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DEVELOPMENT 
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 LANGUAGE 
 
 BY 
 
 ALFRED H. WELSH, A.M. 
 
 MEMBER OF VICTORIA INSTITUTE, THE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF GREAT BRITAIN 
 AUTHOR OF “ESSENTIALS OF ENGLISH,” “COMPLETE RHETORIC,” ETC. 
 
 VOLUME I 
 
 All profitable study is a silent disputation — an intellectual gymnastic; and the most 
 improving books are precisely those which most excite the reader. ... To read pas- 
 sively, to learn,— is, in reality, not to learn at all. — Sir William Hamilton 
 
 NINTH EDITION 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY 
 1888 
 
Copyright 1882 
 
 By S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY 
 
 KNIGHT & LSi:iARD .1 
 
,'}• '■< D. HILL 
 
 TO 
 
 \ J U u. 
 
 !%h% 
 
 N.l 
 
 GOVERNOR CHARLES FOSTER. 
 
 Dear Sir: — Not the least of our national glories are the literary remains 
 of the best of our public men. At a period when the general literature of 
 the country was the contempt of Europe, our statesmen wrote in the Eng- 
 
 council, and the splendid succession of intellect in action mounted to its 
 grandest development in the triumvirate of Calhoun, Clay, and Webster. 
 Nor latterly has that noble lineage failed. Seward and Sumner have illus- 
 trated elegant scholarship in the trustees of power. Within a few years, 
 historians and poets have represented us in foreign courts, while others — 
 notably the lamented Garfield — have carried the world of ideas into that 
 -of catch-words and party habits. In this there is cause to rejoice. It 
 signifies that we are gravitating in the ideal direction ; that art, sentiment, 
 and imagination are dividing favor with trade and government. It means 
 the gradual uplift of the Republic towards the high-water mark of culti- 
 vated mind — catholicity of thought, sensibility, and practice. By culture 
 we become citizens of the universe. The work of the scholar, less liable to 
 be partisan, is more apt to be in the interest of civilization, based not upon 
 class-feeling, but on broad grounds of general justice. Nations are not 
 truly great solely because of their numbers, their freedom, their activity. 
 It is in the conjunction of fine culture with sagacity, of high reason with 
 principle, that the ideal of national greatness is to be placed. Only thus 
 can America stand, as she is privileged to do, for the aspirations and 
 future of mankind. 
 
 The paths proper to the statesman and the artist can rarely coincide, 
 but they may often touch: and because I have pleasure in this tangency 
 of pursuits which promises to organize literature into institutions, tending 
 thus to their refinement and expansion, — I also have pleasure in the 
 inscription of these volumes to your Excellency, who, amid the absorbing 
 cares of business and the arduous realities of office, have never become the 
 slave of material circumstances, nor ever been found wanting in an active 
 sympathy with cosmopolitan aims, displaying on the theatre of politics the 
 virtues which impart grace and dignity to private character. 
 
 But the pleasure is peculiar in remembering your early and generous 
 friendship, through which I am now permitted to hope that these pages 
 may contribute, albeit in a limited way, to form judicious readers, intel- 
 ligent writers, or well-furnished speakers; minister to breadth of thought 
 or beneficence of feeling; strengthen faith or enkindle hope; deepen or 
 multiply the sense of truth, beauty, and right, whence all true manliness 
 is fed. 
 
 lish of Addison and Junius. Classic eloquence adorned the Revolutionary 
 
 Sincerely yours, 
 
 iii 
 
 A. H. W. 
 
F. L. Stevens 
 
 CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. 
 
 Dedication iii 
 
 Prologue ix 
 
 List of Authorities xvii 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Formative Period — The People. 
 
 Britain. Primitive Inhabitants. Celtic Invasion. Roman Conquest; 
 its Effects. Anglo-Saxon Conquest; its Effects. Norman Conquest; 
 its Effects. Norman Oppression. Moulding of the People and 
 
 Fusion of the Races 1 
 
 Celtic Manners. Druidism. Roman Refinements. Celtic Fancy. Danish 
 
 Customs. Norman Culture 18 
 
 Anglo-Saxon Civilization. Social Life. Legislation and Knowledge. 
 
 Traditions and Mythology. Cosmogony. Burial Customs. Val- 
 halla. Theology. Philosophy. Savagery. Code. Home-Life. 
 Fundamental Instincts. Results 21 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Formative Period — The Language. 
 
 Definition. Origin. Development. Growth. Diversities of Speech. 
 Dialects. Idioms. Aryan Mother-Tongue. Elements of English. 
 Original Forms. Transition. Native Features of the Language. 
 History in Word-Forms. Superiority of Saxon English. Results. 39 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Formative Period — The Literature. 
 
 Politics. Old English Jurisprudence. Parliament. Self-Government. 
 Social Life. Town Life. Lawlessness. Brutality. Architecture. 
 
 The Jews in England. Amusements. Superstitions 60 
 
VI 
 
 CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. 
 
 Religion. The English Church. Roman Encroachments. Monasticism. 
 Mendicant Friars. Vices of the Clergy. Disaffection of the Laity. 
 Redeeming Excellences of the System 73 
 
 Learning; its Row Condition. Gradual Revival. Universities. Primitive 
 Oxford. Language ........ 82 
 
 Poetry. Saxon Verse-Form. Alliteration. Rhyme. The Saxon Ideal 
 — Beowulf. Tragic Tones of Saxon Poetry. Sombre Imagination 
 of the North 89 
 
 Romantic Fiction. Its Origin. Its Themes. Love Courts. Its Form. 
 
 Its Poets. Layamon. Robert of Gloucester. The “Owl and the 
 Nightingale” 102 
 
 Rise of English Prose. History — Legendary Stage. Annalists. The 
 Saxon Chronicle. Theology. Heresy. Rationalism. Ethics. 
 Science. Astrology. Philosophy. Scholasticism. Realism. Nom- 
 inalism. Aquinas. Scotus. The Syllogism. Learned Puerilities . 117 
 
 Representative Authors: 
 
 Caedmon 139 
 
 Bede ............. 145 
 
 Alfred 148 
 
 Roger Bacon 156 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Initiative Period. 
 
 Political Forces. Social Life. Chivalry. Misery of the Poor. Revolt. 
 Religion. Exactions of Rome. Dissensions of the Clergy. Disaf- 
 fection of the People 164 
 
 Learning. Its Decay. Language. The King’s English. Its Inter- • 
 
 mixtures 173 
 
 Poetry. Piers Plowman. Robert Manning. Gower. “Confessio 
 Amantis” 176 
 
 Prose. History. Philosophy. Science — Astrology. Theology — Tran- 
 substantiation. Ethics — Casuistry 187 
 
 Representative Authors: 
 
 Mandeville 194 
 
 Wycliffe 199 
 
 Chaucer 204 
 
CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. 
 
 yii 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Retrogressive Period. 
 
 Political Strife. Social State. Industries. Savagery. Homes. News. 
 
 Sports 233 
 
 Religion. Debasement of the Church. Superstitions. Excesses. Oppres- 
 sions 238 
 
 Learning. The Press. Language. Emancipation of the Tongue . . 242 
 
 Poetry. Occleve. Lydgate. The Ballad. Robin Hood 245 
 
 Prose. Paston Letters. Fortescue. Malory. History. Fabyan. 
 Theology — Decadence. Ethics — Vacuity. Science — Empiricism. 
 
 Philosophy — Dead Sea Fruit 252 
 
 Representative Author: 
 
 Caxton 259 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 First Creative Period. 
 
 Political Struggles. Social Condition. Increase of Comfort and Luxury. 
 
 Wretchedness and Disorder. Brutal Amusements 265 
 
 The Reformation. Indulgences. Dispensations. Relies. The Scrip- 
 tures. Book of Common Prayer. Latimer. Ridley. The Church 
 
 of England. Superstitions of the People 272 
 
 The Renaissance; its Rise and Development. Language. Anomalies. 
 
 Progress in Simplicity. Organized Completion 284 
 
 Poetry. Colin Clout. Skelton. Surrey. Continuity of Verse-Form. 
 Rhetorical and Emotive. Early Drama. The Theatre. Mysteries. 
 Moralities. Heywood. Comedy; Udall. Tragedy; Sackville. Ex- 
 ternals of the Stage. Marlowe 297 
 
 Prose. Forces. Style. Euphuism. History. Raleigh. Hollinshed. 
 Theology. The Articles. Rationalism and Dogma. The Bible. 
 Ethics. The Dawn in Lord Bacon’s “Essays.” Rise of Science. 
 Copernicus. Galileo. Philosophy. Emancipation from Scholas- 
 ticism. Bruno 321 
 
 Representative Authors: 
 
 More 334 
 
 Sidney 341 
 
 Hooker 347 
 
 Raleigh 351 
 
 Spenser 358 
 
 Shakespeare . . 373 
 
Vlll 
 
 CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Philosophic Period. 
 
 Political Parties. Cavaliers. Roundheads. Amelioration of Social 
 
 Life. Relics of Barbarity 401 
 
 Religion. Puritan Triumph. Austerity. Influence. Witchcraft . . 404 
 
 Poetry. Wither. Carew. Herrick. Suckling. Donne. Herbert. 
 Drummond. Cowley. Change in the Drama. Jonson. Beaumont 
 and Fletcher. Massinger. Ford. Webster. Inequalities of the 
 
 Drama. Shirley. Closing of the Theatre 409 
 
 Prose. Burton. Bishop Hall. Sir Thomas Browne. Jeremy Taylor. 
 Ethics. Secularization of Morals. Science. Astronomy. Kepler. 
 Newton. Napier. Harvey. Rise of Modern Philosophy. Bacon. 
 
 Descartes. Browne 427 
 
 Representative Authors: 
 
 Jonson . 444 
 
 Lord Bacon 456 
 
 Milton 472 
 
 Index 497 
 
PROLOGUE. 
 
 A nation’s literature is the outcome of its whole life. To 
 consider it apart from the antecedents and environments which 
 form the national genius were to misapprehend its nature and 
 its bearing. Its growth in kind and degree is determined by 
 four capital agencies, — race, or hereditary dispositions; sur- 
 roundings, or physical and social conditions; epoch, or spirit 
 of the age ; person, or reactionary and expressive force. His- 
 torical phenomena are not all to be resolved, as with Draper, 
 into physiological ; nor all to be explained, as with Buckle, by 
 an a priori necessity ; nor chiefly to be referred, as with Taine, 
 to the sky, the weather, and the nerves. On the other hand, 
 they are as far removed from an individual spontaneity as from 
 a depressing fatalism. Personal genius remakes the society 
 which evolves it. In so far as it rises above the table-land of 
 national character, it not only expresses but intensifies the 
 national type. Shakespeare and Bacon wrought under the cir- 
 cumstances of their birth, but were also, by their own supremacy, 
 original and independent sources of influence. Yet progress is 
 according to law. In the midst of eternal change is unity. The 
 relations of the constants and the variables have the true marks 
 of development. On a survey of the whole, human wills, how- 
 ever free, are seen to conform, under a general Providence, to 
 a definite end. 
 
 A history of English Literature requires, therefore, a descrip- 
 tion of English soil and climate, of English thought and English 
 character, as they exist when first the English people come upon 
 the arena of history, of the growth of that character and that 
 
X 
 
 PROLOGUE. 
 
 thought, as they are colored by the foreign infusions of Celt, 
 Roman, Dane, and Norman, or impressed and fostered by the 
 new ideal — Christianity. Nor can any man understand the 
 American mind who fails to appreciate its connection with Eng- 
 lish history, ancient and modern. On English soil were first 
 developed what he most values in his ancestral spirit — the 
 habits, the principles, and the faith, which have made this 
 country to be what it is. As we have no American language 
 which is not a graft on the English stock, though there be 
 minor points of difference, — so we have no American literature 
 which does not flow in a common stream of sentiment from 
 English hearths and English altars. What combinations will 
 hereafter manifest themselves in consequence of democratic ten- 
 dencies and a gradual amalgamation with all the other nations 
 of Europe, is an open question; but the distinctive features 
 which have displayed themselves within the present century 
 can hardly be deemed of sufficient strength to color or disturb 
 the primitive current. 
 
 So far as a historical work may be intended to be an educa- 
 tional appliance, it obviously should be neither a presentation of 
 chronological details nor a mere discussion of causes. The high 
 and natural destination of the soul is the full development of its 
 moral and intellectual faculties. Hence knowledge is chiefly 
 valuable as a means of mental activity. And since the desire of 
 unity, and the necessity of referring effects to their causes, are 
 the mainspring of energy, the knowledge that a thing is, — that 
 a certain author wrote certain books, that a certain book con- 
 tains a certain passage, that a certain passage contains a certain 
 opinion, — is far less important than the knowledge how or why 
 it is, — how the author, the book, the opinion are related, as 
 consequent and antecedent, to some dominant idea or moral 
 state; how this idea or state is shaped by natural bent and 
 constraining force; how, from this primitive bent and moulding 
 
PROLOGUE. 
 
 XI 
 
 force, we may see in advance, and half predict the character of 
 human events and productions; how beneath literary remains we 
 can unearth the beatings of living hearts centuries ago, as the 
 lifeless wreck of a shell is a clue to the entire and living 
 existence. The one is a knowledge of objects as isolated; the 
 other, of objects as connected. The first gives facts; the second 
 gives power. An individual may possess an ample magazine of 
 the former, and still be little better than a barbarian. Accord- 
 ingly 1 have aimed at the golden mean, — a judicious union of 
 facts and philosophy, of narrative and reflection, of objective 
 description and subjective meditation. Color and form may be 
 desirable to attract the eye, but the interlacing, spiritual force, 
 that blends them into harmony and coherence, is required to 
 make their lesson disciplinary, available, and enduring. 
 
 Again, it is a law of intelligence that the greater the number 
 of objects to which our consciousness is simultaneously extended, 
 the smaller is the intensity with which it is able to consider each, 
 and therefore the less vivid and distinct will be the information 
 obtained. If the points considered are intermingled, the rays 
 are not brought to a focus, and the mental eye, — following the 
 lines, but nowhere abiding, — instead of a clear and well-defined 
 image, perceives only a shadowy and confused outline. Now, to 
 the ordinary student, it is believed that the treatment of authors 
 in our current text-books presents the fantastic groupings of the 
 kaleidoscope, — a bewildering show. In the whirl and entangle- 
 ment of topics, he sees nothing in an undivided light, and 
 receives no lasting and organic impressions. He reads passively, 
 conceives feebly, and forgets speedily. Therefore each leading 
 author is here discussed under the classified heads of Biogra- 
 phy, Writings, Style, Rank, Character, and Influence. 
 Others are added when rising into special interest and signifi- 
 cance. One thing at a time is the accepted condition for all 
 efficient activity. While the topics are logically related as the 
 
PROLOGUE. 
 
 xii 
 
 more or less interdependent parts of a whole, each receives the 
 amplest justice by being made in its turn the central subject of 
 thought. The mind in its work thus becomes more animated 
 and energetic, because its ideas are kindred, all converging to a 
 definite because to a single impression. By such an arrange- 
 ment, moreover, the logical powers are trained, and the student 
 unconsciously acquires a habit of bringing, in writing or speak- 
 ing, his thoughts out of chaos into order. 
 
 Further, a great man, his career, his example, his ideas, can 
 take no strong and permanent hold of the heart and mind, until 
 these have become an integral part of our established associa- 
 tions of thoughts, feelings, and desires. But this can only be 
 accomplished by time. The attention must be detained till the 
 subject becomes real, as the face of a friend; fixed, as the sun 
 and stars: then the energies of apprehension, of judgment, of 
 sympathy, are aroused; and images, principles, truths, senti- 
 ments, though the words be forgotten, become fadeless acquisi- 
 tions, assimilated into the very substance of the student’s living 
 self. Hence, as the end of liberal education is the cultivation of 
 the student through the awakened exercise of his faculties, the 
 authors studied should be relatively few and representative. 
 Time is wasted and the powers are dissipated by attempting too 
 much. Preeminent authors are creative and pictorial, reflecting, 
 with singular fidelity, the peculiarities of their age; and by 
 limiting the discussion to such, the student acquires the most in 
 learning the least. 
 
 Regarding language as an apparatus for the conveyance of 
 thought, and mindful that whatever force is absorbed by the 
 machine is deducted from the result, I have carefully excluded 
 polemical and conjectural matter from the body of the work, 
 have seldom diverted attention by introduction of foot-notes, 
 and have employed dates but sparingly. ‘ Biography,’ says 
 Lowell, ‘ from day to day holds dates cheaper and facts dearer,’ 
 
PROLOGUE. 
 
 X11L 
 
 — not all facts, indeed, but the essential ones, those of psycho- 
 logical purport, which underlie the life and make the individual 
 man. To the same end — economy of mental energy — the early 
 poets, including Chaucer, are presented in a more or less mod- 
 ernized form, with an occasional retention of the antique dialect 
 for its illustrative uses. 
 
 Neither the artist nor his art, as before stated, can be under- 
 stood and estimated independently of his times. No enlarged 
 or profound conception of intellectual culture is possible with- 
 out completeness of view, — without a well-defined notion of the 
 other elements of society, and of those products designed to 
 convince of truth or to arouse to action, as well as of those 
 whose prime object is to address the imagination or to please 
 the taste. Consequently, each of the periods, into which the 
 work is divided according to what seemed their predominant 
 characteristics, is introduced by a sketch of the features which 
 distinguish it, and of the forces which go to shape it, including 
 Politics, the state of Society, Religion, Poetry, the Drama, 
 the Novel, the Periodical, History, Theology, Ethics, Sci- 
 ence, Philosophy. No one who aspires now to literary power 
 can afford to be ignorant of the scientific ph&se of modern 
 thought. The educational value of philosophy is peculiarly 
 apparent in its effects on the culture and discipline of the 
 mind, — to quicken it, to teach it precision, to lead it to inquire 
 into the causes and relations of things, to awaken it to a vigor- 
 ous and varied exertion. Not less salutary in this point of view, 
 and far more so in another, are theology and ethics. Moral cul- 
 ture and religious growth cannot be excluded from any just 
 conception of education. Broadly stated, it is of vast moment 
 to the student to reflect upon the motives and springs of 
 human action, to face the unexplained mystery of thought, to 
 ask himself, What is right, and what wrong ; what am I, and 
 whither going; what my history, and my destiny? 
 
XIV 
 
 PROLOGUE. 
 
 According to an enlightened science of education, it is diffi- 
 cult to see the utility of a text-book, though critical, that is 
 wholly abstracted from the literature itself. Its criticisms, its 
 general observations, are meaningless and powerless without 
 illustrative specimens to verify them. They produce no answer- 
 ing thoughts, no questioning, and thus no valuable activity. 
 The student is expected blindly to yield himself to the direc- 
 tion of another. He forms no independent judgment, is excited 
 to no disputation, is stimulated to no profitable or pleasurable 
 exercise. But instruction is only instruction as it enables us 
 to teach ourselves, and leaves on the mind serviceable images 
 and contemplations. If truth is not expansive, if it is not 
 recast and used to interpret nature and guide the life, wherein 
 is its value? The materials of discipline and culture are fur- 
 nished, not by statements about literature, but by the litera- 
 ture itself. To refine the taste, to sharpen thought, to inspire 
 feeling, the student must be brought closely and consciously 
 into contact with personality, — that is, with the writer’s pro- 
 ductions. Not only are extracts to be presented, but when 
 practicable and expedient, entire artistic products. These are 
 to be interpreted ; and in them, as in a mirror, the student 
 should be taught to recognize the genius that constructed them, 
 — his style, his character, the manners, opinions, and civilization 
 of the period. 
 
 Particular care has been taken to insure an interest in the 
 personal life of an author; for all the rules that have ever been 
 prescribed for controlling the attention find their principal value 
 in this, — that they induce or require an interest in the subject- 
 matter. Hence the value of reported sayings, private journals, 
 correspondence, striking events, gossipy incidents, — the scenery 
 and personages that belong to the period, and which have the 
 effect to charm the mind into a sympathetic attitude toward 
 the author’s work. ‘ As the enveloping English ivy lends a 
 
PROLOGUE. 
 
 XV 
 
 living charm and attractiveness to many a ruined castle and 
 abbey, which would prove uninviting to the tourist standing 
 in its naked deformity, so a reasonable amplitude of treatment 
 often throws a wonderful fascination over old names and dates, 
 otherwise uninteresting.’ 
 
 It would seem obvious that a history of English Literature 
 should note in a catholic and liberal spirit the practical lessons 
 suggested by its theme. If it warms not the feelings into 
 noble earnestness, elevates not the mind’s ideals, nor supplies 
 healthful truths by which to live and to die, it is lamentably 
 defective; and the fault is not in the subject, but in the histo- 
 rian. When Dr. Arnold was planning his history, he said: 
 “ My highest ambition ... is to make my history the very 
 reverse of Gibbon in this respect, that whereas the whole spirit 
 of his work, from its low morality, is hostile to religion without 
 speaking directly against it, so my greatest desire would be, in 
 my history, by its high morals and its general tone, to be of 
 use to the cause, without actually bringing it fonvard .’ With- 
 out twisting a story into a sermon, I have humbly endeavored 
 to present it as the artist describes nature, — with a light falling 
 upon it from the region of the highest and truest. As to the 
 benefits of this study per se, they cannot be overestimated. He 
 can hardly hope for eminence as a writer, who has not enriched 
 his mind and perfected his style by familiarity with the literary 
 masters and masterpieces; while to have fed on high thoughts 
 and to have companioned with those — 
 
 ‘ Whose soul the holy forms 
 Of young imagination hath kept pure,’ 
 
 are, beyond all teaching, the virtue-making powers. 
 
 Every thinker, the most original, owes his originality to the 
 originality of all. ‘Very little of me,’ said Goethe, ‘would be 
 left, if I could but say what I owe to my predecessors and 
 contemporaries.’ Omnipotence creates, man combines. He can 
 be originative, strictly, only in development, in the form of his 
 
XVI 
 
 PROLOGUE. 
 
 funded thought, in the fusion of his collected materials, as the 
 sculptor in the conception of his statue, or the architect in the 
 design of his edifice. My scope and purposes being such as 
 indicated, I have drawn freely from all the fountains arOund 
 me, — have wished to absorb all the light anywhere radiating. 
 To the many who have helped me, it is a pleasure to record my 
 obligations in the manner which seems most accordant with the 
 objects and uses to be subserved, — either explicitly in the text, 
 or collectively in the List of Authorities. To some sources, how- 
 ever, I am preeminently indebted, — to the literary histories of 
 Anderson, Bascom, and Taine; to the critical essays of Macaulay, 
 Hazlitt, and Whipple; to the philosophical treatises of Lecky, 
 Buckle, Lewes, and Uberweg. I wish, also, to render acknowl- 
 edgments to personal friends, — to Rev. J. L. Grover for free 
 access to the Columbus Library; to General Joseph Geiger, and 
 his accomplished assistant, Miss Mary Harbaugh, for the liberal 
 privileges of the Ohio State Library; to Professor Alston Ellis, 
 Ph.D., for valuable suggestions; to Rev. Daniel F. Smith, and 
 Mr. James Bishop Bell, of Chicago, the scholarly readers, for 
 their critical and unstinted revision of the proof-sheets; to Rev. 
 F. W. Gunsaulus, and A. E. Clevenger, A.M., for large and 
 important aid in the preparation of a copious index. 
 
 In conclusion, my supreme anxiety has been to produce not 
 a brilliant but a useful book, and the results are therefore hope- 
 fully commended to a conscientious and catholic criticism, a 
 criticism that shall take high ground, — that shall aim to pro- 
 mote the common weal, — that shall not look through a micro- 
 scope when it should look through a telescope, — that shall 
 illuminate excellences as well as indicate errors, — that shall 
 contemplate the whole before it adjudicates on the parts, — 
 that shall be perceptive, sympathetic, and suggestive. 
 
 The Author. 
 
 Columbus , Ohio , July J, 1882. 
 
LIST OF AUTHORITIES. 
 
 Adams, J. Q 
 
 Alford, H 
 
 Alger, W. R 
 
 Anderson, R. B. . 
 Azarins, Brother. 
 
 Angus, J 
 
 Bagehot, W 
 
 Baring-Gould, S. 
 
 Bascom, J 
 
 Bayne, P 
 
 Bayne, P 
 
 Browne, M 
 
 Buckle, H. T 
 
 Burnet, G 
 
 Cairns, J 
 
 Carlyle, T 
 
 Carlyle, T 
 
 Carpenter, S. H. . 
 
 Chambers, R 
 
 Channing, W. E. . 
 
 Cocker, B. F 
 
 Clarke, C. C 
 
 Collet, S 
 
 Collier, J. P 
 
 Cook, Joseph 
 
 Cooke, G. W 
 
 Cox, G. W 
 
 C’raik, G. L 
 
 De Mille, J 
 
 DTsraeli, I 
 
 D'lsraeli, I 
 
 Dorner, J. A 
 
 Drake, N 
 
 Draper, J. W 
 
 Eccleston, J 
 
 Ellis, G 
 
 Emerson, R. W. . 
 Emerson, R. W. . 
 Farrar, F. W. . . . 
 
 Farrar, F. W 
 
 Farrar, F. W 
 
 Fa uriel, C. C. 
 
 Fields, J. T 
 
 Fiske, J 
 
 Fowler, W. E 
 
 Freeman, E. A. . . 
 Freeman, E. A. . 
 Fronde, J. A 
 
 .Lectures on Oratory and Rhetoric. 
 Queen’s English. 
 
 .Poetry of the East. 
 
 .Norse Mythology. 
 
 .Old English Period. 
 
 . Hand-Book of English Literature. 
 .English Constitution. 
 
 .Myths of the Middle Ages. 
 .Philosophy of English Literature. 
 .Essays in Biography and Criticism. 
 .Lessons from My Masters. 
 .Chaucer’s England. 
 
 .History of Civilization in England. 
 .History of his own Time. 
 
 Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century. 
 .Heroes and Hero-Worship. 
 
 .Oliver Cromwell. 
 
 .English of the Fourteenth Century. 
 .Cyclopaedia of English Literature. 
 .Complete Works. 
 
 .Christianity and Greek Philosophy. 
 .Riches of Chaucer. 
 
 Relics of Literature. 
 
 .History of English Dramatic Poetry. 
 .Conscience. 
 
 .Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
 
 .Mythology of the Aryan Nations. 
 .History of English Literature. 
 .Elements of Rhetoric. 
 
 .Amenities of Literature. 
 
 .Curiosities of Literature. 
 
 .History of Protestant Theology. 
 .Shakespeare and His Times. 
 .Intellectual Development of Europe. 
 English Antiquities. 
 
 .Early English Metrical Romances. 
 .English Traits. 
 
 .Representative Men. 
 
 .Chapters on Language. 
 
 .Language and Languages. 
 
 .Witness of History to Christ. 
 
 History of Prove^al Poetry. 
 .Yesterdays with Authors. 
 
 .Myths and Myth-makers. 
 
 Grammar of the English Language. 
 History of Norman Conquest. 
 
 .Old English History. 
 
 .History of England, 
 xvii 
 
XV111 
 
 LIST OF AUTHORITIES. 
 
 Fronde, J. A. ... 
 
 Geike, C 
 
 Giles, J. A 
 
 Gilfillan, G 
 
 Gilliland, T. 
 Gladstone, W. E. 
 Gladstone, W. E. 
 
 Godwin, P 
 
 Goodman, W. . . . 
 
 Gould, E. S 
 
 Green, J. R 
 
 Guizot, F. P. G 
 
 Guizot, F. P. G 
 
 Hamilton, Sir W. . . . 
 
 Hallam, H 
 
 Hallam, H 
 
 Hallam, H 
 
 Haven, J 
 
 Hazlitt, W 
 
 Hazlitt, W. C 
 
 Hudson, F. 
 
 Hume, D. 
 
 Hunt, L 
 
 Hurst, J. F 
 
 Hutton, R. H 
 
 Irvrng, W 
 
 Jameson, A 
 
 Johnson, S 
 
 Jouffroy. T. S 
 
 King, T. S 
 
 Knight, C 
 
 Labarte, J 
 
 Lange, F A 
 
 Lanier, S 
 
 Latham, R. G 
 
 Lecky, W. E. H. ... 
 Lecky, W. E. H. . . . 
 
 Lecky, W. E. H 
 
 Leland, J 
 
 Lewes, G. II 
 
 Lewis, J 
 
 Lodge, E 
 
 Longfellow, H. W. . . 
 
 Lowell, J. R 
 
 Lowell, J. R 
 
 Lubbock, Sir J 
 
 Lytton, Lord 
 
 Macaulay, T. B 
 
 Macaulay, T. B 
 
 Mackintosh, Sir J. . . 
 
 Marsh, G. P 
 
 Martineau, H 
 
 Martineau, J 
 
 Mathews, W 
 
 M'Cosh, J 
 
 M’Cosh, J 
 
 Mill, J. S 
 
 Mills, C 
 
 ..Short Studies on Great Subjects. 
 
 .The English Reformation. 
 
 . Ancient Britons. 
 
 .Modern Literature and Literary Men. 
 
 , .Dramatic Mirror. 
 
 .Gleanings of Past Years. 
 
 , . Juventus Mundi. 
 
 . . Out of the Past. 
 
 . Social History of Great Britain. 
 
 . .Good English. 
 
 . A Short History of the English People. 
 ..History of Civilization in Europe. 
 
 . .History of the English Revolution. 
 .Discussions on Philosophy and Literature. 
 .Constitutional History of England. 
 
 . Europe during the Middle Ages. 
 
 Literature of Europe. 
 
 .History of Ancient and Modern Philosophy. 
 .Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth. 
 .Early Literature of Great Britain. 
 
 .History of Journalism in the United States. 
 .History of England. 
 
 . Selections from English Poets. 
 
 History of Rationalism. 
 
 .Essays, Theological and Literary. 
 
 .Oliver Goldsmith. 
 
 ..Legends of the Monastic Orders. 
 
 Lives of Eminent English Poets. 
 .Introduction to Ethics. 
 
 .Christianity and Humanity. 
 
 Popular History of England. 
 
 . Arts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. 
 History of Materialism. 
 
 .Science of English Verse. 
 
 .English Language. 
 
 .England in the Eighteenth Century. 
 
 .History of European Morals. 
 
 .Rationalism in Europe. 
 
 .View of Deistical Writers. 
 
 Biographical History of Philosophy. 
 
 .History of English Translations of the Bible. 
 .Illustrations of British History. 
 
 . Poets and Poetry of Europe. 
 
 .Among My Books. 
 
 .My Study "Windows. 
 
 .Origin of Civilization. 
 
 Last of the Barons. 
 
 Essays. 
 
 History of England. 
 
 .Progress of Ethical Philosophy. 
 
 .Origin and History of the English Language 
 .History of England. 
 
 .Essays, Philosophical and Theological. 
 .Literary Style. 
 
 Christianity and Positivism. 
 
 .Intuitions of the Mind. 
 
 System of Logic. 
 
 .History of Chivalry. 
 
LIST OF AUTHORITIES. xix 
 
 Morell, J. D Speculative Philosophy of Europe. 
 
 Morley, H First Sketch of English Literature. 
 
 Morris, G. S British Thought and Thinkers. 
 
 Mosheim, J. L Ecclesiastical History. 
 
 Muller, F. M Chips from a German Workshop. 
 
 Muller, F. M Science of Language. 
 
 Neal, D History of the Puritans. 
 
 Neele, II Lectures on English Poetry. 
 
 Niebuhr, B. G History of Rome. 
 
 Oliphant, T. L. K Old and Middle English. 
 
 Palgrave, Sir F History of the Anglo-Saxons. 
 
 Palgrave, Sir F Rise of the English Commonwealth. 
 
 Parker, T Complete Works. 
 
 Percy, T Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. 
 
 Phelps, Austin Men and Books. 
 
 Philp, R. K Progress in Great Britain. 
 
 Porter, N Books and Reading. 
 
 Porter, N The Human Intellect. 
 
 Prescott, W. II Biographical and Critical Miscellanies. 
 
 Ranke, L History of the Popes. 
 
 Reed, II Lectures on English History. 
 
 Reed, H Lectures on English Literature. 
 
 Ruskin, J Modern Painters. 
 
 Russell. A. P Library Notes. 
 
 Scliaff, P History of the Christian Church. 
 
 Schuyler, A Outlines of Logic. 
 
 Shairp, J. C Poetic Interpretation of Nature. 
 
 Shairp, J. C Aspects of Poetry. 
 
 Sismondi. J. C. L. S. de Literature of the South of Europe. 
 
 Shepherd, Henry E History of the English Language. 
 
 Smollet, T History of England. 
 
 Spencer, II Illustrations of Universal Progress. 
 
 Stael, Madame de Influence of Literature. 
 
 Stanhope, P. H Reign of Queen Anne. 
 
 Stedman, E. C Victorian Poets. 
 
 Stephen, L English Thought in the Eighteenth Century. 
 
 Stubbs, W Constitutional History of England. 
 
 Symonds, J. A Sketches and Studies in Southern Europe. 
 
 Symonds, J. A The Renaissance in Italy. 
 
 Taine, H. A Notes on England. 
 
 Taine, II. A History of English Literature. 
 
 Thoms, W. «J Prose Romances. 
 
 Thomson, E Educational Essays. 
 
 Thorpe, B Northern Mythology. 
 
 Tocqueville, A. de Democracy in America. 
 
 Tookc, J. H Diversions of Purley. 
 
 Trench, R. C English, Past and Present. 
 
 Trench, R. C On the Study of Words. 
 
 Turner, S History of the Anglo-Saxons. 
 
 Turner, T. H Domestic Architecture in England. 
 
 Tylor, E. B Primitive Culture. 
 
 Uberweg, F History of Philosophy. 
 
 Vaughan, R Revolutions in English History. 
 
 Ward, T. H English Poets. 
 
 Warton, T History of English Poetry. 
 
 Whewell, W History of the Inductive Sciences. 
 
 Whewell, W Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences. 
 
XX LIST OF AUTHORITIES. 
 
 Whewell, W Elements of Morality. 
 
 Whipple, E. P Character and Characteristic Men. 
 
 Whipple, E. P Literature of the Age of Elizabeth. 
 
 White, J History of England. 
 
 Whitney, W. D... . Language and the Study of Language. 
 
 Whitney, W. D Life and Growth of Language. 
 
 Wright, T England in the Middle Ages. 
 
DEVELOPMENT 
 
 OP 
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 FORMING OF THE PEOPLE. 
 
 The harvest gathered in the fields of the Past is to be brought home for the use of the 
 Present.— Dr. Arnold. 
 
 History does not stand outside of nature, but in her very heart, so that the historian only 
 grasps a people’s character with true precision when he keeps in full view its geographical 
 position, and the influences which its surroundings have wrought upon it. — Ritter. 
 
 Geographical. — We see, by reference to the map, that Eng- 
 land — the land from which our language and many of our insti- 
 tutions are derived — is the largest of three countries comprising 
 the island of Great Britain . 1 The remaining two are W ales and 
 Scotland. These three, with Ireland, constitute the United King- 
 dom / and this, with its foreign possessions, the British Empire. 
 
 England, consisting chiefly of low plains and gentle hills, 
 ■occupies the central and southern portion of the island; and 
 Wales, mountainous and marshy, the western. Scotland is the 
 northern division, storm-beaten by a hostile ocean; mountainous 
 and sterile in the north, but abounding in fertile plains in the 
 south. 
 
 Britain is separated from France by the English Channel, from 
 Ireland by the Irish Sea, and from Germany by the North Sea, 
 notorious for its wrecks. 
 
 1 Great Britain, because there is another land also called Britain,— the northwestern 
 corner of Gaul ; but this last is now commonly called Brittany. The two names, however, 
 are really the same, and both are called in Latin Britannia. 
 
2 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. 
 
 Its entire extent is about ninety thousand square miles, or 
 nearly twice the area of the State of New York. 
 
 It is divided into counties, or shires , of which England has 
 forty, W ales twelve, Scotland thirty-three. 
 
 Its climate is moist with the vapors that rise foreVer from the 
 great sea-girdle, and its sky sombre with the clouds that are fed 
 by ceaseless exhalations, — conditions which, however conducive 
 to splendor of verdure, are less nurturing to refined and nimble 
 thought than to sluggish and melancholy temperament; for man, 
 forced to accommodate himself to circumstances, contracts habits 
 and aptitudes corresponding to them. 
 
 No European country should have a deeper interest for Eng- 
 lish or American readers; none is so rich in learning and science, 
 in wise men and useful arts; but nothing in its early existence 
 indicated the greatness it was destined to attain. We are to think 
 of it in those dim old days as, intellectually and physically, an 
 island in a northern sea — the joyless abode of rain and surge, 
 forest and bog, wild beast and sinewy savage, which, as it strug- 
 gled from chaos into order, from morning into prime, should 
 become the residence of civilized energy and Christian sentiment, 
 of smiling love and sweet poetic dreams. 
 
 Britons. — When we learn that the same grammatical princi- 
 ples, the same laws of structure, dominate throughout the lan- 
 guages of Europe, and that, even when their apparent differences 
 are most obvious, it may yet be proved that there is a complete 
 identity in their main roots, there can be no shadow of doubt that 
 they were once identical, and that the many peoples who use them, 
 once, long before the beginning of recorded annals, dwelt together 
 in the same pastoral tents. Somewhere in the quadrilateral which 
 extends from the Indus to the Euphrates, and from the Oxus to 
 the Persian Gulf, amid scenery ‘ grandiose yet severe,’ lived this 
 mother-race, unknown even to tradition, but revealed by linguistic 
 science, — parent 'of the speculative subtlety of Germany, of the 
 imperial energy of England, of the vivid intelligence of F ranee, of 
 the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome. Its 
 most ancient name with which we are acquainted is Aryas , derived 
 from the root ar, to plough, and which therefore implies originally 
 an agricultural as distinguished from a rude and nomadic people. 
 Just when it began to wander away from its cradle-land is un- 
 
PRIMITIVE BRITONS. 
 
 known; but gradually, perhaps by the natural growth of popula- 
 tion, perhaps by the restless spirit of enterprise, the old home was 
 abandoned; and it often happened that a wandering band parted 
 asunder into two or more others in the course of its wanderinsrs,. 
 who forgot, as they separated, the rock whence they were hewn 
 and the hole of the pit whence they were digged. In most cases 
 they entered upon territory already inhabited by other races, but 
 these were commonly either destroyed or driven from the select 
 parts into out-of-the-way corners. 
 
 First of all, in quest of new fortunes, came the Celts , pressing 
 their way into Germany, Italy, Spain, Gaul (now France), and 
 thence into Britain. The area over which Celtic names are found 
 diffused shows the original extent of their dominion. These pre- 
 English Celts, ever waning and dying, survive chiefly in the mod- 
 ern Highlanders, Irish 1 and Welsh . 2 Their history, as Britons, 
 finds its earliest solid footing in the narrative of a Roman soldier. 
 Early historians, indeed, who could look into the far and shadowy 
 past with an unquestioning confidence, marshalled kings and 
 dynasties in complete chronology and exact succession. They 
 made British antiquity run parallel with ‘ old hushed Egypt,’ with 
 the prophets and judges of Israel. We are gravely told of one 
 British king who flourished in the time of Saul, of another who 
 was contemporary with Solomon; that King Lear had grown old 
 in government when Romulus and Remus were suckled; that the 
 Britons were sprung from Trojan ancestry, and took their name 
 from Brutus, who, an exile and troubled wanderer, was directed 
 by the oracle of Diana to come to Albion, 3 — 
 
 ‘ That pale, that white-faced shore, 
 
 Whose foot spurns back the ocean’s roaring tides.’ 
 
 Standing before the altar of the goddess, with vessel of wine 
 and blood of white hart, he had repeated nine times, — 
 
 ‘ Goddess of woods, tremendous in the chase 
 To mountain boars, and all the savage race! 
 
 Wide o’er the ethereal walks extends thy sway. 
 
 And o’er the infernal mansions void of day! 
 
 Look upon us on earth! unfold our fate, 
 
 And say what region is our destined seat! 
 
 Where shall we next thy lasting temples raise? 
 
 And choirs of angels celebrate thy praise?’ 
 
 1 Meaning ‘Men of the West.’ 2 Meaning ‘ Strangers.’ 
 
 3 The island, not yet Britain, was ruled over by Albion, a giant, and son of Neptune, 
 
 who gave it his name. Presuming, says one account, to oppose the progress of Hercules in 
 his western march, he was slain. 
 
4 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. 
 
 In deep sleep, in vision of the night, he was answered, — 
 
 * Brutus ! there lies beyond the Gallic bounds 
 An Island which the western sea surrounds. 
 
 By giants once possessed ; now few remain 
 To bar thy entrance, or obstruct thy reign. 
 
 To reach that happy shore thy sails employ ; 
 
 There fate decrees to raise a second Troy, 
 
 And found an empire in thy royal line, 
 
 Which time shall ne’er destroy, nor bounds confine.’ 
 
 We call these stories legendary; once — as late as the seven- 
 teenth century — they were accredited history. Certainly, the 
 faith which received them as such seems to us better than the 
 vicious scepticism which would beggar us of the accumulated 
 inheritance of ages by destroying belief in the evidence. They 
 may, and doubtless do, contain germs of truth — left on the 
 shifting sands as wave after wave of forgotten generations broke 
 on the shores of eternity. Many a mighty empire, it is true, 
 has faded forever out of the memory of man; but much that 
 was once thought irretrievably lost has been reclaimed; and, 
 hereafter, historical science may bring to light from the dark 
 oblivion of these pre-historic Britons more than is now dreamed 
 of in our philosophy. 
 
 Fables of a line of kings before the Romans, have left one 
 legend that has become to all a wondrous reality — the story of 
 King Lear, transmuted by the alchemy of genius into perhaps 
 the most impressive and awful tragedy in the range of dramatic 
 literature. 
 
 Roman Conquest. — Meanwhile, our first authentic informa- 
 tion in regard to them is given by Julius Cmsar, who, fifty-five 
 years before Christ, led his brass-mailed legions into Britain from 
 Gaul. If the attack was fierce, the resistance was heroic, and 
 marks the rising pulse in that flood 
 
 ‘ Of British freedom which, to the open sea 
 Of the world’s praise, from dark antiquity 
 t Hath flowed.’ 
 
 While the Roman standard-bearer leaped into the waves, and 
 bade his hesitating comrades follow, the Britons dashed into the 
 surf to strike the invader before his foot polluted their soil. 
 The invasion added nothing to the Roman power or pride. At 
 the end of his campaigns, Caesar had viewed the island rather 
 than possessed it; and when he gave thanks at Rome to the 
 
ROMAN INVADERS. 
 
 0 
 
 gods, it may be questioned whether it was for a conquest or an 
 escape. 
 
 Under his successors, however, about the year 85, when the 
 Republic had become the Empire, the central and southern por- 
 tion of the country became a Roman province, and was subject 
 to Roman rule nearly four hundred years. 
 
 Slow, feeble and imperfect victory, as in the evening of a 
 well-fought day, when the veteran’s arm is less strong and his 
 passions less violent. 
 
 Effects . — During this time much was done to improve the 
 condition of the natives. The Roman coins, laws, language, were 
 introduced. Governed with justice, they became less estranged. 
 Schools were established. The conquered were grouped to- 
 gether in cities guarded by massive walls, and linked together 
 by a net-work of magnificent roads, which ran straight from 
 town to town. The modern railways of England often follow 
 the line of these Roman roads. Agriculture and the useful arts 
 prospered. Many came from Italy, and built temples, palaces, 
 public baths, and other splendid structures, living in great luxury 
 and delight. Their beautiful floors, composed of differently 
 colored brick, and arranged in elegant patterns, are occasionally 
 unearthed — for cornfields and meadows now cover this Roman 
 splendor, and new cities have risen upon the ruins of the old. 
 
 But Roman civilization was arrested and modified by the 
 calamities of the fifth century. In the anarchy and bloodshed 
 of barbarian invasion, the Romanized Britons, who had thus far 
 preserved their national identity, went down; albeit, in their fall, 
 they were as forest leaves strewn by autumnal winds — leaving 
 behind them a fertilizing power in the soil, whence other trees 
 should bud and bloom in the light of other summers, and gather 
 strength to battle with the inclemencies of other winters. The 
 imperial armies brought with them the Christian faith; and 
 Britain, about to undergo a new yoke, had received the principle 
 that was destined to save her from complete desolation. Even 
 in the savage North, where Roman arms had failed to penetrate, 
 Christ had conquered souls. 
 
 Anglo-Saxon Conquest. — In the north and west, sheltered 
 by their mountain fastnesses, were the Celtic Piets and Silures , 
 whom no severity could reduce to subjection and no resistance 
 
G FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. 
 
 restrain from plunder. For two centuries they had been the 
 terror of the civilized Britons, as wild animals harass and perse- 
 cute the tame of their own species. 
 
 Side by side with them, and often driving them back upon 
 their own territory, were the Scots, a Celtic tribe originally from 
 Ireland, whence they crossed in so great a number in their little 
 flat-bottomed boats as Anally to give their own name to the dis- 
 trict they invaded. In 368 we find their united hordes pursuing 
 their depredations as far as London, and repelled with great diffi- 
 culty by Theodosius, a Roman general. 
 
 Soon thereafter the Empire began falling in pieces, and at 
 length its legions were wholly withdrawn from Britain for the 
 defense of Italy against the Goths. The heart of the Britons was 
 faint. They had been so long defended by their Roman masters 
 that when left alone they were incapable of defending themselves. 
 Piteously, but vainly, they entreated once more for protection, 
 exclaiming, ‘ The barbarians drive us to the sea, and the sea 
 drives us back to the barbarians.’ In their extremity they 
 applied, with the usual promises of land and pay, to the Germanic 
 tribes of the Jutes, who, driven by the pressure of want or of foes 
 from the sunless woods and foggy clime of their native Jutland, 
 had already spread their ravages along the eastern shores of 
 Britain, and whose pirate-boats were not improbably cruising off 
 the coast at the moment, — 
 
 ‘Then, sad relief, from the bleak coast that hears 
 The German Ocean roar, deep-blooming, strong. 
 
 And yellow-haired, the blue-eyed Saxon 1 came.’ 
 
 They came to stay — to settle a people and to found a state. 
 The fame of their adventure attracted others, till, their numbers 
 swelling, they treacherously turned their arms against the nation 
 they came to protect, and established themselves on the fruitful 
 plains of Kent. 
 
 From the sand-flats of Holstein and the morasses of Friesland 
 swarmed the Saxons in successive bands, and settled, with 
 sword and battle-axe, to the south, west and east, founding the 
 kingdoms of Sussex , TI r essex and Kssex. 
 
 From the wild waste of Sleswick, swept by the blast of the 
 North, wan and ominous, poured the Angles in a series of 
 
 1 A generic name by which they and their neighbors were known to the Romans, 
 though conveniently applied in particular to a southern tribe. 
 
SAXON SETTLERS. 
 
 7 
 
 descents, and slowly, over deserted walls and polluted shrines, 
 penetrated into the interior, effecting the settlements of North- 
 umberland, Anglia and Mercia. They seem to have been the 
 most numerous and energetic of the invaders, since they occupied 
 larger districts, and in the end gave their name to the land and 
 its people. It was now that Britain began to be called Angle- 
 land , subsequently contracted into England ’, meaning the ‘ land of 
 the Angles,’ or ‘English.’ 
 
 After nearly two hundred years of bitter warfare the island 
 was given over to the dominion of the pagan conquerors, who 
 meantime grouped themselves into the several petty kingdoms 
 indicated, which were collectively known as the Heptarchy . 
 Their history is like a history of ‘kites and crows.’ Freed from 
 the common pressure of war against the Britons, they turned their 
 energies to combats with one another. Little by little, as the tide 
 of supremacy rolled backward and forward, one predominated over 
 the others, till eventually they were all made subject to Wessex 
 in the year 827 , and for the first time there was something like 
 national unity, with the promise of national development. 
 
 Effects . — The conquest, stubbornly resisted and hardly won, 
 was a sheer dispossession of the conquered. Priests were slain at 
 the altar, churches fired, peasants driven by the flames to fling 
 themselves on rings of pitiless steel. Some, the wealthier, fled in 
 panic across the Channel, and took refuge with their kindred in 
 Brittany. Others, who would still be free, retired to Wales, 
 which became the secure retreat of Christianity. The rest, who 
 were not cut down, were enslaved. These are they who, attached 
 to the soil, will rise gradually with the rise of industry, and spread 
 by amalgamation through all ranks of society. In the ascendency 
 of the Saxon, who caused his own language, customs, and laws to 
 become paramount, was laid the sure foundation of the future 
 nation — the one German state that rose on the wreck of Rome. 
 
 It is in this sanguinary and ineffectual struggle that romance 
 places the fair Rowena, of fatal charms, with her golden wine- 
 cup; the enchanter Merlin, who instructs Yortigern, king of the 
 Britons, how to find the two sleeping dragons that hinder the 
 building of his tower; the famous Arthur, with his Knights of 
 the Round Table: 
 
8 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. 
 
 ‘The fellowship of the table round. 
 
 So famous in those days, 
 
 Whereat a hundred noble knights, 
 
 And thirty sat always.’ 
 
 Danish Conquest. — But Saxon Britain was also to be 
 brought to the brink of that servitude or extermination which 
 her arms had brought upon the Celt. About the end of the 
 eighth century, the roving Northmen, 1 pouring redundant from 
 their bleak and barren regions, began to hover off the English 
 coast, growing in numbers and hardihood as they crept southward 
 to the Thames. For two hundred years the raven — dark and 
 dreaded emblem of the Dane — was the terror and scourge of 
 Saxon homes. After a long series of disasters, aggravated by 
 internal feuds, Danish kings occupied the throne from 1016 till 
 1042, when the Saxon line was restored in the person of Edward 
 the Confessor. 
 
 Effects . — The same wild panic, as the light black skiffs strike 
 inland along the river reaches or moor around the river islets; 
 the same sights of horror — reddened horizons, slaughtered men, 
 and children tossed on spikes or sold in the market-place. 
 Christian priests were again slain at the altar. Coveting their 
 treasures of gold and silver, but despising their more valuable 
 ones of knowledge, they made use of books in setting fire to 
 the monasteries. Letters and religion disappeared before these 
 Northmen as before the Northmen of old. The arts of peace 
 were forgotten. Light was all but quenched in a chaotic and 
 muddy ignorance. To an England that had forgotten its origins 
 was brought back the barbaric England of its pirate forefathers. 
 
 When it is considered that the invaders were nearly half 
 as many as the invaded, we are prepared to believe that their 
 influence in language, in physical type, in manners, was far 
 greater than is usually conceded. 
 
 Norman Conquest. — When the great comet of 1060 waved 
 over England, ^the enervated Saxon looked up and beheld what 
 seemed to him a portent that should, as Milton describes it, 
 
 ‘ shake from its horrid hair 
 
 Pestilence and war.’ 
 
 In the ninth century, the Northmen — these same daring and 
 
 1 The terms Northmen , Norsemen , or Scandinavians , are general designations of the 
 inhabitants of Scandinavia (Norway, Sweden and Denmark), who at about this period were 
 called, without distinction, Banes. 
 
NORMAN OPPRESSORS. 
 
 9 
 
 rapacious warriors — penetrated into France, and in 913 had 
 settled in the northern part, where, blending with the French 
 and adopting their language, they rapidly grew up into great 
 prosperity and power. Their name was softened into Normans , 
 and their settlement was called Normandy, meaning the ‘Land 
 of the North-man.’ 
 
 In 1066, polished and transformed by the infusion of foreign 
 blood, the Normans, in their well-knit coats of mail, with sword 
 and lance, invaded and subdued England in the single battle 
 of Hastings, under Duke William, who is therefore known as 
 William the Conqueror. 
 
 Oppression . — The Norman was in a hostile country; and, to 
 maintain himself, became an oppressor. He appropriated the 
 soil, levied taxes, built for himself castles, with their parapets 
 and loop-holes, their outer and inner courts — of which, within a 
 century, there were eleven hundred and fifteen. William, as his 
 power grew, went from a show of justice to ferocity. Wherever 
 his resentment was provoked — wherever submission to his exac- 
 tions was refused — were the red lights of his burnings. Men ate 
 human flesh under the pressure of consuming famine; the perish- 
 ing sold themselves into slavery to obtain food; corpses rotted in 
 the highways because none were left to bury them. The invaders 
 — sixty thousand — are an armed colony. The Saxon is made a 
 body slave on his own estate. For an offence against the forest 
 laws he will lose his eyes. At eight o’clock he is warned by the 
 ringing of the curfew bell to cover up his fire and retire. ‘ What 
 savage unsocial nights,’ says Lamb, ‘ must our ancestors have 
 spent, wintering in caves and unilluminated fastnesses ! They 
 must have lain about and grumbled at one another in the dark. 
 What repartees could have passed when you must have felt about 
 for a smile, and handled your neighbor’s cheek to be sure that he 
 understood it?’ Villages are swept away to make hunting grounds 
 for Norman monarchs. A Norman abbot digs up the bones of his 
 predecessors, and throws them without the gates. In a word, 
 England, in forced and sullen repose, was under a galling yoke, 
 and to all outward appearances was French. 
 
 Effects . — (1.) Introduction of Feudalism, — the distribution 
 of land among military captains, to hold by the sword what 
 the sword had won. In twenty years from the coronation of 
 
10 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. 
 
 William, almost the whole of English soil had been divided, on 
 condition of fealty and assistance, among his followers, while the 
 peasantry were bound as serfs. The meanest Norman rose to 
 wealth and power. Here is the ordinance of the great feudal 
 principle of service : 
 
 ‘We command that all earls, barons, knights, sergeants and freemen be always pro- 
 vided with horses and arms as they ought, and that they be always ready to perform to us 
 their whole service, in manner as they owe it to us of right for their fees and tenements, 
 and as we have appointed to them by the common council of our whole kingdom, and as we 
 have granted to them in fee with right of inheritance.’ 
 
 Of the native proprietors many perished, others were impov- 
 erished, and some retained their estates as vassals of Norman 
 lords. To cast off the chains of feudality will be the labor of six 
 centuries. 
 
 (2.) Introduction of Chivalry, 1 or Knighthood, a military 
 institution which was prompted by an enthusiastic benevolence 
 and combined with religious ceremonies, the avowed purpose of 
 which was to protect the weak and defend the right. It appears 
 to have had its origin in the military distinction by which certain 
 feudal tenants were bound to serve on horseback, equipped with 
 the coat of mail. He who thus fought, and had been invested 
 with helmet, shield and spear in a solemn manner, wanted noth- 
 ing more to render him a knight. From the advantages of the 
 mounted above the ordinary combatant, probably arose that far- 
 famed valor and keen thirst for renown which ultimately became 
 the essential qualities of a knightly character. 
 
 (3.) Introduction of French speech. This became the lan- 
 guage of the court and polite literature. As late as the middle 
 of the fourteenth century it was said: ‘Children in scole, agenst 
 the usage and manir of all other nations, beeth compelled for to 
 leve hire (their) owne langage, and for to construe hir (their) 
 lessons and hir thynges in Frenche, and so they haveth sethe 
 Normans came first into England.’ They made such a point of 
 this that nobles sent their sons to France to preserve them from 
 barbarisms. Students of the universities were obliged to converse 
 either in French or Latin. ‘Gentilmen children beeth taught to 
 speke Frensche from the tyme they bith rokked in hire cradell 
 . . . and uplondish men will likne himself to gentylmen, and 
 fondeth with great besynesse for to speke Frensche to be told of.’ 
 
 1 From the French cheval, a horse. 
 
NORMAN INFLUENCE. 
 
 11 
 
 (4.) Introduction of French poetry. Of course, the Norman, 
 who despised the Saxon, loved none but French ideas and verses. 
 
 (5.) Expulsion of the English language from literature and 
 culture. No longer or scarcely written, ceasing to be studied in 
 schools or to be spoken in higher life, English became the badge 
 of inferiority and dependence. Thus ox , calf \ sheep , pig, deer , 
 are Anglo-Saxon names; while beef, veal , mutton , pork , and 
 venison are Norman-French: because it was the business of the 
 former part of the population to tend these animals while living, 
 but of the latter to eat them when prepared for the feast. The 
 distinction is noticed in his sprightly way by Walter Scott: 
 
 ‘“Why, how call you those grunting brutes running about on their four legs?” 
 demanded Wamba. 
 
 “Swine, fool, swine,” said the herd; “ every fool knows that.” 
 
 “And swine is good Saxon,” said the Jester; “but how call you the sow when she 
 is flayed and drawn and quartered, and hung by the heels like a traitor?” 
 
 “Pork,” answered the swineherd. 
 
 “I am very glad every fool knows that too,” said Wamba; “and pork, I think, is 
 good Norman French ; and so when the brute lives, and is in charge of a Saxon slave, 
 she goes by her Saxon name ; but becomes a Norman, and is called pork, when she is 
 carried to the castle hall to feast among the nobles. What dost thou think of this 
 doctrine, friend Gurth, ha?” 
 
 “It is but too true doctrine, friend Wamba, however it got into thy fool’s pate.” 
 
 “Nay, I can tell you more,” said Wamba, in the same tone. “There is old Aider- 
 man Ox continues to hold his Saxon epithet while he is under the charge of serfs and 
 barbarians such as thou; but becomes beef, a fiery French gallant, when he arrives 
 before the worshipful jaws that are destined to consume him. Mynheer Calf, too, 
 becomes Monsieur de Veau in the like manner. He is Saxon when he requires tend- 
 ance, and takes a Norman name when he becomes matter of enjoyment.” ’ 
 
 Thus does language, as we shall have further occasion to 
 observe, bear the marks and footprints of revolutions, — the ark 
 that rides above the water-floods which sweep away other memo- 
 rials of vanished ages. 
 
 (6.) Finally, the establishment of a foreign king, a foreign 
 prelacy, a foreign nobility, the degradation of the conquered, and 
 the division of power and riches among the conquerors. But the 
 absence of internal wars, due to the firm government of foreign 
 kings, will afford time for a varied progress. The stern disci- 
 pline of these two hundred years will give administrative order 
 and judicial reform. 
 
 Fusion . — But the great masses always form the race in the 
 end, and generally the genius and the language. If the spirit be 
 not broken, tyranny is but a passing storm which purifies while it 
 devastates. The people remember their native rank and their 
 
12 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. 
 
 original independence. At the end of the twelfth century there 
 were Saxon families who had bound themselves by a perpetual 
 vow to wear long beards from father to son in memory of the old 
 national custom. These subjects, trodden and vilified, had the 
 characteristic doggedness, and their predominance was sure. 
 
 A long time is required to convert a mutual hatred into har- 
 mony and peace. Two and a half centuries were needed. Among 
 the various agencies that worked upon the hearts and habits of 
 Norman and Saxon may be reckoned that of the clergy. Never 
 altogether partisan, they constantly became less so. When 
 Anselm came over from his Norman convent to be Archbishop of 
 Canterbury, he told his countrymen plainly that a churchman 
 acknowledged no distinction of race. Ambitious and luxurious 
 as some were, others were humble and self-denying, and stood 
 between the conqueror and the people, a healing influence to 
 mitigate oppression. 
 
 The wars of the Normans made them more dependent on the 
 Saxons, and common victories served to produce a community of 
 interest and feeling. 
 
 The Crusades, too, by the predominant sentiment which they 
 inspired, doubtless helped to appease the old animosities. 
 
 The gradual change in the relation of the two races, as well as 
 an important influence in accelerating that change, is shown by 
 the marriage of Henry the First to a Saxon princess, which soon 
 led to the restoration of the Saxon dynasty in the person of 
 Henry the Second. ‘At present,’ says an author in the time of 
 this monarch, ‘as the English and Normans dwell together, and 
 have constantly intermarried, the two nations are so completely 
 mingled together, that, at least as regards freemen, one can 
 scarcely distinguish who is Norman and who English.’ 
 
 The loss of Normandy snapped the threads of French connec- 
 tions, and the Normans, by the necessities of their isolation, 
 began to regard England as their home, and the English as their 
 countrymen. 
 
 Add to these causes the softening influence of time, and we 
 are prepared for that final fusion of the Normans with the mass 
 by which the nation became one again. 
 
 English, though shunned by cultivation and rank, remained 
 unshaken as the popular tongue. The Norman, too, must learn 
 
CELTIC MANNERS. 
 
 13 
 
 it, in order to direct his tenants. His Saxon wife speaks it, his 
 children are accustomed to the sound of it. Slowly, by com- 
 promise and the necessity of being understood, it prevails, — 
 English still in root and sap, though saturated with the vocabu- 
 lary of Norman-French. 
 
 But truly to understand the chemistry of the English nation, 
 we must penetrate its soul, learn somewhat of its faculties and 
 feelings, study the man invisible — the under-world of events and 
 forms — distinguish the separate moulds in which the entering 
 elements were cast. 
 
 Celtic. — To estimate the advantages of law and order, we 
 must have stood with the stately blue-eyed Briton in his circular 
 hut of timber and reeds, surmounted by a conical roof which 
 served at once to admit daylight and to allow smoke to escape 
 through a hole in the top; have seen a horseman ride in, con- 
 verse with the inmates, then kick the sides of his steed and make 
 his exit without having alighted; have sat in circle with the 
 guests, each with his block of wood and piece of meat; have seen 
 the whole family lie down to savage dreams around the central 
 fire-place, while the wolf’s long howl broke the silence of forest 
 depth or wild fowls screamed across the wilderness of shallow 
 waters; have wandered through their track-ways, careful to hasten 
 home before the setting of the sun should cut us off from our 
 village (a collection of huts amid fens and woods fortified with 
 ramparts and ditches) to become the captive of an enemy or the 
 prey of ravenous beast. 
 
 There is no property but arms and cattle. War is the favorite 
 occupation. Bronze swords, spears, axes, and chariots with 
 scythes projecting from the axle of the wheels, are the weapons. 
 Every tribe has its own chief or chiefs, who call the common 
 people together and confer with them upon all matters concern- 
 ing the general welfare. The cran-tcira , a stick burnt at the end 
 and dipped in blood, carried by a dumb messenger from hamlet 
 to hamlet, summons the warriors. A brave people, and energetic. 
 Says Tacitus: 
 
 ‘The Britons willingly furnish recruits to our armies; they pay the taxes without mur- 
 muring, and they perform with zeal their duties toward the government, provided they 
 
14 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. 
 
 have not to complain of oppression. When they are offended, their resentment is prompt 
 and violent; they may be conquered, but not tamed; they may be led to obedience, but not 
 to servitude.’ 
 
 Would you know their savagery? Imagine them — as old 
 Celtic story tells — mixing the brains of their slain enemies with 
 lime, and playing with the hard balls they made of them. Such 
 a brainstone is said to have g'one through the skull of an Irish 
 chief, who lived afterwards seven years with two brains in his 
 head, always sitting very still, lest in shaking himself he should 
 die. Yet they esteem it infamous for a chieftain to close the 
 door of his house at all, ‘ lest the stranger should come and 
 behold his contracting soul.’ 
 
 Their dead are buried in mounds. Here vases are discovered, 
 containing their bones and ashes, together with their swords and 
 hatchets, arrow-heads of flint and bronze, and beads of glass and 
 amber, — for they believe, after the manner of savages, that 
 things which are useful or pleasing to the living are needed, for 
 pleasure or use, in the shadowy realm: 
 
 ‘Secure beneath his ancient hill 
 The British warrior slumbers still; 
 
 There lie in order, still the same, 
 
 The bones which reared his stately frame; 
 
 Still at his side his spear, his bow, 
 
 As placed two thousand years ago.’ 
 
 The priests of their religion are the Dr\dds , who are so care- 
 ful lest their secret doctrines be revealed to the uninitiated that 
 they teach their disciples in hidden caves and forest recesses. 
 They are the arbiters of disputes, and the judges of crime. 
 Whoever refuses to submit to their decree is banished from 
 human intercourse. The young resort to them for instruction. 
 They teach the eternal transmigration of souls. They will n#t 
 worship their gods under roofs. At noon and night, within a 
 circular area, of enormous stones and of vast circumference , 1 
 they make their appeals with sacrifices — captives and criminals, 
 or the innocenrt and fair. When the priest has ripped open the 
 
 1 One of these — Stonehenge — may yet be seen standing in mysterious and awful 
 silence on Salisbury Plain. So massive are the pieces, that it was fabled to have been 
 built by giants or magic art : 
 
 Not less than that huge pile (from some abyss 
 Of mortal power unquestionably sprung,) 
 
 Whose hoary Diadem of pendant rocks 
 
 Confines the shrill -voiced whirlwind, round and round 
 
 Eddying within its vast circumference. 
 
 On Sarum’s naked plain. — Wordsworth. 
 
KOMAN REFINEMENTS. 
 
 15 
 
 •body of a human being or lighted the fires around a living mass, 
 we may hear the shriek of mad excitement as the ‘ congregation ’ 
 dance and shout. Nor is their teaching confined to their worship. 
 Says Caesar: 
 
 ‘The Druids discuss many things concerning the stars and their revolutions, the 
 magnitude of the globe and its various divisions, the nature of the universe, energy and 
 power of the immortal gods.’ 
 
 There are bards, also, with power and privilege, who sing the 
 praises of British heroes to the crowd. A wheel striking on 
 strings is the instrument of these our ancestral lyrists. Among 
 the three things which will secure a man from hunger and naked- 
 ness is the blessing of a bard. His curse brings fatalities upon 
 man and beast. 
 
 Four hundred years cannot but have made a vast difference 
 between the fierce savages who rushed into the sea on that 
 •old September day, and those who were citizens of the stately 
 Roman towns or tillers of the fertile districts that lay around 
 them. Tacitus is said to have expressed surprise at the facility 
 and eagerness with which the Britons adopted the customs, the 
 arts, and the garb of their conquerors. Under the Roman Empire 
 there were British kings, of whom one of the few famous was 
 Cunobelin — the Cymbeline of the drama. Government became 
 more centralized. A milder worship and a more merciful law 
 were the lot of the people. The Romans improved the agriculture 
 of the country, and bestowed upon the cultivators ‘the crooked 
 plough’ with ‘an eight-foot beam,’ of which Virgil speaks. In 
 the middle of the fourth century, warehouses were built in Rome 
 for the reception of corn from Britain. An export of six hundred 
 large barks in one season assumes the existence of a large rural 
 population. The tin and lead mines were worked with jealous 
 •care for Roman use; and the presence of cinders at this day is 
 the visible proof of the mining and smelting of iron. 
 
 The refinement thus introduced among the Celtic Britons was 
 not uncommunicated to the barbarous tribes whose occupation 
 speedily followed the retirement of the imperial armies. Traces 
 of the Roman modes of thought are indelibly stamped upon 
 much that relates to common life. In January survives the 
 ‘Two-faced Janus’; July embalms the memory of the mighty 
 Julius; March is the month of Mars, the god of war; and August 
 
16 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. 
 
 claims an annual reverence for the crafty Augustus. Our May- 
 day is the festival of Flora. Our marriage ceremonies are all 
 Roman, — the veil, the ring, the wedding gifts, the groomsmen 
 and bridesmaids, the bride-cake. Our funeral imagery is Roman, — 
 the cypress, the flowers strewn upon the graves, the black for 
 mourning. The girl who says, when her ears tingle, a distant one 
 is talking of her, recalls the Roman belief in some influence of a 
 mesmeric nature which produced the same effect. ‘A screech-owl 
 at midnight,’ says Addison, ‘ has alarmed a family more than a 
 band of robbers.’ It was ever an omen of evil. No Roman 
 superstition was more intense. Men all on fire, walking up and 
 down the streets, seemed to Casca a prodigy less dire than ‘ the 
 bird of night ’ that sat 
 
 ‘Even at noonday, upon the market-place, 
 
 Hooting and shrieking.’ 
 
 But there are latent qualities here which would ornament any 
 age. With the skin of a beast slung across his loins, the exposed 
 parts of his body painted with sundry figures, a chain of iron 
 about his neck as a symbol of wealth, and another about his 
 waist, his hair hanging in curling locks and covering his shoul- 
 ders,— Caractacus had stood captive in the imperial presence of 
 Claudius, and said: 
 
 ‘Had my moderation in prosperity been equal to the greatness of my birth and estate, 
 or the success of my late attempts been equal to the resolution of my mind, I might have- 
 come to this city rather as a friend to be entertained, than as a captive to be gazed upon. 
 But what cloud soever hath darkened my present lot, yet have the Heavens and Nature 
 given me that in birth and mind which none can vanquish or deprive me of. I well see that 
 you make other men's miseries the subject and matter of your triumphs, and in this nfy 
 calamity, as in a still water, you now contemplate your own glory. Yet know that I am, 
 and was, a prince, furnished with strength of men and habiliments of war; and what marvel 
 is it if all be lost, seeing experience teacheth that the events of war are variable, and the 
 success of policies guided by uncertain fates? As it is with me, who thought that the deep- 
 waters, like a wall enclosing our land, and it so situated by the gods as might have been a 
 suflicient privilege and defense against foreign invasions; but now I perceive that the 
 desire of your sovereignty admits no limitation; and if you Romans must command all, 
 then all must obey. For mine own part, while I was able I made resistance; and unwilling 
 1 was to submit my neck to a servile yoke; so far the law of Nature alloweth every man, 
 that he may defend himself being assailed, and to withstand force by force. Had I at first 
 yielded, thy glory and my ruin had not been so renowned. Fortune hath now done her 
 worst; we have nothing left us but our lives, which if thou take from us, our miseries end, 
 and if thou spare us, we are but the objects of thy clemency.’ 
 
 In many-colored robe, with a golden zone about her, Queen 
 Boadicea exhorted the Britons on the eve of battle: 
 
 ‘My friends and companions of equal fortunes! — There needeth no excuse of this my 
 present authority or place in regard of my sex, seeing it is not unknown to you all that the 
 
CELTIC FANCY. 
 
 17 
 
 wonted manner of our nation hath been to war under the conduct of women. My blood 
 and birth might challenge some preeminence, as sprung from the roots of most royal 
 descents; but my breath, received from the same air, my body sustained by the same 
 soil, and my glory clouded with imposed ignominies, I disdain all superiority, and, as a 
 fellow in bondage, bear the yoke of oppression with as heavy weight and pressure, if not 
 more! . . . You that have known the freedom of life, will with me confess that liberty, 
 though in a poor estate, is better than bondage with fetters of gold. . . . Have the Heavens 
 made us the ends of the world, and not assigned the end of our wrongs? Or hath Nature, 
 among all our free works, created us Britons only for bondage? Why, what are the Romans? 
 Are they more than men, or immortal? Their slain carcasses sacrificed by us, and their 
 putrefied blood corrupting our air, doth tell us they are no gods. Our persons are more tall, 
 our bodies more strong, and our joints better knit than theirs! But you will say— they are 
 our conquerors. Indeed, overcome we are, but by ourselves, by our own ( factions, still 
 giving way to their intrusions. . . . See we not the army of Plautius crouched together like 
 fowls in a storm? If we but consider the number of their forces and the motives of the war, 
 we shall resolve to vanquish or die. It is better worth to fall m honour of liberty, than be 
 exposed again to the outrages of the Romans. This is my resolution, who am but a woman ; 
 you who are men may, if you please, live and be slaves.’ 
 
 Love of bright color is a Celtic passion. Diodorus told how 
 the Gauls wore bracelets and costly finger-rings, gold corselets, 
 dyed tunics flowered with various hues, striped cloaks fastened 
 with a brooch and divided into many parti-colored squares, a 
 taste still represented by the Highland plaid. This joy in the 
 beautiful will display itself, in poetry, in an outpouring of 
 imagery and grace of expression, as in the Cymric 1 battle-ode of 
 Aneurin: 
 
 ‘ Have ye seen the tusky boar, ^ 
 
 Or the bull with sullen roar, 
 
 On surrounding foes advancing ? 
 
 So Garadawg bore his lance. 
 
 As the flame’s devouring force. 
 
 As the whirlwind in its course, 
 
 As the thunder’s fiery stroke, 
 
 Glancing on the shivered oak; 
 
 Did the sword of Yodel's mow 
 The crimson harvest of the foe.’ 
 
 This fancy, active and bold, is not content to conceive. It must 
 draw and paint, vividly, in detail, as in this glimpse of a Gaelic 2 
 banquet: 
 
 ‘As the king’s people were afterwards at the assembly they saw a couple approaching 
 them,— a woman and a man; larger than the summit of a rock or a mountain was each 
 member of their members; sharper than a shaving-knife the edge of their shins; their heels 
 and hams in front of them. Should a sackful of apples be thrown on their heads, not one of 
 them would fall to the ground, but would stick on the points of the long bristly hair which 
 grew out of their heads; blacker than the coal or darker than the smoke was each of their 
 membei's ; whiter than snow their eyes. A lock of the lower beard was carried round the 
 back of the head, and a lock of the upper beard descended so as to cover the knees; the 
 woman had whiskers, but the man was without whiskers.’ 
 
 Ancient Welsh. 
 
 2 Ancient Irish. 
 
18 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. 
 
 But the true artist, with an eye to see, has also a heart to feel. 
 A bard and a prince, who has seen his sons fall in battle, wonder- 
 ing why he should still be left, sings of his youngest and last dead: 
 
 ‘ Let the wave break noisily ; let it cover the shore when the joined lancers are in battle. 
 O, Gwcnn, woe to him who is too old, since he has lost you! Let the wave break noisily; 
 let it cover the plain when the lancers join with a shock. . . . Gwenn has been slain at the 
 ford of Morlas. Here is the bier made for him by his fierce-conquered enemy after he 
 had been surrounded on all sides by the army of the Lloegrians; here is the tomb of 
 Gwenn, the son of the old Llywarch. Sweetly a bird sang on a pear tree above the head of 
 Gwenn , before they covered him with turf; that broke the heart of the old Llywarch.' 
 
 This vivacity, this tenderness, this sweet melancholy, will pass, to 
 a certain degree, into English thought. 
 
 Danish. — The Danes were preeminently a sea-faring and 
 piratical people — vultures who swept the seas in quest of prey. 
 Their sea-kings, ‘ who had never slept under the smoky rafters 
 of a roof, who had never drained the ale-horn by an inhabited 
 hearth,’ are renowned in the stories of the North. With no terri- 
 tory but the waves, no dwelling but their two-sailed ships, they 
 laughed at the storm, and sang: ‘The blast of the tempest aids- 
 our oars; the bellowing of heaven, the howling of the thunder, 
 hurts us not; the hurricane is our servant, and drives us whither 
 we wish to go.’ In his last hour, the sea-king looks gladly to his 
 immortal feasts ‘ in the seats of Balder’s father,’ where £ we*shall 
 drink ale continually from the large hollowed skulls.’ 
 
 Listen to their table-talk, and from it infer the rest. A 3*outh 
 takes his seat beside the Danish jarl, arid is reproached with 
 ‘ seldom having provided the wolves with hot meat, with never 
 having seen for the whole autumn a raven croaking’ over the 
 carnage.’ But he pacifies her by singing: ‘I have marched with 
 my bloody sword, and the raven has followed me. Furiously we 
 fought, the fire passed over the dwellings of men; we have sent 
 to sleep in blood those who kept the gates.’ 
 
 Here is their code of honor: ‘A brave man should attack two, 
 stand firm against three, give ground a little to four, and only 
 retreat from five.’ No wonder they were irresistible. Add to 
 this the deeper incitement of an immortality in Valhalla, where 
 they should forever hew each other in bloodless conflict. 
 
 When Saxon independence was given up to a Danish king, 
 their character was greatly changed from what it had been during* 
 their first invasions. They had embraced the Christian faith, were 
 
NORMAN" CULTURE. 
 
 19 
 
 centralized, had lost much of their predatory and ferocious spirit. 
 Long settled in England, they gradually became assimilated to 
 the natives, whose laws and language were not radically different 
 from their own. From these sea-wolves, who lived on the pillage 
 of the world, the English will imbibe their maritime enterprise. 
 
 Norman. — The Normans, as we have seen, were a Scandina- 
 vian tribe with a changed nature, — Christianized, at least in the 
 mediaeval sense, and civilized. The peculiar quality of their 
 genius was its suppleness. They intermarried with the French, 
 borrowed the French language, adopted French customs, imitated 
 French thought; and, in a hundred and fifty years after their 
 settlement, were so far cultured as to consider their kinsmen, the 
 Saxons, unlettered and rude. 
 
 Transferred to England, they become English. To these they 
 were superior: 
 
 1. In refinement of manners. ‘ The Saxons,’ says an old 
 writer, ‘ vied with each other in their drinking feats, and wasted 
 their income by day and night in feasting, whilst they lived in 
 wretched hovels ; the French and Normans, on the other hand, 
 living inexpensively in their fine large houses, were, besides, 
 refined in their food and studiously careful in their dress.’ 
 
 2. In taste, — the art of pleasing the eye, and expressing 
 a thought by an outward representation. The Norman archi- 
 tecture, including: the circular arch and the rose window with 
 its elegant mouldings, made its appearance. ‘ You might see 
 amongst them ( the Saxons ) churches in every village, and 
 monasteries in the cities, towering on high, and built in a 
 style unknown before.’ They were to become the most skil- 
 ful builders in Europe. 
 
 3. In weapons and warlike enterprise. They used the bow, 
 fought on horseback, and were thus prepared for a more nimble 
 and aggressive movement. 
 
 4. In intellectual culture. Five hundred and sixty -seven 
 schools were established between the Conquest and the death 
 of King John (1216). In poetry they were relatively cultivated. 
 Another point of excellence was the intelligence of their clergy. 
 The illiteracy of the Saxon was the excuse for banishing him 
 from all valuable ecclesiastical dignities. The Norman bishops 
 and abbots, who gradually supplanted him, were for the most 
 
20 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. 
 
 part of loftier minds than the mailed warriors who elevated them 
 to wealth and authority. 
 
 Such were the points of superiority at which the Norman was 
 prepared to contribute new impulses to the national character. 
 In many respects, he was the reverse of the Saxon. In the 
 movement of his intellect, he was prompt and spirited rather 
 than profound. Like the Parisian, he was polite, elegant, grace- 
 ful, talkative, dainty, superficial. Beauty pleased rather than 
 -exalted him. Nature was pretty rather than grand — never 
 mystical. Love was a pastime rather than a devotion. Woman 
 impressed him less by any spiritual transcendence than by a 
 ‘ vastly becoming smile,’ a 1 sweet and perfumed breath,’ a form 
 * white as new-fallen snow on a branch.’ To show skill and 
 courage for the meed of glory, to win the applause of the 
 ladies, to display magnificence of dress and armor, — such was his 
 desire and study. Here is a picture of the fancies and splendors 
 in which he delights and loses himself. A king, wishing to 
 console his afflicted daughter, proposes to take her to the chase 
 in the following style: 
 
 ‘To-morrow ye shall in hunting fare; 
 
 And ride, my daughter, in a chair; 
 
 It shall be covered with velvet red, 
 
 And clothes of fine gold all about your head, 
 
 With damask white and azure blue, 
 
 Well diapered with lilies new. 
 
 Your pommels shall be ended with gold, 
 
 Your chains enameled many a fold, 
 
 Your mantle of rich degree, 
 
 Purple pall and ermine free. . . . 
 
 Ye shall have revel, dance, and song; 
 
 Little children, great and small, 
 
 Shall sing as does the nightingale. . . . 
 
 A hundred knights, truly told, 
 
 Shall play with bowls in alleys cold, 
 
 Your disease to drive away. . . . 
 
 Forty torches burning bright 
 At your bridge to bring you light. 
 
 Into your chamber they shall you bring 
 * With much mirth and more liking. 
 
 Your blankets shall be of fustian. 
 
 Your sheets shall be of cloth of Rennes. 
 
 Your head sheet shall be of pery pight, 
 
 With diamonds set and rubies bright. 
 
 When you are laid in bed so soft, 
 
 A cage of gold shall hang aloft, 
 
 With long paper fair burning, 
 
 And cloves that be sweet-smelling, 
 
ENGLISH AND ARYAN. 
 
 21 
 
 Frankincense and olibanum, 
 
 That when ye sleep the taste may come; 
 
 And if ye no rest can take, 
 
 All night minstrels for you shall wake.’ 
 
 What will come of this gallantry, splendor, and pride, when 
 the brilliant flower is engrafted on the homely Saxon stock ? 
 
 Anglo-Saxon. — Starting from the same Aryan homestead, 
 with the same stock of ideas, with the same manners and cus- 
 toms, the Teuton takes his westward course, and settles chiefly 
 in Germany, — 
 
 ‘She of the Danube and the Northern Sea.’ 
 
 After centuries of separation, these two kindred meet in mist- 
 enveloped Britain. But climate, soil, and time have changed 
 their characters and speech. They have forgotten their mutual 
 relationship, and meet like the lion whelps of a common lair — 
 ^s foes. The Teutonic stream, — that, too, diverged. Into the 
 mud and slime of Holland, into the forests and fens of Denmark, 
 up into the snow-capped mountains of Sweden and Norway, 
 across the surging main into volcanic Iceland, it branched. Dan- 
 ish, Norse, and Saxon, with superficial distinctions — as of Hea- 
 then and Christian, or the like — are at bottom one, Teutonic or 
 Germanic. Inland, in the south, away from the sea, was the great 
 division of the High-Germans ; near the sea, by the mouths 
 of the Rhine and Elbe, that of the Low-Germans, in whom 
 we have the deeper interest. To these latter belonged the 
 Jutes, Angles, and Saxons, whose language, closely resem- 
 bling modern Dutch, is the plantlet of English. These tribes, 
 known abroad as Saxons , 1 early spoken of by themselves as 
 Angles or English, have in the more careful historic use of the 
 present been designated as Anglo-Saxons. 
 
 The orders of society were the bond and the free. Men 
 became serfs, or slaves, either by capture in battle or by the sen- 
 tence of outraged law. Over them their master had the power 
 of life and death. He was responsible for them as for his cattle. 
 Rank was revered, and the freemen were divided into earls and 
 ceorls, or Earls and Churls. 
 
 1 So called from a short crooked sword, called a seax , carried by the warriors under 
 their loose garments. Thus, Hengist, the Jute, invited to a banquet, instructed his com- 
 panions to conceal their short swords beneath their garments. At a given signal — Nimed 
 eure Seaxes , ‘Draw your swords! 1 — the weapons were plunged into the hearts of their 
 British entertainers. 
 
22 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. 
 
 The basis of society was the possession of land. The free 
 land-holder was ‘the free-necked man,’ whose long hair floated 
 over a neck that had never bent to a lord. He was ‘the weap- 
 oned man,’ who alone bore spear and sword. A nation of farm- 
 ers, as they had been in the Sunny East, as they are to-day. 
 He might not be a tiller of the soil, but he must acquire it if he 
 would be esteemed. The landless one could hope for no dis- 
 tinction. 
 
 The social form was determined by the blood-bond. Accord- 
 ing to kinship, men were grouped into companies of ten, called 
 a tithing. Every ten tithings was called a hundred’ and several 
 hundreds, a shire. Each kinsman was his kinsman’s keeper. 
 Every crime was held to have been committed by all who were 
 related to the doer of it, and against all who were related to the 
 sufferer. From this sense of the value of the family tie sprung 
 the rudiments of English justice. So strong is it, that his kins- 
 folk are the sole judges of the accused, for by their oath of his 
 innocence or guilt he stands or falls. In their British home these 
 judges will be a fixed number — the germ of the jury system. 
 Other methods of appeal there are, — the duel and the ordeal. 
 The first pleases the savage nature. Besides, is not the issue in 
 the hand of God, and will not he award the victory to the just ? 
 This practice will be revived in Normandy, introduced by the 
 Conqueror into England, appealed to in 1631, and abolished only 
 in 1817. The second inspires confidence; for fire and water are 
 deities, and surely the gods will not harm the innocent or screen 
 the guilty? Therefore, be ready to lift masses of red-hot iron in 
 your hands, or to jDass through flame. 
 
 They hate cities. Then, as now, they must have independence 
 and free air. Their villages are knots of farms. ‘ They live apart, ’’ 
 says Tacitus, ‘ each by himself, as woodside, plain, or fresh spring 
 attracts him.’ Each settlement must be isolated from its fellows. 
 Each is jealously begirt by a belt of forest or fen, which parts it 
 from neighboring communities, — a ring of common ground which 
 none may take for his own, but which serves as the Golgotha 
 where traitors and deserters meet their doom. This, it is said, is 
 the special dwelling-place of the nix and the will-o’-the-wisp. Let 
 none cross this death-line except he blow his horn; else he will 
 be taken for a foe, and any man may lawfully slay him. 
 
LEGISLATION AND KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 23 
 
 Around some moot-hill or sacred tree the whole community 
 meet to administer justice and to legislate. Here the field is 
 passed from seller to buyer by the delivery of a turf cut from its 
 soil. Here the aggrieved may present his grievance. The 4 elder- 
 men ’ state the ‘ customs,’ and the evil-doer is sentenced to make 
 pecuniary reparation. ‘ Eye for eye,’ life for life , or for each fair 
 damages, — is the yet unwritten code. The body and its members 
 have each their legal price. Only treason, desertion, and poison 
 involve capital punishment, and sentence is pronounced by the 
 priest. Here, too, the king of the tribe — chosen from among the 
 ablest of its chiefs — and the JVitafi, the Wise Men, who limit his 
 jurisdiction, convene to settle questions of peace and war, or to 
 transact other important affairs. The warriors, met in arms, 
 express their approval by rattling their armor, their dissent by 
 murmurs. Later, this assembly will be known as the Parliament 
 of a great empire. Among the nobility, there is one who is the 
 king’s chosen confidant, the 4 knower of secrets,’ the 4 counsellor.’ 
 In after times he will be known as the Prime Minister. 
 
 Knowledge was transmitted less by writing than by oral tradi- 
 tion, and almost wholly in the form of verse. There was a per- 
 petual order of men, like the rhapsodists of ancient Greece and 
 the bards of the Celtic tribes, who w r ere at once poets and histo- 
 rians; whose exclusive employment it was to learn and repeat;, 
 wandering minstrels they were, travelling about from land to land, 
 chanting to the people the fortunes of the latest battle or the 
 exploits of their ancestors, a delightful link of union, loved and 
 revered. The honors bestowed upon them were natural to an age 
 in which reading and writing were mysteries. On arms, trinkets, 
 amulets, and utensils, sometimes on the bark of trees, and on 
 wooden tablets, for the purpose of memorials or of epistolary cor- 
 respondence, were engraven certain wonderful characters called 
 runes. By their potent spells, some runes, it was believed, 
 could lull the tempest, stop the vessel in her course, divert the 
 arrow in its flight, arrest the career of witches through the air, 
 cause love or hatred, raise the dead, and extort from them the 
 secrets of the spirit-world. Thus says the heroine of a Northern 
 romance: 
 
 ‘Like a Virgin of the Shield I roved o'er the sea, 
 
 My arm was victorious, my valor was free; 
 
 By prowess, by runic enchantment and song, 
 
 I raised up the weak, and I beat down the strong.’ 
 
24 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. 
 
 Would we know the soul of a people, let us seek it in their 
 religion, the unseen spiritual fountain whence flow all their out- 
 ward acts. In the beginning, we are told, were two worlds, — 
 Niflheim, the frozen, and Muspel the burning. From the falling 
 snow-flakes, quickened by the Unknown who sent the heated 
 blast, was born Ymer the giant: 
 
 ‘When Ymer lived 
 Was sand, nor sea. 
 
 Nor cooling wave; 
 
 No earth was found 
 Nor heaven above; 
 
 One chaos all, 
 
 And nowhere grass.’ 
 
 Fallen asleep, from his arm-pits spring the frost-giants. A 
 -cow, born also of melting snow, feeds him with four milk-rivers. 
 Whilst licking his perspiration from the rocks, there came at 
 -evening out of the stones a man’s hair, the second day a man’s 
 head, and the third all the man was there. His name was Bure. 
 His grandsons, Odin, Vile, and Ve, kill the giant Ymer. Dragging 
 bis body to the abyss of space, they form of it the visible universe; 
 from his flesh, the land; from his bones, the mountains; from his 
 hair, the forests; from his teeth and jaws, the stones and pebbles; 
 from his blood, the ocean, in the midst of which they fix the 
 earth; from his skull, the vaulted sky, raised and supported by a 
 •dwarf under each corner, — Austre, Westre, Nordre, and Sudre, 
 from his brains, scattered in the air, the melancholy clouds; from 
 his hair, trees and plants; from his eyebrows, a wall of defense 
 .against the giants. The flying sparks and red-hot flakes cast out 
 of Muspel they placed in the heavens, and said: 4 Let there be 
 light.’ Far in the North sits a giant, ‘the corpse swallower,’ clad 
 with eagles’ plumes. When he spreads his wings for flight, the 
 winds, which yet no mortal can discern, fan fire into flame, or lash 
 the waves into foam. As the sons of Bor, ‘powerful and fair,’ 
 were walking along the sea-beach, they found two trees, stately 
 and graceful, and from them created the first human pair, man 
 and woman, — Ask and Embla: 
 
 4 Odin gave spirit, 
 
 Hoener gave mind, 
 
 Loder gave blood 
 And lovely hue.’ 
 
 Nobler conception is this, than the Greek and Hebrew of clod or 
 
COSMOGONY. 
 
 25 
 
 stone. Diviner symbol is this of the trees, Ash and Elm, which, 
 as they grow heavenward, show an unconscious attraction to that 
 which is heavenly. 
 
 From the mould of Yiner are bred, as worms, the dwarfs, 
 who by command of the gods receive human form and sense. 
 Among the rocks, in the wild mountain-gorges they dwell. 
 When we hear the echo fi'om wood or hill or dale, there stands a 
 dwarf who repeats our words. They had charge of the gold and 
 precious minerals. With their aprons on, they hammered and 
 smelted, and — 
 
 ‘Rock crystals from santl and hard flint they made, 
 
 Which, tinged with the rosebud's dye, 
 
 They cast into rubies and carbuncles red, 
 
 And hid them in cracks hard by.’ 
 
 In the summer’s sun, when the mist hangs over the sea, may 
 be seen, sitting on the surface of the water, the mermaid, comb- 
 ing her long: golden hair with golden comb, or driving her snow- 
 white cattle to the strands. No household prospers without its 
 domestic spirit. Oft the favored maid finds in the morning that 
 her kitchen is swept and the water brought. The buried treasure 
 has its sleepless dragon, and the rivulet its water-sprite. The 
 Swede delights to tell of the boy of the stream , who haunts the 
 glassy brooks that steal through meadows green, and sits on the 
 silver waves at moonlight, playing his harp to the elves who 
 dance on the flowery margin. 
 
 We retain in the days of the week a compendium of the old 
 English creed. A son and a daughter, lovely and graceful, are 
 appointed by the Powers to journey round heaven each day with 
 chariot and steeds, ‘to count years for men,’ each ever pursued 
 by a ravenous wolf. The girl is Sol, the Sun, with meteor eyes 
 and burning plumes; the boy is Maane, the Moon, with white 
 fire laden. The festival-days consecrated to them were hence 
 known as Sun’s-daeg and Moon’s-daeg, whence our Sunday and 
 Monday. Reversing the mythology of the Greeks and Romans, 
 the Teutons worshipped the sun as a female and the moon as a 
 male deity, from an odd notion that if the latter were addressed 
 as a goddess their wives would be their masters. The memory of 
 Tyr, the dark, dread, daring, and intrepid one, is embalmed in 
 Tuesday / his grandmother was an ugly giantess with nine hun- 
 dred heads. Wodin, or Odin, survives in Wednesday. He does 
 
26 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. 
 
 iiot create the world, but arranges and governs it. He is the all- 
 pervading spirit, the infinite wanderer. Two wolves lie at his 
 feet; and on his shoulders sit two gifted ravens, which fly, on his 
 behests, to the uttermost regions. He wakes the soul to thought, 
 gives science and lore, inspires the song of the bard and the in- 
 cantation of the sorcerer, blunts the point of the javelin, renders 
 his warriors invisible; with a hero’s heart and voice, tells the 
 brave how by valor a man may become a god; explains to mortals 
 their destiny here, — makes existence articulate and melodious. 
 Incarnated as a seer and magician unknown thousands of years 
 ago, he led the Teutonic throng into Scandinavia, across seas 
 and rivers in a wonderful ship built by dwarfs, so marvellously 
 constructed that, when they wished to land, it could be taken 
 to pieces, rolled up, and put in the pocket. Our Thursday is 
 Thor’s day, son of Odin. He is a spring-god, subduing the frost- 
 giants. The thunder is his wrath. The gathering of the black 
 clouds is the drawing down of his angry brows. The bursting fire- 
 bolt is the all-rending hammer flung from his hand. The peal, — 
 that is the roll of his chariot over the mountain-tops. In his 
 mansion are five hundred and forty halls. Freyja, the Venus of 
 the North, in whom are beauty, grace, gentleness, the longings, 
 joys, and tears of love, is incarnated in Friday. Saeter, an 
 obscure water-deity, represented as standing upon a fish, with a 
 bucket in his hand, is commemorated in Saturday. But beyond 
 all the gods who are known and named, there is the feeling, the 
 instinct, the presentiment of One who is unseen and imperishable, 
 the everlasting Adamant lower than which the confused wreck of 
 revolutionary things cannot fall: 
 
 ‘Then comes another 
 Yet more mighty. 
 
 But Him dare I not 
 Venture to name ; 
 
 Few look further forward 
 Than to the time 
 z When Odin goes 
 
 To meet the wolf.’ 
 
 Is not the last and highest consecration of all true religion an 
 altar to ‘The Unknown God?’ 
 
 All things exist in antagonism. No sooner are the giants cre- 
 ated than the contest for empire begins. When Ymer is killed, 
 the crimson flood drowns all save one, who with his wife escapes 
 
BURIAL CUSTOMS. 
 
 27 
 
 in a chest, and so continues the hated race. Huge, shaggy, 
 demoniac beings. Jotunheim is their home, distant, dark, chaotic. 
 Long fight the gods against them, — the Fenriswolf, whose jaws 
 they rend asunder; the great serpent, whom they drown in the 
 sea; the evil Loke, whom they bind to the rocks, beneath a viper 
 whose venom drops unceasingly on his face. 
 
 That which is born must die. Hel-gate stands ever ajar to 
 receive the child with rosy cheeks, as him of the hoary locks and 
 faltering step. When a great man dies, — his body, with his 
 sword in his hand, his helmet on his head, his shield by his side, 
 and his horse under him, is burned. The ashes are collected in 
 an earthen vessel, which is then surrounded with huge stones; 
 and over this is heaped the memorial mound. Brynhild, an 
 untamed maiden in an epic of these Northern races, sets her love 
 upon Sigurd; but, seeing him married, she causes his death, 
 laughs once, puts on her golden corselet, pierces herself, and 
 makes this last request: 
 
 ‘ Let in the plain he raised a pile so spacious, that for us all like room may be ; let them 
 burn the Hun (Sigurd) on the one side of me, on the other side my household slaves, with 
 'collars splendid, two at our heads and two hawks; let also lie between us both the keen- 
 edged sword; . . . also flve female thralls, eight male slaves of gentle birth fostered with 
 me.’ 
 
 Is it not a beautiful thought that the dead in the mounds are in 
 a state of consciousness? Out of the depths seems to come the 
 half-dumb stifled voice of the long-buried generations of our 
 fathers, the echo in some sort of our own painful, fruitlessly 
 inquiring wonder: 
 
 ‘Now, children, lay us in two lofty graves 
 Down by the sea shore, near the deep-blue waves: 
 
 Their sounds shall to our souls be music sweet, 
 
 Singing our dirge as on the strand they beat. 
 
 When round the hills the pale moonlight is thrown, 
 
 And Midnight dews fall on the Bauta- stone, 
 
 We'll sit, O Thorsten, in our rounded graves 
 And speak together o’er the gentle waves.’ 
 
 When the daughter weeps for the death of her father, she allows 
 -no tear to fall on his corpse, lest his peace be troubled: 
 
 ‘Whenever thou grievest, 
 
 My coffin is within 
 As livid blood; 
 
 Whenever thou rejoicest, 
 
 My coffin is within 
 Filled with fragrant roses.’ 
 
28 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. 
 
 Even the gods must perish. Have we not seen that the germ of 
 decay was in them from the beginning? They and their enemies, 
 met in a world-embracing struggle, mutually destroy each other. 
 Sun and stars, rock-built earth and crystal vault, sink into the 
 bottomless, many-sounding sea. 
 
 But the end is also the beginning. There comes a new day, 
 and a new heaven without rent or seam, — that is, the regenera- 
 tion. There is no loss of souls, no more than of drops when the 
 ocean yields its vapor to the touch of the summer’s sun. Thought 
 and affection are immortal. Death is but a vanishing from one 
 realm into another — a triumph-hour of entrance through an arch 
 of shadow into eternal day. Therefore, fall gloriously in battle,, 
 and you shall be at once transported to Valhal, the airy hall of 
 Odin, upborne by spears, roofed with shields, and adorned with 
 coats of mail. Fighting and feasting, which have been your 
 fierce joys on earth, shall be lavished upon you in this supernal 
 abode. Every day you shall have combats in the listed field, — 
 the rush of steeds, the flash of swords, the shining of lances, and 
 all the maddening din of conflict; helmets and bucklers riven, 
 horses and riders overthrown, ghastly wounds exchanged: but at 
 the setting of the sun you shall meet unscathed, victors and van- 
 quished, around the festive board, to partake of the ample ban- 
 quet and quaff full horns of beer and fragrant mead. Ragnar 
 Lodbrok, shipwrecked on the English coast, is taken prisoner. 
 Refusing to speak, he is thrown into a dungeon full of serpents, 
 there to remain until he tells his name. The reptiles are power- 
 less. The spectators say he must be a brave man indeed whom 
 neither arms nor vipers can hurt. KingiElla, hearing this, orders 
 his enchanted garment to be stripped off, and soon the serpents 
 cling to him on all sides. Then Ragnar says, ‘How the young 
 cubs would roar if they knew what the old boar suffers!’ But 
 his eye is fixed upon Valhal’s ‘wide-flung door,’ and he glories 
 that no sigh shall disgrace his exit: 
 
 ‘ Cease my strain ! I hear a voice • 
 
 From realms where martial souls rejoice; 
 
 I hear the maids 1 of slaughter call, 
 
 Who bid me hence to Odin's hall; 
 
 High-seated in their blest abodes, 
 
 I soon shall quaff the drink of gods. 
 
 1 The Valkyries, Odin's maids, who are sent out to choose the fallen heroes, and to 
 sway the combat. 
 
THEOLOGY. 
 
 29 
 
 The hours of life have glided by— 
 
 I fall ! but laughing will I die ! 
 
 The hours of life have glided by — 
 
 I fall ! but laughing will I die ! ’ 
 
 For the virtuous who do not die in hght a more peaceful but less 
 glorious Elysium is provided, — a resplendent golden palace, sur- 
 rounded by verdant meads and shady groves and fields of sponta- 
 neous fertility. 
 
 After all, amid the raging of this warlike mood, it is virtue, on 
 the whole, which is to be rewarded — vice which is to be punished. 
 Far from the Sun, ever downward and northward, is the cave of 
 the giantess Hel, — Naastrand, the strand of corpses. Here are the 
 palace Anguish, the table Famine, the waiters Slowness and 
 Delay, the threshold Precipice, the bed Care. Of serpents 
 wattled together the cave is built, their heads turning inward and 
 filling it with thick venom-streams, through which perjurers, mur- 
 derers, and adulterers have to wade: 
 
 ‘But all the horrors 
 You cannot know, 
 
 That Hel's condemned endure; 
 
 Sweet sins there 
 Bitterly are punished, 
 
 False pleasures 
 Reap true pain.’ 
 
 All life is figured as a tree. Ygdrasil, the Ash of existence, 
 has its roots deep down in the kingdom of Hel, or Death; its 
 trunk, towering heaven-high, spreads its branches over the uni- 
 verse. ‘Stately, with white dust strewn: thence come the dews 
 that wet the dales; it stands ever green over Urd’s fountain. ’ 
 Under its root that stretches into the frozen North is Mimer’s 
 well of wisdom. On its topmost bough sits an eagle; at its low- 
 ermost base is the serpent Nidhug, with his reptile brood, that 
 pierce it with their fangs and devour its substance. At its foot, 
 in the Death-kingdom, sit three Norns, Fates, who water its roots 
 from the Sacred Well, and weave, for mortals and immortals, the 
 web of destiny. What similitude so true, so beautiful, so great ? 
 
 Here is philosophy without abstractions or syllogisms; meta- 
 physics that overleaps all categories; history woven of giant- 
 dreams; poetry whose pictures are streams that flow T together. 
 What ideas are at the bottom of this chaos of untamed imagin- 
 ings? The world is a warfare. In the sad inclement North, 
 
30 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. 
 
 amid pathless forests, bridgeless rivers, treacherous seas, inhos- 
 pitable shores, the strife of frost and fire, man, as it were face to 
 face with a beast of prey, feels profoundly that life is a battle, 
 and, in the raging of his own moods, sees reflected the conflict of 
 chaotic forces. Thor’s far-sounding hammer, Jove’s falling thun- 
 derbolt, Indra’s lightning-spear, warring against the demons of 
 the storm, till the light triumphs and the tempest rolls away, but 
 ever returns to renew the combat, — what are they but types of 
 the state of man, cast out of the troubled deep upon the mists of 
 the unknown ? 
 
 When the gods were unable to bind the Fenriswolf with steel 
 'or weight of mountains, because the one he snaj:)ped and the other 
 ilie spurned with his heel, they put round his foot a limp band 
 softer than silk or gossamer, and this held him: the more he 
 struggled the stiffer it drew. So soft, so omnipotent is the ring 
 <of Fate. Balder, the good, the beautiful, the gentle, dies. All 
 nature is searched for a remedy; but he is dead. His mother 
 sends Hermod to seek or see him, who rides nine days and 
 alights through a labyrinth of gloom. Arrived at the bridge with 
 its gtolden roof, he is answered: ‘Yes, Balder did pass here, but 
 the Kingdom of the Dead is down yonder, far in the North.’ 
 '.Speeds the messenger on, leaps Hel-gate, sees Balder, and speaks 
 -with him; but Balder cannot be delivered: Fate is inexorable. 
 The Valkyries are choosers of the fallen. Belief in Destiny is a 
 fundamental point for this wild Teutonic soul. Perhaps it is so 
 for all instinctive and heroic races, as for all earnest men, — a 
 Mahomet, a Luther, a Napoleon, a Carlyle, an Emerson. The 
 Greek, the Turk, the Arab, the Persian, accept the inevitable. 
 
 *On two days it stands not to run from thy grave, 
 
 The appointed and the unappointed day; 
 
 On the first, neither halm nor physicians can save, — 
 
 Nor thee, on the second, the Universe slay.’ 
 
 Who can write the order of the variable winds? On every 
 mortal who enters the hall of the firmament fall snow-storms of 
 illusions, though the gods still sit on their thrones; and he may 
 see, what all great thinkers have seen: 
 
 *We are such stuff as dreams are made of.’ 
 
 In heart-to-heart communion with Nature, these old Northmen 
 seem to have seen what meditation has taught all men in all ages, 
 
PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 31 
 
 that this world is only an appearance, a mirage , a shadow hung 
 by the primal Reality on the bosom of the void Infinite. Thor, 
 with two chosen friends, undertakes an expedition to Giant-land. 
 Wandering at nightfall in a trackless forest, they espy a house, 
 whose door is the whole breadth of one end. Here they lodge; 
 one large hall, altogether empty. Suddenly, at dead of night, 
 loud noises are heard. Thor grasps his hammer, and stands at 
 the door, prepared for fight, while his terrified companions take 
 refuse in a little closet. In the morning: it turns out that the 
 noise was merely the snoring of the giant Skrymer, who lay peace- 
 ably sleeping near by; that the house was only his mitten , 
 thrown carelessly aside; that the door was its wrist , and the 
 closet its thumb. Skrymer now joins the party in travel. Thor, 
 however, suspicious of his ways, resolves to put an end to him as 
 he slumbers beneath a large oak. Raising his hammer, he strikes 
 .a thunderbolt blow down into the giant’s face, who wakes, rubs 
 his face, and murmurs: 4 Did a leaf fall?’ Thor replies that they 
 are just going to sleep, and goes to lie down under another oak. 
 Again he strikes, as soon as Skrymer again sleeps, a more terrible 
 blow than before; but the giant only asks: 4 Did an acorn fall? 
 How is it with you, Thor ? ’ Thor, going hastily away, says that 
 he has prematurely waked up. His third stroke, delivered with 
 both hands, seems to dint deep into the giant’s skull; but he 
 simply checks his snore, strokes his chin, and inquires: 4 Are there 
 sparrows roosting in this tree? Was it moss they dropped? It 
 seems to me time to arise and dress.’ At Utgard-castle, their 
 journey’s end, they are invited to share in the games going on. 
 To Thor, they hand a drinking-horn, explaining that it is a 
 common feat to drain it at one draught, — none so wretched as 
 not to exhaust it at the third. Long and fiercely, three times 
 over, with increasing anger, he drinks; then finding that he has 
 made hardly any impression, gives it back to the cup-bearer. 
 
 4 Poor, weak child!’ they say: ‘Can you lift this gray cat? Our 
 young men think it nothing but play.’ Thor, with his whole god- 
 like strength, can at the utmost bend the creature’s back and lift 
 one foot. 4 Just as we expected,’ say the Utgard people. 4 The cat 
 is large, but you are little.’ 4 Little as you call me,’ says Thor, 4 1 
 challenge any one to wrestle with me, for now I am angry.’ 4 Why 
 here is a toothless old woman who will wrestle you! ’ Heartily 
 
32 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. 
 
 ashamed, Thor seizes her — and is worsted. On their departure, 
 the host escorts them politely a little way, and says to Thor: ‘Be 
 not so mortified; you have been deceived. That race you wit- 
 nessed was a race with Thought. That horn had one end in the 
 Ocean: you did diminish it, as you will see when you come to 
 the shore; this is the ebb. But who can drink the fathomless? 
 And the cat, — ah! we were terror-stricken when we saw one paw 
 off the floor; for that is the Midgard-serpent, which, tail in 
 mouth, girds and keeps up the created world. As for the hag, — 
 why, she was Time / and who, of men or gods, can prevail over 
 her? Then, too, look at these three glens , — by the timely inter- 
 position of a mountain, your strokes made these! Adieu, and a 
 word of advice, — better come no more to Jotunheim!’ Grim 
 humor this, overlying a sublime, uncomplaining melancholy, — 
 mirth resting upon sadness, as the rainbow upon the tempest. 
 To this day it runs in the blood. 
 
 Therefore, the one thing needful, the everlasting duty, is to 
 be brave. The right use of Fate is to bring our conduct up to 
 the loftiness of nature. Let a man have not less the flow of the 
 river, the expansion of the oak, the steadfastness of the hills. 
 Heroism is the highest good. Over you, at each moment, hangs 
 a threatening sword, which may in the next prove fatal. Life in 
 itself has no value, and its ideal termination, to be kept con- 
 stantly in view, is to fall heroically in fight. The Choosers will 
 lead you to the II all of Odin , only the base and slavish being 
 thrust elsewhither: 
 
 ‘The coward thinks to live forever. 
 
 If he avoid the weapon’s reach; 
 
 But Age, which overtakes at last, 
 
 Twines his gray hair with pain and shame.’ 
 
 Hold to your purpose with the tug of gravitation, believing that 
 you can shun no danger that is appointed nor incur one that is 
 not. Thus did these old Northmen. Silent and indomitable, — 
 
 ‘In the prow with head uplifted 
 Stood the chief like wrathful Thor: 
 
 Through his locks the snow-flakes drifted, 
 
 Bleached their hue from gold to hoar; 
 
 Mid the crash of mast and rafter 
 Norsemen leaped through death with laughter, 
 
 Up through Valhal’s wide-flung door.’ 
 
SAVAGERY. 
 
 33 
 
 Old kings, about to die, had their bodies laid in a ship, the ship 
 sent forth with sails set, and a slow fire burning* it; that they 
 might be buried at once in the sky and in the sea! 
 
 Wild and bloody was this valor of the Northmen. True, but 
 they were ferocious — bloody-minded. Murder was their trade, 
 and hence their pleasure. ‘Lord, deliver us from the fury of the 
 Jutes,’ says an ancient litany. The ceremonials of religion 
 assumed a cruel and sanguinary character. Prisoners taken in 
 battle were sacrificed by the victors, sometimes subjects by their 
 kings, and even children by their parents. Bodies white and 
 huge, stomachs ravenous. Six meals a day barely sufficed. The 
 heroes of Valhal gorge themselves upon the flesh of a boar 
 which is cooked every morning, but becomes whole again every 
 night. Lovers of gambling and strong drink. Seated on their 
 stools, by the light of the torch, they listened to battle-songs and 
 heroic legends as they drank their ale, while ‘the lordly hall 
 thundered, and the ale was spilled.’ In Paradise, the elect drink 
 from a river of ale! ‘Disputes,’ says Tacitus, ‘as will be the case 
 with people in liquor, frequently arise, and are seldom confined 
 to opprobrious epithets. The quarrel generally ends in a scene 
 of blood.’ Here are the germs of nineteenth-century vices. In- 
 trepid in war, in peace they lie by the fireside, sluggish and dirty, 
 eating and drinking. 
 
 Established in England, they have brought with them their 
 customs, sentiments, and habits. They are still gluttonous, un- 
 tamed, butcherly. To dance among naked swords is their recre- 
 ation. To drink is their necessity. Later on, they quarrel about 
 the amount each shall drink from the common cup, and the 
 Archbishop puts pegs in the vessel, that each thirsty soul shall 
 take no more than his just proportion. 
 
 Every man is obliged to appear ready-armed, to repel preda- 
 tory bands. A hundred years measure the reign of fourteen 
 kings, seven of whom are slain and six deposed. King Holla’s 
 ribs are divided from his spine, his lungs drawn out, and salt 
 thrown into his wounds. Attendants who are preparing a royal 
 banquet are seized, their heads and limbs severed, placed in ves- 
 sels of wine, mead, ale, and cider, with a message to the king: 
 ‘ If you go to your farm, you will find there plenty of salt meat, 
 but you will do well to carry more with you.’ 
 
 3 
 
34 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. 
 
 They have made one remove from barbarism. Once murder 
 was expiated, as all other crimes, by blows (from five to a thou- 
 sand), the gift of a female to the offended party, or a fine of gold; 
 now, by money-fines only. Here, by implication, in the Saxon 
 Code of laws, is the social status of the sixth century. Mark 
 with what minutiae it seeks to repress the irruptive tendencies 
 of a restive and disordered society: 
 
 ‘These are the Laws King Ethelbert established in Agustine's day: 
 
 2. If the king his people to him call, and any one to them harm does, two fines shall 
 be paid, and to the king 50 shillings. 
 
 8. If in the king's town any one a man slay, 50 shillings shall be paid. 
 
 13. If any one in an earl's town a man kills, 12 shillings shall be paid. 
 
 19. If a highway robbery be committed, 6 shillings shall be paid. 
 
 35. If bones bare become, 3 shillings shall be paid. 
 
 36. If bones bitten are, 4 shillings shall be paid. 
 
 39. If an ear be cut off, 12 shillings shall be paid. 
 
 44. If an eye be gouged out, 50 shillings shall be paid. 
 
 55. For every nail, 1 shilling. 
 
 57. If a man beat another with the fist on the nose, 3 shillings. 
 
 64. If a thigh be broken, 12 shillings shall be paid ; if he halt become, then shall be- 
 summoned friends who arbitrate. 
 
 65. If a rib broken be, 3 shillings shall be paid. 
 
 68. If a foot be cut off, 50 shillings shall compensate. 
 
 69. If the large toe be cut off, 10 shillings shall compensate. 
 
 70. For every other toe, half the sum as has been said for the fingers. 
 
 81. If any one take a maiden by force, he shall pay the owner 50 shillings; and 
 afterwards buy her according to the owner’s will.’ 
 
 Formerly, too, they slew themselves, dying as they had lived — in 
 blood. Now, in the eleventh century, an earl, about to die of dis- 
 ease but unable wholly to repress the ferocious instinct, exclaims: 
 
 ‘ What a shame for me not to have been permitted to die in so many battles, and to end 
 thus by a cow’s death. At least put on my breast-plate, gird on my sword, set my helmet 
 on my head, my shield in my left hand, my battle-axe in my right, so that a stout warrior 
 like myself may die as a warrior.’ 
 
 But in this human animal — let it not be forgotten — abide 
 noble dispositions, which will wax nobler as he climbs the heights- 
 of purer vision. In manners, severe; in inclinations, grave; 
 valorous and liberty-loving. If he is cruel, he refuses to bo 
 shackled. In his own home, he is his own master. No Feudal- 
 ism yet- — only a voluntary subordination to a leader. Required 
 to associate himself with a superior, he chooses him as a friend,, 
 and follows him to the death. ‘He is infamous as long as he 
 lives, who returns from the field of battle without his chief.’ 
 
 Amid the savagery of barbarian life, he feels no sentiment 
 stronger than friendship. An exile, waking from his dream of 
 
HOME-LIFE. 
 
 35 
 
 * In blithe habits full oft we, too, agreed that naught else should divide us except death 
 alone ; at length this is changed, and, as if it had never been, is now our friendship. To 
 endure enmities man orders me to dwell in the bowers of the forest, under the oak tree in 
 this earthly cave. Cold is this earth-dwelling; I am quite wearied out. Dim are the dells, 
 high up are the mountains, a bitter city of twigs, with briars overgrown, a joyless abode. 
 . . . My friends are in the earth; those loved in life, — the tomb holds them. The grave is 
 guarding, while I above alone am going. Under the oak-tree, beyond this earth-cave, — 
 there I must sit the long summer day.’ 
 
 He is over-brave. He places his happiness in battle and his 
 beauty in death. The coward is drowned in the mud under a 
 hurdle, or is immolated. 
 
 The true home-life, out of which are the issues of national 
 life, is foreshadowed by the respect with which woman is treated. 
 She inherits property and bequeaths it; associates with the men 
 at their feasts, and is respected. The law surrounds her with 
 guarantees, and accords her protection. The freeman who presses- 
 the finger of a freewoman, is liable to a fine of six hundred 
 pence; of twelve hundred, if he touches the arm. ‘Almost alone 
 among the barbarians,’ says Tacitus, ‘they are content with one 
 wife’; then, perhaps with a bitter thought of Rome, ‘No one in 
 Germany laughs at vice, nor do they call it the fashion to corrupt 
 and be corrupted.’ A chivalric sense of delicacy, indeed, we may 
 not expect. She attends to the indoor and outdoor work, while 
 her husband dozes in a half stupor by the fire. His companion 
 in war, she is his drudge in peace. As little may we look for the 
 finer instincts of the womanly nature. Brynhild compels her 
 suitors to contend with her in the games of spear-throwing, 
 leaping, and stone-hurling, under penalty of death in case of 
 defeat. Atle’s wife kills her children, and one day, on his return 
 from the carnage, gives him their hearts to eat, served in honey, 
 and laughs as she tells him on what he has fed. Devotion there 
 is, stronger than life or death, and grief too deep for tears. With 
 a fierce kind of joy, the maid expires on the grave of her lover. 
 Balder’s wife accompanies him to the Death-kingdom; and while 
 he sends his ring to Odin, she sends as final remembrance her 
 thimble to Freyja. Loke’s wife stands by his side, and receives 
 the venom-drops, as they fall, in a cup which she empties as often 
 as it is filled. 
 
 The Celt is gay, emotional, easily elevated and as easily 
 depressed. He knows not how to plod, would leap to results, 
 has a passion for color and form. The Teuton is steady, is not 
 
36 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. 
 
 dazzled by show, looks more to the inner fact of things. It 
 inspires the one to be addressed in the words of Napoleon, — 
 * Soldiers, from the summits of yonder Pyramids, forty ages 
 behold you ;’ 1 it nerves the other to be told in the severe phrase 
 of Nelson, — ‘ England expects every man to do his duty.’ What 
 sentiment is to the one, interest is to the other. 
 
 If, again, the Teuton has less of brilliancy than the Norman, 
 he has more of patient strength. If he is less passionate, he is 
 more reflective. If he is less voluble, he has the deep conviction 
 and the indomitable will that have preserved his continuity 
 through all revolutionary changes, and made him the most irre- 
 sistible force in European politics. If he is less the artist of the 
 beautiful, he is more inclined to the serious and sublime. Did 
 ever any people form so tragic a conception of life, get so free 
 and direct a glance into the deeps of thought, or banish so com- 
 pletely from its dreams the sweetness of enjoyment and the soft- 
 ness of pleasure? Here is the shadow, of which the Christian 
 ideal is the substance. 
 
 Do but consider the singular adaptation of this soil for the 
 reception of the new faith. Back in the days of heathendom 
 we may find the first suggestion of the spirit which led to the 
 Reformation of an after age — the revolt against the sensuous 
 worship of Rome — when Tacitus says of the old Germanic tribes 
 that they do not consider it consistent with the grandeur of 
 celestial beings to confine the gods within walls, or to liken them 
 to the form of any human countenance. They consecrate woods 
 and groves, and they apply the names of deities to the abstrac- 
 tion which they see only with the spiritual eye. This feeling of 
 a mysterious infinity, of the dark Beyond, this sincerity of per- 
 sonal and original sentiment, predisposes the mind to Christian- 
 ity; it makes the supreme distinction between races, as between 
 great souls and little souls. Gregory had seen slaves in the 
 market at Rome, and their faces were beautiful. He was told 
 they were heathen boys from the Isle of Britain. Sorry to think 
 that forms so fair should have no light within, he asked what was 
 the name of their nation. ‘ Angles ,’ he was told. ‘Angles!' said 
 Gregory; ‘they have the faces of A.ngels , and they ought to be 
 made fellow-heirs of the Angels in Heaven. But of what prov- 
 
 1 The Celt is the spiritual progenitor of the Frenchman. 
 
FUNDAMENTAL INSTINCTS. 
 
 37 
 
 ince are they?’ l DeiraJ said the merchant. ‘De ira ! ’ said 
 Gregory; ‘then they must be delivered from the wrath’ — in 
 Latin de ira — ‘of God.’ ‘And what is the name of their king?’ 
 LElla.’ ‘ JElla ! then Alleluia shall be sung in his land.’ Pres- 
 ently Roman missionaries bearing a silver cross with an image of 
 Christ came in procession chanting a litany. In the council of 
 the king, the High-Priest of Odin declared that the old gods 
 were powerless: 
 
 ‘ For there is no man in thy land, O King, who hath served all our gods more truly than 
 I, yet there be many who are richer and greater, and to whom thou showest more favor; 
 whereas, if our gods were good for anything, they would rather forewarn me who have been 
 so zealous to serve them. Wherefore let us hearken to what these men say, and learn what 
 their law is; and if we find it to be better than our own, let us serve their God and worship 
 Him.’ 
 
 This is the profit-and-loss estimate — not yet extinct among us — 
 of thing's divine, contracting the horizon of life within the narrow 
 circle of material interests. But in that assembly of wise men 
 was another, of finer mould, whose eyes, lifted from the dust, 
 ■could see the stars. Then a chief rose and said: 
 
 ‘ You remember, it may be, O King, that which sometimes happens in winter when you 
 are seated at table with your earls and thanes. Your fire is lighted, and your hall warmed, 
 and without is rain, snow, and storm. Then comes a swallow flying across the hall : he 
 enters by one door and leaves by another. The brief moment while he is within is pleasant 
 to him: he feels not rain nor cheerless winter weather; but the moment is brief,— the bird 
 flies away in the twinkling of an eye. and lie passes from winter to winter. Such, me- 
 thinks, is the life of man on earth, compared with the uncertain time beyond. It appears 
 for a while; but what is the time which comes after — the time which was before? We 
 know not. If then, this new doctrine may teach us somewhat of greater certainty — 
 whence man cometh and whither he goeth — it were well that we should regard it.’ 1 
 
 Henceforth the war-gods are blotted out, the passions which 
 created them wane; manly and moral instincts increase; new 
 ideas take root; and a literature begins whose inspiration and 
 soul, even to the latest generation, while it images the mingled 
 and many-colored web of mortal experience, are essentially the 
 God-idea — this longing after an Infinite which sense cannot 
 touch, but reverence alone can feel — this wonder and sorrow 
 concerning life and death which are the inheritance of the Saxon 
 soul from the days of its first sea-kings. 
 
 1 ‘In this year (597), 1 says the Chronicle, ‘ Gregorius the Pope sent into Britain Augus- 
 tinus with very many monks who gospelled God’s word to the English folk.’ That is, they 
 ‘preached’ or ‘taught,’ the Gospel— the good spell or tale, the good neivs of what God had 
 done for others and would do for them. 
 
 Though the Christian faith had not failed among the Britons of Wales, the British 
 priests were not likely to try to convert their mortal enemies, the Anglo-Saxons, nor were 
 the latter likely to listen to them. The Scots (Irish) helped much in the good work after- 
 wards, but had nothing to do with it in the beginning. 
 
38 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. 
 
 Results. — The English people, it is thus seen, is a composite 
 nation, uniting in its children the elements which, separately, in 
 the intellectual development of Europe* have shown themselves 
 most efficient in all great and worthy achievements. But of this 
 British, Roman, Saxon, Danish, Norman blood, in fulfilment of 
 the decrees of an overruling Providence, is formed the English 
 nation — a nation that has preserved its free spirit under foreign 
 domination and domestic oppression — a nation that has upheld, 
 with ever increasing strength, the principle that power is derived 
 from the governed for the general good — a nation that in litera- 
 ture and life has furnished the moral pioneers and teachers of the 
 world. Its body, its substance, is Saxon, which receives first the 
 Celt, with his bold imagination and self-sacrificing zeal; then the 
 Dane, with his tacit rage and adventurous maritime spirit; then 
 the Norman, with his flexible genius, his trickery, his subtlety, 
 his drawing-room polish, and his keen sense of enjoyment. Herein 
 consists its true greatness, which comes of no transfusion, — its 
 energetic sense of truth, its assertion of the right of individual 
 liberty, its resolute habit of looking to the end, its deep power of 
 love and its grand power of will. 
 
 We may therefore expect from this blending of diverse parts a 
 many-sided intellectual progress and a wide variety of individual 
 character, — the multifariousness of Shakespeare, the austerity of 
 Milton, the materialism of Spencer, the transcendentalism of 
 Emerson, the grace of Addison, the solidity of Johnson, th& 
 oddity of Swift, the sadness and madness of Byron. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 FORMING OF THE LANGUAGE. 
 
 Words are the sounds of the heart . — Chinese Proverb. 
 Words are the only things that live forever.— Hazlitt. 
 
 Definition. — Speech is the utterance of sounds which usage 
 has made the representatives of ideas. When, in any community, 
 the same sounds are customarily associated with the same ideas, 
 the expression of these sounds by the speaker renders his ideas 
 intelligible to the hearer. 
 
 Man possesses in the organs of utterance — though he seldom 
 thinks of it, or forgets the blessing because it is given — a mu- 
 sical instrument which is at once a harp, an organ, and a flute; 
 an instrument on which Nature gives him the mastery of a fin- 
 ished performer. Hoiq its notes are struck, so as to express in 
 coordination the many-colored world without and the shadow- 
 world within, is the mystery of language. This, however, is the 
 observed phenomenon: a person having a thought, and wishing 
 to awaken a corresponding thought in the mind of another, 
 emits, at stated intervals, a portion of his breath, modified by 
 certain movements of the vocal organs; these movements are 
 transmitted to the atmosphere, and thence to the ear of the lis- 
 tener, producing there vibrations identical with the original; 
 then, through the agency of instinct, memory, and invention, the 
 two have the same thought. A result reached without any con- 
 scious effort, and therefore seemingly simple and commonplace, 
 yet seen, on reflection, to be truly wonderful. Short as is the 
 reach of its pulse, vanishing as are its undulations, by that fluid 
 air, articulated into living words, man graves on the rock or prints 
 in the book the records of his outward history and his inner soul, 
 in symbols more enduring than Babylonian palace or Egyptian 
 pyramid. 
 
 Origin. — Whether man was the special creation of God or 
 was developed from inarticulate creatures, it would seem evident 
 
 39 
 
40 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LANGUAGE. 
 
 that speech, in its inception , like the bark of a dog, is a natural 
 product, and hence originates in the instinct divinely implanted, 
 directly, or indirectly, in man’s nature to communicate thought . 1 
 The Providence that provided soil, fuel, minerals, and vegetables, 
 to meet his physical needs, and religion to meet his spiritual 
 demands, would, it is reasonable to expect, furnish at the outset 
 suitable means of communication. 
 
 We must suppose, however, that what is known to be true in 
 other directions of his development will be found to be true in 
 this, — an imperfect beginning and a gradual ascent. Clothing 
 began with leaves and bark, with skins of wild animals and the 
 like; shelter was first a hole in the ground, or the hollow of a 
 tree; tools were first of bone, wood, or stone: but in time the 
 sheltering cave became a nest of interwoven branches, this, in 
 many ages, a log hut, and this, by improvement in shape, mate- 
 rial, and size, after centuries of toil, a stately palace; in long 
 ages of cultivation, dress-making and tool-making became arts, 
 each giving us forms of elegance and beauty. When first the 
 infant is moved to express itself to others, it does so by motions 
 or natural cries, then by simple words of one syllable — very few 
 in number, for its ideas are few — progressing slowly in its 
 powers of utterance, yet increasing its vocabulary as intelligence 
 expands. 
 
 So, by analogy, was it with man. His beginning was less a 
 song or a poem than a cry or gesture. His first words, like those 
 of the child, were probably monosyllables, and, like those of the 
 child or savage, referred mainly to his bodily wants and to sur- 
 rounding objects which impressed him strongly. 
 
 The origin of speech — so mysterious is the power — excited 
 some speculation even among the rude primeval races. The 
 Esthonians tell that the Aged One, as they call the Deity, placed 
 on the fire a kettle of water, from the hissing and bubbling of 
 which the various nations learned their languages; that is, by 
 imitating these vague sounds, they modulated them into intelligi- 
 ble utterances. The Australians explain the gift of speech by 
 saying that people had eaten an old woman, named Wururi, who 
 
 1 Man is not less divine, nor his speech less God-given, on the supposition that he has 
 been evolved from lower organisms: for still an adequate Cause — a Supreme Intelli- 
 gence — must have impressed such attributes upon primordial matter as to make such 
 evolution possible. 
 
ORIGIN AND GROWTH. 
 
 41 
 
 went about at night quenching fires with a damp stick. Wiiruri 
 is supposed to mean the damp night-wind, and the languages 
 learned from devouring her are the guttural, or wind-like, repro- 
 duction of natural sounds made by the material objects around 
 them. There is the beautiful legend that Wannemunume, the 
 god of song, descended into a sacred wood, and there played and 
 sang. T^ie birds learned the prelude of the song; the listening* 
 trees, their rustle; the streams, their ripple and roar; and the 
 winds, their shrill tones and desolate moans: but the fish remained 
 dumb, because, though they protruded their heads, as far as the 
 eyes, out of the water, their ears continued under water, and they 
 could only imitate the motion of the god’s mouth. Man alone 
 grasped it all, and so his song pierces down into the depths of 
 the heart and up into the home of the gods. 
 
 Development. — Two principles have been especially active 
 in the growth of speech: • 
 
 1. Onomatopoeia , or sound-imitation . — Thus the cry of a cat 
 to children of different nationalities is e-yow / the watch is tick- 
 tick. Thus, also, the interjection ah or ach gives the root aka 
 (Sanskrit), acam (Anglo-Saxon), and thence our ache / whence 
 also anxious , anguish , and agony. The root mur in murmur , 
 implying the rush of water-drops, gives myriad. The Australian, 
 imitating the noise it makes, calls the frog kong-kung . The 
 North American Indian, repeating the hooting of the bird, calls 
 the owl kos-kos-koo-oo, a verbal sign which immediately suggests 
 to all who have heard it, the thing signified. Several tribes on 
 the coast of New Guinea give names to their children in imitation 
 of the first sound the child utters. Familiar instances of invent- 
 ing names by imitating natural sounds, are whip-poor-will, pee- 
 wee, bob-iohite, buzz, whiz, hiss, snap, snarl, bang, roar. There 
 is the story of the Englishman who, wanting to know the nature 
 of the meat on his plate at a Chinese entertainment, turned to 
 the native servant behind him, and, pointing to the dish, inquired, 
 ‘Quack, quack?'' The Chinaman replied, ‘Bow-wow? Thus the 
 two were mutually intelligible, though they understood not a 
 word of each other’s language. 
 
 2. Metaphor, or the use of words in new applications . — 
 When a strange object is seen, men are not satisfied till they 
 have heard its name. If it has none, as would happen in the 
 
42 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LANGUAGE. 
 
 first settlement of a country, they proceed to give it one; and in 
 doing so, the prevailing tendency, as has been observed from the 
 earliest times, is to use the name of some known object nearly 
 resembling the one to be named. To combine and reapply old 
 names is easier than to invent new ones; and, wherever this is 
 done, the result is a metaphor. Thus the French, on the first 
 introduction of the potato, called it, ‘the apple of the earth.’ 
 Captain Erskine relates that in the Fiji Islands, man, dressed and 
 prepared for food, is known as ‘long pig’; human flesh and pork 
 being the two staple articles of food, and the natural pig being 
 the shorter. The New Zealanders called their first horses ‘large 
 dogs’; and the Highlanders styled their first donkey a ‘large 
 hare.’ The Kaffirs called the parasol ‘a cloud,’ transferring to 
 the new object a name belonging to one which resembled it 
 somewhat in figure and effect. Among the Malays, the sun is 
 maUi-ari , literally, ‘the eye of day’; the ankle is mata-kaki , 
 ‘the eye of the foot’; and the key is ‘child of the lock.’ 
 
 These transfers, it is seen, are made between one material 
 substance and another; but frequently they are made between 
 matter and spirit. Man’s earliest words, like the child’s, related, 
 not to his soul, but to his body and material objects. As he 
 advanced to consider and explain thinking, feeling, and willing, 
 his own yearnings and passions, he could neither understand 
 them himself nor make them intelligible to others, except by 
 reference to things which he could see, hear, taste, smell, or 
 touch, — that is, by the use of old terms in a new sense. The 
 ideal, the spiritual, the mental, is, of itself, dim, shadowy, and 
 unseen, and is incapable of being known at all but by a material 
 image that shall make it in some sort visible, as a diagram illus- 
 trates a truth in geometry. Thus our ‘soul’ — German seele — is 
 derived from the same root as the word ‘sea.’ The word ‘reason’ 
 is supposed to be connected with the Greek rheo , ‘I flow.’ 
 ‘Consider,’ from the Latin considerare, means ‘to fix the eyes on 
 the stars’; ‘deliberate,’ from deliberare, ‘to weigh.’ The Greek 
 for the soul of man means ‘wind,’ and the Hebrew ‘breath.’ 
 
 Some of the metaphors in use among savages are highly 
 picturesque. The Malays signify affront by ‘charcoal on the 
 face’; malice by ‘rust of the heart’; impudence by ‘face of 
 board’; sincerity by ‘white heart.’ Scarcely less ingenious are 
 
ORIGIN AND GROWTH. 
 
 43 
 
 the metaphors in Chinese. Capricious is expressed by ‘three 
 mornings, four evenings’; cunning speech by ‘convenient hind- 
 teeth’ persuasive speech by ‘convenient front-teeth’; disagree- 
 ment by ‘you east, I west.’ 
 
 Now, when the same word is applied successively to different 
 objects, the effect is similar to adding so many new words to the 
 language, making it more copious and rich. Mark the various 
 ways in which the shining of the sun is here represented: 
 
 ‘And all his splendor floods the towered walls.’ 
 
 'Solv'd the earth with orient pearl.' 
 
 ‘With rosy fingers unbarred the gates of light.' 
 
 ‘Each purple peak, each flinty spire, 
 
 Was bathed in floods of living fire.’ 
 
 ‘A dazzling deluge reigns.’ 
 
 ‘The western waves of ebbing day 
 Roll'd o’er the glen their level way.’ 
 
 ‘The sanguine snnrise, with his meteor eyes , 
 
 And his burning plumes outspread.' 
 
 Thus language, in its entirety , is not given, but grows with the 
 growth of thought and experience. New ideas spring up which 
 require new forms of expression. New inventions in art or new 
 discoveries in science require new terms. When moral and 
 spiritual forces are especially active, the language of a people is 
 required to utter new truths, and so is extended and multiplied, 
 as the channel of a river is deepened and widened by increasing 
 the volume of the waters which flow through it. 
 
 It is to be observed, further, that while an articulate word, 
 addressed to the ear, is the sign of an idea, a written word, merely 
 exhibiting the same thing to the eye, is but the sign of this 
 sign — an artificial dress. Language, therefore, in its proper 
 nature, consists not of strokes made by the pen, nor of marks 
 made in any other way, but of sounds uttered by the voice and 
 the organs of articulation, being to man somewhat as neighing is 
 to a horse or squealing to a pig. Many languages have existed 
 that never were written, and those that in time have come to be 
 written, first existed in an unwritten state. 
 
 Diversities. — The following is a specimen of the English 
 tongue, as spoken and written in London, in the year 1300: 
 
 Ac heo and hi booth ifuled mid sunnen, and so ich habbe iseid to thilke 
 
 But she they are filled with sins , I have said that 
 
 levedy nche day; answereth, men, nis it nought so? 
 lady each answer , is not 
 
44 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LANGUAGE. 
 
 Three hundred years later, our Shakespeare wrote: 
 
 ‘ Romans, Country-men and Louers, heare mee for my cause, and be silent, that yon 
 may heare. Beleeue mee for mine Honor, and have respect to mine Honor, that you may 
 beleeue. Censure mee in your Wisedom, and awake your Senses, that you may the better 
 Judge. If there be any in this Assembly, any deere Friend of Ccesar's, to him I say that 
 Brutus' love to Coesar was no less than his.’ 
 
 From these illustrations, the student will see, as other exam- 
 ples may have suggested, that our language had not always its 
 present form; and this is only a particular instance of the 
 changes that are always going on, everywhere. Thus the lan- 
 guage of a people in one age may become unintelligible to their 
 descendants in another: or, if a people have parted company, 
 one jjortion going forth to new seats, while the other remained in 
 the old; or, if both have travelled on, separating continually from 
 one another, either section may cease to be understood by the 
 other, and their once common speech, by the gradual unfolding 
 of differences, may be separated into two. Thus the Celts in 
 Britain were, in time, unable to communicate with the Celts in 
 Gaul; and the Britons in Wales could no longer converse with 
 the Britons in Cornwall, from whom they were separated by the 
 intrusion of a hostile tribe, like a wedge, between them. Thus 
 the Russian, and German, and Icelandic, and Greek, and Latin, 
 and Persian, and French, and English, were all produced from 
 one language, spoken by the common ancestors of these nations, 
 when they were living together as an undivided family; and the 
 multitude of human languages — certainly not few T er than seven 
 hundred and fifty in number — sprang, if not from one, from two 
 or three original tongues. The causes of this divergence are: 
 
 1. Difference of occupation. — The vocabulary of a farmer 
 must differ from that of a mariner, for his subjects of thought 
 are different. When the Aryans distributed themselves over the 
 poetic hills of Italy and Greece, they became, in the former, a 
 nation of warriors — wars engrossing their thoughts for seven 
 hundred years; in the latter, a nation of warriors, statesmen, 
 orators, historians, poets, critics, painters, sculptors, architects, 
 philosophers; and this difference was evermore at work to make 
 two the languages that once were one. Language, in the former, 
 became copious in terms expressive of things political; in the 
 latter, it became universal , like the ideas for which it stood. 
 
 2. Difference of pro <jr ess in the sciences and the arts. — New 
 
DIVERSITIES OF SPEECH. 
 
 45 
 
 facts or new ideas require new words. Wherever any science is 
 progressive, there must be a corresponding- progress in its forms 
 of expression. Any considerable change in society — in its gov- 
 ernment, religion, or habits — demands the invention of words 
 which in a former period were not required. 
 
 3. Difference of geographical position. — When a people with 
 
 a common tongue is divided into separate tribes by emigration, 
 or by any of the causes which break up large nations into smaller 
 fragments, their speeches become distinct, as differences of char- 
 acter are developed, or in the degree in which communication 
 between them is interrupted. («.) One branch comes into con- 
 tact with new races or objects which the other does not en- 
 counter, and so upon the old stock engrafts numerous words 
 which the other does not. (b.) In one branch a word will perish, 
 or be thrust out of general use, but live on in the other. For 
 example, the words snag, bluff, slick, and others, would now be 
 lost to the English tongue, were it not for the American branch 
 of the English-speaking race, (c.) Words will gradually acquire 
 a different meaning in one branch from what they have in an- 
 other. Thus, in Northumberland, they ‘shear’ their wheat; here,, 
 we ‘shear’ our sheep . (c7.) The pronunciation and spelling of 
 
 the same word will, in one, be different from what it is in the 
 other. Thus the Germans and the English, using the very same 
 word, pronounce and spell it, — the former, ‘fowl’; the latter, 
 ‘vogel.’ (e.) The language of one section may remain station- 
 ary, because their ideas remain so; while that of the other is 
 kept in motion, because their understanding is ever advancing, 
 and their knowledge is ever increasing. 
 
 4. Difference of climate. — Influences of climate and soil ac- 
 count, in large measure, for the harsh and guttural sounds mut- 
 tered by those who live in moist or cold mountainous regions, 
 and the soft and liquid tones of those who live in fertile plains 
 under a more genial sky. Thus Byron : 
 
 ‘I love the language, that soft bastard Latin, 
 
 Which melts like kisses from a female mouth, 
 
 And sounds as if it should be writ on satin, 
 
 With syllables that breathe of the sweet South. 
 
 And gentle liquids gliding all so pat in, 
 
 That not a single accent seems uncouth, 
 
 Like our harsh , northern , whistling , grunting , guttural , 
 
 Which we’re obliged to hiss , and spit and sputter all.' 
 
46 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LANGUAGE. 
 
 Physical circumstances reach far in their effects, not alone upon 
 the organs of speech, but upon the character as well. It is not 
 too much to assert that the profound differences which are mani- 
 fest between the German races on the one side, heavy, bent on 
 fighting, prone to drunkenness and gluttony, and the Greek and 
 Latin races on the other, ready, flexible, inquisitive, artistic, 
 loving conversations and tales of adventure, — arise chiefly from 
 the difference between the countries in which they are settled. 
 Religion, to the Greek, is an epic; to the Teuton, a tragedy. 
 
 Dialects. — Whenever a homogeneous people is divided into 
 separate and unconnected tribes by emigration or local causes, 
 the speeches of the different members of the race become, there- 
 fore, more or less distinct; and each, in this changed condition, 
 is called a dialect: in other words, a dialect is a branch of a 
 j)arent language, with such alterations as time or revolution 
 may have introduced among descendants of the same people, 
 living in separate or remote situations. Dialects, then, are those 
 forms of speech which have a certain character of their own by 
 which they are distinguished from one another, yet a common 
 character by which they are allied to one another and hence to 
 some mother tongue, just as indigo and sky-blue are different 
 shades of the same color. Their common character will be 
 shown : first, by their similar grammatical forms, such as the 
 endings of nouns, verbs, and the like; second, by their having 
 many of the most common and most necessary words essentially 
 the same. Thus, when the Teutons settled in the western prov- 
 inces of the Roman Empire, there arose a new state of things, 
 which was neither Roman nor Teutonic, but a combination of 
 both. Being much fewer in number, the conquerors adopted 
 the religion, and a great deal of the laws and manners, and espe- 
 cially the language of the conquered. At this time, the com- 
 mon language of Spain, Italy, and Gaul, was Latin — not quite 
 the same as the earlier Latin of Cicero, and, no doubt, more 
 or less different in different localities. As the Germans had 
 to learn this Latin in order to get on with the people, many 
 German words crept into it, and it naturally became still more 
 unlike what it had been. At last, men began to understand 
 that quite new languages had really grown up. Thus, from 
 the mixture of the Teutonic settlers with the Roman inhab- 
 
DIALECTS. 
 
 47 
 
 itants, there slowly arose the modern nations of Spain, Italy, 
 .and France, and from the mixture of their languages, there 
 gradually sprung the modern /Spanish, Italian, and French , — 
 each, when considered with reference to the Latin, called a dia- 
 lect / but viewed by itself, as distinct from either of the others, 
 a language. These newly formed languages, derived by more 
 or less direct processes from one and the same ancient tongue — 
 the Roman Latin — are known as the Romance tongues. Their 
 homogeneity is clearly traceable in the following versions of the 
 first verse, first chapter, of St. John: 
 
 Latin . — In principio ( beginning ) erat (was) Verbum (Word), ct (and) Verbnm erat 
 .apud (with) Demn (God), ct Dens erat Verbum. 
 
 Italian .— Nel principio la Parola era, e la Parola era appo Iddio, e la Parola era Dio. 
 
 French .— Au commencement etait la Parole, et la Parole etait avec Dieu, et cette Parole 
 .etait Dieu. 
 
 Spanish . — En el principio era el Verbo, y el Verbo estaba con Dios, y el Verbo era Dios. 
 
 Again, any of these, as split up into different local forms or 
 provincial idioms, may be regarded as composed of an aggregate 
 of dialects proper; for every language is marked by certain pecu- 
 liarities in different quarters of the same country. Thus two 
 hundred years ago, a man in London would say, ‘I would eat 
 more cheese, if I had it.’ One in the Northern counties would 
 have said, ‘Ay sud eat mare cheese, gin ay had it.’ The West- 
 ern man said, ‘Chud eat more cheese, and chad it.’ The rustic 
 Westmorelander, to the question, ‘How far is it?’ replies, ‘Why, 
 like it garly nigh like to four miles like.’ The conjugation of the 
 Southern slave is, ‘I was done gone, you was done gone, he was 
 done gone.’ 
 
 We are not, however, to think of a dialect as a vulgar form of 
 the classical or literary speech, and its modes of expression as 
 violations of grammar, but rather as one of the forms in which 
 language, passing through its successive phases, once existed. 
 Here and there its departures from what we have been used to, 
 may be set down to the ignorance or stupidity of the speaker. 
 But much oftener its words, its singular combinations, which 
 appear to us as barbarisms, were once reputable, employed by all, 
 and happen to have found an abiding place in certain districts 
 which have not kept abreast with the advances which the lan- 
 guage has made. Thus, in parts of England, for ‘we sing,’ ‘ye 
 sing,’ ‘they sing,’ they yet use the plurals ‘we singen,’ ‘ye 
 
48 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LANGUAGE. 
 
 singen,’ ‘they singen,’ — a mode of declension which arose in the- 
 time of Chaucer, and was constantly employed by Spenser. We 
 are told, indeed, that this form of the plural is still retained in 
 parts of Maryland. It is not very uncommon, in the country, to 
 hear one say, ‘I’m a f ear cl J or ‘I’ll ax him,’ or ‘the price riz yes- 
 terday,’ or ‘I’ll tell ye’/ and we are apt to esteem such phrases 
 violations of the primary rules of grammar, but they are the forms 
 which the words once regularly and grammatically assumed. An 
 old Dative, tham , from tha, is still in use among our lower orders; 
 as, ‘Look at them boys.’ Ourn for ours , and hern for hers , 
 which are not infrequent among us, were freely employed by 
 Wycliffe, who wrote standard English. We are not therefore to 
 conclude that these forms are good English now: for in writing 
 or speaking we are bound to conform to present use and custom,, 
 just as in buying or selling we are to use the form of money that 
 is circulating, not that which was current in the Revolution, or 
 which has long been withdrawn from circulation. 
 
 Idioms. — Nations, like individuals, have their peculiar ideas;, 
 and, since the sign must correspond to the thing signified, these 
 peculiar ideas become the genius of their language. The idioms 1 
 of a given tongue are the modes of expression in harmony with 
 its genius. For example: 
 
 Arma virumque cano, Trojae qui primus ab oris Italian!, fato 
 
 Arms man-and, ( lysing (< ofyTroy who first from coasts (to)- Italy ( by)-fate 
 profugus, Laviniaque venit litora. — Virgil. 
 
 (an)-exile Laviman-and came shores. 
 
 Such an arrangement, though natural to Latin, is quite foreign to 
 English : 
 
 7 sing of arms , and the man who first from the coasts of Troy , by fate an exile , came to 
 Italy and the Lavinian shores. 
 
 That order and diction are idiomatic which are used habitually , — 
 in conversation or familiar letters. Thus, when Dr. Johnson said 
 of the Rehearsal, ‘ It has not wit enough to keep it sweet,’ he was 
 idiomatic; but when, after a moment’s reflection, he expressed it, 
 ‘ It has not sufficient virtue to preserve it from putrefaction,’ he 
 was tmidiomatic. When he wrote, ‘I bore the diminution of my 
 riches without any outrages of sorrow or pusillanimity of dejec- 
 tion,’ he used a style in which no one quarrels, makes love, or 
 
 1 From the Greek, meaning proper or peculiar. 
 
IDIOMS. ARYAN MOTHER-TONGUE. 
 
 49 
 
 thinks. The native idiom is forcibly distinguished from the for- 
 eign in the following: 
 
 Idiomatic.— Then Apollyon straddled quite over the whole breadth of the way, and said, 
 I am void of fear in this matter: prepare thyself to die; for I swear by my infernal Den that 
 thou shalt go no further: here will I spill thy soul. — Pilgrim's Progress. 
 
 Unidiomatic. — Unquestionably, benignity and commiseration shall continge all the 
 diuternity of my vitality, and I will eternalize my habitude in the metropolis of nature. — 
 Psalm xxiii, 6 (a modern version). 
 
 It is remarked by De Quincey, that ‘the pure idiom of our 
 mother-tongue survives only amongst our women and children; 
 not, heaven knows, amongst our women who write books.’ 
 ‘Would you desire at this day,’ he continues, ‘to read our noble 
 language in its native beauty, picturesque form, idiomatic pro- 
 priety, racy in its phraseology, delicate yet sinewy in its compo- 
 sition, — steal the mail-bags, and break open all the letters in 
 female handwriting.’ 
 
 It need not be a matter of surprise, therefore, that those writers 
 who are most idiomatic — as Bunyan, Shakespeare, Longfellow — 
 are the most popular. They are understood with least effort. 
 
 Indo-European. — On noticing how closely our word house 
 resembles the German haus , or the English thou hast the German 
 du hast y the reader might suspect, without other evidence than 
 this likeness in words and in o-rammar, that the two lanomae’es 
 are brothers and sisters. By extending this comparison to a 
 large number of languages, scholars have shown that nearly all 
 the languages in Europe, with a part of those in Asia, are related 
 by having descended from a common parent, namely a language 
 spoken somewhere between the Indus and the Euphrates. These 
 kindred tongues are therefore called the Indo-European ,* or the 
 Aryan 2 family. This family is subdivided into several groups, 
 each group consisting of those languages which most resemble 
 one another: 
 
 1. Celtic , preserved to us chiefly in two dialects, — the Welsh , 
 whose oldest literature extends back to the sixth century; and 
 the Irish , with a literature dating from the fifth. 
 
 2. Latin, containing the dialects sprung from it, or the Ro- 
 mance (modified Roman) languages, — Italian , French , Spanish , 
 and Portuguese. Its oldest literary records date from 300 b.c. 
 
 1 Referring to the territorial position and the geographical connection of the races 
 which speak the languages it represents. 
 
 2 The historic name applied to the people originally speaking this mother-tongue. 
 
 4 
 
50 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LANGUAGE. 
 
 3. Greek, represented by the modern Greek, or Romaic , which 
 is descended from it. Its earliest records are the poems of Homer, 
 1000 b.c. 
 
 4. Persian , containing Ancient and Modern Persian. Its 
 earliest extant writing is the A vesta, or the Bible of Zoroaster, 
 claiming an antiquity of seven thousand years. 
 
 5. Indian, containing the Sanskrit, 1 which is the oldest of all 
 the Indo-European languages, and the modern dialect of India. 
 Among the earliest extant works in this language are the Vedas , 
 or the Bible of the Hindoos, written in Sanskrit, probably five 
 thousand years ago. 
 
 6. Slavonic , 2 containing the Russian (its most important rep- 
 resentative), Polish, and Bohemian. 
 
 7. Teutonic, or Germanic, containing: 
 
 (1.) The Mceso- Gothic, the language of the Goths (a nation 
 of Teutons), in Moesia. The oldest German dialect in existence. 
 Extinct as a spoken language, but preserved to us by one Ulfilas, 
 a bishop of the Goths, who translated the Scriptures into Gothic 
 for the benefit of his countrymen, about the close of the fourth 
 century. Only parts of this translation remain, of which the most 
 famous is the Silver Book, so called from its being transmitted to 
 us in letters of silver and gold. 
 
 (2.) The High German, at first only spoken in the highlands 
 of Central and Southern Germany. It may be represented by the 
 modern literary German, the language into which Luther trans- 
 lated the Bible. 
 
 (3.) The Low German, spoken originally along the low-lying 
 shores of the German Ocean and the Baltic Sea. From this 
 region our Saxon fathers came, and hence the Low German in- 
 cludes our present English. It may now be represented by the 
 language of Holland, or Low Butch, to which English bears the 
 strongest likeness, as appears in the following: 
 
 In den beginne was het woord, en het woord was bij God, en het woord was God. — SL 
 John i , 1. 
 
 (4.) The Scandinavian, represented by the Danish, Swedish, 
 and Norwegian; but best by the Icelandic, from which come its 
 earliest literary memorials. 
 
 1 Meaning classical or literary , in distinction from the language used by the common 
 people. 
 
 2 The Slavs were the third stream of Aryan emigrants into Europe. 
 
ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH. 
 
 51 
 
 The accompanying Linguistic Tree may be assumed to repre- 
 sent the Aryan mother-tongue in process of ramification, while it 
 may furnish a general conception of the Aryan migrations. One 
 main fact will be apparent — ‘Westward the course of empire 
 takes its way.’ 
 
 English. — This is the language used by the people of Eng- 
 land, and by all who speak like them elsewhere; for example, in 
 the United States. 
 
 Historical Elements. — Its ingredients are derived from 
 sources as varied as the English blood. Of these, as the reader 
 will understand from the historical sketch, the most important 
 are: 
 
 1. Celtic , the oldest of our philological benefactors. — It does 
 not appear, however, to have at all modified the syntax or affected 
 the articulation of the language, but to have remained a foreign 
 unassimilated accretion. It contributes to the vocabulary a large 
 number of geographical names, as Thames , Kent / and some mis- 
 cellaneous words, as basket , button , mop , pail, rail , bard , etc. 
 Between the Anglo-Saxons and the Celts, and hence between 
 
FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LANGUAGE. 
 
 their respective tongues, there was, as we have seen, a reciprocal 
 repulsion. 
 
 2. Latin. — From this we have borrowed more or less freely for 
 many centuries. To the Roman conquest we are indebted com- 
 paratively little. A few civil and military terms were adopted 
 by the Saxon invaders. Of these, some are lost, and others are 
 changed. Thus, strata , denoting a paved road, is changed to 
 street / vallum , a rampart, is retained in wall / castra , a fortified 
 camp, reappears in Gloucester , once written Glevse castra; colo- 
 nia , a colony, is changed to coin , as in Lincoln ( Lindi colonia). 
 
 The Christian missionaries of the sixth century made Latin the 
 official language of the Church, and, to some extent, the medium 
 of religious, moral and intellectual instruction; and thus intro- 
 duced a considerable number of Latin words, chiefly ecclesiastical. 
 Examples are, episcopus , bishop; monachus , monk; epistolci , 
 epistle; which were written, bisceop r munuc, pistel. 
 
 But the great majority of Latinisms have arisen in three 
 epochs, — the thirteenth century, which followed an age devoted 
 to classical studies; the sixteenth, which witnessed a new revival 
 of admiration for antiquity; and the eighteenth, when Johnson, 
 who loved to coin in the Roman mint, was the dictator of prose 
 style. 
 
 3. Danish. — The Danes have bequeathed us few words and 
 relatively unimportant; such as fellow, fro, gait, ill, etc., includ- 
 ing some local names extending over the grounds of their settle- 
 ments. 
 
 4. Nor mail- French. — This was spoken in Northern France — 
 Normandy; and, as the student should now' be aware, was com- 
 posed of three elements, — the Celtic, 1 the Latin, the Teutonic. 3 
 It w r as the dominant speech in England between two and three 
 hundred years, the vernacular finding its refuge in the cottages of 
 the rustic and illiterate. By the gradual coalescence of the two 
 races, its influence was very great, both by introducing many new 
 w^ords and by changing the spelling and sound of old ones. 
 
 5. Greek. — To this source we are indebted for scientific terms, 
 slightly for terms in common use; as, botany, physics , ethics , 
 music, didactic, melancholy (literally, black-bile). 
 
 1 The Celts settled in this region were known, it will be remembered, as Gauls. 
 
 3 The Franks and Danes. 
 
EARLY ENGLISH. 
 
 53 
 
 G. Anglo-Saxon . — This is not so much an element, evidently, 
 as it is the mother tongue, or the stock, — the stream to which the 
 rest have been tributary. It is estimated that the percentage 
 of Anglo-Saxon in modern English, exclusive of scientific and 
 provincial terms, is about five-eighths; in the vocabulary of con- 
 versation, four-fifths. The following table may be of interest, as 
 showing approximately, the relative proportion of Anglo-Saxon 
 in the departments of general literature: 
 
 Bible, - 
 
 93 
 
 Prayer-Book, - - - - 
 
 87 
 
 Poetry, ------ 
 
 88 
 
 Fiction, 
 
 87 
 
 Essay, 
 
 78 
 
 Oratory, 
 
 76 
 
 History, 
 
 72 
 
 Newspaper, - - - - 
 
 72 
 
 Rhetoric, 
 
 GO 
 
 
 
 Original English (449 — 1066). — This, as we have 
 learned, was Anglo-Saxon. From what has been said, it is evi- 
 dent that this form of English, or Old English, as it is sometimes 
 called, resulted from the blending together of the several kindred 
 dialects spoken by the Germanic tribes who invaded Britain be- 
 tween the middle of the fifth and the middle of the sixth centuries. 
 We have used the word ‘kindred’ to indicate that while there 
 was a difference of dialect among the invaders, they all used sub- 
 stantially the same language. 
 
 From the specimens already given, the reader need not be told 
 that the language first brought from Northern Germany to Eng- 
 land was so different from ours that we should not understand it 
 if we heard it spoken; nor can we learn to read it without very 
 nearly as much study as is required to learn French or German. 
 Its alphabet consisted of twenty-four characters, only two of 
 which, as Anglo-Saxon books are now printed, are familiar to the 
 eye. These represent the two sounds of th as heard in thine and 
 thin. As compared with our present English, the Anglo-Saxon 
 is called an inflectional tongue; that is, it indicated the relations 
 of words by a correspondence of forms , the form being varied 
 according to the number, person, case, mood, tense, gender, 
 degree of comparison, and other conditions; whereas, such rela- 
 tions are now indicated by position, auxiliaries and particles, the 
 words themselves remaining for the most part unvaried. 
 
 Thus the Latin ‘bib-ere’ was translated by ‘drinc-a^,’ but now 
 by to drink. We now say ‘I love’ and ‘We love,’ without any 
 
54 : 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LANGUAGE. 
 
 change in the form of the word love’ but the Anglo-Saxons used, 
 for the first, lufige , and for the second lujiath. To say ‘I shall 
 help,’ and ‘ We shall help,’ the same form of the verb serves us 
 equally well; but they thought different forms were necessary, — 
 sceal helpan,. and sculon helpan: whence we see that our pres- 
 ent auxiliary verbs, used as mere indications of time, were once 
 inflected and used as principal verbs, — for example, I shall to 
 help and we shall to help. In the sentences, ‘ They were good 
 hunters,’ and ‘ They had the appearance of good hunters,’ 
 the one form ‘good hunters’ expresses equally well both relations; 
 but the Anglo-Saxons would have expressed it, ‘hunt-an god-e,’ 
 and ‘hunt-ena god-ra,’ varying the form both of the adjective and 
 the noun. This variation of form , therefore, to suit the offices 
 which a word may have to perform in the sentence, is what we 
 are to understand by inflection. The accidence and arrangement 
 of English then, as distinguished from i.ts analytic character now, 
 are well illustrated in the following passage from King Alfred, in 
 whose time the language, as a synthetic tongue, reached its best 
 estate: 
 
 l Fela spella him ssedon tha 
 Beormas aehther ge of hym 
 agenum lande, ge of thaem iande the 
 ymb hy utan wseron : ac he 
 nyste hwset thses sothes waer, 
 for thaem he hit sylf ne ge seah.’ 
 
 Many tidings (to) him said the 
 Beormas either ( i.e . both) of their 
 own lande, and of them lands that 
 around them about were: but he 
 wist-not what (of) the sooth (truth) was, 
 for that he itself not 'y-saw. 
 
 Transition English. — After a while men began to think 
 that so many terminations were useless, that they were too cum- 
 bersome, involving a waste of time and energy in writing and 
 speaking; for man is either a very lazy or a very practical animal, 
 and dislikes to say do not, can not , and shall not , when he can 
 more easily and quickly say don't, can't, and shan't. I have 
 been loved is not quite so laborious as ‘Ic wms fulfremedlice 
 gelufod.’ So, as a matter of economy, to save breath and secure 
 a freer utterance, sentential structure became less periodic, most 
 of the inflections were dropped; while short auxiliaries, or help- 
 words, were used instead. This result, though natural, was very 
 much accelerated by the Norman Conquest; for by that event 
 the language was driven from literature and polite society, being 
 there displaced by French and Latin. No longer fixed in books, 
 and living only on the lips of the ignorant, it was broken up into 
 
TRANSITION ENGLISH. 
 
 numerous diverging’ dialects, of which the chief were the North- 
 ern, Midland, and Southern; nor did it again receive literary cul- 
 ture till the beginning of the thirteenth century, from which 
 date it steadily advanced, till, in the form of the East Midland 
 dialect, it acquired complete and final ascendency in the hands of 
 Chaucer and Wycliffe — the first the forerunner of English Litera- 
 ture, the second, of the Reformation. 
 
 This, then, was a period of confusion, alike perplexing to 
 those who used the language and to those who wish to trace its 
 vicissitudes, — a period in which the old was passing, through a 
 state of ruin, into the new. The two languages, native and 
 stranger, hitherto repellent, began slowly to melt into a har- 
 monious whole; and the former, with a distinct and recognizable 
 existence, though gorged with unorganized material, was fitting” 
 for a vigorous and prolific growth. 
 
 The process of disorganization and decay may be exhibited to 
 the eye by the following extract from the Saxon Chronicle, the 
 second column showing what the text would be if written in 
 purer Saxon: 
 
 ‘Hi swencttf/i the wrecce men of 
 the lanc^ mid castel weorces. 
 
 Tha the castles waren ma ked 
 tha fylden hi mid yvele men. Tha 
 namen hi tha men the hi wenden. 
 thaet a ni God hefclen bathe be 
 nighfes and' be dceies. 1 
 
 Hi swencon tha wreccan menn of 
 tham lande mid castel-weorcum. 
 
 Tha tha castel woeron gemacod 
 tha fyldon hi mid yfelon manum. Tha 
 namon hi tha menn tha hi wendon 
 thaet senig God haefdon batwa be 
 nihte & be daege. 
 
 It may be of interest to watch, in early versions of the Lord's 
 Prayer , that series of mutations by which Anglo-Saxon was 
 passing gradually into modern English : 
 
 A.D. 700. Thu ure Fader, the eart on heofenum, 
 
 Si thin noman gehalgod, 
 
 Cume thin rike, 
 
 Si thin Willa on eorthan twa on heofenum; 
 Syle us todag orne daegwanlican hlaf, 
 
 And forgif ns ure gylter, 
 
 Swa we fogifath tham the with us agylthat ; 
 And ne laed thu na us on kostnunge; 
 
 Ac alys us fronn yfele. 
 
 Si bit swa. 
 
 A.D. 890. Faeder ure thu the eart on hoefenum, 
 
 Si thin nama gehalgod; 
 
 To becume thin rice. 
 
 Gewurthe thin willa on eorthan swa swa on heofenum, 
 
 Urne daeghwamlican hlaf syle us to daeg: 
 
 And forgyf us ure gyltas, swa swa we forgifoth urum gyltendumr 
 
56 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LANGUAGE. 
 
 A.D. 1120. 
 
 And ne gelaedde thu us on costnunge, 
 Ac alys us of yfele. Sothlice. 
 
 Ure Fader in Heven rich, 
 
 Thy name be halyed ever lich. 
 Thou bring us thy michel bliese, 
 Als bit in heven y doe; 
 
 Evear in yearth been it alsoe. 
 That holy brede that lasteth ay, 
 Thou send us this ilke day. 
 Forgive us all that we have done 
 As we forgive ech other one. 
 
 Ne let us fall into no founding, 
 Ne sheld us frym the foule thing. 
 
 Hal ud be thy nam to nevene: 
 Thou do us thy rich rike: 
 
 Thi will on erd be wrought elk, 
 Als it es wrought in heven ay: 
 Ur ilk day brede give us to day: 
 Forgive thou all us dettes urs 
 Als we forgive all ur detturs: 
 And ledde us na in na fanding, 
 But sculd us fra ivel thing. 
 
 ■{East Midland.) Halged be thi name with giftis sevene; 
 
 Samm cume thi kingdom, 
 
 Thi wille in herthe als in hevene be don; 
 Ure bred that lastes ai 
 Gyve it hus this hilke dai, 
 
 And ure misdedis thu forgyve hus, 
 
 Als we forgyve tham that misdon hus, 
 And lcod us intol na fandinge, 
 
 Bot frels us fra alle ivele thinge. Amen. 
 
 Native Features of English. — 1 . Its grammar is almost 
 exclusively Anglo-Saxon. 2. Anglo-Saxon is eminently the or- 
 gan of practical action — the language of business, of the street, 
 market, and farm. 3. The specific terms of the English tongue 
 are Anglo-Saxon, while the generic terms are foreign — Latin, 
 Greek, or French. Thus, we are Romans when we speak, in a 
 general way, of moving; but Teutons when we run, icalk , leap , 
 stagger , slip , ride , slide, glide . 4. The Saxon gives us names 
 for the greater part of natural objects; as, sun , moon , stars , 
 rain, snow , hill, dale. 5. Those words expressive of strongest 
 feelings are Saxon ; as, home, hearth, fireside, life, death, man 
 and wife, father and mother, brother and sister, love and hate, 
 hope and fear, gladness and sorrow. 6. A large proportion of 
 the language of invective, humor, satire, and colloquial pleas- 
 antry, is Saxon. 7. In short, to the Saxon belongs the vocabu- 
 
 A.D. 1250. 
 
 Fadir ur that es in hevene, 
 
 A.D. 1250. 
 
 Ure fadir that hart in hevene, 
 
THE HISTORY IN WORDS. 
 
 57 
 
 lary of common life, including* our colloquialisms, idiomatic 
 phrases, and the language of conversation. Thus we see that 
 the essential element in English is native. Between its past and 
 present there is only the difference that exists between the sap- 
 ling and the tree, or between the boy and the man. 
 
 Anglo-Norman History in English. — Supposing all 
 other records to have perished, we could still trace the reciprocal 
 relations of the Saxon and Norman occupants of England in their 
 contributions to the language which they have jointly bequeathed 
 us. Thus we should conclude that the Norman was the ruling* 
 race from the noticeable fact that nearly all the words of state 
 descend to us from them, — sovereign, throne , crown , sceptre, 
 realm , royalty, prince, chancellor , treasurer. Norman aristocracy 
 transmits us duke , baron, peer, esquire, count, palace, castle, hall, 
 mansion. Common articles of dress are Saxon, — shirt, shoes, 
 hat, breeches, cloak / but other articles, subject to changes of 
 fashion, are of Norman origin, — yown, coat , boots, mantle , cap, 
 bonnet, etc. Room and kitchen are Saxon; chambers, parlors, 
 galleries, pantries, and laundries are Norman. The Saxon’s 
 stool, bench, bed, and board — often probably it was no more — 
 are less luxurious than the table, chair, and couch of his Norman 
 lord. The boor whose sturdy arms turned the soil, opened wide 
 his eyes at the Norman carpet and curtain. While luxury, 
 chivalry, adornment, are Norman, the instruments used in cul- 
 tivating the earth, as well as its main products, are Saxon, — 
 plough, share, rake, scythe, harrow, sickle, spade, wheat, rye, 
 oats, grass, hay, flax. 
 
 Thus are words, when we remove the veil which custom and 
 familiarity have thrown over them, seen to be illustrative of 
 national life. As the earth has its strata and deposits from which 
 the geologist is able to arrive at a knowledge of the successive 
 physical changes through which a region has passed, so language 
 has its alluvium and drift from which the linguist may disinter, 
 in fossil form, the social condition, the imaginations and feel- 
 ings, of a period — a period far more remote than any here 
 suggested. 
 
 Superiority of Saxon English.— The special reasons 
 assignable for this are: 
 
58 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LANGUAGE. 
 
 1. Early association. — A child’s vocabulary is almost wholly 
 Saxon. He calls a thing nice or nasty , not pleasant or disagree- 
 able. Words acquired later in life are less familiar — less organi- 
 cally connected with his ideas, and hence less rapidly suggestive. 
 
 2. Brevity. — The fewer the words, the more effective the 
 idea, — as, to point to the door is more expressive than to say, 
 ‘Leave the room.’ On the same principle, the fewer the syllables, 
 the stronger the impression produced, — less time and effort are 
 required to read the sign and perceive the thing signified. Hence 
 the shortness of Saxon words becomes a cause of their greater 
 force. One qualification must be made. When great power or 
 intensity is to be suggested, an expansive and sonorous word, 
 allowing the consciousness, a longer time to dwell on the quality 
 predicated, may be an advantage. A devout and poetic soul 
 gazing, in stilly night, into stellar spaces, — what verb will ex- 
 press its emotion? See , look , think? — only the Latin contem- 
 plate. The noise going to and returning from hill to hill, — what 
 word will describe it? Sound , boom, roar, echo, are all too 
 tame; only reverberate tells the whole. Hence the value of the 
 Latin element in contributing to copiousness and strength of 
 expression. It is a pleasing study to observe how, in all the best 
 writers, the long and short are harmoniously combined, as in 
 these lines from Macbeth: 
 
 ‘Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood 
 Clean from my hand? No! this, my hand, will rather 
 The multitudinous seas incarnadine , 
 
 Making the green one red.’ 
 
 3. Definiteness. — ‘ Well-being arises from well-doing,’ is Saxon. 
 ‘Felicity attends virtue,’ is Latin. How inferior is the second, 
 because less definite than the first. The more concrete the terms, 
 the brighter the picture, as wagon and cart are more vivid than 
 
 vehicle. 
 
 Therefore, though many words of Latin origin are equally 
 simple and clear, those of Saxon origin are, as a whole, more so, 
 and should be preferred. This is the current maxim of com- 
 position, most happily enforced in the following lines: 
 
 ‘Think not that strength lies in the big, round word. 
 
 Or that the brief and plain must needs be weak. 
 
 To whom can this be true who once has heard 
 The cry for help, the tongue that all men speak, 
 
 When want, or fear, or woe, is in the throat. 
 
SUMMARY. 
 
 59 
 
 So that each word gasped out is like a shriek 
 Pressed from the sore heart, or a strange, wild note, 
 
 Sung by some fay or fiend? There is a strength, 
 
 Which dies if stretched too far, or spun too fine, 
 
 Which has more height than breadth, more depth than length. 
 
 Let but this force of thought and speech be mine, 
 
 And he that will, may take the sleek, fat phrase, 
 
 Which glows, but burns not, though it beam and shine, 
 
 Light, but no heat,— a flash, but not a blaze .’ 1 
 
 Results. — So does the English language combine, to an ex- 
 tent unequalled by any other living tongue, the classic (Latin) 
 and the Teutonic, — the euphony, sonorousness, and harmony of 
 the first; the strength, tenderness, and simplicity of the second; 
 a happy medium between French and German, — more grave 
 than the former, less harsh and cumbersome than the latter, 
 grammatically simpler than either. From its composite char- 
 acter come that wealth and compass, that rich and varied music, 
 which have made English Literature the crown and glory of the 
 works of man. It has an abode, far and wide, in the islands of 
 the earth; gives greeting on the shores of the Pacific, as of the 
 Atlantic. Fixed in multitudes of standard works and endeared 
 to the increasing millions who read and speak it, the natural 
 growth of population, the love of conquest and colonization 
 which has distinguished the Saxon race since they traversed the 
 German Ocean in their frail barks, will help to extend and per- 
 petuate its empire. 
 
 Dr. J. A. Alexander. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 FORMING OF THE LITERATURE. 
 
 Wherever possible, let us not be told about this man or that. Let us hear the man him- 
 self speak, let us see him act, and let us be left to form our own opinions about him.—' 
 Froude. 
 
 My friend, the times which are gone are a book with seven seals : and what you call 
 the spirit of past ages is but the spirit of this or that worthy gentleman in whose mind those 
 ages are reflected. — Goethe. 
 
 The view of human manners, in all their variety of appearances, is both profitable and 
 agreeable ; and if the aspect m some periods seem horrid and deformed, we may thence 
 learn to cherish with the greater anxiety that science and civility, which has so close a con- 
 nection with virtue and humanity, and which as it is a sovereign antidote against super- 
 stition, is also the most effectual remedy against vice and disorder of every kind.— Hume. 
 
 Politics. — From the primitive stock — Angles and Saxons, 
 reinforced by the Danish ravagers, buried, re-elevated, and modi- 
 fied, by the Conquest — were to spring the nation and its history. 
 In pursuance of Germanic custom, there was an early division of 
 the kingdom, as we have seen, into counties, and of these into 
 hundreds, the latter partition supposed to contain a hundred free 
 families. Each had its tribunal; the Court of the Hundred — 
 held by an alderman, next in authority to the king — being the 
 lower. In course of time, the County Court became the real 
 arbiter of important suits, the first contenting itself with pun- 
 ishing petty offences and keeping up a local police. Chiefly to- 
 this the English freeman looked for the maintenance of his civil 
 rights. The hundreds were further distributed into decennaries , 
 or tithings, known as ‘ten men’s tale.’ In one of these, every 
 freeman above the age of twelve was required to be enrolled. 
 The members were a perpetual bail for each other; so that if 
 one of the ten committed any fault, the nine were indirectly 
 responsible. From earliest English times there had prevailed 
 the usage of compurgation , under which the accused could be 
 acquitted by the oath of his friends, who pledged their knowl- 
 edge, or at least their belief, of his innocence. The following" 
 passage in the laws of Alfred refers to this practice: 
 
 GO 
 
OLD ENGLISH JURISPRUDENCE. 
 
 61 
 
 ‘ If any one accuse a king’s thane of homicide, if he dare to purge himself, let him do 
 it along with twelve king's thanes.’ ‘ If any one accuse a thane of less rank than a king's 
 thane, let him purge himself along with eleven of his equals, and one king's thane.’ 
 
 Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence proceeded, as here, upon the maxim 
 that the best guarantee of every man’s obedience to the govern- 
 ment was to be sought in the confidence of his neighbors. This 
 privilege, the manifest fountain of unblushing perjury, was abol- 
 ished by Henry II; though it long afterwards was preserved, by 
 exemption, in London and in boroughs. There was left, how- 
 ever, the favorite mode of defence, — the ordeal , or ‘judgment 
 of God.’ Innocence could be proved by the power of holding 
 hot iron in the hand, or by sinking when Hung into the water, 
 for swimming was a proof of guilt. When these were annulled 
 in 1216, the combat remained, but no longer applicable unless 
 an injured prosecutor came forward to demand it. This w T as 
 of Norman origin. The nobleman fought on horseback ; the 
 plebeian on foot, with his club and target. The vanquished 
 party forfeited his claim and paid a fine. It was the function 
 of the court to see that the formalities of the combat, the ordeal, 
 or the compurgation, were duly regarded, and to observe whether 
 the party succeeded or succumbed, — a function which required 
 neither a knowledge of positive law nor the dictates of natural 
 sagacity. 
 
 The seed of our present form of Trial by Jury may be dis- 
 covered in a law of Ethelred II, binding the sheriff and twelve 
 principal thanes to swear that they would neither acquit any 
 criminal nor convict any innocent person. In 1176, precise enact- 
 ment established the jury system, still rude and imperfect, as the 
 usual mode of trial: 
 
 ‘The justices, who represented the king’s person, were to make inquiry by the oaths 
 of twelve knights, or other lawful men, of each hundred, together with the four men from 
 each township, of all murders, robberies, and thefts, and of all who had harboured such 
 offenders, since the king’s (Henry II) accession to the throne.’ 
 
 The jurors were essentially witnesses distinguished from other 
 witnesses only by customs which imposed upon them the obli- 
 gation of an oath and regulated their number. For fifty years 
 yet their duties were to present offenders for trial by ordeal or 
 combat. Under Edward I, witnesses acquainted with the par- 
 ticular fact in question were added to the general jury; and 
 later these became simply ‘witnesses,’ without judicial power, 
 
62 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 while the first ceased to be witnesses and became only judges 
 of the testimony given. It was the abolition of the ordeal sys- 
 tem in 1216 which led the way to the establishment of what is 
 called a ‘petty jury’ for the final trial of the prisoner. Cen- 
 turies were to pass, however, before the complete separation of 
 the functions of juryman and witness should be effected. 
 
 The ‘Meeting of Wise Men’ no longer retained, under Alfred, 
 its character of a national gathering, as when the Saxons pre- 
 served in simplicity their Germanic institutions. Then all free- 
 men, whether owners of land or not, composed part of it. Grad- 
 ually, by the non-attendance or indifference of the people, only 
 the great proprietors were left; and, without the formal exclu- 
 sion of any class of its members, it shrunk up into an aristo- 
 cratic assembly. 
 
 After the Conquest, in the reign of John, the national council 
 was a gathering, at the king’s bidding, of all who held their lands 
 directly from the crown, both clerical and lay. It was like the 
 ‘ Meeting of the Wise Men,’ only more people sat in it, and they 
 were the king’s feudal vassals. Those who were entitled to be 
 present, could only be present themselves — could not send repre- 
 sentatives. At the county courts, groups of men sent from the 
 various parts of the shire represented, in the transaction of busi- 
 ness, the whole free folk of the shire. Slowly and tentatively 
 this principle was applied to the constitution of the Great Coun- 
 cil. Henry III and his barons alike ordered the choice of ‘dis- 
 creet knights’ from every county, ‘to meet on the common 
 business of the realm.’ In 1246, the word parliament was first 
 used as the name of the council. The extension of electoral 
 rights to the freeholders at large is seen in the king’s writ of 
 1264, sent to the higher clergy, earls, and barons; to the sheriffs, 
 cities, and boroughs throughout England, commanding the former 
 three to come in person, the latter to send representatives. It 
 was long, however, before the chosen deputies were admitted to 
 a share in deliberative power. In 1295, Edward gathered at 
 Westminster an assembly that was in every sense a national Par- 
 liament. It straightway fulfilled the sole duty of a Parliament in 
 those days, — voted the king a supply. Two years later the one 
 thing still wanting was gained, — a solemn acknowledgment by 
 the king that it alone had power to tax the nation. The idea of 
 
GERMINATION OF MODERN GOVERNMENT. 
 
 63 
 
 representation has risen. ‘It is a most just law,’ says Edward, 
 •that what concerns all should be approved of by all, and that 
 common dangers should be met by measures provided in common.’ 
 In Edward’s reign, the barons began to hold their deliberations 
 privately. The knights from the shires and the deputies from 
 the towns formed a second chamber. From this time, therefore, 
 dates the origin of the House of Lords and the House of Com- 
 mons. 
 
 The rights of self-government, of free speech in free meeting, 
 of equal justice by one’s peers, were brought safely across the 
 ages of Norman tyranny by the traders and shopkeepers, who 
 alone, unnoticed and despised by prelate and noble, had preserved 
 the full tradition of Teutonic liberty. Henry I, promising to 
 govern the English according to their own wishes, with wisdom 
 and moderation, granted them a first charter, which, though of 
 short duration, was the first limitation imposed on the despotism 
 of the Conquest. A hundred years later, the barons extorted 
 from King John the glorious and powerful Magna Chart a , — 
 ever after the basis of the English freedom, the corner-stone of 
 the noble edifice of the Constitution. Life, liberty, and property 
 were protected. No man could henceforth be detained in prison 
 without trial. No man would have to buy justice. These words, 
 honestly interpreted, convey an ample security for the two main 
 rights of civil society: 
 
 4 No freeman shall be seized or imprisoned, or dispossessed, or outlawed, or in any way 
 brought to ruin : we will not go against any man nor send against him, save by legal judg- 
 ment of his peers or by the law of the land. To no man will we sell, to no man will we deny 
 or delay, justice or right.’ 
 
 At the end of the thirteenth century, the charters were so 
 firmly established that no monarch would venture to disturb them. 
 
 Small and obscure are the beginnings of great political institu- 
 tions, and unforeseen are the tremendous results of the actor’s 
 deeds, who, as he casts the seed into the soil, little dreams of the 
 mighty and perpetual germination it will disclose in after days. 
 
 Society. — By Alfred’s day, it was assumed that no man could 
 exist without dependence upon a superior. The ravages and long 
 insecurity of the Danish wars drove the freeholder to seek pro- 
 tection from the thane. His freehold was surrendered to be 
 received back as a fief, laden with service to its lord. Gradually 
 
64 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 the ‘lordless’ man became a sort of outlaw; the free churl, who 
 had held his land straight from the Maker of it, sank into the 
 villain , 1 and with his personal freedom went his share in the gov- 
 ernment. The bulk of the workmen are serfs. In a dialogue of 
 the tenth century, written for popular instruction, the ploughman 
 says: ‘I labor much. I go out at daybreak, urging the oxen to 
 the field, and I yoke them to the plough. I am bound to plough 
 everyday a full acre or more.’ The herdsman says: ‘When the 
 ploughman separates the oxen, I lead them to the meadows, and 
 all night I stand watching over them on account of thieves; and 
 again in the morning I take them to the plough, well-fed and 
 watered.’ And the shepherd: ‘In the first part of the morning I 
 drive my sheep to their pasture, and stand over them in heat and 
 cold with my dogs, lest the wolves destroy them. I lead them 
 back to their folds, and milk them twice a day; and I move their 
 folds, and make cheese and butter, and am faithful to my lord.’ 
 
 The military oppression of the Normans levelled all degrees 
 of tenants and servants into a modified slavery. The English 
 lord was pushed from his place by the Norman baron, and sank 
 into the position from which he had thrust the churl. The 
 peasant — the producer — had no alternative but to abide from 
 the cradle to the grave in one spot, and was held to be only 
 fulfilling his natural destiny when he toiled without hope for 
 the privileged consumer. ‘ Why should villains eat beef or any 
 dainty food?’ asks one of the Norman minstrels. 
 
 The social organization of every rural part of England rested 
 on the manorial system, — a division of the land, for purposes of 
 cultivation and internal order, into a number of large estates. 
 The lord of the manor, instead of cultivating the estate through 
 his own bailiff, at length found it more convenient and profitable 
 to distribute it among tenants at a given rent, payable either in 
 money or in produce. This habit of leasing afforded an oppor- 
 tunity by which the aspiring among the tenantry could rise to 
 a position of apparent equality with their older masters. The 
 growing use of the words ‘farm’ and ‘farmer’ from the twelfth 
 century mark the initial steps of a peasant revolution. The 
 
 1 A peasant, one of the lowest class of feudal tenants; a bondman, and later a vile, 
 wicked person. One of the many words which men have dragged downwards with them- 
 selves, and made more or less partakers of their own fall. 
 
SOCIAL ORGANIZATION — TOWNS. 
 
 65 
 
 tenants were subject to many exactions. The lord’s bull and 
 boar were free, under the conditions of tenure, to range at night 
 through their standing corn and grass; and their sheep, — for 
 they were permitted to acquire and hold property upon suffer- 
 ance, — were always to be folded on their master’s land. That 
 the land was indifferently farmed we may well believe, when we 
 learn that the highest rent was seven pence an acre, and the 
 lowest a farthing. The rise of the farmer class was soon fol- 
 lowed by that of the free laborer. Influences, indeed, had long 
 been quietly freeing the peasantry from their local bondage. 
 Prior to the Conquest, pure slavery was gradually disappearing 
 before the efforts of the Church. Subsequently she urged eman- 
 cipation, as a mark of piety, on all estates but her own. The 
 fugitive bondsman found freedom in chartered towns, where a 
 residence of one year and a day conferred franchise. The pomp 
 of chivalry and the cost of incessant campaigns drained the royal 
 mid baronial purse; and the sale of freedom to the serf, or of 
 exemption from services to the villain, afforded an easy and 
 tempting mode of replenishment. Thus, by a solemn deed in 
 1302, for forty marks, 4 Robert Crul and Matilda his wife, with 
 all his offspring begotten and to be begotten, together with all 
 his goods holden and to be holden,’ w^as rendered ‘forever free 
 and quit from all yoke of servitude.’ 
 
 In the silent growth and elevation of the people, the boroughs 
 led the way. The English town was originally a piece of the 
 general country, where people, either for purposes of trade or 
 protection, happened to cluster more closely than elsewhere. It 
 was organized and governed in the same way as the manors 
 around it, — justice was administered, its customary services ex- 
 acted, its annual rent collected, by the officer of the king, noble, 
 or ecclesiastic, to whose estate it belonged. Its inhabitants were 
 bound to reap their lord’s corn crops, to grind at his mill, to 
 redeem their strayed cattle from his pound. Its dues paid and 
 services rendered, however, property and person alike were se- 
 cured against arbitrary seizure. The townsman’s rights were 
 rigidly defined by custom, and by custom were constantly widen- 
 ing. By disuse or forgetfulness, services would disappear, while 
 privileges and immunities were being for the most part purchased 
 by hard bargaining. At Leicester, for instance, one of the chief 
 5 
 
66 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 aims of its burgesses was to regain their old English practice of 
 compurgation, for which had been substituted the foreign trial 
 by duel. Says a charter of the time: 
 
 ‘ It chanced that two kinsmen . . . waged a duel about a certain piece of land, con- 
 cerning which a dispute had arisen between them ; and they fought from the first to the 
 ninth hour, each conquering by turns. Then one of them fleeing from the other till he 
 came to a certain little pit, as he stood on the brink of the pit, and was about to fall therein, 
 his kinsman said to him, “ Take care of the pit, turn back lest thou shouldest fall into it.” 
 Thereat so much clamor and noise was made by the by-standers and those who were sitting 
 around, that the Earl heard these clamors as far off as the castle, and he inquired of some 
 how it was there was such a clamor, and answer was made to him that two kinsmen were 
 fighting about a certain piece of ground, and that one had fled till he reached a certain little 
 pit, and that, as he stood over the pit and was about to fall into it, the other warned him. 
 Then the townsmen, being moved with pity, made a covenant with the Earl that they should 
 give him three pence yearly for each house in the High Street that had a gable, on condition 
 that he should grant to them that the twenty-four jurors who were in Leicester from ancient 
 times should from that time forward discuss and decide all pleas they might have among 
 themselves.’ 
 
 At the close of the thirteenth century, all the more important 
 towns had secured freedom of trade, of justice, and of govern- 
 ment. Their liberties and charters served as models and in- 
 centives to the smaller communities stru 2 r 2 rlino > into existence. 
 While the tendency at first seems to have been agricultural, at 
 the Conquest it had become mercantile, and the controlling class 
 was the merchant guild. Wealth and industry developed into 
 dangerous rivalry a second class, composed of escaped serfs, of 
 traders without lands, of the artisans and the poor. Without 
 share in the right and regulation of trade, their struggles for 
 power and privilege began in the reign of the first Henry, and 
 their turbulent election of a London mayor in 1261 marks their 
 final victory. 
 
 In the tenth century, a man wished for two things, — not to be 
 slain, and to have a good leather coat. The state of warfare still 
 contends against the state of order. The right of aggrieved 
 persons to interfere with the sober course of the law is acknowl- 
 edged even by Alfred: 
 
 ‘ We also command that the man who knows his foe to be home -sitting, fight not before 
 he demand justice of him. If he have such power that he can beset his foe and besiege 
 him within, let him keep him within for seven days, and attack him not if he will remain 
 within.’ 
 
 There are so many pagan Danes and other disreputable per- 
 sons scattered up and down the land, that society must protect 
 itself in a summary fashion: 
 
 ‘If a stranger or foreigner shall wander from the highway, and then neither call out 
 nor sound a horn, he is to be taken for a thief and killed, or redeemed by fine.’ 
 
LAWLESSNESS AND BRUTALITY. 
 
 67 
 
 When Henry II, succeeding the Norman king, ascended the 
 throne in 1154, he found his kingdom a prey to horrible anarchy. 
 The royal domains were surrounded on all sides by menacing 
 fortresses garrisoned by resolute soldiers who recognized no 
 authority but that of their chiefs. Within three years, eleven 
 hundred of these castles, the haunts of robbers, were razed to 
 the ground, while the peasants and townspeople applauded the 
 work of destruction. He may be truly said to have initiated ‘ the 
 rule of law.’ Ten years after his accession the principle of 
 pecuniary compensation for crime had, for the most part, been 
 superseded by criminal laws, administered with stern severity. 
 Yet outrage continues to be the constant theme of legislation. 
 In the reign of the first Edward, every man was bound to hold 
 himself in readiness, duly armed, for the king’s service or the hue 
 and cry which pursued the felon. An act for the suppression of 
 crimes directs that, — 
 
 ‘ For the greater security of the people, walled towns shall keep their gates shut from 
 sun-set to sun-rise; and none shall lodge all night in their suburbs, unless his host shall 
 answer for him. All towns shall be kept as in times past, with a watch all night at each 
 gate, with a number of men.’ 
 
 Another, after reciting the commission of robberies, murders, and 
 riots, in the city of London, enjoins: 
 
 ‘ That none be found in the streets, either with spear or buckler, after the curfew-bell 
 rings out, except they be great lords, or other persons of note; also, that no tavern, either 
 for wine or ale, be kept open after that hour on forfeiture of forty pence.’ 
 
 Once, during this reign, a band of lesser nobles disguise their 
 way into a great merchant fair; fire every booth, rob and slaugh- 
 ter the merchants, and carry the booty off to ships lying in wait. 
 Molten streams of silver and gold, says the tale of horror, flowed 
 down the gutters to the sea. Lawless companies of club-men 
 maintain themselves by general violence, aid the country nobles 
 in their feuds, wrest money and goods from the tradesmen. 
 Under a show of courtesy the bloodthirsty instinct breaks out. 
 Richard of the Lion-heart has a lion’s appetite. Under the walls 
 of Acre he wants some pork. There being none to be had, a 
 young Saracen is killed, cooked, salted, and served him. He eats 
 it with a relish, and desires to see the head of the pig. The cook 
 produces it trembling, the king laughs, and says the army, having- 
 provisions so convenient, has nothing to fear from famine. The 
 town taken, he has thirty of the most noble prisoners beheaded* 
 
68 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 bids his cook boil the heads and serve one to each of the ambas- 
 sadors who came to sue for their pardon. Thereupon the sixty 
 thousand prisoners are led into the plain for execution. 
 
 Theodore, who founded the English Church, denied Christian 
 burial to the kidnapper, and prohibited the sale of children by 
 their parents after the age of seven. The murder of a slave, 
 though no crime in the eye of the State, became a sin for which 
 penance was due to the Church. Manumission became frequent 
 in wills, as a boon to the souls of the dead. Usually the slave 
 was set free before the altar; sometimes at the spot where four 
 roads met, and there bidden go whither he would. In the more 
 solemn form, his master took him by the hand in full shire 
 meeting, showed him the open road and door, and gave him the 
 lance and sword of the freeman. A hundred years after the 
 prohibition, in the ninth century, of the slave-traffic from English 
 ports, men and women are said to have been bought in all parts 
 of England and carried to Ireland for sale. ‘You might,’ says a 
 chronicler, ‘have seen with sorrow long files of young people of 
 both sexes and of the greatest beauty bound with ropes and daily 
 exposed for sale. . . . They sold in this manner as slaves their 
 own children.’ Not till the reign of Henry II was it finally sup- 
 pressed in its last stronghold, the port of Bristol. 
 
 A law of 1285, relating to highways, directs: 
 
 1 That those ways shall be enlarged where bushes, woods, or dykes be, where men may 
 lurk, so that there be neither dyke, tree, nor bush within two hundred feet on each side of 
 those roads, great trees excepted.’ 
 
 A provision which illustrates at once the social and physical con- 
 dition of the country at the time. The roads are narrow — from 
 four to eight feet — and of difficult passage. A bishop, journey- 
 ing to London, is obliged to rest his beasts of burden on alternate 
 days of travel. Returning, he accomplishes the first day only 
 five miles. Travellers ride on horseback, and convey their culin- 
 ary wares or merchandise in pack-saddles. The dead, the invalid, 
 ladies of rank, are carried in a liorse-litter , borne by horses and 
 mules, sometimes by men. Carts are the carriages of the nobil- 
 ity, distinguished from the common description by ornament. 
 Even that of King John is springless, — the body rests upon the 
 axletree, the wheels are cut from solid pieces of circular wood, 
 covered ornamentally, and bound round with a thick wooden 
 
ARCHITECTURE — THE CAPITALIST. 
 
 69 
 
 tire. For obvious reasons, a solitary journey in these early days 
 will be a matter of grave anxiety. Friends setting out from the 
 same place, or strangers becoming acquainted upon the road, 
 join in parties for mutual protection and cheer through the semi- 
 desert. 
 
 The houses of the people in the thirteenth century were gen- 
 erally of one story, consisting of a hall and a bed-chamber. The 
 first was kitchen, dining-room, reception-room, as well as sleeping- 
 apartment for strangers and visitors indiscriminately; the second 
 was the resort of the female portion of the household. The door 
 opened outward, and was left open, — a sign of hospitality, which 
 even in turbulent times was almost boundless between those who 
 had established friendly relations. The roof, covered with oval 
 tiles, exhibited two ornamental points. Dwellings of the opulent 
 sometimes had upper floors, reached by an external staircase. 
 The upper part was considered the place of greatest security, as 
 it could be entered only by one door, which was approached by 
 a flight of steps, and hence was more readily defended. The 
 hall was generally the whole height of the house. Adjacent to 
 it was the stable, in which the servants, if any, were well con- 
 tent to lodge. Palaces and manor-houses had essentially the 
 same arrangement, — a private room for the lord, and the great 
 hall which was the usual living apartment for the whole family, 
 and in which retainers and guests, often to the number of three 
 or four hundred, were kennelled, the floor being strewn with dry 
 rushes in winter, and with hay or straw in summer. 
 
 Already the Jew was a capitalist, — the only one in Europe. 
 He had followed William from Normandy. Without citizenship, 
 absolutely at the king’s mercy, he was the engine of finance; 
 and, as such, compelled the kingly regard. Castle and cathe- 
 dral alike owed their existence to his loans. His wealth — 
 wrung from him by torture when mild entreaty failed — filled 
 the royal exchequer at the outbreak of war or revolt. The 
 ‘Jews’ Houses’ were almost the first of stone, which superseded 
 the mere hovels of the English burghers. John, having wrested 
 from them a sum equal to a year’s revenue, might suffer none to 
 plunder them save himself. Hated by the people, persecuted at 
 last by the law, forbidden to appear in the street without the 
 'Colored tablet which distinguished the race, their long agony 
 
70 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 ended in their expulsion from the realm by Edward. Of the 
 sixteen thousand who preferred exile to apostasy, many were 
 wrecked, others robbed and flung- overboard. From that time 
 till their restoration by Cromwell, no Jew touched English soil. 
 
 Under the worst of rulers it is ‘Merry England.’ Of indoor 
 amusements, the most attractive to high and low is gambling. 
 So universal was the passion in the twelfth century, that in 
 the Crusades the kings of France and England made the most 
 stringent regulations to restrict it. No man in the army was 
 to play for money, except the knights and the clergy; nor were 
 the latter to lose more than twenty shillings in one day. The 
 lower orders who should be found playing without the permis- 
 sion and supervision of their masters, were to be whipped; and, 
 if mariners, were to be plunged into the sea on three successive 
 mornings. Love of hardy sports, so characteristic of the Eng- 
 lish, is not of modern growth. It was one of the most impor- 
 tant parts of popular education seven centuries ago. Wrestling 
 was the national pastime. The sturdy yeoman wrestled for 
 prizes, — a ram or a bull, a ring or a pipe of wine. Foot-ball 
 was the favorite game. In the Easter holidays they had river 
 tournaments. In the summer, the youths exercised themselves 
 in leaping, archery, stone-throwing, slinging javelins, and fight- 
 ing with bucklers. The sword-dance of the Saxons, descending 
 to their successors, held an honored place among popular sports. 
 The acrobat went about to market and fair, circling knives and 
 balls adroitly through his hands, and the ‘musical girls’ danced 
 before knight and peasant as the daughter of Herodias before 
 Herod. A very ancient and popular game was that of throwing" 
 a peculiar stick at cocks. It was practised especially by school- 
 boys. Three origins of it have been given: first, that in the- 
 Danish wars, the Saxons failed to surprise a certain city in con- 
 sequence of the crowing of cocks, and had therefore a great 
 hatred of that bird; second, that the cocks were special repre- 
 sentatives of Frenchmen, with whom the English were constantly 
 at war; third, that they were connected with Peter’s denial of 
 Christ. Two diversions of the Middle Ages, however, were a 
 pride and ornament, the theme of song, the object of law, and 
 the business of life, — hunting and hawking. A knight seldom 
 
PLEASURES — SUPERSTITIONS. 
 
 71 
 
 stirred from his house without a falcon 1 on his wrist or a grey- 
 hound at his feet. Into these pastimes the clergy rushed with 
 an irrepressible eagerness. To the country revel came the 
 taborer, the bagpiper, and the minstrel — a privileged wanderer. 
 Music, with its immemorial talismanic power to charm, seems 
 always to have ranked as a favorite accomplishment. The com- 
 plaint of a Scotch abbot in 1160 suggests rather amusingly the 
 innovations it was making in the devotional customs of the 
 Church : 
 
 4 Since all types and figures are now ceased, why so many organs and cymbals in our 
 churches? Why, I say, that terrible blowing of bellows which rather imitates noise of 
 thunder than the sweet harmony of voice?’ 
 
 Again : 
 
 4 One restrains his breath, another breaks his breath, and a third unaccountably dilates 
 his voice. Sometimes (I blush to say it) they fall and quiver like the neighing of horses ; at 
 other times they look like persons in the agonies of death; their eyes roll; their shoulders 
 are moved upwards and downwards; and their fingers dance to every note.’ 
 
 Intellectually, the real character of these times is to be judged 
 by their multitude of superstitions. On the Continent, in particu- 
 lar, credulity was habitual and universal. The west of Britain 
 was believed to be inhabited by the souls of the dead. In a 
 lake in Munster, Ireland, there were two islands. Into the first, 
 death could never enter; but age, disease, and weariness wrought 
 upon the inhabitants till they grew tired of their immortality, 
 and learned to look upon the second as a haven of repose; they 
 launched their barks upon its dark waters, touched its shore, and 
 were at rest. The three companions of St. Colman were a cock, 
 which announced the hour of devotion; a mouse, which bit the 
 ear of the drowsy saint till he rose; and a fly, which, if in the 
 course of his studies his thoughts wandered, or he was called 
 away, alighted on the line where he had left off, and kept the 
 place. In the Church of St. Sabina at Rome was long shown 
 a ponderous stone which the devil had flung at St. Dominic, 
 vainly hoping to crush a head that was shielded by the guardian 
 angel. The Gospel of St. John suspended around the neck, a 
 rosary, a relic of Christ or of a saint, — any of the thousand talis- 
 mans distributed among the faithful, would baffle the utmost 
 efforts of diabolical malice. The more terrible phenomena of 
 nature, unmoved by exorcisms and sprinklings, were invariably 
 
 1 A bird of great destructive power, trained to the pursuit of other birds. 
 
FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 attributed to the intervention of spirits. Such phenomena were 
 by the clergy frequently identified with acts of rebellion against 
 themselves. In the tenth century, the opinion everywhere pre- 
 vailed that the end of the world was approaching. Many charters 
 begin with these words: ‘As the world is now drawing to its 
 close.’ An army was so terrified by a solar eclipse, which it 
 conceived to announce this consummation, as to disperse hastily 
 on all sides. More than once the apparition of a comet filled 
 Europe with terror. In the shadows of the universal ignorance, 
 nothing was too absurd for belief and practice. In France, ani- 
 mals were accused of high crimes and misdemeanors, tried, and 
 acquitted or convicted, with all the solemnity of law. The wild 
 were referred to ecclesiastical tribunals; the domestic to the civil. 
 In 1120, a French bishop pronounced an injunction against the 
 caterpillars and field-mice for the ravages they made on the 
 crops. If after three days’ notice the condemned did not ‘wither 
 off the face of the earth,’ they were solemnly anathematized. If, 
 instead, they became perversely more numerous and destructive, 
 the lawyers ascribed it, not to any injustice of the sentence nor 
 to the inefficiency of the court, but to the machinations of Satan. 
 From the thirteenth century to the sixteenth, there are not a 
 few records of proceedings in criminal courts against hogs for 
 devouring children. 
 
 About the twelfth century, the brood of superstitions, which 
 had once consisted for the most part in wild legends of fairies, 
 mermaids, giants, dragons, conflicts in which the Devil took a 
 prominent part but was always defeated, or illustrations of the 
 boundless efficacy of some charm or relic, — began to assume a 
 darker hue, and the ages of religious terrorism commenced. 
 Never was the sense of Satanic power and presence more pro- 
 found and universal. In Christian art, the aspect of Christ 
 became less engaging; that of Satan more formidable: the Good 
 Shepherd disappeared, the miracles of mercy declined, and were 
 replaced by the details of the Passion and the horrors of the 
 Last Judgment. Now it was that the modern conception of a 
 witch — namely, a woman in compact with Satan, who could 
 exercise the miraculous gift at pleasure, and who at night was 
 transported through the air to the Sabbath, where she paid her 
 homage to the Evil One — first appeared. Owing in part to its 
 
ENGLISH CHURCH. 
 
 73 
 
 insular position, in part to the intense political life which from 
 the earliest period animated its people, there was formed in 
 England a self-reliant type of character which was essentially 
 distinct from that common in Europe, averse to the more depress- 
 ing* aspect of religion, and less subject to its morbid fears. In 
 consequence, the darker superstitions which prevailed on the 
 Continent, and which were to act so tragically on the imagina- 
 tions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, had not here arisen. 
 Nevertheless, as will presently appear in our sketch of historical 
 method, there existed a condition of thought so far removed 
 from that of the present day as to be scarcely conceivable. It 
 will show itself in literature as a controlling love of the marvel- 
 lous; in religion, as the intellectual basis of witchcraft. 
 
 Religion. — When the island was yet without political unity, 
 a Greek monk, sent from Rome, organized an episcopate, divided 
 the land into parishes representing the different provinces of its 
 disunited state, linked them all to Canterbury as ecclesiastical 
 centre, and thus founded the Church of England. In venera- 
 tion of the source of light, Anglo-Saxons began pilgrimages to 
 the ‘Eternal City,’ in the hope that, dying there, a more ready 
 acceptance would be accorded them by the saints in Heaven. 
 In gratitude they established a tax, called St. Peter’s penny, for 
 the relief of pilgrims and the education of the clergy. The 
 claims of the Roman See, based as here upon filial regard, were 
 to become a tremendous peril alike to monarch and to subject. 
 
 As Rome was the queen of cities, so, as the chief seat of 
 Christianity, her Church was naturally held to be the first of 
 Churches, and her bishop first of bishops — the Pope. 1 When 
 the capital was transferred to Constantinople, and the Vandals 
 had dissolved the framework of Roman society, he gradually 
 became the chief man in Italy, indeed in the wdiole West. But 
 wealth is dangerous to simplicity, and power to moderation. 
 From being a father and a counsellor merely, forgetting humility, 
 he became a schemer and a ruler. Love of souls was gradually 
 supplanted by love of empire. The evil was possible to the sys- 
 tem. Each country in Christendom was mapped out into an all- 
 embracing territorial organization, in which the priest was under 
 
 Meaning father , paiia, Greek nairas. 
 
74 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 the bishop, he under the archbishop, and the archbishop in turn 
 responsible to the pope, who thus held in his hand the converging 
 reins of ecclesiastical control. While the prelates, each within 
 his respective sphere, were encroaching little by little upon the 
 laity, the Church of Rome was forming and maturing her plans 
 to enthrall both the national churches and the temporal govern- 
 ments. A prime condition of conquest is a replete exchequer. 
 Covetousness was characteristic. Gifts by the rich on assuming 
 the cowl, by some before entering upon military expeditions, 
 bequests by many in the terrors of dissolution ; the commutation 
 for money of penance imposed upon repentant offenders, — were 
 a few of the various sources of her revenue. No atonement, she 
 taught, could be so acceptable to Heaven as liberal donations to 
 its earthly delegates. The rich widow was surrounded by a 
 swarm of clerical sycophants who addressed her in terms of 
 endearment and, under the guise of piety, lay in wait for a 
 legacy. A special place, it was said, was reserved in purgatorv 
 for those who had been slow in paying their tithes. A man who 
 in a contested election for the popedom had supported the wrong 
 candidate, was placed after death in boiling water. The bereft 
 widow, in the first dark hour of anguish, was told that he who 
 was dearer to her than all the world besides, was now writhing in 
 the flames that encircled him, and could be relieved only by a 
 pecuniary present. Masterly adaptation of means to ends. The 
 end of the twelfth century saw the Church at the zenith of terri- 
 torial possession. She enjoyed nearly one-half of England, and 
 a still greater portion in some countries of the Continent. To 
 her John solemnly resigned his crown, and humbly received it as 
 a fief. But landed acquisitions scarcely contributed so much to 
 her greatness as ecclesiastical jurisdiction and immunity. Her 
 spiritual court, claiming a loftier origin than the civil, acquired 
 absolute exemption from secular authority, and ended by usurp- 
 ing almost the whole administration of justice. Kings were 
 expected to obtain its sanction as a security to their thrones, and 
 to hold those thrones by compliance with its demands. It could 
 try citizens, but ecclesiastics were amenable to it only. The 
 mainspring of her machinery was excommunication and interdict. 
 The former was equivalent to outlawry. The victim was shunned, 
 as one infected with the leprosy, by his servants, his friends, his 
 
CHURCH OF ROME — MONASTICISM. 
 
 75 
 
 family. Two attendants only remained with an excommunicated 
 king of France, and these threw all the meats that passed his 
 table into the fire. By the latter — inflicted perhaps to revenge 
 a wounded pride- — a county or a kingdom was under suspension 
 of religious offices; churches were closed, bells silent, and the 
 dead unburied. She also derived material support from the mul- 
 titudinous monks, who, in return for extensive favors, vied with 
 each other in magnifying the papal supremacy. The thirteenth 
 century was the noonday of her predominance. Rome was once 
 more the Niobe of nations; and kings, as of old, paid her homage. 
 Vast sums from England flowed into her treasury, carried by 
 pilgrims; by suitors with appeals in all manner of disputes; by 
 prelates going thither for consecration and for the confirmation 
 of their elections; by applicants for church preferment, which 
 was almost exclusively at the Pope’s disposal, and must be 
 bought; by Italian priests who, pasturing on the richest bene- 
 fices, drew an annual sum far exceeding the royal revenue. In 
 1300, Boniface VIII, straining to a higher pitch the despotic 
 pretensions of former pontiffs, is said to have appeared at a 
 festival dressed in imperial habits, with two swords borne before 
 him, emblems of his temporal as well as spiritual sovereignty 
 over the earth. 
 
 As the Church rose in splendor, she sank in vice. All her 
 institutions had been noble in their first years, but success had 
 ruined them. The monastic movement, inspired by a strong 
 religious motive, tended to soften every sentiment of pride, to 
 repress all worldly desires, to make preeminent the practice of 
 charity, to give humility a foremost place in the hierarchy of 
 virtues. Every monastery was a focus w r hich radiated benevo- 
 lence. By the monk, savage nobles were overawed, the poor pro- 
 tected, wayfarers comforted. Legend tells how St. Christopher 
 planted himself, with his little boat, by a bridgeless stream, to ferry 
 over travellers. Not without reward, for once, embarking on a very 
 stormy and dangerous night, at the voice of distress, he received 
 Christ. When hideous leprosy extended its ravages over Europe, 
 while the minds of men were filled with terror by its contagion 
 and supposed supernatural character, monks flocked in multitudes 
 to serve in the hospitals. Sometimes, the legends say, the leper 
 was in a moment transfigured, and he who came in mercy to the 
 
76 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 most loathsome of mortals, found himself in the presence of hi& 
 Lord. As organized later by St. Benedict, the monastery was 
 the asylum of peaceful industry, the refuge of the flying peasant, 
 the retreat of the timid, the abode of the princely, the portal to 
 knowledge and dignity for the inquisitive and ambitious, a field of 
 civilizing activity to the ardent and philanthropic, the symbol of 
 moral power in an age of turbulence and war, the fountain whence 
 issued far and wide a constant stream of missionaries, — often the 
 nucleus of a city, where had been gigantic forests and inhos- 
 pitable marshes. In the tenth century, when the English Church, 
 inundated by the Danes, had fallen into worldliness and ignorance, 
 Dunstan the reformer saw in vision a tree of wondrous height 
 stretching its branches over Britain, its boughs laden with count- 
 less cowls. In the revival of a stricter monasticism, he fancied, 
 lay the remedy for Church abuses. The clergy were displaced 
 by monks, bound by vows to a life of celibacy and religious 
 exercise. Freed ere long by the popes from the control of the 
 bishops, they speedily became ascendant in the Church, and so- 
 continued till the Reformation. Parish endowments were trans- 
 ferred to monasteries, of which Dunstan himself established forty- 
 eight, setting an example widely followed in every quarter of the 
 land. Pious, learned, and energetic as were the prelates of Will- 
 iam’s appointment, they were not English. In language, manner, 
 and sympathy, they were thus severed from the lower priesthood 
 and the people; and the whole influence of the Church was for 
 the moment paralyzed. In the twelfth century a new spirit of 
 devotion woke the slumber of the religious houses, and changed 
 the aspect of town and country. Everywhere men banded them- 
 selves together for prayer, hermits flocked to the woods, noble 
 and churl welcomed the austere Cistercians, a reformed offshoot 
 of the Benedictine order. Their rule was one of the most severe 
 mortification and self-denial. Their lives were spent in labor and 
 prayer, and their one frugal daily meal was eaten in silence. They 
 humbly asked for grants of land in the most solitary places, where 
 they could meditate in retirement, amidst desolate moors and the 
 wild gorges of inaccessible mountains. A hundred years later, 
 when the administration of forms had become the sole occupation 
 of the clergy, came the Friars, — Dominicans and Franciscans, to 
 win back the public esteem and reanimate a waning religion. 
 
THE MENDICANT FRIARS. 
 
 77 
 
 They called the wind their brother, the water their sister, and 
 poverty their bride. Incapable by the principle of their foundation 
 of possessing estates, they subsisted on alms and pious remunera- 
 tions. ‘You need no little mountains to lift your heads to 
 heaven,’ was the scornful reply of Francis to a request for pil- 
 lows. Only the sick went shod. An Oxford Friar found a pair 
 of shoes one morning, and wore them. At night he dreamed that 
 robbers leaped on him, with shouts of ‘Kill, kill ! ’ ‘I am a Friar,’ 
 shrieked the terror-stricken brother. ‘You lie,’ was the instant 
 answer, ‘for you go shod.’ In disproof he lifted up his foot, saw 
 the shoe, and in an agony of repentance flung the pair out of the 
 window. Says a contemporary: 
 
 ‘The Lord added, not so much a new order, as renewed the old, raised the fallen, 
 and revived religion, now almost dead, in the evening of the world, hastening to its end, 
 in the near time of the Son of Perdition. . . . They have no monasteries or churches, no 
 fields, or vines, or beasts, or houses, or lands, or even where they may lay their head. 
 They wear no furs or linen, only woolen gowns with a hood; no head-coverings, or 
 cloaks, or mantles, or any other garments have they. If any one invite them, they eat 
 and drink what is set before them. If any one, in charity, give them anything, they 
 keep nothing of it to the morrow. 1 
 
 Self-sacrificing love, for Christ, was the sum of their lives, food 
 and shelter their reward. The recluse of the cloister was ex- 
 changed for the preacher. As the older orders had chosen the 
 country, the Friars chose the town. In frocks of serge and 
 girdles of rope, they wandered bare-foot on errands of salvation, 
 fixed themselves in haunts where fever and pestilence festered, 
 in huts of mud and timber mean as the huts around them. To 
 the burgher and artisan, who had heard the mass-priest in an 
 unknown tongue, spelling out what instruction they might from 
 gorgeous ritual and graven wall, their preaching*, fluent and famil- 
 iar, was a wonder and a delight. Not deviating from the current 
 faith, they professed rather to teach it in greater purity, while 
 they imputed supineness and debasement to the secular clergv. 
 They addressed the crowd in the public streets, with fervid appeal, 
 rough wit, or telling anecdote, and administered the communion 
 on a portable altar, carrying the multitude by their enthusiasm 
 and novelty. Disinterested sincerity is at all times attractive to 
 the popular heart, and, when associated with the hopes and fears 
 of life, is irresistible. These Methodists started a revolution. 
 There will be another such five hundred years hence. Had they 
 been as faithful to their mission as the Wesleys to theirs, it had 
 
FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 78 
 
 been well. Seeing their power to move the masses, the pontiffs 
 accumulated privileges upon them. The bishops were ordered to 
 secure them a hearty reception. They were exempted from epis- 
 copal supervision; were permitted to preach or hear confessions 
 without leave of the ordinary, to accept legacies, to inter any who 
 desired it in their enclosure. The door was thus open to wealth, 
 and wealth brought ruin. Even so early as 1243, Matthew Paris 
 writes of them: 
 
 ‘It is only twenty-four years since they built their first houses fn England, and now 
 they raise buildings like palaces, and show their boundless wealth by making them 
 daily more sumptuous, with great rooms and lofty ceilings, impudently transgressing 
 the vows of poverty which are the very basis of their order. If a great or rich man 
 is like to die, they take care to crowd in, to the injury and slight of the clergy, that they 
 may hunt up money, extort confessions, and make secret wills, always seeking the good 
 of their order, as their one end. They have got it believed that no one can hope to be 
 saved if he do not follow the Dominicans or Franciscans. They are restless in trying 
 to get privileges; to get the ear of kings and princes, to be chamberlains, treasurers, 
 bridesmen, and match-makers, and agents of papal extortions. In their preaching, they 
 either flatter or abuse without bounds, or reveal confessions, or gabble nonsense.’ 
 
 So had it ever been, — so, under a similar constitution, must 
 it ever be. Vast societies living in enforced celibacy, exercising 
 an unbounded influence, and possessing enormous riches, inevit- 
 ably become hot-beds of corruption, when the zeal that created 
 them expires. Monk, friar, clergy, pope, and Church reached 
 ultimately one level. ‘You are a worthy man, though you be a 
 priest,’ says a female speaker in a poem of the times. A bishop 
 of the thirteenth century, while consecrating a church, was ad- 
 dressed by the devil, who stood behind the altar in a pontifical 
 vestment: ‘Cease from consecrating the church; for it pertaineth 
 to my jurisdiction, since it is built from the fruits of usuries and 
 robberies.’ To give money to the priests was the chief article 
 of the moral code, the surest means of atoning for crime and 
 gaining Paradise. The ecclesiastical courts were perennial foun- 
 tains, feeding the ecclesiastical coffers. Instituted to visit with 
 temporal penalties the breach of the moral law, they were imple- 
 ments of mischief, a public scandal and oppression, when saints 
 had ceased to wield them. So corrupt were both priests and 
 monks, that an English bishop had to forbid those of his diocese 
 from ‘ haunting taverns, gambling, or drinking, and from rioting 
 or debauchery.’ The common degeneracy was the normal result 
 of the profound corruption at the centre of the Church — the 
 See of Rome. Says Dante, addressing the popes: 
 
DISAFFECTION OF THE LAITY. 
 
 79 
 
 ‘Of gold and silver ye have made your god; 
 
 Differing wherein from an idolater 
 
 But that he worships one, a hundred ye?’ 
 
 Four of them, of his own day, he locates in hell, and makes the 
 last say: 
 
 ‘Under my head are dragged 
 The rest, my predecessors in the guilt 
 Of simony . 1 Stretched at their length they lie.’ 
 
 To the ambition of the Papacy a spirit of resistance, especially 
 in England, had not been wanting. William the Conqueror, 
 asserting the royal supremacy, had sternly refused to do fealty for 
 his throne, and exacted homage from bishops as from barons. 
 While the effect of his policy had been to weld the English 
 Church more firmly with Rome — a dependence from which it 
 had hitherto been preserved by its insular position — he had 
 vigorously maintained the subjection of the ecclesiastical to the 
 civil. Henry II, vindicating the authority of the state, had re- 
 quired that every priest degraded for his misdeeds should be 
 given up to the civil tribunals. Edward I had compelled the 
 clergy to pay taxes and forbidden bequests to any religious 
 bodies without the king’s license. Pillaged by the pope upon 
 every slight pretence, without law and without redress, chafed 
 by the immunities of the mendicant orders, the clergy came to 
 regard their once paternal monarch as an arbitrary oppressor. 
 The venality and avarice of pope, clergy, and mendicants, were 
 sapping the ancient reverence of the people for each. Among 
 the laity, a spirit of inveterate hatred had grown up, not only 
 towards the papal tyranny, but the whole ecclesiastical system. 
 It was complained that English money was pouring into Rome; 
 that the best livings were given by the Roman See to non-resi- 
 dent strangers; that the clergy, being judged only by the clergy, 
 abandoned themselves to their vices, and abused their state of 
 immunity. In the first years of the reign of Henry III, a hundred 
 murders were committed by priests then alive. Walter Map, a 
 bright man of the world, with a high purpose in his life, had 
 personified the prevalent corruption under the assumed name 
 of a gluttonous dignitary, — Bishop Golias , 2 who confesses the 
 levity of his mind, its lustful desires; recalls the tavern he has 
 never scorned, nor will till the angels sing his requiem; images 
 
 3 Buying or selling ecclesiastical preferment. 2 From gula , the gullet. 
 
 1 
 
80 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 the heavens opening’ upon him as he lies intoxicated, too weak 
 to hold the wine cup he has put to his lips, so dying in his 
 shame: ‘What 1 set before me is to die in a tavern; let there 
 be wine put to my mouth when I am dying, that the choirs of 
 the angels when they come may say, “The grace of God be on 
 this bibber ! ” ’ Golias’ poetry became a fashion, and the earnest 
 man of genius had plenty of co-laborers. 
 
 We must think of these things if we would understand the 
 deep union that subsists between literature and religion, if we 
 would comprehend the signs of the times and the voices of the 
 future, or interpret the countless crowd of quaint and often 
 beautiful legends which, while they witness to the activity of 
 the time, reveal, better than decrees of councils, what was real- 
 ized in the imagination or enshrined in the heart. 
 
 We must think of them, too, if we would understand that 
 grand awakening of reason and conscience which is the Refor- 
 mation. Every great change has its root in the soul, long pre- 
 paring, far back in the national soil. Already have we had 
 premonitory throes of the moral earthquake. We shall see the 
 storm gather and pass, once and again, without breaking. The 
 discontent will spread. The welling spring, despite the efforts 
 to repress it, will bubble and leap, till its surplus overflows, 
 bursting asunder its constraint. While men of low birth and 
 low estate are stealing by night along the lanes and alleys of 
 London, carrying some dear treasure of books at the peril of 
 their lives, the finger that crawls around the dial plate will 
 touch the hour, and the mighty fabric of iniquity will be shivered 
 into ruins. 
 
 But amid the sins and failings of the Church, let us not for- 
 get the priceless blessings she bestowed upon mankind. The 
 inundations of barbarian invasion left her a virgin soil, and made 
 her for a long period the chief and indeed the sole centre of 
 civilization, — the one mighty witness for light in an age of dark- 
 ness, for order in an age of lawlessness, for personal holiness in 
 an epoch of licentious rage. 
 
 She suppressed the bloody and imbruting games of the amphi- 
 theatre, discouraged the enslavement of prisoners, redeemed cap- 
 tives from servitude, established slowly the international prin- 
 ciple that no Christian prisoners should be reduced to slavery; 
 
REDEEMING EXCELLENCES. 
 
 81 
 
 created a new warrior ideal, — the ideal knight of the Crusades 
 and chivalry, wedding the Christian virtues of humility and ten- 
 derness with the natural graces of courtesy and strength, rarely 
 or never perfectly realized, yet the type and model of warlike 
 excellence to which many generations aspired. 
 
 She imparted a moral dignity to the servile class, by intro- 
 ducing into the ideal type of morals the servile virtues of humil- 
 ity, obedience, gentleness, patience, resignation; and by associ- 
 ating poverty and labor with the monastic life so profoundly 
 revered. When men, awed and attracted by reports of the 
 sanctity and miracles of some illustrious saint, made pilgrimages 
 to behold him, and found him in peasant’s garb, with a scythe on 
 his shoulder, sharing and superintending the work of the farm, 
 or sitting in a small attic mending lamps, they could hardly fail 
 to return with an increased sense of the dignity of toil. 
 
 By inclining the moral type to the servile position, she gave 
 an unexampled impetus to the movement of enfranchisement. 
 The multitude of slaves who embraced the new faith was one of 
 the reproaches of the Pagans. The first and grandest edifice of 
 Byzantine architecture in Italy was dedicated by Justinian to the 
 memory of a martyred slave. Manumission, though not pro- 
 claimed a matter of duty or necessity, was always regarded as 
 one of the most acceptable expiations of sin. Clergy and laity 
 freed their slaves as an act of piety. It became customary to do 
 so on occasions of national or personal thanksgiving, on recovery 
 from sickness, on the birth of a child, at the hour of death, in 
 testamentary bequests. In the thirteenth century, when there 
 were no slaves to emancipate in France, caged pigeons were 
 released on ecclesiastical festivals, in memory of the ancient 
 charity, and that prisoners might still be freed in the name of 
 Christ. 
 
 None of her achievements are more truly great than those she 
 effected in the sphere of charity. For the first time in history, 
 she inspired thousands to devote their entire lives, through sacri- 
 fice and danger, to the single object of assuaging the sufferings 
 of humanity. Uniting the idea of supreme goodness with that 
 of active and constant benevolence, she covered the globe with 
 institutions of mercy unknown to pagan Rome and Greece. 
 Through disastrous eclipse and wintry night, we may trace the 
 6 
 
82 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 subduing influence of her spell, blending strangely with every 
 excess of violence and every outburst of superstition. Of an 
 Irish chieftain — the most ferocious that ever defied the English 
 power — it is related, amid a legion of horrible crimes, that, ‘sit- 
 ting at meat, before he put one morsel into his mouth, he would 
 slice a portion above the daily alms, and send it to some beggar 
 at the gate, saying it was meet to serve Christ first.’ 
 
 The monastic bodies that everywhere arose, were an invalu- 
 able counterpoise to military violence; pioneers in most forms of 
 peaceful labor; green spots in a wilderness of rapine and tumult, 
 where the feeble and persecuted could find refuge. As secure 
 repositories for books, when libraries were almost unknown, they 
 bridged the chaos of the Middle Ages, and linked the two periods 
 of ancient and modern civilization. 
 
 The Church peopled the imagination with forms of tender 
 beauty and gentle pathos, which — more than any dogmatic teach- 
 ing — softened and transformed the character, till it learned to 
 realize the sanctity of weakness and the majesty of compassion. 
 The lowliness and sorrow of her Founder, the grace of His person, 
 the agonies of Gethsemane or of Calvary, the gentleness of the 
 Virgin Mother, are the pictures which, for eighteen hundred years, 
 have inspired the hearts of men with an impassioned love, formed 
 the governing ideals of the rudest and most ignorant, furnished 
 the highest patterns of virtue and the strongest incentives to its 
 practice. Here, in the character and example of the crucified 
 Nazarene, Christianity finds an enduring principle of regenera- 
 tion, by which, though shrouded by disastrous eclipse or dimmed 
 bypassing mist, her light is never quenched,— by which, when 
 luxury, ambition, worldliness and vice have wounded her well- 
 nigh to death, she has renewed her strength like the eagle, has 
 run and not been weary, has walked and not been faint. So has 
 her mightiest apology, from age to age, been lives of holiness 
 and fidelity; and never, though she seemed to be dying, has she 
 lacked such. Side by side with those who lived and schemed in 
 ecclesiastical politics as their chosen element, were men to whom 
 worldly honors were indifferent, — to whose meekness and self- 
 denial, more than to diadem, tiara, sword, or logic, she owes her 
 empire over the human heart. 
 
 Learning. — From the age of Augustus, Latin and Greek 
 
LOW STATE OF LEARNING. 
 
 83 
 
 learning which we call ancient or classical, sensibly declined, first 
 by organic decay; and its downfall, begun by disease, was acceler- 
 ated by violence. Libraries were destroyed, schools closed, and 
 intellectual energy of a secular kind almost ceased, in the irrup- 
 tion of the Northern barbarians, who gloried in their original 
 rudeness, and viewed with disdain arts that had neither preserved 
 their cultivators from degeneracy nor raised them from servitude. 
 
 A collateral cause of this prostration was the neglect, by the 
 Christian Church, of Pagan literature. For the most part, the 
 study of the Latin classics was positively discouraged: The 
 
 writers, it was believed, were burning in hell. When a monk, 
 under the discipline of silence, desired to ask for Virgil, Horace, 
 or other Gentile author, he was wont to signify his wish by 
 scratching his ear like a dog, to which animal it was thought the 
 Pagans might properly be compared. 
 
 The human intellect, sinking deeper every age into stupidity 
 and superstition, reached its lowest point of depression about the 
 middle of the eleventh century. On the survey of society, no 
 circumstance is so prominent as the depth of ignorance in which 
 it was immersed. It was rare for a layman, of whatever rank, to 
 know how to sign his name. Contracts were made verbally. 
 The royal charters, instead of the names of the kings, sometimes 
 exhibit their mark — the cross. In England, Alfred declares that 
 he could not recollect a single priest who, at his accession, under- 
 stood the common prayers, or could render a Latin sentence into 
 English. 
 
 The darkness which reigned far and wide was rendered un- 
 avoidable, among other causes, by the scarcity of books, which — 
 as they were in manuscript form, and written or copied with 
 cost, labor, and delay — could be procured only at an immense 
 price. In 855, a French abbot sent two of his monks to the 
 Pope, to beg a copy of Cicero’s De Orcitore , of Quintilian’s Insti- 
 tutes , and some others; ‘for, although we have part of these 
 books, yet there is no whole or complete copy of them in all 
 France.’ In Spain at the beginning of the tenth century one 
 and the same copy of the Bible often served different monas- 
 teries. In 1299, the bishop of Winchester, borrowing a copy of 
 the Bible with marginal notes, gives a solemn bond for due 
 return of the loan. A book donated to a religious house was 
 
84 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 believed to merit eternal salvation, and was offered on the altar 
 with great ceremony. Sometimes a book was given to a private 
 party, with the reservation, ‘Pray for my soul.’ When a book 
 was bought, persons of consequence and character were assem- 
 bled to make formal record that they were present on the occa- 
 sion. It was common to lend money on the deposit of a book. 
 In the universities were chests for the reception of books so 
 •deposited. Bede records that Benedict sold a volume to his 
 sovereign Alfred for eight hides of land — about eight hundred 
 acres. 
 
 Moreover, when Latin ceased to be a living tongue, the whole 
 treasury of knowledge was locked up from the eyes of the peo- 
 ple. In this linguistic corpse were sealed the Scriptures, the 
 liturgy, and the teachings of the Christian Fathers, and there 
 they were tenaciously held. Through this venerable medium, as 
 a learned language, the Church of Rome stood in an attitude 
 strictly European, enabled to maintain a general international 
 relation. Its prevalence was the condition of her unity, and 
 therefore of her power. Thus, intent upon her own emoluments 
 and temporalities, by guarding from the unlearned vulgar this 
 key to erudition, she was yet the sole hope for literature. Learn- 
 ing was confined almost wholly to the ecclesiastical order. Manu- 
 scripts found secure repositories in the abbeys, which floated 
 through the storms of war and conquest, like the Ark upon the 
 waves of the flood; in the midst of violence remaining inviolate, 
 through the awful reverence which surrounded them. The mon- 
 astery became the one sphere of intellectual labor. Here with no 
 craving for human fame, were composed the sermons and de- 
 fences of mediaeval faith, and the voluminous Lives of Saints — 
 heroic patterns of excellence which each Christian within his own 
 limits was endeavoring to realize. Here the monkish scholar, his 
 hopes fixed upon the pardon of his sins and the rewards of the 
 unseen life, pursued his studies in a spirit which has now almost 
 faded from the world. In the deep calm and chilly barrenness of 
 the Scriptorium — what the printing-office is to us — might be 
 seen the sombre figures of the tonsured workmen, whose task it 
 was, seated at the rude desks or tables, to copy and adorn, letter 
 by letter, point by point, the precious manuscripts that filled the 
 wooden chests ranged around the naked stone walls. With pen- 
 
GRADUAL RENEWAL — UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 85 
 
 cil of hair, pen of reed or quill, and ink of many-hued splendors, 
 the artist laid on colors and produced designs which for richness 
 and beauty command our admiration; on jjapyrus or parchment, 
 writing the headings in bright red; forming the initial letter of 
 a chapter with a brilliant tracery, in scarlet and gold and blue 
 lace-work, of intermingled flowers and birds; tracing in black 
 the thick perpendicular strokes of the text-hand; then when the 
 book is finished — which may be the work of years if the decora- 
 tions are minute and profuse, painting the title in scarlet, with 
 the name of the copyist in colors at the foot of the last page, 
 and a marginal embroidery of angelic and human figures, birds, 
 beasts and fishes, flowers, shells and leaves. 
 
 But as in the natural world every night brightens into a new 
 morning, so in the spiritual the sun of science, having reached its 
 nadir of decline, begins its reascension to the zenith, throwing- 
 out many premonitory gleams of light ere the dawn reddens into 
 the lustre of day. 
 
 The leading circumstances in the gradual renewal of European 
 thought are the study of civil law, presaging progress in the sci- 
 ence of government; the development of modern languages, with 
 its taste for poetry and its swarm of lay poets; the cultivation, in 
 the twelfth century, of Latin classics, quotations from which, how- 
 ever, during the Dark Ages, were hardly to be called unusual; 
 the partial restoration of Greek literature — mathematical, physi- 
 cal, and metaphysical, which, with the exception of scattered 
 instances where some ‘petty patristic treatise’ or later commenta- 
 tor on Aristotle was rendered into Latin, had been almost entirely 
 forgotten within the pale of the Romish Church, but now in the 
 eleventh century, imported across the Pyrenees into France from 
 the Arab conquerors of Spain, glimmered with pulsation of — 
 ‘That earlier dawn 
 
 Whose glimpses are again withdrawn, 
 
 As if the morn had waked, and then 
 Shut close her lids of light again.’ 
 
 Lastly, as the special mark of that new fervor of study which 
 sprang up in the West from its contact with the more civilized 
 East, — the institution of universities. 
 
 From an early period, in England as well as elsewhere, there 
 were schools, though in general confined to the cathedrals and 
 monasteries, and designed exclusively for religious purposes. 
 
86 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 Xor is it to be presumed that the laity, though excluded, as a 
 rule, from the benefits of a liberal training, were left wholly with- 
 out the means of obtaining some elementary instruction. Canter- 
 bury, Yarrow, and York commemorate the golden age of Old 
 English scholarship. Alcuin was called from the last to the court 
 of Charlemagne, to assist him in the educational reform of France. 
 In a letter to his patron he enumerates, in the fantastic rhetoric 
 of the period, the branches in which he instructed his pupils at 
 Paris: 
 
 4 To some I administer the honey of the sacred writings ; others I try to inebriate 
 with 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.’ 
 
 That is, Grammar , Greek and Latin , Astronomy and Theology . 
 Here is a specimen of the literary conversations of the palace 
 school : 
 
 4 What is writing?— The guardian of History. What is speech?— The interpreter of 
 the soul. What is it that gives birth to speech?— The tongue. What is the tongue? — 
 The whip of the air. What is air?— The preserver of life. What is life?— A joy for the 
 happy, a pain for the miserable, the expectation of death. What is death?— An inevi- 
 table event, an uncertain voyage, a subject of tears for the living, the confirmation of 
 testaments, the robber of men. . . . What is heaven? — A moving sphere, an immense 
 vault. What is light?— The torch of all things. What is the day?— A call to labor. 
 What is the sun?— The splendor of the universe, the beauty of the firmament, the grace 
 of nature, the glory of the day, the distributor of the hours. . . . What is friendship? — 
 The similarity of souls. . . . 
 
 4 As you are a youth of good disposition, and endowed with natural capacity, I will 
 put to you several other unusual questions : endeavor to solve them.— I will do my best ; 
 if I make mistakes, you must correct them. I shall do as you desire. Some one who is 
 unknown to me has conversed with me, having no tongue and no voice; he was not 
 before, he will not be hereafter, and I neither heard nor knew him. What means this? 
 — Perhaps a dream moved you, master? Exactly so, my son. Still another one. I have 
 seen the dead engender the living, and the dead consumed by the breath of the living. 
 — Fire was born from the rubbing of branches, and it consumed the branches.’ 
 
 Such are the giants of a generation — glimmering lights that, 
 hardly breaking the leaden cloud of ignorance, owe much of their 
 distinction to the surrounding gloom. The studies pursued at 
 York, the same writer informs us, comprehended, besides gram- 
 mar, rhetoric, and poetry, — 
 
 4 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 stars, and the aerial motions 
 of the sea; earthquakes; the nature of man, cattle, birds, and wild beasts, with their 
 various kinds and forms; and the sacred Scriptures.’ 
 
 In short, a long established division of literary and scientific 
 knowledge was the Trivium , embracing Grammar, Rhetoric, and 
 
PRIMITIVE OXFORD. 
 
 87 
 
 Logic; and Quadrivium , embracing Music, Arithmetic, Geom- 
 etry, and Astronomy; all of which were referred to theology, and 
 that in the narrowest manner. To be perfect in the three former 
 was a rare accomplishment; and scarcely any one mastered the 
 latter four. John of Salisbury, writing in the twelfth century, 
 when the simplicity of this arrangement had been outgrown, says: 
 
 ‘ The Trivium and the Quadrivium were so much admired by our ancestors in former 
 ages, that they imagined they comprehended all wisdom and learning, and were suffi- 
 cient 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 Quadrivium, could answer all ques- 
 tions and unfold all the secrets of nature. 1 
 
 But in the twelfth century, the older educational foundations 
 burst into the larger, freer life of the universities, whose demo- 
 cratic spirit threatened feudalism, and whose intellectual spirit 
 threatened the Church, though to outer seeming they were eccle- 
 siastical bodies. None of these grew so early into fame as that 
 of Paris, unrivalled for theological discussion. Here the rational- 
 ism of Abelard, the knight-errant of philosophy, drew down the 
 menaces of councils and the thunders of Rome. Said the Coun- 
 cil of Sens in 1140: 
 
 ‘ He makes void the whole Christian faith by attempting to comprehend the nature 
 of God through human reason. He ascends up into Heaven; he goes down into hell. 
 Nothing can elude him, either in the height above or in the nethermost depths. His 
 branches spread over the whole earth. He boasts that he has disciples in Rome itself, 
 even in the College of Cardinals. He draws the whole earth after him. It is time, 
 therefore, to silence him by apostolic authority. 1 
 
 So great was the influx of his disciples, that the boundaries of 
 the city were enlarged. When he retired to solitude the wilder- 
 ness became a town. Twenty cardinals and fifty bishops had 
 been among his hearers. 
 
 At the opening of the thirteenth century, Oxford was second 
 only to Paris in the multitude of its students and the celebrity 
 of its disputations. Thirty thousand scholars, thinking more of 
 success in polemics than of the truths involved, swelled the stir 
 and turbulence of its life. Yet be not deceived. Thousands 
 of pupils poorly lodged, clustering around teachers as poor as 
 themselves, — drinking, quarrelling’, begging; retainers fighting 
 out the feuds of their young lords in the streets; roisterer and 
 reveller roaming with torches through the dark and filthy lanes, 
 defying bailiffs and cutting down citizens; a tavern row spread- 
 
88 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 ing into a general broil, bells clanging to arms, — this is the 
 seething, surging Oxford of mediaeval history. Upon the vision 
 of these young and valiant minds flashed, as they thought, the 
 temple of truth, and they rushed at it headlong, as knightly 
 warriors with battle-axe might storm a castle. 
 
 Language. — The principal literature was in Latin, and, after 
 the Conquest, in French. The former — the only language in 
 which the scholar might hope to address, not merely the few 
 among a single people, but the whole Republic of Letters — was 
 used in books habitually, as the common language of the edu- 
 cated throughout Europe. In it were written, in particular, 
 most works on subjects of theology, science, and history; in the 
 latter, those intended rather to amuse than to instruct, and ad- 
 dressed, not to students, but to the idlers of the court and the 
 gentry, by whom they were seldom read, but only heard as they 
 were recited or chanted. In the thirteenth century, French ac- 
 quired that widely diffused currency as a generally known and 
 hence convenient common medium which it has ever since main- 
 tained. A Venetian annalist of the time composed his chronicle 
 in it, because, to use his own words: ‘The French tongue is cur- 
 rent throughout the world, and is more delectable to read and 
 hear than any other.’ Dante’s teacher employed it, and thus 
 apologized for using it instead of Italian: 
 
 1 If any shall ask why this book is written in Romance, according to the patois of 
 France, I being born Italian, I will say it is for divers reasons. The one is that I am 
 now in France ; the other is that French is the most delightsome of tongues, and par- 
 taketh most of the common nature of all other languages.’ 
 
 Its frequent use by English writers is to be ascribed, not wholly 
 to the predominance of Norman influence, but, in a considerable 
 degree, to the fact that, for the time, it occupied much the same 
 position as had hitherto been awarded to the Latin as the com- 
 mon dialect of learned Europe. 
 
 Of the vernacular, many of the most important terms, ethical 
 and mental, had become obsolete. Of foreign words in it, there 
 were yet relatively few. The whole number of Romance deri- 
 vatives found in the printed works of authors of the thirteenth 
 century scarcely exceeds one thousand, or one-eighth of the total 
 vocabulary of that era. What would the myriad-minded Shake- 
 speare, with his vast requirement of fifteen thousand, have done 
 
POETRY OLDER THAN PROSE. 
 
 89 
 
 in this age, with its pittance of eight thousand words ? The fol- 
 lowing extract is from the Proclamation of Henry III, addressed 
 in 1258 to the people of Huntingdon, copies being sent to all the 
 shires of England and Ireland. Prepositions, it will be observed, 
 are doing the work of the lost inflections; and the sense is made 
 to depend upon the sequence of the words alone: 
 
 ‘ Henry, thurg Godes fultume 
 King on Englene-loande . . . 
 send igretinge to all hise 
 halde ilaerde and ilaewede. 
 
 Thaet witen ye vvel alle, thaet we 
 willen and nnnen thaet thaet nre raedes- 
 men alle other, the moare dael of heom, 
 thaet beoth ichosen thurg 11s. . . . And 
 this wes idon act foren ure isworene redcs- 
 men. And al on tho ilche worden is 
 isend in to aeunhce othre schire over all 
 thaere kuneriche on Englene-loande and ek 
 intel Irelande.' 
 
 1 Henry, through God's grace 
 king in England . . . 
 sends greeting to all his 
 subjects, learned and unlearned. 
 
 This know ye well all, that we 
 will and grant, that what our council- 
 lors all or the more deal of them, 
 that are chosen by us. . . . And 
 this was done before our sworn council- 
 lors. And all in the same words is 
 sent into every other shire over all 
 the kingdom in England and eke 
 into Ireland.’ 
 
 The popular speech was forcing its way to the throne. 
 
 Poetry. — In early periods, feeling and fancy, with nations as 
 with children, are strongest. Emotion seeks utterance before 
 logic; and the natural expression of emotion is a chant, a song. 
 There is a real kinship between the waves of excited feeling and 
 the rhythmical cadence of words which utter it. Early literature, 
 therefore, is almost exclusively one of poetry. Language, too, 
 then picturesque and bold, lives chiefly on the tongue and in the 
 ear; and poetry, by its rhythm, uniting with the charm of music, 
 allows an oral transfer which prose does not. Rhythm — the 
 recurrence of sounds and silences at regular intervals of time, 
 the essential principle of poetry — is the oldest and widest artistic 
 instinct in man; for man is the emotive part of nature, and the 
 movement of nature, it is the grand distinction of modern science 
 to have shown, is rhythmic. Light and heat go in undulations; 
 the seasons, the sun-spots, come and go in correspondencies; the 
 variable stars brighten and pale at rhythmic intervals; the ocean- 
 tides and trade-winds flow by rhythmic rule; planet, satellite, and 
 comet revolve and return in proportionate periods. The mystic 
 Hindoo’s doctrine of the primal diffusion of matter in space, the 
 aggregation of atoms into worlds, the revolution of these worlds, 
 their necessary absorption into Brahma, their necessary rediffu- 
 sion, again to be aggregated, and again to be absorbed, — eve r ’ 
 
90 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 contracting, ever expanding, — what is this but the rhythmic 
 beating of the heart of the Eternal — a divine shuttle that weaves 
 a definite pattern into the chaotic fabric of things ? After two 
 thousand years or more, we are beginning to see dimly into 
 Pythagoras’ fanciful dream of ‘the music of the spheres’; Plato’s 
 dictum, ‘Time itself is the moving image of Eternity’; and the 
 Orphic saying of the seer, ‘The father of metre is rhythm, and 
 the father of rhythm is God.’ 
 
 During the antique and mediaeval periods, music, though in 
 process of differentiation, has no confirmed separate existence 
 from poetry; and both are at first united in closest bonds with 
 the dance. The poet is then a wandering minstrel — Gleeman , 
 the Saxons called him. His training from early childhood was to 
 store his memory with the poetic legends of his land; and when 
 later he wove into rude verse the story of his own day, it went 
 nameless into the common stock of the craft. When the shadows 
 had fallen, and the festive hall was filled, while the beer-horn 
 passed merrily from mouth to mouth, the Gleeman with his ‘ wood 
 of joy’ roused or soothed the fiery passions of the warriors as he 
 related the deeds of the heroic dead or sung the praises of their 
 posterity, chanting to his harp, now one adventure, now another, 
 as the guests or their lord might call for this or that favorite inci- 
 dent. No festival was complete without him and his harp. He 
 travelled far and wide, songster, poet, and historian, everywhere 
 received with consideration. By the winter fire or beneath the 
 summer trees, flushed brows grew a darker red, or the war-shout 
 faded into gentler tones, as war or love varied the theme of his 
 wild rough melody. Proudly says one of them, who had dwelt 
 with the high-born of many lands: 
 
 ‘Thus North and South, where'er they roam, 
 
 The sons of song still find a home, 
 
 Speak unreproved their wants, and raise 
 Their grateful lay of thanks and praise; 
 
 For still the chief who seeks to grace 
 By fairest fame his pride of place, 
 
 Withholds not from the sacred Bard 
 His well-earned praise and high reward; 
 
 But free of hand and large of soul, 
 
 Where’er extends his wide control, 
 
 Unnumbered gifts his princely love proclaim, 
 
 Unnumbered voices raise to heaven his princely name.’ 
 
SAXON VERSE-FORM 
 
 91 
 
 As to form, Saxon poetry illustrates the overpowering passion 
 of the English ear for 3-rhythm, or the recurrence of the rhythmic 
 accent at that interval of time represented by three units of any 
 sort, — no matter among how many sounds this amount of time 
 may be distributed. The prevailing type is an alternation of feet, 
 or ‘bars,’ of the form J J * * | with bars of the form ^ * J | ; 
 the musical sign £ — called an ‘eighth-note’ — representing a 
 sound whose duration is that of an ordinary syllable, and the 
 sign | # — called a ‘quarter-note’ — representing a sound twice as 
 long. The type may be varied from bar to bar, to prevent the 
 movement from growing monotonous, thus yielding the effect of 
 an ‘air with variations.’ In the rhythm of hurrying rush and 
 martial din, Byrhtnoth defies the invading pirates in The Tattle 
 of Maldon : 
 
 \i A • 1 
 
 r i 
 
 r 
 
 ; ' n 
 
 
 — * * 
 
 f— f — * — f— 
 
 — £_• J 
 
 e.- ^ t i 
 
 E £ =t? * 3 
 
 t— £ V i>— 
 
 : t= 3 
 
 Brim - man - na bod - a, a - beod eft on - geau; 
 
 se - ge thin - um leod-um micl - e lath - re spell, thaet 
 
 her stent un - for - cuth eorl mid his we - ro - de 
 
 Pcv ] 
 
 r ; i 
 
 
 “I 
 
 * * m J 
 
 t—m # • 1 
 
 [— 0 0 — 
 
 
 
 
 r — f F — 
 
 
 t £ — J 
 
 L — ^ U U — ^ 
 
 t_| 
 
 E_j ^—3 
 
 the wi - le gealg - i - an e - thel thys - ne. 
 
 -dSth - el - raed - es eard, eald - res min - es, 
 
 foie and fold - an: feal - lan sceol - on 
 
 ‘ Brimmana boda, abeod eft ongean ; 
 sege thinum leodum micle lathre spell, 
 thaet her stent unforcuth eorl mid his werode, 
 
 the wile gealgian ethel thysne, 
 vEthelraedes eard, ealdres mines, 
 folc and foldan: feallan sceolon 
 haethene aet hilde. Too heanlic me thynceth, 
 
 Herald of pirates, be herald once more ; 
 bear to thy people a bitterer message, — 
 that here stands dauntless an earl with 
 his warriors, 
 
 who will keep us this country, 
 land of my lord, Prince ^Ethelred, 
 folk and field: perish shall 
 the heathen in battle. Too base, me 
 thinketh. 
 
92 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 thaet ge mid urum sceattum to scipe gangon 
 unbefohtene, nu ge thus feor hider 
 on urne eard inn becomon ; 
 ne sceole ge swa softe sine gegangan, 
 
 us sceal ord and ecg ser geseinan 
 grimm guthplega, aer we gafol syllon.’ 
 
 that ye with gold should to ship get 
 unfought, now ye thus far hither 
 to be in our land have come ; 
 never shall ye so soft go hence with your 
 treasure: 
 
 us shall point and blade persuade — 
 grim game of war — ere we pay for peace. 
 
 Each line, it is seen, consists of four bars; each bar, of a number 
 of syllables which mark off determinate periods of time for the 
 ear. The first note in a bar, as every musician understands, is to 
 be given with a slight increase of intensity — stress or accent. 
 The same form appears in the Anglo-Saxon epic of Beowulf : 
 
 -3- r r 
 
 0 
 
 I 0 
 
 0 1 
 
 0 
 
 0 1 
 
 f 
 
 0 i 
 
 '■& V V 
 
 if 
 
 1 1 
 
 If 1 
 
 I 
 
 if 1 
 
 \ 
 
 if 1 
 
 Tha waes 
 
 on 
 
 heal 
 
 le 
 
 heard - 
 
 ecg 
 
 to 
 
 gen, 
 
 There was 
 
 in 
 
 hall 
 
 (the) 
 
 falch - 
 
 ion 
 
 brand - 
 
 ished, 
 
 0 0 
 
 0 
 
 1 0 
 
 0 | 
 
 0 
 
 t \ 
 
 0 
 
 
 b b 
 
 u 
 
 1 1 
 
 i> 1 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 if 1 
 
 Sweord o - 
 
 fer 
 
 setl 
 
 - um, 
 
 sid - 
 
 rand 
 
 man - 
 
 ig 
 
 Swords o - 
 
 ver 
 
 bench 
 
 - es , 
 
 buck 
 
 ler 
 
 man - 
 
 y 
 
 0 
 
 0 
 
 1 0 
 
 0 0 
 
 0 0 
 
 0 I 
 
 0 
 
 0 i 
 
 1 
 
 if 
 
 \ b 
 
 b b 1 
 
 If if 
 
 if 1 
 
 \ 
 
 if 1 
 
 haf 
 
 en 
 
 hand - 
 
 a faest 
 
 helm ne 
 
 ge 
 
 mund - 
 
 e 
 
 (was) hov 
 
 en. 
 
 hand - 
 
 in fast. 
 
 helmet 
 
 not 
 
 mind - 
 
 ed. 
 
 Again, in the 
 
 mournful melody of 
 
 The Wanderer : 
 
 
 
 il 0 
 -8- 1 
 
 Oft 
 
 0 1 
 
 0 
 
 0 0 1 
 
 0 0 
 
 0 I 
 
 0 
 
 r I 
 
 If 1 
 
 If 
 
 b If 1 
 
 if if 
 
 if 1 
 
 1 
 
 v 1 
 
 him 
 
 an - 
 
 ha - ga 
 
 a - re 
 
 ge - 
 
 bid - 
 
 eth, 
 
 Oft 
 
 the 
 
 Solitary 
 
 (for) mer 
 
 - cy 
 
 pray - 
 
 eth. 
 
 0 0 
 
 if It 
 
 0 I 
 
 if 1 
 
 0 
 
 1 
 
 b 1 
 
 0 0 
 
 b b 
 
 b 1 
 
 C b 
 
 b 1 
 
 Met - od - 
 
 es 
 
 milts 
 
 e, 
 
 theah the 
 
 he 
 
 mod - cea * rig 
 
 (for) God's 
 
 compassion , 
 
 though 
 
 he. 
 
 mood - careful, 
 
 0 0 
 
 
 0 
 
 0 1 
 
 0 
 
 0 I 
 
 0 
 
 ' 1 
 
 If If 
 
 If 1 
 
 1 
 
 If 1 
 
 1 
 
 if 1 
 
 1 
 
 sceold 
 
 if 1 
 
 geond lag - 
 
 u 
 
 lad 
 
 e 
 
 long 
 
 e 
 
 - e 
 
 over (the) 
 
 
 water 
 
 - ways 
 
 long 
 
 (time) 
 
 should 
 
 
 0 0 
 
 0 I 
 
 0 
 
 0 | 
 
 0 0 
 
 0 1 
 
 0 
 
 i 1 
 
 b b 
 
 b 1 
 
 \ 
 
 b 1 
 
 if U 
 
 if 1 
 
 
 hre - ran 
 
 mid 
 
 bond 
 
 um 
 
 hrim - calc 
 
 l - e 
 
 sa?. 
 
 
 stir 
 
 with 
 
 (his) 
 
 hands 
 
 rime - cold (the) 
 
 sea . 
 
 
 Old English verse has one peculiarity to establish and fortify its 
 rhythm. This is alliteration. The first three bars or feet begin, 
 in most lines, with the same consonant-color; less frequently with 
 the same vowel-color; sometimes the two middle bars begin alike, 
 
ALLITERATION — RHYME. 
 
 93 
 
 or the first and third. The dominant type is illustrated by the 
 following- passage from The Phoenix , — the third line excepted, 
 which presents the second: 
 
 ‘Ne A’orestes Fncest, ne Ryres blcest , 
 ne //aegles Hryre, ne //rymes dryre , 
 ne Yunnan haetu, ne /Sincald, 
 ne Warm Weder, ne Winter scur, 
 
 Wihte ge Wirdan, ac se Wong seomath.’ 
 
 Inasmuch as the alliterative letter is the initial letter of an impor- 
 tant word, — moreover, of an important sound of that word, — the 
 rhythmic beat, by this coincidence of pronunciative, logical, and 
 rhythmic accent, is rendered strong and commanding. Anon we 
 may hear the sharp ringing blows of the hammer upon the anvil: 
 
 ‘Rlah mah Rliteth 
 Rian man hwiteth, 
 Rurg sorg Riteth, 
 Raid aid thwiteth, 
 Wraec-faec Writeth, 
 Wrath ath smiteth.’ 
 
 The strong dart flitteth, 
 The spear man whetteth, 
 The town sorrow biteth, 
 The bold age quelleth, 
 Wreck suspicion worketh. 
 Wrath the city smiteth . 1 
 
 This fondness for alliteration lives imperishably in a thousand 
 proverbs, saws, and sayings; as, ‘d/any men, many minds,’ ‘Tfime 
 and 2ide wait for no man.’ 
 
 As suggested by these extracts, another feature of Saxon 
 verse, though occurring much less freely, is rhyme, at once a 
 color and an artifice to mark agreeably for the ear each rhythmic 
 group of bars, — a marble statue on the highway instead of a 
 mile-stone. In brief resounding metre, with the measured stroke 
 of a passing bell, a converted warrior, passing into the shadows of 
 the Night, reviews in quick luminous vision the pride and glory 
 of his morning and noon: 
 
 0 
 
 0 
 
 0 
 
 r 
 
 0 
 
 b 
 
 b 
 
 b 
 
 b 
 
 Wic 
 
 o 
 
 fer 
 
 wong - 
 
 um 
 
 0 
 
 
 0 \ 
 
 0 
 
 0 
 
 1 
 
 
 P 1 
 
 1 
 
 V 
 
 Wen 
 
 - 
 
 nan 
 
 gong 
 
 um 
 
 0 
 
 b 
 
 Lis 
 
 - se 
 
 ' 1 
 
 mid 
 
 i r 
 
 long 
 
 P 
 
 um 
 
 Leo 
 
 - ma 
 
 ge - 
 
 tong - 
 
 um. 
 
 1 From the Exeter Book , comprising the main body of the first English poetry. 
 
94 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 Me lifes onlah 
 Se this le'oht onwrah, 
 
 And thoet torhte geteoh 
 Tillice onwrah. 
 
 Ghed was ic gliwum, 
 
 Glenged hiwum, 
 
 Blissa bleoum 
 Blostma hiwum. . . 
 
 Horsce mec heredon, 
 
 Ililde generedon, 
 
 Faegre feredon, 
 
 Feondon biweredon. . . 
 Scealcas wseron scearpe 
 Scyl waes hearpe. 
 
 Hulde hlynede, 
 
 Hleothor dynede, 
 
 Swegl-rad swinsade 
 Swithe, ne minsade. . . 
 
 Nu min hrether is hreoh 
 Heoh-sithum sceoh, 
 
 Nyd bisgum neah; 
 
 Gewited nihtes infleah 
 Se ser in dsege was dyre. . . 
 Wid sith onginneth, 
 
 Sar ne sinneth, 
 
 Sorgum cinnith, 
 
 Blied his blinnith, 
 
 Blisse linnath, 
 
 Listum linneth, 
 
 Lustum ne cinneth. 
 
 Dreamas swa her gedresath, 
 Dryht scyre gehreosath; . . . 
 Thonne lichoma ligeth, 
 
 Linna wyrm friteth, 
 
 Ac him wen ne gewigeth, 
 And tha wist gehygeth; 
 Oththaet beath tha ban an. . . 
 
 He raised me to life 
 Who displayed this light, 
 
 And this bright possession 
 Bountifully disclosed. 
 
 Glad was I in glee, 
 
 Adorned with [fair] colors, 
 
 With the hues of bliss 
 And the tints of blossoms. . . 
 Warriors obeyed me, 
 
 Delivered me in battle, 
 
 Fairly supported me, 
 
 Protected me from enemies. . . 
 
 My servants were sagacious, 
 
 There w r as skill in their harping. 
 
 It resounded loud. 
 
 The strain reechoed, 
 
 Melody was heard 
 Powerfully, nor did it cease. . . 
 
 But now my breast is stormy 
 Shaken by the season of woe, 
 
 Need is nigh; 
 
 And night’s approach torments him 
 Who before in the day was dear. . . 
 A wide journey beginneth, 
 
 Affliction ceaseth not; 
 
 He exclaimeth in sorrows, 
 
 His joy hath ceased, 
 
 His bliss hath declined, 
 
 He is fallen from his delights; 
 
 He exclaimeth not in happiness. 
 Thus glories here are prostrated, 
 And the lordly lot brought low; . . . 
 Then the corpse lieth, 
 
 Worm fretteth the limbs, 
 
 And the worm departeth not, 
 
 And there chooseth its repast, 
 
 Until there be bone only left . 1 . . . 
 
 In style, it is seen to be elliptical and inverted, abrupt, ex- 
 clamatory, and glowing, the more vigorous by the absence of the 
 usual particles, — a concrete of quick, passionate images, like a 
 succession of lightning-flashes. Alfred thus renders a sentence 
 
 1 After this exposition of Anglo-Saxon verse-form, the following statements may 
 appear to the reader not a little surprising: 
 
 ‘In none (of the Anglo-Saxon poems) is found the slightest trace of temporal 
 rhythm.’— Dr. Guest. 
 
 ‘The number of unaccented syllables is indifferent.’— Sweet. 
 
 ‘It was not written in rime nor were its syllables counted.’ — Rev. Stopford Brooke. 
 
 ‘ We do not see any marks of studied alliteration in the old Saxon poetry.’ — Tyrwhitt. 
 
 ‘There is no rhyme, and no counting of syllables.’— Morley. 
 
 ‘Their poets . . . arranged their vernacular verses without any distinct rules ’ ; and 
 again, ‘They used it [alliteration] without special rules.’— Coppte. 
 
 ‘ Nor is there any rhyming, for rhyme was an adornment unknown in English poetry 
 until after the Norman Conquest.’ — Shaw. 
 
 ‘No work in which rhyme or metre was used, can be traced in our literature until 
 after the Norman Conquest.’ — Collier. 
 
THE SAXON IDEAL. 
 
 95 
 
 of prose — ‘So doth the moon with his pale light, that the bright 
 stars he obscures in the heavens’ — into verse: 
 
 Or again: 
 
 ‘With pale light 
 Bright stars 
 Moon lessencth.’ 
 
 ‘Then went over the sea-waves, 
 Hurried by the wind, 
 
 The ship with foamy neck, 
 Most like a sea-fowl; 
 
 Till about one hour 
 Of the second day 
 The curved prow 
 Had passed onward. 
 
 So that the sailors 
 The land saw, 
 
 The shore-cliffs shining, 
 Mountains steep, 
 
 And broad sea-noses. 
 Then was the sea sailing 
 Of the Earl at an end.’ 
 
 From the life we have traced, we can infer the kind of poetry 
 most in harmony with Old English sentiments. Its poetry will 
 be the revelation of its soul, — the embodiment of its ideals; and 
 human ideals, in the young generations of the world as in the old, 
 are determined by the point of view at which men stand, being 
 little or great, serene or stormy, sincere or hollow, as is the life 
 of the artist, whether that artist be one or a community, one age 
 or many ages. Every people has its Hercules or Samson — its 
 ideal of brute force, of vast bodily strength or cunning, who 
 strangles serpents, rends lions, and slaughters hostile hosts. A 
 type perceptibly higher is the valiant one whose might, prowess, 
 and indomitable will exorcise his native land of giant-fiends or 
 dragons, — a heroic Captain, peradventure, true-hearted, just, and 
 noble. Such is the central figure of our nameless English epic, — 
 Beowulf y imported from the Continental homestead and revised 
 by an unknown Christian bard: Christian, for none other could 
 have spoken of Cain; none other would have called the people 
 heathens; none other would have said: 
 
 ‘When sorrow on him came and pain befell, 
 
 He left the joy of men and chose God's light.' 
 
 Beowulf is a hero, a knight-errant before the days of chivalry, 
 who, with his sword hard in his hand, has rowed ‘amidst the 
 fierce waves and coldest of storms, and the rage of the winter 
 hurtled over the waves of the deep’; whom the many-colored 
 foes, sea monsters, drew to the bottom of the sea, and held fast in 
 their gripe, but he reached ‘the wretches with his point and with 
 his war-bill.’ Across the path of the swans (the sea) he comes 
 
96 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 to succor the Danish King Hrothgar, in whose hall, where the 
 banquet, the song*, and the dance w r ere wont to go on, is much 
 sorrow; for Grendel, ‘a mighty haunter of the marshes,’ lias 
 entered during the night, seized thirty of the sleeping warriors, 
 and returned with their carcasses to his fen-dwelling. For twelve 
 winters’ tide, the fiend has devoured men, till the best of houses 
 stand empty. Beowulf, the valiant, offers to grapple with the 
 dreadful ogre, asking only that if death takes him, they will mark 
 his burial place, and send to his chief the war-shroud that guards 
 his breast. When the mists have risen and all is still, Grendel 
 enters in hope of dainty glut, seizes a sleeping warrior, bites his 
 bone-casings, drinks the blood from the veins, and swallows him 
 with ‘continual tearings.’ But the hero seizes him in turn, and, 
 when he w T ould fain return to his haunt, holds him: 
 
 ‘These warders strong waxed wrathful, fiercer grew, 
 
 The hall resounded; wonder much there was 
 That it so well withstood the warring beasts,— 
 
 That fell not to the earth this fair land-house. 
 
 And then arose strange sound; upon the Danes 
 Dire terror stood, of all who heard the whoop, 
 
 The horrid lay of God's denier, 
 
 The song that sang defeat and pain bewailed — 
 
 Hell’s captive's lay — for in his grasp too firm 
 Did he, of men the strongest, hold his prey.’ 
 
 In his efforts to get away, the monster’s sinews spring asunder, 
 the bone-casings burst; and leaving on the ground his hand, arm, 
 and shoulder, he flees to his joyless home, ‘sick unto death,’ for 
 ‘the number of his days was gone by.’ Then are great rejoic- 
 ings in the palace. But there remains the ‘sea-wolf of the 
 abyss, the mighty sea-woman,’ his mother, who comes by night, 
 and amidst drawn swords tears and devours the king’s chosen 
 friend. Again Beowulf offers himself, seeks the ogress in her 
 dread abode, where strange dragons and serpents swim, and one 
 by night may behold the marvel of fire upon the flood, while ever 
 and anon the horn sings a wild terrible dirge. He plunges into 
 the surge, descends, passes monsters who tear his coat of mail, 
 to the ‘hateful man-slayer.’ She seizes the champion in her 
 horrid clutches, and bears him off to her den, where a pale 
 gleam shines brightly and shows them face to face. With his 
 ‘beam of war’ he smites on her head till ‘the riinj-mail’ sinars 
 
BEOWULF THE VALIANT. 
 
 97 
 
 ‘aloud a greedy war-song’; but the weapon will not ‘bite.’ She 
 overthrows him, but he rescues himself, espies ‘an old gigantic 
 sword, doughty of edge, ready for use, the work of giants.’ 
 ‘Fierce and savage, despairing of life,’ he strikes furiously, so 
 that it grapples ‘hard with her about the neck,’ breaks ‘the bone- 
 rings,’ passes through the doomed body, which sinks, and all is 
 silent: 
 
 ' The sword was bloody, the man rejoiced in his deed; the beam shone, light stood 
 within, even as from heaven mildly shines the lamp of the firmament.’ 
 
 Another triumph, and renewed joy. Afterwards he is himself 
 ruler. When he had reigned fifty years, a dragon, who had 
 been robbed of his treasure which he had guarded three hun- 
 dred years, came from the hill and burned men and houses with 
 ‘waves of fire.’ Ordering for himself a variegated shield, all of 
 iron, he goes to battle with ‘the foul, insidious stranger,’ in a 
 cavern ‘under the earth, nigh to the sea wave,’ full within of 
 embossed ornaments and wires; ‘too proud to seek the wide 
 flier with a troop, with a large company’; yet sadly, as if with 
 a presentiment that the end is near: 
 
 ‘Firm rose the stone-wrought vault, a living stream 
 Burst from the barrow, reel with ceaseless flame 
 That torrent glowed; nor lived there soul of man 
 Might tempt the dread abyss, nor feel its rage. 
 
 So watched the fire-drake o’er his hoard; — and now 
 Deep from his laboring breast the indignant Goth 
 Gave utterance to the war-cry. Loud and clear 
 Beneath the hoar stone rung the deafening sound. 
 
 And strife uprose: the watcher of the gold 
 
 Had marked the voice of man. First from his lair, 
 
 Shaking firm earth, and vomiting, as he strode, 
 
 A foul and fiery blast, the monster came. 
 
 Yet stood beneath the barrow’s lofty side 
 The Goth's unshaken champion, and opposed 
 To that infuriate foe his full-orbed shield. 
 
 Then the good war-king bared his trenchant blade: 
 
 Tried was its edge of old, the stranger’s dread. 
 
 And keen to work the foul aggressor's woe. 
 
 The kingly Goth 
 
 Reared high his hand, and smote the grisly foe; 
 
 But the dark steel upon the unyielding mail 
 Fell impotent, nor served its master's need 
 Now at his utmost peril. Nor less that stroke 
 To maddening mood the bfir row’s warder roused: 
 
 Outburst the flame of strife, and blaze of war 
 Beamed horribly; still no triumph won the Goth, 
 
 Still failed his keen brand in the unequal fray . . . 
 
 7 
 
98 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 Again they met — again with freshened strength 
 Forth from his breast the unconquered monster poured 
 That pestilent breath. Encompassed by its flames. 
 
 Sad jeopardy and new the chieftain held.’ 
 
 With the assistance of a trusty comrade, he carves the worm in 
 twain. Burning and faint with mortal wounds, he forgets him- 
 self in death, thinking only that his valor profits others; and 
 says, grandly, the man breathing manifest beneath the hero: 
 
 ‘I have held this people fifty years; there was not any king of my neighbors, who 
 dared to greet me with warriors, to oppress me with terror. ... I held my own well, 
 I sought not treacherous malice, nor swore unjustly many oaths; on account of all this, 
 I, sick with mortal wounds, may have joy. . . . Now do thou go immediately to behold 
 the hoard under the hoary stone, my dear Wiglaf. . . . Now, I have purchased with my 
 death a hoard of treasures; it will be yet of advantage at the need of the people. . . . 
 I give thanks . . . that I might before my dying day obtain such for my people . . . 
 longer may I not here be.’ 
 
 He dies, killed by the dragon’s flame-breath, and is solemnly 
 buried under a great barrow rising high above the deep blue 
 waves: 
 
 ‘And round about the mound rode his hearth-sharers, who sang that he was of kings, 
 of men, the mildest, kindest, to his people sweetest, and the readiest in search of praise.’ 
 
 There — 
 
 ‘No sound of harp shall the warrior awake; but the dusky raven ready o'er the 
 fallen shall speak many things,— to the eagle shall tell how lie fared at his food while 
 with the wolf he spoiled the slain.’ 
 
 Here, under the light of poetry, through the mist of real 
 events, transformed into legendary marvels, we see the actual 
 life of Scandinavian English, — its pride, its melancholy, its re- 
 liance upon strength of arm, its practical spirit of adventure, its 
 fatalism — ‘What is to be goes ever as it must’ — tinged with the 
 energetic sense that ‘the Must-Be often helps an undoomed man 
 when he is brave.’ Thought is too impassioned for the details of 
 comparison, — a characteristic of all Anglo-Saxon verse. In the 
 six thousand and odd lines there are only five similes. Compare 
 the Celtic fancy, with its love of ornament, as displayed in an 
 average stanza on a Cymric chief who fell before the advancing 
 Saxon : 
 
 ‘Both shoulders covered with his painted shield 
 The hero there, swift as the war-horse, rushed. 
 
 Noise in the mount of slaughter, noise and fire; 
 
 The darting lances were as gleams of sun. 
 
 There the glad raven fed. The foe must fly 
 
TRAGIC TONE OF SAXON POETRY. 
 
 99 
 
 While he so swept them as when in his course 
 An eagle strikes the morning (lews aside, 
 
 And like a whelming billow struck their front. 
 
 Brave men, so say the bards, arc dumb to slaves. 
 
 Spears wasted men, and ere the swan-white steeds 
 Trod the still grave that hushed the master voice, 
 
 His blood washed all his arms. Such was Buddvan, 
 
 Son of Blcedvan the Bold.’ 
 
 A vehement phrase, without connectives, without order, with no 
 ornament but three words beginning alike, an exclamation, a cry, 
 a glowing image, — such is the style of the Saxon poets. Joy 
 and fury neglect art. When passion bellows, ideas are crowded 
 and clashed. See it all in the battle-song of The Fight at 
 Finsbury : 
 
 ‘The army goes forth: the birds sing, the cricket chirps, the war-weapons sound, 
 the lance clangs against the shield. Now shineth the moon, wandering under the sky. 
 Now arise deeds of woe, which the enmity of this people prepares to do. . . . Then in 
 the court came the tumult of war-carnage. . . . The raven whirled about, dark and 
 sombre, like a willow leaf. There was a sparkling of blades, as if all Finsburg were 
 on fire. Never have I heard of a more worthy battle in war.' 
 
 From the introduction of Christianity, the predominant tone 
 of Saxon poetry is religious. But its voice, if less savage, is 
 otherwise unchanged. Still its soul is tragic; its tones passion- 
 ate and lightning-like. It is the old heart in transition, — yet a 
 strong barbarous heart. If it essays a Bible narrative, as in the 
 tragedy of Judith , we may see the pagan flesh and blood in the 
 tumult, murder, vengeance, and combat of the verses. Holo- 
 fernes gives a feast: 
 
 ‘All hi? fierce chief?, bold mail-clad warriors, went at the feast to sit, eager to drink 
 wine. There were often carried the deep bowls behind the benches; so likewise ves- 
 sels and orcas full to those sitting at supper. . . . Then was Holofernes rejoiced with 
 wine; in the halls of his guests he laughed and shouted, he roared and dinned. Afar 
 off might the stern one be heard to storm and clamor. . . . So was the wicked one — 
 the lord and his men — drunk with wine, . . . till that they swimming lay ... as they 
 were death-slain.' 
 
 The night having arrived he falls drunk on his bed. The moment 
 is come for Judith, ‘the maid of the Creator, the holy woman,’ 
 to deliver Israel: 
 
 ‘She took the heathen man fast by his hair; she drew him by his limbs toward her 
 disgracefully; and the mischief-full, odious man, at her pleasure laid, so as the wretch 
 she might the easiest well command. She with the twisted locks struck the hateful 
 enemy, meditating hate, with the red sword, till she had half cut off his neck; so that 
 he lay in a swoon, drunk and mortally wounded. He was not then dead,— not entirely 
 lifeless; earnest then she struck another time the heathen hound— she the woman 
 
100 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 illustrious in strength — till that his head rolled forth upon the floor. Cofferless lay 
 the foul one; downward turned his spirit under the abyss, and there was plunged 
 below with sulphur fastened; forever afterward wounded by worms. In torments 
 bound — hard imprisoned — he burns in hell. After his course he need not hope that 
 he may escape from that mansion of worms, with darkness overwhelmed; but there he 
 shall remain ever and ever — without end — henceforth void of the joys of hope, in that 
 cavern home.’ 
 
 Judith, returning to the city with the head of this wicked one, is 
 met by the people, and the warrior instinct swells into flame, as 
 she exhorts them to battle: 
 
 4 Men under helms (went out) from the holy city at the dawn itself. They dinned 
 ■shields; men roared loudly. At this rejoiced the lank wolf in the wood, and the wan 
 raven, the fowl greedy of slaughter, both from the west, that the sons of men for them 
 should have thought to prepare their fill on corpses. And to them flew in their paths 
 the active devourer, the eagle, hoary in his feathers. The willowed kite, with his 
 horned beak, sang the song of Hilda. The noble warriors proceeded, they in mail, to 
 the battle, furnished with shields, with swelling banners.’ 
 
 Men of any high mental power must be serious, whether in 
 ancient or modern days. Only consider the reflective mood, the 
 intense seriousness of this Saxon poetry. The Hydriotaphia of 
 Browne and the Tlianatopsis of Bryant are here in the bud. 
 There is no passing by on the other side; but down to its utter- 
 most depth, to its most appalling detail, it strives, like the 
 Greek, to sound the secrets of sorrow. If any hope, relief, or 
 triumph may hereafter seem possible, — well; but if not, still 
 hopeless, reliefless, eternal, the sorrow shall be met face to face. 
 This Northern imagination, which compared life to the flight of 
 a bird, — in at one door and out at another, whence it came and 
 whither it went being equally unknown to the lookers-on, now 
 contemplates the stern agony of the ‘breathless darkness’ in a 
 poem called The Grave , sad and grand like the life of man. 
 
 4 For thee was a house built ere thou wert born ; for thee a mould shapen ere thou 
 of thy mother earnest. Its height is not determined, nor is its depth measured; nor is 
 it closed up (however long it may be), until I thee bring where thou shalt remain ; until 
 I shall measure thee and the sod of the earth. Thy house is not highly built; it is un- 
 high and low. When thou art in it, the heel-ways are low, the side-ways unhigh. The 
 roof is built thy breast full nigh; so thou shalt in earth dwell full cold, dim, and dark. 
 Doorless is that house, and dark is it within. There thou art fast detained, and Death 
 holds the key. Loathly is that earth-house, and grim to dwell in. There thou shalt 
 dwell, and worms shall share thee. Thus thou art laid, and leavest thy friends. Thou 
 hast no friend that will come to thee, who will ever inquire how that house liketh thee, 
 who shall ever open for thee the door, and seek thee, for soon thou becomest loathly 
 and hateful to look upon.’ 
 
 To this people, which has forgotten the halls of Valhalla, 
 to which danger is a delight, which loves gloomy pictures, the 
 
SOMBRE IMAGINATION OF THE NORTH. 
 
 101 
 
 shadowy is a fascination, as to the Hindoo, the Egyptian and the 
 Greek. The SouVs Complaint of the Body suggests the under- 
 world rivers and the wandering hapless ghosts of Greek and 
 Roman mythology: 
 
 ‘Befits it well that man should deeply weigh 
 His soul's last journey; how he then may fare 
 When death comes on him, and breaks short in twain 
 The bond that held his flesh and spirit linked: 
 
 Long is it thence ere at the hands of Heaven 
 The spirit shall reap joy or punishment. 
 
 E’en as she did in this her earthly frame. 
 
 For ere the seventh night of death hath past, 
 
 Ghastly and shrieking shall that spirit come,— 
 
 The soul to find its body. Restless thus 
 
 (Unless high Heaven first work the end of all things) 
 
 A hundred years thrice told the shade shall roam.’ 
 
 So Virgil represents the souls of the unburied haunting the 
 banks of the Styx, sad and tombless, vainly entreating in pa- 
 thetic suppliance the dread Charon to ferry them over: 
 
 ‘There stood the first and prayed him hard to waft their bodies o’er, 
 
 With hands stretched out for utter love of that far-lying shore; 
 
 But that grim sailor now takes these, now those, from out the band, 
 
 While all the others far away he thrusteth from the sand.' . . . 
 
 For — 
 
 ‘Those borne across the wave 
 Are buried: none may ever cross the awful roaring road 
 Until their bones are laid at rest within their last abode. 
 
 An hundred years they stray about and wander round the shore, 
 
 Then they at last have grace to gain the pools desired so sore.’ 
 
 All who know what pathos there is in the memory of faces 
 that have vanished, of joys that have faded, of days gone by, — 
 holy as spots of earth where angel-feet have stepped, will appre- 
 ciate the rare poetical power of the mutilated poem of The 
 Ruin : 
 
 ‘Wondrous is this wall-stone, the fates have broken it — have burst the burgh- 
 place. Perishes the work of giants; fallen are the roofs, the towers tottering — the 
 hoar gate-towers despoiled — rime on the lime— hrim on. lime; shattered are the battle- 
 ments, riven, fallen under the Eotnish race; the earth-grave has its powerful work- 
 men; decayed, departed, the hard of gripe are fallen and passed away to a hundred 
 generations of people. . . . Bright were the burgh-dwellings, many its princely halls, 
 high its steepled splendor; there was martial sound great, many a mead-hall full of 
 human joys, until obdurate fate changed it all; they perished in wide slaughter. . . . 
 There many a chief of old, joyous and gold-bright, splendidly decorated, proud, and 
 with wine elate, in warlike decorations shone; looked on treasures, on silver, on curious 
 gems, on luxury, on wealth, on precious stone, on this bright burgh of a broad realm.’ 
 
 Among the unknown poets, there is one, Csedmon, whose 
 vigor and grandeur will presently be the subject of special con- 
 sideration. Meanwhile, that which is sown is not quickened 
 
102 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 except it die. The decay of an old literature is the antecedent 
 condition for a new mode of intellectual life. This old poetic 
 genius of sublimity and fury, waning before the Conquest, dis- 
 appears after it, to emerge once more when the wounds have 
 closed and the saps have mingled. Till then, the current that 
 flows shallow and fantastic above ground is of French origin. 
 
 What was this new literature, by which a broader spreading 
 and a more generous vine should spring from the regenerated 
 root of the old stock ? Romantic fiction. 
 
 Its origin . — The child personifies the stone that hurts him, 
 and his first impulse is to resent the injury as if he imagined it 
 to be endowed with consciousness and to be acting with design. 
 The childhood of superstition personifies each individual exist 
 ence, — the plant and the rock. The childhood of philosophy per- 
 sonifies the universe. The barbarian is fascinated by the incom- 
 prehensible. Unable to assign, for a natural phenomenon, a cause 
 within nature, he has recourse to a living personality enshrined 
 in it. To every grotto he gives a genius; to every tree, river, 
 spring, a divinity. Out of the darkness he cannot tell what alarm- 
 ing spectre may emerge. Everywhere he is a believer in sor- 
 cery, witchcraft, enchantments. In an advanced stage of develop- 
 ment, he conceives a number of personal beings distinct from the 
 material creation, which preside over the different provinces of 
 nature, — the sea, the air, the winds, the streams, the heavens, and 
 assume the guardianship of individuals, tribes, and nations. Re- 
 membering this tendency for personification which marks the 
 early life of man, his necessity of referring effects to their causes, 
 and his interpretation of things according to outward appear- 
 ances, we shall better understand how the Hours, the Dawn, and 
 the Night, with her black mantle bespangled with stars, came to- 
 receive their forms; how the clouds were sacred cattle driven to 
 their milking, or sheep of the golden fleece; how the fall of the 
 dew was the shedding of divine tears, and the fatal sun-shafts 
 the arrows of Apollo shot from his golden bow; how the west, 
 where the sun and stars go down, was the portal cf descent to 
 hell, and the morning twilight a reflection from the Elysian 
 Fields; how the eruptions of the volcano were due to the throes 
 of the agonized giant, vainly struggling to rise; how earthquakes, 
 famine, hail, snow, and tempests were the work of supernatural 
 
MYTH-MAKING — IDEALIZATION. 
 
 103 = 
 
 fiends; how the traditions of every land are replete with the ex- 
 ploits of gods, magicians, and devils. Further, under the opera- 
 tion of this principle, a similarity of imagery will exist wherever 
 there exists a resemblance in the objects calling it forth; and a 
 multitude of the symbols thus brought into circulation will be 
 found recurring, like the primitive roots of a language, in almost 
 every country, as common property inherited by descent. Thus,, 
 a mound of earth becomes the sepulchre of a favorite hero; a 
 pile of enormous stones, the labor of a giant; a single one, the 
 stupendous instrument of daily exercise to a fabled king; the 
 figure of a rock, proof of some deity’s wrath or presence, — the 
 foot-print of Hercules or the weeping Niobe: every one, of Aryan 
 blood, knows that the moon is inhabited by a man with a bundle 
 of sticks on his back, exiled thither many centuries, and so far 
 away that he is beyond the reach of death; from the remotest 
 period, the rod has been employed in divination; in Bohemia, 
 in Scotland, in Switzerland, in Iceland, in North America, is the 
 story of some Rip Van Winkle who slumbers while years or ages 
 glide by like a watch in the night; and of that great mystery of 
 human life which is an enigma never solved, and ever originating* 
 speculation, is born the myth of the Wandering Jew. Consider, 
 again, how incidents change by distance, and we by age. How 
 a thing grows in memory when love or hate is there to idealize 
 it ! The' philosophic Agis had to console his desponding coun- 
 trymen with a remark which every man’s experience has made 
 familiar, — that ‘the fading virtues of later times were a cause of 
 grief to his father, who in turn had listened to the same regrets 
 from his own venerable sire.’ Washington, whose picture even 
 now transcends the fact, would be a myth , had there been no 
 books. In the days of Alfred, golden bracelets hung untouched 
 in the open road. In the native vigor of the youthful world, a 
 thousand years are given to the life of man. The national hero, 
 through the lengthened vista, acquires a gigantic stature. The 
 body of Orestes when found measured seven cubits, and the san- 
 dals of Perseus two. How prismatic must be the imagination, 
 when the national mind, as here, is yet in the fresh young radi- 
 ance of hope and wonder, as of the young child’s thoughts in 
 the wild lion-hearts of men. Time is a camera ohscura , through 
 which a man, if great while living, becomes ten-fold greater when 
 
104 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 dead. Henceforward he exists to society by some shining trait 
 of beauty or utility which he had; and, borrowing his propor- 
 tions from the one fine feature, we finish the portrait symmetri- 
 cally. That feature is the small real star that gleams out of the 
 dark vortex of the ages through the madness of rioting fancy and 
 the whirlwind-chaos of images, expanding, according to the glass 
 it shines through, into wondrous thousand-fold form and color. 
 
 Such is the foundation of fiction in general; originating as a 
 whole from no single point as to country or to time, but in part 
 springing from common organic causes, and in part travelling 
 from region to region, on airy wing scattering the seeds of its 
 wild flowers imperceptibly over the world, from the gorgeous 
 East to the virgin West and the frozen North. Its radical types, 
 much as the root-words of speech, are amplified and compounded 
 to meet the demands of new occasions, transferred from one sub- 
 ject to another, and embellished according to the taste, temper, 
 and resources of the artist. Thus, the Macedonian conqueror 
 and his contemporaries are accoutred in the garb of feudal- 
 ism, and his wars transformed into chivalrous adventures. The 
 Naiads of Greece differ only in name from the Nixen of Ger- 
 many, and the Norwegian Thor is brother to Olympian Jove. 
 The Persian Goblet of the Sun reappears as the horn of the Celtic 
 Bran, producing whatever liquor is called for; or as the Saint 
 Graal, of the Round Table, — for which is reserved the ‘Seat Per- 
 ilous,’ — the miraculous cup, the giver of sumptuous banquets, 
 the healer of maladies, to the pure the interpreter of the will 
 of Heaven. The magic ship of Odin, which could be folded like 
 a handkerchief, becomes, under the play of Homeric fancy, self- 
 directing and prophetic: 
 
 ‘ So shalt thou instant reach the realm assign’d, 
 
 In wondrous ships, self-moved, instinct with mind: 
 
 No helm secures their course, no pilot guides; 
 
 Like men intelligent, they plough the tides, 
 
 Conscious of every coast and every bay 
 That lies beneath the sun’s alluring ray.’ 
 
 The story of Jack and Jill is a venerable one in Icelandic my- 
 thology, and Jack and the Beanstalk has found eager listeners in 
 Africa, as in every quarter of Europe. All the machinery of the 
 Iliad is reproduced in the legend of Charlemagne, and if in his 
 case myth were not controlled and rectified by history, he would 
 
MIDDLE-AGE FICTION. 
 
 105 
 
 be for us, under his adventitious ornaments, as unreal as Aga- 
 memnon. Thus the popular literature of the Middle Ages, indi- 
 genous and imported, fostered by a like credulity, vision, and 
 mystery, was invested with the same tissue of marvels, — person- 
 ified and supernatural agents, heroes, elves, fairies, dwarfs, giants, 
 enchanters, spells, charms, and amulets. Written in the Romance 
 dialects — principally in French and Italian — tales of dimly re- 
 membered kings, of marvellous agency and gallant daring, are 
 hence designated as Romances; and differ from the similar 
 productions of antiquity chiefly in a change of names and places, 
 with an admixture of the refinement and pageantry of feudal 
 religion and manners. 
 
 Its themes . — During a long period, saintly legends, in which 
 self-torture was the chief measure of excellence, formed the 
 guiding ideals of Christendom; and the first romances were little 
 more than legends of devotion, containing the pilgrimage of an 
 old warrior. As chivalry grew in splendor and fascination, mar- 
 tial exploits were added to his youth, his religious shaded into the 
 heroic character, and the penitent was lost in the knight-errant. 
 Penance, which was the governing image of the one, gradually 
 became the remote sequel of the other, till it was almost an estab- 
 lished rule of romance for the knight to end his days in a hermit- 
 age. By the reactionary influence of worship, valor was conse- 
 crated, and a Christian soul gave tone and coloring to the whole 
 body of romantic fiction. Thus the Holy Graal, in the midst of 
 the bright animal life of the Arthur legends, became a type of 
 the mystery of Godliness. Whatever impure man sat in the Seat 
 Perilous the earth swallowed. When men became sinful, it, visi- 
 ble only to pure eyes, disappeared; and in the quest for it, only 
 the spotless Sir Galahad succeeded. 
 
 A general homage to the fair, independent of personal attach- 
 ment, forms a distinguishing and most important element of 
 mediaeval romance. This also, in its best development, was the 
 offspring of the Christian dispensation. True, as we have seen, 
 its rudiments already existed in the deference paid to the female 
 sex by the Teutons, who believed some divine quality to be inher- 
 ent in their women. Thus Tacitus relates that Velleda, a German 
 prophetess, held frequent conferences with the Roman generals; 
 and on some occasions, on account of the sacredness of her person, 
 
10G 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 was placed at a great distance on a high tower, whence, as an 
 oracle, she conveyed her answers by a chosen messenger. But 
 that rapturous adoration of woman which produced the spirit of 
 gallantry was the inevitable result of the new ideal introduced by 
 Christianity, which, over the qualities of strength, courage, self- 
 reliance, and patriotism, enthroned the gentler virtues of meek- 
 ness, patience, humility, faith, and love. This was no other than 
 ■change from a type essentially masculine to one which was essen- 
 tially feminine. The Virgin Mary was exalted by the Church to 
 a central figure of devotion, and in her elevation, woman, from 
 being associated with ideas of degradation and of sensuality, rose 
 into a new sphere, and became the object of a reverential regard 
 unknown to the proudest civilizations of the past. Love was 
 idealized. The moral charm of female excellence was felt. Into 
 a harsh and benighted age were infused a conception of gentle- 
 ness and of purity, a sense of delicacy and elegance, around which 
 clustered all that was best in Europe. Chivalry took systematic 
 shape as the adventurous service of God and womankind. The 
 Crusades were its first outgrowth in action, and love-poetry its 
 first symmetrical expression in art. Valor was exerted to protect 
 the innocent from violence, to succor the distressed, to release 
 captive beauty from embattled walls. The knight, fond dreamer 
 whom the dream forever fled, turned him to far lands and con- 
 flicts, to merit and win the favor of his fair adored, whose point 
 •of honor it was to be chaste and inaccessible. 1 
 
 But loving chivalry for its nobleness, let us not be blind to its 
 folly and excess. To a bitter winter’s day it gave the tint of 
 .amethyst. Over the darkness it threw a cheering light. Its 
 incentives, exalted and sublime as they were, too often in this 
 unripe civilization made its possessors implacable and infuriate. 
 The feudal hero did less than he imagined. His profession of 
 courtesy and courage was not infrequently the brilliant disguise 
 that concealed tyranny and rapine. A reduction and softening- 
 down of a rough and lawless period, it often rose to fanaticism or 
 
 1 This respectful enthusiasm for woman forms one of the most remarkable facts in 
 the intellectual development of Europe. Warton derives it from Teutonic manners: 
 Ilallam, from the secular institutions of Rome and the gay idleness of the nobility. A 
 profounder philosophy must have shown them that more influential than any of these 
 causes, or all combined, were the prominence given by Christianity to the female 
 virtues, woman's conspicuous position in the conversion of the Empire by reason of the 
 better adaptation of her genius to piety, the elevation of the Virgin, and the consequent 
 change from an ideal type especially masculine to one especially feminine. 
 
LOVE-COURTS OF CHIVALRY. 
 
 107 
 
 sunk into gross impurity. From the middle of the twelfth until 
 the end of the fourteenth century, it had its Courts of Love, 
 which, sanctioning much that the courts of law forbade, instituted 
 obligations antagonistic to the duties of domestic life. Here love- 
 verses were sung, love-causes were heard, and judgments rendered 
 with formal citations of precedents. They had a code, said to 
 have been established by the king of love, and found by a Breton 
 cavalier and lover in Arthur’s court, tied to the foot of a falcon. 
 Its first rule was that marriage does not excuse from love, and 
 the ladies’ courts enacted that love and marriage are things 
 wholly asunder. Thus, A seeks from a lady permission to love, 
 and is told that she already has a lover, B, but willingly will take 
 A when B is lost. She marries B, and immediately, in fulfilment 
 of promise, A claims his right to be her lover. She wishes to 
 withdraw, but is sued, and the court decides for the plaintiff, 
 saying: 
 
 ‘We do not venture to contradict the decision of the Countess of Champagne, who, 
 by a solemn judgment, has pronounced that true love cannot exist between those who 
 are married to each other . 1 1 
 
 The central figures of romance were Arthur 1 2 and the Knights 
 of the Round Table, Charlemagne and his Peers, the heroes 3 of 
 the Crusades, and the Anglo-Danish Cycle, the most famous of 
 which were, Havelock, King Horn, and Guy of Warwick . 4 
 
 A series of fictions destined to operate powerfully on the 
 general body of our old poetry, was a Latin compilation entitled 
 Gesta Homanorum , or Deeds of the Domans, whose stories, 
 saintly, chivalrous, or allegorical, of home-growth or transplanted 
 from the East, were often used by the clergy to rouse the indif- 
 ference and relieve the languor of their rude and simple hearers. 
 It is a characteristic expression of the manners and sentiments 
 of the time. Thus, — 
 
 '•Chap. LXIII.— The garden of Vespasian’s daughter. All her lovers are obliged to 
 enter this garden before they can obtain her love, hut none returns alive. The garden 
 is haunted by a lion, and has only one entrance which divides into so many windings 
 
 1 The Love-Courts, so far from being a jest or idle amusement, as Morley under- 
 stands them, were one of the moral and social phenomena of the time, springing from 
 the prolonged barbarity of the feudal marriage-tie. The lady-love, almost always of 
 high rank, frequently an heiress in her own right, was sure to be disposed of for pru- 
 dential or political reasons before she had any choice in the matter; and the sufferings 
 to which women were exposed as wives, explain to a certain extent the adoration which 
 they exacted and obtained as the ladies of the chevaliers. 
 
 2 See Tennyson’s Idyls of the King , in which these characters are splendidly por- 
 trayed. 
 
 3 Richard Coeur de Lion, for example, one of the most celebrated. 
 
 4 See Sir Walter Scott. 
 
108 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 that it never can be found again. At length, she furnishes a knight with a ball or clue 
 of thread, and teaches him how to foil the lion. Having achieved this adventure, he 
 marries the lady.’ 
 
 '•Chap. LXVI. — A knight offers to recover a lady's inheritance, which had been 
 seized by a tyrant, on condition, that if he is slain, she shall always keep his bloody 
 armour hanging in her chamber. He regains her property, although he dies in the 
 attempt ; and as often as she was afterwards sued for in marriage, before she gave an 
 answer, she returned to her chamber, and contemplating with tears her deliverer’s 
 bloody armour, resolutely rejected every solicitation.’ 
 
 '■Chap. CIX.— [Best illustrated by a like story of the Boy, in Boccaccio'* Decameron .] 
 A king had an only son. As soon as he was born, the physicians declared that if he 
 was allowed to see the sun or any fire before he arrived at the age of twelve years, he 
 would be blind. The king commanded an apartment to be hewed within a rock, into 
 which no light could enter; and here he shut up the boy, totally in the dark, yet with 
 proper attendants, for twelve years. At the end of which time, he brought him abroad 
 from his gloomy chamber, and placed in his view men, women, gold, precious stones, 
 rich garments, chariots of exquisite workmanship drawn by horses with golden bridles, 
 heaps of purple tapestry, armed knights on horseback, oxen and sheep. These were all 
 distinctly pointed out to the youth : but being most pleased with the women, he desired 
 to know by what name they were called. An esquire of the king jocosely told him that 
 they were devils who catch men. Being brought to the king, he was asked w r hich he 
 liked best of all the fine things he had seen. He replied, “The devils who catch men.” ’ 
 
 ‘ Chap. CXX. — King Darius's legacy to his three sons. To the eldest he bequeaths all 
 his paternal inheritance: to the second, all that he had acquired by conquest: and to the 
 third, a ring and necklace, both of gold, and a rich cloth. All the three last gifts were 
 endued with magical virtues. Whoever wore the ring on his finger, gained the love or 
 favor of all whom he desired to please. Whoever hung the necklace over his breast, 
 obtained all his heart could desire. Whoever sate down on the cloth, could be instantly 
 transported to any part of the world which he chose.’ 
 
 Not unlike the lighter stories of the Gesta were the fabliaux, 
 short familiar pictures of society, keyed to minor occasions, 
 usually satirical, and levelling their wit most frequently at the 
 ladies. 
 
 Its form. — The versification of Latin, it is well known, was 
 based upon syllabic quantity, which acknowledged among verse- 
 sounds but two possible time-values — the long and the short, 
 of which the former was strictly to the latter as two to one. The 
 ratio, moreover, was fixed, so that a long syllable was always 
 long, and a short one always short. The bar or foot was signal- 
 ized by the rhythmic accent ; as — 
 
 ‘Arma virumque can6, Trojae qui primus ab 6ris:' 
 but this was scarcely the accentuation of prose or familiar utter- 
 ance, — a difference which every one may see illustrated in 
 Shakespeare, if first the passage be supposed to conform to the 
 typic scheme. Thus — 
 
 ‘This my mean task 
 
 Would be as heavy to me as odious; but 
 
 The mistress which I serve quickens what’s dead.’ 
 
FORM OF THE ROMANCE POETRY. 
 
 109 
 
 Of course, it would be absurd to read, in the manner of cur- 
 rent discourse: ‘This my mean task would be as heavy to me as 
 odious; but the mistress which I serve quickens what’s dead.’ 
 The distinction of ‘longs’ and ‘shorts,’ never attended to by the 
 uninstructed, required study to attain it, even while Latin re- 
 mained a living tongue. Just as the people corrupted and muti- 
 lated the classic speech founding a new upon the ruins of the 
 old, — so, under the shadow of this cultured poesy, which moved 
 with the regularity of changeless fate, there sprang up, away in 
 the provinces and among the ignorant everywhere, an humble 
 growth of popular song which knew nothing of artificial quanti- 
 ties and arbitrary caesuras, but was simply — and often rudely — 
 rhymed and accented more nearly after the style of actual 
 speech; and when the foreign graces of Roman letters perished 
 with the Empire, this lowly, indigenous poetry escaped by its 
 insignificance, and began to increase. Related to the former, as 
 a dialect to its parent, it imitated the ancient syllabic arrange- 
 ment. Thus the spirited trochaic and iambic 
 
 measures were common in the rhyming chants of the early^ 
 Church. The Song of A Id helm shows us an Anglo-Saxon poet,, 
 at the beginning of the eighth century, versifying Latin words 
 in the metre of the Haven: 
 
 ‘Once upon a midnight dreary 
 Lector caste catholice 
 
 While I pondered weak and weary.’ 
 
 Atque obses athletics. 
 
 ‘Lector caste catholice Usque diram Dornoniam 
 
 Atque obses athletice Per carentum Cornubiam 
 
 Tuis pulsatus precibus Florulentis cespitibus 
 
 Obnixe flagitantibus Et faecundis graminibus.’ 
 
 This, then, was the poetic form which began, in the eleventh 
 century, to give expression to the romantic sentiments, the war- 
 like genius of France, — a form in which the quantity of the 
 verse-sounds was variable, the same word or syllable doing the 
 duty of a ‘ long ’ or a ‘ short,’ according to its position among 
 neighboring, sounds; a form, too, in which the bar or root was 
 more especially signalized to the ear, as at present, by the stress 
 of current utterance, coinciding with the rhythmic accent, and 
 having its origin in the logical preeminence of the root-syllable 
 over the other sounds in a word; — a form whose beat, revealing 
 
110 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 the peculiar genius of those who adopted it, was less the pulse of 
 march-time than the free and airy swing of a waltz. Themes 
 w T ere, indeed, supplied from all quarters; but the romance-setting 
 which was common to them all, and which won the heart and , 
 imagination of Europe, was French. It was this that constituted 
 for the French literature and language, at the height of the 
 Middle' Age, a clear predominance. 
 
 Its poets . — Of this literature there were two divisions, corre- 
 sponding to the two dialects of France, — the Langue L>' > Oc and 
 the Langue L )’ Oyl , so named from the words for yes , which were 
 oc in the South and oyl in the North. The first, or Provencal, is 
 irrecoverably dead; the second, or Norman, is unalterably estab- 
 lished as the French tongue. The poets of the former were 
 called Troubadours ; of the latter, Trouveres , which are evi- 
 dently dialectic forms of the same word, meaning inventors. 
 From the middle of the twelfth century, the troubadours were 
 numerous as the gay insects of spring, till the close of the thir- 
 teenth, when they came to an end, — a lisping, brilliant, short- 
 lived school of song. Their poetry was chiefly lyric, and its chief 
 inspiration was love. Each selects the fair object of his melo- 
 dious homage, flings himself, body and soul, into love’s thrall, 
 exults or wails, mopes and dreams, sighs, faints, and falls, rises 
 and sings, while the April air, the nightingale, and the dewy 
 dawn dilate his joy by accord or intensify his agony by contrast: 
 
 ‘Such is now my glad elation. 
 
 All things change their seeming; 
 
 All with flowers, white, blue, carnation. 
 Hoary frosts are teeming; 
 
 Storm and flood but make occasion 
 For my happy scheming; 
 
 Welcome is my song’s oblation, 
 
 Praise outruns my dreaming. 
 
 Oh, ay! this heart of mine 
 Owns a rapture so divine. 
 
 Winter doth in blossoms shine. 
 
 Snow with verdure gleaming! 
 
 W T hen my love was from me riven, 
 Steadfast faith upbore me; 
 
 She for whom I so have striven 
 Seems to hover o'er me; 
 
 All the joys that she hath given 
 Memory can restore me; 
 
 All the days I saw her, even 
 Gladden evermore me. 
 
 Ah, yes! I love in bliss; 
 
 All my being tends to this; 
 
 Yea, although her sight I miss, 
 
 And in France deplore me. 
 
 Yet if like a swallow flying 
 I might come unto thee. 
 
 Come by night where thou art lying, 
 Verily I’d sue thee, 
 
 Dear and happy lady, crying, 
 
 I must die or woo thee, 
 
 Though my soul dissolve in sighing 
 And my fears undo me. 
 
 Evermore thy grace of yore 
 I with folded hands adore. 
 
 On thy glorious colors pore. 
 
 Till despair goes through me.’ 
 
ROMANCE POETS. 
 
 Ill 
 
 This style early extended itself to the Northern dialect. 
 Abelard, poet and philosopher, was the first of recorded name 
 who taught the banks of the Seine to resound a tale of love. 
 Says the gifted and noble Eloise, of whom he sung: 
 
 ‘You composed many verses in amorous measure, so sweet both in their language 
 and in their melody, that your name was incessantly in the mouths of all; and even the 
 most illiterate could not be forgetful of you. This it was chiefly that made women 
 admire you; and, as most of these songs were on me and my love, they made me 
 known in many countries, and caused many women to envy me. Every tongue spoke 
 of your Eloise; every street, every house, resounded with my name.’ 
 
 The poetry of the North, however, was mostly epic, with his- 
 torical and romantic themes; written for the luxurious few, 
 ambitious and astir with action; expressing and circulating the 
 chivalrous sentiments of life, of love, and of loyalty. The 
 trou veres — minstrel-poets — were the idealizing spirits of the 
 knight, who in hours of leisure and festivity rehearsed his ex- 
 ploits, in transfigured and poetic form, to his flattered and de- 
 lighted senses, holding before him a magic mirror in which he 
 saw with what nobleness and enchantment he was invested. No 
 wonder that they were caressed and richly rewarded, — first in 
 France, where they were native; then in England, where they 
 were transplanted. 
 
 Such, then, was the literature at this time domiciled across 
 the Channel, — a literature into which were gathered the delicate 
 fancies of the Celtic poems, the grand ruins of the German epics, 
 the marvellous splendors of the conquered East, with the whole 
 medley of imaginary creatures; — a poetry of mailed knights and 
 radiant ladies, of polite and witty love, of vague reveries and 
 elegant visions; — a poetry whose facile ideas, expounded and 
 repeated ad infinitum , flow through interminable and insipid 
 rhymes with the careless grace of a clear and purling brook. 
 Bent on pleasure, brilliant but shallow, it will die, — die for lack 
 of depth and perspective. Society itself must purge or perish 
 when it becomes operatic. But first it will become the leaven 
 which throws into fermentation the now torpid elements of the 
 Anglo-Saxon character, secretly and silently training and cos- 
 tuming the dramatis personas for a new and nobler entry upon 
 the literary stage. Form will inherit its refinement, its grace, 
 its music; thought, its piquancy, order, and transparency. Its 
 heaped-up tales, incoherent and mutilated, which in the weak 
 
112 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 hands of the trouveres lie like rubbish or rough-hewn stones, 
 Chaucer and, above all, Spenser will build into a monument. 
 
 Meanwhile, ideas are imported. The Normans, incapable of 
 great poetry, continue to copy, arrange, and develop, with their 
 eyes glued to a series of exaggerated and colored images. Even 
 the English become rhymesters in French. Several write the first 
 half of the verse in English and the second in French,- — as if 
 French influence were at once moulding and oppressing them! 
 A few employ the vernacular, garnish sermons or histories with 
 rhymes, and call them poems. All are imitative and mediocre, 
 repeating what they imitate, with fewer merits and greater 
 faults. Translations, copies, imitations, — there is little or noth- 
 ing else. First of the new singers is Layamon, a monk, who in 
 1205 translates into verse and amplifies the Unit , a subject sup- 
 plied him from a four-fold source, — the supposed original Celtic 
 poem, which is lost; the Latin chronicle of Geoffrey; the dull- 
 rhymed rhapsody of Gaimar; and the duller paraphrase of Wace. 
 Through its more than thirty-two thousand lines the babble goes 
 on, in irregular verse, sometimes rhymed, oftener alliterative, 
 mixing both systems, and employing either at convenience; in 
 general adhering, by its rhythm and short quick phrases, to the 
 fashion of the ancient Saxons, without their fire; never rising to 
 interest but by virtue of the theme, as in the account of Arthur’s 
 nativity: 
 
 ‘The time cO the wes icoren, 
 tha wes Arthur iboren. 
 
 Sone swa he com an eorthe, 
 
 allien hine inengen. 
 
 heo bigolen that child 
 
 mid galdere swithe stronge; 
 
 heo gene him mihte 
 
 to beon bezst alre cnihten. 
 
 heo geuen him an other thing, 
 
 that he scolde beon riche king, 
 heo giuen hi that thridde, 
 that he scolde longe libben. 
 heo gifen him that kine-bern 
 custen swithe gode, 
 that he wes mete-custi 
 of alle quikemonnen; 
 this the alue him gef, 
 and al swa that child ithseh .’ 1 
 
 Or, again, where Arthur, dying of fifteen ‘dreadful wounds,’ into 
 the least of which ‘ one might thrust two gloves,’ is transported 
 after death in a boat, by fairy elves, to Avalon, the abode of their 
 queen: 
 
 1 The time came that was chosen, then was Arthur born. So soon as he came on 
 earth, elves took him; they enchanted the child with magic most strong, they gave him 
 might to be the best of all knights; they gave him another thing, that he should be a rich 
 king; they gave him the third, that he should live long; they gave to him the prince 
 virtues most good, so that he was most generous of all men alive. This the elves gave 
 him, and thus the child thrived. 
 
THE NEW SINGERS. 
 
 113 
 
 ‘Arthur was wounded wondrously much. There came to him a lad, who was of his 
 kindred; he was Cador’s son the carl of Cornwall; . . . Arthur looked on him, where 
 he lay on the ground, and said these words, with sorrowful heart: “Constantine, thou 
 art welcome; thou wert Cador’s son. I give thee here my kingdom, and defend thou my 
 Britons ever in thy life, and maintain them all the laws that have stood in my days, and 
 all the good laws that in Uther’s days stood. And I will fare to Avalun, to the fairest of 
 all maidens, to Argante the queen, an elf most fair, and she shall make my wounds all 
 sound; make me all whole with healing draughts. And afterwards I will come to my 
 kingdom, and dwell with the Britons with mickle joy.” Even with the words there 
 approached from the sea that was a short boat, floating with the waves; and two women 
 therein, wondrously formed; and they took Arthur anon, and bare him quickly, and laid 
 him softly down, and forth they gan depart. Then was it accomplished that Merlin 
 whilom said, that mickle care should be of Arthur’s departure. The Britons believe yet 
 that he is alive, and dwelleth in Avalun with the fairest of all elves; and the Britons 
 ever yet expect when Arthur shall return. Was never the man born, of ever any lady 
 chosen, that knowetli of the sooth, to say more of Arthur. But whilom was a sage liight 
 Merlin; he said with words, — his sayings were sooth, — that an Arthur should yet come 
 to help the English (Britons).’ 
 
 Another poem, of later date, 1250, with no merit but that of 
 just design and regular versification, is the Ormulmn , by Orm, 
 also a monk. Its plan is to explain to the people the spiritual 
 import of the daily Service. A religious hand-book, simple and 
 rustic, it marks the rise of English religious literature. The ideal 
 monk is to be ‘a very pure man, and altogether without property, 
 except that he shall be found in simple meat and clothes.’ He 
 will have ‘a hard and stiff and rough and heavy life to lead. iVll 
 his heart and desire ought to be aye toward Heaven, and his 
 Master well to serve.’ This, as we have seen, was the popular 
 religion. In pardonable vanity the author says: 
 
 ‘This? boc iss nemmnedd Orrmulum 
 Forrthi thatt Orrm itt wrohhte.’ 
 
 Another poem — for we must call it such, if phrases ending 
 with the same sound are poetry — is the chronicle of Robert of 
 Gloucester, written in Alexandrines 1 about the year 1300, and 
 deserving notice chiefly as the most ancient professed history in 
 the English language. Beginning with the siege of Troy, it ends 
 with the death of Henry III, 1272. It conveys some information 
 of value upon the social and physical condition of England in the 
 thirteenth century, as the following lines suggest: 
 
 ‘From South to North he ys long cigte hondred myle: 
 
 And foure hondred myle brod from Est to West to wende, 
 
 A mydde tho lond as yt be, and nogt as by the on ende. 
 
 Plente me may in Engelond of alle gode y se, 
 
 1 Verses of twelve syllables, or six iambic feet. The Alexandrine , as the designation 
 of a particular metre, took its name from its employment in the popular and widely cir- 
 culated poems on Alexander the Great. 
 
 8 
 
114 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 Bute folc yt for gulte other yeres the worse be. 
 
 For Engelond ys full ynow of fruyt and of tren, 
 
 Of wodes and of parkes, that ioye yt ys to sen. 
 
 Of foules and of bestes of wylde and tame al so, 
 
 Of salt fysch and eche fresch, and sayre ryneres ther to. 
 
 Of welles swete and colde ynow, of lesen and of mede. [pastures 
 
 Of seluer and of gold, of tyn and of lede. 
 
 Of stel, of yrn and of bras, of god corn gret won. 
 
 Of whyte and of wolle god, betere ne may be non. 
 
 Wateres he hath eke gode y now, ac at be fore alle other thre [ but 
 
 Out of the lond in to the see, armes as thei be. 
 
 Ware by the schippes mowe come fro the se and wende, 
 
 And brynge on lond god y now, a boute in eche ende.’ 
 
 But shall we look upon a desert of stumps, and exclaim, ‘O 
 my soul, what beauty ! ’ What is here in these metrical Lives of 
 Saints, “rhymed dissertations and chronicles, which are so well 
 prolonged and so void of pleasure ? What but poverty of intel- 
 lect and taste? Wholly destitute of poetical merit, unable to 
 develop a continuous idea, they disregard historical truth without 
 securing the graces of fable by the sacrifice. They are, it is true, 
 of interest to the lover of antiquities, and of importance to the 
 linguist, as are fossil remains to the geologist. They exhibit the 
 physiology of the English speech in its transition or larva and 
 chrysalis states. Thus the 13rut, though rendered from the 
 French, contains fewer than fifty Norman words. A remarkable 
 peculiarity of its grammar is the use of the pronoun his as a sign 
 of the possessive case, as when in more modern English it was 
 not unusual to write John his hook. The Orrnulum differs from 
 the Anglo-Saxon models in wanting alliteration, and from the 
 Norman-French in wanting rhyme. It contains a few words from 
 the ecclesiastical Latin, but scarcely a trace of Norman influ- 
 ence. It has a peculiar device of spelling, consistent and uni- 
 form, — the doubling of the consonant after every short vowel, — 
 to indicate what, at a period of great confusion, the author 
 deemed the standard pronunciation. Its immediate purpose, 
 perhaps, was to guide the half-Normanized priests when the 
 verses w 7 ere read aloud for the good or pleasure of the people. 
 On adherence to its orthography by readers and copyists, it lays 
 great stress: 
 
 ‘And whase willen shall this booke 
 Eft other sithe writcn, 
 
 Him biddc icc that he’t write right 
 Swa sum this booke him teacheth.’ 
 
 And whoso shall wish this book 
 After other time to write, 
 
 Him bid I that he it write right, 
 So as this book him teaclieth. 
 
POVERTY OF INTELLECT AND TASTE. 
 
 115 
 
 In Robert’s Chronicle of England , the infusion of Norman 
 words is still not more than four or five per cent, while it repre- 
 sents the language in a decidedly more advanced stage. He 
 distinctly states the prevalence of French in his own day: 
 
 ‘Vor bote a man conthe French, me tolth of him well lute 
 For unless a man know French , one talketh of him little ; 
 
 Ac lowe men holdeth to Englyss, and to her kunde speche zute 
 But low men hold to English , and to their natural speech yet.' 
 
 Let us omit The Lay of Havelok the Dane , an orphan who 
 marries an English princess; King Horn , who, thrown into a 
 boat when a lad, is wrecked upon the coast of England, and, 
 becoming a knight, reconquers the kingdom of his father; Sir 
 Gag, who rescues enchanted knights, cuts down a giant, chal- 
 lenges and kills the Sultan in his tent; Alexander, the great 
 hero of the heathen world, whose forgotten glory, after the 
 downfall of the Empire, was revived on the Levantine shores of 
 the Mediterranean, and then in Western Europe; — all which are 
 of the thirteenth century, and restored or adapted from the 
 French; all which, while they serve to illustrate the continuity 
 of the English tongue, the growth of the French romantic man- 
 ner of story-telling as the years grow nearer to 1300, and the 
 demand of the Middle Age for glare and startling events, are 
 utterly without power in delineating character or unity of con- 
 ception in plan and execution. 
 
 In the midst of the story-tellers are satirists who, writing* 
 mostly in French or Latin, censure political abuses and Church 
 corruptions, sometimes in a tone of mournful seriousness, as if 
 the degradation to which the profession was reduced by the 
 depravity of the higher clergy was deeply felt; sometimes with 
 more force than respect or elegance. Thus an English poem of 
 the Land of Cockaigne, — from coquina , a kitchen, — a form of 
 satire current in many parts of Europe: 
 
 ‘List, for now my tale begins, There the Pope for my offence, 
 
 How to rid me of my sins, Bade me straight in penance, thence, 
 
 Once I journey’d far from home, Wandering onward to attain 
 
 To the gate of holy Rome. The wondrous land that hight Cockaigne.’ 
 
 We are told of a region free from trouble, where the rivers run 
 with oil, milk, wine, and honey; wherein the white and grey 
 monks have an abbey of which the walls are built of pasties, 
 which are paved with cakes, and have puddings for pinnacles. 
 
116 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 Roasted geese fly about crying, ‘Geese all hot’! This is the tri- 
 umph of gluttony. 
 
 Here, also, like prophecies of the perfect bloom, are some 
 bright lyrics, — religious, amatory, pastoral, warlike. The chival- 
 ric adoration of the sovereign Lady, the real deity of mediaeval 
 society, breathes in this pleasing hymn, which bears witness to 
 its origin: 
 
 ‘Blessed beo thu, lavedi, 
 Ful of hovenc blisse; 
 Sweet flur of parais, 
 Moder of milternisse . . . 
 I-blessed beo thu, Lavedi, 
 So fair and so briht; 
 
 A1 min hope is uppon the, 
 
 Bi day and bi nicht . . . 
 
 Bricht and scene quen of storre, 
 So me liht and lere. 
 
 In this false fikele world. 
 
 So me led and steore.' 
 
 What could be farther from the Saxon sentiment? A poem 
 of some interest as the earliest imaginative piece of native inven- 
 tion after the Conquest is The Owl and the Nightingale, in 
 octosyllabic rhyme, composed in the reign of Henry III. It is a 
 dispute between the two birds as to which has the finer voice. 
 After much reciprocal abuse, the question of superiority is re- 
 ferred to the author. 
 
 Love of nature is deep and national. To the Frenchman it is 
 a light gladsomeness, soon gone, suggesting only a pleasing 
 couplet as it passes, — ‘ Now is winter gone, the hawthorn blos- 
 soms, the rose expands, the birds do voice their vows in melody.’ 
 To the Englishman, all sad and moral, the circling seasons sug- 
 gest a spiritual lesson, — chiefly ‘vanity of vanities.’ So is the 
 following, of the reign of Edward I, truly English in spirit: 
 
 ‘Wynter wakeneth al my care, 
 
 Nou this leves waxeth bare, 
 
 Ofte y sike ant mourne sare, 
 
 When hit cometh in my thoht 
 
 Of this worldes joie, hou hit goth al to noht. 
 
 Now hit is, and now hit nys, 
 
 Also hit nere y-wys, 
 
 That moni mon seith soth his ys, 
 
 Al goth bote Godes wille, 
 
 Alle we shule deye, thath us like ylle. » 
 
 Al that gren me graueth grene, 
 
 Nou hit faleweth al by-dene; 
 
 Jhesu, help that hit be sene. 
 
 And shild us from helle, 
 
 For y not whider y shal, ne hou longe her duelle.’ 
 
 Yeomen and harpers throw off some spirited products; but their 
 songs, first ignored, then transformed, reach us only in a late 
 
RISE OF ENGLISH PROSE. 
 
 117 
 
 edition, as Robin Hood , Chevy Chase , and the Nut-Brown 
 Maid. 
 
 Enough. The Saxon stock, stripped of its buds by the Nor- 
 man axe, grows, though feebly. An occasional shoot displays 
 genuine England to the light, as a vast rock crops up here and 
 there from beneath the soil. 
 
 Prose. — When the preservation of literary compositions by 
 writing has given opportunity for their patient study, the next 
 step is possible, — the use of prose; and histories, rude and meagre, 
 serving rather to fix a date than to illuminate it, are its principal 
 products. Nature makes men poets, — art makes them philoso- 
 phers and critics. 
 
 English prose looks fondly back to Alfred, in his translations 
 of Bede, for its true parentage. As Whitby, in the person of 
 Caedmon, is the cradle of English poetry, so Winchester is that of 
 English prose. Failing soon after, it is revived in ^Elfric, who, 
 turning into English the first seven books and part of Job, becomes 
 the first large translator of the Bible; repressed by the Danes, 
 and again by the Normans, it dies in the death of the Saxon 
 Chronicle , nor lives again. in any extended form till the reign of 
 Edward III. 
 
 There may be mentioned a curious work in the vernacular, 
 belonging to the latter part of the twelfth century, — the Ancren 
 Riwle , that is, the Anchoresses ’ Rule , a code of monastic precepts 
 for the guidance of a small nunnery, or rather religious society of 
 ladies: 
 
 ‘ Ye lie schulen eten vleschs ne seim buten ine muchele secnesse; other hwoso is 
 euer feble eteth potage blitheliche; and wunieth on to Intel drunch. . . . Ye, mine 
 leone snstren. ne schnlen babben no best, bnte kat one. . . . Nexst fleshe ne scbal mon 
 werien no linene cloth, bute yif hit beo of herde and of greate heorden. Stamin habbe 
 hwose wule; and hwose wille mei beon bnten. Ye schnlen liggen in on heater, and 
 i-gurd. . . . Ower schone beon greate and warme. Ine snmer ye habbeth leane norto 
 gon and sitten barnot. ... Ye ne schnlen senden lettres, ne underuon lettres, ne writen, 
 buten leane. Ye schulen beon i-dodded four sithen ithe yere, norto 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 .’ 1 
 
 1 Ye shall not eat flesh nor lard but in much sickness; or whoso is ever feeble may 
 eat potage blithely; and accustom yourselves to little drink. . . . Ye, my dear sisters, 
 shall have but one cat. . . . Next the flesh ye shall wear no linen cloth, but if it be of 
 hard and of coarse canvas. Whoso will may have a shirt of woolen and linen, and 
 whoso will may be without. Ye shall lie in a garment and girt. . . . Let your shoes be 
 large and warm. In summer ye are permitted to go and sit bare-foot. ... Ye shall not 
 send letters, nor receive letters, nor write without leave. Ye shall be cropped four times 
 in the year, to lighten your head; and as often bled, oftener if need be; but whoso may 
 dispense with this, well. 
 
118 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 Again : 
 
 ‘The slowe litli and slepeth ithe deofles berme, ase his deore deorling; and te deouel 
 leieth his tutel adun to his earen, and tnteleth him al thet he euer wule. . . . The giure 
 glutun is thes fondes manciple. Uor he stiketh euer ithe celere, other ithe kuchene. 
 His heorte is ithe disches ; his thouht is al ithe neppe ; his lif ithe tunne ; his soule ithe 
 crocke. 1 1 1 . . . 
 
 History. — Between the beginning and the end of history 
 are legendary traditions, credulous chronicles, barren annals, the 
 glitter and clatter of kings and warriors, luxuriant, tangled, and 
 fanciful narratives. When, as in the Middle Ages, credulity and 
 looseness of thought are universal, it is impossible for men to 
 engage in a philosophic study of the past, or even to record with 
 accuracy what is taking place around them. So great is the 
 general aptitude for the marvellous, that even the ablest writers 
 are compelled to believe the most childish absurdities. Thus, it 
 was well known that the city of Naples was founded on eggs; 
 also, that the order of St. Michael was instituted in person by the 
 archangel, who was himself the first knight. The Tartars, it was- 
 taught, proceeded from Tartarus, which some theologians said 
 was an inferior kind of hell, but others declared to be hell itself. 
 Hence, as the Turks were identical with the Tartars, it was only 
 a proper and natural consequence that, since the Cross had fallen 
 into Turkish hands, all Christian children had ten teeth less than 
 formerly. Here is a story which Anselm, the Archbishop of Can- 
 terbury, one of the greatest and most vigorous minds in the 
 twelfth century, tells of a certain St. Kieran. The saint, with 
 thirty of his companions, has been executed in a wood by order 
 of a Pagan prince, and their bodies are left lying there for the 
 wolves and the wild birds. Note the fact, as the grave and good 
 Anselm has really ascertained it: 
 
 ‘ But now a miracle, such as was once heard of before in the Church in the person of 
 the holy Denis, was again wrought by Divine Providence to preserve the bodies of these 
 saints from profanation. The trunk of Kieran rose from the ground, and selecting first 
 
 1 The sluggard lieth and sleepeth in the devil's bosom, as his dear darling; and the 
 
 devil applieth his mouth to his ears, and tells him whatever he will. [For, this is certainly 
 the case with everyone who is not occupied in anythin" good: the devil assiduously 
 talks, and the idle lovingly receive his lessons. He that is idle and careless is the devil's 
 bosom-sleeper: but he shall on Doomsday be fearfully startled with the dreadful sound 
 of the angels’ trumpets, and shall awaken in terrible amazement in hell. “Arise, ye 
 dead, who lie in graves: arise, and come to the Saviour’s judgment.”] . . . The greedy 
 glutton is the devil’s purveyor; for he always haunts the cellar or the kitchen. His heart 
 is in the dishes; all his thought is of the table-cloth; his life is in the tun, his soul in the 
 pitcher. [He cometh into the presence of his lord besmutted and besmeared, with a dish 
 in one hand and a bowl in the other. He talks much incoherently, and staggereth like a 
 drunken man who seemeth about to fall, looks at his great belly, and the devil laughs so 
 that he bursteth.] 
 
HISTORICAL METHOD — LEGENDARY STAGE. 
 
 119 
 
 his own head, and carrying it to a stream, and there carefully washing it, and afterwards 
 performing the same sacred office for each of his companions, giving each body its own 
 head, he dug graves for them and buried them, and last of all buried himself.’ 
 
 With the appetite for the fabulous and superhuman is coupled 
 — as if the heart were searching for its dead kindred — the love 
 of antiquity. Hence history, in its first efforts, usually begins at 
 a very remote period, and traces events in an unbroken series, 
 even from the moment when Adam passed the gates of Paradise. 
 
 Add to this, that the historians were essentially theological, — 
 priests, who lived remote from public affairs, considered the civil 
 transactions as entirely subordinate to the ecclesiastical, were 
 strongly infected with the love of wonder, and conceived it their 
 business to enforce belief rather than to encourage inquiry. Thus 
 Matthew Paris, the most eminent historian of the thirteenth 
 century, to explain why the Mahometans abominate pork, informs 
 us that Mahomet, having on one occasion gorged himself with 
 food and drink till he was in an insensible condition, fell asleep 
 on a dunghill, and in this disgraceful state was attacked and 
 suffocated by a litter of pigs; for which reason his followers have 
 ever since refused to partake of their flesh. This celebrated 
 writer tells us further, to account for the origin of the Mahom- 
 etan sect, that Mahomet was originally a cardinal, and became a 
 heretic only because he failed in his design of being elected pope. 
 
 Perhaps the most reliable standard of the knowledge and 
 opinions of these Ages of Faith is Geoffrey’s History of the 
 Britons (1147). This Welsh monk ascertains that after the 
 capture of Troy, Ascanius fled from the city, and begat a son, 
 who became father to Brutus; that Brutus, having extirpated the 
 race of giants, founded London, settled the affairs of the island, 
 and called it, after himself, by the name of Britain. A long line 
 of kings is then led from oblivion into day, most of whom are 
 famous for their abilities, and some for the prodigies which occur 
 in their time. Thus during the reign of Rivallo ‘it rained blood 
 three days together, and there fell vast swarms of flies.’ When 
 Morvidus, £ a most cruel tyrant,’ was on the throne, — 
 
 ‘ There came from the coasts of the Irish sea, a most cruel monster, that was contin- 
 ually devouring the people upon the sea-coasts. As soon as he heard of it, he ventured 
 to go and encounter it alone ; when he had in vain spent all his darts upon it, the monster 
 rushed upon him, and with open jaws swallowed him up like a small fish.’ 
 
120 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 The dauntless Arthur kills a giant from the shores of Spain, 
 against whom armies were able to do nothing:, — 
 
 O 0 7 
 
 ‘For whether they attacked him by sea or land, he either overturned their ships with 
 vast rocks, or killed them with several sorts of darts, besides many of them that he took 
 and devoured half alive . 1 
 
 Pausing, in the historical account, to relate the prophecy of Mer- 
 lin, he tells us how, by the prophet’s advice, a jDond was drained, 
 at whose bottom were two hollow stones, and in them two drag- 
 ons asleep, which hindered the building of Vortigern’s tower; 
 then, — 
 
 ‘As Vortigern, king of the Britons, was sitting upon the bank of the drained pond, 
 the two dragons, one of which was white, the other red, came forth, and, approaching 
 one another, began a terrible fight, and cast forth fire with their breath. But the white 
 dragon had the advantage, and made the other fly to the end of the lake. And he, 
 for grief at his flight, renewed the assault upon his pursuer, and forced him to retire. 
 After this battle of the dragons, the king commanded Ambrose Merlin to tell him what 
 it portended. Upon which he, bursting into tears, delivered what his prophetical spirit 
 suggested to him, as follows: 
 
 “Woe to the red dragon, for his banishment hastencth on. His lurking holes shall 
 be seized by the white tiragon, which signifies the Saxons whom you invited over; but 
 the red denotes the British nation, which shall be oppressed by the white. Therefore 
 shall its mountains be levelled as the valleys, and the rivers of the valleys shall run 
 with blood. The exercise of religion shall be destroyed, and churches be laid open to 
 ruin.” 1 
 
 The. history is brought down to the close of the seventh century, 
 when the Britons, sunk in barbarism and no longer worthy of 
 their name, were known only as ‘Welshmen’: 
 
 ‘But as for the kings that have succeeded among them in Wales, since that time, I 
 leave the history of them to Caradoc of Lancarvan, my contemporary; as I do also the 
 kings of the Saxons to William of Malmesbury, and Henry of Huntington. But I advise 
 them to be silent concerning the kings of the Britons, since they have not that book 
 written in the British tongue, which Walter, archdeacon of Oxford, brought out of 
 Brittany, and which being a true history, published in honour of those princes, I have 
 thus taken care to translate . 1 
 
 It is here that we first read of Gorboduc, whose story will be 
 the theme of the earliest English tragedy ; of Lear and his 
 daughters; and, above all, of King Arthur as the recognized 
 hero of national story. 
 
 A hundred years after its first publication, this book was 
 generally adopted by writers on English history; and, for its 
 repudiation in the sixteenth century, Vergil was considered as 
 a man almost deprived of reason. A book thus stamped with 
 every mark of approbation is surely no bad measure of the ages 
 in which it was accredited and admired. 
 
 Mere annalists abounded, who set down minutely, in chrono- 
 
ANNALISTS — THE SAXON CHRONICLE. 
 
 121 
 
 logical order, what their eyes have seen and their ears have 
 heard, till the reader is overpowered with weariness; only the 
 dross of history; facts, in particles, in mass, without the abstract 
 truth which interpenetrates them, and lies latent among them, 
 like gold in the ore; dreams, portents, warnings, and the whole 
 progeny of superstition. Here is the style of the chronicler in 
 the tenth century; 
 
 ‘538. When he had reigned four years, the sun was eclipsed from the first hour of 
 the day to the third. 
 
 540. Again, two years after, the sun was eclipsed for half an hour after the third 
 hour, so that the stars were everywhere visible in the sky. 
 
 661. After three years, Kenwalk again fought a battle near the town of Pontes- 
 bury, and took prisoner Wulfhere, son of Penda, at Ashdown, when he had defeated 
 his army. 
 
 671. After one year more, there was a great pestilence among the birds, so that 
 there was an intolerable stench by sea and land, arising from the carcasses of birds, 
 both small and great. 
 
 674. After one year, Wulfhere, son of Penda, and Kenwalk fought a battle among 
 themselves in a place called Bedwin. 
 
 677. After three years a comet was seen. 
 
 729. At the end of one year a comet appeared, and the holy bishop Egbert died. 
 
 733. Two years after these things, king Ethelbald received under his dominion 
 the royal vill which is called Somerton. The same year the sun was eclipsed. 
 
 734. After the lapse of one year, the moon appeared as if stained with spots of 
 blood, and by the same omen Tatwine and Bede departed this life.' 
 
 That monument of English prose which is at once most vener- 
 able and most valuable is the Saxon Chronicle, compiled from 
 the monastic annals by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 891, 
 and carried forward in the monasteries by various hands until 
 the accession of Henry II, in the year 1154. Of value as a sta- 
 tistic epitome of English history during that long period, its 
 chief value, perhaps, consists in the bird’s-eye view which it 
 gives of linguistic changes from year to year, from century to 
 century, until, as the last records are by contemporary writers, 
 old English almost melts into modern. At distant intervals, 
 when inspired by the transitory, the sombre, and the mysterious, 
 it rises to a pathos like this on William the Conqueror: 
 
 * Sharp death, that passes neither by rich men nor poor, seized him also. Alas, how 
 false and how uncertain is this world’s weal ! He, that was before a rich king and lord 
 of many lands, had not then of all his land more than a space of seven feet; and he, 
 that was whilom enshrouded in gold and gems, lay there covered with mould.’ 
 
 But, in general, it is vapid, empty, and uncritical, noting in the 
 same lifeless tone the important and the trivial, without the 
 slightest tinge of dramatic color or of discrimination. Blood 
 gushes out of the earth in Berkshire near the birthplace of 
 
122 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 Alfred. In Peterborough, under a Norman abbot, horns are 
 heard at dead of night, and spectral huntsmen are seen to ride 
 through the woods. The following extracts are fair specimens: 
 
 ‘449. In this year Martian and Valentinian succeeded to the empire and reigned 
 seven winters. And in their days Hengest and Horsa, invited by Wyrtgeorn, king of the 
 Britons, sought Britain, on the shore which is named Ypwines fleot; first in support of 
 the Britons, but afterwards they fought against them. 
 
 463. In this year Hengest and JEsc fought against the Welsh and took countless 
 booty; and the Welsh fled from the Angles as fire. 
 
 509. In this year St. Benedict the abbot, father of all monks, went to heaven. 
 
 661. In this year was the great destruction of birds. 
 
 792 . Here Offa, king of Mercia, commanded that King Ethelbert should be beheaded ; 
 and Osred, who hud been king of the Northumbrians, returning home after his exile, was 
 apprehended and slain on the 18th day before the Calends of October. His body is depos- 
 ited at Tinemouth. Ethelred this year, on the 3d day before the Calends of October, took 
 unto himself a new wife whose name was Elfreda. 
 
 793. In this year dire forwarnings came over the land of the Northumbrians, and 
 miserably terrified the people: there were excessive whirlwinds and lightnings, and fiery 
 dragons were seen flying in the air. A great famine soon followed these tokens ; and a 
 little after that, in the same year, on the 6th of the Ides of January, the havoc of heathen 
 men miserably destroyed God’s church at Lindisfarne, through rapine and slaughter. 
 And Sicga died on the 8th of the Cal. of March.’ 
 
 Centuries will pass before history, which thus begins in ro- 
 mance and babble, will end in essay; before this enfeebled intel- 
 lect will be able to rise from particular facts to discover the laws 
 by which those facts are governed, exhibiting by judicious selec- 
 tion, rejection, and arrangement, the orderly progress of society 
 and the nature of man. 
 
 Theology. — It was a favorite saying among the ancients, 
 that death is ‘a law and not a punishment.’ It was a root- 
 doctrine of the early Christians that disobedience — the fruit of 
 the forbidden tree — ‘brought death into the world and all our 
 woe.’ 
 
 The first represented man as pure and innocent till his will has 
 sinned; the second, as under sentence of condemnation at the 
 moment of birth. Plutarch had said that no funeral sacrifices 
 were offered for infants, ‘because it is irreligious to lament for 
 those pure souls who have passed into a better life and a happier 
 dwelling-place.’ ‘Be assured,’ writes a saint of the sixth century, 
 ‘that not only men who have obtained the use of their reason, 
 but children who have begun to live in their mother’s womb and 
 have there died, or who, just born, have passed away without the 
 sacrament of holy baptism administered in the name of the 
 Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, must be punished by eternal tor- 
 
THEOLOGY — HERESY. 
 
 123 
 
 ture.’ The opinion so graphically expressed by a theologian who 
 said ‘he doubted not that there were infants less than a span 
 long crawling about the floor of hell,’ was held with great confi- 
 dence in the early Church. Some, indeed, imagined that a spe- 
 cial place was assigned to them, where there was neither suffering 
 nor enjoyment. This was emphatically denied by St. Augustine, 
 who declared that they descended into ‘everlasting fire.’ Accord- 
 ing to a popular legend, the redbreast was commissioned by the 
 Deity to carry a drop of water to them to relieve their con- 
 suming thirst, and its breast was singed in piercing the flames. 
 
 Belief in a personal devil, as we have seen, was profound and 
 universal. Sometimes he is encountered as a grotesque and 
 hideous animal, sometimes as a black man, sometimes as a fair 
 woman, sometimes as a priest haranguing in the pulpit, some- 
 times as an angel of light. He hovers forever about the Chris- 
 tian; but the sign of the cross, a few drops of holy water, or the 
 name of Mary, can put him to immediate and ignominious flight. 
 
 Doubt was branded as a sin. To cherish prejudice was better 
 than to analyze it. Those who diverged from the orthodox belief 
 were doomed. Avenues of inquiry were painted with images of 
 appalling suffering and malicious demons. An age which be- 
 lieves that a man is intensely guilty who holds certain opinions, 
 and will cause the damnation of his fellows if he propagates 
 them, has no moral difficulty in concluding that the heretic should 
 be damned. A law of the Saxons condemned to death any one 
 who ate meat in Lent, unless the priest was satisfied that it was a 
 matter of absolute necessity. Gregory of Tours, recording ‘the 
 virtues of saints and the disasters of nations,’ draws the moral of 
 the history thus: 
 
 ‘Arins, 1 the impious founder of the impious sect, his entrails having fallen out, 
 passed into the flames of hell; but Hilary, the blessed defender of the undivided 
 Trinity, though exiled on that account, found his country in Paradise. King Clovis, 
 who confessed the Trinity, and by its assistance crushed the heretics, extended his 
 dominions through all Gaul. Alaric, who denied the Trinity, was deprived of his king- 
 dom and his subjects, and, what was far worse, was punished in the future world.’ 
 
 At the close of the twelfth century, among the measures devised 
 to suppress heresy, the principal was the Inquisition. The func- 
 tion of the civil government was to execute its sentence. Placed 
 in the hands of Dominicans and Franciscans, it was centralized 
 
 1 ‘ I am persecuted,’ Arius plaintively said, ‘because I have taught that the Son had 
 a beginning and the Father had not.’ 
 
124 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 by the appointment of an Inquisitor-General at Rome, with 
 whom all branches of the tribunal — wherever the new corpora- 
 tion was admitted — were to be in constant communication. Its 
 bloody success might seem to fulfil the portent of Dominic’s 
 nativity. Legend relates that his mother, in the season of child- 
 birth, dreamed that a dog was about to issue from her womb, 
 bearing a lighted torch that would kindle the whole world. 
 We shall see its officers branding the disbeliever with hot irons, 
 wrenching fingers asunder, shattering bones, — doing it all in the 
 name of the Teacher who had said, ‘ By this shall all men know 
 that ye are my disciples, that ye love one another,’ — yet doing 
 it perhaps in devotion to the truth as, in their human frailty, 
 they conceive it. 
 
 The pagan philosopher fixed his eye upon virtue; the Chris- 
 tian, upon sin. The former sought to awaken the sentiment of 
 admiration; the latter, that of remorse. The one, powerless to 
 restrain vice, was fitted to dignify man ; the other, to regen- 
 erate him. Those who are insensible to the nobleness of virtue, 
 may be so convulsed by the fear of judgment as to renew the 
 tenor of their lives. 
 
 The pagans asserted the immateriality of the soul, because 
 they believed that the body must perish forever. The Fathers, 
 with the exception of Augustine, maintained that the soul was 
 simply a second body. The material view derived strength from 
 the firm belief in punishment by fire. This was the central fact 
 of religion. Its ghastly imagery left nature stricken and forlorn. 
 The agitations of craters were ascribed to the great press of lost 
 souls. In the hush of evening, when the peasant boy asked why 
 the sinking sun, as it dipped beneath the horizon, kindled with 
 such a glorious red, he was answered, in the words of an old 
 Saxon catechism, ‘because it is then looking into hell.’ The pen 
 of the poet, the pencil of the artist, the visions of the monk, 
 sustained the maddening terror with appalling vividness and 
 minuteness. Through the vast of hell rolled a seething stream 
 of sulphur, to feed and intensify the waves of fire. In the centre 
 was Satan, bound by red-hot chains, on a burning gridiron. But 
 his hands are free, and he seizes the damned, crushes them like 
 grapes against his teeth, then sucks them down the fiery cavern 
 of his throat. Hideous beings, of dreadful aspect and fantastic 
 
RATIONALISM. 
 
 125 
 
 form, with hooks of red-hot iron, plunge the lost alternately into 
 fire and ice. Some of the souls are hung up by their tongues, 
 others are sawn asunder between flaming iron posts, others 
 gnawed by serpents, others with hammer and anvil are welded 
 into a mass, others boiled and then strained through a cloth. A 
 narrow bridge spans the abyss, and from this the shrieking souls 
 are plunged into the mounting flames below. 
 
 But in every age there are some who stand upon the heights, 
 above the ideal of their generation, and forecast the realized 
 conceptions of the distant future. One of the most rationalistic 
 minds of the fourth century was Pelagius, a British prelate. 
 His persecutors were wont to say, 4 Speak not to Pelagius, or he 
 will convert you.’ His principal tenets may be thus epitomized: 
 
 1. Adam was created mortal, and would have died whether 
 he had sinned or not. 
 
 2. Adam’s transgression affected only himself, not his pos- 
 terity. 
 
 3. Mankind neither perish through Adam, nor are raised from 
 the dead through Christ. 
 
 4. The law, as well as the Gospel, leads men to heaven. 
 
 5. Divine grace is conditioned on human worthiness. 
 
 6. Infants are in the same state as Adam before his fall. 
 
 He would not, however, venture to deny the necessity of infant 
 baptism. Severely pressed on this point by his opponents, he 
 replied that baptism was necessary to wash away the guilt of 
 the child’s pettishness ! 1 One striking example of a bold free 
 spirit in the tenth century was the famed Erigena. Alone 
 in the middle ages, he maintained the figurative interpretation 
 of hell-fire. 
 
 In 1277, propositions like the following were professed by 
 philosophers at Paris: God is not triune and one, for trinity is 
 incompatible with simplicity; the world and humanity are eter- 
 nal; the resurrection of the body must not be admitted by~ 
 philosophers; the soul, when separated from the body, cannot 
 suffer by fire; theological discourses are based on fables; a man 
 who has in himself moral and intellectual virtues, has all that is 
 necessary to happiness. 
 
 1 It is gratifying to know that St. Augustine, in answering this argument, declared 
 distinctly that the crying of a baby is not sinful, and therefore does not deserve eternal 
 damnation. 
 
126 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 It may be needless to add explicitly — what the theology of 
 the past so plainly suggests in the changed atmosphere of the 
 present — that every age creates its image of God; and the image, 
 conforming to the conceptions of its creator, is the measure of its 
 civilization. This child shall one day grow up to manhood, and 
 sing lofty psalms with noble human voice. 
 
 Ethics. — A nation or an age may be without moral science, 
 but never without moral distinctions. The languages and litera- 
 ture of the world indicate that at all times, among all peoples, the 
 idea of right and wrong has been recognized and applied. We 
 shall find ethical notions, ethical life, powerfully operative, in 
 mediaeval England, but no ethical system. When society is semi- 
 barbarous, the inculcation of morality devolves avowedly and ex- 
 clusively upon the priests. Motives of action require to be mate- 
 rialized. Theology is the groundwork of morality. The moral 
 faculty, too weak of itself to be a guide of conduct, must be 
 reenforced by the rewards and punishments of religion, — the hope 
 of Heaven and the fear of Hell. The propensity to evil, in conse- 
 quence of original sin, is itself sin. The foundation of the moral 
 law is the Divine will. Thus Scotus asserted that the good is 
 good, not by its own inherent nature, but because God commands 
 it. But there appear from time to time men who, rising above 
 surrounding circumstances, anticipate the moral standard of a 
 later age, and inculcate principles before their appropriate civil- 
 ization has dawned. Thus Abelard, emphasizing the subjective 
 aspect of conscience, represents that moral good and evil reside 
 not in the act but in the intention. It is only the consenting to 
 evil which is sin. The pure hate sin from love of virtue, not from a 
 slavish fear of pain inflicted. The good is good, not because God 
 commands it; but He commands it because it is good. God is the 
 absolutely highest good, and that, through virtue, should be the 
 aim of human endeavor. The civilizations of the future may esti- 
 mate their relative excellence by their nearness to this eminence 
 of thought ! 
 
 Science. — Before the Conquest, in the popular series of Solo- 
 mon and Saturn , it was asked, as a question that engaged Eng- 
 lish curiosity, ‘What is the substance of which Adam, the first 
 man, was made?’ and the answer was: 
 
EMBRYONIC SCIENCE — ASTROLOGY. 
 
 127 
 
 ‘I tell tliee of eight pounds by weight.’ ‘Tell me what they are called.’ — ‘I tell thee 
 the first was a pound of earth, of which his flesh was made; the second was a pound of 
 fire, whence his blood came, red and hot; the third was a pound of wind, and thence his 
 breathing was given to him ; the fourth was a pound of welkin, thence was his unsteadi- 
 ness of mood given him; the fifth was a pound of grace, whence was given him his 
 growth; the sixth was a pound of blossoms, whence was given him the variety of his 
 eyes; and seventh was a pound of dew, whence he got his sweat; the eighth was a 
 pound of salt, and thence were his tears salt.’ 
 
 From this we may infer and estimate the rest. The same ques- 
 tion and answer will be found in The Maisters of Oxford's 
 Catechism , written in fifteenth-century English ! What are the 
 condition and hope of science, when inquisitive children, who 
 delight in riddles and enigmas, reduce it to a religious cate- 
 chism? The overwhelming importance attached to theology 
 diverted to it all those intellects which in another condition of 
 society would have been employed in the investigations of sci- 
 ence. Everything was done to cultivate habits the opposite of 
 scientific, — fear and faith. Innovation of every kind was re- 
 garded as a crime. Superior knowledge, shown in speculation, 
 was called heresy; shown in the study of mathematics or of 
 nature, it was called magic, — a proof that such pursuits were 
 rare. In the thirteenth century, few students of geometry pro- 
 ceeded farther than the fifth proposition of the first book of 
 Euclid, — the famous asses’ bridge. What must be the state of 
 the natural sciences, when the science of demonstration, which 
 is their foundation, is neglected ? Indeed, the name of the 
 mathematics was given chiefly to astrology. Mathematicians 
 were defined to be ‘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.’ It was universally believed 
 that the whole destiny of man is determined by the star that 
 presides over his nativity. Many could not, as they imagined, 
 safely appear in public, or eat, or bathe, unless they had first 
 carefully consulted the almanac, to ascertain the place and 
 appearance of their particular planet. Comets and meteors 
 foreshadowed the fate of empires; and the signs of the zodiac 
 served only to predict the career of individuals and the develop- 
 ment of communities. But as these constant observations, and 
 the construction of instruments required for making them, led 
 to astronomy; so alchemy, which aimed to transmute all metals 
 into gold, or find the elixir of life, led to chemistry. An alchem- 
 
128 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 ist records that in a secret chamber of the Tower of London, he 
 performed in the royal presence the experiment of transmuting 
 some crystal into diamond, of which Edward I, he says, caused 
 some little pillars to be made for the tabernacle of God. The 
 healing art, from being practised only by women, who employed 
 charms and spells with their herbs and decoctions, gradually 
 became the province of priests, who trusted to relics, holy water, 
 and other superstitions. Medicine had in the thirteenth century 
 been taken in a great measure out of the hands of the clergy, 
 though it was still in the main a mixture of superstition and 
 quackery. The distinction between the physician and the apothe- 
 cary was understood, and surgery also began to be followed as 
 a separate branch. 
 
 With Edward the Confessor, about the middle of the eleventh 
 century, began the extraordinary usage of touching, to cure the 
 disease called the ‘King’s Evil,’ — a usage that continued for 
 nearly seven hundred years. When Malcolm and Macduff have 
 fled to England, it is in the palace of Edward the Confessor that 
 Malcolm inquires of an English doctor, — 
 
 ‘Comes the king forth, I pray you?’ 
 
 and the answer is, — 
 
 ‘Ay, sir: there are a crew of wretched souls 
 That stay his cure: their malady convinces 
 The great assay of art; but at his touch, 
 
 Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand, 
 
 They presently amend.’ 
 
 When Macduff asks, — 
 
 ‘What’s the disease he means?' 
 
 Malcolm answers, — 
 
 ‘ ’Tis called the evil : 
 
 A most miraculous work in this good king; 
 
 Which often, since my here-remain in England, 
 
 I have seen him do. How he solicits heaven. 
 
 Himself best knows: but strangely-visited people, 
 
 All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye. 
 
 The mere despair of surgery, he cures; 
 
 Hanging a golden stamp about their necks, 
 
 Put on with holy prayers: and ’tis spoken 
 To the succeeding royalty he leaves 
 The healing benediction.’ . . . 
 
 All which proves, if anything, that in the treatment of disease 
 faith is more potent than physic. 
 
 The supposed influence of the stars, Avith a crowd of super- 
 stitions, naturally followed from the geocentric theory of the 
 
SCIENTIFIC CONCEPTIONS. 
 
 129 
 
 universe. When it is believed, as in the Middle Ages, that the 
 earth is the great central object of the whole created world, 
 around which the sun and moon alike revolve, and the stars are 
 but inconsiderable lights destined to garnish its firmament, — 
 man becomes the centre of all things, and every startling phe- 
 nomenon has some bearing upon his acts; the eclipse, the comet, 
 the meteor, the tempest, are all intended for him. 
 
 The existence of the antipodes, or persons inhabiting the op- 
 posite side of the globe, and consequently having the soles of 
 their feet directly opposed to ours, w r as disproved by quoting St. 
 Paul, — that all men are made to live upon the 4 face of the 
 earth,’ from which it clearly follows that they do not live upon 
 more faces than one, or upon the back. If we examine a little 
 farther, we are told that the earth is fixed firmly upon its founda- 
 tions, from which we may at least infer that it is not suspended 
 in the air. In the sixteenth century, for asserting that the earth 
 moves, Copernicus will be censured, and Galileo will be impris- 
 oned. 
 
 It was taught as a firmly established principle that water has 
 no gravity in or on water, since it is in proprio loco , in its own 
 place; — that air has no gravity on water, since it is above water, 
 which is its proper place; — -that earth in water tends downward, 
 since its place is below water; — that water rises in a pump or 
 syphon, because nature abhors a vacuum. 
 
 Peter Lombard quotes our Anglo-Saxon Bede that the waters 
 above the firmament are the solid crystalline heavens in which 
 the stars are fixed, 4 for crystal, which is so hard and transparent, 
 is made of water’; and mentions also the opinion of St. Augus- 
 tine, that the waters above the heavens are in a state of vapor, in 
 minute drops: 
 
 ‘If, then, water can, as we see in clouds, be so minutely divided that it may be thus 
 supported as vapor on air, which is naturally lighter than water; why may we not believe 
 that it floats above that lighter celestial element in still minuter drops and still lighter 
 vapors? But in whatever manner the waters are there, we do not doubt that they are 
 there.’ 
 
 Philosophy. — The long and barren period which intervened 
 between Proclus of the fifth century, in whom the speculative 
 activity of ancient Greece disappeared, and Bacon of the six- 
 teenth, in whom it was reformed and fertilized, was character- 
 ized, as a whole, by indistinctness of ideas, bias to authority, and 
 9 
 
130 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 impatience of dissent. Poverty of thought disposed men to lean 
 upon an intellectual superior, — Plato, Aristotle, or the Fathers; 
 to read nature through books; to talk of what great geniuses had 
 said; to study the opinions of others as the only mode of form- 
 ing their own; to criticise, to interpret, to imitate, to dispute. 
 The subtlety which found in certain accredited writings all the 
 truth it desired, forbade others to find, there or elsewhere, any 
 other truths. The slave became a tyrant. 
 
 The Christian Fathers made philosophy the handmaid of reli- 
 gion. The whole philosophic effort was to mediate between 
 the dogmas of faith and the demands of reason, with church 
 doctrine as the criterion or standard. The method was three-fold: 
 1. That of the Fathers, built on Scripture, modified by the prin- 
 ciples of the Grecian schools. 2. Conjointly with Scripture, the- 
 use of the Fathers, themselves. 3. The application of the Aris- 
 totelian dialectics. 1 Philosophy thus subservient to the Christian 
 articles of belief was called Scholasticism, a name derived 
 from the cloister schools opened by Charlemagne for the pursuit 
 of speculative studies, which in those days were prosecuted only 
 by the clergy, they alone having leisure or inclination for such 
 work. The teachers of the seven liberal arts, as afterwards all 
 who occupied themselves with the sciences, and especially with 
 philosophy, following the tradition and example of the schools, 
 were called Scholastics. Scholasticism, therefore, may be de- 
 fined as the reproduction of ancient philosophy under the con- 
 trol of ecclesiastical doctrine , with an accommodation , in cases 
 of discrepancy between them , of the former to the latter. Its 
 leading representatives till the fourteenth century are Erigena, 
 with whom it begins, born and educated in Ireland; Roscelin and 
 Abelard, of France; Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas, of 
 Italy; Anselm, of Normandy; Alexander Hales, ‘the Irrefraga- 
 ble,’ and Duns Scotus, ‘the Subtle Doctor,’ of England. 
 
 The views of Erigena, (800-877) are decidedly Platonic. God, 
 the creating and uncreated being, alone has essential subsistence. 
 He is the essence of all things, the beginning and the end of all. 
 Among created natures are some which themselves create, — 
 Ideas , or the archetypes of things, the first causes of individual 
 existences. These are contained in the Divine Wisdom, or Word 
 
 1 That branch of logic which teaches the rules and modes of reasoning. 
 
SCHOLASTICISM — REALISM — NOMINALISM. 
 
 131 
 
 — the Son; and the influence of the Holy Ghost, or Divine Love, 
 causes them to develop into the forms of the eternal world. More 
 than a thousand years before, Plato had said: 
 
 ‘Now, Idea is, as regards God, a mental operation by him (the notions of God, eter- 
 nal and perfect in themselves) ; as regards us, the first things perceptible by mind; as 
 regards Matter, a standard; but as regards the world, perceptible by sense, a pattern; 
 but as considered with reference to itself, an existence. 1 
 
 The creation from nothing is out of God’s own essence — an un- 
 folding-. Our life is His life in us. As the substance of all thing's 
 in shape and time, He descends to us, not alone in the act of incar- 
 nation, but in all created existence. As out of Him all things are 
 evolved, so into Him all things will ultimately return, — a concep- 
 tion not in harmony with the doctrinal system of the Church. 
 True philosophy and true religion are one. But true religion is 
 not identical with dogmatism. On the contrary, in case of a 
 collision between authority and reason, let reason be given the 
 preference. 
 
 Plato taught Realism , the doctrine that universals — species, 
 genera, or types — have a real existence apart from individual 
 objects. Aristotle, on the contrary, taught Nominalism , the 
 doctrine that only individuals exist in reality, — that abstract 
 ideas are nothing but abstractions, general names , not general 
 things. Of the Scholastic Nominalists, Roscelin, a little before 
 1100, was the first distinguished advocate. It was soon evident 
 that he was in antagonism with the dogma of the Trinity. If, 
 said his opponents, only individuals really exist, then the three 
 persons of the Trinity are three individuals, or three Gods, — that, 
 or else they have no existence. He admits the fatal heresy, is 
 summoned before a Council, and there forced publicly to recant ; 
 escapes to England, and perishes in exile; but the seed sown 
 fructifies, and Nominalism afterwards becomes the reigning 
 doctrine. 
 
 Roscelin was opposed by Anselm (1033-1109). His motto 
 was, Credo , ut intelligam. Knowledge must rest on faith, and 
 submission to the Church must be unconditional. Goodness, 
 truth, virtue, etc., possess real existence, independent of individ- 
 ual beings, not merely immanent in them. On this realistic basis 
 he founds a proof of the divine existence, with which his fame is 
 chiefly connected. The argument is an attempt to prove the ex- 
 istence of God from the very idea which we have of Him — the 
 
132 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 summum bonum , or greatest object that can be conceived. This 
 conception exists in the intellect of all who have the idea of God, 
 — in the intellect of the atheist as well. But the greatest cannot 
 be in the mind only, for then something still greater would be 
 conceivable which should exist not only in the mind but in exter- 
 nal reality. Hence the greatest must exist at the same time, both 
 subjectively and objectively. God, therefore, is not merely con- 
 ceived by us, — He also really exists. 
 
 One of Roscelin’s pupils was the youthful Abelard (1079- 
 1142), whose unfortunate love-relations, more than his eloquence 
 or subtlety, rendered his name immortal. Posterity feels interested 
 in him because Eloise loved him; and when the gates of the con- 
 vent close forever on her, the warm interest in him disappears. His 
 position in dialectics, while intermediate between untenable ex- 
 tremes, is not far removed from strict Nominalism. His chief 
 distinction is regular and systematic application of dialectics to 
 theology. Without being the first to rationalize dogmatics, he 
 went farther in a way which had already been opened up, and 
 may thus be said to have given to Scholasticism its peculiar and 
 permanent form. Asserting the supremacy of reason, he repre- 
 sents the insurgent spirit of those times. Writes St. Bernard to 
 the pope : Transgreditur fines quos posuerunt patres nostri — ‘ he 
 goes beyond the limits set by our ancestors!’ — an offense in all 
 ages, in all nations. The revolutionist further ‘ transgresses’ by 
 the composition of Sic et Non, in which he sets forth the contra- 
 dictory statements of the Fathers, designed, as he distinctly in- 
 forms us, to train the mind to vigorous and healthy doubt, in ful- 
 filment of the injunction, ‘Seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it 
 shall be opened unto you.’ Doubt begins. Disputation waxes 
 stronger. In every city of Europe, logic plays around every sub- 
 ject, the most profound and sacred, like lambent flame. The 
 struggle thus begun has not yet ended. 
 
 Abelard’s pupil — Peter Lombard, who died in 1164 — pre- 
 pared a manual of theology called The Took of Sentences , which 
 became, and for centuries continued, the basis of theological in- 
 struction and a guide for the dialectical treatment of theological 
 problems. 
 
 Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) brought Scholasticism to its 
 highest stage of development, by the utmost accommodation of 
 
SCHOLASTICS — THE SYLLOGISM. 
 
 133 
 
 the Aristotelian doctrines to those of ecclesiastical orthodoxy. 
 With him, as with Aristotle, knowledge — and preeminently 
 knowledge of God — is the supreme end of life. The Divine 
 existence is demonstrable only a posteriori , namely, from the 
 contemplation of the world as the work of God. The order of the 
 world presupposes an Orderer. There must be a First Mover or 
 a First Cause, since the chain of effects and causes cannot be 
 infinite. God exists as a pure, immaterial form. Before His 
 creative fiat, time was not. The soul of man is immortal, because 
 it is immaterial. It is immaterial because it thinks the universal; 
 whereas, if it were a form inseparable from matter, like the soul 
 of a brute, it could think only the individual. Pure form can 
 neither destroy itself, nor, through the destruction of a material 
 substratum, be destroyed. Yet the human soul does not exist 
 before the body. Nor is its knowledge the mere recollection of 
 ideas beheld in a preexistent state, as Plato assumed. 
 
 While the earlier scholastics had known only the Loyic of 
 Aristotle, Alexander Hales (died 1245) first used his entire 
 philosophy, including the metaphysics, as the auxiliary of Chris- 
 tian theology. 
 
 A distinguished opponent of Thomas Aquinas and his system 
 was Duns Scotus, who in 1308 died at Cologne, whither he 
 had been sent to take part in a debate. His strength, like that of 
 Kant, lay in the acute and negative criticism of others rather 
 than in the establishment of his own position. Trained in 
 mathematical studies, he knew what was meant by proving, and 
 could therefore recognize in most of the pretended proofs their 
 invalidity. Without denying the truth of the theorems them- 
 selves, he rejects much of the reasoning employed to prove the 
 being of God and the immortality of the soul, and bases the 
 evidence on our moral nature. Revelation alone renders them 
 certain. Arguments should be viewed with distrust. The do- 
 main of reason he would further contract; that of faith, still 
 more extend. The world is but a mean, by the right use of 
 which the only end of its existence — the salvation of man- 
 kind — is attained. This is practical, — at least in desire, as of 
 one whose eyes are fixed on sin, black death, and the Judgment, 
 not daring to embark on the great journey with unsafe guides. 
 
 The heavy instrument supplied to these disputants by Aris- 
 
134 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 totle was the Syllogism, which, as every student of logic under- 
 stands, contains: 
 
 1. Three terms , the extremes and the middle; or the major 
 term (P ) — predicate of the conclusion, the minor term ($) — 
 subject of the conclusion, and the middle term ( M ) — medium 
 of comparison. 
 
 2. Three propositions , the premises and the conclusion; or 
 the major premise in which M and P are compared, the minor 
 premise in which IS and M are compared, and the conclusion in 
 which the relation of S and P is inferred, — the proposition to 
 be proved. Thus, symbolized: 
 
 ( All M is P, ) 
 ■< All S is M, > 
 ( .*. All S is P. ) 
 
 No P is M, ) 
 
 All S is M, [• 
 
 No S is P. ; 
 
 o 
 
 Or, concretely: 
 
 Every responsible agent is a free agent, 
 
 Man is a responsible agent, 
 
 .*. Man is a free agent. 
 
 Plato, Aristotle, the Apostles, and the Fathers, gave the prem- 
 ises; ingenuity piled up cathedrals of conclusion. What more 
 agreeable exercise to speculative minds than tracing the conse- 
 quences of assumed principles? It is deductive, like geometry, 
 self-satisfying and inexhaustible. As there could be no genuine 
 progress, so there was no tendency to come to an end. A cease- 
 less grinding of the air in metaphysic mills: 
 
LEARNED PUERILITIES. 
 
 135 
 
 ‘ They stand 
 Locked up together hand in hand; 
 
 Every one leads as he is led, 
 
 The same bare path they tread, 
 
 And dance like fairies a fantastic round, 
 
 But neither change their motion nor their ground.’ 
 
 What does the reader think of the pregnant announcement that 
 ‘an individual man is Peter, because his humanity is combined 
 with Petreity ’? — of the division of matter into firstly first, 
 secondly first, and thirdly first? — of the chimerical questions, 
 whether identity, similitude, and equality are real relations in 
 God? whether, the place and body being retained , God can 
 cause the body to have no position? whether the divine essence 
 engendered the Son, or was engendered by the Father? why the 
 three persons together are not greater than one alone? if God 
 can know more things than He is aware of ? whether Christ at 
 the first instant of conception had the use of free judgment ? 
 whether He was slain by Himself or by another? whether the 
 dove in which the Holy Spirit appeared was a real animal ? 
 whether two glorified bodies can occupy one and the same place 
 at the same time ? whether in the state of innocence all children 
 were masculine? — of the puerile puzzles whether a person in the 
 purchase of a whole cloak also buys the cowl ? whether, when, 
 a hog is carried to market with a rope tied about its neck and 
 held at the other end by a man, the hog is really carried to 
 market by the man or by the rope ? 
 
 What truth could issue thence? What wonder that Scholas- 
 ticism is a vast cemetery of departed reputation? Yet under- 
 neath this word-quibbling are the deepest problems of Ontology; 
 and the human hearts which throb to them are, as we shall see,, 
 prophetic of the English soul: 
 
 ‘A great delight is granted 
 When in the spirit of the ages planted, 
 
 We mark how, ere our time, a sage has thought, 
 
 And then, how far his work, and grandly, we have brought.’ 
 
 Resume. — Gradually the past is explaining the present. 
 Through anarchy, conflict, and constraint, the Witan and Great 
 Council are transformed into the English Parliament, which con- 
 tinues to this day the same in all essential points. The House of 
 Commons, archetype of representative assemblies, holds its first 
 sittings. French connections are sundered; Wales is annexed 
 
136 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 forever to the English crown; Ireland is conquered, though not 
 subdued; and the famous heroes, Wallace and Bruce, wrest from 
 Edward I the liberties of Scotland. 
 
 The mass of the agricultural population is rising from the 
 position of mere slaves to that of tenant-farmers; and the ad- 
 vance of society, as well as the natural increase of population, is 
 freeing the laborer from local bondage. The government of the 
 English towns passes from the hands of an oligarchy to those of 
 the rising middle classes. 
 
 The space of about a thousand years, extending from the fall 
 of the Western Empire, in the middle of the fifth century, to 
 that of the Eastern, in the middle of the fifteenth, comprises two 
 nearly equal periods, — the gradual decline and the gradual re- 
 vival of letters. Convents, meanwhile, are the asylum of knowl- 
 edge, and secure the thread which connects us with the literature 
 of classic Greece and Rome. With few exceptions, the writers 
 are priestly or monastic. 
 
 The Conquest, breaking the mental stagnation, introduces 
 England into a free communion with the intellectual and artistic 
 life of the Continent, and subjects it to the two ruling mediasval 
 impulses, — Feudalism and the Church, the one producing the 
 adventurous hero, the other the mystical monk; both working- 
 together for the amelioration of mankind, both running to excess, 
 and degenerating by the violence of their own strength. Under 
 the first, slavery is modified into serfdom; under the second, 
 learning is preserved, and a sense of the unity of Christendom 
 maintained; under both, springs up the idea of chivalry, mould- 
 ing generous instincts into gallant institutions. 
 
 From the fifth to the thirteenth century, the Church elabo- 
 rates the most splendid organization which the world has ever 
 seen. During the last three centuries of the period, her destiny 
 achieved, faith and reason begin to be sundered, and violence is 
 used for the repression of inquiry. The spiritual power, grown 
 corrupt by growing ambitious, is resisted by the temporal. 
 Kings war with popes, and popes struggle to put their feet upon 
 the necks of kings. Religion, from a ceremonial, is being con- 
 verted into a reality. Hermit and friar carry spiritual life home 
 to the heart of the nation. 
 
 First English poems are of war and religion, — never of love. 
 
RESUME. 
 
 137 
 
 The greatest are Beowulf ‘ an epic imported from the Continent, 
 and re-written in parts by a Christian Englishman; and Caed- 
 mon’s Paraphrase of the Bible , written about 670, and for us 
 the beginning of English poetry. Of scattered pieces after 
 Caedmon, all Christian in tone, the finest are Judith , The Ruin , 
 and The Grave. The war poetry, sung from feast to feast and 
 in the halls of kings, dies out after the English are trodden down 
 by the Normans. English literature — in a state of languishing 
 depression at the Conquest — is thereafter displaced by the ro- 
 mance, in which, as favorite heroes, Arthur, Alexander, and 
 Charlemagne, dressed as feudal knights, slay dragons and giants, 
 storm enchanted castles, set free beautiful ladies, and perform 
 other wondrous deeds. Not, however, till nearly a century has 
 passed away — when Norman noble and English yeoman, Norman 
 abbot and English priest, are welded into one — is the rhyming 
 romantic poetry of France naturalized. In its rise under Edward 
 I, native genius, in the vernacular, is poetical. The poetry is 
 religious, story-telling, and lyric, typified in the Onnulum , the 
 Brut , the Owl and Nightingale. As a whole the literature is 
 characterized by reality, directness, and truth to nature. Ele- 
 vated in tone, eminently practical in aim, — owing in a consider- 
 able degree to its insular position, it contrasts strongly with 
 much of the contemporaneous expression of Continental genius, 
 which is less the reflection of earnest, active life, than a magic 
 mirror showing forth the unsubstantial dreams of an idle, luxu- 
 rious, and fantastic people. 
 
 Latin is the key to erudition, — the prevailing language of the 
 learned professions, of law and physic, as well as of divinity, in 
 all their grades. French, the language of romance, lives upon 
 the lips of royalty, rank, and beauty. In the storm of national 
 calamity English ceases to be generally either written or read; 
 and when in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it begins to 
 raise its diminished head, it has been converted, substantially, 
 from an inflectional to a non-inflectional tongue, a natural muta- 
 tion accelerated by the Norman invasion. The Chronicle , the 
 Brut , and the Ormulum prove its continuity and victory. 
 
 The enthusiasm of the Crusades is succeeded by an enthusi- 
 asm of study, imprisoned and limited by the scholastic logic and 
 metaphysics, under whose ascendancy elegant literature pales. 
 
138 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 Scholasticism reveals already the dominant tendencies of Eng- 
 lish thought, — subordination of theory to practice, in John of 
 Salisbury; scepticism as to ultimate philosophical questions, in 
 Scotus; devotion to physical science as a thing of demonstrative 
 and practical utility, in Bacon. 
 
 The twelfth and thirteenth centuries are the seed-time of all 
 modern language and literature. The former is the great turning 
 point of the European intellect. Then it is that a general revival 
 of Latin literature takes place; then — the first time for many 
 centuries — the long slumber of untroubled orthodoxy is broken 
 by hydra-headed heresies; then the standard of an impartial 
 philosophy is first planted by Abelard; then the passion for 
 astrology and its fatalism revives with the revival of pagan learn- 
 ing, and penetrates into the halls of nobles and the palaces of 
 kings; men are learning to doubt, without learning that doubt is 
 innocent, compelled, by the new mental activity, to a variety of 
 opinions, while the old credulity persuades them that all opinions 
 but one are suggestions of the devil. The latter is a decisive 
 epoch, not more for the constitutional history of England than 
 for its intellectual progress. Its general activity and ardor are 
 shown by the great concourse of students to the universities, by 
 the number and eminence of the schoolmen, by religious and 
 political satires, by that flame of zeal which sweeps the masses 
 from their native soil to hurl them upon Holy Land. Then the 
 French romantic poetry with its craving for excitement, begins 
 to be transfused into a medium intelligible throughout England; 
 then, above all, a definite language is formed, and there is room 
 for a great writer. 
 
 Slowly, step by step, the England of the Doomsday Book, the 
 England of the Curfew, the England of crusaders, monks, astrolo- 
 gers, serfs, and outlaws, is becoming the England of liberty, 
 knowledge, and trade, — the England that spreads her dominion 
 over every quarter of the globe, and scatters the seeds of empires 
 .and republics in the jungles of India and the forests of America. 
 
THE SAXON MILTON. 
 
 139 
 
 CAEDMON. 
 
 The Milton of our Forefathers.— D' Israeli. 
 
 Biography, — His life lies buried in obscurity and fable. We 
 obtain our first glimpses of him as a peasant, on some of the 
 abbey lands of Whitby, who, though his sun was already declin- 
 ing, had never dreamed that he was a sublime poet. A marvel- 
 lous incident — according to the taste and manner of the age — 
 explains his literary history: 
 
 Once, sitting with his companions over the ale-cup, while they 
 sang in turn the praises of war or beauty, when the circling 
 ‘Wood of Joy’ passed to him, he rose and went out with a sad 
 heart, for he alone — all unskilled — was unable to weave his 
 thoughts into verse. Wearied and desponding, he lay down to rest 
 in a stall of oxen, of which he was the appointed night-guard. 
 As he slept, an angel appeared to him and said: ‘Caedmon, sing 
 some song to me ! ’ The herdsman urged that he was mute and 
 unmusical. ‘Nevertheless, thou shalt sing!’ retorted the benig- 
 nant stranger. ‘What shall I sing?’ rejoined the minstrel who 
 had never sung. ‘ Sing the origin of things ! ’ His imprisoned 
 intellect was unlocked, and he listened to the wonder of his own 
 voice through eighteen lines of ‘ Let us praise God, maker of 
 heaven and earth.’ In the morning he remembered the lines, 
 flew to the town-reeve 1 to announce his dream, told how, in one 
 memorable night — incapable even of reading his own Saxon, after 
 a whole life spent without ever surmising himself to be poetical — 
 he had become a poet, and desired to use his gift for the instruc- 
 tion of the people in the Heavenly Word. Good Abbess Hilda 
 in turn received him, heard him recite, was favorably impressed 
 with his rare talents, gave him an exercise to test his new-found 
 skill, then welcomed him, with all his goods, into the monastery; 
 the brethren read to him, from Genesis to Revelations, wrote 
 down his oracular sayings, and committed them to memory; so 
 winsome, so divine, were his song and his verse. Day by day, 
 piece by piece, the poem grew, till he had turned various parts 
 of Sacred Writ into English poetry. Severed from the cares of 
 
 1 Reeve , from Saxon gerefa , denotes a magistrate or officer: obsolete except in com- 
 pounds, as shire-reeve (now vvritten sheriff ) . 
 
140 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 the active world, in the deep calm of monastic seclusion, he lived 
 and wrought, living for the Unseen alone, and undisturbed by 
 either anxiety or doubt. One of the aspects, is this, in which the 
 monastic period of literature appears eminently beautiful, — free- 
 dom from the turmoil and impatience, the vanity and pride, of 
 modern literary life. Slowly wasted by disease, he died in 680, 
 near the hour of midnight, peacefully, — 
 
 ‘Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
 
 About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams . 1 
 
 Here, to the inquisitive who would go on knocking, the door 
 is closed. Over the outer history of the man, the accidental 
 circumstances of his life, oblivion ‘blindly scattereth her poppy.’ 
 Of more worth is the inner history of genius. The Dreamer 
 lives in his dream. 
 
 Writings. — The Paraphrase , containing, besides other por- 
 tions of the Bible, the story of the Creation, the Revolt, the 
 Fall, the Flood, and the Exodus. The sole manuscript is of the 
 tenth century; disappearing from visible existence, it was acci- 
 dentally discovered in the seventeenth, and first published in 
 1655, a thousand years after its composition. 
 
 Filled with the grandeur of his subject, in words of such 
 majesty as were never uttered of human heroes or Scandina- 
 vian gods, he sounds the key-note of a new poetic strain: 
 
 ‘ Most right is it that we, heaven’s Guard, 
 
 Glory, King of hosts! with words should praise, 
 
 With hearts should love. He is of powers the efficacy; 
 
 Head of all high creations; 
 
 Lord Almighty! In Him beginning never 
 Or origin hath been; but He is aye supreme 
 Over heaven-thrones, with high majesty 
 Righteous and mighty ! 1 
 
 A concrete of exclamations from a strong, barbarous heart; a 
 song of a servant of Odin, tonsured now, and clad in the habili- 
 ments of a monk. Then follow the rebellion of Satan, the expul- 
 sion of the angels, and their confinement in the fierv g*ulf. The 
 
 ci y c/ o 
 
 Hebrew Tempter, transformed by the German sense of might of 
 individual manhood, becomes a republican, disdainful of vassal- 
 age to God: 
 
 ‘“Wherefore,” he said, “shall I toil? 
 
 No need have I of master. I can work 
 
 With my own hands great marvels, and have power 
 
 To build a throne more worthy of a God, 
 
 Higher in heaven! Why shall I, for His smile. 
 
THE SAXON MILTON. 
 
 141 
 
 Serve Him, bend to Him thus in vassalage? 
 
 I may be God as He. 
 
 Stand by me, strong supporters, firm in strife. 
 
 Iiard-mooded heroes, famous warriors, 
 
 Have chosen me for chief; one may take thought 
 With such for counsel, and with such secure 
 Large following. My friends in earnest they, 
 
 Faithful in all the shaping of their minds; 
 
 I am the master, and may rule this realm.” 1 2 
 
 The two religions, Christian and pagan, so like, mingle their 
 incongruities, images, and legends. The patriarchs are earls; 
 Abraham is ‘a guardian of bracelets’ (wealth); the sons of 
 Reuben are vikings (sea-pirates) ; the Ethiopians are ‘ a people 
 brown with the hot coals of heaven’; God is the ‘Blithe-hearted 
 King,’ the Overlord, ruler of his thanes with an iron hand: 
 
 ‘ Stern of mood He was; He gript them in His wrath; with hostile hands He gript 
 them, and crushed them in His grasp. 1 
 
 For three nights and days 2 the Fiend, with his comrades, fell 
 headlong from the skies down to ‘the swart hell, — a land void 
 of light and full of flame .’ 3 * 
 
 ‘ There they have at even, immeasurably long, each of all the fiends, a renewal of 
 fire with sulphur charged; but cometh ere dawn the eastern wind-frost, bitter cold, 
 ever fire or dart. 1 4 
 
 In the ‘torture-house’ lies the Apostate in chains, proud, fear- 
 less, self-conscious, and indomitable, like the Northern warriors; 
 ‘the haughty king, who of angels erst was brightest, fairest in 
 heaven, beloved of his Master; so beauteous was his form, he 
 was like to the light stars .’ 5 Overcome, shall he be subdued? 
 
 ‘Within him boiled his thoughts about his heart; 
 
 Without, the wrathful fire pressed hot upon him. 
 
 He said: “This narrow place is most unlike 
 That other we once knew in heaven high, 
 
 And which my Lord gave me ; though own it now 
 
 1 See Paradise Lost , I and V, for remarkable resemblances. 
 
 2 Nine times the space that measures day and night 
 To mortal men. — Paradise Lost. 
 
 3 Yet from these flames 
 No light, but rather darkness visible.— Ibid. 
 
 * The bitter change 
 
 Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce. 
 
 From beds of raging fire to starve in ice. — Ibid. 
 
 And,— 
 
 Eternal darkness for the dwellers in fierce heat and ice.— Inferno. 
 
 5 His form had not yet lost 
 All her original brightness, nor appeared 
 Less than archangel ruined. — Paradise Lost. 
 
 And,— 
 
 His countenance as the morning star that guides 
 The starry flock, allured them.— Ibid. 
 
142 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 We must not, but to Him must cede our realm. 
 
 Yet right He hath not done to strike us down 
 To hell’s abyss,— of heaven’s realm bereft,— 
 
 Which with mankind to people He hath planned. 
 
 Pain sorest this, that Adam, wrought of earth, 
 
 On my strong throne shall sit, enjoying bliss. 
 
 While we endure these pangs, — hell-torments dire. 
 
 Oh ! woe is me ! could I but use my hands 
 And might I be from here a little time, — 
 
 One winter’s space,— then with this host would I,— 
 
 But press me hard these iron bands,— this coil 
 Of chain,— and powerless I am, so fast 
 I’m bound. Above is fire; below is fire; 
 
 A loathier landscape never have I seen; 
 
 Nor smolders aye the fire, but hot throughout. 
 
 In chains; my pathway barred; my feet tied down; 
 
 These hell-doors bolted all ; I may not move 
 From out these limb-bands; binds me iron hard, — 
 
 Hot-forged great grindles! God has griped me tight 
 About the neck.” ’ 1 
 
 But to him who has lost everything, vengeance is left. Indisso- 
 lubly bound, he dispatches an associate to wreak his ire on the 
 innocent pair in Eden. The emissary was ‘prompt in arms; he 
 had a crafty soul; this chief set his helmet on his head; he many 
 speeches knew of guileful words; wheeled up from thence, he 
 departed through the doors of hell ,’ 2 flinging aside the flames 
 with the bravery of his sovereign. Adam is invincible, but Eve 
 is ensnared; ‘for to her,’ we are assured, ‘a weaker mind had the 
 Creator assigned;’ ‘yet’ — let us treat her tenderly — ‘did she it 
 through faithful mind; she knew not that hence so many ills, 
 sinful woes, must follow to mankind.’ A theme fitter for the 
 historian or translator; too domestic for the barbarian poet’s vigor 
 and sublimity. Tumult, murder, combat and death are needed to 
 swell into flame the native instinct. When, later on, he describes 
 the flight of the Israelites, the strong breast heaves, and he shouts, 
 incapable of restraining his passion: 
 
 ‘They preferred their arms; the war advanced; bucklers glittered, trumpets blared, 
 standards rattled; . . . around them screamed the fowls of war ; the ravens sang, greedy 
 of battle, dewy-feathered; over the bodies of the host — dark choosers of the slain — 
 the wolves sang their horrid even-song.’ 
 
 With full zest, while the blood mounts in blinding currents to his 
 eyes, he recounts the destruction of Pharaoh and his host: 
 
 1 See Paradise Lost , I and IV, for singular correspondences. 
 
 u Reminding us of — 
 
 The infernal doors that on their hinges grate 
 Harsh thunder.— Paradise Lost. 
 
THE SAXON MILTON. 
 
 143 
 
 ‘The folk was affrighted, the flood-dread seized on their sad souls; ocean wailed 
 with death, the mountain heights were with blood besteamed, the sea foamed with gore, 
 crying was in the waves, the water full of weapons, a death-mist rose; the Egyptians 
 were turned back; trembling they fled, they felt fear; would that host gladly find their 
 homes; their vaunt grew sadder; against them, as a cloud, rose the fell rolling of the 
 waves; there came not any of that host to home, but from behind enclosed them fate 
 with the wave. Where wave e’er lay, the sea raged. Their might was merged, the 
 streams stood, the storm rose high to heaven; the loudest arm-cry the hostile uttered; 
 the air above was thickened with dying voices. . . . Ocean raged, drew itself up on high, 
 the storms rose, the corpses rolled.’ 
 
 Verily, the heathen fire has not burned out, nor the heathen 
 imagery dropped out of memory and power. The old faith and 
 the new coexist and combine. When the monks read to him the 
 opening of Genesis — ‘And the earth was void and empty, and 
 darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of God 
 moved over the waters’ — he is reminded of his ancestral cosmos:- 
 ony as preserved in the Edcla , and the coloring of those ancient 
 dreams clings to his description: 
 
 ‘There had not as yet, save cavern-shade, ought been; but this wide abyss stood deep 
 ;and dim, strange to its Lord, idle and useless; on which looked with his eyes the king 
 firm of mind, and beheld those places void of joys; saw the dark cloud lower in eternal 
 night, swart under heaven, dark and waste, until this worldly creation, through the 
 word, existed of the Glory-King. . . The earth as yet was not green with grass; ocean 
 •cover'd, swart in eternal night, far and wide the dusky ways.’ 
 
 The Caedmonian poem, it is probable, is one of the many attempts 
 •of the monkish recluse to familiarize the people with the miracu- 
 lous and religious narratives of Scripture by a paraphrase in the 
 vernacular idiom. Of the two books composing it, only the first 
 is continuous; the second is fragmentary. Perhaps the discord- 
 ances are no greater than we should expect in a manuscript text 
 passing from generation to generation; perhaps they indicate 
 that the paraphrase, interrupted at intervals, was resumed by 
 some successor, as idling monks at a subsequent period were 
 often the continuators of voluminous romances. Its new mythol- 
 ogy will frame the miracle-play. Milton, finding his originals in 
 the Puritans, as Caedmon in the Vikings, will adopt it in his epic, 
 -assisted in the development of his thought by all the resources of 
 Latin culture and civilization. 
 
 Style . — Iterative, vivid, harsh, curt, emphatic, ejaculative; as 
 in all true Saxon poetry, whose genuine type is the war-song, 
 where the verses fall like sword-strokes in the thick of battle. 
 
 Rank. — Nature in her first poverty, displaying the primitive 
 force of the self-taught. A type of the grandeur, depth, and 
 
144 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 tragic tone which the German race was to give to the religion of 
 the East. Never before had the English language clothed such 
 sublime thoughts. Never had limitless desire so struggled, giant- 
 like, with limited utterance. ‘Others after him,’ says Bede,, 
 ‘attempted, in the English nation, to compose religious poems, 
 but none could ever compare with him.’ Above the din of war 
 and bloodshed, amid the brutality and mental inaction of cen- 
 turies, he raised his voice and sang the substance of which all the 
 ancient myths were but the shadow; sang with such fervor and 
 persuasion that ‘ many were often excited to despise the world,, 
 and to aspire to heaven.’ The prototype of Milton, as the picture 
 exists in the sketch: the one, the rough draft; the other, the 
 finished intellectual ideal. To the one Satan is a Saxon convict, 
 — fastened by the neck, his hands manacled, and his feet bound;, 
 to the other, the ideal being, — 
 
 ‘Whose stature reached the sky, and on whose crest 
 Sat Horror plumed. 1 
 
 The precursor of a new order of ideas, standing at the conflu- 
 ence of two civilizations; a monumental figure placed between 
 two epochs and participating in their two characters, as a stream 
 which, flowing between two different soils, is tinged by both 
 their hues. 
 
 Character. — Cheerful and kind, able to obey or command; ' 
 attentive and punctual in the performance of duty; serious, emi- 
 nently religious, fond of prayer. ‘ He never,’ writes Bede, ‘ could 
 compose frivolous and useless poems, but those alone pertaining' 
 to religion became his religious tongue.’ A rough, noble ex- 
 pression of the vague, vast mystery of the world and of man. 
 A moment, as old age closes upon him, he lifts the veil, and we 
 see, as we read, the charity, pathos, resignation, Northern melan- 
 choly, of the man: 
 
 ‘ Soul-longings many in my day I’ve had. 
 
 My life's hope now is that the Tree of Triumph 
 Must seek I. Than all others oftener 
 Did I alone extol its glories; 
 
 Thereto my will is bent, and when I need 
 A claim for shelter, to the Rood I'll go. 
 
 Of mightiest friends, from me are many now 
 Unclasped, and far away from our world's joys; 
 
 They sought the Lord of Hosts, and now in heaven, 
 
 With the High-Father, live in glee and glory; 
 
 And for the day most longingly I wait, 
 
OUR FIRST HISTORIAN. 
 
 145 
 
 When the Saviour’s Rood that here I contemplate 
 From this frail life shall take me into bliss, — 
 
 The bliss of Heaven’s wards: the Lord's folk there 
 Is seated at the feast; there’s joy unending; 
 
 And He shall set me there in glory, 
 
 And with the saints their pleasures I shall share.’ 
 
 Influence. — He draped the Oriental imagery of the Bible in 
 the English fashion, and brought it within the comprehension of 
 the humblest. His verses became part of the people’s thinking, 
 created for it a new groove, and the recollections of Valhalla 
 paled before the more spiritual and real splendors of the New 
 Elysium. He wrought no revolution in the form of English 
 song, but introduced into it, through the faith of Christ, new 
 realms of fancy. 
 
 In our rasping life of gain, we are apt to imagine that art 
 is of little account, but when the years roll by, we learn well 
 •enough what the ages value. No doubt this Caedmon, in his 
 ill-furnished room, seemed to the practical man of trade a pitiful 
 cipher, quite out of the march of important affairs; but even 
 their names are forgotten, and all their wealth would now be 
 given for one of the songs of the Whitby shepherd. 
 
 BEDE. 
 
 The Father of English learning.— Burke. 
 
 Biography. — Born in the county of Durham, 673; at seven, 
 placed in the newly-founded monastery of St. Peter, Wearmouth; 
 at ten, transferred to the associated monastery of St. Paul, Jar- 
 row, five miles distant. Here, during the remainder of his life, 
 in retirement and prayer, he applied himself to the study of 
 Scripture and the advancement of knowledge. In his nineteenth 
 year, he received the orders of deacon; in his thirtieth, those of 
 the priesthood. The dignity of abbot he declined; ‘for,’ said he, 
 i the office demands household care, and household care brings with 
 it distraction of mind, which hinders the prosecution of learning.’ 
 To the very last he worked hard, teaching his numerous dis- 
 ciples and compiling in Latin from the venerable Fathers. Death 
 comes and finds him still at work. Under an attack of asthma, 
 10 
 
146 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 which has long been sapping his strength, he is urging forward 
 an English version of the Gospel of St. John. It is morning on 
 the 27th of May. ‘Most dear master,’ says one of his pupils, 
 ‘there is still one chapter wanting; do you think it troublesome 
 to be asked any more questions?’ — ‘It is no trouble,’ he answers; 
 ‘take thy pen, and write fast.’ At noon, he takes a solemn fare- 
 well of his friends, distributing among them treasured spices 
 and other gifts. At sunset the boy says, ‘Dear master, there is 
 yet one sentence unwritten.’ — ‘Write it quickly,’ bids the dying- 
 scholar. ‘It is finished now,’ says the scribe at last. — ‘You have 
 spoken truly,’ is the reply, ‘all is finished. Receive my head 
 into your hands; for it is a great satisfaction to me to sit facing 
 my holy place, where I was wont to pray.’ And there on the 
 pavement of his little cell, in the year 735, he falls into his last 
 sleep as his voice reaches the close of the solemn chant, ‘Glory 
 be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.’ 
 
 A tranquil death becomes the man of science or the scholar. 
 The coward dies panic-stricken; the superstitious with visions of 
 terror floating before their fancy: he who has a good conscience 
 and a well-balanced mind, meets death with calmness and hope. 
 Heaven has but ‘recalled its own.’ 
 
 Writings. — The work which immortalizes his name is the 
 j Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation (731), written — 
 like nearly all his works — in Latin. A digest of ancient records, 
 of tradition, and of observation. Though tinged with the cre- 
 dulity of his time, it is based upon inquiries made in the true 
 spirit of a historian, — business-like, yet child-like, practical, and 
 spiritual. It is virtually a history of England brought down to 
 the date of its completion. 
 
 At the end of this book, he gives a list of his compositions, — 
 hymns, commentaries, and homilies; text-books for his pupils, 
 throwing together all that the world had then accumulated in 
 astronomy, physics, philosophy, grammar, rhetoric, medicine, and 
 music. Almost the last words that broke from his lips were 
 some English rhymes upon the uncertainties of the grave: 
 
 Before the necessary journey 
 
 no one is 
 
 wiser of thought 
 
 than he hath need, 
 
 to consider 
 
 before his departure, 
 
 what for his spirit 
 of good or evil 
 
 after the death-day 
 shall be doomed.’ 
 
OUR FIRST HISTORIAN. 
 
 147 
 
 Style. — Artless, succinct, moral, and reflective; clear, and 
 often warm with life. 
 
 Rank. — Accomplished in the classics — a rare accomplish- 
 ment in the West, skilled in the ecclesiastical chant, and master 
 of the whole range of the science of his day. First in the order 
 of time, among English scholars, and first among English histo- 
 rians. The glory of the old English period. The living encyclo- 
 paedia of his age; superior perhaps (so dark was the intellectual 
 night in the East, as in the West) to any man whom the world 
 then possessed. Yet, withal, a great man of talent, not a great 
 man of genius; a prodigious worker rather than a discoverer; 
 a translator, a commentator, who, amid growing anarchy and 
 gross ignorance, digests and compacts, out of dull, voluminous, or 
 almost inaccessible books, what seems good and useful, — doing 
 for the rest what they are unable to do for themselves. 
 
 Character. — Gentle, pure, simple-minded, earnest, and de- 
 vout. Learning but deepened the lustre of his piety. His soul 
 was a sanctuary lighted up with the lamps of angels, and dedi- 
 cated to the high service of man and his Maker. By nature a 
 student, his paradise was introspective. 4 My constant pleasure,’ 
 he says, 4 lay in learning, or teaching, or writing.’ In acquiring* 
 and communicating, his industry was marvellous. Besides the 
 usual manual labors of the monastery, the duties of the priest, 
 and the occupation of teacher, forty-five treatises remained after 
 his death to attest his habitual activity. All this was done with 
 small aid from others. 4 1 am my own secretary,’ he writes; ‘I 
 make my own notes; I am my own librarian.’ 
 
 Influence. — From his Ecclesiastical History we learn nearly 
 all that we know of the Anglo-Saxons and their Church. He is 
 the first figure to which our English science looks back, and the 
 father of English national education. Six hundred monks, be- 
 sides the strangers that flocked hither for instruction, formed his 
 school of Jarrow; and Northumbria became, for a period, the 
 literary centre of Western Europe. Dissensions and confusion, 
 attending the disintegration of the original political system, will 
 bruise this humble plant, and the wars with the Danes will com- 
 plete the blight of its promise. Yet will it have, silently, insen- 
 sibly, a numerous and illustrious progeny. Centuries hence, his 
 
148 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 theological and educational works will be held in esteem as 
 authorities and text-books. The light that issues from Jarrow 
 extends to York; Alcuin, by the invitation of Charlemagne, car- 
 ries it thence to the Continent; French statesmanship and Saxon 
 scholarship go hand in hand to diffuse mediaeval civilization; and 
 so, while the fields are wasted by violence, famine, and plague, 
 the Venerable Bede is as a tree planted by the river’s side; his 
 branches shall spread, and his beauty be as the olive, and his 
 smell as Lebanon; and what though he dare not speak, they that 
 dwell under his shadow shall return, — they shall revive as the 
 corn and grow as the vine. 
 
 ALFRED. 
 
 The most perfect character in history. He is a singular instance of a prince who 
 has become a hero of romance, who, as such, has had countless imaginary exploits 
 attributed to him, but to whose character romance has done no more than justice, and 
 who appears in exactly the same light in history and in fable. — Freeman. 
 
 Biography. — Born at Wantage, 849. Sent to Rome at five, 
 anointed by the Pope, and adopted as his spiritual son; again, 
 two years later, travelling in the train of a king, now at the 
 court of the grandson of Charlemagne, now at the castles of 
 warrior nobles, now with the learned prelates — across the Alps — 
 through the garden of the world — renewing the memories of his 
 childhood amid the ruins, shrines, and palaces of the Eternal 
 City, — what an episode in his young life for observation and 
 thought! Returning, he learns, with the young nobles of Wes- 
 sex, to run, leap, wrestle, and hunt; illiterate at twelve, and 
 during the period of youth, though a lover of wisdom, without 
 the advantages of special tuition. Marries at twenty, while 
 England is growing dark under the shadow of a tremendous 
 storm; within six weeks, is in arms; at twenty-three, ascends the 
 tottering throne of his fathers, when nine pitched battles have 
 been fought; reduces the pagan leaders to sue humbly for peace, 
 and three months later, in January, is obliged to flee, with a 
 scanty band of followers, into the forest of Selwood. Here, in 
 disguise, in a herdman’s hut, by the burning logs on the hearth, 
 
THE TYPICAL KING. 
 
 149 
 
 he mends his bow and arrows. The good house-wife confides to 
 his care her baking loaves: but his thought is elsewhere, and 
 they are burning rapidly to cinders. The irate woman, running 
 , up to remove them, exclaims: 
 
 ‘Ca'sn thee mind the ke-aks, man, an’ doossen zee 'em burn? 
 
 I’m bound thee’s eat 'em vast enough az zoon az 'tis the turn!’ 
 
 Near Easter a gleam of good news from the west gladdens the 
 hearts of the wanderers; and in the lengthening days of spring, 
 strong men and true are rallied, for word is abroad that the hero- 
 king is alive; the spirit of the red-handed Dane is broken, and in 
 the resulting fusion of elements are laid the foundations of a 
 better England. The messengers of death are also the messen- 
 gers of resurrection. There is leisure now for reform, and for 
 upwards of four precious years King Alfred pushes forward the 
 work of internal repair and improvement — material and educa- 
 tional. But in the middle of reforms, while the country is thrill- 
 ing with awakening life, the war-cloud gathers again, and he pre- 
 pares to meet another great wave of invasion. The final issue is 
 tried between Christian and Pagan. In three years the Saxon 
 prevails — ‘Thanks be to God,’ says the Chronicle. Thenceforth 
 his reign is devoted to raising the slothful and stolid nation out 
 of the exhaustion in which the life-and-death struggle have left 
 it. Worn out by the constant stress of government and a grievous 
 but unknown complaint, which the physicians ascribed to the 
 spite of the Devil, he died on the 26th of October, 901, in the 
 fifty-second year of his age, closing his eyes on peace at home 
 and abroad. The good die early; the world’s hardest workers 
 and noblest benefactors rarely burn to the socket. 
 
 Writings. — Chiefly translations into English of the popular 
 manuals of the time, omitting here and expanding there, as might 
 be needful for English use: 
 
 Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England. Perhaps rever- 
 ence for the venerable author caused him to present it without 
 change or addition. It seems likely that his rendering of this 
 work gave the first impulse toward the compilation of the Saxon 
 Chronicle. 
 
 Orosius ’ Universal History , whose scope is thus characteristi- 
 cally summed up by its author — a Spaniard of the fifth century: 
 
 ‘I have now set out by the help of Christ, and in obedience to yonr desire, O most 
 blessed father Augustine, the lusts and punishments of sinfuJ men, the conflicts of the 
 
150 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 ages, and the judgments of God, from the beginning of the world to the present time; 
 that is to say, for 5617 years.’ 
 
 The text — dull enough, though probably the best account of 
 human affairs available to Alfred — is enriched with the new 
 geographical discoveries in the North, including reports of the 
 Northern voyages made by two of his sea-captains. With gossip 
 worthy of Herodotus, we are told: 
 
 ‘Eastland is very large, and there are in it many towns, and in every town a king; 
 and there is also great abundance of honey and fish; and the king and the richest men 
 drink mare's milk, and the poor and the slaves drink mead. They have many contests 
 among themselves; and there is no ale brewed among the Esthonians, for there is mead 
 enough.’ 
 
 Funerals are postponed by the relatives as long as possible, 
 according to the riches of the deceased; kings and the great 
 lying in state for half a year: for — 
 
 ‘There is a tribe which can produce cold, and so the dead in whom they produce 
 that cold lie very long there and do not putrefy; and if any one sets two vessels full of 
 ale or water, they contrive that one shall be frozen, be it summer or be it winter.’ 
 
 The living drink and sport, till the day of burial or burning: 
 
 ‘On that day they divide the dead man’s property into five or six portions, according 
 to value, and place it out, the largest portion about a mile from the dwelling where the 
 dead man lies, then another, then a third, and so on till it is all laid within the mile. 
 Then all the neighbors within five or six miles who have swift horses, meet and ride 
 towards the property; and he who has the swiftest horse comes to the first and largest 
 portion, and so each after other till the whole is taken ; and he takes the least portion 
 who takes that which is nearest the dwelling: and then every one rides away with the 
 property, and they may have it all; and on this account swift horses are there exces- 
 sively dear.’ 
 
 Boethius ’ Consolations of Philosophy, the hand-book of the 
 Middle Ages for the serious. ‘A golden book,’ says Gibbon, 
 ‘not unworthy the leisure of Plato or Tully.’ Few books are 
 more striking from the circumstances of their production. It 
 was written in prison, in the dying-swan-like tones of Aurelius. 
 The reflections that consoled the writer in bonds were soon 
 required to support him in the hour of his execution. To him 
 whose soul is his country, a dungeon is the vestibule of Heaven. 
 The mind, shut out from this scene of sensible things, retires 
 into its own infinite domain. In Milton and Bunyan we shall 
 see how wide, when the outer world loses its charms, the inner 
 opens its gates. 
 
 The burden of the work is, that a wise God rules the world; 
 that man in his worst extremity possesses much, and ought to 
 fix his thoughts on the imperishable; that God is the chief good. 
 
THE TYPICAL KING. 
 
 151 
 
 and works no evil; that, as seen in Eternity, only the good are 
 happy; that God’s foreknowledge is reconcilable with the free- 
 will of man. It is a work congenial to Alfred’s thinking; for 
 he, like Boethius, has known adversity. Moreover, he would 
 give to his people a system of moral precepts. To do this, he 
 must stoop as to a child; for his audience has never thought or 
 known anything. In this style — asking his readers to pray for 
 him and not to blame him for his imperfect attainments — he 
 renders the refined sentiments and classical allusions of the grand 
 Roman Senator: 
 
 l It happened formerly that there was a harper in the country called Thrace, which 
 was in Greece. The harper was inconceivably good. His name was Orpheus. He had 
 a very excellent wife, called Eurydice. Then began men to say concerning the harper, 
 that he could harp so that the wood moved, and the stones stirred themselves at the 
 sound, and wild beasts would run thereto, and stand as if they were tame ; so still, that 
 though men or hounds pursued them, they shunned them not. Then said they that 
 the harper’s wife should die, and her soul should be led to hell. Then should the harper 
 become so sorrowful that he could not remain among the men, but frequented the wood, 
 and sat on the mountains, both day and night, weeping and harping, so that the woods 
 shook, and the rivers stood still, and no hart shunned any lion, nor hare any hound; 
 nor did cattle know any hatred, or any fear of others, for the pleasure of the sound. 
 Then it seemed to the harper that nothing in this world pleased him. Then thought 
 he that he would seek the gods of hell, and endeavour to allure them with his harp, 
 and pray that they would give him back his wife. When he came thither, then should 
 there come towards him the dog of hell, whose name was Cerberus, — he should have 
 three heads,— and began to wag his tail, and play with him for his harping. Then was 
 there also a very horrible gatekeeper, whose name should be Charon. He had also 
 three heads, and he was very old. Then began the harper to beseech him that he would 
 protect him while he was there, and bring him thence again safe. Then did he promise 
 that to him, because he was desirous of the unaccustomed sound. Then went he further 
 until he met the fierce goddesses, whom the common people call Parcre, of whom they 
 say that they know no respect for any man, but punish every man according to his 
 deeds; and of whom they say that they control every man's fortune. Then began he 
 to implore their mercy. Then began they to weep with him. Then went he farther, 
 and all the inhabitants of hell ran towards him, and led him to their king; and all began 
 to speak with him, and to pray that which he prayed. And the restless wheel which 
 Ixion, the king of the Lapittne, was bound to for his guilt, that stood still for his harp- 
 ing. And Tantalus the king, who in this world was immoderately greedy, and whom 
 that same vice of greediness followed there, he became quiet. And the vulture should 
 cease, so that he tore not the liver of Tityus the king, which before therewith tor- 
 mented him. And all the punishments of the inhabitants of hell were suspended 
 whilst he harped before the king. When he long and long had harped, then spoke the 
 king of the inhabitants of hell, and said, “Let tis give the man his wife, for he has 
 earned her by his harping.” He then commanded him that he should well observe that 
 he never looked backwards after he departed thence; and said if he looked backwards, 
 that he should lose the woman. But men can with great difficulty, if at all, restrain 
 love! Wellaway! What! Orpheus then led his wife with him till he came to the 
 boundary of light and darkness. Then went his wife after him. When he came forth 
 into the light, then looked he behind his back towards the woman. Then was she im- 
 mediately lost to him. This fable teaches every man who desires to fly the darkness 
 of hell, and to come to the light of true good, that he look not about him to his old 
 vices, so that he practise them again as fully as he did before. For whosoever with full 
 
152 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 will turns his mind to the vices which he had before forsaken, and practises them, and 
 they then fully please him, and he never thinks of forsaking them; then loses he all 
 his former good unless he again amend it.’ 
 
 Gregory , on the Care of the Soul , which seemed to Alfred a 
 most suitable manual for the clergy in their lethargic state. It 
 is in the preface to this work that he tells us of the sad decay of 
 learning in his kingdom, and of his desire for its true restoration: 
 
 ‘ I wish you to know that it often occurs to my mind to consider what manner of 
 wise men there were formerly in the English nation, both spiritual and temporal, and 
 how happy the times then were among the English, and how well the kings behaved in 
 their domestic government, and how they prospered in knowledge and wisdom. I con- 
 sidered also how earnest God’s ministers then were, as well about preaching as about 
 learning, and men came from foreign countries to seek wisdom and doctrine in this 
 land, and how we, who live in these times, are obliged to go abroad to get them. To so 
 low a depth has learning fallen among the English nation, that there have been very 
 few on this side of the Humber, who were able to understand the English of their ser- 
 vice, or to turn an epistle out of Latin into English; and 1 know there were not many 
 beyond the Humber who could do it. There were so few, that I cannot think of one on 
 the south side of the Thames when I first began to reign. God Almighty be thanked 
 that we have always a teacher in the pulpit now. . . . When I thought of all this, I fan- 
 cied also that I saw (before everything was ravaged and burned) how all the churches 
 throughout the English nation stood full of books, though at that time they gathered 
 very little fruit from their books, not being able to understand them, because they were 
 not written in their own language. For which reason I think it best, if you too think so, 
 that we should turn into the language, which we all of us know, some such books as are 
 deemed most useful for all men to understand. . . . When I reflected how this learning 
 of the Latin tongue had fallen throughout the English nation, though many knew how to 
 read English writing, I then began in the midst of divers and manifold affairs of this 
 kingdom, to turn into Anglo-Saxon this book, which in Latin is named Pastorcilis, and 
 in Anglo-Saxon the Herdsman' s Book; and I will send one of them to every bishop’s see 
 in my kingdom.’ 
 
 Proverbs , compiled in the reign of Henry IT, and lienee in the 
 broken dialect of the transition period. They mirror a wise and 
 benevolent spirit. The scholar and the man outshine the king. 
 We know him better and honor him more when we read from his 
 own lips: 
 
 ‘The right nobility is in the mind, not in the flesh.’ 
 
 ‘Power is never a good unless he be good that has it; and that is the good of the 
 man, not of the power.’ 
 
 ‘Learn therefore wisdom; and when you have learned it, do not neglect it. I tell 
 you then, without any doubt, that by it you may come to power, though you should not 
 desire the power.’ 
 
 In almost the last of the series, he addresses his son: 
 
 1 My dear son, set thee now beside me, and I will deliver thee true instructions. My 
 son, I feel that my hour is coming. My countenance is wan. My days are almost done. 
 We must now part. I shall go to another world, and thou shalt be left alone in all my 
 wealth. I pray thee (for thou art my dear child), strive to be a father and a lord to thy 
 people; be thou the children's father and the widow’s friend; comfort thou the poor 
 and shelter the weak; and with all thy might, right that which is wrong. And, son, 
 govern thyself by law; then shall the Lord love thee, and God above all things shall be 
 
THE TYPICAL KING. 
 
 153 
 
 thy reward. Call thou upon Him to advise thee in all thy need, and so He shall help thee 
 the better to compass that which thou wishest.’ 
 
 Some truths and precepts are like diamonds, which may be set 
 a hundred times in as many generations without loss of beauty 
 or of lustre. 
 
 Style. — Artless, earnest, but sober; abrupt, yet long drawn 
 out; practical and moral, like the man; idiomatic in vocabulary 
 and arrangement, showing a strong repugnance to the importa- 
 tion of foreign words, a quality certainly due in part to his object 
 — the instruction of a barbarous audience. 
 
 Character. — Tradition tells of his genial good-nature, his love 
 of song, his eager desire for knowledge and the improvement of 
 society. His words, and the books selected as the objects of his 
 chief efforts, indicate strongly the union of zeal with moderation, 
 of practical judgment with serious and elevated sentiment, of 
 untiring industry with eminent piety. How or when he learned 
 to read or write, we know not. Asser, his contemporary, says: 
 
 ‘His noble nature implanted in him from his cradle a love of wisdom above all things; 
 but, with shame be it spoken, by the unworthy neglect of his parents and nurses, he 
 remained illiterate even till he was twelve years old or more; but he listened with 
 serious attention to the Saxon poems which he often heard recited, and easily retained 
 them in his docile memory.’ 
 
 And again: 
 
 ‘This he confessed, with many lamentations and sighs, to have been one of his 
 greatest difficulties and impediments in this life, namely, that when he was young and 
 had the capacity for learning, he could not find teachers.’ 
 
 Careful of detail and methodical, he carries in his bosom a note- 
 book in which he jots down things as they strike him; now a 
 prayer, now a story, now an event, now an image. Asser, in- 
 structed to write in it a passage which he has just read to the 
 king, says: 
 
 ‘ But I could not find any empty space in that book wherein to write the quotation, 
 for it was already full of various matters.’ 
 
 Four priests read to him whenever he has leisure, Asser among 
 the number: 
 
 ‘I read to him whatever books he liked, and such as he had at hand; for this is his 
 usual custom, both night and day, amid his many other occupations of mind and body, 
 either himself to read books, or to listen whilst others read them.’ 
 
 But there is a God in this universe, and a God’s sanction, with 
 which a nation may not dispense without peril, nor a man without 
 
154 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 decay of the heart and dimming of the eye. Without a realized 
 sense of the divine, the intellect can have no clear vision on moral 
 mountains, nor the national character become great, firm and 
 glorious. A lost faith or an indifferent faith is fatal to all high 
 ideal. Alfred has neither. The strong moral bent of his mind is 
 seen in some of the novelties of his legislation. He believes there 
 is an order from everlasting, and declares it as he understands it, 
 without balancing expediencies or plausibilities. His ‘Dooms,’ 
 .accordingly, are an almost literal transcript of the Decalogue, 
 with selections from the Mosaic code; as, — 
 
 ‘These are the dooms that thou shalt set them:— If any one buy a Christian bonds- 
 man, be he bondsman to him six years, the seventh be he free unbonght. With such 
 clothes as he went in, with such go he out. If he himself have a wife, go she out with 
 him. If, however, the lord gave him a wife, go she and her bairn the lord’s. If then the 
 bondsman say, I will not go from my lord, nor from my wife, nor from my bairn, nor 
 from my goods, let then his lord bring him to the church door, and drill through his ear 
 with an awl, to witness that he be ever thenceforth a bondsman.’ 1 
 
 Amid the cares of state, racked by almost ceaseless pain, he finds 
 time for daily religious services: 
 
 ‘Because he feared the anger of God, if he should do anything contrary to his will, 
 he used often to rise in the morning at the cock-crow, and go to pray in the churches 
 and at the relics of the saints.’ 
 
 He consecrates to God the half of his possible services, bodily 
 and mental. To prove his sincerity, he contrives a time-piece for 
 the more exact measurement of the hours, since at night on 
 account of the darkness, and frequently at day on account of the 
 clouds, he cannot always accurately estimate them. He has six 
 candles made, of equal length, each with twelve divisions or rings. 
 Lighted in succession, they burn a night and a day: 
 
 ‘But sometimes when they would not continue burning a whole day and night, till 
 the same hour that they were lighted the preceding evening, from the violence of the 
 wind, which blew day and night without intermission through the doors and windows of 
 the churches, the fissures of the divisions, the plankings, or the wall, or the thin canvas 
 of the tents, they then unavoidably burned out and finished their course before the 
 appointed time; the king therefore considered by what means he might shut out the 
 wind, and so by a useful and cunning invention, he ordered a lantern to be beautifully 
 constructed of wood and white ox-horn, which when skilfully planed till it is thin, is no 
 less transparent than a vessel of glass.’ 
 
 Though simple and kindly in temper, he is a stern inquisitor in 
 executing justice. He has twenty-four officers hung for corrup- 
 tion in the judgment-seat. 
 
 Affable and liberal, patient, brave, just, and temperate, with a 
 
 See Exodus xxi, 1-6. 
 
THE TYPICAL KING. 
 
 155 
 
 clear conscience he may testify: ‘This I can now truly say, that 
 so long as I have lived I have striven to live worthily, and after 
 my death to leave my memory to my descendants in good works.’ 
 
 Rank. — Without the genius to invent and originate, he had 
 the talent to adapt means to ends, to develop and improve the 
 old, to think what the many think and cannot yet say. A great 
 gift, no doubt. It is men of great talent who occupy the head- 
 lands of society. In politics, in war, in letters, Alfred simply 
 takes what is nearest and makes the best of it. As an author, he 
 is like Bede, a teacher of semi-barbarians, who tries not to create 
 but to compile, to pick out and explain from Greek and Latin 
 stories something which may suit the people of his age; as a 
 father who draws his little boy between his knees, and with much 
 pains relates a fairy tale or makes an idea clear by visible and 
 tangible things. 
 
 There is no evidence of the imaginative qualities which mark 
 the higher statesman. His sphere of action, indeed, was too 
 narrow to justify his comparison, politically or intellectually, with 
 the immortal few. What really lifts him to their level is the 
 moral grandeur of his life. Nay, his altitude is the greater in 
 proportion as wisdom is above knowledge, and goodness above 
 genius, or spiritual growth above mental culture. Among 
 recorded rulers he is unique. What other has possessed so 
 many virtues with so little alloy? A soldier, a statesman, a law- 
 giver, a lover of learning, and an author of repute; a prince with- 
 out personal ambition, all whose wars were fought in his coun- 
 try’s defense, who bore adversity with noble fortitude and wore 
 his laurels in noble simplicity, steering the ship of state, with a 
 turbulent crew, through a stormy sea, — there is none like him. 
 Of no other will it ever be said that he is ‘England’s darling.’ 
 
 Influence. — Solicitous of his own enlightenment, he never 
 forgot that his first duty was to his people. He educated himself 
 (nearly forty before he acquired an imperfect acquaintance with 
 Latin) that he might educate them. He rebuilt monasteries, 
 and made them educational centres; superintended a school in 
 his own palace, sent abroad for instructors, and desired that 
 every free-born youth who possessed the means should ‘ abide at 
 his book till he well understand English writing’; had skilled 
 
156 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 mechanics brought from the Continent, who built houses, says 
 Asser, 6 majestic and good beyond all the precedents of his ances- 
 tors.’ His legislation left imperishable traces upon England. In 
 his court, at his impulse, perchance in his very words, English 
 history begins. 1 True the light will wane and flicker. The flood 
 of national calamity, rising ominously during his life, shall seem 
 to sweep utterly away the ripening harvest of Saxon civilization; 
 but force is indestructible; and that spirit of moral strength, felt 
 afar off, lives still beneath the sun, as seed springs from seed. 
 The oak dies, but the acorn lives. Each moral world is related 
 to many others. The novels of Scott produce the historical 
 works of Guizot and Thiers; the voice of Demosthenes, though 
 it has long since died away over his native shores, heaves many a 
 living breast; and the heart of Paul, whose head was claimed by 
 Nero long ago, beats sacred music in a thousand pulpits. 
 
 ROGER BACON. 
 
 Xaipere Kij pvKes Aio? ayyeAoi r\he icai avSpOjv. 
 
 Hail, Heralds, messengers of God and men ! — Homer. 
 
 Biography. — Born in the county of Somerset, 1214, of a 
 wealthy family, which had been driven into exile and reduced 
 to poverty by the civil wars. Studied at Oxford, then at Paris, 
 as was at that time the custom of learned Englishmen, and there 
 received the degree of Doctor of Divinity. His whole heritage 
 was spent in costly studies and experiments. Soon after his 
 return home, withdrawing from the civil strife fermenting be- 
 tween the baronage and the Crown, he became a mendicant 
 friar of the order of St. Francis, and settled at Oxford, devoting 
 himself to study with extraordinary fervor, notwithstanding the 
 discipline of the Franciscans, who looked upon books and study 
 as hinderances to their appointed mission of preaching among 
 the masses of the poor. Physics seems to have been the chief 
 object of his labors, and liberal friends of science supplied him 
 with means for pursuing his researches. His spreading fame 
 
 That is, English history expressed in the vernacular. 
 
HERALD OF THE COMING DAY. 
 
 157 
 
 was mingled with suspicions of his dealings in magic; and the 
 prejudice of the ignorant was encouraged by the jealousy of his 
 superiors and brethren. An accusation was brought against him 
 at the Papal court, and he was interdicted from teaching in the 
 university. For ten years he was under constant supervision, 
 forbidden to publish anything under pain of forfeiture of the 
 book and penance of bread and water. The pope, who had 
 heard of his rare acquirements, requested him to write. Friends 
 raised the necessary money by pawning their goods, upon the 
 understanding that their loan should be made known to the 
 Holy See. Within fifteen months, despite all obstacles, three 
 large treatises 1 were dispatched to Rome, ‘on account of the 
 danger of roads and the possible loss of the work,’ by a youth 
 who had been trained and educated with great care by Bacon 
 himself. In 1278, a vehement reformer ere the current of opinion 
 had turned against former establishments, he was thrown into 
 prison, where he remained fourteen years. In 1294, when his 
 life had almost covered the thirteenth century, the old man 
 died, having endured the obloquy of all revolutionists who are 
 not themselves creatures of the revolution. 
 
 "Writings. — His monumental work is the Opus Jtfajus (1267). 
 It is divided into six parts: 
 
 Part I treats of the sources of error and causes of igno- 
 rance, — authority, custom, popular opinion, and ostentatious 
 pride. Like a careful and ambitious builder, filled with a new 
 grand idea of nature and life, he lays a sure foundation for the 
 vast superstructure which his plan embraces. Without certain 
 practical conditions, a speculative knowledge of the most perfect 
 method of procedure remains barren and unapplied. Bacon the 
 Friar proves his kinship with the great lights of the world by his 
 precepts, similar to theirs, on the disposition proper to philosophy. 
 Before him, Socrates had said: ‘To attain to a knowledge of 
 ourselves we must banish prejudice, passion and sloth.’ Bacon 
 the Chancellor was yet to say: ‘If the human intellect hath 
 once taken a liking to any doctrine, either because received and 
 credited, or because otherwise pleasing, — it draws everything 
 
 1 Opus Majus , Opus Minus , and Opus Tertium; or, The Greater Work , The Less Work , 
 and The Third Work. The Minus is little more than a summary of the Majus , and the 
 Tertium an appendix to it; both still exist unpublished in the Cottonian and other 
 libraries. 
 
158 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 else into harmony with that doctrine and to its support.’ And 
 Sir W. Raleigh: ‘It is opinion, not truth, that travelleth the 
 world without passport.’ ‘Opinion,’ says the great Pascal, ‘dis- 
 poses of all things. It constitutes beauty, justice, happiness.’ 
 And the pious Charon: ‘Almost every opinion we have, we 
 have but by authority; we believe, judge, act, live, and die on 
 trust; a common custom teaches us.’ Vanity, self-love, tradition- 
 ary habit, the prestige of a great name, are powerful impedi- 
 ments to a progress in knowledge. Unless we can cast off the 
 prejudices of the man and become as little children, docile and 
 unperverted, we need never hope to enter the temple of science. 
 Let us not follow the philosophers of antiquity with a too pro- 
 found deference. They, and especially Aristotle, are not infalli- 
 ble. ‘We find their books,’ says Bacon, ‘full of doubts, obscuri- 
 ties, and perplexities. They scarce agree with each other in one 
 empty question or one worthless sophism, or one operation of 
 science, as one man agrees with another in the practical opera- 
 tions of medicine, surgery, and the like arts of secular men.’ 
 
 ‘ Indeed,’ he adds, ‘ not only the philosophers, but the saints have 
 fallen into errors which they have afterwards retracted.’ 
 
 Part II treats of the relation between philosophy and theol- 
 ogy. All true wisdom is contained in the Scriptures; and the 
 true end of philosophy is to rise from an imperfect knowledge of 
 created things to a knowledge of the Creator. The brilliant 
 results achieved by the ancients, who had not the Word, must 
 have been inspired by a direct illumination from God. 
 
 Part III treats of the utility of Grammar. The necessity of 
 a true linguistic science was strongly impressed upon him by the 
 current translations of philosophical writings, which were very 
 bad. This it was which moved him to say, somewhat impatiently: 
 
 ‘If I had power over the works of Aristotle, I would have them all burnt; for it is 
 only a loss of time to study in them, and a course of error, and a multiplication of ignor- 
 ance beyond expression . 1 
 
 And again, — 
 
 ‘The common herd of students, with their heads, have no principle by which they 
 can be excited to any worthy employment; and hence they mope and make asses of 
 themselves over their bad translations, and lose their time, and trouble, and money . 1 
 
 A good translator, he wisely insists, should know thoroughly 
 (1) the language from which he is translating, (2) the language 
 
HERALD OF THE COMING DAY. 
 
 159 
 
 into which lie is translating, and (3) the subject of which the 
 book treats. 
 
 Part IV treats of the utility of mathematics. All science, of 
 things human and divine, rests ultimately on them. Here only 
 can we entirely avoid doubt and error, and obtain certainty and 
 truth : 
 
 ‘Moreover, there have been found famous men, as Robert, bishop of Lincoln, and 
 Brother Adam Marshman, and many others who by the power of mathematics have been 
 able to explain the causes of things; as may be seen in the writings of these men, for 
 instance, concerning the Rainbow and Comets, and the generation of heat and climates, 
 and the celestial bodies.’ 
 
 Mathematics is the ‘alphabet of philosophy,’ the door and key to 
 all sciences: 
 
 ‘The neglect of it for nearly thirty or forty years hath nearly destroyed the entire 
 studies of Latin Christendom. For he who knows not mathematics cannot know any 
 other sciences; and, what is more, he cannot discover his own ignorance or find its 
 proper remedies.’ 
 
 Part V treats of perspective. This is the part on which the 
 author most prided himself. He opens with an able sketch of 
 psychology, next describes the anatomy of the eye, touches upon 
 other points of physiological optics, — in general erroneously, then 
 discusses very fully the laws of reflection and refraction, and the 
 construction of mirrors and lenses. 
 
 Part VI, the most remarkable portion of the Opus Majus , 
 treats of experimental science. Real knowledge consists in the 
 union of exact conceptions with certain facts. The foundation is 
 experience; but experience is of two sorts, — external and inter- 
 nal. The first is usually called experiment, but it can give no 
 complete knowledge even of matter, much less of spirit. The 
 second is intuitive and divine. Of the supernatural enlighten- 
 ment there are seven grades. Experimental science has three 
 great Prerogatives over all the other sciences: 1. It verifies their 
 conclusions; as in the Rainbow, whose colors are produced in the 
 drops dashed from oars in the sunshine, in the spray thrown by a 
 mill-wheel, in the dew of a summer morning, and in many other 
 ways. 2. It discovers truths which they could never reach. 
 Thus (1) the construction of an artificial sphere which shall move 
 with the heavens by natural influences. Or (2) the art of pro- 
 longing life, which experiment may teach, though medicine can 
 do little except by regimen. Of a preparation here mentioned, 
 
160 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 one of the ingredients is the flesh of a dragon, used as food by 
 the Ethiopians, we are told, and prepared as follows: 
 
 ‘Where there are good flying dragons, by the art which they possess, they draw them 
 out of their dens, and have bridles and saddles in readiness, and they ride upon them, 
 and make them bound about in the air in a violent manner, that the hardness and 
 toughness of the flesh may be reduced, as boars are hunted and bulls are baited before 
 they are killed for eating.’ 
 
 Or (3) the art of making gold finer than fine gold, which tran- 
 scends the power of alchemy. 3. It investigates the secrets of 
 nature. Here we find the suggestion that the fire-works made by 
 children, of saltpetre, might lead to the invention of a formidable 
 weapon of war; that character may be changed by changing the 
 air. When Alexander applied to Aristotle to know whether he 
 should exterminate certain tribes which he had discovered, as 
 being irreclaimably barbarous, the philosopher replied: ‘If you 
 can alter their air, permit them to live; if not, put them to death. 7 
 
 Hence, it appears, the leading purpose of the Opus Mcijus is 
 the progress of knowledge, and, to this end, the reform of scien- 
 tific method. A wonderful work, if we but consider the circum- 
 stances of its origin, alike wonderful in plan and in detail, — tho 
 encyclopaedia of the classic century of scholasticism. 
 
 Style. — Plain, methodical, clear, animated, energetic, as of a 
 large, earnest soul profoundly penetrated with the vastness of its 
 mission and the brevity of its opportunity. 
 
 Rank. — A giant among his contemporaries, standing out in 
 picturesque and impressive contrast. To them he was a wonder,, 
 and they styled him, ‘ Doctor Mirabilis As a student at Paris, 
 he mastered Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, — an accomplishment 
 which not more than five men in England then possessed. The 
 story was current that he had discovered a receipt for teaching* 
 any one ‘ in a very few days Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Arabic. 7 
 His works, full of sound and exact knowledge, cover the whole 
 range of science and philosophy, — Mathematics, Mechanics, 
 Optics, Astronomy, Geography, Chronology, Chemistry, Magic, 
 Music, Medicine, Grammar, Logic, Metaphysics, Ethics, and The- 
 ology. He stood upon a lofty eminence, and looked forward 
 three centuries when his dreams were to take substantial form. 
 He gave a receipt for making gunpowder, learned perhaps from 
 the Arabs, — saltpetre, charcoal, and sulphur. Afterwards it was 
 
HERALD OF THE COMING DAY. 
 
 161 
 
 told how the fiend, to whom the heretical wizard sold himself, 
 carried away his victim in a whirlwind of fire. He knew that 
 there were different kinds of gas, or air as he calls it, and tells 
 us that one of these puts out a flame. He invented the school- 
 boy’s favorite experiment of burning a candle under a bell-glass 
 to prove that when the air is exhausted the candle goes out. He 
 predicts that one day ships will go on the water without sails, 
 and carriages run on the roads without horses, and that travellers 
 will use flying machines. He constructed lenses, burning glasses, 
 and knew the theory of the telescope if he did not make one. 
 He says: 
 
 ‘We can place transparent bodies (that is, glasses) in such a form and position 
 between our eyes and other objects that the rays shall be refracted and bent towards 
 any place we please, so that we shall see the object near at hand, or at a distance, under 
 any angle we please; and thus from an incredible distance we may read the smallest 
 letter, and may number the smallest particles of sand, by reason of the greatness of the 
 angle under which they appear.’ 
 
 To-day, however high the philosopher may rise above the mul- 
 titude, his elevation is seen to be the reward of energy and labor. 
 But in Bacon’s time, men’s thoughts were less clear, they could 
 eatch no glimpse of the intervening path; and when they saw 
 him above them, but knew not how he was raised and supported, 
 he became to them an object of suspicion and terror — a magi- 
 cian, — and feelings of envy jDrobably induced the few tacitly to 
 sanction the opinion of the many. Thus, the Famous History 
 of Fryer Bacon , compiled in the sixteenth century, represents 
 him before the king and queen in the act of displaying his skill 
 in the black art. He waves his wand, and entrancing music is 
 heard; waves it once more, and five dancers enter, who dance, 
 and vanish in the order of their coming; waves it again, and a 
 table laden with choicest viands is spread before them; yet again, 
 and again, while the room fills with richest perfumes and the 
 liveries of sundry nations pass and fade. He makes a Brazen 
 Head, by which, ‘if he could make this head to speake (and heare 
 it when it speakes), then might hee be able to wall all England 
 about with brasse.’ From a high hill, with his ‘mathematical 
 glasses’ he fires the public buildings of a besieged town, and 
 amid the uproar gives the signal for the king’s assault: 
 
 ‘ Thus through the art of this learned man the king got this strong towne, which hee 
 could not doe with all his men without Fryer Bacon's helpe.’ 
 
 11 
 
162 
 
 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 
 
 A keen and systematic thinker who, without being completely 
 dissevered from his national antecedents and surrounding, seeks 
 to divert into other and profitable channels that subtlety of the 
 schoolmen which was growing forests of erudition without fruit. 
 In this he is an accurate representative of the English mind on 
 one of its most striking sides, and the forerunner of his greater 
 namesake, who will exhibit the same fondness for experiment, 
 the same preference of inductive to abstract reasoning. The 
 Opus Majus is the prototype, in spirit, of Lord Bacon’s Novum 
 Organum. 
 
 Character. — His keen thirst for knowledge, his patience, his 
 energy, appear forcibly in words like these: 
 
 ‘ From my youth up, I have labored at the sciences and tongues. I have sought the 
 friendship of all men among the Latins who had any reputation for knowledge. I have 
 caused youths to be instructed in languages, geometry, arithmetic, the construction of 
 tables and instruments, and many needful things besides . 1 
 
 Again : 
 
 ‘During the twenty years that I have especially labored in the attainment of wisdom, 
 abandoning the path of common men, I have spent on these pursuits more than two 
 thousand pounds, not to mention the cost of books, experiments, instruments, tables, 
 the acquisition of languages, and the like. Add to all this the sacrifices I have made to 
 procure the friendship of the wise, and to obtain well instructed assistants . 1 
 
 Of the difficulties in the way of such studies as he had resolved 
 to pursue: 
 
 ‘Without mathematical instruments no science can be mastered, and these instru- 
 ments are not to be found among the Latins, and could not be made for two or three 
 hundred pounds. Besides, better tables are indispensably necessary, tables on which 
 the motions of the heavens are certified from the beginning to the end of the world 
 without daily labor; but these tables are worth a king’s ransom, and could not be made 
 without a vast expense. I have often attempted the composition of such tables, But 
 could not finish them through failure of means and the folly of those whom I had to 
 employ . 1 
 
 As a teacher, he was devoted to those whom he taught. Of 
 the boy sent to Rome, he writes to the pope: 
 
 ‘When he came to me as a poor boy, I caused him to be nurtured and instructed for 
 the love of God, especially since for aptitude and innocence I have never found so 
 towardly a youth. Five or six years ago I caused him to be taught in languages, mathe- 
 matics, and optics, and I have gratuitously instructed him with my own lips since the 
 time that I received your mandate. There is no one at Paris who knows so much of the 
 root of philosophy, though he has not produced the branches, flowers, and fruit because 
 of his youth, and because he has had no experience in teaching. But he has the means 
 of surpassing all the Latins if he live to grow old and goes on as he has begun . 1 
 
 Neither his confidence in the power of the human intellect nor 
 his devotion to physical studies materialized his faith or abated 
 his humility. Wisely he says: 
 
HERALD OF THE COMING DAY. 
 
 163 
 
 ‘Man is incapable of perfect wisdom in this life; it is hard for him to ascend 
 towards perfection, easy to glide downwards to falsehoods and vanities: let him then 
 not boast of his wisdom or extol his knowledge. What he knows is little and worthless, 
 in respect of that which he believes without knowing; and still less, in respect of that 
 which he is ignorant of. He is mad who thinks highly of his wisdom ; he most mad, who 
 exhibits it as something to be wondered at.’ 
 
 Popular legend, which transforms him into a powerful conjurer, 
 always represents him to have been a beneficent one, courageous 
 and modest. 
 
 Influence. — Upon his own age not great. The seed he let 
 drop, fell for the most part on a barren soil. The master-concep- 
 tion was itself drying up. Science was extinguished in idle 
 raving and inanity. Bacon himself says: 
 
 ‘Never was there so great an appearance of wisdom nor so much exercise of study 
 in so many Faculties, in so many regions, as for this last forty years. Doctors are dis- 
 persed everywhere, in every castle, in every burgh, and especially by the students of two 
 Orders, which has not happened except for about forty years. And yet there was never so 
 much ignorance, so much error.’ 
 
 He sought, in opposition to the spirit of his times, to divert the 
 interest of his contemporaries from scholastic subtleties to the 
 study of nature, and gained from his own Order a prison. To us 
 he has left a treasure of the most solid knowledge of his century, 
 of worthy and wise speculations. He is, moreover, an interesting 
 and instructive example of real greatness born before its time, 
 uttering its thoughts in Golgotha, standing alone on heights un- 
 known, and by its very isolation forming no school and leaving 
 no disciples. 
 
< 
 
 
 INITIATIVE PERIOD. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 FEATURES. 
 
 If there be any such thing as a philosophy of history, real or possible, it is in virtue 
 of there being certain progressive organizing laws in which the fretful lives of each 
 of us are gathered into and subordinated in some larger unity, through which age is 
 linked to age, as we move forward, with an horizon expanding and advancing.— Froude. 
 
 Politics. — The chief object of the English was to establish, 
 by force of arms, a continental empire. The greatest victories 
 of the Middle Ages were gained at this time against great odds 
 by the English armies. A French king was brought captive to 
 London, an English one was crowned at Paris. But after a long 
 and bloody struggle, with many bitter regrets the contest was 
 abandoned, and from that hour no British government has seri- 
 ously and steadily pursued the dream of great conquests on the 
 Continent. 
 
 Confined within the limits of the island, the warlike people 
 employed in civil strife those arms which had carried terror 
 beyond the Pyrenees and the Alps. The barons, ceasing to 
 plunder the French, were by the force of habit, eager to plunder 
 one another. Ireland and Scotland, subjugated by the Plan- 
 tagenets, were impatient under the yoke. The former had never, 
 since the days of Henry II, been able to expel the foreign 
 invaders. The latter, as we have seen, vindicated her inde- 
 pendence under the wise and valiant Bruce. Both were far 
 behind England in wealth and civilization. 
 
 Kings overstepped the constitutional line. They possessed 
 many lucrative and formidable rights which enabled them to 
 punish any who thwarted them, and to reward any who enjoyed 
 their favor. Persons obnoxious to the government were fre- 
 quently imprisoned merely by the mandate of the sovereign. 
 Taxes were imposed without the assent of the estates of the 
 
 164 
 
SOCIAL CONDITION. 
 
 165 
 
 realm. Penalties fixed by statute were remitted. But these 
 incursions were strenuously withstood. Three ancient and potent 
 principles bounded persistently the royal prerogative and pro- 
 tected the liberties of the nation: 1. The king could not legis- 
 late without the consent of parliament. 2. Nor without this 
 consent could he impose a tax. 3. He was bound to conduct 
 the administration according to law, and if the law was infringed 
 his advisers were answerable. These fundamental rules, by their 
 natural development, will produce the order of things under 
 which we now live. 
 
 Though the struggles with regard to the authority of the 
 Great Charter were over, and the king was acknowledged to 
 lie under some obligations; yet the government, on the w r hole, 
 was only a barbarous monarchy, neither regulated by fixed 
 maxims nor bounded by undisputed rights. It was a composite 
 of opposite systems, each prevailing in its turn according to the 
 favor of incidents, — royalty, aristocracy, priesthood, and com- 
 monalty. 
 
 The weakness of the second Edward gave reins to that licen- 
 tiousness of the grandees which the vigor of his father had re- 
 pressed; and the hopes that rose with his accession were blasted 
 amid the traitorous conspiracies and public disorders that accom- 
 plished and attended his deposition. The reign of Edward III, 
 as it was one of the longest in the annals of the nation, was also 
 one of the most glorious, — if by glory are meant foreign victo- 
 ries, and comparative domestic peace in an age of violence and 
 outrage. Parliament rose into greater consideration. The House 
 of Commons, naturally depressed during factious periods by the 
 greater power of the crown and barons, began to appear of some 
 weight in the constitution. The reign of Richard II began in 
 tranquillity and went out in furious convulsions, — less from neg- 
 lect of national privileges than from want of power to overawe 
 his barons. 
 
 Society. — The amalgamation of conquered and conquerors 
 was complete. The original ground of quarrel was lost to view. 
 The constitution of the House of Commons promoted a salutary 
 intermixture of classes. Between the aristocracy and working 
 people was springing up a middle class, agricultural and com- 
 mercial. The knight was the connecting link between the baron 
 
166 
 
 INITIATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 and the shopkeeper. No longer rich enough to assist at the 
 royal assemblies, community of interests, similarity of manners, 
 nearness of condition, lead him to coalesce with the yeomen, who 
 take him for their representative, elect him. The laborious, cour- 
 ageous body that supplies the energy of the nation, they value 
 themselves, equally with the grandee, as of a race born to victory 
 and dominion. 
 
 The ordinary dwelling consisted of two rooms, — the hall for 
 living and miscellaneous use, and the bower , or chamber, for 
 sleeping and privacy. The use of chimneys is distinctly men- 
 tioned, though rarely. The fire was usually in the middle of the 
 floor; and the smoke, if it pleased, took its course through a hole 
 in the roof. Hence Chaucer of the ‘poure wydow’: 
 
 ‘Ful sooty was hir bour, and eek hire halle, 
 
 In which she eet ful many a sclender meel.’ 
 
 The house, as among the low Irish and Italians yet, was shared 
 with the cattle and poultry. Thus of the rooster: 
 
 ‘As Chauntecleer among his wyves alle 
 Sat on his perche, that was in the halle.’ 
 
 The walls, as well as the floor, were commonly bare, without even 
 plaster. Plates there were none. Trenchers — large flat cakes of 
 bread — were used instead. When the meat was eaten off them, 
 they were given to the poor; for, being saturated with the gravy, 
 they were too valuable to be thrown away. No morsel was held 
 in dainty contemplation at a fork’s end. They helped them- 
 selves from the common dish, and ate with their fingers. One 
 cup for drinking passed from guest to guest, and courtesy re- 
 quired to wipe the mouth on the sleeve before drinking, and not 
 spit on the table. Pretty and agreeable were the accomplish- 
 ments of the prioress: 
 
 ‘At mete was she wel ytaughte withalle; 
 
 She lette no morsel from hire lippes falle, 
 
 Ne wette hire fingres in hire sauce depe. 
 
 Wel coude she carie a morsel, and wel kepe, 
 
 Thatte no drope ne fell upon hire brest.’ 
 
 The tournament, or mock-fighting, was the favorite sport, the 
 highest enjoyment and the noblest accomplishment of all ranks. 
 In horse-racing and bull-baiting, high and low took equal inter- 
 est. The great pastime of the lower orders was archery, which 
 they were bound by royal proclamation to practice on Sundays 
 
SOCIAL CONDITION. 
 
 167 
 
 and holidays after Divine service. Upon these occasions, other 
 amusements, such as quoits, cock-fighting, foot-ball, hand-ball, 
 were forbidden. 
 
 High life was a pageant, a brilliant and tumultuous kind of 
 fete. Immediately after the Crusades we find nearly all Europe 
 rushing with long-sustained violence into habits of luxury. In 
 England, the gallantry of France, the gorgeousness of the East, 
 contributed to the movement. One of its first signs was an 
 extraordinary richness of dress. A parliament of Edward III 
 passed no less than eight laws against French fashions. The king 
 and the court set the example, and their splendor was as barbar- 
 ous as their manners. Richard’s dress was stiff with gold and 
 gems. Cloaks of damask or satin trailed in the filth of the 
 streets, and excited the rage of the satirists. Beards were long' 
 and curled, the hair was tied in a tail behind. Shoes were cov- 
 ered with designs borrowed from the stained glass windows of 
 Westminster, and the long pointed toe, reaching to the knee, was 
 there bound by a gold or silver clasp. Gay gowns of green were 
 common, and an unknown author complains that the women 
 could not be distinguished from the men. The most striking 
 part of female attire was a towering head-dress like a mitre, some 
 two feet high, from which floated a rainbow of ribbons. The 
 extravagance was infectious, and the servant aped the manners 
 of the aristocrat. The chief clauses of a statute of 1363 are 
 intended to restrain ‘the outrageous and excessive apparel of 
 divers people against their estate and degree.’ 
 
 But luxurious indulgence was not confined to apparel. It is 
 displayed in the architecture of the period — the decorated Goth- 
 ic, — of which pointed arches and profuse ornament are the dis- 
 tinctive features. ‘Its whole aim was continually to climb higher, 
 to clothe the sacred edifice with a gaudy bedizenment, as if it were 
 a bride on the wedding morning.’ At the marriage of Richard 
 Plantagenet, thirty thousand dishes were provided. In 1399, the 
 royal household comprised ten thousand persons, three hundred 
 of whom were in the kitchen. Excess in eating and drinking 
 is hereditary. It is in harmony with the genius of Germanic 
 peoples to drink in doing everything. 
 
 They asked for adventure, adornment, pleasure. Edward III, 
 in an expedition against the king of France, took with him thirty 
 
168 
 
 INITIATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 falconers, and alternately hunted and fought. Knights carried a 
 plaster over one eye, pledged not to remove it till they had per- 
 formed an exploit worthy of their mistresses; for the sense of 
 love — without depth and reality of nobleness — was not idle. 
 Tournaments, introduced by Edward I, were plentiful, and the 
 precepts of the love courts were punctiliously performed. In one 
 of the London tournaments of Edward III, sixty ladies, seated 
 on palfreys, led each her knight by a golden chain. Minstrelsy 
 and tales of glee, the chase with hawks and hounds, brilliant 
 charges, ‘the love of ladies,’ bestowal of the silken scarf by fair 
 maiden upon brave victor, a racket of contests, a confusion of 
 magnificence, — form the romance of this regal and noble life, 
 the flower of the Romanesque civilization. 
 
 But under this bloom of chivalry are fierce and unbridled in- 
 stincts: bleeding steeds and gasping knights, plunderings and 
 death-wounds, — all the horrors expressed in ‘burned’ — ‘robbed’ 
 — ‘ wasted ’ — ‘ pillaged ’ — ‘ slain ’ — ‘ beheaded.’ The Earl of Win- 
 chester, at ninety, without trial or accusation, is condemned to 
 death by rebellious barons, gibbeted, his body cut in pieces and 
 thrown to the dogs, and his head exposed on a pole to the insults 
 of the populace. Edward II causes twenty-eight nobles to be 
 disembowelled, and is himself dispatched by the insertion of a red- 
 hot iron into his bowels. Men openly associate themselves, for 
 mutual defense, under the patronage of nobles, wear public 
 badges to distinguish their confederacy, meet in troops like 
 armies, and support each other in every iniquity. On the coat of 
 arms of one of these marauders was the inscription: ‘I am Cap- 
 tain Warner, commander of a troop of robbers, an enemy to God, 
 without pity and without mercy.’ Two cardinals themselves, the 
 pope’s legates, are thus despoiled of their goods and equipage; 
 the poet Chaucer is twice robbed; and the king of Cyprus on a 
 visit to England is stripped, with his whole retinue. Highway 
 robbery is a national crime; and capital punishment, though 
 frequent, cannot restrain a bold and licentious crew, made tolera- 
 bly secure by the general want of communication and the advan- 
 tage of extensive forests. The outlaws of Sherwood — allowed to 
 redeem a just ignominy by a few acts of generosity — are the 
 heroes of vulgar applause. What shall be said of the female 
 character or of the tyranny of husbands, when we find it to be no 
 
SOCIAL CONDITION. 
 
 169 
 
 uncommon circumstance that women are strangled by masked 
 assassins, or, walking by the river-side, are plunged into it? 
 Ran a popular proverb: ‘It is nothing, — only a woman being- 
 drowned.’ 
 
 A social chasm severed the rich from the poor. At first, as 
 we have seen, the tiller of the soil was his lord’s property. Cus- 
 tom gradually secured to each serf his little hut and garden-plot, 
 and limited the amount of service he had to render. This done — 
 personally or by deputy, — his remaining hours were free. If by 
 additional labor he acquired cattle, he was permitted to pasture 
 them upon the waste lands of his lord’s estate. If unable to find 
 employment in tillage, he was allowed to pay a money-rent. 
 Manumissions were sold to refill the royal and baronial purse 
 drained by incessant campaigns. Labor — no longer bound to 
 one spot or one master — was free to hire itself where and to 
 whom it would. A statute of the period complains that — 
 
 ‘ Villains and tenants of lands in villainage withdrew their customs and services from 
 their lords, having attached themselves to other persons who maintained and abetted 
 them ; and who, under color of exemplifications from Domesday of the manors and villas 
 where they dwelt, claimed to be quit of all manner of services, either of their body or of 
 their lands, and would suffer no distress or other course of justice to be taken against 
 them; the villains aiding their maintainers by threatening the officers of their lords with 
 peril of life and limb, as well by open assemblies as by confederacies to support each 
 other.’ 
 
 Now for the first time is revealed the strife between capital and 
 labor; and the struggle is now hushed, then intensified by that 
 destroying blast which rising in the East, and sweeping across 
 the shore of the Mediterranean and Baltic, swooped at the close 
 of 1348 upon Britain. 
 
 Harvests rotted, lands were left untilled, cattle strayed through 
 the fields and corn, or poisoned the air with their decaying car- 
 casses, grass grew in towns, villages were left without a single 
 inhabitant, half the population perished. Individuals thought 
 only of their own safety, the rich were rendered more oppressive, 
 the licentious more abandoned; the laborer and artisan — masters 
 at last of the labor market — demanded exorbitant wages, and 
 turned easily into the ‘sturdy beggar’ or the bandit of the woods. 
 Ran a royal ordinance: 
 
 ‘Every man or woman of whatsoever condition, free or bond, able in body, and 
 within the age of three-score years, . . . and not having of his own whereof he may 
 live, nor land of his own about the tillage of which he may occupy himself, and not 
 
170 
 
 INITIATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 serving any other, shall he bound to serve the employer who shall require him to do so, 
 and shall take only the wages which were accustomed to be taken in the neighborhood 
 where he is bound to serve.’ 
 
 Not only was the price of labor fixed by act of parliament, but 
 the labor class was once more tied to the soil. The laborer 
 was forbidden to quit his own parish, and a refusal to obey was 
 punished by imprisonment. The process of emancipation was 
 checked. The ingenuity of lawyers was shamelessly exercised in 
 cancelling on grounds of informality manumissions and exemp- 
 tions, to bring back into bondage the villains and serfs who had 
 delighted in their freedom. Discontent smouldered and spread. 
 A ‘ mad priest ’ gave terrible utterance to the tyranny of prop- 
 erty and the defiance of socialism. Cried the preacher: 
 
 1 Good people, things will never go well in England so long as goods be not in com- 
 mon, and so long as there be villains and gentlemen. By what right are they whom we 
 call lords greater folk than we? Why do they hold us in serfage? They are clothed in 
 velvet, and warm in their furs, while we are covered with rags. They have wine and 
 spices and fair bread, and we oat-cake and straw, and water to drink. They have leisure 
 and fine houses; we have pain and labor, the rain and the wind in the fields. And yet 
 it is of us and our toil that these men hold their state. When Adam delved and Eve 
 span, where was then the gentleman? ’ 
 
 The insolence of the tax-gatherers fanned the scattered sparks 
 of sedition into flame from sea to sea. Quaint rhymes served as 
 call to arms; as, — 
 
 ‘John Ball greeteth you all, and doth for to understand he hath rung your bell. 
 Now right and might, will and skill, God speed every dele.’ 
 
 And, — 
 
 ‘Falseness and guile have reigned too long, and truth hath been set under a lock, 
 and falseness and guile reigneth in every stock.’ 
 
 The revolt, indeed, was outwardly suppressed, and happily so; 
 but Tyler the smith and Ball the priest had sounded the knell 
 of feudalism and the declaration of the equal rights of men. 
 ‘We will that you free us forever,’ shouted the insurgents to 
 the youthful Richard. 
 
 The struggle went on. The terror of the land-owners ex- 
 pressed itself in legislation, to which the stubbornness of resist- 
 ance shows the temper of the people. Says a statute of 1385: 
 
 ‘ Divers villains and neifs, as well of great lords as of other people, spiritual and 
 temporal, do flee unto cities, towns, and places enfranchised, as the city of London, 
 and feign divers suits against their lords, to the intent to make them free by answer 
 of their lords.’ 
 
 Serfdom, by the operation of moral causes, is dying out. The 
 word ‘villen’ gives place to the word ‘servant.’ In 1388, wages 
 
THE RELIGIOUS TONE. 
 
 171 
 
 are again regulated, because ‘servant and laborers will not serve 
 and labor without outrageous and excessive hire.’ In the same 
 year it is harshly enacted that no servant or laborer can depart, 
 even at the expiration of his service, from the hundred in which 
 he lives, without permission under the king’s seal; nor may any 
 who have been bred to husbandry till twelve years old exercise 
 any other calling. Later, the Commons petition that villains 
 may not put their children to school in order to advance them by 
 ihe Church, and complain that villains fly to cities and boroughs, 
 whence their masters cannot recover them, and, if they attempt 
 it, are hindered by the people. 
 
 Closely connected with the progress of constitutional govern- 
 ment was the social movement that was fast changing the face of 
 the country. The force of the feudal system is dissolved, and in 
 every attempt to maintain it we see only the shadow of a power 
 once supreme, retreating and diminishing before an expanding 
 and omnipotent reality, — the doctrine that men are equal before 
 God. 
 
 Religion. — To the social revolution was added the fresh im- 
 pulse of a religious one. The Church was in its noon of splen- 
 dor, but the blaze was only a veil over the central darkness. 
 Petrarch says the Papacy sat ‘as a blight over peoples, and 
 nations, and tongues, toying and confident in the abundance of 
 earthly riches, and careless of the eternal.’ Of Rome itself he 
 says: 
 
 Once Rome! now, false and guilty Babylon! 
 
 Hive of deceits! Terrible prison 
 
 Where the good doth die, the bad is fed and fattened! 
 
 Hell of the living! 
 
 Sad world that doth endure it! Cast her out!’ 
 
 Foreign priests were still intruded into English livings and Eng- 
 lish sees, direct taxes were imposed on the clergy, first fruits 
 were claimed from all ecclesiastical preferments. At the begin- 
 ning of the century, the papal revenue was twelve times greater 
 than the civil; at the end of the century, the Commons declared 
 that the taxes paid to the Church were five times greater than 
 the taxes paid to the crown. 
 
 While the exactions of Rome severed the priesthood, the 
 greed and scandal of both provoked the sleepless hatred of the 
 people. Half the soil was in the hands of the clergy, and with 
 
172 
 
 INITIATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 all their wealth they bore as little as they could of the burdens 
 of the State. Their courts mildly noticed the crimes and vices of 
 their order. They worried the community by their insufferable 
 claim to control wills, contracts, and divorces; by their endless 
 dues and fees; by their countless legal citations of citizens, to 
 extort costs and fines. They were rent by their own dissensions. 
 Each order of friars hated the other; the monks hated them and 
 the parish priests, or secular clergy, who were far better; and the 
 last looked upon both as their natural enemies. The bishops, 
 again, were estranged from the mass of the clergy by the shame- 
 ful inequality between their respective revenues, and by their 
 strife for political emoluments. There was a universal clamor 
 against the mendicant orders, who, though rich, pretended to be 
 poor; and, impure of life, pretended to be good. 
 
 There is a general desire to shake off the papal bondage, and 
 an irrepressible cry for truth and purity in life and in the Church. 
 In the reign of Edward III, every person is outlawed who carries 
 any cause by appeal to the court of Rome. In the committee of 
 eighteen to whom Richard’s last parliament delegated their whole 
 power, there is not the name of an ecclesiastic to be found. The 
 barons are jealous of the prelates. The courtly Chaucer laughs 
 at the jingling bells of the hunting abbots. Piers the Plowman, 
 a man of the multitude and a victim, lifts his indignant voice. 
 Robin Hood, the ballad hero, orders his folk to ‘ spare the yeo- 
 men, laborers, even knights, if they are good fellows,’ but never 
 to pardon abbots or bishops. Wycliffe protests against the car- 
 dinal beliefs of Catholicism, organizes the growing discontent, 
 justifies and supports it with principles, tenets and reasonings. 
 His disciples — ‘the Simple Priests,’ or ‘Lollards,’ whose homely 
 sermons and long russet dress move the ridicule of the regulars — 
 diffuse his doctrines, which rapidly infect all classes, the baronage 
 of the city, the peasantry of the country-side, even the monas- 
 ticism of the cell. Women, as well as men, become preachers of 
 the new sect, whose numbers increase till it seems to the panic- 
 stricken churchmen that every third man in the street is a Lol- 
 lard — a heretic. A more wholesome conception of existence is 
 forming, from which will be finally educed — in the yet far-off 
 national outbreak of the Reformation — a better civilization, 
 founded on the respect for liberty and justice. 
 
STATE OF LEARNING. 
 
 173 
 
 Yet we will not forget that in the two great deliverances from 
 the tyranny of nation over nation and from the property of man 
 in man, the chief agent was the Church of Rome. Distinctions 
 of caste were to her peculiarly odious, because incompatible with 
 other distinctions essential to her system. How great a part she 
 had in the abolition of slavery we have elsewhere seen. Tenderly 
 treating her own bondmen (whom she declined to enfranchise), 
 we have seen her regularly adjuring the dying slaveholder, as he 
 asked for the last sacraments, to emancipate his brethren for 
 whom Christ had died. Corrupt as she was, there is reason to be- 
 lieve that had she been overthrown in the fourteenth century, the 
 vacancy would have been occupied by a system more corrupt 
 still. Her leading-strings, which will impede the full-grown man, 
 are necessary to preserve and uphold the infant. She will be 
 allowed a hundred and fifty years more in which to fill the meas- 
 ure of her offences, that she may fall only when time has laid bare 
 the root of her degeneracy, when faith and manners, ideas and 
 morals, may change together and subsist in harmony. 
 
 Learning 1 . — In an age when every one, rich or poor, lives with 
 his hand on his sword, it is not strange that general education 
 should have been neglected. War and woodcraft were the pride 
 of the great. Not one in five hundred could have stumbled through 
 a psalm. If they read, they spelled the small words, and skipped 
 the large ones. Information passed from mouth to mouth, not 
 from eye to eye. Men were auditors, not readers. The populace 
 had poets for themselves, whose looser carols were the joy of the 
 streets or the fields, — songs that perished on the lips of the 
 singers. Across the gulf of mystery, the opening line of some 
 fugitive rehearsal falls upon the ear like the echo of a vanished 
 world, — 
 
 ‘ Sitteth all stille, and harkeneth to me ! 1 
 
 The clergy alone were learned, and they only relatively. The 
 pulpit was the chief means of instruction. In the little village 
 church, — endeared to the peasant by the most touching incidents 
 of his life, or in vast and spired cathedral, amid smoking censers, 
 the blaze of lamps, the tinkling of silver bells, the play of jewelled 
 vessels, and gorgeous dresses of violet, green, and gold, — listened 
 the silent and unquestioning people. 
 
 Books — still in manuscripts, copied in the Scriptorium by the 
 
174 
 
 INITIATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 patient monks — were few and costly. They had not always 
 titles to denote their subjects, and are described by their outsides 
 — often shining in extreme splendor. Froissart, the French his- 
 torian, on a last visit to England in 1396, presented to Richard a 
 book beautifully illuminated, engrossed with his own hand, bound 
 in crimson velvet, and embellished with silver bosses, clasps, and 
 golden roses. As much as forty pounds was paid for a copy of 
 the Bible. Shelves were not required. At the beginning of the 
 century, the Oxford library consisted of a few tracts kept in 
 chests. A private collection — scant and phenomenal — consisted 
 for the greater part of the romances of chivalry, so long the 
 favorite literature of the noble, the dame, and the lounger of the 
 baronial castle. Some monasteries had not more than twenty 
 volumes. Latin versions of the Scriptures, — Greek or Hebrew 
 never; a commentator, a father, a schoolman; the mediagval 
 Christian poets who composed in Latin; a romance, an accidental 
 classic, chronicles and legends, — such are the usual contents of a 
 surviving catalogue — a sad contraction of human knowledge. 
 
 The glimmerings of the revival of the ancient classics, incip- 
 ient in the twelfth century, fading in the thirteenth owing to the 
 prevalence of scholasticism, are somewhat more distinct in the 
 fourteenth. Petrarch and Boccaccio were the first to lead the way 
 in disinterring them from the dungeon-darkness w T here they safely 
 slept, undisturbed by the monks who were ignorant of their treas- 
 ures or regarded them as the works of idolaters. The light of 
 learning, having first made its entrance into France, now, in 
 natural course of progress, found its way into England, — dimmed 
 by distance from its Italian focus. The debt of England to Italy 
 in the matter of our literature begins with Chaucer, but a hun- 
 dred years will pass before the imagination of the North is in- 
 flamed by the sacred fires kindled at Florence and at Rome. 
 
 The common herd of students (through the medium of Latin 
 translations) looked upon Aristotle as their infallible oracle and 
 guide, though stripping him of all those excellences that really 
 belonged to him, and incapable of entering into the true spirit 
 of his writings. Oxford — and Cambridge as well — had received 
 many noble foundations. She was the school of the island, the 
 fount of the new heresies, the link of England to the learned of 
 Europe. To her, during the English wars, was transferred the 
 
THE LANGUAGE. 
 
 175 
 
 intellectual supremacy of Paris. But of the vast multitude once 
 composing its learned mob, there remained in 1367 less than a 
 fifth. The master idea, running to excess, was languishing by 
 expenditure of force. 
 
 Language. — For the scholastic uses of the learned, and for 
 ■ecclesiastical purposes, Latin was still a living though a dying 
 tongue. For the last fifty years of the century, French was 
 to all classes of Englishmen a foreign language, and, even as 
 taught, was a mere dialect of the Parisian. Chaucer, in the 
 Testament of Love (attributed) says : 
 
 ‘ Certes there hen some that speke thyr poysy mater in Frenche, of whyche speche 
 the Frenchemen have as good a fantasye as we have in hearing of French mennes 
 Englyshe.’ 
 
 And 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 to theyr mouthes; and let us shewe our fantasyes in 
 suche wordes as we learneden of our dames tonge.’ 
 
 The Prioress in the Tales, though she speaks French neatly, 
 speaks it only — 
 
 ‘After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe, 
 
 For Frenche of Paris was to hire unknowe.'’ [ her 
 
 But the old Teutonic, assuming a new organization, recovered 
 its ascendancy by the same circumstances which depressed its 
 rival. Formal note of its triumph is found in a statute of 1362, 
 which orders English to be used in courts of law, because ‘the 
 French tongue is much unknown.’ Later it is observed of the 
 grammar schools that ‘children leaveth Frensche and construeth 
 and lerneth in Englische.’ Chaucer, writing for the instruction 
 of his little son, uses the vernacular, because ‘curious enditying 
 and harde sentences are full hevy at once for such a childe to 
 lerne,’ and, like a true patriot, bids the boy think of it as the 
 King's English. 
 
 The first revolution which English underwent, consisted, as 
 formerly explained, in the conversion of it from an inflectional 
 and synthetic into a nan-inflected and analytic speech. Its state 
 in this particular towards the close of the century may be not 
 ^unfairly represented by the Lord’s Prayer: 
 
 ‘ Our FadiT that art in hevenys ; 
 
 Halewid he thi name. 
 
 Tin kyngdom come to, 
 
176 
 
 INITIATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 Be thi wil done in erthe as in hevene. 
 
 Give to us this day oure breed oure othir substaunce. 
 
 And forgive to us our dettis as we forgiven to our dettouris: 
 
 And lede us not into temptacioun: 
 
 But delyvere us from yvel. Amen.’ 
 
 The second, which it was now undergoing, and which its adop- 
 tion by the court and nobility made possible, was its intermix- 
 ture with foreign elements. Translations and travel greatly 
 enriched it by importations from the South. The new power 
 of thinking, and the new words to embody its conceptions, came 
 together, twin-born. The English language thus enlarging its 
 domain by conquest and assimilation, yet retaining its essentially 
 Germanic character, displays the same powers of acquisition as 
 have distinguished the race. 
 
 Against this alien admixture the critics protested. ‘I seke,’ 
 says one, ‘no strange Inglyss, bot lightest (easiest) and com- 
 munest.’ Thus early was our purity imperilled ! As if new 
 modes of expression were not the creatures of new modifications 
 of thought. A national idiom is in perpetual movement, resem- 
 bling, as it struggles into perfect existence, the lion of the bard 
 of Paradise , — 
 
 ‘ pawing to get free 
 
 His hinder parts' 
 
 What survives? Trevisa, translating a Latin treatise in 1387,. 
 tells us he avoids ‘the old and ancient English.’ In the next 
 century, his printer will rewrite this translation, ‘to change the 
 rude and old English; that is, to wit, certain words which in 
 these days be neither used nor understood’! Little did Caxton 
 imagine that he himself would be to us what Trevisa was to 
 him, — an archaism, covered with the rust of time. The cry of 
 of the purist is the pang of parturition. Styles are like shades 
 melting into each other, passing with the generations that cast 
 them. It is with words as with empires. We each in our day 
 see only the beginnings of things. 
 
 Poetry. — Two notions rule the age: the one tending to a 
 renovation of the heart; the other, to a prodigal satisfaction of 
 the senses; the one disposing to righteousness, the other to ex- 
 citement; the one planting the ideal amidst forms of force and 
 joy; the other amidst sentiments of truth, law, duty; the one 
 producing finical verses and diverting stories, the other the indig- 
 
POETRY — PIERS PLOWMAN. 
 
 177 
 
 nant protest against hypocrisy and the impassioned prayer for 
 salvation. For the omnipotent idea of justice will overflow, and 
 conscience, like other things, will have its poem. 
 
 Tn the Vision of Piers the Plowman , by William Langland 
 (1362), the sombre genius of the Saxon reappears, with its tragic 
 pictures and emotions. The author — ‘Long Will,’ they call 
 him, — is a secular priest, who once earned a miserable livelihood 
 by singing at the funerals of the rich. Silent, moody, and de- 
 fiant, his world is the world of the poor. Far from sin and 
 suffering his fancy flies to a May morning on the Malvern Hills, 
 where he falls asleep and has a wonderful dream: 
 
 ‘I was weary for- wandered, [with wandering 
 And went me to rest 
 Under a brood bank, 
 
 By a burn's side; 
 
 And as I lay and leaned, 
 
 And looked on the waters, 
 
 I slombered into a sleeping, 
 
 It swayed so mury. 
 
 Then gan I meten 
 A marvellous sweven, 
 
 That I was in a wilderness. 
 
 Wist I never where; 
 
 And, as I beheld into the east 
 On high to the sun, 
 
 I seigh a tower on a toft 
 Frieliche ymaked, 
 
 A deep dale beneath, 
 
 A donjon therein, 
 
 With deep ditches and darke, 
 
 And dreadful of sight. 
 
 A fair field full of folk 
 
 [broad 
 
 [stream's 
 
 [pleasant 
 
 [meet 
 
 [dream 
 
 [saw, hill 
 [richly 
 
 Found I there between 
 Of all manner of men, 
 
 The mean and the rich, 
 
 Werking and wandering 
 As the world asketh. 
 
 Some putten hem to the plough [them 
 Playden full seld, 
 
 In setting and sowing 
 Swonkcn full hard, [labored 
 
 And wonnen that wasters [produced 
 With gluttony destroyeth. 
 
 And some putten hem to' pride, 
 Apparelled him thereafter, 
 
 In countenance of clothing 
 Comen deguised, [came 
 
 In prayers and penances 
 Putten hem many, 
 
 All for the love of our Lord 
 Liveden full strait, 
 
 In hope to have after 
 Heaven-riche bliss. 
 
 The canvas of the dreamer is crowded and astir with life, from 
 the king to the bondman. Here are the minstrels, who ‘geten 
 gold with their glee’; jesters and jugglers, ‘Judas’ children’; 
 petitioners and beggars, who flatter ‘ for hir food ’ and fight ‘ at 
 the ale’; pilgrims, who seek the — 
 
 * saintes at Rome, 
 
 They wenten forth in hir way 
 With many wise tales. 
 
 And hadden leave to lien [live 
 
 All hir life after; ’ 
 
 the court-haunting bishop, pardoners, ‘parting the silver’ with 
 the parish priest; friars, — 
 
 ‘All the four orders, 
 
 Preaching the people 
 For profit of hem selve:’ 
 
 12 
 
178 
 
 INITIATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 lawyers, whom the people hate, — of whom the insurrectionists 
 will shout, ‘ Not till all these are killed will the land enjoy its 
 
 old freedom again,’ — whom Burns 
 ing in the kennels of justice,’ — 
 
 ‘ Yet hoved ther an hundred \ivaited 
 In howves of selk, [ hoods 
 
 Sergeantz it bi-semed 
 That serveden at the barre, 
 
 Pleteden for penyes 
 And poundes the lawe; 
 
 will style ‘hell-hounds prey- 
 
 And noght for love of our Lord 
 Unlose hire lippes ones. 
 
 Thow myghtest bettre meete myst 
 On Malverne hilles, 
 
 Than gete a mom of hire mouth, 
 
 Til moneie be shewed.’ 
 
 A heavenly messenger — Holy Church — appears to the dreamer* 
 and shows him in this mortal assemblage a jewelled lady: 
 
 ‘ Hire robe was ful riche. Hire array me ravysshed, 
 
 Of reed scarlet engreyned, Swich richesse saugh I nevere; 
 
 With ribanes of reed gold I hadde wonder what she was, 
 
 And of riche stones. And whos wif she were.’ 
 
 This lady is Mede (Lucre), to whom high and low, lay and clergy, 
 alike offer homage. She contracts a legal marriage with False- 
 hood, and the king would marry her to Conscience, but the 
 latter replies: 
 
 ‘Crist it me forbede! 
 
 Er I wedde swiche a wif, 
 
 Wo me betide! 
 
 For she is frele of hire feith, 
 
 Fikel of her speche, 
 
 And maketh men mysdo 
 Many score tymes.’ 
 
 Reason preaches repentance to offenders. Many are converted, 
 among whom are Proud Heart, who vows to wear hair-cloth ; 
 Envy, lean, cowering, biting his lips, and wearing the sleeves 
 of a friar’s frock; and Covetousness, bony, beetle-browed, blear- 
 eyed. The repentant hearers set out on a pilgrimage to Truth. 
 They meet a far-travelling pilgrim, who proves a blind guide, 
 for of such a saint he has never heard. The wanderers put them- 
 selves under the direction of a carter, Piers the Plowman. His 
 is a .gospel of works, and he puts them to toil in his vineyard. 
 But they become seditious, and are at last reduced by the aid 
 of Hunger, who subdues Waste, leader of the revolt, and hum- 
 bles his followers. ‘Pardons,’ or ‘indulgences,’ are satirized, and 
 with the anxiety of Luther to know what is righteousness the 
 poet goes in search of Do-well. He asks each one to explain 
 where he may be found, and finds him by the description of 
 Wit, in the Castle of the Flesh built by Kind (Nature), who 
 resides there with his bride Anima (Soul). Do-better is her 
 
POETRY — PIERS PLOWMAN. 
 
 179 
 
 handmaid, and Do-best her spiritual guide. Thence, for further 
 instruction he is taken to dine with Clergy, and while they 
 refresh themselves with psalms and texts, which are the bill 
 of fare, Clergy gives his pupil a dissertation, in the course of 
 which he refers to one Piers Plowman who had made light of 
 all knowledge but love, and says that Do-well and Do-better 
 are finders of Do-best, who saves men’s souls. The pilgrim ex- 
 claims, — 
 
 ‘This is a long lesson, 
 
 And litel am I the wiser,’ 
 
 and receives a reproof for his indocile temper. Vain is the wis- 
 dom of man. Do-well, Do-better, and Do-best are at last identi- 
 fied with the Saviour, who is Love. Of low estate, come to direct 
 the erring and redeem the lost, he appears in the garb of Piers 
 the Plowman, — type of the poor and simple. The Immortal 
 dies, descends into Hell, rescues the patriarchs and prophets, 
 triumphs over Death and the Devil. The righteous life is found, 
 and the dreamer wakes in a transport, with the Easter chimes 
 pealing in his ears. Alas, only in a dream is mortal victory 
 complete. Over the beatific vision roll the mists of earth again, 
 and Antichrist — the Man of Sin — with raised banner appears. 
 Bells are rung, and the monks in solemn procession go out to 
 receive with congratulations their lord and father. With seven 
 great giants — the seven Deadly Sins 1 — he besieges Conscience 
 Idleness leads the assault, and brings with him more than a 
 thousand prelates. Nature sends up a host of plagues and dis- 
 eases to punish the sacrilegious show: 
 
 ‘Kynde Conscience tho herde, — and cam oat of the planetes, 
 
 And sente forth his forreyours — feveres and flaxes, 
 
 Coaghes and cardiacles, — crampes and tootli-aques, 
 
 Reumes and radegnndes, — and roynons scabbes. 
 
 Biles and bocches, — and brennynge aques, 
 
 Frenesies and foul yveles,— forageres of kynde. . . . 
 
 There was “Harrow! and Help! — Here cometh Kynde! 
 
 With Deeth that is dredful — to undo us alle ! ” 
 
 The lord that lyved after lust — tho aloud cryde. . . . 
 
 Deeth cam dryvynge after, — and alle to dust passhed 
 Kynges and knyghtes, — kaysers and popes, . . . 
 
 Manye a lovely lady — and lemmans of knyghtes, [lovers 
 
 Swowned and swelted for sorwe of hise dyntes.’ 
 
 1 Pride , Luxury, Envy, Wrath, a friar, whose aunt is a nun, and who is both cook 
 and gardener to a convent; Avarice, who lies, cheats, lends money upon usury, and 
 who, not understanding the French word restitution, thinks it another term for steal- 
 ing; Gluttony , who, on his way to church, is tempted into a London ale-house; Sloth, a 
 priest, who knows rhymes about Robin Hood better than his prayers, and who can find 
 a hare in a field more readily than he can read the lives of the saints. 
 
180 
 
 INITIATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 Contrition is implored for aid, but slumbers; and Conscience, 
 hard pressed by Pride and Sloth, rouses himself with a final effort, 
 and seizing his staff resumes his doubtful quest, praying for luck 
 and health ‘ till he have Piers the Plowman ’ — till he find the 
 Christ; no clear outlook, no sure hope; like the Wandering Jew, 
 bowed beneath the burden of the curse, weary with unrelieved 
 toil, worn with ceaseless trudging. 
 
 This serious poem, w’hich makes Scripture and deed the test of 
 creed — all outward observances but hollow shows — prepares the 
 soil for the reception of that seed which Wycliffe and his asso- 
 ciates are sowing. The imitations — the Plowman's Greed , by a 
 nameless author, and the Plowman's Tale , attributed to Chaucer 
 — bear witness to its popularity and fame. Its wide circulation 
 among the commonalty of the realm is chiefly due to its moral 
 and social bearings. Like the Declaration of Independence, it ex- 
 presses the popular sentiment on the subjects it discusses, — the 
 vices of Church, State, and Society. A spiritual picture which 
 brings into distinct consciousness what many feel and but dimly 
 apprehend, — the solitary advocate of the children of want and 
 oppression. 
 
 A part of its interest, at least for posterity, is derived from its 
 antiquated Saxon and its rustic pith. Without artifice of connec- 
 tion or involution of plot, it is an impulsive voice from the wilder- 
 ness, in the language of the people; and, as such, returns to or 
 continues the old alliterative metre and unrhymed verse — the 
 recurrence at certain regular intervals of like beginnings, without, 
 as Milton contemptuously calls it, the jingling sound of like end- 
 ings. Thus: 
 
 ‘In a somer seson — whan soft was the sonne, 
 
 I sAope me in s/troudes — as I a she pe were, 
 
 In /iabite as an ^eremite — un/ioly of workes, 
 
 Went wyde in this world — wondres to here.’ 
 
 The fashionable machinery of talking abstractions gives evidence 
 of French influence. The satirist, like Bunyan, veils his head in 
 allegory. Perhaps the ideal company who flit along the dreamy 
 scenes of his wild invention, have some distant relationship to the 
 shadowy pilgrimage of that ‘Immortal Dreamer’ to the ‘Celestial 
 City.’ 
 
 The second main stream of the poetical literature of the period is 
 story-telling. Robert Manning’ garnishes with rhymes a history 
 
POETRY — TIIE NEW TASTE. 
 
 181 
 
 of England beginning with the immemorial Brutus, and calls it a 
 poem. Of a style easier than that of Robert of Gloucester and 
 of diction more advanced, it discourses without developing, and 
 sees moving spectacles without emotion: 
 
 Lordynges that be now here, 
 
 If ye wille listene and lere 
 All the story of lnglande, 
 
 Als Robert Mannyng wryten it fand, 
 
 And on Inglysch has it schewed, 
 
 Not for the lered but for the lewed; 
 
 For tho that on this land wonn 
 That the Latin ne the Frankys conn 
 For to hauf solace and gamen, 
 
 In felauschip when tha sitt samen; 
 
 And it is wisdom for to wytten 
 
 The state of the Land, and hef it wryten, 
 
 What manere of folk first it wan, 
 
 And of what kynde it first began. 
 
 And gude it is for many thynges 
 For to here the dedis of kynges, 
 
 Whilk were foies, and whilk were wyse 
 And whilk of tham couth most quantyse; 
 And whilk did wrong, and whilk ryght, 
 And whilk mayntened pes and fight.' 
 
 [ learn 
 
 [a, 7, written 
 
 [ laity 
 [those, dwell 
 [know 
 
 [together 
 
 [know 
 
 [hear 
 [which 
 [knew, artfulness 
 
 [peace 
 
 So forth and so forth. Loquacious, clear, and insipid, we imag- 
 ine, as its French original. 
 
 But reverie and fantasy are needed to satisfy the pleasant 
 indolence of the chivalric world and the courts that shine upon 
 the heights. The tales that sufficed to allure the attention of a 
 ruder ancestry, now demand more volume, more variety, more 
 color; and all that history and imagination have gathered in the 
 East, in France, in Wales, in Provence, in Italy, wrought and re- 
 wrought by the minstrelsy of three centuries, heroics of the 
 North that magnify the valor and daring of the cavalier, lyrics of 
 the South that dwell on the devotion of the knight to his lady- 
 love, — serve as the stuff for the looms of the mighty weavers of 
 verse. Before the frivolous unreality of the new chivalry, songs 
 of martial achievement predominated; but the intellectual palate 
 of the gentry now prefers the later poetry of sensuous enjoy- 
 ment, — the trouvere, with its amours and mysticism; or the 
 troubadour, with its romantic follies. The passion of war has 
 degenerated into a pageant, and Romance , from the light fa- 
 bliaux to the entangling fiction of many thousand lines, tells of 
 little but the ecstasies of love. Love is the essential theme, — 
 love in its first emotions, love happy, jealous; the lover walking, 
 
182 
 
 INITIATIVE PERIOD —FEATURES. 
 
 sitting, sleeping, sick, despairing, dead. In France they have 
 Floral Games where the assembled poets are housed in artificial 
 arbors dressed with flowers, and a violet of gold is awarded the 
 best poem. The love-courts discuss — and decide affirmatively — 
 whether each one who loves grows pale at the sight of her whom 
 he loves; whether each action of the lover ends in the thought of 
 her whom he loves; whether love can refuse anything to love. A 
 company of enthusiasts* love-penitents, to prove the strength of 
 their passion, dress in summer in furs and heavy garments, and 
 in winter in light gauze. When Froissart presents to Richard 
 his book bound in crimson velvet, guarded by clasps of silver, 
 and studded with golden roses, — 
 
 ‘Than the kyng demanded me whereof it treated, and I shewed hym how it treated, 
 maters of loue ; wherof the kynge was gladde.’ 
 
 While rowing on the Thames, Gower (1325-1408) meets the 
 royal barge, and is called to the king’s side. ‘ Book some new 
 thing,’ says Richard, ‘in the way you are used, into which book I 
 myself may often look ’; and the request is the origin of Confessio 
 Amantis — the Confession of a Lover. It is a dialogue between 
 an unhappy lover and his confessor, the object of which is to 
 explain and classify the impediments of love. Through thirty 
 thousand weary lines, the lover, like a good Catholic, states his 
 distress, and is edified, if not comforted, by expositions of her- 
 metic science and Aristotelian philosophy, discourses on politics, 
 litanies of ancient and modern legends, gleaned from the com- 
 pilers for the morality they furnish. Thus a serpent, Aspidis,. 
 bears in his head the precious stone called the carbuncle, which 
 enchanters strive to win from him by lulling him asleep with 
 magic songs. The wise reptile, as soon as the charmer approach- 
 es, presses one ear flat upon the ground, and covers the other 
 with his tail. Ergo, let us obstinately resist all temptations that 
 assail us through the avenues of the bodily organs. Even as 
 Ulysses stopped his companions’ ears with wax and lashed him- 
 self to the ship’s mast, to escape the enticement of the Sirens’ 
 song. The confession terminates with some parting injunctions 
 of the priest, the bitter judgment of Venus that he should re- 
 member his old age and leave off such fooleries, his cure from 
 the wound of Cupid’s dart, and his absolution. He is dismissed 
 with advice from the goddess to go ‘where moral virtue dwelleth.’ 
 
POETRY — GOWER. 
 
 183 
 
 To the last, Gower is learned, dignified, didactic. He would be 
 nothing, if he were not moral. His principal merit lies in the 
 sententious passages which are here and there interspersed, and 
 the narratives culled with dull prolixity from legendary lore, some 
 of which — as the Trumpet of Death — deserve notice for their 
 striking tone of reflection, and others for the charm of their 
 details. Thus, it was a law in Hungary, that when a man was 
 condemned to die, the sentence should be announced to him by 
 the blast of a brazen trumpet before his house. At a magnificent 
 court-festival, the monarch was plunged in deep melancholy, and 
 his brother anxiously inquired the reason. No reply was made, 
 but at break of morn the fatal trumpet sounded at the brother’s 
 gate. The doomed man came to the palace weeping and despair- 
 ing. Then the king said solemnly, that if such grief were caused 
 by the death of the body, how much profounder must be the 
 sorrow awakened by the thought which afflicted him as he sat 
 among his guests, — the thought of that eternal death of the 
 spirit which Heaven has ordained as the wages of sin. 
 
 The tale of Florent is in Gower’s happiest manner, and re- 
 veals, in the desert of platitudes, some of the brilliancy and 
 grace of older models. A knight riding through a narrow pass 
 in search of adventures, is attacked, taken, and led to a castle. 
 There, at the peril of his life, he is required to state — 
 
 ‘What alle women most desire.' 
 
 That he may have time for reflection and consideration, he is 
 granted a leave of absence, on condition that at the expiration 
 of his term he shall return with his answer. He tells all what 
 has befallen him, and asks the opinion of the wisest, but — 
 
 ‘ Such a thing they cannot find 
 By constellation ne kind, — 1 
 
 that is, neither by the stars nor by the laws of nature. Our 
 hero — still pondering what to say — sets out on his return. His 
 troubled meditations are at length interrupted by the discovery 
 of an old woman sitting under a large tree, — 
 
 ‘ That for to speak of flesh and bone 
 So foul yet saw he never none.’ 
 
 He fain would pass quickly on, but she calls him bv name, and 
 warns him that he is riding to his death, adding, however, that 
 she can save him. He begs her advice, and she asks, 4 What 
 
184 
 
 INITIATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 wilt thou give me ? ’ ‘Anything you may ask.’ ‘I want nothing- 
 more, therefore pledge me’ — 
 
 ‘ “ That you will be my housebande.” 
 
 “Nay,” said Florent, “that may not be.” 
 
 “ Ride thenne forth thy way,” quod she.’ 
 
 In vain he offers lands, parks, houses, — she must have a hus- 
 band. He wisely concludes that it is — 
 
 ‘ Better to take her to his wife, 
 
 Or elles for to lose his life.’ 
 
 He also reflects that she probably will not live very long, and 
 resolves to put her meanwhile — 
 
 ‘Where that no man her shoulde know 
 Till she with death were overthrow.’ 
 
 Having signified his assent, she tells him, that when he reaches 
 his destination, he is to reply — 
 
 ‘That allc women lievest would 
 Be sovereign of mannes love ; ’ 
 
 for as sovereign , she will have all her will , which is the beatitude 
 of her desire. With this answer, she says he shall save himself, 
 and he rides sadly on, for he is under oath to return for his 
 bride. At the castle, in the presence of the summoned inmates, 
 he names several things of his own invention, but none will do; 
 and finally he gives the answer the old woman directed, which 
 is declared to be the true one. Retracing his steps, a free but 
 wretched man, he finds the old woman in the identical spot, — 
 
 ‘ The loathliest wight 
 That ever man cast on his eye, 
 
 Her nose has, her browes high. 
 
 Her eyen small, and depe-set, 
 
 Her chekes ben with teres wet, 
 
 And rivelin as an empty skin, 
 
 Hangende down unto her chin, 
 
 Her lippes shrunken ben for age; 
 
 There was no grace in her visage.’ 
 
 She insists, however, upon the agreement, and, sick at heart, 
 almost preferring death, — 
 
 ‘In ragges as she was to-tore 
 He set her on his horse before.’ 
 
 riding through all the lanes and by-ways that no one may see 
 him. At home he explains that he is obliged — 
 
 ‘ This beste wedde to his wife, 
 
 For elles he had lost his life.’ 
 
 Maids of honor are sent in, who renew her attire, all except her 
 
 [low, Hat 
 
 [shrivelled 
 
 [hanging 
 
POETRY — GOWER. 
 
 185 
 
 matted and unsightly hair, which she will not allow them to 
 touch. 
 
 ‘But when she was fully array’d. 
 
 And her attire was all assay’d. 
 
 Then was she fouler unto see.’ 
 
 Poor Florent takes her less for better than for worse, and, the 
 ceremony over, covers his head in grief: 
 
 ‘His body mighte well be there; 
 
 But as of thought and of memoire 
 His liearte was in Purgatoire.' 
 
 She would ingratiate herself in his affections, and approaching 
 him takes him softly by the hand. He turns suddenly and be- 
 holds a vision of sweet smiles and beautiful eyes. He would 
 come nearer, is stopped, and told — 
 
 ‘ that for to win or lose 
 He mote one of two thinges choose, 
 
 Wher he will have her such o’ night [ whether 
 
 Or clles upon daye's light; 
 
 For he shall not have bothe two.’ 
 
 At loss, conscious only of his idolatry, he at last exclaims, — 
 
 “‘1 n’ot what answer I shall give. 
 
 But ever, while that I may live, 
 
 I will that ye be my mistress, 
 
 For I can naught myselve guess 
 Which is the best unto my choice. 
 
 Thus grant I you my whole voice. 
 
 Choose for us bothen, I you pray, 
 
 And, what as ever that ye say, 
 
 Right as ye wille, so will I.” 1 
 
 This is the point — the surrender of his will to hers. This is 
 ‘What alle women most desire’ — to be sovereign of man’s love 
 — in short to have their own way. Foretaste of Paradise for the 
 happy groom, whose cup is now filled to overflowing: 
 
 ‘“My lord,” she saide, “grand-merci [ many thanks 
 
 For of this word that ye now sayn 
 That ye have made me sovereign, 
 
 My destiny is overpassed; 
 
 That n’er hereafter shall be lass’d [ lessened 
 
 My beauty, which that I now have, 
 
 Till I betake unto my grave. 
 
 Both night and day as I am now, 
 
 I shall always be such to you. 
 
 Thus, I am yours for evermo.” ’ 
 
 As an artist, partly the reformer and partly the story-teller, 
 Gower bridges the space between Langland and Chaucer. His 
 English, too, in vocabulary and structure is later than the first 
 
186 - 
 
 initiative PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 and earlier than the second. His metre is the octosyllabic, of 
 four iambics. His rhythm is more smooth than melodious. He 
 is touched only by French influence. There are extant about fifty 
 French amatory sonnets composed by him in imitation of Proven- 
 gal models. On the whole, like the dozen of translators who 
 copy, compile, abridge, he constructs an encyclopaedia, a text- 
 book, in rhymed memoranda; but if excellence be comparative 
 and all criticism relative to the age, we may hail this grave father 
 of our poesy, whose verses, if destitute of creative touches, are 
 stamped with the force of ethical reasoning. Amid triflers, he is 
 earnest, with a deep-rooted idea that the minstrel should be a 
 preacher. In his political admonitions, in his satire on the re- 
 laxed morals of the Pulpit, the Bench, the Bar, the Throne, and 
 the Court, he sounds the deep tones of the patriot. He says: 
 
 ‘I do not affect to touch the stars, or write the wonders of the poles; but rather, with 
 the common human voice that is lamenting in this land, I write the ills I see. In the 
 voice of my crying there will be nothing doubtful, for every man’s knowledge will be its 
 best interpreter.’ 
 
 Again : 
 
 ‘Give me that there shall be less vice, and more virtue for my speaking.’ 
 
 Only one of his three great works has been opened to the 
 world, but the marble perpetuates what the press does not. In 
 the Southwark Church of St. Saviour, his image lies extended on 
 the tomb, with folded hands, in damask habit flowing to his feet; 
 his head supported by three sculptured volumes 1 and decked with 
 a garland of roses, while three visionary virgins, Charity, Mercy, 
 and Pity, solicit the prayer of the passer-by for the soul of the 
 dreamless sleeper. 
 
 The fashions of man have their date and their termination. 
 The fourteenth century is memorable as the era in which the 
 romance-poetry of France, displaced in form, declines in sub- 
 stance. Even comedy cannot thrive on trifles. The literature 
 that has not truth or seriousness must die. Life does not move 
 through a perpetual May-day, nor is it invigorated in gorgeous 
 idleness. Nourished on this poetry, another taste is springing 
 up, which is to seek its subjects, not in France, but in the 
 chaster Roman and Grecian lore. A new spirit pierces through, — 
 no longer the childish imitation of chivalrous life, but the crav- 
 
 1 Speculi/m Meditantis (Mirror of One Meditating ), in French; Vox Clamantis ( Voice 
 of One Crying ), in Latin; Confessio Amantis , in English;— equally graced with Latin 
 titles, though in three languages. 
 
PROSE — HISTORY. 
 
 187 
 
 ing for deep truths. English poetry, as distinguished on the 
 one hand from the pedantry and barrenness of the romancers, 
 and on the other from the impulsive cries of Beowulf \ begins 
 with Chaucer, the first skilled and conscious workman; who, 
 ceasing to repeat, observes; whose characters, no longer a phan- 
 tom procession, are living and distinct persons, — individualized 
 and typical; and who, seeking material in the common forest 
 of the middle ages, replants it in his own soil, to send out new 
 shoots and enduring bloom. 
 
 Prose. — Our early literature, as formerly observed, is almost 
 exclusively one of poetry. Records, chronicles, books of instruc- 
 tion, of science, there are; but of prose, as the embodiment of 
 high art, there is absolutely none. As we have cathedrals while 
 the builders live in hovels, so, under the impulse of the imagina- 
 tive sentiment, we have poetry before we have prose, which 
 passes into pure literature only when the views of men have 
 settled down to sober truth, and art is so diffused as to give 
 grace and expression to things familiar and homely. 
 
 Divines and philosophers, mathematicians and scientists, write 
 in Latin. The prose works in English have an archaic and moral 
 rather than an artistic interest. Mandeville and Wycliffe — - 
 the one in his travels, the other in his translations of the Bible — 
 are, in the mixed vernacular, the first reapers on the margin of 
 the great future of English prose. 
 
 History. — In this mixed state of glory clouded with bar- 
 barism, there is, there can be, no annalist deserving the name of 
 historian. The chroniclers have the usual aptitude for credence, 
 unastonished at astonishing events, credulous and happy by con- 
 stitution and contagion. They begin, as usual, ab initio , with 
 the Conquest, and reach home, across chasms supplied by an 
 ever-ready fancy. The narrative grows like a rolling snowball, 
 gathering whatever lies in its path, fact or legend, appropriate 
 or inappropriate. The readers or hearers are as well prepared 
 to believe as the writers are prompt to collate. A hundred years 
 hence the first peer 1 of the realm will be proud of deriving his 
 pedigree from a fabulous knight in a romantic genealogy. 
 
 Of plumed knights and penitential saints, of warring kings 
 
 iJuke of Buckingham. 
 
188 
 
 INITIATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 and feasting nobles, of furious and raving figures, we have a 
 plenty; but of history that will trace the ideal tendencies of 
 the age, that will exhibit the world of ideas, the life of the 
 people as a drama in which good and evil fight their everlasting 
 battle, — of history in which calmness of insight exists with in- 
 tensity of feeling, there is yet no prophecy. 
 
 Philosophy. — This consists, for the most part, in ringing 
 changes on the syllogism, — 
 
 ‘Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Ferio, 
 
 Cesare, Camestres, Festino, Baroko,’ etc.; 
 
 circulating in endless vortices-; creating, swallowing, — itself. 
 Inductions, corollaries, dilemmas, logical diagrams, cast wonder- 
 ful horoscopes, but end — where perhaps all metaphysical specu- 
 lation ends, as to the stolen jewel of our search — in nothingness. 
 
 The old dispute, long dormant, was now revived with a white- 
 heat of disputation. The Realists maintained that universal 
 ideas or essences belonged to the class of real things , either 
 eternally impressed upon matter or eternally existent in the 
 Divine Mind as the models of created objects; while the Nomi- 
 nalists held that these pretended universals had neither form nor 
 essence, but were merely modes of conception, existing solely in 
 and for the mind, — only individuals are real. 
 
 Of Nominalism, Occam 1 was now the eminent spokesman. 
 The universal, he argues, exists in the mind, not substantially, 
 but as a representation; while outwardly it is only a word, or in 
 general a sign, of whatever kind, representing conventionally 
 several objects. Only an a posteriori proof of the being of God, 
 and that not a rigorous one, is possible. As for the rest, the 
 ‘articles of faith’ have not even the advantage of probability for 
 the wise, and especially for those who trust to the natural reason. 
 Here only the authority of the Bible and Christian tradition 
 should be accepted. Theological doctrines are not demonstrable, 
 yet the will to believe the indemonstrable is meritorious. Thus 
 reason and faith are antagonized, the critical method rises to an 
 independent rank, and, with the cooperation of other influences 
 tending in the same direction, the way is prepared for an induc- 
 tive investigation of external nature and psychical phenomena. 
 
 1 \ Franciscan of the severe order, and a pupil of Duns Scotus; born in the county 
 of Surrey, died April 7, 1347. 
 
PROSE — PHILOSOPHY A HD SCIENCE. 
 
 189' 
 
 The bearings of the discussion upon vital theology explain 
 the furious energy of the disputants. If', for example, the uni- 
 versal is a mere symbol, Christ — the Infinite — is not really 
 present in the Eucharist. If Realism is false, the doctrine of the 
 Trinity, according to which the one divine essence is entirely 
 present in each of the three divine persons, is false. Distinctions 
 of less moment might in the Ages of Faith shatter an empire. 
 Hence it was that the University of Paris, by a public edict 
 (1339) solemnly condemned and prohibited the philosophy of 
 Occam, as prejudicial to the interests of the Church. His party 
 in consequence, flourished the more. What is more natural than 
 to love and pursue the forbidden ? 
 
 Science. — When, as here, the measure of probability is es- 
 sentially theological, if scientific theories are discussed, they will 
 be colored with religious thought. The scientist, — 
 
 ‘Transported 
 
 And rapt in secret studies,’ — 
 
 is imagined to know more than the human faculties can acquire. 
 The wise are magicians; and the enlightened, heretics. 
 
 Astrology — fortune-telling by the aspect of the heavens and 
 the influence of the stars — was the favorite superstition of the 
 East and West. Great circumspection was necessary; neglect 
 of it was fatal. In 1327, Asculanus, having performed some ex- 
 periments that seemed miraculous to the vulgar, and having also 
 offended many by some predictions said to have been fulfilled, 
 was supposed to deal with infernal spirits, and was committed to 
 the flames by the inquisitors of Florence. 
 
 Alchemy was generally confined to the mystery which all 
 sought to penetrate, — the transmutation of metals into gold. 
 Edward III, not less credulous than his grandfather, issued an 
 order in the following terms: 
 
 ‘Know all men that we have been assured that John of Rous and Master William of 
 Dalby know howto 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 com- 
 manded 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 art of medicine was still in the greater part a compound 
 of superstition and quackery. Relics, shrines, and miracle-cures 
 were a source of boundless profit to ecclesiastics. It forms an 
 
190 
 
 INITIATIVE PERIOD — F EATURES. 
 
 epoch, that in this century Mundinus publicly dissected two 
 human bodies in Bologna. A French surgeon, writing in 1363, 
 says : 
 
 ‘The practitioners in surgery 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.’ 
 
 One of Gower’s most graceful passages is that in which he pict- 
 ures Medea going forth at midnight to gather herbs for the incan- 
 tations of her witchcraft: 
 
 ‘ Thus it befell upon a night, 
 
 Whann there was naught but sterre light, 
 
 She was vanished right as hir list, 
 
 That no wight but hirselfe wist: 
 
 And that was at midnight tide; 
 
 The world was still on every side. 
 
 With open head, and foote all bare 
 His heare to spread; she gan to fare: 
 
 Upon the clothes gyrte she was, 
 
 And speecheles, upon the gras 
 She glode forth, as an adder doth.’ 
 
 Theology. — The central doctrine of the mediaeval Church 
 was the carnal nature of the sacraments — Transubstcintiation . 1 
 Long ago, in the ninth century, it had been denied that the bread 
 and wine of the Lord’s Supper were transmuted into the body and 
 blood of Christ. Two centuries later, the dispute was famous; 
 and Berenger, who had the temerity to teach that they were but 
 symbols, was terrified into publicly signing a confession of faith, 
 which, among other tenets, declared: 
 
 ‘ The bread and wine, after consecration, are not only sacrament, but also the real 
 body and blood of Jesus Christ; and this body and blood are handled by the priest and 
 consumed by the faithful, not merely in a sacramental sense, but in reality and truth, as 
 other sensible objects are.’ 
 
 The controversy continued. Bread was deified, carried in solemn 
 pomp through the public streets to be administered to the sick or 
 dying. By his exclusive right to the performance of the miracle 
 in the mass, the humblest priest was exalted above princes. 
 Against this cardinal belief of the early Church, as of the Roman 
 Catholics now, — that the material flesh and blood of the Saviour 
 could be eaten as ordinary meat, — Wycliffe issued a formal pro- 
 
 1 A word introduced and established by Innocent III, at the fourth Lateran Council, 
 1215. 
 
PROSE — THEOLOGY AND ETHICS. 
 
 191 
 
 test (1381), and with that memorable denial began the move- 
 ment of revolt. 
 
 Under every creed, however monstrous, beneath every formula, 
 however obsolete, is a philosophy. Wherever the importance of 
 conduct has been felt, one question has been of chief concern, — 
 ‘Who shall deliver me from the body of this death/' 1 Jew and 
 Persian had witnessed, with idolatrous Greece, that the especial 
 strength of evil lay in matter. How came this substance to be 
 tainted and infirm? Plato had left the question doubtful. The 
 Jew found his solution in the fatal apple. The earth was a garden 
 of delight, over whose hospitable surface no beast or bird of prey 
 broke the changeless peace: but Adam, the first-born, sinned — 
 no matter how, and all this fair scene dissolved in carnage. 
 Creation groaned in ruins, and the human frame — hitherto pure 
 as immortal seraph — was infected with disease and decay, unruly 
 appetites, jealousies, rapines, and murders. Thenceforward every 
 material organization contained in itself the elements of destruc- 
 tion. How shall the soul be saved, unless the body — its compan- 
 ion and antagonist, which bears it down — is purified? The old 
 substance must be transfigured — leavened by the flesh of the 
 Redeemer, which is free from the limitations of sin. So will the 
 new creature, thus fed and sustained, go on from strength to 
 strength, and at last, dropping in the gate of the grave the 
 ‘muddy vesture’ which is death’s, stand robed in glorified form, 
 like refined gold. Such, we doubt not, is the root-idea of the 
 Eucharist. It was the conscious idea, not in metaphor, but in 
 fact. As a symbolism, beautiful still. The weary fasts of the 
 saints may be their glory or their reproach; but the same desire 
 — however expressed — that set St. Simeon on his pillar, tunes 
 the heart and forms the mind of the noblest of mankind, — simili- 
 tude with the divine through victory, however wrought, over the 
 fleshly lusts. 
 
 Ethics. — About this time, more writers than in any former 
 century occupied themselves in collecting and solving what they 
 styled Cases of Conscience. Their industry may have tended 
 as freely to a wrangling spirit as to a suitable practice, but it 
 indicates an advance along the line of moral consciousness. The 
 moral law, in the view of Occam as in that of Scotus, is founded 
 ■upon the will of God. The just and the unjust are what He has 
 
192 
 
 INITIATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 declared to be such, by attaching to them the rewards and pun- 
 ishments of another life. Had His will been different, He would 
 have sanctioned other principles than those which we are now 
 tauo*ht to consider as the foundation of the ffood. 
 
 O O 
 
 It is worthy of remark, also, that moral duties were explained,, 
 and moral precepts enforced by allegories of a new and whimsi- 
 cal kind, as the Vision, and by examples drawn from the quali- 
 ties and habits of brutes. A thousand picturesque legends centre 
 on the intimate connection of the hermit with the animal world 
 in the lonely deserts of the East or in the vast forests of Europe. 
 
 Christianity, as the main source of the moral development of 
 nations, has discharged its office less by the inculcation of a 
 system of ethics than by the attractive influence of its perfect 
 ideal, — the character of the Christian Founder. 
 
 Resume. — Parliament grew steadily in power and impor- 
 tance. The popular element was beginning to manifest itself in 
 government. Feudal bondage was relaxing. The spirit of free- 
 dom, which heretofore had animated only the noble and the 
 high-born, was now inflaming the heart of the serf. There was 
 an almost simultaneous movement of the lower orders in various 
 countries, owing plainly to general causes affecting European 
 society. Amalgamation of races and hard-won concessions from 
 despotic kings were creating an independent body of freemen. 
 
 Laws were inadequately administered. Property was insecure. 
 The dwelling of the peasant was open to plunder, without hope- 
 of redress. Poverty and ignorance hovered over the masses. 
 Domestic virtues were but slightly felt. Ideas of feasting and 
 defense were pushed into the foreground. Luxury was inele- 
 gant, pleasures indelicate, pomp cumbersome and unwieldy. 
 War stood on the right, and riot on the left. 
 
 The angry, fretful spirit of the working classes was joined to 
 a restless state on religious matters, issuing in satire and stern 
 attack. The multiplied abuses in different branches of the 
 Church, strongly supported indeed by the overshadowing super- 
 stition of the land, were yet at war with stubborn English in- 
 stincts, — love of home, industry, and justice. Theory and prac- 
 tice were corrupt, and the corruption irritated the ethical sense 
 of the few and the common sense of the many; the first result 
 finding representation in Wycliffe, the second in Chaucer. 
 
RESUME. 
 
 193 
 
 Every department of life was penetrated with the beliefs, or 
 interwoven with the interests of theology. Astronomy was be^ 
 wildered with astrology, chemistry ran into alchemy, philosophy 
 traversed mechanically the region of arid abstractions, science 
 — pursued in suspicious secrecy — wantoned in the grotesque 
 chimeras of magical phantoms, and the physician’s medicines 
 were powerless unless the priests said prayers over them. Four 
 chief causes were operating to emancipate the intellect from its 
 servile submission and faith: 
 
 1. The rapid growth of the industrial classes, — at all times 
 separated from theological tendencies. 
 
 2. The awakening of a spirit of bold inquiry. 
 
 3. The discredit fallen upon the Church on account of the 
 rival popes. 
 
 4. The corruption of the monasteries. 
 
 Literature was affected and shaped by two generic forces, — 
 foreign and indigenous: 
 
 1. Classical , wrought into Latin Christianity or translated 
 into scholastic tomes, as a benefit of instruction, but shown 
 chiefly and most directly in a trading-stock of semi-historical 
 tales. 
 
 2. Italian , embodied in the sweet and stately measures of 
 Dante or Petrarch and the studied prose or verse of Boccaccio, in 
 which the spirit of the antique was seen as in a modern mirror. 
 
 3. French , steeped in the imagery of Southern beauty and 
 closely connected with the over-strained sentiments of chivalry, 
 rising to its height and dying in the translation of the Romaunt 
 of the Rose. 
 
 4. Religious , the atmosphere, the climate, under which the 
 literary product springs, grows, and derives its vigor of life; a 
 perpetual irritant, arousing, with individual energy, the Teutonic 
 conscience and the English good sense. 
 
 5. Social , of half-barbaric cast, violent in pride, prodigal in 
 splendor, extravagant in its fanciful virtues, gross in its real 
 vices. 
 
 6. Linguistic , able — since now almost devoid of inflections — 
 to receive all the words of other languages that any might bring 
 to it; open for all uses, waiting for the hand of a master-builder 
 to consolidate and temper it. 
 
 13 
 
194 INITIATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 7. Formal , almost exclusively poetic, and dividing itself into 
 two schools — romantic and religious; the one following Conti- 
 nental models, the other reviving the laws of Saxon verse. 
 
 An age of heightened life, of wider culture, or more harmon- 
 ized society, into which are born a reformer, whose call awakes 
 the spirit of national independence and moral earnestness, and a 
 poet — not a rhymer, but a ‘maker,’ who has something new to 
 say, and has found the art of saying it beautifully. Against the 
 ruder, sadder lines of Langland, which paint with terrible fidelity 
 the hunger, toil, and misery of the poor man’s life, are the fresh, 
 glad notes of Chaucer, which breathe the perfumed elegance and 
 luxury of the court. 
 
 MANDEVILLE. 
 
 Now I am comen hom to reste. 
 
 Biography. — Born at St. Albans, about twenty miles north 
 of London, in the year 1300. He studied medicine, but the 
 globe was his home; and, at a time when the Orient was but a 
 Land of Fairy, impelled by an irresistible desire of change and a 
 deep religious emotion, he set forth ‘on the day of St. Michael, 
 in the year of our Lord 1322, passed the sea, and went the way 
 to Hierusalem, to behold the mervayles of Inde.’ With no cre- 
 dentials but his honorable sword, and his medical science (which 
 might sometimes prove as perilous), he penetrated into Turkey, 
 Persia, Armenia, India, Ethiopia, China, spending three years at 
 Pekin; joined a Mahometan army in Palestine, served under the 
 Sultan of Egypt; and after an absence of more than thirty years, 
 returned, as another Ulysses, to find himself forgotten save by a 
 few thin and withered friends of his youth, who supposed him 
 lost and dead. 
 
 Gout and the aching of his limbs had ‘defined the end of my 
 labor against my will, God knoweth.’ He wrote for ‘solace in 
 his wretched rest’; then, with his thoughts ever passing beyond 
 the equator, he set off again on another roving expedition, and 
 overtaken with illness died at Belgium in 1371. 
 
OUR FIRST TRAVELLER. 
 
 195 
 
 Writings. — Travels , first composed in Latin, which was 
 afterwards translated into French, and lastly out of French into 
 English, that ‘every man of my nation may understand it.’ The 
 book was submitted to the pope and to ‘ his wise council,’ who 
 after a critical review ‘ratified and confirmed my book in all 
 points.’ In this ‘true’ book are many things very untrue, but 
 the author himself designs no imposition. With the eyes and 
 ears of a child, he has stood in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre 
 and says: 
 
 ‘ 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 withoute the cytee 
 on the north syde. But it is now enclosed in with the ton wall. And there is a full fair 
 chirche all round, 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 taber- 
 nacle as it wer a lytyll hows, made with a low lityll dore; and that tabernacle is made in 
 maner of a half a compas right curiousely and richely made of gold and azure and othere 
 riche coloures, full nobelyche made. And in the ryght side of that tabernacle is the 
 sepulcre of oure Lord. And the tabernacle is viij fote long and v fote wide, and xj fote 
 in heghte. And it is not longe sithe the sepulcre was all open, that men myghte kisse it 
 and touche it. . . . And there is a lamp that hongeth befor the sepulcre 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 side 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 
 coloure 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. And 
 in the place of that morteys was Adames hed found after Noes flode, in tokene that the 
 synnes of Adam scholde ben bought in that same place.’ 
 
 With pious artlessness, in which the marvellous delights, he re- 
 lates how St. John sleeps placid and uncorrupted in abysmal 
 gloom, — 
 
 4 God-preserved, as though a treasure, 
 
 Kept unto the waking day 1 : — 
 
 ‘From Pathmos men gone unto Epheism, a fair citee and nyghe to the see. And 
 there dyede Seynte Johne, and was buryed behynde the highe Awtiere, in a toumbe. 
 And there is a faire chirche. For Christene mene weren wont to holden that place 
 alweyes. And in the tombe of Seynt John is noughte but manna, that is clept Aungeles 
 mete. For his body was translated into Paradys. And Turkes holden now alle that 
 place and the citee and the Chirche. And all Asie the lesse is yclept Turkye. And ye 
 shalle undrestond, that Seynt Johne bid make his grave there in his Lyf, and leyd him- 
 self there-inne all quyk. And therefore somme men seyn, that he dyed noughte, but 
 that he resteth there till the Day of Doom. And forsoothe there is a gret marveule: 
 For men may see there the erthe of the tombe apertly many tymes stcren and movcn, 
 as there weren quykke thinges undrc.’ 
 
 A suggestion of the picturesque myth of the Seven Sleepers. 
 So Rip Van Winkle passed twenty years slumbering in the 
 Catskill mountains. Even Napoleon is believed among some 
 of the French peasantry to be sleeping on in like manner. 
 
196 INITIATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 w ho has not reverted, fondly, regretfully, to the spring-time 
 of his being, with its simple pleasures and unconscious joys, as 
 the Eden of his individual existence? It may not be precisely 
 defined, but it is there — the same for all — somewhere beyond 
 the storm-line of perils and pitfalls. Even so the generations, 
 world-worn and foot-sore, look longingly back to the ‘shady 
 bowers, the vernal airs, the roses without thorns,’ of Paradise. 
 None has seen it, many have sought it in vain, but all concur 
 in the fact. In the imagination of the ages it is there , — or 
 was, somewhere in the dewy morn of mortal life before the im- 
 measurable wreck. Thus our honest traveller’s description of 
 the locality of this delectable spot is much the same as given 
 by men of finer genius centuries afterwards. He fairly acknowl- 
 edges that he cannot speak of it properly, ‘for I was not there.’ 
 With charming simplicity he adds: 
 
 ‘ The earthly Paradise, or Garden of Eden, as wise men say, is the highest point of 
 the earth, and it is so high that it nearly touches the circle of the earth there as the moon 
 makes her turn. And it is so high that the flood of Noah might not come to it. And 
 Paradise is enclosed all about with a wall, and men know not whereof it is, for the wall 
 is all covered over with moss as it seems, and it seems not that this is natural stone. . . . 
 And you shall understand that no man that is mortal shall approach to that Paradise, 
 for by land may no man go, for wild beasts that are in the deserts, and for the high 
 mountains and great huge rocks that no man may pass by for the dark places there; 
 and by the rivers no man may go, for the water runs so roughly and sharply, because it 
 comes down so outrageously from the high places above that it runs so in great waves 
 that no ship may run or sail against it. Many lords in past time have attempted to pass 
 by these rivers into Paradise, with full, great companies, but they might not speed in 
 their voyage, and many died of weariness of rowing against, the strong waves, and many 
 of them became blind or deaf by the noise of the water, and many perished that were 
 lost in the waves. So that no mortal man may approach that place without special 
 grace of God, and of that place I can tell you no more.' 
 
 When he relates from his own personal observation, it is no 
 longer with the prelude of ‘men seyn.’ Of Chinese royalty he 
 says: 
 
 ‘The gret Kyng hathe every day, 50 fair Damyseles, alle Maydenes, that serven him 
 everemore at his Mete. And whan he is at the Table, thei bryngen him liys Mete at 
 every tyme, 5 and 5 to gedre. And in bryngynge hire Servyse, thei syngen a Song. And 
 after that, thei kutten his Mete, and putten it in his Mouther for he touchethe no thing 
 ne liandlethe nought, but holdethe evere more his Hondes before him, upon the Table. 
 For he hath so longe Nayles, that he may take no thing, ne handle no thing. For the 
 Noblesse of that Contree is to have longe Nayles, and to make hem growen alle weys to 
 ben as longe as men may. And there ben manye in that Contree, that han hyre Nayles 
 so longe, that thei envyronne alle the Hond: and that is gret Noblesse. And the No- 
 blesse of the Women, is for to have smale Feet and litille: and therefore anon as thei 
 ben born, they leet bynde hire Feet so streyte, that thei may not growen half as nature 
 wolde: And alle weys theise Damyseles, that T spak of beforn, syngen alle the tyme that 
 this riche man etethe: and when that he etethe no more of his firste Fours, thanne other 
 -5 and 5 of faire Damyseles bryngen him his seconde Cours, alle weys syngynge, as thei 
 
OUR FIRST TRAVELLER. 
 
 197 
 
 dicle beforn. And so thei don contynuelly, every day, to the cnde of his Mete. And in 
 this manere he ledethe his Lif. And so dide thei before him, that weren his Auncestres; 
 and so shulle thei that comen aftre him, with outen doynge of ony Dedes of Armes: but 
 lyven evere more thus in ese, as a Swyn, that is fedde in Sty, for to- ben made fatte.’ 
 
 He enters the Valley Perilous, of which he has heard with won- 
 dering awe; and what he does not see, his horrifying fancy sup- 
 plies: 
 
 ‘Beside that isle of the Mistorak, upon the left side, nigh to the river Phison, is a 
 marvelous thing. There is a vale between the mountains that durcth near a four mile. 
 And some clepen it the vale enchanted, some clepen it the vale of devils, and some 
 clepen it the vale perilous. . . . This vale is full of devils, and hath been always. And 
 men say there that it is one of the entries of hell. In that vale is plenty of gold and 
 silver; wherefore many misbelieving men, and many Christian men also, gon in often - 
 time, for to have of the treasure that there is, but few comen again ; and namely of the 
 misbelieving men, lie of the Christian men nouther: for they ben anon strangled of 
 devils.’ 
 
 Naturally, — 
 
 ‘I was more devout then than ever I was before or after, and all for the dread of 
 fiends that I saw in divers figures.’ 
 
 He believes the earth to be round, but marvels how the antipodes, 
 whose feet are right upwards toward us, do not fall into the fir- 
 mament. The more wonderful the narrative, the deeper it sinks 
 into the softest and richest moulds of the most germinating mind. 
 ‘The trees of the sun and of the moon,’ he observes, ‘are well 
 known to have spoken to King Alexander, and warned him of his 
 death.’ In the Island of Lango, not far from Crete, he forgets 
 not the unfortunate Lady of the Land who remained a dragoness 
 because no one had the hardihood to kiss her lips to disenchant 
 her. Near Bethlehem, he assures us, is the field Floridus , in 
 which a fair maiden was unjustly condemned to die: 
 
 ‘And as the fire began to burn about her she made her prayers to our Lord, that as 
 truly as she was not guilty He would of His merciful grace help her and make it known 
 to all men. And when she had thus said she entered into the fire and immediately it was 
 extinguished, and the fagots that were burning became red rose trees, and those that 
 were not kindled became white rose trees, full of roses. And these were the first rose 
 trees , red and white , that ever man saw.' 
 
 Style.— Straightforward, unpoetical, unadorned, idiomatic, 
 drawn-out, as if the idea, to be made plain, must be driven in 
 and clinched. These several lines are representative: 
 
 ‘And zee schull vnderstonde Machamete [ Mahomet ] was born in Araybe, that was 
 first a pore knaue that kept cameles that wenten with marchantes for marchandise, and 
 so befell that he wente with the marchantes in to Egipt, and thei were thanne cristene 
 in tho partyes. And at the desartes of Araybe he wente in to a chapel! wher a Eremyte 
 duelte. And whan he entered in to the chapell, that was but a lytill and a low thing, and 
 had but a lytill dore and a low, than the entree began to wexe so gret and so large, and 
 so high, as though it had be of gret mynstr, or the zatc of a paleys.’ 
 
198 INITIATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 Rank. — An ingenuous voyager; the first example of the 
 liberal and independent gentleman journeying over the world in 
 pursuit of knowledge, honored wherever he went for his talents 
 and personal accomplishments. If he was gossipy and credulous, 
 it was because his age was so. The critic who thus comprehends 
 him, will neither calumniate nor ridicule him. A journey over 
 the globe at that distant day was scarcely less solemn than a 
 departure to the realm of spirits; and, considering the circum- 
 stances under which he travelled and wrote, he must be conceded 
 to have been a remarkable man. If he related fables, he did it 
 honestly, while other accounts, long resting on his single and un- 
 supported authority, have been confirmed by later discoveries, — 
 as the burning of widows on the funeral pile of their husbands — 
 the artificial egg-hatching in Egypt — the spheroidal form of the 
 earth — the crocodile — the hippopotamus — the Chinese predilec- 
 tion for small feet — the trees which bear wool of which clothing 
 is made. 
 
 Character. — Studious from childhood, -unconquerably curious 
 to see the unknown, courageous to wander wherever the step of 
 man could press; a knight of spotless honor, a man of unim- 
 peached probity, and a Christian of devoted piety. Offered in 
 marriage a Sultan’s daughter and a province, he refused both 
 when his faith was to be exchanged for Mahometanism. He who 
 can mourn the wickedness of his country cannot be without a 
 large measure of those moral, affectional, and religious faculties, 
 whose fairest, sweetest blossom is goodness. On his return to- 
 Europe, he wrote: 
 
 ‘In our time it may be spoken more truly then of olde, that Vertue is gone, the- 
 Church is under foote, the Clergie is in crrour, the Devill raigneth, and Simonie beareth 
 the sway.’ 
 
 Influence. — By the popularity of his book, he did more, 
 probably, than any other writer of the century, to increase the 
 proportion of Latin and Romance words in the English vocabu- 
 lary. The following are illustrative: assembly , inflame , moisten r 
 nation , cruelty , corner , date, defend , idol, philosopher , plainly r 
 promise, pronounce, reconcile, temporal , publish , monster, visit y 
 environ , conquer, reverend, spiritual. 
 
 We, from whom the ethereal hues of that glowing day have 
 faded (alas !), may smile at his budget of wonders, but to the- 
 
PRECURSOR OF THE REFORMATION. 
 
 199 
 
 spirit of such we owe perhaps the map of the world and the 
 intercourse of nations. His Travels will always remain a deeply 
 interesting monument of the thought of the period. 
 
 WYCLIFFE. 
 
 Honored of God to be the first Preacher of a general Reformation to all Europe.— 
 Milton. 
 
 Biography. — Son of a country squire, born 1324, in the little 
 village of Wycliffe — the cliff by the water. Entered Oxford at 
 sixteen, where he distinguished himself in logic and theology. 
 In 1361, he was elected Master of Balliol, and in that year was 
 presented by his college to the rectory of Fylingham. Four years 
 later, he was appointed Warden of Canterbury Hall, and, as the 
 champion of the State, threw himself into the stormy disputes 
 between Romanism and the government. Armed with the degree 
 of Doctor of Divinity, he began in a wooden hall, roughly plastered 
 and roofed with thatch, to lecture on divinity, boldly assailing the 
 practices of the Church. His fame in 1374 led to his selection as 
 one of an embassy to Bruges, to remonstrate against the tribute- 
 claims of the papacy, whose demands, amid the social troubles 
 from pestilence, from the cost of war, and from the strife between 
 capital and labor, rose ever higher. Obtaining some concessions 
 from the pope, he was rewarded with the rectorship of Lutterworth, 
 which was afterwards his chief residence. Identity of political 
 views had allied him with the powerful John of Gaunt, Duke of 
 Lancaster, who was eager to drive the prelates from office and to 
 seize their wealth. He had said that church property, like other, 
 might be employed for national purposes, and had exhorted the 
 clergy to return to their original poverty. These offences were 
 not to be forgiven. On the 19th of February, 1377, his grey 
 beard sweeping to his breast, his belted robe flowing to his feet, 
 his white staff firmly in his thin hand, he appeared before the 
 Bishop of London, to answer for heresy. By his side were Lan- 
 caster and the Marshal of England. There was no trial. A howl- 
 ing mob, to whom the Duke as the leader of the baronage was 
 
200 INITIATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 unpopular, dissolved the meeting. The hearts of the monks 
 burned to smite him down ; and again, at the close of the ensuing 
 year, he was summoned to the Capitol. Supported by the Crown 
 and the people, he bore himself defiantly and returned to Oxford 
 in peace. ‘It is not possible,’ he asserted, ‘that a man should be 
 excommunicated to his damage, unless he were first and princi- 
 pally excommunicated by himself.’ In his chamber, where he lay 
 at the point of death, eight men urged him to recant. When 
 they had done, he rose by help of his servant, and, ‘holding them 
 with his glittering eye,’ cried: ‘I shall not die, but live; and 
 again declare the evil deeds of the friars ! ’ In 1381, deserted 
 and alone, he openly inveighed against the doctrine of transub- 
 stantiation. The university, panic-stricken, first condemned him, 
 then tacitly adopted his cause. In the presence of his class, he 
 had challenged a refutation of his conclusions, and was com- 
 manded by Lancaster to be silent, to which he replied: ‘I believe 
 that in the end the truth will conquer.’ His courage had restored 
 confidence: but turning from the rich and learned, he appealed 
 to England at large, and, from being a schoolman, became a 
 pamphleteer. His enemies were persistent. Of twenty -four pro- 
 positions, carefully collated from his works, a council solemnly 
 decreed ten to be heretical and the rest erroneous. Alarmed by 
 the Peasant Revolt and the attitude of the barons, Richard II, to 
 strengthen his position by an alliance with the Church, issued a 
 royal order of expulsion from the university; and Wy cliff e, 
 silenced at Oxford, retired to the hovels of Lutterworth, where 
 he forged the great weapon of future warfare against the tri- 
 umphant hierarchy, — the English Bible. Summoned to appear 
 at Rome, his failing strength inspired the sarcastic reply: 
 
 ‘I am always glad to explain my faith to anyone, and above all to the Bishop of 
 Rome ; for I take it for granted that if it be orthodox he will confirm it; if it be erroneous, 
 he will correct it. . . . Now Christ during his life upon earth was of all men the poorest, 
 casting from Him all worldly authority. I deduce from these premises, as a simple 
 counsel of my own, that the Pope should surrender all temporal authority to the civil 
 power, and advise his clergy to do the same.’ 
 
 The terrible strain on his energies enfeebled by age and study 
 had induced paralysis, and a final stroke while he was hearing 
 mass in his parish church was followed a day or two later by his 
 quiet death, December 31, 1384. The lips of malice pursued 
 him with redoubled fury; and, besides assuring the people of 
 
PRECURSOR OF THE REFORMATION. 
 
 201 
 
 his eternal damnation, took care to represent his malady as the 
 visible judgment of Heaven for his heresies. 1 
 
 Writings. — An incredible number of sermons, letters, tracts, 
 and treatises, in Latin and English, asserting collectively and 
 essentially: 
 
 1. All power is of God. Hence the royal is as sacred as the 
 ecclesiastical. The king is as truly His vicar as is the Pope. 
 
 2. Each individual holds the dominion of his conscience, not 
 of a mediating priesthood, but immediately of his Creator, who 
 is the tribunal of personal appeal. 
 
 3. The bread in the Eucharist is not the real body of Christ, 
 but only its sign. 
 
 4. The Roman Church has no true claim to headship over 
 other churches. 
 
 5. Temporal privileges cannot be exacted or defended by 
 spiritual censures. 
 
 G. Ecclesiastical courts should be subject to the civil. 
 
 7. The clergy ought not to possess temporal wealth; they 
 should be maintained by the free alms of their flocks. 
 
 8. Pilgrimages and image-worship are akin to idolatry. 
 
 9. Priests have no power to absolve from sin. 
 
 10. The Bible is the one ground of faith, and it is the right 
 of every man to examine it for himself. 
 
 What a result for the fourteenth century ! What a promise 
 for the renovated head and heart of the sixteenth ! Religion 
 must be secularized — no longer forestalled — and purged from 
 indulgences and rosaries. Let each hear and read for himself. 
 To this end, let God’s word quit the learned schools and the 
 dusty shelves of the monastery. To the mass it is a sealed 
 book, locked up in a dead and foreign tongue, covered with a 
 confusion of commentaries and Fathers. How far it is corrupted 
 by the traditions and devices of men, we know not till we see it 
 in the simple speech of the market and the fireside: 
 
 ‘ Ech place of holy writ, both opyn and derk, techith mekenes and charite; and 
 therfore he that kepith mekenes and charite hath the trewe undirstondyng and perfec- 
 tionn of al holi writ. . . . Therfore no simple man of wit be aferd unmesurabli to studie 
 in the text of holy writ.’ 
 
 1 The impartial historian of opinions most he early impressed with the mournful 
 truth that all religions agree in forever rewarding the believer and forever damning the 
 one who doubts or denies, — the heretic. Under the great laws of eternal development, 
 are we not all heretics? 
 
202 INITIATIVE PEKIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 In this spirit, Protestant Wycliffe translates the Testament, Old 
 and New, which men will consult, not for amusement, but to find 
 in it their doom of life and death, and to learn a new worship, 
 without the rites that smother a living piety beneath external 
 forms. 
 
 Style . — Rugged, homely, sometimes slovenly ; but always 
 clear, terse, vehement, stinging, as if feeling ever the galling 
 shackles of spiritual despotism. The mind intent upon the eter- 
 nal tragedy of the conscience is disdainful of elegance. 
 
 Rank. — In the immense range of his intellectual power, he 
 stood in Oxford without a rival. Like Bacon, Scotus, and Occam, 
 an audacious partisan; unlike them, a dexterous politician. The 
 organizer of a religious order, the founder of our later English 
 prose; first of the great Reformers and last of the great Scholas- 
 tics. The grandeur of his position is marked, as well by the 
 reluctance to adopt extreme measures against him, as by the 
 admission of a contemporary and opponent, who acknowledged 
 him to be ‘the greatest theologian of the day, second to none 
 ms a philosopher, and incomparable as a schoolman.’ To be the 
 first, amidst a host of prejudices and errors, to strike out into a 
 new and untried way, indicates a genius above the common order. 
 
 Character. — Devout, benevolent, austere; a man of sterling 
 sense, of amazing industry, of ardent zeal, with the stout-heart- 
 edness that dared be singular for God and the right. Altogether 
 a brave and admirable spirit, open to the divine significance of 
 life; seeing through the show of things, believing in the truth of 
 things, and striking with the poets, in a troublous period, the 
 first blow of demolition against an ancient thing grown false, 
 preparatory afar off to a new thing. 
 
 Influence. — To Wycliffe is due the establishment of a sacred 
 dialect, which, with slight variation, as will appear below in his 
 version of the first chapter of the Gospel of St. Mark , has con- 
 tinued to be the language of devotion to the present day: 
 
 *1. The bigynnyngc of the gospel of Jhesu Crist, the sone of God. 
 
 2. As it is writun in Ysaie, the prophete, Lo! I send myn angel bifore thi face, that 
 schal make thi weye redy before thee. 
 
 3. The voyce of oon cryinge in desert, Make ye redy the weye of the Lord, make ye 
 ihis pathis rihtful. 
 
PRECURSOR OF THE REFORMATION. 
 
 203 
 
 4. John was in desert baptisynge, and prechinge the baptysm of penaunce, into 
 remiscioun of synnes. 
 
 5. And alle men of Jerusalem wenten out to him and al the cuntree of Judee; and 
 weren baptisid of him in the flood of Jordan, knowlechinge her synnes. 
 
 0. And John was clothid with heeris of camelis, and a girdil of skyn abowte his 
 leendis; and he oet locusts, and hony of the wode, and prechide, seyinge: 
 
 7. A strengere than I schal come aftir me, of whom I knelinge am not worthi for to 
 vndo, or vnbynde, the thwong of his schoon. 
 
 8. I have baptisid you in water: forsothe he shall baptise you in the Holy Goost.' . . . 
 
 He and his school introduced or popularized many Latin and 
 Romance terms; and thus enriched literary diction by enriching 
 that of familiar currency, from which the Shakespeares draw 
 their stock of living and breathing words. 
 
 He accomplished a work which no ecclesiastical censure could 
 set aside. The period was eminently favorable to a successful 
 revolt through a general spirit of disaffection to the pope. Men 
 of rank became his adherents. The learned of Oxford were his 
 apostles. Wandering scholars carried his writing into Bohemia, 
 and disseminated his principles. Lollardism spread through 
 every class of society, a floating mass of religious and social dis- 
 content. The grave nor persecution could extinguish the new 
 forces of thought and feeling which were breaking through the 
 crust of feudalism. His Bible was proscribed; his votaries, as 
 >vill presently appear, were imprisoned and burned; but the seed 
 had been dropped, and was rooted in the soil. Thirty years 
 hence the vultures of the law will ungrave him, and consuming 
 to ashes what little they can find, will cast it into the brook that 
 runs hard by, thinking thus to make away both with his bones 
 and his doctrines; but — 
 
 ‘As thou these ashes, little brook, wilt bear 
 Into the Avon — Avon to the tide 
 Of Severn — Severn to the narrow seas — 
 
 Into main ocean they — this deed accurst 
 An emblem yields to friends and enemies, 
 
 How the bold teacher's doctrine, sanctified 
 
 By truth, shall spread throughout the world dispersed.’ 
 
 When the ‘simple preachers’ have slumbered a century and a 
 half, their day of triumph will be at hand. The age, though 
 strongly disposed, is not yet ripe for revolution. Reforms or- 
 dained to be permanent are of slow growth. 
 
204 INITIATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 CHAUCER. 
 
 Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath 
 Preluded those melodious bursts that fill 
 The spacious times of great Elizabeth 
 With sounds that echo still.— Tennyson. 
 
 Biography. — Born ill London, 1328 , — 1 the city of London, 
 that is to me so dear and sweet in which I was forth-grown’; 
 studied at Cambridge, then at Oxford; acquired all branches of 
 scholastic and elegant literature, Latin, Italian, English, and 
 French; was page in the royal household; served in the army, 
 was taken prisoner in France; again at the court of Edward III, 
 the most splendid in Europe, surrounded by the wit, beauty, and 
 gallantry of chivalry; marries the queen’s maid of honor, wonder- 
 ing that Heaven had fashioned such a being, — 
 
 ‘And in so little space 
 Made such a body, and such face; 
 
 So great beauty and such features 
 More than be in other creatures!’ 
 
 thus brother-in-law of the heir apparent to the throne, Duke of 
 Lancaster, strengthening their political bond by a family alliance; 
 an ambassador in open or secret missions to Florence, Genoa, 
 Flanders; takes part in pomps of France and Milan; converses 
 with Petrarch, perhaps with Boccaccio and Froissart ; is high up 
 and low down, — now a placeholder, now disgraced, now the ad- 
 mired of the Court, now an exile dreading to see the face of a 
 stranger, now incarcerated in the Tower, and again basking in 
 the sunshine of kingly favor; at one time occupied with cere- 
 monies and processions, at another secluded in his lovely retreat 
 at Woodstock; finally, weary of the hurry and turmoil of the 
 varied and brilliant world, retiring to the country quiet of Don- 
 nington Castle; then, bowed beneath the weight of years, dying 
 in Palace-yard on the 25th of October, 1400, — his earthly friend- 
 ship dissolved, — himself the only withered leaf upon a stately 
 branch. He was the first buried in what is now famous as the 
 Poets’ Corner of Westminster Abbey. 
 
 What an education was that, with its splendor, varieties, con- 
 trasts ! What a stage for the mind and eyes of an artist ! 
 
 Appearance. — Of middle stature, late in life inclining to 
 
THE DAWN OF ART — CHAUCER. 
 
 205 
 
 corpulency, — a point upon which the Tabard host takes occasion 
 to jest with him: 
 
 ‘Now ware you, sirs, and let this man have place; 
 
 He in the waist is shaped as well as I ; 
 
 This were a poppet in armes to embrace . 1 
 
 Of full face, indicative of health and serenity; of fair complexion, 
 verging* towards paleness; of dusky yellow hair, short and thin, 
 with small round-trimmed beard; of aquiline nose, of expansive 
 marble-like forehead, and drooping eyes, — a peculiarity likewise 
 noticed by the host: 
 
 “‘What man art thou, 1 ’ quoth he, 
 
 “That lookest as thou wonldest find a hare? 
 
 Forever on the ground I see thee stare . 1 * 1 
 
 His ordinary dress consisted of a loose frock of camlet, reaching 
 to the knee, with wide sleeves fastened at the wrist; a dark hood, 
 with tippet , or tail, which indoors hung down his back, and 
 outdoors was twisted round his head; bright-red stockings, and 
 black, horned shoes. 
 
 Diction. — As to the ancient accentuation, we are much in 
 the dark. Certainly it was not in all respects like that of our 
 own day. It is slightly different even in Shakespeare and his 
 contemporaries from what it now is. For example, aspect , which 
 in their time was always accented on the last syllable, is now 
 accented on the first. A short composition is now called an 
 essay , but a century ago it was called an essay. Thus Pope, — 
 
 ‘And write next winter more essays on man . 1 
 At an earlier period, this change was much more active. There 
 was no recognised standard of accidence, and the modes of spell- 
 ing, as of emphasis, were extremely irregular. It will render the 
 approach to Chaucer’s poetry easier, to remember: 
 
 1. That the Romance canons of verse, which were adopted as 
 the laws of poetical composition, tended to throw the stress of 
 voice upon the final syllable, contrary to the Saxon articulation, 
 which inclined to emphasize the initial syllable. Hence the pro- 
 nunciation would oscillate between the two systems. Thus Chau- 
 cer has langage in one line, langdge in another, as the verse 
 may require. 
 
 2. The eel at the end of verbs, and the es, when it is the plural 
 or possessive termination of a noun, should generally be sounded 
 as distinct syllables. 
 
206 INITIATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 3. The presence of their Anglo-Saxon root is often denoted 
 by an n at the end of words; as, ‘Thou shalt ben quit’ (be), 
 * withouten doubt’ (without), ‘I shall you tellen ’ (tell). 
 
 4. Not infrequently two negatives are used; as, ‘I n’ill nat 
 go ’ (will not), ‘ I w’ am nat sure ’ (am not), ‘ I ne owe hem not a 
 word ’ (do not owe). 
 
 5. Forms of the personal pronouns are exhibited in the follow- 
 
 ing declension: 
 
 Sing. 1st person. 
 
 Nom. I, Ic 
 
 2 d person. 
 thou 
 
 3d person. 
 he 
 
 she 
 
 hit, it 
 
 Gen. 
 
 min, mi 
 
 thin, thi 
 
 his 
 
 hire, hir 
 
 his 
 
 Acc. 
 
 me 
 
 the, thee 
 
 him 
 
 hir, hire 
 
 hit, it 
 
 Plural. 
 
 Nom. 
 
 Gen. 
 
 Acc. 
 
 we 
 
 our, oure 
 
 11S 
 
 ye 
 
 youre, your 
 you 
 
 the, they 
 
 here 
 
 hem. 
 
 
 
 6. Final e (with us totally inoperative upon the syllabication) 
 is usually pronounced, — silent before h or a vowel; as Aprille , 
 
 ■sicoote. 
 
 Chaucer’s position, so far as we know, has no parallel in liter- 
 ary history. His poems are not in a foreign language — hardly 
 in our own. They present to the eye terms that are familiar, and 
 terms that are uncouth. The use of a glossary is wearisome; the 
 intermingling of sunshine and shadow, in which the reader is un- 
 certain how long the clearness will continue, and how soon the 
 obscurity will recur, is vexatious. He is the star of a misty morn- 
 ing. 
 
 Versification. — Chaucer composed several pieces in octosyl- 
 labic metre — iambic tetrameter; but by far the most considera- 
 ble part of his poetry was written in our present heroic measure 
 — iambic pentameter in rhymed couplets or stanzas. In prac- 
 tice, spondees ( - - ), trochees ( - w ) ? and anapaests (%-»<-»-) 
 are often introduced. To vary the position of the accents pre- 
 vents monotony; to reduce their number , as from five to four, 
 quickens the movement of the line. A line may be catalectic — 
 wanting a syllable; or hypercatalectic — lengthened by a syllable 
 or even two, which gives a lifting billowy rhythm. By a little 
 attention to the law of the verse, the difficulties of pronunciation 
 will greatly diminish, and the air of archaism will rather enhance 
 the effect. Thus of the death of Arcite: 
 
THE DAWN OF ART — CHAUCER. 
 
 207 
 
 ■‘And with that word his spech« faite gan; 
 
 For fro his feete up too his brest was come 
 
 The cold of deth that hadde him overnome [overtaken 
 
 And ydt moreover in his armcs twoo 
 The vital strength is lost, and al agoo. 
 
 Only the intellect, withouten m6re, 
 
 That dwelled in his hert<? sik and sdre, 
 
 Gan fayle when the hertfi felte deth.’ 
 
 The poet himself seems anxious that transcribers and reciters 
 should not violate his metre. Thus, gracefully bidding adieu to 
 a finished poem, he adds: 
 
 ‘And for there is so grete dyversite 
 In English and in writynge of our tonge, 
 
 So preye I God that non miswrite thee 
 Ne thee mismetre for defaute of tonge.’ 
 
 His stanza — called rhyme royal , from the circumstance of its 
 being used by a royal follower — was formed from the Italian 
 octave rhyme by the omission of the fifth line. It thus consists 
 of seven lines, three on each side of a middle one, which is the 
 last of a quatrain of alternate rhymes, and first of a quatrain of 
 couplets. Thus: 
 
 “‘Nay, God forbede a lover shulde chaunge!” 
 
 The turtel seyde, and wex for shame al reed: 
 
 “Thoogh that hys lady evermore be straunge, 
 
 Yet let hym serve hir ever, tyl he be deed. 
 
 Forsoth, I preyse noght the gooses reed; 
 
 For though she deyed, I woldc noon other make; 
 
 I wol ben hirs til that the deth me take." ’ 
 
 It remained a favorite with English poets down to the reign of 
 Elizabeth. 
 
 In rhythmic history, Langland terminates the ancient period, 
 and Chaucer begins the modern. The first presents the Anglo- 
 Saxon type ^ p * \j , but with the accent at the second time- 
 unit of the bar instead of the first. Thus: 
 
 3 : 
 
 % 
 
 
 0 0 1 
 
 0 
 
 0 
 
 0 
 
 i 
 
 0 
 
 A 
 
 0 
 
 0 | 
 
 0 
 
 0 
 
 0 1 1 
 
 P 
 
 b 
 
 P 
 
 1 
 
 if 
 
 if 
 
 p 1 
 
 if 
 
 In 
 
 a som 
 
 er 
 
 se - 
 
 son 
 
 
 whan soft 
 
 was 
 
 the 
 
 
 A 
 
 
 A 
 
 
 
 
 
 A 
 
 
 0 
 
 0 0 1 
 
 0 
 
 0 
 
 0, 
 
 0 
 
 1 * 
 
 0 
 
 0 1 
 
 0 
 
 If 
 
 p p ! 
 
 if 
 
 U 
 
 
 $ 
 
 1 * 
 
 ✓ 
 
 ✓ 
 
 1 I 
 
 P 
 
 I 
 
 shop - e 
 
 me in shroud-es 
 
 as 
 
 I 
 
 a 
 
 shep - 
 
 e 
 
 if if V 
 
 the son - ne 
 
 0 0 
 
 P P 
 
 wer - e 
 
 The second presents the same, with the last two of the eighth- 
 notes joined together into a quarter-note; as if in music we 
 should write £ J , where the slur unites two sounds in one 
 
208 INITIATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 precisely equivalent to * . Hence for the predominant form 
 3: f f f , we have the predominant form 3: f f . Thus: 
 
 • 8 - v v v - 8 - If 1 
 
 A 
 
 0 0 
 
 i 0 
 
 A 
 
 0 
 
 0 
 
 A 
 
 0 1 
 
 0 
 
 A 
 
 0 
 
 , 
 
 0 
 
 A 
 
 0 
 
 If 1 
 
 1 If 
 
 I 
 
 If 
 
 1 1 
 
 if 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 Is 
 
 | 
 
 Whil-om 
 
 as 
 
 old 
 
 e 
 
 sto 
 
 ries 
 
 tell 
 
 - 
 
 en 
 
 US 
 
 A 
 
 
 A 
 
 
 A 
 
 
 A 
 
 
 
 A 
 
 0 0 1 
 
 1 0 
 
 0 
 
 I 0 
 
 0 I 
 
 0 
 
 0 
 
 | 
 
 0 
 
 0 
 
 If 
 
 1 If 
 
 
 P 
 
 1 1 
 
 If 
 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 If 
 
 i 
 
 There was 
 
 a 
 
 due 
 
 that 
 
 hight 
 
 e 
 
 The 
 
 - 
 
 se 
 
 ■ US 
 
 Writings. — Like all the rest, Chaucer begins as a copyist, 
 and, turning* with greatest sympathy to those in whom the 
 romantic element is strongest, translates the Homaunt of the 
 JRose , an allegorical love poem, built up by the troubadours into 
 colossal proportions, one of the most famous in the fashionable 
 literature of the time. Under the figure of a rose in a delicious 
 garden, it portrays the trials of a lover, who in the attainment of 
 his desire, has to traverse vast ditches, scale lofty walls, and force 
 the gates of castles. These enchanted fortresses are inhabited 
 by visible divinities, some of whom assist and some oppose. The 
 garden itself is enclosed with embattled masonry, whereon are 
 the emblematic Hatred, Avarice, Envy, Sorrow, Old Age, and 
 Hypocrisy. Within are the smiling dancers, and, by way of con- 
 trast, Danger, who starts suddenly from an ambuscade, and sad 
 Travail, who forever mingles with the merry company. All this, 
 as usual, is seen in a dream, a dream of May, with its mantling 
 green and gladsome melody of birds: 
 
 ‘That it was May me thoughten tho, 
 
 It is five year or more ago, 
 
 That it was May thus dreamed me 
 In time of love and jollity. . . . 
 
 And then becometh the ground so proud 
 That it woll have a newe shrowd, 
 
 And make so quaint his robe and fair 
 That it had hews an hundred pair, 
 
 Of grass and flourcs Ind and Pers, 
 
 And many hewes full diverse. . . . 
 
 The birdes, that han left their song 
 While they had suffered cold full strong 
 In weathers gril, and derk to sight, 
 
 Been in May for the sunne bright 
 So glad, that they shew in singing 
 That in their heart is such liking, 
 
 That they mote singen and been light. . . '. 
 Then younge folk intenden aye 
 
 [then 
 
 [Indian, Persian 
 
 [dreary 
 
THE DAWN OF ART — CHAUCER. 
 
 209 
 
 For to been gay and amorous, 
 
 The time is then so savourous. 
 
 Hard is his heart that loveth nought 
 In May, when all this mirth is wrought, 
 
 When he may on these branches hear 
 The smale birdes singen clear 
 Their blissful swete song pitous.’ 
 
 Under the influence of the prevalent taste for novelty and 
 Splendor, he writes the House of Fame , known to modern read- 
 ers chiefly through Pope’s paraphrase, bearing the statelier title 
 of the ‘Temple of Fame.’ Chaucer is transported in a dream to 
 the Temple of Venus, which is of glass, in a wide waste of sand, 
 and on whose walls are figured in gold all the legends of Virgil 
 and Ovid. Dante’s eagle, glittering like a carbuncle, looks on 
 him from the sun: 
 
 ‘That faste by the sonne, as hye 
 As kenne myght I with myn eye. 
 
 Me thought I sawgh an cgle sore, 
 
 But that hit semede moche more 
 Then I had any egle seyne. . . . 
 
 Hit was of golde and shone so bryght, 
 
 That never sawgh man such a syght 
 
 Suddenly the eagle descends with lightning wing, and, bearing 
 him aloft in his talons above the stars, drops him at last before 
 the House of Fame, built of polished beryl, and standing on a 
 rock of almost inaccessible ice. All the southern side is covered 
 with the names of famous men — perpetually melting away! 
 The northern side is alike graven, but the names, here shaded, 
 remain. All around, on the turrets, are the minstrels, with 
 Orpheus, Arion, and the renowned harpers. Behind them are 
 myriad musicians, then charmers, magicians, and prophets. He 
 enters, and at the upper end of the hall, paved and roofed with 
 gold, and embossed with gems, sees Fame seated on a throne of 
 carbuncle, a ‘gret and noble quene,’ amidst an infinite number of 
 heralds, robed nobles, and crowned heads. From her throne to 
 the gate stretches a row of pillars, on which stand the great his- 
 torians and poets. The palace rings with the sounds of instru- 
 ments, and the celestial melody of Calliope and her seven sisters, 
 in eternal praise of the goddess. People of every nation and 
 condition crowd the hall to present their claims. Some ask fame 
 for their good works, and are denied good or bad fame. Others 
 who merit well, are trumpeted by Slander. A few obtain their 
 just reward. Some, who have done nobly, desire their good works 
 
210 INITIATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 to be hidden, and their request is granted. Others make request, 
 and their deeds are trumpeted through clarion of gold. Chaucer 
 himself refuses to be a petitioner. Enough that he best knows 
 what he has suffered, and what thought. He is then carried by 
 the eagle to the House of Rumor, sixty miles long and perpetually 
 whirling. Made of twigs like a cage, it admits every sound. Its 
 doors, more numerous than forest leaves, stand ever ajar. Thence 
 issue tidings of every description, like fountains and rivers from 
 the sea, flying first to Fame, who gives them name and duration. 
 Would you know how the waves of air perambulate the oceans of 
 space — how the lightest word speeds unerringly to its destina- 
 tion, and mayhap in the Hereafter will vibrate still in the speak- 
 er’s ear — how the atmosphere we breathe may be the ever-living 
 witness of the sentiments we have uttered ? Listen : 
 
 ‘Sound is naught but air that's broken, 
 
 And every speeche that is spoken, 
 
 Whe'er loud or low, foul or fair, 
 
 In his substance is but air: 
 
 For as flame is but lighted smoke, 
 
 Right so is sound but air that's broke. . . . 
 
 Now, henceforth, I will thee teach 
 However, speeche, voice or sown, 
 
 Through his multiplicion, 
 
 Though it were piped of a mouse, 
 
 Must needs come to Fame’s House. 
 
 I prove it thus; taketh heed now 
 By experience, for if that thou 
 Throw in a water now a stone, 
 
 Well wot'st thou it will make anon 
 A little roundel as a circle, 
 
 Par venture as broad as a covercle, 
 
 And right anon thou shalt see well 
 That circle cause another wheel, 
 
 And that the third, and so forth, brother, 
 
 Every circle causing other, 
 
 Much broader than himselfen was: 
 
 Right so of air, my leve brother, 
 
 Ever each air another stirreth 
 
 More and more, and speech upbeareth, 
 
 Till it be at the House of Fame.’ 
 
 The occupants of this house — chiefly sailors, pilgrims, and par- 
 doners — are continually employed in hearing or telling news, 
 inventing and circulating reports and lies. In one corner, the 
 poet sees a throng of eager listeners around a narrator of love- 
 stories. The uproar about this shadow of himself wakes him 
 from his dream. 
 
 Grand suggestiveness here, true strokes of the Gothic imagi- 
 
THE DAWN OF ART — CHAUCER. 
 
 211 
 
 nation. Pass away the highest things ! There are no eternal 
 corner-stones. All things that have been in this place of hope, 
 all that are or will be in it, earth’s wonder and her pride, have 
 to vanish, — rising only to melt in air and be no more ! 
 
 Amid all this exuberancy, love is the sovereign passion. As. 
 we have seen, it has the force of law. It is inscribed in a code,, 
 combined with religion, confounding morality with pleasure, dis- 
 playing the fatal excess and pedantry of the age. From his 
 sojourn beneath Italian skies, Chaucer returns with his Northern 
 brain powerfully stimulated, and, with close attention to his origi- 
 nals, writes the story of Troilus and Creseide , in which the well- 
 loved visions wear a more tangible form, and mingle in a more 
 consecutive history, than in the hazy distance of allegory. It is 
 a tale of Troy told in the Middle Ages. A Trojan seer, warned 
 by Apollo that Troy must fall, deserts to the Greeks, leaving be- 
 hind him in the beleaguered city his beautiful daughter Creseide, 
 overwhelmed with grief at her father’s treachery. Troi'lus, valor- 
 ous brother of Hector, sees her in the temple, clad in mourning, 
 and loves: 
 
 ‘And when that he in cliaumber was allon, 
 
 He down upon his beddes feet him sette, 
 
 And thought ay on hire so, withouten lette [ceasing 
 
 That as he satt and woke, his spirit mette [fancied 
 
 That he hire saugh, and temple, and al the wyse [manner 
 
 Right of hire loke, and gan it new avise.’ [consider 
 
 Like Dante, he is reticent, would languish and die in silence but 
 for Pandarus, her uncle, who persuades him to disclose the name 
 of his love and promises to forward his suit. Troi'lus is born 
 anew — an invincible knight, yet gentle, generous, and sincere; 
 his cruelty, his levity, his haughty carriage, all gone; of so gentle 
 manner, — 
 
 ‘That each him loved that looked in his face.’ 
 
 Pandarus seeks his niece, with the comforting adieu, — 
 
 ‘Give me this labour and this business, 
 
 And of my speed be thine all the sweetness.’ 
 
 He prevails upon her to pity his friend, takes his leave ‘glad and 
 well begone.’ As she sits alone in troubled meditation, a shout 
 in the street proclaims the victorious advance of Troi'lus, who, 
 omnipotent in hope, has put the Greeks to flight, and comes 
 a conquering hero. She sees his triumph, marks his modest 
 demeanor, — 
 
212 INITIATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS, 
 
 ‘ And let it in her heart so softly sink 
 That to herself she said, “Ho! give me drink.” ’ 
 
 She blushes, drops her head, thinks of his prowess, his estate, his 
 fame, — above all, of his distress; almost decides that she will 
 love, then thinks of the woes of love: 
 
 Troi’lus, in wasting suspense, asks his friend, just returned, 
 ‘ Shall I weep or sing ? ’ Assured of her friendly regard, he fears 
 his heart will leap forth, ‘it spreadeth so for joy 
 
 ‘But, Lord, how shall I doen? how shall I liven? 
 
 When shall I next my own dear heart ysee? 
 
 How shall this longe time away he driven 
 Till that thou be again at her from me? 
 
 Thou may’st answer, “Abide, abide”; but he 
 That hangeth by the neck, the soth to sain, 
 
 In great disease abideth for the pain.’ [discomfort 
 
 In answer, Pandarus recommends him to write a letter, and fur- 
 thermore, to ride, as it were accidentally, by her house, when he 
 will take care that she shall be at the window engaged in conver- 
 sation with himself, — the subject the man whom he desires to 
 serve. When the letter is brought, she is ashamed to open it, 
 and consents only when told the poor knight is about to die. 
 When asked how she likes it, ‘all rosy hued then waxeth she’; 
 refuses, however, to answer it, but yields at length to the impor- 
 tunities of her uncle, and writes that she will feel for him the 
 affection of a sister: 
 
 ‘She thanked him of all that he well meant 
 Towardes her, but holden him in hand 
 She woulde not, no maken herself bond 
 In love, but as his sister him to please. 
 
 She would aye fain to do his heart an ease.’ 
 
 When the messenger arrives, Troilus trembles, pales, doubts his 
 happiness. All night long he ponders how he may best merit her 
 favor. Slowly, after many heart-aches, and much stratagem on 
 the part of Pandarus, he obtains her delicate confession: 
 
 ‘For love is yet the moste stormy life 
 Right of himself that ever was begun, 
 
 For ever some mistrust or nice strife 
 There is in love some cloud over the sun; 
 Thereto we wretched women nothing conne, 
 When us is woe, but weep, and sit, and think: 
 Our wreak is this, our owne woe to drink.’ 
 
 [revenge 
 
 [foolish 
 
 [can do 
 
 * And as the new abashed nightingale. 
 
 That stinteth first, when she beginneth sing, 
 When that she heareth any herdes tale, 
 
 [shepherd's call 
 
THE DAWN OF ART — CHAUCER. 
 
 213 
 
 Or in the hedges any wight stirring; 
 
 And after, siker doth her voice out ring; — \ynore boldly 
 
 Right so Creseid', when that her dread stent, [ceased 
 
 Opened her heart, and told him her intent.’ 
 
 Of their delight, judge ‘ye that have been at the feast of such 
 gladness ! ’ They exchange rings, and part, vowing eternal con- 
 stancy. As to him, — 
 
 ‘In alle nedes for the townes war 
 He was, and aye the first in armes dight, 
 
 And certainly, but if that bookes err, 
 
 Save Hector most idread of any wight; 
 
 And this encrease of hardiness and might 
 Come him of love his lady’s thank to win, 
 
 That altered his spirit so within.’ 
 
 All day long she sings: 
 
 ‘ Whom should I thanken but you, god of love, 
 
 Of all this blisse, in which to bathe I ginne? 
 
 And thanked be ye, lorde, for that I love, 
 
 This is the right life that I am inne. 
 
 To fleinen all maner vice and sinne: 
 
 This doth me so to vertne for to entende 
 That daie by daie I in my will amende. 
 
 And who that saieth that for to love is vice, . . . 
 
 He either is envious, or right nice, 
 
 Or is unmightie for his shrudnesse 
 To loven. . . . 
 
 But I with all mine herte and all my might, 
 
 As I have saied, woll love unto my last, 
 
 My owne dere herte, and all mine owue knight, 
 
 In whiche mine herte growen is so fast. 
 
 And his in me, that it shall ever last.’ 
 
 ‘But all too little, welaway ! lasteth such joy.’ A truce between 
 the two armies is struck. Her father Calchas reclaims her. Told 
 that she is to be exchanged for a prisoner, she swoons, and Troi- 
 lus, thinking her dead, cries: 
 
 ‘O cruel Jove! and thou Fortune adverse! 
 
 This all and some is, falsely have ye slain 
 Creseid’, and sith ye may do me no worse, 
 
 Fie on your might and workes so diverse ! 
 
 Thus cowardly ye shall me never win; 
 
 There shall no death me from my lady twin.’ [ separate 
 
 Love sports with death when it makes the whole of life. With 
 his sword unsheathed, he calls upon the loved and lost to receive 
 his spirit: 
 
 ‘But as God would, of swoon she then abraid, [ awaked 
 
 And gan to sigh, and “ Troilus ! ” she cried ; 
 
 And he answered; “Lady mine, Creseid’! 
 
 Liven ye yet?” and let his sword down glide. 
 
 “Yea, hearte mine! that thanked be Cupid,” 
 
 [clad 
 
 [reward 
 
 [banish 
 
214 
 
 INITIATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 (Quod she) and therewithal she sore sight, [ sighed 
 
 And he began to glad her as he might; 
 
 Took her in armes two, and kiss’d her oft, 
 
 And her to glad he did all his intent, 
 
 For which her ghost, that flickered aye aloft, 
 
 Into her woful heart again it went; 
 
 But at the last, as that her even glent [ glanced 
 
 Aside, anon she 'gan his sword espy 
 As it lay bare, and ’gan for fear to cry. 
 
 And asked him why he had it out draw? 
 
 And Tro'ilus anon the cause her told, 
 
 And how himself therewith he would have slaw; [ slain 
 
 For which Creseid’ upon him ’gan behold, 
 
 And ’gan him in her armes fast to fold, 
 
 And said; “O mercy, God! lo which a deed! 
 
 Alas ! how nigh we weren bothe dead ! ” ’ 
 
 Separated at last, he despairs, hears the 4 bird of night ’ shriek, 
 arranges for his sepulture, bequeaths to his lady the ashes of his 
 heart in a golden urn; is exhorted to calm himself, bidden remem- 
 ber that he is a knight, that others — the wisest and best — have 
 been separated from their lovers, and are so every day, even for- 
 ever ; goes reluctantly with Pandarus to a royal banquet, to 
 forget his sorrow, but amid the revelry of beauty, wit, and wealth, 
 sees and hears only the absent : 
 
 ‘On her was ever all that his heart thought, 
 
 Now this now that so fast imagining 
 That gladden, iwis, can him no feasting.’ 
 
 Alone he murmurs: 
 
 ‘Who seeth you now, my right lodestar? 
 
 Who sitteth now or stant in your presence? 
 
 Who can comforten now your heartes war, 
 
 Now I am gone? whom give ye audience? 
 
 Who speaketh for me now in my absence? 
 
 Alas! no wight, and that is all my care, 
 
 For well wote I, as ill as I ye fare. . . . 
 
 O lovesome lady bright! 
 
 How have ye fared since that ye were there? 
 
 Welcome iwis, mine owne lady dear! . . . 
 
 Every thing came him to remembrance 
 As he rode forth by places of the town 
 In whifch he whilome had all his pleasance; 
 
 Lo! yonder saw I mine own lady dance, 
 
 And in that temple with her eyen clear 
 Me captive caught first my right lady dear: 
 
 And yonder have I heard full lustily 
 My dear heart Creseid’ laugh, and yonder play 
 Saw I her ones eke full blissfully. 
 
 And yonder ones to me ’gan she say, 
 
 “Now, goode sweet! loveth me well I pray”; 
 
THE DAWN OF ART — CHAUCER. 
 
 215 
 
 Ancl yond so goodly ’gan she me behold 
 That to the death my heart is to her hold: 
 
 And at the corner in the yonder house 
 
 Heard I mine alderlevest lady dear [ sweetest 
 
 So womanly with voice melodious 
 Singen so well, so goodly and so clear, 
 
 That in my soule yet me think’th I hear 
 The blissful sound, and in that yonder place 
 My lady first me took unto her grace.’ 
 
 She — with what words and what tears! — has prayed that body 
 and soul might sink into the bottomless pit ere she prove false to 
 Troilus, and has pledged that in ten days she will come back. 
 But Fortune seems truest when she will beguile : 
 
 ‘From Troilus she ’gan her brighte face 
 Away to writhe, and took of him no heed, 
 
 And cast him clean out of his lady’s grace 
 And on her wheel she set up Diomed.’ 
 
 Creseide through sheer weakness yields to the pleading of Dio- 
 mede. In vain Troilus appeals to her in the tenderest of letters, 
 and bewails his woe in endless rhymes. He accepts the inevitable 
 then, in a last piteous reproach: 
 
 ‘O lady mine, Creseid’! 
 
 Where is your faith, and where is your behest? 
 
 Where is your love? where is your truth?’ 
 
 There is nothing left. Light and life are stricken from the world : 
 
 ‘And certainly, withouten more speech. 
 
 From hennes forth, as farforth as I may, 
 
 Mine owne death in armes will I seech, 
 
 I ne recke not how soone be the day; 
 
 But truely, Creseide, sweete May! 
 
 Whom I have aye with all my might iserved, 
 
 That ye thus done I have it not deserved.’ 
 
 Courting death, he throws himself upon the Greeks, thousands of 
 whom perish; seeks Diomede everywhere, wounds him, but is 
 himself slain by the spear of the invincible Achilles. Borne up 
 to the seventh sphere, he looks compassionately down upon this 
 little spot of earth, and esteems it vanity. Wherefore, — 
 
 ‘O young and freshe folkes, he or she! 
 
 In which that love up groweth with your age, 
 
 Repaireth home from worldly vanity. 
 
 And of your hearts up casteth the visage 
 
 To thilke God that after his image 
 
 You made, and thinketh all n’is but a fair, 
 
 This world that passeth soon, as flow’res fair.’ 
 
 There is improvement here. The worldly view tempers the 
 sentimental element. Chaucer, still in sympathy with the de- 
 
216 INITIATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 mand of the age for excessive sensation, is growing into man- 
 hood, and winning liberty. His joy in the poetry of others gives 
 way to his desire to render it purer, simpler, more beautiful, and 
 more true. As knowledge and learning increase, these fantastic 
 beings, these exquisite refinements, which make the evening 
 hours of the lord flow sweetly, give way to real manners and 
 living characters. 
 
 The popular excursion of the day is the pilgrimage, and the 
 most famous is that to the shrine of the martyred Becket 1 at 
 Canterbury. Persons of every condition meet in the month of 
 April and travel together, starting from a London Inn. Social 
 distinctions are for the time disregarded, partly from the religious 
 sense, of which the occasion is suggestive, that all men are equal 
 before God; but chiefly from the common disposition of chance 
 companions to put off restraint, and relieve, by friendly inter- 
 change, the tediousness of solitary and dangerous travel. The 
 occasion is not too solemn for mirth, even coarse and vigorous; 
 for since the Devil is thwarted by the object of the mission, it is 
 not at all necessary to maintain any strictness by the wayside. 
 Chaucer seizes upon this custom as the frame in which to set his 
 immortal pictures of life — the Canterbury Tales. Bound for the 
 tomb of the illustrious saint, he joins at the ‘Tabard’ a troop of 
 pilgrims, twenty-nine in number. They set out in early morning, 
 accompanied by the merry host, who is the presiding spirit of the 
 party. To beguile the plodding ride through the miry highways, 
 it is agreed that each shall tell at least one story on the journey 
 and another on the return, — 
 
 ‘For trewely comfort nc mirthe is none 
 To riden by the way domb as the stone.’ 
 
 All the great classes of English humanity are represented, — a 
 knight, a lawyer, a doctor, an Oxford student, a miller, a prioress, 
 a monk, carpenters, farmers, — all in hearty human fellowship. 
 The stories related are as various as the characters of the narra- 
 tors, and comprehend the whole range of middle-age poetry, — 
 chivalric, vulgar, grave, gay, pathetic, humorous, moral, and 
 licentious. 
 
 The knight, bronzed by the Syrian sun, leads us among arms, 
 palaces, temples, tournaments, and glittering barbaric kings. 
 
 J The Saxon archbishop, murdered, it will be remembered, by the minions of Henry II. 
 
THE DAWN OF ART — CHAUCER. 
 
 217 
 
 Palamon and Arcite, the heroes of the story, are lovers of the 
 fair Emily, and in a forest solitude fight in deadly combat: 
 
 ‘The brighte swordes vventen to and fro 
 So hideously that with the leaste stroke 
 It seemed that it woulde fell an oak.’ 
 
 But the king, whose delight is the chase, accidentally discovers 
 them, — 
 
 ‘And at a start, he was betwixt them two, 
 
 And pulled out a sword and cried,— “ Ho ! ” ’ 
 
 He orders that fifty weeks hence each shall bring a hundred 
 knights to contest his claim — Emily to wed the victor: 
 
 ‘Who looketh lightly now but Palamon? 
 
 Who springeth up for joye but Arcite? 
 
 Who could it tell, or who could it indite. 
 
 The joye that it maked in the place 
 When Theseus hath done so fair a grace?’ 
 
 He prepares at fabulous expense a magnificent theatre, a mile in 
 circuit, walled with stone, graduated sixty paces high, adorned 
 with altars and oratories of alabaster, gold, and coral. Wrought 
 on the wall of the temple of Venus, ‘full piteous to behold,’ are — 
 
 ‘The broken sleepes, and the sikes cold [szr/Ai? 
 
 The sacred teares, and the waimentings, [ lamentations 
 
 The fiery strokes of the desirings, 
 
 That Loves servants in this life enduren, 
 
 The oathes that their covenants assuren.’ 
 
 Within the fane of mighty Mars, — 
 
 ‘First on the wall was painted a forest, 
 
 In which there wonneth neither man nor beast, 
 With knotty gnarry barren trees old 
 Of stubbes sharp and hidous to behold. 
 
 In which there ran a rumble and a swough, 
 
 As though a storm should bursten every bough; 
 And downward from a hill under a bent 
 There stood the Tempi’ of Mars Armipotent, 
 Wrought all of burned steel, of which th’ entree 
 Was long and strait, and ghastly for to see; 
 
 And thereout came a rage and such a vise 
 That it made all the gates for to rise. 
 
 The northern light in at the doore shone. 
 
 For window on the wall ne was there none 
 Through which men mighten any light discern; 
 The door was all of adamant etern, 
 
 Yclenched overthwart and endelong 
 With iron tough, and for to make it strong, 
 Every pillar the temple to sustain 
 Was tonne -great, of iron bright and sheen.’ 
 
 [ dwelleth 
 
 [ swooning noise 
 [i declivity 
 [i burnished 
 [ rush 
 
 [, shining 
 
218 INITIATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 Within the gloomy sanctuary, — 
 
 ‘There saw I first the dark imagining 
 Of Felony, and all the compassing; 
 
 The cruel ire, red as any glede. 
 
 The pickpurse, and eke the pale drede 
 The smiler with the knife under the cloak; 
 The shepen burning with the black smoke; 
 The treason of the murdering in the bed; 
 
 The open war, with woundes all bebled; 
 Conteke with bloody knife and sharp menace: 
 All full of chirking was that sorry place. 
 
 The slayer of himself yet saw I there, 
 
 His hearte's blood hath bathed all his hair; 
 The nail ydriven in the shode on height; 
 
 The colde death, with mouth gaping upright.’ 
 
 [hair on the head 
 
 [strife 
 [hateful sound 
 
 [burning coal 
 [fear 
 
 [stable 
 
 Here, — 
 
 ‘ The statue of Mars upon a carte stood 
 Armed, and looked grim as he were wood, . . 
 A wolf there stood before him at his feet 
 With eyen red, and of a man he eat.’ 
 
 [mad 
 
 Now the train of combatants who come to joust in the tilting 
 
 ‘There mayst thou see coming with Palamon 
 Licurge himself, the greate King of Thrace; 
 
 Black was his beard, and manly was his face 
 The circles of his eyen in his head 
 They gloweden betwixen yellow and red. 
 
 And like a griffon looked he about, 
 
 With combed haires on his browes stout; 
 
 His limbcs great, his brawnes hard and strong, 
 
 His shoulders broad, his armes round and long; 
 
 And as the guise was in his countree, 
 
 Full high upon a car of gold stood he, 
 
 With foure white bulles in the trace. . . . 
 
 A hundred lordes had he in his rout 
 Armed full well, with heartes stern and stout. 
 
 With Arcita, in stories as men find, 
 
 The great Emetrius the King of Ind, 
 
 Upon a steede bay, trapped in steel, 
 
 Covered with cloth of gold diapred wele, 
 
 Came riding like the god of Armes, Mars; 
 
 His coat armour was of a cloth of Tars, [a silk 
 
 Couched with,pearles white, and round, and great; [trimmed 
 
 His saddle was of burnt gold new ybeat; [beaten 
 
 A mantelet upon his shoulders hanging 
 
 Bret-ful of rubies red, as fire sparkling; [brimfull 
 
 His crispe hair like ringes was yrun, 
 
 And that was yellow, and glittered as the sun; . . . 
 
 His voice was as a trumpe thundering; 
 
 Upon his head he wear'd of laurel green, 
 
 A garland fresh and lusty for to seen; [pleasant 
 
 Upon his hand he bare for his deduit [amusement 
 
 An eagle tame, as any lily white: 
 
 A hundred lordes had he with him there, 
 
 All armed, save their heads, in all their gear. . . . 
 
 field: 
 
THE DAWN OF ART — CHAUCER. 
 
 219 
 
 About this king there ran on every part 
 Full many a tame lion and leopart . 1 
 
 Such is the gorgeous imagery, contrasted and varied, by which 
 Chaucer belongs to the romantic age and school. He belongs to 
 it as well by his amorous discussions, his broad jokes, his indeli- 
 cate particulars. Alisoun, one of the pilgrims, a wife of Bath, 
 five husbands — saw the fifth at the burial of the 
 
 ‘And Jankin oure clerk was on of tho: 
 
 As helpe me God, whan that I saw him go 
 Aftir the here, me thought he had a paire 
 Of legges and of feet, so clene and faire 
 That all my herte I yave unto his hold. 
 
 He was, I trow, a twenty winter old, 
 
 And I was fourty, if I shal say soth . . . 
 
 As helpe me God, I was a lusty on, 
 
 And faire, and riche, and yonge, and well begon.’ 
 
 She subdues her husband by the continuity of her tempest: 
 
 ‘And whan that I had getten unto me 
 By maistrie all the soverainetee, 
 
 And that he sayd, min owen trewe wif, 
 
 Do as the list, the terme of all thy lif, 
 
 Kepe thin honour, and kepe eke min estat; 
 
 After that day we never had debat . 1 
 
 In acquiring the art of taming her husbands, she has learned the 
 art of arguing, and can pile up reasons beyond a Lapland winter, 
 to justify her practice : 
 
 ‘God bad us for to wex and multiplie; 
 
 That gentil text can I wel understand; 
 
 Eke wel I wot, he sayd, that min husbond 
 Shuld leve fader and moder, and take to me; 
 
 But of no noumbre mention made he, 
 
 Of bigamie or of octogamie; 
 
 Why shuld men than speke of it vilanie? 
 
 Lo here the wise king Dan Solomon, 
 
 I trow he hadde wives mo than on, . . . 
 
 "Which a gift of God had he for alle his wives? . . . 
 
 Blessed be God that I have wedded five. 
 
 Welcome the sixthe whan that ever he shall . 1 
 
 The religious mendicant is a jolly hypocrite, ‘a wanton and a 
 merry’: 
 
 ‘Full well beloved and familier was he 
 With franklins over all, in his countree, 
 
 And eke with worthy women of the town. . . . 
 
 Full sweetely heard he confession, 
 
 And pleasant was his absolution. 
 
 He was an easy man to give pennance 
 There as he wist to have a good pittance; . . . 
 
 Therefore instead of weeping and prayers, 
 
 Men must give silver to the poore friars. . . . 
 
 has buried 
 fourth! — 
 
220 INITIATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 His tippet was ay farced full of knives [stuffed 
 
 And pins for to given faire wives: 
 
 And certainly he had a merry note ; 
 
 Well could he sing and playen on a rote. . . . 
 
 And over all, there as profit should arise, 
 
 Courteous he was, and lowly of service: 
 
 There n’as no man no where so virtuous; [ was not 
 
 He was the beste beggar in all his house. . . . 
 
 For though a widow hadde but a shoe, 
 
 (So pleasant was his “ In Principio ”) 
 
 Yet would he have a farthing ere he went.’ 
 
 Wallet in hand, — 
 
 ‘ In every lions he gan to pore and prie, 
 
 And begged mele and chese, or elles corn. . . . 
 
 “Yeve us a bushel whete, or malt, or reye, 
 
 A Goddes kichel, or a trippe of chese, 
 
 Or elles what you list, we may not chese; 
 
 A Goddes halfpeny, or a masse peny; 
 
 Or yeve us of your braun, if ye have any, 
 
 A dagon of your blanket, leve dame, 
 
 Our suster derc, (lo here I write your name).” . . . 
 
 And whan that he was out at dore anon, 
 
 He planed away the names everich on.’ 
 
 In the course of his tour, he finds one of his most liberal clients 
 ill, in bed, who has given half his fortune, and still suffers; 
 assures him that he has said 4 many a precious orison ’ for his 
 salvation, then inquires for the dame, who enters: 
 
 ‘This frere arisetli up ful curtisly, 
 
 And hire embraceth in his armes narwe, 
 
 And kisseth hire swete and chirketh as a sparwe.’ 
 
 Then: 
 
 ‘Thanked be God that you yaf soule and lif, 
 
 Yet saw I not this tlay so faire a wif 
 In all the chirche, God so save me.’ 
 
 Or again, the summoner, rallied by the friar, retorts in good 
 humor: 
 
 ‘This Frere bosteth that he knoweth helle, 
 
 And, God it wot, that is but litel wonder, 
 
 Freres and fendes ben but litel asonder. 
 
 For parde, ye han often time herd telle 
 How that a Frere ravished was to helle 
 In spirit ones by a visioun, 
 
 And as an angel lad him up and doun, 
 
 To shewen him the peines that ther were . . . 
 
 And er than half a furlong way of space. 
 
 Right so as bees out swarmen of an hive, 
 
 Out of the devils . . . ther gonnen to drive, 
 
 A twenty thousand Freres on a route, 
 
 And thurghout hell they swarmed al aboute, 
 
 And com agen, as fast as they may gon.’ 
 
 If such characters and sentiments show that Chaucer, like 
 every writer, bears on his forehead the traces of his origin, there 
 
THE DAWN OF ART — CHAUCER. 
 
 221 
 
 are others which carry him beyond it, and give him affinity with 
 the latest and highest. There is the Oxford clerk, silent or 
 sententious, poor, learned, and thin by dint of hard study, riding 
 on a horse lean as a rake: 
 
 ‘He rather have at his bed’s head 
 Twenty bookes clothed in black or red 
 Of Aristotle and his philosophy. 
 
 Than robes rich or fiddle or psaltry: 
 
 But all be that he was a philosopher 
 Yet hadde he but little gold in coffer, 
 
 But all that he might of his friendes hent, 
 
 On bookes and on learning he it spent, . . . 
 
 Of study took he moste cure and heed; 
 
 Not a word spoke he more than was need . . . 
 
 Sounding in moral virtue was his speech, 
 
 And gladly would he learn and gladly teach.’ 
 
 Or the young squire: 
 
 ‘With lockes curl’d as they were laid in press; 
 
 Of twenty years of age he was I guess. . . . 
 
 Embroider’d was he, as it were a mead 
 All full of freshe floweres white and red: 
 
 Sipging he was or floyting all the day; 
 
 He was as fresh as is the month of May; 
 
 Short was his gown, with sleeves long and wide; 
 
 Well could he sit on horse, and faire ride: 
 
 He coulde songes make, and well endite. 
 
 Joust and eke dance, and well pourtray and write: 
 
 So hot he loved, that by nightertale 
 He slept no more than doth the nightingale: 
 
 Courteous he was, lowly and serviceable, 
 
 And carv’d before his father at the table.’ 
 
 And his father the knight, brave but gentle: 
 
 ‘That from the time that he first began 
 To riden out, he loved chivalry, 
 
 Truth and honour, freedom and courtesy. 
 
 Full worthy was he in his lordes war, . . . 
 
 And ever honour'd for his worthiness. . . . 
 
 And though that he was worthy he was wise, 
 
 And of his porte as meek as is a maid. 
 
 He never yet no villainy ne said 
 In all his life unto no manner wight: 
 
 He was a very perfect gentle knight.’ 
 
 When Arcite, flushed with the victory that awards him Emily, is 
 mortally hurt by a plunge of his steed, he calls to his bed-side 
 the maiden and his rival ‘that was his cousin dear,’ bequeaths to 
 her the service of his disrobed spirit, and asks her to forget not 
 Palamon if ‘ever ye shall be a wife,’ — all his resentment gone, 
 only his idolatry left, which surges over him in one supreme con- 
 sciousness ere the silence and eternity of the grave: 
 
 [catch 
 
 [whistling 
 
 [night -tune 
 
222 INITIATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 ‘Alas the woe! alas the paines strong, 
 
 That I for you have suffered, and so long! 
 
 Alas the death! alas mine Emily! 
 
 Alas departing of our company! 
 
 Alas mine hearte’s queen ! alas my wife ! 
 
 Mine hearte’s lady, ender of my life ! 
 
 What is this world? — what asken men to have? 
 
 Now with his love, now in his colde grave — 
 
 Alone, — withonten any company. 
 
 Farewell my sweet,— Farewell mine Emily! 
 
 And softe take me in your armes tway 
 For love of God, and hearkeneth what I say.’ 
 
 Were ever the sighs and sobbings of a broken and ebbing spirit 
 more pathetically related? Against the chattering wife of Bath, 
 who stuns her listeners, is the demure prioress — ‘Madame Eglan- 
 tine,’ simple and pleasing, with nice and pretty ways, showing, as 
 we have seen, signs of exquisite taste. As to her conscience, — 
 
 ‘She was so charitable and so piteous, 
 
 She woulde weep if that she saw a mouse 
 Caught in a trap, if it were dead or bled. 
 
 Of smalle houndes had she that she fed 
 With roasted flesh, and milk, and wastel bread, 
 
 But sore wept she if one of them were dead, 
 
 Or if men smote it with a yarde smart: 
 
 And all was conscience and tender heart,’ 
 
 As befits her, she tells the touching story of a Christian child, 
 ‘the ruby bright,’ murdered in a Jewry, whose heart is so filled 
 with divine grace that it breaks out continually in singing, ‘to 
 school ward and homeward,’ O Alma Reclemptoris ! Dying from 
 the dreadful gash in his throat, he sings it still by the miracle of 
 mercy; and dead, — 
 
 ‘In a tomb of marble stones clear 
 Enclosen they his little body sweet: 
 
 There he is now God lfcne us for to meet.’ [where, grant 
 
 A like and stronger contrast is Griselda , 1 who softens the tyranny 
 of her lord by patient submission and unconquerable affection. 
 Her whole conduct is a fervid hymn in praise of forbearance. 
 Smitten on the one cheek, she turns the other. Loving her hus- 
 band, it is natural to her, in the true spirit of charity, to ‘suffer 
 all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things.’ 
 Altogether too passive, you will say. The objection is antici- 
 pated: 
 
 ‘This story is said, not for that wives should 
 Follow Griselda as in humility, 
 
 For it were importable though they would; 
 
 Clerk's Tale. 
 
THE DAWN OF ART — CHAUCER. 
 
 223 
 
 But for that every wight in his degree 
 Should be constant in adversity 
 As was Griselda, therefore Petrarch writeth 
 This story, which with high style he enditeth. 
 
 For since a woman was so patient 
 Unto a mortal man, well more we ought 
 
 Receiven all in gree that God us sent. . . . [ kindness 
 
 Let us then live in virtuous sufferance.’ 
 
 There is need of a striking antithesis, in an age of brutality, when 
 the only choice for woman lay between the violence of vitupera- 
 tion and the persuasion of meekness. Never to be forgotten is 
 the secular priest, brother to the plowman: 
 
 ‘There was a poore Parson of a town, 
 
 But rich he was of holy thought and work; 
 
 His parishens devoutly would he teach; 
 
 Benign he was, and wonder diligent, 
 
 And in adversity full patient. . . . 
 
 Wide was his parish, and houses far asunder. 
 
 But he ne left naught for no rain nor thunder, 
 
 In sickness and in mischief, to visit 
 The farthest in his parish much and lite 
 Upon his feet, and in his hand a staff: 
 
 This noble ’nsample to his sheep he yaf, 
 
 That first he wrought, and afterward he taught, 
 
 Out of the gospel he the wordes caught, 
 
 And this figure he added yet thereto, 
 
 That if gold ruste what should iron do? . . . 
 
 He was a shepherd and no mercenary.’ 
 
 There is yet something good in Nazareth. Not all the ecclesias- 
 tics are venal and voluptuous. This one preaches a long and 
 earnest sermon on the text: 
 
 ‘Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, 
 and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.’ 
 
 The genius that in large measure is shaped by the books it 
 has read and the times it has lived in, is itself a distinct element 
 of growth. What could be more broad and catholic than these 
 Tales , open alike to Briton and to man, shedding long beams of 
 promise on the horizon ? 
 
 Periods. — Chaucer was nourished on the French Romance 
 poetry, which in his early life formed the chief reading of the 
 court circles. After the date of his first visit to Italy, impressed 
 with the ineffaceable charm of that land of loveliness and kind- 
 ling life, his foreign models were less French than Italian. Here 
 he imitated the lively Boccaccio rather than Dante, who was too 
 severe, or Petrarch, who was too sentimental. From his favorite, 
 
 [little 
 
 [gave 
 
224 INITIATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 he freely translated his two longest, and, in a sense, two greatest 
 poems, — Troilus and Creseide and the Knight's Tale. But while 
 his riper genius is guided by the poets of Italy, he is still influ- 
 enced by those of France, — the troubadours and trouveres. The 
 comic stories in the Canterbury Tales are mostly based on the 
 fabliaux. His indirect debt to the Italian stars, however, in all 
 that concerns the elegant handling of material, and in the fusion 
 of the romantic with the classic spirit, is more important. It is 
 in the immortal group of pilgrims that he breaks away from the 
 literary traditions and restricted tastes of ranks and classes, and 
 becomes characteristically English, distinctly national. Even 
 here extraneous influences may be detected, but original genius 
 gives itself freely to the native force of its theme, and we have, 
 for the most part, the pleasing conditions of daily life. The pre- 
 dominant influence, therefore, till 1372, is French ; thence till 
 1384, Italian; from 1384 till 1400, English. This poetic develop- 
 ment may be represented by the correspondent table of works: 
 
 First period 
 
 ( Romaunt of the Rose, 
 
 | Complaint to Pity, 
 j Book of the Duchess, 
 
 The Dream, 
 
 The Court of Love, 
 
 - The Flower and the Leaf, 
 
 | ( attributed ).' 
 
 Second period.... < 
 
 The Former Age, 
 
 The Assembly of Fowls, 
 The House of Fame, 
 Troi'lus and Creseide, 
 Knight’s Tale. 
 
 Third period 
 
 f Legend of Good Women, 
 j Canterbury Tales ( the majority ), 
 - 1 Astrolabie (prose), 
 
 Testament of Love ( attributed ), 
 
 _ Various Ballads. 
 
 Style. — Refined, precise, perspicuous, employing figures less 
 for ornament than lucidity; flexible and graceful, varying in 
 subtle response to the subject and the mood; the living voice, as 
 
 1 The genuineness of many works which till recently have passed as Chaucer’s, has 
 been questioned by the most advanced school of criticism. The dust of the controversy 
 has not yet settled. 
 
THE DAWN OF ART — CHAUCER. 
 
 225 
 
 it were, of nature, carrying a tone as original and divine as the 
 music of her purling brooks; sometimes tedious from too great 
 minuteness, as in other writers from too frequent digression ; if 
 somewhat artificial and disjointed in the earlier workmanship, 
 simple and well-ordered in the later. Do but consider, for in- 
 stance, the ‘linked sweetness’ of the love-passages in Troilus , 
 or the grand harmony of his tragic description, as of the temple 
 of Mars, — 
 
 ‘First on the wal was peynted a forest. 
 
 In which ther dwelleth neither man ne best, 
 
 With knotty knarry bareyne trees olde 
 Of stubbes scharpe and hidous to byholde 
 In which ther ran a swymbel in a swough. 1 
 
 Or the divine liquidness of diction and fluidity of movement in 
 this stanza of the child-martyr: 
 
 ‘My throte is cut unto my nekke*bone, 
 
 Saide this child, and as by way of kinde 
 I shoulde have deyd, yea, longe time agone; 
 
 But Jesu Christ, as ye in bookes finde, 
 
 Will that His glory last and be in minde. 
 
 And for the worship of His mother dere 
 Yet may I sing 0 Alma loud and clere.’ 
 
 Compare Wordsworth’s modernization of the first three lines: 
 
 ‘My throat is cut unto the bone, I trow, 
 
 Said this young child, and by the law of kind 
 I should have died, yea, many hours ago.’ 
 
 The flower must fade, though gathered by the most skilful hand, 
 when severed from its root that lies imbedded in the soil. 
 
 Rank. — First modeller of the heroic couplet, first of the 
 modern versifiers, whose melody and ease few, if any, have sur- 
 passed; whose variety and power of diction not ten of his suc- 
 cessors have been able to rival; to Occleve, his pupil, — 
 
 ‘The first e fynder of our faire langage.’ 
 
 The first artist of expression, — that is, the first to command or 
 guide his impressions, to deliberate, sift, test, reject, and alter. 
 Inventive, though a disciple; original, though a translator; and — 
 like Shakespeare — a borrower, but lending to all that he borrows 
 the gentle luxuriance of his own fancy, extracting from the old 
 romances their sublime extravagances without their frivolous 
 descriptions, re-creating the rude materials of the trouvbres into 
 15 
 
226 INITIATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 forms of elegance, retaining the gayety and critical coolness of 
 the French without its wearisome idleness, and tempering the 
 joyous carelessness of the Italian with the English seriousness. 
 
 Our first painter of Nature, who, haunting her solitudes, caught 
 the glow of her skies and earth in his landscape. Without the 
 gift to see the hidden wealth of meaning in the springing herb- 
 age, dew-drops, and rivulets glad, in the sighings among the 
 reeds and the silent openings of the flowers, no great poet is 
 possible. Chaucer has it conspicuously. His grass, soft as velvet, 
 which he is never done praising, is ‘so small, so thick, so fresh of 
 hue ! ’ The colors of petal and leaf, ‘ white, blue, yellow, and 
 red,’ he counts. The note of every song-bird he knows and 
 loves. His scenery has the freshness of a perennial spring. 
 Across five centuries its leaves are green, and its breezes fan our 
 cheeks. The May-time is his favorite season. Before Burns or 
 Wordsworth, he has loved and sung the daisy, the eye-of-day, 
 and how tenderly ! 
 
 ‘Then in my bed there daweth me no day 
 That I n’am up and walking in the mead. 
 
 To see this flower against the sunne spread, 
 
 When it upriseth early in the morrow; 
 
 That blissful sight softeneth all my sorrow.’ 
 
 With the simple, pure delight of a child, he kneels to greet it 
 when it first unfolds: 
 
 ‘And down on knees anon right I me set. 
 
 And as I could this freshe flow’r I grette, 
 
 Kneeling always till it unclosed was 
 Upon the small, and soft, and sweete gras.’ 
 
 The first clear-eyed and catholic observer of man, who, catch- 
 ing the living manners as they rise, fixes them in pictures that 
 show the life of a hundred years as vivid and familiar as the 
 figures in the streets of our cities. Think of the portraits of the 
 knight, the squire, the prioress, the wife, the clerk, the parson, 
 the monk, — 
 
 ‘And, for to fasten his hood under his chin, 
 
 He had of gold y wrought a curious pin; 
 
 A love-knot in the greater end there was: 
 
 His head was bald, and shone as any glass, 
 
 And eke his face, as it had been anoint; 
 
 He was a lord full fat and in good point: 
 
 His eyen steep, and rolling in his head. 
 
 That steamed as a furnace of a lead.’ 
 
THE DAWN OF ART — CHAUCER. 
 
 227 
 
 Of the friar, — 
 
 ‘Somewhat he lisped for his wantonness 
 To make his English sweet upon his tongue ; 
 
 And in his harping, when that he had sung, 
 
 His eyen twinkled in his head , aright 
 As do the starves in a frosty night.' 
 
 The lawyer, — 
 
 ‘No where so busy a man as he there n’as, 
 
 And yet he seemed busier than he was.’ 
 
 The franklin, — 
 
 ‘To liven in delight was ever his won, 
 
 For he was Epicurus’ owen son, . . . 
 
 It snowed in his house of meat and drink 
 Of alle dainties that men could of think. 
 
 After the sundry seasons of the year. 
 
 So changed he his meat and his soupere. . . . 
 
 His table dormant in his hall alway 
 Stood ready cover'd all the longe day.’ 
 
 The doctor of physic, — 
 
 ‘In all this world ne was .there none him like 
 To speak of physic and of surgery, 
 
 For he was grounded in astronomy. 
 
 He kept his patient a full great deal 
 In houres by his magic naturel: 
 
 Well could he fortunen the ascendant 
 Of his images for his patient. . . . 
 
 Of his diet measurable was he. 
 
 For it was of no superfluity, 
 
 But of great nourishing, and digestible. 
 
 His study was but little on the Bible. 
 
 For gold in physic is a cordial, 
 
 Therefore he loved gold in special.’ 
 
 The miller, — 
 
 ‘He was short shouldered, broad, a thicke gnarre, 
 Ther n'as no door that he n’olde heave off bar, 
 Or break it at a running with his head; 
 
 His beard as any sow or fox was red, 
 
 And thereto broad as though it were a spade. 
 Upon the cop right of his nose he had 
 A wert, and thereon stood a tuft of hairs 
 Red as the bristles of a sowes ears: 
 
 His nose-thirles blacke were and wide: 
 
 A sword and buckler bare he by his side: 
 
 His mouth as wide was as a furnace: 
 
 He was a jangler and a Goliardeis, 
 
 And that was most of sin and harlotries: 
 
 Well could he stealen corn and tollen thrice.’ 
 
 The reeve, — 
 
 ‘His beard was shorn as nigh as ever he can: 
 
 His hair was by his eares round yshorn: 
 
 His top was docked like a priest beforne: 
 
 Full longe were his legges and full lean, 
 
 Ylike a staff; there was no calf yseen.’ 
 
 [was not 
 
 [custom 
 
 [make fortunate 
 
 [knot 
 
 [top 
 
 [nostrils 
 
 [reveller 
 
228 INITIATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS, 
 
 The summoner, — 
 
 ‘With scalled browes black and pilled beard; [ scurfy , bald 
 
 Of his visage children were sore afeard. . . . 
 
 Well lov’d he garlick, onions, and leeks, 
 
 And for to drink strong wine as red as blood; 
 
 Then would he speak and cry as he were wood.’ [ mad 
 
 The pardoner, — 
 
 ‘That straight was comen from the court of Rome; 
 
 Full loud he sang “Come hither love to me.” . . . 
 
 His wallet lay before him in his lap 
 
 Bret-fnll of pardon come from Rome all hot.’ [ brimfull 
 
 Face, costume, disposition, habits, antecedents, — all are here, 
 each character distinct and to this day typical; each maintained, 
 moreover, by its subsequent actions; each speech appropriate to 
 the speaker, and all strung together by incidents so natural, by 
 conversations so life-like, — a veritable troop of pilgrims filing 
 leisurely on, talking and trying to amuse themselves by what 
 they have heard in the hall or by the wayside! This is dramatic 
 composition, not in its full and precise form, but in its rudiments. 
 The pictorial power of dealing in a living way with men and 
 their actions is Chaucer’s point of contact with Shakespeare: 
 
 Like all who excel in the delineation of character, a master of 
 humor and pathos. To take an additional example; the pardon- 
 er, describing himself preaching, says: 
 
 ‘Then pain I me to stretchen forth my neck. 
 
 And east and west, upon the people I beck , 
 
 As doth a dove sitting upon a barn.' 
 
 Or, to view the full length of a monk in one line, — 
 
 ‘Fat as a whale, and walked as a swan.' 
 
 As with Shakespeare, again, it is difficult to decide in which 
 style Chaucer is greater, — the humorous or the pathetic. When 
 Griselda is informed by her husband that she must return to 
 her father to make room for her successor, she says: 
 
 ‘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. . . . 
 
 And of your newe wife God of his grace 
 So grant you weal and prosperity; 
 
 For I wol gladly yielden her my place, 
 
 In which that I was blissful wont to be: 
 
 For, sith it liketh yon my lord quod she, 
 
 That whilome weren all my heartes rest. 
 
 That I shall gon, I wol go where you list. . . . 
 
THE DAWN OF ART — CHAUCER. 
 
 229 
 
 0 goode God! how gentle and how kind 
 Ye seemed by your speech and your visage 
 The day that maked was our marriage !' 
 
 Find, who will, a finer burst of natural feeling than is expressed 
 in the closing verses. When Troi'lus is bereft of Creseide by her 
 departure for the Grecian camp, the universe is absorbed in the 
 one idea of his love: 
 
 ‘And every night, as was his wont to do, 
 
 He stood, the bright moon shining to behold. 
 
 And all his sorrow to the moon he told, 
 
 And said— “Surely when thou art horned new, 
 
 1 shall be glad— if all the ivorld be true."' 
 
 Ah me, match it who can ! 
 
 Yet Chaucer is not one of the great classics whose imagina- 
 tions revel equally in regions of mirth, beauty, and grandeur. 
 He wants their high seriousness, which detecting the divine sig- 
 nificance of things, breathes the aspiration for something purer 
 and lovelier, more thrilling and powerful, than real life affords, 
 and with its prophetic vision helps faith to lay hold on the future 
 life. He loves the fresh green of the panting spring, but has 
 little sympathy with the sear and yellow of the mystical autumn. 
 His love of nature is a simple, unreflective, childlike love: 
 
 ‘He listeneth to the lark, 
 
 Whose song comes with the sunshine through the dark 
 Of painted glass, in leaden lattice bound, 
 
 He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound , 
 
 Then writeth in a book like any clerk.' 
 
 Nature is not to him, as it is to the highest, a symbol translucent 
 with the light of the moral and spiritual world. He lacks the 
 faculty of true naturalistic interpretation. He has never heard — 
 
 ‘The voice mysterious, which whoso hears 
 Must think on what will be, and what has been.’ 
 
 Character. — A man of letters and of action, trained in 
 books, war, courts, business, travel. A poet and a logician, a, 
 student and an observer, a linguist and a politician, a courtier of 
 opulent tastes and a philosopher who surveyed mankind in their 
 widest sphere. He was a hard worker. By his own confession, 
 reading was his chief delight. The eagle that carries him into 
 the empyrean, says: 
 
 ‘Thou goest home to thine house anone. 
 
 And allso dumb as a stone 
 Thou sittest at another book 
 Till fully dazed is thy look.’ 
 
230 INITIATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 Happy among books, he was happy among men. Scorning only 
 hypocrisy, he loved many-colored life, — its weakness and its 
 strength, its delicacy and its force, its laughter and its tears. 
 Modest, glad, and tender. Never were lovers more genuine, un- 
 tainted and adoring, than his. Troilus and Creseide speak with 
 hearts of primeval innocence. He had indeed said, perhaps in a 
 momentary scepticism or irritation, of the courtly class whose 
 stability seemed to lie in perpetual change: 
 
 ‘What man ymay the wind restrain, 
 
 Or holden a snake by the tail? 
 
 Who may a slipper eel restrain 
 That it will void withouten fail? 
 
 Or who can driven so a nail 
 
 To make sure newfangleness, [inconstancy 
 
 Save women, that can gie their sail [guidt 
 
 To row their boat with doubleness? ’ 
 
 Yet for woman he had a true and chivalrous regard. It was with 
 the avowed purpose of rendering homage to the beauty of pure 
 womanhood that he wrote the legend — 
 
 ‘Of goode women, maidenes, and wives. 
 
 That weren true in loving all their lives.’ 
 
 His emblem of womanly truth and purity was the daisy, with its 
 head of gold and crown of white. And how he loves it! 
 
 ‘So glad am I, when that I have presence 
 Of it, to doon it alle reverence 
 As she that is of alle floures flour, 
 
 Fulfilled of all virtue and honour, 
 
 And ever alike fair and fresh of hue, 
 
 And I love it, and ever alike new, 
 
 And ever shall, till that mine herte die.’ 
 
 I know of nothing like it, — this man of the world, of ceremonies 
 and cavalcades, conversant with high and low, with gallant knights 
 and bedizened ladies, far-travelled, tempest-tossed, and time-worn, 
 turning from the gorgeous imagery that filled his vision to find 
 ‘revel and solace’ in the open-air world, and dwelling with the 
 glad, sweet abandon of a child, on the springing flowers, the 
 green fields, the budding woods, the singing of the little birds: 
 
 ‘So loud they sang, that all the woodes rung 
 Like as it should shiver in pieces small; 
 
 And as methought that the Nightingale 
 With so great might her voice out-wrest, 
 
 Right as her heart for love would burst.’ 
 
 Or the beauty of the morning. Were never sun-risings so exhila- 
 rating as his: 
 
THE DAWN - OF ART — CHAUCER. 
 
 231 
 
 ‘The busy larke, messager of day 
 Saluteth in her song the morwe gray; 
 
 And fyry Phebus riseth up so bright 
 That al the orient laugheth of the light, 
 
 And with his stremes dryeth in the greves 
 The silver dropes hongying on the leeves.’ 
 
 Sensitive to every change of feeling in himself and others, his 
 sympathies were as large as the nature of man. Bred among 
 aristocrats, he thought that good desires and ‘ gentil dedes ’ were 
 the only aristocracy. 
 
 Brave in misfortune. Troubled he was, but no trouble could 
 extort from him a fretful note. He easily shirks the burden, and 
 sings to his empty purse: 
 
 ‘To you my purse, and to none other wight, 
 
 Complain I, for ye be my lady dear; 
 
 I am sorry now that ye be so light, 
 
 For certes ye now make me heavy cheer: 
 
 Me were as lief be laid upon a bier, 
 
 For which unto your mercy thus I cry. 
 
 Be heavy again, or elles must I die. 
 
 Now vouchsafen this day ere it be night 
 That I of you the blissful sound may hear. 
 
 Or see your colour like the sunne bright, 
 
 That of yellowness ne had never peer; 
 
 Ye be my life, ye be my heartes steer; [helm 
 
 Queen of comfort and of good company. 
 
 Be heavy again, or elles must I die. 
 
 Now purse, that art to me my lives light, 
 
 And saviour, as down in this world here, 
 
 Out of this towne help me by your might, 
 
 Sithen that you will not be my tresor, 
 
 For I am shave as nigh as any frere, 
 
 But I prayen unto your courtesy 
 Be heavy again, or elles must I die.’ 
 
 The flying shadow of grief touches him, but does not rest there. 
 
 Less sportive, he would have been less vulgar. Some of his 
 pages are stained, but the blemishes are not of evil intent, and 
 are rather to be imputed to the age. Our minds are tinged with 
 the color of custom. Refinement preserves public decency, want 
 of it permits the grossest violations. Having fixed upon his 
 personage, Chaucer, as he himself pleads, had to adjust the tale 
 to the teller. However, — 
 
 ‘Who list not to hear. 
 
 Turn over the leaf, and choose another tale ! ’ 
 
 His sympathies are with virtue. For subjects obscene and dis- 
 gustful, as such, he has no taste. It is not the filth he enjoys, but 
 
232 INITIATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 the fun. Of two unnatural selections by the ‘moral Gower,’ he 
 cries: 
 
 ‘Of all such cursed stones I say, Fy!’ 
 
 He is a moralist, but a happy and humorous one; of an ethical 
 temper, too indolent to make a reformer in the sense in which 
 the fiery Langland or the stern Wycliffe was one. He was pro- 
 gressive without being revolutionary. 
 
 Influence. — He rescued the native tongue from Babylonish 
 confusion, and established a literary diction, banishing from 
 Anglo-Saxon the superannuated and uncouth, and softening its 
 churlish nature by the intermixture of words of Romance fancy. 
 
 He created, or introduced a new versification; exemplified the 
 principle of syllabical regularity, which is now the law and the 
 practice of our poetry; and by the superior correctness, grace, 
 elevation, and harmony of his style, became the first model to 
 succeeding writers. 
 
 He delineated English society with a pictorial force that makes 
 us familiar with the domestic habits and modes of thinking of a 
 most interesting and important period. 
 
 He is an unfailing fount of joy and strength, to revive the 
 relish of simple pleasures, to bring back the freshness that 
 warmed the springtime of our being, to refine youthful love, to 
 make us esteem better the gentle and noble, and to feel more 
 kindly towards the rude and base. Our market-places will be 
 grass-grown, the hum of our industry will be stilled, but the ages 
 will carry, as on the odoriferous wings of gentle gales, the sweet 
 strains of — 
 
 ‘That noble Chaucer, in those former times. 
 
 Who first enriched our English with his rhymes, 
 
 And was the first of ours that ever broke 
 Into the Muse’s treasures, and first spoke 
 In mighty numbers; delving in the mine 
 Of perfect knowledge.’ 
 
[RETROGRESSIVE PERIOD. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 FEATURES. 
 
 A brilliant sun enlivens the face of nature with an unusual lustre; the sudden 
 appearance of cloudless skies, and the unexpected warmth of a tepid atmosphere, after 
 the gloom and inclemencies of a tedious winter, fill our hearts with the visionary pros- 
 pects of a speedy summer; and we fondly anticipate a long continuance of gentle gales 
 and vernal serenity. But winter returns with redoubled horrors; the clouds condense 
 more formidably than before; and those tender buds, and early blossoms, which were 
 called forth by the transient gleam of a temporary sunshine, are nipped by frost and 
 torn by tempests.— Warton. 
 
 Politics. — xAfter two and a half centuries of majestic rule, 
 the dominion of the Plantagenets 1 proper passed away forever; 
 and the House of Lancaster, in the person of Henry IV, was 
 raised to the throne by a Parliamentary revolution. He bought 
 the support of the Church by the promise of religious persecu- 
 tion, and that of the nobles by a renewal of the fatal French 
 war. Henry V continued and almost realized the dream of an 
 English empire in France, and his widow, contracting a second 
 marriage with Owen Tudor, descendant of the Welsh princes, 
 became the ancestress of another proud line of English sov- 
 ereigns. The career of Henry VI was one of disaster in almost 
 every variety, — factional strife at home, and calamity abroad. 
 The Hundred Years’ War ended, happily for mankind, with the 
 expulsion of the English from French soil. Revolts of the popu- 
 lace were followed by a long and deadly struggle for supremacy 
 between the parties of the red rose and the white, headed by two 
 branches of the Plantagenet dynasty, — the Lancastrians and the 
 Yorkists. After the violent crimes and excesses of Edward IV 
 and Richard III, of the House of York — the one a despot and a 
 sensualist, the other a usurper and a monster — when the illus- 
 
 1 The heads of the line were Geoffrey of Anjou and Maud, daughter of Henry I of 
 England. The name is derived from Planta Genista , Latin for the shrub which was worn 
 as an emblem of humility by the first Earl of Anjou when a pilgrim of Holy Land. From 
 this his successors took their crest and their surname. 
 
234 
 
 RETROGRESSIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 trious barons were exterminated, or reduced to a shadow of their 
 former greatness, the rival claims of the warring lines were 
 united in the House of Tudor. 
 
 While the administration swerved continually into an irregu- 
 lar course, the restraint of Parliament grew more effectual, and 
 notions of legal right acquired more precision, till the time of 
 Henry VI, when the progress of constitutional liberty was ar- 
 rested by the Wars of the Roses. To the restriction of suffrage 
 succeeded the corruption of elections . 1 The baronage wrecked, 
 the Crown towered into solitary greatness, and by its overpower- 
 ing influence practically usurped the legislative functions of the 
 two Houses. The interests of self-preservation led the church- 
 man, the squire, and the burgess to lay freedom at the foot of 
 the throne. Without a standing army, however, it is impossible 
 to oppress, beyond a certain point, an armed people. Governors 
 could safely be tyrants within the precinct of the court, but any 
 general and long-continued despotism was prevented by the awe 
 in which they stood of the temper and strength of the governed. 
 From the accession of Henry VII is to be dated a new era, 
 which, if less distinguished by the spirit of freedom, is more 
 prosperous in the diffusion of opulence and the preservation of 
 order. 
 
 Society. — Brutal as was the strife of the Roses, its effects 
 were limited, in fact, to the great lords and their feudal retainers. 
 The trading and industrial classes appear, for the most part, to 
 have stood wholly aloof. It was of this period that Comines, an 
 accomplished observer of his age, wrote: 
 
 ‘In my opinion, of all the countries in Europe where I was ever acquainted, the gov- 
 ernment is nowhere so well managed, the people nowhere less obnoxious to violence and 
 oppression, nor their houses less liable to the desolations of war, than in England, for 
 there the calamities fall only upon their authors.’ 
 
 Elsewhere: 
 
 ‘England has this peculiar grace, that neither the country, nor the people, nor the 
 houses are wasted, destroyed, or demolished; but the calamities and misfortunes of the 
 war fall only upon the soldiers, and especially the nobility.’ 2 
 
 Orders were frequently issued, previous to a battle, to slay the 
 
 1 The complaint of the men of Kent in Cade’s revolt, 1450, alleges: ‘The people of 
 the shire are not allowed to have their free election in the choosing of knights for the 
 shire, but letters have been sent from divers estates to the great rulers of all the coun- 
 try, the which enforceth their tenants and other people by force to choose other persons 
 than the common will is.’ 
 
 2 The actual warfare in England from 1455 to 1485 included an aggregate space of 
 about two years. 
 
SOCIAL STATE — INDUSTRIES — SAVAGERY. 
 
 235 
 
 nobles and spare the commoners. The civil war was the death- 
 struggle of feudalism. The consequent depression of the aristoc- 
 racy was the elevation of the people. Thb words rent and wages, 
 in familiar use, indicate the relations of class to class. The rude 
 fidelity of vassalage was exchanged for the hard bargaining of 
 tenancy. 
 
 There were no factories. Every manufacture — cloth-making 
 the most important — was carried on, in its several branches, at 
 the homes of the workmen. The natural resources of the country 
 were very imperfectly operated. A Venetian traveller, speaking 
 of the general aspect of the country in the time of Henry VII, 
 says: 
 
 ‘England is all diversified by pleasant undulating hills and beautiful valleys, nothing 
 being to be seen but agreeable woods, or extensive meadows, or lands in cultivation.’ 
 
 But he adds: 
 
 ‘Agriculture is not practised in this island beyond what is required for the consump- 
 tion of the people ; because, were they to plough and sow all the land that was capable of 
 cultivation, they might sell a quantity of grain to the surrounding countries.’ 
 
 Capital seems to have been more advantageously applied to the 
 growth of sheep. By a statute of 1495, every laborer from mid 
 March to mid September is to be at his work before five o’clock 
 in the morning, nor leave it till between seven and eight in the 
 evening, with a half hour for breakfast and an hour for dinner. 
 Modern labor would not appear, in comparison, to be overtasked. 
 
 It was still a militar}^ community, with an excess of vigor and 
 readiness to fight. The iron helmet hung upon the wall of the 
 castle; and the long bows were at hand for the deadly flight of 
 the arrow, or the practice of archery on Sundays and festival 
 days. Parliaments, early in the century, were like armed camps. 
 That of 1426 was called the ‘Club Parliament,’ from the circum- 
 stance that, when arms were prohibited, the retainers of the 
 barons appeared with clubs on their shoulders. When clubs 
 were forbidden, stones and balls of lead were concealed in the 
 clothing. Later there is the story of a street-scuffle between two 
 noblemen, in which several retainers were killed. A statute of 
 restraint was enacted against Oxford scholars who hunted with 
 dogs in parks and forests, threatened the lives of keepers, and 
 liberated clerks convicted of felony. The harvest of highway 
 robbery was abundant. ‘If God,’ said a French general, ‘had 
 
236 
 
 RETROGRESSIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 been a captain now-a-days, he would have turned marauder.’ 
 Says Fortescue, Chancellor under Henry VI: 
 
 * It is cowardise and lack of hartes and corage that kepeth the Frenchmen from rysyng, 
 and not povertye ; which corage no Frenche man hath like to the English man. It hath 
 been often seen in England that iij or iv thefes, for povertie, hath sett upon vij or viij true 
 men, and robbyd them al. But it hath not ben seen in Fraunce, that vij or viij thefes have 
 ben hardy to robbe iij or iv true men. Wherefor it is right seld that Frenchmen be hangyd 
 for robbery e, for that they have no hertys to do so terryble an acte. There be therfor mo 
 men hangid in Englond, in a yere, for robberye and manslaughter, than ther be hangid in 
 Fraunce for such cause of crime in vij yers.’ 
 
 It was natural that the discharged retainer of a decayed house 
 should rather incline to take a purse than wield a spade. Ballad 
 story relates how King Edward IV on a hunt meets a bold tanner, 
 and inquires the ‘readyest waye to Drayton Basset, — 
 
 ‘To Drayton Basset woldst thou goe. 
 
 Fro the place where thou dost stand? 
 
 The next payre of gallowes thou comest unto, 
 
 Turne in upon thy right hand.’ 
 
 Violence and cruelty went hand in hand. In the reign of Henry 
 IV, it was made felony to cut out any person’s tongue, or put out 
 his eyes, — crimes which, the act says, were very frequent. The 
 Earl of Rutland carrying on a pole the severed head of his broth- 
 er-in-law, presented it to this monarch in testimony of his loyalty. 
 Two princes were smothered in the tower. Men were beheaded 
 without appeal to law or justice. The gory head of a Lollard 
 was welcomed into London, with psalms of thanksgiving, by a 
 procession of abbots and bishops, who went out to meet it. The 
 head of a Royalist, crowned in mockery with a diadem of paper, 
 was impaled on the walls of York. 
 
 Now that the battle-axe and sword had destroyed the petty 
 royalty of the feudal baron, the lords quitted their sombre cas- 
 tles — strong fortresses, but dreary abodes — and flocked into 
 others uniting convenience and beauty with some power of de- 
 fence. Vaulted roofs and turrets, the decorated gable and the 
 spacious window, superseded in most instances the protecting 
 parapet and the frowning embrasure. The distinguishing feature 
 of the domestic arrangement was still the great hall with its 
 central fire. In towns the upper stories projected over the lower, 
 so that in narrow streets the opposite fronts were only a few feet 
 apart. A Paston letter gives a curious insight into the construc- 
 tion of the ordinary manor-house: 
 
SOCIAL STATE — HOUSES — NEWS — SPORTS. 
 
 237 
 
 ‘Patrick and his fellowship are sore afraid that ye would enter again upon them; and 
 they have made great ordinance within the house ; and it is told me they have made bars to 
 bar the doors crosswise ; and they have made wickets in every quarter of the house to shoot 
 out at, both with bows and with hand-guns; and the holes that be made for hand-guns they 
 be scarce knee-high from the plancher (floor) ; and of such holes be made five; there can 
 no man shoot out at them with no hand- bows.’ 
 
 Sleeping apartments were small. Mrs. Paston is puzzled to know 
 how she can put her husband’s writing-board and his coffer beside 
 the bed, so that he may have space to sit. Beds were rarely used 
 except by the most wealthy. It is poetry and history combined 
 that presents the affecting spectacle of a care-worn and sleepless 
 king asking, — 
 
 ‘Why, rather, Sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs , 
 
 Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee, 
 
 And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber; 
 
 Than in the perfumed chambers of the great, 
 
 Under the canopies of costly state, 
 
 And lull’d with sounds of sweetest melody?’ 1 
 
 Common utensils were transmitted in wills from generation to 
 generation, — tongs, bellows, pans, pewter dishes, ‘a great earth- 
 en pot that was my mother’s.’ 
 
 From the scarcity of books, reading could be no common 
 acquirement. From the dearness of parchment and the slowness- 
 of scribes, manuscripts were things purchasable only by princely 
 munificence. News travelled slowly, borne for the most part, by 
 traders and pilgrims. The result of the great battle of Towton 
 was six days in reaching London. Posts — horsemen placed 
 twenty miles apart — were now first used on the road from Lon- 
 don to Scotland. No modern net-work of wires and rails broke 
 the narrow circle of local influence in which men usually abode 
 from childhood to age. 
 
 Amid monotonous cares and the endless inconvenience of 
 climate, while kings are dethroned and princes assassinated, the 
 spirit of enjoyment abides, reflected in the perilous combats of 
 the lists, the masks and disguisings of the palace, the antique 
 pageantry of Christmas, the merriments of Easter and May-day. 
 Wrestlers contended before the mayor and aldermen, as their 
 fathers had done; and the archers went out, as of old, into Fins- 
 bury Fields. Yaulters came tumbling about, jugglers bewitched 
 the eye, and the ambulatory minstrel with his harp borne before 
 him by his smiling page, who — 
 
 Shakespeare’s Henry IV. 
 
238 
 
 RETROGRESSIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 ‘Walken fer and wyde, 
 
 Her and ther, In every syde, 
 
 In many a diverse londe.’ 
 
 From the days of Henry III, the burning crests of the marching 
 watch 1 had sent up their triumphant fires. The twilight hours 
 of June and July witnessed the simple hospitalities of primitive 
 London: 
 
 ‘On the vigils of festival days, and on the same festival days after the sun setting, 
 there were usually made bonfires in the streets, every man bestowing wood and labor 
 toward them; the wealthier sort also, before their doors near to the said bonfire, would 
 set out tables on the vigils, furnished with sweet bread and good drink, and on the fes- 
 tival days with meats and drinks plentifully, whereunto they would invite their neighbors 
 and passengers also to sit and be merry with them in great familiarity, praising God for 
 the benefits bestowed on them.* 
 
 Most beautiful of all — in its original simplicity so associated 
 with the love of nature — was the custom of rising at dawn in 
 the month of May , 2 and going forth, rich and poor, with one im- 
 pulse, to the woods for boughs of hawthorn and laurel to deck 
 the doorways of the street, as a joyful welcoming, amid feasting 
 and dancing, of the sweet spring-time. Spontaneous and uncon- 
 scious acknowledgment of the beauty of the Universe, as by 
 men reared in the pathless forests, knowing Nature as a house- 
 hold friend that has entwined itself with their first affections; a 
 thing of the nerves and animal spirits, yet impossible, alas ! to 
 our present analytic and jaded civilization. We, all utilitarian 
 and prosaic, mourn in vain the loss of that direct and unreflecting 
 pleasure which the untutored imagination felt in habitual con- 
 verse with earth and sky, talking to the wayside flowers of its 
 love, and to the fading clouds of its ambition; or that earlier fresh- 
 ness of eye, which, in the first pencillings of dawn that struck 
 some lonely peak or fell into some sequestered dell, saw the 
 Fairies retiring; from their moonlight dances into the green knolls 
 where they made their homes. 
 
 Religion. — It may be doubtful whether the belief in fairies 
 Lad passed away. At least they lurked in the by-corners of our 
 poets, and existed elsewhere under a new character, degraded by 
 the church into imps of darkness, to inspire no doubt a horror of 
 relapse into heathenish rites. Superstition was wide and dense, 
 and riveted with theology. Christianity in its struggle with the 
 barbarian world had been profoundly modified. The tendency to 
 
 1 The men of the watch were the voluntary police of the city. 
 
 2 May began twelve days later than now, and ended in the midst of June. 
 
TIIE CHURCH — HER DEBASEMENT. 
 
 239 
 
 a material, sensuous faith was fatally strengthened, first by the 
 infusion of the pagan element, then by the debasement and 
 avarice of the clergy. To the idols of Paganism succeeded 
 shrines, relics, masses, holy wells, awful exorcisms, saintly vigils, 
 festivals, images of miraculous power, pilgrimages afar and pen- 
 ances at home. At Canterbury were skulls, chins, teeth, hands, 
 fingers, arms, feet, shoes, legs, hair, rags, splinters from the 
 crown of thorns, etccetera , to be adored and kissed by the innu- 
 merable pilgrims — for money. Each shrine had certificates 
 written by the Virgin or by angels, to support the lucrative 
 impostures. Winking statues were rife ; bleeding wafers were 
 exhibited; boys wrapped in gold foil were introduced as heavenly 
 visions. Says a contemporary: 
 
 ‘The ignorant masses worship the images of stone, or of wood, or marble, or brass, or 
 painted on the walls of churches, — not as statues or mere figures, but as if they were 
 living, and trust more in them than in either Christ or the saints. Hence they offer them 
 gold, silver, rings, and jewels of all kinds, and that the more may be wheedled into doing 
 so, those who drive this trade hang medals from the neck or arms of the image, to sell, and 
 gather the gifts they receive into heaps in conspicuous places, putting labels on them by 
 which the names of the donors may be proclaimed. By all this a great part of the world is 
 put past itself about these images, and led to make often distant pilgrimages, that they 
 may visit some little figure and leave their gifts to it ; and all piety, charity and duty is 
 neglected to do this, in the belief that they have given and repented enough if they have 
 put gold into the bag at the shrine.’ 
 
 Charms and amulets were a sure guarantee against every form of 
 disaster. The mystical virtues of the cross were the incessant 
 theme of the monk. No happy issue of an adventure could be 
 expected without its frequent sign. In peril or in pleasure, in 
 sorrow and in sin, they diagrammed it by the motion of their 
 hands. It stood, as the hallowed witness which marked the 
 boundaries between parishes. It stood at the beginning and at 
 the end of private letters, as of public documents. It became 
 the mark which served as the convenient signature of some 
 unlettered baron. They knelt to it, kissed it — kissed it as a 
 palpable and visible deity. Waxen images were potent to pro- 
 cure health and weal. An anxious wife writes to her husband, 
 sick in London: 
 
 ‘ My mother vowed another image of wax of the weight of you, to our Lady of Walsing- 
 ham ; and she sent four nobles to the four orders of friars at Norwich to pray for you ; and 
 T have vowed to go on pilgrimage to Walsingham and St. Leonards.' 
 
 In the last human trial, these vain ceremonials were efficacious to 
 comfort and to cheer. Testaments provided for requiems to be 
 
240 
 
 RETROGRESSIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 said, in rich vestments especially furnished for the purpose; 
 newly-painted images of ‘our Lady’ to be set up, with tapers 
 ever burning; the chimes in the steeple to be repaired; the priest 
 to have a yearly reward, or a residence, and at each meal to 
 repeat the name of the testator, that they who hear may say, 
 ‘God have mercy on his soul’; a Latin sentence to be written ‘on 
 the fore part of the iron about my grave,’ and therewith ‘the 
 pardon which I purchased ’ ; ten pounds ‘to a priest for to go to 
 Rome, and I will that the said priest go to the stations and say 
 masses as is according to a pilgrim.’ Henry VII engaged two 
 thousand masses, at sixpence (!) each, to be said for the repose 
 of his soul. 
 
 It was universally taught that innumerable evil spirits were 
 ranging over the world, seeking the present misery and future 
 ruin of mankind, — fallen spirits that retained the angelic capaci- 
 ties, and directed against men the energies of superhuman malice. 
 The brave yeomen, who fronted danger in the field, quailed before 
 the gentle Maid as a sorceress. A proclamation was issued to 
 the soldiery to reassure them against the incantations of the 
 girl. The Duke of Bedford wrote to the king: 
 
 ‘All things here prospered for you till the time of the siege of Orleans, undertaken of 
 whose advice God only knows. Since the death of my cousin of Salisbury, whom God 
 absolve, who fell by the hand of God, as it seemeth, your people, who were assembled in 
 great number at this siege, have received a terrible check. This has been caused in part, 
 as we trow, by the confidence our enemies have in a disciple and limb of the Devil, called 
 Pucelle, that used false enchantments and sorcery. The which stroke and discomfiture has 
 not only lessened the number of your people here, but also sunk the courage of the remain- 
 der in a wonderful manner, and encouraged your enemies to assemble themselves forthwith 
 in great numbers.’ 
 
 The shrivelled arm of Richard III was attributed to witchcraft. 
 A duchess, convicted of practicing magic against the king’s life, 
 was compelled to do penance in the streets, while two of her ser- 
 vants were executed. Satan with his feudatories and vassals — 
 cast out from Olympus and Asgard, outlawed by the new dynasty — 
 lurked in forest and mountain, and issuing forth only after night- 
 fall, raised the desolating tempest, sent the pestilential blast, 
 and kept body and soul together by an illicit traffic between this 
 world and the other. The fancy that once lay warm about the 
 heart, now sends a chill among the roots of the hair. 
 
 So flourished, outwardly, the empire of Rome, while ideas 
 became the occasions of superstition, and forms of ritualism dis- 
 
THE CHURCH — HER EXCESSES. 
 
 241 
 
 placed a living consciousness. Religious discourses, without 
 judgment or spirit, were a motley mixture of gross fiction and 
 extravagant invention. Practical religion was a very simple 
 affair. The one thing needful for a sinner, however scandalous 
 his moral life, was to confess regularly, to receive the sacrament, 
 to be absolved. If sick, or ill at ease, he might be recommended 
 to some wonder-working image, which would bow when it was 
 pleased, and avert its head if the present was unsatisfactory. 
 For every mass — usually bought by the dozen — so many years 
 were struck off from the penal period. The rulers of the Church, 
 who once tamed the fiery Northern warriors by the magic of 
 their sanctity, were sunk into luxurious indolence and vice. The 
 popes, who once lived to remind men of the eternal laws which 
 they ought to obey, were, almost without exception, worldly, 
 intriguing, and immoral. Several were murderers, most were 
 plunderers, one was poisoned by his successor, another was elect- 
 ed by menaces and bribes, the last died by the poison he had 
 mingled for others who stood in the way of his greed and ambi- 
 tion. Prelates, cardinals, and abbots were occupied chiefly in 
 maintaining their splendor. The friars and the secular clergy 
 who were to live for others, not for themselves, turned their 
 spiritual powers to account to obtain from the laity the means 
 for their self-indulgence. The monks, who once lived in an 
 enchanted atmosphere of piety and beneficence, were so many 
 herds of lazy, illiterate, and licentious Epicureans, dividing their 
 hours between the chapel, the tavern, and the brothel, — all 
 scheming or dreaming on the eve of the judgment day! The 
 priesthood, amenable only to spiritual judges, extend the privi- 
 leges of their order till clerk was construed to mean any one who 
 could write his name or read a sentence. A robber or an assassin 
 had only to show that he could do either, and he was allowed 
 what was called the ‘benefit of clergy.’ 
 
 Now consider that such men owned a third or a half of the 
 land in every country of Europe, while they confined their views 
 in life to opulence, idleness, and feasting. At the installation of 
 the Archbishop of York, brother of the King-Maker, there were 
 present 3,500 persons, who consumed, 104 oxen and 6 wild bulls, 
 1,000 sheep, 304 calves, as many hogs, 2,000 swine, 500 stags, 
 bucks, and does, 204 kids, 22,802 wild or tame fowls, 300 quar- 
 16 
 
242 
 
 RETROGRESSIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 ters of corn, 300 tuns of ale, 100 of wine, a pipe of hippocras, 12 
 porpoises and seals. The Commons declared that with the rev- 
 enues of the English Church the king would be able to maintain 
 15 earls, 1,500 knights, 0,200 squires, and 100 hospitals; each 
 earl receiving annually 300 marks, each knight 100 marks, and 
 the produce of four ploughed lands; each squire 40 marks, and 
 the produce of two ploughed lands. 
 
 Was not a reformation of some sort an overwhelming neces- 
 sity? So felt the people, who, if unable to comprehend an argu- 
 ment, were anxious for a correction of abuses. So felt the higher 
 natures who led them, believing in justice, in righteousness, 
 above all in truth, and caring not to live unless they lived nobly. 
 So felt the Church — which repressed them, by entreaty, by re- 
 monstrance, by bribery, by force. The king and the peers allied 
 themselves with the ecclesiastics. In 1400 the Statute of Here- 
 tics was passed; and William Santre, a priest, became the first 
 English martyr. A tailor, who denied transubstantiation — ac- 
 cused of having said that, if it were true, there were twenty 
 thousand gods in every cornfield in England — was next commit- 
 ted to the flames. A nobleman, hung on the gallows with a fire 
 blazing at his feet, suffered the double penalty for heresy and 
 treason. Lollardism was crushed by the weight of the establish- 
 ment above, but its principles, infecting all classes, from the low- 
 est to the highest, were working a silent revolution. The soft 
 spring green withered away, but its roots were quick in the soil. 
 The clergy did not dream that the storm would gather again. 
 For a moment they were startled by a statute of Henry VII 
 ‘for the more sure and likely reformation of priests, clerks, and 
 religious men’; but again the cloud disappeared, and again they 
 forgot the warning. At this moment the Church, ever richer and 
 more glittering, dazzled the eyes to the decay of its substance, 
 like some majestic iceberg drifting southward out of the frozen 
 North, seemingly stable as the eternal rocks, while down in the 
 far deeps the base is dissolving and the centre of gravity is 
 changing. 
 
 Learning. — Intellectual life disappeared with religious lib- 
 erty. Learning declined, especially at Oxford. Her scholars 
 became travelling mendicants, whose academical credentials were 
 at times turned into ridicule and mockery by the insolence of 
 
LEARNING — THE PRINTING PRESS. 
 
 243 
 
 rank and wealth. The monasteries were no longer seats of cult- 
 ure. Twenty years after Chaucer’s death, an Italian traveller 
 said: 
 
 ‘I found in them men given up to sensuality in abundance, but very few lovers of 
 learning, and those of a barbarous sort, skilled more in quibbles and sophisms than in 
 literature.’ 
 
 Knowledge was a stagnant morass or an impenetrable jungle. 
 Literary production was nearly at an end. Puerile chroniclers, 
 scribblers of prosaic commonplaces, translators from the worn- 
 out field of French romance, give some distention to a period 
 that would else collapse. An occasional gleam of genius faintly 
 illuminates a date, like the last flicker of the dying day, or the 
 pulse of the early dawn, — 
 
 ‘As if the morn had waked, and then 
 Shut close her lids of light again.’ 
 
 In the nobler elements of national life, a dreary one-hundred 
 years, whose chief consolation is, that the downward touches the 
 upward movement; that everywhere in the common soil — the 
 unconsidered people, sustained by the surviving Saxon charac- 
 ter — lay the forces of which fruit should come. The popular 
 cast of authorship shows the stir of a new interest among the 
 masses. With a paucity of writers, in no former age were so 
 many books transcribed. It is proof of an increased demand, 
 that the process of copying was transferred from the monastic to 
 the secular class. And it was this transfer that led to the intro- 
 duction of printing. At first a secret and occult art. The 
 monopolizers dreaded discovery, and the workmen were bound 
 to secrecy by the solemnity of an oath. After their opera- 
 tions, the four sides of their forms were cautiously unscrewed, 
 and the scattered type thrown beneath, for ‘when the component 
 parts of the press are in pieces, no one will understand what they 
 mean.’ In a mystical style, they impressed upon the wondering 
 reader that the volume he held was of supernatural origin, an- 
 nouncing merely that it was ‘neither drawn, nor written with a 
 pen and ink, as all books before had been.’ But the freemasonry 
 was lost, the printers were dispersed; and at Cologne a plain 
 English trader — Caxton — was initiated into the ‘noble mystery 
 and craft.’ Very proud of the marvellous freight with which he 
 returns after an absence of five-and-thirty years; very eager in 
 
244 
 
 RETROGRESSIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 his zeal when he remembers the tedious, weary method of the 
 Scriptorium, hardly equal to the production of a hundred Bibles 
 in seven thousand days; almost professing, in his first printed 
 work, to have performed a miracle: 
 
 ‘I have practiced and learned, at my great charge, to put in order this said book in 
 print after the manner and form as ye may here see ; and is not written with pen and ink 
 as other books be, to the end that every man may have them at once: for all the books of 
 this story, thus imprinted as ye see, were begun in one day , and also finished in one day.' 
 
 Not unwilling to keep up the wonder and mystery of the new 
 implement which men did not yet comprehend. 1 
 
 In 1453, the Crescent advanced upon the city of Constantine, 
 the Greek Empire fell, Greek scholars were driven westward, 
 Greek literature and art were forced into Italy; and Plato lived 
 again, to join the ranks of the reformers. His mild and divine 
 wisdom was at war with the sensuality that had become the scan- 
 dal of the Church of Rome. ‘Beware of the Greek,’ ran the cler- 
 ical proverb, ‘lest you be made a heretic.’ Italy that already, in 
 the preceding age, had appropriated whatever Latin letters con- 
 tained of strength or splendor to arouse the thought and fancy, 
 became the school of Christendom. Thither repaired the men 
 of taste or genius who desired to share the newly-discovered 
 privileges of antiquity; and, quickened by the magnetic touch, 
 returned with a generous ambition to vie with the noble ancients. 
 Thence the stream of civilization was to flow as from its fount. 
 With a fluctuating movement, the life current extended through- 
 out Western Europe, England being among the latest to feel it. 
 When gleams of the revival had long struggled with the scholas- 
 tic cloud, the Greek language began to be taught at Oxford, and 
 about 1490 they began to read the classics. Thence was to come 
 every science and every elegance. 
 
 Language. — The emancipation of the national tongue was 
 now confirmed by another monarch. Henry V, in a missive to 
 the craft of brewers, declared: 
 
 ‘ The English tongue hath in modern days begun to be honorably enlarged and 
 adorned; and for the better understanding of the people, the common idiom should be 
 exercised in writing.’ 
 
 1 Who first taught to carve the letters on wooden blocks— who imagined to cast the 
 metal with fusil types distinct one from the other, — that is, for Europe, a German romance 
 with the opening pages forever wanting. Faust, Schdffer, Gutenberg, Costar, have their 
 jealous votaries. The origin of some of the most interesting inventions is lost in obscure 
 traditions. Perhaps the Chinese, who had practiced the art of block-printing for nearly two 
 thousand years, suffered it to steal away over their ‘great wall.' But the same extraordi- 
 nary invention may occur at distinct periods. Friar Bacon indicated the ingredients of 
 gunpowder a hundred years before the monk Schwartz, about 1330, actually struck out the 
 fiery explosion. 
 
POETRY — OCCLEVE AND LYDGATE. 
 
 245 
 
 We further learn that now ‘ the Lords and the Commons began 
 to have their proceedings noted down in the mother-tongue.’ 
 Both this prince and his father left their wills in the native 
 speech. 
 
 Religious diction, always in a more advanced stage of culture 
 than was the secular, made, in the hands of Pecock, considerable 
 progress in vocabulary, and more especially in logical struc- 
 ture. In Fortescue and the Nut-brown Maul , there is not only 
 a diminution of obsolete English, but a modern cast of phrase 
 and arrangement which denotes the commencement of a new 
 era. There was little occasion for decided improvement until 
 new conditions of society should create a necessity for it. 
 
 Poetry. — In the mutability of taste, the ancient romances 
 were turned from verse into prose. They had pleased as pictures 
 of manners still existing, but the correspondence was fading, 
 while there was yet no antiquarian interest to preserve their hold 
 on the public mind that had outgrown them. Indeed, after this 
 literature — prose or metrical — had entranced for three centuries 
 the few who read and the many who listened, its enchantment 
 was on the wane: another taste — where taste existed — was now 
 on the ascendant. 
 
 Nevertheless, it was the impoverished romance, imitated the 
 hundredth time, compiled, abridged, even modernized, that 
 chiefly occupied the dull rhymesters of the fifteenth century. 
 After the heavy platitudes of Gower came the didactic puerili- 
 ties of Occleve, a lawyer, who says truly that Chaucer, whom he 
 strove to copy, would willingly have taught him, 1 but I was dull , 
 and learned little or nothing .' 1 When a man’s only merit is a 
 fond idolatry of his master, let him be forgotten. Then Lydgate, 
 a monk, a long-winded and third-rate poet, who manufactures 
 verses to order, for the king and his subjects; paraphrases or 
 translates, as others have done with more grace and power, The 
 Fall of Princes , The Destruction of Troy , and The Siege of 
 Thebes. Here and there is a sublime truth, strongly expressed, 
 as in the remarkable lines: 
 
 ‘God hath a thousande handes to chastyse, 
 
 A thousande dartes of punicion, 
 
 A thousande bowes made in dyuers wyse, 
 
 A thousande arrowblastes bent in his dongeon.’ 
 
 [castle 
 
246 
 
 RETROGRESSIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 Or a descriptive gem, with much of the brilliancy of the Italian: 
 
 ‘Tyli at the last amonge the bowes glade 
 Of aduenture I caught a plesaunt shade; 
 
 Fill smothe and playn and lusty for to sene 
 And soft as veluet was the yonge grene : 
 
 Where fro my hors I did alisrht as fast, 
 
 And on a bowe aloft his reyne cast. 
 
 So faynte and mate of werynesse I was, [ fatigued 
 
 That I me layde adowne upon the gras, 
 
 Upon a bryncke, shortly for to tell, 
 
 Besyde the ryuer of a cristall welle; 
 
 And the water, as I reherse can, 
 
 Like quicke sillier in his streams ran 
 Of whych the grauell and the bryght stone 
 As any golde agayne the sonne shone.’ 
 
 Or a golden couplet, suggestive of the coloring and melody of 
 later times: 
 
 ‘Serpentes and adders, scaled syluer-bright, 
 
 Were ouer Rome sene tlyeng all the nyght.’ 
 
 There is an accent of originality in The Dance of Death , whose 
 mocking and grotesque figures dance on their tomb to the sound 
 of a fiddle played by a grinning skeleton; or a free vein of 
 humor in The Lack-penny , which opens the street scenery of 
 London : 
 
 ‘To London once my stepps I bent, 
 
 Where trouth in no wyse should be faynt, 
 
 To Westmynster-ward I forthwith went, 
 
 To a man of law to make complaynt; 
 
 1 sayd, “for Mary's love, that holy saint! 
 
 Pity the poore that wold proceede”; 
 
 But for lack of mony I cold not spede. 
 
 Then unto London I dyd me hye, 
 
 Of all the land it beareth the pryse. 
 
 “Hot pescodes,” one began to crye, 
 
 “Strabery rype, and cherryes in the ryse”; 
 
 One bad me come nere and by some spyce, 
 
 Peper and safforne gan me bede, [ began to offer me 
 
 But for lack of mony I myght not spede. 
 
 Then to the Chepe I began me drawne, 
 
 Where mutch people I saw for to stand; 
 
 One ofred me velvet, sylke, and lawne, 
 
 An other he taketh me by the hande, 
 
 “Here is Parys thread, the fynest in the land”; 
 
 I never was used to such thyngs indede, 
 
 And wanting mony, I might not spede. 
 
 Then went I forth by London stone, 
 
 Throughout all Canwyke streete; 
 
 Drapers mutch cloth me offred anone; 
 
 Then comes me one, cryed “Hot shepes feete” 
 
 One cryde “makerell,” “ryslies,” “grene.” an other 
 gan greete; 
 
 [rushes 
 
 [cry 
 
POETRY — BALLAD-SINGERS — NUT BROWN MAID. 
 
 247 
 
 On bad me by a hood to cover my head, 
 
 But for want of mony I myght not be sped. 
 
 Then I hyed me into Est-Chepe; 
 
 One cryes rybbs of befe, and many a pye: 
 
 Pewter pottes they clattered on a heape; 
 
 There was harpe, pype, and mynstralsye. 
 
 “Yea, by cock! nay, by cock!” some began crye; 
 
 Some songe of Jenken and Julyan for there mede; 
 
 But for lack of mony I might not spede. . . . 
 
 The taverner tooke me by the sieve, 
 
 “Sir,” sayth he, “wyll you our wyne assay?” 
 
 I answered, “That can not mutch me greve: 
 
 A peny can do no more harm than it may; ” 
 
 I drank a pynt, and for it did paye, 
 
 Yet some a hungerd from thence I yede, [ went 
 
 And wantying money, I cold not spede.’ 
 
 As for the rest, — tedious, languid, halting, desolate. There are 
 others. You may find them by the dozen in Warton or Ritson, 
 a crowd of worthless and forgotten versifiers. We look patiently 
 for something to exalt, to instruct, or to please; find at last in 
 the royal James, of Scotland, — 
 
 ‘Be not ouir proude in thy prosperitie. 
 
 For as it cummis, sa will it pass away.’ 
 
 and in Dunbar, — 
 
 ‘What is this life but ane straucht way to deid, 
 
 Whilk has a time to pass and nane to dwell?’ 
 
 then we yawn, and go away, oppressed with the surfeit of dreams 
 and abstractions, used up and barren. 
 
 As the romances declined, the lyric which sang of the outlaw 
 and the forest, the joys and woes of love, and later of the wild 
 border life, gradually took form. The ballad-singers outlived the 
 troubadours, but their songs, long stored in the memories of the 
 people, reach us only in a late edition of the fifteenth century. 
 After the gloom of the castle and the conventionalism of the 
 court, it is refreshing to find ourselves in the open air, under a 
 blue sky, surrounded by persons who have human hearts in their 
 bosoms. Listen. They are engaged in a battle of the sexes, in 
 which attacks on the fair are parried by their eulogies. One of 
 the heaviest charges is the imputed fickleness of woman, — 
 
 ‘How that it is 
 A labour spent in vayne. 
 
 To love them wele. 1 
 
 As between libel and panegyric, you are requested to render a 
 verdict in accordance with the evidence: 
 
248 
 
 RETROGRESSIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 l Now I begyn 
 So that ye me answere; 
 
 Wherefore, all ye that present be, 
 
 I pray you, gyve an ere' 
 
 In order to try the maid’s affection, the lover tells her that he is 
 condemned to a shameful death, and must withdraw as an outlaw: 
 
 ‘Wherefore, atlue, my ovvne hart true! 
 
 None other rede I can; 
 
 For I must to the grene vvocle go, 
 
 Alone, a banyshed man. 1 
 
 She. 
 
 *0 Lord what is thys worldys blysse, 
 
 That changeth as the mono! 
 
 My somers day in lusty May 
 Is derked before the none. 
 
 I here you say, Farewell: Nay, nay, 
 
 We depart nat so sone. 
 
 Why say ye so? wheder wyll ye go? 
 Alas! what have ye done? 
 
 All my welfare to sorrowe and care 
 Sholdc chaunge, yf ye were gone; 
 
 For, in my mynde, of all mankynde 
 I love but you alone. 
 
 He. 
 
 I can beleve, it shall you greve. 
 
 And somewhat you dystrayne; 
 
 But aftyrwarde, your paynes harde 
 Within a day or twayne 
 Shall soon aslake; and ye shall take 
 Comfort to you agayne. 
 
 Why sholde ye ought? for, to make thought, 
 Your labour were in vayne. 
 
 And thus I do; and pray you to 
 As hartely, as I can; 
 
 For I must to the grene wode go, 
 
 Alone, a banyshed man. 
 
 She. 
 
 Now, syth that ye have shewed to me 
 The secret of your mynde, 
 
 I shall be playne to you agayne, 
 
 Lyke as ye shall me fynde. 
 
 Syth it so, that ye wyll go, 
 
 I wolle not leve behynde : 
 
 Shall never be sayed, the Not-browne Mayd 
 Was to her love unkynde: 
 
 Make you redy, for so am I, 
 
 Allthough it were anone; 
 
 For, in my mynde, of all mankynde 
 I love but you alone. 
 
 He. 
 
 I counceyle you, remember howe, 
 
 It is no maydens lawe, 
 
 Nothynge to dout, but to renne out 
 To wode with an outlawe: 
 
 For ye must there in your hand here 
 A bowe, redy to drawe; 
 
 And, as a thefe, thus must you lyve 
 Ever in drede and awe; 
 
 Whereby to you grete harm myght growe; 
 Yet had I lever than, 
 
 That I had to the grene wode go, 
 
 Alone, a banyshed man. 
 
 She. 
 
 I thinke nat nay, but as ye say, 
 
 It is no maydens lore: 
 
 But love may make me for your sake, 
 As I have sayed before 
 To come on fote, to hunt, and shote 
 To gete us mete in store; 
 
 For so that I your company 
 May have, I ask no more; 
 
 From which to part, it maketh my hart 
 As colde as any stone: 
 
 For, in my mynde, of all mankynde 
 I love but you alone. 
 
 He. 
 
 Yet take good hede; for ever I drede 
 That ye coude nat sustayne 
 The thornie wayes, the depe valleies, 
 The snowe, the frost, the rayne. 
 
 The cold, the hete: for dry or wete, 
 
 We must lodge on the playne; 
 
 And, us above, none other rofe 
 But a brake bush, or twayne: 
 
 Which soon sholde greve you, I beleve; 
 
 And ye wolde gladly than 
 
 That I had to the grene wode go, 
 
 Alone, a banyshed man. 1 
 
 He urges that she will have no wine or ale, no shelter but the 
 trees, no society but their enemies, finally that another already 
 
POETRY — ROBIN' HOOD. 
 
 249 
 
 awaits him in the forest whom he loves better; still her constancy 
 is unshaken, and in noble admiration he confesses: 
 
 ‘Myne ovvne dere love, I se the prove 
 That ye be kynde, and true: 
 
 Of mayde, and wyfe, in all my lyfe. 
 The best that ever I knewe. . . . 
 
 Be nat dismayed: whatsoever I sayd 
 To you, whan I began; 
 
 I wyll nat to the srrene wode "o. 
 
 I am no banyshed 
 
 She. 
 
 ‘These tydings be more gladd to me 
 Than to be made a quene, 
 
 Yf 1 were sure they sholde endure: 
 
 But it is often sene, 
 
 Whan men wyll breke promyse, they speke 
 The wordes on the splene. 
 
 Ye shape some wyle me to begyle, 
 
 And stele from me, I wene: 
 
 Than were the case worse than it was, 
 And I more wo- begone: 
 
 For, in my mynde, of all mankynde 
 I love but you alone. 
 
 man.’ 
 
 He. 
 
 Ye shall not nede further to drede; 
 
 I wyll not dysparage 
 
 Yon (God defend!) syth ye descend 
 
 Of so grete a lynage. 
 
 Now undyrstande; to Westmarlande, 
 Which is myne herytage, 
 
 I wyll you brynge, and with a rynge 
 By way of maryage 
 I wyll you take, and lady make, 
 
 As shortely as I can: 
 
 Thus have you now an erlys son 
 And not a banyshed man.' 
 
 Wherefore pay your tribute to the beautiful, notwithstanding the 
 free insinuations of the cynic, for, — 
 
 Here may ye se, that women be 
 In love, meke, kynde, and stable: 
 
 Late never man reprove them then, 
 
 Or call them variable; 
 
 But, rather, pray God, that we may 
 To them be comfortable.’ 
 
 We all need something to idealize. Science, literature, art, 
 music, all work that way, this for one, that for another. In the 
 popular ideal, you will discover the national character. Here it 
 is Robin Hood , living in the green forest free and bold, ready ta 
 draw his bow in the sheriff’s face; generous, compassionate, 
 giving to the poor the spoils of the rich; religious, after the 
 fashion, — 
 
 ‘A good maner then had Robyn 
 In land where that he were, 
 
 Every daye ere he wolde dine 
 Three masses wolde he hear;’ 
 
 chivalrous withal, for the worship of the Virgin softens the tem- 
 per of the outlaw, — 
 
 ‘Robyn loved our dere lady; 
 
 For doute of dedely synne, 
 
 Would he never do company harme 
 That ony woman was ynne.’ 
 
250 
 
 RETROGRESSIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 Before all, fearless and valiant, and joyously so, the champion of 
 the commons against oppression, civil and ecclesiastical. 4 It is 
 he,’ says an old historian, ‘whom the common people love so 
 dearly to celebrate in games and comedies, and whose history, 
 sung by fiddlers, interests them more than any other.’ Robin 
 dreams, ‘in the greenwood where he lay,’ that two yeomen are 
 thrashing him, and he wants to go and find them, repulsing 
 Little John, who offers to lead the way: 
 
 ‘ “All ! John, by me thou settest noe store, 
 
 And that I farley finde; 
 
 How offt send I my men beffore, 
 
 And tarry my selfe behinde?’’’ 
 
 He goes alone, and meets the brave Guy of Gisborne: 
 
 ‘“Good morrow, good fellow,’’ said Robin so fair, 
 
 “Good morrow, good fellow,” quoth he, 
 
 “Methinks by the bow thou bearest in thy hand, 
 
 A good archer thou sliouldst be.” 
 
 “I am wandering from my way,” quoth the yeoman, 
 
 “And of my morning tide.” 
 
 “I’ll lead thee thro’ the wood,” said Robin, 
 
 “Good fellow, I'll be thy guide.” 
 
 “I seek an outlaw,” the stranger said, 
 
 “Men call him Robin Hood, 
 
 Rather I’d meet with that proud outlaw 
 Than forty pound so good.” 
 
 “Now come with me, thou lusty yeoman, 
 
 And Robin thou soon shall see; 
 
 But first, let us some pastime find, 
 
 Under the greenwood tree.” 
 
 “Now tell me thy name, good fellow,” quoth he, 
 
 “Under the leaves of lime.” 
 
 “Nay, by my faith,” quoth bold Robin, 
 
 “Till thou hast told me thine.” 
 
 “I dwell by dale and down,” quoth he, 
 
 “And Robin to take I’m sworn, 
 
 And when I’m called by my right name, 
 
 I'm Guy of good Gisborne.” 
 
 “My dwelling is in this wood,” says Robin, 
 
 “By thee I set right nought; 
 
 1 am Robin Hood of Barnesdale, 
 
 Whom thou so long hast sought.” 
 
 He that to neither were kith or kin 
 Might have seen a full fair sight, 
 
 To see how together these yeomen went, 
 
 With blades both brown and bright. 
 
 To see how these yeomen together they fought, k 
 
 Two hours of a summer’s day; 
 
 Yet neither Sir Guy nor Robin Ilood 
 Them settled to fly away.’ 
 
POETRY — THE POPULAR IDEAL. 
 
 251 
 
 These redoubtable archers fight very amicably, jovially, hating 
 only traitors and tyrants. Bold Robin is the representative of a 
 class who revel in fighting as a pastime. An honest exchange of 
 blows, whoever is worsted, always prepares the way for fellowship 
 and respect: 
 
 ‘“1 pass not for length," bold Arthur reply’d, 
 
 “My staff is of oke so free; 
 
 Eight foot and a half, it will knock down a calf, 
 
 And I hope it will knock down thee." 
 
 Then Robin could no longer forbear. 
 
 He gave him such a knock, 
 
 Quickly and soon the blood came down 
 Before it was ten a clock. 
 
 Then Arthur he soon recovered himself 
 And gave him such a knock on the crown, 
 
 That from every side of bold Robin Hood's head 
 The blood came trickling down. 
 
 Then Robin raged like a wild boar. 
 
 As soon as he saw his own blood: 
 
 Then Bland was in hast, lie laid on so fast, 
 
 As though he had been cleaving of wood. 
 
 And about and about and about they went, 
 
 Like two wild bores in a chase, 
 
 Striving to aim each other to maim, 
 
 Leg, arm, or any other place. 
 
 And knock for knock they lustily dealt, 
 
 Which held for two hours and more, 
 
 Till all the wood rang at every bang, 
 
 They plyed their work so sore. 
 
 “Hold thy hand, hold thy hand," said Robin Hood, 
 
 “And let thy quarrel fall ; 
 
 For here we may thrash our bones all to mesh, 
 
 And get no coyn at all. 
 
 And in the forest of merry Sherwood, 
 
 Hereafter thou shalt be free." 
 
 “God a mercy for nought, my freedom I bought, 
 
 I may thank my staflE, and not thee." ’ 
 
 When the bandit and his antagonists have fought to the defeat 
 of one or the satisfaction of all, they embrace, or shake hands, 
 then dance together on the green grass: 
 
 ‘Then Robin took them both by the hands, 
 
 And danc’d round about the oke tree, 
 
 “For three merry men, and three merry men, 
 
 And three merry men we be." ’ 
 
 Will the discontent of such men be overlooked? They conquer 
 and maintain liberty by their native roughness. Upon the haugh- 
 tiest prince they impose a restraint stronger than any which mere 
 
252 
 
 RETROGRESSIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 laws can impose. He may overstep the constitutional line; but 
 they will exercise the like privilege whenever his encroachments 
 are so serious as to excite alarm. 
 
 Prose. — No expansion of prose is possible, until the realities 
 of life, political, social, and ecclesiastical, can be safely discussed. 
 Thought was restrained in too many ways to allow much range 
 of exercise beyond the unsubstantial realm of poetry. Hence the 
 prose writers of the period are not numerous, and, with few ex- 
 ceptions, are unimportant. It is worthy of remark, however, that 
 they exhibit three new kinds of composition, — epistolary, politi- 
 cal, and aesthetic. 
 
 The Paston Letters , written chiefly by persons of rank and 
 condition, contain many curious specimens of correspondence 
 belonging to this and the preceding century. They are unique, 
 and give an interesting picture of social life. In one, for exam- 
 ple, we have a glimpse of the state of the Norfolk coast: 
 
 ‘On Saturday last past, Dravall, half-brother to Warren Harman, was taken with 
 enemies walking by the sea- side; and they have him forth with them, and they took 
 two pilgrims, a man and a woman. . . . God give grace that the sea may be better kept 
 than it is now, or else it shall be a perilous dwelling by the seacoast.’ 
 
 One of the remarkable features of the age was the incessant liti- 
 gation. Agnes Paston writes to one of her sons: 
 
 O 
 
 1 1 greet you well, and advise you to think once of the day of your father's counsel to 
 learn the law, for he said many times that whosoever should dwell at Paston should have 
 need to con to defend himself.’ 
 
 One of the Pastons is reproved for his extravagance in dress and 
 servants: 
 
 ‘It is the guise of your countrymen to spend all the goods they have on men and 
 livery gowns, and horse and harness, and so bear it out for a while, and at the last they 
 are but beggars.’ 
 
 It would appear that in what least concerns others, others most 
 assiduously, then as now, intermeddled, — 
 
 ‘The queen came into this town on Tuesday last past, afternoon, and abode here till 
 it was Thursday afternoon; and she sent after my cousin Elizabeth Clerc, to come to her: 
 and she durst not disobey her commandment, and came to her. And when she came in 
 the queen’s presence, the queen made right much of l)er, and desired her to have an hus- 
 band, the which ye shall know of hereafter. But as for that he is never nearer than he 
 was before' 
 
 It seems to have been dangerous to write freely; and an opinion 
 upon passing events or the characters of men was usually supple- 
 mented by some such sentence as, — 
 
PROSE — FORT ESC UE — MALORY. 
 
 253 
 
 4 After this is read and understood, I pray you burn or break it, for I am loth to write 
 anything of any lord.’ 
 
 The profuse liberality of parliament in voting supplies to Edward 
 IV is rebuked, — 
 
 ‘The king goeth so near us in this country, both to poor and rich, that I wot not how 
 we shall live, unless the world amend.’ 
 
 The first to weigh and explain the constitution of his country 
 was Fortescue, who wrote, in exile, a discourse of real and last- 
 ing value on The Difference betioeen an Absolute and a Limited V 
 Monarchy , in which the state of France under a despot is con- 
 trasted with that of England. He says to the young prince 
 whom he is instructing: 
 
 ‘The same Commons be so impoverished and distroyed, that they may unneth 1 lyve. 
 Thay drink water, thay eate apples, with bred right brown made of rye. They eate no 
 fleshe, but if it be selden, a litill larde, or of the entrails or heds of bests sclayne for the 
 nobles and merchants of the land. They weryn no wollyn, but if it be a pore cote under 
 their uttermost garment, made of grete canvass, and cal it a frok. Their hosyn be of like 
 canvas, and passen not their knee, wherfor they be gartrid and their thyghs bare. Their 
 wifs and children gone bare fote. . . . For sum of them, t hat was wonte to pay to his 
 lord for his tenement which he hyrith by the year a scute 2 payth now to the kyng, over 
 that scute, fyve skuts. Wlicr thrugh they be artyd 3 by necessity so to watch, labour 
 and grub in the ground for their sustenance, that their nature is much wasted, and the 
 kynd of them brought to nowght. Thay gone crokyd and ar feeble, not able to fight nor 
 to defend the realm; nor they have wepon, nor monye to buy them wepon withal. . . . 
 This is the frute first of hyre Jus regale. . . . But blessed be God, this land ys rulid 
 under a better lawe, and therfor the people therof be not in such penurye, nor therby 
 hurt in their persons, but they be wealthie and have all things necessarie to the suste- 
 nance of nature. Wherefore they be myghty and able to resyste the adversaries of the 
 realms that do or will do them wrong. Loo, this is the frut of Jus politicum et regale, 
 under which we lyve.’ 
 
 In the decline of romantic literature, one last and famous 
 effort was made, about 1470, by Sir Thomas Malory, in that 
 tessellated comjiilement of Morte d Arthur, whose mottled pieces, 
 struck from the vast quarry of the Round Table, are squared 
 together by no unskilful hand. Its style, always animated and 
 flowing, mounts occasionally into the region of eloquence: 
 
 ‘Oh ! ye mighty and pompous lords, winning in the glories transitory of this unstable 
 life, as in reigning over great realms and mighty great countries, fortified with strong 
 castles and towers, edified with many a rich city; yea also, ye fierce and mighty knights, 
 so valiant in adventurous deeds of arms, behold ! behold ! see how this mighty conqueror. 
 King Arthur, whom in his human life all the world dreaded, yea also the noble Queen 
 Gucnever, which sometime sat in her chair adorned with gold, pearls, and precious 
 stones, now lie full low in obscure foss, or pit, covered with clods 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 
 
 1 Scarcely. 2About three shillings and fourpence. 3 Compelled. 
 
254 
 
 RETROGRESSIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 so dangerous? Therefore, me thinketh this present book is right necessary often to be 
 read; for in all ye find the most gracious, knightly, and virtuous war, of the most noble 
 knights of the world, whereby they got praising continually; also me seemeth, by the oft 
 reading thereof, ye shall greatly desire to accustom yourself in following of those gra- 
 cious 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. 1 
 
 History. — The science of true history had yet no existence. 
 All facts appeared of equal worth, for all alike cost the same 
 toil; and, still dispersed in their insulated state, still refused 
 combination. But the day had now arrived, in the progress of 
 society, when chronicles were written by laymen. The first in 
 our vernacular prose was the labor of a citizen and alderman, 
 and sometime sheriff of London, — Hobert Fabyan; and was 
 designed for ‘the unlettered who understand no Latin.’ In the 
 accustomed mode, he fixes the historic periods by dates from 
 Adam or from Brut, and composing in the spirit of the day, 
 mentions the revolutions of government with the same brevity 
 as he speaks of the price of wheat and poultry; passes unnoticed 
 his friend Caxton, to speak of ‘a new weathercock placed on the 
 cross of St. Paul’s steeple’; tells us that of the French monarch’s 
 dress ‘ I might make a long rehearsal ’; finds the level of his 
 faculties in recording ‘flying dragons in the air,’ or describing 
 the two castles in space, whence issued two armies black and 
 white, combating in the skies till the white vanished. Of Cabot’s 
 voyage of discovery, under the patronage of Henry VII, he says 
 curiously: 
 
 ‘There were brought King Henry three men, taken in the new found island; they 
 were clothed in beast’s skins, and did eat raw flesh, and spake such speech as that no 
 man could understand them: and in their demeanor were like brute beasts; whom the 
 King kept a time after. Of the which about two years after, I saw two, apparelled after 
 the manner of Englishmen, in Westminster palace, which at that time I could not discern 
 from Englishmen, till I was learned what they were. But as for speech I heard none of 
 them utter one word. 1 
 
 Superstition has always attached to numbers. Seven , or the 
 heptad, is very powerful for good or for evil, and belongs espe- 
 cially to sacred things. The good man’s chronicle, opens with 
 an invocation for help, is in seven unequal divisions, and ends 
 with seven cheering epilogues in unmetrical metre, entitled The 
 Seven Joys of the Virgin. 
 
 Theology. — All knowledge was claimed as a part of theol- 
 ogy, and all questions were decided by scholastic rules. What- 
 
SCHOLASTIC THEOLOGY. 
 
 255 
 
 ever was old, was divine ; whatever was new, was suspected. 
 Never had the schools of divinity made a more miserable figure. 
 Teachers and students loaded their memories with unintelligible 
 distinctions and unmeaning sounds, that they might discourse 
 and dispute, with the semblance of method, upon matters 
 which they did not understand. They still discussed whether 
 God could have taken any form but that of man, — as, for in- 
 stance, that of a woman, of the devil, of an ass, of a cucumber, 
 of a flint. If of a cucumber, how could He have preached, 
 wrought miracles, or been crucified? Whether Christ could be 
 called a man while on the cross; whether the pope shared both 
 natures with Christ; whether the Father could in any case hate 
 the Son; whether the pope was greater than Peter, and a thou- 
 sand other niceties more subtle. There now remained few of 
 those who proved and illustrated doctrine by the positive dec- 
 larations of Scripture; but upon them as upon the pedants, the 
 mechanical manner of arguing and replying imposes its servitude. 
 The moment they begin to reflect, Aristotle and the army of the 
 ancients, flanked by the definition and the syllogism, enter their 
 brains, and construct monstrous, sleep-inspiring books. Hear the 
 worthy Pecock, on whose unconscious shoulders had fallen the 
 mantle of Wycliffe. Thirteen propositions are to be demon- 
 strated in the approved style: 
 
 ‘An argument if he be ful and foormal, which is clepid a sillogisme, is mad of twey 
 proposiciouns dryuing out of hem and bi strengthe of hem the thridde proposicioun. Of 
 the whiche thre proposiciouns the ij. first ben clepid premissis, and the iij. foiewing out of 
 hem is clepid the conclusioun of hem. And the firste of tho ij. premissis is clepid the first 
 premisse, and the ij. of hem is clepid the ij. premisse. And ech such argument is of this 
 kinde, that if the botlie premissis ben trewe, the conclusioun concludid out and bi hem is 
 also trewe; and but if euereither of tho premissis be trewe, the conclusioun is not trewe. 
 Ensample her of is this. “Ech man is at Rome, the Pope is a man, eke the Pope is at 
 Rome.” Lo here ben sett forth ij. proposiciouns, which ben these, “Ech man is at 
 Rome;” and “The Pope is a man;” and these ben the ij. premyssis in this argument, 
 and thei dryuen out the iij. proposicioun, which is this, “ The Pope is at Rome,” and it is 
 the conclusioun of the ij. premissis. Wherefore certis if eny man can be sikir for eny 
 tyme that these ij. premyssis be trewe, he may be sikir that the conclusion is trewe; 
 though alle the aungelis in heuen wolden seie and holde that thilk conclusioun were not 
 trewe. And this is a general reule, in euery good and formal and ful argument, that if 
 his premissis be knowe for trewe, the conclusioun oughte to be avowid for trewe, what 
 euer creature wole seie the contrarie. 
 
 But as for now thus miche in this wise ther of here talkid, that y be the better 
 vndirstonde in al what y schal argue thorugh this present book, y wole come doun into 
 the xiij. conclusiouns, of whiche the firste is this: It longith not to Holi Scripture, 
 neither it is his office into which God hath him ordeyned, neither it is his part forto 
 grovnde eny gouernaunce or deede or seruice of God, or eny lawe of God, or eny trouthe 
 
256 
 
 RETROGRESSIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 which mannis resoun bi nature may fynde, leerne, and knowe. That this conclusioun is 
 trewe, y proue thus: Whateuer thing is ordeyned, &C . 1 
 
 Enough. You are spared the dreary length, the wandering 
 mazes, of the remainder. With all this display of logical tools, 
 he was unable to see in what direction he was marching ; for 
 while he assailed the heretical opinions of the Lollards, he ad- 
 mitted that general councils were not infallible, that the Bible 
 was the true rule of faith, that religious dogmas were to be sup- 
 ported by argument, not by the bare decree of authority. His 
 well-meant defence of the Church was, in reality, a formidable 
 attack upon its foundations. His Repressor was burnt, he was 
 degraded, compelled to recant, and confined for the rest of his 
 life in a conventual prison. 
 
 As long as visible images form the channels of religious devo- 
 tion, the true history of theology, or at least of its emotional and 
 realizing parts, may be found in the history of art. The steady 
 tendency of European art in the fifteenth century was to give an 
 ever-increasing preeminence to the Father, to dilate upon the 
 vengeance of the Day of Judgment, to present to the contempla- 
 tion of the faithful, in new and horrible conceptions, the suffer- 
 ings of the martyrs on earth or of the lost in hell. 
 
 Ethics. — As in the dearth of genius, there were no philoso- 
 phers, so there were no philosophic expositions of duty, and 
 hence no definite ethical system distinct from theological teach- 
 ing. Moral culture was, of course, the main function of the 
 clergy, from the state of whose discipline at this time we may 
 fairly estimate the fidelity and efficiency of their instruction. 
 The ideal of life and character was yet ecclesiastical. It was 
 too early for a purely moral faith, appealing to a disinterested 
 sense of virtue and perception of excellence, to be efficacious. 
 Rites and ceremonies, an elaborate creed and a copious legen- 
 dary, were the appointed means for developing the emotional 
 side of human nature and securing a rectitude of conduct. The 
 formation of a moral philosophy is usually the first step in the 
 decadence of dogmatic religions. 
 
 Science. — Those who turned their attention to mathematics 
 or physics, still pursued the bewildering dreams of astrology 
 and alchemy. An Act of 1456, for example, in favor of three 
 
DREAMS OF SCIENCE — FAILURE OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 257 
 
 alchemists, describes the object of these ‘famous men’ to be ‘a 
 certain most precious medicine, called by some the mother and 
 queen of medicines; by some the inestimable glory; by others 
 the quintessence; by others the philosopher’s stone; by others 
 the elixir of life; which cures all curable diseases with ease, pro- 
 longs human life in perfect health and vigor of faculty to its 
 utmost term, heals all healable wounds, is a most sovereign anti- 
 dote against all poisons, and is capable of preserving to us, and 
 our kingdom, other great advantages, such as the transmutation 
 of other metals into real and fine gold and silver.’ 
 
 The art of medicine appears to have made little or no prog- 
 ress. It was still, to some extent, in the hands of the clergy. 
 The priests, because they were able to read the Greek and 
 Roman authors on medicine, had, all through the dark ages, 
 been the principal physicians. They became intimate with the 
 barbers by frequently employing them to shave their heads, 
 according to the uniform of the clerical order. The barbers were 
 also employed to shave the heads of patients, when washes were 
 prescribed to cool the fevered brain, or blisters were applied to 
 draw the peccant humors from the surface. Found expert and 
 handy with edged tools, the priests taught them to bleed, and to 
 perform such minor operations as they were competent to direct, 
 as well as to make salves and poultices, and dress wounds and 
 sores. Edward IV, in 1461, granted a charter of incorporation 
 and privilege to barber-surgeons; nor, though the distinct nature 
 of the two became gradually more apparent, was the tonsorial 
 art severed completely from the surgical till nearly three centu- 
 ries had elapsed. ‘Would heart of man e’er think it, but you’ll 
 be silent.’ 
 
 Philosophy. — The race of great Schoolmen had died out, 
 and the schools only repeated and maintained, with ever-increas- 
 ing emptiness, what their founders had taught. The whole 
 science of dialectic was degraded into an elaborate and ingenious 
 word-quibbling. Like religion, it had no other substance but 
 one of words. Syllogisms were sold like fish, by the string, and 
 descended, like silver shoe-buckles, from generation to genera- 
 tion. Scholasticism was self-extinguished in a period of bar- 
 barity into whose darkness the light of the Renaissance was 
 destined soon to shine with regenerating effect. What had the 
 17 
 
258 
 
 RETROGRESSIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 laborers accomplished? — If from heart or brain they educed no 
 great original creed, they produced a ferment of intellectual 
 activity such as Europe had never seen. Through the long, 
 terrible night which threatened the extinction of scholarship, 
 they kept alive the spirit of culture in the whirlwind of energy. 
 Disputation, if it adds no single idea to the human mind, is 
 better than indolence. In action, rather than in cognition, lie 
 life and acquirement. The highest value of truth is less in the 
 possession than in the pursuit of it. Could you ever establish a 
 theory of the universe, that were entire and final, man were then 
 spiritually defunct. The one justifying service of metaphysics, 
 in whosesoever hands, is subjective, — the upward aspirations it 
 may kindle, and the habits of close, patient, vigorous thought it 
 may form. As for its efforts to lift the veil from the mystery of 
 being, they are the labor of the struggling and baffled Sisyphus, 
 who rolls up the heavy stone which no sooner reaches a certain 
 point than down it rolls to the bottom, and all the labor is to 
 begin again. There is scarcely anything which modern philos- 
 ophers have proudly brought forward as their own that may not 
 be found in some one or other of the mighty tomes of the 
 hooded Scholastics. Why not? Were they not the posterity 
 of Plato and Aristotle, out of whom come all things yet debated 
 among men of reflection ? 
 
 ‘In countless upward-striving waves 
 The moon-drawn tide-wave strives: 
 
 In thousand far- transplanted grafts 
 The parent fruit survives.’ 
 
 Resume. — The throb of hope and glory which pulsed at 
 the outset, died into inaction or despair. Disputed successions, 
 cruel factions, family feuds, convulsed the land, till the political 
 crisis was terminated by Henry VII, who, as the authority of 
 the potent aristocracy declined, established that despotic regality 
 which remained as the inheritance of the dynasty of the Tudors. 
 
 Commerce widened, material life went on, darkly, without the 
 diviner elements of national progress. The intellect, unable to 
 proceed in the path of creative literature, fell back into lethargy. 
 Inquiry was repressed; originality was replaced by submission; 
 the reformation was trodden out; in the clash of arms the voice 
 of genius sank to feebleness or was hushed to silence; and the 
 reactionary influence of vice, ignorance, and superstition, was in 
 
OUR FIRST PRINTER. 
 
 259 
 
 the ascendant. The Church shrivelled into a self-seeking secular 
 priesthood; practical religion was reduced to the accomplishment 
 of ceremonies; and mankind, slothful and crouching, resigned 
 their conscience and their conduct into the hands of the clergy, 
 and they into the hands of the pope. 
 
 The century, however, was not lost. It was an age of accu- 
 mulation and preparation, as indeed it was in every country of 
 Europe. The commoners maintained their liberties, without 
 going beyond, and waited for a better day. The Reformation, 
 like a forest conflagration, smouldered. America was added to 
 the map; and while thought was startled by the sudden rarity 
 of a New World, with its fresh hopes and romantic realms, the 
 Renaissance was restoring an old one, with its eternal promoters 
 of freedom and beauty. In that twilight time was dawning the 
 great Invention that should give to Letters and Science the pre- 
 cision and durability of the printed page. Nor was the press 
 to be more fatal to the dominion of the priestly bigot than the 
 bullet to the sway of the mailed knight. In the upheaval of 
 the old feudal order, an arrogant nobility was sinking to a level 
 more consistent with national unity. Separate centres of in- 
 trigue were breaking up, society was pulverizing afresh; poetry, 
 like the ballad, was returning to the human interests of the 
 present, and the night of medievalism was drawing to a close 
 amid the chaos which precedes the resurrection morn. 
 
 CAXTON. 
 
 O Albion! still thy gratitude confess 
 To Caxton, founder of the British Press: 
 
 Since first thy mountains rose, or rivers flow’d, 
 
 Who on thy isles so rich a boon bestow’d? — M'Creery. 
 
 Biography. — A native of Kent, born in 1412; apprenticed 
 at an early day to a London silk dealer: after his master’s death 
 he lived — perhaps as consul or agent for the English merchants 
 - — in Holland and Flanders; while there, was appointed, by his 
 sovereign, envoy to the court of Burgundy to negotiate a treaty 
 of commerce; entered the service of an English princess as copy- 
 
260 RETROGRESSIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHOR. 
 
 ist; threw aside the tedious process of the pen for the newly- 
 discovered art, and became a printer, because — 
 
 ‘My pen is worn, my hand weary and not steadfast, mine eyes dimmed with over- 
 much looking on the white paper, and my courage not so prone and ready to labor as 
 it hath been, and that age creepeth on me daily and feebleth all the body, and also 
 because I have promised to divers gentlemen and to my friends to address to them as 
 hastily as I might the said book.’ 
 
 Absent more than thirty years, he returned to England with the 
 precious freight of the printing-press; and at an age when other 
 men seek ease and retirement, plunged with characteristic energy 
 into his new occupation, until his decease in 1492. 
 
 Writings. — Sixty-five works, edited or translated, are as- 
 signed to the pen and the press of Caxton: in French, two; in 
 Latin, seven; the remainder in English. He published all the 
 native poetry of any moment then in existence, — the poems of 
 Chaucer, Lydgate, and Gower; two chronicles, revising both, and 
 continuing one up to his own time; a version of the FEneid, or 
 a tract of Cicero, as the stray first-fruits of classic antiquity; and, 
 with an eye to business, manuals for ecclesiastics, sermons or 
 Golden Legends , — Tales of Troy , or Morte d' Arthur , for the 
 baron and the knight, — ^Esop's Fables and Reynard the Fox , 
 for the populace. 
 
 His Game of Chess , a translation from the French, Hynysshid 
 the last day of Marche, 1474,’ is assumed to be the first book 
 printed on English ground; and a second edition, the first illus- 
 trated with wood-cuts. As the aged Saxon expired dictating the 
 last words of the Gospel of St. John , — 
 
 ‘In the hour of death, 
 
 The last dear service of his parting breath,’ — 
 
 so did the old printer carry forward his last labor, on a volume of 
 sacred lore, to the setting sun of a life that bore its burden of 
 four-score. He dipped, ‘ half desperate,’ into that vast and sin- 
 gular mythology which for fourteen centuries grew and shadowed 
 over the religious mind of Christendom as its form of hero-wor- 
 ship, always simple, often childish, but always good, and there- 
 fore suited to the taste and information which it measured and to 
 which it was addressed. In this manner was the unquiet world 
 once charmed to rest, saintly emulation, and remembrance of 
 God: 
 
 ‘Francis, servant and friend of Almighty God, was born in the city of Assyse, and 
 was made a merchant unto the twenty -fifth year of his age, and wasted his time by living 
 
OUR FIRST PRINTER. 
 
 261 
 
 vainly, whom our Lord corrected by the scourge of sickness, and suddenly changed him 
 into another man, so that he began to shine by the spirit of prophecy. On a time as this 
 holy man was in prayer, the devil called him thrice by his own name. And when the 
 holy man had answered him, he said : “ None in this world is so great a sinner, but if he 
 convert him, our Lord would pardon him ; but who that sleeth himself with hard penance, 
 shall never find mercy.” And anon, this holy man knew by revelation the fallacy and 
 deceit of the fiend, how he would have withdrawn him fro to do well. And when the 
 devil saw that he might not prevail against him, he tempted him by grievous temptation 
 of the flesh. And when this holy servant of God felt that, he despoiled his clothes, and 
 beat himself right hard with an hard cord, saying: “Thus, brother ass, it behoveth thee 
 to remain and to be beaten.” And when the temptation departed not, he went out and 
 plunged himself in the snow, all naked, and made seven great balls of snow, and purposed 
 to have taken them into his body, and said: “This greatest is thy wife; and these four, 
 two ben thy daughters, and two thy sons ; and the other twain, that one thy chambrere, 
 and that other thy varlet or yeman; haste and clothe them; for they all die for cold. And 
 if thy business that thou hast about them, grieve ye sore, then serve our Lord perfectly.” 
 And anon, the devil departed from him all confused; and St. Francis returned again unto 
 his cell glorifying God. ... He was ennobled in his life by many miracles: and the very 
 death, which is to all men horrible and hateful, he admonished them to praise it. And 
 also he warned and admonished death to come to him, and said: “Death, my sister, wel- 
 come be you.” And when he came at the last hour, he slept in our Lord; of whom a 
 friar saw the soul, in manner of a star, like to the moon in quantity, and the sun in clear- 
 ness.’ 
 
 Style. — His diction, never the purest, could scarcely have 
 been improved by absence. A man destitute of a literary educa- 
 tion could hardly attain to any felicity or skill in an idiom to 
 which he was almost a foreigner. Plain and verbose, his manner 
 is that of one who with no brilliancy of talent, tries faithfully 
 to make himself understood. It is full of Gallicisms, however, in 
 vocabulary and phrase. We learn by the preface to his JEneid 
 that there were ‘gentlemen who of late have blamed me, that in 
 my translations I had over-curious terms which could not be 
 understood by common people.’ Critics, no doubt, were abun- 
 dant, when as yet there was no generally recognized standard; 
 and he himself had neither the judgment nor the force to har- 
 monize the heterogeneous elements. It is curious to see in his 
 own words the unsettled state of the language, the affectation 
 of some and the pedantry of others. ‘ Some honest and great 
 clerks,’ he tells us, ‘have been with me, and desired me to write 
 the most curious terms I could find.’ Others, again, ‘desired me 
 to use old and homely terms in my translations.’ But ‘I took an 
 old book and read therein, and certainly the English was so rude 
 and broad I could not well understand it.’ ‘Fain would I please 
 every man,’ is his helpless but good-natured comment. Of the 
 rapid flux of even common speech : ‘ Our language now used 
 varieth far from that which was used and spoken when I was 
 
262 RETROGRESSIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHOR. 
 
 born.’ Not only so, but the tongue of each shire had marked 
 peculiarities: 
 
 ‘ In my days happened that certain marchauntes were in a shippe in Tamyse for to 
 haue sayled over the see into Zclande, and fra lacke of wynde thei taryed at Forland, and 
 went to lande for to refreshe them. And one of theym, named ShefEelde, a mercer, came 
 into an hows and axyed for mete, and specyally he axyed after eggys; and the good wyf 
 answerde that she coude speke no Frenshe, and the marchaunt was angry, for he also 
 coude speke no Frenshe, but wolde have had eggys, and she understood hym not. And 
 then, at laste, another sayd hat he would have eyren. Then the good wyf sayd that she 
 understood hym wel. Loo, what sholde a man in theyse days now wryte, egges or eyren! 
 Certaynly, it is hard to playse every man, because of diversite and chaunge of langage.' 
 
 Rank. — That he was a man of some eminence is shown by 
 his royal connections in service. To the historian of the human 
 mind, he appears as an indifferent translator, and a printer with- 
 out erudition. That he should have been acquainted with French 
 and German was inevitable from his continental residence. That 
 he was unacquainted with classic Latin is evident from a refer- 
 ence to Skelton, whom he mentions as ‘one that had read Virgil, 
 Ovid, Tully, and all the other noble poets and orators to me un- 
 known? With the industry to keep pace with his age, he had 
 not the genius to create a national taste by his novel and mighty 
 instrument of thought. At a loss what author to select, his 
 choice might seem to have been frequently accidental. With 
 simple-hearted enthusiasm, he says of his version of Virgil: 
 
 4 Having no work in hand, I sitting in my study where as lay many divers pamphlets 
 and books, happened that to my hand came a little book in French, which late was 
 translated out of Latin by some noble clerk of France— which book is named “Eney- 
 dos,” and made in Latin by the noble poet and great clerk Vergyl— in which book I had 
 great pleasure by reason of the fairc and honest termes and wordes in French which I 
 never saw to-fore-like, none so pleasant nor so well ordered, which book as me seemed 
 should be much requisite for noble men to see, as well for the eloquence as the histo- 
 ries; and when I had advised me to this said book I deliberated and concluded to trails, 
 late it into English, and forthwith took a pen and ink and wrote a leaf or twain.’ 
 
 His simplicity far exceeded his learning. He solemnly 
 vouched for the verity of Jason and the Golden Fleece , The 
 Life of Hercides , and all ‘the Merveilles of Virgil’s Necro- 
 mancy’! For a moment, ‘the noble history of King Arthur’ 
 puzzled him, because — 
 
 ‘ Dyuers men holde opynyon, that there was no suche Arthur, and that alle suche 
 bookes as been maad of hym, ben but fayned and fables, by cause that somme cronycles 
 make of him no mencyon ne remembre hym noo thynge ne of his knyghtes.’ 
 
 But his sudden scruples were relieved when assured — 
 
 ‘That in hym that shold say or thynke that there was neuer suche a kyng callyd 
 Arthur, myght wel be aretted grete folye and blyndcness. . . Fyrst ye may see his 
 
OUR FIRST PRINTER. 
 
 263 
 
 sejxulture in the monasterye of Glastyngburge. . . At Wynchester the rounde table, in 
 other places Launcelottes swerde and many other thynges.’ 
 
 Character. — Our central impression of him is that of an 
 honest business man, resolved to get a living from his trade. 
 His ‘red pole’ at the disused Scriptorium, where monks once 
 distributed alms to the poor, modestly invited all who desired, 
 to come and buy his wares or give orders for printing. Ran his 
 advertisement: 
 
 ‘If it please any man, spiritual or temporal, to buy any pyes of two or three com- 
 memorations of Salisbury all emprynted after the form of the present letter, which 
 be well and truly correct, let him come to Westminster into the Almonry at the red 
 pole and he shall have them good chepe.’ 
 
 Styling himself ‘simple William Caxton,’ he united great mod- 
 esty of character to indefatigable industry. Over four thousand 
 printed pages are of his own rendering. He speaks as a devout 
 man, careful of happiness as of fabrics, who, while he constructs 
 a book, studies the art of constructing human blessedness. His 
 introduction to Morte d' Arthur concludes: 
 
 ‘And for to passe the tyme this book shal be plesaunte to rede in, but for to giue 
 fayth and byleue that al is trewe that is conteyned herin, ye be at your lyberte, but al 
 is wryton for our doctryne, and for to beware that we falle not to vyce ne synne, but 
 to excercyse and folowe vertu, by whyche we may come and atteyne to good fame and 
 renomme in thys lyf, and after this shorte and transytorye lyf to come vnto euerlastyng 
 blysse in heuen, the whyche he graunt vs that reygneth in heuen the blessyd Trynyte. 
 Amen.’ 
 
 It is not the exceptional things in life which are the noblest, — 
 not the high lift nor the sudden spring of rare and exceptional 
 persons, but the faithful every-day march of men. 
 
 Influence. — The press unfolded its vast resources tardily. 
 In all Europe, between 1470 and 1500, ten thousand books were 
 printed, and of them a majority in Italy; only a hundred and 
 forty-one in England. In the next fifty years, but seven works 
 had been printed in Scotland, and among them not a single clas- 
 sic. A triumph, if we consider that formerly a hundred Bibles 
 could not be procured under an expense of twenty years’ labor; 
 but an inglorious advancement, if we consider the stupendous 
 results since attained. Very slowly was this new appliance for 
 the dissemination of knowledge to change the condition of soci- 
 ety, but thenceforth we can never speak of that condition icith- 
 out regard to the printing-press. No refined consideration, no 
 expansive views of his art, seem to have inspired our primeval 
 
264 RETROGRESSIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHOR. 
 
 printer; but of what momentous consequences was he the initial 
 agent! Unconsciously, he came to form a new intellectual era, 
 to scatter the messengers of reform, to render Bibles and other 
 books the common property of the great and the mean, to create 
 a democracy and make a grave for tyrants; to subordinate oral 
 and scenic to written instruction, and thus to deprive the pulpit 
 of that supremacy which was founded on the condition of a non- 
 reading public; to make possible a direct communication between 
 the government and the governed, without priestly mediation, 
 which was the first step in the separation of Church and State. 
 Patriarch of the English press ! stranger to the powers that 
 slumber in thy craft, insensible to those elevated conceptions 
 that guide the world’s helm, yet thy honest toil for the day and 
 honest hope for the morrow shall accrue to the advantage of 
 mankind continually, for ever. Lad — apprentice — mercer — 
 
 retainer — hoary learner — venerable printer — thou, simple man, 
 by the accident of time and the grace of fortune, shalt live in 
 immortal memory! 
 
FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 FEATURES. 
 
 Under whatever point of view we consider this era, we find its political, ecclesias- 
 tical, and literary events more numerous, varied, and important than in any of the 
 preceding ages.— Guizot. 
 
 To observe the connection between the successive stages of a progressive move- 
 ment of the human spirit, and to recognize that the forces at work are still active, is 
 the true philosophy of history.— Symonds. 
 
 Politics. — The sombre and sinister wisdom of Italian policy 
 — a policy of refined stratagem — of ruthless but secret violence — 
 achieved in this age the tranquillity of a settled state and the 
 establishment of a civilized but imperious despotism. The title 
 of Henry VIII was undisputed — the first such in a hundred years 
 — his temper hot, his spirit high, and his will supreme. Every 
 public officer was his crouching menial. Wolsey, his minister, 
 devoted his learning and abilities to the personal pleasure of the 
 master who might destroy him by a breath. Under the adminis- 
 tration of Cromwell, an organized reign of terror held the nation 
 panic-stricken at Henry’s feet. Judges and juries were coerced. 
 Parliament was degraded into the mere engine of absolutism. 
 His faithful Commons, hesitating to pass the bill for the dissolu- 
 tion of the monasteries, were summoned into his presence. ‘ I 
 hear,’ said the magnificent despot, ‘that my bill will not pass; 
 but I will have it pass, or I will have some of your heads.’ It 
 passed! The imagination of his subjects — to whom his reign, 
 on the whole, was decidedly beneficial — was overawed. To them 
 he was something high above the laws which govern ordinary 
 men. In the midst of his barbarous cruelties he appeared the 
 avenging minister of heaven, who, in renouncing the papacy, 
 had burst asunder the prison-gates of Rome. 
 
 The counsellors of Edward VI, with less of the sanguinary 
 
 265 
 
266 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 spirit of his father, were as unscrupulous in bending the rules of 
 law and justice to their purpose in cases of treason. They were 
 a designing oligarchy, from whom no measure conducive to 
 liberty and justice could be expected to spring. They had not, 
 however, the sinews to wield the iron sceptre of Henry, and the 
 increased weight of the Commons appears in the repeal of for- 
 mer statutes that had terrified and exasperated the people; in 
 the rejection of bills sent down from the Upper House; in the 
 anxiety of the court, by the creation of new boroughs, 1 to obtain 
 favorable elections. 
 
 The reign of Mary is memorable as a period of bloody perse- 
 cution. Popery was restored, Protestants were imprisoned and 
 burned for no other crime than their religion; stretches of pre- 
 rogative in matters temporal were more violent and alarming; 
 torture was more frequent than in all former ages combined, and 
 a commission issued in 1557 has the appearance of a preliminary 
 step to the Inquisition. A proclamation, after denouncing the 
 importation of books filled with heresy and treason, declared that 
 whoever should be found to have such books in his possession, 
 should be considered a rebel and executed according to martial 
 law. Yet not even she could preserve the absolute dominion of 
 her father Henry. While in his reign the Lower House only 
 once rejected a measure recommended by the Crown, in hers the 
 first two Parliaments were dissolved on this account, and the 
 third, refusing to pass several of her favorite bills, was far from 
 obsequious. Still less was the English spirit, which had con- 
 trolled princes in the fulness of their pride, broken. The 
 reproach of servility under usurped powers belongs less to the 
 people than to their natural leaders — the compliant nobility. 
 The reign of each of the Tudors was disturbed by formidable 
 discontents. Each had the discretion never to carry oppression 
 to a fatal point. 
 
 The tone and temper of Elizabeth’s administration were dis- 
 played in a vigilant execution of severe statutes, especially upon 
 the Romanists, and in occasional stretches of power beyond 
 the law, while the superior wisdom of her counsellors led them 
 generally to shun the more violent measures of the late reigns. 
 To high assumptions of prerogative, the resistance of Parliament 
 
 1 Twenty-two were created or restored in this short reign. 
 
POLITICS — SOCIETY. 
 
 267 
 
 became insensibly more vigorous. If, in the House of Commons, 
 many were creatures of the Royal Council, grasping at prefer- 
 ment, others with inflexible aim recurred in every session to an 
 important guarantee of civil liberty, — the right to inquire into 
 public grievances and obtain redress. Now it was, perhaps for 
 the first time, that the Commons asserted the privilege of deter- 
 mining contested elections. The finger of this sovereign was 
 ever on the public pulse, and she knew exactly when she could 
 resist and when she must retreat. 
 
 The same jealousy of the aristocracy turned the genius of the 
 maiden queen to a new source of influence, unknown to her 
 ancestors, — the people, a people divided by creeds and dogmas, 
 but made compliant and coherent by the firmness and the in- 
 dulgence of the wisest policy. While she ruled them with a 
 potent hand, she courted their eyes and hearts. She it was who, 
 studying their wants and wishes, first gave the people a theatre 
 4 for the recreation of our loving subjects as for our solace and 
 pleasure.’ She subdued by yielding. Her sex and graciousness 
 inspired a reign of love, and her energies contributed to make it 
 one of enterprise and emulation — a new era of adventure and 
 glory. Elizabeth, living in the hearts of her people, survived in 
 their memories. Her birthday was long observed as a festival 
 day. Every sign of the growing prosperity told in her favor, 
 and her worst acts failed to dim the lustre of the national ideal. 
 
 Society. — The monarchy established peace, and with peace 
 came the useful arts and domestic comfort. The development of 
 manufactures was gradually absorbing the unemployed. Under 
 Elizabeth commerce began that rapid career which has made 
 Englishmen the carriers of the world. The burst of national 
 vigor found new outlets in the marts of the Mediterranean and 
 Baltic. In 1553 was founded a company to trade with Russia. In 
 1578 Drake circumnavigated the globe. In 1600 the East India 
 Company was founded. Henry VIII at the beginning of his 
 reign had but one ship of war. Elizabeth sent out one hundred 
 and fifty against the Armada. Agriculture was so improved 
 that the produce of an acre was doubled. Dwellings of brick 
 and stone were superseding the straw-thatched cottages, plastered 
 with coarsest clay and often on fire. With open admiration, 
 
268 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 Harrison notes, 1580, three important changes in the farm-houses 
 of his time: 
 
 ‘One is the multitude of chimnies lately erected, whereas in their yoong daies were 
 not above two or three, if so manie, in most uplandishe townes of the realme. . . . The 
 second is the great amendment of lodging, although not generall, for our fathers, (yea 
 and we ourselves also) have lien full oft upon straw pallets, on rough mats covered onlie 
 with a sheet, under coverlets made of dogswain, or hopharlots, and a good round log 
 under their heads, instead of a bolster or pillow. If it were so that the good man of the 
 house had within seven years after his marriage purchased a matteres or flockebed, and 
 thereto a sacke of chaffe to rest his head upon, he thought himselfe to be as well lodged 
 as the lord of the towne. . . . Pillowes (said they) were thought meet onelie for women 
 in childbed. . . . The third thing is the exchange of vessell, as of treene platters into 
 pewter, and wodden spoons into silver or tin; for so common was all sorts of treene stuff 
 in olden time, that a man should hardlie find four peeces of pewter (of which one was 
 peradventure a salt) in a good farmers house.’ 
 
 Looking-glasses imported from France began to displace the 
 small mirrors of polished steel. Carpets were used rather for 
 covering tables than floors, which latter were generally strewn 
 with rushes. Forks were as yet unheard of, but knives — first 
 made in England in 1563 — and spoons were ornamented with 
 some care. Gloomy walls and serried battlements disappeared 
 from the palaces of the noblesse, half Gothic, half Italian, cov- 
 ered with picturesque gables, fretted fronts, gilded turrets, and 
 adorned with terraces and vast staircases, with gardens, foun- 
 tains, vases, and statues. The prodigal use of glass was a marked 
 feature — one whose sanitary value can hardly be overestimated. 
 ‘ You shall have,’ grumbles one, ‘your houses so full of glass that 
 we can not tell where to come to be out of the sun or the cold.’ 
 The master no longer rode at the head of his servants, but sat 
 apart in his ‘coach.’ The first carriage, 1564, caused much aston- 
 ishment; some calling it ‘a great sea-shell from China,’ others ‘a 
 temple in which cannibals worshipped the devil.’ Gentlemen 
 placed their glory less in the conquests of the battle-axe and 
 sword than in the elegance and singularity of their dress. ‘ Do 
 not,’ says a bitter Puritan, ‘both men and women, for the most 
 part, every one, in general, go attired in silks, velvets, damasks, 
 satins, and what not, which are attire only for the nobility and 
 gentry, and not for the others at any hand?’ They wore hats 
 ‘perking up like the spear or shaft of a temple,’ or hats ‘flat and 
 broad on the crown like the battlements of a house’; hats of 
 silk, velvet, and of ‘fine hair, which they call beaver, fetched 
 from beyond the seas, from whence a great sort of other vani- 
 ties do come besides’; cloaks of sable, ornamented shirts; coats 
 
SOCIAL STATE. 
 
 269 
 
 diversified with oxen and goats; velvet shoes, covered with 
 rosettes and ribbons; boots with falling tops, hung with lace, 
 and embroidered with figures of birds, animals, flowers of silver 
 and 2*old. When Elizabeth died, three thousand dresses were 
 found in her wardrobe. Feasts were carnivals of splendor. En- 
 tertainments were like fairy scenes. Sober thrift was forgotten 
 in the universal expanse. Gallants gambled a fortune at a sit- 
 ting, then sailed for the New World, in quest of a fresh one. 
 Dreams of El Dorados lured the imagination of the meanest 
 seaman. The advance of corporal well-being disclosed itself in 
 the manners and tastes of all ranks — at the base as well as 
 on the summit. The growth of the humanities is seen in the 
 establishment of hospitals or retreats for the infirm and needy, 
 and houses of correction for the vagrant and vicious. 
 
 Not modern England yet. Herds of deer strayed in vast 
 and trackless forests. Fens forty or fifty miles in length reeked 
 with miasm and fever. The population — barely five millions 
 — was perpetually thinned by pestilence and want, whose tri- 
 umphs were numbered by the death-crier in the streets or the 
 knell for the passing soul. The peasants shivered in their 
 mud-built hovels, where chimneys still were rare. For the poor 
 there was no physician; for the dying — till the monasteries 
 were suppressed — the monk and his crucifix. For a hundred 
 years, agrarian changes had been leading to the mergence of 
 smaller holdings and the introduction of sheep-farming on an 
 enormous scale. Merchants, too, were investing heavily in land, 
 and these ‘farming gentlemen’ were under little restraint in 
 the eviction of the smaller tenants. The farmers, according to 
 More, were ‘got rid of either by fraud or force, or tired out 
 with repeated wrongs into parting with their property.’ He 
 adds: 
 
 ‘In this way it comes to pass that these poor wretches, men, women, husbands, 
 orphans, widows, parents with little children, householders greater in number than in 
 wealth (for arable farming requires many hands, while one shepherd and herdsman will 
 suffice for a pasture farm), all these emigrate from their native fields without knowing 
 where to go.’ 
 
 Homeless wanderers, they joined the army of beggars, maraud- 
 ers, vagabonds, — a vast mass of disorder on which every rebellion 
 might count for support. The poor man, if unemployed, prefer- 
 ring to be idle, might be demanded for service by any master of 
 
270 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 his vocation, and compelled to work. If caught begging once, 
 and neither aged nor infirm, he was whipped at the cart’s tail. 
 For a second offence, his ear was slit, or bored through with a 
 hot iron. For a third, — proved thereby to be useless to himself 
 and hurtful to others, — he suffered death as a felon. This law, 
 enacted in 1536, and subsisting for sixty years, expressed the 
 English conviction that it is better for a man not to live at all 
 than to live a profitless and worthless life, — so reaching, per- 
 haps, the heart of the whole matter. Hogue , mendicant , thief, 
 were practically synonymous terms, embracing, — 
 
 ‘All persons calling themselves scholars, going about begging; all seafaring men 
 pretending losses of their ships and goods dn the sea; all idle persons going about either 
 begging, or using any subtle craft or unlawful games and plays, or feigning to have 
 knowledge in physiognomy, palmistry, or other like crafty science, or pretending that 
 they can tell destinies, fortunes, or such other fastastical imaginations, all fencers, 
 bear-wards, common players and minstrels; all jugglers.’ 
 
 Travelling required strong nerves. Some one petitions that 
 ‘parties of horse be stationed all along the avenues of the city 
 of London, so that if a coach or wagon wanted a convoy, two 
 or three or more may be detached.’ Sometimes, says More, 
 you might see a score of thieves hung on the same gibbet. In 
 the county of Somerset alone, we find the magistrates capturing 
 a hundred at a stroke, hanging fifty at once, and impatient to 
 swing the rest. On the byways, as on all the highways, stand 
 the gallows. Beneath the idea of order is the idea of the scaf- 
 fold. Savage energy remains. The living are cut down, disem- 
 bowelled, quartered. ‘When his heart was cut out, he uttered a 
 deep groan.’ London witnesses the fearful spectacle of a living- 
 human being — a poisoner — boiled to death, ‘to the terrible ex- 
 ample of all others.’ Judge of the moral tone by the utter 
 absence of personal feeling. With business-like brevity, as if 
 the thing were perfectly natural, Cromwell ticks off human lives: 
 
 ‘Item, the Abbot of Reading to be sent down to be tried and executed at Reading.' 
 ‘Item, when Master Fisher shall go to his execution, and the other.’ 
 
 Honor, beauty, youth, and genius went quietly to the block, as if 
 bloodshed were an accepted system. With the utmost equanim- 
 ity, as if no murder could be extraordinary, Holinshed relates: 
 
 ‘The five and twentith daie of Maie (1535) was in saint Paules church at London 
 examined nineteen men and six women born in Holland, whose opinions were (heretical). 
 Fourteene of them were condemned, a man and a woman of them were burned in Smith - 
 field, the other twelve were sent to other townes, there to be burnt. On the nineteenth 
 
SOCIAL STATE. 
 
 271 
 
 of June were three moonkes of the Charterhouse hanged, drawne, and quartered at 
 Tiburne, and their heads and quarters set up about London, for denieng the king to be 
 supreme head of the church. Also the one and twentith of the same moneth, and for the 
 same cause, doctor John Fisher, bishop of Rochester, was beheaded for denieng of the 
 supremacie, and his head set upon London bridge, but his bodie buried within Barking 
 churchyard. The pope had elected him a cardinall, and sent his hat as far as Calais, but 
 his head was off before his hat was on: so that they met not. On the sixth of Julie was 
 Sir Thomas Moore beheaded for the like crime, that is to wit, for denieng the king to be 
 supreme head.’ 
 
 In such a state, man can be happy — like swine. He is still a 
 primitive animal, too heavy for refined sensations, too vehement 
 for restraint; a hive of violent and uncurbed instincts, seeking 
 only expansion, and, to that end, ready to appeal at once to arms. 
 Says a correspondent: 
 
 ‘On Thursday laste, as my Lorde Rytche was rydynge in the streates, there was one 
 Wyndam that stode in a dore, and shotte a dagge at him, thynkynge to have slayne him. 
 
 . . . The same daye, also, as Sir John Conway was goynge in the streetes, Mr. Lodovyke 
 Grevell came sodenly upon him, and stroke him on the hedd with a sworde. ... I am 
 forced to trouble your Honors with thes tryflynge matters, for I know no greater.’ 
 
 His enjoyment, if lacking decency, is heartfelt — the overflowing 
 of a coarse animation. Bear and bull baitings are the delight of 
 all classes, a ‘charming entertainment’ even to the queen. Cock- 
 fighting and throwing at cocks are regularly introduced into the 
 public schools. They feast copiously, furnishing their tables as 
 if to revictual Noah’s ark. They drink without ceasing, as when 
 they crossed the sea in leather boats; as now in Germany, where 
 to drink is to drink for ever. Their holidays, with which tradition 
 had filled the year, are the incarnation of natural life. Stubbes, 
 whose mind is burdened with the pitiless doctrines of Calvin, 
 says, with morose impatience: 
 
 ‘First, all the wilde heades of the parishe, conventying together, chuse them a 
 ground capitaine of mischeef, whan they innoble with the title of myrLorde of Misserule, 
 and hym they crown with great solemnitie, and adopt for their kyng. This kyng 
 anoynted, chuseth for the twentie, fourtie, three score or a hundred lustie guttes like to 
 hymself to waite uppon his lordely maiestie. . . . Then have they their hobbie horses, 
 dragons, and other antiques together with their baudie pipers and thundering drommers, 
 to strike up the devilles daunce withall : then marche these heathen companie towardes 
 the churche and churche-yarde, their pipers pipyng, their drommers thonderyng, their 
 stumppes dauncyng, their belles rynglyng, their hankerchefes swyngyng about their 
 heades like madmen, their hobbie horses and other monsters skirmishyng amongest the 
 throng; and in this sorte they goe to the churche (though the minister bee at praier or 
 preachyng), dauncyng and swingyng their hankercheefes over their heads, in the churche, 
 like devilles incarnate, with such a confused noise, that no man can heare his owne voice. 
 Then the foolishe people they looke, they stare, they laugh, they fleere, and mount upon 
 formes and pewes, to see these goodly pageauntes, solemnized in this sort. Then after 
 this, aboute the churche they goe againe and againe, and so fortheinto the churche-yarde, 
 where they have commonly their sommer haules, their bowers, arbors and banquettyng 
 
272 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 houses set up, wherein they feaste, banquet, and daunce all that daie, and preadventure 
 all that night too. And thus these terrestriall furies spend the Sabboath daie.’ 
 
 And, — 
 
 ‘Against Maie, every parishe, towne and village assemble themselves together, bothe 
 men, women, and children, olde and yong, even all indifferently ; they goe to the woodes 
 where they spende all the night in pleasant pastymes, and in the mornyng they returne, 
 bringing with them birch, bowes, and branches of trees, to deck their assemblies with- 
 all. But their cheefest iewell they bringe from thence is their Maie poole, which they 
 bring home with great veneration, as thus : They have twenty or fourtie yoke of oxen, 
 every ox havyng a sweete nosegaie of flowers tyed on the tippe of his homes, and these 
 oxen drawe home this Maie poole (this stinkyng idoll rather), . . . and thus beyng 
 reared up, they strawe the grounde aboute, binde greene boughes about it, sett up 
 sommer haules, bowers, and arbours hard by it; and then fall they to banquet and feast, 
 to leape and dance aboute it, as the heathen people did at the dedication of their idolles.’ 
 
 What literature will this life create? You will see it all 
 there, reflected in the drama, reproduced on the stage, — free and 
 liberal living, a masquerade of splendor, vice raging without 
 shame, a prodigality of carnage, — a young w’orld, natural, un- 
 shackled, and tragic. 
 
 The Reformation. — Society is not possible without reli- 
 gion, and neither society nor religion can be founded only on the 
 pursuit of pleasure and of power. Recall the secular irritations 
 whose momentum had long been gathering for the impending 
 outbreak. Imagine, if you can, the secret anger which the cus- 
 tom of sanctuary alone must have excited. Says the Venetian 
 ambassador at the English court in 1502: 
 
 ‘The clergy are they who have the supreme sway over the country, both in peace 
 and war. Among other things, they have provided that a number of sacred places in the 
 kingdom should serve for the refuge and escape of all delinquents; and no one, were he 
 a traitor to the crown, or had he practised against the king’s own person, can be taken 
 out of these by force. And a villain of this kind, who, for some great excess that he has 
 committed, has been obliged to take refuge in one of these sacred places, often goes out 
 of it to brawl in the public streets, and then, returning to it, escapes with impunity for 
 every fresh offence he may have been guilty of. This is no detriment to the purses of the 
 priests, nor to the other perpetual sanctuaries ; but every church is a sanctuary for forty 
 days; and if a thief or murderer, who has taken refuge in one, cannot leave it in safety 
 during those forty days, he gives notice that he wishes to leave England. In which case, 
 being stripped to the shirt by the chief magistrate of the place, and a crucifix placed in 
 his hand, he is conducted along the road to the sea, where, if he finds a passage, he may 
 go with a “ God speed you.” But if he should not find one, he walks into the sea up to 
 the throat, and three times asks for a passage; and this is repeated till a ship appears, 
 which comes for him, and so he departs in safety. It is not unamusing to hear how the 
 women and children lament over the misfortune of these exiles, asking “ how they can 
 live so destitute out of England”; adding, moreover, that “they had better have died 
 than go out of the world,” as if England were the whole world.’ 
 
 Visible acts and invisible thoughts were environed and held 
 down by an ecclesiastical code, which, only a vehicle for extor- 
 
THE REFORMATION. 
 
 273 
 
 tion, changed the* police into an inquisition. 4 Heresy,’ 4 witch- 
 craft,’ 4 impatient words,’ 4 absence from church,’ an offence 
 imputed or suspected, resulted in heavy fines, imprisonment, ab- 
 juration, public penance, and the menace or sentence of the 
 torture and the stake. A Northman, a follower of Luther, an 
 artist, grouped and portrayed the infamy and glory of his age, 
 — Christ bleeding in the last throes of a dying life, angels full 
 of anguish catching in their vessels the holy blood, the stars 
 veiling their face, a heretic bound to a tree and torn with the 
 iron-pointed lash of the executioner, another praying with 
 clasped hands while an auger is screwed into his eye, men and 
 women hurled at the lance’s point from the crest of a hill into 
 the abyss below. On the other hand, an atrocious crime, the 
 mortal sin of a priest, could be expiated by an indifferent pen- 
 ance or the payment of a few shillings. But the crimes of the 
 clergy were exceeded by their licentiousness. These are the 
 most moderate lines in a satire of 1528: 
 
 ‘What are the bishops divines? . . . 
 
 To forge excommunications, 
 
 For tythes and decimations 
 Is their continual exercise. . . . 
 
 Rather than to make a sermon. 
 
 To follow the chase of wild deer, 
 
 Passing the time with jolly cheer. 
 
 Among them all is common 
 To play at the cards and dice; 
 
 Some of them are nothing nice 
 Both at hazard and momchance; 
 
 They drink in golden bowls 
 The blood of poor simple souls 
 Perishing for lack of sustenance. 
 
 Their hungry cures they never teach, 
 
 Nor will suffer none other to preach .’ 1 
 
 In Latimer’s opinion, only one bishop in all England was faithful: 
 
 ‘ I would ask a strange question. Who is the most diligent bishop and prelate in all 
 England, that passeth all the rest in doing of his office? I can tell, for I know him who 
 it is; I know him well. But now I think I see you listening and hearkening that I 
 should name him. There is one that passeth all the others, and is the most diligent 
 prelate and preacher in all England. And will ye know who it is? I will tell you. It is 
 the devil. Therefore, ye unpreaching prelates, learn of the devil to be diligent in your 
 office. If ye will not learn of God, for shame learn of the devil.’ 
 
 It was the frightful depravity of Rome that startled Luther 
 into revolt. He went there an eager pilgrim, trudging penniless 
 and barefoot across the Alps, as to the city of the saints, and 
 
 1 Roy’s Burying of the Mass. 
 
 18 
 
274 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 the palace of the Pope, fragrant with the odors of Paradise. 
 ‘ Blessed Rome,’ he cried as he entered the gate, — ‘ Blessed 
 Rome sanctified with the blood of martyrs ! ’ ‘Adieu ! ’ he cried 
 as he fled, ‘ let all who would lead a holy life depart from Rome. 
 Every thing is permitted in Rome except to be an honest man.’ 
 Romanism was turned into a carnival of vice in which all that 
 is high and pure in man is smothered by corruption, and a 
 circus of ostentation where the kingdom of heaven is bought 
 and sold. In 1517 a new cathedral 1 was in progress, that 
 should dwarf the proudest monuments of art. Agents were sent 
 about Europe with sacks of indulgences and dispensations — 
 letters of credit on heaven. Archbishops were promised half 
 the spoil for their support. Streets were hung with flags to 
 receive them, bells were rung to welcome them; nuns and monks 
 walked in procession before and after, while the vender himself 
 sat in a chariot, with the Papal Bull on a velvet cushion in front. 
 The sale-rooms were the churches. Amid the blazing candles of 
 the altar, the agent explained the efficacy of his medicines, de- 
 claring all sins blotted out ‘as soon as the money chinks in the 
 box.’ Acolytes walked through the crowds, clinking the plates, 
 and crying, ‘ Buy, buy ! ’ 
 
 Now consider the national temper and inclinations, which 
 long before the great outburst were muttering ominously. The 
 words of the consecration, the most sacred of the old worship, 
 Hoc est corpus , were travestied into a nickname for jugglery — 
 hocus pocus. Priests were hooted or knocked down in their 
 walks. Women refused the sacrament from their hands. An 
 apparitor, sent by the church to secure her dues, was driven out 
 with insults: ‘Go thy way, thou stynkyng knave; ye are but 
 knaves and brybours, everych one of you.’ Another’s head was 
 broken. A waiter fell in trouble for saying that ‘ the sight of a 
 priest did make him sick,’ also, ‘ that he would go sixty miles to 
 indict’ one. In one diocese a woman was summoned and tried 
 for turning her face from the cross; several for not saying their 
 prayers in church, remaining seated ‘dumb as beasts’; three for 
 passing a night together reading a book of the Scriptures; a 
 thresher for asserting, as he pointed to his work, that he was 
 going; to make God come out of his straw. Latimer announced 
 
 o o 
 
 1 St. Peter’s, designed by Angelo. 
 
THE REFORMATION. 
 
 275 
 
 one day that he would preach in a certain place. On the morrow, 
 proceeding to his appointment, he found the doors closed, and 
 waited more than an hour for the key. At last a man came, and 
 said: ‘Syr, thys ys a busye day with us; we cannot heare you: 
 it is Robyn Hoodes Daye.’ Straws on the stream. The thought- 
 ful and the learned had come to smile at the extent of human 
 credulity. Erasmus visits the shrine at Walsingham. An at- 
 tendant, like a modern guide, shows him the wonders: 
 
 ‘The joint of a man's finger is exhibited to us, the largest of three. I kiss it; 
 and I then ask, “Whose relics were these?” He says, “St. Peter’s.” “The apos- 
 tle?” He said, “Yes.” Then, observing the size of the joint, which might have 
 been that of a giant, I remarked, “Peter must have been a man of very large size.’’ 
 At this one of my companions burst into a laugh, which I certainly took ill, for if lie 
 had been quiet the attendant would have shown us all the relics.’ 
 
 His attention is called to the milk of the Virgin, ‘what looked 
 like ground chalk mixed with white of egg,’ and he inquires as 
 civilly as he may by what proofs he is assured of its genuineness: 
 
 ‘The canon, as if possessed by a fury, looking aghast upon us, and apparently 
 horrified at the blasphemous inquiry, replied, “ What need to ask such questions, when 
 you have the authenticated inscription?”’ 
 
 The contagion spreads, reaches even men in office. When the 
 enormities of the English monks are read in Parliament, there is 
 nothing but the cry of ‘Down with them!’ Henry permits the 
 ‘free and liberal use ’ of the Scriptures. Never were they so 
 eagerly and artlessly scrutinized. Every impression made a fur- 
 row. Girls took them to church, and studied them ostentatiously 
 during matins. Grave judges, charging the jury, prefaced their 
 charges by a text. Every reader became an expounder, and the 
 nation abounded with disputants. They reasoned about the 
 sacred volume in taverns and alehouses. In vain the king, irri- 
 tated at the universal distraction of opinion, orders them not to 
 rely too much on their own ideas, and restricts the privilege to 
 the nobility and gentry. In the solitude of the fields, in con- 
 cealment, under their smoky lights, by their fires of turf, they 
 spell out the Bible, discuss it, ponder it. One hides it in a 
 hollow tree, another commits a chapter to memory, so as to be 
 able to revolve it even in the presence of his accusers. They 
 see a companion or relative bound amid the smoke, encourage 
 him, cry out to him that his cause is just, hear his last appeals 
 to God, and meditate on them darkly, passionately. 
 
 Twice had the storm gathered and passed. Twice had the 
 
276 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 mind of Europe risen in vain against the domination of Rome; 
 first in France, then in England and Bohemia. But now the in- 
 vention of printing, which supplied her assailants with unwonted 
 weapons, the study of the classics, the vices of the Roman clergy, 
 — these things conspired to achieve in the sixteenth century what 
 was impossible in the fourteenth or fifteenth. More powerful 
 still, because more general: for five centuries the energies of the 
 human spirit had been accumulating. Never had it greater 
 activity, never so imperious a desire to advance. On the con- 
 trary, the Church, which governed the intellect and the heart, 
 had fallen into a state of imbecility and remained stationary. 
 Insurrection was the result. The forward impulse — ethical and 
 intellectual — resisted by the moral inertness, but accumulated to 
 excess, burst out, and produced the Reformation. The change 
 was essentially moral. Its mainspring was the awakened con- 
 science — not the revolutionary desire to experimentalize abstract 
 truth, but the indignation of righteousness, the fundamental 
 anxiety to seize upon truth and justice. It is the genius of the 
 Germanic peoples — the idea of duty blooming afresh amid the 
 mighty upgrowth of all human ideas, the sombre Semitic con- 
 ception of the vast and solitary Being, whose commands, whose 
 vengeance, whose promises and threats, fill, occupy, and direct 
 their thoughts. They ask, with Luther, ‘ What is righteousness, 
 and how shall I obtain it?’ Troubled and anxious, their light 
 failing, themselves groping, they cry from the abyss: 
 
 ‘Almighty and most merciful Father; we have erred, and strayed from Thy ways 
 like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own heart. 
 We have offended against Thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which 
 we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have 
 done; And there is no health in us. But Thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miser- 
 able offenders. Spare Thou them, O God, which confess their faults. Restore Thou 
 them that are penitent; According to Thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ 
 Jesus our Lord. And grant, O most merciful Father, for His sake; That we may 
 hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life.’ 
 
 ‘Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that Thou hast made, and dost 
 forgive the sins of all them that are penitent; Create and make in us new and con- 
 trite hearts, that we worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretched- 
 ness, may obtain of Thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness.’ 1 
 
 It is this conscience that made believers strong" against all the 
 revulsions of nature and all the trembling of the flesh. Many 
 went to the stake cheerfully, and all bravely, deeming the ‘cross 
 
 iBook of Common Prayer , 1548 ; subsequently, at different periods, undergoing 
 several changes. 
 
THE REFORMATION. 
 
 277 
 
 of persecution’ an ‘inestimable jewel.’ ‘No one will be crowned,’ 
 said one of them, ‘ but they who light like men, and he who en- 
 dures to the end shall be saved.’ Latimer at eighty, refusing to 
 retract, after two years of prison and waiting, was burned. His 
 companion, ready to be chained to the post, said aloud: ‘O 
 heavenly Father, I give thee most hearty thanks, for that thou 
 hast called me to be a professor of thee, even unto death!’ Lati- 
 mer in his turn, when they brought the lighted fagots, uttered 
 the thrilling words: ‘Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and 
 play the man: we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s 
 grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.’ A youth, 
 an apprentice to a silk-weaver, doomed to die if he does not 
 recant, is exhorted by his parents to stand firm: 
 
 ‘Then William said to his mother, “For my little pain which I shall suffer, which is 
 but a short braid, Christ hath promised me, mother (said he), a crown of joy: may you 
 not be glad of that, mother?” With that his mother kneeled down on her knees, saying, 
 “I pray God strengthen thee, my son, to the end; yea, I think thee as well-bestowed as 
 any child that ever I bare.” . . . Then William Hunter plucked up his gown, and stepped 
 over the parlour groundsel, and went forward cheerfully; the sheriff's servant taking 
 him by one arm, and I his brother by another. And thus going in the way, he met with 
 his father according to his dream, and he spake to his son weeping, and saying, “God be 
 with thee, son William”; and William said, “God be with you, good father, and be of 
 good comfort; for I hope we shall meet again, when we shall be merry.” His father said, 
 “1 hope so, William” ; and so departed. So William went to the place where the stake 
 stood, even according to his dream, where all things were very unready. Then William 
 took a wet broom-faggot, and kneeled down thereon and read the fifty-first Psalm, till he 
 came to these words, “The sacrifice of God is a contrite spirit; a contrite and a broken 
 heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.” . . . Then said the sheriff, “ Here is a letter from 
 the queen. If thou wilt recant thou shalt live; if not thou shalt be burned.” “No,” 
 quoth William, “I will not recant, God willing.” Then William rose and went to the 
 stake, and stood upright to it. Then came one Richard Ponde, a bailiff, and made fast 
 the chain about William. Then said master Brown, “ Here is not wood enough to burn a 
 leg of him.” Then said William, “Good people! pray for me, and make speed and des- 
 patch quickly ; and pray for me while you see me alive, good people ! and I will pray for 
 you likewise.” “How?” quoth master Brown, “pray for thee! I will pray no more for 
 thee than I will pray for a dog.” . . . Then was there a gentleman which said, “I pray 
 God have mercy upon his soul.” The people said, “Amen, Amen.” Immediately was 
 fire made. Then William cast his psalter right into his brother’s hand, who said, “Will- 
 iam! think on the holy passion of Christ, and be not afraid of death.” And William 
 answered, “I am not afraid.” Then lift he up his hands to heaven, and said, “Lord, 
 Lord, Lord, receive my spirit”; and, casting down his head again into the smothering 
 smoke, he yielded up his life for the truth, sealing it with his blood to the praise of 
 ■God.’ 1 
 
 The same sentiment, alas, made them tyrants after it had made 
 them martyrs. While the Reformation was demanding freedom 
 of thought for itself, it was violating that right towards others. 
 Both Reformers and Papists held it right to inflict coercion and 
 
 Fox’s Book of Martyrs. 
 
278 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 death upon those who denied what they regarded as the essential 
 faith. The first never doubted that truth was on their side, the 
 second were no less confident; and both required with equal 
 ardor the princes of their party to wield the temporal sword 
 against the other. The innovators were not emancipated from 
 the corrupt principles of the age, and there is no little warrant 
 for the taunt that they were against burning only when they 
 were in fear of it themselves. Calvin burned Servetus for heresy. 
 Speaking to the Earl of Somerset, he expressly says of the 
 Papists and Dissenters, ‘They ought to be repressed by the 
 avenging sword which the Lord has put into your hands.’ Cran- 
 mer caused a woman to be burned for some opinion about the 
 Incarnation. In the reign of Henry VIII, the story of martyr- 
 doms convulsed the Catholic world; in that of Mary, nearly 
 three hundred Protestants let themselves be burned rather than 
 abjure; in that of Elizabeth, a hundred and sixty Catholics were 
 put to death. We shall do well, however, to bear in mind the 
 temper of the men with whom the Reformers had to deal. They 
 remembered that when their teaching began to spread in the 
 Netherlands, an edict was issued, under which fifty thousand of 
 them, first and last, were deliberately murdered. 
 
 About the year 1520, when Luther publicly burned at Witten- 
 berg the bull of Leo X, containing his condemnation, the move- 
 ment definitely began which was to raise the whole of Europe 
 and change the spiritual history of mankind. Slowly, with mis- 
 trust, from self-interest, Henry VIII laid the axe to the tree. In 
 1534, Parliament enacted that the king — 
 
 ‘ shall be taken, accepted, and reputed the only supreme Head in earth of the Church 
 of England, and shall have and enjoy annexed and united to the Imperial Crown of this 
 realm as well the title and style thereof as all the honors, jurisdictions, authorities, 
 immunities, profits, and commodities to the said dignity belonging, with full power to 
 visit, repress, redress, reform, and amend all such errors, heresies, abuses, contempts, 
 and enormities, which by any manner of spiritual authority or jurisdiction might or 
 may lawfully be reformed.’ 
 
 Denial was treason, and treason death. A second blow was 
 struck, and the monasteries were lopped off, their relics cast out, 
 their shrines levelled, their estates appropriated by the court and 
 nobility, the monks sent wandering into the world, and the bish- 
 ops looked helplessly on while their dominion was trodden under 
 foot. Henry VIII, by brute force, wrought out only a purified 
 Catholicism differing in theory from the Roman Catholic faith on 
 
THE REFORMATION. 
 
 279 
 
 the point of supremacy and on that point alone. Above the roar 
 of controversy, he told the people, in six articles , 1 how to worship 
 and what to believe. Assailed with equal fury by those who 
 were zealous for either the new or the old, he burned as heretics 
 such as avowed the tenets of Luther, and hanged as traitors such 
 as owned the authority of the Pope. His system, too hazardous 
 to maintain, died with him. Under the Regency of his infant 
 son, the Six Articles were repealed; the prohibitions of Lollardy 
 were removed ; the churches were emptied of pictures and 
 images; priests, descending from their stone altars to wooden 
 tables, were once more equals, and married like the rest; the 
 Book of Common Prayer was restored, to knock at the door of 
 every soul with its imposing supplications; old customs were 
 broken. Cranmer, who had been slowly drifting, set the exam- 
 ple. ‘This year,’ says a contemporary, ‘the Archbishop of Can- 
 terbury did eat meat openly in Lent in the hall of Lambeth, the 
 like of which was never seen since England was a Christian coun- 
 try.’ 
 
 Mary undid all that had been done by her father and brother. 
 Not only were the old doctrines and ceremonies restored; the 
 supremacy was resigned to the Pope. But the new worship 
 became popular through the triumph of its martyrs, and became 
 national on the accession of Elizabeth — national by the con- 
 straint of internal sentiment and the pressure of foreign hostility. 
 England is henceforth Protestant; her faith, a part of the Consti- 
 tution, an alliance of the worldly and religious enemies of popery, 
 a union of the court and the cloister, of the State and the Church; 
 linked to the throne by the two Acts of headship and uniformity; 
 in its doctrinal structure, tolerant; in its political structure, per- 
 secuting. For a government whose organic principle is synthetic 
 and monarchical will not patiently submit to dissension whose 
 tendency is analytic and republican. 
 
 To this day, the Established Church bears the visible imprint 
 of her origin. Like her imperial parent, she has her chief magis- 
 trate; she retains episcopacy, without declaring it to be essential; 
 she copies the daily chant of the monk, though translating it into 
 the vulgar tongue and inviting the multitude to join its voice to 
 that of the minister; without asking for the intercession of the 
 
 1 Transubstantiation, celibacy, vows, mass, confession, withholding the cup from 
 the laity. 
 
280 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 saints, she has her festival-days for her great benefactors; dis- 
 carding a crowd of pantomimic gestures, she marks the sprinkled 
 infant with the sign of the cross; condemning the idolatrous 
 adoration of the bread and wine, she requires them to be re- 
 ceived in a meekly kneeling posture; rejecting many rich vest- 
 ments, she yet keeps the robe of white; without the gloomy 
 monotony of the middle-age litany, the organ-led music now 
 thunders forth glory to God, now whispers to the broken in 
 spirit; — in short, a flourishing branch, shooting forth in the open 
 air, amid satin doublets and stage attitudes, amid youthful blus- 
 ter and fashionable prodigality; friendly to the beautiful, which 
 it does not proscribe, and to fancy, which it does not attempt to 
 fetter. 
 
 Only by a very slow process- does the human mind emerge 
 from a system of error. The excesses of vice had been repressed 
 without attacking its source. Many persons, with a severer 
 ideal, thought that the interests of pure religion required a 
 reform far more searching and extensive. They would have a 
 service without shred or fragment of Rome. One protests: ‘I 
 can’t consent to wear the surplice, it is against my conscience; 
 I trust by the help of God, I shall never put on that sleeve, 
 which is a mark of the beast.’ And another: ‘God by Isaiah 
 commandeth not to pollute ourselves with the garments of the 
 image.’ As they could not be convinced, they were persecuted — 
 imprisoned, fined, pilloried, their noses slit, their ears cut off. 
 From being a sect, they consequently became a faction. To 
 hatred of the authorized church was added hatred of the royal 
 authority. So, underneath the established Protestantism is 
 propagated an interdicted Protestantism, — Puritanism , whose 
 intermingled sentiments, each embittering the other, will pro- 
 duce the English Revolution. 
 
 If now we inquire what were the ultimate results of the 
 Reformation, it can hardly escape observation: 
 
 1. That it banished, or nearly so, religion from politics, and 
 secularized government. 
 
 2. That, leaving the mind subject to the variable influence 
 of political institutions, it yet procured, by disarming the spir- 
 itual power, a great increase of liberty — a liberty which re- 
 dounded to the advantage of morality and of science. 
 
THE REFORMATION — EFFECTS. 
 
 281 
 
 3. That rejecting much of the polity and ritual of the 
 mystical Babylon, it rendered possible that steady movement 
 by which theology has since been gravitating towards the moral 
 faculty. 
 
 4. That it introduced religion into the midst of the laity, 
 which till then had been the exclusive domain of the ecclesi- 
 astical order. 
 
 5. That, begetting a war of tracts and disputations, whether 
 conqueror or conquered, it effected an immense progress in 
 mental activity. 
 
 6. That, by arousing Rome to impose upon herself an in- 
 stant counter-reform, it gave an improved tone to all ecclesi- 
 astical grades. 
 
 Inestimable as are these blessings, it were idle to deny that 
 
 the Reformation aggravated, for a time, unavoidably, some of 
 
 the evils it was intended to correct. It was the culminating 
 
 fact in a train of circumstances that had diffused through 
 
 © 
 
 Christendom an intense and vivid sense of Satanic agency. 
 When the mind, without power of sound judgment, is fallen 
 upon times in which tendencies and passions rage with tem- 
 pestuous violence, it turns readily to the miraculous as the 
 solution of all phenomena, and phantoms are transfigured into 
 realities through the mists of hope and fear. Men, supersti- 
 tious and terror-stricken, listen then with wide ears and fan- 
 tastic foreshadowings, momentarily expecting the thunderbolts 
 of God, and feeling upon them the claw of the devil. Cran- 
 mer, in one of his articles of visitation, directs his clergy to 
 seek for ‘any that use charms, sorcery, enchantments, witch- 
 craft, soothsaying, or any like craft invented by the Devil .’ 
 Under Henry VIII, there were a few executions for supposed 
 dealings with the Evil One; but the law on the subject in the 
 following reign was repealed, nor again renewed till the acces- 
 sion of Elizabeth, when other laws were made, and executed 
 with severity. A preacher before the queen, adverting to the 
 increase of witches, expressed a hope that the penalties might 
 be rigidly enforced: 
 
 ‘May it please your grace to understand that witches and sorcerers within these few 
 years are marvellously increased within yonr grace’s realm. Your grace’s subjects pine 
 away even \mto the death; their color fadeth, their flesh rotteth, their speech is be- 
 numbed, their senses are bereft; ... I pray God they never practice further than upon 
 the subject.’ 
 
282 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 It must have made the teeth chatter with fright to hear the min- 
 isters assert: 
 
 ‘That they have had in their parish at one instant, XVII or XVIII witches; mean- 
 ing such as could worke miracles supernaturallie; . . . that instructed by the devil, 
 they make ointments of the bowels and members of children, whereby they ride in the 
 aire, and accomplish all their desires. )Vhen a child is not baptized, or defended by the 
 sign of the cross, then the witches catch them from their mothers sides in the night 
 . . . kill them ... or after buriall steale them out of their graves, and seeth them in a 
 caldron, untill their flesh be made potable. ... It is an infallible rule, that everie fort- 
 night, or at the least everie moneth, each witch must kill one child at the least for hir 
 part.’ 
 
 With signal success, the witch-finders pricked their victims all 
 over to discover the insensible spot, threw them into the water to 
 ascertain whether they would sink or swim, or deprived them of 
 sleep during successive nights to compel confession. Under a 
 milder judiciary than on the Continent, witches who had not 
 destroyed others by their incantations, were, for the first convic- 
 tion, punished only by the pillory and imprisonment, while those 
 condemned to die, perished by the gallows instead of the stake. 
 The cast of thought engendered by the Reformation is strikingly 
 typified in Luther. Oppressed by a keen sense of unworthiness, 
 distracted by intellectual doubt, Satan was the dominating con- 
 ception of his life, the efficient cause in every critical event, in 
 every mental perturbation. In the seclusion of his monastery at 
 Wittenberg, he constantly heard the Devil making a noise in the 
 cloisters, even cracking nuts on his bed-post. A stain on the 
 wall of his chamber still marks the place where he flung an ink- 
 bottle at the Devil. He became so accustomed to the presence 
 that, awakened on one occasion by the sound, he perceived it to 
 be only the Devil, and accordingly went to sleep. ‘Oh, what 
 horrible spectres and figures I used to see ! ’ None of the infirm- 
 ities to which he was liable were natural; but his ear-ache was 
 peculiarly diabolical. Physicians who attempted to explain dis- 
 ease by natural causes, were ignorant men, who did not know all 
 the power of Satan. Indeed suicides, commonly supposed to have 
 destroyed themselves, had in reality been seized and strangled by 
 the Devil. In strict accordance with the spirit of his age, he 
 emphatically proclaimed the duty of burning the witches. ‘ I 
 would have no compassion on these witches,’ he exclaimed. ‘ I 
 would burn them all ! ’ The immense majority of the accused 
 were women — a fact explained not by their nervous sensibility 
 
THE REFORMATION — EFFECTS. 
 
 283 
 
 and their consequent liability to religious epidemics, but by their 
 inherent wickedness. As long as celibacy was esteemed the 
 highest of virtues, divines exhausted all the resources of their 
 eloquence in describing the iniquity of the fair. By a natural 
 process, all the ‘phenomena of love’ came to be regarded as most 
 especially under the influence of the Devil. The tragedy of 
 Macbeth faithfully reflects the popular superstition touching the 
 powers of darkness. The air is lurid and thick with things weird 
 and fantastic. Three witches meet in dark communion — kinless 
 — nameless — and fitly consult: 
 
 ‘ First W. 
 
 Second W. 
 
 Third W. 
 First W. 
 Second W. 
 Third W. 
 
 When shall we three meet again 
 In thunder, lightning, or in rain? 
 When the hurlyburly’s done, 
 When the battle’s lost and won. 
 That will be ere set of sun. 
 Where the place? 
 
 Upon the heath; 
 There to meet with Macbeth.’ 
 
 With wild utterance, all, of the moral confusion and murkiness 
 of their demon’s heart, they vanish: 
 
 ‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair: 
 
 Hover through the fog and filthy air.’ 
 
 Meeting again on the blasted heath, they recount to each other 
 their exploits: 
 
 ‘ First W. Where hast thou been, sister? 
 
 Second W. Killing swine. 
 
 Third W. Sister, where thou? 
 
 First W. A sailor’s wife had chestnuts in her lap. 
 
 And mounch’d, and mounch'd, and mounch’d:— 
 
 “Give me,” quoth I: 
 
 “Aroint thee, witch!” the rump-fed ronyon cries. 
 
 Her husband’s to Aleppo gone, master o’ the Tiger: 
 
 But in a sieve I’ll thither sail, 
 
 And, like a rat without a tail. 
 
 I’ll do, I’ll do, and I’ll do. 
 
 Second W. I’ll give thee a wind. 
 
 First W. Thou art kind. 
 
 Third W. And I another. 
 
 First W. I myself have all the other, 
 
 And the very ports they blow. 
 
 All the quarters that they know 
 I’ the shipman’s card. 
 
 I’ll drain him dry as hay: 
 
 Sleep shall neither night nor day 
 Hang upon his pent-house lid; 
 
 He shall live a man forbid: 
 
 Weary sev'n-nights, nine times nine, 
 
 Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine: 
 
 Though his bark cannot be lost. 
 
284 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 Yet it shall be tempest-tost. 
 
 Look what I have.— 
 
 Second W. Show me, show me.— 
 
 First W. Here I have a pilot's thumb, 
 
 Wreck’d as homeward he did come.’ 
 
 Distant and complex objects are rendered distorted and porten- 
 tous in the morning mists which the rising sun has not yet dis- 
 pelled. 
 
 The Renaissance. — In the moral, as ill the physical world, 
 every night brightens into a new day. Ages of sloth are suc- 
 ceeded by periods of energy. First the seed in the soil, then the 
 harvest — in endless recurrence. Nature may sleep, but she will 
 wake again — forever. It is with man as with the planet, — change 
 is identified with existence, never by leaps, ever by steps; revolu- 
 tionary, periodic; pulsating to the rhythmic law of the universe, 
 that swings to and fro through the immeasurable agitations, like 
 the shuttle of a loom, and weaves a definite and comprehensible 
 pattern into the otherwise chaotic fabric of things. What the 
 Reformation exhibits in the sphere of religion and politics, the 
 Revival of Letters displays in the sphere of culture, art, and 
 science, — the recovered energy and freedom of humanity. Both 
 are effects or phases, each by reaction a stimulant and a cause; 
 the first ethical, the second intellectual; the one Christian, the 
 other classical — in contrasted language, pagan; either, the acme 
 of a gradual and instinctive process of becoming / neither, as we 
 have seen, without many anticipations and foreshadowings. The 
 Renaissance, however, is commonly understood to be the renova- 
 tion of the intellect only — that outburst of human intelligence 
 which, abroad in the fifteenth century and at home in the six- 
 teenth, marks an epoch in human growth. What was it in its 
 elements and its origin? — An expansion of natural existence, 
 and a zeal for the civilizations of Greece and Rome, that till the 
 fulness of time had lain essentially inoperative on the Dead-Sea 
 shore of the middle-age. It was the resuscitation of the taste, 
 the eloquence, and the song of antiquity; of the gods and heroes 
 of Olympus, of the eternal art and thought of Athens. It was, 
 after a long oblivion, the reappearance, with others high and 
 luminous, of the ‘divine Plato,’ who alone among books is enti- 
 tled to Omar’s fanatical compliment to the Koran, — ‘ Burn the 
 libraries, for their value is in this volume.’ All who went before 
 
THE RENAISSANCE. 
 
 285 
 
 were his teachers; all who came after were his debtors. Every 
 thinker of grand proportions is his . 1 Whoever has given a 
 spiritual expression to truth, has voiced him. Whoever has had 
 vision of the realities of being, has stood in his hallowed light — 
 the Elizabethans not less. But for the magnitude of his proper 
 genius, Shakespeare would be the most eminent of Platonists. 
 Would you understand the lofty insight, the celestial ardor of 
 the Fairy Queen — first great ideal poem in the English tongue, 
 you must reascend to the serene solitudes of Plato, and watch the 
 lightnings of his imagination playing in the illimitable. His sen- 
 tences are the corner-stone of speculative schools, the fountain- 
 head of literatures, the culture of nations. ‘To his doctrines we 
 may hardly allude — the acutest German, the fondest disciple, is 
 at fault.’ What renders him immortally noble, and irresistibly 
 attractive to the noble, is his moral aim, his sympathy with truth 
 — truth arrayed in the unsullied white of heayen. The admirable 
 earnest is the central sun: 
 
 * I, therefore, Callicles, am persuaded by these accounts, and consider how I may 
 exhibit my soul before the judge in a healthy condition. Wherefore disregarding the 
 honors that most men value, and looking to the truth, I shall endeavor in reality to 
 live as virtuously as I can ; and, when I die, to die so. And I invite all other men, to 
 the utmost of my power.’ 
 
 Upon this dogma let the pillared firmament rest: 
 
 ‘Let us declare the cause which led the Supreme Ordainer to produce and com- 
 pose the universe. He was good; and he who is good has no kind of envy. Exempt 
 from envy, he wished that all things should be as much as possible like himself. 
 Whosoever, taught by wise men, shall admit this as the prime cause of the origin and 
 foundation of the world, will be in the truth.’ 
 
 And human faith cleave to this, and by it interpret the world: 
 
 . ‘All things are for the sake of the good, and it is the cause of everything beautiful.* 
 
 Impute no ill to the eternal Radiance, however dark the prob- 
 lem of human destiny: 
 
 ‘That which is good is beneficial ; is the cause of good. And, therefore, that which 
 is good is not the cause of all which is and happens, but only of that which is as it 
 should be. . . The good things we ascribe to God, whilst we must seek elsewhere, and 
 not in him, the causes of evil things.’ 
 
 Towards this superlative perfection, the holy, the beautiful, the 
 true, let reason lift itself: 
 
 ‘Marvellous beauty! eternal, uncreated, imperishable beauty, free from increase 
 and diminution. . . beauty which has nothing sensible, nothing corporeal, as hands or 
 face: which does not reside in any being different from itself, in the earth, or the 
 
 1 Aristotle was his pupil, and the critic of his system. 
 
286 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 heavens, or in any other thing, but which exists eternally and absolutely in itself , and by 
 itself ; beauty of which every other beauty partakes, without their birth or destruction 
 bringing to it the least increase or diminution.’ 
 
 Alas ! when we would rise, we feel the weight of clay. Our 
 life is double: 
 
 ‘ The Deity himself formed the divine , and he delivered over to his celestial off- 
 spring the task of forming the mortal. These subordinate deities, copying the example 
 of their parent, and receiving from his hands the immortal principle of the human soul, 
 fashioned subsequently to this the mortal body, which they consigned to the soul as a 
 vehicle, and in which they placed another kind of soul, mortal, the seat of violent and 
 fatal affections.’ 
 
 All the longing, all the vanity, all the doubt, the sorrow, the 
 travail, of the world, this man felt; and said — what we are only 
 now beginning to discover — that the soul had two motive pow- 
 ers. Two winged steeds, he calls them, one princely, the other 
 plebeian; and a charioteer Reason, who endeavors to guide them 
 to the realized vision of the ideal: 
 
 ‘Now the winged horses, and the charioteer of the gods are all of them noble, and of 
 noble breed, while ours are mixed; and we have a charioteer who drives them in a pair, 
 and one of them is noble and of noble origin, and the other is ignoble and of ignoble 
 origin ; and, as might be expected, there is a great deal of trouble in managing them. 
 . . . The wing is intended to soar aloft and carry that which gravitates downwards into 
 the upper region, which is the dwelling of the gods ; and this is that element of the 
 body which is most akin to the divine. Now the divine is beauty, wisdom, and good- 
 ness and the like; and by these the wing of the soul is nourished, and grows apace; 
 but when fed upon evil and foulness, and the like, wastes and falls away. Zeus, the 
 mighty lord holding the reins of a winged chariot, leads the way in heaven, ordering all 
 and caring for all; and there follows him the heavenly array of gods and demigods, 
 divided into eleven bands; for only Hestia is left at home in the house of heaven; but 
 the rest of the twelve greater deities march in their appointed order. And they see in 
 the interior of heaven many blessed sights ; and there are ways to and fro, along which 
 the happy gods are passing, each one fulfilling his own work; and any one may follow 
 who pleases, for jealousy has no place in the heavenly choir. This is within the heaven. 
 But when they go to feast and festival, then they move right up the steep ascent, and 
 mount the top of the dome of heaven. Now the chariots of the gods, self-balanced, 
 upward glide in obedience to the rein ; but the others have a difficulty, for the steed 
 who has evil in him, if he has not been properly trained by the charioteer, gravitates 
 and inclines and sinks towards the earth: and this is the hour of agony and extremest 
 conflict of the soul. . . . That which follows God best and is likest to him lifts the head 
 of the charioteer into the outer world and is carried round in the revolution, troubled 
 indeed by the steeds, and beholding true being, but hardly; another rises and falls, and 
 sees, and again fails to see by reason of the unruliness of the steeds. The rest of the 
 souls are also longing after the upper world and they all follow, but not being strong 
 enough they sink into the gulf as they are carried round, plunging, treading on one 
 another, striving to be first; and there is confusion and the extremity of effort, and 
 many of them are lamed or have their wings broken by the ill driving of the chariot- 
 eers; and all of them after a fruitless toil go away without being initiated into the 
 mysteries of being, and are nursed with the food of opinion. The reason of their great 
 desire to behold the plain of truth is that the food which is suited to the highest part of the 
 soul comes out of that meadow; and the wing on which the soul soars is nourished with 
 this.' 
 
THE RENAISSANCE. 
 
 287 
 
 No wonder Platonism is immortal — immortal because its vitality 
 is not that of one or another blood but of human nature. 
 
 But the recovered consciousness of Europe — signalized and 
 quickened by the admiration for the antique — was especially 
 marked by a general efflorescence of the beautiful. Among 
 the Greeks, the central conception of art was the glory of the 
 human body. As their mythology passed gradually into the 
 realm of poetry, statues that once were objects of earnest prayer 
 came to be viewed with the glance of the artist or the critic. 
 Reverence was displaced by allegory and imagination; worship 
 of the object, by the w r orship of form. It was Greece, arisen 
 from the tomb, that in this unique era of human intelligence 
 bequeathed those almost passionate models which have been the 
 wonder and the delight of all succeeding ages. Man, long en- 
 veloped in a cowl, awoke to beauty. Painting and sculpture, 
 from being a frigid reproduction of entranced eyes and sunken 
 chests, became instinct with strong and happy life. The atten- 
 uated Christ was transformed into ‘a crucified Jupiter,’ the pale 
 Virgin into a lovely girl, the dried-up saint into a ready athlete. 
 Similar was the transition in architecture. The Gothic style, 
 whose sombre and solemn images had awed barbarian energies to 
 rest, was supplanted by the classic, more gorgeous, gay, and fair, 
 fashioned from the temples of antiquity, and aspiring to an ex- 
 cellence purely aesthetic. With the erection of St. Peter’s, the 
 age of cathedrals was passed. 
 
 Luxurious Italy, as previously observed, led the way. The 
 fourteenth century was her period of high and original invention 
 — the age of the sombre Dante, the passionate Petrarch, and the 
 joyous Boccaccio. The fifteenth was the age of rapturous devo- 
 tion to classic antiquity, when the merchant bartered his rich 
 freights for a few worm-eaten folios, and the gift of manuscripts 
 healed the dissensions of rival states; an age as remarkable for 
 the dispersion of learning as the other had been for the concen- 
 tration of talent. The sixteenth was the exhilarating Augustan 
 age of the Italian muse, when she had regained her freedom in 
 the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and was pouring forth in 
 spontaneous plenty everything brilliant, or fragrant, or nourish- 
 ing; the age of the mighty Angelo — of the social Ariosto, whose 
 stanzas were sung in the streets and fields — of the solitary Tasso, 
 
288 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 whose Jerusalem , broken up into ballads and sung by the gondo- 
 liers in Venice, made the air vocal on a tranquil summer evening. 
 It was also, as well as the preceding, an age of adolescence, when 
 men were, and dared to be, themselves for good or for evil. There 
 was no limit to the development of personality. In the midst of 
 all the forms of loveliness was an unbridled laxity in literature 
 and morals. ‘We must enjoy,’ sang Lorenzo: ‘there is no cer- 
 tainty of to-morrow.’ Fair Florence, in Carnival, rung to the 
 thoughtless refrain of ‘Naught ye know about to-morrow’: 
 
 ‘Midas treads a wearier measure: 
 
 All he touches turns to gold: 
 
 If there be no taste of pleasure, 
 
 What’s the use of wealth untold? . . . 
 
 Listen well to what we're saying; 
 
 Of to-morrow have no care ! 
 
 Young and old together playing 
 Boys and girls be blithe as air! 
 
 Every sorry thought forswear! 
 
 Keep perpetual holiday. — 
 
 Youths and maids, enjoy to-day; 
 
 Naught ye know about to-morrow. 1 
 
 ‘Some people,’ said Pulci, glancing towards the dark Beyond, 
 ‘ think they will there discover fig-peckers, plucked ortolans, ex- 
 cellent wine, good beds, and therefore they follow the monks, 
 walking behind them. As for us, dear friend, we shall go into 
 the black valley, where we shall hear no more alleluias.’ Side by 
 side with the infatuation for harmony and grace, flourished the 
 passion for pleasure and voluptuousness; and the reproach even 
 of indecency lies heavily, in all the nakedness of detail, upon 
 most of the Italian novelists. To the poets, love furnishes the 
 animating impulse; and amid the clouds of amorous incense we 
 rarely discern, with a few honorable exceptions, an ennobling 
 sentiment or a moral purpose. A mistress frowns, and the Flor- 
 entine lover cries: 
 
 ‘Fire, fire! Ho, water! for my heart’s afire! 
 
 Ho, neighbors ! help me, or by God I die ! 
 
 See, with his standard, that great lord, Desire ! 
 
 He sets my heart aflame: in vain I cry. 
 
 Too late, alas ! The flames mount high and higher. 
 
 Alack, good friends ! I faint, I fail, I die. 
 
 Ho! water, neighbors mine! no more delay! 
 
 My heart’s a cinder if you do but stay. 1 
 
 He is not elevated, — inflated only and conventional. He desires 
 to give play to his imagination, and to please his facile fair one 
 
THE RENAISSANCE. 
 
 289 
 
 with the fluency of his vows. You may see it in the levity of 
 his love declarations: 
 
 ‘Wherefore, O lady, break the ice at length; 
 
 Make, thou, too, trial of love’s fruits and flowers: 
 
 When in thine arms thou feelst thy lover's strength, 
 
 Thou wilt repent of all these wasted hours: 
 
 Husbands, they know not love, its breadth and length, 
 
 Seeing their hearts are not on fire like ours: 
 
 Things longed for give most pleasure; this I tell thee; 
 
 If still thou doubtest let the proof compel thee.’ 
 
 You may see it, best of all, in his fifteenth century code: 
 
 ‘Honor, pure love, and perfect gentleness, 
 
 Weighed in the scales of equity refined, 
 
 Are but one thing: beauty is naught or less, 
 
 Placed in a dame of proud and scornful mind. . . . 
 
 I ask no pardon if I follow Love; 
 
 Since every gentle heart is thrall thereof. 
 
 Let him rebuke me whose hard heart of stone 
 Ne’er felt of Love the summer in his vein! 
 
 I pray to Love that who hath never known 
 
 Love’s power may ne'er be blessed with Love’s great gain; 
 
 But he who serves our lord with might and main 
 May dwell forever in the fire of Love!' 
 
 Three paganisms are thus imported from the South to con- 
 tribute to the taste of the North, — Greek, Latin and Italian, the 
 last circulating fresh sap through the other two. Between the 
 ancient world and the modern stands the genius of Italy as in- 
 terpreter. England, when most strenuous in severing her spirit- 
 ual relations, cultivates most closely her intellectual. The new 
 knowledge came like a fertilizing flood upon the ‘island of the 
 silver sea.’ Dean Colet from his Greek studies at Florence re- 
 turned with the key to unlock the New Testament, and to dis- 
 cover a rational and practical religion in the Gospels themselves. 
 ‘I have given up my whole soul to Greek learning,’ says the 
 young Erasmus, with chivalrous enthusiasm; ‘and as soon as I 
 get any money, I shall buy Greek books, and then I shall buy 
 some clothes.’ Formerly Italian scholars had been employed to 
 compose the public orations, but now he could write: ‘I have 
 found in Oxford so much polish and learning that now I hardly 
 care about going to Italy ait all, save for the sake of having been, 
 there. When I listen to my friend Colet, it seems like listening 
 to Plato himself.’ Colet, beginning the work of educational 
 Teform, established a public school, in which the scholastic logic 
 was displaced, the steady diffusion of the classics enjoined, and 
 19 
 
290 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 the old methods abolished. The spirit of the founder might be 
 seen in the image of the child Jesus over the gate, with the 
 words graven beneath it, ‘Hear ye Him.’ ‘Lift up your little 
 white hands for me,’ he wrote, ‘which prayeth for you to God.’ 
 Vain was the cry of alarm. ‘No wonder,’ wrote More to the 
 dean, ‘your school raises a storm, for it is like the wooden horse 
 in which armed Greeks were hidden for the ruin of barbarous 
 Troy.’ The example bred a crowd of imitators. More grammar 
 schools were founded in the later years of Henry than in three 
 hundred years before. Higher education passed from death to 
 life. Of Cambridge, Erasmus, invited there as a teacher of 
 Greek, says: 
 
 ‘Scarcely thirty years ago nothing was taught here but the Parva Logicalia of 
 Alexander, antiquated exercises from Aristotle, and the Qucestiones of Scotus. As 
 time went on better studies were added — mathematics, a new, or at any rate a reno- 
 vated, Aristotle, and a knowledge of Greek literature. What has been the result? 
 The university is now so flourishing that it can compete with the best university of 
 the age.’ 
 
 At Oxford, the fierceness of the opposition evinces the strength 
 of the revival. The contest took the form of hostile division into 
 Greeks and Trojans — the former the advocates of the New Learn- 
 ing, the latter its opponents. But even here the battle was soon 
 over. ‘ The students,’ said an eye-witness, ‘ rush to the Greek 
 letters; they endure watching, fasting, toil, and hunger, in the 
 pursuit of them.’ The movement, however, suddenly received a 
 temporary check. The impulse given by the reformers was pri- 
 marily incidental, for to them the Greek Testament was the 
 armory from which they drew their weapons of defence and of 
 assault; while the immediate effects of the Reformation, both by 
 revolutionizing the ecclesiastical system and by withdrawing aca- 
 demic abilities into the abyss of controversy, were depressing. 
 Latimer calculated that the number of students at the two uni- 
 versities was fewer by ten thousand after the alienation of abbey 
 and church lands had left no mercenary attractions in the sacred 
 offices. Religion lost some of its charms when the golden pros- 
 pect was gone. About the same time (1550), an observer says 
 curiously: 
 
 ‘Formerly there were in houses belonging to the University of Cambridge, two 
 hundred students of divinity, many very well learned, which be now 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 hotels and inns, be either gone away or else fain to 
 
THE RENAISSANCE. 
 
 291 
 
 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.’ 
 
 Of the poorer and more diligent students he adds the interesting 
 picture: 
 
 ‘There be divers there which rise daily about four or five of the clock in the morn- 
 ing, and from five till six of the clock use common prayer, with an exhortation of God 1 ? 
 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 pottage 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.’ 
 
 In the adverse reign of Mary, Trinity College was endowed, more 
 especially for the cultivation of classical scholarship. Its founder 
 states in a letter: 
 
 4 My 'Lord Cardinal’s Grace has had the overseeing of my statutes. He much 
 likes well that I have therein ordered the Latin tongue to be read to my scholars. 
 But he advises me to 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 languishing culture revived towards the close of Elizabeth’s 
 reign, when the ‘times’ were far more propitious. Insensibly, 
 through the shocks and convulsions of opinion, the influences of 
 the Renaissance had been enriching the soil for the harvest. 
 When the first fanaticisms of misguided zealots had subsided, the 
 interest in letters recovered and spread with unwonted vigor. 
 The tone of the universities wholly changed. Scholars like 
 Hooker could now be found in the ranks of the priesthood — 
 against whom it had been a common note in the official visita- 
 tions, ‘He knows a few Latin words, but no sentences.’ The 
 Court was distinguished for its elegance. Maids of honor were 
 readers of Plato. The Queen could quote Pindar and Homer in 
 the original, and read every morning a portion of Demosthenes. 
 It was preeminently the age of learned ladies. Says Harrison: 
 
 ‘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 gentlewomen and ladies there are that, besides 
 sound knowledge 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.’ 
 
 The abundance of printers and of printed books is evidence that 
 the world of readers and writers had widened much beyond the 
 
292 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 I 
 
 circle of courtiers and of prelates. Yet the light that shone 
 remarkably upon the heights, was by no means generally dis- 
 persed. Many of the rank were illiterate, the majority of the 
 middle-class were uneducated, while the lower orders were in 
 comparative darkness. As late as Edward VI there were peers 
 of Parliament unable to read. It is a question whether Shake- 
 speare’s father, an alderman of Stratford, could write his name. 
 The educative theory was based upon the principle that varieties 
 of inapplicable knowledge might be good where accessible, but 
 were not essential. Two things were indispensable, — ability to 
 labor and skill in arms. Every boy between seven and seventeen 
 was required to be provided with a long-bow and two arrows; 
 and every Englishman older, to provide himself with a bow and 
 four arrows. It was the spirit of this law which Ascham, the 
 schoolmaster of the period, is enforcing when he says of his own 
 tutor: 
 
 ‘ This worshipful man hath ever loved, and used to have many children brought up 
 in learning in his house, amonges whom I myself was one, for whom at term times he 
 would bring down from London both bow and shafts. And when they should play he 
 would go with them himself into the field, see. them shoot, and he that shot the fairest 
 should have the best bow and shafts, and he that shot ill-favoredly should be mocked of 
 his fellows till he shot better. Would to God all England had used or would use to lay 
 the foundation of youth after the example of this worshipful man in bringing up children 
 in the Book and the Bow; by which two things the whole commonwealth both in peace 
 and war is chiefly valid and defended withal.’ 
 
 Latimer, preaching before the king in 1549, draws the portrait of 
 a yeoman: 
 
 ‘In my time my poor father was as diligent to teach me to shoot as to learn me any 
 other thing; and so, I think, other men did their children. He taught me how to draw, 
 how to lay my body in my bow, and not to draw with strength of arms, as other nations 
 do, but with strength of the body. I had my bows bought me according to my age and 
 strength; as I increased in them, so my bows were made bigger and bigger; for men 
 shall never shoot well except they be brought up in it. It is a goodly art, a wholesome 
 kind of exercise, and much commended in physic.’ 
 
 But what is more to our present purpose is, that the true sig- 
 nificance of the Renaissance consists, not in any accidental emi- 
 gration of Greek scholars and importation of ancient manuscripts 
 from Constantinople, nor chiefly in the passion for classical lore, 
 but in that general ferment which produced, on the whole, 
 marked effects upon all classes, — in that new life by which every 
 province of human intelligence and action was refreshed. A far 
 higher development, indeed, than the Greek or Latin mania, 
 sprang from the nearer and more seductive paganism of Italy, 
 
LANGUAGE. 
 
 293 
 
 partly through travel, partly through her poetry and romance. 
 A land of tropical gardens and splendid skies, of public pageants 
 and secret tragedies, of brilliant fancies and gorgeous contrasts, 
 she fascinated the Northern imagination with a strange wild 
 glamour. ‘An Italianate Englishman,’ ran the Italian proverb, 
 ‘ is an incarnate devil.’ Our ancestral youth who repair to her 
 for polish and inspiration or in quest of fanciful adventure, are 
 warned of her alluring charms: 
 
 ‘ And being now in Italy, that great limbique of working braines, he must be very 
 circumspect in his carriage, for she is able to turne a Saint into a devil, and deprave 
 the best natures, if one will abandon himselfe, and become a prey to dissolute 
 courses and wantonesse.’ 
 
 Ascham writes with the alarm and severity of a rigorist: 
 
 4 These bee the inchantementes of Circes, brought out of Italie to marre mens 
 maners in England; much, by example of ill life, but more by preceptes of fonde 
 bookes, of late translated out of Italian into English, sold in every shop in London. 
 . . . There bee moe of these ungratious bookes set out in Printe wythin these fewe 
 monethes, than have been sene in England many score yeares before. . . . Than 
 they have in more reverence the triumphes of Petrarche: than the Genesis of Moses: 
 They make more account of Tullies offices, than S. Paules epistles: of a tale in 
 Bocace than a storie of the Bible.’ 
 
 If the breath of the South was tainted, it was spirit-stirring; and 
 the healthier constitution which inhaled it, purged off much of 
 its mischief, while it assimilated the beneficial. The contem- 
 plative vein of the Briton was quickened by the brilliancy of the 
 Italian. That which in the first became a superb corporeality, 
 became in the second a vehement and unconventional spirituality. 
 The debt of English to Italian literature consists, — in material of 
 production — the impulse towards creation — a keener sense of 
 the tragic — a livelier sense of the beautiful — a more copious 
 diction — and a more finished style. 
 
 Language. — Of the monstrous anomalies of the current or 
 colloquial speech, the following note from the Duchess of Norfolk 
 to Cromwell is a curious instance: 
 
 4 My ffary gode lord — her I sand you in tokyn hoff the neweyer a glasse hofi 
 ■Setyl set in Sellfer gyld I pra you tak hit (in) wort An hy wer babel het showlde 
 be bater I woll hit war wort a m crone.’ 
 
 So unsettled was our orthography still, that writers, each in 
 his peculiar mode of spelling, did not write the same words uni- 
 formly. Elizabeth, the royal mistress of eight languages, wrote 
 sovereign seven different ways, while the name of Villers , in the 
 
294 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 deeds of that family, has fourteen different forms. Shakespeare 
 is found in the manuscripts of the period spelled in any manner 
 that may express the sound or the semblance of it. Many of the 
 learned engaged in the ambitious reform of teaching the nation 
 how to spell and pronounce. But the pronunciation was so dis- 
 cordant in different shires, that the orthoepists are quite irrecon- 
 cilable with each other or with themselves. Some may amuse. 
 One would turn the language into a music-book. He says: 
 
 ‘ In true orthographie, both the eye , the voice , and the eare must consent perfectly, 
 without any let, doubt, or maze.’ 
 
 Another affords a quaint definition of orthoepy combined with 
 orthography : 
 
 * Orthographic, conteyning the due order and reason howe to write or painte thimage 
 of manners voice, moste like to the life or nature.’ 
 
 While Shakespeare sarcastically describes the whole race of 
 philologists: ‘Now he is turned orthographer , his words are a 
 very fantastical banquet; just so many strange dishes.’ The 
 English Bible had been the strong breakwater against the tides 
 of novelty and the vicissitudes of time; and Tyndale’s New Tes- 
 tament, executed in the traditional sacred dialect of Wycliffe, 
 did more to fashion and fix our tongue than any other native 
 work from Chaucer to Shakespeare. The Lord’s Prayer illus- 
 trates well its force and purity of expression: 
 
 i Onr Father, which arte in heven, halowed he thy name. Let thy kingdom come. 
 Thy wyll he fulfilled, as well in erth as hit ys in heven. Geve vs this daye oure dayly 
 hreade, and forgeve vs oure treaspasses, even as we forgeve them, which treaspas vs. 
 Leede vs not into temptacion, hut delyvre vs from yvell. Amen.’ 
 
 In 1575, standard English had so progressed in simplicity and 
 power, that Sidney could say, to his honor: 
 
 ‘English is void of those cumbersome differences of cases, genders, moods, and 
 tenses, which I think was a piece of the Tower of Babylon s curse, that a man should 
 he put to schoole to learn his mother tongue ; hut for the uttering sweetly and properly 
 the conceit of the minde, which is the ende of speech, that it hath equally with any 
 other tongue in the world.’ 
 
 Travel and commerce, enlarging with the rapid progress of 
 geographical discovery, made numerous and important accessions 
 to the vocabulary. New wares were introduced, new stores of 
 natural knowledge flowed in from regions hitherto unknown. 
 For a single instance of the manv terms which thus rose above 
 the horizon, seldom more grateful if less material, potato 1 now 
 
 1 From the Indian batata. 
 
LANGUAGE — ORGANIZED COMPLETION. 
 
 295 
 
 made its first appearance in Europe, imported from America. 
 Of this .esculent tuber, a voyager makes the following mention: 
 
 ‘ Openark are a kinde of roots of round forme, some farre greater, which are found 
 in moist and marish grounds, growing many together, one by another in ropes, as though 
 they were fastened by a string. Being boiled or sodden, they are very good meat.’ 
 
 A more prolific origin of new words than the taste for sea rov- 
 ing was the intense thirst after religious discussion. The Refor- 
 mation enriched our theological dialect by the translation of 
 many moral and religious works from the Latin; and the very 
 general study of theology rendered this dialect more familiar 
 than that of any other branch of letters. Latin, moreover, was 
 the great link between our Reformers and those of the Conti- 
 nent, and the new ideas taking root, brought in shoals of new 
 terms. Finally, the versions of classical authors, after the brief 
 reaction against classical learning, were an inexhaustible mine 
 of linguistic wealth; and the ‘far-journeyed gentlemen’ re- 
 turned not only in love with foreign fashions, but equally fond 
 ‘to powder their talk with over-sea language.’ The influx of 
 foreign neologisms alarmed the purists, who always deem that 
 English corrupt which recedes from its Saxon character. Says 
 Wilson in. 1550: 
 
 ‘ Some seke so farre for outlandishe Englisbe, that thei forgette altogether their 
 mothers’ language, ... He that commeth lately out of France, will talke Frenche- 
 English, and never blush at the matter. The unlearned or foolishe phantasticall that 
 the simple cannot but wonder at their talke and thinke surely thei speake by some rev- 
 elacion. I know them that thinke Rlietorique to stand whollie upon darke woordes, and 
 he that can catche an ynke home terme by the taile, hym thei coumpt to be a fine Eng- 
 lishman and a good Rhetorician.’ 
 
 Notwithstanding, in 1583 Mulcaster wrote: ‘The English tung 
 cannot prove fairer than it is at this day.’ Querulous critic and 
 rash soothsayer ! The one did not reflect that an expansion of 
 thought compels an expansion of its garniture, and could not 
 know that even Chaucer’s ‘well of English undefiled’ was a well 
 in which were deposited many waters; while the other could not 
 foresee the luxuriant productiveness, the powerful stimulus, of 
 the next thirty years. A single example may suggest something* 
 of that variety and affluence by which the speech, once so rude 
 and impotent, was being made ready for the enlarged and diver- 
 sified conceptions of the great masters: wrath and ire 1 came over 
 with Hengist; the Danes brought anger / the French supplied 
 
 1 From Saxon yrre. 
 
296 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 rage and 'fury ; the Latin indignation ; the Greek choler y and 
 we now, it may be added, confer this sense on passion. As a 
 final illustration of the state of English orthography in its pro- 
 cess of evolution, we extract the following from the address of 
 Brutus to the people in the drama of Julius C cesar, written in 
 or before 1601, and printed in 1623: 
 
 ‘I have done no more to Caesar than you shall do to Brutus. The Question of his 
 death, is inroll'd in the Capitol : his Glory not extenuated, wherein he was worthy ; nor 
 his offences enforc’d, for which he suffered death. 
 
 Heere comes his Body, mourned by Harke Antony, who though he had no hand in his 
 death, shall receiue the benefit of his dying, a place in the Commonwealth, as^which of 
 yon shall not. With this I depart, that as I slewe my best Loner for the good of Rome, 
 I haue the same Dagger for my selfe, when it shall please my Country to need my death. 
 
 All. Liue Brutus , liue, line. 
 
 1. Bring him with Triumph home vnto his house. 
 
 2. Giue him a Statue with his Ancestors. 
 
 3. Let him be Caesar. 
 
 4. Ccesars better parts 
 Shall be Crown’d in Brutus. 
 
 1. Wee’l bring him to his House, with Showts and Clamors. 
 
 Bru. My Country-men. 
 
 2. Peace, silence, Brutus speakes 
 
 1. Peace ho. 
 
 Bru. Good Countrymen, let me depart alone, 
 
 And (for my sake) stay heere with Antony: 
 
 Do grace to Caesars Corpes, and grace his Speech 
 Tending to Caesars Glories, which Marke Antony 
 (By our permission) is allow’d to make. 
 
 I do intreat you not a man depart, 
 
 Saue I alone, till Antony have spoke.’ 
 
 Here our survey is approximately complete. We have arrived 
 at the stage where new capabilities are no longer imperiously 
 demanded by the advancement of culture. The nursling has 
 become a child, the child a man, — still, with proper training, to 
 acquire additional flexibility and strength, yet to remain substan- 
 tially the same. The closing century that witnessed the vast and 
 varied revelation of man’s moral nature, witnessed also the end 
 of that organic action by which the English language was devel- 
 oped from its elements and constitutionally fixed, unfettered and 
 many-voiced. Your daughter, O Thor and Odin, has indeed lost 
 the likeness of her mother, but, — 
 
 ‘Not from one metal alone the perfectest mirror is shapen, 
 
 Not from one color is built the rainbow's aerial bridge: 
 
 Instruments blending together yield the divinest of music. 
 
 Out of myriad of flowers sweetest of honey is drawn.’ 1 
 
 W. W. Story. 
 
POETRY — REALISM. 
 
 297 
 
 Poetry. — Do but consider the life of man, that we are as a 
 shadow and our days as a post, then think whether it were good 
 to disinter the lifeless versifiers who fill up the spaces around and 
 between the noticeable elevations of this age, with scarce a soul 
 to a hundred, and of interest to poetical antiquarians only. 
 Chaucer, it has been seen, left nothing to resemble him. Gower 
 is a feeble spring, obstructed by scholastic rubbish. Occleve and 
 Lydgate are as dead sea-moss on a barren shore. The Scotch 
 poets, with more energy, are yet nebulae, which no telescope 
 could resolve into individual stars. Where they mean to be 
 serious, they are tedious; and where lofty, pedantic. Their com- 
 positions, with scattering remembrances of beauty or occasional 
 throbs of true vitality, have the same vices of unreality and 
 allegory which were the fashion of the day. Verse that makes 
 us foreigners is no poetry. 
 
 One writer alone, in its early years, displays, like a feudal 
 premonition, the two great destined features of the sixteenth 
 century, — hatred of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, which is the 
 Reformation ; and the realism of the senses, which is the Re- 
 naissance. His rhyme, — 
 
 ‘Tattered and jagged, 
 
 Rudely rain-beaten, 
 
 Rusty, moth-eaten,’ 
 
 full of English and popular instincts, is a sort of literary mud 
 with which he bespatters those who retain the privileges of saints: 
 
 ‘Thus I, Colin Clout, 
 
 As I go about*, 
 
 And wondering as I walk, 
 
 I hear the people talk: 
 
 Men say for silver and gold 
 Mitres are bought and sold: 
 
 A straw for Goddys curse, 
 
 What are they the worse? 
 
 What care the clergy though Gill sweat, 
 Or Jack of the Noke? 
 
 The poor people they yoke 
 With sumners and citacions, 
 
 And excommunications. 
 
 About churches and markets 
 The bishop on his carpets 
 At home soft doth sit. 
 
 This is a fearful fit. 
 
 To hear the people jangle. 
 
 Row wearily they wrangle! 
 Doctor Daupatus 
 And Bachelor Bacheleratus, 
 Drunken as a mouse 
 At the ale-house, 
 
 Taketh his pillion and his cap 
 At the good ale-tap 
 For lack of good wine. 
 
 As wise as Robin Swine, 
 Under a notary’s sign, 
 
 Was made a divine; 
 
 As wise as Waltham’s calf. 
 Must preach in Goddys half; 
 In the pulpit solemnly; 
 
 More meet in a pillory; 
 
 For by St. Hilary 
 He can nothing smatter 
 Of logic nor school matter.’ 
 
298 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 With almost brutal coarseness alternate gleams of the sprightly 
 fancy. Called upon to praise the ladies of the court, he can give 
 a portrait of the outside, clear, pretty, and full of detail. He 
 
 compares one to — 
 
 ‘The fragrant camomile, 
 The ruddy rosary, 
 
 The sovereign rosemary 
 
 And adds: 
 
 ‘ Your color 
 
 Is like the daisy flower 
 After an April shower. 
 
 The pretty strawberry, 
 The columbine, the nepte, 
 The gillyflower well set, 
 The proper violet.’ 
 
 Star of the morrow grey, 
 The blossom of the spring, 
 The freshest flower of May.’ 
 
 By his hilarity and freedom only, does Skelton exhibit the new 
 spirit. Rooted in the soil, he grovels there, with no aspiring 
 instinct towards diviner air. 
 
 A brighter light in this rising dawn gives clearer promise of 
 refulgent day. For Howard, Earl of Surrey, it was reserved to 
 mark a transformation of the intellect, — to introduce a new and 
 manly style, and to teach the English muse accents she had never 
 tried before. Says Puttenham: 
 
 ‘In the latter end of the same king (Henry the eight) reigne, sprong up a new 
 ■company of courtly makers, of whom Sir Thomas Wyat th’ elder and Henry Earle 
 of Surrey were the two chieftaines, who having travailed into Italie, and there tasted 
 the sweete and stately measures and stile of the Italian Poesie, as novices newly 
 crept out of the schooles of Dante, Arioste, and Petrarch, they greatly pollished 
 our rude and homely maner of vulgar Poesie, from that it had bene before, and 
 for that cause may justly be sayd the first reformers of our English meetre and 
 stile.’ 
 
 The life of Surrey was a chivalric romance. An earl, a relative 
 of the king, a satellite of the Court, brilliant in arms, magnificent, 
 sumptuous, ambitious, four times imprisoned, then beheaded at 
 twenty-seven; like Dante and Petrarch, a plaintive and platonic 
 lover. More than all, his mystical love for the fair Geraldine, 
 like Dante’s for Beatrice and Petrarch’s for Laura, invests his 
 memory with a peculiar charm. She too is a child, seen only to 
 be idealized; one of nature’s sweet creatures that, like chastened 
 colors, have always a holy reference beyond themselves; whose 
 image, entering the poet-soul, is straightway enthroned in a 
 region sublime, to shine as a light, a consolation, a hope, in a 
 dark and troubled world. With the polish and disposition of his 
 Italian model, he says of this being of the heart and mind: 
 
POETRY — THE SONNET. 
 
 299 
 
 ‘I could rehearse, if that I would, 
 
 The whole effect of Nature’s plaint, 
 
 When she had lost the perfect 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.’ 
 
 The sad and sombre tint, seldom lacking in this race, is here, 
 even in youth. Alone, a prisoner in Windsor, banishing the less 
 by remembrance of a greater grief, he recalls with pathetic 
 modulation, the joys and faces of the vanished days: 
 
 ‘With each sweet place returns a taste full sour, 
 
 The large green courts, where we were wont to hove, [hover 
 
 With eyes cast up into the maiden’s tower, 
 
 And easy sighs such as folk draw in love, 
 
 The stately seats, the ladies bright of hue, 
 
 The dances short, long tales of great delight; 
 
 With words and looks, that tigers could but rue; 
 
 When each of us did plead the other’s right, . . . 
 
 The secret groves, which oft me made resound 
 Of pleasant plaint, and of our ladies’ praise; 
 
 Recording oft what grace each one had found, 
 
 What hope of speed, what dread of long delays, . . . 
 
 The secret thoughts imparted with such trust; 
 
 The wanton talk, the divers change of play; 
 
 The friendship sworn, each promise kept so just, 
 
 Wherewith we passed the winter night away. 
 
 And with this thought the blood forsakes the face; 
 
 The tears berain my cheeks of deadly hue: 
 
 The which, as soon as sobbing sighs, alas! 
 
 Upsupped have, thus I my plaint renew: 
 
 “O place of bliss, renewer of my woes! 
 
 Give me account, where is my noble fere, 
 
 Whom in thy walls thou dost each night enclose, 
 
 To other lief, but unto me most dear.” 
 
 Echo, alas! that doth my sorrow rue 
 Returns thereat a hollow sound of plaint.’ 
 
 Observe the new-born art. It is calculating and selective, con- 
 trasted and ornamented, eloquent and forceful; critical, exact, 
 musical, and balanced; uniting symmetry of phrase to symme- 
 try of idea, and delight of the ear to delight of the mind. 
 
 But the chief point in which the pupil imitates his master 
 is in the use of the sonnet. This ‘diamond of literature,’ as 
 practiced by Petrarch, is composed of fourteen lines, divided 
 
 [companion 
 
 [dear 
 
300 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 into two quatrains and two tercets, the quatrains repeating one 
 pair of rhymes and the tercets another. Thus: 
 
 ‘The wrinkled sire with hair like winter snow 
 
 Leaves the beloved spot where he hath passed his years, 
 
 Leaves wife and children, dumb with bitter tears, 
 
 To see their father’s tottering steps and slow, 
 
 Dragging his aged limbs with weary woe, 
 
 In these last days of life he nothing fears, 
 
 But with stout heart his fainting spirit cheers, 
 
 And spent and wayworn forward still doth goe; 
 
 Then comes to Rome, following his heart's desire, 
 
 To gaze upon the portraiture of Him 
 Whom yet he hopes in heaven above to see: 
 
 Thus I, alas! my seeking spirit tire, 
 
 Lady, to find in other features dim 
 
 The longed for, loved, true lineaments of thee.’ 
 
 Surrey does not adhere to the strict Italian rule, and his most 
 famous performance consists of three • regular quatrains con- 
 cluded with a couplet. Thus: 
 
 ‘The soote season, that bud and blome forth brings, 
 
 With grene hath clad the hill, and eke the vale-* 
 
 The nightingale with fethers new she sings: 
 
 The turtle to her mate hath told her tale: 
 
 Somer is come, for every spray now springs: 
 
 The hart hath hong his old hed on the pale; 
 
 The buck in brake his winter coate he flings: 
 
 The fishes flete with new repaired scale: 
 
 The adder all her slough away she flings; 
 
 The swift swalow pursueth the flies smale; 
 
 The busy bee her hony now she mings: 
 
 Winter is worne, that was the flowers bale. 
 
 And thus I se among these pleasant things 
 
 Eche care decayes; and yet my sorrow springs.’ 
 
 Besides the sonnet, Surrey borrows for English versification 
 that decasyllable iambic rhythm — blank verse — in which our 
 greatest poetical triumphs have been achieved. Almost verse 
 for verse he translates parts of the iEneid into unrhymed 
 pentameter. Thus, of the introduction of the wooden horse 
 into Troy: 
 
 ‘We cleft the walles, and closures of the towne, 
 
 Wherto all helpe, and underset the feht 
 
 With sliding rolles, and bound his neck with ropes. 
 
 This fatall gin thus overclambe our walles, 
 
 Stuft with armd men: about the which there ran 
 Children and maides, that holly carolles sang. . . . 
 
 Fowr times it stopt in thentrie of our gate, 
 
 Fowr times the harnesse clattered in the womb.’ 
 
 Surely no ignoble effort to break the bondage of rhyme. Let it 
 not be forgotten, however: — 
 
 [meet 
 
 [suim 
 
 [mingles 
 
POETRY — CONTINUITY OF VERSE-FORM. 
 
 301 
 
 1. That English verse was mainly blank for the first five hun- 
 dred years of its existence. 
 
 2. That the typic scheme of our old ‘heroic measure’ was 
 
 -a- rr r 
 
 ( 2 ) 
 
 £, in which (1) alternated with (2) in lines of two 
 
 or four bars. 
 
 3. That the modern ‘heroic’ differs from the ancient in hav- 
 ing for its prevalent bar :jfc £ | # , with five bars to the line. 
 
 4. That Surrey merely disused rhyme in a rhythm which was 
 established by Chaucer a hundred and fifty years gone by; as: 
 
 0 
 
 0 1 
 
 A 
 
 0 
 
 0 1 
 
 0 
 
 A 
 
 0 1 
 
 0 
 
 A 
 
 0 ] 
 
 0 
 
 A . 
 
 0 * 0 
 
 ! 
 
 V 1 
 
 I 
 
 u 1 
 
 1/ 
 
 1 | 
 
 
 1 | 
 
 u 
 
 1 H 
 
 Whan 
 
 that 
 
 A- 
 
 prill - 
 
 e 
 
 with 
 
 his 
 
 shour - 
 
 es 
 
 swoot-e 
 
 0 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 if 
 
 J 1 
 
 If 
 
 | | 
 
 if 
 
 | 1 
 
 if 
 
 1 | 
 
 if 
 
 1 H 
 
 The 
 
 droghte 
 
 of 
 
 March 
 
 hath 
 
 perc - 
 
 ed 
 
 to 
 
 the 
 
 root-e 
 
 Farther on, thirty years distant, beyond this budding spring 
 which was nipped untimely, is the phenomenal Sidney, whose 
 writings will exhibit the luxuriance and the irregularity of the 
 prevailing manners and the public taste. Higher up, in that 
 empyrean where the moral and sensuous are united, is the pla- 
 tonic Spenser, at once a pagan and a Christian, who will gather 
 and arrange, with inimitable art, the loveliest flowers of both 
 civilizations. About this exceptional bloom is an abundancer 
 of verse, beyond the drama, most of which is a dismal travesty 
 upon the name of poetry. Undoubtedly, these poetasters, badly 
 as they wrote, did not write in vain. By their very failures they 
 helped to develop the powers of the language, and by patient 
 labor on its sterile spots enriched the soil for such as should be 
 born into the inheritance of ‘fresh fields and pastures new.’ It 
 would be pleasant to be grateful to them for their poems, — ver- 
 bose, generally stale, dull to the verge of stupidity. The titles 
 set one yawning; as, Five hundred Points of good Husbandry / 
 A Dialogue contayning in effect the number of al the Proverbs 
 in the English tongue , compact in a matter concerning two 
 marriages ; The whole Books of Psalmes collected into English 
 metre by T. Sternhold , T. Hopkins , and others , conferred with 
 the Ebrue , with apt Notes to sing them withall. You will meet 
 now and then, we dare say, with a brilliant picture, or a genuine 
 
302 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 love-cry, or a profound truth, as in the two noble stanzas of 
 Sternhold: 
 
 ‘The Lord descended from above 
 And bowed the heavens high. 
 
 And underneath his feet he cast 
 The darkness of the sky; 
 
 On cherubs and on cherubims 
 Full royally he rode, 
 
 And on the wings of all the winds 
 Came flying all abrode.’ 
 
 Or the elaborate sonnet of the amiable Daniel to the object of 
 his baffled affection: 
 
 ‘Restore thy tresses to the golden ore; 
 
 Yield Cytherea’s son those arcs of love; 
 
 Bequeath the heavens the stars that I adore; 
 
 And to the orient do thy pearls remove. 
 
 Yield thy hand’s pride unto the ivory white; 
 
 To Arabian odors give thy breathing sweet; 
 
 Restore thy blush unto Aurora bright; 
 
 To Thetis give the honor of thy feet. 
 
 Let Venus have thy graces, her resigned; 
 
 And thy sweet voice give back unto the spheres; 
 
 But yet restore thy fierce and cruel mind 
 To Hyrcan tigers and to ruthless bears; 
 
 Yield to the marble thy hard heart again; 
 
 So shalt thou cease to plague and I to pain.’ 
 
 The grand dictum of Stoicism: 
 
 ‘ He that of such a height hath set his mind. 
 
 And reared the dwelling of the thoughts so strong, 
 
 As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame 
 Of his resolved powers: nor all the wind 
 Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong 
 His settled peace, or to disturb the same; 
 
 What a fair seat hath he from whence he may 
 The boundless wastes and weals of man survey!’ 
 
 And the famous sentiment: 
 
 ‘ Unless above himself he can 
 Erect himself how poor a thing is man ! ’ 
 
 Or Drayton’s graceful compliment to Isabella’s hand: 
 
 ‘She laid her fingers on his manly cheek, 
 
 The god’s pure sceptres and the darts of love, 
 
 That with their touch might make a tiger meek, 
 
 Or might great Atlas from his seat remove, 
 
 So white, so soft, so delicate, so sleek 
 As she had worn a lily for a glove.’ 
 
 And his description of the virgin morning of the infant year, 
 when brooks sing carols and glees, and birds in silvery warblings 
 tell their panting joy: 
 
POETRY — RHETORICAL AND EMOTIVE. 
 
 303 
 
 4 When Phoebus lifts his head out of the water’s wave, 
 
 No sooner doth the earth her flowery bosom brave, 
 
 At such time as the year brings on the pleasant spring, 
 
 But Hunt’s up to the mom the feathered sylvans sing; 
 
 And, in the lower grove as on the rising knowl, 
 
 Upon the highest spray of every mounting pole 
 
 These quiristers are perched, with many a speckled breast. 
 
 Then from her burnished gate the goodly glittering East 
 Gilds every mountain top, which late the humorous night 
 Bespangled had with pearl, to please the morning’s sight; 
 
 On which the mirthful quires, with their clear open throats, 
 
 Unto the joyful morn so strain their warbling notes 
 That hill and valleys ring, and even the echoing air 
 Seems all composed of sounds about them every where.’ 
 
 But we shall no longer pause, if we know our opulence, and have 
 learned to distinguish diamond from flint-sand, or gold from iron- 
 glance; for be it clearly and constantly remembered, worthy art, 
 that makes of all men a commonwealth, that is always new* and 
 incapable of growing old, must have that intensity* of moral feel- 
 ing or power of imagination by which noble emotions are excited, 
 — Veneration, Love, Admiration, Joy, or their opposites — Hatred, 
 Scorn, Horror, Grief. There were simple ballad-writers who 
 could have given these scholars a lesson in rhetoric. For hear 
 a lover deceived and repentant ‘of the true love which he bare 
 her’: 
 
 ‘Where I sought heaven there found I hap; 
 
 From danger unto death, 
 
 Much like the mouse that treads the trap 
 In hope to find her food, 
 
 And bites the bread that stops her breath,— 
 
 So in like case I stood.’ 
 
 And another, ‘accusing his love for her unfaithfulness,’ and pro- 
 posing ‘to live in liberty’: 
 
 ‘But I am like the beaten fowl 
 That from the net escaped, 
 
 And thou art like the ravening owl 
 That all the night hath waked.’ 
 
 Shall we make an old lava stream white-hot by covering it with 
 hoar-frost? With these futile efforts to kindle one’s self with a 
 painted flame, compare the wild vigor and fierce sincerity of the 
 Scotch Twa Corbies: 
 
 ‘As I was walking all alone 
 I heard twa corbies making a moan. 
 
 The one unto the other did say 
 Where shall we gang dine to-day? 
 
 In beyond that old turf dyke 
 I wot there lies a new-slain knight; 
 
304 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 And naebody kens that he lies there 
 
 But his hawk and his hound and his lady fair. 
 
 His hound is to the hunting gone, 
 
 His hawk to fetch the wild fowl home, 
 
 His lady has ta’n another mate, 
 
 So we may make our dinner sweet. 
 
 O'er his white bones as they lie bare 
 The wind shall blow forevermair.’ 
 
 But the chief excellence of poetry, as well as its most abun- 
 dant and popular development, was dramatic. The most original 
 product and expression of the English Renaissance is the drama. 
 No form of art receives and preserves, like it, the exact imprint 
 of the age and of the nation. None expresses so much, and that 
 so deeply. None has expanded, in all its details, by gradations 
 more insensible. None teaches more clearly that genius can not 
 dispense with experience, — that the favored generation, and the 
 great artists in it, flourish largely on a soil fertilized by the tenta- 
 tive efforts of generations which precede. Here, as in Greece 
 and elsewhere, the drama began in religion. At a time when 
 sermons were not intelligible if preached, and when none but 
 the clererv could read the stories of the Christian faith, it w T as 
 introduced by the Church, to instruct the illiterate in saintly or 
 Scriptural history — the only history then known — and to extend 
 her influence by engrossing the sources of popular recreation. 
 Priests w T ere the writers or inventors, and frequently the actors, 
 of the plays, usually written in mixed prose and verse. As mys- 
 terious subjects were chosen — the lives and marvels of the saints, 
 the Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Creation, Fall, or Con- 
 quests of Hell — these performances acquired the general name of 
 Mysteries. The ‘theatre’ was the cathedral, a scaffold in the 
 open air, or a movable stage on wheels, drawn from street to 
 street, or from town to town. As the cart stopped at given 
 points, the actors threw open the doors, and proceeded to per- 
 form the scenes allotted them. A graduated platform in three 
 divisions, represented Heaven, Earth, and Hell. Above, the 
 Deity and His angels, passive w T hen not actually mingling in the 
 action; in the centre moved the human w'orld, the actors stand- 
 ing motionless at one side when they had nothing to say or do; 
 and the yawning throat of an immeasurable dragon, emitting 
 smoke and flames when required, showed the entrance to the 
 bottomless pit, into which, through the expanded jaws, the 
 
POETRY — EARLY DRAMA — EARLY THEATRE. 
 
 305 
 
 damned were dragged with shrieks of agony by demons. Trap- 
 doors and like mechanical contrivances were not unknown. 
 Closed structures were palaces, cottages, temples, according to 
 the necessities of the piece, their destination being occasionally 
 shown by written placards. A superb paradise was the glory 
 of the manager. Silk hangings, flowers, and fruit-bearing trees 
 adorned this favored spot. The costumes were as rich and im- 
 posing as the vestry or the purse could compass. Horned devils 
 in skins of beasts, with tails and cloven hoofs, formed an excep- 
 tion to the usual inaccuracy of theatrical attire. These were 
 the buffoons; and the poor yokels who shed tears at the torturous 
 crucifixion, or were appalled at the flaming wings of the infernal 
 monster, would listen with shouts of laughter to the reciprocal 
 abuse voided by Satan and his minions, whose very names in 
 solitude would have paralyzed them. The customary encomium 
 was, ‘To-day the mystery was very fine and devout, and the 
 devils played most pleasantly.’ The people were in the child- 
 hood of society, satisfied that they were good Christians, and so 
 were innocently insensible to the blasphemy or indecency of 
 their exhibitions. It accorded with the debased ideas of the 
 times to make such entries as: ‘paid for a pair of gloves for 
 God;’ ‘paid for gilding God’s coat;’ ‘dyvers necessaries for 
 the trimmynge of the Father of Heaven;’ ‘payed to the players 
 for rehearsal — to God, iis. viiic?. ; to Pilate his wife, iis. ; for 
 keeping fyer at hell’s mouth, iiic?.’ The coarse humor which 
 kept the audience awake, was not without a certain power of 
 characterization. Thus Noah and his wife, in the Deluge , are 
 close copies of contemporary life. Mrs. Noah, a shrew and a 
 vixen, refuses to leave her gossips, swears she will not go into 
 the Ark ; scolds Noah, and is flogged ; then wishes herself a 
 widow, hopes all wives the same good luck, and thinks she but 
 echoes their feelings in doing so; while Noah takes occasion to 
 inform all husbands that their proper course is to break their 
 wives after his fashion — with a stick not thicker than the thumb. 
 At this point, the water is nearly up to her neck, and she is 
 partly coaxed, partly forced, into the Ark by one of her sons. 
 
 A change of intellectual condition is marked by the deca- 
 dence of the Mysteries after the fourteenth century. In the 
 fifteenth, a new class of dramatic performances arose, in which 
 20 
 
306 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 the personages were not concrete beings, but their shadowy 
 reflections, the virtues and vices, — Pride, Gluttony, Temperance, 
 Faith, and the like. To relieve their gravity, under which the 
 audience were liable to yawn and sleep, the Devil was retained, 
 and a more natural buffoon was introduced in the Vice, who 
 acted the part of broad, rampant jester. These two were the 
 darlings of the multitude. Full of pranks and swaggering fun, 
 a part of Vice’s ordinary business was to treat the Devil with 
 ribald familiarity, to crack saucy jokes upon him, to bestride 
 him and beat him till he roared, and in the end to be carried 
 off to Hell on his back. Characteristic examples are The Castle 
 of Perseverance and Every Man. The latter is opened in a 
 monologue by the Messenger, who announces the subject. Then 
 God appears, who, after some general complaints on the moral 
 depravity of the human race, calls for Death, and orders him 
 to bring before His tribunal Every-Man. Neither Fellowship 
 nor Kindred nor Goods nor Riches will or can avail. Succes- 
 sively implored, they successively forsake the suppliant. Utterly 
 disconsolate, Every-Man seeks Good-Deeds, and she, after up- 
 braiding him with his long neglect of her, conducts him to her 
 sister Knowledge, who in turn leads him to the ‘ holy man Con- 
 fession.’ Confession appoints him penance, which he inflicts 
 upon himself, and then withdraws from the stage to receive the 
 sacraments of the priest. On his return he waxes faint; and, 
 as Strength, Beauty, Discretion and Five -Wits desert him, he 
 expires, abandoned by all but Good-Deeds, w T ho attends him to 
 the last. An angel then descends to sing his requiem; and the 
 epilogue is spoken by a Doctor, who, after recapitulation, deliv- 
 ers the moral: 
 
 ‘This memoriall men may have in mynde, 
 
 Ye herers, take, if of worth old and yonge, 
 
 And forsake Pryde, for he deceyveth yon in thende, 
 
 And remembre Beaute, Five Witts, Strength and Discretion, 
 
 They all at last do Every Man forsake; 
 
 Save his Good Deeds there dothe he take; 
 
 But beware, for and they be small, 
 
 Before God he hath no help at all.’ 
 
 This drama came from the Romanists to recall the auditors back 
 to the shaken creed of their fathers. As the earlier plays were 
 professedly religious or theological, so the later were semi-relig- 
 ious or ethical, and hence were styled Moralities. 
 
POETRY — HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE DRAMA. 307 
 
 A further secularization of the drama occurred when, taking* 
 a more adventurous course, it accommodated itself to the fash- 
 ions and factions of the day, not yet venturing into a wide field, 
 but peeping, as it were, from a corner. It was nothing more 
 than a farce in a single act, satirical and comic, sustained in 
 dialogue by three or four professional characters of the times, 
 and acted in the intervals of a banquet. From this last circum- 
 stance, it was called the Interlude. Thus Douglas, the Scotch 
 bard: 
 
 ‘Grete was the preis the feast royal to sene; 
 
 At ease they eat, with interludes between.’ 
 
 Heywood, jester of Henry VIII, was their most noted author. 
 His Four P's is a curious illustration of the wit, manners, and 
 opinions of the period. It turns upon a dispute between a 
 Palmer, a Pardoner, a Poticary, and a Pedlar, as to who can 
 practice the greatest frauds on credulity and ignorance. The 
 contest ends in a wager who shall tell the greatest lie, when the 
 Palmer says he never saw a woman out of temper. Thereupon 
 the others declare him ‘a liar of the first magnitude.’ Hey- 
 wood’s zeal for the Roman Catholic cause does not seem to have 
 prevented him from lashing with the utmost freedom and sever- 
 ity the abuses of popery. The Pardoner says: 
 
 ‘I say yet again, my pardons are such, 
 
 That if there were a thousand souls on a heap, 
 
 I would bring them all to heaven as good sheep, . . . 
 
 With small cost without any pain, 
 
 These pardons bring them to heaven plain: 
 
 Give me but a penny or two-pence, 
 
 And as soon as the soul departeth hence, 
 
 In half an hour, or three quarters at the most, 
 
 The soul is in heaven with the Holy Ghost.’ 
 
 Like a regular graduate in the game of imposture, he recounts 
 the virtues of his relics, to which he and the rest hood-wink their 
 understandings : 
 
 ‘Lo, here be pardons, half a dozen, 
 
 For ghostly riches they have no cousin. 
 
 And moreover, to me they bring 
 Sufficient succour for my living. . . . 
 
 Friends, here shall ye see, even anon, 
 
 Of All-Hallows, the blessed jaw-bone. 
 
 Mark well this, this relic here is a whipper; 
 
 My friends unfeigned, here’s a slipper 
 Of one of the seven sleepers, be sure. 
 
 Here is an eye-tooth of the great Turk; 
 
 Whose eyes be once set on this piece of work, 
 
308 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 May happily lose part of his eye-sight, 
 
 But not all till he be blind outright. 
 
 Kiss it hardly, with good devotion. 
 
 Pot. This kiss shall bring us much promotion: 
 
 Fogh ! by St. Saviour, I never kissed a worse. . . . 
 
 For, by All- Hallows, yet methinketh 
 That All-Hallows'' breath stinketh. 
 
 Palm. Ye judge All-Hallows’ breath unknown; 
 
 If any breath stink, it is your own. 
 
 Pot. I know my own breath from All-Hallows, 
 
 Or else it were time to kiss the gallows. 
 
 Pard. Nay, sirs here may ye see 
 
 The great toe of the Trinity: 
 
 Who to this toe any money voweth, 
 
 And once may roll it in his mouth, 
 
 All his life after I undertake 
 
 He shall never be vex’d with the tooth-ache. 
 
 Pot. I pray you turn that relic about; 
 
 Either the Trinity had the gout, 
 
 Or else, because it is three toes in one, 
 
 God made it as much as three toes alone. . . . 
 
 Pard. Good friends, I have yet here in this glass, 
 
 Which on the drink at the wedding was 
 Of Adam and Eve undoubtedly: 
 
 If ye honour this relic devoutly, 
 
 Although ye thirst no whit the less, 
 
 Yet shall ye drink the more, doubtless. 
 
 After which drinking, ye shall be as meet 
 To stand on your head as on your feet.’ 
 
 The stage was becoming a living power. Mary hastened a proc- 
 lamation against the interludes of the reformers, while Elizabeth, 
 on her accession, as suddenly suppressed those of the papists. 
 
 Such were the steps by which the national genius was con- 
 ducted to the verge of tragedy and comedy. As the Morality 
 had superseded the Mystery, and the Interlude that, the older 
 retaining its hold till the younger gained strength to assert its 
 rights; so now, in the march of intellect, they were all to give 
 way before the drama proper, which portrays the character and 
 actions of man, to the exclusion or subordination of the super- 
 natural. The first play which bears the distinctive marks of a 
 legitimate Comedy , is commonly considered to be JR,alpli Roister 
 Roister , by Nicholas Udall (1551). The plot, without involu- 
 tion, progresses through five acts in rhyme more racy than ele- 
 gant. Ralph is a vain, blustering, amorous hair-brain : 
 
 ‘So fervent hot wooing, and so far from wiving, 
 
 I trow, never was any creature living.’ 
 
 His baffled pursuit of a gay and rich widow forms the action of 
 the piece. A group of domestics, that might have formed a 
 
POETRY — FIRST COMEDY — FIRST TRAGEDY. 
 
 309 
 
 study for Shakespeare in his happiest vein, opens up the domes- 
 tic scenery of the metropolis, warm with reality. Its scholastic 
 authorship, as well as its merry-making, is shown in a proposal of 
 marriage sent by the conceited fop to the widow, which is read 
 to her with its sense reversed by changing the true punctuation: 
 
 ‘Now by these presents I do you advertise 
 That I am minded to marry you in no wise. 
 
 For your goods and substance I could be content 
 To take you as ye are. If ye mind to be my wife, 
 
 Ye shall be assured for the time of my life 
 I will keep ye right well from good raiment and fare; 
 
 Ye shall not be kept but in sorrow and care. 
 
 Ye shall in no wise live at your own liberty; 
 
 But when ye are merry, I will be all sad; 
 
 When ye seek your heart’s ease I will be unkind; 
 
 At no time in me shall ye much gentleness find.’ 
 
 The tragic muse was not far behind. The first English heroic 
 tale divided into acts and scenes, and clothed in the formalities 
 of a regular Tragedy , was Gorboduc , by Thomas Sackville 
 tl562). Gorboduc, king of Britain about five hundred years before 
 Christ, divides his kingdom between his two sons, Ferrex and 
 Porrex. A quarrel between the princes results in civil war, and 
 Ferrex is slain by his brother. The mother revenges his death 
 by murdering Porrex in his sleep. The people, exasperated at 
 the unnatural deed, rise in rebellion, and kill both her and the 
 king. The nobility collect an army and destroy the rebels, but 
 immediately fall to destroying one another. The lineal succes- 
 sion to the Crown is lost; and the country, without a head, is 
 wasted by slaughter and famine. Like Roister Roister , Gor- 
 boduc is cast in the mould of classical antiquity; but instead of 
 individual nature and real passion, it deals only in vague and 
 labored declamations which never entered any head but the 
 author’s. Nothing is intricate, nothing unravelled, and little 
 pathetic. It has the form of dialogue without the spirit. Sin- 
 gularly frigid and unimaginative, it is not without justness, 
 weight, and fertility of thought. Its diction is transparent. It 
 is celebrated, moreover, as being our first tragedy in blank verse. 
 But the measure, though the embryon of Shakespeare’s, conveys 
 no notion of that elasticity and variety which it was destined 
 shortly to attain. The following are the most animated lines in 
 the whole play: 
 
310 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 ‘O mother, thou to murder thus thy child! 
 
 Even Jove with justice must with lightning flames 
 From heaven sAid down some strange revenge on thee. 
 
 Ah, noble prince, how oft have I beheld 
 Thee mounted on thy fierce and trampling steed, 
 
 Shining in armor bright before the tilt, 
 
 And with thy mistress’ sleeve tied on thy helm, 
 
 And charge thy staff — to please thy lady’s eye — 
 
 That bowed the headpiece of thy friendly foe ! ’ 
 
 In these exact lines, stealing on with care but with fear, we fail 
 to discover the potent spirit who planned the Mirror for Magis- 
 trates / and, resigning that noble scheme to inferior hands, left as 
 its model the Induction. Tragical, like Gorboduc , in idea and 
 plot, it has the vigor of creative imagination. It is the congenial 
 offspring of a gloomy genius in a night of storm, which may be 
 thought to receive a ghastly complexion from the lurid flames 
 that wrap the victims of persecution. Amid the shadows of the 
 darkening day, across the faded fields swept by the wintry wind, 
 the poet, as he pursues his lonely way, marks the gray grass, the 
 blasted flowers, the bare boughs, the wan clouds, and sees in 
 them the type of the state of man; but suddenly as he redoubles 
 his pace, — 
 
 ‘In black all clad there fell before my face 
 A piteous wight. . . . 
 
 Her body small, forwithered and forspent, 
 
 As is the stalk with summer’s drouth 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.’ 
 
 Sorrow guides him into the region of death, there to hear from 
 the dead the stories of their woes. Here, among other dreadful 
 and hideous shapes, is Old Age: 
 
 ‘Crooked-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, and he with eld forelore; [ bald 
 
 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.’ 
 
 It is the recurrence of the deep poetic instinct, the feeling of 
 misery and mortality, the sad sense of limitless darkness, the 
 sombre conception of the world, which this race has manifested 
 from its origin, which it will preserve to its end. 
 
 1 A series of poetic narratives of the disasters of men eminent in English story. 
 
POETRY — THE HEW DRAMA AND THEATRE. 
 
 311 
 
 Thenceforward the drama makes rapid progress, passing from 
 youth to a splendid maturity with enormous strides, and extend- 
 ing in a single generation over all the provinces of history, imagi- 
 nation, and fancy, with that breadth of anticipation and intoxica- 
 tion of heart which the ardent soul may experience, when from 
 being a child it has become a man and feels a new-glowing joy 
 shoot through nerve and vein. Expanding with the growing 
 taste, it quits the Palace, the Inns, the Universities, where it is 
 compressed, and creates in 157G a public theatre and a national 
 audience. Before the end of the century, eleven theatres and 
 nearly two hundred dramas attest the absorbing passion. Latin, 
 French, Italian, and Spanish, are ransacked ‘to furnish the play- 
 house of London.’ Listen to the groans of the Puritan: 
 
 ‘The daily abuse of stage plays is such an offense to the godly, and so great a hin- 
 drance to the Gospel, as the Papists do exceedingly rejoice at the blemish thereof, and 
 not without cause; for every day in the week the player’s bills are set up in sundry 
 places of the city ; so that, when the bells toll to the lecturer, the trumpets sound to 
 the stages. Whereat the wicked faction of Rome laughetli for joy, while the godly weep 
 for sorrow. ... It is a woful sight to see two hundred proud players jet in their silks, 
 while five hundred poor people starve in the streets. . . . Woe is me ! the play-houses are 
 pestered when the churches are naked. At the one, it is not possible to get a place; at 
 the other, void seats are plenty.’ 
 
 Some of the theatres are used as cock-pits, some for bull-baiting 
 and bear-baiting, all are poor and squalid. On the banks of the 
 Thames rises the principal one, the Globe, a hexagonal tower, 
 surrounded by a muddy ditch, surmounted by a red flag, and 
 roofed by the sky, retaining in its form and arrangements traces 
 of the old model — the inn-yard. Into the pit, the sun shines 
 and the rain falls without let or hindrance; but their bodies are 
 inured to exposure, and they don’t trouble themselves about it. 
 The poor are there, as well as the rich; for they have sixpenny, 
 twopenny, and even penny seats. With the actors, on the rush- 
 strewn stage, which is covered with thatch, are the elegant and 
 the dainty, who pay a shilling for admittance. For an extra 
 shilling, they can have a stool. If stools or benches are lacking, 
 they stretch themselves on the floor. They smoke, drink, swear, 
 insult the pit, who pay them back in kind, and fling apples at 
 them in the bargain. Over them, in a lofty gallery are the musi- 
 cians. Below, in the circle of the pit, while they wait for the 
 piece, cards are shuffled, oaths resound, ale-pots clatter, blows 
 are exchanged. When the beer takes effect, there is a receptacle 
 
312 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 for general use. W hen the fumes rise, they cry, ( Burn the juni- 
 per ! ’ They are amusing themselves after their fashion. At one 
 o’clock — Sundays included — the flag is hoisted, to announce the 
 hour of the performance. When the trumpet sounds, a figure in 
 a long black velvet cloak comes forward to recite the prologue. 
 Then the play begins, the players in masks and wigs, and attired 
 in the richest dress of the day. If the house are not suited, they 
 hiss, whistle, crow, yell, perhaps fall upon the actors and turn 
 the theatre upside down. The appointments are barbarous, but 
 imaginations are fervid and supply what is wanting. Wooden 
 imitations of animals, towers, forests, etc., are the scenery. A 
 bed suggests a bed-room. A rough table, with drinking vessels, 
 replaces a dingy throne and turns a palace into a tavern. A 
 young man, just shaven, stands for a queen. A scroll in big 
 letters, hung out in view of the spectators, informs them that 
 they are in London, Athens, or Paris. Three combatants on a 
 side determine the fate of an empire. Says Sir Philip Sidney: 
 
 ‘You shall have Asia of the one side, and Africke of the other, and so many other 
 under-kingdoms, that the Plaier when hee comes in must ever begin with telling where 
 hee is, or else the tale will not be conceived. Now shall you have three Ladies walke 
 to gather flowers, and then wee must beleeve the stage to be a garden. By and by wee 
 heare newes of shipwracke in the same place, then wee are to blame if we accept it not 
 for a rocke ; . . . while in the meane time two armies flie in, represented with foure 
 swordes and bucklers, and then what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field? ’ 
 
 The actors — at first strolling companies under the patronage of 
 some nobleman, as security against the laws which brand all 
 strollers as vagabonds and rogues — are neglected or despised 
 by those whom they entertain. Their social position is not far 
 above that of the jester who shakes his cap and bells at the 
 tables of the great. Nearly all are writers. Most are born of 
 the people, yet educated. The majority are accomplished in the 
 classics. The manager gives them work, advances them money, 
 and receives their manuscripts or their wardrobes. For a play 
 he allows them seven or eight pounds. Their trade of author 
 scarcely brings bread. Rarely, like Shakespeare, they contrive, 
 by a judicious investment of early gains to acquire a third and 
 more fruitful source of income, — a theatre-share. Generally, 
 they are wild Bohemians, improvident, poor, full of excess, and 
 die untimely by exhaustion or violence. 
 
 Such are the externals. We have seen what the interior must 
 
POETRY — MARLOWE. 
 
 313 
 
 be; for the drama is but the moral, social, and physical expres- 
 sion of the age in which it lives; and. the poets who establish it 
 carry in themselves the intensified sentiments and passions of 
 those around them. They will reproduce the entire man, — his 
 finest aspirations and his savagest appetites, the low and the 
 lofty, the ideal and the sensual. So does Marlowe, the true 
 founder of the dramatic school, the mightiest of Shakespeare’s 
 pioneers. Born in 1564, son of a shoemaker, he was the proudest 
 and fiercest of aristocrats. At seventeen he was in Cambridge. 
 Studied theology, and became a sceptic. Returning to London, 
 he turned actor, broke his leg in a scene of debauchery, and 
 turned author. Rebellious in manners, he was rebellious in 
 creed; declared Moses a juggler; was accused of saying that ‘yf 
 he wer to write a new religion, he wolde undertake both a more 
 excellent and a more admirable methode’; was prosecuted for 
 avowed infidelity, and, if time had not failed, would probably 
 have been brought to the stake. In love with a harlot, he tried 
 to stab his rival; his hand was turned, and the blade entered his 
 own eye and brain, and he died, at thirty, cursing and blasphem- 
 ing. A Puritan ballad, in which he is called I Vormall, draws the 
 moral : 
 
 ‘Take warning, ye that plays do make, 
 
 And ye that them do act. 
 
 Desist in time, for Wormall's sake. 
 
 And think upon his fact.’ 
 
 His first play, Tamburlaine the Great , is characteristic, — a pic- 
 ture of boundless ambition and murderous raire. The hero is a 
 shepherd, who aspires to the throne of Persia, scornful of re- 
 straint, and ready to put men to the sword or to rail at the gods. 
 He says, giant-like: 
 
 ‘For in a field, whose superficies 
 Is cover’d with a liquid purple veil, 
 
 And sprinkled with the brains of slaughtered men 
 My royal chair of state shall be advanc’d; 
 
 And he that means to place himself therein, 
 
 Must armed wade up to the chin in blood, . . . 
 
 And I would strive to swim through pools of blood, 
 
 Or makk a bridge of murder’d carcasses, 
 
 Whose arches should be fram’d with bones of Turks, 
 
 Ere I would lose the title of a king.’ 
 
 Seated in a chariot, drawn by captive kings, he berates them for 
 their slowness: 
 
314 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 ‘Hallo! ye pampered jades of Asia! 
 
 What, can ye draw but twenty miles a day? 
 
 And adds, with purest splendor, as with swaggering fustian: 
 
 ‘ The horse that guide the golden eye of heaven , 
 
 And blow the morning from their nostrils , 
 
 Making their fiery gait above the clouds , 
 
 Are not so honored in their governor 
 As you, ye slaves, in mighty Tamburlaine.’ 
 
 All the ferocities of the middle-age are in the Jew of Malta . If 
 there is less bombast than in Tamburlaine , there is even more 
 horror. Barabbas, the Jew, robbed by the Christians, has been 
 maddened with hate till he is no longer human. He says to his 
 servant: 
 
 ‘Hast thou no trade? then listen to my words, 
 
 And I will teach thee that shall stick by thee: 
 
 First, be thou void of these affections, 
 
 Compassion, love, vain hope, and heartless fear; 
 
 Be moved at nothing, see thou pity none, 
 
 But to thyself smile when the Christians moan. . . . 
 
 I walk abroad a-nights, 
 
 And kill sick people groaning under walls: 
 
 Sometimes I go about and poison wells. . . . 
 
 Being young, I studied physic, and began 
 To practice first upon the Italian; 
 
 There I enriched the priests with burials, 
 
 And always kept the sexton’s arms in ure 
 
 With digging graves and ringing dead men’s knells. . . . 
 
 I fill'd the jails with bankrouts in a year, 
 
 And with young orphans planted hospitals.’ 
 
 By forged letters he causes his daughter’s lovers to slay each 
 other. She leaves him, and he poisons her. A friar comes to 
 convert him, and he strangles him, joking with his cut-throat 
 slave, who rejoices in the neatness of the job: 
 
 ‘Pull amain, 
 
 ’Tis neatly done sir; here’s no print at all: 
 
 So, let him lean upon his staff; excellent! 
 
 He stands as if he were begging of bacon.’ 
 
 A true painting, conceived with an intensity and executed with 
 a sweep of imagination unknown before. So in Edward If all 
 is impetuous, excessive, and abrupt. Furies and hatreds clash; 
 helplessness and misery wait for their hour alike in the fortalices 
 of strength and the high places of pleasure. He who has seen 
 and felt with volcanic energy the heights and depths of imagina- 
 tion and license can paint, more powerfully than Shakespeare in 
 Eichard If the heart-breaking distress of a dying king: 
 
POETRY — MARLOWE. 
 
 315 
 
 ■Edward. Wcep’st thou already? List awhile to me, 
 
 And then thy heart, were it as Gurney’s is, 
 
 Or as Matrevis, hewn from the Caucasus, 
 
 Yet will it melt ere I have done my tale. 
 
 This dungeon where they keep me, is the sink 
 Wherein the filth of all the castle falls. 
 
 Lightborn. Oh villains! 
 
 Edward. And here in mire and puddle have I stood 
 
 This ten days’ space; and lest that I should sleep, 
 
 One plays continually upon a drum. 
 
 They give me bread and water, being a king; 
 
 So that, for want of sleep and sustenance, 
 
 My mind's distemper’d, and my body’s numb’d ; 
 
 And whether I have limbs or no, I know not. 
 
 Oh! would my blood drop out from every vein, 
 
 As doth this water from my tatter’d robes! 
 
 Tell Isabel, the Queen, I look’d not thus, 
 
 When for her sake I ran at tilt in France, 
 
 And there unhors'd the Duke of Cleremont. 
 
 What are we but sports of every pressure of the air ? What is 
 life but a crushing fatality ? A wreck upon the shore of time. 
 At most, a brief day of joy or victory, then the silence and gloom 
 of the Illimitable. Mortimer, brought to the block, says, with 
 the mournful heroism of the old sea kings: 
 
 ‘Base Fortune, now I see, that in thy wheel 
 There is a point, to which when men aspire. 
 
 They tumble headlong down ; that point I touched. 
 
 And, seeing there was no place to mount up higher. 
 
 Why should I grieve at my declining fall? — 
 
 Farewell, fair queen; weep not for Mortimer, 
 
 That scorns the world, and, as a traveller. 
 
 Goes to discover countries yet unknown.’ 
 
 So in Faustas, which best reflects the genius and experience 
 of Marlowe, the overshadowing thought is — 
 
 ‘Ay, we must die an everlasting death . . . 
 
 What will be, shall be; divinity, adieu!’ 
 
 Therefore enjoy, at any cost, though you be swallowed up on 
 the morrow; nor say to the passing moment, ‘Stay, thou art so 
 fair,’ but seek forever the intoxicating whirl. Faustus, glutted 
 with 1 learning’s golden gifts,’ swells with desire for the magi- 
 cian’s power: 
 
 ‘Emperors and kings 
 
 Are but obeyed in their several provinces; 
 
 But his dominion that exceeds in this, 
 
 Stretches as far as doth the mind of man. 
 
 A sound magician is a mighty god. . . . 
 
 How I am glutted with conceit of this! . . . 
 
 I’ll have them fly to India for gold, 
 
 Ransack the ocean for orient pearl. . . . 
 
316 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 I’ll have them read me strange philosophy. 
 
 And tell the secrets of all foreign kings; 
 
 I’ll have them wall all Germany with brass, 
 
 And make swift Rhine circle fair Wittenberg.’ 
 
 To satisfy these vast desires, he summons, by his mystic art, 
 Mephistophilis from Hell: 
 
 '•Faust. And what are you that live with Lucifer? 
 
 Meph. Unhappy spirits that fell with Lucifer, 
 
 Conspired against our God with Lucifer, 
 
 And are forever damned with Lucifer. 
 
 Faust. How comes it then that thou art out of hell? 
 
 Meph. Why this is hell, nor am I out of it; 
 
 Think’st thou that I, that saw the face of God 
 And tasted the eternal joys of heaven, 
 
 Am not tormented with ten thousand hells 
 In being deprived of everlasting bliss? 
 
 O Faustus, leave these frivolous demands 
 Which strike a terror to my fainting soul. 
 
 Faust. What! Is great Mephistophilis so passionate 
 For being deprived of the joys of heaven? 
 
 Learn then of Faustus manly fortitude, 
 
 And scorn those joys thou never shalt possess.’ 
 
 Boldly, to obtain four-and-twenty years of power, he sends an 
 olfer of his soul to Lucifer: 
 
 ‘Had I as many souls as there be stars 
 I’d give them all for Mephistophilis. 
 
 By him I’ll he great emperor of the world, 
 
 And make a bridge through the moving air. . . . 
 
 Why should’st thou not? Is not thy soul thy own?’ 
 
 At midnight the answer comes, and the bond is signed with 
 blood. Pangs of conscience come. Good and evil angels plead, 
 and he cries: 
 
 ‘O Christ, my Saviour, my Saviour, 
 
 Help thou to save distressed Faustus’ soul ! ’ 
 
 Too late, says the demon. Plunge into the rushing of time, into 
 the rolling of accident, and deaden thought in the feast of the 
 senses: 
 
 ‘Oh, might I see hell, and return again, 
 
 How happy were I then!’ 
 
 He is conducted invisible over the whole world, around the 
 whole circle of sensual pleasure and earthly glory, hurried and 
 devoured by desires and conceptions that burn within him like 
 a furnace with bickering flames. Ever and anon, in the midst 
 of his transports, he starts, falters, and struggles with the toils 
 of Destiny: 
 
POETRY — MARLOWE. 
 
 317 
 
 ‘I will renounce this magic and repent. . . . 
 
 My heart’s so harden'd I cannot repent; 
 
 Scarce can I name salvation, faith, or heaven, 
 
 But fearful echoes thunder in mine ears, 
 
 “Faustus thou art damned!” the swords, and knives, 
 
 Poison, guns, halters, and envenom’d steel, 
 
 Are laid before me, to despatch myself, 
 
 Had not sweet pleasure conquer’d deep despair. 
 
 Have not I made blind Homer sing to me 
 Of Alexander's love and CEnon's death? 
 
 And hath not he, that built the walls of Thebes 
 With ravishing sound of his melodious harp, 
 
 Made music with my Mephistophilis? 
 
 Why should I die, then, or basely despair? 
 
 I am resolved; Faustus shall ne’er repent. 
 
 Come Mephistophilis, let us dispute again, 
 
 And argue of divine astrology.’ 
 
 The term expires, and the forfeit is exacted. Faustus has run 
 the round of his brilliant dream, and stands on the brink of the 
 Bottomless. Never was such an accumulation of horrors and 
 anguish. Mephistophilis gives him a dagger. An old man 
 enters, and with loving words warns him: 
 
 ‘Oh, stay, good Faustus, stay thy desperate steps! 
 
 I see an angel hover o’er thy head, 
 
 And with a vial full of precious grace 
 Offers to pour the same into thy soul: 
 
 Then call for mercy, and avoid despair.’ 
 
 He would weep, but the devil draws in his tears; he would raise 
 his hands, but he cannot. The lovely Helen is conjured up, 
 between two Cupids, to prevent his relapse, and the wildfire 
 kindles in his heart: 
 
 ‘Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships, 
 
 And burnt the topless tow’rs of Ilium? 
 
 Sweet Helen , make me immortal with a kiss. 
 
 Her lips suck forth my soul ! See where it flies. 
 
 Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again. 
 
 Here will I dwell, for Heav’n is in these lips. 
 
 And all is dross that is not Helena. 
 
 I will be Paris, and for love of thee, 
 
 Instead of Troy shall Wittenberg be sack’d; 
 
 And I will combat with weak Menelaus, 
 
 And wear thy colours on my plumed crest; 
 
 Yea I will wound Achilles in the heel, 
 
 And then return to Helen for a kiss. 
 
 Oh! thou art fairer than the evening air , 
 
 Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars' 
 
 The clock strikes eleven. He implores the mountains and hills 
 to fall upon him, would rush headlong into the gaping earth, but 
 it will not harbor him: 
 
318 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 ‘Oh, Faustus! 
 
 Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, 
 
 And then thou must be damn'd perpetually! 
 
 Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven, 
 
 That time may cease, and midnight never come! . . . 
 
 The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, 
 
 The devil will come, and Faustus must be damn'd. 
 
 Oh, I’ll leap up to my God!— Who pulls me down? — 
 
 See, see, where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament! 
 
 One drop would save my soul, half a drop: ah, my Christ, 
 
 Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ! 
 
 Yet will I call on him.’ 
 
 The clock strikes the half hour: 
 
 ‘Ah, half the hour is past! 'twill all be past anon. . . . 
 
 Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years, 
 
 A hundred thousand, and at last be saved.’ 
 
 The clock strikes twelve: 
 
 ‘It strikes! it strikes; Now body turn to air, 
 
 Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell. 
 
 Oh soul! be changed into small water-drops. 
 
 And fall into the ocean: ne’er be found.’ 
 
 This tormented soul, who reels from desire to enjoyment, from 
 the diabolical to the divine, is not the philosophic type of 
 Goethe’s Faust , the ferment of whose spirit impels him towards 
 the ‘far-away,’ though both are equally lost in the end; but I 
 find nothing in that tragedy equal,, in power of delineation, to 
 this closing scene of terror, despair, and remorse. 
 
 If ever there was poet born, Marlowe was one. His poetry 
 is irregular, but the irregularity is that of the extreme flight of 
 virgin nature, the inequality of the young, eager, bounding 
 blood. His Faustus was his twin-spirit, the expression of the 
 social life of the period, — restless, self-asserting, hot-headed, 
 and omnivorous. Extremes meet, at such times, in such men. 
 With capacity for Titanic conceptions, they render gentlest 
 beauty into sweetest music. Capable of enamored hate and 
 soundless sensuality, they are also capable of the most delicate 
 tenderness and the purest dreams. Thus Marlowe could leave 
 his powerful verse, his images of fury, and say to his lady-love, 
 in strains like the breath of the morning which has swept over 
 flowery meads: 
 
 ‘ Come live with me and he my love , 
 
 And we will all the pleasures prove % 
 
 That hill and valley, grove and field. 
 
 And all the craggy mountains xjield. 
 
 There will we sit upon the rocks, 
 
POETRY — THE NATIONAL DRAMA. 
 
 319 
 
 And sec the shepherds feed their flocks 
 By shallow rivers, to whose falls 
 Melodious birds sing madrigals. 
 
 There will I make thee beds of roses. 
 
 With a thousand fragrant posies; 
 
 A cap of flowers and a kirtle 
 Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle; 
 
 A gown made of the finest wool 
 Which from our pretty lambs we pull; 
 
 Slippers lin’d choicely for the cold, 
 
 With buckles of the purest gold; 
 
 A belt of straw, and ivy buds. 
 
 With coral clasps and amber studs. 
 
 The shepherd swains shall dance and sing 
 For thy delight each May morning ; 
 
 And if these pleasures may thee move, 
 
 Then live with me and be my love.' 
 
 What are the marked characteristics of this drama, now ad- 
 -vanced to the point from which Shakespeare will rise to the 
 supreme heights of poetry? — Tamburlaine , the first play in 
 blank verse which was publicly acted, drove the rhymed couplet 
 from the stage, and fixed forever the metre of English tragedy as 
 blank. Not only did the author popularize the measure, but he 
 perfected it: he created a new metre by the melody, variety, and 
 force which he infused into the iambic; not a fixed, unalterable 
 type, in which the verse moves to the common and despotic beat 
 of time, but a Proteus, whose varying pauses, speed, and group- 
 ing of syllables make one measure represent a thousand. It 
 flows impetuous and many-colored, like the spirit which feels 
 it — -not studies it — and revels in a stream of images. Consider 
 the didactic dignity of the following: 
 
 ‘Our souls whose faculties can comprehend 
 The wondrous architecture of the world, 
 
 And measure every wandering planet's course. 
 
 Still climbing after knowledge infinite, 
 
 And always moving as the restless spheres. 
 
 Will us to wear ourselves, and never rest 
 Until we reach the ripest fruit of all, 
 
 That perfect bliss and sole felicity, 
 
 The sweet fruition of an earthly crown.’ 
 
 Or the variable modulations of these lines— -in particular, the 
 «daring but successful license of the first and third: 
 
 ‘ Bags of fiery opals, sapphires, amethysts, 
 
 Jacinths, hard topaz, grass-green emeralds, 
 
 Beauteous rubies, sparkling diamonds, 
 
 And seld seen costly stones of so great price, 
 
 As one of them, indifferently rated, 
 
 May serve, in peril of calamity, 
 
 To ransom great kings from captivity.’ 
 
320 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 Or the changeful temper, the ‘plastic stress’ of these: 
 
 ‘Mortimer! who talks of Mortimer, 
 
 Who wounds me with the name of Mortimer, 
 
 That bloody man? Good father, on thy lap 
 Lay I this head laden with mickle care. 
 
 O, might I never ope these eyes again, 
 
 Never again lift up this drooping head, 
 
 O, never more lift up this dying heart!’ 
 
 Single lines, struck in the heat of glowing passion or fancy, 
 seem to leave a track of fire: 
 
 ‘Tyrants swim safest in a crimson flood.’ 
 
 ‘Adders and serpents, let me breathe awhile!’ 
 
 ‘And blow the morning from their nostrils.’ 
 
 ‘See, see, where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament.’ 
 
 •Thence flew Love’s arrow with the golden head.’ 
 
 ‘I know he is not dead; I know proud death 
 Durst not behold such sacred majesty.’ 
 
 Not inaptly has a living poet described Marlowe as singing — 
 
 ‘With mouth of gold, and morning in his eyes.’ 
 
 For this is his contribution to the heroic style, — that he found it 
 insipidly regular, and left it various, sometimes redundant, some- 
 times deficient, enriched with unexpected emphases and changes 
 in the beat. Shakespeare will only refine it from wordiness, and 
 use it with more than Marlowe’s versatility and power. 
 
 Our first tragedy and comedy observed the classical or dramatic 
 unities: Unity of Action , which required that the action repre- 
 sented should be one , complete , and important; Unity of Time , 
 which required that the incidents of the play should naturally 
 occur within one day; Unity of Place , which required that the 
 entire action should naturally occur in the same locality. The 
 Greek drama, relying thus upon form or proportion, ow6d its 
 charm to a certain union and regularity of feeling. In its sphere, 
 it spoke, felt, and acted according to nature — that is, nature 
 under the given circumstances; but it was limited by the physi- 
 cal conditions of time and space, as well as bound to a certain 
 dignity and attitude of expression, selection and grouping of 
 figures, as in a statue. But this was too formal and stately to 
 suit the tastes and wants of an age or people distinguished by 
 its novelty, strangeness, and contrast. The whole framework of 
 society — customs, manners, aspirations, religion — had changed. 
 
PROSE — FORCES — STYLE. 
 
 321 
 
 Hence a sudden revolution in the dramatic art. Our poets, who 
 felt the excitement of the new life, disdained paths previously 
 made, scorned the thraldom of Greece, the servility of Rome. 
 They had to address no scholastic critics, but the people. As 
 one of them said, — 
 
 ‘They would have good plays , and not produce 
 Such musty fopperies of antiquity; 
 
 Which do not suit the humorous age's back 
 With clothes in fashion . 1 
 
 To win a mutable attention required a multiform shape. At 
 once they clung to the human nature before them, — its appe- 
 tites, passions, frailties, hopes, imaginations, heights of ecstasy 
 and depths of depravity. The theatre, mingling the comic with 
 the tragic, was to be a mirror of enchantment, — Gothic in the 
 scope of its design and the boldness of its execution. While 
 Italy and France were adhering to the contracted antique model, 
 two nations — England and Spain — were thus spontaneously 
 creating a national drama accordant with their own sympathies 
 and experiences — a movable reflection of themselves. 
 
 Prose. — The poetry of the period, as the overflow of natural 
 enthusiasm, has a decided ascendancy in quantity and quality; 
 but the powerful vitality which impels it and makes it great, 
 begins also the era of prose. The insatiable desire of the mind 
 to beget its own image gives the primary impulse. The reforma- 
 tion of religion, the revival of antiquity, the influx of Italian 
 letters, traditions of the past, speculations of the future, inven- 
 tion, travel, and discovery, give the materials. Philology begins, 
 notably with Cheke and Mulcaster; artistic theory and criticism, 
 with Sidney, Wilson, Ascham, and Puttenham, who explore the 
 rules of style; narratives of adventure and observation, with 
 Hakluyt 1 ; history, with Holinshed, More, and Raleigh; the essay, 
 with Lord Bacon; rational theology, with Hooker; romantic or 
 fanciful fiction, with Lily. In physics, medicine, and law, curi- 
 osity is rife. Editions and revisals of the Scriptures increased. 
 The roar and dash of opinions creates and multiplies pamphlet- 
 eers, Anglican and Puritan, sectarian and secular, — Skelton a 
 virulent one, Roy a merciless one, Fish a seditious one, Greene an 
 incessant one, Nash a brilliant one. Men’s brains are busy, their 
 
 1 The Principal Navigations , Voyages, and Discoveries made by the English Nation. 
 
 21 
 
322 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 spirits stirring, their hearts full. With the new resources of 
 thought and language, conies a new sense of literary beauty — a 
 new-born pleasure in delicacy and grandeur of phrase, in the 
 choice of words and the structure of sentences. We see it first 
 in Lily’ S E/uphues, 1 the story of a young Athenian who, after 
 spending some time in Italy, visits England in 1579. Its form 
 is Italian, and its style a skilful elaboration of the Italian taste 
 for alliteration, verbal antithesis, far-fetched allusion. To ladies 
 and lords, it was a novel enchantment to read: 
 
 ‘ There is no privilege that needeth a pardon, neither is there any remission to be 
 asked, where a commission is granted. I speake this, Gentlemen, not to excuse the 
 offence which was taken , but to offer a defence where I was mistaken. A cleare con- 
 science is a sure card, truth hath the prerogative to speake with plainnesse, and the 
 modesty to heare with patience. It was reported of some, and beleueed of many, that in 
 the education of Ephoebus, where mention is made of Uniuersities, that Oxford was to- 
 much either d efacecl or defamed. I know not what the enuious have picked out by 
 malice, or the curious by wit, or the guilty by their own galled consciences; but this I 
 say, that I was as farre from thinking ill as I find them from iudging well. But if I 
 should goe about to make amends , I were then faulty in somewhat amisse, and should 
 shew my selfe like Apelles Prentice, who coueting to mend the nose marred the week; 
 and not vnlike the foolish Dier, who neuer thought his cloth Slack vntil it was burned. 
 If any fault be committed, impute it to Euphues who knew you not, not to Lylie who 
 hates you not.’ 
 
 Once more in Athens, Euphues writes: 
 
 ‘Gentlemen, Euphues is musing in the bottom of the mountain Silixedra, Philau- 
 tus is married in the Isle of England: two friends parted, the one living in the 
 delights of his new wife, the other in contemplation of his old griefs.’ 
 
 The new fashion, universally admired, ran into extravagance 
 without elegance, overloaded, strained, and motley. Stamhurst 
 in the dedication of a history of Ireland writes, quaintly and 
 ludicrously: 
 
 ‘My verie good Lord, there have beene diuerse of late, that with no small toile, 
 and great commendation, haue throughlie imploied themselues in culling and packing 
 togither the scrapings and fragments of the historie of Ireland. Among which crue, 
 my fast friend, and inward companion, maister Edmund Campion did so learnedlie- 
 bequite himselfe, in the penning of certeine breefe notes, concerning that countrie, 
 as certes it was greatlie to be lamented, that either his theame had not beene shorter, 
 or else his leasure had not beene longer. For if Alexander were so rauisht with 
 Homer his historie, that notwithstanding Thersites were a crabbed and a rugged 
 dwarfe, being in outward feature so deformed, and inward conditions so crooked, as 
 he seemed to stand to no better steed, than to lead apes in helL’ 
 
 There was just time for Gosson to have read Euphues before he 
 wrote in The School of Abuse: 
 
 ‘The title of my book doth promise much, the volume you see is very little: 
 and sithens I cannot bear out my folly by authority, like an emperor, I will crave 
 
 1 From the Greek, meaning well - grown , symmetrical hence clever , witty. It was 
 really on the culmination of the grow ing influence of Italian conceits and quibbles. 
 
PROSE — RISE OF HISTORY. 
 
 323 
 
 pardon for my phrensy by submission, as your worship’s to command. The school 
 which I build is narrow, and at the first blush appeareth but a dog-hole; yet small 
 clouds carry water; slender threads sew sure stitches; little hairs have their shadows; 
 blunt stones whet knives; from hard rocks flow soft springs; the whole world is drawn 
 in a map, Homer’s “Iliad” in a nutshell, a king’s picture in a penny.’ 
 
 Comparisons mount one above another, sense disappears, atti- 
 tudes are visible. But out of this youthful wantonness will 
 spring complete art. Tinsel and pedantry will pass, beauty and 
 merit will remain. Prose, born of thought rather than of feeling, 
 does not reach literary excellence till the imagination is regu- 
 lated, and the gaze is fixed, not to admire, but to understand. 
 
 History. — A whole class of industrious antiquaries collected 
 the annals of the by-gone world, and embodied them in English 
 shape, supplying materials for the historical dramatist and the 
 future historian. Daniel gave to the chronicle a purer literary 
 form, while Raleigh’s History of the World showed the widen- 
 ing of historic interest beyond national bounds. If there was no 
 rhyming, there was little accuracy, and no attempt at a minute 
 tracing of cause and effect; that was to come. The compilers, 
 following the beaten path, usually began at the Creation and 
 continued to the date of publication. Credulity still darkened 
 the field, and, surveying it complacently, they gathered con- 
 tentedly, with both hands, seldom doubting the truth of what 
 from childhood they had been taught to believe. Thus Holin- 
 shed, the most complete of our chroniclers, thinks it probable 
 that Britain was peopled before the Deluge, and supposes these 
 primitive Britons to have been drowned in the flood. He can 
 vouch for the arrival of Ulysses, inclines to the derivation of 
 Albion from a huge giant of that name, and relates the story 
 of Brute, the great-grandson of HCneas, with unquestioning con- 
 fidence. He inserts a one-line notice of 4 Caxton as the first 
 practicer of the art of printing,’ but is more intent in the same 
 paragraph to speak of ‘a bloody rain, the red drops falling on 
 the sheets which had been hanged to dry.’ It was reserved for 
 Raleigh, in his unfinished but ambitious work, to strike into a 
 virgin vein, and make the ordinary events of history assume a 
 new face by the noble speculations which he builds on them, 
 often profound, oftener eloquent. 
 
 Theology. — A new era of creed-formations set in. The 
 Articles of the Anglican Church, now in number thirty-nine, 
 
324 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 were originally forty-two, drawn up under the supervision of 
 Cranmer as the bonds of Christian union, the conditions of 
 Christian fellowship. It is asserted, in this confession of faith, — 
 
 1. That there is an infinite Spirit, and ‘in the unity of this 
 Godhead there be three persons of one substance, power, and 
 eternity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.’ 
 
 2. That the fall of Adam ‘brought death into the world and 
 all our woe.’ 
 
 3. That, by Adam’s transgression, we are shapen in iniquity, 
 and conceived in sin. 
 
 4. That Christ, of the same substance with the Father, died 
 for our original guilt and our actual sins. 
 
 5. That none can emerge from this state of pollution, and be 
 saved, but by Christ. 
 
 6. That every person born into the world ‘deserveth God’s 
 wrath and damnation.’ 
 
 7. That ‘ predestination to life is the everlasting purpose of 
 God ... to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he 
 hath chosen in Christ out of mankind.’ 
 
 The English Reformers can scarcely be said to have arrived at 
 any definite conclusions. Luther and Calvin framed the specula- 
 tive doctrines for Protestant Europe. Both declared the utter 
 depravity of human nature, and 1 eternal fire ’ the punishment of 
 the lost. Calvin was an uncompromising predestinarian, who 
 taught that the Fall with all its consequences was predetermined 
 ages before the Creation; that the fate of each individual was 
 thus irrevocably decided before he was called into existence; that 
 out of the ruined race a few are selected for eternal bliss; that 
 the rest are pre-ordained to ‘most grievous torments in soul and 
 body without intermission in hell-fire for ever.’ Luther was only 
 less explicit, hardly aware, perhaps, of the extreme to which his 
 acrimonious zeal logically carried him. The mild and sagacious 
 Erasmus had written a defence of free-will, to which Luther 
 replies: 
 
 ‘The human will is like a beast of burden. If God mounts it, it wishes and goes as 
 God wills ; if Satan mounts it, it wishes and goes as Satan wills. Nor can it choose the 
 rider it would prefer, or betake itself to him, but it is the riders who contend for its pos- 
 session.’ 
 
 Again : 
 
 ‘This is the acme of faith, to believe that He is merciful who saves so few and who 
 condemns so many; that He is just who at His own pleasure has made us necessarily 
 doomed to damnation.’ 
 
PROSE — RATIONALISM AND DOGMA. 
 
 Thus the two great founders of Protestantism designed, it would 
 appear, to construct a religious system which should be as dis- 
 tinct and exclusive as that which they assailed, but which should 
 represent more faithfully the teachings of the first four cen- 
 turies. The Puritans, simple and rigorous, preferred the grim 
 and pitiless features of the Calvinistic system, whose spirit, how- 
 ever, has long been yielding to conciliation and charity. The 
 Anglicans, practical, prudent, and more worldly, favored rather 
 the less gloomy and more conservative system of Luther. Both 
 found common ground in the idea of the inexorable Judge, the 
 alarm of conscience, the impotence and inherited poison of na- 
 ture, the necessity of grace, the rejection of rites and ceremonies. 
 A period of passion and conflict throws men naturally upon dog- 
 matic systems, nor is the mind easily extricated from old theo- 
 logical modes of thought. A century was required to develop 
 fully the germ of rationalism that had been cast abroad. Still, 
 the intellect was moving onward, the tenor of life was changing, 
 and at the close of the century the disposition was perceptible to 
 interpret the articles of special creeds, not by the precept and 
 example of tradition, but by the light of reason and of con- 
 science. A remarkable evidence of the transition is found in 
 JewePs Apology , and, a generation later, in Hooker’s Eccle- 
 siastical Polity , — the two most important theological works 
 which appeared in England during the reign of Elizabeth. Both 
 wrote with the avowed object of defending the Established 
 Church, but their methods are entirely different. The first incul- 
 cates the importance of faith, collects the decisions of antiquity, 
 and regards the mei3 assertions of the Fathers, when uncontra- 
 dicted by Scripture, as proofs positive. The second insists upon 
 the exercise of reason, and lays little stress upon the ancients, 
 evidently considering that his readers would be slightly impressed 
 Ly their unsupported opinions. He says: 
 
 ‘For men to be tied and led by authority, as it were with a kind of captivity of judg- 
 ment, and, though there be reason to the contrary, not to listen unto it, but to follow, 
 like beasts, the first in the herd, they know not nor care not whither: this were brutish. 
 Again, that authority of men should prevail with men, either against or above Reason, 
 is no part of our belief. Companies of learned men, be they never so great and rever- 
 end, are to yield unto Reason.’ 
 
 1 Written in 1561 or 1562. This, the Bible, and ¥ ok'* Martyrs were ordered ‘to be 
 Axed in all parish churches, to be read by the people.’ 
 
326 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 When this could be said, the English intellect had made immense 
 progress. 
 
 With the revolution in Church, preaching changed its object 
 and character. It became more earnest, popular, and moral. 
 The Age of Doctrines was to follow. In the pulpit, it was not 
 yet sought to exhibit dialectics, but to recall men — sailors, sol- 
 diers, workmen, servants — to their duties. At least, this is what 
 we see in the sermons of Latimer (1472-1555), a genuine Eng- 
 lishman, serious, courageous, and solid, sprung from the heart 
 and sinews of the nation. He never speaks for the sake of 
 speaking. With him, practice is before all; theology — the 
 metaphysics of religion — secondary. To reprove the rich, who 
 oppress the poor by enclosures, he details the needs of the 
 peasant: 
 
 ‘A plough land must have sheep; yea, they must have sheep to dung their ground 
 for bearing of corn ; for if they have no sheep to help to fat the ground, they shall have 
 but bare corn and thin. They must have swine for their food, to make their veneries or 
 bacon of : their bacon is their venison, for they shall now have hangum tuum if they get 
 any other venison ; so that bacon is their necessary meat to feed on, which they may 
 not lack. They must have other cattle: as horses to draw their plough, and for car- 
 riage of things to the markets; and kine for their milk and cheese, which they must 
 live upon and pay their rents. These cattle must have pasture, which pasture if they 
 lack, the rest must needs fail them: and pasture they cannot have, if the land be taken 
 in, and enclosed from them.’ 
 
 Only the wish to convince, to denounce vice, and to do justice. 
 No grand words, no show of style, no exaltation. Generally, it 
 may be observed, the preachers of the earlier part of the six- 
 teenth century were accustomed to take a wide range, to bring 
 together into a miscellaneous assortment topics from every 
 region of heaven and earth. Not more fastidious as to manner. 
 Their style, like that of most contemporary prose, is simpler in 
 construction, more familiar and homely, than that which came 
 into fashion in the later years of the Elizabethan period. Their 
 kind of writing, however, though indirectly interesting and his- 
 torically valuable, can hardly be regarded as partaking the char- 
 acter of literary composition. 
 
 But that which penetrated the imagination and language of 
 England more than any word, lay or ecclesiastic, was the Bible 
 itself, wherein the simple folk, without other books and open to 
 new emotions, pricked by the reproaches of conscience and the 
 presentiment of the dark future, looked suddenly with awe and 
 trembling upon the face of the eternal King, read or heard the 
 
PROSE — THE BIBLE — ETHICS. 
 
 327 
 
 tables of his law, the archives of his vengeance, and with the 
 whole attention of eyes and heart filled themselves with his prom- 
 ises and threats. Condemned, hunted, in concealment, Tyndale 
 translated from the Greek, in the reign of Henry VIII, the New 
 Testament and a portion of the Old. It was this Book which, 
 revised by Coverdale, and edited in 1539, as CromioelVs Bible, 
 again in 1540, as Granger's Bible , was set up in every English 
 parish church by the very sovereign who had caused the trans- 
 lator to be strangled and burned. It was not only a discovery of 
 salvation to the troubled conscience, but the revelation of a new 
 literature — the only literature practically accessible to all, and 
 comprising at once legends and annals, war-song and psalm, phi- 
 losophy and vision. Imagine the effect upon minds essentially 
 unoccupied by any history, romance, or poetry, and anxiously 
 alive to the grandeurs and terrors which pass before their eyes as 
 they gather in crowds Sunday after Sunday, day after day, to 
 hear its marvellous accent: 
 
 ‘Many well-disposed people used much to resort to the hearing thereof, especially 
 when they could get any that had an audible voice to read to them. . . . One John 
 Porter used sometimes to be occupied in that goodly exercise, to the edifying of him- 
 self as well as others. This Porter was a fresh young man and of a big stature; and 
 great multitudes would resort thither to hear him, because he could read well and 
 had an audible voice.’ 
 
 The Koran alone can boast an equal share of reverence, spread 
 far and wide; and as a mere literary monument, the English Bible 
 is the noblest example of the English tongue. Of its 6,000 words, 
 only 250 are not in common use, and nearly all of these last are 
 readily understood. 
 
 Ethics. — Occam, the Nominalist, had taught that moral dis- 
 tinctions originate in the arbitrary appointment of God; that ‘no 
 act is evil but as prohibited by Him, or which cannot be made 
 good by His command.’ 
 
 Catholics, who appealed to tradition, Protestants, who appealed 
 only to Scripture, — confirmed the pernicious error. On none 
 of these principles could there be a science of morality. That 
 was possible only when men, seeking for just ideas of right and 
 wrong, should begin to interrogate their moral sense more than 
 the books of theologians, and make this faculty the supreme arbi- 
 ter, moulding theology into conformity with its dictates. The 
 moral was still subordinate to the dogmatic side of religion. It 
 
328 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 needed the profound sagacity of Hooker to give anything like 
 currency to the following principle, in which the rationalistic 
 tendency to a philosophy of morals is first decidedly manifest: 
 
 ‘Those precepts which learned men have committed to writing, transcribing them 
 from the common reason and common feelings of human nature, are to be accounted 
 not less divine than those contained in the tables given to Moses; nor was it God’s 
 intention to supersede by a law graven on stone that which is written with His own 
 finger on the table of the heart.’ 
 
 Two years later, in 1596, appeared Lord Bacon’s Essays , 
 which, if they offered nothing new to the English heart, revealed 
 much to the English consciousness, and formed an emphatic 
 agency in the history of English practical ethics. 
 
 In general, estimated by the standard of the present, moral 
 perceptions were clouded, and moral sympathies were neither 
 expansive nor acute. Add to this the reflexive influence of 
 religious belief — in particular, the doctrine of exclusive salva- 
 tion, and we have an adequate explanation of the burnings, 
 tortures, imprisonments, animosities and wars which for so many 
 centuries marked the conflicts of theological bodies. As long 
 as it was believed that those who rejected certain opinions were 
 excluded from eternal felicity, so long would scepticism be 
 branded a sin, and credulity a virtue. As long as the Church, 
 by a favorite image of the Fathers, was regarded as a solitary 
 Ark floating on a boundless sea of ruin, the heretic, as an 
 offender against the Almighty, was to be reclaimed or pun- 
 ished, and heresy was to be corrected or stifled — by persuasion 
 if possible, by violence if necessary. While some of the perse- 
 cutions, even some of the most atrocious, sprang from purely 
 selfish motives, I doubt not that they were mainly due to the 
 sincere conviction that the cause of truth (as apprehended) 
 required the sacrifice of its foes. Men had yet to learn that 
 mere acts of the understanding are neither right nor wrong; 
 and that unbelief, whether good or bad, must receive its charac- 
 ter from the dispositions or motives which produce or pervade it. 
 
 Science. — ‘In Wonder,’ says Coleridge, ‘all Philosophy be- 
 gan; in Wonder it ends: and Admiration fills up the interspace.’ 
 Better, it is suggested, — and Investigation fills up the inter- 
 space. In the first wonder and the last, the poet and the philos- 
 opher are akin; but the emotion tends to different results. The 
 former wonders at the beauty in the face of Nature, but seeks 
 
PROSE — RISE OF SCIENCE. 
 
 329 
 
 no explanation, — reads its inner meaning, and tries to utter it. 
 The latter wonders at what he sees, but scrutinizes appearances 
 to find the laws which regulate them. The two processes — im- 
 aginative intuition and painful analysis — are distinct, not to be 
 combined in one intellectual act, nor scarcely to coexist in one 
 mind. The latter does not assert itself till objects pass from the 
 poetic flush of emotion into the colder region of rational insight. 
 Therefore, beyond a few exceptional and isolated facts, there was 
 as yet no English science. But at the close of the sixteenth 
 century the daylight of scientific speculation and experiment had 
 already arisen on the Continent. Memorably, after twenty years’ 
 study of the heavens from the window of his garret, Copernicus 
 the Pole founded modern astronomy. He came to the conclu- 
 sion, as had Aristarchus in the third century before Christ, that 
 the sun is immovable, while the earth and planets revolve around 
 it. Afraid of public opinion, he refused to publish. Bruno the 
 Italian espoused his theory with ardor, propagated it, as well as 
 the plurality of worlds, with haughty defiance, — and was burned 
 by the Inquisition. The fact survived, soon to effect an impor- 
 tant revolution in our conceptions. As long as the globe was 
 believed to be the central object of the universe, and the stars 
 but inconsiderable lights to garnish its firmament, it was as- 
 signed a similar position in the moral scheme; and every phe- 
 nomenon, human and divine, terrestrial and celestial, was sup- 
 posed to have some bearing upon the acts and history of man. 
 But when this ‘goodly ball’ was seen to be only a moving point 
 in infinite space — a mere infinitesimal fraction in creation, human 
 egotism was succeeded by a depressing sense of insignificance, 
 and the way was open for the gradual substitution of the idea of 
 law for that of supernatural intervention. 
 
 Every priest in the Cathedral of Pisa, every woman and child 
 at Christmas, saw the great lamps which hung from the ceiling, 
 some by a longer, some by a shorter chain, — saw them swing in 
 the wind that came in with the crowd, as the Christmas-doors, 
 storied all over with mediaeval fictions, opened wide; but only 
 Galileo, a student not yet twenty, saw that the motion of the 
 swinging lamps w r as uniform, and proportional to the length of 
 the chain — each a great clock whereof he alone had the dial. 
 For five hundred years these lamps, swinging slowly to and fro, 
 
830 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 had been virtually proclaiming the law of gravitation, but Gali- 
 leo was the first who heard it. This was the great principle of 
 the Pendulum. So does genius find general laws in facts which 
 have been familiar to everybody since the world was. 
 
 In England, meanwhile, much of the progress abroad probably 
 remained unknown. Various mathematical works were produced 
 in the vernacular in the first half of the century, by William 
 Record, a jnhysician. Says a contemporary: 
 
 ‘ He was the first who wrote on arithmetic in English ; the first who wrote on geome- 
 try in English; the first who introduced algebra into England; the first who wrote on 
 astronomy and the doctrine of the sphere in English; and finally the first Englishman 
 who adopted the system of Copernicus.' 
 
 He styled the first the Ground of Arts; the second, Pathway to 
 Knowledge ; the third, Whetstone of Wit; the fourth, the Castle 
 of Knowledge. In 1599, Thomas Hill published The School of 
 Skill , which is described as 4 an account of the heavens and the 
 surface of the earth, replete with those notions on astrology and 
 physics which are not very common in the works of Record.’ 
 The author refers to the scheme of Pythagoras and Copernicus, 
 by which, as he expresses it, 4 they took the earth from the 
 middle of the world, and placed it in a peculiar orb.’ He adds: 
 
 ‘But overpassing such reasons, lest by the newness of the arguments they may 
 offend or trouble young students in the art, we therefore (by true knowledge of the wise) 
 do attribute the middle seat of the world to the earth, and appoint it the centre of the 
 whole.’ 
 
 Gilbert’s book On Magnetism (1600) marks the origin of the 
 modern science of electricity. Medicine was practiced and 
 taught on the revised principles of the ancients. Henry VIII 
 incorporated the College of Physicians in 1518. From the time 
 of Edward the Confessor, the power of kings, to touch for the 
 King’s Evil seems never to have been doubted, and to have been 
 extensively exercised. The Breviary of Health , by Andrew 
 Borde (1547), is a curious suggestion of the state of medical 
 science. It has a prologue addressed to physicians, beginning: 
 
 ‘Egregious doctors, and masters of the eximious and arcane science of physick, of 
 your urbanity exasperate not yourselves against me for making this little volume.' 
 
 The ‘volume’ treats not only of bodily disease, but of mental, 
 as in ‘the 174 Chapter,’ which 4 doth shewe of an infirmitie 
 named Hereos’: 
 
 '■Uereos is the Grckc worde. In Latin, it is named Amor. In English it is named 
 Love-sick, and women may haue this fickleness as well as men. Young persons be much 
 troubled with this impediment.’ 
 
PROSE — REVIVAL OF PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 331 
 
 The following is the remedy prescribed: 
 
 ‘First I do advertize every person not to set to the heart what another doth set to the 
 hole. Let no man set his love so far, but that he may withdraw it betime; and muse not, 
 but use mirth and mery company and be wyse, and not foolish.’ 
 
 Philosophy. — So far as it concerns the history of philoso- 
 phy, the Renaissance meant the revival of Platonism and the 
 insurgence against scholastic antiquity. Never had monarch 
 been so nearly universal and absolute as Aristotle. For two 
 thousand years he had dictated to the nations what to believe. 
 Amid all the commotions of Empire and the war of words, he 
 had kept his throne and state, unshaken and undisturbed. His 
 autocratical edict was placed by the side of the Gospel. His ten 
 categories, which pretend to classify every object of human 
 apprehension, were held as another Revelation. Universities 
 were his sentinels. Parliaments issued decrees banishing those 
 who maintained theses against him. His name was a synonym 
 for reason. To contradict him was to contradict the Church, 
 whose integrity was based on the immovable conformity of all 
 human opinions. In vain did Galileo try to convince the learned 
 of Pisa that bodies of unequal weight, dropped from the same 
 height, would reach the ground in equal times. They saw the 
 weights fall from the top of the tower, saw them strike the 
 ground simultaneously; but they would not believe, for Aristotle 
 had said that a ten-pound weight would fall ten times as fast as 
 a one-pound weight. A student, having detected spots in the 
 sun, communicated his discovery to a worthy priest, who replied: 
 
 ‘My son, I have read Aristotle many times, and I assure you there is nothing of the 
 kind mentioned by him. Go rest in peace; and be certain that the spots which you have 
 seen are in your eyes, and not in the sun.' 
 
 But early in the sixteenth century revolt had broken forth, in 
 Italy, in Spain, in France, in Germany, even in England. In 
 1535, a royal commission abolished from the two universities the 
 works of the famous Duns Scotus. Said the report, in a tone of 
 triumph: ‘We have set Dunce in Bocardo, 1 and have utterly 
 banished him from Oxford forever, with all his blind glosses.’ 
 In 1583, Bruno, a lionized foreigner, a knight-errant of truth, 
 opened under the patronage of Elizabeth, a public disputation, in 
 which he combated the Aristotelians with stirring eloquence. 
 
 1 A figure of syllogism terminatiug in a negative conclusion, and implying therefore 
 annihilation. 
 
332 
 
 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 He styled the wise conclave of liis opponents ‘a constellation 
 of pedants, whose ignorance, presumption, and rustic rudeness 
 would have exhausted the patience of Job.’ To all the reform- 
 ers, however various their doctrines, one spirit seems to have 
 been common, — unhesitating opposition to the dominant author- 
 ity. Each in his own way, the new generation were emancipat- 
 ing themselves from the dogmas of the ancient dictator. Scho- 
 lasticism, majestic in its decay, was fast losing its hold upon the 
 mind of the age. As yet, however, there was nothing better to 
 accept in its stead. Being the whole philosophy, mental and 
 physical, then taught, its abolition from the academical course 
 was tantamount to the ejection of philosophical studies entirely. 
 So it happens that all departments — physics, metaphysics, and 
 ethics — were alike barren. Materials were at hand, indeed, for 
 the most successful research; but there was need of an instructor, 
 an organizer, who should reduce to form and method the discord- 
 ant elements, and cut, as it were, a new channel in which the 
 philosophic spirit of the world should flow. 
 
 Resume. — The feudal system, worn out and vicious, unable 
 to give to a general society either security or progress, disap- 
 pears; and European society passes from the dominion of spirit- 
 ual to that of temporal governments, in which the essential fact 
 is centralization of power. A new and remarkable species of 
 politicians appears — the first generation of professional states- 
 men, all laymen, all cultured, all men of peace, who direct the 
 politics of England dexterously, resolutely, gloriously. The 
 nobles cease to be military chieftains, the priests cease to pos- 
 sess a monopoly of learning. Chivalry, no longer a controlling 
 institution, has been refined of its grossness, and retaining only 
 its beauty, gives color and flavor to society, and tinctures strongly 
 poetic sentiment. Literature proper still belongs almost exclu- 
 sively to the upper classes, but these are being greatly increased 
 by additions of rich citizens, who are growing up to be the body 
 of the nation. Vestiges of slavery still exist, yeomen lead a 
 coarse and brutish life, vagrancy and crime are inadequately 
 suppressed by severe laws unequally administered. Language 
 reaches its full stature, strong, flexible, and copious; adequate 
 to the needs of philosophic thought and of deep and varied feel- 
 ing. The aroused spirit of travel and adventure brings races 
 
RESUME. 
 
 333 
 
 face to face, widens the sphere of human interest, and by its 
 revelations gives life and richness to the imagination. The 
 Reformation, connected on the one side with scholarship, un- 
 locks the sealed treasures of the Bible, and opens the path for 
 modern biblical criticism; connected on the other with intoler- 
 ance of mere authority, it leads to what has been termed ra- 
 tionalism — the attempt to define the laws which underlie the 
 religious consciousness ; connected with politics, it is linked 
 historically with the approaching Revolution. The veil woven 
 by human hands across the brightness of Christianity is rent 
 asunder, and a new meaning is given to the words: ‘God is a 
 spirit; and they that worship him must worship him in spirit 
 and in truth.’ The Renaissance achieves the discovery of the 
 world and of man, — the first, the exploration of the globe and 
 the exploration of the heavens; the second, the restoration of 
 Pagan antiquity — man in his temporal relations, and the reno- 
 vation of faith — man in his spiritual relations. Printing renders 
 indestructible all knowledge, and disseminates all thought. Sci- 
 ence, rescued from the hands of alchemy and astrology, takes 
 her incipient steps. Philosophy, sundered from Scholasticism 
 and Aristotle, awaits the principle of order — the law and the 
 lawgiver. Prose, waking larger and richer from its sleep, passes- 
 from the elegant simplicity of More to the formal rhetoric of 
 Ascham, and thence from the extravagance of Lily and the 
 JEuphuists to the decorated eloquence of Raleigh and Sidney, 
 gaining, by the close of the period, much in copiousness, in 
 sonorousness, in splendor. Poetry, in Skelton an instrument of 
 reform, revives as an art in Surrey, who gives a sweeter move- 
 ment to English verse, and extends its ‘lyrical range.’ In the 
 poems of Spenser are reflected the roseate hues, the higher 
 elements, of the English Renaissance; while its higher and lower 
 alike are reflected in the drama, which is both indigenous and 
 national. In it is directly imaged the whole of English life — 
 character, class, condition, in all their varieties; and the poets 
 who establish it carry in themselves the sentiments which it 
 displays, — happy and abundant feeling, free and full desire, the 
 overflowing of nature, the worship of beauty and of vigor, the 
 energy of pride, the despair of destiny, the insurrection of reason, 
 the turbulence of passion, the brutality of evil lusts, and the 
 
334 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 divine innocence of love, all the luxuriance and irregularity of 
 men who feel the sudden advance of corporal well-being, and are 
 scarcely recovered from barbarism. A constellation of kindred 
 spirits, with unequal success but with the same unconcerned pro- 
 fusion, express the new art, closing around Shakespeare, who 
 expresses it fully, towering above his fellows ‘in shape and ges- 
 ture proudly eminent,’ — all impelled by the same causes in their 
 whirling and eccentric career; for the productive forces which 
 culminate in the reign of Elizabeth, ripen some of their distinctive 
 fruits in the times immediately subsequent. The last portion of 
 the sixteenth century, with the earlier of the seventeenth, consti- 
 tutes the great era of our literary history, and the first of its 
 stages of consecutive progress, in which the warmth of soul, the 
 love of truth, the passion for freedom, and the sense of human 
 dignity, are the promise of eternal development. Consider the 
 mass of knowledge we have since acquired — knowledge infinitely 
 curious and infinitely useful, consider how much of this kind was 
 acquired in the ten centuries which preceded — then you may 
 estimate the expansive force generated in this notable epoch of 
 human growth. 
 
 MORE. 
 
 Like Cato firm, like Aristides just, 
 
 Like rigid Cincinnatus nobly poor,— 
 
 A dauntless soul erect, who smiled on death. — Thomson. 
 
 Biography. — Born in London, in 1489, of noble parentage; at 
 fifteen, a page in the household of Cardinal Morton, who said of 
 him: ‘Whoever may live to see it, this boy now waiting at table 
 will turn out a marvellous man’; at seventeen, a law-student in 
 Oxford University; championed the ‘Greeks’ against the ‘Tro- 
 jans’; practised his profession; lectured on divinity; entered 
 Parliament at twenty-two ; became Speaker of the Commons; 
 defeated the royal demand for a heavy subsidy; withdrew from 
 public life under the royal displeasure; rose into repute at the 
 bar, wrote and published; was forced back into the political cur- 
 rent by the accession of Plenry VIII; was soon in the king’s 
 
MORE. 
 
 335 
 
 favor as counsellor and diplomatist; succeeded Wolsey as Chan- 
 cellor in 1529, the first layman appointed to that office; refused, 
 as a zealous Catholic, to acknowledge the validity of Henry’s 
 marriage with Anne Boleyn, or his headship of the English 
 Church, and the neck that oft had been familiarly encircled by 
 the royal arm was in 1535 cleft by the headsman’s axe. A strik- 
 ing illustration of the truth of Wolsey’s words to Cromwell, — 
 
 ‘How wretched 
 
 Is that poor man who hangs on princes’ favors ! 1 
 
 Writings. — He wrote numerous theological tracts, but of 
 local or passing interest, and all inflamed by a passion which be- 
 trayed him — otherwise clear-headed — into violent expression 
 and confusion of thought. Much of his fame as a writer rests 
 upon his Life of Richard Ilf of doubtful historical value, but 
 of great philological importance, as the best English secular 
 prose which had yet been written. More is better known by his 
 Latin work, Utopia , — a vision of the kingdom of ‘Nowhere,’ 
 the leading design of which, under the veil of fanciful fiction, is 
 to correct abuses and suggest reforms. A sailor who has voy- 
 aged into new and unknown worlds, gives him an account of an 
 imaginary republic risen, as by enchantment, in the form of a 
 crescent, out of the bosom of the watery waste. In its laws and 
 institutions, in its moral and physical aspects, it realizes the 
 author’s ideal of a perfect society, and shows thus, by contrast, 
 the defective one in which he lives. The principal city of the 
 Utopians — 
 
 ‘Is compassed about with a high and thick stone wall, full of tunnels and bulwarks. 
 A dry ditch, but deep, goeth about three sides. On the fourth side the river serveth for a 
 ditch. The streets be twenty feet broad. On the back side of the houses, through the 
 whole length of the street, lay large gardens. The houses arc curiously builded after a 
 gorgeous and gallant sort, with three stories, one over the other, the outside being of hard 
 plaster, or else of brick, and the inner side well strengthened with timber-work. . . . 
 They keep the wind out of their windows with glass, for it is there much used, and also 
 with fine linen cloth dipped in oil, for by this means more light cometh in and the wind 
 is better kept out.’ 
 
 In Utopia are no taverns, no fashions ever changing, few laws 
 and no lawyers. All learn agriculture; and each, in addition, a 
 trade. They labor six hours a day, and sleep eight. War is a 
 brutal thing, hunting a degrading thing: 
 
 ‘What pleasure, they ask, can one find in seeing dogs run after a hare? It ought 
 rather to stir pity, when a weak, harmless, and timid hare is devoured by a strong, fierce, 
 and cruel dog. Therefore, all this business of hunting is, among the Utopians, turned 
 
336 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 over to their butchers; and they look on hunting as one of the basest parts of a butcher's 
 work.’ 
 
 Wisdom is preferred to riches, the formation of character to the 
 accumulation of property. Virtue is nobility. Integrity is the 
 marble statue which survives the sacking of cities and the down- 
 fall of empires: 
 
 * The Utopians wonder how any man should be so much taken with the glaring, doubt- 
 ful lustre of a jewel or stone, that can look up to a star, or to the sun itself: or how any 
 should value himself because his cloth is made of finer thread; for, how fine soever that 
 thread may he, it was once no better than the fleece of a sheep, and that sheep was a 
 sheep still for all its wearing it. They wonder much to hear that gold, which in itself is 
 so useless a thing, should be everywhere so much esteemed, that even man, for whom it 
 was made, and by whom it has its value, should yet be thought of less value than it is,* 
 so that a man of lead, who has no more sense than a log of wood, and is as bad as he is 
 foolish, should have many wise and good men serving him, only because he had a great 
 heap of that metal.’ 
 
 To this day tolerance is far from being a general virtue. Perse- 
 cution has indeed given up its halter and fagot, but it secretly 
 blasts what it cannot openly destroy. In ‘Nowhere,’ however, it 
 is lawful for every man to be of what faith he will. Each may 
 propagate his creed by argument — never by violence or insult. 
 Religion rests simply on nature and reason, finds its centre rather 
 in the family than in the congregation, holds asceticism to be 
 thanklessness, and bases its unity on the moral and spiritual 
 cohesion of motives. If Utopia contains impracticable dreams of 
 political organization, it also anticipates the views and improve- 
 ments of the latest and wisest legislation. While in England 
 half the population are unable to read, in ‘Nowhere’ every child 
 is well taught. The aim of the laws is the comprehensive wel- 
 fare of the labor-class as the true basis of a well-ordered common- 
 wealth. Is it not true to-day that the civilized world, with its 
 palaces, libraries, academies of science, and galleries of art, rests 
 on the solid shoulders of farmers and mechanics? All the im- 
 provements in our criminal system are the Utopian conceptions 
 of More, who insists, centrally, that the proper end of punish- 
 ment is reformation, and that the most effective means of sup- 
 pressing crime is prevention: 
 
 ‘If you allow your people to be badly taught, their morals to be corrupted from child- 
 hood, and then when they are men punish them for the very crimes to which they have 
 been trained in childhood — what is this but first to make thieves, and then to punish 
 them?' 
 
 Style. — Easy and flowing, without pedantry and without vul- 
 garisms; rivalling in purity his great antagonist, Tyndale; so 
 
MOKE. 
 
 337 
 
 graphic in description that many* of the learned received the 
 Utopia as a true history, and thought it expedient to send mis- 
 sionaries to that island for the conversion of so wise a people to 
 Christianity; so buoyant in tone, that in the grave and sullen 
 pages of polemics, it jests, smiles, rails, or drifts into ludicrous 
 ribaldry; for, on questions of religious reform, More was a mad- 
 man, and sarcasm was at any moment liable to pass into scurril- 
 ity. Thus, of one Richard Mayfield, a monk and a priest, he 
 says: 
 
 ♦His holy life well declares his heresies, when, being both a priest and a monk, he 
 went about two wives, one in Brabant, another in England. What he meant I cannot 
 make you sure, whether he would be sure of the one if t’other should happen to refuse 
 him; or that he would have them both, the one here, the other there; or else both in one 
 place, the one because he was priest, the other because he was monk.’ 
 
 Of a famous invective against the clergy, who, though only ‘a 
 four hundredth part of the nation, held half the revenues,’ he 
 writes: 
 
 ‘And now we have this gosling with his “Supplication of Beggars.” He maketh his 
 bill in the name of the beggars. The bill is couched as full of lies as the beggar swarm- 
 eth full of lice.' 
 
 He looked upon literature without humor, as a banquet without 
 sauce; and, even in combating heresy, conceived it better 4 to 
 tell his mind merrily than more solemnly to preach.’ 
 
 Rank. — A scholar, a lawyer, a theologian, a wit, a politician 
 without ambition, a lord-chancellor who entered and resigned his 
 office poor, a sage whose wisdom lay concealed in his philosoph- 
 ical pleasantry, a theorist and a seer, — 
 
 ‘Who could forerun his age and race, and let 
 His feet millenniums hence be set 
 In midst of knowledge dreamed not yet ’ ; 
 
 a martyr who laid his head upon the block, to seal his conscience 
 with his blood; the most illustrious figure — save Wolsey — in the 
 reign of Henry VIII; an author who missed the full immortality 
 of his genius by the infelicity of his subjects, but whose massive 
 folio remains a monument of our language in its pristine vigor; 
 memorable as the first in jDrose to gauge the means of striking 
 the attention, to study the art of arrangement and effect; hence, 
 in the order of time, the first of our great English prose writers. 
 The following letter to his children — in itself an admirable pict- 
 ure — shows an intellect grown capable of self-criticism, possessed 
 of ideas and expressing them by superior reflection : 
 
 22 
 
338 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 ‘The merchant of Bristow brought unto me your letters, the next day after he had 
 received them of you; with the which I was exceedingly delighted. For there can 
 come nothing, yea, though it were never so rude, never so meanly polished, from this 
 your shop, but it procureth me more delight than any others’ works, be they never so 
 eloquent: your writing doth so stir up my affection towards you. But, excluding this, 
 your letters may also very well please me for their own worth, being full of fine wit and 
 of a pure Latin phrase: therefore none of them all but joyed me exceedingly. Yet, to 
 tell you ingenuously what I think, my son John’s letter pleased me best; both because it 
 was longer than the ether, as also for that he seemeth to have taken more pains than the 
 rest. For he not only painteth out the matter decently, and speaketh elegantly;' but he 
 playeth also pleasantly with me, and returneth my jests upon me again, very wittily. 
 Hereafter I expect every day letters from every one of you: neither will I accept of such 
 excuses as you complain of ; that you have no leisure, or that the carrier went away sud- 
 denly, or that you have no matter to write: John is not wont to allege any such thing. 
 And how can you want matter of writing unto me, who am delighted to hear either of 
 your studies or of your play; whom you may even then please exceedingly, when, having 
 nothing to write of, you write as largely as you can of that nothing, than which nothing is 
 more easy for you to do. 
 
 But this I admonish you to do; that, whether you write of serious matters or of 
 trifles, you write with diligence and consideration, premeditating of it before. Neither 
 will it be amiss, if yon first indite it in English; for then it may more easily be translated 
 into Latin, whilst the mind, free from inventing, is attentive to find apt and eloquent 
 words. And, although I put this to your choice, whether you will do so or no, yet I enjoin 
 you, by all means, that you diligently examine what you have written before you write it 
 over fair again; first considering attentively the whole sentence, and after examine every 
 part thereof ; by which means you may easily find out if any solecisms have escaped you; 
 which being put out, and your letter written fair, yet then let it not also trouble you to 
 examine it over again; for sometimes the same faults creep in at the second writing, 
 which you before had blotted out. By this your diligence you will procure, that those your 
 trifles will seem serious matters. For, as nothing is so pleasing but may be made unsavory 
 by prating garrulity, so nothing is by nature so unpleasant, that by industry may not be 
 made full of grace and pleasantness. Farewell, my sweetest children.’ 
 
 Character. — Of keen irregular features, gray restless eye, 
 tumbled brown hair, careless gait and dress, — the outer pictures 
 the inner man, cheerful, witty even to recklessness, kindly, half- 
 sadly humorous, throwing the veil of laughter and of tears over 
 the tender reverence of the soul. He married his first wife out 
 of pure benevolence, thinking how much it would grieve her to 
 see her younger sister, whom be loved the better, preferred 
 before her. As his wife, it was his delight to train her in his own 
 taste for letters and for music. Among his children, he was a 
 loving companion and a wise teacher, luring them to the deeper 
 studies by relics and curiosities gathered in his cabinet. Fond 
 of their pets and their games as they themselves. He would take 
 scholars and statesmen into his garden to see his girls’ rabbits or 
 watch the gambols of their favorite monkey. ‘I have given you 
 kisses enough,’ he wrote them, ‘but stripes hardly ever.’ In con- 
 versation and writing, humor was his constitutional temper. At 
 the most solemn moments of his life, he was facetious. In the 
 
MORE. 
 
 339 
 
 Tower, denied pen and ink, he writes to his daughter Margaret, 
 and tells her, ‘This letter is written with a coal’; but that, to 
 express his love, a peck of coals would not suffice. Climbing 
 the crazy timbers where he was to die, he said gaily to the lieu- 
 tenant, ‘I pray you see me safe up; and for my coming down, 
 let me shift for myself.’ When life and death were within a 
 second of each other, he bade the executioner to stay his hand 
 till he had removed his beard, observing, ‘ Pity that should be 
 cut, which has never committed treason.’ His fatalistic maxim 
 was : 
 
 ‘If evils come not, then our fears are vain; 
 
 And if they do, fear but augments the pain.’ 
 
 His character presents many opposite and, unhappily, some in- 
 consistent qualities. Beneath his sunny nature lay a stern 
 inflexibility of resolve. When he took office, it was with the 
 open stipulation, ‘first to look to God, and after God to the 
 king.’ He laughed at the superstition and asceticism of the 
 day, yet every Friday scourged his body with whips of knotted 
 cords, and by way of further penance wore his hair-shirt next to 
 his lacerated skin. Once an opponent of abuses in the Church, 
 when the Reformation was sprung, he went violently back to the 
 extreme of maintaining the whole fabric of idolatry. Playful 
 and affectionate in his own household, his abuses of power are a 
 cloud on his memory. Free-thinker, as the bigots termed him, 
 he appeals to miraculous relics as the evidences of his faith. In 
 allusion to a napkin sent to King Abgarus, on which Jesus 
 impressed the image of his own face, he says: 
 
 ‘And it hath been by like miracle in the thin corruptible cloth kept and preserved 
 these 1500 years fresh and well preserved, to the inward comforts, spiritual rejoicing, and 
 great increase of fervor, in the hearts of good Christian people.’ 
 
 Theoretically opposed to sanguinary laws, he spared no pains to 
 carry the most sanguinary into execution. He wished to have it 
 engraved on his tombstone that he was ‘ Furibus , Homicidis , 
 Hcereticisque molestus ’ — the scourge of Thieves, Murderers, and 
 Heretics — the last being the greatest malefactors of the three. 
 
 Influence. — Viewed in active as in meditative life, in public 
 as in private relations, the character, the events, and the works 
 of this distinguished man will be always interesting and always 
 instinctive. Under his free and copious vein, the vernacular 
 
340 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 idiom enlarged the compass of its expression. To him belongs 
 the merit of having struck out, in advance of his age, and, as it 
 afterward appeared, in advance of himself, a new path in litera- 
 ture, — that of political romances, wherein his successors — among 
 them, Swift — were to be indebted largely to his reasoning and 
 inventive talents. His antagonism to the Reformation could at 
 most prove a transient evil, hardly appreciable, if so mucli as a 
 retarding force. But the comprehensive dreams of the Utopia 
 have haunted every nobler soul. Excellence is perpetual, and all 
 of it exists in vision before it exists in fact. The Utopia has 
 long afforded to conservatives a term of reproach applicable to 
 all reformatory schemes and innovations. There is a large class 
 of persons with whom the idea of fnaking the world better and 
 happier is ever regarded with distrust or contempt. He who 
 entertains it is an unpractical dreamer. His project is straight- 
 way pronounced to be Utopian. Of which the moral, to the 
 wise, is: Look kindly upon the ‘vagaries’ of the ‘dreamer’ and 
 the ‘fanatic’; reflect that what was folly to our ancestors, is 
 wisdom to us, and that another generation may successfully 
 practice what we now reject as impossible or regard with an 
 incredulous smile. The idealizing power of the race — I would 
 have it engraved upon the living tablets of every human mem- 
 ory — is the most potent force of its development. A family of 
 equals, — a community without want, without ignorance, without 
 crime, — a church of righteousness, — a state where the intuitions 
 of conscience have been codified into statutes, — are all possible, 
 just as possible as cultivated America, jewelled all over with 
 cities and fair towns, factories and schools, which no one would 
 have dared to prophesy some hundred years ago. A steam- 
 engine is only an opinion dressed in iron. A republic is but 
 an idea worked out into men. The difference between a savage 
 and an Angelo was once a power of progress. Desire only points 
 to the reserve of power that one day shall satisfy it. 
 
THE JEWEL OF THE COURT. 
 
 341 
 
 SIDNEY. 
 
 Warbler of poetic prose.— Cowper. 
 
 Biography. — Of high birth, born in Kent, in 1554; at thir- 
 teen entered Oxford, where he won distinction as a scholar; at 
 eighteen, without a degree, though trained in polite literature, 
 began a tour of travel embracing France, Germany, and Italy; 
 was in Paris during the massacre of St. Bartholomew; read Plato 
 and Aristotle; studied Astronomy and Geometry at Venice; pon- 
 dered over the Greek tragedies and the Italian sonnets; returned 
 to England in his twenty-first year, a polished and accomplished 
 man; instantly became a favorite of the Queen and the Court, 
 where he shone as one of the most brilliant; at twenty -two, an 
 ambassador for the promotion of a Protestant league among the 
 princes of the Continent ; at twenty-nine, married, and was 
 knighted; two years later, was a candidate for the throne of 
 Poland, but yielded to the remonstrance of Elizabeth, who feared 
 to lose ‘the jewel of her times’; shortly after, a cavalry officer 
 fighting in the cause of the Netherlands; mortally wounded in 
 battle, he died on the 17th of October, 1586, lamented abroad, 
 honored at home with a public funeral in the cathedral of St. 
 Paul’s, while the whole nation went into mourning for their hero. 
 
 Writings. — Far from the glittering whirl of the Court, in 
 the shelter of the forest oaks, Sidney wrote for his own and his 
 sister’s amusement the Arcadia , a romance of love and chivalry, 
 narrated in prose mixed with verse, in imitation of Italian mod- 
 els, with pastoral episodes, in the manner of the Spanish. Two 
 princes, cousins, in quest of adventure, attached to each other in 
 chivalrous fashion, are wrecked on the coast of Sparta, wander 
 providentially and mysteriously into the kingdom of Arcadia, 
 fall in love with the king’s two daughters, and, after passing 
 through many severe trials, marry them, and are happy. You 
 will find in it profusion of startling events and tragical or fan- 
 tastic images, — shipwrecks, deliverances, surprises, abductions, 
 pirates, wicked fairies, dancing shepherds, disguised princes, 
 songs, allegories, sensuous beauties, tournaments of wit. It is 
 less a monument than a relic, not more an image of the time 
 than of the man, who had said: ‘It is a trifle; my young head 
 
342 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 must be delivered.’ In works of courtly taste and impassioned 
 youth, look for excessive sentiment. A lover sends a letter to 
 his love, and says to the ink: 
 
 ‘Therefore mourne boldly, my inke; for while shee lookes upon you, your black- 
 nesse will shine: cry out boldly my lamentation ; for while shee reades you, your cries 
 will be musicke . 1 
 
 Two young princesses have retired: 
 
 ‘They impoverished their clothes to enrich their bed, which for that night might 
 well scorne the shrine of Venus; and there cherishing one another with deare, though 
 chaste embracements; with sweet, though cold kisses; it might seeme that love was 
 come to play him there without dart, or that wearie of his owne fires, he was there to 
 refreshe himselfe between their sweet breathing lippes . 1 
 
 It is, in part, the knightly desire of effect; in part, the exagger- 
 ation of inventive fire, confusing the story by endless digressions, 
 and marring now and then idea, as well as expression, by un- 
 natural refinements. Hence, the Arcadia is above the prose- 
 level by its poetic genius, absorbing reveries, and tumultuous 
 thoughts. So, it was long, and may still remain, the haunt of 
 poets. Stately periods, luxuriant imagery, graceful fancies, natu- 
 ral freshness, piercing through the outward crust of affectation, 
 withstanding the revolutions of times and tastes. For example: 
 
 ‘ In the time that the morning did strew roses and violets in the heavenly floore against 
 the coming of the sun, the nightingales (striving one with the other which could in most 
 dainty varieties recount their wronge-caused sorrow) made them put off their sleep . 1 
 
 Or the scenery of Arcadia: 
 
 ‘There were hills which garnished their proud heights with stately trees; humble val- 
 leys, whose base estate seemed comforted with the refreshing of silver rivers; meadows, 
 enamelled with all sorts of eye-pleasing flowers; thickets, which being lined with most 
 pleasant shade, were witnessed so to, by the cheerful disposition of many well-tuned 
 birds; [each pasture stored with sheep, feeding with sober security; while the pretty 
 lambs, with bleating oratory, craved the dam's comfort; here a shepherd’s boy piping, as 
 though he should never be old ; there a young shepherdess knitting, and withal singing ; 
 and it seemed that her voice comforted her hands to work, and her hands kept time to her 
 voice-music . 1 
 
 Growing Puritanism disparaged poetry, calling the poets of the 
 age ‘caterpillars of the commonwealth.’ Sidney, therefore, as a 
 knight battling for his lady, wrote, in heroic and splendid style, 
 The Defence of Poesy. The conception is noble, the argument 
 profound, the tone vehement and commanding. No art or sci- 
 ence, he reasons, produces such invigorating moral effects; and it 
 possesses this excellence by its superior creative power to dress 
 and embellish nature. He says: 
 
 ‘Now, therein, of all sciences — I speak still of human, and according to the human 
 conceit — is our poet the monarch. For he doth not only shew the way, but giveth so 
 
SIDNEY. 
 
 343 
 
 sweet a prospect into the way, as will entice any. man to enter into it. Nay, he doth, as 
 if your journey should lie through a fair vineyard, at the very first give you a cluster of 
 grapes; that, full of that taste, you may long to pass further. He beginneth not with 
 obscure definitions; which must blur the margin with interpretations, and load the mem- 
 ory with doubtfulness; but he cometh to you with words set with delightful proportion, 
 either accompanied with, or prepared for, the well-enchanting skill of music; and with a 
 tale, forsooth, he cometh unto you, with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old 
 men from the chimney-corner; and pretending no more, doth intend the winning of the 
 mind from wickedness to virtue; even as the child is often brought to take most whole- 
 some things, by hiding them in such other as have a pleasant taste. So is it in men, — 
 most of whom are childish in the best things, till they be cradled in their graves. Glad 
 they will be to hear the tales of Hercules, Achilles, Cyrus, ASneas; and hearing them, 
 must needs hear the right description of wisdom, valour, and justice; which, if they had 
 been barely — that is to say, philosophically — set out, they would swear they be brought 
 to school again.’ 
 
 It was natural that a spirit so ardent and aspiring should feel 
 and paint the sentiment in which all dreams converge — love. 
 More beautiful than anything in the world were the eyes, love- 
 lier still the soul, of Stella (star) who inspired his adoration: 
 
 ‘ Stella, sovereign of my joy, . . . 
 
 Stella, star of heavenly fire, 
 
 Stella, load-star of desire, 
 
 Stella, in whose shining eyes 
 Are the lights of Cupid’s skies. . . . 
 
 Stella, whose voice when it speaks 
 Senses all asunder breaks; 
 
 Stella, whose voice when it singeth, 
 
 Angels to acquaintance bringeth.’ 
 
 To her, he, as Astrophel (lover of the star), addressed one hun- 
 dred and eight sonnets, besides a number of songs; and in addi- 
 tion to these, wrote sixteen others, chiefly amatory. Some are 
 artificial and cold; others, artless and warm: some forced and 
 painful ; others, simple and sweet. There is nothing conven- 
 tional here — only the troubled heart, and the adored image of 
 the absent, seen through worshipful tears: 
 
 ‘When I was forced from Stella ever dear— 
 
 Stella, food of my thoughts, heart of my heart — 
 
 Stella, whose eyes make all my tempests clear — 
 
 By Stella's laws of duty to depart ; 
 
 Alas, I found that she with me did smart; 
 
 I saw that tears did in her eyes appear; 
 
 I saw that sighs her sweetest lips did part, 
 
 And her sad words my sadded sense did hear. 
 
 For me, I wept to see pearls scattered so; 
 
 I sighed her sighs, and wailed for her woe; 
 
 Yet swam in joy, such love in her was seen. 
 
 Thus, while th’ effect most bitter was to me, 
 
 And nothing than the cause more sweet could be, 
 
 I had been vexed, if vexed I had not been.’ 
 
344 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 And nothing* gallant or far-fetched in this, — only real and noble 
 feeling, told in changeful melody: 
 
 ‘Stella, think not that I by verse seek fame, 
 
 Who seek, who hope, who love, who live but thee; 
 
 Thine eyes my pride, thy lips my history: 
 
 If thou praise not, all other praise is shame. 
 
 Nor so ambitious am I, as to frame 
 A nest for my young praise in laurel tree: 
 
 In truth, I swear I wish not there should be 
 Graved in my epitaph a Poet's name. 
 
 Nor, if I would, could I just title make, 
 
 That any laud thereof to me should grow. 
 
 Without my plumes from others’ wings I take: 
 
 For nothing from my wit or will doth flow. 
 
 Since all my words thy beauty doth endite, 
 
 And love doth hold my hand, and makes me write.’ 
 
 What more genuine, free, and graceful than this invocation to 
 exhausted nature’s ‘ sweet restorer ’ ? 
 
 ‘ Come, Sleep ! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace, 
 
 The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe, 
 
 The poor man’s wealth, the prisoner's release, 
 
 Th’ indifferent judge between the high and low; 
 
 With shield of proof shield me from out the press 
 Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw: 
 
 0 make in me those civil wars to cease; 
 
 1 will good tribute pay, if thou do so. 
 
 Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed, 
 
 A chamber deaf to noise and blind to light, 
 
 A rosy garland and a weary head: 
 
 And if these things, as being thine in right, 
 
 Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me. 
 
 Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see.’ 
 
 But there is a divine love which continues the earthly; a death- 
 less beauty, a heavenly brightness, which fails not, and is the 
 soul’s sovereign beatitude: 
 
 ‘Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust; 
 
 And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things; 
 
 Grow rich in that which never taketh rust; 
 
 Whatever fades but fading pleasure brings. 
 
 Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might 
 To that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be; 
 
 Which breaks the clouds, and opens forth the light, 
 
 That doth both shine, and give us sight to see. 
 
 O take fast hold; let that light be thy guide 
 In this small course which, birth draws out to death. 
 
 And think how ill becometli him to slide. 
 
 Who seeketh heaven, and comes of heavenly breath. 
 
 Then farewell, world; thy uttermost I see: 
 
 Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me!’ 
 
 Style. — Always flexible and harmonious, usually decorated 
 and luminous, but ever liable to youth’s unripeness and inequal- 
 
SIDNEY. 
 
 345 
 
 ity; commonly easy and vigorous; occasionally running into 
 trivial conceits and remote comparisons; now, stately or ani- 
 mated; now cramped or irksome; here direct, here overloaded, 
 as of a nimble wit that must regard an object under all its 
 forms, delighting in endless excursions, and perhaps somewhat 
 too studious of display. The demand for what is fine in diction 
 may easily degenerate into admiration of what is superfine. Sid- 
 ney’s style is not a little affected by the prevalent taste for 
 Euphuism , in the use of which, however, he is almost always 
 labored and unnatural. The following passage exhibits the arti- 
 fice to uncommon advantage: 
 
 ‘The messenger made speed and found Argalns at a castle of his own, sitting in a 
 parlor with his fair Parthenia, he reading in a book the stories of Hercules, she sitting 
 by him as to hear him read ; but while his eyes looked on the book, she looked in his 
 eyes, sometimes staying him with some pretty question, not so much to be resolved of her 
 doubt, as to give him occasion to look upon her. A happy couple! he joying in her, she 
 joying in herself, but in herself, because she joyed in him; both increased their riches 
 by giving to each other, each making one life double because they made a double life 
 one. Where desire never wanted satisfaction, nor satisfaction ever bred satiety; he 
 ruling because she would obey, or rather because she would obey, she therein ruling.’ 
 
 Rank. — Less potent and comprehensive than other spirits of 
 his age, but more beautiful and engaging than any; a combina- 
 tion of the scholar, the poet, and the knight-errant; a courtier 
 petted and praised; a patriot who failed in ambition, though 
 educated a statesman, because too fine an ornament of the nation 
 to be spared for its defence; a lover who failed in love, marrying 
 the woman he respected, and losing the one he adored; a soldier, 
 a gentleman, and a gifted writer, whose vigor, variety, and idiom 
 in prose mark a decided advance. Largely conspicuous in life, 
 his merits are apt to be lo^t on the modern reader in consequence 
 of their bedizened dress; for, though his thoughts were noble 
 and his feelings genuine, his fancy was artificial, and tended 
 incessantly to lift his rhetoric on stilts. He will always main- 
 tain, however, a high place as an aesthetic critic, nor an incon- 
 siderable one as a sonneteer. Into what final mould his powers 
 would have run, to what heights they might have attained, had 
 they not been cut off so prematurely, is matter for speculation. 
 
 Character. — So rare a union of attractions is difficult of defi- 
 nition. 4 He hath had,’ was the simple testimonial of a friend, 
 ‘as great love in this life, and as many tears for his death, 
 as ever any had.’ His conception of chivalry — ‘high-erected 
 
346 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 thoughts seated in a heart of courtesy’ — is the fitting descrip- 
 tion of his own manliness, and the charm that made him the 
 idol of court and camp. Scholarly, aspiring, brilliant, ingenuous, 
 brave, and gentle. With a keen sense of pleasure and a thirst 
 for adventure, he possessed a gravity beyond his years. Like 
 most men of high sensibility, he inclined to melancholy and soli- 
 tude. His chief fault — which was the impassioned energy of the 
 age — was an impetuosity of temper, a trait which appears in the 
 following letter addressed to his father’s secretary, and contain- 
 ing what proved to be a groundless accusation: 
 
 ‘Mr. Molynenx— Few words are best. My letters to my father have come to the eyes 
 of some. Neither can I condemn any but you for it. If it be so, you have played the 
 very knave with me; and so I will make you know, if I have good proof of it. But that 
 for so much as is past. For that is to come, I assure you before God, that if ever I know 
 you do so much as read any letter I write to my father, without his commandment, or 
 my consent, I will thrust my dagger into you. And trust to it, for I speak it in earnest. 
 In the meantime, farewell.' 
 
 The closing scenes of his life display the crowning qualities of 
 his character, — magnanimity and seriousness. On the field of 
 carnage, mortally wounded, and perishing of thirst, a cup of 
 water is brought to him ; but as it touches his fevered lips he sees 
 by his side a soldier still more desperately hurt, who is looking 
 at the water with anguish in his face; and he says, ‘Give it to 
 this man; his necessity is yet greater than mine.’ In his last 
 moments, his chaplain — 
 
 ‘proved to him out of the Scriptures, that though his understanding and senses 
 should fail, yet that faith which he had now could not fail; he did, with a cheerful and 
 smiling countenance put forth his hand and slapped me softly on the cheeks. Not 
 long after, he lifted up his eyes and hands, uttering these words, “I would not change 
 my joy for the empire of the world.” . . . Having made a comparison of God’s grace 
 now in him, his former virtues seemed to be nothing; for he wholly condemned his 
 former life. “All'things in it,” he said, “have been vain, vain, vain.” 1 
 
 Influence. — A work so extensively perused as was the 
 Arcadia must have contributed not a little to liberalize and 
 dignify English speech, and to create, among writers, a bold and 
 imaginative use of words. From him, as from a fountain, the 
 most vigorous shoots of the period drew something of their verd- 
 ure and their strength. Shakespeare was his attentive reader, 
 copied his diction, transferred his ideas — above all, his fine con- 
 ceptions of female character. Thus, in poetic prose of Sidney: 
 
 ‘More sweet than a gentle south-west wind, which comes creeping over flowery 
 fields and shadowed waters in the extreme heat of summer.’ 
 
HOOKER. 
 
 347 
 
 Said Shakespeare, after him: 
 
 ‘Oh! it came o’er my ear like the sweet south, 
 
 That breathes upon a bank of violets, 
 
 Stealing and giving odor.’ 
 
 And Coleridge: 
 
 ‘And sweeter than the gentle south-west wind, 
 
 O'er willowy meads and shadowed waters creeping, 
 
 And Ceres" golden fields." 
 
 And Byron: 
 
 ‘Breathing all gently o'er his cheek and mouth, 
 
 As o’er a bed of violets the sweet south." 
 
 Nor is this all. The moral charm of his character wrought bless- 
 edly in life; and the noble feeling, the lofty aspiration, that lives 
 in and exhales from the record of his heart and brain, is a part 
 of the breath of human-kind, to nourish pastoral delight, pure 
 friendship, and magnanimous thought. 
 
 HOOKER. 
 
 There is no learning that this man hath not searched into. . . . His books will get 
 reverence from age.— Pope Clement. 
 
 Biography. — Born near Exeter, in 1553, of parents respect- 
 able, but neither noble nor rich, and abler to rejoice in his early 
 piety than to appreciate his early intelligence. They designed 
 him for a tailor, but to his humble schoolmaster he appeared ‘to 
 be blessed with an inward divine light,’ and therefore at the age 
 of fourteen, through the kindness of Bishop Jewel, was sent to 
 Oxford, where he rose to eminence and preferment. After four- 
 teen years of exhaustive study, he entered holy orders, was made 
 deacon and priest, and married a scolding wife, whom he had 
 allowed to be chosen for him by an ignorant low-minded match- 
 maker. In 1585, he was appointed Master of the Temple; but 
 the situation neither accorded with his temper nor with his 
 literary pursuits, and he petitioned his superior to remove him 
 to ‘some quiet parsonage.’ The following is the appeal: 
 
 1 My Lord,— When I lpst the freedom of my cell, which was my college, yet I found 
 some degree of it in my quiet country parsonage. But I am weary of the noise and oppo- 
 sitions of this place; and, indeed, God and nature did not intend me for contentions, but 
 for study and quietness. And, my lord, my particular contests here with Mr. Travers have 
 
348 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 proved the more unpleasant to me, because I believe him to be a good man ; and that 
 belief hath occasioned me to examine mine own conscience concerning his opinions. And 
 to satisfy that I have consulted the holy Scripture, and other laws, both human and divine, 
 whether the conscience of him and others of his judgment ought to be so far complied 
 with by us as to alter our frame of church-government, our manner of God's worship, our 
 praising and praying to Him, and our established ceremonies, as often as their tender con- 
 sciences shall require us. And in this examination I have not only satisfied myself, but 
 have begun a treatise in which I intend the satisfaction of others, by a demonstration of 
 the reasonableness of our laws of ecclesiastical polity. But, my lord, I shall never be able 
 to finish what I have begun, unless I be removed into some quiet parsonage, where I may 
 see God’s blessings spring out of my mother-earth, and eat my own bread in peace and 
 privacy; a place where I may, without disturbance, meditate my approaching mortality, 
 and that great account which all flesh must give at the last day to the God of all spirits.’ 
 
 First appointed to a parish in Wiltshire, he was in the following 
 year presented to a rectory in Kent, where the remainder of his 
 life was spent in meditation and the faithful discharge of his 
 duties. Never strong, he died in November, 1600, of pulmonic 
 disease induced by a heavy cold. 
 
 Writings. — Against the non-conforming Puritans, Hooker, 
 in The Lcncs of Ecclesiastical Polity, undertook to investigate 
 and define the right of the Church to claim obedience from its 
 members, and the duty of the members to render obedience to 
 the Church. His opponents insisted that a definite scheme of 
 church polity was revealed in the Bible, thus reducing the con- 
 troversy to a mere anarchy of opinions about the meaning of 
 certain texts. With that aching for order and that demand for 
 fundamental ideas which characterize a tranquil spirit and a great 
 mind, he founded his argument on general conceptions, and 
 urged that the laws of nature, reason, and society, equally with 
 those of Scripture, are of divine institution. Both are equally 
 worthy of respect. It is the province of the ‘natural light’ to 
 distinguish between what is variable and what is invariable in 
 these laws, between what is eternal and what is temporary in 
 Revelation itself. Hence the divinely constituted reason of man 
 does not exceed its rights in establishing certain uniformities and 
 ceremonials on which Scripture may be doubtful or silent. The 
 English Church system may be conformable to the will of God, 
 though not enjoined by any clear text of his revealed Word. 
 
 What was transitory- or what was partial in the book may be 
 subtracted without injury to its immortal excellence; for its 
 foundations are laid deep in the eternal verities which are the 
 basis of all duties and all rights, political as well as religious. 
 
HOOKER. 
 
 349 
 
 Its central idea is law, as apprehended by reason, which in its 
 essential nature is one with the self-conscious infinite reason at 
 the heart of things. ‘ May we,’ he indignantly asks, ‘ cause our 
 faith without Reason to appear reasonable in the eyes of men ? ’ 
 And of this uncreated Law which sustains the fabric of the 
 universe, and weds obligation to ecstasy, he says in language 
 touched by a consecrating radiance: 
 
 ‘Wherefore, that here we may briefly end: of law there can be no less acknowl- 
 edged, than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world: all 
 things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the 
 greatest as not exempted from her power; both angels and men and creatures of what 
 condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent, 
 admiring her as the mother of their peace and their joy.’ 
 
 Style. — Methodical, correct, ample, massive, and grand; idio- 
 matic without vulgarity, and learned without pedantry. The 
 Latin order of arrangement was with Hooker, as with all the 
 translators of the period, a favorite construction. For example: 
 ‘Brought already we are even to that estate’; ‘able we are not 
 to deny, but that we have deserved the hatred of the heathen.’ 
 Often it is used with powerful effect, giving to the capital 
 images the emphatic positions; as, ‘Dangerous it were for the 
 feeble brain of man to wade far into the doings of the Most 
 High.’ Some of his periods are cumbrous and intricate, but in 
 general they roll melodiously on, with the serene might of the 
 soul that inspires and moves them, rich in imagery and noble in 
 diction. 
 
 Rank. — By universal consent, one of the great in English 
 letters. A learned divine without fanaticism. A persuasive 
 logician, from the chain of whose reasoning it is hard to detach 
 a link, without a fracture. A philosopher whose breadth and 
 power of mind are shown not only in the conception and appli- 
 cation of one majestic principle, but in the exhibition of many 
 principles harmoniously related. None before him had his grasp 
 and largeness; few after him have been so comprehensive. As 
 he was one of the loftiest of thinkers, so he was one of the most 
 practical. The idea that shone in the heaven of contemplation, 
 radiated in a thousand directions on the earth. Worthy to be 
 regarded not only as one of the fathers of the English Church, 
 but as one of the chief founders of English prose. It was said 
 by a contemporary Romanist that he had never read an English 
 
350 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 book whose writer deserved the name of author till he read the 
 first four books of ‘ a poor obscure English priest ’ on Laws and 
 Church Polity; a judgment which points at least to the fact that 
 the ‘obscure priest’ is the original of what deserves to be called 
 English literature, in its theological and philosophical domain. 
 
 Character. — Grave, mild, modest, and devout ; in youth 
 ardently studious, and in manhood conspicuous equally for learn- 
 ing and for eloquence. As a schoolboy he was remarkable for his 
 continual questioning, but his inquisitive intellect was accompa- 
 nied with docility of disposition, and the happy teacher spared no 
 efforts to advance the little wonder. His body was feeble, his 
 soul capacious. He suffered much, yet was without fretful or 
 morbid quality, resolved, like Socrates, to make a noble use of 
 racking pains and sordid annoyances. It was in this enlightened 
 and tolerant spirit that he bore the perpetual cross of union with 
 a female of vulgar manners, of unprepossessing face, of snappish 
 and tyrannizing temper. A London hostess, on the occasion of 
 his appointment to preach a sermon at Paul’s Cross, had oppor- 
 tunely cured him of a cold. He was easily persuaded that his 
 constitutional delicacy required a perpetual nurse. Her benevo- 
 lence not stopping here, she offered to provide such a one; and 
 he, in an excess of gratitude, promised to marry her choice. On 
 his next arrival, the artful woman presented her daughter, and 
 the guileless Hooker, the thinker and scholar, the man of inno- 
 cent wisdom, who would have a nurse-wife, got a shrew. She 
 preferred the more natural office of vixen. When visited, about 
 a year afterwards, by two of his former pupils, he was found 
 tending a flock of sheep, with a copy of Horace in his hand. In 
 the house, they received no entertainment but his conversation, 
 which Mrs. Hooker interrupted by calling him sharply to come 
 and rock the cradle; for she would have it understood that her 
 husband was her servant, and that his friends were unwelcome 
 guests. Cranmer, in taking leave, said: 
 
 ‘ Good tutor, I am sorry that your lot is fallen in no better ground as to your parson- 
 age; and more sorry that your wife proves not a more comfortable companion after you 
 have wearied yourself in your restless studies . 1 
 
 To which Hooker made the characteristic answer: 
 
 ‘My dear George, if saints have usually a double share in the miseries of this life, I, 
 that am none, ought not to repine at what my wise Creator hath appointed for me, but 
 labor — as indeed I do daily — to submit mine to His will, and possess my soul in patience 
 and peace' 
 
RALEIGH. 
 
 351 
 
 His intelligence was essentially moral; and, by the alchemy of 
 his rare spirit, all knowledge and experience were transmuted 
 into celestialized reason. 
 
 Influence. — To Hooker belongs the merit of first fully de- 
 veloping the English language as a vehicle of refined and 
 philosophic thought. His work is monumental. It is still 
 referred to as a great authority upon the whole range of moral 
 and political principles. The beauty of his daily life was an 
 agency to create new beauty everywhere. We can believe that 
 it left its impress even upon his wife. A man of noble piety is 
 in a community like a flower that fills the whole house with its 
 fragrance; and the children born there a hundred years later are 
 better born than elsewhere, because that man spread the sweet- 
 ness of his character there, and uplifted the vulgar when they 
 knew it not. 
 
 Above all, Hooker introduced into polemics a new spirit and 
 method — philosophical rather than theological. Against the 
 dogmatism of creed he set the authority of reason, to which he 
 gave so large a place that never, even to this day, has it made a 
 similar advance. It is not difficult to see the immense impor- 
 tance of this change, — a change of which, indeed, he is the 
 representative and reactionary rather than the initial and efficient 
 cause. As long as an opinion was defended by the dogmatic 
 method, whoever assailed it incurred the imputation of heresy, 
 and it was easy to justify his persecution; but when it was 
 chiefly defended by human reason, which leads the ablest minds 
 to the most opposite conclusions, the element of uncertainty 
 entered, and punishment was felt to be wrong when it was seen 
 that the persecuted might be right. 
 
 RALEIGH. 
 
 A great but ill-regulated mind. — Hume. 
 
 Biography. — Born in Devonshire, in 1552, the younger son 
 of a family richer in ancient lineage than in patrimony; entered 
 Oxford, but quit it shortly for active life, with no resource but 
 
352 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 his enterprise and his sword; at seventeen a valorous leader in 
 the Protestant cause of France, subsequently in the Netherlands, 
 then in Ireland; from the art of war, turned to the art of naviga- 
 tion, which had led Columbus to discovery and Pizarro to con- 
 quest; planned an expedition to North America; planted colonies 
 in the wilds to which the royal maiden had eagerly given the 
 name of Virginia , but failed, the colonists returning with tobacco 
 and potatoes instead of diamonds and gold; rose to a favorite of 
 the Queen, was knighted, was her chief adviser in the Spanish 
 invasion of the Armada, was active in its destruction and ser- 
 viceable in Parliament ; a courtier commanding the Queen’s 
 guard, riding abroad with her in his suit of solid silver, or at- 
 tending the Court in dress gorgeous with jewels, from the huge 
 diamond which buttoned his feather to his shoes powdered with 
 pearls; intrigued with a maid of honor, and lost the favor which 
 had been the pride of his ambition; married the maid, and was 
 imprisoned with his wife in the Tower; counterfeited the most 
 romantic despair at the Queen’s displeasure, and obtained his 
 freedom, but was banished the presence; thought to dazzle her 
 imagination, and went in quest of the El Dorado, fabled to be in 
 the interior of South America, where the sands glistened, the 
 rocks shone, and the houses were roofed, with the precious metal; 
 returned, and wrote: 
 
 ‘ Of the little remaining fortune I had, I have wasted in effect all herein. I have 
 undergone many constructions, been accompanied with many sorrows, with labor, 
 hunger, heat, sickness, and peril. From myself I have deserved no thanks; for I am 
 returned a beggar, and withered.’ 
 
 Restored to the favor of his mistress-sovereign by the brilliancy 
 of his maritime enterprise, he was discountenanced by James I, 
 whose mind had been poisoned by a malignant rival; was tried 
 on a charge of treason, condemned, but reprieved, and instead of 
 being executed was committed to the Tower, where he was con- 
 fined for twelve years, during six of which his wife was permitted 
 to bear him company; tempted the cupidity of the king by the 
 vision of a gold-mine and a new empire in Guiana; offered to 
 equip a fleet for the adventure, and was released but not par- 
 doned; burned a Spanish town, got nothing of value, was forced 
 to return a baffled dreamer, under the imputations of falsehood 
 and treachery ; and to satisfy the implacable Spaniards, was 
 
RALEIGH. 
 
 353 
 
 executed, in 1G18, on the old sentence, which had been suspended 
 over his head like the pointed sword. 
 
 'Writings. — His prison-hours were made memorable by the 
 composition in his cell of the History of the World. He begins 
 with the Creator and the creation ; discusses fate, fore-knowl- 
 edge, and free-will, the site of Paradise, the travels of Cain; the 
 several floods, whose dates are pretty certain; Noah’s Ark, which 
 is proved, with prodigious labor, not to have rested on Ararat; 
 descends, through sacred story, to the annals of Assyria, Persia, 
 Greece, and Rome; closing with the fall of the Macedonian Em- 
 pire, b.c. 170; and infusing into his voluminous scroll of four 
 thousand years the foolish and the wise sayings of Pagan and 
 Christian philosophers and poets, dissertations on the origin of 
 law and government, digressions on slavery, on idolatry, on art, all 
 the fables that were believed by the learned and the unlearned 
 alike, all that his own eyes had observed in the old and the new 
 worlds, and whatever the peculiar studies of each individual in 
 his cultured circle could afford. Whoever can have patience to 
 wade through the first half of the book, will find, when he reaches 
 the second, that his pains are not unrewarded. In its versatile 
 pages are eloquent and stirring passages, embodying the grave 
 and grand idea of death as the issue throughout — oblivion, dust, 
 and endless darkness. Thus: 
 
 ‘We have left Rome flourishing in the middle of the field, having rooted up or cut 
 down all that kept it from the eyes and admiration of the world. But, after some con- 
 tinuance, it shall begin to lose the beauty it had ; the storms of ambition shall beat her 
 great boughs and branches one against another; her leaves shall fall off, her limbs wither, 
 and a rabble of barbarous nations enter the field and cut her down.’ 
 
 Again : 
 
 ‘If we seek a reason of the succession and continuance of this boundless ambition in 
 mortal men, we may add to that which hath been already said, that the kings and princes 
 of the world have always laid before them the actions but not the ends of those great 
 ones which preceded them. They are always transported with the glory of the one, but 
 they never mind the misery of the other, till they find the experience in themselves. 
 They neglect the advice of God, while they enjoy life or hope it; but they follow the 
 counsel of death upon his first approach. It is he that puts into man all the wisdom of 
 the world, without speaking a word, which God, with all the words of His law, promises, 
 or threats, doth not infuse. Death, which hateth and destroyeth man, is believed; God, 
 which hath made him and loves him, is always deferred. ... It is Death alone that can 
 suddenly make man to know himself. He tells the proud and insolent that they are but 
 abjects, and humbles them at the instant, makes them cry, complain, and repent, yea, 
 even to hate their forepast happiness. He takes the account of the rich, and proves him 
 a beggar, a naked beggar, which hath interest in nothing but the gravel that fills his 
 mouth. He holds a glass before the eyes of the most beautiful, and makes them see 
 therein their deformity and rottenness, and they acknowledge it. 1 
 
 23 
 
354 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 This was his great literary work; but his miscellaneous writ- 
 ings are so various that they have been classed under the heads 
 of poetical, epistolary, military, maritime, geographical, political, 
 philosophical, and historical. It was one of his intentions to 
 write an English epic; but his busy life allowed him leisure only 
 for some scattered and fragmentary efforts. These, however, are 
 affluent of grace and tenderness, depth of sentiment and strength 
 of imagination. Thus: 
 
 ‘Passions are likened best to floods and streams; « 
 
 The shallow murmur, but the deep are dumb; 
 
 So, when affections yield discourse, it seems 
 The bottom is but shallow whence they come. 
 
 They that are rich in words, in words discover 
 That they are poor in that which makes a lover.’ 
 
 Or his reply to Marlowe’s Passionate Shepherd: 
 
 ‘If all the world and love were young. 
 
 And truth in every shepherd’s tongue, 
 
 These pretty pleasures might me move 
 To live with thee and be thy love. 
 
 But time drives flocks from field to fold, 
 
 When rivers rage and rocks grow cold; 
 
 And Philomel becometh dumb; 
 
 The rest complains of cares to come. 
 
 The flowers do fade, and wanton fields 
 To wayward winter reckoning yields: 
 
 A honey tongue, a heart of gall. 
 
 Is fancy’s spring, but sorrow’s fall. 
 
 Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy bed of roses. 
 
 Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies, 
 
 Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten, — 
 
 In folly ripe, in reason rotten. 
 
 Thy belt of straw and ivy buds, 
 
 Thy coral clasps and amber studs, — 
 
 All those in me no means can move 
 To come to thee and be thy love. 
 
 But could youth last, and love still breed; 
 Had joys no date, nor age no need; 
 
 Then those delights my mind might move 
 To live with thee and be thy love.’ 
 
 Or the justness of moral perception in the couplet, profoundly 
 true : 
 
 ‘Of death and judgment, heaven and hell, 
 
 Who oft doth think, must needs die well.’ 
 
 And the noble pathos of the Soul's Errand: 
 
 ‘ Go, Soul, the body’s guest, 
 Upon a thankless errand: 
 
 Fear not to touch the best; 
 
 The truth shall be thy warrant: 
 
 Go, since I needs must die, 
 
 And give the world the lie. . . . 
 Tell zeal it wants devotion: 
 
 Tell love it is but lust; 
 
RALEIGH. 
 
 355 
 
 Tell time it is but motion ; 
 Tell flesh it is but dust; . . 
 Tell age it daily wasteth; 
 Tell honour how it alters; 
 
 Tell fortune of her blindness; 
 Tell nature of decay; 
 
 Tell friendship of unkindness; 
 
 Tell beauty how she blasteth; 
 Tell favour how it falters. . . . 
 
 Tell justice of delay: 
 And if they will reply. 
 
 Then give them all the lie.* 
 
 Style. — Easy, vigorous, elevated, as a whole; seldom low, 
 never affected; often ornate, with an antique richness of imagery; 
 showing, when most careful, the artificial structure of Sidney 
 and Hooker. In poetry, simple, sweet, melodious and strong. 
 Spenser called him ‘the summer’s nightingale.’ 
 
 Rank. — In that brilliant constellation of the great which 
 adorned his period, one of the most distinguished of those who 
 added eminence in letters to eminence in action. Conspicuous in 
 an era prodigal of genius, as a soldier, a statesman, a navigator, 
 and a writer, a valorous knight, and the most splendid of adven- 
 turers. An orator whom the Queen, we are told, ‘took for a 
 kind of oracle.’ An experimentalist in natural phenomena, seek- 
 ing the philosopher’s stone and the elixir of life. In political 
 economy, he anticipated the modern doctrine of Free Trade; in 
 metaphysics, Stewart’s fundamental laws of human belief. He 
 is the pioneer in the department of dignified historical writing, 
 and, could he have tamed the wild fire of his erratic dreams, 
 would have won a foremost place among the famous poets of his 
 day. 
 
 Character. — A genius versatile as ambitious. What strikes 
 us most forcibly is his restless and capacious intellect, — his 
 various efficiency, and his prompt aptitude for whatever absorbed 
 him at the moment; his superabundant physical and mental 
 vitality, which displays itself equally in literature and in action. 
 Haughty in prosperity, base in humiliation. With vision of the 
 moral heights, he could creep in crooked politics, or intrigue in 
 dark labyrinths, and was an adept in the arts of bribery and of 
 flattery. It was thus, when a prisoner for his love-treason, that 
 he gallantly raved of the Queen, aged sixty: 
 
 ‘I was wont to behold her riding like Alexander, hunting like Diana, walking like 
 Venus; the gentle wind blowing her fair hair about her pure cheeks like a nymph; 
 sometime sitting in the shade like a goddess, sometime singing like an angel.’ 
 
 His principal defect, even when his ends were patriotic and 
 noble, was unscrupulousness as to the means. But we will re- 
 
356 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 member that, with boundless desires, he was thrown from the 
 first upon his own resources. He was in a sense to be the archi- 
 tect of his own destinies, and was in a measure to be the creature 
 of circumstances. It was his fate to make headway through 
 subtle and plotting factions. 
 
 A courtier holding ‘the glass of fashion,’ a daring child of 
 fortune, he was also a recluse thinker, equally renowned for his 
 contemplative and his active powers. It was in misfortune, after 
 all, that his noble self was asserted, — never more grandly than 
 when, the night before he was beheaded, he wrote: 
 
 ‘Even such is time, that takes in trust 
 Our youth, our joys, our all we have, 
 
 And pays us but with earth and dust; 
 
 Who, in the dark and silent grave, 
 
 When we have wandered all our ways, 
 
 Shuts up the story of our days; 
 
 But from this earth, this grave, this dust, 
 jVIy God shall raise me up, I trust!’ 
 
 His wits were, on all occasions, equal to his reputation. ‘Traitor, 
 monster, viper, spider of hell!’ cried the Attorney-General, ‘I 
 want words to express thy viperous treasons.’ — ‘True,’ said 
 Raleigh quietly, ‘for you have spoken the same thing half a 
 dozen times over already.’ Dauntless in life, reflection had taught 
 him how to die. On the scaffold, after vindicating his conduct 
 in a manly speech to the spectators, he desired to see the axe. 
 When the headsman hesitated, he said: ‘I pray thee, let me see 
 it; dost thou think that I am afraid of it?’ — As he ran his 
 fingers over its keen edge, he smilingly remarked: ‘This is a 
 sharp medicine, but it will cure all diseases.’ When he had 
 extended himself for the stroke, he was requested to turn his 
 head. ‘So the heart be right,’ he replied, ‘it is no matter which 
 way the head lieth.’ When he had forgiven the executioner and 
 had prayed, the signal was made, which not being followed im- 
 mediately by the stroke, he said: ‘Why dost thou not strike? 
 Strike, man ! ’ 
 
 Influence. — He contributed to that passion for adventure 
 and discovery which gave at this period an unusual impetus to 
 the mind of man. His exploring captains discovered a virgin 
 soil — Virginia. His attempts at colonization were indeed fruit- 
 less in their ostensible aim, but were instrumental to others more 
 successful and permanent; just as this man plays with the light- 
 
RALEIGH. 
 
 357 
 
 ning and brings nothing to pass, while his son after him flashes 
 intelligence through the air. Through the gratitude of later times, 
 less for what he did than for what he strove to do, Raleigh — the 
 capital of North Carolina — preserves his romantic name. He 
 formed the famous Mermaid Club — oldest of its kind — where 
 Shakespeare brought to the feast of wit the brightness of his 
 fancy, and Jonson his sarcastic humor. He projected an office 
 of universal agency, and thus forecast that useful information 
 which we now recognize by the term of advertisement. He 
 joyed to pay the homage of his protection to Spenser, and the 
 severe Milton carefully collected his maxims and his counsels. 
 And so this restless spirit, who seemed, in his ceaseless occupa- 
 tions, to have lived only for his own age and his own pleasure, 
 was the true servant of posterity, who hail him as also one of the 
 founders of literature. Had his life been devoted to letters in- 
 stead of a variety of pursuits, his success would have been brill- 
 iant and lasting; his writings, no longer now a living force, would 
 have been a perennial power. A universal genius is not likely 
 to reach eminent and enduring excellence in anything. The 
 beams of a thousand suns will not fire the softest piece of timber 
 when radiating freely. Unity of effort — a gathering of the soul’s 
 energies — a limitation of the field of exertion — is essential to 
 glorious achievement. This shifting, various career suggests a 
 second truth for the education of character, — that inattention to 
 the outer world promotes attention to the inner; that the circum- 
 stance which sunders the mind from external things, impels it 
 inward, from the life of sensation to the life of reflection. It was 
 through the Traitor’s Gate that our hero passed to a tranquillity 
 and thoughtfulness impossible outside. Within the sombre walls 
 of the Tower shone the celestial light. When the body is im- 
 prisoned, the soul may be most free. 
 
 ‘Then like a bird, it sits and sings, 
 
 Then whets and claps its silver wings, 
 
 And till prepared for longer flight. 
 
 Waves in its plumes the various light.’ 
 
358 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 SPENSER. 
 
 Who, like a copious river, pour'd his song 
 
 O'er all the mazes of enchanted ground.— 77 lomson. 
 
 We must not fear to assert, with the best judges of this and former ages, that Spen- 
 ser is still the third name in the poetical literature of our country, and that he has not 
 been surpassed, except by Dante, in any other. — Hallarn. 
 
 Biography. — Born in London in 1552; his parents poor but of 
 ancient fame; educated at Cambridge, where he imbued himself 
 with the noblest philosophies; quit the university to live as a 
 tutor in the North, where in obscure poverty he passed through 
 a deep and unfortunate passion; driven again southward by the 
 scorn of the fair ‘Rosalind’; wanted to dream, and sought, with 
 ceaseless importunity, the patronage of wealth, that he might 
 live in the free indulgence of his tastes; was sent as an envoy 
 to France; was a guest of the chivalrous Sidney, in the castle 
 where the Arcadia was produced; gained the favor of the 
 Queen, but obtained only inferior employment; went to Ireland 
 as a private secretary; there remained, with appointments more 
 honorable than lucrative, on a grant of forfeited estate, in a 
 lonely castle, from which the view embraced a beautiful lake, an 
 amphitheatre of mountains, and three thousand acres of barren 
 solitude; received a visit from Raleigh, who — 
 
 ‘’Gan to cast great liking to my lore, 
 
 And great disliking to my luckless lot , 
 
 That banished had myself like wight forlorn , 
 
 Into that waste where / was quite forgot 
 
 was created poet laureate, and decreed a pension of fifty pounds; 
 visited England at intervals to publish poems, or to find a situa- 
 tion in his native home, still the persistent court-suitor moving 
 round the interminable circle of ‘hope deferred’; tells us how on 
 a summer’s day, — 
 
 ‘I, whose sullen care. 
 
 Through discontent of my long fruitless stay 
 In princes’ court, and expectation vain 
 Of idle hopes which still do fly away. 
 
 Like empty shadows, did afflict my brain, 
 
 Walked forth, to ease my pain, 
 
 Along the shore of silver- streaming Thames'; 
 
 banished, as he said, to his undesired and savage locality as often 
 as he sued to leave it, whence a rebellion expelled him, after his 
 
SPENSER. 
 
 359 
 
 house and youngest child had been burned by the insurgents; 
 died three months later, in 1599, in obscure lodgings, of misery 
 and a broken heart; buried, close by Chaucer, in Westminster 
 Abbey. Poets held his pall, and cast their elegies into his 
 grave. 
 
 Appearance. — Face long and somewhat spare, beard closely 
 shaven, moustache full and arching, nose of the Grecian type, 
 forehead well-formed, hair short and curling, eyebrows heavy, 
 eyelids drooping, eyes thoughtful and dreamy, lips full enough 
 to denote feeling, firm enough to prevent its riotous overflow. 
 To the commonplace gossips, he was only ‘ a little man who wore 
 short hair, little bands, and little cuffs.’ 
 
 Writings. — As on an inexhaustible, many-winding stream, 
 whose end is never reached, Spenser floated, many a summer’s 
 day, adown the gently-flowing vision of the Fairy Queen. To 
 please the Court, the scene is laid in contemporary England, and 
 includes all the leading personages of the day under the veil of 
 knights and their squires and lady-loves: 
 
 ‘Of Faery Land yet if he more inquire, 
 
 By certain signs, here set in sundry places. 
 
 He may it find; . . . 
 
 And thou, O fairest princess under sky. 
 
 In this fair mirror mayst behold thy face 
 And thine own realms in land of Faery . 1 
 
 To please posterity, to suit this wider and higher application of 
 his plan, the characters double their parts, and appear as the 
 impersonations of moral attributes. He says: 
 
 ‘I have undertaken to represent all the moral virtues, assigning to every virtue a 
 knight to be the patron and defender of the same ; in whose actions and feats of arms 
 the operations of that virtue whereof he is the protector are to be expressed, and the 
 vices and unruly appetites that oppose themselves against the same, to be beaten down 
 and overcome . 1 
 
 To each of the twelve virtues, each embodied in a representative 
 patron, was to be devoted a book of twelve cantos; this, if well 
 received, to be followed by the exposition of twelve others, the 
 guardians of public faith. In the dedication to Raleigh, he tells 
 us that ‘the general end of the book is to fashion a gentleman 
 • • • in virtuous and gentle discipline.’ And in the person of 
 the Fairy herself, he informs us: ‘I mean glory in my general 
 intention, but in my particular, I conceive the most excellent and 
 
360 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 glorious person of our sovereign, the queen? In the legendary 
 Arthur, the sun of the whole knightly company, man was to be 
 seen perfected, in his longing and progress toward the Fairy 
 Queen, the divine excellence which is the true end of human 
 effort. Thus the poem may be characterized, in its intent, as a 
 dream of idealism, a poem of the human soul struggling towards 
 the perfect love, which is God, and towards the perfect beauty, 
 which consists not in harmony of color and form, but in the 
 deathless idea which shines through them. Its true scene is not 
 material but mental space, the world of picture and illusion, in 
 which the actual is idealized and the ideal is real. In this 
 enchanted region tw T o worlds are harmonized — the beauty of 
 energy and the beauty of happiness, Christian chivalry and pagan 
 Olympus, mediaeval romance and classical mythology; the second 
 imaginary, the first shadowy, both poetic; each, in some sort, a 
 mutilated copy or suggestion of invisible forces and ideas — the 
 heaven of Plato. At this elevation, fancy loses itself, invention 
 overflows, apparitions abound, phrases are expanded into periods, 
 objects are traced with lingering, infinite detail. A wounded 
 giant falls — 
 
 ‘As an aged tree, 
 
 High growing on the top of rocky clift, 
 
 Whose heart-strings with keen steel nigh hewen be, 
 
 The mighty trunk half rent with ragged rift. 
 
 Doth roll adown the rocks, and fall with fearful drift. 
 
 Or as a castle, reared high and round, 
 
 By subtile engines and malicious slight 
 Is undermined from the lowest ground, 
 
 And her foundation forced, and feebled quite. 
 
 At last down falls; and, with her heaped height, 
 
 Her hasty ruin does more heavy make, 
 
 And yields itself unto the victor’s might.’ 
 
 All this, because the dream is pleasant, and the dreamer loves to 
 see the living and changing figures rise and display themselves 
 incessantly. Now consider the vastness of the design, which, 
 when completed, was to comprise not less than a hundred thou- 
 sand verses. What result? Only six books completed, — alle- 
 gories of Holiness , Temperance , Chastity , Friendship, Justice, 
 and Courtesy, which, however, form one of the longest poems in 
 existence; no movement of the whole; like a train whose large- 
 orbed wheels spin pleasantly without progress; fancy strays, the 
 thread is lost in an ecstasy of adornment; features blend, posi- 
 tions and exploits reappear, imagery fails, and the first book sur- 
 
SPENSER. 
 
 361 
 
 passes all the others in consistency and ‘splendor; in fact, six 
 separate poems, in which the action diverges, then converges, 
 becomes confused, then starts again; each combining the imagin- 
 ings of antiquity and the middle age, fair, terrible, and fantastic; 
 a series of airy shapes that waver and are gone; a phantasmago- 
 ria, one part allegory and nine parts beauty; while in, under, and 
 over all is a sublime spirituality, the heaven without rent or 
 seam, where no ache or sorrow of spirit can enter, the extreme 
 verge where the realm of mind and the realm of sense unite, — 
 the everlasting Ought and Possible of human life. 
 
 The reader will perceive the impossibility of giving the plot 
 in full, if plot it may be called, — 
 
 ‘That shape has none, 
 
 Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb.’ 
 
 The true use of these magical pages is as of a noble gallery of 
 art, which, without stopping long enough to cloy his perceptions, 
 one visits to forget himself, for solace and delight, to wonder, to 
 admire, to dream, to be happy, and by that experience, to refine 
 and sweeten his tastes, — 
 
 ‘Lifting himself out of the lowly clust 
 On golden plumes up to the purest sky.’ 
 
 Was never invention more prodigal and brilliant, — on earth a pil- 
 grim, its home on the celestial mountains. Here, in a description 
 of the House of Morpheus, is a suggestion of its endless grace, 
 dreaming pleasure, and picturesque play: 
 
 l A little lowly hermitage it was 
 Down in a dale , hard by a forest's side , 
 
 Far from resort of people that did pass 
 In travel to and fro: a little wide 
 There was a holy chapel edified, 
 
 Wherein the hermit duly wont to say 
 His holy things each morn and eventide; 
 
 Thereby a crystal stream did gently play 
 Which from a sacred fountain welled forth alway. 
 
 Arrived there the little house they fill, 
 
 Nor look for entertainment where none was. 
 
 Rest is their feast, and all things at their will. 
 
 The noblest mind the best contentment has. 
 
 With fair discourse the evening so they pass, 
 
 For that old man of pleasing words had store, 
 
 And well could file his tongue as smooth as glass: 
 
 He told of saints and hopes, and evermore 
 He streiv'd an Are Mary, after and before. 
 
 And drooping night thus creepeth on them fast; 
 
 And the sad humour, loading their eye-lids , 
 
362 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 As messenger of Morpheus, on them cast 
 
 Sweet slumbering dew; the which to sleep them bids; 
 
 Unto their lodgings then his guests he rids; 
 
 Where, when all drown’d in deadly sleep he finds, 
 
 He to his study goes, and there amids’ 
 
 His magic books and arts of sundry kinds. 
 
 He seeks out mighty charms to trouble sleepy minds. . . . 
 
 And forth he call'd out of deep darkness dread 
 Legions of sprites, the which, like little flies, 
 
 Fluttering about his ever damned head , 
 
 Await whereto their service he applies, 
 
 To aid his friends, or fray his enemies; 
 
 Of those he chose out two, the falsest two 
 And fittest for to forge true seeming lies; 
 
 The one of them he gave a message to, 
 
 The other by himself staid other work to do. 
 
 He maketh speedy way through spersed air, 
 
 And through the world of waters wide and deep , 
 
 To Morpheus’ house doth hastily repair. 
 
 Amid the bowels of the earth full steep, 
 
 And low, where dawning day doth never peep, 
 
 His dwelling is; there Tethys his wet bed 
 Doth ever rvash, and Cynthia still doth steep 
 In silver dew his ever-drooping head, 
 
 While sad night over him her mantle black doth spread. 
 
 Whose double gates he findeth locked fast; 
 
 The one fair fram'd of burnished ivory, 
 
 The other all with silver overcast; 
 
 And wakeful dogs before them far do lie. 
 
 Watching to banish Care their enemy, 
 
 Who oft is wont to trouble gentle Sleep; 
 
 By them the sprite doth pass in quietly 
 And unto Morpheus comes, whom drowned deep 
 In drowsy fit he finds; of nothing he takes keep. 
 
 And more to lull him in his slumber soft , 
 
 A trickling stream , from high rock tumbling down. 
 
 And ever drizzling rain upon the loft. 
 
 Mix'd with a murmuring wind, much like the soun 
 Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swoun : 
 
 No other noise, nor people's troublous cries . 
 
 As still are wont to annoy the walled town. 
 
 Might there be heard ; but careless Quiet, lies. 
 
 Wrapt in eternal silence, far from enemies' 
 
 Tn the paradise of devices, you are unconscious of the sentiment, 
 and when reminded of it, prefer to forget it. You may be told 
 that Archimago, a hypocritical magician (Hypocrisy) lures, be- 
 cause he cannot be detected, Una (Truth) and the Red-cross 
 Knight (Holiness) into his abode; that, while they are asleep, 
 he sends to Morpheus (the god Sleep) for a false dream to pro- 
 duce discord between them; but you are disenchanted, and 
 choose rather the condition of reverie, the gentle sway of the 
 
SPENSER. 
 
 363 
 
 measure that floats you lullingly from scene to scene. The de- 
 light of the eyes is, for once, finer than the instruction of the 
 understanding. The images, in their ideal life, are more potent 
 as poetry, living beings and actions, than as symbols investing a 
 theology. 
 
 With this ever-flowing fertility of inspiration, there is no per- 
 plexity, no haze. Every object is defined, complete, separate. 
 If it moves a thousand leagues from the actual, so do we, and 
 are not the less interested, because it is not flesh and blood. It 
 is something better, something beyond the importunate trifles 
 which we gravely call realities, something of that to-morrow, 
 always coming and never come, where thought and fancy are 
 free. We take pleasure in its brilliancy or its bravery, without 
 regard to whether it be substantial. We are upborne by associ- 
 ation, and grow credulous and happy by contagion. When Sir 
 Guyon is led by the tempter Mammon in the subterranean realm, 
 through caverns, unknown abysses, across wonderful gardens, by 
 glittering palaces, trees laden with golden fruits, we follow, see 
 behind us the ugly Fiend, with monstrous gait, ready to devour 
 us on the least show of covetousness, and enter the infernal edi- 
 fice, where hideous figures are outlined in the darksome depths, 
 and the shining metal lights up the shadowy horror: 
 
 ‘That house's form within was rude and strong. 
 
 Like a huge cave hewn out of rocky clift, 
 
 From whose rough vault the ragged branches hung , 
 
 Enibost with massy gold of glorious gift , 
 
 And with rich metal loaded every rift , 
 
 That heavy ruin they did seem to threat; 
 
 And over them Arachne high did lift 
 
 Her cunning web, and spread her subtle net, 
 
 Enwrapped in foul smoke, and clouds more black than jet. 
 
 Both roof and floor , and walls were all of gold , 
 
 But overgrown with dust and old decay 
 And hid in darkness, that none could behold 
 T'hue thereof; for view of cheerful day, 
 
 Did never in that house itself display, 
 
 But a faint shadoiv of uncertain light; 
 
 Such as a lamp , whose life does fade away; 
 
 Or as the moon , clothed with cloudy night , 
 
 Does shore to him that walks in fear and sad affright. 
 
 In all that room was nothing to be seen, 
 
 But huge great iron chests and coffers strong, 
 
 All barr'd with double bands, that none could ween 
 Them to enforce by violence or wrong: 
 
 On every side they placed were along; 
 
364 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 But all the ground with skulls was scattered, 
 
 And dead men's bones, which round about were flung, 
 
 Whose lives (it seemed) whilome there were shed, 
 
 And their vile carcasses now left unburied.’ 
 
 The train of scenery never ends. Guyon (Temperance) after the 
 test of gold, is tried by that of pleasure. Side by side with the 
 gloomy vaults and the swarming fiends are the happy gardens: 
 
 ‘And in the midst of all a fountain stood 
 Of richest substance that on earth might be. 
 
 So pure and shiny that the crystal flood 
 Through every channel running one might see; 
 
 Most goodly it with curious imagery 
 
 Was overwrought, and shapes of naked boys, 
 
 Of which some seemed with lively jollity 
 To fly about, playing their wanton toys, 
 
 Whilst others did themselves embay in liquid joys. 
 
 And over all, of purest gold was spread 
 A trail of ivy in his native hue; 
 
 For the rich metal was so colored 
 That he who did not well avised it view 
 Would surely deem it to be ivy true; 
 
 Low his lascivious arms adown did creep 
 That themselves dipping in the silver dew 
 Their fleecy flowers they tenderly did steep, 
 
 Which drops of crystal seemed for wantonness to weep. 
 
 Infinite streams continually did well 
 Out of this fountain, sweet and fair to see, 
 
 The which into an ample laver fell. 
 
 And shortly grew to so great quantity 
 That like a little lake it seemed to be 
 Whose depth exceeded not three cubits’ height, 
 
 That through the waves one might the bottom see 
 All paved beneath with jasper shining bright, 
 
 That seemed the fountain in that sea did sail upright. . . 
 
 Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound, 
 
 Of all that mote delight a dainty ear, 
 
 Such as at once might not on living ground, 
 
 Save in this paradise, be heard elsewhere: 
 
 Right hard it was for wight which did it hear 
 To read what manner music that mote be; 
 
 For all that pleasing is to living ear 
 Was there consorted in one harmony: 
 
 Birds, voices, instruments, winds, waters, all agree. 
 
 The joyous birds, shrouded in cheerful shade. 
 
 Their notes unto the voice attempered sweet; 
 
 The angelical, soft, trembling voices made 
 To the instruments divine respondence mete; 
 
 The silver-sounding instruments did meet 
 With the base murmur of the water’s fall; 
 
 The water’s fall with difference discreet, 
 
 Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call; 
 
 The gentle, warbling wind low answered to all.’ 
 
SPENSER. 
 
 365 
 
 Never was poetry more luxuriant and pictorial. Never was 
 more of that subtler spirit of the art, which painting can not 
 express — thoughts beyond the visible proof of the canvas. 
 This man was a colorist and an architect, equally of the graceful 
 and the terrible. Had he not been himself, he w r ould have been 
 a Rubens or a Raphael. Pride, in the throne chamber of her 
 palace, built over human carcasses, is thus described: 
 
 ‘So proud she shone in her princely state, 
 
 Looking to heaven, for earth she did disdain, 
 
 And sitting high, for lowly she did hate: 
 
 Lo! underneath her scornful feet was lain 
 A dreadful Dragon with an hideous train ; 
 
 And in her hand she held a mirror bright, 
 
 Wherein her face she often viewed fain.’ 
 
 Her chariot is driven by Satan, with a team of beasts ridden by 
 the Mortal Sins, one of whom is Gluttony: 
 
 ‘His belly was upblown with luxury, 
 
 And eke with fatness swollen were his eyne, 
 
 And like a crane his neck was long and fine. 
 
 Wherewith he swallowed up excessive feast, 
 
 For want whereof poor people oft did pine.’ 
 
 And another Envy, than which nothing could be finer: 
 
 ‘Malicious Envy rode 
 Upon a ravenous wolf, and still did chaw 
 Between his cankred teeth a venomous toad, 
 
 That all the poison ran about his jaw. 
 
 All in a kirtle of discolored say 
 He clothed was y painted full of eyes , 
 
 And in his bosom secretly there lay 
 An hateful snake, the which his tail upties 
 In many folds, and mortal sting implies.’ 
 
 Who has ever approached the horror and the truth of the follow- 
 ing description of the Captain of the Lusts? Note the various 
 images which set forth the wasting away of body and soul, the 
 coldness of the heart, consumed by unholy fire, the kindling of 
 dire impatience, and the implanting of thorny ineradicable griefs: 
 
 ‘As pale and wan as ashes was his look; 
 
 His body lean and meagre as a rake; 
 
 And skin all withered like a dried rook; 
 
 Thereto as cold and dreary as a snake; 
 
 That seemed to tremble evermore, and quake: 
 
 All in a canv.as thin he was bedight , 
 
 And girded with a belt of twisted brake: 
 
 Upon his head he wore an helmet light 
 Made of a dead man’s skull.’ 
 
366 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 He is mounted upon a tiger, and in his hand is a drawn bow 1 : 
 
 ‘And many arrows under his right side, 
 
 Headed with flint, and feathers bloody-dyed . 1 
 
 Beyond the wondrous fairy tale, far within it, often escaping the 
 dazzled eye, is an inner life, steadily beaming there. Everything 
 is referred to it, and, though still apprehensible, — 
 
 ‘Suffers a sea- change 
 Into something rich and strange.’ 
 
 He is divine who instinctively, in Bacon’s phrase, subordinates 
 ‘the shows of things to the desires of the mind.’ Here as in 
 Plato, a sense of the presence of the Deity, as the vital principle 
 in all things, great or small, runs in a solemn undercurrent be- 
 neath the stream of visions. If a nymph is beautiful, it is 
 because she has been touched with this heavenly light, with 
 these angels’ tints: 
 
 * Her face so fair, as flesh it seemed not, 
 
 But heavenly portrait of bright angels’ hue, 
 
 Clear as the sky, withouten blame or blot. 
 
 Through goodly mixture of complexion's dew; 
 
 And in her cheeks the vermeil red did show 
 Like roses in a bed of lilies shed, 
 
 The which ambrosial odors from them throw. 
 
 And gazers’ sense with double pleasure fed, 
 
 Able to heal the sick and to revive the dead. 
 
 In her fair eyes two living lamps did flame, 
 
 Kindled above at th’ Heavenly Maker’s light, 
 
 And darted firie beams out of the same, 
 
 So passing persant, and so wondrous bright, 
 
 That quite bereav’d the rash beholder’s sight: 
 
 In them the blinded god his lustful fire 
 To kindle oft assayed, but had no might; 
 
 For with dread majesty and awful ire. 
 
 She broke his wanton darts, and quenched base desire. 
 
 Her ivory forehead, full of bounty brave, 
 
 Like a broad table did itself dispread, 
 
 For Love his lofty triumphs to engrave, 
 
 And write the battles of his great godhead: 
 
 All good and honour might therein be read; 
 
 For there their dwelling was. And, when she spake, 
 
 Sweet words, like dropping honey, she did shed; 
 
 And ’twixt the pearls and rubies softly brake 
 A silver sound, that heavenly music seemed to make.’ 
 
 As Dante was drawn up from heaven to heaven by the eyes of 
 Beatrice, through which he could look into the far Infinite, so 
 was Spenser lifted away from the earthly by those of that 
 
SPENSER, 
 
 367 
 
 unique, imperishable Beauty which, above all created forms, a 
 noble woman reveals. In holy rapture of Una, he exclaims, — 
 
 Again : 
 
 ‘O happy earth, 
 
 Whereon thy innocent feet do ever tread.’ 
 
 ‘As bright as doth the morning star appear 
 Ont of the East, with flaming locks bedight. 
 
 To tell that dawning day is drawing near, 
 
 And to the world does bring long- wished light: 
 
 So fair and fresh that Lady show’d herself in sight.’ 
 
 In wilderness and wasteful desert, she seeks her knight, who has 
 been beguiled from her by the subtle art of the enchanter: 
 
 ‘One day nigh weary of the irksome way. 
 
 From her unhasty beast she did alight, 
 
 And on the grass her dainty limbs did lay 
 In secret shadow far from all men’s sight: 
 
 From her fair head her fillet she undight 
 And laid her stole aside: her angel's face 
 As the great eye of heaven shined bright , 
 
 And made a sunshine in the shady place ; 
 
 Did never mortal eye behold such heavenly grace. 
 
 It fortuned out of the thickest wood 
 A ramping lion rushed suddenly, 
 
 Hunting full greedy after savage blood: 
 
 Soon as the royal virgin he did spy, 
 
 With gaping mouth at her ran greedily, 
 
 To have at once devour'd her tender corse; 
 
 But to the prey when as he drew more nigh, 
 
 His bloody rage assuaged with remorse, 
 
 And with the sight amaz’d, forgot his furious force. 
 
 Instead thereof he kiss’d her weary feet, 
 
 And lick'd her lily hand with fawning tongue; 
 
 As he her wronged innocence did meet. 
 
 O how can beauty master the most strong. 
 
 And simple truth subdue avenging wrong!’ 
 
 The loftiest, deepest, most angelic element in this genius is 
 reverence for woman — which is only a worship of the supernal 
 charm and attraction rendered visible in her. All the wealth 
 of his respect and tenderness is poured out at the feet of his 
 heroines. In his adoration, he lifts them up to heights where 
 no mortal fleck is visible. In this exalted mood he sings of 
 his bride, in the Epithalamion , his marriage-song: 
 
 ‘Behold, whiles she before the altar stands, 
 
 Hearing the holy priest that to her speaks, 
 
 And blesseth her with his two happy hands, 
 
 How the red roses flush up in her cheeks, 
 
 And the pure snow with goodly vermeil stain 
 Like crimson dyed in grain: 
 
368 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 That even the angels, which continually 
 About the sacred altar do remain, 
 
 Forget their service and about her fly, 
 
 Oft peeping in her face, that seems more fair 
 The more they on it stare. 
 
 But her sad eyes, still fastened on the ground. 
 
 Are governed with goodly modesty, 
 
 That suffers not one look to glance awry, 
 
 Which may let in a little thought unsound. 
 
 Why blush ye, Love, to give to me your hand, 
 
 The pledge of all our band? 
 
 Sing, ye sweet angels, Allelujah sing, 
 
 That all the woods may answer, and your echoes ring ! 1 
 
 Spenser made many miscellaneous attempts in sonnets, pastorals, 
 elegies, and hymns, all fairy-like or mystic, all stamped with the 
 ruling idea, and all striving to express it, — moral sublimity and 
 sensuous seduction. 
 
 Versification. — Spenser came to the Fairy Queen with his 
 head full of Ariosto and the romantic poets of Italy. His exqui- 
 site ear had felt the melody of their heroic metre — the ottava 
 rim, a, to which he added a grace of his own, the Alexandrine. 
 The order of rhymes, it will be observed, is: 1, 3; 2, 4, 5, 7; 6, 
 8, 9. This gave to his stanza a fuller cadence, ‘the long, majestic 
 march,’ well suited to the sober sublimity of his genius. 
 
 Style . — Luxuriant and spacious, yet simple and clear; seldom 
 rivalled in the charm of its diffusion, the orient flush of its diction, 
 and the music of its recurrent chimes. Many passages, it may 
 be needless to observe, are beautifully harmonious, combining a 
 subtle perfection of phrase with a happy coalescence of meaning 
 and melody. The last, indeed, is often an essential part of the 
 sentiment ; and, with ‘ many a bout of linked sweetness long 
 drawn out,’ lures the thought along its pleasant paths. The 
 modulation is made spirited and energetic by the variety of 
 pauses. There is no slumberous monotony in these lines: 
 
 '■But lie my lion , and my noble lord , 
 
 How does he find in cruel heart to hate 
 
 Her that him lov’d, and ev‘er most ador’d 
 
 As the God of my life? Why hath he me abhorr’d?’ 
 
 Nor any languor in this: 
 
 ‘Come hither, come hither, oh, come hastily ! 1 
 Spenser’s language, of one substance with the splendor of his 
 fancy, would seem to have been chosen rather for its richness of 
 
SPENSER. 
 
 369 
 
 tone than for its intensity of meaning. Like all masters of 
 speech, he is fond of toying with it a little. Sometimes his 
 alliteration is tempted to excess; as, — 
 
 ‘Eftsoones her shallow ship away did slide, 
 
 More swift than swallow shears the liquid sky.’ 
 
 Generally, however, the initial assonances are scattered at adroit 
 intervals, rarely obtrusive, but responsive to the idea. For in- 
 stance: 
 
 ‘In woods, in waves, in wars, she wonts to dw'ell; 
 
 And will be found with peril and with pain . 1 
 
 Or,— 
 
 ‘A world of waters, 
 
 Horrible, hideous, roaring with hoarse cry . 1 
 
 Or,— 
 
 ‘All the day, before the sunny rays, 
 
 He used to slug or sleep, in slothful shade . 1 
 
 Rank. — There had been much poetry, and not a little poet- 
 ical power, since Chaucer; but the Fairy Queen was the first 
 production that might challenge comparison with the Canter- 
 bury Tales. It was received with a burst of general welcome. 
 The ‘new poet’ became almost the recognized title of its author. 
 It portrayed, indeed, the wonder and mystery of the new life, 
 the incongruous life of the Renaissance, moulding into harmoni- 
 ous form its warring ideals and contrasted impulses. All the 
 past, with its imagery, its illusion, its glory, — and the present, 
 with its rough romantic beauties and gorgeous pageantry, — de- 
 scended upon the Fairy of Spenser, and, in the mellow light of 
 his imagination, lost the passion of conflict, the grossness of lust, 
 and the tarnish of physical contact. 
 
 His invention was extraordinary, and its mode unique. Shape 
 after shape, scene after scene, monstrous and anomalous, or im- 
 possible and beautiful, rose from the unfathomable depths, to 
 embody some shade of emotion or an idea; while, in the midst 
 of the rising and commingling visions, he was unperturbed and 
 serene, never hurrying, rarely if ever passionate. Next to 
 Dante among the Italians, next to Virgil among the ancients, 
 Milton surpasses him in the severity of his greatness, Shake- 
 speare in the sweep and condensation of his power. Daring 
 elevations, when they occur, indicate the strength of his genius 
 rather than the habit of his mind. He lacked executive effi- 
 ciency,— the coordinating, centralizing quality of the highest 
 24 
 
370 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 order of imagination. But grandeur, intensity, and reflection 
 aside, he is the most purely poetical of our writers. In the union 
 of musical expression, fanciful conception of thought, and the 
 exquisite sense of beauty, he excels them all. Eminent in wis- 
 dom, like every other greatest poet, he is also the finest dreamer 
 that ever lived, and, as such, is the inheritance of all future gen- 
 erations. He repels none but the anti-poetical. His ‘better 
 parts’ will ever interest the lovers of the beautiful, unchange- 
 able amid the changes of taste, as long as riches are sought in 
 the regions of the unknown. 
 
 Character. — Magnificently imaginative. Captivated with 
 beauty; above all, with beauty of soul, which is the source of 
 all outward charms, — 
 
 ‘For of the soul the body form doth take; 
 
 For soul is form, and doth the body make.' 
 
 The true glory of all material things is in the immortal idea 
 which irradiates them; and they are lovable only as they are 
 rendered thus nobly luminous: 
 
 ‘For that same goodly hue of white and red, 
 
 With which the cheeks are sprinkled, shall decay; 
 
 And those sweet rosy leaves, so fairly spread 
 Upon the lips, shall fade and fall away 
 To that they were, even to corrupted clay: 
 
 That golden wire, those sparkling eyes so bright, 
 
 Shall turn to dust and lose their goodly light. 
 
 But that fair lamp, from whose celestial ray 
 That light proceeds, which kindleth lover's fire, 
 
 Shall never be extinguished nor decay; 
 
 But, when the vital spirits do expire, 
 
 Upon her native planet shall retire; 
 
 For it is heavenly born, and cannot die, 
 
 Being a parcel of the purest sky.’ 
 
 The seen is but the semblance; the unseen is the reality, ever 
 fairer as you ascend the graduated scale. Ineffably fair is the 
 spirit’s dim but still enraptured vision of the absolute Beauty — 
 God, who, in the objects of sense, — 
 
 ‘Daily doth display 
 
 And shew Himself in th’ image of His grace. 
 
 As in a looking-glass through which He may 
 Be seen of all His creatures vile and base, 
 
 That are unable else to see His face.’ 
 
 This is eminently Platonic. The bent of his mind was ever thus 
 toward a supermundane sphere, in whose untrammelled ether it 
 
SPENSER. 
 
 371 
 
 might expatiate freely, joyously. To this sublime summit he 
 carried everything, and thus subtleized everything at a touch. 
 Where most men see only the perishable form and color of the 
 thing, he saw the joy of it, the soul of eternal youth that is in 
 it. Yetj with a purity like that of driven snow, he had no lack 
 of warmth. He is, of all our poets, the most truly sensuous; 
 but so chaste and ardent, that when he painted sentiment and 
 passion, or material loveliness, he could not but make them ‘of 
 glorious feature.’ 
 
 Such a one does not wait to get into the next stage of exist- 
 ence to begin to enter it. He sees that the Infinite Life is the 
 world of essence; that it is the meaning which glows through all 
 matter; that out of it flows all goodness, all truth, all enduring- 
 happiness on this side of the grave: 
 
 ‘And is there care in Heaven? and is there love 
 In heavenly spirits to these creatures base, 
 
 That may compassion of their evils move? 
 
 There is: else much more wretched were the case 
 Of men than beasts: but O, the exceeding" grace 
 Of highest God, that loves His creatures so, 
 
 And all His works with mercy doth embrace, 
 
 That blessed angels He sends to and fro, 
 
 To serve to wicked man, to serve His wicked foe ! 
 
 How oft do they their silver bowers leave. 
 
 To come to succor us that succor want! 
 
 How oft do they with golden pinions cleave 
 The fleeting skies like flying pursuivant, 
 
 Against foul fiends to aid us militant! 
 
 They for us fight, they watch and duly ward, 
 
 And their bright squadrons round about us plant; 
 
 And all for love and nothing for reward; 
 
 O, why should heavenly God to men have such regard? 1 
 
 Thus it is that, while he himself was outwardly vexed with dis- 
 content, fretted with neglect, his poetry breathes the very soul 
 of contentment and cheer. It is not the gladness of mirth, but 
 the deep satisfaction of the seer; for to such as have gained the 
 point of changeless being, beyond the changing and phenome- 
 nal, — 
 
 ‘Their joy, their comfort, their desire, their gain. 
 
 Is. fixed all on that which now they see; 
 
 All other sights but fained shadows be. 1 
 
 Sensitive, tender, grateful, devout, learned, wise, and introspect- 
 ive, with ‘the vision and the faculty divine,’ his own words are 
 applicable to him: 
 
372 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 ‘The noble heart that harbors virtuous thought 
 And is with child of glorious-great intent, 
 
 Can never rest until it forth have brought 
 The eternal brood of glory excellent.’ 
 
 Influence. — He threw into English verse the soul of har- 
 mony, and made it more expansive, more richly descriptive, than 
 it ever was before. More than any other, by his ideal method of 
 treatment, and the splendor of his fancy, he contributed to the 
 transformation of style and language. One so largely and so 
 ardently admired, must have had many imitators. Browne and 
 the two Fletchers were his professed disciples. Cowley said 
 that he became ‘ irrevocably a poet ’ by reading him when a boy. 
 Gray was accustomed to open him when he would frame — 
 ‘Thoughts that breathe, aud words that burn.’ 
 
 Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and Keats show traces of him. 
 Thomson wrote the most delightful of his own poems in his 
 stanza. Dryden claimed him for a master. Milton called him 
 ‘our sage and serious poet, whom I dare be known to think a 
 better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas .’ How so? Because he 
 revealed, in lowly aspect, the ideal point of view; gave to souls 
 a consciousness of their wings; sowed in them the seeds of a 
 noble discontent with prosaic views of life; fastened the atten- 
 tion upon necessary uncreated natures — Ideas, into whose divine 
 atmosphere no man can be lifted, without becoming, in some 
 degree, himself divine. This is the inestimable value of such a 
 character, — that he forms a standing protest against the tyranny 
 of commonplace, against the limitary tone of English thought, 
 enslaved to the five mechanic powers. He and his culture are 
 needed to withstand the encroachments of artificial manners, to 
 counteract the materializing tendencies of physical science, to 
 sway and purify the energies that are too much confined to gain 
 and pleasure and show. The end of a moral being is, not food 
 or raiment or estate, but soul-expansion; and the parent of all 
 noblest improvement is love — the outflow of desire toward the 
 true, beautiful, and good, which exists in thought, action, or per- 
 son, not our own. Whoever acts admirably upon the imagina- 
 tion, administers to this effect. Whoever gives the world a pic- 
 torial air, contributes to our emancipation. Whoever makes us 
 more intensely and comprehensively imaginative, exalts us into 
 the possession of incorruptible goods. In vain will philosophy 
 
THE THOUSAND-SOULED. 
 
 373 
 
 and fashion and utilitarianism oppose such a one. They fare as 
 servants; he is sought after, and entertained as an angel. The 
 ages esteem visions more than bread. Centuries hence, men will 
 be touched — the more powerfully, the more they are advanced — 
 by this artist and his art. His is the ceaseless fertility of the 
 great Mother, the universal Love which was the prayer of his 
 life, of which all loves are but the frail and fleeting blossoms: 
 
 ‘So all the world by thee at first was made, 
 
 And dayly yet thou doest the same repayre; 
 
 Ne ought on earth that merry is and glad, 
 
 Ne ought on earth that lovely is and fayre, 
 
 But thou the same for pleasure didst prepayre: 
 
 Thou art the root of all that joyous is: 
 
 Great God of men and women, queene of th’ ayre, 
 
 Mother of laughter, and welspring of blisse, 
 
 O graunt that of my love at last I may not missel’ 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Mellifluous Shakespeare. — Heywood. 
 
 The thousand- souled. — Coleridge. 
 
 His thoughts, passions, feelings, strains of fancy, all are of this day as they were of 
 his own ; and his genius may be contemporary with the mind of every generation for a 
 thousand years to come. — Prof. Wilson. 
 
 Biography. — Born ill Stratford, in 1564; removed from school 
 at an early age by the reverses of his father, once a prosperous 
 tradesman and official, now on the verge of ruin; applied himself, 
 in a desultory manner, to business; to keep up the reputation of 
 his little town, took part in scrapes and frolics; at eighteen, mar- 
 ried a farmer’s daughter, Anne Hathaway, aged twenty-six, to 
 whom he was to bequeath only his ‘ second best bed with furni- 
 tftire’; quit home for London, fell into theatrical society, and 
 became an actor and a playwright, serving an apprenticeship in 
 the revision of dramas ; six years later, was applauded by the 
 gifted and the noble; added to the trades of player and author 
 those of manager and director of a theatre; acquired shares in 
 the Blackfriars and the Globe; invested in land, farmed tithes, 
 bought the finest house in Stratford, where his wife and three 
 children continued to live; finally retired to his native village, 
 
374 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 like a country gentleman and a landlord with a good rent-roll; 
 wrote for the stage, took an active interest in the public welfare, 
 made an occasional visit to the metropolis, lent money, managed 
 his fortune, lived like a cheerful shop-keeper, and, without the 
 care or the time to collect and publish his works, died on the 
 anniversary of his birth-day, April 23, 1616. 
 
 Meanwhile, he had projected himself into all the varieties of 
 human character ; had mingled with men of vigorous limbs, 
 strong appetites, impetuous passions, and keen intellect ; had 
 felt the fascinations of the stormy and irregular Marlowe; in the 
 company of fashionable young nobles, had fed his senses on 
 examples of Italian pleasures and elegances; had tasted misery, 
 felt the thorn of care and discredit; had seen himself under- 
 valued, named, along with Burbage and Greene, as one of ‘His 
 Majesty’s poor players’; had said in the bitterness of humilia- 
 tion: 
 
 ‘Alas, ’tis true I liave gone here and there. 
 
 And made myself a motley to the view, 
 
 Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear.' 
 
 And again: 
 
 ‘When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, 
 
 I all alone beweep my outcast state, 
 
 And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries, 
 
 And look upon myself, and curse my fate, 
 
 Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, 
 
 Featured like him, like him with friends possessed. 
 
 Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope. 
 
 With what I most enjoy contented least; 
 
 Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising. 
 
 Happily I think on thee,— and then my state 
 (Like to the lark at break of day arising 
 From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate; 
 
 For thy sweet love remembred, such wealth brings. 
 
 That then I scorn to change my state with kings.’ 
 
 One of his daughters married a physician, the other a wine mer- 
 chant. The second could not write her name. His only son, 
 Hamnet, died when eleven years of age. So few are the 
 recorded incidents in the outward career of the best head in the 
 universe. Like Plato, he drew up the ladder after him; and 
 the new age has sought in vain for a history of his house-and- 
 street life. His biography, like Plato’s, is internal; and the 
 psychologist sheds the light of which the antiquary despairs, 
 which it most imports us to have. 
 
SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 375 
 
 Writings. — The poems of Shakespeare are Venus and Ado- 
 nis , Lucrece , The Passionate Pilgrim , and Sonnets. His plays, 
 to several of which his title is disputed, are in number thirty- 
 seven, and, according to the sources from which the dramatist 
 drew his materials, may be grouped as, — 
 
 1. Historical. 
 
 DRAMAS, 
 
 Henry VI, Part I, 
 
 Tragedy , 
 
 SOURCES. 
 
 Denied; attributed to Marlowe. 
 
 Henry VI, Part 11, 
 
 44 
 
 Older play. 
 
 Henry VI, Part III, 
 
 
 Older play. 
 
 Richard II, 
 
 44 
 
 Holinshed’s Chronicles . 
 
 Richard III, 
 
 
 More’s History. 
 
 King John, 
 
 44 
 
 Older play. 
 
 Henry IV, Part I, 
 
 44 
 
 Older play. 
 
 Henry IV, Part II, 
 
 44 
 
 Older play. 
 
 Henry V, 
 
 44 
 
 Older play. 
 
 Henry VIII, 
 
 44 
 
 Chronicles of Hall and Holinshed. 
 
 2 . 
 
 Semi-historical. 
 
 Titus Andronicus, 
 
 Tragedy, 
 
 Perhaps by Marlowe. 
 
 Hamlet, 
 
 (i 
 
 Saxo’s Chronicle of Scandinavia. 
 
 King Lear, 
 
 u 
 
 Holinshed. 
 
 Macbeth, 
 
 “ 
 
 Holinshed’s Scotland. 
 
 Julius Caesar, 
 
 
 Plutarch’s Lives. 
 
 Antony and Cleopatra, 
 
 “ 
 
 Plutarch’s Lives. 
 
 CORIOLANUS, 
 
 
 Plutarch’s Lives. 
 
 Cymbeline, 
 
 Comedy (?) 
 
 Holinshed and Boccaccio. 
 
 3 
 
 Love's Labor Lost, 
 
 . Fictional. 
 
 Comedy , 
 
 Italian play. 
 
 Comedy op Errors, 
 
 “ 
 
 Plautus. 
 
 Two Gentlemen op Verona, 
 
 “ 
 
 An old romance. 
 
 Midsummer’s Night’s Dream, 
 
 
 Chaucer. 
 
 Merchant op Venice, 
 
 “ 
 
 Gesta Romanorum. 
 
 Romeo and Juliet, 
 
 Tragedy, 
 
 Boccaccio. 
 
 Much Ado About Nothing, 
 
 Comedy, 
 
 Italian romance. 
 
 Twelfth Night, 
 
 “ 
 
 Italian romance. 
 
 As You Like It, 
 
 “ 
 
 Lodge’s Romance. 
 
 Taming op the Shrew, 
 
 “ 
 
 Older play. 
 
 Pericles, 
 
 “ 
 
 Gower. 
 
 Merry Wives of Windsor, 
 Measure for Measure, 
 
 44 
 
 44 
 
 Old tale. 
 
 All’s Well that Ends Well, 
 
 “ 
 
 Boccaccio. 
 
 Timon of Athens, 
 
 Tragedy, 
 
 Plutarch and others. 
 
 Othello, 
 
 “ 
 
 Old tale. 
 
 Troilus and Cressida, 
 
 Comedy, 
 
 Chaucer. 
 
 Winter’s Tale, 
 
 44 
 
 Greene. 
 
 Tempest, 
 
 44 
 
 Italian romance. 
 
 In these performances, he exhausts all human experience, and 
 imagines more] searches the heart, lays bare its strength and 
 
376 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD— REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 weakness, its excesses and its rages; divines the secret impulses 
 of humanity; depicts all manners and conditions, high and low, 
 such as the world will always find; shines, like the sun, on the 
 evil and the good; runs without effort the round of human ideas, 
 records his convictions on the questions that knock at the gate 
 of every brain, on life, love, trial, death, immortality, freedom, 
 fate, — the ends of existence and the means. In so vast a field, 
 we must select. Nor, amid so many portraitures, in so great 
 variety of moods, in such profusion of sentiments, can the critic 
 choose more than fragments, entreating the reader to divine the 
 rest. The importance of this wisdom and this beauty sinks 
 form, chronology, analytic completeness, out of notice. 
 
 Nowhere is the wonderful range of power more visible than in 
 the varied types of female characters. Some are but babblers, — 
 each the representative of a species; vulgar minds that forget and 
 spare nothing, ignorant that conversation is but a selection, that 
 every story is subject to the laws of dramatic poetry , — festincit 
 ad eventum. Thus Mrs. Quickly reminds Falstaff of his promise 
 of marriage: 
 
 ‘Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in my Dolphin-chamber, at 
 the round table, by a sea- coal fire, upon Wednesday in Whitsun week, when the prince 
 broke thy head for liking his father to a singing-man of Windsor, thou didst swear to me 
 then, as I was washing thy wound, to marry me and make me my lady thy wife. Canst 
 thou deny it? Did not goodwife Keech, the butcher's wife, come in then and call me 
 gossip Quickly? coming in to borrow a mess of vinegar; telling us she had a good dish 
 of prawns; whereby thou didst desire to eat some .' 1 
 
 She is held in thraldom to the order and circumstances in which 
 her perceptions were originally acquired. Better still is the 
 example of the nurse in Romeo and Juliet , a never-ending 
 gossip, smelling of the kitchen, impudent, immoral, but faithful 
 and affectionate like a dog. The involuntary associations of her 
 thoughts are imperative. She would advance, but repeats her 
 steps; or, struck with an image, wanders from the point. She 
 brings Juliet news of her lover: 
 
 ‘ Nurse. I am aweary, give me leave awhile: 
 
 Fie, how my bones ache! what a jaunt have I had! 
 
 Jul. I would thou hadst my bones and I thy news. 
 
 Nay, come, I pray thee, speak; good, good nurse, speak. 
 
 Nurse. Jesu, what haste? can you not stay awhile? 
 
 Do you not see that I am out of breath? 
 
 Jul. How art thou out of breath when thou hast breath 
 To say to me that thou art out of breath? 
 
 1 Henry IV, Part II. 
 
SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 377 
 
 The excuse that thou dost make in this delay 
 Is longer than the tale thou dost excuse. 
 
 Is thy news good or bad? answer to that; 
 
 Say either, and I'll stay the circumstance: 
 
 Let me be satisfied, is't good or bad? 
 
 Nurse. Well, you have made a simple choice; you know not how to choose a man: 
 Romeo! no, not he; though his face be better than any man’s, yet his leg excels all 
 men's; and for a hand, and a foot, and a body, though they be not to be talked on, yet 
 they are past compare: he is not the flower of courtesy, but, I’ll warrant him, as gentle 
 as a lamb. Go thy ways, wench: serve God. What, have you dined at home? 
 
 Jul. No, no: but all this did I know before. 
 
 What says he of our marriage? what of that? 
 
 Nurse. Lord, how my head aches ! what a head have I ! 
 
 It beats as it would fall in twenty pieces. 
 
 My back o’ t’other side,— O, my back, my back! 
 
 Beshrew your heart for sending me about, 
 
 To catch my death with jaunting up and down! 
 
 Jul. I’faith, I am sorry that thou art not well. 
 
 Sweet, sweet, sweet nurse, tell me, what says my love? 
 
 Nurse. Your love says, like an honest gentleman, and a courteous, aud a kind, and 
 a handsome, and, I warrant, a virtuous,— Where is your mother? 
 
 Jul. Where is my mother! why, she is within; 
 
 Where should she be? How oddly thou repliest! 
 
 “Your love says, like an honest gentleman, 
 
 Where is your mother?”’ 
 
 But his heroines are of finer mould. They are the possible of the 
 female mind, seen, for the first time, as in a dream, yet — unlike 
 Spenser’s — warm breathing realities. They are all charming or 
 fascinating. Rosalind, sprightly but modest, coquettish and 
 voluble, like a warbling and pretty bird, her tongue running 
 ‘With wanton heed and giddy cunning.’ 
 
 When Orlando promises to love her ‘for ever and a day,’ she 
 says, with pretended cruelty: 
 
 ‘Say a day without the ever, no, no, Orlando, men are April when they woo, Decem- 
 ber when they wed; maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when 
 they are wives: I will be more jealous of thee than a Barbary cock-pigeon over his hen : 
 more clamorous than a parrot against rain ; more new-fangled than an ape ; more giddy 
 in my desires than a monkey; I will weep for nothing, like Diana in the fountain, and I 
 will do that when you are disposed to be merry ; I will laugh like a hyen, and that when 
 you are inclined to sleep.’ 
 
 ‘But will my Rosalind do so?’ — ‘By my life, she will do as I do.’ 
 Or, ‘What would you say to me now, an I were your very, very 
 Rosalind?’ Miranda, whose soul shines upon Ferdinand through 
 her innocent eyes, and he asks in a rapture of wonder: 
 
 ‘I do beseech you 
 
 (Chiefly that I might set it in my prayers) 
 
 What is your name?’ 1 
 
 1 Tempest. 
 
378 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 Imogen, the most artless of all, — 
 
 ‘So tender of rebukes that words are strokes, 
 
 And strokes death to her.’ 
 
 Accused of inconstancy by her husband, and discarded, she dis- 
 guises herself in order to be near him; finds, as she thinks, his 
 dead body, and refuses to quit the spot till — 
 
 ‘With wild-wood leaves and weeds, I ha’ strew'd his grave. 
 
 And on it said a century of prayers .' 1 
 
 Jachimo, dared by her husband to make trial of her fidelity, hides 
 in her chamber in order to bring away pretended proofs against 
 it. He notes the furniture, removes her bracelet, soliloquizing: 
 
 ‘ Fresh lily , 
 
 And whiter than the sheets! that I might touch! 
 
 But kiss; one kiss! . . . 
 
 ' Tis her breathing that 
 
 Perfumes the chamber thus : —the flame o’ the taper 
 Bows towards her; and would under-peep her lids , 
 
 To see the enclosed lights , now canopied 
 Under those windows , white and azure , lac'd 
 With blue of heaven's own tint.' 
 
 Desdemona, guileless victim of a foul conspiracy, — 
 
 ‘A maiden never bold: 
 
 Of spirit so still and quiet that her motion 
 Blushed at itself .’ 2 
 
 Cleopatra, voluptuous, ostentatious, haughty, dazzling, child of 
 air and fire: 
 
 ‘The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, 
 
 Burnt on the water; the poop was beaten gold, 
 
 Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that 
 The winds were love-sick .' 3 
 
 What a picture ! — 
 
 ‘Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale 
 Her infinite variety. Other women cloy 
 The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry 
 Where most she satisfies.’ 
 
 Cordelia, whose hallowed tears are — 
 
 ‘The holy water from her heavenly eyes .' 4 
 
 When her father, aged, irritable, half insane, asks her how she 
 loves him, she cannot protest, is ashamed to parade her tender- 
 ness, as her sisters have done, in order to buy a dowry by it; is 
 disinherited, expelled; afterwards, when she finds him forsaken 
 
 1 Cymbeline. 1 Othello. 3 Antony and Cleopatra. * Lear. 
 
SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 379 
 
 and mad, goes on her knees before him, caresses him, weeps over 
 him, prays for him: 
 
 ‘0 you kind gods, 
 
 Cure this great breach in his abused nature! 
 
 The untuned and jarring senses. O, wind up 
 Of this child-changed father! . . . 
 
 O my dear father! Restoration, hang 
 Thy medicine on my lips; and let this kiss 
 Repair those violent harms that my two sisters 
 Have in thy reverence made! . . . Was this a face 
 To be opposed against the warring winds? . . . 
 
 Mine enemy’s dog, 
 
 Though he had bit me, should have stood that night 
 Against my fire. . . . 
 
 How does my royal lord? How fares your majesty?’ 
 
 Ophelia, sincere and constant, feeling deeply but saying little, 
 and that quietly; delighted when she discovers that her love is 
 reciprocated, yet chary of her words; separated from her lover, 
 yet bearing her cruel fortune patiently; singing herself to rest, 
 when reason is dethroned. What can be more beautiful than 
 the words of the Queen on throwing flowers into her grave ? — 
 ‘Sweets to the sweet, farewell.’ 1 
 
 A true Northener. Juliet, deep though easily moved, constant 
 though ecstatic, pure though impulsive, uniting sweetness and 
 dignity of manners with passionate violence. When Romeo first 
 sees her, in the midst of elegance and splendor, he inquires: 
 
 ‘What lady’s that which doth enrich the hand 
 Of yonder knight? . . . 
 
 0 she doth teach the torches to burn bright. 
 
 Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of night, 
 
 Like a rich jewel in an JEthiop’s ear.’ 
 
 She is overcome by the pressure at her heart, and apologizes 
 thus for her maiden boldness: 
 
 ‘O gentle Romeo, 
 
 If thou dost love pronounce it faithfully; 
 
 Or if thou think I am too quickly won 
 I’ll frown and be perverse, and say thee nay, 
 
 So thou wilt woo: but else not for the world. 
 
 In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond; 
 
 And therefore thou may’st think my ’havior light; 
 
 But trust me, gentleman, I’ll prove more true 
 Than those that have more cunning to be strange. 
 
 1 should have been more strange, I must confess. 
 
 But that thou over-heard’ st, ere I was ware, 
 
 My true love’s passion; therefore, pardon me, 
 
 And not impute this yielding to light love, 
 
 Which the dark night hath so discovered.’ 
 
 Hamlet. 
 
380 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 Of the same sort — heart fluttering ever between pleasure, hope, 
 and fear — is the soliloquy after marriage: 
 
 ‘Come, Romeo! come, thou day in night; 
 
 For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night 
 Whiter than new snow on a raven’s back. . . . 
 
 Come, gentle night; come, loving, black-brow’d night, 
 
 Give me my Romeo: and when he shall die, 
 
 Take him and cut him out in little stars, 
 
 And he will make the face of heaven so fine, 
 
 That all the world shall be in love with night, 
 
 And pay no worship to the garish sun.’ 
 
 This is the true Southerner. Lady Macbeth, finally, than whom 
 nothing could be more fearful and appalling; ambitious, com- 
 manding, inexorable, never to be diverted from a wicked pur- 
 pose, when once formed. One obstacle stands between her family 
 and a throne — Duncan; and on hearing of his fatal entrance 
 under her battlements, she exclaims: 
 
 ‘ Come, you spirits 
 
 That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here: 
 
 And fill me, from the crown to th’ toe, top-full 
 Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood, 
 
 Stop up the access and passage to remorse, 
 
 That no compunctious visitings of nature 
 Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between 
 The effect and it. Come to my woman's breasts. 
 
 And take my milk for gall, you murthering ministers, 
 
 Whenever in your sightless substances 
 
 You wait on nature’s mischief. Come, thick night! 
 
 And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, 
 
 That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, 
 
 Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, 
 
 To cry, hold, hold ! ’ 
 
 If you seek the passions of an animal and the imagination of 
 a man of wit, you will find them exemplified in Falstaff, profane, 
 dissolute, corpulent, voluble, and jolly; a jester, a drunkard, and 
 a glutton, who sleeps among tavern jugs, and wakes to brag, lie, 
 and steal. Yet he does not offend you, he delights you. He is 
 himself openly, without malice or hypocrisy. He says to the 
 prince, who berates him: 
 
 ‘Dost thou hear, Hal? thou knowest in the state of innocency Adam fell; and what 
 should poor Jack Falstaff do in the days of villainy? Thou seest I have more flesh than 
 another man, and therefore more frailty.’ 1 
 
 He is an Epicurean systematically, and, though a coward, pulls 
 out his bottle on the field of battle to show his contempt for 
 glory and danger. He is never at a loss, and devises a shift on 
 
 1 Henry 7F, Part /. 
 
SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 381 
 
 every occasion, at a moment’s warning, with monumental impu- 
 dence. Arrested for an old debt by Mrs. Quickly, he persuades 
 her to pawn her plate to lend him ten pounds more. Insults, 
 oaths, and boastings flow from him naturally, unceasingly, in 
 geometrical progression. He pretends to have encountered two 
 robbers, — has fought them alone; and presently, as the imagina- 
 tion of his own valor increases with the narrative, the number is 
 four, then eleven, then fourteen. He is always good-natured, 
 unconquerably self-possessed. Exposed or insulted, he laughs, 
 retorts in coarse words, but owes no grudge. 4 Gallants, lads, 
 boys, hearts of gold.’ ‘What, shall we be merry?’ A frank, 
 embossed rascal, without thought of being just or unjust. If his 
 vices gratify himself, they amuse others, without infecting them. 
 Here he is, embodied and palpable: 
 
 ‘ Fal. Bardolph, am I not fallen away vilely since this last action? do I not bate? do 
 I not dwindle? Why, my skin hangs about me like an old lady's loose gown; I am with- 
 ered like an old apple-john. Well, I’ll repent, and that suddenly, while I am in some 
 liking ; I shall be out of heart shortly, and then I shall have no strength to repent. An I 
 have not forgotten what the inside of a church is made of, I am a peppercorn, a brewer's 
 horse: the inside of a church! Company, villanous company, hath been the spoil of me. 
 
 Bard. Sir John, you are so fretful, you cannot live long. 
 
 Fal. Why, there is it: come sing me a bawdy song; make me merry. I was as vir- 
 tuously given as a gentleman need to be ; virtuous enough ; swore little ; diced not above 
 seven times a week; went to a bawdy-house not above once in a quarter — of an hour;, 
 paid money that I borrowed, three or four times; lived well and in good compass: and! 
 now I live out of all order, out of all compass. 
 
 Bard. Why, you are so fat, Sir John, that you must needs be out of all compass, out 
 of all reasonable compass, Sir John. 
 
 Fal. Do thou amend thy face, and I’ll amend my life: thou art our admiral, thou 
 bearest the lantern in the poop, but 'tis in the nose of thee ; thou art the Knight of the 
 Burning Lamp. 
 
 Bard. Why, Sir John, my face does you no harm. 
 
 Fal. No, I’ll be sworn; I make as good use of it as many a man doth of Death's- 
 head or a memento mori: I never see thy face but I think upon hell-fire and Dives that 
 lived in purple; for there he is in his robes, burning, burning. If thou wert any way- 
 given to virtue, I would swear by thy face; my oath should be “By this fire, that's God's- 
 angel:” but thou art altogether given over; and wert indeed, but for the light in thy 
 face, the son of utter darkness. When thou rannest up Gad’s-hill in the night to catch 
 my horse, if I did not think thou hadst been an ignis fatuus or a ball of wildfire, there's* 
 no purchase in money. O, thou art a perpetual triumph, an everlasting bonfire-light ! 
 Thou hast saved me a thousand marks in links and torches, walking with thee in the 
 night betwixt tavern and tavern. . . . 
 
 Bard. ’Sblood, I would my face were in your belly! 
 
 Fal. God-a-mercy! so should I be sure to be heart-burned.’ 
 
 An acute head and a calloused heart, with a deliberate and 
 absorbing preference of evil, constitute the perfect villain. Iago 
 is a demon in human form; a trooper and a hypocrite, with the 
 philosophy of a cynic, the maxims of a detective, and the spirit 
 
382 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 of an assassin. ‘O my reputation, my reputation!’ cries the dis- 
 graced Cassio. ‘ As I am an honest man,’ says Iago, ‘ I thought 
 you had received some bodily wound; there is more sense in that 
 than in reputation.’ 1 4 What wouldst thou write of me, if thou 
 
 shouldst praise me ? ’ says Desdemona : 
 
 ‘O gentle lady, do not put me to’t; 
 
 For I am nothing, if not critical.’ 
 
 She insists, and bids him draw the portrait of a perfect woman. 
 He does it characteristically: 
 
 '■logo. She that was ever fair and never proud, 
 
 Had tongue at will and yet was never loud. 
 
 Never lack'd gold and yet went never gay, 
 
 Fled from her wish and yet said “Now I may,” 
 
 She that being anger’d, her revenge being nigh. 
 
 Bade her wrong stay and her displeasure fly. 
 
 She that in wisdom never was so frail 
 To change the cod's head for the salmon’s tail, 
 
 She that could think and ne’er disclose her mind, 
 
 See suitors following and not look behind, 
 
 She was a wight, if ever such wight were,— 
 
 Des. To do what? 
 
 Iago . To suckle fools and chronicle small beer.'' 
 
 To this impotent and sinister conclusion, all optimism is reduced. 
 He speaks only in sarcasms. He is an inveterate misanthrope, 
 and has a rancorous delight in the worst side of everything. His 
 coolness, dexterity, and profound dissimulation appear admirably 
 where he first enters upon the execution of his design to set 
 Othello and Desdemona at fatal issue: 
 
 '■Iago. My noble lord. 
 
 Othello. What dost thou say, Iago? 
 
 Iago. Did Michael Cassio, when you woo’d my lady. 
 
 Know of your love? 
 
 Othello. He did, from first to last. 
 
 Why dost thou ask? 
 
 Iago. But for a satisfaction of my thought, 
 
 No further harm. 
 
 Othello. Why of thy thought, Iago? 
 
 Iago. I did not think he had been acquainted with her. 
 
 Othello. O yes, and went between us very oft. 
 
 Iago. Indeed? 
 
 Othello. Indeed! ay, indeed. Discern' st thou ought in that? 
 
 Is he not honest? 
 
 Iago. Honest, my lord? 
 
 Othello. Ay, honest? 
 
 Iago. My lord, for aught I know. 
 
 Othello. WKat dost thou think? 
 
 Iago. Think, my lord? 
 
 Othello. Think, my lord? By heaven, he echoes me, 
 
 As if there was some monster in his thought 
 Too hideous to be shoiun.' 
 
 i Othello. 
 
SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 383 
 
 Like Mephistopheles, he can justify himself by cogent reasoning. 
 When he gives the advice which is to be the ruin of the innocent 
 and trusting, he likens the atrocious crime to virtue: 
 
 ‘And what’s he then that says I play the villain? 
 
 When this advice is free I give and honest, 
 
 Probal to thinking and indeed the course 
 
 To win the Moor again? For ’tis most easy 
 
 The inclining Desdemona to subdue 
 
 In any honest suit: she's framed as fruitful 
 
 As the free elements. And then for her 
 
 To win the Moor, — were’t to renounce his baptism, 
 
 All seals and symbols of redeemed sin, — 
 
 His soul is so enfetter'd to her love, 
 
 That she may make, unmake, do what she list. 
 
 Even as her appetite shall play the god 
 
 With his weak function. IIow am I then a villain?’ 
 
 His ease arises from the torture lie inflicts; his joy, from the 
 success of his treacherous plots. When Othello swoons for grief, 
 he rubs his hands for bliss: ‘Work on, my medicine, work ! Thus 
 credulous fools are caught.’ When Othello recovers, he inquires, 
 with diabolical but natural indifference: ‘How is it, General? 
 Have you not hurt your head?’ 
 
 In Lear, passion, unrestrained and terrible, rises into colossal 
 proportions. The poor old king, to whom patience is unknown, 
 is the subject of prolonged and vast agony. His daughters, who 
 turn against his age and weakness, are the one rooted idea in the 
 desert of his mind; and their incredible treacheries gradually, 
 through transports of fury and convulsions of misery ever deep- 
 ening and growing, drive him mad. Nothing can exceed the 
 awful beauty of the meeting between him and Cordelia, when, 
 through her tender care, he revives and recollects her: 
 
 '■Cor. 
 
 Lear. 
 
 Cor. 
 
 Lear. 
 
 Cor. 
 
 Physician. 
 
 Lear. 
 
 Cor. 
 
 How does my royal lord? How fares your majesty! 
 Yon do me wrong, to take me out of the grave: 
 Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound 
 Upon a wheel of fire, that mine own tears 
 Do scald like molten lead. 
 
 Sir, do you know me? 
 
 You are a spirit I know: when did you die? 
 
 Still, still far wide ! 
 
 He’s scarce awake; let him alone awhile. 
 
 Where have I been? Where am I? Fair daylight? 
 
 I am mightily abused. I should even die with pity. 
 To see another thus. I know not what to say. 
 
 I will not swear these are my hands:— let’s see; 
 
 I feel this pin prick. Would I were assur’d 
 Of my condition. 
 
 O, look upon me, sir, 
 
384 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 And hold your hands in benediction o'er me: . . . 
 
 No, sir, you must not kneel. 
 
 Lear. Pray do not mock me: 
 
 I am a very foolish fond old man, 
 
 Fourscore and upward; 
 
 Not an hour more, nor less: and to deal plainly, 
 
 I fear I am not in my perfect mind. 
 
 Methinks I should know you, and know this man; 
 
 Yet I am doubtful; for I am mainly ignorant 
 What place this is; and all the skill I have 
 Remembers not these garments; nor I know not 
 Where I did lodge last night: do not laugh at me; 
 
 For, as I am a man, I think this lady 
 To be my child Cordelia. 
 
 Cor. And so I am, I am ! ’ 
 
 Lear, who thought himself omnipotent, finds himself helpless; 
 and, once pleased with false professions of love, now clings to 
 that which is tranquil because of its depth and fulness. Thus 
 they console each other when, after the triumph of their ene- 
 mies, they are led to prison: 
 
 '■Cor. We are not the first. 
 
 Who, with best meaning, have incurr'd the worst. 
 
 For thee, oppressed king, am I cast down; 
 
 Myself could else out-frown false fortune's frown. — 
 
 Shall we not see these daughters, and these sisters? 
 
 Lear. No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison: 
 
 We too alone will sing like birds i’ the cage: 
 
 When thou dost ask my blessing, I'll kneel down, 
 
 And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live, 
 
 And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh 
 
 At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues 
 
 Talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them too — 
 
 Who loses, and who wins; who's in, who's out;— 
 
 And take upon us the mystery of things, 
 
 As if we were God’s spies: and we'll wear out, 
 
 In a wall’d prison, packs, and sects of great ones. 
 
 That ebb and flow by the moon.’ 
 
 The history of Macbeth is the story of a moral poisoning. 
 Frank, sociable, and generous, though tainted from the first by 
 base and ambitious thoughts, he is urged on to his ruin by the 
 prophetic warnings of the witches, by golden opportunity, and 
 the instigations of his wife. He has physical but lacks moral 
 courage. The suggestion of a possible crown haunts him. He 
 struggles, but he is a lion in the toils. He feels the resistless 
 traction of fate, sees himself on the verge of an abyss, and his 
 brain is filled with phantoms : 
 
 ‘Why do I yield to that suggestion 
 Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair 
 And make my seated heart knock at my ribs, 
 
SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 385 
 
 Against the use of nature? Present fears 
 Are less than horrible imaginings: 
 
 My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, 
 
 Shakes so my single state of man that function 
 Is smother’d in surmise, and nothing is 
 But what is not.’ 
 
 To act, he must be sudden and desperate. When the deed is 
 done, he is horrified, shudders to think of* it, starts at every 
 sound, is disturbed by a supposed word from the sleepers in an 
 adjoining room : 
 
 ‘One cried, “God bless us!” and “Amen,” the other; 
 
 As they had seen me with these hangman's hands. 
 
 Listening their fear, I could not say “Amen,” 
 
 When they did say, “God bless us!”. . . 
 
 But wherefore could I not pronounce “Amen”? 
 
 I had most need of blessing, and “Amen” 
 
 Stuck in my throat.’ 
 
 Having murdered one, he must murder others, in order to pre- 
 serve the fruits of his crime: 
 
 ‘I am in blood 
 
 Steep'd in so far that, should I wade no more. 
 
 Returning were as tedious as go o’er.’ 
 
 He has Banquo murdered, and thereafter is in continual deadly 
 terror of the ghost that ‘will not down’: 
 
 ‘Prithee, see there! Behold! look! lo! how say you? 
 
 Why, what care I? If thou canst nod, speak too. 
 
 If charnel-houses and our graves must send 
 Those that we bury back, our monuments 
 Shall be the maws of kites. . . . 
 
 The times have been 
 
 That, when the brains were out, the man would die, 
 
 And there an end; but now they rise again, 
 
 With twenty mortal murders on their crowns, 
 
 And push us from our stools: . . . 
 
 Avaunt! and quit my sight! let the earth hide thee! 
 
 Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold; 
 
 Thou hast no speculation in those eyes 
 Which thou dost glare with ! ’ 
 
 A habit of slaughter, mechanical smiles, and a fixed belief in 
 destiny are all that remain: 
 
 ‘Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player 
 That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, 
 
 And then is heard no more: it is a tale 
 Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. 
 
 Signifying nothing.’ 
 
 Yet we sympathize with him in that fine close of thoughtful 
 melancholy: 
 
 25 
 
386 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS, 
 
 ‘My way of life 
 Is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf; 
 
 And that which should accompany old age, 
 
 As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends, 
 
 I must not look to have; but in their stead. 
 
 Curses not loud but deep, mouth- honor, breath 
 Which the poor heart would fain deny, but dare not.’ 
 
 Hamlet is a metaphysician and a. psychologist; a soul of sensi- 
 bility, hope, refinement, and thought, with every kind of culture 
 except the culture of active life, forced from its natural bias by 
 extreme misfortune. He has seen only the beauty of humanity, 
 and at once sees all its vileness in his mother : 
 
 ‘O that this too, too solid flesh would melt, 
 
 Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! 
 
 Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd 
 
 His canon 'gainst self- slaughter ! O God! O God! 
 
 How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. 
 
 Seem to me all the uses of this world! 
 
 Fie on't ! ah fie ! 'tis an unweeded garden, 
 
 That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature 
 Possess it merely. That it should come to this! 
 
 But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two: 
 
 So excellent a king, ... so loving to my mother, 
 
 That he might not beteem the winds of heaven 
 Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth! . . . 
 
 And yet, within a month, — 
 
 Let me not think on't,— Frailty, thy name is woman! — 
 
 A little month, or ere those shoes were old 
 
 With which she follow'd my poor father’s body, . . . 
 
 Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears 
 Had left the flushing in her galled eyes. 
 
 She married.’ 
 
 Then appears the ghost in the night, to inform him of the fratri- 
 cide, and enjoin him to avenge the crime: 
 
 ‘Hold, hold, my heart, 
 
 And you my sinews, grow not instant old, 
 
 But bear me stiffly up! Remember thee! 
 
 Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat 
 In this distracted globe. Remember thee! 
 
 Yea, from the table of my memory 
 I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records, 
 
 All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, . . . 
 
 And thy commandment all alone shall live.’ 
 
 Henceforth he is a sceptic. His distress is transferred to the 
 general account. The universe is tinged with the color of his 
 own ideas. Sadness clings to him like a malady: 
 
 ‘I have of late — but wherefore I know not — lost all my mirth, foregone all custom 
 of exercises, and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, 
 the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look 
 you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, 
 it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. What 
 
SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 387 
 
 a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and 
 moving how express and admirable ! in action how like an angel ! in apprehension how 
 like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is 
 this quintessence of dust? man delights not me: no, nor woman neither.' 
 
 He doubts everything, doubts immortality, even doubts Ophelia, 
 asks her, ‘Are you honest?’ Doubts himself, says to her: ‘We 
 are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us.’ To a hopeless phi- 
 losophy, the world is a dull blank, and man a grinning skull. In 
 this mood, the unconscious Hamlet stumbles on the destined 
 grave of Ophelia, and pauses to muse on death and decay. He 
 comments on the skulls which the grave-digger throws up. This 
 may be the ‘pate of a politician, one that would circumvent 
 God’; or of a courtier, ‘which could say, “Good morrow, sweet 
 lord!’” This may be a lawyer’s: 
 
 ‘Where be his quiddities now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? 
 why does he suffer this rude knave now to knock him about the sconce with a dirty 
 shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery? 1 
 
 Here is another. It is Yorick’s: 
 
 ‘A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a 
 thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it. 
 Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? 
 your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table 
 on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen? Now get you 
 to my lady's chamber , and tell her , let her paint an inch thick , to this favor she must come; 
 make her laugh at that' 
 
 The base affinities of the body are irresistibly attractive to his 
 curiosity. Did Alexander look like this? Even so. The high- 
 est are but animate clay, and return to basest uses. ‘ Why may 
 not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till he find it 
 stopping a bung-hole ?' This surplus of imagination disqualifies 
 Hamlet for action. He is forever analyzing his own emotions 
 and motives, and does nothing because he sees two ways of doing 
 it. He is continually diverted from his purpose by his scruples. 
 He spares his uncle because he finds him praying, and waits for 
 some more fatal opportunity, ‘that has no relish of salvation in 
 it.’ He is conscious of his defect, reproves himself for it, tries to 
 reason himself out of it: 
 
 ‘How all occasions do inform against me, 
 
 And spur my dull revenge ! What is a man. 
 
 If his chief good and market of his time 
 Be but to sleep and feed? . . . 
 
 I do not know 
 
 Why yet I live to say, this thing’s to do; . . . 
 
 O, from this time forth, 
 
 My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth.’ 
 
388 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 He only alternates between enthusiasm and inactivity. His tri- 
 umphs in words are rocket-bursts of momentary splendor. Of 
 deliberate energy he is not capable. If he plunges a sword into 
 a breast, he does it in a fit of excitement, on a sudden impulse 
 from without. So his strength, in the moment of its final extinc- 
 tion, leaps up to accomplish the punishment of the malefactor. 
 It was thus that he had killed Polonius, his brooding bitterness 
 leaving him without remorse: 
 
 '■King. Now Hamlet, where’s Polonius? 
 
 Hamlet. At supper. 
 
 King. At supper! where? 
 
 Hamlet. Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain convocation of politic 
 worms are e’en at him.’ 
 
 Hamlet is an enigma, never wholly explicable and forever sug- 
 gestive. 
 
 The real is one great field of Shakespeare’s jpower; the fan- 
 tastical is another, — the supernatural world, the world of appari- 
 tions. We have elsewhere seen a variety of this life in the 
 witches of Macbeth. Never were so exquisitely imagined, sus- 
 tained, or expressed, the nimble genii, the bodiless sylphs, the 
 dreamy population of the moonlit forests. Prospero’s enchanted 
 isle is full of — 
 
 ‘Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. 
 
 Sometimes a thousand twanging instruments 
 Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices, 
 
 That if I then had waked after long sleep, 
 
 Would make me sleep again; and then in dreaming. 
 
 The clouds methought would open, and show riches 
 Ready to drop upon me: when I wak’d 
 I cried to dream again .’ 1 
 
 Ariel, delicate as an abstraction of the dawn and vesper sun- 
 lights, flies around shipwrecked men to console them, spreads 
 glowing visions before lovers, and executes his mission with the 
 swiftness of thought: 
 
 ‘Where the bee sucks, there suck I: 
 
 In a cowslip's bell I lie. . . . 
 
 Merrily, merrily shall I live now* 
 
 Under the blossom that hangs on the bough. . . . 
 
 I drink the air before me, and return 
 Or e’er your pulse twice beat .’ 2 
 
 When Titania, Queen of the Fairies, contends with Oberon, her 
 husband, for the retention of her favorite page, of whom he 
 1 Tempest. ^ Ibid. 
 
SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 389 
 
 seeks to deprive her, the frightened elves hide in the acorn cups. 
 Oberon comes off second best, and, by way of retaliation, drops 
 upon Titania’s sleeping eyes the juice of a magic flower, which 
 changes her heart: 
 
 ‘What thou seest when thou dost wake 
 Do it for thy true love take; 
 
 Love and languish for his sake: 
 
 Be it ounce, or cat, or bear, 
 
 Pard, or boar with bristled hair, 
 
 In thy eye that shall appear 
 When thou wak’st, it is thy dear; 
 
 Wake, when some vile thing is near. 1 1 
 
 The result is, that she finds herself enamored of Bottom, a stupid 
 fellow with an ass’s head: 
 
 ‘Out of this wood do not desire to go: 
 
 Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no. . . . 
 
 I'll give thee fairies to attend on thee; 
 
 And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep, 
 
 And sing, while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep. 
 
 And I will purge thy mortal grossness so, 
 
 That thou shalt like an airy spirit go. 1 
 
 She calls her fairy attendants: 
 
 ‘Be kind and courteous to this gentleman, 
 
 Hop in his walks, and gambol in his eyes; 
 
 Feed him with apricocks and dewberries, 
 
 With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries; 
 
 The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees. 
 
 And for night tapers crop their waxen thighs. 
 
 And light them at the fiery glow-worm’s eyes. 
 
 To have my love to bed, and to arise; 
 
 And pluck the wings from painted butterflies, 
 
 To fan the moon beams from his sleeping eyes. 1 . . . 
 
 Then: 
 
 ‘ Come, sit thee down upon this flowery bed. 
 
 While I thy amiable cheeks do coy 
 
 And stick musk- roses in thy sleek smooth head, 
 
 And kiss thy fair large ears , my gentle joy.' 
 
 To all this divine tenderness, her love makes characteristic reply: 
 
 '•Bot. Where’s Peas-blossom? 
 
 Peas. Ready. 
 
 Bot. Scratch my head , Peas-blossom. Where’s Monsieur Cobweb? 
 
 Cob. Ready. 
 
 Bot. Monsieur Cobweb, good monsieur, get up your weapons in your hand, and kill 
 me a red-hipped humble-bee on the top of a thistle ; and, good monsieur, bring me the 
 honey-bag. Do not fret yourself too much with the action , monsieur ; and, good mon- 
 sieur, have a care the honey-bag break not; I would be loth to have you overflown with a 
 honey-bag , signior. Where’s Monsieur Mustard-seed ? 
 
 Must. Ready. 
 
 Bot. Give me your fist, Monsieur Mustard-seed. Pray you, leave your courtesy, 
 good monsieur. 
 
 Must. What’s your will? 
 
 1 Midsummer Night's Dream. 
 
390 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD— REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 Bot. Nothing, good monsieur, but to help Cavaliero Cobweb to scratch. I must to 
 the barber’s, monsieur; for methinks I am marvellous hairy about the face ; and I am 
 such a tender ass, if my hair do but tickle me I must scratch. 
 
 Tit. What, wilt thou hear some music, my sweet love? 
 
 Bot. I have a reasonable ear in music: let us have the tongs and the bones. 
 
 Tit. Or say, sweet love, what thou desirest to eat. 
 
 Bot. Truly a peck of provender. I could munch your good dry oats. Methinks I 
 have a great desire to a bottle of hay. Good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow. 
 
 Tit. I have a venturous fairy, that shall seek 
 
 The squirrel’s hoard, and fetch thee new nuts. 
 
 Bot. I had rather have a handful or two of dried peas : — but, I pray you, let none 
 of your people stir me; I have an exposition of sleep come upon me. 
 
 Tit. Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms. 
 
 Fairies, begone, and be all ways away. 
 
 So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle 
 Gently entwist;— the female ivy so 
 Enrings the barky fingers of the elm. 
 
 O, how I love thee! How I dote on thee!’ 
 
 Was ever such extent of action? such diverse creation? such 
 mastery of situation and form ? 
 
 It is this poet’s prerogative to have thought more finely and 
 more extensively than all other poets combined. Not the least 
 of the emblazonries upon his shield is his teeming fertility of fine 
 ideas and sentiments, universally intelligible, and applicable to 
 the circumstances of every human being. For instance, as 
 merest suggestions of the golden bead-roll that might be gath- 
 ered from his works: 
 
 ‘’Tis the mind that makes the body rich.’ 
 
 ‘How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!’ 
 
 ‘Death lies on her, like an untimely frost 
 Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.’ 
 
 ‘ Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny.’ 
 
 ‘Violent delights have violent ends, 
 
 And in their triumph die.’ 
 
 ‘Our doubts are traitors, 
 
 And make us lose the good we oft might win, 
 
 By fearing to attempt.’ 
 
 ‘Good name, in man and woman, dear my lord, 
 
 Is the immediate jewel of their souls.’ 
 
 ‘For aught that ever I could read, 
 
 Could ever hear by tale or history, 
 
 The course of true love never did run smooth.' 
 
 ‘The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would 
 be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair if they were not 
 cherished by our virtues.’ 
 
 ‘Never durst poet touch a pen to write 
 Until his ink were temper’d with love’s sighs; 
 
SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 391 
 
 O, then his lines would ravage savage ears, 
 
 And plant in tyrants mild humility.’ 
 
 4 ’Tis better to be lowly born, 
 
 And range with humble livers in content, 
 
 Than to be perk'd up in glistering grief, 
 
 And wear a golden sorrow.’ 
 
 ‘There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’ st, 
 
 But in his motion like an angel sings, 
 
 Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins; 
 
 Such harmony is in immortal souls; 
 
 But whilst this muddy vesture of decay 
 Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.’ 
 
 ‘The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces. 
 
 The solemn temple, the great globe itself, 
 
 Yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve; 
 
 And, like this insubstantial pageant faded. 
 
 Leave not a rack behind.’ 
 
 ‘Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; 
 
 To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot; 
 
 This sensible warm motion to become 
 A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit 
 To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside 
 In thrilling regions of thick- ribbed ice; 
 
 To be imprisoned in the viewless winds. 
 
 And blown with restless violence about 
 The pendent world; or to be worse than worst 
 Of those, that lawless and incertain thoughts 
 Imagine howling! — ’tis too horrible!’ 
 
 Perhaps there is a mood in the life of every thoughtful person 
 when he feels, and in a sense truly, that human existence is a 
 little tract of feverish vigils, islanded by a shoreless ocean of 
 oblivion: 
 
 ‘We are such stuff 
 
 As dreams are made of, and our little life 
 Is rounded with a sleep.’ 
 
 Still, in his higher, serener altitudes, he will bid us do our dream 
 duties: 
 
 ‘To thine own self be true; 
 
 And it must follow as the night the day. 
 
 Thou canst not then be false to any man.’ 
 
 And still he believes in the immortal essence of the dreamer; 
 and will say with Hamlet, of the ghost, though his teeth chatter: 
 
 ‘I do not set my life at a pin's fee; 
 
 And for my soul , what can it do to that , 
 
 Being a thing immortal as itself?’ 
 
 When, too, a man has tried wearily but vainly to adjust the 
 infinite part of him to the finite, or, in learning to prescribe a 
 narrower boundary for the things he expected to obtain, has felt 
 
392 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 stealing upon him an unwelcome conviction of the vanity of 
 human hopes, he may think, — 
 
 ‘There's a divinity that shapes our ends. 
 Rough-hew them how we will .' 1 
 
 Or this? — 
 
 ‘That we would do. 
 
 We should do when we would; for this icould changes, 
 And hath abatements, and delays as many 
 As there are tongues, are hands, are instruments.’ 
 
 But, with a truer insight, he will confess this to be but a frag- 
 ment, a partial account, of our complex nature: 
 
 ‘Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie. 
 
 Which we ascribe to heaven ; the fated sky 
 Gives ns free scope , only doth backward push 
 Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull .’ 3 
 
 Lately Tyndall, of the advanced materialists, declared at Bir- 
 mingham that ‘the robber, the ravisher, and the murderer offend 
 because they can not help offending.’ But three hundred years 
 before, at Stratford-on-Avon, a far greater than Tyndall pro- 
 claimed in words that will never die: 
 
 ‘This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune,— 
 often the surfeit of our own behavior, — we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the 
 moon, and the stars: as if ice were villains by necessity ; fools by heavenly compulsion; 
 knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and adulter- 
 ers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all that we are evil in, by a 
 divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion of abominable man, to lay his goatish dispo- 
 sition to the charge of a star! . . . Tut, I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest 
 star in the firmament twinkled on my birth .’ 3 
 
 Lord Bacon wished that a science of the human passions might 
 be elaborated. He could have found it in Shakespeare. The 
 parts are there, needing only to be combined into a consistent 
 whole. Underlying and penetrating them is the Moral Law. 
 They disclose a constantly recurring emphasis, a pervading 
 agency, of the two grand factors in moral being, — the motive 
 
 1 Hamlet. M. Taine, intent upon the confirmation of a theory, would have Shake- 
 speare define man as a ‘nervous machine' led at random by determinate and complex 
 circumstances. But the eminent Frenchman, more brilliant than profound, has, in the 
 passages he cites, not only generalized from inadequate data, but has failed to discrimi- 
 nate between dramatic and philosophical or theological significance. It is when we have 
 divested ourselves of our proper humanity that life becomes a walking shadow — an 
 automaton. Did M. Taine note this? — 
 
 ‘Refrain to-night. 
 
 And that shall lend a kind of easiness 
 To the next abstinence: the next more easy; 
 
 For use almost can change the stamp of nature. 
 
 And either curb the devil, or throw him out. 
 
 With wondrous potency.' 
 
 'All's Well that Ends Well. 
 
 3 King Lear. 
 
SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 393 
 
 force and the perceptive faculty, — Free-Will and Conscience. 
 Let us hear a few of the observations which this anatomist of the 
 heart, by the simple exposition of human conduct, has made in 
 the sphere of the latter. For example, of the monitory function 
 of conscience, the collision and struggle of opposite impulses: 
 ‘Conscience is a thousand swords .’ 1 
 
 Or,— 
 
 ‘ First Murd. How dost thou feel thyself now? 
 
 Second Murd. ’Faith, some certain dregs of conscience are yet within me. 
 
 First Murd. Remember our reward, when the deed is done. 
 
 Second Murd. ’Zounds, he dies: I had forgot the reward. 
 
 First Murd. Where is thy conscience now? 
 
 Second Murd. In the Duke of Gloucester's purse. 
 
 First Murd. So when he opens his purse to give us our reward, thy conscience flies out. 
 
 Second Murd. ’Tis no matter. Let it go; there’s few or none will entertain it. 
 
 First Murd. How if it come to thee again ? 
 
 Second Murd. I’ll not meddle with it: it is a dangerous thing: it makes a man a cow- 
 ard: a man cannot steal, but it accuseth him; a man cannot swear, but it check him; 
 . . . ’tis a blushing shamefaced spirit that mutinies in a man’s bosom; it fills one full of 
 obstacles: it made me once restore a purse of gold that by chance I found; it beggars any 
 man that keeps it: it is turned out of all towns and cities for a dangerous thing. . . . 
 
 First Murd. ’Zounds, it is even now at my elbow, persuading me not to kill the 
 duke .’ 2 
 
 Or,— 
 
 ‘ Macb . If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well 
 It were done quickly: if the assassination 
 Could trammel up the consequence , and catch 
 With his surcease success; that but this blow 
 Might be the be-all and the end-all here , 
 
 But here, upon this bank and shoal of time, 
 
 We’d jump the life to come. But in these cases 
 We still have judgment here; that we but teach 
 Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return 
 To plague the inventor: . . . 
 
 This Duncan 
 
 Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been 
 So clear in his great office, that his virtues 
 Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against 
 The deep damnation of his taking-off; 
 
 And pity, like a naked new-born babe, 
 
 Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horse 
 Upon the sightless couriers of the air, 
 
 Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye 
 That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur 
 To prick the sides of my intent, but only 
 Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself .' 3 
 
 More powerful still, — 
 
 ‘Since Cassius first did whet me against Caesar, 
 
 I have not slept. 
 
 Between the acting of a dreadful thing 
 
 Richard III. 
 
 2 Ibid. 
 
 3 Macbeth. 
 
394 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 And the first motion, all the interim is 
 Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream: 
 
 The genius and the mortal instruments 
 Are then in council; and the state of man, 
 
 Like to a little kingdom, suffers then 
 The nature of an insurrection .' 1 
 
 The timidity of guilt, its mental and physical effects, — the soul 
 accusing* itself: 
 
 ‘Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind .’ 2 
 ‘How is’t with me when every noise appals me ?’ 3 
 ‘Guiltiness will speak , though tongues were out of use ?' 4 
 
 ‘Methought I heard a voice cry, “ Sleep no more! 
 
 Macbeth does murder sleep;" . . . 
 
 Still it cried, '‘'■Sleep no more!" to all the house: 
 
 “Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor 
 Shall sleep no more; Macbeth shall sleep no more.”’ 
 
 And so Lady Macbeth, at whose heart, when royalty crowns her 
 and royal robes enfold her, gnaws the undying worm: 
 
 '■Naught's had— all's spent 
 Where our desire is had without content. 
 
 'Tis safer to be that which we destroy 
 Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.’ 
 
 The boldness of innocence: 
 
 ‘What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted? 
 
 Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just , 
 
 And he but naked , though locked up in steel , 
 
 Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted .' 5 
 
 Its peaceful, cheering, commanding effect: 
 
 ‘ I feel within me 
 
 A peace above all earthly dignities — 
 
 A still and quiet conscience.' 6 
 
 To sum up all: 
 
 ‘Mark but my fall, and that that ruin’d me. 
 
 Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition: 
 
 By that sin fell the angels; how can man, then. 
 
 The image of his Maker, hope to win by it? 
 
 Love thyself last; cherish those hearts that hate thee; 
 
 Corruption wins not more than honesty. 
 
 Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace, 
 
 To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not: 
 
 Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country’s, 
 
 Thy God’s and truth’s .’ 7 
 
 What altitudes did this man not reach ? What depths did 
 not his plummet sound? What domain of consciousness did he 
 not extend ? 
 
 1 Caesar. 2 Henry VI. 3 Macbeth. 4 Ibid. 6 Henry VI. • Heni'y VIII. 7 Ibid . 
 
SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 395 
 
 Originality. — A few years ago the most eminent living 
 writer 1 of Holland said to a congress of authors and publishers 
 at Brussels: ‘For nearly forty years I have lived principally by 
 robbery and theft.’ He justified his practice by the example 
 of Virgil, Dante, Tasso, Milton, Voltaire, Schiller, and others. 
 Every man is receptive. The greatest are the most indebted. 
 Chaucer’s opulence has fed many pensioners, but he was himself 
 a huge borrower, using Gower and the Italians like stone- 
 quarries. Shakespeare, like every master, is at once heir and 
 dispenser. He has no credit of design. His materials, as the 
 table shows, were already prepared. He absorbed all the light 
 anywhere radiating. He borrowed not only the plot, but often 
 and extensively the very terms. Read Plutarch’s Lives for the 
 originals of Julius Caesar. Out of 6,043 lines in Henry TV, 1,771 
 were written by some antecedent author; 2,373 by Shakespeare 
 on the foundation laid by his predecessors ; and only 1,899 by 
 himself alone ! 2 Ready-made plots, solitary thoughts, fortunate 
 expressions were at hand, but he organized, enriched, and vivi- 
 fied them. Of little value where he found them, they were 
 priceless where he left them. ‘Thought,’ says Emerson, ‘is the 
 property of him who can entertain it ; and of him who can 
 adequately place it.’ 
 
 Versification. — He had no system, no mannerism, but the 
 true secret of blank verse — the adaptation of words and 
 rhythms to the sense contained in them. Thought runs before 
 expression and moulds it to its own peculiar uses. Hence the 
 defective and redundant lines, and other rhythmic variations, as 
 the various distribution of the time-values within a bar, by which 
 Shakespeare out of the bare type of blank verse has brought 
 such marvellous and subtle music. 
 
 Style . — His versification is powerful, sweet and varied, natu- 
 rally and enduringly musical. It was the sweetness of his utter- 
 ance that gave to his first readers their chief delight. To them, 
 he was the ‘ honey-tongued.’ His diction is appropriate to the 
 persons who use it, and to the idea or sentiment it conveys. 
 
 The dominant feature of his style is impassioned luxuriance. 
 It is the translation of abstract thoughts into visible images, — 
 
 1 Van Lennep. 2 Malone’s computation. 
 
396 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 thoughts that come of themselves, thrown out from the furnace 
 of invention by the seething', whirling energies of passion, crowd- 
 ed and contorted; images that unfold like a series of paintings, 
 involuntarily, in mingled contrasts, copious, jumbled, flaming. 
 Thus Hamlet to the queen’s question, ‘What have I done?’ 
 answers as if his brain were on fire: 
 
 ‘Such an act 
 
 That blurs the grace and blush of modesty, 
 
 Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose 
 From the fair forehead of an innocent love, 
 
 And sets a blister there, makes marriage -vows 
 As false as dicers' oaths: O, such a deed 
 As from the body of contraction plucks 
 The very soul, and sweet religion makes 
 A rhapsody of words; heaven's face doth glow: 
 
 Yea, this solidity and compound mass, 
 
 With tristful visage, as against the doom, 
 
 Is thought-sick at the act.’ 
 
 Whatever the situation, he is exuberant because he is buried and 
 absorbed in it. All objects shrink and expand to serve him, are 
 transfigured by his rapture. Thus, — 
 
 ‘The morning steals upon the night. 
 
 Melting the darkness.' 
 
 Or,— 
 
 ‘How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!’ 
 
 And, — 
 
 ‘The strong based promontory 
 Have I made shake, and by the spurs plucked up 
 The pine and cedar. 1 
 
 To the excited soul, metaphor is a necessity. It thinks of no 
 rules, and requires none. It studies not to be just or clear, but 
 attains life. It seizes ideas and figures without a consciousness 
 of its movements, and hurls them with an energy like to the 
 supernatural. Its condensation and confusion abide no criticism, 
 and heed none. As the result of inspiration, they mark the 
 suddenness and the breaks of the inner and divine afflatus. 
 
 Rank. — To excel in pathos, in wit, or in humor; in sub- 
 limity, as Milton; in intensity, as Chaucer; or in remoteness, as 
 Spenser, — would form a great poet; but to unite all, as Shake- 
 sjDeare has done, is — 
 
 ‘7b get the start of the majestic world , 
 
 And bear the palm alone!'' 
 
 Others have equalled or surpassed him in some particular excel- 
 lence, but no man ever had at once such strength and variety of 
 
SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 397 
 
 imagination. He has grasped all the diversities of rank, sex, and 
 age. His imperial muse has swept the poles of existence — the 
 human and the superhuman. His characters are legion; but — 
 whether sage or idiot, king or beggar, queen or nurse, hero or 
 clown, plotting villain or sportive fairy — all are distinct, all 
 speak and act with equal truth, all are inspired by the artist’s 
 animation. No other ever saw the world of nature and of mind 
 from so many points of view. He is all that he imaginatively 
 sees. Thus his figures acquire a relief and color which create 
 illusion. They are so consistent and vital that we seem to know 
 them, not by description, but by intercourse. 
 
 If we seek to refer this preeminence to the possession of any 
 peculiar quality, we think it may be found in the superior power 
 of grouping men in natural classes by an insight of general laws. 
 His penetrative genius discerns the common attributes of indi- 
 viduals; his dramatic genius gathers them up into one concep- 
 tion, and embodies that in a type; his poetic genius lifts it into 
 an ideal region, where, under circumstances more propitious, it 
 may find a free and full development. Each character is thus 
 the ideal head of a family. Each is rooted in humanity. Each 
 is an impassioned representative. Each, therefore, is a species 
 individualized. You will find many that resemble it, but none 
 identical with it. In actual existence, there is no Falstaff, 
 though there be multitudes like him. Vital generalization is 
 thus the secret of Shakespeare’s transcendent superiority over all 
 other writers. His personages are of no locality, no sect. They 
 belong to all regions, and to all ages. This is the essential prin- 
 ciple of highest literature, — that it is addressed to man as man, 
 not to men as they are parted into trades and professions. Its 
 audience-chamber is the globe. Its touches of nature make the 
 whole world kin. 
 
 We are not, however, to think of Shakespeare as having 
 achieved his work by the power of his single genius. He was 
 fortunately born. The tide of thoughts and events was at its 
 flood. Contemporary ideas and necessities forced him on. He 
 stood, like every greatest man, where all hands pointed in the 
 direction in which he should go. Generations pioneered his road. 
 Noble conceptions and a noble school of execution awaited him. 
 Filled with the power of that spirit which prevailed widely 
 
398 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 around him and formed his environment, he carried them to the 
 summit of excellence. The topstone of Bunker Hill Monument 
 is highest only because it rests on every block underneath; the 
 lowest and smallest helps to hold it there. 
 
 Character. — Norman by the father, Saxon by the mother, 
 Shakespeare had the English duality. He combined the Oriental 
 soaring of the first with the grip and exactitude of the second. 
 Imperfectly educated, he had as much culture as he wanted, and 
 of whatever kind he wanted. All the classicism then attainable 
 he got cheap — ready-made. Like Goethe, he set little store by 
 useless learning. Yet who can reckon all that he knew of man 
 and of history? Such minds have no need to be taught; they 
 are full, and overflow, by the revelations of their seer’s madness. 
 
 A nature affectionate and kind , 1 witty in conversation, brill- 
 iantly gay; extreme in joy and pain; so exquisitely sensitive, 
 that, like a perfect harp, it vibrated at the slightest touch; with 
 an imagination so broad, that it grasped all the complexity of 
 human lot, its laughter and its tears; so copious, that he never 
 erased what he had written; so glowing, that it set at defiance 
 the Unities which imprisoned it, and produced in their stead a 
 fantastic pageant, — a medley of forms, colors, and sentiments; 
 with sympathies so embracing, so urgent, that he became trans- 
 fused into all that he conceived, and gave to a multitude of 
 diverse individualities each a separate soul. 
 
 Without doubt, in his youth, he was not a pattern of pro- 
 priety. His Venus and Adonis is little else than a debauch. As 
 a dramatist he is certainly neither a professed religionist, nor a 
 pronounced reformer. He copies at random the high and the 
 low. He holds the mirror up to all that is — the whole reality. 
 While the lower half of the far-spread glass is therefore blotched, 
 we believe that the upper half is his ultimate and essential self. 
 With advancing years, he evidently dwells more upon the great 
 characters of his tragedies, and gives increased light to moral 
 issues. More and more, as he grows older, he tightens the 
 strands in the colossal harp of his nature and strikes the reso- 
 nant wires with a firmer plectrum. Deeper and deeper sink the 
 pangs of affection misplaced, the memory of hours misspent. 
 Conscience is ill at ease with the world. Thus again and 
 1 ‘My darling Shakespeare," ‘Sweet swan of Avon .’— Ben Jonson. 
 
SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 399 
 
 again he alludes to the infamy of his marriage. If the fact, 
 without the form, exists before — 
 
 ‘All sanctimonious ceremonies may 
 With full and holy rite be ministered, 
 
 No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall 
 To make this contract grow; but barren hate, 
 
 Sour-eyed disdain and discord, shall bestrew 
 The union of your bed with weeds so loathly 
 That you shall hate it both ; therefore take heed 
 As Hymen’s lamps shall light you.’ 
 
 Joy alternates with sadness, transports with melancholies: 
 
 ‘That time of year thou mayst in me behold 
 When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang 
 Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, 
 
 Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. 
 
 In me thou see’st the twilight of such day. 
 
 As after sun-set fadeth in the west, 
 
 Which by and by black night doth take away, 
 
 Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest. 
 
 In me thou see’st the glowing of such lire, 
 
 That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, , 
 
 As the death-bed whereon it must expire, 
 
 Consum’d with that which it was nourish'd by. 
 
 This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong, 
 
 To love that well which thou must leave ere long.’ 
 
 Here are the last notes struck within the hearing of this world: 
 
 ‘I commend my soul into the hands of God, my Creator, hoping and assuredly be- 
 lieving, through the only merits of Jesus Christ, my Savior, to be made partaker of life 
 everlasting.’ 1 
 
 Influence. — Upon universal sympathy, upon historical in- 
 quiry, upon linguistic development, he has left a potent and 
 enduring impress. His works and the Bible, both models of 
 Teutonic simplicity, are the great conservators of English speech. 
 
 He infused into the early drama a spirit of high art; gave it 
 order, symmetry, elevation; informed it with true airy wit and 
 rich but subtle humor; made it an opulent and unfailing fount 
 of entertainment and instruction. 
 
 He has revealed, in fresh, familiar, significant, and precise 
 details, the complete condition of civilization: and thus to attain 
 nature truthfully in the balance of motives and the issues of 
 action, is in the most vital of all ways to be moral; to be a prop- 
 agator, though by indirection, of the morality that governs and 
 illuminates the world; else is nature immoral and in fellowship 
 with impurity. 
 
 Shakespeare’s will. 
 
400 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 Consider the mental activity of which he is the occasion; how 
 far, and for how many, he has enlarged the circle of study and 
 reflection; the fund of maxims, observations, and sentiments, 
 that relate to whatever is interesting, important, or lofty in 
 human life, and whose infinite variety age cannot wither nor cus- 
 tom stale. Art, science, history, politics, physics, philosophy, 
 shall tax him for illustration while the tide of human feeling-s 
 and passions shall continue its course. 
 
 Shakespeare is like a great primeval forest, whence timber 
 shall be cut and used as long as winds blow and leaves are green. 
 
PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 FEATURES. 
 
 Man is explicable by nothing less than all his history. — Emerson. 
 
 Politics. — European civilization had merged in two essential 
 facts, — free inquiry and centralization of power; the first pre- 
 vailing in religious society, the second in civil. Before these 
 two could be reconciled, a struggle between them was inevitable. 
 On the one hand, royalty declared itself superior to the laws; on 
 the other, the spirit of liberty was passing from the public mind 
 to the state. When, in 1603, James, the Sixth of Scotland and 
 the First of England, ascended the throne, the decisive hour was 
 fast approaching' when either the king must become absolute, 
 or the parliament preponderant. He alternately enraged and 
 alarmed them by his monstrous claims, and excited their scorn 
 by his concessions; kept discontent alive by his fondness for 
 worthless and tyrannical favorites; provoked derision by his 
 cowardice, his pedantry, his ungainly person, and his uncouth 
 manners. The dignity of government was weakened, loyalty was 
 cooled, and revolution was fostered. Under his son and successor 
 Charles I, the struggle went on. He inherited his father’s the- 
 ories, with a stronger disposition to carry them into effect. He 
 imposed and collected illegal taxes, made forced loans; was art- 
 ful, capricious, and winding; entered into compacts which he 
 had no intention of observing; was perfidious from habit and on 
 principle. The commons put on a sterner front. Parliament 
 after parliament was dissolved, each more intractable than the 
 former. Then he attempted to rule without one, and for eleven 
 years — an interval utterly without precedent — the Houses were 
 not convoked. Yielding at length to the pressure of necessity, 
 he summoned them in 1640, but quickly dismissed them when 
 they would have considered the grievances of the nation. The 
 26 401 
 
402 
 
 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 opposition grew fiercer. In November of the same year, without 
 money, without credit, without authority even in his own camp, 
 he yielded again; and then met the ever-memorable body known 
 as the Long Parliament. Again he broke faith with his council, 
 with his people; and in August, 1642, the sword was drawn. 
 Charles, driven to Scotland and by the Scots surrendered to his 
 English subjects, expiated his crimes with his blood. The soul 
 of the revolutionary party was Cromwell, whose warrior saints, 
 devotedly attached to their leader, were bent on the establish- 
 ment of a free and pious commonwealth. Having destroyed the 
 king, they vanquished in turn the Parliament, which, having out- 
 lived its usefulness, and forgetting it was the creature of the 
 army, exasperated the latter by its dictation. The victorious 
 chief became king in everything but name. The government, 
 though in form a republic, was in truth a military despotism; but 
 the despot was wise and magnanimous, and the glory of Eng- 
 land, grown dim in the two preceding reigns, shone again, with 
 a brighter lustre than ever. Cromwell’s death, in 1658, brought 
 the rule of Puritanism to an end. The master had been a tem- 
 porary necessity. His system, acknowledged by all to be neces- 
 sary, w T as acceptable to none. The soldiers, against whom, wdiile 
 united, plots and risings of malcontents were ineffectual, now 
 released from the control of that mighty spirit, separated into 
 factions. Weary of strife, and terrified at the prospect of re- 
 newed civil warfare, the country sought again the shelter of the 
 monarchy, and invited the return of its exiled prince. Charles 
 II was proclaimed, and the Restoration was accomplished. 
 
 From 1641 dates the corporate existence of the two great 
 parties which have ever since contended for the direction of 
 public affairs. The royalists, comprising the nobles, the gentry, 
 and the prelacy, were called Cavaliers , from their gallant bear- 
 ing and equestrian skill. The opposition, comprising a few of 
 the peers, the bulk of citizens and yeomen, and the Nonconform- 
 ists, were called Roundheads , from the Puritan fashion of wear- 
 ing closely cropped hair. The names were afterwards changed 
 to Tory and Whig, and these, still later, to Conservative and 
 Liberal ; but the principles have remained essentially the 
 same. The watchword of the first is Order; that of the second, 
 Progress. 
 
CHANGES IN SOCIETY AND MANNERS. 
 
 403 
 
 Society. — In the midst of light, the thick darkness of the 
 middle-age rested on Ireland. Only the heavy hand of a single 
 despot could deliver her from the local despotism of a hundred 
 masters. Cromwell’s conquest was a series of awful massacres. 
 ‘I am persuaded,’ he says, ‘that this is a righteous judgement 
 of God upon these barbarous wretches who have imbrued their 
 hands in so much innocent blood, and that it will tend to pre- 
 vent the effusion of blood for the future.’ She was, as ever 
 since, undisguisedly governed as a dependency won by the 
 sword. 
 
 Scotland, joined to her neighbor on the most honorable terms, 
 preserved her dignity in retaining her constitution and laws. 
 Her people, however, had always been singularly turbulent. 
 They had butchered their first James in his bed-chamber; had 
 rebelled repeatedly against the second; had slain the third on 
 the field of battle; had broken the heart of the fifth by their 
 disobedience ; had imprisoned Mary, and led her son captive. 
 The border was a chaos of violence; and along the line between 
 the Highlands and Lowlands raged an incessant predatory war. 
 
 England had long been steadily advancing. Men had become 
 accustomed to peaceful pursuits, and irritation did not now so 
 readily as in former ages take the form of rebellion. From the 
 rising of the northern earls against Elizabeth, to the memorable 
 reckoning against Charles I, seventy years had elapsed without 
 intestine hostilities. The national wealth had greatly multiplied, 
 and civilization had greatly increased. 
 
 Still, we shall not forget the difference between the rude and 
 thoughtless boy and the refined and accomplished man. Masters 
 habitually beat their servants, teachers their pupils, and hus- 
 bands their wives. The offender in the pillory was happy to 
 escape with life from the shower of brickbats and paving stones. 
 If tied to the cart’s tail, the officer was implored to make him 
 howl. Pleasure parties were arranged for the purpose of seeing 
 wretched women whipped. Fights, in which gladiators hacked 
 each other to pieces, Avere the delight of multitudes. At the 
 Restoration, the glorious leaders of the Puritan faith were cut 
 down alive from the gallows, and quartered amidst insults; while 
 others — Cromwell among them — were dug up, and exposed on 
 the gibbet. 
 
404 
 
 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 The police were in constant collision with ruffians who wore 
 rapiers and daggers. At night bands of dissolute youth domi- 
 neered over the streets, which were buried in profound darkness. 
 It was these pests of London that suggested to Milton the lines: 
 
 ‘And in luxurious cities, when the noise 
 Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers, 
 
 And injury and outrage, and when night 
 Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons 
 Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.’ 
 
 In the outcast quarters of the city, even the warrant of the Chief 
 Justice could not be executed without a company of musketeers. 
 Sanguinary encounters with robbers were frequent. Mounted 
 highwaymen infested all the great approaches to the metropolis. 
 
 With the decline of enthusiasm and respect, courtly manners 
 degenerated into a base sensuality. An arch of triumph under 
 James I often represented obscenities. On one occasion, the 
 king and his royal brother of Denmark were carried to bed 
 drunk. Hear a description of the entertainment — the masque 
 of the Queen of Sheba: 
 
 ‘The ladies abandon their sobriety, and are seen to roll about in intoxication. . . . 
 The lady who did play the Queen's part . . . did carry most precious gifts to both their 
 Majesties; but, forgetting the steppes arising to the canopy, overset her caskets into his 
 Danish Majesties lap, and fell at his feet, tho rather 1 think it was in his face. Much 
 was the hurry and confusion; clothes and napkins were at hand, to make all clean. His 
 Majesty then got up and would dance with the Queen of Sheba; but he fell down and 
 humbled himself before her, and was carried to an inner chamber and laid on a bed of 
 state; which was not a little defiled with the presents of the Queen which had been 
 bestowed on his garments; such as wine, cream, jelly, beverage, cakes, spices, and other 
 good matters. The entertainment and show went forward, and most of the presenters 
 went backward, or fell down; wine did so occupy their upper chambers. Now did 
 appear, in rich dress, Hope, Faith, and Charity: Hope did assay to speak, but wine ren- 
 dered her endeavors so feeble that she withdrew, and hoped the king would excuse her 
 brevity; Faith . . . left the court in a staggering condition. . . . They were both sick 
 and spewing in the lower hall. Next came Victory, who ... by a strange medley of 
 versification . . . and after much lamentable utterance, was led away like a silly captive, 
 and laid to sleep in the outer steps of the ante-chamber. As for Peace, she most rudely 
 made war with her olive branch, and laid on the pates of those who did oppose her 
 coming." 
 
 Farther on we shall see how, underneath the disorderly bubbles 
 at the surface, Puritanism was raising the national morality. 
 
 Religion. — The Reformation was incomplete. It had been 
 made in accordance with the interests of its leaders, — the king 
 and the prelates, who divided between themselves the riches and 
 power of which they had despoiled the popes. By a large body 
 of Protestants the alliance was regarded as a scheme for serving 
 
PURITAN TRIUMPH. 
 
 405 
 
 two masters. It had closed reform, while the greater part of the 
 abuses which induced them to desire it were continued. They 
 denounced its pretensions, complained of its tyranny. They 
 had not thrown off one yoke in, order to receive another. They 
 were not afraid to dissent from those who had themselves dis- 
 sented. To no purpose were they fined, imprisoned, pilloried, 
 mutilated; their ministers dismissed, tracked by spies, prosecuted 
 by usurping and rapacious courts. They flourished in spite of 
 the efforts to destroy them, because they lived honestly, sustained 
 by the powerful ideas of God and conscience. Private life was 
 transformed. Enthusiasm spread. From individual manners, 
 the movement extended to public institutions. When the Long 
 Parliament assembled, they were able to resort to arms. Every 
 week the Commons occupied a day in deliberating on the prog- 
 ress of religion. The external and natural man was abolished. 
 Recreations and ornaments were abandoned. To wear love-locks, 
 to starch a ruff, to read the Fairy Queen, were sins. Law was 
 changed into a guardian of morals: 
 
 ‘Though the discipline of the church was at an end, there was nevertheless an un- 
 common spirit of devotion among people in the parliament quarters ; the Lord’s day was 
 observed with remarkable strictness, the churches being crowded with numerous and 
 attentive hearers three or four times in the day; the officers of the peace patrolled the 
 streets, and shut up all publick houses; there was no travelling on the road, or walking 
 in the fields, except in cases of absolute necessity. Religious exercises were set up in 
 private families, as reading the Scriptures, family prayer, repeating sermons, and singing 
 of psalms, which was so universal that you might walk through the city of London on the 
 evening of the Lord’s day, without seeing an idle person, or hearing anything but the 
 voice of prayer or praise from churches and private houses.’ 
 
 All the outlets of instinctive nature were closed. In 1644 it was 
 ordained: 
 
 ‘ That no person shall travel, or carry a burden, or do any worldly labour, upon pen- 
 alty of 10s. for the traveller and 5s. for every burden. That no person shall on the Lord’s 
 <lay use, or be present at, any wrestling, shooting, fowling, ringing of bells for pleasure, 
 markets, wakes, church-ales, dancing, games or sports whatsoever, upon penalty of 5s. to 
 every one above fourteen years of age. And if children are found offending in the prem- 
 ises, their parents or guardians to forfeit 12d. for every offense. If the several fines above 
 mentioned cannot be levied, the offending party shall be set in the stocks for the space of 
 three hours.’ 
 
 One ordinance directed that all the May-poles in England should 
 be cut down. Later they attacked the stage. Theatres were to 
 be dismantled, the spectators fined, the actors whipped at the 
 cart’s-tail. They persecuted pleasure, the more surely to punish 
 crime. In the army there was a like theory and a like practice. 
 Cromwell’s Ironsides were organized upon the principle that a 
 
406 
 
 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 perfect Christian makes a perfect soldier. A quartermaster, 
 convicted of blasphemy, was condemned to have his tongue bored 
 with a red-hot iron, his sword broken over his head, and himself 
 to be dismissed. During the expedition in Ireland, soldiers passed 
 their leisure hours in reading the Bible, in singing psalms, in 
 religious controversy. 
 
 Into the primeval forests of America, exiles, from conscience, 
 they carried the same fixed determination, the same fervent 
 faith, the same stoical spirit. A rigid morality was raised into 
 a civil law, and the Bible was the basis of the state. It was 
 enacted in New Hampshire: 
 
 ‘ That if any person shall in the night time break and enter any dwelling-house in 
 this State, with intent to kill, rob, steal, or to do or perpetrate any felony, the person so 
 offending being thereof convicted shall suffer death.’ 
 
 Again : 
 
 ‘That no person shall travel on the Lord's day between sun-rising and sun-setting, 
 unless from necessity, or to attend public worship, visit the sick, or do some office of 
 charity, on penalty of a sum not exceeding six dollars, nor less than one.’ 
 
 And: 
 
 ‘If any person shall openly deny the being of a God, or shall wilfully blaspheme the 
 name of God, Jesus Christ, or the Holy Ghost, or shall curse or reproach the word of 
 God, ... he shall be punished by fine not exceeding fifty pounds, and may be bound to 
 good behavior for a term not exceeding one year.' 
 
 In Maryland the law declared: 
 
 ‘That if any person shall hereafter, within this province, wittingly, maliciously, and 
 advisedly, by writing or speaking blaspheme or curse God, or deny our Saviour, Jesus 
 Christ, to be the Son of God, or shall deny the Holy Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy 
 Ghost, or the Godhead of any of the three persons, or the unity of the Godhead, or shall 
 utter any profane words concerning the Holy Trinity, or any of the persons thereof, and 
 shall thereof be convicted by verdict, he shall, for the first offence, be bored through the 
 tongue, and fined £20 to be levied of his body. And for the second offence, the offender 
 shall be stigmatized by burning in the forehead with the letter B, and fined £40. And 
 that for the third offense, the offender shall suffer death without the benefit of clergy.' 
 
 In Massachusetts, a man was publicly whipped for singing a 
 profane song. A girl, who gave some roasted chestnuts to a 
 boy, adding ironically that they would put him into Paradise, 
 was sentenced to ask pardon three times in church, and to be 
 imprisoned three days. So does personal asceticism develop 
 into public tyranny. 
 
 Such were the ‘Precisians’ or ‘Puritans’ — Protestant dissent- 
 ers, precise and combative minds, who, with the fundamental 
 honesty of the race, demanded of the Anglicans a more search- 
 ing and extensive reform, resolved to do all and to bear all rather 
 
PURITAN INFLUENCE. 
 
 407 
 
 than be false to their convictions, firm in suffering as scrupulous 
 in belief, and, amid all the fluctuations of fortune, leavening the 
 temper of the times with a new conception of life and of man. 
 If this ideal was, in the end, warped and overwrought, think of 
 its genesis. Puritanism was the product of war. Hence the 
 rigor of its precepts, its social austerity, its unbending creed. 
 The general intoxication forced it into total abstinence. Only 
 thus could it withstand laxity and license. To become belliger- 
 ent was to become severe. 
 
 Each party — Royalists and Episcopalians in alliance against 
 the Puritans — was in turn oppressed by the other. The latter, 
 in the day of its power, was as intolerant as had been the former. 
 We hate with a will, when we can hate at once God’s enemies 
 and our own. How will it be when power is restored to the sup- 
 porters of the throne and Established Church, embittered, not 
 instructed, by misfortune, and fretting under restraints like a 
 checked and flooded stream ? 
 
 If now it be asked what was the worth and meaning of this 
 heroic sternness, the answer is, — it accomplished much, and we 
 walk smoothly over its results. It enthroned purity on the 
 domestic hearth, labor in the workshop, probity in the counting- 
 house, truth in the tribunal; developed the science of emigration, 
 fertilized the desert, practised the virtues it exacted; above all, it 
 saved the national liberty, against the predominating Church, 
 who, seeking to realize in England the same position as Roman- 
 ism had occupied in Europe, flung herself on every occasion into 
 the arms of the Court, and taught that no tyranny however gross, 
 no violation of the constitution however flagrant, could justify 
 resistance . 1 Little culture, indeed; no philosophy, no sentiment 
 of harmonious beauty; but solid and convincing reasoners, ener- 
 getic men of action. We can excuse the fanaticism of those 
 who, when the battle-instinct is yet strong, are so intent on the 
 essence of things, against others intent on semblances and forms 
 divorced from reality. 
 
 Not unmixed good, certainly. The sun flings out impurities, 
 gets balefully incrusted with spots. Ideals can never be com- 
 pletely embodied here. Not to reiterate what has already been 
 
 1 ‘Eternal damnation is prepared for all impenitent rebels in hell with Satan, the first 
 founder of rebellion.' 
 
408 
 
 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 noticed, one effect of Puritanism was to inflame, by its gloomy 
 tenets, the zeal against witches. In the short space of the Coim 
 monwealth, more of these unfortunates perished than in the whole 
 period before and after. In Suffolk sixty were hung in a single 
 year, — a barbarity to which Butler alludes in Hudibras : 
 
 ‘Hath not this present parliament 
 A leger to the devil sent 
 Fully empowered to treat about 
 Finding revolted witches out? 
 
 And has not he within a year 
 
 Hanged three-score of them in one shire?’ 
 
 The superstition grew into a panic. In Scotland, controlled by a 
 system of religious terrorism, it obtained an absolute ascendancy. 
 In solemn synod, every minister was enjoined to appoint two of 
 the elders of his parish as ‘a subtle and privy inquisition,’ who 
 should question all parishioners upon oath as to their knowledge 
 of witches. If the witch — commonly a half-doting woman — 
 was obdurate, the first method of extorting confession was to 
 ‘ wake her.’ Across her face was bound an iron hoop with four 
 prongs, which were thrust into her mouth. It was fastened 
 behind to the wall, in such a manner that the victim was unable 
 to lie down; and in this position she was sometimes kept for sew 
 eral days, carefully prevented from closing her eyes for a moment 
 in sleep. To discover the insensible mark, which was the sure 
 sign of guilt, long pins were thrust into her body. If this was 
 ineffectual, other and worse tortures were in reserve — a kind of 
 thumb-screw, or a frame in which the lower limbs were inserted, 
 then broken by wedges driven in by a hammer. The seeds of 
 the superstition were carried to New England by the Pilgrim 
 Fathers. It flourished with frightful vigor in Massachusetts. 
 Cotton Mather proclaimed it, and created a commission. Those 
 who ventured to oppose the prosecutions were denounced as 
 Sadducees and infidels. Multitudes were imprisoned, others fled, 
 twenty-seven were executed. An old man of eighty was pressed 
 to death. The clergy of Boston drew up an address of thanks to 
 the commissioners, and expressed the hope that their zeal would 
 never be relaxed. 
 
 Yet this was orthodoxy once, attested by an amount of evi- 
 dence so varied and so ample as to preclude the possibility of 
 doubt ! You who would stifle the voice of reason, you who deem 
 
DEVELOPMENT — POETRY. 
 
 409 
 
 another a heretic because his views are different from your own, 
 you who would stigmatize the professors of other creeds as idol- 
 atrous, — consider the lesson of history. What is truth? Has it 
 any absolute criterion? Your opinions are imagined to be con- 
 clusive and final; but have not the finalities of yesterday yielded 
 to the larger generalizations of to-day ? What assurance that, in 
 the onward march of the collective soul, your doctrines shall not 
 wane and vanish like the scattered dreams of your ancestors? 
 Your faith assumes to be perfect; but what is perfection? The 
 realized anticipations of the present. But is humanity tottering 
 into the grave, or yet crawling out of the cradle ? Who shall set 
 a limit to the giant’s unchained strength ? Is not man forever 
 defining himself? Does he not mould himself incessantly in 
 thoughts, sentiments, acts? And, as incessantly progressing by 
 these determinations, does he not successively burst his environ- 
 ments as he assumes them, only to pass into new ones, from 
 which he will again escape in his unflagging and indefinite 
 ascent ? Through the ages to be, as through the ages gone, it 
 shall be asked, ‘Brethren, what of the night?'’ while to each 
 and to all the same answer shall be returned, ‘Lo, the morning 
 cometh.’ 
 
 Poetry. — We have seen its ardent youth and its early man- 
 hood; not preoccupied, as we are, with theories; happy in con- 
 templating lovely objects, dreaming of nothing else, and wishing 
 only that they might be the loveliest possible; not that things 
 were more beautiful then, but that men, in the vernal freshness 
 of the senses, found them so. Now prettiness takes the place of 
 the beautiful. To the impassioned succeeds the agreeable. It 
 is no more the overflow of images, compelling relief in words, but 
 the sentiment of gallantry, turning a delicate compliment and a 
 graceful phrase. The literary exhaustion is manifested in verses 
 like these of Wither : 
 
 ‘Shall I, wasting in despair, 
 
 Die because a woman’s fair? 
 
 Or make pale my cheeks with care 
 ’Cause another’s rosy are? 
 
 Be she fairer than the day 
 Or the flowery meads in May, 
 
 If she thinks not well of me, 
 
 What care I how fair she be? . . . 
 
 Great, or good, or kind or fair, 
 
 I will ne’er the more despair: 
 
410 
 
 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 If she love me (this believe), 
 
 I will die ere she shall grieve. 
 
 If she slight me when I woo, 
 
 I can scorn and let her go; 
 
 For if she be not for me. 
 
 What care I for whom she be?’ 
 
 But if like the rest, he is a reader and a versifier rather than a 
 seer, he keeps close to the best he knows, pure enough to have 
 delight in nature, reverent enough to give praise: 
 
 ‘Now the glories of the year 
 May be viewed at the best. 
 
 And the earth doth now appear 
 In her fairest garments dress'd: 
 
 Sweetly smelling plants and flowers 
 Do perfume the garden bowers; 
 
 Hill and valley, wood and field, 
 
 Mixed With pleasure profits yield.’ 
 
 Withal, he has the dominating bent, — the serious thought of the 
 long sad sleep beyond the dark gulf into which we plunge, un- 
 certain of the issue: 
 
 ‘As this my carnal robe grows old, 
 
 Soil'd, rent, and worn by length of years. 
 
 Let me on that by faith lay hold 
 Which man in life immortal wears: 
 
 So sanctify my days behind. 
 
 So let my manners be refined, 
 
 That when my soul and flesh must part. 
 
 There lurk no terrors in my heart.’ 
 
 These are the words of a Puritan. We must expect even less 
 substance in wits of the court, cavaliers of fashion, — Carew, 
 Herrick, and Suckling 1 . If the first is destitute of noble ideas, 
 he gives us smooth and flexible verse, mere perfume and dainty 
 form, with hardly a gem amid the rubbish-heap of trivialities: 
 
 ‘He that loves a rosy cheek, 
 
 Or a coral lip admires. 
 
 Or from star-like eyes doth seek 
 Fuel to maintain his fires, 
 
 As old Time makes these decay, 
 
 So his flames must waste away. 
 
 But a smooth and steadfast mind. 
 
 Gentle thoughts and calm desires, 
 
 Hearts, with love combined, 
 
 Kindle never-dying fires; 
 
 Where these are not, I despise 
 Lovely cheeks or lips or eyes.’ 
 
 No fire in the second, but light; no passion, but sensuous reverie, 
 with a radical indelicacy of fancy and a garrulous egotism. Let 
 
POETRY — HERRICK — SUCKLING. 
 
 411 
 
 us hear the exquisite who wrote twelve hundred little poems in 
 Arcadian repose, while public riot was drowning the voices of 
 some and driving others to madness: 
 
 ‘Some ask’d me where the Rubies grew: 
 
 And nothing did I say, 
 
 But with my Anger pointed to 
 The lips of Julia. 
 
 Some ask’d how Pearls did grow, and where: 
 
 Then spoke I to my girl, 
 
 To part her lips, and shew me there 
 The quarrelets of Pearl.’ 
 
 Again : 
 
 ‘Cherry-ripe, ripe, ripe, I cry, 
 
 Full and fair ones; come and buy: 
 
 If so be you ask me where 
 They do grow? I answer, there 
 Where my Julia’s lips do smile; — 
 
 There’s the land, or cherry-isle, 
 
 Whose plantations fully show 
 All the year where cherries grow.’ 
 
 It is not the inner character of things which moves him, but the 
 sense of bodily loveliness, which is perilously acute, nor easily 
 restrained within bounds by artistic tact. Where is the mount- 
 ing melody of Burns or Shelley ? Even at his prayers, his spirit 
 is mundane: 
 
 ‘When the house doth sigh and weep, 
 
 And the world is drown'd in sleep, 
 
 Yet mine eyes the watch do keep, 
 
 Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! 
 
 When the artless doctor sees 
 No one hope, but of his fees, 
 
 And his skill runs on the lees, 
 
 Sweet Spirit, comfort me I 
 
 When his potion and his pill, 
 
 Has, or none, or little skill. 
 
 Meet for nothing but to kill, 
 
 Sweet Spirit, comfort me!’ 
 
 The third, handsome, rich, and prodigal, was a Royalist gentle- 
 man, and as such, wishing to try his hand at imagination and 
 style, was able to write in liquid numbers a love-song that was 
 in sympathy with the age: 
 
 ‘Why so pale and wan, fond lover? 
 
 Prithee, why so pale? 
 
 Will, when looking well can't move her, 
 
 Looking ill prevail? 
 
 Prithee, why so pale? 
 
 Why so dull and mute, young sinner? 
 
 Prithee, why so mute? 
 
412 
 
 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 Will, when speaking well can’t win, 
 
 Saying nothing do't? 
 
 Prithee, why so mute? 
 
 Quit, quit, for shame, this will not move: 
 
 This cannot take her. 
 
 If of herself she will not love, 
 
 Nothing can make her: 
 
 The devil take her!’ 
 
 He has none of the penetrating faculty which opens the invisible 
 door of obscure, endless depths, leads us to the centre, and leaves 
 us to gather what more we may of the treasure of pure gold. He 
 has only fancy, which stays at externals. Thus : 
 
 ‘Her feet beneath her pettiooat 
 Like little mice stole in and out, 
 
 As if they feared the light ,’ 1 
 
 Again: 
 
 ‘Her lips were red, and one was thin, 
 
 Compared with that was next her chin, 
 
 Some bee had stung it newly.' 2 
 
 The real bright being of the lip is there in an instant, but it is all 
 outside; no expression, no mind. Now hear imagination speak: 
 
 ‘Lamp of life, thy lips are burning 
 Through the veil that seems to hide them, 
 
 As the radiant lines of morning 
 
 Through thin clouds, ere they divide them .' 3 
 
 There is no levity here. He who sees into the heart of things 
 sees too far, too darkly, too solemnly, too earnestly, to smile. 
 
 A second mark of decadence is the affectation of poets, their 
 involved obscurity of style, their ingenious absurdities, their 
 conceits. They desire to display their skill and wit in yoking 
 together heterogeneous ideas, in justifying the unnatural, in con- 
 verting life into a puzzle and a dream. They are characterized 
 by the philosophizing spirit, the activity of the intellect rather 
 than that of the emotions. The prevalent taste is to trace re- 
 semblances that are fantastic, to strain after novelty and surprise. 
 Thus Donne, earliest of the school, says of a sea- voyage: 
 
 ‘There note they the ship’s sicknesses,— the mast 
 Shaked with an ague, and the hold and waist 
 With a salt dropsy clogged.’ 
 
 When a flea bites him and his mistress, he says: 
 
 ‘This flea is you and I, and this 
 Our marriage bed and marriage temple is. 
 
 Though Parents grudge, and you, w’are met, 
 
 'Ballad upon a Wedding. *Ibid. 3 Shelley. 
 
POETRY — DONNE — HERBERT. 
 
 413 
 
 And cloyster'd in the living walls of jet. 
 
 Though use make you apt to kill me, 
 
 Let not to that selfe- murder added be, 
 
 And sacrilege, three sins in killing three. 1 
 
 We find little to admire, and nothing to love. We see that far- 
 fetched similes, extravagant metaphors, are not here occasional 
 blemishes, but the substance. He should have given us simple 
 images, simply expressed; for he loved and suffered much: but 
 fashion was stronger than nature. Much in this manner, though 
 never in so light a humor, is the poetry of Herbert, whose quaint- 
 ness is vitally connected with essential beauty and sweetness of 
 soul. Let him live in these tender and beautiful lines: 
 
 ‘Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, 
 
 The bridal of the earth and sky; 
 
 The dews shall weep thy fall to-night. 
 
 For thou must die.’ 
 
 And in these, than which no profounder were uttered in the 
 Elizabethan age: 
 
 ‘More servants wait on Man 
 Than he'll take notice of: in every path 
 He treads down that which doth befriend him. 
 
 When sickness makes him pale and wan 
 O mighty Love! Man is one world, and hath 
 Another to attend him.' 
 
 To the same class of verse — concoctions of novel and remote 
 analogies, belongs The Purple Island of Fletcher, five cantos of 
 allegorical anatomy and one of psychology, a languid sing-song 
 of laborious riddles. Other instances of the change, equally 
 frigid if less extravagant, are Wotton’s Character of a Happy 
 Life , Bacon’s Life of Man, Brook’s Treatise of Religion, which 
 are noticed only as indications that the sentiment of truth was 
 encroaching upon the sentiment of beauty, that the imaginary 
 figures of art were giving way to the precise formulas of logic. 
 
 Apart from the crowd of sedulous imitators, is one who, 
 preserving something of the energy and thrill of the original 
 inspiration, refuses to be perverted; a Scot, — Drummond of 
 Hawthornden, — whose private happiness was suddenly ruined, 
 and whose public hopes were slowly wasted; a brooding, silent, 
 tragic soul, altogether too serious to be artificial, with the funda- 
 mental Saxon idea of man and of existence: 
 
 ‘This world a hunting is. 
 
 The prey poor man, the Nimrod fierce is death; 
 
 His speedy greyhounds are 
 
414 
 
 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 Lust, sickness, envy, care. 
 
 Strife that ne'er falls amiss, 
 
 With all those ills which haunt us while we breathe. 
 
 Now if by chance we fly 
 Of these the eager chase, 
 
 Old age with stealing pace 
 
 Casts up his nets, and there we panting die.’ 
 
 There are moments when the greatest must feel and speak thus, 
 troubled by the infinite obscurity that embraces our short, glimmer- 
 ing life, which seems then but a madness, a sorrow, a phantom : 
 behind, a submerged continent; before, oblivion and dust: 
 
 ‘If crost- with all mishaps be my poor life, 
 
 If one short day I never spend in mirth, 
 
 If my sprite with itself holds lasting strife, 
 
 If sorrow's death is but a new sorrow's birth; 
 
 If this vain world be but a sable stage 
 
 Where slave-born man plays to the scoffing stars; 
 
 If youth be toss’d with love, with weakness age, 
 
 If knowledge serve to hold our thoughts in wars; 
 
 If time can close the hundred mouths of fame, 
 
 And make what long since past like that to be; 
 
 If virtue only be an idle name, 
 
 If I, when I was born, was bom to die; 
 
 Why seek I to prolong these loathsome days? 
 
 The fairest rose in shortest time decays.’ 
 
 At the end of one intellectual epoch, and at the beginning of 
 another, appeared one of the most illustrious of these brain-poets, 
 Abraham Cowley, a marvel of precocity, widely known at 
 fifteen, and, like Reynolds the painter, accidentally determined to 
 a particular direction: 
 
 ‘ How this love of poetry came to be produced in me so early is a hard question. I 
 believe I can tell the particular little chance which filled my head first with such chimes 
 of verse as have never since left ringing there ; for I remember when I began to read, and 
 to take some pleasure in it, there was wont to lie in my mother's parlor (I know not by 
 what accident, for she herself never in her life read any book but of devotion) . . . 
 Spenser's works; this volume I happened to fall upon, and was infinitely delighted with 
 the stories of the knights, monsters, giants, and brave houses which I found everywhere 
 there (though my understanding had very little to do with all this), and by degrees, with 
 the tinkling of the rhymes and the dance of the numbers, I had read him all over before 
 I was twelve years old, and was thus made a poet almost immediately.’ 
 
 He read much, learned much, wrote much; but while he is always 
 either ingenious or profound, he is usually wearisome. Always, 
 on the watch for novelty, he is seldom natural, never pathetic, if 
 ever sublime. His best performances are his translations from 
 Anacreon, which are but the literature of pleasure — the idle joys 
 of the banquet and the wine circle. Still, it is refreshing to see 
 the beholder, once a partaker, abandoned to the fresh impulses 
 
POETRY — CHANGE IN THE DRAMA. 
 
 415 
 
 of an eager delight, quite forgetful of the skeleton that stands 
 there to scare him from his roses and his cups: 
 
 ‘The thirsty earth soaks up the rain, 
 
 And drinks, and gapes for drink again, 
 
 The plants suck in the earth, and are 
 With constant drinking fresh and fair. 
 
 The sea itself, which one would think 
 Should have hut little need of drink, 
 
 Drinks ten thousand rivers up, 
 
 So fill'd that they overflow the cup. 
 
 The busy sun (and one would guess 
 By its drunken* fiery face no less) 
 
 Drinks up the sea, and when he’s done, 
 
 The moon and stars drink up the sun. 
 
 They drink and dance by their own light. 
 
 They drink and revel all the night. 
 
 Nothing in nature's sober found, 
 
 But an eternal health goes round. 
 
 Fill up the bowl then, fill it high, 
 
 Fill all the glasses there, for why 
 Should every creature drink but I, 
 
 Why, man of morals, tell me why?’ 
 
 It is the waste of power in these men, not the want of it; the 
 abuse of talent, not the absence of it, which we lament. To this 
 they owe their poetical effacement with posterity. He who pays 
 court to temporary prejudices, must content himself with ‘a 
 deciduous laurel, of which the verdure in its spring may be 
 bright and gay, but which time will continually steal from his 
 brows.’ 
 
 The Puritan conception of life was not one to nourish the 
 eloquence of a ‘divine madness’; yet, Puritanism, in its higher 
 attributes, in its moral elevation, was to have its monument, the 
 work of a mighty and superb mind, — Milton, the prince of 
 scholars, the impassioned devotee of virtue, a poetic seer of the 
 antique type, with a strong affinity for the genius of Greece 
 and of Rome, and able to estimate all the Renaissance could 
 tell or teach. 
 
 The Muses had taken sanctuary in the theatres. England, 
 indeed, was not to produce another Hamlet. Such heights 
 could not be maintained. As the unknown was explored, the 
 romantic ideal was fading. Puritanism was hardening and nar- 
 rowing, while it was ennobling, life. Imagination was losing its 
 buoyancy and bloom. The natural was giving place to the arti- 
 ficial. But the infection that tainted lyric and didactic poetry, 
 affected in a less degree the drama, which even in its decay was 
 
416 
 
 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 still magnificent, and, with an altered tone and manner, retained 
 much of the warmth, mellowness, and reality of painting. Only 
 at intervals does the chorus equal the solo of their matchless 
 leader. The great elements in their natures are imperfectly har- 
 monized. All grope amid qualified successes. All are noble in 
 parts but without any general effect of nobleness. Jonson, the 
 foremost, is but partial. He paints, not the whole of human 
 nature, but a feature. His characters are not men and women 
 as they are, but as they may be when mastered by a special bias 
 or humor. 
 
 However, to be tenacious of what is grand and lofty is more 
 praiseworthy than to delight in what is low and disagreeable. 
 None refuse wholly the color of the low world around them. 
 Beaumont and Fletcher are £ studiously indecent.’ The object 
 is to excite, at any cost, the passions of an audience craving crudi- 
 ties and horrors. Their young men are the ‘ bloods ’ of the Stuart 
 Court. The older and graver are foul. It they paint a bad woman, 
 she is monstrous; if a good one, she is unreal, as if the one ex- 
 treme were to compensate or atone for the other. We are willing' 
 to accept this transcendental conception of goodness as a redeem- 
 ing merit; for that stature appears in everything which we pro- 
 foundly revere and love, and only by a certain infinitude which 
 belongs to it are we drawn into perpetual aspiration. These two 
 writers were fellow-laborers, brothers in heart as well as brothers 
 in work; the first, slow, solid, and painstaking; the second, rapid, 
 volatile, and inventive. The first is the smoother, sweeter; the 
 second, the more fertile and forceful. Both agree in impurity, 
 the one deliberately impure, the other heedlessly so. Of the 
 fifty-two plays in the collection that bears their names jointly, 
 there is scarcely one that has not marks of blight — haste, extrav- 
 agance, or grossness. If we seek for a burst of passion, a beauti- 
 ful sentiment, a brilliant dialogue, or a vivid picture, we shall 
 find it. Amid tavern-rackets, the clash of swords, and the howl 
 of slaughter, they cut life into scenes of shame and terror, yet 
 carry before the footlights touching and poetical figures that 
 would seem to place them on the open borders of the infinite. 
 Thus Philaster, speaking of Bellario, whom he has taken for a 
 page, but who is no other than a maiden that has disguised her- 
 self in order to be near him, says: 
 
POETRY — BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 
 
 417 
 
 ‘I found him sitting by a fountain-side, 
 
 Of which he borrowed some to quench his thirst, 
 
 And paid the nymph again as much in tears. 
 
 A garland lay him by, made by himself, 
 
 Of many several flowers, bred in the bay, 
 
 Stuck in that mystic order, that the rareness 
 Delighted one: But ever when he turned 
 His tender eyes upon them, he would weep, 
 
 As if he meant to make them grow again. 
 
 Seeing such pretty helpless innocence 
 Dwell in his face, I asked him all his story. 
 
 He told me that his parents gentle died. 
 
 Leaving him to the mercy of the fields, 
 
 Which gave him roots: and of the crystal springs. 
 
 Which did not stop their courses; and the sun. 
 
 Which still, he thanked him, yielded him light. 
 
 Then took he up his garland, and did shew 
 What every flower, as country people hold. 
 
 Did signify; and how all ordered thus. 
 
 Expressed his grief; and to my thoughts did read 
 The prettiest lecture of his country art 
 That could be wished; so that methought I could 
 Have studied it .’ 1 
 
 When she is detected, an explanation is demanded, and she re- 
 counts her hopeless attachment: 
 
 ‘My father oft would speak 
 Your worth and virtue; and, as I did grow 
 More and more apprehensive, I did thirst 
 To see the man so praised; but yet all this 
 Was but a maiden longing, to be lost 
 As soon as found; till, sitting in my window, 
 
 Printing my thoughts in lawn, I saw a god, 
 
 I thought, — but it was you, — enter our gates. 
 
 My blood flew out, and back again as fast 
 As I had puffed it forth and sucked it in 
 Like breath. Then was I called away in haste 
 To entertain you. Never was a man, 
 
 Heaved from a sheep-cote to a sceptre raised, 
 
 So high in thoughts as I; you left a kiss 
 Upon these lips then, which I mean to keep 
 From you forever. I did hear you talk, 
 
 Far above singing! After you were gone, 
 
 I grew acquainted with my heart, and searched 
 What stirred it so. Alas! I found it love; 
 
 Yet far from lust; for could I but have lived 
 In presence of you, I had had my end. 
 
 , For this I did delude my noble father 
 
 With a feigned pilgrimage, and dressed myself 
 In habit of a boy: and for I knew 
 My birth no match for you, I was passed hope 
 Of having you. And, understanding well 
 That when I made discovery of my sex, 
 
 I could not stay with you, I made a vow, 
 
 27 
 
 l Philaster; or, Love Lies Bleeding. 
 
418 
 
 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 By all the most religious things a maid 
 Could call together, never to he known, 
 
 Whilst there was hope to hide me from men's eyes, 
 
 For other than I seemed, that I might ever 
 Abide with you .' 1 
 
 Here are feminine innocence with feminine power, ethereal soft- 
 ness with martyr heroism. Few have equalled, fewer have ex- 
 celled, this superior fineness of perception. Again, what could 
 be more angelic than the modesty of Amoret, the faithful shep- 
 herdess ? — 
 
 ‘Fairer far 
 
 Than the chaste blushing morn, or that fair star 
 That guides the wand' ring seaman thro 1 the deep . 1 2 
 
 She is transported by her tenderness, as her lover by his violence. 
 Persuaded that she is unchaste, he strikes her to the ground with 
 his sword, and casts her into a well, but the god lets fall into the 
 wound ‘a drop from his watery locks,’ and, recovering, she goes 
 in search of her Perigot — 
 
 ‘Speak if thou he here, . . . 
 
 Thy Amoret, thy dear, 
 
 Calls on thy loved name. . . . ’Tis thy friend. 
 
 Thy Amoret; come. hither to give end 
 To these consumings. Look up, gentle boy, 
 
 I have forgot those pains and dear annoy 
 I suffer’d for thy sake, aud am content 
 To be thy love again. Why hast thou rent 
 Those curled locks, where I have often hung 
 Ribbons, and damask roses, and have flung 
 Waters distill 1 d to make thee fresh and gay. 
 
 Sweeter than nosegays on a bridal day? 
 
 Why dost thou cross thine arms, and hang thy face 
 Down to thy bosom, letting fall apace, 
 
 From those two little Heav’ns, upon the ground, 
 
 Show’rs of more price, more orient, and more round. 
 
 Than those that hang upon the moon’s pale brow? 
 
 Cease these complainings, shepherd! I am now 
 The same I ever was, as kind and free, 
 
 And can forgive before you ask of me: 
 
 Indeed, I can and will . 1 
 
 At last the shepherd, after he has wounded her, and a nymph has 
 cured her, is disabused, and throws himself on his knees before 
 her. In spite of all he has done, she is unchanged: 
 
 ‘I am thy love! 
 
 Thy Amoret, for ever more thy love! 
 
 Strike once more on my naked breast, I'll prove 
 As constant still. Oh, cou’dst thou love me yet, 
 
 How soon could I my former griefs forget ! 1 
 
 1 Pliilaster: or, Love Lies Bleeding. 
 
 2 The Faithful Shepherdess , by Fletcher alone, who survived his friend ten years. The 
 joint productions of the two are usually estimated at fifteen. 
 
POETRY — BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 
 
 419 
 
 Now hear the resounding talk of Memnon: 
 
 ‘ I know no court but martial, 
 
 No oily language but the shock of arms, 
 
 No dalliance but with death, no lofty measures 
 But weary and sad marches, cold and hunger, 
 
 ’Lamms at midnight Valor's self would shake at; 
 
 Yet, I ne’er shrunk. Balls of consuming wildfire, 
 
 That licked men up like lightning have I laughed at, 
 
 And tossed 'em back again, like children's trifles. 
 
 Upon the edge of my enemies’ swords 
 
 I have marched like whirlwinds, Fury at this hand waiting. 
 
 Death at my right, Fortune my forlorn hope: 
 
 When I have grappled with Destruction, 
 
 And tugged with pale-faced Ruin, Night and Mischief, 
 
 Frighted to see a new day break in blood .' 1 
 
 These contrasts are characteristic, — timidity, grace, devotion, 
 patience; boldness, fury, contempt for consequences, concern only 
 for the wild, reckless whim of the moment. Sometimes the 
 heroic spirit appears, not as a mere flash, but as a character. 
 When the Egyptians, to propitiate the mighty Caesar, bring him 
 Pompey’s head, he says nobly, grandly, of his mortal enemy: 
 
 ‘Egyptians, dare ye think your highest pyramids, 
 
 Built to out-dure the sun, as you suppose, 
 
 Where your unworthy kings lie raked in ashes, 
 
 Are monuments fit for him? No, brood of Nilus, 
 
 Nothing can cover his high fame but heaven. 
 
 No pyramids set off his memories, 
 
 But the eternal substance of his greatness; 
 
 To which I leave him .' 2 
 
 Scattered all over these dramas are exquisite lyrics, luxuriant 
 descriptions, which show the poet greater than the dramatist. 
 He who would have left the hoof-prints of unclean beasts in 
 Paradise, could sing, in the rebound from sportive excess: 
 
 ‘Hence, all you vain delights, 
 
 As short as are the nights 
 Wherein you spend your folly! 
 
 There’s naught in this life sweet, 
 
 If man were wise to see't, 
 
 But only melancholy: 
 
 O sweetest melancholy! 
 
 Welcome, folded arms and fixed eyes, 
 
 A sigh that piercing mortifies, 
 
 A look that’s fasten'd to the ground, 
 
 A tongue chain'd up without a sound! 
 
 Fountain heads and pathless groves. 
 
 Places which pale passion loves! 
 
 Moonlight walks, when all the fowls 
 Are warmly hous’d, save bats and owls! 
 
 1 The Mad Lover. 
 
 *Tlie False One. 
 
420 
 
 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 A midnight bell, a parting groan, 
 
 These are the sounds we feed upon; 
 
 Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley; 
 
 Nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy.’ 
 
 He who sold his birthright with posterity for the loathsome pot- 
 tage of contemporary praise, could, in his diviner moods, regale 
 the soul with medicinal sweets. For example, how charming are 
 the aspects of his landscape, of the dewy verdant grove, where 
 on a summer night, after their custom, the young men and girls 
 go to gather flowers and plight their troth- 
 
 ‘Thro’ yon same bending plain 
 That flings his arm down to the main, 
 
 And thro 1 these thick woods, have I run, 
 
 Whose bottom never kiss’d the sun 
 Since the lusty spring began. . . . 
 
 For to that holy wood is consecrate 
 A virtuous well, about whose flow’ry banks 
 The nimble-footed fairies dance their rounds. 
 
 By the pale moon-shine, dipping oftentimes 
 Their stolen children, so to make them free 
 From dying flesh, and dull mortality. 
 
 By this fair fount hath many a shepherd sworn 
 And given away his freedom, many a troth 
 Been plight, which neither Envy nor old Time 
 Could ever break, with many a chaste kiss given 
 In hope of coming happiness: by this 
 Fresh fountain many a blushing maid 
 Hath crowned the head of her long-loved shepherd 
 With gaudy flowers, whilst he happy sung 
 Lays of his love and dear captivity. 
 
 See the dew-drops, how they kiss 
 Ev’ry little flower that is; 
 
 Hanging on their velvet heads 
 Like a rope of crystal beads. 
 
 See the heavy clouds low falling 
 And bright Hesperus down calling 
 The dead Night from underground.’ 
 
 In Massinger there is the same deplorable evil — licentious inci- 
 dent. But we remember that decorum was then unknown, and 
 that his vital sympathies were for justice and virtue. He sang, 
 like the nightingale, darkling. His life was spent in conflict and 
 distress. Hence nowhere is he so great as when he describes the 
 struggles of the brave through trial to victory, the unmerited 
 sufferings of the pure, and the righteous terrors of conscience. 
 If ever his placid spirit rises to ecstasy, the ecstasy is moral. 
 Passages like the following are the best of him, ethically and 
 poetically: 
 
POETRY — MASSINGER — FORD, 
 
 421 
 
 ‘Look on the poor 
 
 With gentle eyes, for in such habits, often, 
 
 Angels desire an alms.’ 
 
 ‘By these blessed feet 
 
 That pace the paths of equity, and tread boldly 
 On the stiff neck of tyrannous oppression, 
 
 By these tears by which I bathe them, I conjure you 
 With pity to look on me.’ 
 
 ‘Happy are those 
 
 That knowing in their births, they are subject to 
 Uncertain changes, are still prepared and armed 
 For either fortune.’ 
 
 ‘When good men pursue 
 The path marked out by virtue, the blest saints 
 With joy look on it, and seraphic angels 
 Clap their celestial wings in heavenly plaudits . 1 
 
 ‘As you have 
 
 A soul moulded from heaven, and do desire 
 To have it made a star there, make the means 
 Of your ascent to that celestial height 
 Virtue mingled with brave action: they draw near 
 The nature and the essence of the gods 
 Who imitate their goodness . 1 1 
 
 More intense, though less genial, is the sombre and retiring Ford, 
 the poet not merely of the heart but of the broken heart, — the 
 heart worn, tortured, and torn. His tragedies surprise, stun, per- 
 plex, by the overpowering force of a passion which suggests 
 kinship to insanity. The noblest is The Broken Heart. Penthea, 
 whose soul is pledged to Orgilus, permits herself, from duty or 
 submission, to be led to other nuptials, and finds the source of 
 life dried up. Only the marriage of the heart is, in her eyes, 
 genuine ; the other is moral infidelity. In the depths of her 
 despair, she says, not bitterly, but sadly: 
 
 ‘My glass of life, sweet princess, hath few minutes 
 Remaining to run down; the sands are spent: 
 
 For by an inward messenger, I feel 
 
 The summons of departure short and certain. . . . 
 
 Glories of human greatness are but pleasing dreams, 
 
 And shadows soon decaying: on the stage 
 Of my mortality my youth hath acted 
 Some scenes of vanity, drawn out at length; 
 
 But varied pleasures sweetened in the mixture, 
 
 But tragical in issue. . . . 
 
 How weary I am of a lingering life, 
 
 Who count the best a misery. . . . 
 
 That remedy must be a winding-sheet, a fold of lead, 
 
 And some untrod-on corner in the earth . 1 
 
 1 Only eighteen of his thirty-seven plays are extant. The best known are The Virgin 
 Martyr , The Fatal Dowry , The Duke of Milan , A Mew Way to Pay Old Debts. The last 
 has yet occasional representation, and contains the famous character of Sir Giles Over- 
 reach. 
 
422 
 
 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 In the end she becomes mad, sinking continually under the incur- 
 able grief, the fatal thought: 
 
 ‘Sure, if we were all sirens, we should sing pitifully, 
 
 And 'twere a comely music, when in parts 
 One sung another's knell; the turtle sighs 
 When he hath lost his mate; and yet some say 
 He must be dead first: ’tis a fine deceit 
 To pass away in a dream! indeed, I’ve slept 
 With mine eyes open, a great while. No falsehood 
 Equals a broken faith; there’s not a hair 
 Sticks on my head, but, like a leaden plummet, 
 
 It sinks me to the grave: I must creep thither; 
 
 The journey is not long.’ 
 
 Calantha, after enduring the most crushing calamities, concealed 
 under a show of mirth, breaks under the terrible tension, and dies 
 — without a tear: 
 
 ‘Death shall not separate us. Oh, my lords, 
 
 I but deceived your eyes with antic gesture, 
 
 When one news strait came huddling on another 
 Of death, and death, and death: still I danced forward; 
 
 But it struck home and here, and in an instant. 
 
 Be such mere women, who with shrieks and outcries 
 Can vow a present end to all their sorrows, 
 
 Yet live to court new pleasures, and outlive them: 
 
 They are the silent griefs which cut the heart-strings: 
 
 Let me die smiling.’ 
 
 There is the same sad strain in his few songs, though subdued^ 
 as: 
 
 ‘Crowns may flourish and decay, 
 
 Beauties shine, but fade away. 
 
 Youth may revel, yet it must 
 Lie down in a bed of dust .’ 1 
 
 And: 
 
 ‘Fly hence, shadows, that do keep 
 Watchful sorrows, charmed in sleep! 
 
 Though the eyes be overtaken, 
 
 Yet the heart doth ever waken 
 Thoughts chained up in busy snares 
 Of continual woes and cares: 
 
 Love and griefs are so exprest, 
 
 As they rather sigh than rest. 
 
 Fly hence, shadows, that do keep 
 Watchful sorrows, charmed in sleep .’ 2 
 
 Of all these later dramatists, the most Shakespearean is Webster, 
 an artist of agony. But one has seen farther into the dark, woful, 
 and diabolical. He calls one of his heroines The WJiite Devil f 
 
 1 The Broken Heart. 
 
 2 The Lover's Melancholy. 
 
POETRY — WEBSTER. 
 
 423 
 
 Vittoria Corombona, an Italian. Her mate is a duke, an adulter- 
 ous lover, another devil, to whom she says: 
 
 ‘To pass away the time, I’ll tell your "race 
 A dream I had last night. . . . 
 
 Methought I walk’d about the mid of night, 
 
 Into a church-yard, where a goodly yew-tree 
 Spread her large root in ground. Under that yew, 
 
 As I sat sadly leaning on a grave 
 Checquer’d with cross-sticks, there came stealing in 
 Your duchess and my husband; one of them 
 A pick-axe bore, th' other a rusty spade, 
 
 And in rough terms they 'gan to challenge me 
 About this yew. . . . 
 
 They told me my intent was to root up 
 
 That well-known yew, and plant i’ th’ stead of it 
 
 A wither’d black-thorn: and for that they vow’d 
 
 To bury me alive. My husband straight 
 
 With pick-axe ’gan to dig; and your fell duchess 
 
 With shovel , like a fury , voided out 
 
 The earth, and scattered bones ; Lord, how, methought, 
 
 I trembled, and yet for all this terror 
 I could not pray. . . . 
 
 When to my rescue there arose, methought 
 A whirlwind, which let fall a massy arm 
 From that strong plant ; 
 
 And both were struck dead by that sacred yew. 
 
 In that base shallow grave which ivas their due.' 
 
 The import is clear, and her brother says, aside: 
 
 ‘ Excellent devil! she hath taught him in a dream 
 To make away his duchess and her husband.' 
 
 Her husband is strangled, his wife is poisoned, and she, accused 
 of both crimes, is brought before the tribunal. She defies her 
 judges: 
 
 ‘To the point. 
 
 Find me guilty, sever head from body. 
 
 We'll part good friends: I scorn to hold my life 
 At yours, or any man’s entreaty, sir. . . . 
 
 These are but feigned shadows of my evils; 
 
 Terrify babes, my lord, with painted devils; 
 
 I am past such needless palsy. For your names 
 Of whore and murderess, they proceed from you, 
 
 As if a man should spit against the wind; 
 
 The filth returns in's face.’ 
 
 More insulting at the dagger’s point: 
 
 ‘Yes, I shall welcome death 
 As princes do some great ambassadors; 
 
 I’ll meet thy weapon half way. . . . ’Twas a manly blow; 
 
 The next thou giv’st, murder some sucking infant; 
 
 And then thou wilt be famous.’ 
 
 Another is the DucheSs of Malfi, who has secretly married her 
 
424 
 
 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 steward. Her enraged brother determines to destroy her hus- 
 band and children, resolves to kill her, but will first torture her. 
 He comes to her in the dark, pretends to be reconciled, speaks 
 affectionately, offers her his hand, but gives her a dead man’s, 
 then suddenly exhibits a group of waxen figures, covered with 
 wounds to represent her slaughtered family. Then appears a 
 company of madmen, who leap and howl; at last, with execu- 
 tioners and a coffin, a grave-digger, whose taunting talk is of the 
 charnel-house. Sensibility dies. Asked of what she is thinking, 
 she replies, with fixed gaze: 
 
 ‘Of nothing: 
 
 When I muse thus, 1 sleep. . . . 
 
 Dost thou think we shall know one another 
 In the other world? . . . 
 
 Oh, that it were possible we might 
 
 But hold some two days’ conference with the dead! 
 
 From them I should learn somewhat, I am sure, 
 
 1 never shall know here. 1*11 tell thee a miracle; 
 
 I am not mad yet. . . . 
 
 The heaven o'er my head seems made of molten brass. 
 
 The earth of flaming sulphur, yet I am not mad.’ 
 
 Told that she is to be strangled, she replies, with brave, quiet 
 dignity: 
 
 ‘I pray thee look thou giv’st my little boy 
 Some syrup for his cold; and let the girl 
 Say her prayers ere she sleep. . . . 
 
 Pull, and pull strongly, for your able strength 
 Must pull down heaven upon me. 
 
 Yet stay, heaven gates are not so highly arched 
 As princes' 1 palaces; they that enter there 
 Must go upon their knees. . . . 
 
 Go, tell my brothers when I am laid out; 
 
 They then may feed in quiet.’ 
 
 After this, her servant, the duke and his confidant, the cardinal 
 and his mistress, are poisoned or assassinated. To the dying, in 
 the midst of this butchery, what is the state of humanity? A 
 troubled dream, a nightmare, a clashing destiny, and, at the end 
 of all, a void: 
 
 ‘We are only like dead walls or vaulted graves. 
 
 That, ruin’d, yield no echo. Fare you well. . . . 
 
 O, this gloomy world!’ 
 
 In what a shadow, or deep pit of darkness, 
 
 Doth womanish and fearful mankind live! . . 
 
 In all our quest of greatness, 
 
 Like wanton boys, whose pastime is their care, 
 
 We follow after bubbles blown in the air. 
 
 Pleasure of life, what is’t? only the good hours 
 
POETRY — INEQUALITIES OF THE DRAMA 
 
 425 
 
 Of an ague; merely a preparative to rest, 
 
 To endure vexation. . . . 
 
 Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, 
 
 Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust.’ 
 
 To little of the dramatic talent, as we pass on to its lower 
 grades, are we able to accord a distinct notice. The writers have 
 merit, might have left a rich legacy to all generations, but wrote 
 too much, which is perhaps the fault of all ages and of every 
 author. They have the diversity of human life, but no central 
 principle of order. Their scenes are more effective as detached 
 than as connected. All degrade their fine metal by the inter- 
 mixture of baser. All afford veins or lumps of the precious ore 
 in the duller substance of their work. Here are specimens: 
 
 ‘ Man is a torch borne in the wind; a dream 
 But of a shadow .’ 1 
 
 ‘Now, all yc peaceful regents of the night, 
 
 Silently gliding exhalations, 
 
 Languishing winds , and murmuring falls of waters , 
 
 Sadness of heart , and ominous secureness , 
 
 Enchantments , dead sleeps , all the friends of rest 
 That ever wrought upon the life of man, 
 
 Extend your utmost strengths; and this charmed hour 
 Fix like the centre .’ 2 
 
 ‘From his bright helm and shield did burn a most unwearied fire, 
 
 Like rich Autumnus’ golden lamp, whose brightness men admire, 
 
 Past all the other host of stars, when with his cheerful face, 
 
 Fresh washed in lofty ocean waves, he doth the sky enchase .’ 3 
 
 ‘Patience, my lord! why, 't is the soul of peace; 
 
 Of all the virtues, *t is nearest kin to heaven; 
 
 It makes men look like gods. The best of men 
 That e'er wore earth about him ivas a sufferer , 
 
 A soft , meek , patient , humble , tranquil spirit ; 
 
 The first true gentleman that ever breathed ' 4 
 
 ‘He that in the sun is neither beam nor moat. 
 
 He that's not mad after a petticoat, 
 
 He for whom poor men’s curses dig no grave. 
 
 He that is neither lord’s nor lawyer’s slave, 
 
 He that makes This his sea and That his shore, 
 
 He that in’s coffin is richer than before, 
 
 He that counts Youth his sword and Age his staff. 
 
 He whose right hand carves his own epitaph. 
 
 He that upon his death-bed is a swan, 
 
 And dead no crow,— he is a Happy Man .’ 5 
 
 Of all the roses grafted on her cheeks, 
 
 Of all the graces dancing in her eyes, 
 
 Of all the music set upon her tongue, 
 
 1 Chapman; a wise, manly, but irregular genius, greater as a translator of Homer 
 
 than as a dramatist. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid: Homer. 
 
 4 Decker; a hopeful, cheerful, humane spirit, who turned vexations and miseries 
 
 into commodities. 5 Ibid. 
 
426 
 
 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 Of all that was past woman’s excellence, 
 
 In her white bosom; look, a painted boar 
 Circumscribes all ! ’ 1 
 
 ‘ Love ! hang love ! 
 
 It is the abject outcast of the world. 
 
 Hate all things; hate the world, thyself, all men; 
 Hate knowledge; strive not to be overwise; 
 
 It drew destruction into Paradise; 
 
 Hate honor, virtue, they are bates 
 That entice men’s hopes to sadder fates.’ 2 
 
 ‘As having clasped a rose 
 Within my palm, the rose being ta’en away. 
 
 My hand retains a little breath of sweet, 
 
 So may man’s trunk, his spirit slipp'd away. 
 
 Hold still a faint perfume of his sweet guest.’ 3 
 
 ‘Black spirits and white; red spirits and gray; 
 Mingle, mingle, mingle, yon that mingle may. 
 Titty, Tiffin, keep it stiff in; 
 
 Firedrake, Puckey, make it lucky; ‘ 
 
 Lizard, Robin, you must bob in: 
 
 Round, around, around, about, about; 
 
 All ill come running in; all good keep out! 
 
 1st Witch. Here's the blood of a bat. 
 
 Hecate. Put in that; oh, put in that. 
 
 2d Witch. Here's libbard's bane. 
 
 Hecate. Put it in again. 
 
 1st Witch. The juice of a toad, the oil of adder. 
 
 2d Witch. Those will make the younker madder. 
 
 All. Round, around, around, about, about; 
 
 All ill come running in; all good keep out!’ 4 
 
 ‘Now I go, now I fly 
 Malkin, my sweet spirit, and I. 
 
 Oh, what dainty pleasure 'tis 
 To ride in the air. 
 
 When the moon shines fair, 
 
 And sing and dance, and toy and kiss! 
 
 Over woods, high rocks, and mountains, 
 
 Over seas, our mistress’ fountains, 
 
 Over steep towers and turrets, 
 
 We fly by night, ’mongst troops of spirits. 
 
 No ring of bells to our ears sounds; 
 
 No howls of wolves, no yelp of hounds; 
 
 No not the noise of waters’ breach, 
 
 Or cannon’s roar our height can reach.’ 5 
 
 ‘Simple and low is our condition, 
 
 For here with ns is no ambition: 
 
 We with the sun our flocks unfold, 
 
 Whose rising makes their fleeces gold; 
 
 Our music from the birds we borrow, 
 
 They bidding us, we them, good-morrow. 
 
 1 Decker. 
 
 2 Marston; properly a satirist, bitter, misanthropic, cankered. s Ibid. 
 
 4 Middleton ; a sagacious cynic, best known by his play of The Witch. 
 
 * IbJfTf. 
 
PROSE — CHAOS AND OVERFLOW. 
 
 427 
 
 Our habits are but coarse and plain, 
 
 Yet they defend from wind and rain: 
 
 As warm too, in an equal eye, 
 
 As those bestained in scarlet dye. 
 
 The shepherd, with his homespun lass, 
 
 As many merry hours doth pass, 
 
 As courtiers with their costly girls, 
 
 Though richly dressed in gold and pearls.’ 1 
 
 In Shirley, last of the great race, the fire and passion of the 
 grand old era passes away. Imagination is driven from its last 
 asylum. The sword is drawn, and the theatres are closed. Dram- 
 atists are stigmatized, actors are arrested; and when, after the 
 lapse of a few years, they return to their old haunts, it is as 
 roisterers under a foreign yoke. 
 
 Prose. — The drooping flower of poesy was succeeded by a 
 blossom of prose, produced by the same inner growth, and, at its 
 highest point, tinged with the like ideal colors. A half dozen 
 writers will exhibit the expansion. We omit, at present, those 
 who offer only the material of knowledge, the substance of 
 wisdom merely, — annalists, antiquaries, scientists, pamphleteers, 
 whether poets, dramatists, divines, or politicians; and pass to 
 those who bring us merit of execution, as well as the residuary 
 element of thought-value. Of Bacon we shall elsewhere treat. 
 Fulness of thought and splendor of workmanship raise him into 
 the realm of pure literature. Less originative and luminous, 
 though of the same band of scholars and dreamers, is Robert 
 Burton, an ecclesiastic, a recluse, an eccentric, spasmodically 
 gay, as a rule sad. To amuse and relieve himself, after thirty 
 years’ reading, he wrote the Anatomy of Melancholy , an enor- 
 mous medley of ideas, musical, medical, poetical, mathematical, 
 philosophical; every page garnished with Latin, Greek, or French, 
 from rare and unknown authors. It is the only book that ever 
 took Dr. Johnson out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to 
 rise. Here is a faint suggestion of his style — a glimpse into 
 its jumble of observation, erudition, anecdote, instruction, and 
 amusement: 
 
 ‘Boccace hath a pleasant tale to this purpose, which he borrowed from the Greeks, 
 and which Beroaldus hath turned into Latin, Bebelius into verse, of Cymon and Iphige- 
 nia. This Cymon was a fool, a proper man of person, and the governor of Cyprus’ son, 
 out a very ass; insomuch that his father being ashamed of him, sent him to a farm- 
 
 1 Thomas Heywood; graceful and gentle, one of the most prolific writers the world 
 has ever seen. 
 
428 
 
 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 house he had in the country, to be brought up; where by chance, as his manner was, 
 walking alone, he espied a gallant young gentlewoman named Iphigenia, a burgomas- 
 ter's daughter of Cyprus, with her maid, by a brook side, in a little thicket, fast asleep 
 in her smock, where she had newly bathed herself. When Cymon saw her he stood lean- 
 ing on his staff, gaping on her immovable , and in a maze : at last he fell so far in love 
 with the glorious object, that he began to rouse himself up; to bethink what he was; 
 would needs follow her to the city, and for her sake began to be civil, to learn to sing 
 and dance, to play on instruments, and got all those gentleman-like qualities and com- 
 pliments, in a short space, which his friends were most glad of. In brief, he became 
 from an idiot and a clown, to be one of the most complete gentlemen in Cyprus; did 
 many valorous exploits, and all for the love of Mistress Iphigenia. In a word, I may say 
 thus much of them all, let them be never so clownish, rude and horrid, Grobians and 
 sluts, if once they be in love, they will be most neat and spruce ; for, Omnibus rebus , et 
 nitidis nitoribus antevenit amor ; they will follow the fashion, begin to trick up, and to 
 have a good opinion of thexnselves; venustatum enim mater Venus ; a ship is not so long 
 a-rigging, as a young gentlewoman a-trimming up herself against her sweetheart comes. 
 A painter’s shop, a flowery meadow, is not so gracious an aspect in Nature's store-house as 
 a young maid, nubilis paella , a Novitsa or Venetian bride, that looks for an husband ; or a 
 young man that is her suitor; composed looks, composed gait, clothes, gestures, actions, 
 all composed; all the graces, elegancies, in the world, are in her face. Their best robes, 
 ribbons, chains, jewels, lawns, linens, laces, spangles, must come on; praeter quam res 
 patitur student elegantiae , they arc beyond all measure coy, nice, and too curious on a 
 sudden. ’Tis all their study, all their business, how to wear their clothes neat, to be 
 polite and terse, and to set out themselves. No sooner doth a young man see his sweet- 
 heart coming, but he smugs up himself, pulls up his cloak, now fallen about his shoul- 
 ders, ties his garters, points, sets his band, cuffs, slicks his hair, twires his beard, etc.’ 
 
 The Meditations of Bishop Hall, the ‘English Seneca,’ are 
 alike rich in imagery and sententious in expression. Passages 
 like the following reveal the poetic temperament: 
 
 ‘Here is a tree overlaid with blossoms: it is not possible that all these should pros- 
 per ; one of them must needs rob the other of moisture and growth. I do not love to see 
 an infancy over-hopeful; in these pregnant beginnings one faculty starves another, and 
 at last leaves the mind sapless and barren ; as, therefore, we are wont to pull off some of 
 the too frequent blossoms, that the rest may thrive, so it is good wisdom to moderate the 
 early excess of the parts, or progress of over-forward childhood. Neither is it other- 
 wise in our Christian profession; a sudden and lavish ostentation of grace may fill the 
 eye with wonder, and the mouth with talk, but will not at the last fill the lap with fruit.’ 
 
 Again : 
 
 ‘What a strange melancholic life doth this creature lead; to hide her head all the 
 day long in an ivy bush, and at night, when all other birds are at rest, to fly abroad, and 
 vent her harsh notes. I know not why the ancients made sacred this bird to wisdom, 
 except it be for her safe closeness and singular perspicuity; that when other domestical 
 and airy creatures are blind, she only hath inward light to discern the least objects for 
 her own advantage. Surely thus much wit they have taught us in her: that he is the 
 wisest man that would have least to do with the multitude; that no life is so safe as the 
 obscure; that retiredness, if it have less comfort, yet has less danger and vexation; 
 lastly, that he is truly wise who sees by a light of his own, when the rest of the world 
 sit in an ignorant and confused darkness, unable to apprehend any truth save by the 
 helps of an outward illumination.’ 
 
 A like irradiating power of fancy, with a less sustained dig- 
 nity, may be seen in Dr. Fuller, facetious without irreverence, 
 and witty without bitterness. A few of his aphorisms may 
 
PROSE — THE DREAMER OF NORWICH. 
 
 429 
 
 suggest that strong and weighty, yet gentle and beautiful style 
 which was his habit: 
 
 ‘Learning hath gained most by those books by which the printers have lost.’ 
 
 ‘Moderation is the silken string running through the pearl-chain of all virtues.’ 
 
 ‘Anger is one of the sinews of the soul: he that wants it hath a maimed mind.’ 
 
 ‘Tombs are the clothes of the dead. A grave is but a plain suit, and a rich monu- 
 ment is one embroidered.’ 
 
 ‘They that marry ancient people, merely in expectation to bury them, hang them- 
 selves in hope that one will come and cut the halter.’ 
 
 ‘Heat gotten by degrees, with motion and exercise, is more natural, and stays longer 
 by one, than what is gotten all at once by coming to the fire. Goods acquired by industry 
 prove commonly more lasting than lands by descent.’ 
 
 ‘It is dangerous to gather flowers that grow on the banks of the pit of hell, for fear 
 of falling in; yea, they which play with the devil’s rattles will be brought by degrees to 
 wield his sword; and from making of sport, they come to doing of mischief.’ 
 
 ‘Generally, nature hangs out a sign of simplicity in the face of a fool, and there is 
 enough in his countenance for a hue and cry to take him on suspicion; or else it is 
 stamped in the figure of his body; their heads sometimes so little, that there is no room 
 for wit; sometimes so long, that there is no wit for so much room.’ 
 
 While the clash of arms is drawing* men of letters from contem- 
 plation into the war of pens, Sir Thomas Browne, a physician 
 and an idealist, is plunging into the abysses of meditative reverie. 
 Unlike most of his profession, his delight is in the preternatural 
 and visionary; he penetrates the internal structure of things, sees 
 in the universe more than a dry catalogue, divines in every fact a 
 mysterious soul, looks as from an eminence beyond visible phe- 
 nomena, trembling w r ith a kind of veneration before the dim 
 vistas of the unknown, stirred to an eloquent sadness by the 
 decay of nature and the dust of forgotten tombs, moved with an 
 eloquent pity for the plumed and disorderly procession swallowed 
 up in the fatal, all-devouring pit: 
 
 ‘Circles and right lines limit and close all bodies, and the mortal right-lined circle 
 must conclude and shut up all. There is no antidote against the opium of time, which 
 temporally considereth all things. Our fathers find their graves in our short memories, 
 and sadly tell us now we may be buried in our survivors. Gravestones tell truth scarce 
 forty years. Generations pass while some trees stand, and old families last not three 
 oaks. . . . Who can but pity the founder of the Pyramids? Herostratus lives that burnt 
 the temple of Diana; he is almost lost that built it: time hath spared the epitaph of 
 Adrian’s horse; confounded that of himself. In vain we compute our felicities by the 
 advantage of our good names, since bad have equal durations; and Thersites is like to 
 live as long as Agamemnon. Who knows whether the best of men be known; or 
 whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot than any that stand remembered 
 in the known account of time. Without the favour of the everlasting register, the first ' 
 man had been as unknown as the last, and Methuselah's long life had been his only 
 chronicle. 
 
 Oblivion is not to be hired: the greatest part must be content to be as though they 
 
430 
 
 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 had not been; to be found in the register of God, not in the record of man. Twenty- 
 seven names make up the first story before the Flood; and the recorded names ever 
 since contain not one living century. The number of the dead long exceedeth all that 
 shall live. The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the 
 equinox? . . . 
 
 Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with memory a 
 great part even of our living beings; we slightly remember our felicities, and the smart- 
 est strokes of affliction leave but short smart upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, 
 and sorrows destroy us or themselves. To weep into stones are fables. Afflictions 
 induce callosities; miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon us, w'hich, notwithstand- 
 ing, is no unhappy stupidity. . . . The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time 
 hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise; Mizraim cures 
 wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsams. . . . 
 
 Man is a nob-le animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnising 
 nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery in the infancy 
 of his nature .’ 1 
 
 Those whose minds are intent, constantly or mainly, on mere 
 pleasure and gain, on the petty interests of appetite, will here 
 find little to their satisfaction. But the meditations that lead us 
 into the inner chambers of life and death are, if we be rightly 
 attuned, more precious than the positive facts that put money 
 into a man’s pocket or actual knowledge into his head. We are 
 more than sentiment — we are rational, we are ethical. The scale 
 of our affinities is indicated by the intellect which seeks to tran- 
 scend the finite in space and time and truth, by the conscience 
 which owns the infinite in duty and stays itself on the infinite in 
 love. A noble melancholy is the source of every generous pas- 
 sion and of every philosophical discovery . 2 Whatever depth 
 there may be in our tenderness, whatever reverence in our voice, 
 flows into us from the two eternities. 
 
 Another who rises above the din of strife into the region of 
 spiritualities, is Jeremy Taylor , 3 an Anglican and a Royalist, 
 upright, zealous, tolerant, a sensitive and creative genius, less 
 profound than Browne, but as opulent in resources, warmer, 
 richer, more gorgeous in style. His soul was made for the sub- 
 lime, the beautiful, and the picturesque. Never was such wealth 
 and sweetness of imagery, or readier perception of analogies in 
 things familiar and fair. He sees the skylark build her nest on 
 
 1 Hydriotaphia, or Urn Buria' : ‘a Discourse on the Sepulchral Urns lately found in 
 Norfolk.’ 
 
 2 Melancholy is the genuine inspiration of true genius: whoever is not conscious of 
 this affection of the mind must not aspire to any great celebrity as an author. Madam 
 de Stael. 
 
 Happy is the country where the authors are melancholy, the merchants satisfied, the 
 rich gloomy. Ibid. 
 
 3 Son of a poor surgeon -barber, entered college at fourteen as a sizar, won his way, 
 married a natural daughter of Charles I, was wrecked in the storm of the Civil War, 
 twice imprisoned, and after the Restoration loaded with honors. 
 
PROSE — THE SHAKESPEARE OF DIVINES. 
 
 431 
 
 the ground, sees her rise amid the early perfumes of the fields, 
 soaring highest of all the feathered tribe, or breasting the tem- 
 pest in her upward flight, and compelled to return panting; then 
 he thinks of the good man’s spirit, struggling to ascend towards 
 the throne of mercy: 
 
 ‘For so I have seen a lark rising from his bed of grass, and soaring upwards, singing 
 as he rises, and hopes to get to heaven, and climb above the clouds; but the poor bird 
 was beaten back with the loud sighings of an eastern wind, and his motion made irregu- 
 lar and inconstant, descending more at every breath of the tempest, than it could recover 
 by the libration and frequent weighing of his wings; till the little creature was forced 
 to sit down and pant, and stay till the storm was over; and then it made a prosperous 
 flight, and did rise and sing, as if it had learned music and motion from an angel as he 
 passed sometimes through the air, about his ministries here below. So is the prayer of 
 a good man.’ 
 
 Or his full imagination traces in sensible colors the progress of 
 sin: 
 
 ‘I have seen the little purls of a stream sweat through the bottom of a bank, and 
 intenerate the stubborn pavement, till it hath made it fit for the impression of a child’s 
 foot; and it was despised, like the descending pearls of a misty morning, till it had 
 opened its way and made a stream large enough to carry away the ruins of the under- 
 mined strand, and to invade the neighboring gardens: but then the despised drops were 
 grown into an artificial river, and an intolerable mischief. So are the first entrances of 
 sin stopped with the antidotes of a hearty prayer, and checked into sobriety by the eye 
 of a reverend man, or the counsels of a single sermon: but when such beginnings are 
 neglected, and our religion hath not in it so much philosophy as to think anything evil 
 as long as we can endure it, they grow up to ulcers and pestilential evils; they destroy 
 the soul by their abode, who at their first entry might have been killed with the pressure 
 of a little finger.’ 
 
 With like fertility and continuity, he describes the growth of 
 reason : 
 
 ‘We must not think that the life of a man begins when he can feed himself or walk 
 alone, when he can fight or beget his like, for so he is contemporary with a camel or a 
 cow; but he is first a man w T hen he comes to a certain steady use of reason, according to 
 his proportion : and when that is, all the world of men cannot tell precisely. Some are 
 called at age at fourteen, some at one and twenty, some never; but all men late enough; 
 for the life of a man comes upon him slowly and insensibly. But, as when the sun 
 approaches towards the gates of the morning, he first opens a little eye of heaven, and 
 sends away the spirits of darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calls up the lark to 
 matins, and by and by gilds the fringes of a cloud, and peeps over the eastern hills, 
 thrusting out his golden horns like those which decked the brow of Moses, when he was 
 forced to wear a veil, because himself had seen the face of God; and still, while a man 
 tells the story, the sun gets up higher, till he shews a fair face and full light, and then he 
 shines one whole day, under a cloud often, and sometimes weeping great and little 
 showers, and sets quickly; so is a man’s reason and his life.’ 
 
 We see that he is a philanthropist, who is not content to have 
 religion a ritual or a dream; with whom the business of life is 
 not to gather gold or get station, but to be a man ; not to pass 
 an ephemeral being in a whirl of fashion, but to be a woman; 
 a godly man, who does not spoil the poetic depth of holiness by 
 
432 
 
 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 reducing its speech to a technical use; a counsellor, who does his 
 work only with thought that it be good, whose marriage — let us 
 hope — was the noble poem, the interior relation, the rudimentary 
 heaven, which he would have it be: 
 
 ‘ They that enter into the state of marriage cast a die of the greatest contingency, and 
 yet of the greatest interest in the world, next to the last throw for eternity. Life or 
 death, felicity or a lasting sorrow, are in the power of marriage. A woman, indeed, ven- 
 tures most, for she hath no sanctuary to retire to from an evil husband; she must dwell 
 upon her sorrow, and hatch the eggs which her own folly or infelicity hath produced; and 
 she is more under it, because her tormentor hath a warrant of prerogative, and the woman 
 may complain to God, as subjects do of tyrant princes; but otherwise she hath no appeal 
 in the causes of unkindness. And though the man can run from many hours of his sad- 
 ness, yet he must return to it again; and when he sits among his neighbors, he remem- 
 bers the objection that lies in his bosom, and he sighs deeply. The boys and the pedlers, 
 and the fruiterers, shall tell of this man when he is carried to his grave, that he lived 
 and died a poor wretched person. 
 
 The stags in the Greek epigram, whose knees were clogged with frozen snow upon 
 the mountains, came down to the brooks of the valleys, hoping to thaw their joints with 
 the waters of the stream; but there the frost overtook them, and bound them fast in ice, 
 till the young herdsmen took them in their stronger snare. It is the unhappy chance 
 of many men, finding many inconveniences upon the mountains of single life, they 
 descend into the valleys of marriage to refresh their troubles; and there they enter into 
 fetters, and are bound to sorrow by the chords of a man’s or woman’s peevishness. . . . 
 
 Man and wife are equally concerned to avoid all offences of each other in the begin- 
 ning of their conversation ; every Tittle thing can blast an infant blossom ; and the breath 
 of the south can shake the little rings of the vine, when first they begin to curl like the 
 the locks of a new weaned boy: but when by age and consolidation they stiffen into 
 the hardness of a stem, and have by the warm embraces of the sun and the kisses of 
 heaven, brought forth their clusters, they can endure the storms of the north, and the 
 loud noises of a tempest, and yet never be broken: so are the early unions of an unfixed 
 marriage.' 1 
 
 It is not a cold rigorist who speaks, but a saviour, who feels the 
 sore travail of the world, and esteems nothing greater than by 
 word or deed to minister comfort to a weary or troubled soul: 
 
 ‘This is glory to thy voice, and employment fit for the brightest angel. But so have 
 I seen the sun kiss the frozen earth, which was bound up with the images of death, and 
 the colder breath of the north; and then the waters break from their inclosures, and melt 
 with joy, and run in useful channels; and the flies do rise again from their little graves 
 in walls, and dance awhile in the air, to tell that there is joy within, and that the great 
 mother of creatures will open the stock of her new refreshment, become useful to man- 
 kind, and sing praises to her Redeemer. So is the heart of a sorrowful man under the 
 discourses of a wise comforter.’ 
 
 He has, like Browne, the stamp of the national spirit, the North- 
 ern gloom which, in the days of the Edda , was soothed by the 
 roaring of the sea and the hollow blast of the barren heath. For 
 what is the end and sum of mortal designs? A dark nifidit and 
 an ill guide, ‘a boisterous sea and a broken cable,’ — a rock and a 
 wreck, while they who weep loudest have yet to enter into the 
 storm. All, fair as the morning, brave as the noon, are the Jieri- 
 
PROSE — A NEW CULTURE. 
 
 433 
 
 tage of worms. Go where you may, you tread upon the bones of 
 a dead man. ‘ Where is the dust that has not been alive?” 
 
 ‘Nature calls us to meditate of death, by those things which arc the instruments of 
 acting it; and God by all the variety of His providence, makes us see death everywhere 
 in all variety of circumstances, and dressed up for all the fancies and the expectation of 
 every single person. Nature has given us one harvest every year, but death hath two; 
 and the spring and the autumn send throngs of men and women to charnel-houses: and 
 all the summer long, men are recovering from their evils of the spring, till the dog-days 
 come, and then the Sirian star makes the summer deadly; and the fruits of the autumn 
 are laid up for all the year's provision, and the man that gathers them eats and surfeits, 
 and dies and needs them not, and himself is laid up for eternity ; and he that escapes 
 till winter, only stays for another opportunity, which the distempers of that quarter 
 minister to him with great variety. Thus death reigns in all the portions of our time. 
 The autumn with its fruits provides disorders for us, and the winter’s cold turns them 
 into sharp diseases, and the spring brings flowers to strew our hearse, and the summer 
 gives green turf and brambles to bind upon our graves.’ 
 
 The style of all these writers, by its copiousness and pomp, by 
 its redundancies and irregularities, links them to the age of 
 Elizabeth. It has the Elizabethan ardor and the Elizabethan 
 faults. If now we turn to Cowley, we shall see, in startling- 
 contrast, the powerful and erratic breeze slacken to a smooth 
 and placid equability: 
 
 ‘The first minister of state has not so much business in public as a wise man has in 
 private: if the one have little leisure to be alone, the other has less leisure to be in com- 
 pany: the one has but part of the affairs of one nation, the other all the works of God and 
 Nature under his consideration. There is no saying shocks me so much as that which I 
 hear very often, that a man does not know how to pass his time.’ 
 
 Of Oliver Cromwell: 
 
 ‘What can be more extraordinary than that a person of mean birth, no fortune, no 
 eminent qualities of body, which have sometimes, or of mind, which have often, raised 
 men to the highest dignities, should have the courage to attempt, and the happiness to 
 succeed in, so improbable a design as the destruction of one of the most ancient and 
 most solidly founded monarchies upon the earth? that he should have the power or bold- 
 ness to put his prince and master to an open and infamous death; to banish that numer- 
 ous and strongly allied family: to do all this under the name and wages of a parliament; 
 to trample upon them, too, as he pleased, and spurn them out of doors when he grew 
 weary of them; to raise up a new and unheard-of monster out of their ashes; to stifle 
 that in the very infancy, and set up himself above all things that ever were called sover- 
 eign in England; to oppress all his enemies by arms, and all his friends afterwards by 
 artifice; to serve all parties patiently for a while, and to command them victoriously at 
 last; to overrun each corner of the three nations, and overcome with equal facility both 
 the riches of the south and the poverty of the north ; to be feared and courted by all for- 
 eign princes, and adopted a brother to the gods of the earth ; to call together parliaments 
 with a word of his pen, and scatter them again with the breath of his mouth; to be hum- 
 bly and daily petitioned, that he would please to be hired, at the rate of two millions a 
 year, to be the master of those who had hired him before to be their servant; to have the 
 estates and lives of three kingdoms as much at his disposal as was the little inheritance 
 of his father, and to be as noble and liberal in the spending of them; and lastly — for 
 there is no end of all the particulars of his glory — to bequeath all this with one word to 
 
 1 Young’s Night Thoughts. 
 
 28 
 
434 
 
 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 his posterity; to die with peace at home, and triumph abroad; to be buried among kings, 
 and with more than regal solemnity; and to leave a name behind him not to be extin- 
 guished but with the whole world; which, as it is now too little for his praises, so might 
 have been, too, for his conquests, if the short line of his human life could have been 
 stretched out to the extent of his immortal designs.’ 
 
 This is the mark of a new culture, a new society: it is the model 
 which Temple and Addison will adopt and improve. 
 
 History. — The contribution to this department in the first 
 quarter of the century, most valuable as authority and most mas- 
 terly in execution, is Bacon’s Reign of Henry VII. In the 
 collection of materials, the period was exceedingly active. Vol- 
 umes of Antiquities , Memoirs , Memorials , Travels , contempo- 
 rary narratives and retrospective treatises, most of which from 
 the literary point of view are worthless, attest the great amount 
 of industry subsidiary to true history. Always liable in all its 
 forms to be partisan, the historical literature of the seventeenth 
 century, as a whole, is violently so. The historian speaks less 
 with the air of a judge than with the gesticulations of an attor- 
 ney. Indeed, the grave and judicial, ancient or modern, are not 
 altogether unbiased by their sympathies and antipathies. They 
 are prone — let the reader or student remember — to write in the 
 interest of some political party, some social caste, some favorite 
 hero, some Idol of the Tribe , the Den , the Forum , or the 
 Theatre. There are, also, unmistakable signs that historians 
 were shifting their ground. Thus Selden, the chief of scholars, 
 offended many of the Royalists by his History of Tithes , wherein 
 he denied their divine right. Baker compiled a Chronicle ‘with 
 such care and diligence,’ he assures us, ‘ that if all other chroni- 
 cles were lost, this only would be sufficient to inform posterity of 
 all passages worthy to be known.’ Bacon analyzes motives, 
 weighs actions, examines and describes the laws and events 
 affecting trade and agriculture, with an evident purpose to enable 
 the reader to glean the lessons which may hereafter be turned to 
 useful account. We observe an increasing respect for the human 
 intellect, an indisposition to believe in things strange, merely be- 
 cause they have been believed, and an inclination to take the 
 side of the people, rather than that of the rulers. 
 
 Theology. — The persecutions of Galileo, and his recantation, 
 suffice to show that Religion was still considered the arbiter of 
 Science. In England, though creeds did not at once come into 
 
PROSE — THE AGE OF CREEDS. 
 
 435 
 
 conflict with the general culture, the temper of the nation was 
 intensely theological. ‘ There is a great abundance of theologians 
 in England,’ says a contemporary; ‘all point their studies in that 
 direction.’ It was a period of distrust and dissension, — of the 
 strife of conservative and radical reform. As the struggle pro- 
 gressed, fanaticism gained ground, faith became more stubborn, 
 divinity more sinister, action and intelligence more restrictive. 
 But — Milton aside — the Episcopalians were not only more tal- 
 ented and scholarly than their opponents, but also more liberal. 
 If, by their alliance with the crown, they were oppressive in poli- 
 tics, they were tolerant in doctrine, more friendly, perhaps, to 
 the large ideas of the Renaissance. 
 
 What it is chiefly important to observe, is, that the rage of 
 controversy reacted upon the spirit of insubordination that was 
 abroad, and tended to the rapid increase of heresy. In 1647, 
 Boyle writes from London: 
 
 ‘There arc few days pass here that may not justly be accused of the brewing or 
 broaching of some new opinion. Nay, some are so studiously changing in that particu- 
 lar, they esteem an opinion as a diurnal, after a day or two scarce worth the keeping. 
 If'any man have lost his religion, let him repair to London, and I’ll warrant him he shall 
 find it. I had almost said too,— if any man has a religion, let him but come hither now, 
 and he shall go near to lose it 1 
 
 Each sect proclaimed its contempt of tradition and the efficiency 
 of reason. Hales, the ‘ ever-memorable,’ declared that he would 
 quit the Church of England to-morrow if she insisted on the 
 damnation of dissenters. He advised men to trust to themselves 
 alone in religious matters. Of the authority of the Fathers and 
 of Councils, he said briefly, ‘It is none.’ Universality is no con- 
 clusive test. It ‘is such a proof of truth as truth itself is ashamed 
 of. The most singular and strongest part of human authority is 
 properly in the wisest and most virtuous, and these, I trow, are 
 not the most universal.’ ChillingWOrth, a militant and Royal- 
 ist, of strong and subtle intellect, asserted the insecurity of any 
 basis for belief but that of private judgment. No man is bound to 
 believe the points at issue between the Catholics and Protestants 
 if he finds them repugnant to reason. ‘God requires only that 
 we believe the conclusion as much as the premises deserve.’ 
 Nothing can be more detrimental to religion than to force it. 
 ‘For my part, I am certain that God hath given us our reason to 
 discern between truth and falsehood; and he that makes not this 
 use of it, but believes things he knows not why, I say it is by 
 
43G 
 
 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 chance that he believes the truth, and not by choice; and I can 
 not but fear that God will not accept of this sacrifice of fools.’ 
 The great principle of religious toleration is clearly implied in 
 this, if it is not clearly expressed in what follows: 
 
 ‘This deifying our own interpretations and tyrannous enforcing them upon others; 
 this restraining of the word of God from that latitude and generality, and the understand- 
 ings of men from that liberty wherein Christ and His apostles left them, is and hath been 
 the only foundation of all the schisms of the Church and that which makes them im- 
 mortal.’ 
 
 But the first famous plea for tolerance, on a solid and compre- 
 hensive basis, was Taylor’s liberty of Prophesying . That free- 
 dom of conscience which the Puritan founded on the personal 
 communion of each soul with God, is here founded on the weak- 
 ness of authority and the infirmity of reason. The Apostle’s 
 Creed comprises all that can be absolutely proven, and therefore 
 all that is fundamental. All errors beyond do not affect salva- 
 tion, and hence ought not to be punished. The magistrate, how- 
 ever, must see to the safety of the commonwealth, and put down, 
 if necessary, those religions whose principles destroy government, 
 as well as ‘those religions — if there be any such — which teach 
 ill life.’ 
 
 Among Puritans, the Independents allowed the greater lati- 
 tude. Milton deemed persecution, in defense of truth, inexcusa- 
 ble: ‘For truth is strong next to the Almighty. She needs no 
 policies or stratagems or licensings to make her victorious. These 
 are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her power.’ 
 The Presbyterians desired to tolerate only those who accepted 
 the ‘fundamentals’ of Christianity, and drew up a list which 
 formed as elaborate and exclusive a test as the Anglican articles 
 which they rejected. They tried in 1648 to induce Parliament to 
 enact that any one who advocated views contrary to the doctrines 
 of the Trinity and the Incarnation, should be punished with death, 
 and all who taught Popish, Arminian, 1 Baptist, or Quaker doc- 
 trines, should be imprisoned for life. Catholicism, indeed, was 
 by all sectaries ruthlessly proscribed; but the nation, it is evident, 
 was advancing towards religious liberty. It must not be forgotten 
 that this great process — yet far from being completed in any 
 country — was begun by the union of the spirit of Christianity 
 
 1 A scheme of Arminius, a Dutch theologian, who died in 1608. It arose by way of 
 reaction against the predestinarianism of Calvin. 
 
PROSE — SECULARIZATION OF MORALS. 
 
 437 
 
 with the spirit of scepticism. He who has learned to doubt has 
 learned to tolerate. They who have recognized the fallibility of 
 their own opinions, cease to dream that guilt can be associated 
 with an honest conclusion. 
 
 Ethics. — When dogmatism declines, we may be sure that 
 men are interrogating their moral sense more than the books of 
 theologians, and that they will soon proceed to make that sense 
 a supreme arbiter. While the period offers nothing that can be 
 reckoned a treatise, much less a system, of moral philosophy, 
 indications are not wanting that conditions were rapidly maturing 
 for the examination, analysis, and classification of moral feelings 
 on a rationalistic basis. Bacon, without attempting a scheme, 
 calls attention to the insufficient treatment of Ethics, and sug- 
 gests the double line of investigation — theory and practice : 
 
 ‘The main and primitive division of moral knowledge seemeth to be into the exem- 
 plar or platform of good, and the regimen or culture of the mind: the one describing 
 the nature of good ; the other presenting rules how to subdue, apply, and accommodate 
 the will of man thereunto.’ 
 
 The ‘ platform ’ seems to consist in seeking the good of the whole 
 — or the greatest good of the greatest number. He contributes 
 several passages, moreover, to the rising issues touching the 
 rights of belligerents. We also meet with allusions, reflections, 
 precepts, counsels, in Feltham’s Resolves , Berkin’s Cases of Con- 
 science , Selden’s Table Talk , and Browne’s Christian Morals. 
 The aim of these writers is not to inquire into the principles of 
 action, but rather to enforce the duties of practical religion. We 
 quote briefly from the last: 
 
 1 Live by old ethicks and the classical rules of honesty. . . . Think not that morality 
 is ambulatory; . . . that virtues, which are under the everlasting seal of right reason, 
 may be stamped by opinion. And therefore though vicious times invert the opinions of 
 things, and set up new ethics against virtue, yet hold thou unto old morality; and rather 
 than follow a multitude to do evil, stand like Pompey’s pillar conspicuous by thyself, 
 and single in integrity. And since the worst of times afford imitable examples of virtue ; 
 since no deluge of vice is like to be so general but more than eight will escape; eye well 
 those heroes who have held their heads above water, who have touched pitch and not 
 been defiled, and in the common contagion have remained uncorrupted. ’ 
 
 And: 
 
 ‘Live happy in the Elysium of a virtuously composed mind, and let intellectual con- 
 tents exceed the delights wherein mere pleasurists place their paradise. Bear not too 
 slack reins upon pleasure, nor let complexion or contagion betray thee unto the exor- 
 bitancy of delight. Make pleasure thy recreation or intermissive relaxation, not thy 
 Diana, life and profession. . . . Our hard entrance into the world, our miserable going 
 out of it, our sicknesses, disturbances, and sad rencounters in it, do clamorously tell us 
 we come not into the world to run a race of delight.’ 
 
438 
 
 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 Again : 
 
 ‘ Lastly, if length of days be thy portion, make it not thy expectation. Reckon not 
 upon long life ; think every day the last, and live always beyond thy account. He that so 
 often surviveth his expectation lives many lives, and will scarce complain of the short- 
 ness of his days. Time past is gone like a shadow; make time to come present. Ap- 
 proximate thy latter times by present apprehensions of them; be like a neighbour unto 
 the grave, and think there is but little to come. And since there is something of us that 
 will still live on, join both lives together, and live in one but for the other. He who thus 
 ordereth the purposes of this life will never be far from the next. 1 
 
 That moral instruction has been secularized, constitutes an im- 
 portant advance towards the exploration of the nature and foun- 
 dation of morals. 
 
 Science. — As poetry languished, science rose, a second crea- 
 tion which continued the first. What one had represented, the 
 other proceeded to observe, to analyze, and to classify. On the 
 Continent, the discoveries of Galileo established the Copernican 
 theory of the universe. Summoned before the Inquisition, he 
 was forced to kneel in the sackcloth of a penitent, and swear 
 with his hands upon the gospels, that ‘ it was not true that the 
 earth moved round the sun, and that he would never again in 
 words or writing spread this damnable heresy.’ ‘And yet,’ he 
 immediately whispered to a friend, ‘it does move.’ In 1609, he 
 had constructed his telescope, and, applying it to the heavens, 
 had excited the strongest interest by revealing the inequalities of 
 the moon’s surface, the moon-like phases of Venus, the satellites 
 of Jupiter, and the ring of Saturn. Space was thus seen to be 
 very different from what the ancients had imagined. Men were 
 led to suspect that it contained a mechanism more various and 
 more vast than had ever been conjectured. Kepler took up the 
 notion of a physical connection among celestial bodies, and 
 arrived at three laws the most magnificent which the whole ex- 
 panse of human knowledge can show: that the planets move 
 round the sun in ellipses • that they describe equal areas about 
 their centres in equal times / that the squares of their periodic 
 times are proportional to the cubes of their distances. Why 
 they so moved, or how their motions were maintained, he also 
 endeavored to explain. It was assumed that a current of fluid 
 matter circulated round the sun, and carried them with it, like 
 a boat in a stream, or straws in a whirlpool. The true explana- 
 tion was to be the glory and merit of Newton. The theory 
 of vortices, — put forward more distinctly and elaborately by 
 
PROSE — THE EXPANSION OF SCIENCE. 
 
 439 
 
 Descartes, — though it is now known to have no scientific value, 
 has a mental value of the highest order: for (1) it reminds us 
 again that the complete disclosure of a new truth by the principal 
 discoverer is preceded by guesses, trials, and glimpses; and (2) 
 it introduced the conception of natural law into what had long 
 been the special realm of superstition. 
 
 In England, the intellectual impulse was in the same direction. 
 Weeds and the grain often thrive and flourish together, but if 
 Bacon set aside with scorn the astronomical system of Coper- 
 nicus, he was the first to impress upon mankind at large, the 
 power and importance of physical research. ‘Through all those 
 ages,’ he says, ‘wherein men of genius or learning principally or 
 even moderately flourished, the smallest part of human industry 
 has been spent on natural philosophy, though this ought to be 
 esteemed as the great mother of the sciences; for all the rest, if 
 torn from the root, may perhaps be polished and formed for use, 
 but can receive little increase.’ Many were undecided, Milton 
 among others: 
 
 ‘What if seventh to these 
 The planet earth, though steadfast she seem, 
 
 Insensibly three different motions move?’ 
 
 And: 
 
 ‘What if the sun 
 
 Be centre to the world; and other stars. 
 
 By his attractive virtue and their own 
 Incited, dance about him various rounds?’ 
 
 His leaning, however, seems to have been for the new: 
 
 ‘Or she from west her silent course advance 
 With inoffensive pace, that spinning sleeps 
 On her soft axle, while she paces even. 
 
 And bears thee soft with the smooth air along?’ 
 
 Many were knocking at the door which another and a later was 
 to force open. In 1638 a book appeared with the title, The Dis- 
 covery of a JVew World ; two years afterward, a Discourse 
 concerning a JVew Planet. The art of numerical calculation 
 made inestimable progress by means of Napier’s invention of 
 Logarithms, without which the sciences in which the most splen- 
 did triumphs have been achieved, could never have been carried 
 to the height they have reached. The circulation of the blood 
 had been partially anticipated. Harvey completed the doctrine, 
 demonstrated and announced it. It encountered as much popu- 
 lar as professional odium; but like the heliocentric doctrine, — 
 
440 
 
 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 ‘Untamed its pride, unchecked its course. 
 
 From foes and wounds it gathers force.’ 
 
 This was the beginning; of a revolution in medicine. In the fer- 
 ment of the Civil War, some speculative persons formed them- 
 selves into a club, which they called the Invisible College, and 
 met once a week, sometimes in London, sometimes in Oxford, 
 according to the changes of fortune and residence of members. 
 ‘ Our business,’ says one of them, ‘ precluding affairs of state and 
 questions of theology, was to consider philosophical subjects, and 
 whatever related thereto, — physic, anatomy, geometry, astron- 
 omy, navigation, statics, magnetism, chemistry, mechanics, and 
 natural experiments, with the state of these studies as then culti- 
 vated at home or abroad.’ 
 
 A witness to the resistless tendencies of the age, is the cele- 
 brated work of Sir Thomas Browne — Inquiries into Vulgar 
 and Common Errors. His enumeration of errors to be dispelled 
 exemplifies the notions which prevailed: 
 
 ‘That crystal is nothing else but ice strongly congealed; that a diamond is softened 
 or broken by the blood of a goat; that a pot full of ashes will contain as much water as 
 it would without them; that bays preserve from the mischief of lightning and thunder; 
 that an elephant hath no joints; that a wolf, first seeing a man, begets a dumbness in 
 him; that moles are blind; that the flesh of peacocks corrupteth not; that storks will 
 only live in republics and free states; that the chicken is made out of the yolk of the egg; 
 that men weigh heavier dead than alive ; that the forbidden fruit was an apple ; that there 
 was no rainbow before the Flood; that John the Evangelist should not die.’ 
 
 ‘Many others there are,’ he adds, ‘which we resign unto divinity, 
 and perhaps deserve not controversy.’ We are here informed 
 that one main cause of error is ‘adherence unto authority’; that 
 another is ‘ neglect of inquiry’; that a third is ‘credulity.’ All 
 which is confirmatory of that vast social and intellectual move- 
 ment which we have seen sweep away the institutions that vainly 
 attempted to arrest it, and which was steadily introducing a new 
 series of conceptions into every province of speculative and prac- 
 tical life. 
 
 Philosophy. — The sterile empire of scholasticism was at an 
 end. The sound of great names had lost its omnipotent charm. 
 Speculators felt the need of a law and a law-giver to methodize 
 the discordant elements, but pursued no determinate course, 
 while pretenders struggled for the vacant throne. At this junc- 
 ture a leader appeared — Francis Bacon, who set aside the 
 traditions of the past, separated philosophy from theology, and in 
 
PROSE — RISE OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 441 
 
 a large and noble temper called the attention of mankind to the 
 power and importance of experimental research. While his own 
 researches lay chiefly in the domain of physical science, yet the 
 spirit of his method — slow and patient investigation — was one 
 which applied equally to the whole realm of knowledge. More 
 clearly than any other, he saw where the error of the ancients 
 lay, — in making the largest generalizations first, without the aid 
 or warrant of rigorous inductive methods, and applying them 
 deductively without verification. But the revolt from this waste 
 of intelligence, as well as his ignorance of mathematical knowl- 
 edge, blinded him to the real value of deduction as an instrument 
 of discovery . 1 His influence, however, especially on the develop- 
 ment of science, was decisive, if not immediate. His fundamental 
 maxim — excellent though not without its dangers — suited the 
 English positive, practical genius, — that philosophy should begin 
 in observation and end in art: 
 
 ‘ In the same manner as we are cautioned by religion to show our faith by our works, 
 we may freely apply the principle to philosophy, and judge of it by its works, account- 
 ing that to be futile which is unproductive, and still more, if instead of grapes and olives 
 it yield but the thistles and thorns of dispute and contention?’ 
 
 What is that world? What is man? What is the origin of 
 knowledge? What are its limits? How can it be increased? 
 From what principles must we start? What methods are we to 
 employ? What rule shall we deduce for the conduct of life? To 
 answer these questions is the dark problem of metaphysics, to 
 which Bacon, from the bent of his genius, was no way addicted. 
 On the continent a Frenchman, Descartes, gave an answer which, 
 while it has ceased to be satisfactory, formed the starting-point 
 of much English speculation, though he himself made no distin- 
 guished disciples among English thinkers. Turning the mental 
 vision inward, as Bacon turned it outward, he watched the opera- 
 tions of the soul, as an object in a microscope. Resolved to 
 believe nothing but upon evidence so convincing that he could 
 not by any effort refuse his assent, he found, as he inspected his 
 beliefs, that he could plausibly enough doubt everything but 
 his own existence. Here at last was the everlasting rock, and 
 
 1 Mechanics, astronomy, optics, acoustics, involve a deductive element. Each sup- 
 poses the law to be so and so, that is, devises an hypothesis, and inquires what conse- 
 quences will follow, always with the design of trying such results by facts, and adopting 
 the hypothesis only when it can stand the test. From a principle thus established a 
 multitude of truths are deduced by the mere application of geometry and algebra. 
 
442 
 
 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. 
 
 this was revealed in his own Consciousness. Hence his famous 
 Cogito, ergo sum , — I think , therefore I am. Consciousness, said 
 he> is the basis of certitude. Interrogate it, and its clear replies 
 will be science; for all clear ideas are true. Down in the depths 
 of self, he tells you, is the distinct immutable idea of the Infinite 
 Perfection — the mark of the workman impressed upon his 
 work; therefore, God exists. This fact established, the veracity 
 of our faculties is guaranteed; for an Infinite and Perfect Being 
 would not so constitute His creatures that they should be always 
 and essentially deceived. His method of ascent to the basis of 
 truth was inductive ; thenceforth, from that irreversible Cer- 
 tainty, it was deductive. He was greatest in that in which Bacon 
 was least, — mathematics. The latter argued from effects to 
 causes; the former deduced effects from causes — explaining the 
 phenomena of sense by those of intuition. The one used ex- 
 periment to verify an a priori conception; the other, to form 
 conceptions. 
 
 Against the prosaic, earthy temper of the next period, when 
 Philosophy shall turn her face earthward, the mind be plotted 
 out into real estate, and grandeur become a thing unknown, 
 let us hold in remembrance the sublime words of Sir Thomas 
 Browne on the true dignity and destiny of man as the highest 
 sublunary object of our theoretical and moral interest. This 
 poet-philosopher shall give us the last accents of the great 
 Elizabethan age: 
 
 ‘ For the world, I count it not an inn but an hospital, and a place, not to live but to 
 die in. The world that I regard is myself; it is the microcosm of my own frame that I 
 oast mine eye on ; for the other, I use it but like my globe, and turn it round sometimes for 
 my recreation. . . . The earth is a point not only in respect of the heavens above us, but 
 of that heavenly and celestial part within us; that mass of flesh that circumscribes 
 me limits not my mind ; that surface that tells the heavens it hath an end cannot per- 
 suade me I have any: . . . whilst I study to find how I am a microcosm or little world, I 
 find myself something more than the great. There is surely a piece of divinity in us, 
 something that was before the elements and owes no homage unto the sun. Nature tells 
 me I am the image of God, as well as Scripture ; he that understands not thus much, 
 hath not his introduction or first lesson, and is yet to begin the alphabet of man.’ 
 
 Resume. — The opinions and feelings that had been growing 
 up in the bosom of private families now manifested themselves 
 in Parliamentary debates, then overturned the throne, and insti- 
 tuted the Commonwealth. Against the loyal enthusiasm of Eng- 
 lish gentry, and the fierce licentiousness of Royalist reprobates, 
 w 7 ere arrayed the valor, the policy, and the public spirit of the 
 
RESUME. 
 
 443 
 
 Puritans, with their severe countenance, precise garb, petty scru- 
 ples, and affected accent. Out of the struggle sprang into 
 organized existence two great parties, — standing the one for 
 political tradition, the other for political progress; the one for 
 religious conformity, the other for religious liberty. 
 
 In the drama, the noonday of Shakespeare was followed by 
 the afternoon flush of Jonson, the delineator of humors , and a 
 semi-classic in taste; of Beaumont and Fletcher, luxuriating in 
 irregularity of form, and heralding the sensual excess that ended 
 in the violent extinction of the art; of Massinger, Ford, and the 
 rest of that bright throng, whose final and almost solitary succes- 
 sor was Shirley. 
 
 Having reached the limit of its expansion, the poetic bloom 
 withered. The serious temper, the blast of strife, the ascetic 
 gloom, accelerated the decay which natural causes began. The 
 agreeable replaced the forceful; and the pretty, the beautiful. 
 Donne founded the fantastic or metaphysical school, marked by 
 the love of quaint phrases, strange analogies, and ambitious 
 efforts at antithesis. Poets lost the romantic fervor without 
 gaining the classic grace. Yet in this exhausted soil, the old 
 sap, lost to the eye, sent up one more of its most vigorous prod- 
 ucts. Prose was unexampled in vigor and amount; most of it — 
 in particular during the Civil War — political and theological, 
 inspired by the rage of sects and factions, meant for the ravenous 
 appetites of the moment, and therefore ephemeral. A few nota- 
 ble books — like the Areopagitica of Milton, those of Taylor, the 
 Spenser of theology, of Bacon, the diviner in science, and of 
 Browne, the dreamer of Norwich — glow with the colored lights 
 and the heart of fire which give to the productions of genius 
 enduring life. Style was copious, even to redundancy; ornate, 
 even to intemperance; not seldom pedantic, with blemishes of 
 vulgarity and tediously prolonged periods. We do not look for 
 grace in Leviathans, nor for urbanity in mastodons. 
 
 The scholastic dynasty, which had survived revolutions, em- 
 pires, religions, and languages, was fallen. Into the ensuing 
 anarchy Bacon introduced the principle of order, and furnished 
 to liberated thought a chart and compass. His preeminent ser- 
 vice was his classification of the Idola , and his constant injunction 
 to correct theory by confronting it with facts. In him, and in 
 
444 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 Descartes of France, modern philosophy may be said to originate, 
 inasmuch as they were the first to make the doctrine of method a 
 principal object of consideration. 
 
 Literary eras have no arbitrary or precise bounds. They are 
 discriminated by centres and directions, by a certain set of influ- 
 ences affecting- the public mind and character during a more or 
 less definite time, to be succeeded by a new set producing a new 
 phase of the nation’s literature. The characteristic tendencies 
 which stretch across them are denoted by persons scattered 
 through them, as the mountain trend is determined by its isolated 
 peaks. The poetic conception of the world, as distinguished from 
 the mechanical, may be taken as the dominant mark of the so- 
 called Elizabethan Age, first clearly defined in Spenser, rising to 
 its zenith in Shakespeare, and passing away in Milton — last of 
 the famed race who slaked the thirst of their souls at the springs 
 of imagination and faith. 
 
 JONSON. 
 
 Then Jonson came, instructed from the school, 
 
 To please in method, and invent by rule; 
 
 His studious patience and laborious art 
 
 By regular approach essay'd the heart . — Samuel Johnson. 
 
 Many were the wit-combats betwixt Shakspeare and Ben Jonson, which two I be- 
 held like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war. Master Jonson, like the 
 former, was built far higher in learning; solid but slow in his performances. Shak- 
 speare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn 
 with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit 
 and invention.— Fuller. 
 
 Biography. — Born in Westminster, in 1574, a few days after 
 the death of his father, who was a clergyman ; attracted the 
 attention of Camden, who sent him to school, where he made 
 extraordinary progress; entered Cambridge at sixteen, but was 
 shortly recalled by his step-father, a bricklayer, who set him to 
 the trowel; ran away, enlisted, fought in the Netherlands, killed 
 a man in single combat in the view of both armies; returned to 
 England at the age of nineteen, with a roistering reputation and 
 an empty purse; turned to the stage for a livelihood, and failed; 
 quarrelled with a fellow-performer, and slew him in a duel, was 
 
JONSON. 
 
 445 
 
 arrested for murder, imprisoned, almost brought to the gallows ; 
 was released, and immediately married a woman as poor as himself 
 — a wife whom he afterwards described as ‘a shrew yet honest’; 
 was forced again to the stage both as an actor and a writer, be- 
 ginning his dramatic career by doing job-work for the managers; 
 sprang into fame in his twenty-second year, proclaimed himself a 
 reformer of the drama, assumed an imperious attitude, railed at 
 his rivals, and made bitter enemies, against whom he struggled 
 without intermission to the end; excited the king’s anger by an 
 irreverent allusion to the Scotch, was in danger of mutilation, but 
 was set at liberty without a trial; amid feasting and rejoicing, 
 his mother showed him a poison which she had intended to put 
 into his drink, to save him from the disgraceful punishment, and 
 ‘to show that she was not a coward,’ says Jonson, ‘she had re- 
 solved to drink first ’; received the appointment of Poet Laureate, 
 with a pension of a hundred marks, which was subsequently ad- 
 vanced to a hundred pounds by Charles I. His latter days were 
 dark and painful. For twelve years he battled with want and 
 disease. His pockets had holes, and his money failed. Still 
 obliged to write in order to live, he wrote when his pen had lost 
 its vigor and lacked the charm of novelty. Scurvy increased, 
 paralysis came, and dropsy. In the epilogue to the New Inn 
 (1630), he appeals to the audience: 
 
 ‘If you expect more than you had to-night, 
 
 The maker is sick and sad. . . . 
 
 All that his faint and falt’ring tongue doth crave, 
 
 Is, that you not impute it to his brain, 
 
 That’s yet unhurt, altho’ set round with pain 
 It cannot long hold out.’ 
 
 Deprived of Court patronage, he was forced to beg, first from 
 the Lord Treasurer, then from the Earl of Newcastle. Shattered, 
 drivelling, and suffering, he died in August, 1637, — alone, served 
 by an old woman; and was buried, in an upright posture, in the 
 Poet’s Corner of the Abbey. A workman, hired for eighteen 
 pence by the charity of a passer-by, carved into the simple stone 
 over his grave the laconic inscription: 
 
 ‘O Bare Ben Jonson!’ 
 
 Appearance. — Big and coarsely framed, of wide and long* 
 face, early marred by scurvy, square jaw, enormous cheeks, thick 
 lips, with a ‘mountain belly’ and an ‘ungracious gate’; a pon- 
 
446 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 derous athlete, of free and boisterous habits, built up out of beef 
 and Canary wine, for action and for endurance. His life and 
 manners were in harmony with his person. 
 
 "Writings. — We perceive at once the introduction of a new 
 model, — art subjected strictly to the laws of classical compo- 
 sition. The understanding of the artist is solid, strong, pene- 
 trating, assertive; his mind, extensively furnished from expe- 
 rience and from books; his memory, retentive and exact, crowded 
 with technical details and learned reminiscences. It is not for 
 him to imitate, but to be imitated. He has a doctrine, which he 
 expounds with Latin regularity. He will be loyal to culture, and 
 therefore observes the unities. His plot shall be a diagram, the 
 incidents rapid and natural; and you may see the dramatic effect, 
 perceptible to every reader, rise to a climax by a continuous and 
 uniform ascent. You have seen greater spontaneity, finer sym- 
 pathy, finer fancy, a more genial spirit of enjoyment, but never 
 such preoccupation of rule and method; above all, such power of 
 working out an idea to a painful and oppressive issue, such per- 
 sistency of thirst to unmask folly and punish vice. A character, 
 with him, is but an incorporated idea, — a leading feature, conceit, 
 or passion, produced on the stage in a man’s dress, — which masters 
 the w T hole nature, and which the personages combine to illustrate. 
 At twenty-two, having exulted in his own exploits on the field, 
 he writes Every Man in his Humour , to clothe in flesh and blood 
 a colossal coward and braggart, — Bobadil, who swears ‘by the 
 body of Caesar,’ or ‘by the foot of Pharaoh,’ or, more terrifically 
 still, ‘ by my valor ! ’ His proposal for the pacification of Europe 
 is famous: 
 
 ‘I will tell you, sir, by the way of private, and under seal, I am a gentleman, and 
 live here obscure, and to myself; but were I known to her majesty and the lords (ob- 
 serve me), I would undertake, upon this poor head and life, for the public benefit of the 
 state, not only to spare the entire lives of her subjects in general, but to save the one- 
 half, nay, three-parts, of her yearly charge in holding war, and against what enemy 
 soever. And how would I do it, think you! . . . Why, thus, sir. I would select nineteen 
 more, to myself, throughout the land; gentlemen they should be of good spirit, strong 
 and able constitution ; I would choose them by an instinct, a character that I have : and 
 I w T ould teach these nineteen the special rules,— as your punto, your reverso, your stoc- 
 cata, your imbroccato, your passado, your montanto, — till they could all play very near, 
 or altogether, as well as myself. This done, say the enemy were forty thousand strong, 
 we twenty would come into the field the tenth of March, or thereabouts; and we would 
 challenge twenty of the enemy; they could not in their honour refuse us; well, we would 
 kill them; challenge twenty more, kill them; twenty more, kill them; twenty more, kill 
 them too; and thus would we kill every man his twenty a day, that’s twenty score; 
 
JONSON. 
 
 447 
 
 twenty score, that's two hundred; two hundred a day, five days a thousand; forty thou- 
 sand; forty times five, five times forty, two hundred days kills them all up by computa- 
 tion. And this will I venture my poor gentleman-like carcass to perform, provided there 
 be no treason practiced upon us, by fair and discreet manhood; that is, civilly by the 
 sword.’ 
 
 It is affectation and bluster grown to egregious excess. So in 
 the Alchemist , Sir Epicure Mammon, in public and alone, expa- 
 tiates continually in gigantic fancies of luxury and sensuality. 
 Hear him unfold the vision of splendors and debauchery into 
 which he will plunge when, by the possession of the philosopher’s 
 stone, he has learned to make gold: 
 
 ‘I assure you 
 
 He that has once the flower of the Sun, 
 
 The perfect ruby, which we call elixir, . . . 
 
 Can confer honour, love, respect, long life; 
 
 Give safety, valour, yea, and victory. 
 
 To whom he will. In eight and twenty days 
 I’ll make an old man of fourscore a child. . . . 
 
 I will have all my beds blown up, not stuff’d: 
 
 Down is too hard. My mists 
 
 I’ll have of perfume, vapored ’bout the room 
 
 To lose ourselves in; and my baths, like pits. 
 
 To fall into: from whence we will come forth, 
 
 And roll as dry in gossamer and roses.— 
 
 Is it arriv’d at ruby?— And my flatterers 
 Shall be the pure and gravest of divines. 
 
 And they shall fan me with ten ostrich tails 
 Apiece, made in a plume to gather wind. 
 
 We will be brave, Puffe, now we have the med'eine 
 My meat shall all come in , in Indian shells , 
 
 Dishes of agate, set in gold, and studded 
 With emeralds, sapphires, hyacinths, and rubies, 
 
 The tongues of carps, dormice, and camel’s heels, 
 
 Boil’d in the spirit of sol, and dissolv'd pearl , 
 
 Apicius’ diet ’gainst the epilepsy: 
 
 And I will eat these broths with spoons of amber, 
 
 Headed with diamond and carbuncle. 
 
 My foot-hoy shall eat pheasants, calver’d salmons, 
 
 Knots, godwits, lampreys: I myself will have 
 The beards of barbels serv’d, instead of salads; 
 
 Oil’d mushrooms; and the swelling, unctuous paps 
 Of a fat pregnant sow, newly cut off, 
 
 Drest. with an exquisite and poignant sauce, 
 
 For which I'll say unto my cook, “ There's gold ; 
 
 Go forth, and be a knight." . . . 
 
 My shirts 
 
 I’ll have of taffeta-sarsnet, soft and light 
 As cobwebs; and for all my other raiment, 
 
 It shall be such as might provoke the Persian, 
 
 Were he to teach the world riot anew. 
 
 My gloves of fishes’ and birds’ skins, perfum’d 
 With gums of Paradise and eastern air: 
 
448 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 Or the dominant trait assumes the form of a mental eccentricity, 
 bordering on madness, as in The Silent Woman. Morose is an 
 old citizen who has a horror of noise, but loves to talk. He dis- 
 charges his servant whose shoes creaked. The new one wears 
 slippers soled with wool, and speaks only in a whisper through a 
 tube; but even the whisper is finally forbidden, and he is made to 
 reply by signs. Further, Morose is rich; and has a nephew, 
 witty but penniless, who, in revenge for all his treatment, finds 
 him a supposed silent woman, the beautiful Epicene. Morose, 
 enchanted by her brief replies and nearly inaudible voice, marries 
 her, with a view to disinherit his nephew who has laughed at his 
 infirmity. The ceremony is no sooner over than she turns out a 
 very shrew: 
 
 ‘Why, did you think you had married a statue? or a motion only? one of the French 
 puppets, with the eyes turn’d with a wire? or some innocent out of the hospital, that 
 would stand with her hands thus, and a playse mouth, and look upon you ? 1 
 
 She directs the valets to speak louder; opens wide the doors to 
 her friends, who arrive in troops and overwhelm him all at once 
 with congratulations, Cjuestions, and counsels. Here comes one^ 
 with a band of music, who play suddenly, to their utmost volume. 
 Now a procession of menials, with clattering dishes, a whole tav- 
 ern. Amid the shouts of revelry, the din of trumpet and drum, 
 Morose flees to the top of the house, puts ‘ a whole nest of night- 
 caps ’ on his head and stuffs his ears. In vain. The racket 
 increases. The house is turned into a thunder factory. ‘ Rogues, 
 hell-hounds, Stentors ! . . . They have rent my roof, walls, and 
 all my windows asunder with their brazen throats ! ’ Goaded to 
 desperation, he casts himself on the guests with his long sword, 
 looking like a maniac; chases the musicians, breaks their instru- 
 ments, and disperses the gathering amid indescribable uproar. 
 Afterwards, he is pronounced mad, and they discuss his alleged 
 insanity before him. They jingle in his ear most barbarous 
 words, consider the books which he must read aloud for his cure, 
 assure him that his wife talks in her sleep, and snores dreadfully. 
 ‘O, redeem me, fate; redeem me, fate,’ he cries in his extremity. 
 ‘For how many causes may a man be divorced?’ he asks of his 
 nephew, who replies, like a clever rascal, ‘Allow me but five 
 hundred during life, uncle, and you are free.’ Morose accepts the 
 proposition eagerly, joyfully; and his nephew then shows him 
 that Epicene is no woman — only a boy in disguise. 
 
JONSOtf. 
 
 449 
 
 In sensual Venice, queen city of vices and of arts, he finds a 
 magnificent cheat, and hounds him to a merited retribution in 
 Volpone. Never was such ignoble lust of gold, such shameless 
 artistry in guile, such debasement to evil and the visibly vile. 
 The fearful picture is flashed upon us at the outset, when Vol- 
 
 pone says: 
 
 Then: 
 
 ‘ Good morning to the day, and next, my gold: 
 Open the shrine, that I may see my saint! ’ 
 
 ‘Hail the world's soul, and mine! . . . 
 
 O thou son of God, 
 
 But brighter than thy father, let me kiss, 
 With adoration, thee, and every relic 
 Of sacred treasure in this blessed room ! ’ 
 
 Childless and without relations, he has many flatterers who hope 
 to be his heir; and he plays the invalid to encourage their gifts. 
 First Voltore arrives, bearing a huge piece of precious plate. 
 Volpone has cast himself on the bed and buried himself in wraps, 
 coughing as if at the point of death: 
 
 ‘I thank you, signior Voltore, 
 
 Where is the plate? mine eyes arc bad. . . . Your love 
 Hath taste in this, and shall not be unanswered. . . . 
 
 I cannot now last long. ... I feel me going,— 
 
 Uh, uh, uh, uh ! ’ 
 
 He is exhausted, his eyes close; and Voltore inquires of his para- 
 site, Mosca: ‘Am I inscribed his heir for certain?’ — 
 
 ‘Are you? 
 
 I do beseech you, sir, you will vouchsafe 
 To write me i’ your family. All my hopes 
 Depend upon your worship. I am lost 
 Except the rising sun do shine on me. 
 
 Vol. It shall both shine and warm yon, Mosca. 
 
 M. Sir, 
 
 I am a man, that hath not done yonr love 
 All the worst offices: here I wear your keys, 
 
 See all your coffers and yonr caskets loekt. 
 
 Keep the poor inventory of your jewels. 
 
 Your plate and moneys; am your steward, sir. 
 
 Husband your goods here. 
 
 Vol. But am I sole heir? 
 
 M. Without a partner, sir, confirm’d this morning: 
 
 The wax is warm yet, and the ink scarce dry 
 Upon the parchment. 
 
 Vol. Happy, happy me! 
 
 By what good chance, sweet Mosca? 
 
 Al. Your desert, sir; 
 
 I know no second cause.’ 
 
 29 
 
450 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 The second is a deaf old miser, Corbaccio, hobbling on the verge 
 of the grave, yet trusting to survive Volpone, whom he is joyed 
 to find more ill than himself: 
 
 ‘C. How does your patron? ... * 
 
 M. His mouth 
 
 Is ever gaping, and his eyelids hang. 
 
 C. Good. 
 
 M. A freezing numbness stiffens all his joints. 
 
 And makes the color of his flesh like lead. 
 
 C. ’Tis good. 
 
 M. His pulse beats slow, and dull. 
 
 C. Good symptoms still. 
 
 M. And from his brain- 
 ed I conceive you, good. 
 
 M. Flows a cold sweat, with a continual rheum. 
 
 Forth the resolved corners of his eyes. 
 
 C. 1s t possible? Yet I am better, ha! 
 
 How docs he with the swimming of his head 
 
 M. O, sir, ’tis past the scotomy, he now 
 
 Hath lost his feeling, and hath left to snort: *- 
 
 You hardly can perceive him, that he breathes. 
 
 C. Excellent, excellent, sure I shall outlast him: 
 
 This makes me young again, a score of years. 1 
 
 He is reminded that Voltore has been here, to forestall him, 
 leaving a splendid token of regard; but: 
 
 ‘See, Mosca, look, 
 
 Here, I have brought a bag of bright cecchines, 
 
 Will quite weigh down his plate. . . . 
 
 M. Now, would I counsel you, make home with speed, 
 
 There, frame a will; whereto you shall inscribe 
 My master your sole heir. . . . 
 
 C. This plot 
 
 Did I think on before. . . . 
 
 M. And you so certain to survive him. 
 
 C. I. 
 
 M. Being so lusty a man. 
 
 C. Tis true. 1 
 
 When he is gone, Corvino, a merchant, appears, with an orient 
 pearl and a superb diamond. ‘Am I his heir?’ — 
 
 ‘Sir, I am sworn, I may not shew the will 
 Till he be dead : but here has been Corbaccio, 
 
 Here has been Voltore, here were others too, 
 
 I cannot number ’em, they were so many. 
 
 All gaping here for legacies; but I, 
 
 Taking the vantage of his naming you, 
 
 Signior Corvino, Signior Corvino, took 
 Paper, and pen, and ink, and there I ask'd him. 
 
 Whom he would have his heir? Corvino. Who 
 Should be executor? Corvino. And, 
 
 To any question he was silent to, 
 
 I still interpreted the nods he made 
 
JONSON. 
 
 451 
 
 (Through weakness) for consent: and sent home th’ others, 
 Nothing bequeath’d them, but to cry and curse. 
 
 Cor. O my dear Mosca ! ’ 
 
 Presently he departs; and Volpone, springing up, cries in rap- 
 tures: 
 
 ‘My divine Mosca! 
 
 Thou hast to-day outgone thyself. . . . Prepare 
 Me music, dances, banquets, all delights; 
 
 The Turk is not more sensual in his pleasures, 
 
 Than will Volpone.’ 
 
 He is accused, before the tribunal, of imposture and rape; and 
 the would-be heirs defend him with an incredible energy of lying 
 and open villainy. Then he writes a will in Mosca’s favor, has 
 his death reported, conceals himself, and enjoys the looks of 
 those who have just saved him, now stupefied with disappoint- 
 ment. Now is Mosca’s moment. He has the will, and demands 
 of Volpone half his fortune. Their dispute exposes the common 
 rascality. The arch villain has outwitted himself, and all are 
 sent to the pillory. 
 
 The best testimony to his imagination is The Sad Shepherd , 
 an unfinished pastoral drama, more poetical than dramatic, with 
 nothing low in the comic and nothing inflated in the serious. It 
 were not easy to surpass the charm of the opening lines: 
 
 ‘Here she was wont to go! and here! and here! 
 
 Just where those daisies, pinks and violets grow: • 
 
 The world may find the Spring by following her; 
 
 For other print her airy steps ne’er left: 
 
 Her treading would not bend a blade of grass, 
 
 Or shake the downy blow-ball from his stalk! 
 
 But like the soft west-wind she shot along, 
 
 And where she went the flowers took thickest root, 
 
 As she had sowed them with her odorous foot ! ’ 
 
 And where should we look for a more masterly delineation of 
 that sorceress of evil, the witch ? — 
 
 ‘Within a gloomy dimble she doth dwell, 
 
 Down in a pit, o’ergrown with brakes and briars 
 Close by the ruins of a shaken abbey , 
 
 Torn with an earthquake down unto the ground , 
 
 ’Mongst graves and grots, near an old charnel-house, . . . 
 
 Where the sad mandrake grows. 
 
 Whose groans are dreadful: and dead-numbing night-shade. 
 
 The stupefying hemlock, adder’s tongue, 
 
 And martagan; the shrieks of luckless owls 
 We hear, and croaking niglit-crows in the air! 
 
 Green-bellied snakes , blue fire-drakes in the sky, 
 
 And giddy flitter-mice with leather wings! 
 
 The scaly beetles, with their habergeons, 
 
452 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 That make a humming murmur as they fly! 
 
 There in the stocks of trees, white fairies do dwell. 
 
 And span-long elves that dance about a pool , 
 
 With each a little changeling in their arms! 
 
 The airy spirits play with falling stars, 
 
 And mount the spheres of fire to kiss the moonl 
 While she sits reading by the glow-worm’s light, 
 
 Or rotten wood o'er which the worm hath crept, 
 
 The baneful schedule of her nocent charms.’ 
 
 Jonson’s fame rests chiefly on his comedies, which constitute 
 by far the largest part of his work. His tragedies are men-of- 
 war, stately and heavy. JSejanus is distinguished by sustained 
 depth of knowledge and gravity of expression. But more than 
 once, in this and in Cataline , nature forces its way through 
 pedantry and erudition. Cataline’s imprecation is fine: 
 
 ‘It is decreed! Nor shall thy fate, O Rome! 
 
 Resist my vow. Though hills were set on hills. 
 
 And seas met seas, to guard thee, I would through: 
 
 I’d plough up rocks, steep as the Alps, in dust, 
 
 And lave the Tyrrhene waters into clouds. 
 
 But I would reach thy head, thy head, proud city!’ 
 
 The description of the morning on which the conspirators meet, 
 is powerful and dramatic: 
 
 ‘It is, methinks, a morning full of fate! • 
 
 She riseth slowly, as her sullen car 
 
 Had all the weights of sleep and death hung at it. 
 
 She is not rosy-fingered, but swoll’n black! 
 
 Her face is like a water turned to blood, 
 
 And her sick head is bound about with clouds 
 As if she threatened night ere noon of day!’ 
 
 The following is vivid and impressive: 
 
 ‘The rugged Charon fainted, 
 
 And asked a navy rather than a boat, 
 
 To ferry over the sad world that came. 
 
 The maws and dens of beasts could not receive 
 The bodies that those souls were frighted from; 
 
 And e’en the graves were fill’d with men yet living, 
 
 Whose flight and fear had mix’d them with the dead.’ 
 
 Jonson should have written an epic. 
 
 Style. — Massive, erudite, concise, compact, equipoised, rotund; 
 in a word, classic. As literal as Shakespeare’s is figurative; as 
 studied as Shakespeare’s is intuitive and unrestrained. His adver- 
 saries asserted that every line cost him a cup of sack. In prose, 
 terse, sharp, swift, biting. In versification, peculiarly smooth and 
 flowing; for this literary leviathan, it strangely appears, has emi- 
 nently the merits of elegance and grace. What, for example, 
 
JONSON. 
 
 453 
 
 could be more lightsome and airy, more artistic, than the procla- 
 mation of the Graces, when Venus has lost her son Cupid? — 
 
 ‘Beauties, have you seen this toy, 
 Called Love, a little boy, 
 
 Almost naked, wanton, blind, 
 
 Cruel now, and then as kind? 
 
 If he be amongst ye, say; 
 
 He is Venus' runaway. 
 
 She that will but now discover 
 Where the winged wag doth hover, 
 Shall to-night receive a kiss. 
 
 How or where herself would wish; 
 But who brings him to his mother 
 Shall have that kiss, and another. 
 
 He hath marks about him plenty; 
 You shall know him among twenty. 
 All his body is a fire, 
 
 And his breath a flame entire, 
 
 That, being shot like lightning in, 
 Wounds the heart, but not the skin. 
 
 At his sight the sun hath turned; 
 Neptune in the waters burned; 
 
 Hell hath felt a greater heat; 
 
 Jove himself forsook his seat; 
 
 From the centre to the sky 
 Are his trophies reared high. 
 
 Wings he hath, which though yc clip, 
 He will leap from lip to lip, 
 
 Over liver, lights, and heart. 
 
 But not stay in any part; 
 
 And if chance his arrow misses. 
 
 He will shoot himself in kisses.’ 
 
 Rank. — In the cluster of poets who sing the meditative, 
 aspiring, and romantic life of the period, Jonson is a soloist; next 
 to Shakespeare, a leader, — a leader by profundity of knowledge 
 and vigor of conception, by the dash of the torrent and the force 
 of the flood. Above all, has he the art of development, the habit 
 of Latin regularity. For the first time, a plot is a symmetrical 
 whole, advancing by consecutive deductions; having a beginning, 
 middle, and end, its subordinate actions well ordered, and its 
 leading truth which they combine to elucidate and establish. He 
 is persuaded that he ought to observe the severity and accuracy 
 of the ancients; not, in the same play, — 
 
 ‘Make a child new-swaddled, to proceed 
 Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed, 
 
 Past threescore years; or with three rusty swords, 
 
 And help of some few foot and half-foot words, 
 
 Fight over York and Lancaster’s long jars.’ 
 
 But in this full attainment of form, he fails in completeness of 
 life. He is too much of a theorist, too little of a seer. Given a 
 peculiarity, he can work it out with logical exactness and real- 
 istic intensity. That is, he delineates absorbing singularities 
 rather than persons. He thus inverts the true process of char- 
 acterization, which conceives the ‘humour’ as an offshoot of the 
 individual. He is English merely, where Shakespeare is cosmo- 
 politan. He is too ponderous and argumentative. His plots, 
 admirable of their kind, are external contrivances of the under- 
 standing rather than interior organisms of the imaginative 
 
454 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 insight. Depth of passion and winning tenderness are wanting. 
 The energy which should be vital too often becomes mechanical. 
 His point of view is usually or always that of the satirist: 
 
 ‘My strict hand 
 
 Was made to seize on vice, and with a gripe 
 Squeeze out the humour of such spongy natures, 
 
 As lick up every idle vanity . 1 
 
 And thus, even in the lower levels of comedy, where he is most 
 at home, the critic frequently, consciously or unconsciously, mars 
 the artist. Neither he nor the reader forgets himself. The pro- 
 cess is seen, the intention is felt. Calculation strips him of that 
 delicate and easy-flowing imitation which begets hallucination. 
 
 Still, if unable to construct characters, variety of learning, 
 clearness of mind, and energy of soul, suffice to depict English 
 manners and to render vice visible and odious. But he is loftier 
 from another side. We have seen how charming, how elegant 
 and refined, this same war-elephant may be when he enters the 
 domain of pure poetry; as in the polished songs and other lyrical 
 pieces sprinkled over his dramas, in the beautiful dream of the 
 Shepherd, or the courtly Masques , which display the whole mag- 
 nificence of the English Renaissance. His inequality — great 
 excellences offset by great defects — is in strong contrast with 
 the unebbing fulness and amplitude of the creative Shake- 
 speare. Nevertheless, in his field, in his genus of the drama, he 
 stands on the summit of his hill. 
 
 Character. — The most obvious qualities of his intellectual 
 nature are weight and force; of his spiritual nature, earnestness 
 and courage. In the classics, accurate and thorough; and on 
 every subject, athirst. He is said to have carried books in his 
 pocket while working at his trade, in order, during leisure mo- 
 ments, to refresh his memory upon favorite passages in the Latin 
 and Greek poets. In method, he was careful and precise: 
 
 ‘For a man to write well, there are required three necessaries: — to read the best 
 authors; observe the best speakers; and much exercise of his own style. In style, to 
 consider what ought to be written, and after what manner; he must first think, and 
 excogitate his matter; then choose his words, and examine the weight of either. Then 
 take care in placing and ranking both matter and words, that the composition be comely ; 
 and to do this with diligence and often. No matter how slow the style be at first, so it 
 be labored and accurate; seek the best, and be not glad of the forward conceits, or first 
 words that offer themselves to us, but judge of what we invent, and order what we 
 approve . 1 
 
JONSON. 
 
 455 
 
 He had moral loftiness. ‘Of all styles,’ he said, ‘he most loved 
 to be named Honest.’ To this add resolute self-assertion. The 
 stage was to be improved and exalted. He would guide, not 
 follow, the popular taste. Judge of his energy and purpose: 
 
 ‘With an armed and resolved hand, 
 
 I’ll atrip the ragged follies of the time 
 Naked as at their birth, . . . 
 
 And with a whip of steel, 
 
 Print wounding lashes in their iron ribs. 
 
 I fear no mood stampt in a private brow, 
 
 When I am pleas’d t’ unmask a public vice. 
 
 I fear no strumpet’s drugs, nor ruffian’s stab. 
 
 Should I detect their hateful luxuries.’ 
 
 He writes correspondently, — as if with his fist. Conscience and 
 vigor, aided by an intrepid self-confidence, commanded esteem, 
 even veneration; his hard- won position strengthened his natural 
 pride; and consciousness of power, with a severe sense of duty, 
 rendered him censorious, magisterial. He thought Donne, ‘ for 
 not keeping of accent, deserved hanging’; and Decker was a 
 rogue. He could instruct even Shakespeare. At the Mermaid, 
 he was self-constituted autocrat. His hearers were schoolboys. 
 While other dramatists said to the audience, ‘ Please to applaud 
 this,’ Ben said, ‘Now you fools, we shall see if you have sense 
 enough to applaud this ! u Egotistical, overbearing, of sour 
 aspect, he was frank, social, generous, even prodigal. To the last 
 , he retained the riotous, defiant color of the brilliant dramatic 
 world through which he fought his way. Like the rest, he lived 
 freely, liberally, and saw the ins and the outs of lust. Drink, 
 always a luxury, became his necessity. He was a frequent visitor 
 of the Apollo, a club in the Old Devil Tavern; wrote rules for 
 it, — Leges Conviviales ; and penned a welcome over the door to 
 all who approved the ‘true Phabian liquor.’ 
 
 In a general view, he presents a singular antithesis, — a rugged, 
 gross, and combative aspect, which is the ordinary one, and a 
 fanciful, serene aspect, which is exceptional and separate, occu- 
 pying, so to speak, a secluded corner in the general largeness. 
 It might seem surprising that the burly giant could become so 
 gracefully petit as he appears in previous quotations, and, pre- 
 eminently in the following lightly tripping strophe: 
 
 ‘Have you seen but a bright lily grow 
 Before rude hands have touched it? 
 
 Whipple. 
 
456 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 Have you marked but the fall o’ the snow 
 Before the soil hath smutched it? 
 
 Have you felt the wool of beaver? 
 
 Or swan's down ever? 
 
 Or have smelt o’ the bud o’ the briar? 
 
 Or the nard in the fire? 
 
 Or have tasted the bag of the bee? 
 
 O so white, — O so soft,— O so sweet is she!’ 
 
 Influence. — It is believed that his social position was supe- 
 rior to Shakespeare’s. With royalty he was familiar. Elizabeth 
 and James admired and employed him. His society was courted 
 by the time-worn and the youthful; and by an inner circle of 
 devotees he was venerated. In his declining days, he was the 
 acknowledged chief of his art, and during the Restoration his 
 reputation as a critic was still second to none. In his own age, 
 his power was similar to that of his massive namesake, Samuel 
 Johnson, in the succeeding century. Swift was to find sugges- 
 tions in his Tale of the Tub. Milton was to go to his masques 
 and odes for some of the elegancies of his own dignified muse. 
 Dryden was to think, erroneously, ‘He did a little too much 
 Romanize our tongue.’ For reasons given, his readers are now, 
 unhappily and unworthily, relatively few; but, as his good parts 
 are enduring and imperishable, no fame is more secure. 
 
 To every soul that is taxed, to every youth that resolves to 
 be eminent, he brings the assurance that manly resistance sub- 
 dues the opposition of the world; the resolution to surmount an 
 obstacle reduces it one half; before a fearless step, foes will slink 
 away; around perseverance the Graces collect, and at its bidding 
 the laurel comes. 
 
 LORD BACON. 
 
 Who is there that upon hearing the name of Lord Bacon does not instantly recognize 
 everything of genius the most profound, everything of literature the most extensive, 
 everything of discovery the most penetrating, everything of observation of human life 
 the most distinguishing and refined? — Burke. 
 
 Biography. — Born in London, in 1561 ; his father, Sir Nich- 
 olas, one of Elizabeth’s most sagacious statesmen; his mother, 
 the learned daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke; received his early 
 education under his mother’s eye, mixed freely with the wise 
 
LORD BACON. 
 
 457 
 
 and sreat who were visitors at his home; at thirteen, entered 
 Cambridge University, where his deepest impressions became an 
 inveterate scorn for Aristotle and his followers; left before he 
 was sixteen, without taking a degree, and was sent to France as 
 an attache of the English ambassador, to learn the arts of state- 
 craft; designed to stay some years abroad, and was studying 
 assiduously when his father’s sudden death recalled him, making 
 it incumbent ‘to think how to live, instead of living only to 
 think’; applied for office, but his abilities were too splendid, and 
 a jealous uncle ‘suppressed’ him; took to law, and soon rose to 
 eminence; at twenty-four, obtained a seat in the Commons; w'as 
 appointed by the queen her counsel extraordinary, but, owing to 
 the secret opposition of his kinsman, was not immediately raised 
 to any office of emolument; loved but lost a rich young widow, 
 and at forty-five married a fair young bride; steadily advanced 
 in fortune after the accession of James, till he reached the post 
 to which he had long aspired — Lord High Chancellor; was 
 accused of accepting bribes in his official capacity, was rudely 
 stripped of all his dignities, sentenced to the Tower during the 
 king’s pleasure, and heavily fined; was restored to liberty within 
 forty-eight hours, with a remission of his fine, but permitted to 
 pass the remainder of his days in penury, obscurity, and disgrace, 
 hunted by creditors and vexed by domestic disquiet; died after 
 five years of dishonor, in consequence of a cold induced by an 
 open-air experiment, on a snowy day, to ascertain whether flesh 
 might not be preserved in snow as well as in salt; consoled, in 
 his last hours, by the reflection that ‘the experiment succeeded 
 excellently well.’ 
 
 Intellectual Scheme. — With a just scorn for the trifles 
 which were occupying the followers of Aristotle, Bacon early 
 conceived the dream of converting knowledge from a speculative 
 waste into ‘a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the 
 relief of man’s estate.’ It was the supreme effort of his life to 
 embody this grand conception in the Instauratio Magna — the 
 renewal of Science — the Restoration, to man, of the empire of 
 nature. The vast plan, for which many lives would not have suf- 
 ficed, consisted, in its final form, of six divisions: 
 
 1. A survey of the sciences, a summary of all the possessions 
 of the human mind, comprehending ‘not only the things already 
 
458 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 invented and known, but also those omitted and wanted.’ Here 
 occurs the famous but inadequate distribution of learning into 
 History , which uses the memory; Poetry , which employs the 
 imagination; and Philosophy , which Requires the reason. Here, 
 in particular, occurs the short but beautiful paragraph which 
 exhausts everything yet offered on the subject of the beau ideal: 
 
 ‘Therefore because the acts or wants of true history have not that magnitude which 
 satisfieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical ; 
 because true history propoundeth the successes and issues of actions, not so agreeable 
 to the merits of virtue and vice, therefore poesy feigns them more just in retribution, 
 and more according to revealed Providence; because true history representeth actions 
 and events more ordinary and less interchanged, therefore poesy indueth them with more 
 rareness, and more unexpected and alternative variations. . . . And therefore it was 
 ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect 
 the mind by submitting the show of things to the desires of the mind.’ 
 
 2. Precepts for the interpretation of nature; ‘the science of a 
 better and more perfect use of reason in the investigation of 
 things, and of the true aids of the understanding’; ‘a kind of 
 logic, . . . differing from the common logic ... in three 
 respects, — the end, the order of demonstrating, and the grounds 
 of inquiry.’ This, which is but a fragment of what he had prom- 
 ised, is known as the Novum Organum , the most admirable of 
 his books, and the chief foundation of his fame. Its first por- 
 tion enumerates the causes of error, the illusions to which man 
 is subject: 
 
 Idols of the Tribe , to which all by common infirmity are liable; 
 
 Idols of the Den , such as are peculiar to individuals; 
 
 Idols of the Forum , such as arise from the current usage of 
 words; 
 
 Idols of the Theatre , springing from Partisanship, Fashion, 
 and Authority. 
 
 Its second portion describes and exemplifies the rules for con- 
 ducting investigations. 
 
 3. An extensive collection of facts and observations, — the 
 Natural History of any desired class of phenomena, — an im- 
 mense chart of nature, furnishing the raw material for the appli- 
 cation of the new method. But, in fact, an outline of the field 
 to be explored, rather than an exploration; a sketch of what he 
 would do: as, for instance, a complete account of comets, of me- 
 teors, of winds, of rain, hail, snow; the facts to be accurately 
 related and distinctly arranged; their authenticity diligently ex- 
 
LORD BACON. 
 
 459 
 
 amined; those that rest on doubtful evidence, to be noted as 
 uncertain, with the grounds of the judgment so formed. 
 
 4. A scale of the intellect — a ladder of the understanding — 
 illustrations of the mind’s gradual ascent from phenomena to 
 principles, — ‘not such examples as we subjoin to the several 
 rules of our method, but types and models , which place before 
 our eyes the entire process of the mind in the discovery of truth, 
 selecting various and remarkable instances.’ Only a few intro- 
 ductory pages, however, are contributed. 
 
 5. Specimens of the perfect system which he hoped to erect, 
 — provisional anticipations of the whole, ‘hereafter to be veri- 
 fied,’ — a sort of scaffolding, to be of use only till the building is 
 finished, — ‘the payment of interest till the principal could be 
 raised.’ 
 
 G. Science in practice — the new philosophy — the magnificent 
 birth. ‘To this all the rest are subservient, — to lay down that 
 philosophy which shall flow from the just, pure, and strict inquiry 
 hitherto proposed.’ But, ‘to perfect this is beyond both our 
 abilities and our hopes; yet we shall lay the foundations of it, 
 ' and recommend the superstructure to posterity.' 1 ‘Such,’ in the 
 language of Hallam, ‘was the temple which Bacon saw in vision 
 before him: the stately front and decorated pediments, in all 
 their breadth of light and harmony of proportion; while long 
 vistas of receding columns and glimpses of internal splendor 
 revealed a glory that it was not permitted him to comprehend.’ 
 The world we move in, is not the world we think. Only the 
 latter sets aside disturbances, defects, and limitations. There, at 
 least, the seamless heaven is attainable. To the consummation 
 which flees before him as the shadow of his achievement, he 
 gives ‘ local habitation ’ in the New Atlantis , a philosophical 
 romance, in which, with a poet’s boldness and a seer’s precision, 
 he describes, with almost literal exactness, modern arts, acade- 
 mies, observatories, air-balloons, submarine vessels, discovery of 
 remedies, preservation of food, transmutation of species, and 
 whatever prodigies cannot be proved to lie beyond the mighty 
 magic of time. Here is a college worthy of the name, Solo- 
 mon’s House, ‘the end of whose foundation is the knowledge of 
 causes and the secret motions of things, and the enlarging of the 
 bounds of human empire to the effecting of all things possible.’ 
 
460 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 His Motive. — The intense conviction that knowledge, in its 
 existing state, was barren of practical results, — a waste wilder- 
 ness in which successive generations had been moving without 
 advancing. He would propose as the end of thought, fruit — the 
 discovery of useful truth — victory over nature, not victory in 
 controversy. He would lead men out of a sterile desert, with its 
 deceitful mirage, into a fertile country, with its ample pastures 
 and abiding cities: 
 
 ‘Is there any such happiness as for a man's mind to be raised above the confusion of 
 things, where he may have the prospect of the order of nature and error of man? But is 
 this a view of delight only and not of discovery? of contentment and not of benefit? 
 Shall he not as well discern the riches of nature's warehouse as the beauty of her shop? 
 Is truth ever barren? Shall he not be able thereby to produce worthy effects, and to 
 endow the life of man with infinite commodities ? 1 
 
 His Method. — A different point of arrival requires a differ- 
 ent path of travel. To change the goal is to transform the 
 method. ‘ It would be an unsound fancy, and self-contradictory, 
 to expect that things which have never yet been done' can be done 
 except by means which have never yet been tried.’ The syllogists 
 had fashioned nature according to preconceived ideas, starting 
 from axioms not accurately obtained, and caring more for an 
 opinion than for a truth. But: 
 
 1 Syllogism consists of propositions, propositions of words, and words are the signs of 
 notions; therefore, if our notions , the basis of all , are confused, and over-hastily taken 
 from things , nothing that is built upon them can be firm; whence our only hope rests upon 
 genuine Induction.' 
 
 Not, however, the perfect induction which would reason that 
 what we can prove of a, b , c, and d separately, we may properly 
 state as true of <7, the whole; nor exactly the partial induction 
 which would argue that what is believed true of three of the 
 species, is to be believed as true likewise of the fourth, and 
 hence of the genus: but a graduated system of helps , by the use 
 of which an ordinary mind, when started on the right road, might 
 proceed, through successive stages of generality, with unerring 
 and mechanical certainty , to the vision of fruitful principles. 
 Thus, for every general effect, as heat, we must seek a general 
 condition, so that in producing the condition we may produce 
 the effect. If we find by long and continued experience that the 
 second uniformly succeeds the first, w*e may conclude, with a high 
 degree of probability, that the connection between them is neces- 
 sary. But, says Bacon, there is a shorter way to the result. 
 
LORD BACON. 
 
 461 
 
 From the copious Natural History which I contemplate, make 
 out as complete and accurate an account of the facts connected 
 with the subject of inquiry, as possible; select, compare, and 
 scrutinize these according to the rules stated in the second book 
 of my Organum , and by the same rules conduct your experi- 
 ments, if experiments are admissible: that is, you are to construct 
 the table of causes from which the effect is absent, the table 
 where it is present, and the table where it is shown in various 
 degrees; then, ‘by fit rejections and exclusions ,’ extract the con- 
 dition sought. Light, for example, is denied to be the cause or 
 form of heat, because light is found to be present in the instance 
 of the moon’s rays, while heat is absent. 
 
 Thus philosophy resembles a compass, with whose aid the 
 novice can draw a better circle or line than the expert can pro- 
 duce without it. 
 
 Its Spirit. — A curious piece of machinery, you will say, very 
 subtle, very elaborate, very ingenious. You will suspect, also, 
 that nothing has been accomplished by it; that it has solved no 
 problems. True, but its merit lies in the general advice which 
 developed it, in the wise and eminently scientific spirit which 
 pervades it. To pluck a few illustrations from his string of 
 aphorisms: 
 
 ‘Man, the minister and interpreter of Nature, can act and understand in as far as 
 he has, either in fact or in thought, observed the order of Nature; more he can neither 
 know nor do.’ 
 
 ‘The real cause and root of almost all the evils in science is this: that, falsely mag- 
 nifying and extolling the poivers of the mind , we seek not its real helps.’ 
 
 ‘ The human understanding is like an unequal mirror to the rays of things, which, 
 mixing its own nature with the nature of things , distorts and perverts them.' 
 
 ‘The understanding, when left to itself, takes the first of these ways; for the mind 
 delights in springing up to the most general axioms, that it may find rest; but after a 
 short stay there, it disdains experience , and these mischiefs are at length increased by 
 logic, for the ostentation of disputes.’ 
 
 For the first time, Science is sundered from Metaphysics 
 and Theology, and Physics is constituted ‘the mother of all the 
 sciences.’ This is eminently f>ositive, and hence entirely modern. 
 Nothing could be more thoroughly opposed to antiquity: 
 
 ‘ The opinion which men entertain of antiquity is a very idle thing, and almost incon- 
 gruous to the word; for the old age and length of days of the world should in reality be 
 accounted antiquity, and ought to be attributed to our own times, not to the youth of the 
 world which it enjoyed among the ancients; for that age, though with x*espect to us it be 
 ancient and greater, yet with regard to the world it was new and less.’ 
 
462 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 Whence can arise the sterility of the physical systems hitherto 
 in vogue ? — 
 
 ‘ It is not, certainly, from any thing in nature itself ; for the steadiness and regularity 
 of the laws by which it is governed , clearly mark, them out as objects of precise and certain 
 knowledge .’ 
 
 Nor from the want of talent, but from ‘the perverseness and in- 
 sufficiency of the methods which have been pursued’: 
 
 ‘Men have sought to make a world from their own conceptions, and to draw from 
 their own minds all the materials which they employed; but if, instead of doing so, they 
 had consulted experience and observation, they would have had/acte.’ 
 
 But: 
 
 ‘As things are at present conducted, a sudden transition is made from sensible 
 objects and particular facts to general propositions , which are accounted principles , and 
 round which, as round so many fixed poles, disputation and argument continually 
 revolve." 
 
 Quite the reverse is the way that promises success: 
 
 ‘It requires that we should generalize slowly , going from particular things to those 
 that are but one step more general ; from those to those of still greater extent , and so on 
 to such as are universal. By such means we may hope to arrive at principles, not vague 
 and obscure, but luminous and well-defined, such as Nature herself will not refuse to 
 acknowledge.’ 
 
 Its Novelty. — It is already apparent that Bacon understood 
 his method to be original, though he admits that Plato had used 
 a method somewhat akin to his own: 
 
 ‘The induction which is to be available for the discovery and demonstration of sci- 
 ences and art must analyse nature by proper rejections and exclusions; and then, after 
 a sufficient number of negatives, come to a conclusion on the affirmative instances, 
 which has not yet been done, or even attempted, save only by Plato.’ 
 
 Induction, as such, had been defined by Aristotle, though he 
 seems to have regarded it as less important than the syllogism. 
 Roger Bacon had insisted on experience as the truest guide. At 
 this very moment, it was being employed on the Continent, nota- 
 bly by Galileo, in whose dialogues the Aristotelian disputant fre- 
 quently appeals to observation and experiment. It was latent in 
 the tendencies of the age, — as the steam-engine was latent in 
 the tendencies of the age of Watt. But (1) no one till now had 
 coordinated into a compact body of doctrine all the elements of 
 the Inductive Method, nor (2) had any one even attempted that 
 part in which the author took most pride, — the process of exclu- 
 sion or rejection. 1 
 
 ■Mr. Macaulay is correct when he says: ‘The inductive method has been practised 
 ever since the beginning of the world by every human being. It is constantly practised 
 by the most ignorant clown.’ He is egregiously i/icorrect wnen he adds that ‘everybody 
 
LORD BACON. 
 
 463 
 
 Its Utility. — Nothing can be more certain than that the 
 inductive sciences have not followed it. No great physicist has 
 used it. No important discovery has been effected by it. It has 
 no present intrinsic value. It has long been superseded by a 
 better. It can be made applicable only when the phenomena of 
 the universe have been tabulated and arranged: 
 
 ‘It comes, therefore, to this, that my Organum , even if it were completed, would not 
 without the Natural History much advance the Instauration of the Sciences , whereas the 
 Natural ITistory without the Organum would advance it not a little.’ 
 
 The true scientific procedure, moreover, is by hypothesis, followed 
 up and tested by verification. Kepler tried twenty guesses on the 
 orbit of Mars, and the last fitted the facts. But the Organum 
 does not admit hypotheses as guides to investigation . 1 
 
 It was indirectly, however, of inestimable service, — by its gen- 
 eral spirit, by its systematization of the new mode of thinking, 
 by the power and eloquence with which it was expounded and 
 enforced. If its details, on which was laid the greatest stress, 
 have not been useful, it was still the basis of the more perfect 
 structure which successors have erected. Induction had been 
 adopted from accident or from taste; it was henceforth to be 
 applied and defended on principle. 
 
 Essays. — Bacon’s philosophical writings have operated on 
 mankind through a school of intermediate agents. To the multi- 
 tude he is best known by the Essays, in which he talks to plain 
 men in language intelligible to all, on subjects in which every- 
 body is interested. Never was observation at once more recon- 
 dite, better matured, and more carefully sifted; attractive for the 
 fulness of imagination that draws so many stately pictures, and 
 for the wise reflection that suggests so many wholesome truths. 
 Here are a few sample thoughts for memory and for use — texts 
 for sermons and dissertations, if you will: 
 
 is constantly performing the process described in the second book of the Novum Orga- 
 num.' Here (1) the brilliant essayist confounds simple incautious induction with cautious 
 methodical induction, between which there is as much difference as between instinct 
 and science. (2) In experimental philosophy, to which the rules of the Organum espe- 
 cially referred, there was a notorious want of inductive reasoning. (3) Not only had 
 Bacon’s peculiar system of rules never been applied before, — they have never been 
 applied since. Macaulay has had followers, hut his argument receives its force solely 
 from a misconception of the Baconian method. Draper (Intellectual Development of 
 Europe) is guilty of like confusion when he asserts that the Baconian principles were 
 understood eighteen hundred years before; and of lamentable ignorance when he adds 
 that ‘they were carried into practice.’ Its inaccuracies and partisanship have abated 
 greatly our early enthusiasm for this still valuable work. 
 
 1 Very surprising, after this, is the declaration of Taine: ‘After more than two cen- 
 turies, it is still to him that we go to discover the theory of what we are attempting and 
 doing.’ The mistake arises from confounding induction with the Baconian method of 
 induction. 
 
464 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 Of beauty, — 
 
 ‘Virtue is like a rich stone — best plain set.’ 
 
 Of happiness, — 
 
 ‘They are happy men whose natures sort with their vocations.’ 
 
 Of youth and age, — 
 
 ‘A man that is young in years may be old in hours, if he have lost no time.’ 
 
 Of nature in men, — 
 
 ‘A man's nature runs either to herbs or weeds; therefore, let him seasonably water 
 the one, and destroy the other . 1 
 
 Of riches, — 
 
 ‘ A great estate left to an heir, is as a lure to all the- birds of prey round about to seize 
 on him, if he be not the better stablished in years and judgment." 
 
 Of friendship, — 
 
 ‘ There is no man that impartetli his joys to his friend, but he joyeth the more; and 
 no man that imparteth his griefs to his friend, but he grieveth the less." 
 
 Of love, — 
 
 ‘ There was never proud man thought so absurdly well of himself as the lover doth of 
 the person loved; and therefore it was well said, “ That it is impossible to love and to be 
 wise.” ’ 
 
 Of envy, — 
 
 ‘ He that cannot possibly mend his own case, will do what he can to impair another's.’ 
 
 Of marriage, — 
 
 ‘ He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune ; for they are impedi- 
 ments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.’ 
 
 And, — 
 
 ‘Grave natures, led by custom, and therefore constant, are commonly loving hus- 
 bands." 
 
 Again, — 
 
 ‘ It is one of the best bonds, both of chastity and obedience, in the wife, if she thinks- 
 her husband wise, which she will never do if she find him jealous.’ 
 
 Of gardens, — 
 
 ‘ God Almighty first planted a garden,— and, indeed, it is the purest of human pleas- 
 ures; it is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man; without which buildings and 
 palaces are but gross handy works; and a man shall ever see, that, when ages grow to 
 civility and elegancy, men come to build stately, sooner than to garden finely; as if gar- 
 dening were the greater perfection." 
 
 It is by their inexhaustible aliment and illustrative enrichment, 
 that the Essays belong most to literature. Few books are more 
 quoted, few are more generally read. ‘ These, of all my works/ 
 says Bacon, ‘have been most current; for that, as it seems, they 
 come home to men's businesse and bosomes .’ He justly foretold 
 that they would ( live as long as books last.’ Their brief, pithy say- 
 ings have passed into popular mottoes and household words, like — 
 
LORD BACON. 
 
 465 
 
 ‘Jewels, five words long, 
 
 That on the stretched forefinger of all time 
 Sparkle forever.’ 
 
 Style. — Clear and strong, elaborate and full of color, replete 
 with images that serve only to concentrate meditation; now in an 
 apothegmatic sentence: 
 
 ‘A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a 
 tinkling cymbal, when there is no love.’ 
 
 Now in the majesty of a grand period: 
 
 ‘For as water, whether it be the dew of Heaven or the springs of the earth, easily 
 scatters and loses itself in the ground, except it be collected into some receptacle, where 
 it may by union and consort comfort and sustain itself (and for that cause, the industry 
 •of man has devised aqueducts, cisterns, and pools, and likewise beautified them with 
 various ornaments of magnificence and state, as well as for use and necessity); so this 
 excellent liquor of knowledge, whether it descend from divine inspiration or spring from 
 human sense, would soon perish and vanish into oblivion, if it were not preserved in 
 books, traditions, conferences, and especially in places appointed for such matters, as 
 universities, colleges, and schools, where it may have both a fixed habitation, and means 
 and opportunity of increasing and collecting itself.' 
 
 Now in the symmetry of concise and well-balanced antithesis: 
 
 ‘Crafty men contemn studies; simple men admire them; and wise men use them; 
 for they teach not their own use: that is a wisdom without them, and won by observa- 
 tion. Read not to contradict, nor to believe, but to weigh and consider. Some books are 
 to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. Reading 
 maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. And therefore 
 if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, have a present 
 wit ; and if he read little, have much cunning to seem to know that he doth not. Histories 
 make men wise, poets witty, the mathematics subtle, natural philosophy deep, morals 
 grave, logic and rhetoric able to contend.’ 
 
 A passage to be cliciccd and digested. Always grave, often 
 metaphorical, his style grew richer and softer with increasing 
 years. Not long before his death, he wrote: 
 
 ‘Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament, adversity is the blessing of the 
 New, which carrieth the greater benediction and the clearer evidences of God's favour. 
 Yet, even in the Old Testament, if you listen to David's harp, you shall hear as many 
 hearse-like airs as carols; and the pencil of the Holy Ghost hath laboured more in de- 
 scribing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon. Prosperity is not without 
 many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes. We see in 
 needleworks and embroideries it is more pleasing to have a lively work upon a sad and 
 solemn ground, than to have a dark and melancholy work upon a lightsome ground. 
 Judge therefore of the pleasures of the heart by the pleasures of the eye. Certainly 
 virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when they are incensed or crushed; for 
 prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.’ 
 
 Shakespeare, with far greater variety, contains no more vigorous 
 or expressive condensations. 
 
 Bacon feared that the modern languages would 6 at one time 
 •or another play the bankrupt with books.’ Dreading to trust the 
 30 
 
466 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 mutability of English, he composed the Instauratio in Latin, 
 which fifteen centuries had fixed sacred from innovations; and 
 into the same tongue his vernacular compositions were translated 
 by himself and friends — Jonson, Hobbes, and Herbert. 
 
 Rank. — The principal figure in English prose; the most com- 
 prehensive, cultivated, and originative thinker of the age; the 
 master spirit of the long-agitated antagonism to ancient and 
 scholastic thought; the first great exponent of the increasing 
 tendency to positivism; the first to systematize the inductive 
 process, to teach its extensive use, to give it a clear appreciation; 
 and thus the great leader in the reformation of modern science. 
 Not strictly a scientist — rather a scientific philosopher — an 
 expounder of the scientific spirit and method — a surveyor who 
 broadly mapped the road — the philosopher more of human than 
 of general nature. He belongs to the realm of imagination, of 
 eloquence, of history, of jurisprudence, of ethics, of metaphysics 
 — the investigation of the powers and operations of the human 
 mind. His writings have the gravity of prose, with the fervor 
 and vividness of poetry; in this, unlike those of the materialistic 
 succession, such as Spencer and Mill; but resembling those of 
 Plato, who was loftier, and of Burke, who was less profound. 
 
 Commanding as is his merit, he has perhaps been overrated. 
 The time was ripe. He had better eyes than his fellow-men, and 
 found what others were seeking. More judicial than they, he 
 gave expression to ideas already in the air. The epoch-making 
 genius gathers up in a harmonious vibration a thousand buzzing 
 and swelling voices. He did not thoroughly understand the 
 older philosophy which he attacked, nor accurately anticipate the 
 methods of the new. In banishing deduction, he failed to see 
 that it makes up with induction the double enginery of thought. 
 His circle of observation was external. But within that, are 
 ideas which experience can never furnish — ideas necessary, abso- 
 lute, eternal; truths which it were madness to deny, folly to 
 attempt to prove, and without which reason could not advance a 
 step, — as, matter has uniform and fixed laws ; qualities imply a 
 sid)stance. Without an assumption of the first, the simplest pro- 
 cess of induction is impossible. He who doubts the second, can 
 make no pretension to the knowledge of spiritual and material 
 essence. Ignorant of geometry, he had no prevision of the 
 
LORD BACON. 
 
 467 
 
 important part that mathematics was to perform in the interpre- 
 tation of nature. Galileo revived that science, excelled in it, first 
 applied it, and fortified with new proofs the system of Coperni- 
 cus, which Bacon rejected with positive disdain: 
 
 ‘In the system of Copernicus there are many and grave difficulties; for the threefold 
 motion with which he encumbers the earth is a serious inconvenience, and the separa- 
 tion of the sun from the planets, with which he has so many affections in common, is 
 likewise a harsh step; and the introduction of so many immovable bodies in nature, as 
 when he makes the sun and stars immovable, the bodies which are peculiarly lucid and 
 radiant, and his making the moon adhere to the earth in a sort of epicycle, and some 
 other things which he assumes, are proceedings which mark a man who thinks nothing 
 of introducing fictions of any kind into nature, provided his calculations turn out well.' 
 
 He did not use skilfully his own system. His conjectures in 
 physics, though often acute, are often chimerical, owing to his 
 defective acquaintance with natural phenomena. He saw, from 
 the mountain-top, the Promised Land, pointed it out, but did not 
 enter there. In any special department, he has latterly been ex- 
 celled by many. There have been thousands of better astrono- 
 mers, chemists, physicians. But in wide-ranging intellect, in the 
 union of speculative power with practical utility, he has been 
 equalled by none. 
 
 Character. — As a boy, he was delicate in health, indifferent 
 to the sports of youth, quick and curious in mind, with that 
 sweet sobriety of manner which led the queen to call him ‘my 
 young Lord Keeper.’ Still in his ‘teens,’ he saw, in dim vision, 
 a philosoj}hic revolution. He solicited employment only that he 
 might have leisure to become a ‘ pioneer in the deep mines of 
 truth; not being born under Sol, that loveth honor, nor under 
 Jupiter that loveth business, but being wholly carried away by 
 the contemplative planet.’ At the moment of his greatest eleva- 
 tion, he said: ‘The depth of three long vacations I would reserve 
 in some measure free from business of estate, and for studies, 
 arts, and sciences, to which of my own nature I am most in- 
 clined.’ 
 
 His point of view was so exalted that he saw the eddying, 
 dashing stream of human events as a motionless silvery thread 
 in the plain; so profound that his reflections shine like the far-off 
 stars seen from the bottom of the deep sunken shaft; his circle 
 so spacious, that it took in all the domains of science, — the errors 
 of the past, the signs of the present, the hopes of the future. 
 Like the archangel glancing from heaven to earth, — 
 
468 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 ‘Round he surveyed — and well might, where he stood 
 So high above the circling canopy 
 Of night’s extended shade — from eastern point 
 Of Libra, to the fleecy star which bears 
 Andromeda far off Atlantic seas 
 Beyond the horizon. 1 
 
 What he was as a writer, he was as an orator. Ben Jonson wit- 
 nessed his eloquence: 
 
 ‘ There happened in my time one noble speaker who was full of gravity in his speak- 
 ing. His language, where he could spare or pass by a jest, was nobly censorious. No 
 man ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, 
 less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his own 
 graces. His hearers could not cough or look aside from him without loss. He com- 
 manded where he spoke, and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion. No man 
 had their affections more in his power. The fear of every man that heard him was lest 
 he should make an end. 1 
 
 Like Shakespeare and the rest, he grasped objects, not frac- 
 tionally, but organized and complete. Like them, he speaks in 
 the style of an oracle. He will not dispute, though he moves 
 against a vast mass of prejudices. He condenses the details into 
 a maxim, and hands us the result, with the words, ‘ Francis of 
 Venilam thought thus .’ 
 
 He has the strong common sense which marks the English 
 mind. He will not catch at clouds. He must stand on a fact, — 
 a palpable and resisting fact. His motto is, experiment, again 
 and again experiment. The end of knowledge is empire over 
 matter. Plato and Seneca would extinguish cupidity; Bacon 
 would secure property. They would teach us to endure pain; he 
 would assuage it. They would form the mind to a high degree 
 of wisdom and virtue; he would minister to the comforts of the 
 body, without neglecting moral and religious instruction. He 
 lacks the upright bias, — insight into transcendental truths. 
 
 He was a thinker living amid the turmoil of a fresh and stir- 
 ring life, yet with the genius of counsel rather than of action. 
 Scorning the least prudential care of his fortune, he was often 
 in pecuniary distress. On one occasion he was arrested in the 
 street for a debt, and lodged in a spunging-house. His heart, 
 he declared, was not set on exterior things. His purpose was 
 noble. 1 1 am not hunting for fame. I have no desire to found a 
 sect.’ ‘Enough for me, — the consciousness of well-deserving, and 
 those real and effectual results with which fortune itself cannot 
 interfere.’ 
 
 But mortal greatness is not without mortal infirmity. He who 
 
LORD BACON. 
 
 469 
 
 was to teach us how to philosophize, was himself fascinated by 
 magical sympathies, surmised why witches eat human flesh; as- 
 serted: ‘It is constantly received and avouched, that the anoint - 
 big of the weapon that maketh the wound will heal the wound 
 itself;’ presented Prince Henry, as ‘the first-fruits of his philoso- 
 phy, a sympathizing stone , made of several mixtures, to know 
 the heart of man,’ whose ‘operative gravity, magnetic and magi- 
 cal, would show, by the hand which held it, whether the heart 
 was warm and affectionate.’ He dictated the laws and economy 
 of Nature, and was himself enamored of state and magnificence. 
 He took a feminine delight in the brilliancy of his robes, loved 
 to be grazed on in the streets, and to be wondered at in the cabi- 
 net. He championed the cause of intellectual freedom, and was 
 himself a servile intriguer for place. A devoted worshipper of 
 truth, he had the double temper of a lawyer and a politician, — 
 duplicity. As utility was his watchword, he assiduously courted 
 the favor of all who were likely to be of. use to him; and might 
 prop the fortunes of a friend, — till he was in danger of shaking 
 his own. Loved, trusted, and befriended by Essex, he bore a 
 principal part in sending that nobleman to the scaffold. In his 
 judicial capacity, pledged to discharge his functions impartially, 
 he accepted bribes from plaintiff and defendant. His illicit gains 
 were stated at a hundred thousand pounds. After he had tried 
 in vain to avert the sudden and terrible reverse, he wrote to the 
 Peers: ‘Upon advised consideration of the charges, descending 
 into my own conscience, and calling my memory to account so 
 far as I am able, I do plainly and ingenuously confess that I am 
 guilty of corruption, and do renounce all defence.’ ‘ My lords,’ 
 said he to the deputies who came to inquire whether the con- 
 fession was really subscribed by himself, ‘it is my act, my hand, 
 my heart. I beseech your lordships to be merciful to a broken 
 reed.’ 
 
 He had none of the fire of sentiment or passion, — none of the 
 kindling impulses which give intensity to character. To impulse 
 he was serenely, coldly superior. Let us hope that his wife was 
 equally unimpassioned, — a pure intelligence, craving no love, 
 for it is doubtful if she received any. He desired to marry Lady 
 Hatton, not for her disposition, which was that of an eccentric 
 termagant, but for her money. Though indifferent or selfish in 
 
470 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 personal relations, he had the mellow spirit of humanity, without 
 which, he tells us, ‘ men are but a better kind of vermin.’ His 
 benevolence embraced all races and all ages. This philanthropy 
 which distinguishes between individuals and mankind, and which 
 we believe, after all, to have formed the essential feeling of his 
 soul, is expressed in the description of one of the fathers of 
 Solomon’s House: ‘ His countenance was as the countenance of 
 one who pitties men .’ 
 
 As he preserved a calm neutrality, though living in an age of 
 controversy, his creed, if he held any, may not be told. Theology 
 is relegated to the province of faith. i If I proceed to treat of it,’ 
 he said, 4 1 shall step out of the bark into the ship of the Church. 
 Neither will the stars of philosophy, which have hitherto so nobly 
 shone on us, any longer give us their light.’ But speculation is 
 profitless, and scepticism is powerless, before these vital, grand, 
 imperial words: 
 
 ‘I had rather believe all the fables in the legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, 
 than that this universal frame is without a mind.’ 
 
 He cultivated letters to the last moment of his life. We could 
 fancy him awaiting the signal for his departure, without boldness 
 and without fear, with that sublime reliance on the future which 
 makes the hour of evening tranquil. He contemplated the end 
 with the composure that becomes the scholar: 
 
 ‘I have often thought upon death, and I find it the least of all evils. All that which 
 is past is as a dream; and he that hopes or depends upon time coming, dreams waking. 
 So much of our life as we have discovered is already dead; and all those hours which we 
 share, even from the breasts of our mothers, until we return to our grandmother the 
 earth, are part of our dying days, whereof even this is one, and those that succeed are of 
 the same nature, for we die daily; and, as others have given place to us, so we must, in 
 the end, give way to others. 1 
 
 Then, as if sensibly passing to the last rest: 
 
 ‘ Mine eyes begin to discharge their watch, and compound with this fleshly weakness 
 for a time of perpetual rest; and I shall presently be as happy for a few hours, as I had 
 died the first hour I was born.’ 
 
 Not without emotion do we read: 
 
 ‘First, I bequeath my soul and body into the hands of God by the blessed oblation 
 of my Saviour; the one at the time of my dissolution, the other at the time of my resur- 
 rection. For my burial, I desire it may be in St. Michael's Church, near St. Albans: 
 there was my mother buried. . . . For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charita- 
 ble speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next ages. 1 
 
 Influence. — He confirmed and accelerated the new move- 
 ment bv a thorough and large apprehension of its bent and value. 
 
LORD BACON. 
 
 471 
 
 At home, his authority, within forty years, was the subject of 
 complaint. Abroad, treatises were written on his method, and 
 academies were formed which expressly recognised him as their 
 master. In France it was said: ‘However numerous and impor- 
 tant be the discoveries reserved for posterity, it will always be 
 just to say of him, that he laid the foundation of their success, 
 so that the glory of this great man, so far from diminishing with 
 the progress of time, is destined to receive perpetual increase.’ 
 
 He had taken all knowledge for his province, and all realms 
 were to be affected: 
 
 ‘One may doubt, not to say object, whether it is natural philosophy alone that we 
 speak of perfecting by our method, or other sciences as well — logic, ethics, politics. 
 But we certainly intend what has been said as applicable to all; and as the common logic 
 which governs by syllogisms pertains not only to natural but to all sciences, so also our 
 own, which proceeds by induction, embraces all.’ 
 
 Hence his influence, though indirect, due to the practical or 
 positive spirit of his method, has perhaps been more powerful 
 on mental and moral than on physical science; for the dominant 
 principle of modern psychology is, that experience, exterior and 
 interior, is the only origin of knowledge. ‘The philosophy of 
 Locke,’ says Degerando, ‘ought to have been called the philoso- 
 phy of Bacon.’ Not without justice, may he be looked upon as 
 the inspiration of that empirical school which numbers among its 
 adherents such names as Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Hartley, Mill, 
 Condillac, and others of less note. 
 
 We have elsewhere indicated some of the ‘fruits’ of the new 
 philosophy. We have also explained that in illuminating the 
 physical field, it has darkened the intellectual and moral. It has 
 furnished a lamp to guide our feet through the outer world, but 
 none to light our way to the inward. It has fastened upon ethics 
 an earthy utilitarian temper, taking no account of the motives 
 that drop from the skies. 
 
 We have remarked, too, those profound reflections which, be- 
 sides forming a treasure of ethical and political wisdom, have 
 stimulated the thought and suggested the inquiries of after 
 times. If to-day a scientist wishes to express compactly his 
 scorn of dogmatism, of custom, it is to the Orgcinum that he 
 goes for an aphorism. Volumes have been written in the expan- 
 sion of its statements. The ideas of the Essays have become 
 
472 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 domesticated, and have been continually reproduced, to enrich 
 and enlarge the individual and collective mind. 
 
 Finally, mournfully, my lord, you whose glorious day-dream 
 is hourly accomplishing around us, whose inductive spell has 
 proved more puissant than the incantations of Merlin, — you 
 have left to all the children of men, from your own checkered 
 life of magnificence and of shame, this retributive, warning in- 
 duction, albeit not contemplated in your scheme: When man 
 departs from the divine means of reaching the divine end , he 
 suffers harm and loss. 
 
 MILTON. 
 
 Three poets in three distant ages born, 
 
 Greece, Italy, and England did adorn; 
 
 The first in loftiness of thought surpassed; 
 
 The next in majesty, in both the last: 
 
 The force of nature could no further go, — 
 
 To make a third, she joined the other two .—Dryclen. 
 
 Biography. — Born in London, in 1608, son of a Puritan 
 scrivener; inherited from his father literary tastes and a love 
 of music, from his mother a gentle nature and weak eyes; was 
 instructed first by private tuition, sent to school at twelve, and at 
 sixteen entered Cambridge; took the usual degrees, and returned 
 home, to spend five soft flowing years among the woods of Hor- 
 ton; read the classics and wrote; travelled on the Continent; 
 formed the acquaintance of Grotius at Paris, and of Galileo at 
 Florence; fed his imagination on Italian scenery, art, and letters; 
 received some distinction, and was excluded from others by his 
 liberal utterances on religion; was about to start for Sicily and 
 Greece, but, hearing of the pending rupture between the king 
 and parliament, hastened back to England, too conscientious to 
 pass his life in foreign amusements while his countrymen were 
 contending for their rights; while waiting for a call to service, 
 conducted a private school; taught many years and at various 
 times; threw himself into the raging sea of controversy, against 
 the Royalists and the Established Church; at thirty-five, within a 
 month after meeting her, married Mary Powel, who, four weeks 
 
MILTON. 
 
 473 
 
 afterwards, repelled by spare diet and austere manners, returned 
 to her parents; wrote to her, but got no answer; sent, and his 
 messenger was ill-treated; determined to repudiate her for disobe- 
 dience, published essays on Divorce , held himself absolved from 
 the bond; paid court to another lady of great accomplishments, 
 but suddenly, seeing his wife on her knees imploring forgiveness, 
 received her back, and lived with her until her death; in later life 
 married twice, the last time to a woman thirty years his junior; 
 meanwhile, had become Latin secretary to Cromwell; carried on 
 the wordy strife with puritanical savageness, and lost his sight 
 willingly in the war of pamphlets; survived the funeral of the 
 Republic and the proscription of his doctrines, his books burned 
 by the hangman, himself constrained to hide, at length impris- 
 oned, then released; living in expectancy of assassination, losing 
 three-fourths of his fortune by confiscations, bankruptcy, and the 
 great fire; neither loved nor respected by his daughters, who had 
 bitterly complained of his exactions, and the second of whom on 
 being told that he was to be married, had said that his marriage 
 would be no news — the best would be his death; seeking solace, 
 yet a little, in meditation and in poverty; and, after so many 
 miseries, expiring in 1674, calm as the setting sun, tried at once 
 by pain, danger, poverty, obloquy, and blindness, — prepared by 
 culture for a book of universal knowledge, and, by suffering, for 
 a Christian epic. 
 
 Writings. — During a long, sultry midday of twenty years — 
 1640 to 1660 — Milton gave himself to the championship of ideas 
 — ideas that were to emancipate the press — ideas that plucked 
 at thrones — ideas that were to raise up commonwealths. At the 
 outset, as one created for strife, he wrote against Episcopacy with 
 incomparable eloquence and concentrated rancor: 
 
 ‘All mouths began to be opened against the bishops. ... I saw that a way was open- 
 ing for the establishment of real liberty ; that the foundation was laying for the deliver- 
 ance of man from the yoke of slavery and superstition ; . . . and as I had from my youth 
 studied the distinction between religious and civil rights, ... I determined to relinquish 
 the other pursuits in which I was engaged, and to transfer the whole force of my talents 
 and my industry to this one important object .' 1 
 
 Then, in conjunction with others, hurled himself upon the prince 
 with inexpiable hatred ; and, when bishops and king had been 
 made to suffer for their long despotism, justified the regicide: 
 
 Second Defence. 
 
474 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 ‘For what king's majesty sitting upon an exalted throne, ever shone so brightly, as 
 that of the people of England then did, when, shaking off that old superstition, which 
 had prevailed a long time, they gave judgment upon the king himself, or rather upon an 
 enemy who had been their king, caught as it were in a net by his own laws (who alone 
 of all mortals challenged to himself impunity by a divine right), and scrupled not to 
 inflict the same punishment upon him, being guilty, which he would have inflicted upon' 
 any other ? 1 1 
 
 With like energy, armed with logic aud spurred by conviction, 
 he attacked ail prevailing systems of education: 
 
 ‘Language is but the instrument conveying to us things useful to be known. And 
 though a linguist should pride himself to have all the tongues that Babel cleft the world 
 into, yet, if he have not studied the solid things in them, as well as the words and lexi- 
 cons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man as any yeoman or trades- 
 man competently wise in his mother dialect only. Hence appear the many mistakes 
 which have made learning generally so unpleasing and so unsuccessful: first, we do 
 amiss to spend seven or eight years merely in scraping together so much miserable 
 Latin and Greek as might be learned otherwise easily and delightfully in one year .’ 2 
 
 The pupil shall not begin with results, but reach them by 
 experience. He is not expected to construct a telescope — mo 
 more shall he be required to construct a poem or essay without 
 resources either of reflection or of knowledge. The seed must 
 be sown, and the soil fertilized, before the flower and the fruit 
 can be gathered: 
 
 ‘And that which casts our proficiency therein so much behind, is our time lost partly 
 in a preposterous exaction, forcing the empty wits of children to compose themes, verses, 
 and orations, which are the acts of ripest judgment, and the final work of a head filled, 
 by long reading and observing, with elegant maxims and copious invention. These are 
 not matters to be wrung from poor striplings, like blood out of the nose, or the plucking 
 of untimely fruit.’ 3 
 
 Having demonstrated what we should not do, — 
 
 ‘ I shall detain you now no longer, . . . but straight conduct you to a hillside, where 
 I will point you out the right path of a virtuous and noble education; laborious, indeed, 
 at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospect and melodious 
 sounds on every side, that the harp of Orpheus was not more charming .’ 4 
 
 Above the roar of revolution, his voice was heard thundering 
 against the tyranny of tradition and custom. In sentences that 
 are like the blasts of a trumpet calling men to freedom, he pro- 
 tested against the oppression of printers and the restriction of 
 printing; and as one who foresees the future and reveals the 
 truth, exulted in that era of deliverance when every man should 
 be encouraged to think, however divergently, and to bring his 
 thoughts to the light: 
 
 1 Defence. 
 
 2 Tractate of Education. We commend these views to those refiners of method in 
 education who, pavilioned in the glittering pride of our superficial accomplishments, 
 seem to arrogate all excellence to the present, and to fancy that all anterior is but a dull 
 and useless blank. 3 Ibid. 4 ibid. 
 
MILTON. 
 
 475 
 
 ‘Methinks I sec in my mind a noble and puissant nation rbusing herself like a strong 
 man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks: methinks I see her as an eagle mewing 
 her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam; purging 
 and unsealing her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of the heavenly radiance; 
 while the whole noise of timorous and flocking bipds, with those also that love the 
 twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble would 
 prognosticate a year of sects and schisms .’ 1 
 
 He never wearies of railing at the pedantic theologians, who 
 answer an argument by a citation from the Fathers; nor of mock- 
 ing and jeering at the corpulent prelates, persecutors of free dis- 
 cussion, whose gaudy Church is a political machine to uphold the 
 Crown : 
 
 ‘What greater debasement can there be to royal dignity, whose towering and stead- 
 fast height rests upon the unmovable foundations of justice, and heroic virtue, than to 
 chain it in a dependence of subsisting, or ruining, to the painted battlements and gaudy 
 rottenness, of prelatery, which want but one puff of the king’s to blow them down like a 
 pasteboard house built of court cards ? 1 2 
 
 It is the power of superabundant force which courses in athletic 
 limbs. Irony is too refined and feeble. Invectives are blows that 
 ease ferocity, and knock an adversary down; 
 
 ‘The table of communion, now become a table of separation, stands like an exalted 
 platform upon the brow of the quire, fortified with bulwark and barricado, to keep off the 
 profane touch of the laics, whilst the obscene and surfeited priest scruples not to paw 
 and mammock the sacramental bread as familiarly as his tavern biscuit .’ 3 
 
 Then with a vengeful fury that would have delighted Calvin; 
 
 ‘They shall be thrown eternally into the darkest and deepest gulf of hell, where, 
 under the despiteful control, the trample, and spurn of all the other damned, that in the 
 anguish of their torture shall have no other eafce than to exercise a raving and bestial 
 tyranny over them as their slaves and negroes, they shall remain in that plight forever 
 the basest, the lowermost, the most dejected, most underfoot, and down-trodden vassals 
 of perdition .’ 4 
 
 Enthusiasm may break out in a moment into a resplendent 
 hymn. His reasoning always ends with a poem — a song of 
 triumph whose richness and exaltation, as in the following, carry 
 the splendor of the Renaissance into the earnestness of the Ref- 
 ormation: 
 
 ‘O Thou the ever-begotten Light and perfect Image of the Father, . . . Who is there 
 that cannot trace thee now in thy beamy walk through the midst of thy sanctuary, 
 amidst those golden candlesticks, which have long suffered a dimness amongst us 
 through the violence of those that had seized them, and were more taken with the men- 
 tion of their gold than of their starry light? . . . Come therefore, O thou that hast the 
 seven stars in thy right hand, appoint thy chosen priests according to their orders and 
 courses of old, to minister before thee, and duly to press and pour out the consecrated 
 oil into thy holy and ever-burning lamps. Thou hast sent out the spirit of prayer upon 
 thy servants over all the land to this effect, and stirred up their vows as the sound of 
 many waters about thy throne. . . . O perfect and accomplish thy glorious acts! . . . 
 
 1 Areopagitica. 
 
 2 Of Reformation in England. 
 
 3 Ibid. 
 
 4 Ibid. 
 
476 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 Come forth out of thy royal chambers, O Prince of all the kings of the earth ! put on the 
 visible robes of thy imperial majesty, take up that unlimited sceptre which thy Almighty 
 Father hath bequeathed thee; for now the voice of thy bride calls thee, and all creatures 
 sigh to be renewed.’ 1 
 
 Do not take these for the whole, which is ponderous and dull, 
 heavy with scholasticism, and marred by the grossness of the 
 times. They are but fine isolated morsels which show the all- 
 powerful passion, the majestic imagination of the man, whose 
 dominant need and faculty lead him to noble conceptions, and 
 have preordained him a poet. In childhood he had written 
 verses; and at Cambridge his poetic genius opened in the 
 Hymn on the Nativity , any stanza of which was sufficient to 
 show that a new and great light was rising: 
 
 °It was the winter wild, 
 
 While the heaven-born child 
 
 All meanly wrapped in the rude manger lies; 
 
 Nature, in awe, to him 
 Had doffed her gaudy trim, 
 
 With her great Master so to sympathise: 
 
 It was no season then for her 
 
 To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour.’ 
 
 Also: 
 
 ‘No war, or battle's sound, 
 
 Was heard the world around: 
 
 The idle spear and shield were high up hung; 
 
 The hooked chariot stood 
 Unstained with hostile blood; 
 
 The trumpet spake not to the armed throng: 
 
 And kings sat still with awful eye, 
 
 As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.’ 
 
 Or again: 
 
 ‘But peaceful was the night 
 Wherein the Prince of Light 
 
 His reign of peace upon the earth began: 
 
 The winds, with wonder whist, 
 
 Smoothly the waters kissed. 
 
 Whispering new joys to the mild ocean, 
 
 Who now hath quite forgot to rave, 
 
 While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.’ 
 
 At Horton, ere yet his eye was dimmed, while the soul was 
 fresh, and responsive to the sweet scenes of rural life, he wrote 
 the happiest and richest of his productions. The heart of the 
 scholar, transported from the pale cloister to the flowery mead, 
 is open to the careless beauty and laughing plenty around him; 
 
 1 Animadversions on the Remonstrants' Defence. 
 
MILTON. 
 
 477 
 
 and the sensuous imagination bodies forth its serene content in 
 a succession of images unsurpassed for their charm: 
 
 ‘Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee. 
 Jest and youthful Jollity, 
 
 Quips and Cranks, and wanton Wiles, 
 Nods and Becks and wreathed Smiles , 
 Such as hang on Hebe's cheek , 
 
 And love to live in dimple sleek; 
 
 Sport that wrinkled Care derides. 
 
 And Laughter holding both his sides. 
 Come and trip it , as yon go , 
 
 On the light fantastic toe ; 
 
 And in thy right hand lead with thee 
 The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty; 
 And, if I give thee honor due. 
 
 Mirth, admit me of thy crew, 
 
 To live with her, and live with thee, 
 
 In unreproved pleasures free ; 
 
 To hear the lark begin his flight. 
 
 This is the mirthful aspect 
 of the hawthorn hedge. But 
 
 And singing, startle the dull night, 
 From his watch-tower in the skies , 
 
 Till the dappled dawn doth rise; 
 
 Then to come in spite of sorrow , 
 
 And at my window bid good-morrow , 
 Through the sweet-briar, or the vine. 
 
 Or the twisted eglantine; 
 
 While the cock with lively din. 
 
 Scatters the rear of darkness thin , 
 
 And to the stack or the barn-door 
 Stoutly struts his dames before: . . . 
 While the ploughman near at hand, 
 Whistles o'er the furrowed land , 
 
 And the milkmaid singeth blithe , 
 
 And the mower whets his scythe. 
 
 And every shepherd tells his tale. 
 Under the hawthorn in the dale.’ 1 
 
 of Nature, with the fadeless scent 
 
 the pensive is nobler. Milton pre- 
 
 fers it, and summons Melancholy: 
 
 ‘Come, pensive nun, devout and pure, 
 Sober, stedfast, and demure. 
 
 All in a robe of darkest grain, 
 Flowing with majestic train, 
 
 And 6able stole of Cypress lawn 
 Over thy decent shoulders drawn. 
 Come, but keep thy wonted state, 
 With even step and musing gait 
 And looks commercing with the skies , 
 Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes." 1 
 
 With her he wanders among the primeval trees, — 
 
 ‘ Where the rude axe , with heaved stroke. 
 
 Was never heard the nymphs to daunt. 
 
 Or fright them from their hallowed haunt.' 
 
 Or in the retirement of study, — 
 
 ‘ Where glowing embers through the room 
 Teach light to counterfeit a gloom; 
 
 Far from all resort of mirth. 
 
 Save the cricket on the hearth.' 
 
 Or under the ‘high embowered roof,’ amid antique pillars, — 
 
 '•And storied windows richly diglit , 
 
 Casting a dim religious light.' 
 
 While the growth of Puritan sentiment was chilling the taste 
 for such entertainment, Milton, conceiving sublimity, on an altar 
 1 V Allegro. 
 
 2 II Penseroso. 
 
478 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 of flowers, composed the C omits / a masque — a lyric poem in the 
 form of a play, an amusement for the palace; with others, an 
 exhibition of costumes and fairy tales; with him, a divine eulogy 
 of innocence and purity. A noble lady, separated from her two 
 brothers, strays — 
 
 ‘Through the perplexed paths of this drear wood, 
 
 The nodding horrour of whose shady brows 
 Threats the forlorn and wandering passenger.’ 
 
 There Comus, son of an enchantress, amid the clamors of men 
 transformed into beasts, holds his wild revels: 
 
 ‘Now the top of heaven doth hold; 
 
 And the gilded car of day 
 His glowing axle doth allay 
 In the steep Atlantic stream; 
 
 And the slope Sun his upward beam 
 Shoots against the dusky pole; 
 
 Pacing toward the other goal 
 Of his chamber in the East. 
 
 Meanwhile, welcome joy, and feast. 
 
 Midnight shout, and revelry, 
 
 Tipsy dance, and jollity, 
 
 Braid your locks with rosy twine, 
 
 Dropping odours, dropping wine. . . . 
 
 Come, knit hands, and beat the ground, 
 
 In a light fantastic round.’ 
 
 She is troubled by the turbulent joy which she hears afar in the 
 darkness. A thousand fantasies startle her, but her strength is 
 in the heavenly guardians who watch over the good: 
 
 ‘O welcome, pure-eyed Faith, w'hite-handed Hope, 
 
 Thou hov’ring angel girt with golden wings, 
 
 And thou, unblemish'd form of Chastity! 
 
 I see ye visibly, and now believe 
 
 That He, the Supreme Good, to whom all things ill 
 
 Are but as slavish officers of vengeance, 
 
 Would send a glist'ring guardian, if need were, 
 
 To keep my life and honour unassail’d.’ 
 
 She calls her brothers, in strains that steal upon the air like rich 
 distilled perfumes, and reach the dissolute god, who approaches, 
 changed by a magic dust into a gentle shepherd: 
 
 ‘Can any mortal mixture of earth’s mould 
 Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment? 
 
 Sure something holy lodges in that breast, 
 
 And with these raptures moves the vocal air 
 To testify his hidden residence. 
 
 How sweetly did they float upon the wings 
 Of silence through the empty-vaulted night, 
 
 At every fall smoothing the raven down 
 Of Darkness till it smiled! I have oft heard 
 
MILTON. 
 
 479 
 
 My mother Circe with the Syrens three, 
 
 Amidst the flowery- kirtled Naiades, 
 
 'Culling their potent herbs, and baleful drugs; 
 
 Who, as they sung, would take the prison’d soul 
 And lap it in Elysium; Scylla wept, 
 
 And chid her barking waves into attention, 
 
 And fell Charybdis murmur’d soft applause: 
 
 Yet they in pleasing slumber lull’d the sense, 
 
 And in sweet madness robb’d it of itself; 
 
 But such a sacred, and home-felt delight, 
 
 Such sober certainty of waking bliss 
 I never heard till now. I’ll speak to her, 
 
 And she shall be my queen.’ 
 
 Under pretence of leading her out of the forest, he beguiles her 
 to his palace, and seats her, with ‘nerves all chained up,’ before 
 a sumptuous table. She scorns his offer, and confounds the 
 tempter by the energy of her indignation. Suddenly her broth- 
 ers enter, led by the attendant Spirit; cast themselves upon him 
 with drawn swords, and he flees. To deliver their enchanted 
 sister, they invoke a river nymph, who sits — 
 
 ‘Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave. 
 
 In twisted braids of lilies knitting 
 
 The loose train of her amber-dropping hair.’ 
 
 Sprinkled by the naiad, the lady leaves the ‘venomed seat,’ 
 which held her spell-bound. Joy reigns. What stronger breast- 
 plate than a heart untainted ? Therefore, — 
 
 ‘Love Virtue; she alone is free. 
 
 She can teach ye how to climb 
 Higher than the sphery chime; 
 
 Or, if Virtue feeble were, 
 
 Heaven itself would stoop to her.’ 
 
 To the protracted storm succeeded a sombre, reactionary even- 
 ing; and when the blind old warrior turned again to the dreams 
 of his youth, lightness and grace were gone. Theology, disap- 
 pointment, and conflict had subdued the lyric flight, and fitted 
 him for a metaphysical theme — exploits of the Deity, battles of 
 the supernatural, the history of salvation. It had been among 
 his early hopes to construct something which the world would 
 not willingly let die. Before entering upon his travels, he had 
 written to a friend: ‘I am meditating, by the help of heaven, 
 an immortality of fame, but my Pegasus has not yet feathers 
 enough to soar aloft in the fields of air’; and after his return, he 
 said to another: ‘Some day I shall address a work to posterity 
 which will perpetuate my name, at least in the land in which I 
 
480 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 was born.’ In old age, his choice had settled upon Paradise Lost , 
 whose composition occupied from 1658 to 1665, though the vast 
 design had long been shaping itself. It opens with an invocation 
 to the Muse to sing — 
 
 ‘Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit 
 Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste 
 Brought death into the world, and all our woe. 
 
 With loss of Eden, till one greater man 
 Restore us, and regain the blissful seat.' 
 
 And a petition to the Spirit for inspiration: 
 
 ‘What in me is dark, 
 
 Illumine; what is low, raise and support; 
 
 That to the height of this great argument 
 I may assert eternal Providence , 
 
 And justify the trays of God to men.' 
 
 Out of ‘solid and liquid fire’ is framed a world of horror and suf- 
 fering, vast and vague: 
 
 ‘A dungeon horrible on all sides round, 
 
 As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames 
 No light, but rather darkness visible 
 Served only to discover sights of woe, 
 
 Regions of sorrow, doleful shades . 1 
 
 There wallows the colossal Satan, with the rebel angels, hurled 
 from the ethereal heights into that livid lake: 
 
 ‘With head uplift above the wave, and eyes 
 That sparkling blazed, his other parts besides 
 Prone on the flood, extended long and large. 
 
 Lay floating many a rood . 1 
 
 But ‘by permission of all-ruling Heaven,’ — 
 
 ‘Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool 
 His mighty stature; on each hand the flames, 
 
 Driv'n backward, slope their pointing spires, and, roll’d 
 In billows, leave i' th 1 midst a horrid vale . 1 
 
 Fiercer than the flames is the defiant spirit they enwrap — the 
 proud but ruined seraph, who, preferring independence to ser- 
 vility, welcomes defeat and torment as a glory and a joy: 
 
 ‘Is this the region, this the soil, the clime. 
 
 Said then the lost Arch-Angel, this the seat 
 
 That we must change for heav’n, this mournful gloom 
 
 For that celestial light? Be it so, since he 
 
 Who now is Sovran can dispose and bid 
 
 What shall be right: farthest from him is best, 
 
 Whom reason hath equall’d, force hath made supreme 
 Above his equals. Farewell happy fields, 
 
 Where joy forever dwells! Hail horrors, hail 
 Infernal world ! and thou profoundest Hell 
 
MILTON. 
 
 481 
 
 Receive thy new possessor; one who brings 
 A mind not to be changed by place or time. 
 
 The mind is its own place, and in itself 
 Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Ilell of Heav'n. 
 
 What matter where, if I be still the same. 
 
 And what I should be, all but less than He 
 Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least 
 We shall be free; th’ Almighty hath not built 
 Here for His envy, will not drive us hence: 
 
 Here we may reign secure, and in my choice 
 To reign is worth ambition, though in hell ; 
 
 Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.’ 
 
 He gathers his crew, who lay entranced thick as autumnal leaves, 
 and addresses them: 
 
 ‘He, above the rest 
 In shape and gesture proudly eminent. 
 
 Stood like a tower. . . . His face 
 
 Deep scars of thunder had intrench'd, and care 
 
 Sat on his faded cheek; but under brows 
 
 Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride 
 
 Waiting revenge. . . . Attention held them mute. 
 
 Thrice he essay’d, and thrice, in spite of scorn. 
 
 Tears, such as angels weep, burst forth.’ 
 
 At last his words find utterance, and he comforts them with the 
 hope of universal empire. A council of peers is held in Pande- 
 monium, — 
 
 ‘A thousand demi-gods on golden seats 1 ; 
 
 And their dauntless king, — 
 
 ‘ High on a throne of royal state, which far 
 Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, 
 
 Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand 
 Show’rs on her kings barbaric pearl and gold.’ 
 
 It is resolved to go in search of a new kingdom and a new crea- 
 ture, of which there had been an ancient prophecy or report, and 
 to inflict upon them infinite misery in compensation for the loss 
 of infinite bliss. But, — 
 
 ‘Whom shall we find 
 
 Sufficient? who shall ’tempt with wand’ring feet 
 The dark unbottom’d infinite abyss, 
 
 And through the palpable obscure find out 
 His uncouth way, or spread his aery flight, 
 
 Upborne with indefatigable wings 
 Over the vast abrupt, ere he arrive 
 The happy isle?’ 
 
 Each reads in the other’s countenance his own dismay. The 
 awful suspense is only broken by their matchless chief, who 
 31 
 
482 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 offers himself for the general safety, and undertakes the voyage 
 alone, though — 
 
 ‘Long is the way 
 
 Anil hard that out of Hell leads up to light; 
 
 Our prison strong; this huge convex of fire, 
 
 Outrageous to devour, immures us round 
 Ninefold, and gates of burning adamant 
 Barr'd over us prohibit all egress,’ 
 
 Then the plunge ‘into the void profound of unessential Night/ 
 Arrived at Hell-bounds, mark the horror and grandeur of the 
 situation; 
 
 ‘Thrice threefold the gates; three folds were brass, 
 
 Three iron, three of adamantine rock, 
 
 Impenetrable, impaled with circling fire, 
 
 Yet unconsumed. Before the gates there sat 
 On either side a formidable shape; 
 
 The one seemed woman to the waist, and fair, 
 
 But ended foul in many a scaly laid, 
 
 Voluminous and vast, a serpent arm’d 
 With mortal sting: about her middle round 
 A cry of Hell-hounds never ceasing, bark’d 
 With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung 
 A hideous peal: yet, when they list, would creep, 
 
 If aught disturb’d their noise, into her womb, 
 
 And kennel there, yet there still bark'd and howl’d 
 Within unseen. . . . The other shape, 
 
 If shape it might be call’d that shape had none 
 Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb. 
 
 Or substance might be call’ll that shadow seemed, 
 
 For each seem'd either; black it stood as Night, 
 
 Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell, 
 
 And shook a dreadful dart. What seem’d his head 
 The likeness of a kingly crown had on. 
 
 Satan was now at hand, and from his seat, 
 
 The monster moving onward, came as fast 
 With horrid strides, Hell trembled as he strode, 
 
 Th’ undaunted Fiend what this might be admired — 
 
 Admired, not feared.’ 
 
 Satan, unterrified, and burning like a comet, advances. But the 
 snaky sorceress, rushing between the combatants, takes from her 
 side the fatal key, and unlocks the gates, whose 1 furnace-mouth ’ 
 would admit ‘a bannered host with extended wings.’ On the 
 frontiers of Chaos, the flying Fiend weighs his spread wings, and 
 descries — 
 
 ‘This pendent world, in bigness as a star 
 Of smallest magnitude close by the moon.’ 
 
 In prospect of Eden, he falls into painful doubts: 
 
 ‘Me miserable! which way shall I fly 
 Infinite wrath, and infinite despair? 
 
 Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell, 
 
MILTON. 
 
 483 
 
 And in the lowest deep a lower deep 
 Still threat’ning to devour me opens wide, 
 
 To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav’n.’ 
 
 There is no repentance, no pardon, but by submission; and that, 
 disdain forbids: 
 
 ‘So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear, 
 
 Farewell remorse: all good to me is lost: 
 
 Evil be thou my good; by thee at least 
 Divided empire with Heav’n's King I hold.’ 
 
 He reaches the wall, overleaps it, sees Adam and Eve, hears them 
 converse as they repose on the velvet green, amid sporting kids 
 and ramping lions under trees of ambrosial fruitage: 
 
 ‘Sight hateful! sight tormenting! thus these two, 
 
 Imparadised in one another's arms. 
 
 The happier Eden, shall enjoy their fill 
 Of bliss on bliss; while I to Hell am thrust, 
 
 Where neither joy nor love, but fierce desire, 
 
 Among our other torments not the least, 
 
 Still unfulfill’d with pain of longing, pines. 
 
 Yet let me not forget what I have gained 
 
 From their own mouths; all is not theirs, it seems; 
 
 One fatal tree there stands, of Knowledge call’d. 
 
 Forbidden them to taste: Knowledge forbidden?’ 
 
 He is arrested, by a night-watch, while tempting Eve in a dream, 
 and brought into the presence of Gabriel, but escapes; returns, 
 however, in a rising mist at midnight: 
 
 ‘Cautious of day, 
 
 Since Uriel, regent of the sun, descry’d 
 His entrance, and forewarn’d the Cherubim 
 That kept their watch.’ 
 
 Entering into the form of a serpent, he spies Eve apart, veiled in 
 a cloud of fragrance: 
 
 ‘So thick the roses blushing round 
 About her glow’d, oft stooping to support 
 Each flow’r of slender stalk, whose head, though gay 
 Carnation, purple, azure, or speck’d with gold, 
 
 Hung drooping unsustained.’ 
 
 He knows she is a woman, and therefore must first use all his arfs 
 to lure the eye, approaching, — 
 
 ‘Not with indented wave, 
 
 Prone on the ground, as since, but on his rear, 
 
 Circular base of rising folds, that tower’d 
 Fold above fold a surging maze, his head 
 Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes; 
 
 With burnish’d neck of verdant gold, erect 
 Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass 
 Floated redundant.’ 
 
484 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 She hears the sound of rustling leaves, but heeds not, because she 
 is used to it. Bolder now, he presents himself: 
 
 ‘But as in gaze admiring, oft he bow'd 
 His turret crest and sleek enamel'd neck, 
 
 Fawning, and lick'd the ground whereon she trod, 
 
 His gentle dumb expression turn’d at length 
 The eye of Eve to mark his play.’ 
 
 Having her attention, the next point is to excite the ruling 
 passion — curiosity, which he does by the most delicate of com- 
 pliments. Amazed to hear a brute articulate, she wants to know 
 what it can mean, and he explains: 
 
 ‘Empress of this fair world, resplendent Eve, 
 
 Easy to me it is to tell thee all 
 
 What thou command’st; and right thou should’ st be obey’d. 
 
 I was at first as other beasts that graze 
 The trodden herb, of abject thoughts and low. 
 
 As was my food: nor aught but food discern’d, 
 
 Or sex, and apprehended nothing high; 
 
 Till on a day roving the field, I chanced 
 A goodly tree far distant to behold, 
 
 Loaden with fruit of fairest colours mix’d, 
 
 Ruddy and gold. ... To pluck and eat my fill 
 I spared not; for such pleasure till that hour 
 At feed or fountain never had I found.’ 
 
 With many wiles and arguments he overcomes her scruples, and 
 induces her to eat. She says: 
 
 ‘In the day we eat 
 
 Of this fair fruit, our doom is, we shall die. 
 
 How dies the serpent? he hath eaten and lives, 
 
 And knows, and speaks, and reasons, and discerns, 
 
 Irrational till then.’ 
 
 True and conclusive: 
 
 ‘So saying, her rash hand, in evil hour, 
 
 Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she eatl 
 Earth felt the wound; and Nature from her seat 
 Sighing, through all her works gave signs of woe. 
 
 That all was lost. 1 
 
 Satan, triumphant, arrives at Pandemonium, and exultingly re- 
 lates his success. He awaits their shout of applause, but hears 
 instead, on all sides, only a dismal hiss: 
 
 ‘ He wondered, but not long 
 Had leisure, wond’ring at himself now more: 
 
 His visage drawn he felt to sharp and spare, 
 
 His arms clung to his ribs, his legs intwining 
 Each other, till supplanted down he fell 
 A monstrous serpent on his belly prone. 
 
 Reluctant, but in vain; a greater Pow'r 
 
MILTON. 
 
 485 
 
 Now ruled him, punish'd in the shape he sinn’d 
 According to his doom. He would have spoke, 
 
 But hiss for hiss return'd with forked tongue 
 To forked tongue.’ 
 
 Solaced by the promise of redemption, the fallen pair are led 
 forth from Paradise, casting back one fond lingering look upon 
 their happy seat, — 
 
 ‘Waved over by that flaming brand, the gate 
 With dreadful faces throng’d and fiery arms. 
 
 Some natural tears they dropt, but wiped them soon.’ 
 
 Style. — The difficulties of his prose — the heaviness of its 
 logic, the clumsiness of its discussions, the involution of its sen- 
 tences — have almost sealed it to common readers; but if it lacks 
 simplicity and perspicuity, it has what is nobler — breadth of 
 eloquence, wealth of imagery, sublimity of diction. 
 
 His poetical manner, with more of richness and inversion, is 
 essentially the same — ample, measured, and organ-like; not im- 
 pulsive and abrupt, but solid and regular, as of one who writes 
 from a superb self-command. All languages, ancient and mod- 
 ern, contributed something of splendor, of energy, of music; but 
 no exotic is so largely and conspicuously helpful as the stately 
 Latin, as none is so valuable for the purposes of harmony. Many 
 of his grandest lines consist chiefly of this element, as, — 
 
 ‘ The palpable obscure .' 
 
 ‘ Ruin upon ruin , rout on rout , 
 
 Confusion worse confounded.'' 
 
 ‘Deep on his front engraven 
 Deliberation sat, and public care.' 
 
 '■Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds' 
 
 ‘ Thrones , dominations , princedoms , virtues , powers' 
 
 His fondness for Latinisms is perceptible in every such arrange- 
 ment as — 
 
 'Him the Almighty power 
 
 Hurled headlong, flaming down the ethereal heights,’ 
 and in that strictly periodic structure, of which finer examples 
 can nowhere be found than those already given. A few of his 
 epithets, taken at random, will suggest his ruling characteristics, 
 — ‘ hideous ruin and combustion’; ‘wasteful deep’; ‘gentle gales, 
 fanning their odoriferous wings’; ‘gay-enamelled colors’; ‘pon- 
 derous shield, ethereal temper, massy, large, and round.’ 
 
 His rhythm beats with no intermittent pulse. He is unerr- 
 
486 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENT ATI YE AUTHORS. 
 
 ingly harmonious. To specify but two or three of the modes 
 by which from the iambic blank he obtains the most felicitous 
 effects: 
 
 1. By the interchange of feet , — 
 
 Trochee '■High on a throne of royal state.’ 
 
 Anapaest ‘Created hugest that swim the ocean stream.’ 
 
 Spondee ‘ The force of those dire arms." 
 
 2. By a perpetual change of the ccesural p>ause , — 
 
 ‘At once, as far as angel’s ken he views 
 The dismal situation, waste and wild; 
 
 A dungeon horrible, on all sides round, 
 
 As one great furnace flamed, yet from those flames 
 No light, but rather darkness visible, 
 
 Served only to discover sights of woe, 
 
 Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace 
 And rest can never dwell, hope never comes 
 That comes to all, but torture without end 
 Still urges, and a fiery deluge fed 
 With ever- burning sulphur unconsumed.’ 
 
 3. By an unequalled skill in the management of sound. 
 How expressive of harshness, — 
 
 ‘On a sudden open fly, 
 
 With impetuous recoil and jarring sound, 
 
 The infernal doors, and on their hinges grate 
 Harsh thunder.’ 
 
 How expressive of peace, — 
 
 ‘Heaven opened wide 
 Her ever- during gates, harmonious sound. 
 
 On golden hinges turning.’ 
 
 Or of the uproar of contending hosts,— 
 
 ‘Arms on armor clashing bray’d 
 Horrible discord, and the madding wheels 
 Of brazen chariots raged.’ 
 
 Or of the virgin charms of Eden, — 
 
 ‘Airs, vernal airs, 
 
 Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune 
 The trembling leaves, while universal Pan, 
 
 Knit with the graces and the hours in dance, 
 
 Led on the eternal spring.’ 
 
 His natural movement is majestic, as of a full deep stream; 
 but not, as we have seen, without its phases. In his master- 
 pieces, we may see, in the order of their execution, what might 
 be expected a priori , — the intellectual gaining upon the sensual 
 qualities of art: the youthful freshness of Comus , passages of 
 
MILTON. 
 
 487 
 
 which might have been written by Fletcher or Shakespeare; the 
 grave full-toned harmonies of Paradise Lost / the rugged eccen- 
 tricities and harsh inversions of Paradise Regained ; and the 
 cold, uncompromising severity of Samson Agonistes. 
 
 Rank. — As a poet, he was little regarded by his contempora- 
 ries. ‘The old blind poet,’ says Waller, ‘hath published a tedious 
 poem on the Fall of Man. If its length be not considered as a 
 merit, it hath no other.’ To be neglected by them was the pen- 
 alty paid for surpassing them. The fame of a great man needs 
 time to give it due perspective. He was esteemed and feared, 
 however, as a learned and powerful disputant. His prose writ- 
 ings, in his own day, seem to have been read with avidity; but 
 the interests which inspired them were accidental, while in argu- 
 ment they have the rambling course of indignation, and their 
 cloth of gold is disfigured with the mud of invective. 
 
 The poet of revealed religion under its Puritanic type. Para- 
 dise Lost is the epic of a fallen cause, the embodiment of 
 Puritan England — its grand ambitions, its colossal energies, 
 its strenuous struggles, its broken hope, its proud and sombre 
 horizon. It has the distinguishing merit and signal defect of the 
 Puritan temper, — the equable realization of a great purpose, and 
 the painful want of a large, genial humanity. 
 
 The last of the Elizabethans; holding his place on the borders 
 of the Renaissance, which was setting, and of the Doctrinal Age, 
 w'hich was rising; between the epoch of natural belief, of un- 
 biased fancy, and the epoch of severe religion, of narrow opin- 
 ions; displaying, under limitations, the old creativeness in new 
 subjects; concentrating the literary past and future; and when 
 his proper era had passed by, looming in solitary greatness at a 
 moment when imagination was extinct and taste was depraved. 
 
 By the purity of his sentiments and the sustained fulness of 
 his style, he holds affinity with Spenser, who calmly dreams; by 
 his theme and majesty, with Dante, who is fervid and rapt; by 
 his profundity and learning, with Bacon, who is more comprehen- 
 sive; by his inspiration, with Shakespeare, who is freer and more 
 varied: but in sublimity he excels them all, even Homer. The 
 first two books of Paradise Lost are continued instances of the 
 sublime. 
 
 Its height is what distinguishes the entire poem from every 
 
488 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 other. Its central figure, the ruined arch-angel, is the most 
 tremendous conception in the compass of poetry; no longer the 
 petty mischief-maker, the horned enchanter, of the middle-age, 
 but a giant and a hero, whose eyes are like eclipsed suns, whose 
 cheeks are thunder-scarred, whose wings are as two black forests; 
 armed with a shield whose circumference is the orb of the moon, 
 with a spear in comparison with which the tallest pine were but a 
 wand; doubly armed by pride, fury, and despair; brave and faith- 
 ful to his troops, touched with pity for his innocent victims, 
 pleading necessity for his design, actuated less by pure malice 
 than by ambition and resentment. 
 
 Burns resolved to buy a pocket-copy of Milton, and study that 
 noble (?) character, Satan; not that his interest fastened upon the 
 evil, but upon the miraculous manifestation of energy, — the vehe- 
 ment will, the spiritual might, which could overpower racking 
 pains, and, in the midst of desolation, cry: 
 
 ‘ Hail, horrors ! hail 
 Infernal world! and thon, profoundest hell, 
 
 Receive thy new possessor!’ 
 
 But stoical self-repression limits the imagination. If he was 
 the loftiest of great poets, none ever had less of that dramatic 
 sensibility which creates and differentiates souls, endowing each 
 with its appropriate act and word. He can neither forget nor 
 conceal himself. The most affecting passages in his great epic 
 are personal allusions, as when he reverts to the scenes which 
 exist no longer to him: 
 
 ‘Thus with the year 
 Seasons return, but not to me returns 
 Day, or the sweet approach of ev'n or morn. 
 
 Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer’s rose. 
 
 Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; 
 
 But cloud instead, and ever-during dark 
 Surrounds me.' 
 
 His individuality is always present. Adam and Eve are often 
 difficult to be separated. They pay each other philosophical 
 compliments, and converse in dissertations. She is too serious. 
 If you are mortal, you will sooner love the laughing Rosalind, 
 with her bird-like petulance and volubility: 
 
 ‘O coz, coz, coz, my pretty little coz, that thou didst know how many fathoms deep I 
 am in love .’ 1 
 
 ‘Why, how now, Orlando, where have you been all this while? You a lover ?’ 3 
 
 Ms You Like If. 
 
 * Ibid. 
 
MILTON. 
 
 489 
 
 Or to one who has seen her lover in this autumn glade: 
 
 ‘What said he? how looked he? Wherein went he? Did he ask for me? Where 
 remains he? How parted he with thee? and when shalt thou see him again? . . . Do you 
 not know that I am a woman? When I think, I must speak. Sweet, say on .* 1 
 
 Eve is Milton’s ideal. With her he would have been happy. 
 There would have been no friction. He would administer the 
 scientific draughts required, and she would reply becomingly, 
 gratefully, as he wished: 
 
 ‘My . . . Disposer, what thou bidst, 
 
 Unargued, I obey; so God ordains; 
 
 God is thy law, thou mine; to know no more 
 Is woman’s happiest knowledge and her praise. 
 
 With thee conversing I forget all time; 
 
 All seasons and their change, all please alike.’ 
 
 As for Adam, no mortal woman could love him, however she 
 might admire him, — least of all Mary Powel. 
 
 Milton could not divorce himself from dialectics. His Jeho- 
 vah is too much of an advocate. He expounds and enforces 
 theology like an Oxford divine. The highest art is only in- 
 directly didactic. The most exquisite can produce no illusion 
 when it is employed to represent the transcendent and absolute. 
 Spiritual agents cannot be poetically expressed with metaphysical 
 accuracy. They must be clothed in material forms, — -must have 
 a sphere and mode of agency not wholly superhuman . 2 
 
 Character. — He was born for great ideas and great service. 
 At ten he had a learned tutor, and at twelve he worked until 
 midnight. It is Milton's childhood that is described in Paradise 
 Regained , where Christ is made to say: 
 
 ‘While I was yet a child, no childish play 
 To me was pleasing; all my mind was set 
 Serious to learn and know, and thence to do, 
 
 What might be public good; myself I thought 
 Born to that end, born to promote all truth, 
 
 All righteous things.’ 
 
 No man ever conceived a loftier ideal, or a firmer resolve to un- 
 fold it. Amid the licentious gallantries of the South he per- 
 fected himself by study, without soiling himself by contagion: 
 
 1 As You Like It. 
 
 2 M. Taine demands of the poet what is altogether impossible, — that God and Mes- 
 siah should act and feel in conformity with their essential natures. To reconcile the 
 spiritual properties of supernatural beings with the human modes of existence which it is 
 necessary to ascribe to them, is a difficulty too great for the human mind to overcome. 
 The infinite cannot be made to enter finite limits without jar and collision. It may be 
 justly insisted, of course, that the Deity shall not be bound to a precise formula. 
 
490 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 ‘ I call the Deity to witness that in all those places in which vice meets with so little 
 discouragement, and is practised with so little shame, I never once deviated from the 
 paths of integrity and virtue, and perpetually reflected that, though my conduct might 
 escape the notice of men, it could not elude the inspection of God.’ 
 
 The idea of a purer existence than any he saw around him, regu- 
 lated all his toil: 
 
 ‘ He who would aspire to write well in laudable things, ought himself to be a true 
 poem; . . . not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men or famous cities unless he 
 have in himself the experience and the practice of all that which is praiseworthy . 1 
 
 Not art, but life, was the end of his effort, — to identify himself 
 and others with all select and holy images. Comus is but a 
 hymn to chastity. Two noble passages attest the conviction 
 which fired him, the purpose which no temptation could shake, 
 and which gives such authority to his strain: 
 
 And: 
 
 ‘Virtue could see to do what Virtue would 
 By her own radiant light, though sun and moon 
 Were in the flat sea sunk . 1 
 
 ‘This I hold firm;— 
 
 Virtue may be assail’d, but never hurt,— 
 
 Surpris’d by unjust force, but not enthrall’d; 
 
 Yea, even that, which mischief meant most harm, 
 Shall in the happy trial prove most glory; 
 
 But evil on itself shall back recoil, 
 
 And mix no more with goodness: when at last 
 Gather'd like scum , and settled to itself , 
 
 It shall be in eternal restless change , 
 
 Self -fed, and self -consumed; if this fail. 
 
 The pillar'd firmament is rottenness. 
 
 And earth's base built on stubble.' 
 
 The mind thus consecrated to moral beauty, is stamped with the 
 superscription of the Most High. Like the Puritans, his eye 
 was fixed continually on an Almighty Judge. This was the light 
 that irradiated his darkness, and, early and late, on all sides 
 round, — 
 
 ‘As one great furnace flamed . 1 
 
 This was the idea, strengthened by vast knowledge and solitary 
 meditation, that absorbed all the rest of his being, and made 
 him the sublimest of men. Hence the poems that rise like tem- 
 ples, and the rhythms that flow like organ chants. Hence the 
 contempt of external circumstances, the purpose that will not 
 bend to opposition nor yield to seduction, the courage to per- 
 form a perilous duty and to combat for what is true or sacred. 
 Hence the calm, conscious energy which no subject, howsoever 
 
MILTON. 
 
 491 
 
 vast or terrific, can repel or intimidate, which no emotion or 
 accident can transform or disturb, which no suffering* can render 
 sullen or fretful. Hence the larger conception of perpetual 
 growth, the consequent reverence for human nature, hatred of 
 the institutions which fetter the mind, devotion to freedom — 
 above all, freedom of speech, of conscience and worship. Par- 
 ents and friends had destined him for the ministry, but, — 
 
 ‘Coming to some maturity of years, and perceiving what tyranny had invaded the 
 church, that he who would take orders must subscribe slave, and take an oath withal, 
 which unless he took with a conscience that would retch, he must either straight perjure, 
 or split his faith; I thought it better to prefer a blameless silence before the sacred office 
 of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and forswearing.’ 
 
 Hence, too, — from the endurance of the God-idea, from the fixed 
 determination to live nobly and act grandly, — he preserved his 
 moral ardor intact from the withering and polluting influences of 
 politics, which generally extinguish sentiment and imagination in 
 a sordid and calculating selfishness. 
 
 Can we expect humor here? — Only at distant intervals, and 
 then with strange slips into the grotesque, as in the heavy witti- 
 cisms of the devils on the effect of their artillery. Thus Satan 
 seeing the confusion of the angels, calls to his mates: 
 
 ‘O Friends, why come not on these victors proud? 
 
 Ere while they fierce were coming: and when we 
 To entertain them fair with open front 
 And breast (what could we more?) propounded terms 
 Of composition, straight they changed their minds, 
 
 Flew off, and into strange vagaries fell, 
 
 As they would dance ; yet for a dance they seem'd 
 Somewhat extravagant and wild.’ 
 
 And Belial answers: 
 
 ‘Leader, the terms we sent were terms of weight, 
 
 Of hard contents, and full of force urged home, 
 
 Such as we might perceive amused them all. 
 
 And stumbled many; who receives them right, 
 
 Had need from head to foot well understand.’ 
 
 Naturally, his habits of living were austere. He was an early 
 riser, and abstemious in diet. The lyrist, he thought, might 
 indulge in wine, and in a freer life; but he who would write an 
 epic to the nations, must eat beans and drink water. His amuse- 
 ments consisted in gardening, in exercise with the sword, and in 
 playing on the organ. Music, he insisted, should form part of 
 a generous education. His ear for it was acute; and his voice, 
 it is said, was sweet and harmonious. In youth, handsome to a 
 
492 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 proverb, he was called the lady of his college. The simplicity of 
 his later years accorded with his inner greatness. He listened 
 every morning to a chapter from the Hebrew Bible; and, after 
 meditating in silence on what he had heard, studied till mid-day; 
 then, after an hour’s exercise, he attuned himself to majesty and 
 purity of thought with music, and resumed his studies till six. 
 
 The most devout man of his time, he frequented no place of 
 worship. He was perhaps too dissatisfied with the clashing sys- 
 tems of the age to attach himself to any sect. Finding his ideal 
 in none, he prayed to God alone : 
 
 ‘Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer 
 Before all temples , the upright heart , and pure .’ 1 
 
 The discovery, in 1823, of his Treatise on Christian Doctrine 
 excited considerable amazement by its heterodox opinions. In 
 this he avers himself an anti-Trinitarian, and teaches that the Son 
 is distinct from the Father, inferior to Him, created by Him, and 
 afterwards employed by Him to carry on the creative work. He 
 is opposed, as were most of the ancient philosophers, to the doc- 
 trine of creation out of nothing; and maintains that, since there 
 can be no act without a passive material on which the act was 
 exerted, the world was formed out of a preexistent substance. 
 To the question, What and whence is this primary substance? he 
 answers: It proceeded from God, ‘an efflux of the Deity.’ 2 He 
 differs from the majority, again, in the rejection of infant bap- 
 tism, and in the assertion that under the Gospel no time is ap- 
 pointed for public worship, but that the observance of the first 
 day of the week rests wholly on expediency and general consent. 
 On two other points he satisfies himself with the prevalent no- 
 tions, — original sin, and redemption through Christ. 
 
 In the order of Providence, the highest and greatest must have 
 more or less sympathy with their age. Hence his controversial 
 asperity. Gentlemen now are expected to dispute with an elegant 
 dignity. In those days, they sought to devour each other, or, 
 failing in this, to cover each other with filth. Some of his offend- 
 ers deserved no mercy. Salmasius, a hired pedant, disgorges 
 
 1 Paradise Lost: Invocation. 
 
 2 Those who represent, with Macaulay, that Milton asserts the eternity of matter, are 
 in error, as is evident from the following passage, than which nothing could be more ex- 
 plicit: ‘That matter, I say, should have existed from all eternity, is inconceivable. If, 
 on the contrary, it did not exist from all eternity, it is difficult to understand from whence 
 it derives its origin. There remains, therefore, but one solution of the difficulty, for 
 which, moreover, we have the authority of Scripture, namely, that all things are of God.’ 
 
MILTON. 
 
 493 
 
 upon him a torrent of calumny, and he replies with a dictionary 
 of epithets — rogue, wretch, idiot, ass: 
 
 ‘You who know so many tongues, who read so many books, who write so much 
 about them, you are yet but an ass.’ 
 
 Again : 
 
 ‘O most drivelling of asses, you come ridden by a woman, with the curled heads of 
 bishops whom you had wounded.’ 
 
 And again: 
 
 ‘Doubt not that you are reserved for the same end as Judas, and that, driven by 
 despair rather than repentance, self-disgusted, you must one day hang yourself, and like 
 your rival burst asunder in your belly.' 
 
 Such passages every admirer of Milton must lament. When 
 interests of infinite moment are at stake, the deeply moved souk 
 will speak strongly. The general strain of his prose, however, 
 must exalt him, notwithstanding its occasional violence; but in 
 the more congenial sphere of poetry, he ever appears in the. 
 serene strength, the sedate patience, which was proper to him. 
 
 To the manners and spirit of his age, as well as to his severe 
 sanctitude, is due his conception of female excellence and the 
 relative position of the sexes: 
 
 ‘Not equal, as their sex not equal seem'd: 
 
 For contemplation he and valour form’d. 
 
 For softness she and sweet attractive grace; 
 
 He for God only, she for God in him. 
 
 His fair large front and eye sublime declared 
 Absolute rule; and hyacinthine locks 
 Round from his parted forelock manly hung 
 Clust’ring, but not beneath his shoulders broad: 
 
 She, as a veil down to the slender waist. 
 
 Her unadorned golden tresses wore 
 Dishevell'd, but in wanton ringlets waved 
 As the vine curls her tendrils; which imply’d 
 Subjection, but required with gentle sway, 
 
 And by her yielded, by him best received; 
 
 Yielded with coy submission, modest pride. 
 
 And sweet reluctant amorous delay.’ * 
 
 Milton’s heart lived in a sublime solitude. Disappointed of a 
 companionship there, he regarded the actual woman with some- 
 thing of condescension, and, incapable of those attentions which 
 make companionship sweet, probably exacted a studious respect. 
 As for sensibility and tenderness, it was essential to his perfect- 
 ness that the nature should be quiet. A great mind is master of 
 its enthusiasm, — the less perturbed, the closer its resemblance to 
 
 1 Paradise Lost , IV: Adam and Eve. 
 
494 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 
 
 the Divine. Its emotion, though more intense and enduring than 
 that of other men, is calmer, and therefore less observed. We 
 have seen what susceptibility breathes in Milton’s early poetry, — 
 not light or gay, indeed, but always healthful and bright. And 
 later, in his essay on Education , he says: 
 
 ‘In those vernal seasons of the year when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an 
 injury and sullenness against Nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake in 
 her rejoicing with heaven and earth.’ 
 
 When old, tried, and sightless, he could turn from the stormy 
 scenery of the infernal regions, and luxuriate in the loveliness 
 of Paradise, the innocent joy of its inhabitants. There is no 
 mistaking the fine sense of beauty and the pure deep affection of 
 these exquisite lines, which the gentle Eve addresses to her lover 
 in the ‘shady bowers’ of Eden: 
 
 ‘Neither breath of Morn, when she ascends 
 With charm of earliest birds; nor rising Sun 
 On this delightful land; nor herb, fruit, flower, 
 
 Glist'ring with dew; nor fragrance after showers; 
 
 Nor grateful ev’ning mild; nor silent Night 
 With this her solemn bird, nor walk by Moon, 
 
 Or glitt'ring star-light, without thee is sweet.’ 
 
 An Independent in politics and religion, a hero, a martyr, a 
 recluse, a dweller in an ideal city, standing alone and aloof above 
 his times, and, when eyes of flesh were sightless, wandering the 
 more ‘where the Muses haunt,’ — truly — 
 
 ‘Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart.’ 
 
 Influence. — Such men are sent as soldiers of humanity. 
 They use the sacred fire, divinely kindled within them, not to 
 amuse men or to build up a reputation, but to awaken kindred 
 greatness in other souls. What service Milton has rendered to 
 mankind by his love of freedom and the high, brave morals he 
 taught ! On account of the learning necessary to their full com- 
 prehension, his works will never be popular in the sense in which 
 those of Shakespeare are so, or Bunyan, or Burns, or even Pope 
 and Cowper; but, like the Organum , they move the intellects 
 which move the world. As culture spreads and approaches their 
 spiritual heights, the more they will reveal their efficacy to 
 purify, invigorate, and delight; the more will man aspire to emu- 
 late the zeal, the fortitude, the virtue, the toil, the heroism, of 
 their author. 
 
 It is a Chinese maxim, that ‘a sage is the instructor of a hun- 
 
MILTON - . 
 
 495 
 
 dred ages.’ Talk much with such a one, and you acquire his 
 quality, — the habit of looking at things as he. From him pro- 
 ceeds mental and moral force, will he or not. He is of those who 
 make a period, as well as mark it; who, without ceasing to help 
 us as a cause, help us also as an effect; who reach so high, that 
 age and comparison cannot rob them of power to inspire; who 
 turn, by their moral alchemy, 
 
 ‘The common dust 
 Of servile opportunity to gold. 
 
 Filling the soul with sentiments august. 
 
 The beautiful, the brave, the holy, and the just.’ 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abelard, fame and influence, 87 ; and 
 Eloise, 111; on ethical good, 126; 
 heresies, 132. 
 
 ASlfric, translates Bible, 117. 
 
 Albion, ancient name of Britain, 3. 
 
 Alchemy, 128, 189, 256. 
 
 Alchemist, quoted and criticised, 447. 
 
 Alcuin, quoted, 86; allusion to, 148. 
 
 Alexander, 115. 
 
 Alfred, laws of, 61, 66; position in 
 English prose, 117; biography and 
 criticism, 148-156. 
 
 Alliteration, 92, 180. 
 
 Anatomy of Melancholy, quoted and 
 criticised, 427. 
 
 Ancren Riwle, quoted, 117. 
 
 Aneurin, battle ode of, 17. 
 
 Angelo, Michael, 287. 
 
 Angles, coming of, 6. 
 
 Anglia, settled, 7. 
 
 Anglo-Norman history in word- 
 forms, 57. 
 
 Anglo-Saxon language. See Lan- 
 guage. 
 
 Anglo-Saxons, origin, 21; orders of, 
 2 1 ; basis of society, 22 ; character- 
 istics, 22, 33 ; government, 23 ; fam- 
 ily tie, 22; culture, 23; supersti- 
 tions, 23 ; theology, 24 ; burial cus- 
 toms, 27 ; nomenclature for days of 
 the week, 25 ; popular philosophy, 
 30 ; savagery, 33 ; laws of, 34 ; com- 
 pared with Celts, 35 ; with the Nor- 
 mans, 36; persistent sentiments, 
 36; language of, 53. 
 
 Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 influence of, 12 ; quoted, 1 18 ; on the 
 being of God, 131. 
 
 Antipodes, popular notions of, 129, 
 191. 
 
 Antony and Cleopatra, quoted, 378. 
 
 Apology, 325. 
 
 Aquinas, Thomas, perfects scholasti- 
 cism, 132. 
 
 Arcadia, quoted and criticised. 341. 
 
 Ariosto, 287. 
 
 Aristotle, philosophy of, 331 ; opposed 
 by Bruno, 331. 
 
 32 
 
 Arminius, theology of, 436. 
 
 Arnold, Dr. Thomas, quoted, 1. 
 
 Art, sovereignty of, 145. 
 
 Arthur, legends of, 7, 105, 107; the 
 death of, 113; a romance favorite, 
 120; in Fairy Queen, 360. 
 
 Aryas, Aryan, the mother-race, 2; 
 influence on language, 44, 49. 
 
 Ascham, Roger, quoted, 292, 293 ; as 
 critic, 321. 
 
 Asculanus, martyrdom of, 189. 
 
 Ask, myth of, 24. 
 
 Asser, quoted, 153, 156. 
 
 Astrology, 127, 189, 256. 
 
 As You Like It, quoted and criti- 
 cised, 377. 
 
 Atheism, foolishness of, 470. 
 
 Augustine, St. ,on total depravity, 125. 
 
 Bacon, Sir Francis, quoted, 157 ; in- 
 stitutes the essay form of composi- 
 tion, 321 ; contributions of, to the 
 science of ethics, 328; biography 
 and criticism, 456-472. 
 
 Bacon, Roger, biography and criti- 
 cism, 156-163. 
 
 Baker’s Chronicle, 434. 
 
 Balder, the Good, 30. 
 
 Ballad, early, 247. 
 
 Battle of Maldon, 91. 
 
 Beaumont and Fletcher, literary co- 
 partnership, 416; quoted and criti- 
 cised, 416. 
 
 Beauty, vivid sense of. in the Re- 
 naissance, 287 ; true source of, 366, 
 370. 
 
 Becket, Thomas a, pilgrimages to the * 
 shrine of, 216. 
 
 Bede, Alfred’s translations of, 117; 
 biography and criticism, 145-8. 
 
 Bedford, Duke of, quoted, 240. 
 
 Beowulf, quoted and criticised, 95; 
 allusion to, 137. 
 
 Berenger, on transubstantiation, 190. 
 
 Berkin’s Cases of Conscience, 437. 
 
 Bernard, St., quoted, 132. 
 
 Bible, influence upon English thought 
 and language, 326; translated by 
 
 497 
 
498 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 JElfric, 117: by Wvcliffe, 200; by 
 Tyndale, 327; revised by Cover- 
 dale, 327. 
 
 Bishop Golias, 79. 
 
 Boadicea, the warrior-queen, 15. 
 
 Boccaccio, relation to the Renais- 
 sance, 174; allusion to, 287. 
 
 Boethius’ Consolations of Philosophy, 
 translated by Alfred, 150. 
 
 Booh of Common Prayer, quoted, 276. 
 
 Booh of Sentences, 132. 
 
 Books, manuscript form of early, and 
 their costliness, 83, 173, 237. 
 
 Borde, Andrew, quoted, 330. 
 
 Boyle, quoted, 435. 
 
 Breviary of Health, quoted, 330. 
 
 Britain, geography of, 1 ; area, 2 ; 
 climate, 2; political divisions, 2; 
 Caesar’s invasion of, 4 ; Roman con- 
 quest of, 4 ; Anglo-Saxon conquest, 
 5 ; introduction of Christianity into, 
 5; Danish conquest, 8; Norman 
 conquest, 8: Celtic period of, 13; 
 Danish period, 18; Norman period, 
 19; Anglo-Saxon, 21. 
 
 Britons, prehistoric, 2; heroism, 4; 
 enervation under Roman rule, 6; 
 apply to the Jutes for aid, 6; dis- 
 possessed by the Teutons, 7. See 
 Celts. 
 
 Broken Heart, quoted and criticised, 
 
 421. 
 
 Browne, Sir Thomas, allusion to the 
 Hydriotaphia of, 100 : quoted and 
 criticised, 429 ; in relation to ethics, 
 437; to science, 440; on the dig- 
 nity and destiny of man, 442. 
 
 Bruno, influence and martyrdom of, 
 329. 
 
 Brut, quoted and criticised, 112. 
 
 Brutus, legendary founder of Brit- 
 ain, 3. 
 
 Bryant, Thanatopsis, 100. 
 
 Brynhild, 27, 35. 
 
 Burbage, an actor, 374. 
 
 Burke, Edmund, quoted, 145, 456. 
 
 Burton, Robert, quoted and criti- 
 cised, 427. 
 
 Butler, Samuel, quoted, 408. 
 
 Byron, quoted, 347. 
 
 Ca)dmon, 101 : biography and criti- 
 cism, 139-145. 
 
 Caesar, Julius, invades Britain, 4; 
 quoted, 15. 
 
 Calvin, John, on predestination, 
 324. 
 
 Cambridge University, 174. 
 
 Canterbury Tales, quoted and criti- 
 cised, 2i6. 
 
 Caractacus, 16. 
 
 Carew, Thomas, quoted and criti- 
 cised, 410. 
 
 Cases of Conscience, 437. 
 
 Castle of Knowledge, 330. 
 
 Castle of Perseverance, 306. 
 
 Cataline, quoted and criticised, 452. 
 
 Cavaliers, the, 402. 
 
 Caxton, William, 243 ; biography and 
 criticism, 259-264. 
 
 Celts, migrations of, into Europe, 3 ; 
 as Britons, 3; environment, 13; 
 customs, 14; religion, 14; acquired 
 refinement, 15; latent qualities of 
 art, 16; influence on English na- 
 tionality, 18, 138 ; on English lan- 
 guage, 51, 
 
 Chapman, quoted, 425. 
 
 Character of a Happy Life, 413. 
 
 Charlemagne, as legendary hero, 104. 
 
 Charles I, 401. 
 
 Charles II, 402. 
 
 Charon, quoted, 158. 
 
 Charon, the Stygian ferryman, 101, 
 452. 
 
 Chaucer, quoted, 166, 175; in what 
 sense the father of English poetry, 
 187 ; biography and criticism, 204- 
 232. 
 
 Cheke, 321. 
 
 Chevy Chase, old ballad, 117. 
 
 Chilling worth, 435. 
 
 Chinese proverb, 39; royalty, 196; 
 printing, 244 {note) ; maxim, 494. 
 
 Chivalry, introduction of, 10; influ- 
 ence, 106, 167. 
 
 Christ, power of, as the ideal of 
 humanity, 82 ; Decker’s characteri- 
 zation of, 425. 
 
 Christian Morals, 437. 
 
 Christianity, introduction of, into 
 England, 36; influence on Saxon 
 poetry, 99. See Church. 
 
 Chroniclers, early, their method, 137. 
 
 Church of Rome, organizes the Eng- 
 lish Church, 73; commanding 
 position in the Middle-age, 73; 
 monasticism, 75 ; the mendicant 
 Friars, 76; moral deterioration, 
 78; resistance to, in England, 79; 
 redeeming excellences, 80; condi- 
 tion in the fourteenth century, 171 ; 
 popular feeling against, 172; agen- 
 cy in the abolition of slavery, 173; 
 state of, in the fifteenth century, 
 238; persecutions, 242. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 499 
 
 Cistercians, the, 76. 
 
 Clergy, the. See Church. 
 
 Climate and language, 45. 
 
 Club Parliament, the, 235. 
 
 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, quoted, 
 328, 347, 373. 
 
 Colet, Dean, 289. 
 
 Combat, trial by, 61. 
 
 Comines, quoted, 234. 
 
 Composition, superiority of Saxon 
 words in, 58; importance of meth- 
 od in, 338. 
 
 Compurgation, custom of, 60. 
 
 Comus, quoted and criticised, 478. 
 
 Confessio Amantis , 182. 
 
 Conscience, 393. 
 
 Conversation, the law of, 376. 
 
 Copernicus, 329. 
 
 Court of the Hundred, 60; of the 
 County, 60. 
 
 Courts of Love, the, 107. 
 
 Council of Sens, 87. 
 
 Coverdale, revises New Testament, 
 327. 
 
 Cranmer, as reformer, 279 ; Bible of, 
 327; quoted, 350. 
 
 Creation, process of the Divine, 131, 
 492. 
 
 Creeds, the age of, 435. 
 
 Cromwell, Oliver, 402; quoted, 403; 
 characterized, 433. 
 
 Cromwell, Thomas, quoted, 270; 
 Bible, 327. 
 
 Crusades, influence of, 12. 
 
 Culture, end of, 392. 
 
 Custom, influence of, 157. 
 
 Cymbeline, or Cunobelin, 15. 
 
 Cymbeline , quoted, 378. 
 
 Daisy, the, 226. 230. 
 
 Dance of Death, 246. 
 
 Daniel, Samuel, quoted, 302; chron- 
 icler, 323. 
 
 Danish Conquest, 8; Caesar quoted 
 concerning, 15; influence, 18, 52. 
 
 Dante, quoted, 79, 198. 
 
 Dark Ages, the, 185. 
 
 Death, universal sense of, 100. 413, 
 414; popular explanation of the 
 origin of, 122; reflections on, 28, 
 146, 391, 432, 433, 470. 
 
 Decker, Thomas, quoted, 425. 
 
 Defense of Poesy, quoted and criti- 
 cised, 342. 
 
 Degerando, quoted, 471. 
 
 Deluge, 305. 
 
 Descartes, philosophy of, 441. 
 
 Destiny, Teutonic belief in, 30, 98. 
 
 Destruction of Troy, 245. 
 
 Devil, the, 123. See Satan, and 
 Witchcraft. 
 
 Dialects, 46. 
 
 Diodorus, concerning the Gauls, 17. 
 
 D’lsraeli, Isaac, quoted, 139. 
 
 Donne, Dr. John, quoted and criti- 
 cised, 412. 
 
 Dooms of Alfred, 154. 
 
 Douglas, Gawin, quoted, 307. 
 
 Drama, product of the English Re- 
 naissance, 304; origin and growth, 
 304; the Mysteries, 304; the Mo- 
 ralities, 305 ; the Interlude, 307 : 
 first English comedy, 308; first 
 English tragedy, 309; ascendancy 
 of, 311: the theatre, 311; the Uni- 
 ties, 320 ; how affected by Puritan- 
 ism, 415. 
 
 Drake, explorer, 267. 
 
 Draper, Dr. John W., quoted, 463 
 {note). 
 
 Drayton, Michael, quoted, 302. 
 
 Druids, the, 14. 
 
 Drummond, of Ilawthornden, quoted, 
 413. 
 
 Drunkenness, 107. 
 
 Drvden, John, quoted, 472. 
 
 Duchess of Malfi, quoted and criti- 
 cised, 423. 
 
 Dunbar, William, quoted, 247. 
 
 Duty, the idea of fundamental to 
 the Germanic race, 36, 276. 
 
 Dwarfs, the, 25. 
 
 Ecclesiastical History of the English 
 Nation, Bede’s, 146; Alfred’s 
 translation, 149. 
 
 Ecclesiastical Polity, 325. 
 
 Edda, the. 143, 432. 
 
 Eden, the garden of, 196. 
 
 Edward, the Confessor, 8, 128, 330. 
 
 Edward I, jury under, 61. 
 
 Edward II, weakness of, 165; brutal- 
 ity, 168. 
 
 Edward II. quoted and criticised, 
 314. 
 
 Edward III, order of, 189. 
 
 Edward IV, violence, 233; charter, 
 257. 
 
 Edward VI, counsellors of, 265. 
 
 El Dorado, 352. 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, administration of, 
 266. 
 
 Embla, myth of, 24. 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, quoted, 402. 
 
 England, geography of, 1, 2; etymol- 
 ogy of name, 7 ; political and 
 
•500 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 social development of, in the 
 Formative Period, 60 ; in the four- 
 teenth century, 164; in the fif- 
 teenth, 233; in the sixteenth, 265; 
 in the seventeenth, 401. See Brit- 
 ain. 
 
 English language, effect of Conquest 
 upon, 11; persistency of, 12; ele- 
 ments, 51; basis, 53; originally 
 inflected, 53; transition, 54; pro- 
 gress of, illustrated, 55; organic 
 features, 56 ; history in word-forms 
 of, 57; superiority of Saxon, 57; 
 general view of, 59; state of, in 
 thirteenth century, 88 ; in the 
 fourteenth, 175; in the fifteenth, 
 244; in the sixteenth, 293-296. 
 
 Envy, Spenser’s portrait of, 365. 
 
 Epithalamion , quoted and criticised, 
 367. 
 
 Erasmus, quoted, 275, 289, 290, 324. 
 
 Erigena, on hell-fire, 125 ; a Platon- 
 ist, 130. 
 
 Essex, settled, 6. 
 
 Ethics, condition of, in theological 
 ages, 126, 191, 256, 327; funda- 
 mental distinctions of, 126; basis 
 of, according to Scotus, 126; ac- 
 cording to Abelard, 126; accord- 
 ing to Occam, 191; true basis of, 
 327; gradual severance from the- 
 ology, 437; method of, suggested 
 by Bacon, 437. 
 
 Eucharist, the, 191. 
 
 Euphuism, 345. 
 
 Every Man, 306. 
 
 Every Man in his Humour, quoted 
 and criticised, 446. 
 
 Evil, popular genesis of, 191. 
 
 Evolution of language, 40. 
 
 Exclusive Salvation, effect of belief 
 in, 328. 
 
 Fabliaux, the, 108. 
 
 Fabyan, Robert, quoted, 254. 
 
 Fairy Queen, quoted and criticised, 
 285. 
 
 Faithful Shepherdess, quoted and 
 criticised, 418. 
 
 Fall of Princes, 245. 
 
 False One, quoted and criticised, 
 419. 
 
 Fame, transitoriness of, 209. 
 
 Famous History of Fryer Bacon, 161. 
 
 Fancy, the Celtic, 17. 
 
 Fate, right use of, 32. 
 
 Fathers, the Christian, and philoso- 
 phy, 130; evanescence of, 332. 
 
 Faustus, quoted and criticised, 315. 
 
 Feltham’s Resolves, 437. 
 
 Feudalism, introduction and charac- 
 ter of, 9, 1 0 ; evanescence of, 332. 
 
 Fiction, romantic, origin of, 102. 
 
 Fight at Finsburg, war-song, 99. 
 
 Fletcher, Giles, 413. 
 
 Fletcher, John. See Beaumont. 
 
 Florent, quoted and criticised, 185. 
 
 Ford, John, quoted and character- 
 ized, 421. 
 
 Formative Period, the general view 
 of, 192. 
 
 Fortescue, 236, 245, 253. 
 
 Four P's, quoted and criticised, 307. 
 
 Fox’s Book of Martyrs, quoted, 277. 
 
 France, genesis of modern, 46. 
 
 Free agency, 392. 
 
 Freeman, Edward A., quoted, 148. 
 
 French language, supersedes Eng- 
 lish, 10; formation of, 46, 47; 
 influence, 52; predominance, 88; 
 dialects, 110; decline of, in Eng- 
 land, 175. 
 
 French poetry, introduction of, into 
 England, 11; predominance, 102; 
 illustrated, 110; decline, 186. 
 
 Friar, the, 76; Chaucer’s portrait of, 
 220, 227. 
 
 Froissart, 174, 182. 
 
 Froude, James Anthony, quoted, 60, 
 164. 
 
 Fuller, Doctor, 428, 444. 
 
 Future, the, a vision of, 340. 
 
 Galileo, 329, 438. 
 
 Games and Gambling in Early Eng- 
 land, 70. 
 
 Genius and Talent, 147, 329. 
 
 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 119. 
 
 Germans, origin of, 21; character- 
 ized, 46 ; language of, 50. 
 
 Gesta Romanorum, discussed and 
 quoted, 107. 
 
 Gibbon, Edward, quoted, 150. 
 
 Gilbert, on magnetism, 330. 
 
 Gleeman, Saxon minstrel, 90. 
 
 God, the existence of, 131, 133, 441; 
 essence of, 373 ; Plato’s conception 
 of, 285. 
 
 Goethe, quoted, 60; Faust of, 318. 
 
 Gorboduc, characterized and quoted, 
 30. 
 
 Gosson, Stephen, quoted, 322. 
 
 Gower, Thomas, quoted and criti- 
 cised, 182, 190. 
 
 Graal, the Holy, 105. 
 
 Grave, the, 100, 137. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 501 
 
 Greek language, 50. 
 
 Greek learning, 284. 
 
 Greek literature, 244. 
 
 Greeks, characterized, 44, 46. 
 
 Greene, Robert, 321, 374. 
 
 Gregory, 36, 37, 151. 
 
 Ground of Arts, 330. 
 
 Guizot, quoted, 265. 
 
 Hakluyt, Richard, 321. 
 
 Hales, Dr. Alexander, 133, 435. 
 
 Hall, Bishop, quoted, 428. 
 
 Hallam, Henry, quoted, 358, 459. 
 Hamlet, 379, 386. 
 
 Happiness, Decker’s conception of, 
 
 425. 
 
 Harrison, quoted, 268, 291. 
 
 Harvey, 439. 
 
 Hastings, battle of, 9. 
 
 Havelock, 107. 
 
 Hell, 29, 83, 124, 141, 475; Milton’s, 
 480. 
 
 Hell-gates, 482. 
 
 Henry I, and Saxon dynasty, 12; 
 
 charter granted by, 63. 
 
 Henry II, reign of, 67; and priests, 
 
 79. 
 
 Henry II, quoted, 376. 
 
 Henry III, murders under, 79; pro- 
 clamation of, in vernacular, 89. 
 Henry IV, inaugurates Lancastrian 
 rule, 233. 
 
 Henry IV, quoted, 380. 
 
 Henry V, his dream of empire in 
 France, 233; quoted on progress 
 of language, 244. 
 
 Henry VI, career of, 233. 
 
 Henry VII, marks a new era, 234. 
 Henry VIII, tyranny of, 265 ; agency 
 of, in the Reformation, 278; and 
 medical science, 330. 
 
 Heptarchy, formation of, 7. 
 
 Herbert, George, quoted and criti- 
 cised, 413. 
 
 Heresy, 123, 127, 438. 
 
 Hero, the, of the Middle Ages, 95, 
 
 249. 
 
 Herrick, Robert, quoted and criti- 
 cised, 410. 
 
 Hevwood, Thomas, quoted and criti- 
 cised, 307; quoted, 373. 
 
 Highways in thirteenth century, 69. 
 Hill, Thomas, 330. 
 
 History, method of, in the ages of 
 faith, 118, 187, 254, 323; true con- 
 ception of, 188; partisan character 
 of, 434. 
 
 Holinshed, 270, 321, 323. 
 
 Holy Graal, the, 105. 
 
 Holy Sepulchre, the church of, 195. 
 Homer, quoted, 156; translated by 
 Chapman, 425. 
 
 Hooker, Richard, quoted, 325 ; influ- 
 ence on ethics. 328 ; biography and 
 criticism, 347-351. 
 
 Howard, Earl of Surrey, 298. 
 
 House of Fame, quoted and criti- 
 cised, 209. 
 
 Houses, in the Middle Ages, 69, 166, 
 236. 
 
 Hudibras, quoted, 408. 
 
 Hume, David, quoted, 60, 351. 
 Hundred, court of. 60. 
 
 Hundred Years’ War, 233. 
 Hydriotapliia, 100. 
 
 Ideal, the, law of, 95; power and 
 necessity of, 340, 372. 
 
 Idealization, 161. 
 
 II Penseroso, quoted and criticised, 
 
 477. 
 
 Imagination, character of Northern, 
 100; activity of, in the infancy of 
 races, 102. 
 
 Imposture in the Roman Church, 
 238. 
 
 Indo-European races, 49 ; languages, 
 
 49-51. 
 
 Induction, the, quoted and criticised, 
 
 310. 
 
 Influence, immortality of, 156. 203. 
 Inquiries into Vulgar Frrors, quoted, 
 
 440. 
 
 Instauratio Magna, 457. 
 
 Interlude, the, 307. 
 
 Ireland, geography of, 1, 2; subju- 
 gation of, 164; barbarism, 403. 
 Irish, the ancient, 3, 14. 
 
 Italian language, 46, 47; literature, 
 287. 
 
 James, of Scotland, quoted, 247. 
 James I, of England, 401. 
 
 Jewel, Bishop, 325. 
 
 Jew of Malta, quoted and criticised, 
 
 314. 
 
 Jews, as capitalists, 69; their expul- 
 sion, 70. 
 
 John of Salisbury, quoted, 87. 
 Johnson, Dr. Samuel, quoted, 48, 
 
 444. 
 
 Jonson, Ben, 398, 416; biography 
 and criticism, 444r-456. 
 
 Judith, quoted, 99. 
 
 Jury, trial by, 61. 
 
 Jutes, coming of, 6. 
 
502 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Kent, settled, 6. 
 
 Kepler, laws of, 438. 
 
 King Horn, 107, 115. 
 
 King Lear, 120. 
 
 King Lear, 378, 383. 
 
 King’s Evil, 128. 
 
 Koran, the, 327. 
 
 Labor and Capital, 169. 
 
 Lackpenny, quoted, 246. 
 
 K Allegro, quoted and criticised, 477. 
 
 Land of Cockaigne, 115. 
 
 Langland, William, quoted and criti- 
 cised, 177. 
 
 Language, fossil history in, 11; mys- 
 tery of, 39; origin, 40; legends 
 concerning, 40, 41 ; principles of 
 development, 41; diversities, 43; 
 dialects, 46 ; idioms, 48 ; classifica- 
 tion, 49. 
 
 Langue D’Oc, 110. 
 
 Langue D’Oyl, 110. 
 
 Latimer, Bishop, quoted, 271, 273, 
 275, 277, 292, 326. 
 
 Latin race, 46 ; language, 47, 52, 100, 
 137, 175; versification of, 108. See 
 Learning and Renaissance. 
 
 Layamon, quoted, 112. 
 
 Lawyer, the, popular hatred of, in 
 fourteenth century, 178 ; Chaucer’s 
 portrait of, 220, 227. 
 
 Learning, state of, during Formative 
 Period, 82; in the fourteenth cen- 
 tury, 173; in the fifteenth, 242; in 
 the sixteenth, 284. 
 
 Legends, 40, 41 ; formation of, 105. 
 
 Liberty of Prophesying, 436. 
 
 Life, Saxon conception of, 29, 37; a 
 dream, 385, 391 ; true mode of 
 estimating, 431, 469; on the con- 
 duct of, 437. 
 
 Life of Richard III, 335. 
 
 Lily, John, quoted, 321. 
 
 Literature, how affected during For- 
 mative Period, 193; and life, 272; 
 eras of, how discriminated, 444. 
 
 Lollards, 172. See Religion. 
 
 Lombard, Peter, 129, 137. 
 
 Long Parliament, the, 402. 
 
 Lord’s Prayer, versions of, in succes- 
 sive centuries, 55, 56, 175, 244. 
 
 Love, idealized by the worship of the 
 Virgin, 106; in romance poetry, 
 105, 110, 181; woes of, 212; power 
 of, 213; apostrophe to, 344; Bacon 
 concerning, 464: Jonson, 453. 
 
 Love-Courts, the, 182. 
 
 Luther, Martin, 272, 273, 324. 
 
 Lydgate, John, quoted and criticised, 
 245. 
 
 Macaulay, Thomas B., 462 (note), 
 492 (note). 
 
 Macbeth, quoted, 380; and criticised, 
 384. 
 
 Mad Lover, quoted and criticised, 
 419. 
 
 Magna Charta, 63. 
 
 Maid of Orleans, 290. 
 
 Maisters of Oxford’s Catechism, 127. 
 Malory, Sir Thomas, quoted and 
 criticised, 253. 
 
 Mammon, palace of, 363. 
 
 Man, creation of, in Norse mythologv, 
 24. 
 
 Mandeville, Sir John, biography and 
 criticism, 194-199. 
 
 Manning, Robert, quoted and criti- 
 cised, 180. 
 
 Map, Walter, 79. 
 
 Marlowe, Christopher, quoted and 
 criticised, 313. 
 
 Marriage, in the age of chivalry, 107 ; 
 song of, 367; reflections on, 399, 
 
 429, 432, 464. 
 
 Marston, John, quoted, 426. 
 
 Mary, Bloody, 266. 
 
 Maryland, statute of, 406. 
 
 Mass, ceremonial of the, 240. 
 Massinger, Philip, quoted and criti- 
 cised, 420. 
 
 Mathematics in thirteenth century, 
 
 127. 
 
 Matter and spirit, unity of, 492. 
 May-day, 237, 272. 
 
 Medicine, theory and practice of,. 
 
 128, 189, 257. 
 
 Meditations, quoted, 428. 
 Melancholy, the inspiration of genius,. 
 
 430. 
 
 Mercia, settled, 7. 
 
 Merlin, legend of, 7 ; prophecy of, 120. 
 Metaphor, discussed and illustrated,. 
 41; the language of excitement,. 
 396. 
 
 Metre, in Chaucer, 206. 
 
 Middleton, Thomas, quoted, 426. 
 Midland dialect, 54. 
 
 Midsummer Night’s Dream, quoted 
 and criticised, 389. 
 
 Milton, John, 141, 199, 372, 404, 415, 
 436 ; biography and criticism, 472- 
 495. 
 
 Mirror for Magistrates, 310. 
 Monasteries, the, 76, 174, 241. See 
 Religion. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 503 
 
 Monasticism, some beautiful aspects 
 of, 75, 84. 
 
 Monks, 75, 226, 241. See Church. 
 Months, names of, 15. 
 
 Moralities, the, 306. 
 
 Morals. See Ethics. 
 
 More, Sir Thomas, 269, 270, 290, 321 ; 
 
 biography and criticism, 334-40. 
 Morte d' Arthur, quoted, 253. 
 Mulcaster, quoted, 295, 321. 
 Mundinus, 190. 
 
 Muspel, 24. 
 
 Mysteries, the, 304. 
 
 Mythology, Norse, 30. 
 
 Myths, radical similarity of, 103. 
 
 Napier, 439. 
 
 Nash, Thomas, 321. 
 
 Nature, love of, 116, 238; in Chau- 
 cer, 208, 226, 229, 230. 
 
 New Atlantis , 459. 
 
 New Hampshire, statute of, 406. 
 Newton, Sir Isaac, 438. 
 
 Niflheim, 24. 
 
 Nominalism, 131, 188. 
 
 Normans, invade Britain, 8; effects 
 of invasion, 9; culture and influ- 
 ence of, 19 ; language of, 52. 
 Northmen, the, 8, 33. 
 Northumberland, settled, 7, 
 Nut-brown Maid , 117, 245. 
 
 Occam, 188, 191, 327. 
 
 Occleve, Thomas, 245. 
 
 Odin, 24, 25, 104. 
 
 Onomatopoeia, 4t. 
 
 Opus Majus , 157. 
 
 Original English, 53. 
 
 Originality, 395. 
 
 Orm, 113. 
 
 Ormulum, quoted, 114, 137. 
 
 Orosius’ Universal History , 149. 
 Orpheus and his harp, legend of, 151. 
 Othello, quoted, 378; and criticised, 
 382. 
 
 Owl and Nightingale, 116, 137. 
 Oxford, university of, 87, 174, 242, 
 289. 
 
 Paganism and Christianity, 124. 
 Palamon and, Arcite, quoted and 
 criticised, 217. 
 
 Paradise, the Norse, 28, 83. 
 
 Paradise Lost, quoted and criticised, 
 480. 
 
 Paradise Regained, 487. 
 
 Paraphrase, by Caedmon, 140. 
 
 Paris, Matthew, 78, 119. 
 
 Paris, influence of university of, 87. 
 
 Parliament, rise and development of, 
 62, 165, 234, 265, 401. 
 
 Parson, Chaucer’s portrait of the, 223. 
 
 Pascal, quoted, 158. 
 
 Passionate Pilgrim, 375. 
 
 Passionate Shepherd, quoted, 318. 
 
 Paston Letters, 252. 
 
 Pathway of Knowledge, 330. 
 
 Pecock, Reynold, 245, 255. 
 
 Pelagius, theological tenets of, 125. 
 
 Perfection, the desire of, 191. 
 
 Persecution, 242, 328. 
 
 Persian language,50 ; mythology, 104. 
 
 Personification, 102. 
 
 Petrarch, concerning the Church, 
 171; debt of the Renaissance to, 
 174; quoted, 330. 
 
 Philaster, quoted and criticised, 416. 
 
 Philosophy, characterization of, from 
 Proclus to Bacon, 129; the Scho- 
 lastic, 130 ; Realistic and Nominal- 
 istic schools of, 131 ; state of, in 
 the fourteenth century, 188; in the 
 fifteenth, 257; in the sixteenth, 
 331 ; in the seventeenth, 440. 
 
 Phoenix , quoted, 93. 
 
 Physician, Chaucer’s portrait of the, 
 227. 
 
 Piets, the, 5. 
 
 Piers the Ploughman, 172. 
 
 Piety, essential to character, 154. 
 
 Plantagenet, 233. 
 
 Plato, his doctrine of Ideas, 131 ; 
 spirit and influence of his philoso- 
 phy, 284. 
 
 Plowman’s Creed, 180. 
 
 Poetry, earliest form of literature, 
 89; Saxon, 91; religious tone of, 
 in England, 99; romantic, 108; 
 characterization of, in fourteenth 
 century, 176; low state of English, 
 in fifteenth century, 245: revival 
 of, 298; sentimentalism of, 409. 
 
 Politics. See England. 
 
 Prayer, power of, 431. 
 
 Predestination, defined, 324. 
 
 Presbyterians, 436. 
 
 Printing, origin of, 244 {note). 
 
 Prose, order of production, 117; 
 parentage of English, 117; general 
 view of, in the fourteenth century, 
 187; in the fifteenth, 252; in the 
 sixteenth, 321 ; in the seventeenth, 
 427. See History, Theology, Eth- 
 ics, Science, Philosophy. 
 
 Proverbs, of Alfred, 152. 
 
 Pulci, quoted, 288. 
 
504 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Puritans, and the theatre, 311 : reli- 
 gious bias of, 325 ; origin and 
 character, 404; emigration of, to 
 America, 406; intolerance, 407; 
 superstition, 408 ; poet of, 415. 
 
 Purple Island , 413. 
 
 Puttenham, George, 298, 321. 
 
 Quadrivium, the, 87. 
 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 158, 323; biog- 
 raphy and criticism, 351-356. 
 
 Raven , the, quoted, 109. 
 
 Realism, 131, 188. 
 
 Record, William, 330. 
 
 Reformation, premonitions of, 36, 80, 
 172, 242; accomplishment of, 272; 
 beneficent results of, 280 ; evil 
 effects, 281. 
 
 Religion, the sentiment of, funda- 
 mental to the English mind, 36; 
 influence of, upon poetry and lit- 
 erature, 80, 99; necessity of, 272; 
 the Puritan, 404. See Church. 
 
 Renaissance, the, nature and charac- 
 teristics of, 284; in Italy, 287; in 
 England, 289 ; results of, .333. See 
 Learning. 
 
 Resolves, 437. 
 
 Restoration, the, 402. 
 
 Resume, 135, 192, 258, 322, 442. 
 
 Retribution, 394, 472. 
 
 Rhythm, universal, 87; in Chaucer, 
 207. 
 
 Richard II, 165. 
 
 Richard III, 233, 240. 
 
 Ridley, martyrdom of, 277. 
 
 Rip Van Winkle, 195. 
 
 Ritson, Joseph, 247. 
 
 Ritter, quoted, 1. 
 
 Robert of Gloucester, 113, 115. 
 
 Robin Hood, 117, 249. 
 
 Romance, nations and languages, 46 ; 
 fiction, 102, 105; poetry, 108; 
 poets, 110; prose, 245, 253. 
 
 Romans, conquest of Britain by, and 
 its influence, 4, 5, 15. 
 
 Romaunt of the Rose, quoted and 
 criticised, 208. 
 
 Romeo and Juliet, quoted, 376, 379. 
 
 Roscelin, 131. 
 
 Roundheads, the, 402. 
 
 Rovvena, legend of, 7. 
 
 Runes, the, 23. 
 
 Ruin, the, 101. 
 
 Sackville, Thomas, quoted and criti- 
 cised, 309. 
 
 Sad Shepherd, quoted and criticised, 
 451. 
 
 Samson Agonistes, characterized, 487. 
 
 Santre, William, first English mar- 
 tyr, 242. 
 
 Satan, 72, 240, 488. See Witchcraft. 
 
 Satirists, Anglo-Saxon, 115. 
 
 Saxon laws, 34; Chronicle, 117, 121; 
 poetry, 91. 
 
 Scandinavian people, 8 {note)', lan- 
 guage, 50. 
 
 Scepticism, services of, 351. 
 
 Scholasticism, 130, 257, 332. 
 
 Schoolmen, 130, 257. 
 
 School of Abuse, quoted and criti- 
 cised, 322. 
 
 School of Skill, 330. 
 
 Science, inception of, 126; astrology 
 and alchemy the principal part of, 
 189; also, 256; dawn of, on the 
 Continent, 329 ; in England, 439. 
 
 Scotland, geography of, 1, 2; politi- 
 cal and social condition, 164, 403. 
 
 Scott, Walter, quoted, 11. 
 
 Scotts, the, 6. 
 
 Scotus, Duns, on moral good, 126; 
 on reason and faith, 133, 191. 
 
 Scriptorium, the, 84. 
 
 Selden’s Table Talk, 434, 437. 
 
 Seven Deadly Sins, the, 170. 
 
 Seven Joys of the Virgin, 254. 
 
 Seven Sleepers, legend of, 195. 
 
 Shakespeare, William, quoted, 44, 
 108, 128, 237, 283, 294, 296, 347, 
 488 ; biography and criticism, 373- 
 400. 
 
 Shirley, James, 427. 
 
 Sidney, Sir Philip, on the merits of 
 English, 294; position of, 301; on 
 the equipments of the theatre, 312; 
 biography and criticism, 341-347. 
 
 Siege of Thebes, 245. 
 
 Sigurd, 27. 
 
 Silent Woman, quoted and criticised, 
 448. 
 
 Silures, the, 5. 
 
 Sixteenth Century, expansive force 
 of, 334. 
 
 Skelton, John, quoted and criticised, 
 297. 
 
 Skrymer, Norse giant, 31. 
 
 Slavery, and the Saxons, 63 ; and the 
 Normans, 64; in Ireland, 68; and 
 the Church, 81. 
 
 Sleep, invocation to, 344 ; the god of. 
 and his dwelling, 361. 
 
 Society, English, aspects of, from 
 the ninth to the thirteenth century, 
 
INDEX. 
 
 505 
 
 63; in the fourteenth, 165; in the 
 fifteenth, 234; in the sixteenth, 
 267; in the seventeenth, 403. 
 
 Socrates, quoted, 157. 
 
 Solomon and Saturn, quoted, 126. 
 
 Song of Aldhelin, quoted, 109. 
 
 Sonnet, the, 299. 
 
 Soul, the, purgatory of, 100 ; immor- 
 tality of, 133; Plato’s figure of, 
 286. 
 
 Soul's Complaint, quoted, 101. 
 
 Soul's Errand, quoted, 354. 
 
 Southern dialect, 54. 
 
 Speech, Chaucer’s definition of, 210. 
 
 Spenser, Edmund, biography and 
 criticism, 358-373. 
 
 Stael, Madame de, quoted, 430 (note). 
 
 Stanihurst, quoted, 322. 
 
 Sternhold, quoted, 302. 
 
 Stonehenge, 14. 
 
 Story, W. W., quoted, 296. 
 
 Stubbes, quoted, 271. 
 
 Suckling, Sir John, quoted and criti- 
 cised, 411. 
 
 Superstitions, 71, 122, 127. 
 
 Surgery, in the fourteenth century, 
 190. 
 
 Surrey, Earl of, quoted and criti- 
 cised, 298. 
 
 Sussex settled, 6. 
 
 Syllogism, defined and illustrated, 
 134. 
 
 Symonds, J. A., quoted, 265. 
 
 Table-Talk, 437. 
 
 Tacitus, quoted, 13, 33, 105. 
 
 Taine, H. A., 463 (note), 489 (note). 
 
 Tamburlaine the Great, quoted and 
 criticised, 313, 314, 319. 
 
 Tasso, 287. 
 
 Taylor, Jeremy, quoted and criti- 
 cised, 430. 
 
 Tempest, the, quoted, 377, 888. 
 
 Tennyson, Alfred, quoted, 204. 
 
 Teutons, the, a generic race, 21, 46; 
 language of, 50. 
 
 Thanatopsis, the, 100. 
 
 Theatre, the early, 311. 
 
 Theodore, founds the English Church, 
 
 68 . 
 
 Theodosius, Roman general, 6. 
 
 Thomson, James, quoted, 334, 358. 
 
 Thor, Norse god, 26, 31. 
 
 Thought, English, limitary tone of, 
 372. 
 
 Tolerance, a late virtue, 336. 
 
 Tory, the, 402. 
 
 Town, rise of the English, 65. 
 
 Transition English, 54. 
 Transubstantiation, 190. 
 
 Treatise of Religion, 413. 
 
 Trevisa, quoted, 176. 
 
 Trinity College, 291. 
 
 Trivium, the, 86. 
 
 Troilus and Creseide, quoted and 
 criticised, 211. 
 
 Troubadours, the, 110. 
 
 Trouveres, the, 110. 
 
 Trumpet of Death, 183. 
 
 Truth, no absolute criterion of, 409; 
 
 sure to triumph. 430. 
 
 Tudor dynasty, 233. 
 
 Tyndale, William, 294, 327. 
 
 Twa Corbies, quoted and character- 
 ized, 335. 
 
 Udall, Nicholas, 308. 
 
 Unities, the dramatic, 320. 
 University, of Cambridge, 174, 290: 
 of Oxford, 87, 174, 242, 244, 289. 
 290; of Paris, 87. 
 
 Utilitarianism, dangers of, 469, 471. 
 Utopia, 335. 
 
 Valhalla, Norse paradise, 28, 33. 
 Valkyries, the, 28 (note). 
 
 Van Lennep, quoted, 395. 
 
 Velleda, German prophetess, 105. 
 Venus and Adonis, 375. 
 
 Vergil, 120. 
 
 Virgil, quoted, 101. 
 
 Virgin Mary, worship of, and its in- 
 fluence, 106. 
 
 Virtue, 126, 397, 479. 490. 
 
 Volpone, quoted and criticised, 449. 
 Vortigern, King of the Britons, 7. 
 
 Wales, geography of, 1, 2; a refuge 
 for Christianity, 7; literature of, 
 17; language, 49; annexation of, 
 135; princes of, 233. 
 
 Waller, Edmund, quoted, 487. 
 
 War of the Roses, 233. 
 
 Warton, Thomas, quoted, 233. 
 Webster, John, quoted and criticised, 
 422. 
 
 Week, nomenclature of days of, 25. 
 Wessex settled, 6; supremacy of, 7. 
 Whetstone of Wit, 330. 
 
 Whig, the, 402. 
 
 Whipple, Edwin P., quoted, 455. 
 White Devil, quoted and criticised, 
 
 422. 
 
 Wife of Bath, quoted and criticised, 
 
 219. 
 
 William the Conqueror, 9, 79. 
 
506 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Wilson, Arthur, quoted, 295. 
 
 Witan, the, 23, 62. 
 
 Witch, Sabbath of the, 283; method 
 of trying the, 408. 
 
 Witchcraft, 240, 281, 408. 
 
 Wither, George, quoted and criti- 
 cised, 409. 
 
 Wodin. See Odin. 
 
 Woman, position of, among the Sax- 
 
 ons, 35; in romance poetry, 105; 
 how affected by Christianity, 106 
 (and note ) ; types of, 219, 222; in 
 Shakespeare, 376; Milton’s ideal 
 of, 493. 
 
 Wordsworth, William, quoted, 14, 225. 
 
 Wotton, Sir Henry, 413. 
 
 Wycliffe, John, 172, 190; biography 
 and criticism, 199-203. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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