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The Author devoted to its composition the labor of several years, sparing neither time nor pains to render it both instructive and interesting. In consequence of Mr. Shaw's lamented death the MS. was placed in my hands to prepare it for publication as one of Mr. Mur- ray's STUDENT'S MANUALS, for which purpose it seems to me peculiarly well adapted. Through long familiarity with the subject, and great experience as a teacher, the Author knew how to seize the salient points in English literature, and to give prominence to those writers and those subjects which ought to occupy the main attention of the Student. Considering the size of the book, the amount of information which it conveys is really remarkable, while the space devoted to the more im- portant names, such as Bacon, Shakspeare, Milton, Dryden, Addison, Sir Walter Scott, and others, is sufficient to impress upon the Student a vivid idea of their lives and writings. The Author has certainly succeeded in his attempt " to render the work as little dry as readable, in short as is consistent with accuracy and comprehensiveness." As Editor, I have carefully revised the whole work, com pleted the concluding chapters left unfinished by the Author, (3) 4 PREFACE. and inserted at the end of the first ai?d second chapters a brief account of Anglo-Saxon, Norman, and early English Litera- ture, in order to render the work as useful as possible to Students preparing for the examination of the India Civil Service, the University of London, and the like. Moreover I have, in the other Notes and Illustrations, given an account of the less important persons, which, though not designed for continuous perusal, will be useful for reference, for which pur- pose a copious Index has been added. All living writers are, for obvious reasons, excluded. W. S. LONDON, January, 1864. SECOND EDITION. IN this Edition a few errors in names and dates have been corrected, and considerable additions have been made to the later chapters of the work. A brief account of the lives and works of more than two hundred and twenty authors has been added ; and it is believed that the work, in its present form, will be found to contain information respecting every writer Who deserves a place in the history of our literature. W. S. LONDON, January, 1865. A BRIEF MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. THOMAS BUDD SHAW, born in Gower Street, London, on the i2th of October, 1813, was the seventh son of John Shaw, F. R. S., an eminent architect. From a very early period of his life, though of delicate constitution, he manifested that delight in the acquisition of knowledge which was continued throughout his subsequent career. In the year 1822 he accompanied his maternal uncle, the Rev. Francis Whitfield, to Berbice in the West Indies, where that gentleman was the officiating clergyman, and who was eminently qualified as a scholar and an accomplished gentleman to advance his nephew in his studies and in the formation of his character. On his return from the West Indies, in 1827, he entered the Free School at Shrewsbury, where he became a favorite pupil of Dr. Butler, afterwards Bishop of Lichfield. Here the writer of this brief record recollects that it was remarked of the subject of it that, although inferior to some of his contemporaries in the critical exactness of his scholarship, he was surpassed by none in the intuitive power with which he comprehended the genius and spirit of the great writers of antiquity. At this early period also, apart from school exercises, he rapidly accumulated that general and varied knowl- edge of books and things which when acquired seemed never to be forgotten. From Shrewsbury, in 1833, Mr. Shaw proceeded to St. John's Col- lege, Cambridge. On taking his degree, in 1836, he became tutor in the family of an eminent merchant; and subsequently, in 1840, he was induced to leave England for Russia, where he commenced his useful and honorable career, finally settling in St. Petersburgh in the year 1841. Here he formed an intimacy with M. Warrand, Professor at the University of St. Petersburgh, through whose influence, in 1842, he obtained the appointment of Professor of English Literature at the Imperial Alexander Lyceum. His lectures were eagerly attended : no % professor acquired more thoroughly the love and respect of his pupils, many of whom continued his warmest admirers and friends in after life. In October in the same year he married Miss Annette Warrand, daughter of the Professor. In 1851 he came to England for the purpose of taking his Master of Arts degree; and on his return to Russia was elected Lector of English Literature at the University of St. Petersburgh. His first pupils were the Princes of Leuchtenburg ; and, his reputation being now thoroughly i * CO 6 A BRIEF MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. established, he was in 1853 engaged as tutor and Professor o) English to the Grand Dukes, an appointment which he retained till hi> death. For nine years Mr. Shaw's position was in every respect enviable : happy in his married life, loved by his pupils, respected and honored by all for his "high attainments and many virtues, his life passed in peace and prosperity. A few years more, and his means would have enabled him to retire and pass the evening of his life in literary pur- suits. But this was not to be. In October, 1862, he complained of pain in the region of the heart; yet he struggled hard against his malady, until nature could bear no more. For a few days before his death he suffered acutely, but bore his sufferings with manly fortitude. On the i4th of November he was relieved from them, dying suddenly of aneurism. His death was regarded as a public loss, and his funeral was attended by their Imperial Highnesses, and a large concourse of present and former students of the Lyceum. A subscription was raised, and a monument is erected to his memory. The following is a list of such of Mr. Shaw's works as have come to our notice. In 1836 he wrote several pieces for " The Fellow," and " Fraser's Magazine." In 1837 he translated into verse numerous German and Latin poems, and wrote a few original poems of merit, some of which appeared in " The Individual." Two well-written pieces, " The Song of Ilrolf kraken the Sea King," and " The Surgeon's Song," were con- tributions to " Fraser's Magazine." In 1838 and two /o! loving years he contributed several translations from the Italian to " Fraser." In 1842 he started "The St. Petersburg!! Literary Review; " he also published in " Blackwood " a translation of " Anmalet Bek," a Russian novel, by Marlinski. In 1844 ne published his first work of considerable length, a translation of " The Heretic," a novel in three volumes, by Lajetch- nikoff. The work was well received, and an edition was immediately reprinted in New York. In the following year appeared in " Black- wood " his " Life of Poushkin," accompanied by exquisite translations of several of the finest of that poet's productions. In 1846 his leisure time was entirely occupied in writing his " Outlines of English Litera- ture," a work expressly undertaken at the request of the authorities of the Lyceum, and for the use of the pupils of that establishment. The edition was speedily sold, and immediately reprinted in Philadelphia. A second edition was published by Mr. Murray in 1849; an< ^ the edition now offered to the public is the fruit of his later years and mature judgment. It may, indeed, be said to be an entirely new work, as the whole has been re- written. In 1850 he published in the " Quarter- ly " an exceedingly original and curious article, entitled " Forms of Salutation." CONTENTS. I'AGK \ BRIEF MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR. 5 CHAPTER I. ORIGIN OP THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE . . . . n NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS : A. Anglo-Saxon Literature. .26 B. Anglo-Norman Literature ....28 C. Semi-Saxon Literature 32 D. Old English Literature 33 CHAPTER II. THE AGE OF CHAUCEK 3$ NOTES VND ILLUSTRATIONS : A. The Predecessors of Gower, and Chaucer 53 B. John Gower 55 C. Wicliffe and his School 57 CHAPTER III. FROM THE DEATH OF CHAUCER TO JHE AGE OF ELIZABETH. . 59 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS : A. Minor Poets ....69 B. Minor Prose Writers 70 CHAPTER IV. THE ELIZABETHAN POETS (INCLUDING THE REIGN OF JAMES I.). 71 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS : A. The Mirrour for Magistrates 84 B. Minor Poets in the Reig is of Elizabeth and James I. . . 84 flf) 8 CONTENTS. CHAPTER V. THE NEW PHILOSOPHY AND PROSE LITERATURE IN THE REIGNS OF ELIZABETH AND JAMES 1 88 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS : Minor Prose Writers in the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I. 107 CHAPTER VI. THE DAWN OF THE DRAMA 108 CHAPTER VII. SHAKSPEARE 128 CHAPTER VIII. THE SHAKSPEARIAN DRAMATISTS 152 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS: Other Dramatists 166 CHAPTER IX. THE SO-CALLED METAPHYSICAL POETS 167 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS: Other Poets 176 CHAPTER X. THEOLOGICAL WRITERS OF THE CIVIL WAR AND THE COMMON- WEALTH 177 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS : Other Theological and Moral Writers 186 CHAPTER XI. JOHN MILTON 187 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS : Contemporaries of Milton 205 CHAPTER XII. THE AGE OF THE RESTORATION 207 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS ; Other Writers 231 CONTENTS. 9 CHAPTER XIII. THE NEW DRAMA AND THE CORRECT POETS < . . 232 CHAPTER XIV. THE SECOND REVOLUTION 249 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS: A. Other Theological Writers 263 B t Other Prose Writers . 264 CHAPTER XV. POPE, SWIFT, AND THE AUGUSTAN POETS 265 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS: Minor Poets 288 CHAPTER XVI. THE ESSAYISTS 289 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS: A. Minor Essayists, &c 302 B. Boyle and Bentley Controversy 302 Other Writers 304 CHAPTER XVII. THE GREAT NOVELISTS 305 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS : Other Novelists 325 CHAPTER XVIII. HISTORICAL, MORAL, POLITICAL, AND THEOLOGICAL WRITERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 326 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS : Theological Writers 345 Philosophical Writers 346 Historians and Scholars 347 Miscellaneous Writers 348 Novelists 349 10 CONTENTS. CHAPTER XIX. THE DAWN OF ROMANTIC POETRY 350 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS : Other Poets of the Eighteenth Century 373 CHAPTER XX. WALTER SCOTT 375 CHAPTER XXI. BYRON, MOORE, SHELLEY, KEATS, CAMPBELL, LEIGH HUNT, AND WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR 396 CHAPTER XXII. WORDSWORTH, COLERIDGE, AND SOUTHEY 420 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS : Other Poets of the Nineteenth Century 432 More Modern Poets 434 CHAPTER XXIII. THE MODERN NOVELISTS 436 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS : Other Novelists 458 CHAPTER XXIV. PROSE LITERATURE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 459 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS : Other Prose Writers of the Nineteenth Century 474 SKETCH OF AMERICAN LITERATURE 477 INDEX TO ENGLISH LITERATURE 533 INDEX TO AMERICAN LITERATURE 538 ENGLISH LITERATURE. CHAPTER I. ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE, {1. The most ancient inhabitants of the British Isles. 2. The Roman occupation. 3. Traces of the Celtic and Latin periods in the English lan- guage. 4. Teutonic settlements in Britain. 5. Anglo-Saxon language and literature. 6. Effects of the Norman conquest upon the English population and language. 7. Romance Literature, Norman Trouv,'res and Proven9al Troubadours. 8. Change of Anglo-Saxon into English. 9. Principal epochs of the English language. 1. WITHIN the limited territory comprised by a portion of the British Isles has grown up a language which has become the speech of the most free, the most energetic, and the most powerful portion of the human race ; and which seems destined to be, at no distant period, the universal medium of communication throughout the globe. It is a language, the literature of which, inferior to none in variety or extent, is superior to all others in manliness of spirit, and in universality of scope ; and it has exerted a great and a continually increasing influence upon the progress of human thought, and the improvement of human happiness. To trace the rise and formation of such a language cannot be otherwise than interesting and instructive. The most ancient inhabitants of the British Islands, concerning whom history has handed down to us any certain information, were a branch of that Celtic race which appears to have once occupied a large portion of Western Europe. Though the causes and period of their immigration into Europe are lost in the clouds of pre-historical tradi- tion, this people, under the various appellations of Celts, Gael (Gaul) or Cyrnry (Cimbrians), seems to have covered a very large extent of territory, and to have retained strong traces, in its Druidical worship, its astronomical science, and many other features, of a remote Oriental descent. It is far from probable, however, that this race ever attained more than the lowest degree of civilization : the earliest records of it which we pos r ess, at the time when it came in contact with the Roman arms, show it to have been then in a condition very little superior to barbarism a fact sufficiently indicated by its nomad and predatory mode of existence, by the absence of agriculture, and above all by Ine 12 ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH [CHAP. I. universal practice of that infallible sign of a savage state, the habit of tattooing and staining the body. Whether the Phoenicians ever ex tended their navigation to the British Islands must remain doubtful ; but their intercourse with the natives must in any case have been confined to the southern coast of the island ; and there is no ground for supposing that the influence of the more polished strangers could have produced any change in the great body of the Celtic population. 2. The first important intercourse between the primitive Britons and any foreign nation was the invasion of the country by the Romans in the year 55 B. C. Julius Caesar, having subdued the territory occu- pied by the Gauls, a cognate tribe, speaking the same language and characterized by the same customs, religion, and political institutions, found himself on the shores of the Channel, within sight of the white cliff's of Albion, and naturally desired to push his conquests into the region inhabited by a people whom the Romans considered as dwelling at the very extremity of the earth : " penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos." The resistance of the Britons, though obstinate and ferocious, was grad- ually overpowered in the first century of the Christian era by the superior skill and military organization of the Ronan armies : the country became a Roman province; and the Roman domination, though .extending only to the central and southern portion of the country, that is, to England proper, exclusive of Wales, the mountainous portion of Scotland, and the whole of Ireland, may be regarded as having sub- sisted about 480 years. A large body of Roman troops was permanently stationed in the new province; a great military road, defended by strongly fortified posts, extended from the southern coast at least as far as York ; and the invaders, as was their custom, endeavored to intro- duce among their barbarous subjects their laws, their habits, and their civilization. In the course of this long occupation by the Roman power, the native population became naturally divided into two distinct and hostile classes. Such of the Celts as submitted to the yoke of their invaders acquired a considerable degree of civilization, learned the Latin language, and became a Latinized or provincial race, similar to the inhabitants on the other side of the Channel. The other portion of the Celts, namely, those who inhabited mountainous regions inaccessible to the Roman arms, and those who, refusing to submit to the invaders, fled from the southern districts to take refuge in their rugged fastnesses, retained, we may be sure, with their hostility to the invaders, their own language, dress, customs, and religion ; and it was these who, periodi- cally descending from the mountains of Wales and Scotland, carried devastation over the more civilized province, and taxed the skill and vigilance of the Roman troops. It was to restrain the incursions of these savages that a strong wall was constructed in the reign of Severus across the narrowest portion of the island, from the River Tyne to the Solway Frith. When the Roman troops were at length withdrawn from Britain, in order to defend Italy itself against the innumerable hordes of barbarians which menaced it, we can easily comprehend the desperate position in which the Romanized portion of the population A.D. 446.] LAN\1UAGE AND LITERATURE. 13 now found itself. Having in all probability lost, during their long subjection, the valor which originally distinguished them; having acquired the vices of servitude without the union which civilization can give, they found themselves exposed to the furious incursions of hungry barbarians, eager to reconquer what they considered as their birthright ; and who, intense as was their hatred of the victorious Romans, must have looked with a still fiercer enmity on their degen- erate countrymen, as traitors and cowards who had basely submitted to a foreign yoke. Down from their mountains rushed the avenging swarms of Scottish and Pictish savages, and commenced taking a terrible vengeance on their unhappy countrymen. Every trace of civilization was swept away; the furious devastation which they carried through the land is commemorated in the ancient songs and legends of the Cymry ; and the objects of their vengeance, after vainly imploring the assistance of Rome in a most piteous appeal, had recourse to the only resource now left them, of hiring some warlike race of foreign adventurers to protect them. These adventurers were the Saxon pirates. 3. Before approaching the second act in the great drama of English history, it will be well to clear the ground by making a few remarks upon the traces left by the Celtic period in the language of the country. It must first of all be distinctly remembered that the Celtic dialect, whether in the form still spoken in Wales, which is supposed to be the most similar to the language of the ancient Britons, or in that em- ployed in the Highlands of Scotland and among the Celtic population of Ireland, has only a very remote affinity to modern English. It is in all respects a completely different tongue ; and so completely insignifi- cant has been its influence on the present language that, in a vocabu- lary consisting of about 40,000 words, it would be difficult to point out a hundred derived directly from the Celtic.* It is true that the English language contains a considerable number of words ultimately traceable to Celtic roots; but these have been intro- duced into it through the medium of the French, which, together with an enormous majority of Latin words, contains some of Gaulish origin. The same remark may be made respecting the prominent Latin element in the English language. The Latin words, which constitute three- fifths of our language, cannot in any instance be proved to have derived their origin from any corrupt Latin dialect spoken in Britain, but to have been filtered, so to speak, through some of the various forms of the great Romance speech from which French, Italian, and Spanish are derived. One class of words, however, is traceable to the Brito- Roman period of our history ; and this is ineffaceably stamped upon the geography of the British Isles. In Wales, in the Highlands of Scotland, and in Ireland, where the population is pure and unmixed, the names of places h.ve probably remained unaltered from a very * On the Cel;ic element in the English language, fee " The Student's Manual of thw English Language," p. 23, seq., and p. 45. 2 14 ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH [CHAP. I, remote period, perhaps long anterior to the invasion of Julius Caesar; and even in those parts of the country which have been successively occupied by very different races, many appellations of pure Celtic antiquity have survived the inundations of new peoples, and may still be marked, like some venerable Druidical cromlech, standing in hoar mysterious age in the midst of a more recent civilization. Thus the termination "don" is in some instances the Celtic word " dun" a rock or natural fortress. Again, the termination "caster" or " Chester" is unquestionably a monument of the Roman occupation of the island, indicating the spot of a Roman " castrum " or fortified post.* 4. The true foundations of the English laws, language, and national character were laid, between the middle of the fifth and the middle of the six centuries, deep in the solid granite of Teutonic an- tiquity. The piratical adventurers whom the old German passion for plunder and glory, and also, perhaps, the entreaties of the " miserable Britons," allured across the North Sea from the bleak shores of their native Jutland, Schleswig, Holstein, and the coasts of the Baltic, were the most fearless navigators and the most redoubted sea-kings of those ages. On their arrival in Britain, concerning which the early chron- icles are filled with vague and picturesque legends, like that of Hengist and Horsa, these rovers were in every respect savages, though their rugged energetic Teuton nature, so admirably sketched by Tacitus at a preceding period, offered a rich and fertile soil capable of being developed by Christianity and civilization into a noble type of national character. Successive bands of the same race, attracted by the reports of their predecessors respecting the superiority of the new settlement over their own barren and perhaps over-peopled father-land, gradually established themselves in those parts of Britain which (he Romans had occupied before them. But the same causes which j> evented the Romans from penetrating into the mountainous districts of Wales and Scotland, continued to exclude the Saxons also from those inaccessible fastnesses. Gradually, and after sanguinary conflicts, they succeeded, as the armies of Rome had done before, in driving back into these regions the wild Celtic populations which had descended thence with the hope of reconquering their inheritance ; and this historical fact receives confirmation from the circumstance that the present inhab- itants of these mountain regions are in the present day of pure Celtic blood, retaining the language of their British ancestors, and forming a race as completely distinct from the English people properly so called, as the Finn or the Lett, for example, from the Slavonic occupier of the land of his forefathers. The level, and consequently more easily accessible, portion of Scotland was gradually peopled by the Anglo- Saxon race ; and their language and institutions were established there as completely as in South Britain itself. This fact alone ought to be * In the same way some other Latin words appear in ether names of places; as strata, " pnvcd roads," in Strat-ford, Stret-ton; colon'a, in Lin-coin ; port-u*, in Ports-) wuih, &c. A. D. 450-550.] LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 15 sufficient to destroy the prejudice, so common not only among foreign- ers, but even among Englishmen, of regarding all the inhabitants of Scotland as Celts alike; of representing William Wallace, for instance, in a Highland kilt a mistake as ludicrous as would be that of painting Washington armed with a tomahawk, or adorned, like a Cherokee chief, with a belt of scalps or a girdle of wampum. It is probable that even the half-Romanized Britons who first invited the Saxon tribes to come to their assistance were speedily involved by their dangerous allies in the same persecution as their savage mountain countrymen : at all events one fact is certain, that the Celt in general, whether friendly or hostile, possessing a less powerful organization and a less vigorous moral constitution than the Teuton, was in the course of time either quietly absorbed into the more energetic race, or gradually disappeared, with that fatal certainty which seems to be an inevitable law regulating the contact of two unequal nationalities, just as the aboriginal Indian has disappeared before the descendants of the very same Anglo-Saxons in the New World. It is only a peculiar combination of geographical conditions that has enabled the primeval Celt to retain a separate exist- ence on the territory of Great Britain, while the predominance a numerical predominance only of the Celtic race in the population of Ireland may be traced to other, but no less exceptional causes. 5. The true parentage, therefore, of the English nation, is to be traced to the Teutonic race. The language spoken by the Northern invaders was a Low-Germanic dialect, akin to the modern Dutch, but with many Scandinavian forms and words. Like the people who spoke it, it was possessed of a character at once practical and imaginative ; at once real and ideal ; and required but the influence of civilization to become a noble vehicle for reasoning, for eloquence, and for the expres sion of the social and domestic feelings. In the modern English, all ideas which address themselves to the emotions, and all those which bring man into relation with the great objects of nature and with the sentiments of simple existence, will be invariably found to derive their linguistic representatives directly from the Teutonic tongue. The con- version of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, which took place in the sixth century, brought them into contact with more intellectual forms of life, and with a higher type of civilization : the transfer of their religious allegiance from Thor, Woden, Tuisk, and Freya to the Sa- viour, while it softened their manners, exposed their language to the modifying influences of the corrupt but more civilized Latin literature uf the Lower Empire, and gave rapid proof how improvable a tongue was that in which they had hitherto produced nothing, probably, but rude war-songs and sagas like that of Beowulf. A very varied anil extensive literature soon arose among the Anglo-Saxons, embracing compositions on almost every branch of knowledge, law, historical chronicles, ecclesiastical and theological disquisitions, together with a large body of poetry in which their very peculiar metrical system was adapted to subjects derived either from the Scriptures, or from the mediaeval lives of the saints. The curious, but rather tedious, versified 16 ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH [CHAP. L paraphrase of the Bible by Czedmon generally attributed to the middle of the seventh century was long considered to be one of the most ancient among the more considerable Saxon poems ; but the discovery, at Copenhagen, of the Lay of Beowulf, to which we have just alluded, has furnished us with a specimen of Anglo-Saxon poetry decidedly more ancient, as well as far more interesting; inasmuch as, having been composed in all probability at a period anterior to the general conversion of the race to Christianity, it is free from any traces of that imitation of the rhetorical style of the lower Latinity which preve.'its Csedmon from being a good representative of the national literature of his race. This poem, the picturesque vigor of which gives it a right to be placed among the most interesting monuments of early literature, is not inferior in energy and conciseness to the Nibe- lungen-Lied, though undeniably so in extent of plot and development of character. The subject is the expedition of Prince Beowulf, a lineal descendant of Woden, from England to Norway, on the adventure of delivering the king of the latter country from a kind of demon or mon- ster which secretly enters the royal hall at midnight, and destroys some of the warriors who are sleeping there. This monster, called in the poem the Grendel, is probably nothing but the poetical personification of some dangerous exhalations from a marsh, for it is represented as issuing from a neighboring swamp, and as taking a refuge in the same abode, when, after a furious combat, Beowulf succeeds in driving it back, together with another evil spirit, into the gloomy abyss. The description of the voyage of Beowulf in his " foamy-necked " ship along the " swan-path " of the ocean, of his arrival at the Norwegian court, and his narrative of his own exploits, are in a very similar style to the ancient Scandinavian Sagas. The versification of this, as well as of all Saxon poetry in general, is exceedingly peculiar; and thr, sys- tem upon which it is constructed for a long time defied the ingenuity of philologists. The Anglo-Saxons based their verse not upon any regular recurrence of syllables, accented and unaccented, or regarded, as among the Greeks and Romans, as long or short ; still less upon the employment of similarly sounding terminations of lines or parts 01 lines, that is, upon what we call rhyme. With them it was sufficient to con- stitute verse, that in any two successive lines which might be of any length there should be at least three words beginning with the same letter. This very peculiar metrical system is called alliteration.* The language in which these works are composed is usually called Anglo-Saxon ; but in the works themselves it is always styled English, and the country England, or the land of the Angles. The term Anglo- Saxon, is meant to distinguish the Saxons of England from the Saxons of the Continent, and does not signify the Angles and Saxons. But why English became the exclusive appellation of the language epoken by the Saxons as well as the Angles, is not altogether clear, ft has * For a fuller account of Anglo-Saxon literature, see Notes and Illustration* rii. A.. D. 450-550.] LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 17 been supposed by some writers that the Saxons were only a section of the Angles, and consequently that the latter name was always recog- nized among the Angles and Saxons as the proper national appellation. Another hypothesis is, that, as the new inhabitants of the island became first known to the Roman see through the Anglian captives who were carried to Rome in the sixth century, the name of this tribe was given by the Romans to the whole people, and that the Christian missionaries to Britain would naturally continue to employ this name as the appellation both of the people and the country.* Some modern writers have proposed to discard the term Anglo-Saxon altogether, and employ English as the name of the language, from the earliest date to the present day. But, as has been already observed in a previous work of the present series, " a change of nomenclature like this would expose us to the inconvenience, not merely of embracing within one designation objects which have been conventionally separated, but of confounding things logically distinct : for, though our modern English is built upon and mainly derived from the Anglo-Saxon, the two dia- lects are now so discrepant, that the fullest knowledge of one would not alone suffice to render the other intelligible to either the eye or the ear." For all practical purposes, they are two separate languages, as different from one another as the Italian from the Latin, or the present English from the German. For a long period the Saxon colonization of Britain was carried on by detached Teutonic tribes, who established themselves in such por- tions of territory as they found vacant, or from which they ousted less warlike occupants ; and in this way there gradually arose a number of separate and independent states or kingdoms. This epoch of our history is generally denominated the Heptarchy, or Seven Kingdoms, the names of the principal of which may still be traced in the appella- tions of our modern shires, as Essex and Northumberland. As might easily have been foreseen, one of these tribes or kingdoms, growing gradually more powerful, at last absorbed the others. This important event took place in the ninth century, in the reign of Egbert, from which period to the middle of the eleventh century, when there occurred the third great invasion and change of sovereignty to which the coun- try was destined, the history of the Anglo-Saxon monarchy presents a confused and melancholy picture of bloody incursions and fierce resist- ance to the barbarous and pagan Danes, who endeavored to treat the Saxons as the Saxons had treated the Celts. The only brilliant figure in this period is the almost perfect type of a patriot warrior, king, and philosopher, in the person of the illustrious Alfred; whose virtues * For further particulars see the "Student's Manual of the English Lan- guage," pp. 14, 15. It is there shown that the common account of the imposi- tion of the name of England upon the country by a decree of King Egbert, is unsupported by any contemporaneous or credible testimony ; and that the title of AnglicE or Anglorum Rex, is much more naturally explained by the supposi- tion that England and English had been already adopted us the collective names of the country and its inhabitants. 18 ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH [CHAP. I. would appear to posterity almost fabulous, were they not handed down in the minute and accurate records of a biographer who knew and served him well. The two fierce races, so obstinately contending fov mastery, were too nearly allied in origin and blood for their amalgama- tion to have produced any very material change in the language or institutions of the country. In those parts of England, principally in the North and East, as in some of the maritime regions of Scotland, where colonies of Danes established themselves, either by conquest or by settlement, the curious philologist may trace, in the idiom of the peasantry and still more clearly in the names of families and places, evident marks of a Scandinavian instead of an Anglo-Saxon popula- tion. As examples of this we may cite the now immortal name of Havelock, derived from a famous sea-king of the same name, who is said to have founded the ancient town of Whitby, the latter being the Scandinavian Hvitby. As to memorials of the Saxons, preserved in the names of men, families, or places, or in the less imperishable monu- ments of architecture, they are so numerous that there is hardly a locality in the whole extent of England where a majority of the names is not pure and unaltered Saxon ; the whole mass of the middle and lower classes of the population bears unmistakable marks of pure Saxon blood : and the sound and sterling vigor of the popular lan- guage is so essentially Saxon, that it requires but the re-establishment of the now obsolete inflections of the Anglian grammar, and the substitution of a few Teutonic words for their French equivalents, to recompose an English book into the idiom spoken in the days of Alfred. 6. It would be, however, an error to suppose that all the words of Latin origin found even in the earlier period of the English language were introduced after the introduction into England of the Norman- French element; that is to say, after the conquest of the country by William in the eleventh century. For a long time previous to that event the cultivation of the Latin literature in the monasteries and among the learned, as well as the employment of the Latin language in the services of the Church, must have tended to incorporate with the Saxon tongue a considerable number of Latin words. Alfred, we know, visited Rome in his youth, acquired there a considerable portion of the learning which he unquestionably possessed, and exhibited his patriotic care for the enlightenment of his countrymen by translating into Saxon the " Consolations " of Bo(ithius. The Venerable Bede, and other Saxon ecclesiastics, composed chronicles and legends in Latin, and we may therefore conclude that, though the sturdy Teutonic na- tionality of the Anglo-Saxon language guarded it from being corrupted by any overwhelming admixture of Latin, yet a considerable influx of Latin words may have become perceptible in it before the appearance of Normans on our shores. It is also to be remarked that the superior civilization of the French race must have exerted an influence on at least the aristocratic classes ; and the family connections between the last Saxon dynasty anJ the neighboring dukes of Normandy, of which A.D. io66.J LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 19 the reign of Edward the Confessor furnishes examples, must have tended to increase the Gallicizing character perceptible in Anglo-Saxon writings previous to the Conquest. In tracing the influence of that mighty revolution on the language, the institutions, and the national character of the people, it will be advisable to advert separately to its effects as regarded from a political, a social, and a philological point of view. The most important change consequent upon the subjugation of the country by the Normans was obviously the establishment in England of the great feudal principle of the military tenure of land, of the chivalric spirit and habits which were the natural result of feudal insti- tutions, and lastly, of the broad demarcation which separated society into the two great classes of the Nobles and the Serfs. It is unnecessary to say that the feudal institutions, which lay at the bottom of all these modifications, were totally unknown to the original Saxons who established themselves in England, and were indeed utterly repugnant to that free democratic organization of society which they brought with them from their native Germany, and which Tacitus shows to have universally prevailed among the primitive dwellers of the Teu- tonic swamps and forests. The Scandinavian pirates, who carried devastation over every coast accessible to their " sea-horses," and who, under the valiant leadership of Hrolf the Ganger, wrested from the feeble and degenerate successors of Charlemagne the magnificent province to which they gave their own North-man appellation, adopted, from the force of circumstances, that strong military organization which could alone enable a warlike minority to hold in subjection a more numerous but less vigorous conquered people. Like the Lom- bards in Italy, like a multitude of other races in different parts of the world and in different historical epochs, they found feudal institutions an indispensable necessity of their position ; and what had been forced upon them at their original occupation of Normandy they naturally practised on their irruption into England. But as the invasion of William was carried on under at least a colorable allegation of a legal right to the inheritance of the English throne, his investiture of the crown was accompanied by a studied adherence to the constitutional forms of the Saxon monarchy; and it was perhaps only the obstinate resistance of the sullen, sturdy Saxon people, that at length wearied him into treating his new acquisition with all the rigor of a conquering invader. The whole territory was by his orders carefully surveyed and registered in that curious monument of antiquity, which still exists, entitled Domesday Book : the severest measures of police, as for exam- ple the famous institution of the Curfew (which was, however, no new invention of William to tyrannize over the enslaved country, but a very common regulation in feudal states), were introduced to keep down the rising of the people ; the territory was divided into 60,000 fiefs ; the original Saxon holders of these lands were as a general rule ousted from their estates, which were distributed, on the feudal conditions of bemage and general defence, to the warriors who had enabled him to 20 ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH [CHAP. L Bubjugate the country; vast tracts of inhabited lands were depopulated and transformed into forests for the chase, and the higher functions of the Church and State were with few exceptions confided to men of Norman blood. The natural consequence of such a state of things, when it continued, as it did in England, through the reigns of the long series of Norman and Plantagenet sovereigns, was to create in the country two distinct and intensely hostile nationalities. The Saxon race gradually descended to the level of an oppressed and servile class ; but being far superior in numbers to their oppressors, they ran no risk of being absorbed and lost in the dominant people. The high qualities, too, of the Norman race, qualities which made them greatly superioi in valor, wisdom, and intellectual activity, to any other people then existing on the continent of Europe, no less saved them from gradually disappearing in the subjugated population. It required several ages to amalgamate the two nationalities ; but, partly in consequence of their high, though very different merits, and partly in consequence of a most peculiar and happy combination of circumstances, they were ultimately amalgamated, and formed the most vigorous people which has ever existed upon earth. In the present case the two nationalities were not dissolved in each other, but like some chemical bodies their affinities combined to form a new and powerful substance. But for several cen- turies the two fierce and obstinate races felt nothing but hatred towards each other, a hatred cherished by the memory of a thousand acts of tyranny and contempt on the one part, and savage revenge and sullen degradation on the other. Macaulay has well observed that, " so strong an association is established in most minds between the great- ness of a sovereign and the greatness of the nation which he rules, that almost every historian of England has expatiated with a senti- ment of exultation on the power and splendor of her foreign masters, and has lamented the decay of that power and splendor as a calamity to our country. This is, in truth, as absurd as it would be in a Hay- tian negro of our time to dwell with national pride on the greatness of Lewis XIV., and to speak of Blenheim and Ramillies with patriotic regret and shame. The Conqueror and his descendants to the foarth generation were not Englishmen : most of them were born in ance : their ordinary speech was French : almost every high office -i-\ their gift was filled by a Frenchman : every acquisition which they mttde on the continent estranged them more and more from the population of our island." Though every trace of this double and hostile nationality has long passed away, abundant monuments of its having once existed may be still observed in our language. The family names of the higher aristocracy in England are almost universally French, while those of the middle and lower orders are as unmistakably German. THUS our peerage abounds in Russells (Roussel), Mortimers (Mortemai), Cour- tenays, and Talbots, while the Smiths, Browns, Johnso -s, and Hodgkins plainly betray their Teutonic origin. Under the Noiman regime the Saxon subdivisions of the country were transformed from the demo- cratic skire into the feudal county, administered by a military governoi A D. 1066.] LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 21 or count. The ancient Saxon witanageihote, or thing, was metamor- phosed into the feudal Parlement, the members of which occupied their seats, not as elective representatives of the people, but in their feudal capacity as vassals in the enjoyment of military fiefs. Thus the great ecclesiastical dignitaries took part of right in the deliberations of the legislative body, in their quality of holders of lands, and as such dis- posing of a certain contingent of military force. )/ But it is with the effects of the Norman Conquest upon the language of the country that we are at present concerned : and it is here that the task of tracing the process of admixture between the two races becomes at once more complicated and more interesting. On their arrival in Normandy, the piratical followers of Hrolf the Ganger had found themselves exposed to the civilizing influences which a small minority of rude conquerors, placed in the midst of a subject popula- tion superior to them in numbers as well as intellectual cultivation, can never long resist with success. Like the hordes of barbarian invaders who shared among them the territories of the Roman empire, the Northmen, with the Christianity of the conquered nation, imbibed also the language and civilization so intimately connected with that Christianity, and in an incredibly brief space of time exchanged for their native Scandinavian dialect a language entirely similar', in its words and grammatical forms, to the idiom prevalent in the northern division of France. It was a repetition of the introduction of Greek art and culture into republican Rome : Grsecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes. The language thus communicated by the subject to the conquered nation was a dialect of that great Romance speech which extended during the Middle Ages from the northern shore of the Mediterranean to the British Channel, and which may be defined as the decomposition of the classical Latin. It was soon divided into two great sister- idioms, the Langue-d'Oc and the Langue-d'Oil (so called from the different words for yes), the general boundary or line of demarcation between them being roughly assignable as coinciding with the Loire. The former of these languages, spoken to the south of this river, was closely allied to the Spanish and Italian, and was subsequently called the Provencal ; the latter was the parent of the French. Knowing the circumstances under which such a dialect as the Romance was formed, it is no difficult problem to establish d, priori the changes which the mother-tongue, or Latin, must have undergone, in its process of trans- formation into what, though afterwards developed into regular and beautiful dialects, was at first little better than a barbarous jargon. The language of ancient Rome, a highly inflected and complicated tongue, naturally lost all, or nearly all its inflections and grammatical complexity. Thus the Latin substantive and adjective lost all those terminations which in the original language expressed relation, as the various cases of the different declensions ; these relations being thence- forward indicated by the simpler expedient of prepositions. 22 ORIGIN OF THE ENGLiSH [CHAP. I. 7. The literary models introduced into England by the Norman invasion were no less important than the linguistic changes consequent upon the admixture of their Romance dialect with the Saxon speech. Together with the institutions of feudalism the Normans brought with them the poetry of feudalism, that is, the poetry of chivalry. The fat's and romances, the fabliaux and the legends of mediaeval chivalry soon began to modify the rude poetical sagas and the tedious narratives of the lives of saints and hermits which had formed the bulk of the literature of Saxon England. Few subjects have excited more lively controversy among the learned than the origin and specific character of the Romance literature. In particular the distinction between the compositions of the Norman Trouveres and of the Provencal Trouba- dours has given rise to many elaborate dissertations and many con- tending theories : and yet the fundamental question may be easily, and, we think, not unsatisfactorily, solved by the simple comparison of the two terms. Trouvbre and Troubadour are obviously the two forms of the same word as pronounced respectively by the population who spoke the Langue-d'Oil and the Langue-d'Oc. The natural and pic- turesque definition of a poet as a finder or inventor bears some analogy with the term Skald, or polisher of language, by which the same idea was represented among the Scandinavians, with the Greek 7ro/ the Danes. The long poem on the Church of York has also some good descrip- tive passages. He also wrote Epigram*, tcyict, and Jlniginata. Columban, Boniface, Bedc, aud Cuthbert, wrote some Latin venue; end, passing CHAP. I.] ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE. 27 ovei a few others, the list concludes, in the tenth century, with the Life of St. Wilfred, by FBTDE- 60DE, and the Life of St. SwiUiun by WOL8TAN. (2) The Latin I'rose Literature of the Anglo- Saxons consists of religious treatises, works on sci- ence and education, and histories in which the ec- clesiastical element preponderates; but its most interesting remains are the letters of Alcuin and Boniface, for the light they throw on contemporary history and manners. (a) The period opens with some writers, who were not Saxons, but of the old Celtic race, which had preserved British Christianity, or had learned it anew from Ireland. Passiag over the obscure Histortti of GILD AS, son of the British King of Alcluyd (Dumbarton), in the sixth century, and NENNIUS, whose work is probably not genuine, in the seventh, we come to ST. COLUMBANUS (lived about A. D. MS-CIS) of Ireland, who, having joined the lately founded monastery at Bangor, set out thence at the head of a mission to the eastern parts of Gaul, Switzerland, and the south-west of Ger- many, lie wrote in Latin several theological trea- tises, some poems, and five letters. Nearly two cen- turies later Ireland sent forth .JO1IANNE3 SCOTU8, urnamed from his native land EmGENA (d. A. D. 877), who settled in France, and became, by his dia- fectic skill and his acquaintance with the doctrines of Neo-Platonism, one of the founders of the philo- sophical sect of the Kealists. The story of his com- ing to England on Alfred's invitation is more than doubtful. (b) The earliest Anglo-Saxon prose writer in Latin is WILFRED (lived A. D. G34-709), Archbishop of York and apostle of Sussex, who succeeded, after troubled life, in uniting the churches of the Anglo- Saxon kingdoms. His works are lost ; but he de- serves mention as the founder of the school of learn- ing at York, which was fostered by Bishop EGBEBT (A. D. C78-7G6), and produced BEDE and ALCUIN, the two great names of the Anglo-Saxon Latin lit- erature. The course of BEDE (A. D. 672-705), surnamed the " Venerable," is a perfect type of the outward repose and intellectual activity of the monastic life, In its best aspect. At the age of seven he was placed under the teaching of Benedict Biscop, in the mon- astery of \Vearmouth ; became a deacon at nine- teen, and a priest at thirty. Whether he visited Rome is uncertain. He only left his monastery on rare visits to other religious houses ; and his dying moments were divided between religious exercises and dictating the last sentences of a work which he just lived to finish. His works embrace the whole compass of the learning of his age. Numbering no less than forty- tvc, they may be divided into four classes : Theo- bgical, consisting chiefly of commentaries on the Scriptures, pervaded by the allegorical method; Scientific Treatises, exhibiting the imperfect knowl- edge of science, from Pliny to his own time ; Gram- matical Works, which display much learning; with some correct but lifeless Latin poems; HiftGr- iral Compositions, which place him in the first rank among writers of the middle ages. The History of his own Monastery and the Life of St Cuthbert deserve mention ; but his great work is the Ecclesi- astical Hietvrii of the At^glo-Saxon^ fro.m thjr first settlement in England. IIo nsed the aid of tin most learned men of his time in wllccting the docu- ments and traditions of the various kingdoms, which he relates with scrupulous fidelity and in a very pleasing style. The Hillary was translated into Anglo-Saxon by King Alfred. Bede was surrounded by a body of literary friends, as Acca and others, among whom the most distin- guished was EGBEBT, Archbishop of York (about A. D. 678-766), the reformer of his diocese, and founder of the splendid library already mentioned. His writings are chiefly on points of discipline, and two of them, the Confessionale and faenitentiale, were published in Anglo-Saxon as well as in Latin. ST. BONIFACE ( Winfrid), a native of Crediton in Devonshire (lived about A. D. 680-755) and the apostle of Western Germany, has left a collection of valuable letters, amounting (with those addressed to him) to a hundred and six. The eighth century closes with the great name of ALCUIN (about A. D. 735-804). He was born at York, and, like Bede, was placed in a convent in his infancy. Trained in the school of Archbishop Egbert, he became the favorite pupil of that prelate's kinsman and suc- cessor, Albert, on whose appointment to the arch- bishopric (A. D. 7G6), the school was intrusted to Alcuin, just ordained a deacon. Eanbald, a pupil of Alcuin, on succeeding to the archbishopric (A. D. 780), sent Alcuin to Rome, and this mission caused his introduction to Charlemagne, at whose court he resided with magnificent appointments till A. D. 790, and again from A. D. 792 to his death. His works were commentaries, dogmatic and prac- tical treatises, lives of saints, and several vory interesting letters. His Latin poems have been al- ready noticed. He is chiefly important in the His- tory of English Literature, as another example, like that of Erigcna, of what the Continent gained from the learning of these islands. The name of ASSEB, Bishop of Sherborne (d. A. D. 910), is connected with a Latin history of King Alfred, of very doubt- ful authenticity. The renowned DUNSTAN (A. D. 925-088) wrote commentaries on the Benedictine rule, and other works. Of his contemporary ODO (d. 961), we have only a single letter. A few other names might still be mentioned. in. The VERNACULAR ANGLO-SAXON PBOSK LITERATURE contains few but great names. Above all shines that of KlXG ALFRED (A. D. 848-901), the story of whose early training and lift-long self- discipline needs not to be recounted here. His early love for the old national poetry, the growing neglect of Latin even by the priests, and the eager desire, of which he himself tells us, that the people might enjoy the treasures of learning collected in tha churches for security from the invaders, urged him to the culture of the native tongue for popular in- struction. While inviting over learned men to re- pair the decay of scholarship, the king himself set the example of translating existing works into the vernacular. Having learned Latin only late in life, he did not disdain the help of scholars, such ai Bishop Asser, in clearing up grammatical difficul- ties, while he brought to the work untiring industry, great capacity of comprehending the author's gen- eral meaning, and sound judgment upon points needing ili istration. His most imporU.nl transla- tion* were those of Bede's Eccletiattical History 28 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. [CHAP. I the Ancient Biitory of Oroaius, Boethius de Conso- latione Philosophise, and, for the use of the clergy, the Pastorale of St. Gregory. According to Wil- liam of Malmcsbury, Alfred had commenced an Anglo-Saxon version of the Psalms shortly before hi a death. Among the works falsely attributed to him are Alfred's Proverbs, a translation of jEsop's Fables, and a metrical version of the Metres of Boethius. Many works were translated by the king's order or after his example; for instance, the Dialogues of St. Gregory, by Werfred, Bishop of \Vor :cster. The new intellectual impulse, given by Alfred's policy of calling foreign scholars into the realm, which was followed by other kings down to the eve of the Conquest, sustained the revival of Anglo-Saxon literature in full activity for some time. The great light of the tenth century was AURIC, Archbishop of Canterbury, sumamed Grammaticus (d. A. D. 1006), whose opposition to Romish doc- trines called attention to his work, and so gave an impulse to Anglo-Saxon studies in modern times. His eighty Homilies are his chief work. He also translated the Books of Moses, and wrote other the- ological treatises. As a grammarian he labored to revive the neglected study of Latin by his Latin Grammar (from Donatus and Priscian), his Glos- lary and Colloquium (a conversation book). He appears as a scientific writer in the Manual of As- tronomy, if it is rightly assigned to him. He is often confounded with two other Alfrics, the name being common among the Anglo-Saxons. There was an Alfric, Abbot of Malmesbury (d. A. D. 994), and an Alfric, surnamcd Bata, Archbishop of York (d. 1051) , a devoted disciple of the great Alfric, whose Grammar and Colloquium he republished, besides writing a life of Bishop Ethelwold (A. D. 925-984). In the eleventh century we need only mention WULFSTAN, Archbishop of York (d. 1023), the *yttior of some homilies. It remains to notice two great monuments of Anglo-Saxon prose literature, the Chronicle and the Laws. The Saxon Clironicle is a record of the his- tory of the people, compiled at first, as is believed, for Alfred, by Plegmund, Archbishop of Canter- bury, who brought it down to A. D. 891. Thence it was continued, as a contemporary record, to the end of the Anglo-Saxon period, in the middle of the twelfth century. It breaks off abruptly in the first year of Henry H. (A. D. 1154). " It is a dry chronological record, noting in the same lifeless tone important and trifling events without the lightest tinge of draiui,tic color, of criticism in ireighing evidence, or o? judgment in the selection jf the facts narrated" (Marsh, Origin and History qf the English Lanixcye, Lect. iii. p. 103). This want of historical tcJent, as the same writer observes, prevents our learning from it much of our ancestors' social life, or cf the practical working of their in- stitutions. The fragments cf the Anglo-Saxon Laws contain some as early us the reign of Ethelbert, King of Kent, reduced, however, to the language of a later age. Alfred, who began the work, says that, with the advice of his Witan, he rejected what did not please him, but (\ddcd little of his own. The work wa then a'tbrrjttcd to and adopted by the Witan. His cHW (ollwsw In the*e labors were Athelrime, Ethelred, and Canute. (See SchaiiJ, Gesetze tier Angel-Sachsen, 2d ed. 1858.) B. AXGLO-NORMAN LITERATURE. A.D. 1060-1350. The Norman Conquest had both a destructive and a reconstructive influence on the literature of the country- The ordinance, forbidding the Saxon clergy to aspire to any ecclesiastical dignity, con- fined the literary activity that was left to the mon- asteries, except in the case of those who were will- ing to adapt themselves to the new state of things. The Anglo-Saxon learning gradually died out by the middle of the twelfth century, its chief work being the completion of the Saxon Chronicle in the monastery of Peterborough. The chief works of learning were composed in Latin ; while for lightei compositions the English adopted the language of their conquerors. On the other hand, the Normang introduced a new and most potent element of intel- lectual activity. The fifty years preceding the Con- quest had witnessed a great revival of learning on the Continent, originating from the Arabs, who had themselves become imbued with the Greek learning of the conquered East.- Thus the revival of letters in the eleventh century, like the brighter revival in the fifteenth, owed its source to the ancient Greeks ; but with this great difference : while, in the latter case, inspiration was drawn from the great poets and orators, the Arabs were chiefly attracted by the physical, logical, and metaphysical works of the school of Aristotle. The Aristotelian logic and spirit of systematizing were eagerly applied to the- ology, especially in France. The monasteries of Caen and Bee, in Normandy, became distinguished seats of the new science ; and in them were trained LANFKANC and ANSELM, the first great lights of Anglo-Norman learning. Indeed Anselm is often regarded as the founder of the Scholastic Philosophy, which was the fruit of the new movement. But he is only a connecting link. The old method of treating theology, followed by the Fathers, was based on the foundation of faith in the dogmatic statements of Scripture. The scholastic philosophy aspired to establish a complete system of truth by a chain of irrefragable reasoning. Anselm only ap- plied its methods to the establishment of separate doctrines; while ABELABD, breaking away from the old foundation of faith, which Anselm tacitly assumed, made the same methods the instruments of scepticism. He was met by ST. BEBNABD, who took his stand upon the old patristic ground. " Scholasticism," says Mr. Arnold (Eng. Lit. p. 15), " made a false start in the school of Bee; its true commencement dates a little later, and from Paris." Its founder was PETEK LOMBAED, called the " Master of the Sentences," from his Four Books of Sentences, published in A. D. 1151. Thus the same age produced St. Bernard, the last of the Fathers, and Peter Lombard, the first of the schoolmen. In England there is no trace of the new learning be- fore the Conquest, though she had helped to prepare for it by sending forth such men as Erigena and Alcuin. Erigena, indeed, as early as the ninth century, had employed philosophical methods in religious discussion; but he was a Platonist; tha schoolmen were Aristotelians. The new learning not only entered in the train of the Cowrwrw, tut CHAI.I.I ANGLO-NORMAN LITERATURE. 29 was fostered by his personal Influence. William, and nearly all his successors, down to Henry III., were themselves well educated, and patronized lit- erature and art. The displacement of the Saxon bishops and abbots seems to have arisen from con- tempt for their illiteracy, as well as from political motives ; and their places were filled by the most learned of the Norman ecclesiastics, as Archbishops Lanfranc and Anselm, UEBMAN, Bishop of Salis- bury, who founded a great iibraryi GODFREY, Prior of St. Swithin's at Winchester, who wrote Latin epigrams in the style of Martial, and GEOFFREY, un eminent scholar from the University of Paris, who founded a school at Dunstable, and acted, with his scholars, a drama of his own on the Life of St. Catharine. Numerous as were the Saxon monas- teries, no less than five hundred and fifty-seven new religious houses were founded, from the Conquest to the reign of John. All of these, as well as the cathedrals, had schools for Miose destined to the church, and general schools were founded in the towns and villager. The twelfth ce> tury witnessed the foundation of our two great L niversities ; but they were at first regarded rather as portals to the contineutal Universities, to which English subjects resorted in great numbers, especially to Paris, where they formed one of the four " nations." Clas- sical learning revived at the Universities, and was extended from the Latin poets to Greek and even Hebrew, in the thirteenth century, chiefly by the influence of ROBERT GBOSSETESTE, Bishop of Lincoln. About the same time, the invention of the art of making paper from linen rags more than made up for the growing lack of parchment, and gave a new mechanical impulse to literature. Meanwhile, the tenacity with which the English language held its ground among the common peo- ple, caused the ultimate fruit of these movements to be shown in the formation of a truly English literature in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It remains to mention the classes of literature and the chief writers of the period. Literature being cultivated almost entirely by the clergy and the minstrels, nearly all the prose works were in Latin, and the poetry in Norman-French j exclu- sive, however, of the contemporaneous Semi-Saxon literature (see below, C). An age of violence and oppression permitted but little popular literature, in the proper sense. 1. ANGLO-NORMAN AND ANGLO-SAXON LIT- ERATURE IN LATIN. 1. Theologian* and School- mat. LANFRANC {b. A. D. 1005, d. A. D. 1089) was a Lombard of Pavia, where, after studying in other Italian Universities, he practised as a pleader- Removing to Normandy, he opened a school at Avranches (A. D. 1035 or later), which became a centre of elegant Latinity. In A. D. 1042 he sud- denly joined the small abbey of Bee; was elected prior, and opened a school, which soon surpassed that of Avrauches. He soon found a wider field for his ambition as the counsellor of Duke William; nd being scut by him on a mission to Rome, he distinguished himself by defending the doctrine of transubstantiation, against Berengarius of Tours. In A. D. luufi (the year of the Conquest), William macie him abbot of his new monastery of St. Stephen at Caen, and in 1070 he became Archbishop of Canterbury, in place of the deposed Saxon prel- 3* ate Stigand. His reform of the Anglo-Saxon Church and severity towards its clergy concern us here less than his invitations to learned foreigners, whereby he founded a new school of science ana literature in England. His great work was the Treatise against ficrengarita (written A. I). 1W or 1080) ; he aflS wrote Commentaries on Scrip ture, and Letters. Many of Lanf Vane's works an lost. AN8KLM (b. A. D. 1033, d. 1109) was also an Italian, of Aosta. His eagerness for learning led him to Bee, where he succeeded Lanfranc as prior, and afterwards became abbot in place of Herluin (A. D. 1078). Most of his works were composed here, while he gained the highest reputation for piety, and taught diligently. On his second visit to England, in A. D. 1092, the voice of the bishopt and barons forced William Rufus to appoint him as the successor of Lanfranc, who had been dead four years. Anselm's troubles in the primacy be- long to history rather than literature; but amidst them all he continued to write and teach. It is un- necessary to enumerate his many works, which are less important than his influence on the learn- ing of his age. They consist of theological and dialectic treatises, homilies, devout meditations, and letters. His claims to a share in the Hym- nology of the church are doubtful. Besides many distinguished prelates, only inferior in fame to these two, some of whom are mentioned above, wa may name two writers of more general literature, JOHN OK SALISBURY (died Bishop of Chartres in A. D. 1182), an Englishman, who wrote a treatise De A'ugis (Jurvdium et t'est-igiis 1'kilosophorum, be- sides Latin verses ; and FETEB OF BLOIS (d. after A. D. 1108), whose letters throw much light on the characters and manners of his time ; he wrote many other works, and an interesting poem on Richard's misfortunes in Palestine. The English Schoolmen were for the most part of the Anglo-Saxon race, but lived chiefly abroad. ALEXANDER HALES, "the Irrefragable Doctor," a native of Gloucestershire, was the teacher of St. Bonaventure. He lived and taught abroad, and died at Paris, A. D. 1345. Jo- IIANNES DUNS SCOTUS, " the Subtle Doctor," taught at Oxford and Paris, and died at Bologna, A. D. 1308. WILLIAM OF OCCAM (b. A. D. 1300, d. A. D. 1347, at Munich), "the Invincible Doctor," spent most of his life at the court of the German Emperor, whose cause he maintained against the Pope. Though the pupil of the great Realist, Duru Scotus, he was the head cf the school of the Nomi- nalist*, who held that our abstract ideas are merely general expressions of thought, not necessarily cor- responding to real existences. At Oxford, the Franciscan friar, ROGER BACON (about A. D. 1214- 1292), by his devotion to physical science, gained the reputation of a sorcerer, while dimly anticipat- ing some of the great inventions of later times, among which is thought to have been that of gun- powder. His Opus Majvt is an inquiry into " the rooti ofwMorn;" namely, language, mathematics, optics, and experimental science. That he had begun to cast off the scholastic trammels, and al- ready to question nature in the spirit of his great namesake, is shown by his saying, on a disputed fact in physic >, " I have tried it, and it is not the fact, but the very reverse." 2, Latin Chrmicla of past and coijemporarj 30 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. [CllAP. I. history had already been commenced before the Conquest. Their writers were churchmen, and mostly of the Saxon race ; and, with a few excep- tions, they confined themselves to the history of England. Passing over the more than doultful work ascribed to INGC1.P1IU8, Abbot of Croyland (A. D. 1075-1109), and its continuation (to A. D. 1118), we have a History of the Norman Conquest by WILLJAJI OF POITIERS, a follower of the Con- queror, extending from A. D. 1035 to A. D. 1067 ; but the beginning and end are lost ; we know that it cune down to A. D. 1070. FLOBENOE OF WOBCE8- TIB (d. A. D. 1118) compiled a chronicle from the Creation to the year of his death, chiefly from the Saxon Chronicle, and the Chronology of Marianus Scotus, a German monk. EADMEB'S (d. A. D. 1124) history is chiefly a monument to the fame of Ansclm. OBPEKICUS VITALIS (b. A. D. 1075, near Shrewsbury, d. after A. D. 1143), wrote an Ecclesi- astical History in thirteen books, from the Creation to the latter year. The best of all these chroni- clers is WILLJAJI OF MALMESBUKY (about A. V. 1140), who dedicated his history to Robert, Earl of Gloucester, natural sou of Henry I. It is in two parts; the Gesta Begum Anglnrum, in five books, from the landing of Heugist and Horsa to A. D. 1120, and the Historia Novella, in three books, down to A. D. 1142. The work is written in the spirit and manner of Bedc. He also wrote a Life of Wulfstan, a history of the English Bishops, and other works. His contemporary, HENKY OF HUNTINGDON (d. after A. U. 1154), also a worthy follower of Bede, though inferior to William, wrote a History of England, from the landing of Julius Csesar to the accession of Henry II. (A. D. 1154). To the eight books of the history he added his oilier works, forming four more, the last consisting of his Latin poems. GIOFFEEY OF MONMOUTU (d. A. D. 1154) also inscribed to Robert, Earl of Gloucester, his Historia Britonum, which professes to be a translation of an old British chronicle brought over from Brittany by Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, in nine books: it relates the legendary story of the British kings, from Brutus, the great-grandson of ./Eneas, to the death of Cad-.vallader, son of Cad- Ivallo, in A. D. 638. The lively Welshman) keeps his country's traditions free from those rationaliz- ing attempts, which " spoil a good poem, without making a good history ; " and he provided for the romance writers some of their best stories, among the rest, that of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. His work was abridged by ALFRED or A-LUBED OF BEVEBLEY, and continued by CABADOC OF LANCABVAM to A. D. 1154. The latter work is only known in a Welsh version, which has been translated into English. Another learned Welshman, GIKALDUS CAMBBENSIB (Gerald Barry, b. about A. D. 1146, d. A. D. 1223), wrote topographical works on Wales and Ireland, an account of his own life, and many other works, including Latin poems. He was about the most vigorous and versatile author of his time. An.ur.i) OF RiEVATTX, in Yorkshire (b. A. D. 1109, d. A. D. 1166), has left an admirable account of the Battle of tlte Standard (A. D. 1138), and teveral theological works. ROGEB DE HOVEDEN (. e. of Howden, in Yorkshire) continued Bede's History from A. I). 732 tu A. D. 1202, traiucribing I many documents of great historical value. GEOF- FREY DE VlNSAUF wrote an important work on the Crusade, in which he followed Richard CocuJ de Lion. MATTHEW PABIS (a monk of St. Al- ban's) wrote his celebrated Historia Major, from the Nonnon Conquest to the year of his death, A. D. 1259. Much of it consists of open plagiarisms from the Chronicle, or Flore Historiarttm, of ROGEE DE WENUOVEB, also a monk of St. Al ban's, who died Prior of Belvoir, May 6th, A. D 1237. This work extends from the Creation to tht nineteenth year of Henry III. (A. D. KM), and th latter part is very valuable. It was published by the Rev. Henry O. Coxe, for the English Historical Society, 5 vols. 8vo., London, 1841-1844. Another monk of St. Alban's, WILLIAM RISHAXGEE, con- tinued the work of Matthew Paris, probably to the fifteenth of Edward II. (A. D. 1322), but the lattei part of his book is lost. NICHOLAS TRIVET wrote an excellent history, from Stephen to Edward I. (A. D. 1135-1307), which was edited by Mr. T. Hog, London, 1845. From these two works was compiled the Chronicle of St. Alba-Hi, which is plagiarized (like Roger of Wendover by Matthew Paris) in the Historia Anijlicaaa of WALSINGEAM, published by Mr. Riley, 1803. Another chronicler of the 14th century is RALPH or RAXULVII HlGDEN, a Benedictine monk of St. Werburgh at Chester, where he died at a great age, about A. D. 1370. His Polychronicon was a universal History in seven books. Only the part preceding the Norman Conquest was printed in Gale's Seriptores XV. (Oxon. Kl, fol.); bnt John de Trevisa's English translation of the whole work, completed before the end of the century, was printed by Caxton, who added an eighth book, in A. D. 1482. Some author- ities ascribe to Higden the Chester Mysteries, per- formed in A. D. 1328. The history of Samson, Abbot ofSttry St. Edmunds (A. D. 1173-1202), by JOCELJN OF BUAKELONK, only recently discov- ered, has furnished the materials for Mr. Carlyle's vivid picture of the old abbot and his age (Past and Present, 1843). Besides the writings of these chroniclers (and sev- eral almost as important might be named), we have a mass of public rolls and registers, beginning with Domesday Book ; but these official documents hard- ly belong to literature. 3. The frequent resort of Englishmen to the Uni- versity of Bologna gax an impulse to the study of Civil Law, which excited the emulation of the gr=at masters of the Common Law, and so produced, towards the end of the twelfth century, the first great treatise on the laws of England, the Tractat>u de Leffibus et Cansuetadinitnu AngliK, by the chief justiciary, RANULF DE GLANVIL (d. A. D. 1190). 4. The Letters of the leading churchmen of the age, besides the value of tlieir matter, afford many good specimens of Latin composition. Beginning with Lanfrane and Anselm the series comes down to TIIOMAS A BECKET and STEPHEN LANTON ; but by far the most valuable for their matter, and the most interesting for their literary excellence, are those of John of Salisbury and Peter of Bio is, which reveal to us much both of the political and the scholastic history of the latter half of the twelfth century. The letters of ROBERT GBOSSETESTJ have been edited by Mr. Luard, 1861 ; and the woril CHAP. I.] ANGLO-NORMAN LITERATURE. 31 of John of Salioury are thoroughly analyzed in toe monograph cf Dr. Schaarschinidt, Leipzig, 1862. 5. Latin 1'oeli y was cultivated as an elegant ac- complishment b/ the men oi' learning, as Lawrence of Durham, Henry of Huntingdon, John of Salis- bury, John de Ilnuteville, and others. But a more natural, though irregular school was formed under the influence of the minstrels, the application of whose accentual system of verse to Latin, in defiance of quantity, gave rise to the Leonine Verse, which was used for epigrams, satires, and also for the hymns of the Church. The term Leonine describes specifically verses rhymed as well as accentual j but both forms are common. Leonine verse was natu- ralized in Europe by the end of the eleventh century. It was applied to hymnology by St. Bernard, St. Thomc.f Aquinas, and Pope Innocent III. ; and every one is familiar with some of the finest of these hymns, as the Dies Ires and Stabat Mater. (See the Hymni Ecclesiie, Oxon. 1838. A curious instance of its use in England is furnished by the epitaph on Bede, the first line of which " Continet hsee theca BetUe venerabilis ossa," was transformed by later ingenuity into " Continet haic fossa Bed.-e venerabilis ossa." A further stage of license is seen in the frivolous Uacaronic 1'oetry, which abounds not only in Latin words of the strangest formation, but in mix- tures of different languages, as in the following example, in Latin, French, and English, belonging to the early part of Edward II. 's reign (Marsh, p. 247):- " Quant homne deit parleir, videat qua8 verba lo- quatur, Sen coveut aver, ne stultior inveniatur. Quando quis loquitur, bole rcsoun reste therynne, I>erisum patitur, ant lutei so nhall he v;iine ; and so on. " This confusion of tongues," a "Ids Mr. Marsh, "led very naturally to the corruption of them all, and consequently none of them were written or spoken as correctly as at the period when they were kept distinct." But the Leonine, as indeed also the regular verse, was chiefly used for satire, especially by the secular clergy and by laymen against the regular clergy and the vices of the age. Here is one example : " Mille annis jam pcractis Nulla tides cst in pactis; Mel in ore, verba lactis, Fel in corde, fraus iu factis." It was employed also for all manner of light and popular pieces. The earliest known writer in this ityle was HiLAUics, a disciple of Abelard, and jrobably an Englishman, who flourished about A.. D. 1125. A mass of such poetry, probably by various writers, is ascribed to WALTER MAI-ES, or MAT, Archdeacon of Oxford under Henry II., under the general title of Confessio Golias, Golias being the type of loose livers, especially among the clergy. Map also wrote iu regular Latin verse, and in prose De fi'ugis Curialium. He was an author, too, in Anglo-JCorman poetry and prose, chiefly on the legends of Arthur. Altogether he seems to have been one of the most active minds of the age. The regular Latin writers were up in arms against die Leonines. GEOFFREY VINSAUF, already no- ticed as a chronicler, addressed to Pope Innocent ni. fc regular poem, ff A'ova Poetrta, o merit, and containing interesting illusions to con- temporary history. His overstrained lament fol Richard's death is satirized by Chaucer even wMl* addressing him as " O Gaufride, dear maister soverain." One of the last and best examples of the regulat Latin poetry is the work of JOSEPHI'S laCANua (Joseph of Exeter, d. about A. D. 1210) Oe Bella Trojano, which was so popular as to be used ; n schools with the classic poets. He also wrote a Latin poem entitled Antiochei's, on Richard's ex- pedition to Palestine. But the whole style wa doomed to extinction before a more vigorous rival t)>an the Leonines the vernacular poetry which sprang up in imitation of the French minstrelsy and it had almost disappeared by the middle of tha thirteenth century. n. The ANGLO-NORMAN FRENCH LITERA- TURE was, as already observed, chiefly in poetry, and the production of laymen, whether the pro- fessional minstrels, or knights and even kings, who deemed it a gentlemanly accomplishment to sing aa well as act the deeds of chivalry. RICHARD CB * The sirvente was a piece for one performer, thj tenson a duet between two. f There is a question, however, whether his song wai of the Paladin Koland, or of Kollo, the foundel of "oruiau line. A'OTS ILLUSTRATIONS. [CHAP. I. T.5lACX(i. A- D- 1MB), hy thoss of SSM sis St. Qraai (or A* QsjX *i insfe Jteroa, the Jfi in dc Jsrrssf. rhr fjsst* dm jr. Orsts^ sad the Ji in V ssi Jbrt <>**; with a sespsei, in two parts, die << TKaSsss (orTiistuss). The chief writer ssiBsafMed); bat I part of Tristan, were by sttNUXX D* BAKKOX, and the first part of me Trirts. by L00* :by SirThos. r Edward IV., has been fistd'hy Mr. Wright, tram the hut black-letter csStisjD of MM. assier the tide of " IM Jhrt ad his de- scription of battles without being reminded of the Ode on AOeistan's victory at Bronsmburgh." After and languages, poet (Grundlvig), in Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian I stand Layamon *s beyond compor- t lofty and animated in its style, at reminding the reader of the splendid of Anglo-Saxon verse. It may also be added, that the nillinnisl character of irczh of the it peculiarly valuable as a monument of me hofjnnge, sine* it serves to convey to us, in all probability , the Ctrl-rent speech of the writer's time." (Prtfae*, pp. Tnii, xxiv.) His verse also retains of the Anglo-Saxon poetry. h the rhyming couplets of the French predominating. Besides alteration, which consists in the sameness of initial consonant*, Layamon uses the kindred device of ajuonance, that is, the concnrrence of syllables containing the same voweL The rhyming couplets are founded (as Dr. Guest has shown, Batarj of CHAP. L] OLD ENGLISH LITERATURE. . TOL iL, pp. IM HL) OB ft* Amglo-SaxoB ' rhTthms of four, fire, ox, or rrea of'nre *ad tr being the freqaent. Theim- portant inring of I^ymaoa-iBmbet OB Ike history of the formation of Ike English hijiagi totally du>. priated by Sr Thomat kT s/A. CBmarme, 33 r,fc J ::::-:.: r :.-.:-. - :. D. OU) EXGLI^n LrTEBATUKE. A- D. ISO- tat Bijr (he mUmc f the reigm of Bear/ HI- <** m AmOBK Cbc chief Immy woda T Ode period re printed by the Percy Society in ttli AeaW Boa of Lrns of the Saint, i. also attribmed to laatkor, whose works, though of ftke OB a atB larger scale i* the metrical chronicle of metre, mm party m Ike AlexBadnae, NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. [CHAP. L notes are added, and many of the pieces (including political ballads) printed by Wartou, Percy, Ritson, and Wrignt. One of the most pleasing of these poems is the Owl and Nightingale, a dispute between the two birds about their powers of song, consisting of about 1800 verses in rhymed octosyllabic metre. The satirical poem, called the Land of Cockayne, which Warton placed before the reign of Henry II., is at least as late as A. D. 1300, and is clearly traced to a French original. It is somewhat doubtfully ascribed, with other Doems, to MICHAEL OF KIL- DAEE, the first Irishman who wrote verses in Eng- lish. It is a satire upon the monks. That the Metrical Romances should have been translated from the French, is a natural result of the fact, that 1'rench was the language of popular literature for come generations after the Conquest. Many of the legends were, indeed, British and Anglo-Saxon; but this may be accounted for by the affinity of the Britons and Armoricans, and the close connection between the Norman and the later Anglo-Saxon kings. Nor is it probable that the Troxvtres should have missed many of these legends. Their poetry at first amused the leisure and enlivened the ban- quets of the conquerors; but, as the two races became one, and as the Anglo-Saxon tongue died out, they began to be translated into the new- formed language of the English people. The most popular of these, such as JJaveJok, Sir Tristram, Sir Gawaine, Jfyng Horn, King Alesaunder, and Richard Coew de Lion, may be referred to the beginning of Edward I.'s reign. They are fol- lowed by a series of poems by unknown authors, far too numerous to mention, down to and consid- erably below the age of Chauer, many of which re printed in the collections mentioned below. Th change, by which these English Metrical Romances superseded the French originals, may be referred to the fourteenth century. In the fifteenth their popularity, besides being divided with th prose romances, yielded, at least among the educated classes, to the regular poetry of Chaucer and hi school ; but they only ceased to be generally writtev after the beginning of the sixteenth. It was not til three hundred years later that Sir Walter Scott re- vived the taste for a kind of poetry, similar in form, but appealing to very different sentiments. Among the Minor Poena, other than Romances, are many imitations of the French Fabliaiuc, or Tales of Common Life. The Satires, both political and ecclesiastical, undoubtedly helped the progress of freedom under Henry III. and his successors, and prepared the way for Wicklift'e, if they do no< rather exhibit a state of popular feeling demanding such a teacher. The chief authorities for these four periods are Wright, Eiographia Britannica Literaria. Vol. I. The Anglo-Saxon Period, Lond. 1842; Vol. H. The Anglo-Norman Period, Lond. 184G; Percy, Reliqwis of Ancient English Poetry, first published in 1765; Warton, Hittory of English Poetry, 1774, edited by Price, 3 vols. 8vo., Lond. 1840; Tyr- whitt, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, with Prelimina- ry Essays, 1775 ; Pinkerton, Scottish Poems,3vola. 1792; Herbert, Robert the Devylle, 1798; Ritson, Ancient Sonys, and other collections; Ellis, George, Specimens of Early English Metrical Jiomancei, 3 vols. 8vo. 1805; Wright, Political Songs of Eng- land from John to Edward II., 1839; the publica- tions of the Roxburghe Club, the Bannatyne, Maitland, Abbotsford, and Camden Societies, tha Society of Antiquaries, &c. ; Chambers, Cyclopaedia of English Literature ; Craik, History of EngluM Literature and the English Language, 2 vols., 18S1| Marsh, Orig't and /fitforj of tke Euglu.i utv iTUOfl*, 1862. A. D. 1350.] THE AGE OF CHAUCER. 35 CHAPTER II. THE AGE OF CHAUCER. A. D. 1350 A. D. 1400. { 1. The fourteenth century a great period of transition Chaucer, the type of his age. 2. His literary predecessors, especially GOWER. 3. Influence of WiCLirFE. 4. CHAUCER: his personal history, character, and appearance. 5. Twc periods in his literary career, corresponding to the Romantic and Renaissance tendencies. The religious element : his relations to Wicliffe. $ 6. Critical survey of his works. Of the Romantic type : (i.) Rommmt of the Rose ; (ii.) Court of Love ; (iii.) Assembly of Fowls ; (iv.) Cuckow and Nightingale ; (v.) fhe Flower and the Leaf ; (vi.) Chaucer's Dream ; (vii.) Boko of the Duchesse ; (viii.) House of Fame. Of the Renaissance type : (ix.) The Legende of Good Women ; (x.) Troilus and Cresseide. 7. The CANTERBURY TALES; the Prologue and Portrait Gallery. $8. Plan incomplete. The existing Tales ; their arrangement, metrical forms, and sources. $ 9. Critical examination of the chief Tales, in their two classes, serious and humorous. The two prose Tales. 10. Chaucer's services to the English language. 1. THE fourteenth century is the most important epoch in the intellectual history of Europe. It is the point of contact between two widely-differing eras in the social, religious, and political annals of oui race ; the slack water between the ebb of Feudalism and Chivalry, and the " young flood " of the Revival of Letters and the great Protestant Reformation. As in the long bright nights of the Arctic summer, the glow of the setting sun melts imperceptibly into the redness of the dawning, so do the last brilliant splendors of the feudal institutions and the chivalric literature transfuse themselves, at this momentous period, into the glories of that great intellectual movement which has given birth to modern art, letters, and science. Of this great transform-; ationthe personal career, no less than the works, of the first great Eng- lish poet, CHAUCER, will furnish us with the most exact type and expres- sion ; for, like all men of the highest order of genius, he at once followed and directed the intellectual tendencies of his age, and is himself the " abstract and brief chronicle " of the spirit of his time. Dante is not more emphatically the representative of the moral, religious, and political ideas of Italy, than Chaucer of English literature. He was, indeed, an epitome of the time in which he lived ; a time when chivalry, about to perish forever as a political institution, was giving forth its last and most dazzling rays, " and, like the sun, looked larger at its setting; " whet the magnificent court of Edward III. had carried the splendor of tha system to the height of its development ; and when the victories of Sluys, of Crecy, and Poitiers, by exciting the national pride, tended to consummate the fusion into one vigorous nationality of the two elements which formed the English people and the English lan guage. It was these triumphs that gave to tha English character in 36 THE AGE OF CHAUCER. [CHAP. II. peculiar insularity; and made the Englishman, whether knight or yeoman, regard himself as the member of a separate and superior race, enjoying a higher degree of liberty and a more solid material welfare than existed among the neighboring continental monarchies. The literature, too, abundant in quantity, if not remarkable for much origi- nality of form, was rapidly taking a purely English tone; the rhyming chronicles and legendary romances were either translated into, or originally composed in, the vernacular language. 2. Thus, among the predecessors of Chaucer, the literary stars that heralded the splendid dawning of our national poetry, Richard Rolle, Laurence Minot, and the remarkable satirist Langlande in South Biitain, an :. Barbour, Wyntoun, and Blind Harry in Scotland, all show evident tr. ces of a purely English spirit.* The immediate poetical predecessor of Chaucer, however, was undeniably GOWER, whose interminable productions, half moral, half narrative, and with a con- siderable infusion of the scholastic theology of the day, though they certainly will terrify a modern reader by their tiresome monotony and the absence of originality, rendered inestimable services to the infant literature, by giving regularity, polish, and harmony to the language. Indeed, the style and diction of Gower is surprisingly free from difficult and obsolete expressions ; his versification is extremely regular, and he runs on in a full and flowing, if commonplace and unpoetical, stream of disquisition. It is very curious, as an example of the contemporary existence of the French, the Latin, and the vernacular literature at this period in England, that the three parts of Gower's immense work should have been composed in three different languages : the Vox Cla- mantis in Latin, the Speculum Meditantis in Norman-French, and the Confcssio Amantis in English. f ^ 3. In endeavoring to form an idea of the intellectual situation of England in the fourteenth century, we must by no means leave out of the account the vast influence exerted by the preaching of WiclifFe, and the mortal blow struck by him against the foundations of Catholic 'supremacy in England. This, together with the general hostility excited by the intolerable corruptions of the monastic orders, which had gradually invaded the rights, the functions, and the possessions of the far more practically-useful working or parochial clergy, still further intensified that inquiring spirit which prompted the people to refuse obedience to the temporal as well as spiritual authority of the Roman See, and paved the way for an ultimate rejection of the Papal yoke. Much influence must also be attributed to WiclifTe's translation of the Bible into tl e English language, and to the gradual employment of that idiom in the services of the church, towards the perfecting and regu- lacing of the English language; an influence similar in kind to the settlement of the German language by Luther's version of the same holy book, though, perhaps, less powerful in degree ; fo.- in the latter case * For an account of Chaucer's predecessors, see Notes and Illustrations (A). t For a fuller account of Gower, see Notes and Illustrations (B). A. D. 1350.] THE AGE OF CHAVCER. 87 the reading class in Germany must ha\ ; been more numerous than in the England of the fourteenth century." 4. GEOFFREY CHAUCER was born in 1328. and his long and active life extended till the 25th of October, 1400. Consequently the poet's career almost coincides, in its commencement, with the splendid admin- istration of Edward III. ; and comprehends also the short and disastrous reign of Richard II., whose assassination preceded the poet's death by only a few months. In the brilliant court of Edward, in the gay and fantastic tourney, as well as in the sterner contests of actual warfare, the poet appears to have played no insignificant part. He is supposed to have been sprung of wealthy, though not illustrious parentage, and must have been of gentle blood ; his surname, which is the French Cfiausster, evidently pointing at a continental at that period equiv- alent, in a certain degree, to an aristocratic origin. Besides this, we have distinct proof, not only in the fact of his having been " armed a knight" (which is shown by his evidence in the disputed cause of the Scrope and Grosvenor arms), but also in the honorable posts which he held, that Chaucer must have belonged to the higher sphere of society. His marriage, too, with Philippa de Roet, a lady of Poitevin birth, tne daughter of a knight, and one of the maids of honor in attendance upon Queen Philippa, would still further tend to confirm this sup- position. Though but little credit is due to the details set forth in the ordinary biographies of the poet, I will condense into a rapid sketch such as are best established ; for every trait is interesting that helps us to realize the individual existence of so illustrious a man. The inscription upon his tomb in Westminster Abbey, which still exists, though the recumbent Gothic statue of the poet, originally a portrait, has become unhappily so defaced that even the details of the dress are no longer distinguishable, fixes the period of his birth in 1328, and that of his death in 1400. This tomb, however, was not erected till 1556, by Mr. Nicholas Brigham, probably an admirer of his genius. Chaucer calls himself a Londenois or Londener in the Testa- ment of Love. In his Court of Love he speaks of himself under the name and character of " Philogenet of Cambridge, Clerk; " but this hardly proves that he was educated at Cambridge. According to an authentic record, he was taken prisoner in 1359 ^J tne French at the siege of Rhetiers, and being ransomed, according to the custom of those times, was enabled to return to England, in 1360. His marriage with Philippa de Roet, which took place in 1367, may have brought him more under the notice of the court: for in 1367 we find him named one of the "valets of the king's chamber," and writs are addressed to him under the then honorable designation " dilectus valettus noster." His official car?;r appears to have been active and even distinguished : he enjoyed during a long period various profitable offices connected with the customs, having been comptroller of the For an account of Wicliffe and his school, see Notes and Illustratio -3 (C). 4 r o -4 38 THE AGE OF CHAUCER. [CHAF. II. important revenue arising from the large importation of Bordeaux and Gascon wines into the port of London ; and he seems also to have been occasionally employed in diplomatic negotiations. Thus, he wat joined with two citizens of Genoa in a commission to Italy in 1373, on which occasion he is supposed to have made the acquaintance of Palrarch, then the most illustrious man of letters in Europe. Partly in consequence of his marriage with Philippa de Roet, whose sister, Catherine Swynford, was first the mistress and afterwards the wife of John of Gaunt, and partly perhaps from sharing in some of the political ail d religious opinions of that powerful prince, Chaucer was identified to a considerable degree both with the household and party of the duke of Lancaster; and the death of the duchess Blanche in 1369 is believed to have suggested to him the subject of his Boke of the Duc/iesse, and the Complaynte of the Blacke Knyght. One of the most interesting particulars of his life was his election as representative for Kent in the parliament of 1386, which was dissolved in December of the same year. The year 1382 was the signal for a great and unfavorable change ir. the poet's fortunes. In consequence of the active part taken by him in the struggle between the court and the city of London, on occasion of the re-election of John of Northampton to the mayoralty, Chaucer fell into disgrace and difficulty, and was exposed to serious persecution, and even imprisoned in the Tower, whence he is said to have attained his liberation only on condition of accusing and denouncing his asso- ciates. This imprisonment lasted three years; and in addition to heavy fines and the loss of his offices, the poet underwent a severe domestic calamity in the death of his wife, in 1387. The catastrophe in his affairs to which we have alluded was, however, followed by a partial restoration to favor ; for in 1390 he was appointed to the office of clerk of the king's works, which he held for only about a year; and there is reason to believe that, though his pecuniary circumstances must have been, during a great part of his life, proportionable to the position he occupied in the state and in society, his last days were more or less clouded by embarrassment. It is with regret that we are obliged to abandon the supposition, founded on insufficient evidence, of his having resided, during the latter part of his life, at Donnington Castle. It is more probable that the close of his career was passed at Woodstock, where a house was long shown as having been the poet's residence. His death took place at Westminster, and the house in H'l ich this event occurred was afterwards removed to make room for the chapel of Henry VII. If we may judge from an ancient and probably authentic portrait of Chaucer, attributed to his contemporary and fellow-poet, Occleve, as well as from a curious and beautiful miniature introduced, according to the fashion of those times, into one of the most valuable manu- script copies of his works, our great poet appears to have been a man of pleasing and acute, though somewhat meditative and abstracted countenance, wearing a long beard; and he seems to have become A. D. 1400.] TEE AGE OF CHAUCER. 39 somewhat corpulent towards the end of his life, at whicn time the Can* terbury Tales were written. These peculiarities of personal appear- ance, as well as some others, giving indications of nis manners and character, are also alluded to by the poet himself in the Tales them- selves. When Chaucer is in his turn called upon by the host of the Tabard, himself represented as a " large man," and a " faire burgess,' to contribute his story to the amusement of the pilgrims, he is rallied by honest Harry Bailey on his corpulency, as well as on his studioui and abstracted air : " What man art thou ? " quod he, "Thou lokest as thou woldest fynde an hare ; For ever on the ground I se the stare. Approach nere, and loke merrily. Now ware you, sires, and let this man have space. He in the wast is shape as wel as I : This were a popet in an arm to embrace, For any womman, smal and fair of face. He semeth elvisch by his countenance, For unto no wight doth he daliaunce." The good-nature with which the poet receives these jokes, and the readiness with which he commences a new story when uncourteously cut short, all seem to point to the gentlemanly and sociable qualities of an accomplished man of the world. 5. The literary and intellectual career of Chaucer seems to divide itself naturally into two periods, closely corresponding with the two great social and political tendencies which meet in the fourteenth cen- tury. The earlier productions of Chaucer bear the stamp and charactei of the Chivalric, his later and more original creations of the Renais- sance literature. It is more than probable that the poet's visits to Italy, then the fountain and centre of the great literary revolution, brought him into contact with the works and the men by whose exam- ple the change in the taste of Europe was brought about. Dante, it is true, died before the birth of Chaucer; and though his influence as a poet, a theologian, and a metaphysician, may not yet have fully reached England, yet Chaucer must have fallen under it in some degree. There is a third element in the character of Chaucer's writings, besides the imitation of the decaying Romance and the rising Renaissance litera- turo, which must be taken into account by all who would form a true conception of his intellect; and this is the religious element. It is difficult to ascertain how far the poet sympathized with the bold doc- trines of Wicliffe, who, like himself, was favored and protected by John of Gaunt, fourth son of Edward III. It is, however, probable, that though he sympathized as is shown by a thousand satirical passages in his poems with Wicliffe's hostility to the monastic orders and abhorrence of tha corruptions of the clergy, and the haughty claim;, tf papal supremacy, the poet did not share in the theological opinions of me reformer, then regarded as a dangerous heresiarch, Chaucer probably remained faithful to the creed of Catholicism, while *0 THE AGE OP CHAUCER. [CHAP. 11 attacking with irresistible satire the abuses of the Catholic ecclesiastical administration. How intense that satire is, may be gathered from the contemptible and odious traits which he has lavished on nearly all hit portraits of monastic personages in the Canterbury Tales ; and not less clearly from the strong contrast he has made between the slotn, sensuality, and trickery of these persons, and the almost ideal per- fection of Christian virtue which he has associated with his Persoune, the only member of the secular or parochial clergy he has introduced into his inimitable gallery. It is by no means to be understood that the principal works of this great man can be ranged chronologically under the two strongly marked categories just specified ; or that all those bearing manifest traces of the Provencal spirit and forms were written previously, and those of the Renaissance or Italian type sub- sequently, to any particular epoch in the poet's life; but only that his earlier productions bear a general stamp of the one, and his later of the other literary tendency; while the greatest and most original of all, the Canterbury Tales, may be placed in a class by itself. 6. A brief critical examination of Chaucer's works may serve to point out, however imperfectly, the boundless stores of imagination and pathos, of wisdom and of wit, which the father of English poetry has embodied in language that has never been surpassed, and seldom equalled, for harmony, variety, and picturesqueness. I shall reserve to the last the more detailed analysis of the Canterbury Tales. On a rough general inspection of the longer works which compose the rather voluminous collection of Chaucer's poetry, it will be found that about eight of them are to be ascribed to a direct or indirect imitation of purely Romance models, while three fall naturally under the category of the Italian or Renaissance type. Of the former class the principal are the Romaunt of the Rose, the Court of Love, the Assembly of Fowls, the Cuckow and the Nightingale, the Flower and the Leaf, Chancer's Dream, the Boke of the Duchesse, and the House of Fame. Under the latter we must range the Legend of Good Women, Troilus and Creseide, Anelyda and Arcyte, and above all the Canterbury Tales. (i.) The Romaunt of the Rose is a translation of the famous French allegory Le Roman de la Rose, which forms the earliest monument of French literature in the thirteenth century. The original is of inordinate .length, containing, even in the unfinished state in which it was left, 22,000 verses, and it consists of two distinct portions, the work of two very different hands. It was begun by Guillaume de Lorris, who com- pleted about 5000 lines, and was continued after his death by the witty and sarcastic Jean de Meun : the former of these authors died in 1260, and the latter probably about 1318, which will make him nearly the contemporary of Dante. The portion composed by Lorris has great poetical merit, much invention of incident, vivid character-painting, and picturesque description ; the allegorical coloring of the whole, though wire-drawn and tedious to our modern taste, was then highly admired, and gave the t?.le immense popularity. The continuation by Meun, though following up the allegory, diverges into a much more A. D. 1400.] THE AGE OF CHAUCER. 41 satirical spirit, and abounds in what were then regarded as most auda- cious attacks on religion, social order, the court, and female reputation. Even at this distance of time it is impossible not to admire the bold- ness, the vivacity, and the severity of the satire. According to the almost universal practice of the old Romance poets, the story is put into the form of a dream or vision ; and the principal allegoric person- ages introduced, as Hate, Felony, Avarice, Sorrow, Elde, Pope-Holy, Poverty, Idleness, &c., are of the same kind as usually figure in the poetical narratives of the age. Lover, the hero, is alternately aided and obstructed in his undertakings, the principal of which is that of culling the enchanted rose which gives its name to the poem, by a multitude of beneficent or malignant personages, such as Bel-Accueil, Faux-Semblant, Danger, Male-Bouche, and Constrained-Abstinence. Chaucer's translation, which is in the octosyllabic Trouvere measure of the original, and consists of 7699 verses, comprehends the whole of the portion written by Lorris, together with about a sixth part of Meun's continuation ; the portions omitted having either never been translated by the English poet in consequence of his dislike of the immoral and anti-religious tendency of which they were accused, or left out by the copyist from the early English manuscripts. The trans- lation gives incessant proof of Chaucer's remarkable ear for metrical harmony, and also of his picturesque imagination ; for though in many places he has followed his original with scrupulous fidelity, he not unfrequently adds vigorous touches of his own. Thus, for example, in the description of the Palace of Elde, a comparison between the original and the translation will show us a ^ rand image entirely to be ascribed to the English poet : Travail et Douleur la herbergent, With hir Labour and Travaile Mais ils la tient et enfergent, Logged ben with Sorwe and Woo, Et tant la batent et tormentent, That never out of hir court goo. Que mort prochaine li presentent. Peyne and Distresse, S ykenesse and Ire, And Malencoly, that angry sire, Ben of hir paleys senatoures ; Gronyng and Grucchyng hir herbejeours, The day and nyght, hir to turment, And tellen hir, erliche and late, That Det'i stondith armed at hir gate. (ii.) The Court of Love is a work bearing, both in its form and spirit, strong traces of that amorous and allegorical mysticism which runs through all the Provencal poetry, and which seems to have been developed into substantive institutions in the Cours d'Amour of Picardy and Languedoc, whose arrtts form such a curious example of the refining scholastic subtleties of mediaeval theology transferred to the fashions of chivalric society. It is written in stanzas of seven lines, each line being of ten syllables; the first and third rhyming together, as do the second, fourth, and fifth, and again the sixth and seventh. It is written in the name of " Phiiogenet of Cambridge," 4* 42 THE AGE OF CHAUCER. [CHAP. II. clerk (or student), who is directed by Mercury to appear at the Court of Venus. The above designation has induced some critics to suppose that the poet meant under it to indicate himself, and have drawn from it a most unfounded supposition that Chaucer had studied at Cam bridge. The poet proceeds to give a description of the Castle of Love, where Admetus and Alcestis preside as king and queen. Philogenet is then conducted by Philobone to the Temple, where he sees Venus and Cupid, and where the oath of allegiance and obedience to *Jhe twenty commandments of Love is administered to the faithful. 'Iht hero is then presented to the Lady Rosial, with whom, in strict accord- ance with Provenqal poetical custom, he has become enamoured in & dream. We then have a description of the courtiers, two of whom, Golden and Leaden Love, seem to be borrowed from the Eros and Anteros of the Platonic philosophers. The most curious part of the poem is the celebration of the grand festival of Love on May-day, when an exact parody of the Catholic Matin service for Trinity Sunday is chanted by various birds in honor of the God of Love. (iii.) In the Assembly of Fowls we have a poem not very dissimilar in form and versification to the preceding. The subject is a debate carried on before the Parliament of Birds to decide the claims of three eagles for the possession of a beautiful forniel (female or hen) of the same species, which perches upon the wrist of Nature. The principal incidents of this poem were probably borrowed from a fabliau to which Chaucer has alluded in another place, and the popularity of which is proved by the existence of several versions of the same subject, as for instance, Hueline et Eglantine, Le Jugement d' Amour, and Florence et Blancheflor. (iv.) The Cucko-w and the Nightingale, though of no great length, is one of the most charming among this class of Chaucer's productions : it describes a controversy between the two birds, the former of which was among the poets and allegorists of the -Middle Ages the emblem of profligate celibacy, while the Nightingale is the type of constant and virtuous conjugal love. In this poem we meet with a striking ex- ample of that exquisite sensibility to the sweetness of external nature, and in particular to the song of birds, which was possessed by Chaucer in a higher degree, perhaps, than by any other poet in the world; ae witness the following inimitable passage : " There sat I downe among the faire floures, And sawe the birdes trippe out of hir boures, There as they rested hem alle the night ; They were so joyful of the dayes light, They began of May for to done honoures. They coude that service al by rote ; There was many a lovely note ! Some songe loud as they had plained, And some in other manner voice yfained, And some al oute with the fulle throte. A. D. 1400.] THE AGE OF CHAUCER. 43 They proyned hem, and maden hem right gay, And daunceden and lepten on the spray And evermore two and two in fere, Right so as they had chosen hem to-yere In Feverere upon Saint Valentine's day. And the rivere that I sat upon, It made such a noise as it ron, Accordaunt with the birdes armony, Me thought it was the beste melody That mighte ben yheard of any man." (v.) The Flower and the Leaf is, like the preceding poems, an allegory related in the form of a chivalric and pastoral adventure. A lady, unable to sleep, wanders out into a forest on a spring morning an opening or mise en sc&ne which often recurs in poems of this age and seating herself in a delicious arbor, listens to the alternate song of the goldfinch and the nightingale. Her reverie is suddenly interrupted by the approach of a band of ladies clothed in white, and garlanded with laurel, agnus-castus, and woodbine. These accompany their queen in singing a roundel, and are in their turn interrupted by the sound of trumpets and by the appearance of nine armed knights, followed by a splendid train of cavaliers and ladies. These joust for an hour, and then advance to the first company, and each knight leadr t. lady to a laurel to which they make an obeisance. Another troop of ladies now approach, habited in green and led by a queen, who do reverence to a tuft of flowers, while the leader sings a " bargaret," or pastoral song, in honor of the daisy, " si douce est la Marguerite." The sports are broken off, first by the heat of the sun which withers all the flowers, and afterwards by a violent storm of thunder and rain, in which the knights and ladies in green are pitifully drenched ; while the white company shelter themselves under the laurel. The queen and ladies in white then comfort and refresh the green band, and the whole retire to sup with the party of the white ; the nightingale, as they pass along, flying down from the laurel to perch upon the hand of the white queen, while the goldfinch settles upon the wrist of the leader of the green party. Then follows the explanation of the allegory : the white queen and her party represent Chastity ; the knights the Nine Worthies ; the cavaliers crowned with laurel the Knights of the Round Table, the Peers of Charlemagne, and the Knights of the Garter, to which illus- trious order, then recently founded, the poet wished to pay a compli- ment. The queen and ladies in green represent Flora and the followers of sloth and idleness. In general the flower typifies vain pleasure, the leaf, virtue and industry; the former beii g " a thing fading with every blast," while the latter " abides with the root, notwithstanding the frosts and winter storms." The poem is written in the seven-lined stanza, and contains many curious and beautiful passages. (vi., vii.) The two poems entitled Chaucer's Dream, and the Book of the Duchess, though now found to be separate and distinct works, were long confounded together. This error was caused by the similarity of 44 THE AGE OF CHAUCER. [CHAP. II. their style and versification (for they are both written in the octo- syllabic Trouvere measure, the same as that employed in the Romaunt of the Rose), and in some degree also by the connection of their sub- ject with John of Gaunt, Chaucer's friend and patron, and the marriage of that nobleman with Blanche, heiress of Lancaster. This prince, then bearing the title of Earl of Richmond, was united to his cousin in 1359, and the Duchess dying ten years after, John was married a second time, in 1371, to Constance, daughter of Peter the Cruel, King of Spain. Both poems are allegorical ; and allude, though sometimes rather obscurely as regards details, to the courtship of John of Gaunt, and his grief, under the person of the Black Knight, at the loss of his first wife. There may be traced in the Dream allusions to Chaucer's own courtship and marriage, to which we have referred in our bio- graphical remarks, and which took place about 1360. (viii.) For its extraordinary union of brilliant description with learning and humor, the poem of the House of Fame is sufficient of itself to stamp Chaucer's reputation. It is written in the Trouvere measure, and under the fashionable form of a dream or vision, gives us a vivid and striking picture of the Temple of Glory, crowded with aspirants for immortal renown, and adorned with myriad statues of great poets and historians, and the House of Rumor, thronged with pilgrims, pardoners, sailors, and other retailers of wonderful reports. The Temple, though originally borrowed from the Metamorphoses of Ovid, exhibits in its architecture and adornment that strange mixture of pagan antiquity with the Gothic details of mediaeval cathedrals, that strikes us in the poetry and in the illuminated MSS. of the four- teenth century : and in the description of the statues of the great poets we meet with a curious proof of that mingled influence of alchemical and astrological theories perceptible in the science and literature of Chaucer's age. In richness of fancy it far surpasses Pope's imitation, The Temple of Fame. (ix.) The Legend of Good Women is supposed, from many circum- stances, to have been one of the latest of Chaucer's compositions, and to have been written as a kind of amende honorable or recantation for his unfavorable pictures of female character ; and in particular for his having, by translating the Roman de la Rose, to a certain degree identi- fied himself with Jean de Meun's bitter sarcasms on the sex. Though the matter is closely translated, for the most pnrt, from the Heroide* of Ovid, the coloring given to the stories is entirely Catholic and mediaeval. The misfortunes of celebrated heroines of ancient story are related in the manner of the Legends of the Saints, and Dido, Cleopatra, and Medea are regarded as the Martyrs of Saint Venus and Saint Cupid. The poet's original intention was to compose the legends of nineteen celebrated victims of the tender passion ; but the work having been left incomplete, we possess only those of Cleopatra, Thisbe, Dido, Hypsipyle, Medea, Lucretia, Ariadne, Philomela, and Phillis. The poem is in ten-syllable heroic couplets, the rhymed herok measure, and exhibits a consummate mastery over the resources of the A.D. HOD.} THE AGE OF CHAUCER. 45 English language and prosody, and many striking passages of 'lescrip- tion interpolated by Chaucer. A few droll anachronisms also n:aybe noted, as the introduction of cannon at the Battle of Actium. (x.) The poem which the generations contemporary with, or suc- ceeding to, the age of Chaucer placed nearest to the level of the Can- terbury Tales, was unquestionably the Troilus and Creseide ; and this judgment will be confirmed by a comparison of the two works ; though the wonderful variety and humor of the Tales has tended to throw into the shade, for modern readers, the graver beauties of the poem we are now about to examine. The source from which Chaucer drew his materials for this work was indubitably Boccaccio's poem entitkd Filos- trato. The story itself, which was extremely popular in the Middle Ages (and its popularity continued down to the time of Elizabeth, Shakespeare himself having dramatized it), has been traced to Guido di Colonna, and to the mysterious book entitled Trophe of the equally mysterious author Lollius, so often quoted in Chaucer's age, and respecting whom all is obscure and enigmatical. Some of the names and personages of the story, as Cryseida (Chryseis), Troilus, Pandarus, Diomede, and Priam, are obviously borrowed from the Iliad ; but their relative positions and personality have been most strangely altered ; and the principal action of the poem, being the passionate love of Troilus for his cousin, her ultimate infidelity, the immoral subserviency of Pandarus, all of which became proverbial in conse- quence of the popularity of this tale, all details, in short, bear the stamp of mediaeval society, and have no resemblance whatever to the incidents and feelings of the heroic age, a period when the female sex was treated as it is now in Eastern countries, and when consequently that sentiment, which we call chivalric or romantic love, could have had no existence. Chaucer has frequently adhered to the text of the Filostrato, and has adopted the musical and flowing Italian stanza of seven lines ; but in the conduct of the story he has shown him- self far superior to his original, the characters of Troilus, Pandarus, and Creseide in the Filostrato, contrasting very unfavorably with the pure, noble, and ideal personages of the English poet, whose morality, indeed, is far higher and more refined than that of his great Floren- tine contemporary. I may remark in conclusion, that this beautiful poem is of great length, nearly equal in this respect to the ^Eneid of Virgil, and that it abounds in charming descriptions, in exquisite traits of character, and in incidents which, though simple and natural, are involved and developed with great ingenuity. 7. Chaucer's greatest and most original work is, beyond all com- parison, the Canterbury Talcs. It is in this that he has poured forth in inexhaustible abundance all his stores of wit, humor, pathos, splen- dor, and knowledge of Aumanity : it is this which will place him, till the remotest posterity, in the first rank among poet's and character- painters. The exact portraiture of the manners, language, and habits of society in a remote age could not fail, even if executed by an inferior hand, 46 THE AGE OF CHAUCER. [CHAP. IL to possess deep interest; as we may judge from the avidity with which we contemplate such traits of real life as are laboriously dug up by the patient curiosity of the antiquary from the dust and rubbish of bygone days. How great then is our delight when the magic force of a great poet evokc.s a whole series of our ancestors of the fourteenth century, making them pass before us " in their habit as they lived," acting, speaking, and feeling in a manner invariably true to general nature, and stamped with all the individuality of Shakespeare or Moliere. The plan of the Canterbury Tales is singularly happy, enabling the poet to give us, first, a collection of admirable daguerreotypes of the various classes of English society, and then to place in the mouths of these persons a series of separate tales highly beautiful when regarded as compositions and judged on their own independent merits, but deriving an infinitely higher interest and appropriateness from the way in which they harmonize with their respective narrators. The work can be divided into two portions, which are, however, skilfully mixed up and incorporated : the first being the general prologue, de- scribing the occasion on which the pilgrims assemble, the portraits of the various members of the troop, the adventures of their journey and their commentaries on the tales as they are successively related : and the second the tales themselves, viewed as separate compositions. The general plan of the work may be briefly sketched as follows. The poet informs us, after giving a brief but picturesque description of spring, that being about to make a pilgrimage from London to the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket in the Cathedral of Canterbury, he passes the night previous to his departure at the hostelry of the Tabard in Southwark. While at the inn the hostelry is filled by a crowd of pilgrircs bound to the same destination : " In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay, Redy to wenden on my pilgrimage To Canterbury with ful devout corage, At night was come into that hostelrie Wei nyne and twenty in a companye * Of sondry folk, by aventure i-falle In felawschipe, and pilgryms were thei alle, That toward Canterbury wolden ryde." The goodly company, assembled in a manner so natural in those times of pilgrimages and of difficult and dangerous roads, agree to travel in a body; and at supper the Host of the Tabard, a jolly and sociable personage, proposes to accompany the party and serve as a guide, having, as he says, often travelled the road before; and at the same time suggests that they may much enliven the tedium of their journey by relating stories as they ride. He is to be accepted by the whole society as a kind Of ju~ge or moderator, by whose decisions every one >s to abide. As the journey to Canterbury occupies one day, and the return another, the plan of the whole work, had Chaucer completed it, * But in his subsequent enumeration (see next page) Chaucer count* person*. A.D. 1400.] THE AGE OF CHAUCER. 47 would have comprised the adventures on the outward journey, the arrival at Canterbury, a description, in all probability, of the splendid religious ceremonies and the visits to the numerous shrines and relics in the Cathedral, the return to London, the farewell supper at the Ta- bard, and dissolution of the pleasant company, which would separate as naturally as they had assembled. Harry Bailey proposes that each pilgrim should relate two tales on the journey out, and two more on the way home ; and that on the return of the party to London, he who should be adjudged to have related the best and most amusing story should sup at the common cost. Such is the setting or frame- work in which the separate tales are inserted ; and the circumstances and general mise en seine are so natural and unforced, that no reader refuses credence to the ancient tradition of our great poet's having founded his work upon an actual pilgrimage to Canterbury, in which he had himself taken part. The tales themselves are admi- rably in accordance with the characters of the persons who relate them, and the remarks and criticisms to which they give rise are no less humorous and natural; some of the stories suggesting others, just as would happen in real life under the same circumstances. The pilgrims are persons of all ranks and classes of society; and in the inimitable description of their manners, persons, dress, horses, &c., with which the poet has introduced them, we behold a vast and minute portrait gallery of the social state of England in the fourteen century. They are (i.) A Knight; (2.) A Squire; (3.) A Yeoman, or military retainer of the class of the free peasants, who in the quality of an archer was bound to accompany his feudal lord to war ; (4.) A Prioress, a lady of rank, superior of a nunnery; (5, 6, 7, 8.) A Nun and three Priests, in attendance upon this lady; (9.) A Monk, a person repre- sented as handsomely dressed and equipped, and passionately fond of hunting and good cheer; (10.) A Friar, or Mendicant Monk ; (n.) A Merchant; (12.) A Clerk, or Student of the University of Oxford; (13.) A Serjeant of the Law; (14.) A Franklin or rich country-gentle- man ; (15, 16, 17, 18, 19.) Five wealthy burgesses or tradesmen, de- scribed in general but vigorous and characteristic terms ; they are A Haberdasher, or dealer in silk and cloth, A Carpenter, A Weaver, A Dyer, and A Tapisser, or maker of carpets and hangings ; (20.) A Cook, or rather what in old French is called a rdtisseur, i. e. the keeper of a cook's-shop ; (21.) A Shipman, the master of a trading vessel ; (22.) A Doctor of Physic ; (23.) A Wife of Bath, a rich cloth-manufacturer ; (24.) A Parson, or secular parish priest; (25.) A Ploughman, the brother of the preceding personage ; (26.) A Miller ; (27.) A Manciple, or steward of a college or religious house ; (28.) A Reeve, bailiff or intendant of the estates of some wealthy landowner; (89.) A Sompnour, or Sumner, an officer in the then formidable ecclesiastical courts, whose duty was to summon or cite before the spiritual jurisdiction those who had of- fended against the canon laws; (30.) A Pardoner, or vendor of Indul- gences from Rome. To these thirty persons must be added Chaucel himself, and the Host of the Tabard, making in all thirty-two. 48 THE AGE OF CHAUCER. [CHAP. II 8. Now, if each of these pilgrims had related four tales, viz., two on the journey to Canterbury, and two on their return, the work would have contained 128 stories, independently of the subordinate incidents and conversations. In reality, however, the pilgrims do not arrive at their destination, and there are many evidences of confusion in the tales which Chaucer has given us, leading to the conclusion that the materials were not only incomplete, but left in an unarranged state by the poet. The stories that we possess are 25 in number, and are dis- ti ibuted as follows : The Knight ; The Miller ; The Reeve ; The Cook, to whom two tales are assigned ; * The Man of Law ; The Wife of Bath ; The Friar; The Sompnour; The Clerk of Oxford ; The Merchant; The Squire, whose tale is left unfinished ; The Franklin ; The Second Nun ; The Canon's Yeoman a personage who does not form a part of the original company, but joins the cavalcade on the journey ; The Doctor; The Pardoner; The Shipman ; The Prioress ; Chaucer himself, to whom two tales are assigned in a manner to which I shall refer presently ; The Monk; the Nun's Priest; The Manciple, and the Parson. Thus it will be seen that many of the characters are left silent, while some of them relate more than one story, and two persons altogether extraneous are introduced. These are the Canon and his Yeoman, who unexpect- edly join the cavalcade during the journey; but it is uncertain whether this episode, which was probably an afterthought of the poet, takes place on the journey to or from Canterbury. The Canon, who is repre- sented as an Alchemist, half swindler and half dupe, is driven awny from the company by shame at his attendant's indiscreet disclosures ; and the latter, remaining with the pilgrims, relates a most amusing story of the villanous artifices of the charlatans who pretended to pos- sess the Great Arcanum. The stories narrated by the pilgrims are ad- mirably introduced by what the author calls "prologues," consisting either of remarks and criticisms on the preceding tale, and which nat- urally suggest what is to follow, of the incidents of the journey itself, an excellent example of which is the drunken uproariousness of the Miller and the Cook, or of the infinitely varied manner in which the Host proposes and the Pilgrims receive the command to perform their part in contributing to the common entertainment. The Tales are all in verse, with the exception of two, that of the Parson, and Chaucer's second narrative, the allegorical story of Melibceus and his wife Patience. Those in verse exhibit an immense variety of metricial forms, ranging from the regular heroic rhymed couplet, in which the largest portion of the work is composed, as well as the general prologue and introductions to each story, through a great variety of stanzas of different lengths and arrangement, down to the short irregular octosyllable verse of the Trouvcre Gestours, and in the case of the Tale of Gamelyn the * The first is broken off abruptly almost at the beginning, and the second is Dy some suspected not to be the work of Chaucer at all, as it is written in a style and versification unlike the rest of his poems, and seems to belong to an older and ruder period of English literature. The Cook's Tale of Gamelyn, if i really written by Chauce'r, was perhaps intended to be related on the journey hoire. A. D. 14.00. J THE AGE OF CHAUCER. 49 long tonic, not syllabic, measure of the old English popular legend, which was itself a relic of the ancient Saxon metrical system. All these forms Chaucer handles with consummate ease and dexterity; indeed, it may be boldly affirmed that no English poet whatever is more exqui- sitely melodious than he : and the nature of the versification will often assist us in tracing the sources from whence Chaucer derived or adapted his materials. Of him it maybe truly said, as Molicre affirmed of him- self, that " il prenait son bien oil il le trouvait," for he appears in no single demonstrable instance to have taken the trouble to invent the intrigue or subject-matter of any of his stories, but to have freely bor- rowed them either for the multitudinous fabliaux of the Provencal poets, the legends of the mediaeval chroniclers, or the immense storehouse of the Gesta Romanorum, and the rich treasury of the early Italian writers, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. 9. The Tales themselves may be roughly divided into the two great classes of serious, tragic, or pathetic, and comic or humorous ; in both styles Chaucer has seldom been equalled, and assuredly never surpassed. His wonderful power of object and character-painting, the incomparable conciseness and vividness of his descriptions, the loftiness of his senti- ment, and the intensity of his pathos, can only be paralleled by the richness of his humor and the outrageously droll, yet perfectly natural extravagance of his laughable scenes. Both in the one style and in the other, the peculiar naivetb and sly infantine simplicity of his language add a charm of the subtlest kind, the reality of which is best proved by the evaporation of this delicate perfume in the process, so often and so unsuccessfully attempted, of modernizing his language. The finest of the elevated and pathetic stories are \hzKnigkfs Tale the longest of them all, in which is related the adventure of Palamon and Arcite ; the Squire's Talc, a wild half-Oriental story of love, chivalry, and en- chantment, the action of which goes on " at Sarray (Bakhtchi-Sarai) in the lond of Tartary ; " the Matt of Law's Tale, the beautiful and pathetic story of Custance; the Prioress's Tale, the charming legend of " litel Hew of Lincoln," the Christian child murdered by the Jews for so per- severingly singing his hymn to the Virgin ; and above all the Clerk of Oxford's Tale, perhaps the most beautiful pathetic narration in the whole range of literature. This, the story of Griselda, the model and heroine of wifely patience and obedience, is the crown and pearl of all the serious and pathetic narratives, as the Knight's Tale is the master- piece among the descriptions of love and chivalric magnificence. I will rapidly note the sources from which, as far as can be ascer- tained at present, Chaucer derived the subjects of the narratives above particularized. The Knight's Tale is freely borrowed from the Theseida of Boccaccio, many of the incidents of the latter being themselves taken from the Thebais of Statius. Though the action and personages of this noble story are assigned to classical antiquity, it is needless to say that the sentiments, manners, and feelings of the persons introduced are those of chivalric Europe; the "Two Noble Kinsmen," Palamon and Arcite, being the purest ideal types of the knightly character, and the 5 50 THE AGE OF CHAUCER. [CHAT. IL decision of their claims to the hand of Emilie by a combat in champ clos, an incident completely alien from the habits of the heroic age. The Squire's Tale bears evident marks of Oriental origin ; but whether it be a legend directly derived from Eastern literature, or received by Chau- cer after having filtered through a Romance version, is now uncertain. It :'s equnl to the preceding story in splendor and variety of incident and -word-painting, but far inferior in depth of pathos and ideal eleva- tion of sentiment ; yet it was by the Squire's Tale that Milton charac- terized Chaucer in that inimitable passage of the Penseroso where he evokes the recollections of the great poet : " And call up him that left half-told The story of Cambuscan bold, Of Cambal, and of Algarsife, And who had Canace to wife That owned the virtuous ring and glass ; And of the wondrous horse of brass On which the Tartar king did ride." The Man of Laiv^s Tale is taken with little variation from Gower's voluminous poem " Confessio Amantis" the incidents of Gower's narra- tive being in their turn traceable to a multitude of romances, as for instance those of Emare, the Chevalier au Cygne, the Roman de la Vio- lette, Le Bone Florence de Rome, and the inexhaustible Gesta Roma- norum. The character of the noble but unhappy Custance, beautiful as it is, is idealized almost beyond nature; and the employment of the Italian stanza harmonizes well with the tender but somewhat enervated graces of the narrative. The legend of the " litel clergion," foully mur- dered by the Jews at Lincoln, and whose martyrdom is so miraculously cested, was in all probability founded on fact, at least so far as regards cruel punishment having been inflicted on the Jews accused of such a crime. An infinity of ballads were current in England and Scotland on this subject, and one indeed has been preserved in Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, entitled " The Jewes Daughter." Moreover there still exists a record of the trial of some Jews for the assassina- tion of a Christian child at Lincoln in 1256, in the reign of Henry III. Though Chaucer has retained the principal incidents of the English legend, he has laid the scene in Asia; but many allusions to the story of Hugh of Lincoln prove that the fundamental action is identically the same- The tale is exquisitely tender and graceful in sentiment, and exhibits precisely that union of religious sentimentality and refinement which makes it so appropriate in the mouth of Madame Eglantine the Prioress. The pedigree of the most pathetic of Chaucer's stories, that of Patient Griselda, narrated by the clerk of Oxford, is traceable to Petrarch, who cominunicated the incidents to his friend Boccaccio. The latter has made them the groundwork of one of the novels of the Decameron, viz., the Toth and last of the Tenth Day ; and there is evidence that the pathos of this beautiful story was found to transgress the limits of or- dinary endurance. The submission of Griselda to the ordeals impeded JLD. 1400.] THE AGE OF CHAUCER. 51 upon her conjugal and maternal feelings by the diabolical tyranny ol the Marquis of Saluzzo, her husband, seems exaggerated beyond all the bounds of reality. Yet we should remember that the very intensity of Griselda's sufferings is intended to convey the highest expression of the inexhaustible goodness of the female heart. The finest of Chaucer's comic and humorous stories are those of the Miller, the Reeve, the Sompnour, the Canon's Yeoman, and the Nun's Priest. Though all of these are excellent, the three best are the Miller's, the Reeve's, and the Sompnour's ; and among these last it is difficult to give the palm of drollery, acute painting of human nature, and exqui- site ingenuity of incident. It is much to be regretted that the comic stories turn upon events of a kind which the refinement of modern manners renders it impossible to analyze; but it should be remembered that society in Chaucer's day, though perhaps not less moral in reality, was far more outspoken and simple, and permitted and enjoyed allusions which have been proscribed by the more precise delicacy of later ages. The first of these irresistible drolleries is probably the adaptation to English life for the scene is laid at Oxford of some old fabliau; the Reeve's Tale may be found in substance in the 6th novel of the Ninth Day of the Decameron : the Sompnour's Tale, though probably from a mediaeval source, has not hitherto been traced. The admirable wit, humor, and learning, with which in the Canon's Yeoman's Tale Chaucer exposes the rascalities of the pretenders to alchemical knowl- edge, may have been derived from his own experience of the arts of these swindlers. The tale may be compared with Ben Jonson's comedy of the Alchemist. The tale assigned to the Nun's Priest is an exceed- ingly humorous apologue of the Cock and the Fox, in which, though the dramatis persona are animals, they are endowed with such a droll similitude .to the human character, that the reader enjoys at the same time the apparently incompatible pleasures of sympathizing with them is human beings, and laughing at their fantastic assumption of reason as lower creatures. I have remarked, some pages back, on the circumstance of two of the stories being written in prose. It may be not uninteresting to investi- gate this exception. When Chaucer is applied to by the Host, he com- mences a rambling puerile romance of chivalry, entitled the Rhyme of Sir Thopas, which promises to be an interminable story of knight- errant adventures, combats with giants, dragons, and enchanters, and is written in the exact style and metre of the Trouvere narrative poems the only instance of this versification being employed in the Canter- bury Tales. He goes on gallantly " in the style his books of chivalry had taught him," and, like Don Quixote, " imitating, as near as ha could, their very phrase ; " but he is suddenly interrupted, with many expressions of comic disgust, by the merry host : '"No inor of this, for Goddes dignite ! * Quod our Hoste, ' for thou makest mo So wery of thy verray lewednessc, That, al so wisiy Gd my soule blesse, 52 THE AGE OF CHAUCER. [CHAP, II Myn eeres aken for thy drafty speche. Now such a rym the devell byteche ! This may wel be rym dogerel,' quod he." Theie can be no doubt that the poet took this ingenious method of ridiculing and caricaturing the Romance poetry, which had at this time reached the lowest point of effeteness and commonplace. Chaucer then, with great good-nature and a readiness which marks the man of the world, offers to tell "a litel thing in prose; " and commences the long allegorical tale of Melibaeus and his ivtfe Patience, in which, though the matter is often tiresome enough, he shows himself as great a master of prose as of poetry. Indeed it would be difficult to find, an- terior to Hooker, any English prose so vigorous, so harmonious, and BO free from pedantry and affectation, as that of the great Father of our Literature : " The morning-star of song, who made His music heard below ; 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." The other prose tale is narrated by the Parson, who, being represent- ed as a somewhat simple and narrow-minded though pious and large- hearted pastor, characteristically refuses to indulge the company with what can only minister to vain pleasure, and proposes something that may tend to edification, "moralite and vertuous matiere;" and com- mences a long and very curious sermon on the Seven Deadly Sins, their causes and remedies a most interesting specimen of the theolo- gical literature of the day. It is divided and subdivided with all the painful minuteness of scholastic divinity; but it breathes throughout a noble spirit of evangelical piety, and in many passages attains great dignity of expression. Besides these two Canterbury Tales, Chaucer wrote in prose a trans- lation of Boertiius' De Consalatione, and an imitation of that work, under the title of The Testament of Love, and an incomplete astrolo- gical work, On the Astrolabe, addressed to his son Lewis in 1391. The general plan of the Canterbury Tales, a number of detached stories connected together by their being narrated by a troop of imagi- nary pilgrims, is similar to the method so frequently employed in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and of which we find examples in the Decameron of Boccaccio, the Cent Noirvclles Nouvelles, and a multi- tude of similar collections of stories. The idea may have come origi- nally from the East, the very inartificial plan of the Thousand and One Nights being not altogether dissimilar, in which the stories o/ the in- exhaustible princess Dinarzadeh are inserted one within the other, like a set of Chinese boxes. Chaucer's plan, however, must be allowed to be infinitely superior to that of Boccaccio, whose ten accomplished young gentlemen and ladies assemble in their luxurious villa to escape from the terrible plague, the magnificent description of which forms the A D. 1400.] THE AGE OF CHAUCER. 53 Introduction, and which was then, in sad reality, devastating Florence. Boccaccio's interlocutors being all nearly of the same age and social con- dition, for they are little else but repetitions of the graceful types ol Dioneo and Fiammetta, it was impossible to make their tales corre- spond to their characters as Chaucer's do ; independently of the shock to the reader's sense of propriety in rinding these elegant voluptuaries whiling away, with stories generally of very doubtful morality, the hours of seclusion in which they find a cowardly and selfish asylum during a most frightful national calamity. 10. Chaucer rendered to the language of his country a service in some respects analogous to that which Dante rendered to that of Italy. He harmonized, regulated, and made popular the still discordant ele- ments of the national speech. The difficulty of reading and under- standing him has been much exaggerated : the principal rule that the student should keep in mind is that the French words, so abundant in his writings, had not yet been so modified, by changes in their orthog- raphy and pronunciation, as to become anglicized, and are therefore to be read with their French accent ; and secondly, that the final e which terminates so many English words was not yet become an e mute, and is to be pronounced as a separate syllable, as love, hope, love, hopi ; and finally, the past termination of the verb cd is almost invariably to be made a separate syllable. Some curious traces of the old Anglo- Saxon grammar, as the inflections of the personal and possessive pro- nouns, are still retained ; as well as of the Teutonic past participle, in the prefix i or y (ifalle, yron, German gefallen, geronneti), and a few other details of the Teutonic formation of the verb. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. A. -THE PREDECESSORS OF COWER ! ^ P"**^ centuries of transition (though it ii AND CHAUCER. ' " cu l' to tlraw the precise line of demarcation) by its substance as well as Us form. While the lan- By the middle of the fourteenth century the spirit ! guage has become so like modern English, that it of patriotism evoked by Edward III., and the in- j can be read \vith tolereble case, by pronouncing fluence of the continental Renaissance, were united i syllables which ore now mute, aUowing for the to call forth a vigorous national literature. Its j retention of some inflectional forms, especially in chief product, as in most similar cases, was poetry, j the pronouns and verbs, and taking the trouble to but the earliest works in prose that can be properly | learn the meaning of a few words now obsolete, called English belong to the same age. In A. D. | the subjects are no longer borrowed entirely from 1356, Maudeville dedicated his Travels to Edward I the monkish chroniclers or the Norman minstrels; IH. : in 1362 Parliament was first opened by a | and those so borrowed are treated with the indepcn- peech in English; Chaucer had begun to write; I dence of native genius. These characteristics are and Cower had exchanged the French and Latin j first fully seen in Chaucer, and in a less degree in of his earlier works for his mother tongue. That meeting of different influences, referred to in the text, may be illustrated by the fact that the last great hero of chivalry, the Black Prince, and Occam (see p. 22, 6), the last and greatest of the English schoolmen, lived in the same century with Chaucer, the father of English poetry, and Wic- litte, tlie herald of the Reformation. The new Gower in proportion to his far less commanding genius; but these two had several precursors in England, while a vigorous native literature grew up in the Anglo-Saxon parts of Scotland. ADAM DAVIE and RICUABD RoiLE (d. 1349), or Richard of Hampole, near Doncaster, writers of metrical paraphrases of Scripture, and other religious pieces, belong properly to the Old English period, th literature my be distinguislied from that of the , former bfcimi the only English i>oet named in th* 5* 54 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. [CHAP. II. reign of Edward II. Richard Rolle also wrote, in the Northumbrian dialect, a poem called The Pricke of Conscience, in seven books, and nearly 10.000 lines. It has been published by Mr. Morris, 1863. The first poet of any merit, known to us by name, is LAWRENCE MINOT (about A. D. 1352). His poems were discovered by Tyrwhitt, in 1775, and printed by Ritson in 1790 (reprinted in 1825), with an Introduction on the reign and wars of Edward III. They celebrate ten victories of that king in his wars with France and Scotland, except that the first gives an account of the battle of Ban- nockburn (A. D. 1314), as an introduction to that of Ilalidon Hill (A. D. 1333) and others by which it was avenged. The last, the taking of Guisnes (A. D. 1352), gives an approximate date for the author, who may, however, of course have written the other poems nearer the events. Equal in spirit to the best of our heroic ballads, they have more sustained power and more finished composition. Their language is a border dialect, near akin to the Scotch. It is quite intelligible, when a few obsolete words and constructions are mastered. Among their varied measures, we meet with the animated double triplet, familiar in the poems of Scott. In Minot's poems rhyme is regularly employed; while the frequent alliterations not only remind us of the principle of Anglo-Saxon composition, but prove how much the popular ear still required that artifice. There is another famous poem of the same age, constructed by a mixture of alliteration and rhyth- mical accent, without rhyme ; the alliteration being stricter than that of the Anglo-Saxons themselves. This is the Vision of fieri Ploughman, or rather the Vision of William concerning Piers (or Peter) Plouuhman, an allegory of the difficulties in the course of human life, kindred in conception to Bunyan's great work, and in its day scarcely less popular. Its prevalent spirit is that of satire, aimed against abuses and vices in general, but in particu- lar against the corruptions of the church, from a moral (though not doctrinal) point of view closely resembling that of the later Puritans, with whom it was a great favorite. It consists of nearly 8000 double verses (or couplets), arranged in twenty "pouwus," or sections, so little connected with each other as to appear almost separate poems. Each couplet has two principal accents, with a consider- able license as to the number of syllables. The alliteration falls on three accented syllables in each couplet, namely, on both those of the first line and on the first in the second line (and sometimes on the second). As these peculiarities can only be understood by an example, we give the opening of Hie poem, which also shows where the scene of the vision is laid, among the Malvern Hills (the pa: wige is quoted with the modernized spelling and ii[.lanations of Professor Craik) : ** In a mimmer reason, When ooft was the un, I xAoop me into *Arouds* As I a s/ieep f were j In Aabit as a Aermit UnAoly ofwcrkcs, Went Wide in this IForld Wonders to hear ; Put myself into clothes, t Probably u vagabond tiiiir. t Shepherd Ac* on a >/aj wiorweilng, On Jtfalvern hills, Me bi/t'l a/erly,t Of /airy me thought." This opening marks the probable residence of tl.t poet. The third couplet, with other internal evi- dence, points to his having been a priest. The date seems to be tolerably well fixed by his allusions U the treaty of BreLigny, in 1360, and to the great tempest of January 15, 1362, of which he speaks as of a recent event. Tradition ascribes the work to a "ertain ROBERT LANGLANDE; but in the Latin litle the author is called William. Nothing whatever is known of his personal history. His acquaintance with ecclesiastical literature agrees with the supposition that he was a churchman ; and he was evidently familiar with the Latin poems ascribed to Walter de Mapes. The great interest of his work is its unquestionable reflection of the popular sentiment of the age. Langlande is as intensely national as Chaucer ; but, while the latter freely avails himself of the forms introduced by the Anglo-Norman literature, the former makes a last attempt to revive those of the Anglo-Saxon. This effort, combined with his rich humor and unsparing satire, gained him unbounded popularity with the common people. The Vision of Piers Ploughman was first printed in 1550; the last reprint in black letter is that of Dr. Whitaker, 1813; a far better edition was published by Mr. Wright, with Intro- duction, Notes, and Glossary, in 2 vols. 12mo. Lond. 1842; but the numerous MSS. of the work would still repay a careful collation. Langlande had numerous imitators. The Creed of Pier* Ploughman, a work of the same school, and often ascribed to the same author, is supposed to have been written about twenty or thirty years later than the Viflon. It is more serious in its tone, and more in harmony with the religious views of Wicliffe. The Complaint of Piers Ploughman is found in volume of political and satirical songs, which also contains a poem on the misgovernment of Rich- n., hinting at his deposition. These political poems concur with Gower's Vox Clamantis to give us a vivid impression of the evils which provoked the Lancastrian revolution. English Prose Literature begins with SlEjOHN DE MANDEVILLE, who was born at St Alban's about A. D. 1300, and left England for the East in 1322. His travels and his service under Oriental sovereigns gave him an extensive knowledge of Palestine, Egypt, Persia, and parts of India, Tar- tary, and China. He resided three years at Pckin. On his return he wrote an account of what he pro- fessed to have seen, and dedicated the book to Edward III. in A. D. 1356. He died at Liege, A. D. 1371. Mandeville's work is neither wholly, nor even chiefly, original. He borrows freely fron i the chroniclers and other old writers, prefOTuij what is most wonderful; and his own obsirs atiom have so much of the marvellous as to discredit hit testimony. The work is now chiefly interesting the earliest example, on a large scale, of English prose. Mandeville himself tells us that he wrote i. first in Latin, then translated it into French, and afterwards into English, " that every man of my nation may understand it." Such is not the proeesi AjuL t Wonder. CHAP. II. J GOWER. of creating a work of literary art ; and accordingly lite English of Mandeville is straightforward and unadorned, and probably a fair example of the spoken language of the day. As compared with Hubert of Gloucester, it shows a great increase of French words. No work of the age was more popu- lar. It exists in a large number of MSS. The earliest printed edition, in English, is that of Wynkyn de Worde, Westminster, 149U, 8vo. ; but an Italian translation, by Pietro de Come."), had liecn previously printed at Milan, 14SO, 4to. The Btj. idard English edition is that printed at London, 17i, 8vo., and reprinted, with an Introduction, Xotes, and Glossary, by Mr. Ilalliwcll, London, 1K3U, 8vo. The translation of the Latin Poli/chron- icon of Ralph Iligdeu (see p. 30), by JOHN DE TiSEViSA, Vicar of Berkeley, completed in the year l.'Vi, is chiefly interesting as having been printed by Caxton, 1482, with an additional book bringing down the narrative from 1357 to 1460. It was also printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1485. It is a curious proof of the change which a single century made in the language, that Caxton thought it neces- sary " somewhat to change the rude and old Eng- lish, that is to wit, certain words which in these days be neither used ne understood." Several other translations, made by Trevisa from the Latin, exist only in MS. The great Scottish Poet of this age, JOHN BAB- ItoUB, Archdeacon of Aberdeen (b. about A. D. 131G, d. A. D. 1390), was rather a contemporary than a precursor of Chaucer, like whom he deserves to rank as the father of a national literature. His Jiruce, in 13,000 rhymed octosyllabic lines, is a chronicle of the adventures of King Robert I., of very high merit. The lowland Scottish dialect was formed under exactly the same influences as the English, from which it differed rather less than in the present day. To confound it with the language of the aboriginal Celts is an error akin to painting Wallace in tartans and a kilt Barbour also paid several visits to England, and studied at Oxford in his mature age. Before this time there are hardly any names in Scottish literature, except the school- man MICHAEL SOOT, who resided abroad, and was carcely known at home except by his fabulous reputation as a wizard; THOMAS LEBMONT, the Rhymer, -of Ercildoune, erroneously called the author of the romance of Sir Tristram; and the Latin chronicler, JOHJJ OP FOEDtTN, a canon of Aberdeen, whose Scoti-clironicon contains the legendary and historical annals of his country to Uic death of David I. The later and less celebrated contemporary of Barbour, ANDEEW WYNTOCN (b. about A. D. 1350, d. after 1420), Prior of Loeh- leven, wrote a metrical chronicle in nine books, of Scottish and general history. BLIND IlAUUY, the Minstrel, belongs to the following century. B.-JOHN GOWER. The transition made in our language and litera- ture about the middle of the fourteenth century cannot be better illustrated than by the writings of John Gower, the contemporary and friend of Chau- cer, and the author of three great poetical works, tl" first in French, the second in Latin, and the Uiird in English. Gower is assumed to have been suh>ewh.U Udjr ttuiu Chaucer, as the old writers generally name him first ; r o survived him by eight years, Chaucer having died in A. D. 1400, and Gower iu A. D. 1408. But the precedence must bt awarded to Chaucer, not only for the vast superior- ity of Jus genius, but as the earlier writer in Englink. It may be questioned whether Gower would have written in English at all, except in conformity to the taste created by Chaucer. Their early friend- ship is evinced by Chaucer's dedication of Troilui and CifKyle to Gower, by a title which became t fixed epithet of the latter poet : " O MOUAL Go WEB! this booke I direct To thec, and to the philosophical! Strode, To vouchsafe there need is to correct Of your benignities and zcales good." And the continuance of their friendship (in cpite of conjectures founded on insufficient evidence) it attested by the compliment paid to Chaucer ill Gower' s Confessio Ainantia (finished in 1393), where Venus greets Chaucer " As my disciple and my poete," and after speaking of " the dittees and songea glad," composed " in the floures of his youth " for but sake, and of which " The land fulfilled is ouer all," exhorts him to employ his old age in writing his " Testament of Love." Two of the Canterbury Talet, those of the Man of Law and the Wife of Bath, arc borrowed from Gower, unless both poets derived them from a common source. Caxton made Gower a native of Gowerland in South Wales, and Lelaud claimed him as a member of the family of Gower of Stittcnham, in Yorkshire, from which are sprang the noble houses of Suther- land and Kllcsnif re. But Sir Harris Nicolas and others have proved, from existing deeds, and from the comparison of seals with the arms on Gower's tomb, that the poet was an e&quiiv of Kent, and probably of the same family as Sir Robert Gower of Multon (Moulton) and Kentwcll, in Suffolk, who died iu or before A. D. 1349, and whose daughter and coheiress Joan conveyed the manor of Kent- well to John Gower (the poet) on June 28, 1368. From this and similar evidence it appears that Gower was sprung from a family of knightly rank, and that he possessed estates in Kent, Norfolk, Suffolk, and probably in Essex; though he lived much in London, and apparently in close connec- tion with the court There is no ground for the common statement that he followed the legal pro- fession. About the year 1400, he speaks of himself as both old and blind. His will still exists, mado on the 15th of August, 1408, and proved by hi widow, Agnes, on the 24th of October following, so that he must have died between those two dates. There can be little doubt that his wife was the same as the Agnes Groundalf whose marriage to John Gower, at St. Mary Magdalen's, Southwark, on the 28th of January, 13U7, is recorded in the register of William t>f Wykeham, preserved at Winchester. If so, the poet married in his old age. His will leaves it doubtful whether he had issue. He lies buried, according to his own directions, in St. Mary Overy's ^aow St Saviour's), Southwark, of which church he is said to have been a benefactor, beneath a sulendid canopied tomb, 'leari'.ig his arms ai 56 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. [CHAP. Ii'. effigy, the head resting on his three volumes ; the waT within the three arches being painted with figures of Charity, Mercy, and Pity. The etory of his having been a fellow-student with Chaucer, cither at Oxford or Cambridge, is as unfounded as most of Iceland's other statements about him, but his works furnish proof of his having received the best education his age could bjttow, and of his command of the languages then in use. Gower's three great works were the Speculum Meditantis, in French; the Vox Clamantis, in Latin ; and the Confessio Amantia, in English. (1.) The Speculum ileditanta is now entirely >.<>t; the short French poem which Warton de- scribes under the title being an entirely different work. It was a collection of precepts on chastity, enforced by examples. But there are still extant Fiflu Frenc.h Valladt by Gower, in a MS. belong- ing to the Duke of Sutherland, and edited by the late duke for the Roxburghe Club, in 1818. " They are," says 1'auli (Introd. Esxay, p. xxvi.), "ten- der in sentiment, and not unrefined with regard to language and form, especially if we consider that flicy are the work of a foreigner. They treat of Love in the manner introduced by the Provencal poets, which was' afterwards generally adopted by those in the north of France. A few specimens cannot fail to give a favorable idea of Gower's skill and expression." These were about the last works of any importance written in the Anglo-Norman French, which was now so fully regarded as a for- eign language, that Gower apologizes for his French, saying, "I am English," while he gives as a reason for using the language, that he was addressing his ballads " Al Universite de tout le monde." Some verses addressed to Henry IV., after his acces- sion, prove that Gower continued to write in French to the end of his life. (2.) Of Gower's great Latin poem, the Vox Clamantis, Dr. Paul! given the following account : " Soon after the rebellion of the commons in 1381 [under Richard EC.], an event which made a great impression on his mind, he wrote that singular work in Latin distichs, called Vox Clamantu, of which we possess an excellent edition by the Rev. II. O. Coxe, printed for the Roxburghe Club, in 1850. The name, with an allusion to St. John the Baptist, seems to have been adopted from the gen- eral clamor and cry then abroad in the country. The greater bulk of the work, the date of which its editor is inclined to fix between 1382 and 1384, is rather a moral than an historical essay; but the firtt book describes the insurrection of Wat Tyler in an allegorical disguise ; the poet having a dream, on the llth of June, 1381, In which men assume the ihapc of animals. The second 600* contains a long ecrmon on fatalism, in which the poet shows him- self no friend to Wicliffe's tenets, but a zealous advocate for the reformation of the clergy. The third book points out how all orders of society must suffer for their own vices and demerits ; in illustra- tion of which he cites the example of the secular clergy. The fourth book is dedicated to the clois- tered clergy and the friars ; the./?//* to the military; the sixth contains a violent attack on the lawyers ; nd the seventh subjoins the morel of the whole, represented iu Nebuchadnezzar'* ircam, as inter- preted by Daniel." (I\tro, the brother of Anne Boleyn, beheaded in 1536; THOMAS, LORD VAliX, Captain of the Island of Jersey under Henry VIII., some of whose poems are also printed in the collection called the " Para- disc of Dainty Devices" (seep. 85), and who is described by Puttenham in his Art of Poesie as " a man of much facilitie in vulgar makings ; " and NICHOLAS GRIMOALD (about 1520-15G3), a lecturer at Oxford, whose initials, N. G., are attached to bis " Songes " in Tottel's Miscellany. He was a learned scholar, and translated iato English some of the Latin and Greek classics. To this period, rather than to that of Elizabeth, belongs THOMAS Tu'SSEB (1527-1580), one of the earliest of our didactic poets, who was born at Rivenhall in Essex, was educated at Cambridge, and passed two years at court under the patronage of William, Lord Paget. He afterwards settled ns a farmer at Cattiwade in Suffolk, where he wrote his work on Husbandry, of which the first edition appeared in 1557, under the title of " A Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie." He practised farm- ing in other parts of the country, was a singing man in Norwich cathedral, and died poor in Lon- don. His work, after going through four editions, was published in an enlarged form in 1577, under the title of " Five Hundred Points of Good IIus- bandrie, united to as many of Good Huswiferie." It is written in familiar verse, and " is valuable as a genuine picture of the agriculture, the rural arts, and the domestic economy and customs of our industrious ancestors." (Warton.) B. MINOR PROSE WRITERS. One of the chief prose writers of the fifteenth century was PECOCK (fl. 1450), Bishop of Asaph, and afterwards of Chichcstcr. Though he wrote against the Lollards, his own theological views were regarded with suspicion, and he was, in 1457, obliged to recant, was deprived of his bishopric, ind passed the rest of his life in a conventual prison. His principal work, entitled the Represser of over- much, blaming of the Clergy, appeared in 1449. Thi're is an excellent edition of this work by C. Babington, 1863. With respect to its language, Mr. Marsh observes that, " although, in diction and arrangement of sentences, the Represser is much in advance of the chroniclers of Pccock's age, the grammar, both in accidence and syntax ; is in many points nearly where Wicliffe .had left it ; and it i of the contemporary poetical writers. Thus, whili these latter authors, as well as some of earlier date, employ the objective plural pronoun Mem, and the plural possessive pronoun their, Pecock writes al- ways hem for the personal and her for the posses- sive pronoun. These pronominal forms soon fell into'disuse, and they are hardly to be met with in any English writer of later date than Pecock. With respect to one of them, however, the objec- tive hem for them, it may be remarked that it ha not become obsolete in colloquial speech to the present day ; for in such phrases as I law 'em, 1 told 'em, and the like, the pronoun em (or 'em) is not, as is popularly supposed, a vulgar corruption of the full pronoun Mem, which alone is found in modern books, but it is the true Anglo-Saxon and old English objective plural, which, in our spoken dialect, has remained unchanged for a thousand years." SIB THOMAS MALORY (fl. 3470), the compiler and translator of the Alorle Arthur, or History of King Arthur, printed by Caxton in 1485. Caxton, in his preface, says that Sir Thomas Malory took the work out of certain books in French, and reduced it into English. It is a compilation from some of the most popular romances of the Round Table. The stylo deserves great praise. See also p. 32, B. JOHN FISHER (1459-1535), Bishop of Rochester, put to death by Henry VIII., along with Sir Thomas More. Besides his Latin works he wrote some sermons in English. SIR THOMAS ELTOT (d. 154C), an eminent scholar in the reign of Henry VIII., by whom he was employed in several embassies. lie shares with Sir Thomas More the praise of being one of the earliest English prose writers of value. His principal work is The Oovtrnor, published in 15111, a treatise upon education, in which he deprecates the ill-treatment to which boys were exposed at school at this period. JOHN LELANl) (1506-1552), the eminent antiquary, was educated at St. Paul's School, London, and at Oxford and Cambridge. He received several eccle- siastical preferments from Henry VIII., who also gave him the title of the King's Antiquary. Besides his Latin works he wrote in English his Itinerant, giving an account of his travels, a work still of great value for English topography. GEORGE CAVENDISH (d. 1557), not Sir William, as frequently stated, was gentleman-usher to Car- dinal Wolsey, and wrote the life of the Cardinal, from which Shakspeare has taken many passages in his Henry VIII. JOHN BELLENDEN (d. 1550), Archdean of Mo- ray, in the reign of James V., deserves mention aa one of the earliest prose writers in Scotland. Ills translation of the Scottish History of Boethius, or Boccius (Boece), was published in 1537. JOHN BALE (1495-1563), Bishop of Ossory in Ire- land, was the author of several theological works, and of some dramatic interludes on sacred subjccti (see p. 114). But the work by which he is best kuown is in Latin, containing an account of illus- trious writers in Great Britain from J uplift to lh ef course in these respects considerably behind that | year 1501). A. D. 1558.] THE ELIZABETHAN POETS. 71 CHAPTER IV. THE ELIZABETHAN POETS (INCLUDING THE REIGN OF JAMES I.)- A. D. 1558-1625. { 1. Characteristics of the Elizabethan age of Literature. $ 2. The less known writers of this period : GASCOIGNE ; TURBERVILLE ; THOMAS SACKVILLE, Lord Buckhurst. $ 3. EDMUND SPENSER : his personal history ; the Shep- herd's Calendar; his friendship with Harvey and Sidney ; favored by Leicester and Elizabeth ; disappointments at court; residence in Ireland ; misfortunes, and death. 4. Analysis and criticism of the Fatry Queen : brilliancy of imagination ; defects of plan ; allusions to persons and events. 5. Detailed analysis of the Second Book, or the Legend of Temperance. G. Versifica- tion of the poem ; adaptation of the language in the metre ; Spenser's bold- ness in dealing with English. 7. Character of Spenser's genius : his minor works. $ 8. SIR PHILIP SIDNEY : his accomplishments and heroic death : his Sonnets, Arcadia, and Defence of Poesy. 9. Other leading Poets of the age: (i.) DANIEL; (ii.) DRAYTON; (Hi.) SIR JOHN DAVIES ; (iv.) JOHN DONNE; (v.) BISHOP HALL; English Satire. 10. Minor Poets: PHINEAS and GILES FLETCHER ; CHURCHYARD ; the Jesuit SOUTHWELL ; FAIRFAX, the translator of Tasso. 1. THE Age of Elizabeth is characterized by features which cause it to stand alone in the literary history of the world. It was a period of sudden emancipation of thought, of immense fertility and origi- nality, and of high and generally diffused intellectual cultivation. The language, thanks to the various causes indicated in the preceding chapters, had reached its highest perfection ; the study and the imita- tion of ancient or foreign models had furnished a vast store of materi- als, images and literary forms, which had not yet had time to become commonplace and overworn. The poets and prose writers of this age, therefore, united the freshness and vigor of youth with the regularity and majesty of manhood; and nothing can better demonstrate the intellectual activity of the epoch than the number of excellent works which have become obsolete in the present day, solely from their merits having been eclipsed by the glories of a few incomparable names, as those of Spenser in romantic and of Shakspeare in dramatic poetry. It will be my task to give a rapid sketch of some of the great works thus " darkened with the excess of light." 2. The first name is that of GEORGE GASCOIGNE (1530-1577), who, as one of the founders of the great English school of the drama, as a satirist, as a narrative and as a lyric poet, enjoyed a high popularity for art and genius. His most important production, in point of length, is a species of moral or satiric declamation entitled the Steel Glass, in which he inveighs against the vices and follies of his time. It is written in blank verse, and is one of the earliest examples of that kind 72 THE ELIZABETHAN POETS. [CHAP. IV. of metre, so well adapted to the genius of the English language, an/' in which, independentlj' of the drama, so many important composi- tions were afterwards to be written. The versification of Gascoigne in this work, though somewhat harsh and monotonous, is dignified and regular; and the poem evinces close observation of life and a lofty tone of morality. His career was a very active one ; he figured on the bril- liant stage of the court, took part in a campaign in Holland against the Spaniards, and has commemorated some of the unfortunate inci- dents of this expedition in a poem in seven-lined stanzas, entitled The Fruits of War ; and many of his minor compositions are well deserv- ing of perusal. He was an example of a type of literary men which abounded in England at that period, in which the active and contem- plative life were harmoniously combined, and which brought the acqui- ritions of the study to bear upon the interests of real life. Nearly contemporary with this poet was GEORGE TURBERVILE (1530-1594), whose writings exhibit a less vigorous invention than those of Gascoigne. He very frequently employed a peculiar modifica- tion of the old English ballad stanza which was extremely fashionable at this period. The modification consists in the third line, instead of being of equal length to the first, viz. of six syllables, containing eight. It must not, however, be understood from this that Turbervile did not employ a great variety of other metrical arrangements. The majority of his writings consist of love epistles, epitaphs, . and compli- mentary verses. A poet whose writings, of a lofty, melancholy, and moral tone, un- doubtedly exerted a great influence at a critical period in the formation of the English literature, was THOMAS SACKVILLE, Lord Buckhurst (1536-1608), a person of high political distinction, having filled the office of Lord High Treasurer. It was for his children that Ascham wrote the Schoolmaster. He projected, and himself commenced, a work entitled A Mirrour for Magistrates, which was intended to contain a series of tragic examples of the vicissitudes of fortune, drawn from the annals of his own country, serving as lessons of virtue to future kings and statesmen, and as warnings of the fragility of earthly greatness and success. Sackville composed the Induction (Introduction) of this grave and dignified work, and also the first legend or complaint, in which are commemorated the power and the fall of the Duke of Buckingham, favorite and victim of the tyrannical Richard III. The poem was afterwards continued by other writers in the same style, though gener- ally with a perceptible diminution of grandeur and effect. Such collec- tions of legends or short poetical biographies, in which celebrated and unfortunate sufferers were introduced, bewailing their destiny, or warn- ing mankind against crime and ambition, were frequent in literature at an earlier period. Chaucer's Monk's Tale, and the same poet's Legend of Good Women, are in plan and character not dissimilar : nay, the origin of such a form of composition may be traced even to the vast ethical collection of the Gesta Romanorum, if not to a still higher antiquity; for the Heroidcf of Ovid, though confined 10 the sufferings A. D. 1558-1599.] SPENSER. 73 of unhappy love, form a somewhat similar gallery of examples. The Mirrour for Magistrates is written in stanzas of seven lines, and exhibits great occasional power of expression, and a remarkable force and compression of language, though the general tone is gloomy and somewhat monotonous. Some of the lines reach a high elevation of sombre picturesqueness, as these, of old age : " His scalp all pilled, and he with eld forlore, His withered fist still knocking at death's door," which is strikingly like what Chaucer himself would have written.* 3. A period combining a scholar-like imitation of antiquity and of foreign contemporary literature, principally that of Italy, with the force, freshness, and originality of the dawn of letters in England, might have been fairly expected, even it priori, to produce a great imagina- tive and descriptive work of poetry. The illustrious name of EDMUND SPENSER (1553-1599) occupies a place among the writers of England similar to that of Ariosto among those of Italy; and the union in his works and particularly in his greatest work, the faery Queen of original invention and happy use of existing materials, fully warrants the unquestioned verdict which names him as the greatest English poe* intervening between Chaucer and Shakspeare. His career was brilliant, but unhappy. Born in 1553, a cadet of the illustrious family whose name he bore, though not endowed with fortune, he was educated at the University of Cambridge, where he undoubtedly acquired an amount of learning remarkable even in that age of solid and substantial studies. He is supposed, after leaving the University, to have been compelled to perform the functions of domestic tutor in the North of England ; and to have gained his first fame by the publication of the Shepherd's Calendar, a series of pastorals divided into twelve parts or months, in which, as in Virgil's Bucolics, under the guise of idyllic dialogues, his imaginary interlocutors discuss high questions of morality and state, and pay refined compliments to illustrious personages. In these eclogues Spenser endeavored to give a national air to his work, by painting English scenery and the English climate, by selecting English names for his rustic persons, and by infusing into their language many provincial and obsolete expressions. The extraordinary superiority, in power of thought and harmony of language, exhibited by the Shepherd's Calen- dar, immediately placed Spenser among the highest poetical names of his day, and attracted the favor and patronage of the great. The young poet had been closely connected, by friendship and the com- munity of tastes and studies, with the learned Gabriel Harvey a man of unquestionable genius, but rendered ridiculous by certain literary hobbies, as, for example, by a mania for employing the ancient classical metres, founded on quantity, in English verse; and he for some lime infected Spenser with his own freaks. Through Harvev, Spenser acquired the notice and favor of the accomplished Sidney; and it was * For a further account of the Mirrour for Magistrates, see Notes and Illus- trations (A). 7 74 THE ELIZABETHAN POETS. [CHAP. IV at Pcnshurst, the fine mansion of the latter, that he is supposed to havo revised the Shepherd's 'Calendar, which he dedicated, under the title of the Poet's Tear, to " Maister Philip Sidney, worthy of all titles, both of Chivalry and Poesy." Sidney, in his turn, recommended Spenser to Dudley Earl of Leicester, and the powerful favorite brought the poet under the personal notice of Elizabeth herself. The great queen, surfeited as she was with all the refinements of literary homage, certainly had not, among the throng of poets that filled her court, a worshipper hose incense arose before her altar in richer or more fragrant clouds ; but the poet, in his court career, naturally exposed himself to the hos- tility of those who were the enemies of his protectors ; and there are several traditions which relate the disappointments experienced by Spenser at the hands of the great minister Burleigh, whose influence on the mind of his mistress was too firmly established to be seriously shaken by the Queen's attachment to her favorites. Spenser has left us a gloomy picture of the miseries of courtly dependence. The poet appears to have been occasionally employed in unimportant diplomatic services; but on the nomination of Lord Grey de Wilton as Deputy or Lieutenant of Ireland, Spenser accompanied him to that country as secretary, and received a grant of land not far from Cork, which he was to occupy and cultivate. This estate had formed part of the domains of the Earls of Desmond, and had been forfeited or confiscated by the English Government. Spenser resided several years at Kilcolman Castle, during which time he exercised various important administra- tive functions in the government of the then newly-subjugated country. It was during his residence in Ireland that he composed the most im- portant of his works, among which the first place is occupied by his great poem of the Faery Queen. About twelve years after his first establish- ment in the province of Munster, the flame of revolt, communicated from the great rebellion called Tyrone's Insurrection, which had been raging in the neighboring province of Ulster, spread to the region which surrounded Spenser's retreat. He had probably rendered him- self hateful to the half-savage Celtic population whom the English colonists had ejected and oppressed : indeed the very curious little work entitled A Vietv of the State of Ireland, in which he has described the curious manners and customs of the indigenous race, indicates plainly enough that the poet shared the prejudices of his race and position. Kilcolman Castle was attacked and burned by the insurgents. Spenser and his family escaped with difficulty, and with the loss not only of all they possessed, but with the still more cruel bereavement of a young child, which was left behind and perished in the house. Completely ruined, and overwhelmed by so tragic an affliction, the poet returned to Lon- don, where he is reported to have died in the greatest poverty, forgotten by the court and neglected by his patrons, in 1599. He was, however, followed to the grave with the unanimous admiration of his cour*ry- men, who bewailed in his death the loss of the greatest poet of his age. lie was buried with great pomp in Westminster Abbey, near the toml of Chaucer. ^ D. 1558-1599.] SPENSER. 75 4. Spenser's greatest work, The FaCry Queen, is a poem the sub- ject of which is chivalric, allegorical, narrative, and descriptive, while the execution is in a great measure derived from the manner of Ariosto and Tasso. It was originally planned to consist of twelve books 01 moral adventures, each typifying the triumph of a Virtue, and couched under the form of an exploit of knight-errantry. The hero of the whole action was to be the mythical Prince Arthur, the type of perfect virtue in Spenser, as he is the ideal hero in the vast collection of mediaeval legends in which he figures. This fabulous personage is sup- posed to become enamoured of the Faery Queen, who appears to him in a dream ; and arriving at her court in Fairy-Land he finds her hold- ing a solemn feudal festival during twelve days. At her court there is a beautiful lady for whose hand the twelve most distinguished knights are rivals; and in order to settle their pretensions these twelve heroes undertake twelve separate adventures, which furnish the materials for the action. The First Book relates the expedition of the Red-Cross Knight, who is the allegorical representative of Holiness, while his mistress Una represents true Religion ; and the action of the knight's exploit shadows forth the triumph of Holiness 'over the enchantments and deceptions of Heresy. The Second Book recounts the adventures of Sir Guyon, or Temperance ; the Third those of Britomartis a female champion or Chastity. It must be remarked that each of these books is subdivided into twelve cantos, consequently that the poem, even in the imperfect form under which we possess it, is ex- tremely voluminous. The three first books were published separately in 1590, and dedicated to Elizabeth, who rewarded the delicate flattery which pervades innumerable allusions in the work with a pension of 5O/. a year. After returning to Ireland Spenser prosecuted his work , and in 1596 he gave to the world three more books, namely, the Fourth, containing the Legend of Cambell and Triamond, allegorizing Friend- skip ; the Fifth, the Legend of Artegall, or of Justice ; and the Sixth, that of Sir Calidore, or Courtesy. Thus half of the poet's original design was executed. What progress he made in the six remaining books it is now impossible to ascertain. There are traditions which assert that this latter portion was completed, but that the manuscript was lost at sea ; while the more probable theory is, that Spenser had not time to terminate his extensive plan, but that the dreadful misfor- tunes amid which his life was closed prevented him from completing his design. The fragment consisting of two cantos of Mutability was intended to be inserted in the legend of Constancy, one of the books projected. The vigor, invention, and splendor of expression thai glow so brightly in the first three books, manifestly decline in the fourth, fifth, and sixth ; and it is perhaps no matter of regret that the poet never completed so vast a design, in which the very nature of the plan necessitated a monotony that not all his fertility of genius could have obviated. We may apply to the FaCry Queen the paradox of Hesiod "the hilf is more than the whole." In this poem are united and harmoniz<^I three different elements which at first sight would appeal 76 THE ELIZABETHAN- POETS. [CHAi . IV. irreconcilable; for the skeleton or framework of the action u> derived from the feudal or chivalric legends; the ethical or moral sentiment from the lofty philosophy of Plato, combined with the most elevated Christian purity; and the form and coloring of the language and ver- sification are saturated with the flowing grace and sensuous elegance of tl s gr^it Italian poets of the Renaissance. The principal defects of tl e faery >uecn, viewed as a whole, arise from two causes apparently opposed, yet resulting in a similar impression on the reader. The first is a want of unity, involving a loss of interest in the story ; for we alto- gether forget Arthur, the nominal hero of the whole, and follow each separate adventure of the subordinate knights. Each book is therefore, intrinsically, a separate poem, and excites a separate interest. The other defect is the monotony of character inseparable from a series of adventures which, though varied with inexhaustible fertility, are all, from their chivalric nature, fundamentally similar, being either com- bats between one knight and another, or between the hero of the moment and some supernatural being a monster, a dragon, or a wicked enchanter. In these contests, however brilliantly painted, we feel little or no suspense, for we are beforehand nearly certain of the victory of the hero ; and even if this were otherwise, the knowledge that the valiant champion is himself nothing but the impersonation of some abstract quality or virtue, would be fatal to that interest with which we follow the vicissitudes of human fortunes. Hardly any degree of genius or invention can long sustain the interest of an allegory; and where the intense realism of Bunyan has only partially succeeded, the unreal phantasmagoria of Spenser's imagination, brilliant as it was. could not do other than fail. The strongest proof of the justice of these remarks will be found in the fact that those who read Spenser with the intensest delight are precisely those who entirely neglect the moral lessons typified in his allegory, and endeavor to follow his recital of adventures as those of human beings, giving themselves voluntarily up to the mighty magic of his unequalled imagination. Another result flowing from the above considerations is, that Spenser, though ex- tremely monotonous and tiresome to an ordinary reader, who deter- mines to plod doggedly through two or three successive books of the Fa' : .ry Queen, is the most enchanting of poets to him who, endowed with a lively fancy, confines his attention to one or two at a time of his delicious episodes, descriptions, or impersonations. Independently of the general allegorical meaning of the persons and adventures, it must be remembered that many of these were also intended to contain allu- sions to facts and individuals of Spenser's own time, and particularly to convey compliments to his friends and patrons. Thus Gloriana, the FaOry Queen herself, and the beautiful huntress Belphoebe, were in- tended to allude to Elizabeth ; Sir Artegall, the Knight of Justice, to Lord Grey; and the adventures of the Red-Cross Knight shadow forth the history of the Anglican Church. In all probability a multitude of puch allusions, now become obscure, were clear enough, when the poem first appeared, to those who were familiar with the courtly and political A. D. 1558-1599.] SPENSER. 77 life of the time; but the modern reader, I think, will little regret the dimness in which time has plunged these allusions, for they only still further complicate an allegory which of itself often detracts from the charm and interest of the narrative. 5. As a specimen of Spenser's mode of conducting his allegory, I will give here a rapid analysis of the Second Book, or the Legend of Temperance. In Canto I. the wicked enchanter, Archimage, meeting Sir Guyon, informs him that a fair lady, whom the latter supposes to be Una, but who is really Duessa, has been foully outraged by the Red- Cross Knight. Guyon, led by Archimage, meets the Red-Cross Knight, and is on the point of attacking him, when the two champions recog- nize each other, and, after courteous conference, part. Sir Guyon then hears the despairing cry of a lady, and finds Amaria, newly stabbed, lying beside a knight (Sir Mordant), and holding in her lap a babe with his hands stained by its mother's blood. After relating her story, the '.ady dies. Canto II. describes Sir Guyon's unsuccessful attempts to wash the babe's bloody hands. He then finds his steed gone, and pro- ceeds on foot to the Castle of Golden Mean, where dwell also her two sisters, Elissa and Perissa Too Little and Too Much with theii knights. Canto III. describes the adventures of the Boaster, Bragadoc- chio, who has stolen Guyon's steed, but who is ignominiously com- pelled to give it up, and is abandoned by Belphcebe, of whom this canto contains a description, of consummate beauty. In Canto IV. Guyon delivers Phaon from the violence of Furor and the malignity of the hag Occasion. Canto V. describes the combat of Guyon with Pyrochles, who unbinds Fury, and is then wounded by him ; and Atin lies to obtain the aid of Cymochles. Canto VI. gives a most rich and exquisite picture of the temptation of Guyon by the Lady of the Idle Lake. In Canto VII. is contained the admirable description of the Cave of Mammon, who tempts Sir Guyon with riches. The VHIth Canto depicts Guyon in his trance, disarmed by the sons of Aerates, and delivered by Arthur. Canto IX. describes the House of Temper- ance inhabited by Alma. This is a most ingenious and beautifully developed allegory of the human body and mind, each part and faculty being typified. Canto X. gives a chronicle of the ancient British kings down to the reign of Gloriana, or Elizabeth. In the Xlth canto the Castle of Temperance is besieged, and delivered by, Arthur. The Xllth and last canto of this book describes the attack of Guyon upon the Bower of Bliss, and the ultimate defeat of Acrasia or Sensual Pleasure. From this very rough and meagre analysis, which is all that my limits will permit, the reader may in some measure judge cf the conduct of the fable in Spenser's great poem. 6. The versification of the work is a peculiar stanza, based upon the otta-va rima so universally employed by the romantic and narrative poets of Italy, and of which the masterpieces of Tasso and Ariosto furnish familiar examples. To the eight lines composing this form of metre, Spenser's exquisite taste and consummate ear for harmony induced him to add a ninth, which, being of twelve instead of, as in 7* 78 THE ELIZABETHAN POETS [CHAP. IV. the others, ten syllables, winds up each phrase with a long, lingering cadence of the most delicious melody. I have already observed how extensively the forms of Italian versification as in the various exam- ples of the sonnet and the heroic stanza had been adopted by the English poets; and I have insisted, particularly in the case of Chaucer, on the skill with which our language, naturally rude, monosyllabic, and unharmonious, had been softened and melodized till it was little infe- rior, in power of musical expression, to the tongues of Southern Europe. None of our poets is more exquisitely and uniformly musical than Spenser. Indeed the sweetness and flowingness of his verse are sometimes carried so far as to become cloying and enervated. The metre he employed being very complicated, and necessitating a frequent recur- rence in each stanza of similar rhymes namely, four of one ending, three of another, and two of a third he was obliged to take consid- erable liberties with the orthography and accentuation of the English language. In doing this, in giving to our metallic northern speech the flexibility of the liquid Italian, he shows himself as unscrupulous as masterly. By employing an immense mass of old Chaucerian words and provincialisms, nay, even by occasionally inventing words himself, he furnishes his verse with an inexhaustible variety of language; but at the same time the reader must remember that much of the vocabu- lary of the great poet was a dialect that never really existed. Its pecu- liarities have been less permanent than those of almost any other of our great writers. 7. The power of Spenser's genius does not consist in any deep analysis of human passion or feeling, in any skill in the delineation of character ; but in an unequalled richness of description, in the art of representing events and objects with an intensity that makes them visi- ble and tangible. He describes to the eye, and communicates to the .airy conceptions of allegory, the splendor and the vivacity of visible objects. He has the exhaustless fertility of Rubens, with that great painter's sensuous and voluptuous profusion of color. Among the most important of his other poetical writings, I must mention his Mother Hubbard's Tale ; his Daphnaida, an idyllic elegy bewailing the early death of the accomplished Sidney; and above all his Amo- retti, or love poems, the most beautiful of which is his Epithalamium, or Marriage-Song on his own nuptials with the " fair Elizabeth." This is certainly one of the richest and chastest marriage-hymns to be found in the whole range of literature, combining warmth with dignity, the intensest passion with a noble elevation and purity of sentiment. Here, too, as well as in innumerable passages of the Fary Queen, d~> we see the influence of that lofty and abstract philosophical idea of the identity between Beauty and Virtue, which he borrowed from the Pla- tonic speculations. 8. The name of SIR PHILIP SIDNEY (1554-1586) occurs so fre- quently in the literary history of this age, and that illustr'ous man exerted so powerful an influence on the intellectual spirit of the epoch, that our notice of the age would be incomplete without sor?e all usion A. D. 1554-1586.] SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. 79 to his life, even did not the intrinsic merit of his writings give him a place among the best poets ai.d prose-writers of the time. He united in his own person almost all the qualities that give splendor to a char- acter, natural as well as adventitious nobility of birth, beauty of per son, bravery, generosity, learning, and courtesy. He was almost the beau idial of the courtier, the soldier, and the scholar. The jewel of the court, the darling of the people, and the liberal and judicious patron of arts and letters, his early and heroic death gave the crowning grace to a consummate character. He was born in 1554, and died at the age of thirty-two, of a wound received in the battle of Zutphen (October 19, 1586), fought to aid the Protestants of the Netherlands in their heroic struggle against the Spaniards. His contributions to the litera- ture of his country consist of a small collection of Sonnets, remarkable for their somewhat languid and refined elegance ; and the prose ro- mance, once regarded as a manual of courtesy and refined ingenuity, entitled The Arcadia. Judging only by its title, many critics have erroneously regarded this work as a purely pastoral composition, like the Galatea of Cervantes, the Arcadia of Sannazzaro, and the multi- tude of idyllic romances which were so fashionable at that time ; but the narrative of Sidney, though undoubtedly written on Spanish and Italian models, is not exclusively devoted to pastoral scenes and descrip- tions. A great portion of the work is chivalric, and the grace and ani- mation with which the knightly pen of Sidney paints the shock of the tourney, and the noble warfare of the chase, is not surpassed by the luxurious elegance of his pastoral descriptions. In the style we see perpetual traces of that ingenious antithetical affectation which the imitation of Spanish models had rendered fashionable in England, and which became at last a kind of Phtbus or modish jargon at the court, until it was ultimately annihilated by the ridicule of Shakspeare, just as Moliere destroyed the style pricieux which prevailed in his day in France. One charming peculiarity of Sidney is the pure and elevated view he takes of the female character, and which his example power- fully tended to disseminate throughout the literature of his day. This alone would be sufficient to prove the truly chivalrous character of his mind. The story of the Arcadia, though occasionally tiresome and involved, is related with considerable skill; and the reader will be enchanted, in almost every page, with some of those happy thoughts and graceful expressions which he hesitates whether to attribute to the felicity of accident or to a peculiar delicacy of fancy. Sidney also wrote a small tract entitled A Defence of Poesy, in which he strives to show that the pleasures derivable from imaginative literature are pow- erful aids not only to the acquisition of knowledge, but to the cultiva- tion of virtue. He exhibits a peculiar sensibility to the power and genius so often concealed in rude national legends and ballads. 9. The epoch which I am endeavoring to describe was fertile in a class of poets, not perhaps attaining to the highest literary merit, but whose writings are marked by a kind of solid and scholar-like dignitj which will render them permar ently valuable. 80 THE ELIZABETHAN POETS. [CHAP. IV. (I.) Such was SAMUEL DANIEL (1562-1619), whose career seerns to have been tranquil and happy, and who enjoyed among his contem poraries the respect merited not only by his talents, but by a regularity of conduct then sufficiently rare among poets who, like Daniel, were connected with the stage. His works are tolerably veluminous, and all bear the stamp of that grave vigor of thought and dignified evenness of expression which, while it seldom soars into sublimity, or penetrates deep into the abysses of passion, is never devoid of sense and reflection. His most celebrated work is The History of the Civil Wars, a poem on the Civil Wars between the houses of York and Lancaster, in that peculiar style of poetical narrative and moral meditation the example of which had been set by Sackville's Mirrour for Magistrates, and which was at this time a favorite type among the literary men of England. Daniel's poem is in eight books, in stanzas of eight lines ; and the talents of the writer struggle in vain against the prosaic nature of the subject, for Daniel closely adheres to the facts of history, which he can only occasionally enliven by a pathetic description or a sensible and vigorous reflection. His language is exceedingly pure, limpid, and intelligible. The poem entitled Musophilus is an elaborate defence of learning, cast into the form of a dialogue. The two interlocutors, Musophilus and Philocosmus, pronounce, in regular and well-turned stanzas, the usual arguments which the subject suggests. Many of Daniel's minor poems, as his Elegies, Epistles, Masques, and Songs, Together with his contributions to the dramatic literature of the day, justify the reputation which he possessed. Good sense, dignity, and an equable flow of pure language and harmonious versification, are the qualities which posterity will acknowledge in his writings. He is said to have succeeded Spenser to the post of poet laureate. (ii.) A poet somewhat similar in general character to Daniel, but en- dowed with a much greater originality, was MICHAEL DRAYTON (1563- 1631), a voluminous writer. His longest and most celebrated produc- tions were the topographical and descriptive poem entitled Polyolbion, in thirty cantos or songs, The Barons' Wars, England 's Hcroical Epistles, The Battle of Agincourt, The Muses' Elysium, and the deli- cious fancies of The Court of Fairy. The Polyolbion is a minute poetical itinerary of England and Wales, in which the affectionate patriotism of the writer has enumerated county by county, village by village, hill by hill, and rivulet by rivulet the whole surface of his native land; enlivening his work as he goes on by immense stores of picturesque legend and the richest profusion of allegory and personifi- cation. It is composed in the long-rhymed verse of twelve syllables, and is, both in design and execution, absolutely unique in literature. The notes attached to this work, in which Drayton was assisted by '* that gulf of learning," the incomparable Selden, are a wonderful mass of curious erudition. Drayton has described his country with the pain- ful accuracy of the topographer and the enthusiasm of a poet ; s.nd the Polyolbion will ever remain a most interesting monument of industry nnd taste. In The Barons' Wars Drayton has described the principal A. D. 1562-1625.] DANIEL. DRAYTON. DA VIES. 81 events of the unhappy reign of Edward II. The poem is composed in the stanza of Ariosto, which Drajton, in his preface, selects as the most perfect and harmonious ; and the merits and defects of the work may be pretty accurately characterized by what has been said above concern- ing Daniel's poem on a not dissimilar subject. The Heroical Epistles are imagined to be written by illustrious and unfortunate personages in English history to the objects of their love. They are therefore a kinc" of adaptation of the plan of Ovid to English annals. It was quite natural that a poet so fertile as Drayton, who wrote in almost every foTn, should not have neglected the Pastoral, a species of composition jit that time in general favor. His efforts in this department are cer- tainly not inferior to those of any of his contemporaries, not even excepting Spenser himself; while in this class of his writings, as well as in his inimitable fairy poems, Drayton has never been surpassed. In the series entitled The Muses' Elysium, consisting of a series of nine idyls, or Nymphals, as he calls them, and above all in the exquisite little mock-heroic of Nymphidia, everything that is most graceful, delicate, quaint, and fantastic in that form of national superstition almost peculiar to Great Britain the fairy mythology, is accumulated and touched with a consummate felicity. The whole poem of Nym~ phidia is a gem, and is almost equalled by the Epithalamium in the Vlllth Nymphal, on the marriage of "ourTita to a noble Fay." It is interesting to trace the use made of these graceful superstitions in the Midsummer Nighfs Dream and the Merry Wives of Windsor. (iii.) The vigorous versatility of the age, founded on solid and ex- tensive acquirements, is well exemplified in the poems of SIR JOHN DAVIES (1570-1626), a learned lawyer and statesman, and Chief Justice of Ireland, who has left two works of unusual merit and originality, on subjects so widely different that their juxtaposition excites almost a feeling of ludicrous paradox. The subject of one of them, Nosct. Teipsum, is the proof of the immortality of the soul; that of the other, entitled Orchestra, the art of dancing. The language of Davies is pure and masculine, his versification smooth and melodious ; and he seems to have communicated to his metaphysical arguments in the first poem, something of the easy grace and rhythmical harmony of the dance, while he has dignified and elevated the comparatively trivial subject of the second by a profusion of classical and learned allusions.* The Nosce * On the Nosce Teipsum, Mr. Hallam remarks, " Perhaps no language can produce a poem, extending to so great a length, of more condensation of thought, or in which fewer languid verses will be found. Yet according to some definitions, the Nosce Teipsum is wholly unpoetical, inasmuch as it shows no passion and little fancy. If it reaches the heart at all, it is through the reason. But since strong argument, in terse and correct style, fails not to give us pleasure in prose, it seems strange that it should lose its effect when it gains the aid of regular metre to gratify the ear and assist the memory. Lines there are in Davies which far outweigh much of the descriptive and imaginative poetry of th last two centuries, whether we estimate them by the pleasure they impart to us, or by the intellectual vigor they display. Experience has shown that the facuJ- 82 THE ELIZABETHAN POETS. [CHAP. IV, Tcifaum, pubi : aL.d in 1599, is written in four-lined stanzas of heroic lines, a measure which was afterwards honored by being taken as the vehicle of one of Dryden's early efforts ; but Dryden borrowed it more immediately from the Gon dibert of Davenant. The Orchestra is com- posed in a peculiarly-constructed stanza of seven lines, extremely well adapted to express the ever-varying rhythm of those dancing move ments which the poet, by a thousand ingenious analogies, trace? throughout all nature. (iv.) The unanimous admiration of contemporaries placed the genius of JOHN DONNE (1573-1631), Dean of St. Paul's, in one of the foremost places among the men of letters of his day. His life, too, full of vicissi- tudes, and his devotion of great and varied powers, first to scholastic study and retirement, then to the service of the state in active life, and last to the ministry of the Church, by familiarizing him with all the phases of human life, furnished his mind with rich materials for poetry of various kinds. When entering upon the career of the public service, as secretary to the Treasurer Lord Ellesmere, he made a secret mar- riage with the daughter of Sir George Moor, a lady whom he had long ardently loved, and the violent displeasure of whose family involved Donne in severe persecution. Though distinguished in his youth for wit and gayety, he afterwards, under deep religious conviction, embraced the clerical profession, and became as remarkable for intense piety as he had previously been for those accomplishments which had made him the Pico di Mirandola of his age. The writings of Donne arc- very voluminous, and consist of love verses, epigrams, elegies, and, abors all, satires, which latter department of his works is that by which nt is now principally remembered. As an amatory poet he has been justly classed by Johnson among the metaphysical poets writers in whom the intellectual faculty obtains an enormous and disproportionate supremacy over sentiment and feeling. These authors are ever on the watch for unexpected and ingenious analogies ; an idea is racked into every conceivable distortion ; the most remote comparisons, the obscurest recesses of historical and scientific allusion, are ransacked to furnish comparisons and illustrations which no reader can suggest to himself, and which, when presented to him by the perverse ingenuity of the poet, fill him with a strange mixture of astonishment and shame, like the distortions of the posture-master or the tricks of sleight-of-hand. It is evident that in this cultivation of the odd, the unexpected, and the monstrous, the poet becomes perfectly indifferent to the natural graces and tender coloring of simple emotion ; and in his incessant search after epigrammatic turns of thought, he cares very little whether reason, taste, and propriety be violated. This false taste in literatura was at one time epidemic in Spain and Italy, from whence, in all probi- ties peculiarly deemed poetical are frequently exhibited in a considerable degree, but very few have been able to preserve a perspicuous brevity without stiffnesi or pedantry (allowance made for the subject and the times), in metaphysical reasoning, so successfully as Sir John Davies." (Lit. ii. 129.) A. D. 1573-1625.] DONNE. HALL 83 bility, it infected English poets, who have frequently rivalled theii models in ingenious absurdity. The versification of Donne is singu larly harsh and tuneless, and the contrast between the ruggedness ot his expression and the far-fetched ingenuity of his thought adds to the oddity of the effect upon the mind of the reader, by making him con- .trast the unnatural perversion of immense intellectual activity with the rudeness and frequent coarseness both of the ideas and the expression. In Donne's Satires, of which he wrote seven, and in his Epistles to friends, we naturally find less of this portentous abuse of intellectual legerdemain, for the nature of such compositions implies that they are written in a more easy and colloquial strain ; and Donne has occasion- ally adapted, with great felicity, the outlines of Horace and Juvenal to the manners of his own time and country. Pope has translated some of Donne's Satires into the language of his own time, under the title of "The Satires of Dr. John Donne, Dean of St. Paul's, versified." (v.) But the real founder of Satire in England, if we are to judge by the relative scope and completeness of his works in this department, was JOSEPH HALL (1574-1656), Bishop of Norwich, a man equally remarkable for the learning, dignity, and piety with which he fulfilled his pastoral functions, and the heroic resignation with which he sup- ported poverty and persecution when deprived of them. He produced six books of Satires, under the title of Virgidemiarum (I. e. a harvest or collection of rods, a word modified from the similar term Vinde- miarum, vintage), which form a complete collection, though they were not all published at the same time, the first three books, quaintly en- titled by their author toothless Satires, having appeared in 1597, while a student at Cambridge ; and the latter three, designated biting' Satires, two years afterwards. Some of these excellent poems attack the vices and affectations of literature, and others are of a more general moral application. For the vivacity of their images, the good sense and good taste which pervade them, the abundance of their illustrations, and the ease and animation of the style, they are deserving of high admi- ration. Read merely as giving curious pictures of the manners and society of the day, they are very interesting in themselves, and throw frequent light on obscure passages of the contemporary drama. Hall, like Juvenal, often employs a peculiar artifice which singularly heightens the piquancy of his attacks, viz. that of making his secondary allusions or illustrations themselves satirical. Some of these satires are ex- tremely short, occasionally consisting of only a few lines. His versi- fication is always easy, and often elegant ; and the language offers an admirable union of the unforced facility of ordinary conversation with the elevation and conciseness of a more elaborate style.* 10. Space will permit only a rapid allusion to several secondary poets who adorned this period, so rich in variety and vigor. The two brothers, PHINEAS FLETCHER and GILES FLETCHER, who lived, approx- * To Donne and Hall should be added the name of JOHN MARSTON, the dramatic poet, as one of the chief satirists of the Elizabethan era. In 1.599 h - published three books of Satires, x^nder the title of The Scourge of Villainy. 84 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. [CHAP. IV. imatelj, between the years 1584 and 1650, and who were connected by blood with their great contemporary the dramatist, produceu, the former one of those long elaborate allegorical works which had been so fashionable at the beginning of the century, and in which science called in the aid of fiction, as in the case of Davies's poem on the Im- mortality of the Soul. This was The Purple Island, a minute descrip- tion of the human body, with all its anatomical details, which is followed by an equally searching delineation of the intellectual faculties. Giles Fletcher's work is Christ's Victory and Triu.nph, in which, as in his brother's production, we see evident traces of the rich and musical ciction, as well as of the lofty and philosophical tone, of the great master of allegory, Spenser. With a mere notice of the noble religious enthusiasm that prevails in the writings of CHURCHYARD, and of the unction and truly evangelical resignation of the unfortunate Jesuit SOUTHWELL, and a word of praise to the faithful and elegant transla- tion of Tasso by FAIRFAX, I must conclude the present chapter.* * For a fuller account of these poets, see Notes and Illustrations (B). NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. A THE MIKROTJR FOR MAGISTRATES. (See p. 72.) The history of this work, which \a the most im- portant poem in English literature between Surrey and Spenser, and which was very popular in its day, deserves a few words. It was projected, as rtated above (p. 72), by Thomas Sackville, Lord Bathurst, about the year 1537, and its plan was to give an account of all the illustrious but unfortunate characters in English history, from the conquest to the end of the fourteenth century. The poet de- scends, like Dante, into the infernal regions, con- ducted by Sorrow. Sackville, however, wrote only the Induction and the legend of the fall of the Duke of Buckingham, the vision of Richard III., and (hen committed the completion of the work to RICHARD BATJDWTOE and GEOEGE FEBEEES. They were both men of learning; the former an ecclesiastic, and the author of a metrical version of Solomon's Song, which he dedicated to Edward VI. ; the latter a lawyer, who sat in Parliament in the reign of Henry VIII., and whofilled the office of the Lord of Misrule in the palace of Greenwich at the Christinas revels appointed by Edward VI., in 1553. Baldwyne and Ferrers called in the assist- ance of several other writers, among whom were Churchyard and Phayer, the translator of Virgil, who took their materials chiefly from the newly published chronicles of Fabyan and Hall. The wars of York and Lancaster were their chief rc- ource. The work was first published in 1559; and after passing through three editions was reprinted in 1587, with the addition of many new lines, under the conduct of JOHN HlGGISB, a clergyman, and the author of some school books, who wrote a new induction in the octave stanza and a new series of lives, from Albanact, the youngest son of Brutus, and the first king of Albanie, or Scotland, continued to the Emperor Caracalla. The legend of Cordelia, King Lear's youngest daughter, is the most striking part of Iliggins's performance. The Mirrour was recast, with new additions, in 1610, by the poet Richard Niccols. It continued to enjoy great popu- larity till superseded by the growing reputation of a new poetical chronicle, entitled Albion's England, published before the beginning of the reign of James I. Warton, who has devoted considerable space to the Mirrourfor Magistrates, remarks, " It is reason- able to suppose, that the publication of the ilirrour fur Afaflistrates enriched the stores, and extended the limits, of our drama. These lives are so many tragical speeches in character. They suggested scenes to Shakspeare. Some critics imagine that Historical Plays owed their origin to this collec- tion. At least it is certain that the writers of this Mirrour were the first who made a poetical use of the English chronicles recently compiled by Fabyan, Hall, and Hollinshed, which opened a new field of subjects and events; and, I may add, produced a great revolution in the state of popular knowledge. For before those elaborate and voluminous compila- tions appeared, the history of England, which had been shut ap in the Latin narratives of the monkish annalists, was unfamiliar and almost unknown to the general reader." B. MINOR POETS IN THE REIGNS OF ELIZABETH AND JAMES L ''It was said by Ellis that nearly one hundred names of poets belonging to the reign of Elizal>cth might be enumerated, betides many that have lull CHAP. IV.] NOTES AND ILLUSTRATION'S. 85 no memorial except their songs. This, however, was I at a moderate computation. Drake (6'Aoi- ipeaie and his Times, i. C74) has made a list of more than two hundred." (Uallam, Lit. ii. 133.) The following is a list of the most important of these poets, in addition to those already described in the text: THOMAS CHURCHYARD (1520-1604), a voluminous poet, was born at Shrewsbury, and served as a soldier in the armies of Henry VIH., Mary, and Elizabeth. He experienced many vicissitudes of fortune. Mr. D'Israeli describes him "as one of those unfortunate men who have written poetry all their days, and lived a long life to complete the m isfortune." RICHARD EDWARDS (1523-1566), also known as a dramatic poet, was born in Somersetshire, educated at Oxford, and was appointed by Queen Elizabeth master of the singing boys of the royal chapel. He was the chiof contributor and framer of a poetical collection called Tlte Paradise of Dainty Devices, which was not published till 1576, ten years after his death. It was probably undertaken in conse- quence of the great success of Tottcl's Miscellany (see p. 70). The Paradiie of Dainty Devices has been republished in the " British Biographer," by Sir Egerton Brydges, who remarks that the " poems do not, it must be admitted, belong to the higher classes ; they are of the moral and didactic kind. In their subject there is too little variety, as they deal very generally in the commonplaces of ethics, rich as the fickleness and caprices of love, the falsehood and instability of friendship, and the ranity of all human pleasures. But many of these re often expressed with a vigor which would do credit to any era." The poems of Edwards are the best in this collection, and the one entitled Aman- tivm Irse is reckoned by Brydges one of the most beautiful in the language. The poems which are next in merit in this collection are by Lord Vaux (see p. 70, A). The writer who holds thethird place is WILLIAM HUNNIS (fl. 1550), one of the gentle- men of Queen Elizabeth's chapel, and the author of some moral and religious poems printed sepa- rately. WILLIAM WAKNEB (1558-1609), a native of Oxfordshire, an attorney of the Common Pleas, and the author of A'Mon's England, first published in 1586, and frequently reprinted. This poem, which is written in the fourtcen-syllable line, is a his- tory of England from the Deluge to the reign of James I. It supplanted in popular favor the J/irrour far Magistrates. The style of the work was much admired in its day, and Meres, in his " Wit's Treas- ury," says, that by Warner's pen the English tongue was "mightily enriched and gorgeously invested in rare ornaments and resplendent habiliments." The tales are chiefly of a merry cast, and many of them indecent. THOMAS WATSON (1.560-1592), the author of some lonncts, which have been much admired. JOSHUA SYLVESTER (1563-1618), a merchant, who translated The Divine Weeks and Works of the French poet Du Bartas, and obtained in his day the epithet of the Silver-tongued. The work went through seven editions, the last being published in 1641. It was one of Milton's early favorites. ABTHUB BROOKE (ob. 1563), the author of Tht 8 Tragical History of Romeo and Juliet, pullished in 15C2, a metrical paraphrase of the Italian novel of Bandello, on which Shakspeare founded his tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. Brooke's poem is one of con- siderable merit. ROBEBT SOUTHWELL (1560-1595), born in Nor- folk, of Catholic parents, educated atDouay, becamo a Jesuit, and returned to England in 1584 as a mis- sionary, lie was arrested in 1592, and was executej at Tyburn in 1595, on account of his being a Romish priest, though not involved in any political plot*. His poems breathe a spirit of religious resignation, and are marked by beauty of thought and expres- sion. Ben Jonson said that Southwell " had so written that piece of his, The Burning Babe, ha (Jonson) would have been content to destroy many of his." THOMAS STOBEB (1587-1604), of Christ Church, Oxford, the author of a poem on The Life and Death of Thomas Wolsey, Cardinal, published in 1599, in which he followed closely Cavendish's Life of Wolsey. NICHOLAS BRETON (1558-1624 ?), the author of considerable number of poems, and a contributor to a collection called England'* Helicon, published in 1600, which comprises many of the fugitive pieces of the preceding twenty years. Sidney, Raleigh, Lodge, Marlowe, Greene, are among the other contributors to this collection. FRANCIS DAVISON (1575-1618), the son of th secretary Davison, deserves mention as the editor and a contributor to the 2'oetical Rhapsody, pub- lished in 1002, and often reprinted. Like " Eng- land's Helicon " it is a collection of poems by various writers. GEORGE CHAPMAN (1557-1634), also a dramatic poet, but must celebrated for his translation of Homer, which preserves much of the fire and spirit of the original. It is written in the fourteen-sylla- ble verse so common in the Elizabethan era. "He would have made a great epic poet," says Charle* Lamb, " if, indeed, he has not abundantly shown himself to be one; for his Homer is not so properly a translation as the stories of Achilles and Ulyssea rewritten. The earnestness and passion which he lias put into every part of these poems would be incredible to a reader of more modern transla- tions." Chapman was born at Hitching Hill, in Hertfordshire. His life was a prosperous one, and he lived on intimate terms with the great men of his day. EDWARD VERB, EARL or OXFORD (1534-1004), the author of some verses in the Paradise of Dainty Devicef. He sat as Great Chamberlain of England upon the trial of Mary, Queen of Scots. HENRY CONSTABLE (15687-1604?), was cele, brated for his sonnets, published in 1592, under the name of Diana. It is conjectured that he was the same Henry Constable who, for his zeal in the Catholic religion, was long 6bliged to live in a state of banishment. SIR FCLK GREVTLLE, LORD BROOKE (1554- 1621), a friend of Sir Philip Sidney, was made Chancellor of the Exchequer, and a peer in 1621. He died by the stab of a revengeful servant, in 1628. His poems are a Treatise on Humane Learning, a Treatise of W:rrs, a Treatise of Monarchy, a Trea- tise of Religion, and an Inquisition upon Famt and 86 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. [CHAP. [V. Fortune. Be also wrote two tragedies, entitled Alaham and Muftapha, neither of which was ever acted, being written after the model of the ancients, with choruses, &c. Soutliey remarked that Dryden appeared to him to have formed his tragic style more upon Lord Brooke than upon any other author. SAMUEL ROWLANDS (d. 1634), whose history is quite unknown, except that he was a prolific pam- phleteer in the reigns of Elizabeth, James I., and Charles t. Campbell remarks that " his descrip- tions of contemporary follies have considerable humor. I think he has afforded in the story of pinup and Smith a hint to Butler for his apologue of vicarious justice, in the case of the brethren who hanged a ' poor weaver that was bed-rid,' instead of the cobbler who had killed an Indian. ' Not out of malice, but mere zeal, Because he was an Infidel.' Uiulibras, Part. ii. Canto ii. 1. 420." Sm JOffii nABBlNGTON (1561-1612), born at Kelston, near Bath, in Somersetshire, and celebrated as the first English translator of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, published in 159L Harrington also wrote book of epigrams, and several other works. His father, John Harrington (1534-1532) was the author Oi some poems published in the " Nugsc Antiquse." He was imprisoned in the Tower under Queen Mary, for holding correspondence with Elizabeth. EDWABD FAIRFAX (fl. 1600), the translator of Tasso's Jerusalem, was a gentleman of fortune. The first edition was published in 1600, and was dedicated to Queen Elizabeth. This translation is much superior to that of Ariosto by Sir John Har- rington. " It has been considered as one of the earliest works in which the obsolete English which had not been laid aside in the days of Sackville, and which Spenser affected to preserve, gave way to a style not much differing, at least in point of ingle words and phrases, from that of the present day." But this praise, adds Mr. Uallam, is equally due to Daniel, to Drayton, and to others of the later Elizabethan poets. The first five books of Tasso had been previously translated by CAEEW in 1594. This translation is more literal than that of Fairfax, but far inferior in poetical spirit. THOMAS LODGE (1556-1625?), also a physician and a dramatic poet, was born in Lincolnshire, was educated at Trinity College, Oxford, and first ap- peared as an author about 1580. Ten of Lodge's poems are contained in the " English Helicon," published in 1600. To his poem entitled Rotalynde : Eup/teut Golden Legacie (1590), Shakspeare was indebted for the plot and incidents of his drama, AI You Like It. For his dramatic works, see p. 126. THOMAS CABEW (1589-1638), a poet at the court m Charles I., where he held the office of gentleman of the Privy-chamber, and server in ordinary to the king. His poems, which are mostly short and amatory, were greatly admired in their dar. Campbell remarks that " the want of boldness and expansion in Carew's thoughts and subject* excludes j him from rivalship with great poetical names ; nor i it difficult, even within the narrow pale of his I works, to discover some faults of affectation, and of still mi,re objectionable indelicacy. But among | the i oets who have walked in the same limited path j he ii pre-eminently beautiful, and deservedly ranks I among the earliest of those who gave a cultivated grace to our lyrical strains." SIB HEN-BYTVOTTO* (1568-1639), a distinguish^ diplomatist in the reigns of Elizabeth and James L He was secretary to the Earl of Essex; but upon the apprehension of his patron, he left the kingdon.. He returned upon the accession of James, and was appointed ambassador to Venice. Later in life h was appointed Provost of Eton, and took deacon's orders. His principal writings were published in 1651, under the title of Reliquix Wottonianie, with a memoir of his life by Izaak Walton. His liter- ary reputation rests chiefly upon his poems. Hif Element* o/ Architecture were long held in esteem. The Sxliqaue also contain several other prosa works. RICHABD BABXFIELD (b. 1574), educated at Brasenose College, Oxford, wrote several minor poems, distinguished by elegance of versification. His ode, " As it fell upon a day," which was re- printed in the " English Helicon " under the signa- ture of " Ignoto," in 1600, hod been falsely attributed to Shakspeare in, a volume entitled " The Passionate Pilgrim" (1559). RICUAKD COKBETT (1582-1635), Bishop of Ox- ford, and afterwards of Norwich, celebrated as a wit and a poet in the reign of James I. His poems were first collected and published in 164". The best known are his Journey into France and his Fare- well to the Fairies. They ore lively and witty. SIB JOHN BEAUMONT (1582-1628), elder brother of Francis Beaumont the dramatist, wrote in the heroic couplet a poem entitled Bosworth field, which was published by his son in 1629. PHINEAS FLETCIIEB (1584-1650), and his younger brother GILES FLETCHEB, mentioned in the text (p. 84), deserve a fuller notice; and we cannot do better than quote Mr. Hallam's discriminating criticism respecting them. ** An ardent admiration for Spenser inspired the genius of two young broth- ers, Phineas and Giles Fletcher. The first, very soon otter the queen's death, as some allusions to Lord Essex seem to denote, composed, though ho did not so soon publish, a poem, entitled The Purple Island. By this strange name he expressed a sub- ject more strange; it is a minute and elaborate account of the body and mind of man. Through five cantos the reader is regaled with nothing but allegorical anatomy, in the details of which Phineai seems tolerably skilled, evincing a great deal of ingenuity in diversifying his metaphors, and in presenting the delineation of his imaginary island with as much justice as possible to the allegory without obtruding it on the reader's view. In the sixth canto he rises to the intellectual aud moral faculties of the soul, which occupy the rest of the poem. From its nature it is insuperably weari- some, yet his language is often very poetical, hii versification harmonious, his invention fertile. . . . Giles Fletcher, brother of Phineas, in Christ's Victory and Triumph, though his subject has not oil the unity that might bv desired, had a manifest superiority in its choice. Each uses a stanza of his own; Phineas one of seven lines, Giles one of eight. This poem was published in 1610. Each brother alludes to the work of tia other, which must be owing to the alterations niadl by Phineas in his Purple Island, written probablj CHAP. IV.] NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 8? the first, but not pnblished, I believe, till 1633. Giles seems to have more vigor than his elder brother, but less sweetness, lesa smoothness, and more affectation in his style. This, indeed, is deformed by words neither English nor Latin, but imply barbarous, such as, elamping, eblazon, dfprostrate, parpured, glitterand, and many others. They both bear much resemblance to Spenser; Giles sometimes ventures to cope with him, even in celebrated passages, such as the description of the Cave of Despair. And he has had the honor, in turn, of being followed by Milton, especially in the first meeting of our Saviour with Satan in the Para- dise Regained. Both of these brothers are deserv- ing of much praise ; they were endowed with minds eminently poetical, and not inferior in imagination to any of their contemporaries. But an injudicious taste, and an excessive fondness foi a style which the public was rapidly abandoning, that of allegori- cal personification, prevented their powers from being effectively displayed." SCOTTISH POETS. bra ALEXANDER SCOTT (fl. 1562) wrote several amatory poems, which have procured him the title of the Scottish Anacreon. SIB RICHARD MATT/LAND (1496-1586), more cele- brated as a collector of the poems which bear his name than as an original poet, but his own com- positions are marked by good taste. ALEXANDER MONTGOMERY, the author of au allegorical poem called The Cherry and the Sloe, published in 1597, which long continued to be a favorite, and the metre of which was adopted by Burn*. HCJLE (d. 1609), a clcrg/irjui. I published in 1599 a volume of Hymns or Sacred Song*. KING JAMES VI. published, in 1.584, a volume of poetry, entitled Essayet of a Prentice in the Dirini Art of Poefie, with the Rewli* and Cautelit to 6. pursued and avoided. EARL or ANCRCM (1578-1654), wrote some eon- nets of considerable merit GEOEGE BUCHANAN (1506-1582), celebrated fo his Latin version of the Psalms, is spoken of among the prose writers (p. 107). DP.. AETIIITB JOHNSTON (1587-1641), also cele- brated for his Latin version of the Psalms, was born near Aberdeen, studied medicine at Padua, and was appointed physician to Charles I. He died at Oxford. According to the testimony of Mr. Ilallam, "Johnston's Psalms, all of which are in the elegiac metre, do not fall short of those of Bu- chanan, either in elegance of style or correctness of Latinity." Johnston also wrote several other Latin poems. EABL OP STIRLING (1580-1640), published in 1637 a collation of his works entitled Recreations with the ifuses, consisting of heroic poems and tragedies, of no great merit, but Campbell observes that " there is elegance of expression in a few of hit shorter pieces." One of his tragedies is on th subject of Julius Caesar. WILLIAM DECMMOSD of Hawthornden (1585- 1649), the most distinguished of the Scottish po- ets of this era, was the friend of Ben Jonson and Drayton. Jonson visited him in Hawthornden in 1619. His best poems are his sonnets, which Mr. Hailam describes as "polished and elegant, fret from eonceit and bad taste, in pure, unblemuhew English." 88 PHILOSOPHY AND PROSE LITERATURE. [CHAP. V CHAPTER V. THE NEW PHILOSOPHY AND PROSE LITERATURE IN THE REIGNS OF ELIZABETH AND JAMES I. A. D. 1558-1625. { 1. Introduction. $ 2. Chroniclers: STOW, HOLLIXSHED, SPEED. $ 3. SIB WALTER RALEIGH. 4. Collections of Voyages and Travels : HAK.LUYT, PURCHAS, DAVIS. 5. The English Church : HOOKER'S Ecclesiastical Pol- ity. 6. Life of LORD BACOX. 7. Services of Bacon : the scholastic philosophy. $ 8. History of previous attempts to throw off the yoke of the scholastic philosophy. 9. Bacon's Instauratio Mayna. 10. First and Second Books : De Augmentis Scientiarum and the Novum Organon : the Inductive Method. 11. Third Book : Silca Silvarum : collection and classi- fication of facts and experiments: remaining books. 12. Estimate of Bacon's services to science. $ 13. His Essays and other English writings. $ 14. BURTON'S Anatomy of Melancholy. LORD HERBERT OF CHERBURY. \ 15. TlIOMAS HOBBES. 1. THE principal object of the present chapter is to trace the nature and the results of that immense revolution in philosophy brought about by the immortal writings of Bacon. It will, however, be unavoidable, in accordance with the chronological order generally adopted in our work, to sketch the character of other authors, of great though inferior importance, who flourished at the same time. Of the general intellec- tual character of the Age of Elizabeth, something has already been said : it may be observed that much of the peculiarly practical charac- ter which distinguishes the political and philosophical literature of this time is traceable :o the general laicising' of the higher functions of the public service, and is not one of the least valuable results of the Prot- estant Reformation. The clergy had no longer the monopoly of that learning and those acquirements which during the Catholic ages secured them the monopoly of power : and the vigorous personal character of the great queen combined with her jealousy of dictation to surround her throne with ministers chosen for the most part among the middle classes of her people, and to whom she accorded unshaken confidence, while fhe never allowed them to obtain any of that undue influercc which the weaknesses of the woman experienced from unworthy favorites like Leicester and Essex. Such men as Burleigh, Walsingham, and Sir Thomas Smith belong to a peculiar type and class of statesmen ; and their administration, though less brilliant and dramatic than might be found at other periods of our history, was incontestably more wise and patriotic than can easily be paralleled. 2. In the humble but useful department of historical chronicles a few words must be said on the labors of JOHN STOW (1525-1605) and A. D. 1552-1618.] SIR WALTER RALEIGH. 89 RAPHAEL HOLLIXSHED (d. 1580),* the former of whom, a London citi- zen of very slight literary pretensions, devoted the whole of his long life to the task of collecting materials for numerous chronicles and descriptions of London. The latter undertook a somewhat similar work, though intended to commemorate the history of England gen- erally. From Hollinshed, it may be remarked, Shakspeare drew the materials for many of his half-legendary, half-historical pieces, such as Macbeth, King Lear, and the like ; and it is curious to observe the mode in which the genius of the great poet animates and transfigures the flat and prosaic language of the old chronicler, whose very words he often quotes textually. Striking examples of this will be found in Henry V. and Henry VI. 3. The most extraordinary and meteor-like personage in the liter- ary history of this time is SIR WALTER RALEIGH (1552-1618), the brilliancy of whose courtly and military career can only be equalled by the wonderful variety of his talents and accomplishments, and by the tragic heroism of his death. He was born in 1552, and early attracted the favor of Elizabeth by an act of romantic gallantry, which has fur- nished the theme of a famous anecdote ; and both by his military exploits and his graceful adulation, he long maintained possession of her capricious favor. He highly distinguished himself in the wars in Ireland, where he visited Spenser at Kilcolman, and was consulted by the great poet on the FaCry Queen, and no less as a navigator and adventurer in the colonization of Virginia and the conquest of Guiana. He is said to have first introduced the potato and the use of tobacco into England. On the accession of James I. he seems to have been, though without the least grounds, involved in an accusation of high treason connected with the alleged plot to place the unfortunate Ara- bella Stuart upon the throne, and he was confined for many years in the Tower under sentence of death. Proposing a new expedition to South America, he was allowed to undertake it ; but, it proving unsuc- cessful, the miserable king, in order to gratify the hatred of the Span- ish court, which Raleigh's exploits had powerfully excited, allowed him to be executed under the old sentence in 1618. During his imprison- ment of twelve years Raleigh devoted himself to literary and scientific occupations ; he produced, with the aid of many learned friends, among whom Jonson was one, a History of the World, which will ever be regarded as a masterpiece of English prose. The death of few illustrious men has been accompanied by so many traits of heroic simplicity as that of Raleigh.f * Stow's chief works are a Summary of English Chronicles, first published in 1565, his Annals in 1573, and his Survey of London in 1598. To the names of Stow and Hollinshed should be added that of JOHN SPEED (1552-1629), who published in 1614 A History of Great Britain, from the earliest times to the reign of James I. t Raleigh's History comes down only to the Second Macedonian War. He- specting its style, Hallam remarks that " there is little now obsolete in the Words of Raleigh, nor, to any great degree, in his turn of phrase ; the periods, 8* 90 PHILOSOPHY AND PROSE LITERATURE. [CHAP. V. 4. The immense outburst of intellectual activity which renders the middle of the sixteenth century so memorable an epoch in the history of philosophy, was not without a parallel in the rapid extension of geographical knowledge. England, which gave birth to Bacon, the j-.uccessful conqueror of new worlds of philosophical speculation, was forem'ost among the countries whose bold navigators explored unknown regions of the globe. Innumerable expeditions, sometimes fitted ou by the state, but far more generally the undertakings of private specu- lation, exhibited incredible skill, bravery, and perseverance in opening new passages for commerce, and in particular in the endeavor to solve the great commercial and geographical problem of finding a north- west passage to the eastern hemisphere. The commercial rivalry between England and Spain, and afterwards between England and Holland, generated a glorious band of navigators, whose exploits, par- taking of the double character of privateering and of trade, laid the foundation of that naval skill which rendered England the mistress 01" the seas. Drake, Frobisher, Davies, Raleigh, were the worthy ances- tors of the Nelsons, Cooks, and Franklins. The recital of their dan- gers and their discoveries was frequently recorded by these hardy navigators in their own simple and picturesque language ; and the same age that laid the foundation of the naval greatness of our coun- try, produced also a branch of our literature which is neither the least valuable nor the least characteristic the narration of maritime dis- covery. HAKLUYT (1533-1616), PURCHAS (d. 1628), and DAVIS (d. 1605) have given to posterity large collections of invaluable materials con- cerning the naval adventure of those times : the first two authors were merely chroniclers and compilers ; the third was himself a famous navigator, the explorer of the Northern Ocean, and gave his name to the famous strait which serves as a monument of his glory. The lan- guage in all these works is simple, grave, and unadorned; the narra- tive, in itself so full of the intensest dramatic excitement, has the charm of a brave old seaman's description of the toils and dangers he has passed ; and the tremendous dangers so simply encountered with such insignificant means are painted with a peculiar mixture of professional tang froid and child-like trust in Providence. The occasional acts of cruelty and oppression, which are to be mainly attributed to a less advanced state of civilization, are more than redeemed by the indom- itable courage and invincible perseverance of these illustrious nav- igators. 5. Among the various Christian sects generated by the great break-up of the Catholic Church at the Reformation, the Anglican confession appears to occupy nearly a central position, equidistant from the blind devotion to authority advocated by the Romish com munion, and the extreme abnegation of authority proclaimed by the where pains have heen taken with them, show that artificial structure which w find in Sidney and Hooker ; he is less pedantic than most of his contempora- ries, seldom low, never affected." \. D. 1553-1598.] HOOKER. 91 Calvinistic theologians. The Church of England is essentially a com- promise between opposite extremes ; and it is perhaps to this modera- tion that it owes its solidity and its influence : it is unquestionably this moderation which recommended it to so reasonable and practical a people as the English. On its first appearance on the stage of history it was exposed to the most violent hostility and persecution at the hands of the ancient faith which it had supplanted ; but no sooner had it become firmly established as the dominant and official religion of the state, than it was exposed to attacks from the very opposite point of the theological compass attacks under whose violence it temporarily succumbed. The Catholic persecutions of Mary's reign were followed by the gradually increasing hostility of Puritanism, which had been insensibly acquiring more and more power from the middle of the reign of Elizabeth. The great champion of the principles of Anglican- ism against the encroachments of the Genevan school of theology was RICHARD HOOKER (1553-1598), a man of evangelical piety and of vast learning, sprung from the humblest origin, and educated in the University of Oxford. He was for a long time buried in the obscurity of a country parsonage ; but his eloquence and erudition obtained for him the eminent post of Master of the Temple in London, where his colleague in the ministry, Walter Travers, propounded doctrines in church government which, being similar to those of the Calvinistic confession, were incompatible with Hooker's opinions. The mildness and modesty of Hooker's character, rendering controversy and dispu- tation insupportable to him, urged him to implore his ecclesiastical superior to remove him from his place, and restore him to the more congenial duties of a country parish : and it was here that he executed that great work which has placed him among the most eminent of the Anglican divines, and among the best prose writers of his age. Th^ title of this work is A Treatise on the Lcrws of Ecclesiastical Polity, and its object is to investigate and define the fundamental principles upon which is founded the right of the Church to the obedience of its members, and the duty of the members to pay obedience to the Church. But, though the principal object of this book is to establish the relative rights and duties of the Anglican Church in particular, and to defend its organization against the attacks of the Roman Catholics on the one hand and the Calvinists on the other, Hooker has dug deep down into the eternal granite on which are founded all law, all obedience, and all right, political as wel 1 as religious. The Ecclesiastical Polity is a mon- ument of close aia cogent logic, supported by immense and varied erudition, and is written in a style so free from pedantry, so clear, vig- orous, and unaffected, as to form a remarkable contrast with the gen- erality of theological compositions, then generally overloaded with quotation and deformad by conceits and antithesis. It is to be regret- ted that this excellent work was never finished by the author, or, at least, if finished, has not descended to us as Hooker intended it to do, for the Sixth Book is supposed, though certainly the composition of the same author, to be a fragment of a quite different work. 92 PHILOSOPHY AND PROSE LITERATURE. [CHAP. V. 6. The political life of FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626) forms, with his purely intellectual or philosophical career, a contrast so striking that it would be difficult to find, in the records of biographical literature, any thing ro vividly opposed. He was the son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, long a favorite and trusted minister of Queen Elizabeth, in whose service he held the high office of Keeper of the Great Seal. Sir Nicholas was r fair specimen of that peculiar class of able statesmen with whom that great sovereign surrounded her administration, a type which we find repeated in Burleigh, Walsingham, Ellesmere, and Smith men of great practical knowledge of the world, of powerful though not per- haps inventive faculties, and of great prudence and moderation in their religious opinions, a point of much importance at a period when the recent Reformation in the Church had exposed the country to the agitations arising from theological disputes. Francis Bacon was the nephew of Burleigh, Sir Nicholas and the great Chancellor having married two sisters ; and the boy gave earnest, from his tenderest childhood, of those powers of intellect and that readiness of mind which afterwards distinguished him among men. He was born in 1561 ; and received a careful education, completed at an age even for that time exceedingly early, in the University of Cambridge. He is said, even as a boy, to have shown plain indications of that inquiring spirit which carried him to the investigation of natural laws, and a gravity and presence of mind which attracted the attention of the Queen ; and while studying at Cambridge it is reported that he was struck with the defects of the philosophical methods, founded upon the scholastic 01 Aristotelian system, then universally adopted in the investigations of science. Then, perhaps, first dawned upon his mind the dim outline of that great reformation in philosophy which he was afterwards des- tined to bring about. His father, who certainly intended to devote him to the public service, probably in the department of diplomacy, sent him to travel on the Continent ; and a residence of about four years in France, Germany, and Italy, not only gave him the opportunity of acquiring a remarkable stock of political knowledge respecting the state and views of the principal European courts, but rendered him the still more valuable service of enlarging his knowledge of mankind, and making him acquainted with the state of philosophy and letters. He was recalled from the Continent by the death of his father in 1580, and found himself under the necessity of entering upon some active career. He appears to have felt that the natural bent of his genuis inclined to the study of science ; and he begged his kinsman and natural protector. Burleigh, to obtain for him the means of devoting himself to those" pursuits. The Chancellor, however, who was jealous of his nephew's extraordinary abilities, which he feared might eclipse or at least inter- fere with the talents of his own son Robert, just then entering upon that brilliant career which he so long followed, treated Francis with great harshness and indifference, and insisted on his embracing the profession of the law. He became a student of Gray's Inn ; and that wonderful aptitude, to which no labor was too arduous and no subtletj A. D. 1561-1626-] LORD BACON. 93 too refined, very soon made him the most distinguished a ivocate of his day, and an admired teacher of the legal science. The jealousy of his kinsmen the Cecils, both father and son, appears to have veiled itself, in some degree perhaps unconsciously, under the pretext that Bacon was a flighty and bookish young man, too fond of projects and theories to be likely to become a useful servant of the State. But the counte- nanoe which was refused to Bacon by his uncle and cousin, he obtained from the generous and enthusiastic friendship of Essex, who used all his influence to obtain for his friend the place of Solicitor-General, and when unsuccessful in this attempt, consoled him for the disappointment by the gift of a considerable estate. During this period of his life Bacon continued to rise rapidly, both in professional reputation as a lawyer, and in fame both for philosophy and eloquence. He sat in the House of Commons, and gave evidence not only of his unequalled powers as a speaker, but also of that cowardly and interested subservi- ence to the Court which was the great blot upon his glory, and the cause of his ultimate disgrace. There is nothing in the whole range of history more melancholy than to trace this sublime intellect truc- kling to every favorite who had power to help or to hurt, and betraying in succession all those to whom self-interest for the moment had attached him. After submitting, with a subserviency unworthy of a man of the least spirit, to the haughty reproaches of the Cecils, he aban- doned their faction for that of Essex, whom he flattered and betrayed. On the unhappy Earl's trial for high treason, in consequence of his frantic conspiracy and revolt, Bacon, though he certainly felt for his benefactor as warm an attachment as was compatible with a mean and servile nature, not only abandoned his former friend, but volunteered with malignant eagerness among the foremost ranks of his enemies, and employed all his immense powers, as an advocate and a pam- phleteer, to precipitate his ruin and to blacken his memory. Bacon was not in fact a malignant man : he was a needy, flexible, unscrupu- lous courtier; and showed in his after career the same ignoble readiness to betray the duties of the judge as he now did in forgetting the obli- gations of the friend. On the death of Elizabeth, and the transfer of the crown to James I. in 1603, Bacon, who had been gradually and steadily rising in the ser- vice of the State, attached himself first to Carr, the ignoble favorite of that prince, and afterwards to Carr's successor, the haughty Bucking- ham. He had been knighted at the coronation, and at the same time married Alice Barnham, a young lady of considerable fortune, the daughter of a London alderman. He sat in more than one parliament, and was successively made Solicitor-General, Attorney-General, and at last, in 1617, chiefly by the interest of Buckingham, Lord High Chan- cellor of England, and Baron Verulam, which latter title was three years afterwards replaced by the still higher style of Viscount St. Alban's. Though the whole of his public career was stained with acts of the basest servility and corruption, it is not uninstruc.tive to mention that Bacon was one of the last, if not the very last, ministers of the law *)4 PHILOSOPHY AND PROSE LITERATURE [CHAP. V. in England to employ and to defend the application of torture in judicial procedure. Bacon occupied the highest office of justice during four years, and exhibited, in the discharge of his great functions, the wisdom and eloquence which characterized his mind, and the servility and meanness which disgraced his conduct; and on the assembling of Par- liament in 1621, the House of Commons, then filled with just indignation against the insupportable abuses, corruptions, and monopolies counte- nanced by the Government, ordered a deliberate investigation into vari- ous acts of bribery of which the Chancellor was accused. The King and the favorite, though ready to do all in their power to screen a criminal who had always been their devoted servant, were not bold enough to face the indignation of the whole country; and the investi- gation was allowed to proceed. It was carried on before the House of Lords, and it resulted in his conviction, on the clearest evidence, of many acts of gross corruption as a judge.* Independently of the cases thus proved, it cannot be doubted that there must have existed numer- ous others which were not inquired into. Bacon himself fully confessed his own guilt; and in language which under other circumstances would have been profoundly pathetic, threw himself on the indulgence of his judges. The sentence, though it could not be otherwise than severe, was evidently just : it condemned him to be deprived of his place as Chancellor, to pay a fine of 4o,ooo/. (a sum, be it remarked, not amounting to half the gains he was supposed to have corruptly made), to be imprisoned during the King's pleasure in the Tower, to be ever afte. 'ncapable of holding any office in the State, and to be incapacitated from sitting in Parliament or coming within twelve miles of the Court. In imposing so severe a punishment it must be recollected that Bacon's judges well knew that much of it would be mitigated, or altogether remitted ; and the result showed how just were these anticipations. The culprit was almost immediately released from confinement; the fine was not only remitted by royal favor, but by the manner of its remission converted into a sort of protection of the fallen Chancellor against the claims of his importunate creditors ; and he was speedily restored to the privilege of presenting himself at Court. There can be no doubt that James and his favorite had felt great reluctance in abandoning Bacon to the indignation of Parliament, and that they only did so in the conviction that any attempt to save their servant would not only have been inevitably unsuccessful, but must have involved the Govern- ment itself in odium, without in the least alleviating the lot of the guilty Chancellor. The life of the fallen minister was prolonged for five years after his severe but merited disgrace ; and these years were passed in intriguing, flattering, and imploring pecuniary relief in his distresses. During his >hole life he had lived splendidly and extravagantly. His taste for * Many of the charges against Bacon, related in the text, have been proved by Mr. Hepworth Dixon, in his " Personal History f Lord Bacon," to be un- founded. A.. D. 1561-1626.] LORD BACON. 95 magnificence in houses, gardens, and trains of domestics had been such as may generally be found in men of lively imagination ; and it was to escape from the perpetual embarrassments which are the natural con sequences of such tastes that he in all probability owed that gradual deadening of the moral sense, and that blunting of the sentiment of honor and self-respect, which were the original source of his crimes. Common experience shows with what fatal rapidity rises the flood of corruption in the human heart when once the first barriers are removed. Bacon's death took place, after a few days' illness, on the gth April, 1626, and was caused by a cold and fever caught in travelling neai London, and in part is attributed to an experiment which he tried, of preserving meat by freezing. He got out of his carnage, bought a fowl, and filled the inside of the bird with snow, which then lay thick upon the ground. In doing this he received a chill, which was aggra- vated by being put into a damp bed at Lord Arundel's house near Highgate. Bacon was buried, by his own desire, by his mother's side in St. Michael's Church, St. Alban's, near which place was the magnif- icent seat of Gorhambury, constructed by himself. He had no children, and left his affairs involved in debt and confusion. 7. In order to appreciate the services which Bacon rendered to the cause of truth and knowledge, and which have placed his name foremost p.mong the benefactors of the human race, two precautions are indis- pensable. First we must form a distinct idea of the nature of the phil- osophical methods which his system of investigation supplanted for- ever in physical research ; and, secondly, we must dismiss from our minds that common and most erroneous imagination that Bacon was an inventor or a discoverer in any specific branch of knowledge. Hi? mission was not to teach mankind a philosophy, but to teach them how to philosophize. A contrary supposition would be as gross an error as that of the clown who imagined that Newton was the discoverer of gravitation. The task which Bacon proposed to himself was loftier and more useful than that of the mere inventor in any branch of science ; and the excellence of h'is method can be nowhere more clearly seen than in the instances in which he has himself applied it to facts which in his day were imperfectly known or erroneously explained. The most brilliant name among the ancient philosophers is incontesta- bly that of Aristotle : the immensity of his acquirements, which ex- tended to almost every branch of physical, political, moral, and intel iectual research, and the powers of a mind unrivalled at once for grasp of view, and subtlety of discrimination, have justly secured to him the very highest place among the greatest intellects of the earth : he was indeed, in the fullest sense, " '1 maestro di color che sanno." But the instrumental or mechanical part of his system, the mode by which he taught his followers that they could arrive at true deductions in scientific investigation, when falling into inferior hands, was singu- larly liable to be abused. That careful examination of nature, and 96 PHILOSOPHY AND PROSE LITERATURE. [CHAP. V. that wise and cautious prudence in the application to particular phe- nomena, of general formulas of reasoning, which are so perceptible in the works of the master, were very soon neglected by the disciples, who, finding themselves in possession of a mode of research .which seemed to them 'to promise an infallible correctness in the results ob- tained, were led, by their very admiration for the genius of Aristotle, to leave out of sight his prudent reserve in the employment of his method. The synthetic mode of reasoning flatters the pride of human intellect by causing the truths discovered to appear the conquest made by its unassisted powers ; and the great part played in the investigation 'by those powers renders the method peculiarly susceptible of that kind of corruption which arises from over-subtlety and the vain employment of words. Nor must we leave out of account the deteriorating influence of the various nations and epochs through which the ancient deductive philosophy had been handed down from the time of Aristotle himself till the days of Bacon, when its uselessness for the attainment of truth h3d become so apparent that a great reform was inevitable had been indeed inevitable from a much more remote period. The acute, dispu- tatious spirit of the Greek character had already from the very first commenced that tendency towards vain word-catching which was still further accelerated in the schools of the Lower Empire. It was from the schools of the Lower Empire that the Orientals received the philo- sophical system already corrupted, and the mystical and over-subtle genius of the Jewish and Arabian speculators added new elements of decay. It was in this state that the doctrines were received among the monastic speculators of the Middle Ages, and to the additional errors arising from the abstract and excessive refinements of the cloister were added those proceeding from the unfortunate alliance between the phil- osophical system of the Schools and the authority of the Church. The solidarity established between the orthodoxy of the Vatican and the methods of philosophy was indirectly as fatal to the authority of the one as ruinous to the value of the other. In this unhallowed union between physical science and dogmatic theology, the Church, by its ar- rogation to itself of the character of infallibility, put it out of its own power ever to recognize as false any opinion that it had once recognised as true ; and theology being in its essence a stationary science, while philosophy is as inevitably a progressive one, the discordance between the two ill-matched members of the union speedily struck the one with impotence and destroyed the influence of the other. Independently ; too, of the sources of corruption which I have been endeavoring to point out, the Aristotelian method of investigation, even in its pure and normal state, had been always obnoxious to the charge of infertility, and of being essentially stationary and unprogressive. The ultimate aim and object of its speculations were, by the attainment of abstract i:ruth, to exercise, purify, and elevate the human faculties, and to carry the mind higher and higher towards a contemplation of the Supreme Good and the Supreme Beauty: the investigation of nature was merely a means to this end. Practical utility was regarded as a result which A. D. 1561-1626.] LORD BACON. 97 might or might not be attained in this process of raising the mind to a certain ideal height of wisdom; but an end which, whether attained or not, was below the dignity of the true sage. Now, the aim proposed by the modern philosophy is totally different; and it follows that the methods by which that end is pursued should be as different. Since the time of Bacon all the powers of human reason, and all the energies of invention and research, have been concentrated on the object of im- proving the happiness of human life of diminishing the sufferings and increasing the enjoyments of our imperfect existence here below of extending the empire of man over the realms of nature in short, of making our earthly state, both physical and moral, more happy. This is an aim less ambitious than that ideal virtue and that impossible wis- dom which were the aspiration of the older philosophy; but it has the advantage of being attainable, while the experience of twenty centuries had sufficiently proved that the lofty pretensions of the former system had been followed by no corresponding results ; nay, that the incessant disputations of the most acute and powerful intellects, during so many generations, not only had left the greatest and most vital questions where they had found them at first, but had degraded philosophy to the level of an ignoble legerdemain. 8. Many attempts had been made, by vigorous and independent minds, long before the appearance of Bacon, to throw off the yoke of the scholastic philosophy; but that yoke was so riveted with the shackles of Catholic orthodoxy, that the efforts, being made in coun- tries and at epochs when the Church was all-powerful, could not possi- bly be successful : all they could do was to shake the foundations of an intellectual tyranny which had so long weighed upon mankind, and to prepare the way for its final overthrow. The Reformation, breaking up the hard-bound soil, opened and softer jd it so that the seeds of true science and philosophy, instead of falling upon a rock, brought forth fruit a hundred fold. Long and splendid is the list of the great and liberal minds who had revolted against the tyranny of the schools before the appearance of the New Philosophy. In the writings of that wonderful monk, the anticipator of his great namesake in the controversy between the Nominalists and Realists in the disputes which preceded the Reformation the standard of revolt against the tyranny of the ancient system had been raised by a succession of brave and vigorous hands ; and though many of these champions had fallen in their con- test against an enemy intrenched in the fortifications of religious orthodoxy, and though the stake and the dungeon had apparently silenced them forever, nevertheless the tradition of their exploits had formed a still-increasing treasury of arguments against orthodox tyranny. England, in the reign of Elizabeth and James I., was pre- cisely the country, and a country precisely in the particular state, in which the great revolution in philosophy was possible; and it was a most providential combination of circumstances and qualities that was concentrated in Francis Bacon so as to make him, and perhaps hiro alone, the apostle of the new philosophical faith. 9 98 PHILOSOPHY AND PROSE LITERATURE. [CHAP. V. 8. The great object which Bacon proposed to himself, in proclaim- ing the advantages of the Inductive Method, was fruit : the improve- ment of the condition of mankind; and his object being different from that of ihe elder philosophers, the mode by which it was to be attained was different likewise. From an early age he had been struck with the defects, with the stationary and unproductive character, of the Deduc- tive Method ; and during the whole of his brilliant, agitated, and, alas I too often ignominious career, he had constantly and patiently labored, adding stone after stone to that splendid edifice which will enshrine his n:ime when his crimes and weaknesses, his ambition and servility, shall be forgotten. His philosophical system is contained in the great work, or rather series of works, to which he intended to give the general title of Instauratio Magna, or Great Institution of True Philosophy. The v, hole of this neither was nor ever could have been executed by one mar. or by the labors of one age ; for every new addition to the stock of human knowledge, would, as Bacon plainly saw, modify the conclu- sions, though it would not affect otherwise than by confirming the soundness, of the philosophical method he propounded. The Instau- ratio was to consist of six separate parts or books, of which the follow- ing is a short synoptical arrangement : I. Partitiones Scicntiarum : a summary or classification of all knowledge, with indications of those branches which had been more or less imperfectly treated. II. Novum Organum : the New Instrument, an exposition of the methods to be adopted in the investigation of truth, with indi- cations of the principal sources of human error, and the reme- dies against that error in future. III. Phenomena Universi, sive Historia Naturalis et Experimemalis ad condendam Philosophiam : a complete body of weil-ob- served facts and experiments in all branches of human knowl- edge, to furnish the raw material upon which the new method was to be applied, in order to obtain results of truth. IV. Scala Intellectus, sive Filum Labyrinthi : rules for the gradual ascent of the mind from particular instances or phenomena, to principles continually more and more abstract ; and warn* ings against the danger of advancing otherwise than grad- ually and cautiously. V. Prodromi, sive Anticipationes Philosophic Secundas; anticipa- tions or forestallings of the New Philosophy, i. e. such truths as could be, so to say, provisionally established, to be after- wards tested by the application of the New Method. VI. Philosophia Secutida, sive Scientia activa ; the result of the just, careful, and complete application of the methods previously laid down to the vast body of facts to be accumulated and observed in accordance with the rules and precautions con- tained in the lid and IVth parts. Let us compare the position of Bacon, with respect to science in gen- A. D. 1561-1626.] LORD BACON. 99 I eral, to that of an architect invited to undertake the reconsi .ruction of a palace, ancient and splendid, but which, in consequence of the lapse of time and the changes of the mode of living, is found to be in a ruin- ous or uninhabitable condition. What would be the natural mode of proceeding adopted by an enlightened artist under these circumstances .' He would, I think, make it his first care to draw an exact plan of the edifice in its present state, so as to form a clear notion of the extent, the defects, and the conveniences of the building as it stands ; and not till then would he proceed to the demolition of the existing edifice. He would next prepare such instruments, tools, and mechanical aids, as would be likely to render the work of construction more rapid, certain, and economical. Thirdly, he would accumulate the necessary mate- rials. Fourthly, he would provide the ladders. Lastly, he would begin to build : but should the edifice be so vast that no human life would be long enough to terminate it, he would construct so much of it as would suffice to give his successors an idea of the general plan, style, and dis- position of the parts, and leave it to be completed by future genera- tions. It will easily, I think, be seen, how accurately the mode of pro- ceeding in Bacon's great work corresponds with common sense and with the method followed by our imaginary architect. Bacon is the builder ; the great temple of knowledge is the edifice, which the labors of our race have to terminate according to his plan. 10. Let us now inquire what portion of this project Bacon was able to execute. The first portion, consisting of a general view of the state of science at his time, with an explanation of the causes of its sterility and unprogressiveness, was published in 1605, in an English treatise, bearing the title of The Proficience and Advancement of Learning: this was afterwards much altered and extended, and republished in Latin, in 1623, under the title De Augmentis Scientiarum. The Novum Organum, the most important portion of Bacon's work, is that in which the necessity and the principles of the Inductive Method are laid down and demonstrated. It is, in short, the compendium of the Baconian logic. It was pub- lished in Latin, in 1620. The fundamental difference be- tween the method recommend- ed by Bacon and that which had so long been adopted by philosophers, may, I think, be rendered clear by a compari- son ot the accompanying little B diagrams : In the first of these the point A may be conceived to represent some general principle upon which depend any number of detached facts or phenomena B, c, D, E, F. Now let it be supposed that we are seeking for the explanation of one or all of these phenomena; or, in other 100 PHILOSOPHY AND PROSE LITERATURE. [CHAP. V. words, desirous of discovering the law upon which they depend. It is obvious that we may proceed as the arithmetician proceeds in the solu- tion of a problem involving the search after an unknown quantity or number ; that is, we may suppose the law of nature to be so and so, and applying this law to one or all of the phenomena within our obser- vation, see if it corresponds with them or not. If it does, we conclude, so far as our examination has extended, that we have hit upon the true result of which we are in search : if not, we must repeat the process, as the arithmetician would do in a like case, till we obtain an answer that corresponds with all the conditions of the problem : and it is evi- dent, that the greater the number of separate facts to which we suc- cessfully apply our theoretical explanation, the greater will be the probability of our having hit upon the true one. Now this application of a preCstablished theory to the particular facts or phenomena is pre- cisely the signification of the word synthesis. It is obvious that the march of the mind in this mode of investigation is from the general to the particular that is, in the direction of the arrow, or down-wards whence this mode of investigation is styled deduction, or a descent frorr, the general law to the individual example. Similarly, the Aristotelian method has received the designation a priori, because in it the estab- lishment of a theory, or, at all events, the provisional employment of a theory, is prior to its application in practice, just as in meas- uring an unknown space we previously establish a rule, as of a foot, yard, &c., which we afterwards apply to the space to be so deter- mined. In the diagram all the elements are the same as in the pre- ceding one, with the exception that here the process follows a precisely opposite direction that is, from a careful comparison of the different facts, the mind travels gradually upwards, with slow and cautious advances, from bare phenomena to more general consideration, till at last it reaches some point in which all the phenomena agree, and this point is the law of nature or general principle, of which we were in search. As synthesis signifies composition, so analysis signifies resolu- tion; and it is by a continual and cautious process of resolution that the mind ascends .in the direction marked by the arrow from the particular to the general. This ascending process is clearly designated by the term induction, which signifies an ascent from particular instances to a general law; and the term h posteriori denotes that the theory, being evolved from the examination of the individual facts, is neces- sarily posterior or subsequent to the examination of those facts. All human inventions have their good and their bad sides, their ad lantages and their defects : and it is only by a comparison between the relative advantages and defects that we can establish the superiority of one system or mode of action over another. On contemplating the two methods of which I have just been giving a very rough and popular explanation, it will be at once obvious that the Deductive mode enables us, -when the right theory has been hit upon, to arrive at absolute, or almost mathematical truth ; while analysis, being dependent for its tccuraov upon the number of phenomena which furnish the materials A. D. 1561-1626.] LORD BACON. 101 for our induction, can never arrive at absolute certainty; inasmuch as it is impossible to examine all the phenomena of a single class, and as while any phenomena remain unexamined we never can be certain thai the discovery of some new fact will not completely overset our conclu- sions. The utmost that we can arrive at, therefore, by this route, is t very high degree of probability a degree which will be higher in proportion as it is founded upon a greater number of instances, and attained by a more careful process of sifting. But the nature of the human mind is such that it is practically incapable of distinguishing between a very high probability and an absolute certainty ; at least the latter is able to produce upon the reason the same amount of conviction in some cases, perhaps, even a greater amount than even an abso- lute certainty. If we consider, therefore, the enormous number of chanceo against any given a priori deduction being the right one, for, as in an arithmetical problem, there can be only one correct solution, while the number of possible incorrect solutions is infinite, and observe that till all the possible phenomena have been submitted to the synthetic test we never can be sure that we have the right theory, we shall easily agree that the possible certainty of a theory is dearly bought when compared with the far greater safety of the analytical method of reasoning, which, keeping fast hold of nature at each step of its progress, has the possibility, nay, even the certainty, of correcting its errors as they may arise. The most important portion of the whole Instauratio is the Novum Organum, in which Bacon lays down the rules for the employment of Induction in the investigation of truth, and points out the origin and remedies of the errors which most commonly oppose us in our search. The earlier philosophers, and particularly Aristotle, assigning a great and almost unlimited efficacy in this research to the intellectual faculties alone, contented themselves with perfecting those logical formulas, among which the syllogism was the principal, by whose aid, as by the operation of some infallible instrument, they conceived that that result would assuredly be attained ; and gave rules for the legitimate employment of their syllogism, pointing out the means of detecting and guarding against fallacies or irregularities in the expression of their reasoning. Bacon went far deeper than this, and showed that the most dangerous and universal sources of human error have their origin, not in the illegitimate employment of terms, but in the weaknesses, the prejudices, and the passions of mankind, exhibited either in the race or the individual. He classifies these sources of error, which in his vivid picturesque language he calls Idols or false appearances, in four cate- gories ; the Idols of the Tribe, of the Den, of the Market-place, of the Theatre. Under the first he warns us against those errors and prejudices which are common to the whole human race, the tribe to which we all belong ; the idols of the Den are those which arise from the particular circumstances of the individual, as his country, his age, his religion, his profession, or his personal character : the errors of the Market-place are the result of the universal hab ; t of using terms the meaning of 102 PHILOSOPHY AND PROSE LITERATURE. [CHAP. V. which we have either not distinctly agreed on, or which we do not clearly understand. These terms are used in the interchange of thought, as money is passed from hand to hand in the market; -and we accept and transfer to others coins whose real value we have not taken the trouble to test. The idols of the Theatre are the errors arising from false systems of philosophy, which dress up conceptions in unreal disguises, like comedians upon the stage. We may compare the precau- tions of the older logic to that of a physician who should direct his efforts to the getting rid of the external efflorescence of a disorder, and should think his duty performed when he had purified the skin, though perhaps at the cost of driving in the disease and rendering it doubly dangerous. Bacon, like the more enlightened practitioner, sought out the deep-seated constitutional source of the malady; it is to that thai he addresses his treatment, certain that when the internal cause ia removed, the symptoms will vanish of themselves. 11. Of the Third Book Bacon has given only a specimen, intended to show the method to be adopted in collecting and classifying facts and experiments ; for in a careful examination of facts and experiments consists the whole essence of his induction, and in it are concealed the future destinies of human knowledge and power. Bacon contributed to this portion of the work a History of the Winds, of Life and Death, written in Latin ; and a collection of experiments in Physics, or, as he calls it, Natural History in English. This portion of the work is alone sufficient to 'show how small are Bacon's claims or pretensions to the character of a discoverer in any branch of natural science, and how completely he was under the influence of the errors of his day; but at the same time it proves the innate merit of his method, and the power of that mind which could legislate for the whole realm of knowledge, and for sciences yet unborn. To the English fragment he gives the title of Silva Silvarum, i. e. a collection of materials. The Fourth Book, Scala Intellectus, of which Bacon has given but a brief extract, was intended to show the gradual march to be followed by induction, in ascending from the fact perceptible to the senses to principles which were to become more and more general as we advance ; and the author's object was to warn against the danger of leaping ab- ruptly over the intermediate steps of the investigation. Of the Fifth Book he wrote only a preface, and the Sixth was never commenced. 12. Of the soundness and the fertility of Bacon's method of inves- tigation, the best proof will be a simple and practical one : we have only to compare the progress made by humanity in all the useful arts during the two centuries and a half since induction has been general'/ employed in all branches of science, with the progress made during the twenty centuries which elapsed between Aristotle and the age of Bacon. It is no exaggeration to say that in the shorter interval that progress has been ten times greater than in the longer. That this progress is in any degree attributable to any superiority of the human intellect in modern times is a supposition too extravagant to deserve a moment's attenti in. Never did humanity produce intellects more vast, more A D. 1561-1626.] LORD BACON. 10? penetrating, and more active, I will not say than Aristotle himself, bul than the series of great men who wasted their powers in abstract ques- tions which never could be solved, or in the sterile subtleties of scholastic disputation. We may remark, too, as a strong confirmation of the truth of what we are saying, that in those sciences which are independent of experiment, and proceed by the efforts of reasoning and contemplation alone, as theology, for instance, or pure geometry, the ancients were fully as far advanced as we are at this moment. The glory of Bacon is founded upon a union of speculative power with practical utility which were never so combined before. He neglected nothing as too small, despised nothing as too low, by which our happi- ness could be augmented; in him, above all, were combined boldness and prudence, the intensest enthusiasm, and the plainest common sense. He could foresee triumphs over nature far surpassing the wildest dreams of imagination, and at the same time warn posterity against the most trifling ill consequences that would proceed from a neglect of his rules. It is probable that Bacon generally wrote the first sketch of his works in English, but afterwards caused them to be translated into Latin, which was at that time the language of science, and even of diplomacy. He is reported to have employed the services of many young men of learning as secretaries and translators : amomg these the most remark- able is Hobbes, afterwards so celebrated as the author of the Leviathan. The style in which the Latin books of the Instauratio were given to the woi Id, though certainly not a model of classical purity,- is weighty, vigorous, and picturesque. 13. Bacon's English writings are very numerous : among them unquestionably the most important is the little volume entitled Essays, the first edition of which he published in 1597, and which was several times reprinted, with additions, the last in 1625. These are short papers on an immense variety of subjects, from grave questions of morals and policy down to the arts of amusement and the most trifling accomplishments ; and in them appears, in a manner more appreciable to ordinary intellects than in his elaborate philosophical works, the wonderful union of depth and variety which characterizes Bacon. The intellectual activity they display is literally portentous ; the immense multiplicity and aptness of unexpected illustration is only equalled by the originality with which Bacon manages to treat the most worn-out and commonplace subject, such, for instance, as friendship or garden- ing. No author was ever so concise as Bacon ; and in his mode of writing there is that remarkable quality which gives to the style of Shakspeare such a strongly-marked individuality; that is, a combina- tion of the intellectual and imaginative, the closest reasoning in the boldest metaphor, the condensed brilliancy of an illustration identified with the development of thought. It is this that renders both the dramatist and the philosopher at once the richest and the most concise of writers. Many of Bacon's essays, as that inimitable one on Studies, are absolutely oppressive from the power of thought compressed into the smallest possible compass. Bacon wrote also an Essay on the Wis> 104 PHILOSOPHY AND PROSE LITERATURE. [CHAP. 'V dom of the Ancients, in which he endeavored to explain the politic; and moral truths concealed in the mythology of the classical ages and in this work he exhibits an ingenuity which Macaulay justly d< scribes as almost morbid ; an unfinished romance, The Netv Atlanti which was intended to embody the fulfilment of his own dreams of philosophical millennium ; a History of Henry VII., and a vast nun ber of state-papers, judicial decisions, and other professional writing All these are marked by the same vigorous, weighty, and somewh: ornamented style which is to be found in the Instauratio, and ai among the finest specimens of the English language at its period c highest majesty and perfection. 14. In every nation there may be found a small number of writei who, in their life, in the objects of their studies, and in the form an manner of their productions, bear a peculiar stamp of eccentricity. N country has been more prolific in such exceptional individualities tha England, and no age than the sixteenth century. There cannot I a more striking example of this small but curious class than old Roi ERT BURTON (1576-1640), whose life and writings are equally odi His personal history was that of a retired and laborious scholar, an his principal work, the Anatomy of Melancholy, is a strange combin; tion of the most extensive and out-of-the-way reading with just obse vation and a peculiar kind of grave saturnine humor. The object c the writer was to give a complete monography of Melancholy, and 1 point out its causes, its symptoms, its treatment, and its cure : but it descriptions given of the various phases of the disease are written i so curious and pedantic a style, accompanied with such an infinity c quaint observation, and illustrated by such a mass of quotations from crowd of authors, principally the medical writers of the fourteenth an fifteenth centuries, of whom not one reader in a thousand in the pre: ent day has ever heard, that the Anatomy possesses a charm which n one can resist who has once fallen under its fascination. The enormoi amount of curious quotation with which Burton has incrusted ever paragraph and almost every line of his work has rendered him th favorite study of those who wish to appear learned at a small expense and his pages have served as a quarry from which a multitude of authoi have borrowed, and often without acknowledgment, much of the: materials, as the great Roman feudal families plundered the Coliseui to construct their frowning fortress-palaces. The greater part of BUJ ton's laborious life was passed in the University of Oxford, where h died, not without suspicion of having hastened his own end, in orde that it might exactly correspond with the astrological predictions whic he is said, being a firm believer in that science, to have drawn from hi own horoscope. He is related to have been himself a victim to the melancholy which he has so minutely described, and his tomb bear the astrological scheme of his own nativity, and an inscription emi nently characteristic of the man : " Hie jacet Democritus, junior, cv ritam dedit et mortem Melancholia." Our notice of the prose writers of this remarkable period would b L D. 1588-1679.] HERBERT. HOBBES. 105 ncomplete without some mention of LORD HERBERT OF CHERBUR\ 1581-1648), who was remarkable as a theologian and also as an his- orian. He was a man of great learning and rare dignity of personal haracter, and was employed in an embassy to Paris in 1616. There ic first published his principal work, the treatise De Veritate, an elab- -rate pleading in favor of deism, of which Herbert was one of the ear- iest partisans in England. He also left a History of Henry VIII., not mblished until after his death, and which is certainly a valuable mon iment of grave and vigorous prose, though the historical merit of the vork is diminished by the author's strong partiality in favor of the iharacter of the king. Though maintaining the doctrines of a free- hinker, Herbert gives indications of an intensely enthusiastic religious nysticism, and there is proof of his having imagined himself on more han one occasion the object of miraculous communications by which he Deity confirmed the doctrines maintained in his books. 15. But in force of demonstration, and clearness and precision of anguage, none of the English metaphysicians have surpassed THOMAS ioBBES (1588-1679), who, however, more properly belongs to a later >eriod. Hobbes was a man of extraordinary mental activity, equally emarkable, during the whole of a long literary career, for the power is for the variety of his philosophical speculations. The theories of iobbes exerted an incalculable influence on the opinions, not only of Cnglish, but also of Continental thinkers, for nearly a century, and hough that influence has since been much weakened by the errors and ophistries mingled in many of this great writer's works, in some mportant and arduous branches of abstract speculation, as for exam- le in the great question respecting Free Will and Necessity, it is loubtful whether any later investigations have thrown any new light ipon the principles established by him. He was born at Malmesbury n Wiltshire in 1588, was educated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, and sub- equently travelled abroad as private tutor to the Earl of Devonshire. )n his return he became intimate with the most distinguished men of lis day, through the influence of his patron the Earl of Devonshire. Jis first literary work, the translation of Thucydides, was published in he third year of the reign of Charles I., in 1628. He subsequently iassed several years in Paris and Italy, and he was in constant com- munication with the most illustrious minds among his contempo- aries, as with Descartes for example, with Galileo, and with Harvey. Chough of extreme boldness in speculation, Hobbes was an advocate ar high monarchical or rather despotic principles in government : his heory being that human nature was essentially ferocious and corrupt, ie concluded that the iron restraint of arbitrary power could alone uffice to bridle its passions. This theory necessarily flowed from the undamental proposition of Hobbes's moral system ; viz. that the trimum mobile of all human actions is selfish interest. Attributing 11 our actions to intellectual calculation, and thus either entirely ^noring or not allowing sufficient influence to the moral elements nd the affections, which play at least an equal part iff the dnuna of 106 PHILOSOPHY AND PROSE LITERATURE. [CHAP. > life, Hobbes fell into a narrow and one-sided view of our motives whic makes his theory only half true. Me was a man whose reading, thoug not extensive, was singularly profound : and in the various branch* of science and literature which he cultivated we see that clearness c view and vigor of comprehension which is found in men of few book The most celebrated work of this great thinker was the Leviathan (pul lished in 1651), an argument in favor of monarchical government: tf reasonings, however, will apply with equal force to the justification c despotism. But though the Leviathan is the best known of his work the Treatise on Human Nature, and the Letter on Liberty and Nece st'fy, are incontestably those fn which the closeness of his logic and tl purity and clearness of his style are most visible, and the correctne of his deductions least mingled with error. Two purely political tre; tises, the Elementa Philosophica de Give, and De Corpore Politico are remarkable for the cogency of the arguments, though many of tl results at which the author struggles to arrive are now no longer coi sidered deducible from the premises. In the latter portion of his lif Hobbes entered with great ardor upon the study of pure mathematic and engaged in very vehement controversies with Wallis and othe respecting the quadrature of the circle and other questions in whi< novices in those sciences are apt to be led away by the enthusiasm ( imaginary discoveries. Hobbes has often been erroneously confound* with the enemies of religion. This has arisen from a misconceptic of the nature of his doctrines, which, in apparently lowering the mor faculties of man, have seemed to exhibit a tendency to materialisr though in reality nothing can be more opposed to the character < Hobbes's philosophical views ; for the selfish theory of human action when divested of those limitations which confine the motive of self those low and short-sighted views of interest with which it is general associated, no more necessitates a materialistic line of argument ths any other system for clearing up the mysteries of our moral nature. f * These two treatises were published before the Leviathan, and were incc porated in the latter work. f It may also be mentioned that Hobbes wrote, in 1672, at the age of a curious Latin poem on his own life ; and he also published in 1675, at the a] of 87, a translation in verse of the Iliad and Odyssey. His Behemoth, or a Hi tory of the Civil Wars from 1640 to 1660, appeared in 1679, a few months aft his death. HAP V.] NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 102 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. DfOE PEOSE WRITERS IN THE REIGNS OF ELIZABETH AND JAMES I. WEBSTER PTJTTENHAM, published in 1586 the ft of English Poesie; a writer whom Mr. Hallam nsidera the first who wrote a well measured ose. RICHARD GEAFTON, a printer in the reigns of enry VIII. and the three following sovereigns, is le of the early chroniclers. He wrote in prison, to which he was thrown for printing the procla- ntion of the succession of Lady Jane Grey to the rone, An Abridgment of the Chronicles of Eng- nd, published in 1562. WILLIAM CECIL, LORD BURLEIGII (d. 1598), e celebrated statesman in the reign of Queen :izabeth, wrote Precepts, or, Directions for the 'M Ordering and Carnage of a Man's Life, ad- essed to his son Robert Cecil. JOHN LYLY, the author of the prose romance of uphves, and GUEENE aud NASII, the authors of veral pamphlets in prose, are mentioned under the amatists (pp. 124, 125). GEORGE BUCHANAN (1506-1582), celebrated as an sgant Latin writer, was born at Killearn, in the unty of Stirling, and was educated at the Univer- ;ics of St. Andrews and Paris. He was appointed ' the Earl of Murray tutor to the young King ,mes VL His chief work is a History of Scot- nd, which was published in 1582, under the title ' Rerum Scoticarum Historia. His Latin version ' the Psalms has been already mentioned (p. 87). e wrote in the Scottish dialect a work called hamii'leon, to satirize Secretary Maitland of Lcth- gton. GEORGE SANDYS (1577-1643), known as a travel- r and as a poet, wa the youngest son of the rchbishop of York. His Travels in the East were ry popular, and were repeatedly republished in e seventeenth century. His chief poetical pro- iction was a translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses. WILLIAM LITHGOW (d. 1640), a native of Seot- nd, also celebrated as a traveller. He travelled neteen years on foot in Europe, Asia, and Africa, he first edition of his Travels was published in 14. Sin JOHN HAYWAED (d. 1627), an historian, pub- shed in 1509 The First Part of the Life and Reign 'Henry IV., dedicated to the Earl of Essex; a ork which gave such offence to the queen that the ithor was thrown into prison. Hayward was ibscquently patronized and knighted by James I. 1 1613 he published The Lives of the three Norman ings of England, William I., William If., and 'enry I., dedicated to Charles, Prince of Wales, e likewise wrote The Life and Reign of King 'duard VL, with the Beginning of the Reign of ttcen Elizabeth, which was published in 1630, after is death. RICHARD KNOLLES (d. 1610), master of the free- school at Sandwich in Kent, published in 1610 a History of the Turks. Johnson, in a paper in thi Rambler, gives Knolles the superiority over al English historians. " He has displayed all the ex- cellencies that narrative can admit. His s7lr, though somewhat obscured by time and vitiated by falsa wit, is pure, nervous, elevated, and clear. Nothing could have sunk this author into obscurity but the remoteness and barbarity of the people he relates." Mr. Hallam thinks that Johnson has not too highly extolled Knolles's style and power of narration. SAMUEL DANIEL, the poet of whom we have al- ready spoken (p. 80), published in 1618 a History of England, from the Conquest to the Reign of Ed- ward HI. Mr. Hallam remarks that " this work is deserving of some attention on account of its lan- guage. It is written with a freedom from all stiff- ness, and a purity of style, which hardly any olhe* work of so early a date exhibits. These qualities are indeed so remarkable that it would require a good deal of critical observation to distinguish it even from writings of the reign of Anne; and where it differs from them (I speak only of the secondary class of works, which have not much individuality of manner), it is by a more select idiom, and by an absence of the Gallicism or vulgarity which is often found in that age. It is true that the merits of Daniel are chiefly negative ; he is never pedantic, or antithetical, or low, as his contemporaries were apt to be ; but his periods are ill constructed ; he has little vigor or elegance; and it is only by observing how much pains he must have taken to reject phrases which were growing obsolete that we give him credit for having done more than follow the common stream of easy writing. A slight tinge of archaism, and a certain majesty of expression, relatively to colloquial usage, were thought by Bacon and Raleigh congenial to an elevated style ; but Daniel, a gentleman of the king's household, wrote as the court spoke, and his facility would be pleasing if his sentences had a less negligent struc- ture. As an historian he has recourse only to com- mon authorities; but his narration is fluent and perspicuous, with a regular vein of good sense, mora the characteristic of his mind, both in yerse and prose, than very commanding vigor." WILLIAM CAMDEN (1551-1C23), the antiquary and historian, was head master of Westminster School, and endowed at Oxford the chair of history, which bears his name. His most celebrated work is in Latin, entitled Britannia, first published in 1586, giving a topographical description of Great Britain from the earliest times. He also wrote in Latin an account of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. SIR HENRY SPELMAN (1562-1641), also an emi- nent antiquary, published in Latin various worki upon legal and ecclesiastical antiquities, of which one of the principal is a History of the English Councils. 108 THE DAWN OF THE DRAMA. [CiiAP. VI CHAPTER VI. THE DAWN OF THE DRAMA. 6 1. Origin of the Drama. Earliest religious spectacles, called Mysteries 01 Miracles. 2. Plays, called Moralities : BISHOP BALE. 3. Interludes : JOHN HEYWOOD. 4. Pageants. Latin Plays. $ 5. Chronicle Plays. Bale's King John. First English tragedies. The tragedy of Gorboduc. Other early tragedies. 6. First English comedies. Ralph Royster Doyster. Gammer Gurton's Needle. 7. Actors. Theatres. Scenery and properties of the stage. 8. Dramatic authors usually actors. $ 9. Early English playwrights. LYLY. PEELE. KYD. NASH. GREENE. LODGE. 10. CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE. 11. Anonymous plays. 1. As the Drama is one of the most splendid and perhaps the most intensely national department of our literature, so its orig -n and devel- opment were peculiar, and totally different from anything to be found in, the history of other European countries. It is only Spain and England among all the modern civilized nations, that possess a theatri- cal literature independent in its origin, characteristic in its form, and reflecting faithfully the features, moral, social, and intellectual, of the people among which it arose : and the nationality of Spain being strongly distinguished from that of England, it is natural that the Spanish drama should possess a character which, though, like that of Britain, strongly romantic, should be very dissimilar in its type. It is possible to trace the first dim dawning of our national stage to a very remote period, to a period indeed not very far removed from the era of the Norman Conquest : for the custom of representing, in a rude dramatic form, legends of the lives of the Saints and striking episodes of Bible History seems to have been introduced from France, and to have been employed by the clergy as a means of communicating reli- gious instruction to the rude population of the twelfth century. There exists the record of one of these religious spectacles, which received the name of Mysteries or Miracles, from the sacred nature of their subject. and personages, having been represented in the Convent of Dunstable in I Tig. It was called the Play of St. Catherine^ and in all probability consisted of a rude dramatized picture of the miracles and martyrdom of that saint, performed on the festival which commemorated her death. In an age when the great mass of the laity, from the highest to the low- est, were in a state of extreme ignorance, and when the little learning that then existed was exclusively in the hands of ecclesiastics, it was quite natural that the latter, which was then the governing class, should employ so obvious an expedient for communicating some elementary religious instruction to the people, and by gratifying the curiosity of their rude hearers, extend and strengthen the influence of the Church. It is known that this play of St. Catherine was performed in French, A.D. in 9 .] MYSTERIES OR MIRACLES. 10'J which is a sufficient proof that the custom of these representations was imported from abroad ; but the great and rapid extension of these per- formances soon showed how well this mode of religious amusement accorded with the tastes and requirements of the times. Mysteries and Miracle-plays abound in the early literature of all the Catholic countries of Europe; Spain, Germany, France, Italy possess examples so abun- dant that a considerable library might be formed of these barbarous pieces ; and the habit of seeing them represented in public has certainly left very perceptible traces in medizeval literature and art. For example, the title, the subject, and the arrangement of Dante's immortal poem are closely connected with dramatic representations of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, which formed a common feature among the festivities of Florence. The Divine Comedy, the very name of which shows its re- lation to some theatrical performance, is nothing but a Miracle in a narrative form. These plays were composed and acted by monks, the cathedral was transformed for the nonce into a theatre, the stage was a species of graduated platform in three divisions rising one over the other, and placed near or over the altar, and the costumes were fur- nished by the splendid contents of the vestry of the church. It will appear natural enough, that on any of the high religious festivals, on the anniversary of any important religious personage or event, that personage or event should be represented in a visible form, with such details as either Scripture, legend, or the imagination of the author could supply. The childish and straightforward art of these old monkish dramatists felt no repugnance in following with strict literal accuracy every circumstance of the original narrative which they dramatized ; and the simple faith of their audience saw no impropriety in the introduction of the most supernatural beings, the persons of the Trinity, angels, devils, saints, and martyrs. The three platforms into which the stage was divided represented Heaven, Earth, and Hell ; and the dramatis personce made their appearance on that part of the stage which corresponded with their nature. It was absolutely necessary that some comic element should be introduced to enliven the graver scenes, particularly as some of these representations were of inordinate length, there being one, for example, on the subject of the Creation and the Fall of Man, which occupied six days in the performance. Besides, the rude audience would have absolutely required some farcical or amusing episode. This comic element was easily found by representing the wicked personages, whether human or spiritual, of the drama as placed in ludicrous situations, or surrounded by ludicrous accompaniments : thus the Devil generally played the part of the clown or jester, and was exhibited in a light half terrific and half farcical. Nor were they con- tented with such drolleries as could be extracted from the grotesque gambols and often baffled machinations of Sati T and his imps, or with the mixture of merriment and horror inspired by horns, and tails, and hairy howling mouths : the authors of these pieces introduced human buffoons ; and the modern puppet-play of Punch, with his struggles with the Devil, is unquestionably a direct tradition handed down from to 110 THE DAWN OF THE DRAMA. [CHAV. VI. these ancient miracles in which the Evil One was alternately the con- queror and the victim of the Buffoon, Jester, or Vice, as he was called Some idea may be formed of these ancient religious dramas from the titles of some of them which have been preserved ; for the general reader h scarce likely to consult such of them as have been piinted, though curious monuments of the faith and art of long-vanished ages. The Creation of the World, the fall of Man, the story of Cain and Abel, the Crucifixion of Our Lord, the Massacre of the Innocents, the Deluge., besi.les an infinite multitude of subjects taken from the lives and miracles of the saints ; such were the materials of these simple dramas. They are generally written in mixed prose and verse, and though abounding in anachronisms and absurdities both of character and dialogue, they sometimes contain passages of simple and natural pathos, and some- times scenes which must have affected the spectators with intense awe and reverence. In an English mystery on the subject of the Deluge, a comic scene is produced by the refusal of Noah's wife to enter the Ark, and by the beating which justly terminates her resistance and scolding. But, on the other hand, a mystery on the subject of the Sacrifice of Isaac contains a dialogue of much pathos and beauty between Abraham and his 'son ; and the whole action of the Mystery of the Holy Sacra- ment was capable of producing a strong impression in an age of child- like, ardent faith. These representations were^o/ up with all the mag- nificence attainable, and every expedient was employed to heighten the illusion of the scene. Thus there is a tradition of a condemned crimi- nal having been really crucified on the stage, in a representation of the Passion of Our Lord, in the character of the Impenitent Thief. Very evident traces of the universality of these religious dramas may be found in the early works of sculpture and painting throughout Catholic Europe. Thus the practice of representing the Deity in the costume and ornaments of a Pope or a Bishop, which appears to us an absurdity or an irreverence, arose from such a personage being generally repre- sented, on the rude stage of the miracle-play, in a dress which was then associated with ideas of the highest reverence : and the innumerable anecdotes and apologues representing evil spirits as baffled and defeated by a very moderate amount of cunning and dexterity may easily have been generated by that peculiarity of Mediaeval Christianity which pic- tures the wicked spirits, not as terrible and awful beings, but as mischiev- ous goblins whose power was annihilated at the foundation of our faith. 2. To trace the gradual changes which establish the affiliation from the early Mysteries of the twelfth century to the regular drama of modern times, is nothing else but to point out the steps by which the dramatic art, from an exclusively religious character acquired more and more of a lay or worldly spirit in its subjects and its personages. The Mysteries, once the only form of dramatic representation, continued to be popular from the eleventh to the end of the fourteenth century; nay, in some pastoral and remote corners of Europe, where the primitive faith glows in all its ancient ardor, and where the manners of the people have been little modified by contact with foreign civilization, A. D. 1495.] MORALITIES. Ill something very similar to the Mysteries may be still seen even in the present day. In the retired valleys of Catholic Switzerland, in the Tyrol, and in some little-visited districts of Germany, the peasants stil j annually perform dramatic spectacles representing episodes in the life of Christ. The first stage in the process of laicizing' the drama was the substitution for the Miracle-play of another kind of representation, entitled a Morality. This species of entertainment seems to have been popular from about the beginning of the fifteenth century, and gradually supplanted the exclusively religious Mystery. It is quite evident that the composition as well as the representation of these pieces was far less exclusively in the hands of ecclesiastics, who thus began to lose that influence over the popular mind which they derived from their monopoly of knowledge. Perhaps, however, it would be a more legiti- mate explanation of this change to say, that the spread of civilization among the laity, and the hostility which was gradually but rapidly un- dermining the foundations of Catholicism in England, had contributed to put an end to that monopoly; for many of our early Moralities, though the production of Churchmen, as in the case of Bishop Bale, were the production of Churchmen strongly tainted with the unortho- dox opinions of the early reformers. The subjects of these dramas, instead of being purely religious, were moral, as their name implies ; and the ethical lessons were conveyed by an action and dramatis per- sonce of an abstract or allegorical kind. Thus, instead of the Deity and his angels, the Saints, the Patriarchs, and the characters of the Old and New Testament, the persons who figure in the Moralities are Every-Man a general type or expression of humanity Lusty Juven- tus who represents the follies and weaknesses of youth Good Counsel, Repentance, Gluttony, Pride, Avarice, and the like.. The action was in general exceedingly simple, and the tone grave and doc- trinal, though of course the same necessity existed as before for the introduction of comic scenes. The Devil was far too popular and useful a personage to be suppressed ; so his battles and scoldings with the Vice, or Clown, were still retained to furnish forth " a fit of mirth." Our readers may form some idea of the general character of these pieces by the analysis of one, entitled The Cradle of Security, the outline of which has been preserved in the narrative of an old man who had formed one of the audience in his early childhood. It was intended as a lesson to careless and sensual sovereigns. The principal personage is a King, who, neglecting his high duties and plunged in voluptuous pleas- ures, is put to sleep in a cradle, to which he is bound by golden chains held by four beautiful ladies, who sing as they rock the cradle. Sud- denly the courtiers are all dispersed by a terrible knock at the door, and the king, awaking, finds himself in the custody of two stern and tremendous figures, sent from God to punish his voluptuousness and vice. In a similar way the action of the Morality Lusty Juventus contains a vivid and even humorous picture of the extravagance and debauchery of a young heir, surrounded by companions, the Virtues and the Vices, some of whom endeavor in vain to restrain his passions, while others flattei 112 THE DAWN OF THE DRAMA. [Cn vr. VI. his depraved inclinations. This piece also ends with a demonstration of the inevitable misery and punishment which follow a departure from the path of virtue and religion. It is impossible to draw any strong line of demarcation, either chronological or critical, between the Mys- tery and Morality. The one species imperceptibly melts into the other ; though the general points of distinction are clear and obvious enough. The Morality also had a strong tendency to partake of the character of the court masque, in which the Elements, the Virtues, the Vices, or the various reigns of nature, were introduced either to convey some physical or philosophical instruction in the guise of allegory, or to compliment a king or great personage on a festival occasion. Of this class is Skel- ton's masque, to which I have alluded in a former chapter, and to which he gave the title of Magnificence. A very industrious writer of these Moralities was BISHOP BALE (1495-1563), who will also be mentioned presently (p. 114) as one of the founders of our national drama. 3. Springing from the Moralities, and bearing some general resem- blance to them, though exhibiting a still nearer approach to the regu- lar drama, are the Interludes, a class of compositions in dialogue much shorter in extent and more merry and farcical in subject, which were exceedingly fashionable about the time when the great controversy was raging between the Catholic church and the Reformed religion in Eng- land. A prolific author of these grotesque and merry pieces was JOHN HEYWOOD, a man of learning and accomplishment, but who seems to have performed the duties of a sort of jester at the court of Henry VIII. Heywood was an ardent Catholic; and the stage at that time was used by both religious parties to throw odium and ridicule upon the doc- trines of their opponents; the Catholics delighting to bring forward Luther, Catherine de Bora, and the principal figures among the reform- ers, in a light at once detestable and ridiculous, and the Protestants returning the compliment by showing up the corruptions and vices of the Pope and the hierarchy. The Interludes, being short, were, it is sup- posed, performed either in the entr'actes of the longer and more solemn Moralities, or represented on temporary stages between the intervals of the interminable banquets and festivities of those days. 4. In the preceding rapid sketch of the dramatic amusements of our ancestors, I have endeavored to give a general idea of these enter- tainments in their complete and normal form.; that is, when the action selected for the subject of the piece was illustrated with dialogue, and the exhibitor addressed himself to the ears as well as to the eyes of his audience. It must not be forgotten that both the subjects of the Mys- teries and those of the Moralities were sometimes exhibited in dumb show. A scene of Holy Writ or some event in the life of a saint was represented in. a kind of tableau vivant by disguised and costumed per- sonages, and this representation was often placed on a sort of wheeled platform and exhibited continually during those long processions which formed the principal feature of the festivities of ancient times. These tableaux -vivants were also introduced into the great halls during the elaborate banquets which were the triumphs of ancient nragnificence: A.D. isoo.] LATIN PL A FS. 113 and thus this species of entertainment is inseparably connected with those pageants so often employed to gratify the vanity of citizens, of to compliment an illustrious visitor. These pageants, whether simply consisting of the exhibition, 01 some lofty platform, in the porch or churchyard of a cathedral, in the Town Hall or over the city gate, of a number of figures suitably dressed, or accompanying their action with poetical declamation and music, necessarily partook in all the change* of taste which characterized the age : the Prophets and Saints who welcomed the royal stranger in the thirteenth century with bar- barous Latin hymns, were gradually supplanted by the Virtues and allegorical qualities ; and these in their turn, when the Renaissance had disseminated a universal passion for classical imagery, made way for the Cupids, the Muses, and other classical personages whose influ- ence has continued almost to the literature of our own time. Such spectacles as I have just been alluding to, which were so common that the chronicles of every European nation are filled with records of them, were of course frequently exhibited at the Universities : but in the hands of these bodies the shows naturally acquired a more learned character than they had elsewhere. It was almost universal in those times that the students should employ Latin on all official occasions : this was necessary, partly from the multitude of nations composing the body of the students, and who required some common language which they could all understand. Latin, therefore, was by a thousand differ- ent laws and regulations obligatory; and this occurred not only in the Universities, but also in many conventual and monastic societies. It was therefore natural that the public amusements of the University should partake of the same character. A large number of pieces, gen- erally written upon the models of Terence and Seneca, were produced and represented at this time. In the great outbreak of revolt against the authority of scholasticism which preceded the Reformation, the return to classical models in dramatic composition was general, and Reuchlin boasted that he was the first to furnish the youth of Germany with comedies bearing some similarity to the masterpieces of Terence. The times of Elizabeth and James were peculiarly fertile in Latin dramas composed at the Universities ; and these sovereigns, the first of whom was remarkably learned in an age of general diffusion of classical studies, while in the second erudition had degenerated into pedantry, were en- tertained by the students of Oxford and Cambridge with Latin plays. 5. We have now traced the progress of the Dramatic art from its first rude infancy in England, and have seen how every step of that advance removed it farther and farther from a purely religious, and brought it closer and closer to a profane character. The last step of the progress was the creation of what we now understand under the term dramatic, viz. the scenic representation, by means of the action and dialogue of human personages, of some event of history or social life. As in the first appearance of this, th2 most perfect form which the art could attain, the influence of the grer.t models of ancient litera- ture must have been very powerful dramatic compositions class them* 114 THE DAWN OF THE DRAMA. [CHAP. VI selves, by the very nature of the case, into the two great categories of Tragedy and Comedy, and even borrow from the classical models detaih of an unessential kind, as for example the use of the Chorus, which, originally consisting of a numerous body of performers, was gradually reduced, though its name and functions were retained to a certair degree by the old English playwrights, to a single individual, as in sev- eral of Shakspeare's dramas. It was about the middle of the sixteenth century that a considerable activity of creation was first perceptible in this department. JOHN BALE (1495-1563), the author of many semi- polemical plays, partaking in some measure of the character of the Mystery, the Morality, and the Interlude, set the example of extracting materials for rude historical dramas from the Chronicles of his native country. His drama of King John occupies an intermediate place between the Moralities and historical plays. But the most remarkable progress in this department of literature is to be found in a considera- ble number of pieces, written to be performed by the students of the Inns of Court and the Universities, for the amusement of the sov- ereign on high festival occasions : for it must be remembered that the establishment of regular theatres and the formation of regular theatri- cal troops did not take place for a considerable period after these first dramatic attempts. The great entertainments of the rich and power- ful municipal corporations, of which the Lord Mayor's annual Show in London, and similar festivities in many other towns, still exist as curi- ous relics, prove that the same circumstances which had generated the annual performance of the Chester and Coventry plays, and maintained those exhibitions uninterruptedly during a very long succession of years, still continued to exist. Contrary to what might have been expected, the first tragedies produced in the English language were remarkable for the gravity and elevation of their language, the dignity of their sentiments, and the dryness and morality of their style. They are, it is true, extremely crowded with bloody and dolorous events, rebellions, treasons, murders, and regicides : but there is very little attempt to delineate character, and certainly not the slightest trace of that admixture of comic action and dialogue which is so characteristic of the later theatre of England, in which the scene struggled to imitate the irregularity and the vastness of human life. A good example of these early plays is the Tragedy of Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex, written by Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst (the principal writer in the " Mirrour for Magistrates "), and Thomas Norton, and acted in 1562 for the entertainment of Queen Elizabeth, by the gentlemen of the Inner Temple. The subject of this play is borrowed from the old half- mythological Chronicles of Britain, and the principal event is similar to the story of Eteocles and Polynices, a legend which has furnished the materials not only to the genius of ^Eschylus, but to that of Racine and Schiller. But though the subject of this piece is derived from the national records, whether authentic or mythical, the treatment exhibits strong marks of classic imitation, though rather after the manner of Sen- fcca than of ^Eschylus or Sophocles. Seneca enjoyed a most surprising A. D. 1566. J EARLY TRAGEDIES. 115 reputation at the reviva' of Letters. The dialogue of Gtrboduc is in blank verse,* which is regular and carefully constructed ; but it is totally destitute of variety of pause, and consequently is a most insuffi- cient vehicle for dramatic dialogue. The sentence almost invariably terminates with the line, and the effect of the whole is insupportably 'formal and heavy; for no weight and depth of moral and political apothegm, with which the work abounds, can compensate for the total want of life, of sentiment, and passion. Another work of a simi- lar character is Damon and Pythias, acted before the Queen at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1566. This play, which is in rhyme, is a mixture of tragedy and comedy. Its author was RICHARD EDWARDS, the com- piler of the miscellany called The Paradise of Dainty Devices (see p. 85). He also wrote Palamon and Arcite, the beautiful story so inim- itably treated by Chaucer in The Knighfs Tale, and afterwards in Beau- mont and Fletcher's romantic play The Two Noble Kinsmen. In 1578 was acted Promos and Cassandra, by GEORGE WHETSTONE, chiefly curious as having furnished the subject of Shakspeare's Measure for Measure. All these plays are marked by a general similarity of style and treatment, and belong to about the same period. 6. In the department of Comedy the first English works which made their appearance very little anterior to the above pieces, offer a most striking contrast in their tone and treatment. It would almost seem as if the national genius, destined to stand unrivalled in the pecu- liar vein of humor, was to prove that while in tragic and sublime delin- eations it might encounter, not indeed superiors, but rivals, in the grotesque, the odd, the laughable, it was to stand alone. The earliesf comedy in the language was Ralph Royster Doyster, acted in 1551, and written by NICHOLAS UDALL, who for a long time executed the duties of Master of Eton College. This was followed, about fourteen years later, by Gammer Gurton's Needle, composed by JOHN STILL, after- wards Bishop of Bath and Wells, and who had previously been Master of St. John's and Trinity Colleges in Cambridge. This piece was prob- ably acted by the students of the society over which the author pre- sided, and was long considered to have been the earliest regular comedy in the English language : but it was afterwards established that the work of Udall preceded it by a short interval. Both these works are highly curious and interesting, not only as being the oldest specimens of the class of literature to which they belong, but in some measure from their intrinsic merit. There can be no question that the former comedy is far superior to the second : it is altogether of n higher order, both in conception and execution. The action takes place in London, and the principal characters are a rich and pretty widow, her lover, and several of her suitors, the chief of whom is the foolish personage who gives the title to the play. This ridiculous pretender to gayety and * Blank verse was first introduced by Lord Surrey in his translation of tha Mneid (see p. 66). It was next upd by Grimoald (see p. 70), who, according to Warton, gave it " new strength, elegance, ai d modulation." Sar.kville was the third writer who employed it. H6 THE DAWN OF THE DRAMA. [CHAP. VI. love, a young heir just put into possession of his fortune, is surrounded by a number of intriguers and flatterers who pretend to be his friends, and who lead their dupe into all sorts of absurd and humiliating scrapes ; and the piece ends with the return of the favored lover from a voyage which he had undertaken in a momentary pique. The man- ners represented are those of the middle class of the period, and the picture given of London citizen life in the middle of the sixteenth cen- tury is curious, animated, and natural. The language is lively, and the dialogue is carried on in a sort of loose doggerel rhyme, very well adapted to represent comic conversation. In general the intrigue of this drama is deserving of approbation; the plot is well imagined, and the reader's curiosity well kept alive. Gammer Gurtorfs Needle is a composition of a much lower and more farcical order. The scene is laid in the humblest rustic life, and all the dramatis personce belong to the uneducated class. The principal action of the comedy is the sud- den loss of a needle with which Gammer (Comm&re?) Gurton has been mending the inexpressibles of her man Hodge, a loss comparatively serious, when needles were rare and costly. The whole intrigue con- sists in the search instituted after this unfortunate little implement, which is at last discovered by Hodge himself, on suddenly sitting down, sticking in the garment which Gammer Gurton had been repairing. A comparison between these early comedies, and Gammer Gurton In particular, and that curious and interesting piece Maistre Pierre Paihe- lin, which is regarded as the first specimen of the French comic stage, would not be uninstructive. In both the transition from the sottie or farce to regular comedy is plainly perceptible; and it must be con- fessed that in the humorous delineation of character, as well as in probability and variety of incident, the French piece has decidedly the advantage. The form of the dialogue, being in both cases a sort of easy doggerel verse, little removed from the real language of the classes represented, has great similarity; though the French comedy is, as far as its diction is concerned, far more archaic and difficult to a modern French reader than the English of Gammer Gurton to an English one. This indeed may be generally remarked, that our language has under- gone less radical changes in the space of time which has elapsed from the first appearance of literary productions among us than my of the other cultivated dialects of Europe. 7. It will be inferred from what has been said respecting the cus- tom of acting plays at Court, in the mansions of great lords, in the Universities, and in the Inns of Law, that regular public theatres were not yet in existence. The actors were to a certain degree amateurs, and were frequently literally the domestics of the sovereign and the nobles, wearing their badges and liveries, and protected by their pa- tronage. The line of demarcation between musical performers, singers, jugglers, tumblers, and actors, was for a long period very faintly traced. The Court plays were frequently represented by the children of the royal chapel, and placed, as the dramatic profession in general was for a long (ime, under the peculiar supervision of the Office of the Revels, A. D. 1580.] EARLY THEATRES. 117 which was obliged also to exercise the duties of a dramatic censor. These bodies of actors, singers, tumblers, &c., were frequently in the habit of wandering about the country, performing wherever they could find an audience, sometimes in the mansions of rural grandees, some- times in the town halls of provincial municipalities, sometimes in the court-yards of inns. Protected by the letters-patent and the livery of their master against the se\ere laws which qualified strollers as vaga- bonds, they generally began their proceedings by begging the counte- nance and protection of the authorities; and the accounts of the ancient municipal bodies, and the household registers of the great families of former times, abound in entries of permissions given to such strolling parties of actors, tumblers, and musicians, and of sums granted to them in recompense of their exertions. It is curious to remark that the amount of such sums seems to have been calculated less in refer- ence to the talent displayed in the representation, than to the degree of respect which the grantors wished to show to the patron under whose protection the troop happened to be. This state of things, how- ever, had existed long before; for in the accounts of the ancient mon- asteries we frequently meet with entries of gratuities given, not only to travelling preachers from other religious bodies, but even to min- strels, jugglers, and other professors of the arts of entertainment. Nothing was more easy than to transform the ancient hall of a college, palace, or nobleman's mansion into a theatre sufficiently convenient in the then primitive state of dramatic representation. The dais or elevat- ed platform at the upper extremity was a stage ready made; it was only necessary to hang up a curtain, and to establish a few screens covered with tapestry, to produce a scene sufficient for the purpose. When the performance took place in an inn, which was very common, the stage was established on a platform in the centre of the yard ; the lower classes of spectators stood upon the ground in front of it, which custom is preserved in the designation parterre, still given by the French to the pit. The latter denomination is a record of the circumstance that in England theatrical representations often took place in cockpits. Indeed there at one time existed in London a theatre called the Cockpit, from the circumstance of its having been originally an arena for that sport. The ancient inns, as may be seen by many specimens still in existence, were built round an open court-yard, and along each story internally ran an open gallery, upon which opened the doors and windows of the small chambers occupied by the guests. In order to witness the perform- ance the inmates had only to come out into the gallery in front of their rooms ; and the convenience of this arrangement unquestionably sug- gested the principal features of construction when buildings were first specifically destined for scenic performances. The galleries of the old inns were the prototypes of the circles of boxes in our modern theatres. But the taste for dramatic entertainments grew rapidly more general and ardent; and in the course of time, in many places, particularly in London, not only did special societies of professional actors begin to come into existence, but special edifices were constructed for their exhi- 118 THE DAWN OF THE DRAMA. [CHAP. VI. bitions. Indeed at one period it is supposed that London and its suburbs contained at least twelve different theatres, of various degrees of size and convenience. Of these the most celebrated was undoubt- edly the Globe, for at that time each playhouse had its ugn, and the company which performed in it were also the proprietors of a smaller house on the opposite, or London side of the Thames, called the Black- friars, situated very nearly on the spot now occupied by the gigantic establishment of the " Times " newspaper. The great majority of the London theatres were on the southern or Surrey bank of the Thames, in order to be out of the jurisdiction of the municipality of the City, which, having been from a very early period strongly infected with the gloomy doctrines of Puritanism, was violently opposed to theatrical entertainments, and carried on against the players and the playhouses a constant war, in which their opponents repelled the persecutions of authority with all the petulance of wit and caricature. Some of these theatres were cockpits or arenas for bull-baiting and bear-baiting, either transformed into regular playhouses, or alternately employed for theatrical and other spectacles : but the Globe, and probably others as well, were specifically erected for the purpose of the drama. They were all, however, very poor and squalid, as compared with the mag- nificent theatres of the present day, and retained in their form and arrangement many traces of the ancient model the inn-yard. The building was octagon, and entirely uncovered, excepting over the stage, where a thatched roof protected the actors from the weather; and this thatched roof was, in 1613, the cause of the total destruction of the Globe, in consequence of the wadding of a chamber, or small cannon, lodging in it, fired during the representation of Shakspeare's Henry VIII. The boxes or rooms, as they were then styled, were of course arranged nearly as in the present day, but the musicians, instead of being placed, as now, in the orchestra, or space between the pit and the stage, were established in a lofty gallery over the scene. The most remarkable peculiarity of the ancient English theatres was the total absence of painted scenery, which in more recent times has been carried to such a height of artistic splendor and illusion. A few traverses, as they were called, or screens of cloth or tapestry, gave the actors the opportunity of making their exits and entrances ; and in order to give the audience an idea of the place where the action was to be supposed, they employed the singularly primitive expedient of exhibiting a placard, bearing the name of Rome, Athens, London, or Florence, as the case might be. So exceedingly rude an expedient as this is the more singular as the English drama is remarkable for its frequent changes of scene. But though they were forced to content themselves with this very inartificial mode of indicating the place of the action, the details of the locality could be represented with a much more accurate imitation. Thus, if a bedroom were to be supposed, a bed was pushed forward on the stage ; a table covered with bottles and tankards, and surrounded with benches, easily suggested a tavern ; a gilded chair surmounted by a canopy, and called a state, gave the idea A.. D. 1580.] EARLY THEATRES. 119 of a palace, an altar of a church, and the like. At the back of the stage was erected a permanent wooden construction, like a scaffold or a high wall; and this served for those innumerable incidents where one of the dramatis persona is to overhear the others without being him- self seen, and also represented an infinity of objects according to the requirements of the piece, such as the wall of a castle or besieged city, the outside of a house, as when a dialogue is to take place between on person at a window and another on the exterior. Thus in the admira- ble garden-scene of Romeo and Juliet, Juliet probably spoke either from the summit of this wall or from a window established in it, while Romeo stood on the ground outside; in the same way the "men of Angiers " spoke to the besieging English from the top of their wall, and the storming of Harfleur divided the action between Henry and his troops upon the stage and the defenders of the city upon the platform. In those accessories to scenic illusion which in the language of the English stage are called properties, the old Elizabethan theatres were better provided than could have been expected, as may be seen from very curious lists of such articles which have accidentally descended to us from the ancient greenrooms. In point of costume very little atten- tion was paid to chronological or national accuracy. The dramatis personcp of all ages and countries were in general habited in the dress of the period; this was fortunately a graceful, rich, and picturesque costume ; and we may judge, from the innumerable philippics of divines and moralists against the luxury of the actors, that a very considerable degree of splendor in theatrical dress was common. The employment of the contemporary costume in plays whose action was supposed to take place in Greece, Rome, or Persia, naturally led into gross ai nch- ronisms and absurdities, arming the assassins of Caesar with Spanish rapiers, or furnishing Carthaginian senators with watches ; but these anachronisms were not likely to strike in a very offensive manner the mixed and uncritical spectators of those times. It may indeed be said that the meagre material aids to the illusion of the scene which were then at the disposal of the dramatic author were in reality of the great- est service to the poetical and imaginative department of his art. Not being able to depend upon the scene-painter and the machinist, he was obliged to trust to his own resources, and to describe in words what could not be " oculis subjecta fidelibus." It is to this circumstance that we owe those inimitable pictures of natural and artificial objects and scenery with which the dramas of this age are so prodigally adorned. Though the majority of the characters were clothed in the habit of the day, there were certain conventional attributes always associated with particular supernatural personages, such as angels, devils, ghosts, and eo on. Thus " a roobe for to goo invisibell" is one of the items in the lists of properties to which I have alluded above; and in all probability the spectral armor of the Ghost in Hamlet was to be found in the ward- robe of the ancient theatres. It appears that the dresses and properties belonged *3 persons who derived their livelihood from hiring these articles at a fixed price per night to the performers. 120 TEE DAWN OF THE DRAMA. [CHAP. VI. The curtain, that essential appendage to every theatre, is supposed to have opened perpendicularly in the middle, instead of being wound up and let down as at present; and besides this principal curtain there seem to have been others occasionally drawn so as to divide the stage into several apartments, and withdrawn to exhibit one of the charac- ters as in a tent or closet. The cost of admission to the theatres was small, and it was possible to secure the use of a private box or room ; for it was then considered hardly proper for a lady to be present at the representations of the public theatres : it was certainly long before any of our sovereigns deigned to witness any of those performances. Whenever the monarch desired to see a play the actors were summoned to court; and the accounts of the chamberlain's office furnish abundant entries of the recompenses ordered to be distributed on such occasions among the performers. Several of the companies of actors were under the imme- diate patronage of the sovereign, of different members of the royal family and other great personages of the realm : they were bound to " exercise themselves industriously in the art and quality of stage- playing," in order to be always ready to furnish entertainment to their employer, and in return for these services they were protected against interlopers and rivals, and above all against the implacable hostility of the Puritanical municipality of London. It is perhaps to this cir- cumstance that we may attribute the designation of Her Majesty's Ser~ vants, which our modern companies of actors still retain in their play- bills ; and the old custom of the actors at the end of the piece falling upon their knees and putting up a solemn prayer to Heaven in favor of the sovereign is perhaps commemorated in the words Vivat Regina, with which our modern playbills terminate. The usual hour of repre- sentation was anciently very early, in accordance with the habit of dining before midday, and the signal was given by the hoisting of a flag at the summit of the theatre, which remained floating during the whole performance. The piece commenced with three flourishes of a trumpet, and at the tkird sounding, as it was called, the prologue was declaimed by a solemn personage whose regular costume was a long black velvet cloak. At the end of the piece, or occasionally perhaps between the acts, the clown or jester performed what was called a jig, a species of entertain- ment in which our ancestors seem to have delighted. This was a kind of comic ballad or declamation in doggerel verse, either really or pro- fessedly an improvisation of the moment, introducing any person 01 event which was exciting the ridicule of the day, and accompanied by the performer with tabor and pipe and with grotesque and farcical dancing. As the comic actors who performed the clowns and jesters, then indispensable personages in all pieces, tragic and comic, were allowed to introduce extemporary witticisms at their pleasure, they were probably a clever and inventive class; and the enormous popular- ity of several of them, as Tarlton, Kempe, and Armin, seems to prove that their drollery must have been intensely amusing. A. D. 1580.] EARLY THEATRES. 121 During the representation of a deep tragedy the whole stage was sometimes hung with black ; a very singular custom, to which innu- merable allusions are made in our older pieces. On ordinary occasions the stage was strewed with rushes, as indeed were rooms generally in those days ; and on these rushes, or on stools brought for the purpose, it was customary for the fine gentlemen to sit, amid the full business of the stage, displaying their splendid clothes, smoking clay-pipes, which was then the height of fashion, exchanging repartees and often coarse abuse with the audience before the curtain, and criticising in a loud voice the actors and the piece. In England, as in Spain, the com- panies of players have been generally, from time immemorial, private aad independent associations. The property and profits of the theatrf were divided into a number of shares, as in a joint-stock company ; and the number of these shareholders being limited, whatever addi- tional assistance the society required was obtained by engaging the services of hired men, who usually acted the inferior parts. Many bonds stipulating the terms of such engagements are in existence ; and one of the conditions usually was, that the actor so engaged should give his services at a fixed price, and should undertake to perform for no other company during the time specified in his engagement. These men had no right to any share in the profits of the society. That these profits were very considerable and constant, and that the career of an actor of eminence was often a very lucrative one, is abundantly proved, not only by the frequent allusions to the pride, luxury, and magnificence in dress of the successful performers, which are met with in the sermons, pamphlets, and satires of the day, but still more decisively by the wills left by many of these actors, specifying the large fortunes they sometimes accumulated by the practice of their art. Ex- amples of this will be found in the cases of Shakspeare, the great tragedian Burbage, and the well-known charitable institution due to the philanthropy and piety of Edward Alleyn. It must never be lost sight of, by any one who wishes to form a clear notion of the state of the elder English drama, that the female parts were invariably acted by boys or young men. No woman appeared on our stage till about the time of the Restoration, and then, singularly enough, the earliest part acted by a female was the Desdemona of our great dramatist. This innovation was at first considered as something shocking and monstrous ; but the evident advantages and propriety of the change soon silenced all opposition. The novelty itself first origi- nated in Italy. We must not, however, imagine that because the parts of women were intrusted to male representatives they were necessarily ill performed : there are abundant proofs that some of the young actors who devoted themselves to this line of their art, attained by practice to a high degree both of elegance and pathos. They were often sing- ing-boys of the royal chapel, and as long as their falsetto voice re- mained pure, not "cracked i' the ring," as Hamlet says, they were no unfit representatives of the graceful and beautiful heroines of Shak- sneare, Ford, or Fletcher. The testimony of contemporaries provee 122 THE DA WN OF THE DRAMA. [CHAP. VI that some of them, as for example the famous Kjnaston, so admirably seized all the details of the characters they personated, that the illusion was complete; and they were no unworthy rivals of the great artists of those days. It is true that this custom of the female parts being acted by boys may have in some degree exaggerated that tendency to double entendre and indecent equivoque which has unfortunately been but too universally the vice of the stage : but even this objection will lose some of its weight when we reflect that the .habitual appearance of women on the stage seems, so far from checking, absolutely to have aggravated the frightful profligacy and immorality which defiled the society and the literature of the country at the epoch of the Restoration, and which reached its highest intensity in compositions destined for the stage. 8. Perhaps the most remarkable peculiarity of the dramatic pro- fession at this period of our literary history was the frequent combina- tion, in one and the same person, of the qualities of player and dramatic author. I do not mean to imply, of course, that all the actors of this splendid epoch were dramatists ; but nearly all the dra- matic authors were actors by profession. This circumstance must have obviously exerted a mighty influence in modifying the dramatic produc- tions composed under such conditions an influence not of course exclusively favorable, but which must have powerfully contributed to give to those productions that strong and individual character, that go&t du terroir, which renders them so inimitable. It is evident that a dramatic writer, however great his genius, unacquainted practically with the mechanism of the stage, will frequently fail in giving to his work that directness and vivacity which is the essential element of popular success. Such a poet, writing in his closet under the influence not of scenic but of merely literary emotions, may produce admirable declamation, delicate anatomy of character, profound exhibition of human passion ; but the most valuable element of scenic success, viz., dramatic effect, may be entirely absent. This precious quality may be possessed by a writer with not a tithe of the genius of the former, and for the absence of this quality no amount of abstract literary merit can compensate. A striking example of this may be found in the French theatre. All the admirable qualities of Racine and Corneille have not been able to preserve their tragedies from comparative neglect as trage- dies, /. e. in a theatrical point of view. As literary compositions they will always be studied and admired by every one who desires to make acquaintance with the higher qualities of the French language and poetry; but as tragedies, few persons can now witness their perform- ance without experiencing a sensation of weariness which they may attempt to disguise, but which they certainly cannot escape. It has been the fashion to explain this by attributing it to changes in the manners and habits of society; but how happens it that the scenes of Moliere always retain their freshness and vivacity? The reeson is, that Moliere, himself a skilful actor, as well as an unequalled painter of that range of comic character which he has delineated, gave to his pieces the element of scenic effect ; an element which will successfully replace (L D. I5&.J ACTORS AND AUTHORS. 123 the absence of much higher literary qualities, -and which can be acquired only by the instinct of the stage. An immense majority of the drama* tists of our Elizabethan theatre were actors, and this is why their writ* ings are so often defiled by very gross faults of coarseness, violence, buffoonery, bombast, bad taste, and extravagance such faults, in short, as were naturally to be expected from actor-authors writing in great haste, addressing themselves to a very miscellaneous public, and thinking not of future glory, but of immediate profit and success ; but at the same time it is the reason why their writings, despite of all these, and even graver faults, invariably possess intense dramatic interest, and an effectiveness for the absence of which no purely literary merit can in any way compensate. But though professional actors, this brilliant con- stellation of writers, by a chance which has never been repeated in liter- ary history, consisted of men of liberal and often learned education. Generally young men of strong passions, frequently of gentle birth, they in many cases left the university for the theatre, where they hoped to obtain an easy subsistence at a time when both writing for the stage and acting were well recompensed by the public, and where the joyous and irregular mode of life possessed such charms for ardent passions and lax morality. Their career was, in too many cases, a miserable succession of revelry and distress, of gross debauchery and ignoble privation ; but the examples of many showed that prudence and indus- try would be rewarded in this career with the same certainty as in oth- ers, and the success of Burbage, Alleyn, and Shakspeare can be put forward as the contrast to the debauched lives and miserable deaths of Marlowe, Greene, and Nash. This very irregularity of life, however, may have contributed to give to the works of this time that large spirit of observation, that universality of painting, which certainly distin- guished them. The career of these men, at least in its commencement and general outlines, was the same. They attached themselves, in the double quality of actors and poets, to one of the numerous companies then existing; and in many instances began their literary labors by rewriting and rearranging plays already exhibited to the public, and which a little alteration could often render more suitable to the peculiar resources of the company. Having by this comparatively humble work of making rechauffls acquired skill and facility, the dramatic aspirant would bring out an original work, either alone or in partner- ship with some brother playwright ; and in this way he would be fairly started as a writer. It was of course very much to the interest of a company of actors to possess an exclusive right to the services of an able or popular dramatist ; and his productions, while they remained n manuscript, continued to be the exclusive property of the company. Thus the troops of actors had the very strongest motive for takiDg every precaution that their pieces should not be printed, publication instantly annihilating their monopoly, and allowing rival companies to profit by their labors ; and this is the reason why comparatively so few af the dramas of this period, in spite of their unequalled merit and their great popularity, were committed to the press during the lives, at 124 THE DAWN OF THE DRAMA. [CHAP. VL least, of their authors. It also explains the singularly careless execu- tion of such copies as were printed, these having been given to the public in many cases surreptitiously, and in direct contravention to the wishes and interests of the author. It must be confessed that in the six- teenth century in England theatrical writing was considered the very lowest branch of literature, if indeed it was regarded as literature at all. The profession of actor, though often profitable, and exercised by many individuals with dignity and respectability, was certainly not looked upon by society in a very favorable light. The vices and prof- ligacy of many of its members seemed almost to justify the infamy stamped on the occupation by the old law, which classed players with "rogues and vagabonds." Placed in such a social atmosphere, and exposed to such powerful and opposing influences, the dramatic author of those times was likely to exhibit precisely the tendencies which we actually find characterizing his works, and recorded in his life. 9.1 will now give a rapid sketch of the principal English play- wrights anterior to Shakspeare. JOHN LYLY (b. about 1554) composed several court plays and pageants, and is supposed to have enjoyed in eome degree the favor of Elizabeth, for we know that he was at one time a petitioner for the reversion of the office of Master of the Revels. His few plays were written upon classical, or rather mythological sub- jects, as the story of Endymion, Sappho and P/iaon, and Alexander and Campaspe. He has a rich and fantastic imagination, and his writ- ings exhibit genius and elegance, though strongly tinctured with a peculiar kind of affectation with which he infected the language of the Court, the aristocracy, and even to a considerable degree literature itself, till it fell under the ridicule of Shakspeare, like the parallel absurdity in France, the Phcbus of the Hotel de Rambouillet, under the lash of the Pricieuses Ridicules and the Critique de VEcole des Femmes. Lyly was the English Gongora; and his absurd though ingenious jargon, like the estilo culto in Spain, became the fashionable affectation of the day. It consisted in a kind of exaggerated vivacity of imagery and expression ; the remotest and most unexpected analo- gies were sought for, and crowded into every sentence. The reader may form some notion of this mode of writing (which was called Eu- phuism, from Lyly's once fashionable book entitled Euphues and his England} by consulting the caricature of it which Scott has introduced in the character of the courtier Sir Piercy Shafton in The Monastery. In fact the Euphuism of Lyly was the somewhat exaggerated wit of the style of Sydney, still further outre. Lyly was a man of consider- able classical acquirements, and had been educated at Oxford. His lyrics are extremely graceful and harmonious, and even as a playwright his merits are rather lyrical than dramatic. GEORGE PEELE, like Lyly, had received a liberal education at Oxford. He was one of Shakspeare's fellow-actors and fellow-shareholders in the Blackfriars Theatre. He had also been employed by the City of London in composing and preparing those spectacles and shows which formed so great a portion of ancient civic festivity. His earliest work, A.. D. 1580.] EARLY DRAMATISTS. 125 The Arraignment of Parts, was printed anonymously in 1584. His most celebrated dramatic works were the Davia and Bethsabe, and Absalom, in which there are great richness and beauty of language, and occasional indications of a high order of pathetic and elevated emotion ; but his versification, though sweet, has little variety ; and the luxuri- ous and sensuous descriptions in which Peele most delighted are so numerous that they become rather tiresome in the end. It should be remarked that this poet was the first to give an example of that peculial kind of historical play in which Shakspeare was afterwards so consum- mate a master. His Edward I. is, though monotonous, declamatory, and stiff, in some sense the forerunner of such works as Richard //., Richard III., or Henry V. THOMAS KYD, who lived about the same time, is principally notice- able as having probably been the original author of that famous play upon which so many dramatists tried their hands in the innumerable recastings which it received, and which have caused it to be ascribed in succession to almost the whole body of the elder Elizabethan dramatists. Of this piece, in spite of its occasional extravagance, even the greatest of these authors might have been proud. It is called Hieronymo, the Span- ish Tragedy. Its popularity was very great, and furnishes incessant allusions to the playwrights of the day. The subject is exceedingly gloomy, bloody, and dolorous ; but the pictures of grief, despair, re- venge, and madness, with which it abounds, not only testify high dra- matic power of conception, but must have been, as we know they were, exceedingly favorable for displaying the powers of a great tragic actor. THOMAS NASH and ROBERT GREENE, both Cambridge men, both sharp, and, I fear, mercenary satirists, and both alike in the profligacy of their lives and the misery of their deaths, though they may have eked out their income by occasionally writing for the stage, were in reality rather pasquinaders and pamphleteers than dramatists con- dottieri of the press, shamelessly advertising the services of their ready and biting pen to any person or any cause that would pay them. They were both unquestionably men of rare powers ; Nash probably the bet- ter man and the abler writer of the two. Nash is famous for the bitter controversy he maintained with the learned Gabriel Harvey, whom he has caricatured and attacked in numerous pamphlets, in a manner equally humorous and severe. He was concerned with other drama- tists in the production of a piece entitled Summer's Last Will and Testament, and in a satirical corned}', The Isle of Dogs, which drew down upon him the anger of the Government, for we know that he vas imprisoned for some time in consequence. Greene was, like Nash, the author of a multitude of tracts and oamphlets on the most miscellaneous subjects. Sometimes they were tales, often translated or expanded from the Italian novelists; some- limes amusing exposures of the various arts of cony-catching, i. e. cheating and swindling, practised at that time in London, and in which, it is to be feared, Greene was personally not unversed; sometimes moral confessions, like Nash's Pier:e Pennilessi his Supplication to the. 126 THE DAWN OF THE DRAMA. [CHAP. VL Devil, or Greene's Groats-worth of Wit, purporting to be . warning to others against the consequences of unbridled passions. Some ot these confessions are exceedingly pathetic, and would be more so could the reader divest himself of a lurking suspicion that the whole is often a mere trick to catch a penny. The popularity of these tracts, we know, was very great. The only dramatic work we need specify of Greene's was Georgc-a- Green, the legend of an old English popular hero, recounted with much occasional vivacity and humor. THOMAS LODGE (1556-1625?) is described by Mr. Collier as " second lo Kyd in vigor and boldness of conception ; but as a drawer of char- acter, so essential a part of dramatic poetry, he unquestionably has the advantage." His principal work is a tragedy entitled The Hounds of Civil War, lively set forth in the Two Tragedies of Marius and Sylla (1594). He also composed, in conjunction with Greene, A Looking- Glassfor London and England, the object of which is a defence of the stage against the Puritanical party. (See also p. 86.) 10. But by far the most powerful genius amoxig the dramatic poets who immediately preceded Shakspeare was CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE (i563?-i593). This man, if destiny had granted to him a longer life, which might have enabled him to correct the luxuriance of an ardent temperament and an unregulated imagination, might have left works that would have placed him very high among the foremost poets of his age. As it is, his remains strike us with as much regret as admiration regret that such rare powers should have been so irregularly culti- vated. Marlowe was born at Canterbury in 1563, and was educated at Cambridge. On leaving the University he joined a troop of actors, and is recorded to have broken his leg upon the stage. His mode of life was remarkable for vice and debauchery, even in a profession so little scrupulous ; and he was strongly suspected by his contemporaries of having been little better than an Atheist. His career was as short as it was disgraceful : he was stabbed in the head with his own dagger, which he had drawn in a disreputable scuffle with a disreputable antag- onist, in a disreputable place : and he died of this wound at the age of thirty. His works are not numerous, but they are strongly distinguished from those of preceding and contemporary dramatists by an air of astonishing power, energy, and elevation an elevation, it is true, which is sometimes exaggerated into bombast, and an energy which occasionally degenerates into extravagance. His first work was the tragedy of Tamburlaine, and the rants of the declamation in this piece furnished rich materials for satire and caricature ; but in spite of this bombast the piece contains many passages of great power and beauty. Marlowe's best work is incontestably the drama of Faustus, founded upon the very same popular legend which Goethe adopted as 'ihe groundwork of his tragedy ; but the point of view taken by Marlowe is far simpler than that of Goethe ; and the English poem contains no trace of the profound self-questioning of the German hero, of the extraordinary creation of Mephistopheles, nor anything like the pathetic episode of Margaret. The witch element, which reigns so A. D. 1563-15930 MARLOWE. 127 wildly and picturesquely in the German poem, is here entirely absent. But, on the other hand, there is certainly no passage in the tragedy of Goethe in which terror, despair, and remorse are painted with such a powerful hand, as the great closing scene of Marlowe's piece, when Faustus, after the twenty-four years of sensual pleasure which were stipulated in his pact with the Evil One, is waiting for the inevitable arrival of the Fiend to claim his bargain. This is truly dramatic, and is assuredly one of the most impressive scenes that ever were placed upon the stage. The tragedy of the Jew of Malta, though inferior tc Faustus, is characterized by similar merits and defects. The hero. Barabbas, is the type of the Jew as he appeared to the rude and bigoted imaginations of the fifteenth century a monster half terrific, half ridiculous, impossibly rich, inconceivably bloodthirsty, cunning, and revengeful, the bugbear of an age of ignorance and persecution. Though the exploits of cruelty and retaliation upon his Christian oppressors make Barabbas a fantastic personage, the intense expres- sion of his rage, his triumph, and his despair, give occasion for many noble bursts of Marlowe's powerful declamation. The tragedy of Edward II., which was the last of this great poet's works, shows that in some departments of* his art, and particularly in that of moving ter- ror and pity, he might, had he lived, have become no insignificant rival of Shakspeare himself. The scene of the assassination of the unhappy king is worked up to a very lofty pitch of tragic pathos. Charles Lamb observes that " the reluctant pangs of abdicating roy- alty in Edward furnished hints which Shakspeare scarce improved in his Richard II. ; and the death-scene of Marlowe's king moves pity and terror beyond any scene, ancient or modern, with which I am acquainted." Marlowe was the morning star that heralded the rising of the great dramatic Sun. 11. I pass over the names of a number of comparatively insignifi- cant authors who appeared about this time, whose dramatic works have not yet been collected and printed. They in some instances, according to the custom of that age, either composed plays in partnership, or revised and altered plays written before, so that it is exceedingly diffi- cult to assign to each playwright his just share of merit. There are, however, two or three pieces which have come down to us, either anony- mous, or at least attributed to so many different authors, that it is now impossible to father them with precision. Some of these pieces are of great merit, and others are curious as being examples of the practice which afterwards became general in our theatre, of dramatizing either episodes from the chronicle history of our own or other countries (of which class we may cite the old Hamlet, The Famous Victories, and King John), or remarkable crimes causes ctl&bres which had attracted the public attention by their unusual atrocity or the romantic nature of their details. Good examples of these areArden of Fe-versham, and The Yorkshire Tragedy, both founded on fact, both works of no mean merit, and both attributed, though without any probability, to the pen of Shaki peare. SHAKSPEARE. [CHAP. VII CHAPTER VII. SHAKSPEARE. A. D. 1564-16:6. } 1. Parentage and education of Shakspeare. $ 2. His early life and marriaga 3. He comes to London, joins the Globe Theatre, and turns author. { 4. Com- pany of the Globe Theatre. 5. Shakspeare's career at the Globe. His act- ing. 6. Continuation of his life. His success and prudence. Returns to Stratford. His death. 7. Classification of his Dramas into History and Fiction. Sources of the Dramas. $ 8. His treatment of the Historical Dra- mas. $ 9. His treatment of the Dramas founded upon Fiction. 10. Hii Venus and Adonis, Rape of Lucrece, and Sonnets. 1. WILLIAM SHAKSPEARE was born on the 23d of April, 1564, in the small county town of Stratford-on-Avon, Warwickshire, and was baptized on the 26th of the same month. His father, John Shakspeare, respecting whose trade and position in life much controversy has been raised, was, in all probability, a fellmonger and wool-dealer, to which commerce he appears to have added that of glover or manufacturer of the many articles of dress that were then made of leather. He unques- tionably belonged to the burgher or shopkeeper class ; but had married an heiress of ancient and even knightly descent, Isabella Arden or Arderne, the scion of a family which had figured in the courtly and warlike annals of preceding reigns ; and thus in the veins of the great poet of humanity ran blood derived from both the aristocratic and popular portions of the community. Isabella Arderne had brought her husband in dowry a small freehold property; but this acquisition, though apparently advantageous, seems to have been ultimately the cause of misfortune to the family ; for John Shakspeare, who had ori- ginally been a thriving and prosperous tradesman, gradually descended, during the boyhood and youth of his illustrious son, to a condition of comparative indigence. This is to be attributed, as far as may be guessed, to his acquisition of land having tempted him to engage, with- out experience, in agricultural pursuits, which ended disastrously in his being obliged at different times to mortgage and sell not only his farm, but even one of the houses in Stratford of which he had been owner. He at last retained nothing but that small, but now venerable dwelling, consecrated to all future ages by being the spot where the greatest of poets first saw the light, and which will ever be carefully preserved as the shrine of England's greatest glory. That John Shakspeare had been originally in flourishing circumstances is amply proved by his having long been one of the Aldermen of Stratford, and having served the office of Bailiff or Mayor in 1568. His distresses appear t? have become severe in 1579, when he was excused by his brethren of the municipality from contributing a small sum at a time of public calain- &. D. 1564-1616.] ^ SHAKSPEABE. 129 ty, an exemption grounded, probably, on his poverty. He also, most Hkely from the same cause, was obliged to resign his post of Alder- man ; and seems at the end of his life to have been entirely dependent upon the assistance of his son, when the latter, as he speedily did, raised himself to a position of competence, and even of affluence. These details will no. be regarded as trivial by any one who will reflect how closely connected they are with the important and much- agitated question of the kind and degree of education enjoyed by Wil- liam Shakspeare a question of the very deepest import in fixing our estimate of his works and our appreciation of his genius. That he could have derived even the most elementary instruction from his parents is impossible; for we know that neither John nor Isabella Shak- speare could write an accomplishment, however, which, it should be remarked, was comparatively rare in Elizabeth's reign, in even a higher class of society than the one to which such persons belonged. Pat we are not to conclude from this, as is done by those who think to elevate the genius of the great poet by denying him all the advantages of regular instruction, that the poverty and ignorance of his parents necessarily deprived him of education. There existed at that time, and there exists at the present day, in the borough of Stratford, one of those endowed " free grammar-schools " of which so many country towns in England offer examples, where the pious charity of past ages has pro- vided 1 r the gratuitous education of posterity. In these establishments provision is always made for the children of the burgesses of the town ; and to the old grammar-school in Stratford, founded in the reign of Edward IV., it is quite certain that John Shakspeare had the right, as Alderman and Past Bailiff of the town, of sending his son without ex- pense. It is inconceivable that he should have neglected to avail him- self of so useful a privilege : and that William enjoyed at all events the advantage of such elementary instruction as was offered by the gram- mar-schools of those days, is rendered more than probable, not only by the extensive though irregular reading of which his works give evidence, but by one among the vague traditions which have descended to us. This legend relates that the poet had been " in his youth a schoolmaster in the country," a fact which cannot, of course, be strictly true, as we know at what an early age he left his native town to enter upon his career of actor and author in the Globe Theatre in London. It may, however, be the misrepresentation of fact, namely, that after passing through the lower classes of Stratford Grammar-School he may have been employed, as a lad of his aptitude would not improba- bly have been, in assisting the master in instructing the junior pupils. 2. Among the various legends connected with the early life of so great a man, and which posterity, in the singular absence of more trustworthy details, swallows with greediness, the most celebrated and romantic is that which represents his youth as irregular and even profligate, and in particular recounts his deer-stealing expedition, in company with other riotous young fellows, to Sir Thomas Lucy's park at Charlcote, near Stratford. The young poacher, who had " broken 130 SHAKSPEARE. [CHAP. VII. the park, stolen the deer, and kissed the keeper's daughter," is said to have been seized, brought before the indignant Justice of the Peace, and treated with so much severity by Sir Thomas, that he revenged himself on the rural magnate by affixing a doggerel pasquinade to the gates of Charlcote. The wrath of the magistrate is said to have blazed so high at this additional insolence that Shakspeare was obliged to withdraw himself from more serious persecution by escaping to London. Here, continues the legend, which is so circumstantial and picturesque that we cannot but regret its total want of proof and probability, the young poet arrived in such deep poverty, as to be for some time reduced to earn a livelihood by holding horses at the doors of the theatres, where "his pleasant wit" attracting the notice of the actors, he ultimately obtained access " behind the scenes," and by degrees became a cele- brated actor and valuable dramatic author. Eager as we are for every scrap of personal information which can help to realize so great a man as Shakspeare, we are naturally reluctant to renounce our belief in so striking a story ; but, though the deer-stealing story may very possibly be not altogether devoid of foiindation, the romantic incidents connect- ed with his leaving Stratford and embracing the theatrical career, are to be explained in a different and much less improbable manner. It is quite certain that he left his native town in 1586, at the age of twenty -two ; and it is quite possible that the distressed situation in which his parents then were, and, what is no less likely, the imprudence and irregularity of his own youthful conduct, may have contributed to render a longer stay in Stratford disagreeable, if not impossible. One event, which had occurred about four years before, most probably contributed more powerfully to send him forth " to seek his fortune," than the ire of Sir Thomas Lucy, or the perhaps not very enviable reputation which his boyish escapades had probably acquired among the steady burgesses of the little town, who probably shook their heads at the young scape- grace, prophesying that he would never come to any good. This event was his marriage, contracted when he was only eighteen, in 1582, with AnneHathaway, the daughter of a small farmer, little above the rankofa laboring man, who resided at the hamlet of Shottery, about two miles from Stratford. Anne Hathaway was seven years and a half older than her boy-husband ; and the marriage appears to have been pressed on with eager haste, probably by the relatives of the bride, who may have forced young Shakspeare to heal a breach which he had made in the young woman's reputation. There is still in existence the undertaking, legally signed by the parties, giving Shakspeare, then a minor, the power of contracting marriage. The whole of this important episode in the poet's life bears strong trace of a not over reputable family mys- tery. The fruit of this union was first a daughter Susanna, the poet's favorite child, born in 1583, and in the following year twins, Judith and Hamnet. The latter, the poet's only son, died at twelve years of age ; his two daughters survived him. After these he had no more children ; and there are several facts which seem to point, significantly though ob- scurely, to the conclusion that the married life of the poet was not A. D. 1564-1616.] SHAKSPEARE. 131 marked by that love and confidence which is the usual result of well considered and well-assorted unions. Thus, though Shakspeare passed the most active portion of his life, from 1586 to 1611, almost constantly in London, there is evidence to show that his wife, during the whole of that long period, never resided with her husband, but with his parents in Stratford ; and therefore could only have seen him on the occasions, probably pretty frequent, of his flying visits to his native place. In the great poet's Will, too, which invaluable document gives us so many details concerning his private life, Mrs. Shakspeare appears to be treated in a manner very different from that which a beloved and re- spected wife might have expected from so generous and gentle a charac- ter as William Shakspeare's unquestionably was. To his wife the poet leaves only " his second-best bed, with the hangings," a very slighting and inconsiderable legacy when we reflect that he died com- paratively rich.* Concerning the boyhood and youth of the great painter of nature and of man we know little or nothing. It is more than probable that his education was neglected, his passions strong, and his conduct far from regular : yet we may in some sort rejoice at the destiny which allowed him to draw his earliest impressions of nature from the calm and graceful scenery of Warwickshire, and placed him in a situation to study the passions and characters of men among the unsophisticated inhabitants of a small provincial town. Perhaps, too, the very imper- fection of his intellectual training was an advantage to his genius, in allowing his gigantic powers to develop themselves, untrammelled by the bonds of regular education. It is not improbable that atone period of his youth he had been placed in the office of some country practitioner of the law : in all his works he shows an extraordinary knowledge of the technical language of that profession, and frequently draws his illustra- tions from its vocabulary. Besides, such terms as he employs he almost always employs correctly; which would hardly be possible but to one who had been professionally versed in them : add to which in one of the few ill-natured and satirical allusions made to Shakspeare by his contemporary rivals, there is a distinct indication of the poet's hav- ing in his youth exercised " the trade of Noverint," that is, the occupa- tion of a lawyer's clerk, this word being the usual commencement ot writs " noverint universi." 3. At the age of twenty-two, therefore, Shakspeare,now the father Oi three children, in all probability not enjoying in his native place a very enviable reputation, without means of support, his father having at this time descended to a very low ebb of worldly fortunes, for we know that at this period, 1586, he was obliged to retire altogether from the municipal council, determined upon the great step of leaving Stratford altogether, and embarking on the wide ocean of London theatrical life. The story of his being reduced to hold horses at the doors of theatres is * On the other hand, it should he recollected that, as Shakspcaie's property vas chiefly freehold, his wife was entitled to dower. 132 SHAKSPEARE. [CHAP. VIL too absurd to deserve a moment's consideration. In the first place it is established by a thousand passages and allusions in the dramatic com- positions of that day, that the audiences universally visited the theatres either on foot or in boats, for which facility these establishments were built upon the banks of the Thames, then a much more convenient highway than the narrow and tortuous streets of London of the six- teenth century. Consequently there could be no horses to hold. Secondly, it is not conceivable that a young rnan endowed with such talents as Shakspeare, talents of which he had most certainly given evidence in his early poems, many of them probably written before this time, should have found the least difficulty in entering a profession so easy of access as the theatre then was. The companies of actors were always glad to enlist among them such men of ready genius as could render themselves useful as performers and dramatists ; and this com- bined occupation Shakspeare, like Ben Jonson, Marlowe, and many others of his contemporaries, fulfilled with an aptitude of which the proofs are evident. Besides, theatrical performances had before this time been popular in Warwickshire. Various companies had visited Stratford in the:'' summer peregrinations, and had performed for the amusement of the corporation. The greatest tragic actor of that day, Richard Burbage, was a Warwickshire man, and Thomas Greene, a distinguished member of the troop of the Globe, then the first theatre in London, was a native of Stratford, and is by many supposed to have been even a relation of Shakspeare. Nothing, therefore, is more prob- able than that the young adventurer, whose talents could not have been unknown, received an invitation to throw in his lot with the company of the Globe. It is certain that he joined that undertaking; for we find him in 1589, that is, only three j r ears after his arrival in London, en- rolled among the shareholders of the above theatre, his name being the eleventh in a list of fifteen. It will be remembered, as I have indicated in a preceding chapter, that the number of shareholders in the Elizabethan theatrical companies was generally small, and that the profits of the representation were divided among them ; the additional actors neces- sary for the performance being " hired men," receiving a fixed salary, and having no claim upon the general profits of the undertaking. Like other young men of that time, he rendered himself useful to his com- pany in the double capacity of actor and arranger of pieces : and there is no reason to suppose that his professional career differed from that of Marlowe, Jonson, Fletcher, Ford, and others, in any respect save in the industry and success with which he pursued his double calling, and the prudence with which he accumulated the pecuniary results of that activity. He began, in all probability, by adapting old plays to the exigencies of his theatre, and while engaged in this humble employment acquired Jthat consummate knowledge of stage effect which distinguished him, and which first struck out the spark of that inimitable dramatic genius which places him above all other poets in the world. His con- nection with the theatre continued from 1586 to his retirement in 1611. tt peiiod of twenty-five years, embracing the splem or of his youth anJ A. D. 1564-1616.] SHAKSPEARE. 133 the vigor of his manhood. It is between these dates that were produced the thirty-seven dramas which compose his best-known works. It would evidently be no less curious than useful could we establish, with some degree of accuracy, the dates and sequence of these thirtj'- seven plays : such an investigation would furnish us with inestimable materials for tracing the intellectual and artistic development of the greatest of all dramatists ; but though many such attempts have been madn, some of them with extraordinary acuteness and erudition, none of them have resulted even in an approach to a satisfactory chronology of Shakspeare's dramatic history. The notices of the first performance of some of these wonderful works, the minute examination of possible historical allusions contained in them, the order of their sequence in the first complete edition of the plays, which was not given to the world till 1623, that is, seven years after the poet's death, all these apparently promising materials for establishing a sound theory of their order of composition, will be found on trial not to be relied on. Inter- nal evidence founded upon shades of style and a higher or lower degree of artistic perfection in treatment, is a test of a still more tempting but even more visionary nature; and from the employment of all these methods combined we may indeed sometimes class the plays of Shak- speare into certain great but not very accurately marked periods, but we can never hope to attain anything like an exact chronological order. This is of course to be deeply regretted, but cannot be an object of sur- prise; for during the whole of his literary career our great dramatic master-workman, in all likelihood, continued to adapt and arrange old plays as well as to compose original pieces ; and working for bread, and probably with great rapidity, he was not scrupulous as to how far the inferior composition of an earlier and ruder poet passed for his own production. This consideration will also explain the extraordinary difference in point of merit, literary as well as theatrical, which even the least critical reader may discern in his performances, some of them, as Othello for example, being specimens of the most consummate per- fection both in style and construction, while others, as Titus Androni- cux, Pericles, and parts of Henry VI., are not only markedly inferior to his other compositions, but are unworthy of a dramatist even of the humblest pretensions. 4. The Company of the Globe Theatre, to which Shakspeare remained attached as an actor and shareholder during the whole of his London career, was, as I have said, the richest and most prosperous of the numerous troops that then furnished amusement to the capital. Their principal place of representation was the playhouse which gave them their name, so called from its sign bearing the effigy of Atlas supporting the globe, with the motto " Totus Mundus agit Histrionem," and was situated on the Bankside in Southwark near the Surrey ex- tremity of London Bridge. Most of the theatres of that day were placed on the river's bank in the southern suburb of the capital, partly, no doubt, for the convenience of access by water, but mainly to plaee them out of the jurisdiction of the Corporation of London, which, being 13 13d SUAKSPEARE. [CHAP. VII. at that time deeply infected with Puritan doctrines, used all its efforts to discountenance and crush the players. The enmity between the " witty vagabonds " of the theatre and the fanatic Aldermen was envenomed by incessant jokes and pasquinades on the part of the for- mer, and by constant persecution from the latter : and on the ultimate triumph of the Puritans at the outbreak of the Civil War, the vindic- tive bigotry of the city succeeded in completely annihilating the theatre. The Globe company was undoubtedly the most respectable as well as the most prosperous of the then theatres, and partly by prudently avoiding to give offence by political allusions, and partly by securing powerful protection at Court, as for instance that of Lord Keeper Egerton and the accomplished Earl of Southampton, the liberal patron and personal friend of Shakspeare himself, this society obtained the unusual permission of opening, as a theatre, a private house altered for the purpose, in the forbidden precincts of London itself. This was the Rlackfriars playhouse, situated nearly on the exact spot now occ - - pied by the printing-house of the Times newspaper. This edifice, much smaller than the Globe, was entirely roofed over, and the com- pany were in the habit of performing here in the winter, whereas dur ing the summer their representations were given on the Bankside, th: inclemency of the weather being then less inconvenient. 5. Guided by the faint and feeble lights of tradition and occasional obscure allusions in the writings of the day, we may trace Shakspeare's professional and literary career from his joining the Globe company in 1589 till his retirement from active life in 1611. That career appears to have been a highly successful one. During the first years he probably rendered himself useful to his theatre as an actor ; and here arises the question of the degree of talent he displayed in this branch of his pro- fession ; some maintaining him to have been a tragic and comic per- former of the first class, while others accord him only a very moderate amount of talent. That he was better acquainted than perhaps any man has ever been with the theoretic principles of the actor's art is unquestionable from many passages in his writings ; it will suffice t-> allude to the inimitable "directions to the players" put into the mouth of Hamlet, which, in incredibly few words, contain the whole syciem of the art. But in all probability the truth, as far as regards his own personal proficiency as a performer, lies between the two extremes. From some clear and other obscure indications, we may guess at cer- tain parts which he acted in his own dramas as in those of other poets. Thus we have good authority for supposing that he acted the Ghost in his tragedy of Hamlet ; the secondary, but graceful and touching char- acter of Adam, the faithful old servant, in his As You Like It ; tiie passionate and deeply pathetic impersonation of grief and despair in Kyd's popular tragedy of Hicronymo ; and the sensible citizen, Old Knowell, in Ben Jonson's Every Man In His Humor. Such parts, it is evident, would never have been intrusted, in a company so rich in talent as was that of the Globe, to an incompetent actor : at the same time they all belong to a particular and perhaps secondary type, from A.. D. 1564-1616.] SUAKSPEARE. 135 which we may conclude that Shakspeare's line or emploi, as it is now called in the technical jargon of the English and French stages, was that of the old men the ptres nobles. It is probable, however, thai he soon abandoned the practice of appearing, except perhaps occa- sionally, on the stage, and found that his services as an adapter and arranger of plays, and then as an original author, were more valuable to his troop than his exertions as an actor. Burbage, we know, was the original and most popular performer of his comrade's great tragic creations, Richard III., Hamlet, Othello, and the like. 6. Shakspeare's first original poems were not dramatic; he must be regarded as the creator of a peculiar species of narrative composi- tion which was destined to achieve an immediate and immense popu- larity. Venus and Adonis, which, in his dedication to Lord Southamp- ton, he calls " the first heir of his invention," was published in 1593. It is highly probable that this poem exhibiting all the luxuriant sweetness, the voluptuous tenderness, of a youthful genius was con- ceived, if not composed, at Stratford. The Rape of Lucrece, a some- what similar but inferior work, written, like its companion, in a species of Italian cianza, enjoyed a great but inferior popularity. The former of these works was reissued in five several editions between the years 1593 and 1602; while the Lucrece, during nearly the same lapse of time, appeared in three. The first years of Shakspeare's theatrical life were probably devoted to mere arrangement and adaptation of old plays ; and the traces of his pen might perhaps be found in an immense number of works of earlier dramatists Kyd, Marlowe, Lyly, &c. Even among his published and collected works, several as Pericles, Titus Androuicus, Henry VI., perhaps much of Henry VIII. seem to be examples of this ; and though difficult, it would not be impossi- ble to track his genius here and there through the rude and undigested chaos of the older playwright, vivifying some stroke of passion or character, or interspersing one of those inimitable touches of descrip- tion and reflection which glow and sparkle like gems amid the rubbish of the original piece. At what period he began to be fully conscious of his own vast powers, and abandoned such adaptation for original dra- matic composition, it is quite impossible to ascertain ; for some of those immortal works which bear the strongest and deepest impress of his wondrous genius were undoubtedly based upon former productions b) former hands, and had undergone repeated recastings and alterations by himself and others. As examples of this I may mention Hamlet Henry V., and King John. Shakspeare must have speedily risen tc so much importance in the Globe company as sufficed to call dowr. upon him the attacks of envious or disappointed rivals ; for the learned ana witty but disreputable Nash makes bitter allusions unmistakably pointing at Shakspeare's name and alleged want of learning, as weh as at his activity in " bolstering out a blank verse," and producing "whole Hamlets, or handfuls, of tragical speeches." He is "Johannes Factotum," and on the strength of a few blustering commonplaces fancies himself ' the only Shakescene [Shakspef.rp] in a country." 136 SHAKSPEARE. [Cn \p. VII. That he gradually and steadily rose in importance among his " fellows* is proved by his name, which in 1589 was eleventh in a list of fifteen shareholders, being found seven years afterwards fifth in a list of eight; and again in I .he license renewed to the company on the accession of James I., Shakspeare stands second. In the scurrilous pamphlet enti- tled Greene's Groats-worth of Wit, published by Chettle after the death of that unhappy but clever profligate, there was a libellous attack upon Shakspeare, evidently dictated by the envy of a disappointed rival; but for this unfounded calumny Chettle was speedily obliged to apologize in the fullest manner, and in terms which bear high testimony not only to the great poet's genius as a writer, but to his respectability as a man, and to his amiable, gentle, and generous disposition a quality which all contemporary notices conspire in attributing to our bard. But it is not only from the effusions of spite and literary jealousy that we can gain some feeble insight into Shakspeare's personal his- cory. It is quite certain that the accomplished Pembroke and the generous Southampton were his admirers and patrons. The former, indeed, is related to have made the poet a present of iooo/. an im- mense sum, if we take into consideration the far higher value of money in those days ; but though this princely gift was in all probability not a personal gratuity to Shakspeare, but rather a generous contribution to the support of the drama as represented by Shakspeare's company, an6 designed to assist them in building a new theatre, the action, neverthe- less, shows the high respect which the poet had inspired. That Shak- speare, in his business relations with the theatre and the public, exhibited great good sense, prudence, and knowledge of the world, seems proved by the skill with which the actors of the Globe managed to steer clear of the various dangers arising from the puritanic opposition of the London Corporation, and the still more serious perils Incurred by offending, in political or satirical allusions, the susceptibility of the Court and the Censorship, then so severe that almost all the other com- panies of players suffered more or less for their imprudences, some in the forcible closing of their theatres, some in the imprisonment of their authors and performers. That the singular good fortune of the Globe company in this respect was in no small degree attributable to Shak- speare's prudence, or to the powerful patronage he had secured among the great, is rendered probable by the fact that no sooner had he retired from an active interference in the concerns of the theatre than repeated causes of complaint arose from the petulance of his comrades, and were punished with considerable severity. Shakspeare's worldly prosperity seems to have gone on steadily increasing, and he appears to have careful- ly invested his gains ; for in 1597, when he was aged thirty-three, he pur- chased the landed estate of New Place in Stratford, and either built en- tirely or partially reconstructed a house long considered the most con- siderable in the town, and to which he determined to retire as soon as the state of his fortune would permit, to pass the evening of his life far from the turmoils of the stage, in the competency he had so wisely earned. During the whole of his London life he no doubt made frequent visit* A.. D. 1564-1616.] SHAKSPEARE. 137 to his native place, keeping up a. lively interest in the public and private affairs of his townsmen. He was able to afford a tranquil asylum to his parents, who appear to have closed their lives under the protection of his roof. The death of his only son, Hamnet, in 1596, when the boy was in his twelfth year, must have been a severe shock to so loving a heart; but in general his life seems to have been one of continued prosperity. In 1602 he purchased one hundred and seven acres of land, and most prob- ably engaged in farming speculations, with the assistance of his brother Gilbert. Two years after this we get a curious insight into his private life, by finding him the plaintiff in an action for the delivery of a cer- tain quantity of malt, in which affair the justice of the case seems to have been entirely on his side. About the same time he purchased a share in the tithes of Stratford, as a means of securing a safe revenue j and there is extant an interesting note in which some of his townsmen employed him, as a man resident in London and well versed in business, to obtain a favorable hearing from the legal authorities in a matter con- cerning the enclosure of some lands near Stratford. In 1607 (the poet now aged forty-three) his favorite daughter Susanna married Dr. Hall, and in the following year she brought into the world a granddaughter to the dramatist. Both at the marriage and at the christening it is highly projbable that Shakspeare visited Stratford. He certainly was godfather, at the latter period, to William Walker, the child of one of his friends and fellow-townsmen. In 1611, the poet, having disposed of most of his interest in the Globe, finally retired to New Place, where he livec with his daughter Mrs. Hall and her husband, who enjoyed a consider- able provincial reputation for medical skill, and who most probablj treated his illustrious father-in-law in his last illness. Shakspeare die not long enjoy the retirement which he had labored for so long. He died, after a short illness, on the 23d April, the anniversary of his birthday, in 1616, having exactly completed his fifty-second year. A short time before his death his second daughter, Judith, was married to Thomas Quiney ; but her career in life appears to have been altogether humbler than her sister's. Respecting the details of Shakspeare's last illness and decease we have no information. Dr. Hall indeed has left us a curious record of some of the most remarkable cases occurring in his practice, but unluckily his notes exhibit a void for the years before and after this precise period. There exists indeed a tradition that the great poet had been suffering from fever, when, desiring to entertain with his usual hospitality Ben Jonson and Drayton, who had come down from London to visit him, he imprudently arose from his bed, and brought on a relapse by sharing too freely in conviviality. He was buried in the parish church of Stratford, the registers of which furnish the greater part of the meagre though trustworthy information we possess concerning the family vicissitudes of the Shakspeares. Over his grave is erected a mural monument in the Italianized taste of that day, which is chiefly remarkali le as containing a bust of the poet an authentic though not very well executed portrait. Indeed the like- nesses of Shakspeare, whether sculptured, painted, or engraved, are 138 SHAKSPEARE. [CHAP. VII neither very numerous nor altogether to be relied on. The bust just mentioned, and the coarse engraving by Droeshout, prefixed to the first folio edition of his works in 1623, appear to have the best claims to our confidence. The latter, in particular, is vouched for as a faithful re- semblance in the eulogistic verses placed under it by Ben Jonson, who knew intimately his great contemporary, and was not a man to assert what he did not think. The tomb and the birthplace of Shakspeare will ever be sacred spots shrines of loving pilgrimage for all the nations of the earth. The house of New Place has long been destroyed, but the garden in which it stood, as well as the house where the poet was born, will be preserved to the latest ages by the piety of his countrymen and the veneration of the civilized world. A short time before his death Shakspeare made his will ; and thus we have, singularly enough, a very exact account of the nature and extent of his property at the time of his decease. In the mode of its disposal we see evident traces of that kind and affectionate disposition which every proof seems to establish as having characterized him a careful remembrance of his old comrades and " fellows," to each of whom he leaves some token of regard, generally a ring. This document is unspeakably precious to us on another ground, viz. from its containing his signature twice repeated. These and one or two more autographs, consisting likewise of nothing more than the signa- ture, are literally the only specimens that have been preserved of the writing of that immortal hand. 7. It is with the most unfeigned diffidence diffidence arising from a veneration which no words can express that I approach the difficult but delightful task of examining the writings of Shakspeare. From the number, no less than the excellence, of the dramatic portion of these works, it will be absolutely necessary to employ some method of classifying them into groups. This would possess the advantage of conciseness in the treatment, as well as of assisting the memory of the student. The most valuable principle of classification would be one based upon the chronological order of production, because such a method would give us a chart of the intellectual and artistic develop- ment of Shakspeare's mind, enabling us to trace the course of that ma- estic river from its first sparkling but irregular sources to the full flow of its calm and mighty current : but this mode, as has already been pointed out, though it has exercised the ingenuity and research of many laborious and acute investigators, has furnished no results which can be depended upon a fact evidenced by the extreme discrepancy among the various systems of chronological arrangement which havt hitherto been given to the world. Upon the order of the pieces as givei in the first folio edition, published in 1623 by Hemings and Condell, Shakspeare's friends and " fellows," it is evident no reliance can be placed. Independently of the many contradictions and impossibilities involved in the adoption of their order as the true order of composition impossibilities which are obvious on a superficial examination the extreme negligence of the p ringing of that edition, in evincing a total A. D. 1564-1616.] SHAKSPEARE. 139 absence of care in the editing astd correction of the p. ess, leads us inevitably to the conclusion that, in spite of the assurances of the editors as to its having been based upon the "papers" of their immortal col- league, the publication must be regarded as little better than a hasty speculation, carelessly entered into for the purpose of snatching a momentary and not very honorable profit, without much regard to the literary reputation of the great poet. Another mode of classifying Shakspeare's dramas is founded on the principle of ranging them respectively under the heads of Tragedies Comedies, and Histories or Historical Plays, without attempting to enter into the question of the order of their production; and this system has at all events the advantage of clearness, as well as that of dividing them into manageable groups, easily retained in the memory. This is the principle upon which are based most of the editions of the dramas. But this method is in some measure open to objection. Though some of the pieces (such as Othello, Lear, Hamlef) are dis- tinctly tragedies, in the ordinary sense of that word, a sense common to the critical nomenclature both of the Classical and Romantic types of the drama, and though others (as As You Like It, the Merry Wives of Windsor, the Taming of the S/irew, or Twelfth Night} are as evidently comedies, there exists a considerable number of the plays which, from their tone and incidents, might be ranged equally under both heads. Nay, in all the pieces of Shakspeare we find such a mix- ture of the tragic and comic elements as would withdraw them equally from the strongly marked boundaries appropriated, as in the French theatre for instance, respectively to Tragedy and Comedy ; and where Thalia and Melpomene are never permitted to intrude upon each other's domains. Indeed, as has been said some pages back, it is precisely this mixture of tragedy and comedy in the same piece, the same char- acter, the same scene, and in even the same phrase, which constitutes the peculiar distinguishing trait of the noble romantic drama of Eng- land in the Shakspearian Age ; and not only its distinguishing trait, but also, in the opinion of the English reader, as well as of the most profound art-critics of Germany, its peculiar excellence and title of superiority, as a picture of life and nature, over the national drama of every other country. There remains a third mode of classification, which we may adopt as not devoid either of convenience or of philosophic truth ; and this is based upon the sources from which Shakspeare drew the materials for his dramatic creations. If we follow the classification according to the three heads we have just been alluding to, we shall find that the thirty- seven plays composing the collection will range themselves as follows : eleven tragedies, two tragi-comedies, ten historical plays, and fourteen comedies. But the classification according to sources will give some- what different results. The sources in question will naturally divide themselves first into the two great genera History and Fiction, Wahr~ keit und Dichtung; while the former of these two genera will naturally subdivide into different classes or degrees of historical authenticity, 140 SHAKSPEARE. [CiiAP. VII ranging from vague and half-poetical legend to the comparatively firm ground of recent historical events. Again, the legendary category may be referred to the different countries from whose chronicles the events were borrowed : thus Hamlet is taken from the Danish chroni- cler Saxo-Grammaticus ; Macbeth, Lear, and Cymbeline refer respec- tively to the legends, more or less fabulous, of Scottish and British history; while Coriolanus, Julius Ccesar, and Antony and Cleopatra are derived from the annals of ancient Rome. Many of the historical dramas of Shakspeare are intended to depict the events of the more recent and consequently more reliable details of the history of his own country ; and these, beginning with King- John and terminating with Henry VIII., embrace materials possessing various shades of authen- ticity, from what may be called the semi-legendary to a degree of pre- cision as great as could be expected in the then state of historical literature. For these pieces Shakspeare mainly drew his materials from the old annalist Hollinshed ; and both in their form and peculiar excellences this class of dramas, though not perhaps invented by Shakspeare, was certainly carried by him to a wonderful degree of perfection. These pieces are not tragedies or comedies in the strict sense of the word, but they are grand panoramas of national glory or national distress, embracing often a very considerable space of time, even a whole reign, and retracing with apparent irregularity in their plan, but with an astonishing unity of general feeling and sentiment great epochs in the life of the nation. Examples of such will be found in Richard II., Richard III., the two unequalled dramas on the reign of Henry IV., and the glorious chant of patriotic triumph embodied in Henry V., in which Shakspeare has completed the type of the Hero- King. To such pieces is applied the particular designation of Histo- ries ; and of such histories Shakspeare, though not the inventor, was certainly the most prolific author. The second general category, that of pieces derived from fiction, need not detain us long. The materials for this the largest class of his dramas, Shakspeare derived from the Italian novelists and their imita- tors, who supplied the chief element of light literature in the sixteenth century. The most brilliant type of this species of writer was Boc- caccio, whose Novelle, translated and copied into all the tongues of Europe, furnished a mass of excellent materials, from Chaucer down to Lafontaine. These short tales, which so long formed the predominant type of the literature of amusement in many countries, were in many instances derived from a still more ancient source the fabliaux and piquant stories with which the narrative poets, the moralists, and theo- logians of the middle ages enlivened their compositions ; but in the form which they ultimately attained in Boccaccio and his innumerable imitators they were most singularly adapted to furnish an appropriate canvas or groundwork upon which Shakspeare was to construct his humorous or pathetic actions. In the first place, these tales were, from the nature of the case, exceedingly short; they depended for their pop- ularity rather upon amusing and surprising incidents than upon any A. D. 1564-1616.] SHAKSPEARE. 141 development of character, which would have been impracticable within the narrow limits of a few pages. In dramatizing such stories, there- fore, the playwright enjoyed full liberty for the exercise of his peculiai talent of portraying human character, while at the same time he had ready prepared to his hand a series of striking events which he could compress or expand as best suited his purpose ; he was left free just where freedom was most essential to his particular form of art, and spared the necessity of invention precisely where the task of invention would be likely to embarrass him. It is susceptible of proof that in no one instance has Shakspeare taken the trouble of inventing the plot of a piece for himself; certainly from no want of genius, but simply from his consummate knowledge of his art. He knew that he would act more profitably for his dramatic success by combining materials already prepared, and directing all his energies to that department in which he has never met an equal the exhibition of human nature and human passion. How nobly he performed his task may be perceived by a simple comparison of the original novel or legend which he selected as the groundwork of his pieces, with such creations as Othello, the Tempest, or the Merchant of Venice. The number of Shakspeare's pieces derived from fiction amounts to eighteen ; by far the majority of these are traceable, as already remarked, to the Italian novelists and their French or Spanish imitators. We are not, however, to infer that the great poet necessarily consulted the tales in the original language. From a careful examination of his works it seems to result that our great dramatist has rarely, if ever, made use, whether in the way of subjects for his plays or quotations introduced into the dialogue, of any ancient or foreign materials not then existing in English translations : and this important fact, while it does not necessarily lead to the mon- strous conclusion of his having been a totally illiterate man, yet fur- nishes proof that Ben Jonson was neither an envious carper nor a malicious perverter of the truth when, in his exquisite tribute to the genius and virtues of his departed friend, he qualifies him as having " small Latin and less Greek." We may al&o remark that what Jon- son, one of the most learned men of his day, may have expressed by small may have been in reality no inconsiderable tincture of scholar- ship. The following general classification may be found not altogether use- less n;r uninteresting: in it I have endeavored to combine, together with a rough indication of the class to which each piece belongs, ths particular origin whence Shakspeare drew his materials : I. HISTORY. L Legendary : Hamlet (Tragedy). The Cl ronicle of Saxo-Grammaticus, and an older play. King Lear (Tragedy). Hollinshed, and older dramas. Cymbeline (Tragi-comedy). Hollinshed, and old French ro- mances. 142 SHAKSPEARE. [CHAP. VII Macbeth (Tragedy). Hollinshed. Julius Ccesar (Tragedy). Plutarch. Antony and Cleopatra (Tragedy). Plutarch. Coriolanus (Tragedy). Plutarch. Titus Andronicus (Tragedy). Probably an older pluy on tha same subject. ii. Authentic: Henry VI., Part I. \ Various old plays, among which The Part II. f Contention bet-ween the famous Hoitstt Part III. J of York and Lancaster. King John. Founded on an older play on the same subject. Richard II. The Chronicles of Hall, Fabian, and Hollinshed. Richard III. The Chronicles, and an older but very inferior play. Henry IV., Part I. j An oW play Qf Thg Famous Victories of * ' irHrt J.J.B f 7-7- TT Henry V. Henry V. } Henry VIII. All these belong to the department of "Histories," or Historical dramas II. FICTION. Midsummer Nighfs Dream (Comedy). Chaucer's Knighfs Tale. Comedy of Errors (Comedy). The Menczchmi of Plautus. Taming of the Shrew (Comedy). An old English piece of the same name. Love's Labor's Lost (Comedy). Unknown ; probably an Italian play. Two Gentlemen of Verona (Comedy). Exact origin unknown. Romeo and Juliet (Tragedy). Paynter's Palace of Pleasure. Merchant of Venice (Comedy). The Pccorone and the Gesta Romanorum. All's Well that Ends Well (Comedy). The Palace of Pleasure, translated from Boccaccio. Much Ado about Nothing (Comedy). An episode of the Or- lando Furioso. As Tou Like It (Comedy). Lodge's Rosalynde, and the Coke'* Tale of Gamclyn. Merry Wives of Windsor (Comedy). Exact origin unknown Troilus and Cressida (Tragedy). Chaucer, and the Recuyell of Troye. Measure for Measure (Comedy). Cinthio's Hccatommithi, Dec. viii. Nov. 5. Winter's Tale (Comedy). Greene's tale of Dorastus and Faivm'a. Timon of Athens (Tragedy). Plutarch, Lucian, and Palace of Pleasure. A. D. 1564-1616.] 8HAESPEARE. 143 Othello (Tragedy). Cinthio's Hecatommithi, Dec. viii. Nov. 7. Tempest (Comedy). Exact origin unknown, probably Italian. Twelfth Night (Comedy). A novel by Bandello, imitated by Belleforest. Pericles (Comedy). Twine's translation of the Gesta Ro- manorum, 8. In the historical department of the above classification it will be seen that many plays were based upon preceding dramatic works treating of the same, or nearly the same subjects ; and in some few ises we possess the more ancient pieces themselves, exhibiting differ- ent degrees of imperfection and barbarism. We thus are in a position to compare the changes introduced by the consummate art of Shak- speare into the rude draughts of his theatrical predecessors, and to appreciate the wise economy he showed in retaining what suited his purpose, as well as the skill he exhibited in modifying and altering what did not. In one or two examples we have more than one edition of the same play in its different stages towards complete perfection under the hand of Shakspeare, instances of which may be cited in the cases of Hamlet and Lear. A careful and minute collation of such various editions furnishes us with precious materials for the investiga- tion of the most interesting and profitable problem that literary crit- icism can approach the tracing of the different phases of elaboration through which every great work must pass. It is no mean privilege to be thus admitted, as it were, into the studio of the mighty painter, the laboratory of the mighty chemist to mark the touches, sometimes bold, sometimes almost imperceptible in their delicacy, which trans- form the rugged sketch into the highly-finished picture, the apparently insignificant operations by which the rude ore is transformed into the consummate jewel. It is like being admitted into the penetralia of nature herself. The first impression which strikes the reader when he makes acquaintance with the Historical and Legendary category of Shakspeare's dramas, is the astonishing force and completeness with which the poet seized the general and salient peculiarities of the age and country which he undertook to reproduce. With the limited and imperfect scholarship that he probably possessed, this power is the more extraordinary, and shows that his vast mind must have proceeded in a manner eminently synthetic ; he first made his characters true to general and universal humanity, and then gave them the peculiar dis- tinguishing traits appropriate to their particular period and country. His persons are true portraits of Romans, for example, because they ate first true portraits of men. His great contemporary Jonson has shown a far more accurate and extensive knowledge of the details of Roman manners, ceremonies, and institutions ; but his personages, admirable as they are, are entirely deficient in that intense human real- ity which Shakspeare never fails to communicate to his dramatis per- sona. The nature of the Historical Play, as it was understood by Shak- s peare, admitted, and even required, the adoption of an extern ive epoch 144 SHAKSPEARE. [CHAP. VII. as the subject, and a numerous crowd of agencs as the material, of such pieces ; and it is not too much to say, that in all the personages so introduced, from the most prominent down to the most obscure, the reader may detect, if he takes the necessary pains, that every one had, in the mind of the author, a separate and distinct individuality, equally true to universal and to particular nature. Nay, in comparing such subjects as are drawn from different periods in the history of hi own or other nations, in ancient or modern times, we may remark the singular felicity with which this great creator has differentiated, so to say, various phases in the character, social or political, of a people : thus the Romans in Coriolanus are very different from the Romans in Julius Casar or Antony and Cleopatra, though equally true to general human nature and to the particular nature of the Roman people at the different epochs selected. The same extraordinary power of differenti- ating is equally perceptible in the English historical plays, as will plain- ly be seen on comparing King John, for example, with Henry IV. or Henry V. This power of throwing himself into a given epoch is, in Shakspeare, carried to a degree which cannot be justly qualified as anything short of superhuman. It is true that in these plays we find instances of gross anachronism in detail ; but these anachronisms never touch the essential truth of the delineation ; they are mere exter- nal excrescences, which can be instantly got rid of by the imaginative reader, and which, though they may excite a passing smile, do not. affect for a moment the sense of verisimilitude. Shakspeare may make a hero of the Trojan War quote Aristotle, or he may arm the Romans of Pharsalia with the Spanish rapier of the sixteenth century; but he never infects the language and sentiments of classical times with the conceits of gallant and courtly compliment that were current in the age of Louis XIV. In the scenes of private and domestic life which he has freely intermingled with the stirring and heroic episodes of war or policy, his knowledge of human nature enables him to paint with an equally firm and masterly touch the hero and the man. The deli- cate task of giving glimpses into the private life of great historical personages, which we find generally evaded in all other authors who have treated such subjects, is a proof of the supremacy of Shakspeare's genius. The same thing may be said of the boldness with which he has introduced comic incidents and characters amid the most lofty and solemn events of history, and as frequently and successfully in his Ro- man as in his English plays. In the two parts of Henry IV. the heroic and familiar are side by side, and the Prince's adventures with th inimitable Falstaff and his other pleasant but disreputable companions, are closely intermingled with the majestic march of the great historical events. This shows that Shakspeare, far from fearing, as an inferior artist would have done, the juxtaposition of the familiar and the sub- lime, the wildest and most fantastic comedy with the loftiest and gravest tragedy, not only made such apparently discordant elements mutually heighten and complete the general effect which he contem- plated, but in so doing teaches us that in human life the sublime and A. D. 1564-1616.] S&dKSPEARE. 145 the ridiculous are side by side, and that the source of laughter is placed close by the fountain of tears. Even a cursory examination of these wonderful plays will supply us with another and not less remarkable evidence of Shakspeare's creative power. In them, though the chief characters may be historical, the action requires the introduction of a multitude of other personages ; nd these are not always necessarily subordinate ones, which the poet nmst unavoidably have created out of his own observation. Now, in such cases the most difficult trial of a dramatic talent would be the callida junctura which should make the imaginary harmonize with the historical personages ; and this ordeal would be equally arduous whether the subject upon which it was exercised were persons or events. Walter Scott, with all his power of delineation, has not always been successful in hiding the joining on of the real with the imaginary. In Shakspeare, on the contrary, we never see a deficiency : indeed, whether by his consummate skill in realizing the ideal, or in idealizing the real, both the one and the other stand before us in the same solidity ; and it is not too much to say that to us his imaginary persons are as much real entities nay, often far more so than the authentic figures of history itself. . Thus, to our intimate consciousness, Othello and Shylock are persons as real as Coriolanus and Wolsey. In the department of Shakspeare's works which we are now treating, as well as in the other category which we shall examine presently, there are unquestionably some pieces manifestly inferior to others. Thus among the English Histories the three plays upon the subject of Henry VI. bear evident marks of an inferior hand, and were in all probability older dramas which Shakspeare retouched and revivified here and there with some of his inimitable strokes of nature and poetic fancy. The last of the English historical plays, at least the latest in the date of its action, is Henry VIII. This piece bears many traces of having been in part composed by a different hand : in the diction, the turn of thought, and in particular in the peculiar mechanism of the versification, there is much to lead to the conclusion that Shakspeare, in its composition, was associated with one other, if not more, poets. This kind of collaboration was an almost universal practice in that age; and the circumstance that the play was written with a particular intention and contained very pointed and graceful compliments both to Elizabeth and her successor seem to indicate that it was composed with great rapidity, and that therefore Shakspeare was likely to have worked upon it in partnership with others. 9. But a general conception of the dramatic genius of Shakspeare must be founded upon an examination of all his pieces ; and while the historical dramas show how he could free his mind from the trammels imposed by the necessity of adhering to real facts and persons, the romantic portion of his pieces, or those founded upon Fiction, will equally prove that the freedom of an ideal subject did not deprive him of the strictest fidelity to general nature. The characters that move through the action of these latter dramas exhibit the same consummate 13 146 SHAKSPEARE. [CHAP. VII. appreciation of the general and the individual in humanity; and though he has occasionally stepped over the boundary of ordinary human nature, and has created a multitude of supernatural beings, fairies, spirits, witches, and other creatures of the imagination, even in these the severest consistency and the strictest verisimilitude never for a moment abandon him. They are always constantes sibi ; we know that such beings do not and cannot exist; but we irresistibly feel, in reading the scenes in which they appear, that if they did exist, they could not exist other than as he has painted them. The data being established, tha consequences, to the most remote and trivial details, flow from them in a manner that no analysis can gainsay. In the mode of delineating passion and feeling Shakspeare proceeds differently from all other dra- matic authors. They, even the greatest among them, create a person- age by accumulating in it all such traits as their reading and observa- tion show to usually accompany the fundamental elements which go to form its constitution : and thus they all, more or less, fall into the error of making their personages embodiments of such and such a moral peculiarity. They give us admirable and complete monographiei of ambition, of avarice, of hypocrisy, and the like. Moreover, in the expression of their feelings, whether tragic or comic, such characters almost universally describe the sensations they experience. This men and women in real life never do : nay, when under the influence of strong emotion or other powerful moral impression, we indicate to others what we feel, rather, and far more powerfully, by what we sup- press than by what we utter. In this respect the men and women of Shakspeare exactly resemble the men and women of real life, and not the men and women of the stage. Nor has he ever fallen into the common error of forgetting the infinite complexity of human charac- ter. If we analyze any one of the prominent personages of Shak- Bpeare, though we may often at first sight perceive in it the predomi- nance of some one quality or passion, on a nearer view we shall find that the complexity of its moral being goes on widening and deepening with every new attempt on our part to grasp or sound the whole extent of its individuality. Macaulay has excellently observed that it is easy to say, for example, that the primary characteristic of Shylock is re- vengefulness ; but that a closer insight shows a thousand other quali- ties in him, the mutual play and varying intensity of which go to com- pose the complex being that Shakspeare has drawn in the terrible Jew. Thus Othello is no mere impersonation of jealousy, nor Macbeth of ambition, nor FalstafF of selfish gayety, nor Timon of misanthropy, nor Imogene of wifely love : in each of these personages the more closely we analyze them the deeper and more multiform will appear the infinite springs of action which make up their personality. Shak- speare has shown, in a manner that no one has either equalled or approached, how a given character will act under the stimulus of some overmastering passion ; but he has painted ambitious and revengeful men, not ambition and revenge in human form. Nothing is more childish than the superficial judgment which identifies the great crca A. D. 1564-1616.] SHAKSPEARE. 147 tions of Shakspeare with some prominent moral or intellectual charac- teristic. His conceptions are as multiform as those of nature herself; and as the physiologist knows that even in the plant or mollusk of apparently the simplest construction there are depths of organization which bid defiance to all attempts to fathom them, so in the characters of the great painter of humanity, there is a variety which grows more and more bewildering the more earnestly we strive to penetrate its mysteries. This wonderful power of conceiving complex character is at the bottom of another distinguishing peculiarity of our great poet ; namely, the total absence in his works of any tendency to self-reproduc- tion. Possessing only the dramas of Shakspeare, it would be totally impossible for us to deduce any notion of what were the sympathies and tendencies of the author. He is absolutely impersonal ; or rather he is all persons in turn : for no poet ever possessed to a like degjee the portentous power of successively identifying himself with a multi- tude of the most diverse individualities, and of identifying himself so completely that we cannot detect a trace of preference. Let us suppose a man capable of conceiving and delineating such a picture of jealousy as we have in the tragedy of Othello. Would not such a man be irre- sistibly impelled to do a second time what he had so admirably done the first? But Shakspeare, when he has once thrown off such a'char- acter as Othello, never recurs to it again. Othello disappears from the stage as completely as a real Othello would have done from the world, and leaves behind him no similar personage. True, Shakspeare has given us a number of other pictures of jealous men ; but their jealousy is as different from that of Othello as in real life the jealousy of one man is different from that of another. Leontes, Ford, Posthumus, are all equally jealous ; but how differently is the passion manifested in each of these ! In the female characters, too, what a wonderful range, what an inexhaustible variety! Perhaps in no class of his impersona- tions are the depth, the delicacy, and the extent of Shakspeare's creative power more visible than in his women : for we must not forget that in writing these exquisitely varied types of female character, he knew that they would be intrusted, in representation, to boys or young men no female having acted on the stage till long after the age which witnessed such creations as Hermione, Lady Macbeth, Rosalind, or Juliet. We may conceive what a chill it must have been to the imagination of E> poet to be conscious that a marvel of female delicacy, grandeur, 01 passion would be personated on the stage by a performer of the othei sex, and that the author would feel what Shakspeare has so powerfully Expressed in the language of his own Cleopatra : " The quick comedians Extemporary shall stage us : Antony Shall be brought drunken forth, and I shall see Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness." Surely the power of ideal creation has never undergone a severer or- deal. Shakspeare's triumph over this graat practical difficulty is the morj 148 SHAKSPEARE. [CHAP. VII. surprising as there is, perhaps, no class of his personages more varied^ more profound, and more exquisitely delicate than his female charac- ters, which possess a far higher tone of sentiment than can be found in the most beautiful conceptions of womanly qualities which even the greatest of his contemporaries as Beaumont, Massinger, and Ford have given to the drama. Some critics, indeed, have traced his superior refinement in this respect to the imitation of the pure and lofty feminine ideal which he found in the Arcadia of the illustrious Sidney and the graceful purity of the Faerie Queene. In the expression of strong emotion, as well as in the delineation of character, Shakspeare is superior to all other dramatists, superior to all other poets. He never finds it necessary, in order to produce the effect he desires, to have recourse in the one case to violent or declamatory rhetoric, or in the other to unusual or abnormal combinations of quali- ties. In him we meet with no sentimental assassins, no moral mon- sters, " Blessed with one virtue and a thousand crimes." Without overstepping the ordinary limits of human experience, he is always able to interest or to instruct us with the exhibition of general passidns and feelings, manifesting themselves in the way we generally see them in the world. He is like the great painter of antiquity, who produced his ever-varying effects by the aid of four simple^colors. In the expression, too, he uniformly draws, at least in his finest passages, his illustrations from the most simple and familiar objects, from the most ordinary scenes of life. When a great occasion presents itself, he ever shows himself equal to that occasion. There are, indeed, in his works many passages where he has allowed his taste for intellectual subtleties to get the better of his judgment, and where his passion foi playing upon words a passion which was the literary vice of his day, and the effects of which are traceable in the writings of Bacon as well as in his is permitted to cool the enthusiasm excited by the situation or the feelings of the speaker. But this indulgence in conceits gen- erallj- disappears in the great culminating moments of intense passion : and while we are speaking of this defect with due critical severity, we must not forget that there are occasions when the intensest moral agitation is not incompatible with a morbid and feverish activity of the intellect, and that the most violent emotion sometimes finds a vent in the intellectual contortions of a conceit. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that Shakspeare very often runs riot in the indulgence of this tendency, to the injury of the effect designed and in defiance of the most evident principles of good taste. His style is unquestionably a very difficult one in some respects; and this obscurity is not to be at- tributed, except of course in some particular instances, to the corrupt state in which his writings have descended to us, and still less to the archaism or obsoleteness of his diction. Many of the great dramatists his contemporaries, for example Massinger and Ford, are in this respect as different from Shakepcare as if they had been separated A. D. 1564-1616.] SHAKSPEARE. 149 from him by two centuries of time their writings being as remarka- ble for the limpidity and clearness of expression as his are occasionally for its complexity. It is not therefore to the remoteness of the period that we must ascribe this peculiarity. Indeed in this respect Shak- speare's language will present nearly as much difficulty to an English as to a foreign student. We must look for the cause of this in the enormously developed intellectual and imaginative faculty in the poet; leading him to make metaphor of the boldest kind the ordinary tissue of his style. The thoughts rise so fast under his pen, and successively generate others with such a portentous rapidity, that the reader requires almost as great an intellectual vivacity as the poet, in order to trace the leading idea through the labyrinth of subordinate illustration. In all figurative writing the metaphor, the image, is an ornament, something extraneous to the thought it is intended to illustrate, and may be detached from it, leaving the fundamental idea intact : in Shakspeare the metaphor is the very fabric of the thought itself and entirely insep- arable from it. His diction may be compared to some elaborate monu- ment of the finest Gothic architecture, in which the superficial glance loses itself in an inextricable maze of sculptural detail and fantastically fretted ornamentation, but where a close examination shows that every pinnacle, every buttress, every moulding is an essential member of the construction. This intimate union of the reason and the imagination is a peculiarity common to Shakspeare and Bacon, in whose writings the severest logic is expressed in the boldest metaphor, and the very titles of whose books and the very definitions of whose philosophical terms are frequently images of the most figurative character. There is assuredly no poet, ancient or modern, from whose writings may be extracted such a number of profound and yet practical observation* applicable to the common affairs and interests of life ; observations* expressed with the simplicity of a casual remark, yet pregnant with the condensed wisdom of philosophy; exhibiting more than the acuteness of De Rochefoucauld, without his cynical contempt for humanity, and more than the practical good sense of Moliere, with a far wider and more universal applicability. In the picturing of abnormal and super- natural states of existence, as in the delineation of every phase of mental derangement, or the sentiments and actions of fantastic and supernatural beings, Shakspeare exhibits the same coherency and con- sistency in the midst of what at first sight appears altogether to tran- scend ordinary experience. Every grade of folly, from the verge of Idiotcy to the most fantastic eccentricity, every shade of moral pertur- bation, from the jealous fury of Othello to the frenzy of Lear or the not less touching madness of Ophelia, is represented in his plays with a fidelity so complete that the most experienced physiologists have affirmed that such intellectual disturbances may be studied in his pages with as much profit as in the actual patients of a madhouse. 10. The non-dramatic works of Shakspeare consist of the two nar- rative poems, written in the then fashionable Italian stanza, entitled Venus aud Adonis, and the Rape of Lucrece, the volume of beautiful Sonnet; 150 SHAKSPEARE, [CHAP. VII. whose internal signification has excited so much controversy, and a few lyrics, some of which appear to have good and others but fndifferenl claims to be attributed to the great poet. Venus and Adonis, which the author himself, in his dedication to the Earl of Southampton, calls " the first heir of his invention," was undoubtedly one of his earliest produc- tions, and though the date of its composition is not precisely known, was possibly written by Shakspeare before he left Stratford, at all events al the very outset of his poetical career. It is stamped with the strongest marks of youthful genius, exhibiting all the flush and voluptuous glow of a fervent imagination. The story is the common mythological epi- sode of the loves of Venus and the hunter ; and both in its form and substance, it must be regarded as an original attempt at a new kind of poetry, in which the extraordinary success of Shakspeare afterwards induced a multitude of other poets to follow his example. It ran through an unusual number of editions in a very short time, and was indeed one of the most successful literary ventures of the age. In the rich and somewhat sensual love-scenes in this poem, in the frequent inimitable touches of description which give earnest of Shakspeare's miraculous power of painting external nature, and in the delicious but somewhat effeminate melody of the verse, we see all the marks of youth, but it is the youth of a Shakspeare. The Rape of Lucrece, though less popular than its predecessor, a circumstance which may be attributed to the repulsive nature of the subject, is yet a poem of very great merit. The Sonnets of Shakspeare possess a peculiar interest, not only from their intrinsic beauty, but from the circumstance of their evidently containing carefully veiled allusions to the personal feelings of their author, allusions which point to some deep disappointment in love and friendship suffered by the poet. They were first printed in 1609, though, from allusions found in contemporary writings, many of theni were composed previously. They are one hundred and fifty-four in number, and some are evidently addressed to a person of the male sex, while others are as plainly intended for a woman. The poet bit- terly complains of the treachery of the male, and the infidelity of the female object of his affection, while he speaks both of the one and of the other in the most ardent language of passionate yet melancholy devotion. Throughout the whole of these exquisite but painful compo- sitions there runs a deep undercurrent of sorrow, self-discontent, and wounded affection, which bears every mark of being the expression of a real sentiment. No clew, however, has as yet been discovered by which we may hope to trace the persons to whom these poems are addressed, or the painful events to which they allude. The volume was dedicated, on its first appearance, by the publisher, Thomas Thorpe, to " Mr. W. H.," who is qualified as the only begetter of these sonnets , and some hypotheses suppose that this mysterious " Mr. W. H." was no other than William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, one of Shakspeare's most powerful patrons, and a man of great splendor and accomplish- ments. It is, however, difficult to suppose that a personage so high- placed could easily have interfered to destroy the happiness of the com- A. D. 1564-1616.] SHAKSPEARE. 151 paratively humble player and poet of the Globe, or, if he had, that a bookseller would have ventured to allude to him under so familiar s designation as " W. H." In fact the whole production is shrouded in mystery; and we must content ourselves with admiring the deep ten- derness, the melancholy grace, and the inimitable touches of poetical fancy and moral reflection which abound in these poems, without endeavoring to solve the enigma unquestionably a painful and per- sonal one involved in the circumstances under which they were com- posed. 152 THE SHAKSPEARIAN DRAMATISTS. [CiiAi VIII. CHAPTER VIII. THE SHAKSPEARIAN DRAMATISTS. f 1. BEN JONSON. His life. $ 2. His tragedies and comedies. $ 3. His masquei and other works. { 4. BEATJMONT and FLETCHER. 5. MASSINGER. 6. FOHD. 7. WEBSTER. $ 8. CHAPMAN, DEKKER, MIDDLETON, MARSTCN, and other minor Dramatists. $ 9. SHIRLEY. 10. Remarks on the Eliza- bethan drama. 1. THE age of Elizabeth and James I. produced a galaxy of great dramatic poets, the like of whom, whether we regard the nature or the degree of excellence exhibited in their works, the world has never seen. In the general style of their writings, they bear a strong family resem- blance to Shakspeare ; and indeed many of the peculiar merits of their great prototype may be found scattered among his various contem- poraries, and in some instances carried to a height little inferior to that found in his writings. Thus intensity of pathos hardly less touching than that of Shakspeare may be found in the dramas of Ford, gallant animation and dignity in the dialogues of Beaumont and Fletcher, deep tragic emotion in the sombre scenes of Webster, noble moral elevation in the graceful plays of Massinger; but in Shakspeare, and in Shak- speare alone, do we see the consummate union of all the most opposite qualities of the poet, the observer, and the philosopher. The name which stands next to that of Shakspeare in the list of these illustrious dramatists is that of BEN JONSON (1573-1637), a vigorous and solid genius, built high with learning and knowledge of life, and whose numerous works, dramatic as well as other, possess an imposing and somewhat monumental weight. He was born in 1573, and was consequently nine years younger than Shakspeare. His career was full of strange vicissitudes. Though compelled by a step-father to follow the humble trade of a bricklayer, he succeeded in gratifying an intense thirst for learning. He passed some short time, probably with the assistance of a patron, at the University of Cambridge, and there, as well as after leaving college, continued to study with a diligence that certainly rendered him one of the most learned men of his age -an age fertile in learned men. He is known to have served some time as a soldier in the Low Countries, and to have distinguished himself by his courage in the field ; but his theatrical career seems to have begun when he was about twenty years of age, when we find him attached as an actor to one of the minor theatres, called the Curtain. His success as a performer is said to have been very small, arising most probably Vom want of grace and beauty of person ; and there is no reason to Buppose that his theatrical career differed from the almost universal type of the actor-dramatists of that age. While still a very young A. D. 1573-1637.] BEN JONS OK 153 man he fought a duel with one of his fellow-actors, whom he had the misfortune to kill, receiving at the same time a severe wound ; and for this infringement of the law, which at that particular period was punished with extreme seve-ity, the poet was condemned to death, though afterwards pardoned. Among other vicissitudes of life, Jon- son is related to have twice changed his religion, having been con- verted by a Jesuit to the Roman Catholic faith, and to have afterwards ngain returned to the bosom of his mother-Church, on which last occasion he is said, when receiving the Sacrament on his reconversion to have drunk out the whole chalice, in sign of the sincerity of his recantation. His first dramatic work, the Comedy of Every Man in his Humor, is assigned to the year 1596. This piece, the action and characters of which were originally Italian, failed in its first representation ; and there is a tradition, far from improbable in itself, that Shakspeare, who was then in the full blaze of his popularity, advised the young aspirant to make some changes in the piece and to transfer its action to Eng- land. Two years afterwards the comedy, with considerable alterations, was brought out a second time, at Shakspeare's theatre of the Globe, and then with triumphant success. One of the few parts which Shak- speare is known to have personated on the stage is that of Old Knowel, the jealous merchant, in this comedy. Thus was probably laid the foundation of that warm and solid friendship between Jonson and Shak- speare, which appears to have continued during their whole lives, and the existence of which is proved not only by many pleasant anecdotes recording the gay and witty social intercourse of the two great poets, but by the enthusiastic, and yet discriminating, eulogy in which Jonsoi. who was not a man to give light or unconsidered praise has hon- ored the memory and described the genius of his friend. From the moment of this second representation of his comedy Ben Jonson's literary reputation was established ; and during the remainder of his very active career, though the success of particular pieces may have fluctuated, Jonson undoubtedly occupied a place at the very head of the dramatic authors of his day. His social and generous, though coarse and somewhat overbearing character, the extraordinary power and richness of his conversation, contributed to make him one of the most prominent figures in the literary society of that day. His "wit- combats " at the famous taverns of the Mermaid, the Devil, and the Falcon, have been commemorated in many anecdotes ; and he even appears to have been regarded at last as a sort of intellectual poten- tate, much as his great namesake Samuel Johnson was afterwards, and to have conferred upon his favorites the title of his sons ; " sealing them," as he says in one of his epigrams, " of the tribe of Ben." His first comedy was followed in the succeeding year by Every Man Out of his Humor, and his literary activity continued to be very great, for in 1603 he gave to the world his tragedy of Sejanus, and in 1605 he appears to have had some share, with Chapman, Marston, Dekker, and other dramatists, in the piece of East-ward Hoe ! 154 THE SHAKSPEARIAN DRAMATISTS. [CHAP. VIIL which called down upon all connected with it a severe persecution from the Court, which was bitterly offended by certain satirical allusions to the favor then accorded by King James to his Scottish countrymen. Jonson was involved in this persecution ; and there is a story that the guilty wits having been condemned to have their noses slit, Jonson generously refused to abandon his associates, and that his mother had prepared for herself and him "a strong and lusty poison," to enable him to escape the ignominy of such a disfigurement. With the frank and violent character of Jonson it was impossible that he could escape continual quarrels and disputes, so difficult to avoid in a literary caree- and particularly in the dramatic profession. Thus we have notices 01 violent feuds between him and Dekker, Chapman, Marston, and others, as well as Inigo Jones, the Court architect and arranger of festivities and masques, whose favor seems to have given great umbrage to the proud and self-confident nature of old Ben. Many of these literary quarrels may be traced in the dramatic works of Jonson and his con- temporaries, who used the stage as a vehicle for mutual attack and recrimination. In rapid succession between 1603 and 1619 followed some of Jonson's finest works, Volpone, Epicene, the Alchemist, and the tragedy of Catiline. In the latter year he was appointed Laureate or Court poet, and was frequently employed in getting up those splendid and fantastic entertainments called masques, in which magnificence of scenery, decoration, and costume, ingenious, allegorical, and myth- ological personages, exquisite music, dancing, and declamation were made the instruments for paying extravagant compliments to the king and the great personages of the Court, on occasion of any festivity at the palace or in the mansions of the great. These charming composi- tions, in which Jonson exhibited all the stores of his invention and all the resources of his vast and elegant scholarship, were represented sometimes by actors, but often by the ladies and gentlemen of the Court, and were performed, not in the public theatres, but in palaces and great houses, both in London and the country. Many of Jonson's later pieces were entirely unsuccessful, and in one of the last, the Ne-w Inn, acted in 1630, the poet complains bitterly of the hostility and bad taste of the audience. Towards the end of his life Ben Jonson ap- pears to have fallen into poverty, aggravated by disappointment and ill health, the latter probably caused by his too great fondness for copious libations of sack. He died in 1637, in the twelfth year of the reign of Charles I., and was buried, it is said, in a vertical position, in the churchyard of Westminster, the stone ove'r his grave having been inscribed with the excellent and laconic words, " O rare Ben Jonson." 2. The dramatic as well as the other works of this great poet are so numerous that I must content myself with a very cursory survey of them. They are of various degrees of merit, ranging from an excellence not surpassed by any contemporary excepting Shakspeare, to the lowest point of laborious mediocrity. Two of them are trage- dies, the Fall of Sej anus and the Conspiracy of Catiline. The subjects A. D. 1573-1653.] BEN JONS ON. 155 of both these plays are borrowed from the Roman historians, and the dialogue and action in both may be regarded as a mosaic of striking and brilliant extracts from the Latin literature, reproduced by Johson with such a consummate force and vigor that we may call him a Roman author who composed in English. Nothing can exceed the minute ac- curacy with which all the details of the Roman manners, ceremonies, religion, and sentiments are reproduced; and yet the effect of the whole is singularly stiff and unpleasing, partly perhaps from the absence of pathos and tenderness which characterizes Jonson's mind, and partly from the unmanageable nature of the subjects, the hero in both cases being so odious that no art can secure for his fate the sympathy of the reader. Many of the scenes, however, particularly those of a declama- tory character, as the trial of Silius and Cremutius Cordus before the abject Senate, the appearance of Tiberius, and the magnificent oration in which Petreius describes the defeat amd death of Catiline, are of ex- traordinary power and grandeur. Of comedies, properly so called, Jon- son composed fifteen, the best of which are incontestably Every Man in his. Humor, Volpone, Epicene or the Silent Woman, and the Alchemist. The plots or intrigues of Jonson are far superior to those of the gener- ality of his contemporaries : he always constructed them himself, and with great care and skill. Those of Volpone and the Silent Woman for example, though some of the incidents are extravagant, are admirable for the constructive skill they display, and for the art with which each detail is made to contribute to the catastrophe. The general effect, however, of Jonson's plays, though abundantly satisfactory to the reason, is hard and defective to the taste. The character of his mind was eminently analytic; he dissected the vices, the follies, and the affectations of society, and presented them to the reader rather like anatomical preparations than like men and women. His observation was extensive and acute; but his mind loved to dwell rather upon the eccentricities and monstrosities of human nature than upon those uni- versal features with which all can sympathize, as all possess them. His mind was singularly deficient in what is called humanity ; his point of view is invariably that of the satirist, and thus, as he fixed his attention chiefly upon what was abnormal, many of his most elaborately-drawn portraits are a sort of dry, harsh, abstruse caricatures of absurdities which were peculiar to the manners and society of that day, and appear to us as strange and quaint as the pictures of our ancestors in their stiff and fantastic dresses. The satiric tendency of Jonson's mind, too-, induced him to take his materials, both for intrigue and character, from odious or repulsive sources ; thus the subject of two of his finest pieces, Volpone and the Alchemist, turns entirely upon a series of ingenious cheats and rascalities; all the persons, without exception, being either scoundrels or their dupes. Nevertheless, in spite of these peculiarities, the knowledge of character displayed by Jonson is so vast, the force and vigor of expression are so unbounded, he has poured forth into his dialogue such a wonderful wealth of illustration drawn from men us well as books, that his comedies form a study eminently substantial. 156 THE SHAKSPEARIAN DRAMATISTS. [CHAP. VIII In some of them, as in Poetaster, Bartholomew Fair, and the Tale of a Tub, Jonson has attacked particular persons and parties, as Dekker in the first, the Puritans in the second, and Inigo Jones in the third ; but these pieces can have but little interest for the modern reader. The tone of morality which prevails throughout Jonson's works is high and manly, and he is particularly remarkable for the lofty standard he invariably claims for the social value of the poet, the dramatist, and the satirist. Though he has too often devoted his great powers to the (delineation of those oddities and absurdities which were then called humors, and which may be defined as natural follies and weaknesses exaggerated by affectation, he has traced more than one truly comic personage, the interest of which must be permanent; thus his admirable type of coward braggadocio in Bobadill will always deserve to occupy a place in the great gallery of human folly. The want of tenderness and delicacy which I have ascribed to Jonson will be especially perceived in the harsh and unamiable characters which he has given to his female persons. Without stamping him as a woman-hater, it may be said that there is hardly one female character in all his dramas which is represented in a graceful or attractive light, while a great many of them are absolutely repulsive from their coarseness and their vices. 3. It is singular that while Jonson in his plays should be Jistin guished for that hardness and dryness which I have endeavored to point out, this same poet, in another large and beautiful category of his works, should be remarkable for the elegance and refinement of his invention and his style. In the Masques and Court Entertainments which he composed for the amusement of the king and the great nobles, as well as in the charming fragment of a pastoral drama entitled The Sad Shepherd, Jonson appears quite another man. Everything that the richest and most delicate invention could supply, aided by extensive, elegant, and recondite reading, is lavished upon these courtly compli- ments, the gracefulness of which almost makes us forget their adulation and servility. This servility, it should be remarked, was the fashion of the times ; and was carried quite as far towards the pedantic and imbecile James as it had been towards his great predecessor, Elizabeth. Of such masques and entertainments, Jonson composed about thirty-five, many of which exhibit a richness and playfulness of invention which have never been surpassed. These productions were, of course, generally short, and depended in a great measure for their effect upon the scenes, machinery, costumes, dances, and songs, with which they were thickly interspersed. The magnificence sometimes displayed in these spectacles was extraordinary, and forms a striking contrast with the beggarly mise en scene of the regular theatres of those days. Among the most beautiful of these masques we may mention fan's Anniversary, the Masque of Oberon, and the Masque of Queens. In the dialogue of these slight pieces, as well as in the lyrics which are frequently introduced, we see how graceful and melodious could become the genius of this great poet, though generally attuned to the severer notes of the satiric muse. Besides his dramatic works Jonson left a very large quantity of A. D. 1576-1625.] BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 157 literary remains in prose and verse. The former portion contains many curious and valuable notes made by Jonson on books and men, among which are particularly interesting the references to Shakspeare and Bacon ; and the latter consists chiefly of epigrams written in the manner of Martial, and sometimes containing interesting notices of contemporary persons and things. All these are pregnant with wit fancy, and solid learning, and confirm the idea which we derive fron. Jonson's dramas of the power, richness, and variety of his genius. 4. Superior to Ben Jonson in variety and animation, though hardly equal to him in solidity of knowledge, were the two illustrious dramatists who worked together with so intimate a union that it is impossible, in the works composed before their friendship was dissolved by death, to separate their contributions. These were BEAUMONT (1586- 1615) and FLETCHER (1576-1625), both men of a higher social status, by birth and by education, than the generality of the dramatists of this splendid epoch ; for Beaumont was of noble family, and the son of a judge, while Fletcher was son to Bishop Fletcher, an ecclesiastic, however, of no very enviable reputation, in the reign of Elizabeth. John Fletcher was born in 1576; Thomas Beaumont ten ye*xrs later, but he died early, in 1615, at the age of thirty, and his friend survived him ten years, and was one of the victims to the plague in 1625. Concerning the details of their lives and characters we possess but vague and scanty informa- tion ; it is, however, evident from their works that they had both re- ceived a learned education. They were accomplished men, possessing a degree of scholarship far inferior, perhaps, in depth and accuracy to that of Jonson, but amply sufficient to furnish their writings with rich allusions and abundant ornaments. The dramatic works of these brilliant fellow-laborers, in spite of the very short existence of the one, and the not very long life of the other, are extraordinary not only for theii excellence and variety, but also for their number, their collected dramas which were not printed in a complete form till 1647 amounting to fifty-two. Some of these, it is certain, were acted before Beaumont's death ; and of the remainder many are attributed to Fletcher alone, and this probably with justice, though it is impossible to know how far Fletcher, in those works which are to be ascribed to the period succeed- ing that event, may have profited by the unfinished sketches thrown off by them both in partnership. The common tradition relates that Beaumont possessed more of the elevated, sublime, and tragic genius, while Fletcher was rather distinguished by gayety and comic humor; but so intimately interwoven is the glory of these two excellent poets, that neither in their names nor in their writings does biography or criticism ever separate them. Such imperfect notices, however, as have come down to our time upon this subject I will introduce here, as they will assist the memory in judging of such a multiplicity of pieces, by dividing them into comparatively manageable groups. Dryden, who has spoken with just enthusiasm of the works of these great dramatists, to whom he himself owed so much, has asserted that the first successful piece they placed upon the stage was the charming romantic drama of 14 158 THE SUAKSPEARIAN DRAMATISTS. [CHAP. VIII. Philaster, though they had composed several before this production raised their names to a high pitch of popularity. Among the pieces performed anterior to 1615 may be mentioned, besides Philaster, the Maid's Tragedy, A King and No King, the Laws of Candy, all of a lofty or tragic character; while among the dramas belonging to the same early period may be specified the following, as exhibiting the comic genius of the two illustrious fellow-laborers : the Woman-hater, the Knight of the Burning Pestle (one of their richest and most popular extravaganzas), the Honest Man's Fortune, the Captain, and the Cox- comb. Of those attributed, with more or less show of probability, to Fletcher alone, it will be seen that a large proportion possess a charac- ter in which the comic tone is predominant. I will specify the follow- ing: the excellent comedies of the Chances, the Spanish Curate, Beg- gars' Bush, and Rule a Wife and Have a Wife. But a mere enumera- tion of the principal dramas of these animated and prolific playwrights will be found tiresome and unsatisfactory. I will therefore, after mak- ing a few general remarks on the genius and manner of Beaumont and Fletcher, note such peculiarities in their principal plays as my limited space will permit. The first quality which strikes the reader in making acquaintance with these poets is the singularly airy free, and animated manner in which they exhibit incident, sentiment, and action. Thej' evidently wrote with great ease and rapidity; and their productions, though occasionally offending against the rules of good taste and pro- priety, are never deficient in the tone of good society. Their dialogue, far less crowded with thought than that of Shakspeare, and less bur- dened with scholar-like allusion than that of Jonson, is singularly vivacious and flowing. Their style, though not altogether free from affectation, is wonderfully limpid, and will generally be found much easier to understand at the first glance than that of Shakspeare a clearness which arises from less complexity in the ideas. They often attain, in their more poetical and declamatory passages, a high eleva- tion both of tragic and romantic eloquence. In the delineation of character and passion they are inferior to the great artist with whom they have not seldom ventured to measure their strength; and if ever they have deserved the high honor of being compared for a moment with Shakspeare, it must be remembered that we must select, as the subject of such comparison, not the deeper and vaster creations of the great master's genius, " For in that circle none durst walk but he," not, in short, such works as Hamlet, Lear, Othello, but rather what may be called his secondary pieces, such as Much Ado about Nothing, Measure for Measure, or the Tempest works in which the graceful, fantastic, and romantic elements predominate. In this department Beaumont and Fletcher are no unworthy rivals to the greatest of dramatists. They possess high comic powers in the delineation of violently farcical and extravagant characters. Their portraiture of bragging cowardice in Bessus is one of the finest and completesi A. D. 1576-1625.] BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 15? delineations which the stage has given ; while in such quaint and out- rageously ludicrous impersonations as those of JLazarillo, the hungry courtier who is in vain pursuit of the "umbrana's head," which is the object of his idolatry, they have touched the very brink to which humorous extravagance can be carried. Their plots, like those of Shakspeare, are often carelessly constructed and improbable in inci- dent ; but the curiosity of the reader is always kept alive by striking situations and amusing turns of fortune. Their materials are similar to those which the romantic dramatists of that age generally employed Italian and French novels, and sometimes legendary or authentic history. It should be remarked, however, that they have never once attempted, like Shakspeare, the historical drama, founded upon the annals of their own country, though they have freely used materials derived from Roman chronicles as in their tragedy of the False One, in which they seem to have intended to try their strength against Julius Cczsar ; and from the legendary history of the middle ages, as in Rollo, Thierry and Theodoret, and other pieces. They are sin- gularly happy in the delineation of noble and chivalrous feeling, the love and friendship of young and gallant souls; and their numerous portraits of valiant veterans may be pronounced unequalled. As exam- ples of the former I may cite the personages of Philaster, of Arbaces, of Palamon and Arcite, of Areas in the Loyal Subject, and, above all, of Caratach in the tragedy of Bonduca. They possess the art of ren- dering a character vicious, and even criminal, without making it for- feit all claims to our sympathy; and thus exhibit a true sense of humanity. A striking example of this is the erring but generous hero of A King and No King. Their pathos, though frequently exhibited, is rather tender than deep : among the most striking instances of this I may refer to the Maid's Tragedy, one of their most admired and elab- orate works. The grief of Aspasia and the despair of Evadne are worked up to a high pitch of tragic emotion. In the Ttvo Noble Kins- men, the subject of which is borrowed from the Knighfs Tale of Chau- cer, the dignity of chivalric friendship is portrayed with the highest and most heroic spirit. In this play the scenes exhibiting the love and madness of the Gaoler's Daughter show an evident imitation of the character of Ophelia; and there can be no higher praise to Beaumont and Fletcher than to confess that they come out of the contest beaten indeed, but not disgraced. Excellent too are they in pictures of simple tenderness and sorrow : there are few things in dramatic literature more pathetic than the character and death of the little heroic Prince Hengo in the tragedy of Bonduca. But it is perhaps in their pieces of mixed sentiment, containing comk: matter intermingled with romantic and elevated incidents, that Beaumont and Fletcher's genius shines out in its full effulgence. It is on such occasions that we see them rise with- out effort and sink without meanness. Perhaps no better examples of this the most charming phase of their peculiar talent can be select- ed than the comedies of the Elder Brother, Rule a Wife and Have a Wife, Beggars' Bush, and the Spanish Curate. In the third-mentioned 160 THE SHAKSPEARIAN DRAMATISTS. [CHAP. VIII. piece the romantic and the farcical intrigues are combined in a most masterly manner, while in the first and second the force of innate worth and courage is made to shine out brilliantly amid the most apparently adverse circumstances. In the more violently farcical intrigues and characters, such as are to be found in the Little French Lawyer, the Woman-hater, the Humorous Lieutenant, the Scornful Lady, Wit at Several Weapons, and the like, we willingly forget the eccentricity, or even absurdity, of the idea, in consideration of the inexhaustible series of laughable extravagancies in which it is made to develop itself. Such .extravagancies are very different from the dry, persevering, analytical method in which Jonson works out to its very last dregs the exhibition of one of those " humors " which he so delighted to portray a pro- cess which may almost be called scientific, like the destructive distilla- tion of the chemist, leaving nothing behind but a caput mortuum. The fools and grotesques of Beaumont and Fletcher are " lively, audible, and full of vent ; " and the authors seem to enjoy the amusement of heaping up absurdity upon absurdity, out of the very abundance of their humorous conception. The language in which the poet clothes their droll extravagancies is often highly figurative, full of imagery, and of a rich and generous music; sometimes the simple change of a few words will transform one of these passages of ludicrous and yet picturesque exaggeration into a noble outburst of serious poetry. Some of the pieces of Beaumont and Fletcher furnish us with a store of curious antiquarian and literary materials : thus the excellent roman- tic play of Beggars' Bush contains, in the humorous scenes where the "mumping" fraternity is introduced, valuable materials illustrating that singular subject the slang dialect, or the professional jargon of thieves, beggars, and such like offscourings of society; and it is curious to see how long much of this argot has been in existence, and 'how slight are the changes it has undergone. In the same way the fantastic extravaganza of the Knight of the Burning Pestle is an absolute store- house preserving a multitude of popular ahivalric legends and frag- ments, sometimes beautiful and always interesting, of ancient English ballad poetry. In a good many passages of Fletcher we meet with evident parodies or caricatures of scenes and speeches of other drama- tists, and particularly of Shakspeare, in which latter case the interest of such passages is of course very high ; but it must be remembered that such caricatures or parodies are marked by a playful spirit, and bear no trace of malignity or envy. Examples of this will be found in the play I have just mentioned, in the droll, pathetic speech on the installation of Clause as King of the Gypsies, an evident and good- natured jest at Cranmer's speech in the -last scene of Henry VIII. Many others might be adduced. The pastoral drama of the Faithful Shepherdess is unquestionably one of the most exquisite combinations of delicate and tender sentiment with description of nature and lyrical music that the English or any other literature can boast. Originally imitated from the Italian, this mixture of the eclogue and the drama forms a peculiar subdivision of poetry. Though the characters, sentiments, A. D. 1584-1640.] MASS1NGER. 161 language, and incidents have little relation to real life, the charm of such idyllic compositions, from the days of Theocritus to those of Guarini and Tasso, has always been felt; and the refined ideal and half-.nythclogic beauty of the " fabled life" of Tempe seems to gratifj' that craving of the imagination which makes us all hunger after some- thing purer, sweeter, and more innocent than the atmosphere of our ordinary "working-day world." The pictures of nature which crowd this exquisite Arcadian drama have never been surpassed for their truth, their delicacy, and the melody of their expression ; and it is not the least glory of Beaumont and Fletcher that in this exquisite poem they are the victorious rivals of Ben Jonson, whose delicious fragment of the Sad Shepherd was undoubtedly suggested by the drama I am speaking of; while Fletcher also furnished to Milton the first prototype of one of the most inimitable of his works the pastoral drama of Comus. 5. Of the personal history of PHILIP MASSINGER (1584-1640) little is known. This excellent poet was born in 1584, and died, apparently very poor, in 1640. His birth was that of a gentleman, his education good, and even learned ; for though his stay in the University of Ox- ford, which he entered in 1602, was not longer than two years, his works prove, by the uniform elegance and refined dignity of their dic- tion, and by the peculiar fondness with which he dwells on classical allusions, that he was intimately penetrated with the finest essence of the great classical writers of antiquity. His theatrical life, extending from 1604 to his death, appears to have been an uninterrupted succes- sion oi struggle, disappointment, and distress ; and we possess one touching document proving how deep and general was that distress in the dramatic, profession of the time. It is a letter written to Henslowe, the manager of the Globe Theatre, in the joint names of Massinger, Field, and Daborne, all poets of considerable popularity, imploring the loan of an insignificant sum to liberate them from a debtor's prison. Like most of his fellow-dramatists, Massinger frequently wrote in partner- ship with other playwrights, the names of Dekker, Field, Rowley, Middleton, and others being often found in conjunction with his. We possess the titles of about thirty-seven plays either entirely or partially written by Massinger, of which number, however, only eighteen are now extant, the remainder having been lost or destroyed. These works are tragedies, comedies, and romantic dramas partaking of both char- acters. The finest of them are the following : the Fatal Do-wry, the Unnatural Combat, the Roman Actor, and the Duke of Milan, in the first category ; the Sandman, the Maid of Honor, and the Picture, in the third ; and the Old Law and A Netv Way to Pay Old Debts in the second. The qualities which distinguish this noble writer are an extraordinary dignity and elevation of moral sentiment, a singular power of delineating the sorrows of pure and lofty minds exposed to unmerited suffering, cast down but not humjjiated by misfortune. In these lofty delineations it is impossible not to trace the reflection of Massinger's own high but melancholy spirit. Female purity and devo- tion he has painted with great skill; and his plays exhibit many scenei H* 162 TUE SHAKSPEARIAN DRAMATISTS. [CHAP. VIII. in which he has ventured to sound the mysteries of the deepest pas- sions, as in the Fatal Dowry and the Duke of Milan, the subject of the latter having some resemblance with the terrible story of Mariamne. It was unfortunately indispensable, in order to please the mixed audi- ences of those day?, that comic and farcical scenes should be introduced in every piece ; and for comedy and pleasantry Massinger had no apti- tude. This portion of his works is in every case contemptible for stupid buffoonery, as well as odious for loathsome indecency ; and the coarseness and obscenity of such passages forms so painful a contrast with the general elegance and purity of Massinger's tone and language that we are driven to the supposition of his having had recourse to other hands to supply this obnoxious matter in obedience to the popular taste. Massinger's style and versification are singularly sweet and noble. No writer of that day is so free from archaisms and obscurities ; and perhaps there is none in whom more constantly appear all the force, harmony, and dignity of which the English language is susceptible. From many passages we may draw the conclusion that Massinger was a fervent Catholic. The Virgin Martyr is indeed a Catholic mystery; and in many plays as, for example, the Renegado he has attributed to Romanist ccBifessors, and even to the then unpopular Jesuits, the most amiable andfphristian virtues. If we desire td characterize Massinger in one sentence, we may say that dignjty, tenderness, and grace are the qualities in which he excels. 6. If Massinger, among the Elizabethan dramatists, be peculiarly the poet of moral dignity and tenderness, JOHN FORD (1586-1639) must be called the great painter of unhappy love. This passion, viewed under all its aspects, has furnished the almost exclusive subject matter of his plays. He was born in 1586, and died in 1639; and does not appear to have been a professional writer, but to have followed the employment of the law. He began his dramatic career by joining with Dekker in the production of the touching tra-gedy of the Witch of Ed- monton, in which popular superstitions are skilfully combined with a deeply-touching story of love and treachery ; and the works attributed to him are not numerous. Besides the above piece he wrote the trage- dies of the Brother and Sister, the Broken Heart (beyond all com- parison his most powerful work, a graceful historical drama on the subject of Perkin Warbeck), and the following romantic or tragi-comic pieces : the Lover's Melancholy, Love's Sacrifice, the Fancies, Chaste and Noble, and the Lady's Trial. His personal character, if we may judge from slight allusions found in contemporary writings, seems to have been sombre and retiring; and in his works sweetness and pathos are carried to a higher pitch than in any other dramatist. In the terrible play of the Brother and Sister the subject is love of the most unnatural and criminal kind ; and yet Ford fails not to render his chief personages, however we may deplore and even abhor their crime, objects of our sympathy and pity. In the Broken Heart we have in the noble Penthea, in Orgilus, Ithocles, and Calantha, four phases of un- happy passion ; and in the scenes between Penthes. and her ciuel bul A D. 1586-1639.] FORL. WEBSTER. 163 repentant brother, between Penthea and the Princesn (in which the dying victim makes her will in such fantastic but deeply-touching terms), and last of all in the tremendous accumulation of moral suf fering with which the piece concludes, we cannot but recognize in Fora a master of dramatic effect. His lyre has but few tones, but his music makes up in intensity for what it wants in variety ; and at present we can hardly understand how any audience could ever have borne the harrowing up of their sensibilities by such repeated strokes of pathos. Ford, like the other great dramatists of that era of giants, never shrank from dealing with the darkest, the most mysterious enigmas of our moral nature. His verse and dialogue are even somewhat monotonous in their sweet and plaintive melody, and are marked by a great richness of classical allusion. His comic scenes are even more worthless and offensive than those of Massinger. One proof of the consummate mastery which Ford possessed over the whole gamut of love-sentiment is his skill in making attractive the characters of unsuccessful suitors, in proof of which may be cited Orgilus and the noble Malfato. 7. But perhaps the most powerful and original genius among the Shakspearian dramatists of the second order is JOHN WEBSTER. His terrible and funereal Muse was Death ; his wild imagination revelled in images and sentiments which breathe, as it were, the odor of the char- nel : his plays are full of pictures recalling with fantastic variety all associations of the weakness and futility of human hopes and interests, and dark questionings of our future destinies. His literary physiog- nomy has something of that dark, bitter, and woful expression which makes us thrill in the portraits of Dante. The number of his known works is very small : the most celebrated among them is the tragedy of the Duchess of Malfy (1623) ; but others are not inferior to that strange piece in intensity of feeling and savage grimness of plot and treat- ment. Besides the above we possess Guise, or the Massacre of France, in which the St. Barthelemy is, of course, the main action, the Devil's Law Case, the White Devil, founded on the crimes and sufferings of Vittoria Corombona, Appius and Virginia ; and we thus see that in the majority of his subjects he worked by preference on themes which offered a congenial field for his portraiture of the darker passions and of the moral tortures of their victims. In selecting such revolting themes as abounded in the black annals of mediaeval Italy, Webster followed the peculiar bent of his great and morbid genius ; in the treat- ment of these subjects we find a strange mixture of the horrible with the pathetic. In his language there is an extraordinary union of com- plexity and simplicity : he loves to draw his illustrations not only from " skulls, and graves, and epitaphs," but also from the most attractive and picturesque objects in nature, and his occasional intermingling 01" the deepest and most innocent emotion and of the most exquisi/r touches of natural beauty produces the effect of the daisy springing up amid the festering mould of a graveyard. Like many of his con- temporaries, he knew the secret of expressing the highest passion Jirough the most familiar images ; and the dirges and funeral songi 164 THE SHAESPEARIAN DRAMATISTS. [CHAP. VIII. which he has frequently introduced into his pieces possess, as Charles Lamb eloquently expresses it, that intensity of feeling which seems to resolve itself into the very elements they contemplate. His dramas are generally composed in mingled prose and verse ; and it is possible that' he may have had a share in the production of many other pieces besides those I have enumerated above. 8. As the dramatic form was the predominant type of popular literature at this splendid period, the student must expect to be bewil- dered by the great though subordinate glory of a multitude of minor lights of the theatrical heaven, whose genius our space will enable us to analyze but in a very rapid and cursory manner. The works of these playwrights, each of whom has, when closely examined, his peculiar traits, hare, however, such a strong family resemblance both in their merits and defects, that this cursory appreciation will not lead the reader into any considerable error; one star of the bright constel- lation may somewhat differ from another in glory, but the general character and composition of their rays are the same. Chapman, Dek- ker, Middleton, and Marston are all remarkable for their fertility and luxuriance. GEORGE CHAPMAN, who has been previously mentioned as the translator of Homer (p. 85), is, however, more admirable for his lofty, classical spirit, and for the power with which he communi- cated the rich coloring of romantic poetry to the forms borrowed by his learning from Greek legend and history. THOMAS DEKKER, one of the most inexhaustible of the literary workers of his age, though he generally appears as a fellow-laborer with other dramatists, yet in the few pieces attributed to his unassisted pen shows great elegance of language and deep tenderness of sentiment. THOMAS MIDDLETON is admired for a certain wild and fantastic fancy which delights in por- traying scenes of witchcraft and supernatural agency. JOHN MARSTON, on the contrary, deserves applause less by a purely dramatic quality of genius than by a lofty and satiric tone -of invective in which he lashes the vices and follies of mankind, and in particular the neglect of learn- ing. Nor can he who would make acquaintance with the dramatic wealth of this marvellous age pass without attention the works of Taylor, Tourneur, Rowley, Broome, and Thomas Heywood. Tourneur has some resemblance, in the sombre and gloomy tone of his works, to the terrible genius of Webster, while Broome is remarkable for the immense number of pieces in whose composition he had a greater or less share; an observation which may also be applied to Heywood. This latter poet must not be confounded with his namesake John, who was one of the earliest dramatic authors, and flourished in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Mary (see p. 112). Thomas Heywood exhibits a graceful fancy, and one of his plays, A Woman Killed -zvit/t Kindness, is among the most touching of the period. Broome was originally Ben Jonson's domestic servant, but afterwards attained considerable success upon the stage. 9. The dramatic era of Elizabeth and James closes with JAMES SHIRJ.EY (1594-1666), whose comedies, though in many respects bear* A. D. 1642.] SHIRLEY. 165 ing the same general character as the works of his great predecessors, still seem the earnest of a new period. He excels in the delineation of gay and fashionable society, and his dramas are more laudable for ease, nature, and animation than for profound tracings of human nature, 01 for vivid portraiture of character. He passed through the whole of the Civil War, the Commonwealth, and the Revolution, and is the link which connects the great dramatic school of Shakspeare with the very different form of the drama which revived at the Restoration in 1660. In proportion as the Puritan party grew in influence and acrimony, in precisely equal degree grew the hostility to the theatre ; and at last, when fanaticism was rampant, the theatre was formally and legal!) suppressed, the play-houses were pulled down by bigoted mobs of citi- zens and soldiers, and the performance of plays, nay, the simple wit- nessing of theatrical representations, made a penal offence. This took place September 2, 1642, and the dramatic profession may be regarded as remaining under the frown of government during about fourteen years from that date, when the theatre was revived, but revived, as we shall afterwards see, under a completely different form, and with totally different tendencies, moral as well as literary. Of the nature and causes of this dramatic revolution, not less profound than the great political and social revolution of which it was a symptom and a result, I shall speak in another place. 10. The Elizabethan drama is the most wonderful and majestic outburst of genius that any age has yet seen. It is characterized by marked peculiarities ; an intense richness and fertility of imagination, such as was natural in an age when the stores of classical antiquity were suddenly thrown open to the popular mind ; and this richness and splendor of fancy are combined with the greatest force and vigor of familiar expression. We have an intimate union of the common and the refined, the boldest nights of fancy and the most scrupulous fidelity to actual reality. The great object of these dramatists being to pro- duce intense impressions upon a miscellaneous audience, they sacri- ficed everything to strength and nature. The circumstance that most of these writers were actors tended to give their productions the pecu- liar tone they exhibit : to this we must attribute some of their gravest defects as well as many of their most inimitable beauties their occa- sional coarseness, exaggeration, and buffoonery, as well as that instinc- tive knowledge of effect which never abandons them. But besides being actors, they were, almost without exception, men of educated and cultivated minds ; and thus their writings never fail to show a peculiar aroma of style and language, which is perceptible even in the least fragment of their dialogue. They were also men, men of strong passions and often of irregular lives ; and what they felt strongly, and what they had seen in their wild lives, they boldly transferred to their writings ; which thus reflect not only the faithful images of human character and passion under every conceivable condition, not only the strongest as well as the most delicate coloring of fancy and imagina- tion, but the profoundest and simplest precepts derived from the prao 166 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. [CHAF. VIII. tical experience of life. It should never be forgotten that they all resemble Shakspeare in the general texture of their language and the prevailing principles of their mode of dramatic treatment, and only differ from him in the degree to which they possess separately those high and varied qualities which he alone of all human beings carried to an almost superhuman degree of intensity. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. OTHER DRAMATISTS. ANTHONY MTOTDAT (1553-1633) was said by Sleres to be the " best plotter " among the comic poets. Fourteen plays were written either partly or wholly by him. The first of importance was Val- entine and Orson, published in 1598. Drayton and others assisted him in Si'r John OlJcastle, which was referred by some to Shakspeare. In 1601 he published Robert Earl of Huntingdon's Downfall, and Bobert Earl of Huntingdon's Death., in the last of which he was assisted by Chettle. His writings extended over the period 1580-1621. lie died August 10, 1633, and is styled on his monument in St. Stephen's, Colcman Street, " citizen and draper of Ix)ndon." HENIJY CHETTLE was a most industrious writer of plays. Thirty-eight are said to bear an impress from his hand. With Haughton and DeVker he produced Patient Grissil in 1603. According to Mr. Collier he wrote for the stage before 1592. Three only of his plays have been preserved. He wrote loo largely to produce works of more than passing Interest. GEOEGE COOKE produced Greens Tu quoque in 1599, and was the author of fifty epigrams. THOMAS X ABBES wrote in the reign of Charles I. A. third-rate poet, but original. None of his dra- fci-tie pieces are extant, the hief of which were ilierocosmm. Spring's Glory, Bricle. Charlt* thi First, a tragedy, and Swetiiam, a comedy, an proved not to be his. Nabbes was secretary to a mie noble or prelate near Worcester. He also wrote a continuation of Kuolles's History of the Turks. THOMAS RANDOLPH (1G05-1G34), born near Daventry. A scholar and poet of some worth, but whose pieces have sank into an obscurity ill de- served. He studied at Cambridge, and through too great excess shortened his life, and died at the early age of twenty-nine. His chief plays were Tht HUMS' Looking- Glass, and The Jealous Lovers. NATHANIEL FIELD, in the reigns of James I. and Charles I., wrote A Woman's a Weathercock, 1G12; Amends for Ladies, 1618. JOHN DAY wrote between 1602 and 1654. Studied at Caiui College, Cambridge, was associated with Rowley, Dekker, Chettle, and Marlowe, and is said to have been the subject of the satirical lines on the flight of Day. His chief works were flriftol Tra- gedv, 1602, Law 2'ricks, 1608, and the Blind Keggar of Bethnal Green, 1659. HENEY GLAPTUOEXE lived in the reign of Charles I. Winstauley calls him "one of tho chiefcst dramatic poets of that age." There is much ease and elegance in his verse, but little force and passion. His plays numbered nine, five c f which are preserved. AOxrtui \7dttensttln, 1614, Tfit Hollander, 1640, *c. CHAP. IX.] THE SO-CALLED METAPHYSICAL POETS. 167 CHAPTER IX. ^ THE SO-CALLED METAPHYSICAL POETS. A. D. 1600-1700. 1. Characteristics of the so-called metaphysical poets. 2. WITHER and QUARLES. $ 3. HERBERT and CRABHAW. 4. HERRICK, SUCKLING, and LOVELACE. 5. BROWNE and HABINGTON. 6. WALLER. $ 7. DAVEN'ANt and DENHAM. } 8. COWLEY. 1. THE seventeenth century is one of the most momentous in Eng- lish history. A large portion of it is occupied by an immense fermen- tation, political and religious, through which were worked out many of those institutions to which the country owes its grandeur and its hap- piness. The Civil War, the Commonwealth, the Protectorate, and the Restoration, fill up the space extending from 1630 to 1660, while its termination was signalized by another revolution, which, though peace- ful and bloodless, was destined to exert a perhaps even more beneficial influence on the future fortunes of the country. In its literary aspect this agitated epoch, though not marked by that marvellous outburst of creative power which dazzles us in the reigns of Elizabeth and her successor, yet has left deep traces on the turn of thought and expression of the English people ; and confining ourselves to the department of poetry, and excluding the solitary example in Milton of a poet of the first class, who will form the subject of a separate study, we may say that this period introduced a class of excellent writers in whom the intellect and the fancy play a greater part than sentiment or passion. Ingenuity predominates over feeling; and while Milton owed much to many of these poets, whom I have ventured, in accordance with John- son, to style the metaphysical class, nevertheless we must allow that they had much to do with generating the so-called correct and artificial manner which distinguishes the classical writers of the age of William, Anne, and the first George. I propose to pass in rapid review, and generally according to chronological order, the most striking names of this department, extending from about 1600 to 1700. 2. GEORGE WITHER (1588-1667) and FRANCIS QUARLES (1592- 1644) are a pair of poets whose writings have a considerable degree of .esemblance in manner and subject, and whose lives were similar in misfortune. Wither took an active part in the Civil War, attained command under the administration of Cromwell, and had to undergo severe persecution and long, imprisonment. His most important work is a collection of poems, of a partially pastoral character, entitled the Shepherd's Hunting, in which the reader will find frequent rural de- scriptions of exquisite fancifulness and beauty, together with a sweet and pure tone of moral reflection. The vice of Wither, as it was gen- erally of the literature of his ajje, was a passion for ingenious turns 168 THE SO-CALLED METAPHYSICAL POETS. [CHAP. IX. and unexpected conceits, which bear the same relation to really beauti- ful thoughts that plays upon words do to true wit. He is also often singularly deficient in taste, and frequently deforms graceful images by the juxtaposition of what is merely quaint, and is sometimes even igndble. Many of his detached lyrics are extremely beautiful, and the verse is generally flowing and melodious; but in reading his best pas- enges we are always nervously apprehensive of coming at any moment upon something which will jar upon our sympathy. He wrote, among many other works, a curious series of Emblems, in which his puritani- cal enthusiasm revels in a system of moral and theological analogies at least as far-fetched as poetical. Quarles, though a Royalist as ardent as Wither was a devoted Republican, exhibits many points of intellectual resemblance to Wither; to whom, however, he was far inferior in poetical sentiment. One of his most popular works is a collection of Divine Emblems, in which moral and religious precepts are inculcated in short poems of a most quaint character, and illustrated by engravings filled with what may be called allegory run mad. For example, the text, " Who will deliver me from the body of this death?" is accom- panied by a cut representing a diminutive human figure, typifying the soul, peeping through the ribs of a skeleton as from behind the bars of a dungeon. This taste for extravagant yet prosaic allegory was bor- rowed from the laborious ingenuity of the Dutch and Flemish moralists and divines; and Otto Van Veen, the teacher of Rubens, is answerable for some of the most extravagant pictorial absurdities of this nature. Quarles, however, in spite of his quaintness, is not destitute of the feeling of a true poet; and many of his pieces breathe an intense spirit of religious fervor. In spite of their antagonism in politics, Quarles and Wither bear a strong resemblance : the one may be desig- nated as the most roundhead of the Cavaliers, the other as the most cavalier of the Roundheads. 3. If Quarles and Wither represent ingenuity carried to extrava- gance, GEORGE HERBERT (1593-1632) and RICHARD CRASHAW (circa 1620-1650) exhibit the highest exaltation of religious sentiment, and are both worthy of admiration, not only as Christian poets, but as good men and pious priests. George Herbert was born in 1593, and at first rendered himself remarkable by the graces and accomplishments of the courtly scholar; but afterwards entering the Church, exhibited, as parish priest of Bemerton in Wiltshire, all the virtues which can adorn (lie country parson a character he has beautifully described in a prose tieatise under that title. He died in 1632, and was known among his contemporaries as " holy George Herbert." He was certainly one of the most perfect characters which the Anglican Church has nourished in her bosom. His poems, principally religious, are generally short lyrics, combining pious aspiration with frequent and beautiful pictures of nature. He decorates the altar with the sweetest and most fragrant flowers of fancy and of wit. Herbert's poems are not devoid of that strange and perverted ingenuity with which I have reproached Quarles and Wither ; but the tender unction which reigns throughout his lyricu A. D. 1520-1674.] CRASHAW. HERR1CK. LOVELACE. 1C9 serves as a kind of antidote to the poison of perpetual conceits. In his most successful efforts he has almost attained the perfection rf de- votional poetry, a calm and yet ardent glow, a well-governed fervor, which seem peculiarly to belong to the Church of which he was a minister, equally removed from the pompous and childish enthusiasm of Catholic devotion and the gloomy mysticism of Calvinistic piety. His best collection of sacred lyrics is entitled the Temple, or Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations. Crashaw's short life was glowing throughout with religious enthu- siasm. The date of his birth is not exactly known, but probably was about 1620; and he died, a canon of the Cathedral of Loretto, in 1650. He was brought up in the Anglican Church, and received a learned education at Oxford ; but during the Puritan troubles he embraced the Romish faith, and carried to the ancient Church a singularly sensitive mind, very extensive erudition, and a gentle but intense devotional mysticism. He had been employed in negotiation by Charles I., and seems to have possessed among his contemporaries a high reputation for ability. The mystical tendency of his mind was increased by his misfortunes and by his change of religion, and in his later works we find the fervor of his pietism reaching a pitch little short of extrava- gance. He is said to have been an ardent admirer of the ecstatic writings of St. Theresa ; and that union of the sensuous fervor of human affec- tion with the wildest flights of theological rapture which we see in the writings of the great Catholic mystics, is faithfully reproduced in Crashaw. That he possessed an exquisite fancy, great melody of verse, and that power over the reader which nothing can replace, and which springs from deep earnestness, no one can deny. The reader will never regret the time he may have employed in making some acquaintance with Crashaw's poetry, among the most favorable specimens of which I may cite the Steps to the Temple, and the beautiful description entitled Music's Duel, borrowed from the celebrated Contention bet-ween a Nightingale and a Musician, composed by Famianus Strada, of which there is a most exquisite imitation in Ford's play of the Lover's Melan- choly. 4. Love, romantic loyalty, and airy elegance find their best repre- sentatives in three charming poets whose works may be examined under one general head. These are ROBERT HERRICK (1591-1674), SIR JOHN SUCKLING (1609-1641), and SIR RICHARD LOVELACE (1618- 1658). The first of these writers, after beginning his career among the brilliant but somewhat debauched literary society of the town and the theatre, took orders, and, like Herbert, passed the latter portion of his life in the obscurity of a country parish. Unlike Herbert, however, he continued to exhibit in his writings, after this change of life, the same graceful but voluptuous spirit which distinguished his early writings ; and unlike the holy pastor of Bemerton, he seems never to have ceased repining at the fate which obliged him to exchange the gay conversa- tion of poets and wits for the unsympathizing companionship of the rural " salvages " among whom he was condemned to live. His poems IS 170 THE SO-CALLED METAPHYSICAL rOETS. [CHAP. IX. are all lyric, generally songs; and love and wine form their invar able topics. In Herrick we find the most unaccountable mixture of sensual coarseness with exquisite refinement. Like the Faun ot the ancient sculpture, his Muse unites the bestial and the divine. In fancv, in genius, in power over the melody of verse, he is never deficient ; and it is easy to see that in his union of tenderness with richness of imagina- tion he had been inspired by the lovely pastoral and lyric movements of Fletcher and of Heywood. Suckling and Lovelace are the types of the Cavalier poet: both underwent persecution, and were reduced to poverty. Lovelace was long and often imprisoned for his adherence to the loyal doctrines of his party, and is said to have died in abject dis- tress. Both were men of elegant if not profound scholarship, and both exemplify the spirit of loyalty to their king, and gallantry to the ladies. Many of Suckling's love songs are equal, if not superior, to the most beautiful examples of that mixture of gay badinage and tender if not very deep-felt devotion which characterizes French courtly and erotic poetry in the seventeenth century; and his thoughts are expressed with that cameo-like neatness and refinement of expression which is the great merit of the minor French literature from Marot to Beranger. But his most exquisite production is his Ballad upon a Wedding, in which, assuming the character of a rustic, he describes the marriage of a fashionable couple, Lord Broghill and Lady Margaret Howard. In this inimitable gern, if we exclude one or two allusions of a somewhat too warm complexion, the reader will find the perfection of grace and elegance, rendered only the more piquant by the well-assumed naTvete of the style. Lovelace is more serious and earnest than Suckling: his lyrics breathe rather devoted loyalty than the half-passionate, half- jesting love-fancy of his rival. Some of his most charming lyrics were written in prison ; and the beautiful lines to Althea, composed when the author was closely confined in the Gate-house at Westminster, remind us of the caged bird which learns its sweetest and most plain- tive notes when deprived of its woodland liberty. The gay and airy spirit which we see running through the minor poetry of this epoch maybe traced back to a period considerably earlier to the contemporaries of Ben Jonson and the great dramatists. The pleasant and facetious BISHOP CORBET (p. 86), CAREW, one of the ornaments of the court of Charles I. (p. 86), and even DRUMMOND (p. 87), though the genius of the latter is of a more serious turn, all exhibit a tendency to intellectual ingenuity which was afterwards grad- ually divested of that somewhat pedantic character which Drummond, for example, had imbibed from his models, the masters of the Italian sonnet. It is curious to observe that the Scots should in this time have distinguished themselves in their writings by a learned and artificially classical spirit strangely at variance with the unadorned graces (if the '' native woodnotes wild " that thrill so sweetly through their national and popular songs. This learned character was perhaps derived from, as it is chiefly exemplified in, Buchanan, one of the purest and most truly classiaal writers in Latin verse among those who have appeared A. D. 1590-1687.] BROWNE. HABINGTON. WALLER. Ill Bince the destruction of Roman literature (p. 107). The Scols have generally been a learned people, and much of their national annals was written in Latin, sometimes in Latin of great elegance. This may perhaps be in some degree attributed to the fact that their vernaculai dialect, when they employed it, was, though certainly far too cultivated to be stigmatized as a fatois of English, yet at all events no better than a provincial mode of speech; and the naTvete which is charming in a song or poem runs great risk of exciting contempt when coloring his- torical or philosophical matter. 5. WILLIAM BROWNE (1590-1645) was the author, besides a large number of graceful lyrics and shorter poems, of a work entitled Bri- tannia's Pastorals, undoubtedly suggested, as far as their style and treatment are concerned, by the example of Spenser and Giles Fletcher. They contain much agreeable description of rural life, but they are chargeable with that ineradicable defect which accompanies all idyllic poetry, however beautiful may be its details, namely, the want of prob- ability in the scenes and characters, when the reader tests them by a reference to his own experience of what rustic life really is. His verse is almost uniformly well knit, easy, and harmonious ; and the attentive reader could select many passages from this poet, now little read, ex- hibiting great felicity of thought and expression. WILLIAM HABINGTON (1605-1654) is a poet of about the same calibre as Browne, though his writings are principally devoted to love. He celebrates, with much ingenuity and occasional grace, the charms and virtues of a lady whom he calls Castara, and who a fate rare in the annals of the love of poets was not only his ideal mistress, but his wife. Habington, like Crashaw, was a Catholic; and his poems are free from that immorality which so often stains the graceful fancies of the poets of this age. Though generally devoted to love, Habington's collected works exhibit some of a moral and religious tendency. 6. The most prominent and popular figures of the period we are now considering, and the writers who exerted the strongest influence on their own time, I have reserved till the end of this Chapter : they are Waller and Cowley, to which may be added the secondary but still important names of Denham and Davenant. EDMUND WALLER (1605-1687) was unquestionably one of the leading characters in the literary and political history of England during the momentous period embraced by his long life. He was of ancient and dignified family, of great wealth, and a man of varied accomplishments and fascinating manners ; but his character was timid and selfish, and .lis political principles fluctuated with every change that menaced either his safety or his interest. He sat for many years in Parliament, and was the " darling of the House of Commons " for the readiness of his repartees and the originality and pleasantness of his speeches. It was unfortunate for a man endowed with the light talents formed to adorn a court to be obliged to take part in public affairs at so serious a crisis as that of the Long Parliament, the Civil War, and the Restora- tion; but Waller seems for a while to have floated scathless through 172 THE SO-CALLED METAPHYSICAL POETS. [CHAP. IX the storms of that terrible time, trusting, like the nautilus, to the ver^ fragility which bears it safely among rocks and quicksands where an argosy would be wrecked. He exhibited repeated indications of tergi- versation in those difficult times, professing adherence to Puritan and Republican doctrines while really sympathizing with the Court party ; and on more than ; one occasion was accused of something very like distinct military treachery. Even his consummate adroitness did not ahvay; (succeed in securing impunity; and in 1643 he was convicted by the House of a plot to betray London to the King, and narrowly escaped a capital punishment, being imprisoned, fined io,ooo/., and obliged to exile himself for some time, which he passed in France. His conduct at this juncture is said to have been mean and abject. Though distantly related by birth to the great and good Hampden, and to Oliver Cromwell himself, whom he has celebrated in one of his finest poems, Waller was ready to hail with enthusiasm every new change in the political world ; and he panegyrized Cromwell and Charles II. with equal fervor, though not with equal effect. He lived to see the accession of James II., whose policy he prophesied would lead to the fatal results that afterwards occurred. During the whole of his life Waller was the idol of society, but neither much trusted nor much respected a pliant, versatile, adroit partisan, joining and deserting all causes in succession, and steering his bark with address through the dangers of the time. In his own day, and in the succeeding generation, his poetry enjoyed the highest reputation. He was said to have carried to perfection the art of expressing graceful and sensible ideas in the clearest and most harmonious language ; but his example, which acted so powerfully on Dryden and Pope, has ceased to exert the same in- fluence, which it owed rather to the good sense and good taste by which Waller avoids faults than to the ardor and enthusiasm which can alone attain beauties. Regular, reasonable, well-balanced, well-proportioned, the lines of Waller always gratify the judgment, but never touch the heart or fire the imagination. Here and there in his works may be found strokes of happy ingenuity which we know not whether to attrib- ute more to accident or to genius ; a* in the passage where he laments the cruelty of his mistress Sacharissa (Lady Dorothy Sidney), and boasts that his disappointment as a lover had given him immortality as a poet, he makes the following delicious allusion to the fable of Apollo and Daphne : " I caught at love, but filled my arms with bays." Most of his poems are love verses, but his panegyric on Cromwell con- tains many passages of great dignity and force. He was less felicitous in his longer work, the Baffle of the Summer Islands, in which, in n half-serious, half-comic strain, he described an attack upon a stranded whale in the -Bahamas. 7. SIR WILLIAM DAVENANT (1605-1668), born in the same year Vvith Waller, was one of the most active literary and political person- ages of his day. lie is principally interesting to us at the present daj A,, D. 1605-1668.] DAVENANT. DEN HAM. 173 as being connected with the revival of the theatre after the eclipse it had suffered during the severe Puritan rule; and nothing can more clearly indicate the immense change which litevary taste had under- gone, than the fact that Davenant, who was a most ardent worshipper of the genius of Shakspeare and Shakspeare's mighty contemporaries, should, in attempting to revive their works, have found it necessary to alter their spirit so completely, that a reader who admires the originals must regard the adaptations with a feeling little less than disgust. Yet there can be no doubt that Davenant's veneration was sincere. He was long connected with the Court Theatre, and both in the dramas which he composed himself, and in those which he adapted and placed upon the stage, we see how far the taste for splendor of scenery, dances, music, and decoration had usurped the passion of the earlier public for truth and intensity in the picturing of life and nature. -Declamation and pompous tirades had now taken the place of the ancient style of dia- logue, so varied, so natural, touching every key of human feeling, from the wildest gayety to the deepest pathos. The mechanical accessories of the stage had been immensely improved ; actresses, young, beauti- ful, and skilful, usurped the place of the boys of the Elizabethan scene, and in every respect the stage had undergone a complete revolution. We see the influence of that French or classical taste which was brought into England by the exiled court of Charles II., and which afterwards completely metamorphosed the character of our dramatic literature, which, in the time of Dryden and Congreve, was destined to produce much that was imposing and vigorous in tragedy and much that was inimitable in comedy, but which was, in all its essentials, something totally different from the great productions of the preceding era. Davenant was a most prolific author, not only in the dramatic department, in which his most popular productions were Albovine, the Siege of Rhodes, the Laiv against Lovers, the Cruel Brother, and many others, but also as a narrative poet. He was also one of the most active, virulent, and unscrupulous party-writers of that period. There is a ridiculous story of Davenant being in the habit of giving out that he was a natural son of William Shakspeare by a handsome Oxford landlady, but neither the supposition itself nor the fact of Dav- enant's exhibiting such a strange, perverted kind of vanity, is at all deserving of credit. One of Davenant's principal non-dramatic works is the poem of Gondibcrt, narrating a long series of lofty and chivalric adventures in a dignified but somewhat, monotonous manner. It is written in a peculiar four-lined stanza with alternate rhymes, afterwards employed by Dryden in his Annus Mirabilis. It is, however, a form of verification singularly unfitted for continuous narration, and its employment may be one cause of the neglect into which the once- admired work of Davenant has fallen a neglect so complete that per- haps there are not ten men in England now living who have read it through. SIR JOHN DENHAM (1615-1668) was the son of the Chief Baron of I tie Exchequer in Ireland, and a supporter of Charles I. Though & '5* 174 THE SO-CALLED METAPHYSICAL POETS. [CHAP. IX. poet of the secondary order, when regarded in connection with Cow ley, one work of his, Cooper's Hill, will always occupy an important place in any account of the English Literature of the seventeenth century. This place it owes not only to its specific merits, but also in no mean degree to the circumstance that this poem was the first work in a pecu- liar department which English writers afterwards cultivated with great success, and which is, I believe, almost exclusively confined to our lit- erature. This department is what may be called local or topographic poetry, and in it the writer chooses some individual scene as the object round which he is to accumulate his descriptive or contemplative pas- eages. Denham selected for this purpose a beautiful spot near Rich- mond en the Thames, and in the description of the scene itself, as well as in the reflections it suggests, he has risen to a noble elevation. Four lines, indeed, in which he expresses the hope that his own verse may possess the qualities which he attributes to the Thames, will be quoted again and again as one of the finest and most felicitous passages of verse in any language. 8. One of the most accomplished and influential writers of the period was ABRAHAM COWLEY (1618-1667). He exhibits one of the most perfect types of the ideal man of letters. He was a remarkable instance of intellectual precocity, for he is said to have published his first poems, filled with enthusiasm by the Fairy Queen of Spenser, when only thirteen years of age. He received a very complete and learned education, partly at Oxford, and afterwards, when obliged by religious and political troubles to leave that academy, in the sister Uni- versity of Cambridge ; and he early acquired and long retained among his contemporaries the reputation of being one of the best scholars and most distinguished poets of his age. During the earlier part of his life he had been confidentially employed, both in England and in France, in the service of Charles I. and his queen, and on attaining middle age he determined to put in execution the philosophical project he had long fondly cherished, of living in rural and lettered retirement. He was disappointed in obtaining such a provision as he thought his services had deserved; but receiving a grant of some crown leases pro- ducing a moderate income, he quitted London and went to reside near Chertsey. But his dreams of ease and tranquillity were not fulfilled; he was involved in continual squabbles with the tenants, from whom he could extort no rents ; and he speaks with constant querulousness of the hostility and vexations to which he was subjected. He died of a fever caused by imprudence and excess, but not before he had learned the melancholy truth that annoyances and vexations pursue us even into the recesses of rural obscurity. Cowley is highly regarded among the writers of his time both as a poet and an essayist. Immense and multifarious learning, well digested by reflection and polished into brilliancy by taste and sensibility, ren- ders his prose works, in which he frequently intermingles passages of verse, reading little less delightful than the fascinating pages of Mon- taigne. Cowley, like Montaigne, possesses the charm arising from the A-. D. 1618-1667.] COWLET. 175 intimate union between reading and reflection, between curious erud- tion and original speculation, the quaintness of the scholar ana tne practical knowledge of the man of the world. There are few writers 6O substantial as Cowley ; few whose productions possess that peculiar attraction which grows upon the reader as he becomes older and more contemplative. As a poet, the reputation of Cowley, immense in his .own day, has much diminished, which is to be attributed to that abuse of intellectual ingenuity, that passion for learned, far-fetched, and recondite illustrations which was to a certain extent the vice of his age. He 1 as very little passion or depth of sentiment; and in his love- verses a kind of composition then thought obligatory on all who were ambitious of the name of poet he substitutes the play of the intel- lect for the unaffected outpouring of the feelings. He was deeply versed both in Greek and Latin literature, and his imitations, paraphrases, and translations show perfect knowledge of his originals and great mastery over the resources of the English language. He translated the Odes of Anacreon, and attempted to revive the boldness, the pictu- resqueness, and the fire of the Pindaric poetry; but his odes have only an external resemblance with those of the " Theban Eagle." They have the irregularity of form only an apparent irregularity in the case of the Greek originals, which, it must be remembered, were writ- ten to be accompanied by that Greek music of whose structure nothing is now known ; but they have not that intense and concentrated fire which burns with an inextinguishable ardor, like the product of some chemical combustion, in the great Boeotian lyrist. Cowley seems al- ways on the watch to seize some ingenious and unexpected parallelism of ideas or images ; and when the illustration is so found, the shock of surprise which the reader feels is rather akin to a flash of wit than to an electric stroke of genius. Cowley lived at the moment when the revolution inaugurated by Bacon was beginning to produce its first fruits. The Royal Society, then recently founded, was astonishing the world, and astonishing its own members, by the immense horizon opening before the bold pioneers of the Inductive Philosophy. In this mighty movement Cowley deeply sympathized ; and perhaps the finest of his lyric compositions are those in which, with a grave and well- adorned eloquence, he proclaims the genius and predicts the triumphs of Bacon and his disciples in physical science. One long epic poem of great pretension Cowley meditated but left unfinished. This is the Davtdets, the subject of which is the suffer- ings and glories of the King of Israel. But this work is now complete- ly neglected. Biblical personages and events have rarely, with the solitary and sublime exception of Milton, been transported with success out of the majestic language of the Scripture ; and it may be main- tained, without much fear of contradiction, that the rhymed heroic couplet the measure employed by Cowley is not a form of versifi- cation capable of supporting the attention of 'he reader through a lofty tpic narrative. The genius of Cowley was far more lyric than epic; 176 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. [CHAP. IX. and in his shorter compositions he exerted that influence upon the style of English poetry which tended very much, during nearly two centu- ries, to modify it very perceptibly, and which is especially traceable in the writings of Dryden, Pope, and generally in the next succeeding generations. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. OTHER POETS. WILLIAM CHAMBEBLAYNE (1619-1689), a physi- cian at Shaftesbury, in Dorsetshire, wrote 1'harnn- nida, an heroic poem, in five books, which contains some vigorous passages, but the versifica- tion is rugged, and the style slovenly and quaint. Chamberlayne is also the author of a tragi-comedy entitled Love's Victory, acted after the Restoration under the new title of Wit* led by the A'ote, or the I'oet'g Eerenge. CHARLES COTTON (1630-1687), best known as the friend of Izaak Walton, had an estate in Derby- shire upon the river Dove, celebrated for its trout He wrote several humorous poems, and his Voyage to Ireland, Campbell remarks, seems to anticipate the manner of Anstey in the Bath Guide. HENRY VAUGHAN (1614-1695), a native of Wales, born in Brecknockshire, first bred to the law, which he afterwards relinquished for the profession of physic. He published in 1651 a volume of miscel- laneous poems. Campbell says of him that " he is one of the harshest even of the inferior order of the school of conceit ; but he has some scattered thoughts that meet our eye amid his harsh pages, like wild flowers on a barren heath." DR. HENRY KINO (1591-1669), chaplain to James L, and afterwards Bishop of Chichester, wrote chiefly religions poetry. His thoughts are elevated, and his language is choice. His style is not free from the conceits so fashionable in the writers of this age, but the little fancies he indulges are chaste and full of beauty. JOHN CLKVELAJTD (1613-1658), son of a Leices- teTfhlre clergyman, distinguished himself a* a eol- dier and poet on the king's aide during the Civil War. In 1647 he published a severe satire on the Scotch ; was imprisoned in 1653, released by Crom- well, but died soon after. Some of his writings are amatory, and though conceited contain true poetry. It is said that Butler borrowed no little from him in his ' Hudibras.' SIB RICHARD FANSHAWE (1607-1666), brother of Lord JTanshawe, and secretary to Prince Rupert. He was made ambassador to Spain by Charles II., and died at Madrid. He translated Camoens' Lu- tiad, and the Paitor Fido of Guarini. He wrote also some minor poems. His song, The Saint's Encouragement, 1643, is full of clever satire, and all his verse is forcible, with here and there a touch of the true poet's beauty. THOMAS STANLEY (1625-1678), a native of Hert- fordshire, studied at Cambridge, and entered the Middle Temple. In 1651 he published some poenu chiefly on the tender passion, full of beautiful thought and happy fancy, but marked by the too common quaintncss of the times. DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE (d. 1673), daughter of Sir Charles Lucas, and maid of honor to Queen Henrietta Maria. In 1653 she published Poems and Fancie* was assisted by her husband in many of her writings, according to Horace Walpolc in the Royal and Noble Authon. Twelve folio volumes were issued by the industrious marquis and his wife, but the value of the writings is not great. MRS. KATHERINE PHILIPS (1631-1664), a Cardi- ganshire lady, known by the name of Orinda, ex. cecdingly popular as a writer with her contempo. raries. Her style is more free than that of most of the poets of the age from quaintne/m ind conceit. A. D. 1584-1656.] THEOLOGICAL WRITERS. Ill CHAPTER X. THEOLOGICAL WRITERS OF THE CIVIL WAR AND THE COMMONWEALTH. j 1. Theological "Writers. JOHN HALES and WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH. 2. SIR THOMAS BROWNE. $ 3. THOMAS FULLER. { 4. JEREMY TAYLOR. His Life. 5. His Liberty of Prophesying and other works. 6. His style com- pared with Spenser. 7. RICHARD BAXTER. The Quakers : Fox, PENN, and BARCLAY. 1. THE Civil War, which led to the temporary overthrow of the ancient monarchy of England, was in many respects a religious as well as a political contest. It was a struggle for liberty of faith at least as much as for liberty of civil government. The prose literature of this time, therefore, as well as of a period extending considerably beyond it, exhibits a strong religious or theological character. The blood of martyrs, it has been said, is the seed of the Church; and the alternate triumphs and persecutions, through which passed both the Anglican Church and the multiplicity of rival sects which now arose, naturally developed to the highest degree both the intellectual powers and the Christian energies of their adherents. The most glorious outburst of theological eloquence which the Church of England has exhibited, in the writings of Jeremy Taylor, Barrow, and the other great Anglican Fathers, was responded to by the appearance, in the ranks of the sec- taries, of many remarkable men, some hardly inferior in learning and genius to the leaders whose doctrines they opposed, while others, with a ruder yet more burning enthusiasm, were the founders of dissenting communions, as in the case of the Quakers. JOHN HALES (1584-1656), surnamed " the ever-memorable John Hales," was a man who enjoyed among his contemporaries an im- mense reputation for the vastness of his learning and the acuteness of his wit. He was born in 1584, and in the earlier part of his life had acquired, by travel and diplomatic service in foreign countries, a vast amount not only of literary knowledge, but practical acquaintance with men and affairs : he afterwards retired to the learned obscurity of a I'eF.owship of Eton College, where he passed the sad and dangerous years filled with civil contention. During part of this time his writings and opinions rendered him so obnoxious to the dominant party that a price was set upon his head, and he was obliged to hide, being at the same time reduced to the extremest privations. He for some time sub- sisted by the sale of his books. He died in 1656, and left behind him the reputation of one of the most solid and yet acutest intellects that his country had produced. The greater part of his writings are con- troversial, treating on the politico-religious questions that then agitated 178 THEOLOGICAL WRITERS. [CHAP. X men's minds. He had been present at the Synod of Dort, and has given an interesting account of the questions debated in that assembly. While attending its sittings as an agent for the English Church he was converted from the Calvinistic opinions he had hitherto held to those of the Episcopalian divines. Both in his controversial writings and in his sermons he exhibits a fine example of that rich yet chastened eloquence which characterizes the great English divines of the seven- teenth century, and which was carried to the highest pitch of gorgeous magnificence by Taylor and of majestic grandeur by Barrow. WILLIAM CHTLLIKGWORTH (1602-1644), a l so an eminent defender of Protestantism against the Church of Rome, was converted to the Roman Catholic faith while studying at Oxford, and went to the Jesuits' College at Douay. But he subsequently returned to Oxford, renounced his new faith, and published in 1637 his celebrated work against Cathol- ir.ism, entitled The Religion of the Protestants a Safe Way to Salva- tion, in reply to a treatise by a Jesuit, named Knott, who had main- tained that unrepenting Protestants could not be saved. " In the long parenthetical periods," observes Mr. Hallam, " as in those of other old English writers, in his copiousness, which is never empty or tautologi- cal, there is an inartificial eloquence springing from strength of intel- lect and sincerity of feeling that cannot fail to impress the reader. But his chief excellence is the close reasoning which avoids every danger- ous admission, and yields to no ambiguousness of language. He per- ceived and maintained with great courage, considering the times in which he wrote and the temper of those whom he was not unwilling to keep as friends, his favorite tenet, that all things necessary to be believed are clearly laid down in Scripture. ... In later times his book obtained a high reputation; he was called the immortal Chillingworth; he was the favorite of all the moderate and the latitudinarian writers, of Tillotson, Locke, and \Varburton." 2. The writings of SIR THOMAS BROWSTE (1605-1682), though not exclusively theological, belong, chronologically as well as by their style and manner, to this department. Both as a man and a writer this is one of the most peculiar and eccentric of our great prose-authors ; and the task of giving a clear appreciation of him is unusually aifficult. He was an exceedingly learned man, and passed the greater part of his life in practising physic in the ancient city of Norwich. It should be remembered that the great provincial towns at that time had not been degraded to that insignificance to which the modern facility of inter- course has reduced them in relation to the Metropolis : they were then go many little capitals, possessing their society, their commercial activ- ity, and their local physiognomy, and had not yet been swallowed up by the monster London. Browne was born in 1605, and his life was unusually prolonged, as he died in 1682. His writings are of a most miscellaneous character, ranging from observations on natural science to the most arduous subtleties of moral and metaphysical speculation, Among the most popular of his works are the treatise entitled Hydrio- taphia, or Urn-Burial, and the Essays on Vulgar Errors, which beai A. D. 1608-1661.] BROWNE. FULLER. 179 the name of Pseudoxia Efidemica. The first of thsse treatises was sug- gested by the digging up in Norfolk of some Roman funeral urns, and the other is an attempt to overthrow many of the common supersti- tions and erroneous notions on various subjects. But a mere specifica- tion of the subject will altogether fail to give an idea of Browne's strange but fascinating writings. They are the frank and undisguised outpourings of one of the most original minds that ever existed. With the openness and discursive simplicity of Montaigne, they combine immense and recondite reading : at every step the author starts some extraordinary theory, which he illustrates by analogies so singular and unexpected that they produce upon the reader a mingled feeling of amusement and surprise, and all this in a style absolutely bristling with quaint Latinisms, which in another writer would be pedantic, but in Browne were the natural garb of his thought. His diction is stiff with scholastic terms, like the chasuble of some mediaeval prelate, thick-set with pearl and ruby. The contrast between the simplicity of Browne's character and the out-of-the-way learning and odd caprices of theory in which he is perpetually indulging, makes him one of the most amusing of writers ; and he very frequently rises to a sombre and touching eloquence. Though deeply relijfious in sentiment he is some- times apparently sceptical, and his sudden turns of thought and strange comparisons keep the attention of the reader continually awake. He stands almost alone in his passion for pursuing an idea through every conceivable manifestation; and his ingenuity on such occasions is absolutely portentous. For instance, in a treatise on the Quincunx he finds quincunxes on the earth, in the waters, and in the heavens, nay, in the very intellectual constitution of the soul. He has a particular tendency to dwell on the dark mysteries of time and of the universe, and makes us thrill with the solemnity with which he suggests the nothingness of mortal life, and the insignificance of human interests when compared to the immeasurable ages that lie before and behind us. In all Sir Thomas Browne's works an intimate companionship is estab- lished between the writer and the reader ; but the book in which he ostensibly proposes to communicate his own personal opinions and feelings most unreservedly, is the Religio Medici, a species of Confes- sion of Faith. In this he by no means confines himself to theological matters, but takes the reader into his confidence in the same artless and undisguised manner as the immortal Montaigne. The images and illustrations with which his writings are crowded, produce upon the leader the same effect as the familiar yet mysterious forms that make up an Egyptian hieroglyphic : they have the same fantastic oddity, the same quaint stiffness in their attitude and combination, and imprest the mind with the same air of solemn significance and outlandish remoteness from the ordinary objects of our contemplation. 3. THOMAS FULLER (1608-1661) is another great and attractive prose-writer of this period, and has in some respects a kind of intellec- tual resemblance to Browne. Unlike him, however, he passed i very active life, having taken a not unprominent part in the Great Civil 180 THEOLOGICAL WRITERS. I.CHAP. X War, in which he embraced the cause of the royalists. H was born in 1608, and survived till 1661, and it is said was to have been rewarded for his services with a bishopric, had the intention of the restored court not been defeated by his death. He studied first at Queen's and after- wards at Sidney College, Cambridge, and, entering the Church, ren- dered himself conspicuous in the pulpit. In the course of time he was nominated preacher at the Savoy in London, and in 1642, just at the outbreak cf the Civil War, offended the Parliament by a sermon deliv- ered at Westminster, in which he advised reconciliation with the King, who had left his capital and was on the eve of declaring war against his subjects. Fuller after this joined Charles at Oxford, and is said to have displeased the court party by a degree of moderation which they called lukewarmness. Having thus excited the dissatisfaction of both factions, we may, I think, fairly attribute to reasonable and moderate views the double unpopularity of Fuller. During the war he was at- tached, as chaplain, to the army commanded by Sir Ralph Hopton, in the West of England; and he took a distinguished par* in the famous defence of Basing House, when the Parliamentary anny under Sir William Waller was forced to abandon that siege. During his cam- paigning Fuller industriously collected the materials for his most popular work, the Worthies of England and Wales, which, however, was not published until after the author's death. This, more than his Church History, is the production with which posterity has generally associated the name of Fuller; but his Sermons frequently exhibit those singular peculiarities of style which render him one of the most remarkable writers of his age. His writings are eminently amusing, not only from the multiplicity of curious and anecdotic details which they contain, but from the odd and yet frequently profound reflections suggested by those details. The Worthies contain biographical notices of eminent Englishmen, as connected with the different counties, and furnish an inexhaustible treasure of curious stories and observations : but whatever the subject Fuller treats, he places it in such a number of new and unexpected lights, and introduces in illustration of it such a number of ingenious remarks, that the attention of the reader is inces- santly kept alive. He was a man of a pleasant and jovial as well as an ingenious turn of mind : there is no sourness or asceticism in his way of thinking ; flashes of fancy are made to light up the gravest and most unattractive subjects, and, as frequently happens in men of a lively turn, the sparkle of his wit is warmed by a glow of sympathy and ten- derness. His learning was very extensive and very minute, and he drew from out-of-the-way and neglected corners of reading illustrations which give the mind a pleasant shock of novelty. One great source of his picturesqueness is his frequent use of antithesis ; and, in his works, antithesis is not what it frequently becomes in other authors, as in Samuel Johnson for example, a bare opposition of words, but it is the juxtaposition of apparently discordant ideas, from whose sudden contact there flashes forth the spark of wit or the embodiment of some original conception. The shock of his antithetical oppositions is liko A. D. 1613-1667.] JEREMY TAYLOR. 181 the action of the galvanic battery creative. He has been accused of levity in intermingling ludicrous images with serious matter, but these images are the reflex of his own cheerful, ingenious, and amiable nature; and though their oddity may sometimes excite a smile, it is a smile which is never incompatible with serious feeling. He is said to have possessed an almost supernatural quickness of memory, yet he has given many excellent precepts guarding against the abuse of this faculty, and in the same way he has shown that wit and ingenuity may be rendered compatible with lofty morality and deep feelirg. In a word, he was essentially a wise and learned humorist, with net less singularity of genius than Sir Thomas Browne, and with less than that strange writer's abstract indifference to ordinary human interests. 4. But by far the greatest theological writer of the Anglican Church at this period was JEREMY TAYLOR (1613-1667). He was of good but decayed family, his father having exercised the humble calling of a barber at Cambridge, where his illustrious son was born in 1613. The boy received a sound education at the Grammar-School founded by Perse, then recently opened in that town, and afterwards studied at Caius College, where his talents and learning soon made him conspicu- ous. He took holy orders at an unusually early age, and is said to have attracted by his youthful eloquence, and by his " graceful and pleasant air," the notice of Archbishop Laud, the celebrated Primate and Minister, to whose narrow-minded bigotry and tyrannical indiffer- ence to the state of religious opinion among his countrymen so much of the confusion of those days is to be ascribed. Laud, who was struck with Taylor's merits at a sermon preached by the latter, made the young priest one of his chaplains, and procured for him a fellowship in All Souls' College, Oxford. His career during the Civil War bears some semblance to that of Fuller, but he stood higher in the favor of the Cavaliers and the Court. He served, as chaplain, in the Royalist army, and was taken prisoner in 1644 at the action fought under the walls of Cardigan Castle; but he confesses that on this occasion, as well as on several others when he fell into the power of the triumphant party of the Parliament, he was treated with generosity and indulgence. Such traits of mutual forbearance, during the heat of civil strife, are honorable to both parties, ami as refreshing as they are rare. Our great national struggle, however, offered many instances of such noble magnanimity. The King's cause growing desperate, Taylor at last retired from it, and Charles, on taking leave of him, made him a pres- ent of his watch. Taylor then placed himself under the protection of his friend Lord Carbery, and resided for some time at the seat of Golden Grove, belonging to that nobleman, in Carmarthenshire. Taylor was twice married ; first to Phoebe Langdale, who died early, and after- \vards to Joanna Bridges, a natural daughter of Charles I., with whom he received some fortune. He was unhappy in his children, his twc. sons having been notorious for their profligacy, and he had the sorrow of surviving them both. During part of the time which he passed in retirement, Taylor kept a school in Wales, and continued to take an 16 182 THEOLOGICAL WRITERS. [CHAP. X. active part in the religious controversies of the day. The opinions he expressed were naturally distasteful to the dominant party, and on at least three occasion subjected him to imprisonment and sequestrations at the hands of the Government. In 1658, for example, he was for a short time incarcerated in the Tower, and on his liberation migrated to Ireland, where he performed the pastoral functions at Lisburn. On the Restoration his services and sacrifices were rewarded with the Bishopric of Down and Connor, and during the short time he held that prefer- ment he exhibited the brightest qualities that can adorn the episcopal dignity. He died at Lisburn of a fever, in 1667, and left behind him a high reputation for courtesy, charity, and zeal all the virtues of a Christian Bishop. 5. Taylor's works are very numerous and varied in subject : I will content myself with mentioning the principal, and then endeavor to give a general appreciation of his genius. In the controversial depart- ment his best known work is the treatise On the Liberty of Prophesy- ing, which must be understood to refer to the general profession of religious principles and the right of all Christians to toleration in the exercise of their worship. This book is the first complete and system- atic defence of the great principle of religious toleration ; and in it Taylor shows how contrary it is, not only to the spirit of Christianity but even to the true interests of Government, to interfere with the pro- fession and practice of religious sects. Of course, the argument, though of universal application, was intended by Taylor to secure in- dulgence for what had once been the dominant Church of England, but which was now proscribed and persecuted by the rampant violence of the sectarians. An Apology for Fixed and Set Forms of Worship was an elaborate defence of the noble ritual of the Anglican Church. Among his works of a disciplinary and practical tendency I may men- tion his Life of Christ, the Great Exemplar, in which the details scat- tered through the Evangelists and the Fathers are co-ordinated in a continuous narrative. But the most popular of Taylor's writings are the two admirable treatises On the Rule and Exercise of Holy Living, and On the Rule and Exercise of Holy Dying, which mutually cor- respond to and complete each other, and which form an Institute of Christian life and conduct, adapted to every conceivable circumstance and relation of human existence. This devotional work has enjoyed in England a popularity somewhat similar to that of the Imitation of yesut Christ among Catholics; a popularity it deserves for a similar eloovience and unction. The least admirable of his numerous writings, anA the only one in which he derogated from his usual tone of courtesy a'.d fairness, was his Dticlor Dubitantium, a treatise of questions of casuistry. His Sermons are very numerous, and are among the most eloquent, learned, and powerful that the whole range of Protestant nay, the whole range of Christian literature has produced. As in his character, so in his writings, Taylor is the ideal of an Anglican pastor. Our Church itself being a middle term or compromise between the gorgeous formalism of Catholicism and the narrow fanaticism Q( A. D. 1613-1667.] JEREMY TAYLOR. 183 Caivinistic theology, so our great ecclesiastic writers exhibit the union of consummate learning with practical simplicity and fervor. 6. Taylor's style, though occasionally overcharged with erudition and marked by.that abuse of quotation which disfigures a great dea\ of the prose of that age, is uniformly magnificent. The materials are drawn from the whole range of profane as well as sacred literature, and are fused together into a rich and gorgeous unity by the fire of an unequalled imagination. No prose is more melodious than that of this great writer; his periods, though often immeasurably long, and evolv- ing, in a series of subordinate clauses and illustrations, a train of images and comparisons, one springing out of another, roll on with a soft yet mighty swell, which has often something of the enchantment of verse. He has been called by the critic Jeffrey, " the most Shak- spearian of our great divines ; " but it would be more appropriate to compare him with Spenser. He has the same pictorial fancy, the same voluptuous and languishing harmony; but if he can in any respect be likened to Shakspeare, it is firstly in the vividness of intellect which leads him to follow, digressively, the numberless secondary ideas that spring up as he writes, and often lead him apparently far away from his point of departure, and, secondly, the preference he shows for draw- ing his illustrations from the simplest and most familiar objects, from the opening rose, the infant streamlet, " the little rings and wanton tendrils of the vine," the morning song of the soaring lark, or the " fair cheeks and full eyes of childhood." Like Shakspeare, too, he knows how to paint the terrible and the sublime no less than the tender and the affecting; and his description of the horrors of the Judgment-Day is no less powerful than his exquisite portraiture ot' married love. Nevertheless, with Spenser's sweetness he has occasion- ally something of the luscious and enervate languor of Spenser's style. He had studied the Fathers so intensely that he had become infected with something of that lavish and Oriental imagery which many of those great writers exhibited many of whom, it should be remem- bered, were Orientals, not only in their style, but in their origin. Tak- ing his personal character and his writings together, Jeremy Taylor may be called the English Fenelon ; but in venturing to make this parallel, we must not forget that each of these excellent writers and admirable men possessed the characteristic features of his respective country : if Fenclon's productions, like those of Taylor's, are distin- guished by their sweetness, that sweetness is allied in the former to the reat, clear, precise expression which the French literature derives not only from the classical origin of the language, but from the antique writers who have always been set up as models for French imitation ; while Jeremy Taylor, with a sweetness not interior, owes that quality to the same rich and poetic susceptibility to natural beauty that gives such a matchless coloring to the English poetry of the sixteenth and seven- teenth centuries. 7. Having thus given a rapid sketch of some of the great figures ivhose genius adorned the Church, it may complete our view of the 184 THEOLOGICAL WRITERS. [CHAP. X. religious aspect of that time to mention some of the more remarkable men who appeared in the opposing party. The greatest names among the latter class Milton and Banyan will be discussed in subsequent chapters ; but a few words may now be added respecting the excellent Baxter and the fanatical founder of the sect of the Quakers, George Fox, together with his more cultivated, yet not less earnest, follower William Penn, and Barclay, who defended with the arms of learning and argument a system originally founded by half-frantic enthusiasm. RICHARD BAXTER (1615-1691) was during nearly the whole of his long life the victim of unrelenting persecution. Few authors have been so prolific as he ; the multitude of his tracts and religious works almost defies computation. He was the consistent and unconquerable defender of the right of religious liberty ; and in those evil days when James II. endeavored forcibly to re-establish the Roman Catholic religion in England, Baxter was exposed to all the virulence and bru- tality of the infamous Jeffries and his worse than inquisitorial tribunal. He wa? a man of vast learning, the purest piety, and the most indefatiga- ble industry. In prison, in extreme poverty, chased like a hunted beast, suffering from a weak constitution and a painful and incurable disease, this meek yet unconquerable spirit still fought his fight, pouring forth book after book in favor of free worship, and opposing the quiet suf- ferance of a primitive martyr to the rage and tyranny of the persecu- tor. His works, which have little to recommend them to a modern reader but the truly evangelical spirit of toleration which they breathe, are little known in the present day, with the exception of the Saints' Everlasting- Rest, and A Call to the Unconverted. GEORGE Fox (1624-1690), the founder of the Quaker sect, was a man born in the humblest rank of life in 1624, and so completely without education that his numerous writings are filled with unintelligible gib- berish, and in many instances, even after having been revised and put in order by disciples possessed of education, it is hardly possible, through the mist of ungrammatical and incoherent declamation, to make out the drift of the authors argument. The life of Fox was like that of many other ignorant enthusiasts ; believing himself the object of l special supernatural call from God, he retired from human companion- ship, and lived for some time in a hollow tree, clothed in a leathern dress which he had made with his own hands. Wandering about the country to preach his doctrines, the principal of which were a denial of nil titles of respect, and a kind of quietism combined with hostility not only to all formal clerical functions and establishments, but even to all institutions of government, he met with constant and furious persecu- tion at the hands of the clergy, the country magistrates, and the rab- ble, whose manners were, of course, much more brutal than in the present day. He has left curious records of his own adventures, and in particular of two interviews with Cromwell, upon whose mind the earnestness and sincerity of the poor Quaker seemed to have produced an impression honorable to the goodness of the Protector's heart. Fox's claims to the gift of prophecy and to the power of detectii/j* A. D. 1644-1718.] PENN. BARCLAY. 185 witches bear witness at once to b is ignorance and sin.plicity, and to the universal prevalence of gross superstition ; but we cannot deny to him the praise of ardent faith, deep, if unenlightened, benevolence, and a truly Christian spirit of patience under insults and injuries. WILLIAM PENN (1644-1718), the founder of the colony of Pennsyl- vania, played a very active and not always very honorable part at the court of James II. when that prince, under a transparent pretext of zeal for religious liberty, was endeavoring, by giving privileges to the dissenting and nonconformist sects, to shake the power and influence of the Protestant Church, and thus to pave the way for the execution of his darling scheme, the re-establishment of Romanism in England. Penn was a man of good birth and academical education, but early adopted the doctrines of the Quakers. His name will ever be respec- table for the benevolence and wisdom he exhibited in founding that colony which was afterwards destined to become a wealthy and enlight- ened state, and in the excellent and humane precepts he gave for the conduct of relations between the first settlers and the Indian aborigines. The sect of Quakers has always been conspicuous for peaceable beha- vior, practical good sense, and much acuteness in worldly matters. Their principles forbidding them to take any part in warfare, and excluding them from almost all occupations but those of trade and commerce, they have generally been thriving and rich, and their num- bers being small they have been able to carry out those excellent and well-considered plans for mutual help and support which have made their charitable institutions the admiration of all philanthropists. ROBERT BARCLAY (1648-1690) was a Scottish country-gentleman of considerable attainments, who published a systematic defence of the doctrines of the sect founded by the rude zea) of Fox. His celebrated Apology for the Quakers was published, originally in Latin, in 1676. 16* 186 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. [ClIAP. X. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. OTHER THEOLOGICAL AND MORAL WRITERS. JOSEPH IIAU. (1574- 165C), Bishop of Norwich, whose satires have been already mentioned (p. 83), v us also a distinguished theological writer. His Contemplations and his Art of Divine ileditation are the most celebrated of his works. As a devo- tional writer he is second only to Jeremy Taylor. ROBERT SASDEESON (1587-1GG3), Bishop of Salisbury, one of the most celebrated of the High- Church Divines, wrote works on casuistry, and sermons distinguished by great learning. OWEN FELTIIAM (circa 1G10-1G77) lived in the house of the Earl of Thomond. Uis work entitled licKolres, Divine, Moral, and Political, was first published in 1628, and enjoyed great popularity for many years. But Mr. Hallam's judgment is that " Feltham is not only a labored and artificial, but a hallow writer." He owed much of bis popularity to a pointed and sententious style. SIB THOMAS OVEBBCEY (1581-1013), who was poisoned in the Tower in the reign of James I., wrote a work entitled Character*, which displays skill in the delineation of character. His descrip- tion of the Fair and happy Milkmaid has been often quoted, and is one of the best of his characters. lie also wrote two didactic poems entitled The Wife and the Choice of a Wife. Joan EAELE (1601-1GG3), Bishop of Worcester, and afterwards of Salisbury, the reputed author of a work, Jlicrocosmography, or a Piece of the World Discovered, in Essays and Characters, published anonymously about 1C28. " In some of these short characters Earle is worthy of comparison with La Bruyere; in others, perhaps the greater part, he has contented himself with pictures of ordinary man- ners, such as the varieties of occupation, rather than of intrinsic character, suppl-. In all, however, we find an acute observation ard * happy humor cf expression. The chapter entiled the Sceptic is bit known ; it is witty, but an iuult throughout on tlu honest searcher after truth, which could have come only from one that was content to take up his own opinions for ease or profit. Earle is always gay and quick to catch the ridiculous, especially that of exterior appearances ; his style is short, describing well with a few words, but with much of the affected quaintness of that age. It is one of those books which give us a picturesque idea of the manners of our fathers at a period now become remote, and for this reason, were there no other, it would deserve to be read." (Hallam.) PKTEB HEYi.rs (1600-1GG2), a divine and histo- rian, deprived of his preferments by the Parliament, was the author of many works, of which the most popular was his Microcotmus, or a Description of the Great World, first published in 1021. JOHN SEL.DEN (15S4-1C54). one of the most learned men of his age, and the author of numerous histor- ical and antiquarian works; but the one by which he is best known in English literature is his Table- Talk, published after his death, containing many acute sayings, and well worth reading. JAMES USSIIEB (1581-1G56), Archbishop of Ar- magh, likewise distinguished for his great learning is best known by his chronological work, entitled Annals, containing chronological tables of univer- sal history from the creation to the time of Ves- pasian. The dates in the margin of the authorized version of the Bible are taken from Ussher. Joirs GAUDEK (1G05-1GG4), Bishop of Exeter, and afterwards of Worcester, was the author of Ikon BasilHd, a work professing to be written by Charles L The authorship of this book has been the subject of much controversy ; but there can ha 110 doubt that it was written by Gaudcii, wko ; af.:i the IU storation, claimed it a* his own. A. D. 1608-1674.] JOHN MILTON. 187 CHAPTER XI. JOHN MILTON, A. D. 1608-1674. \ 1. JOHN MILTON. His early life and education. 2. Travels in Italy. & Returns to England. Espouses the popular party. His Areopayitica. 4 Made Latin Secretary to the Councilor State. His Defensio Populi Anglicani t and other Prose "Works. His Tractate of Education. 5. History of his life after the Restoration. His death. 6. Three periods of Milton's literary career. FIRST PERIOD : 1623-1640. Hymn on the Nativity. Comus. $ 7. Lycidas. 8. L' Allegro and II Penseroso. 9. Milton's Latin and Italian writings. His English Sonnets. 10. SECOND PERIOD : 1640-1660. Style of his prose writings. $11. THIRD PERIOD: 1660-1674. Paradise Lost. Analysis of the poem. Its versification. 12. Incidents and personages of the poem. Conduct and development of the plot. 13. Paradise Regained. 14. Samson Agonistes. 1. ABOVK the seventeenth century towers, in solitary grandeur, the sublime figure of JOHN MILTON (1608-1674). It will be no easy task to give even a cursory sketch of a life so crowded with literary as well as political activity ; still less easy to appreciate the varied, yet all incom- parable, works in which this mighty genius has embodied its concep- tions. He was born, on the gth December, 1608, in London, and was sprung from an ancient and gentle stock. His father, an ardent republican, and who sympathized with the Puritan doctrines, had quarrelled with his relations, and had taken his own independent part in life, embracing the profession of a money-scrivener, in which, by industry and unquestioned integrity, he had amassed a considerable fortune, so as to be able to retire to a pleasant country-house at Horton, near Colne, in Oxfordshire. It was undoubtedly from his father that the poet first imbibed his political and religious sympathies, and per- haps also something of that lofty, stern, but calm and noble spirit which makes his character resemble that of the heroes of ancient story. The boy evidently gave indications, from his early childhood, of the extraordinary intellectual powers which distinguished him from all other men ; and his father, a person of cultured mind, seems to have furthered the design of Nature, by setting aside the youthful prophet and consecrating him like Samuel to the service of the Temple the holy temple of patriotism and literature. Milton enjoyed the rare advantage of an education specially training him for the career of letters ; and the proud care with which he collected every production of nis youthful intelligence, his first verses and his college exercises, shows that he was well aware that everything proceeding from his pen, " whether prosing or versing," as he says himself, "had certain signs pf life in it," and merited preservation. What in other men would have been a pardonable vanity, in him was a duty he owed to his own JOHN MILTON. [CHAP. XI genius and to posterity. He was most carefully educated, first at home, then at St. Paul's School. London, whence he entered Christ's College, Cambridge, vet a child in years, but already a consummate scholar. We mav conceive with what admiration, even with what awe, must have been regarded by his preceptors both in the School and in the University the first efforts of his Muse, which, though taking the com- monplace form of academical prolusions, exhibit a force of conception, of thought, and a solemn and orgxi-Iike music of ver- that widely separate them from even the matured productions of contemporary poets. He left Cambridge in 1632. after taking his Master'* degree, and there are many allusions in his works which prove that the doctrines and discipline of the University at that time con- tained much that was distasteful to his haughty and uncontrolled spirit. His first attempts in poetry were made as early as his thirteenth year, so that he is as striking an instance of precocity as of power of genius ; and his sublime Hymn on tie Xaii'sity, in which may plainly be seen all the characteristic features of his intellectual nature, was written, as a college exercise, in his twenty-first year. On leaving the Univer- sity he resided for about five years at his father's seat at Horton, con- tinuing his multifarious studies with unabated and almost excessive ardor, and filling his mind with those sweet and simple emanations of rural beauty which are so exquisitely reflected in his poetry. His studies seem to have embraced the whole circle of human knowledge : the literature of every age and of every cultivated language, living and dead, gave up all its stores of truth and beauty to his all-embracing mind : the most arduous subtleties of philosophy, the loftiest mysteries rf theological learning, were familiar to him : there is no art, no science, no profession with which he was not more or less acquainted ; and however we may wonder at the majesty of his genius, the extent of his acquirements is no less astounding. It was during this, probably happiest, period of his life that he wrote the more graceful, fanciful, and eloquent of his poems, the pastoral drama, or Masque, of Comas, the lovely elegy on his friend King entitled Lycidas, and in all proba- bility the descriptive gems L? Allegro and II Penseroso. At this epoch his mind seems to have exhibited that exquisite susceptibility to all refined, courtly, and noble emotions which is so faithfully reflected in these works, emotions not incompatible in him with the severest parity of sentiment and the loftiest dignity of principle. He was at this time eminently beautiful in person, though of a stature scarcely attaining the middle size ; but he relates with pride that he was remarkable for bis bodily activity and his address in the use of the sword During the whole of his life, indeed, the appearance of the poet was noble, almost ideal : his face gradually exchanged a childish, seraphic beauty for the lofty expression of sorrow and sublimity which it bore in his blindness and old age. When young he was the type of his own angels, when Id of a prophet, a patriot, and a saint. 2. In 1638 the poet, now about thirty, set out upon his travels on the continent the completion of a perfect education. He visited th A. D. 1608-1674.] JOHN MILTOy. 189 most celebrated cities of Italy, France, and Switzerland ; was furnished with powerful introductions, and received everywhere with marked respect and admiration. "Johannes Miltonus, Anglus," seems to hare struck the learned and fastidious Italians with unusual astonishment; and wherever he went the youthful poet gave proofs, " as the manner w^s," of his profound skill in Italian and Latin verse. He appears everywhere to have made acquaintance with all who were most illus- trious for learning and genius; he had an interview with Galileo. "then grown old, a prisoner in the Inquisition," and he laid the foun- dation of solid friendships with the learned Deodate, originally of an illustrious house of Lucca, but now retired, for the free profession of Protestant opinions, to Geneva, where he was a celebrated professor of theology, and the noble Manso, the distinguished poet and friend of poets, who had been the friend of Torquato Tasso, and now " With open arms received one poet more." During his residence abroad the young poet gave proofs not only of his learning and genius, but also of the ardor of his religious and political enthusiasm, so hostile to Catholicism and monarchy; and though he had at starting received from the wise diplomatist Wotton the prudent recommendation of maintaining " il volto sciolto ed i pen- sieri stretti," his anti-papal zeal exposed him at Rome and other places to considerable danger, even, it is supposed, of assassination. The friendships Milton formed with virtuous and accomplished for- eigners were in some degree the suggesting motive for many of his Italian and Latin poems ; for in the former language he wrote at least as well as the majority of the contemporary poets of any but the first class, and in the latter his compositions hare never been surpassed by any modern writer of Latin verse. 3. After spending about fifteen months on the continent he was abruptly recalled to England by the first mutterings of that social and political tempest which was for a time to overthrow the Monarchy and the Church. So fervid a patriot and so inveterate an enemy of episco- pacv was not likely to remain an inactive spectator of the momentous conflict : he threw himself into the struggle with all the ardor of his temperament and convictions ; and from this period begins the second phase of his many-sided life. His father was dead, and Milton now began the career of a vehement and even furious controversialist. He was one of the most prolific writers of that agitated time, producing works on all the most pressing questions of the day. Chiefly the advo- cate of republican principles in the state, he was the most uncom- promising enemy of the Episcopal Church. His fortune being small, lie opened a school in 1640. and among those who had the honor of his instructions, only two persons are at all celebrated, his nephews John and Charles Phillips, who have contribiited some details to the history of English Poetry. T>e commencement of Milton's career as a prose writer may be referred to about the year 1641. and it continued almost without interruption till the Restoration defeated all his hopes, and 190 JOHN MILTON. [CHAP. XL left him, in blindness, poverty, and danger, nothing but the proud con- sciousness of having done his duty as a good citizen, and tho leisure to devote the closing years of his life to the composition of his sublinnest poems, the Paradise Lost and the Paradise Regained. Milton's first prose writings were directed against the Anglican Church Establishment, but he soon took a very active part in agitating an important question involving the Law of Divorce. This was sug- gested by his own conjugal infelicity. His first marriage was an unfor tunate one. In 1643 he was united to Mary Powell, the daughter of a spendthrift and ruined country gentleman of strong Royalist sym- pathies, to whom Milton's father had lent sums of money which he was unable to repay, and who appears to have sacrificed his daughter to an unsuitable and unpromising match in order to escape from his embar- rassments. Mary Powell, soon disgusted with the austerity of Milton's life, fled to her father's house, and was only recalled to the conjugal roof by a report that her husband, basing his determination upon the Levitical law, was meditating a new marriage with another person. The lady was forgiven by her husband, but the remaining years of her marriage were probably not happy, though three daughters were the fruit of the union. We shall by and by see that Milton was twice married after the death of his first wife. The finest of the prose com- positions produced at this epoch was the Areopagltica, an oration after the antique model, addressed to the Parliament of England in' defence of the Liberty of the Press. It is the sublimest pleading that any age or country has produced, in favor of the great fundamental principle of Freedom of Thought and Opinion. In this, as in many other of his prose works, Milton rises to an almost superhuman eleva- tion of eloquence. It was published in 1644. About this time he began his History of England, a work which he abandoned quite at its com- mencement ; he used the subject merely as a vehicle for attacking the abuses of Catholicism and the monastic orders. 4. In 1649 Milton received the appointment of Latin Secretary to the Council of State, a post in which his skill in Latin composition was employed in carrying on the diplomatic intercourse between Eng- land and other countries, such correspondence being at that time always couched in the universally-understood language of ancient Rome ; but in these duties, probably in consideration of his rapidly-increasing in- firmity of sight, were joined with him in his office first Meadowes, and afteiwards the excellent and accomplished Marvell. The loss of the great poet's sight became total in 1662, though the gutta serena which caused it had been gradually coming on during ten years. His eyes, even from early youth, had been delicate; and in his intense devotion to study he had greatly overtasked them. In one of the noblest of his Sonnets he alludes, in a strain of lofty self-consciousness and religion? resignation, 1o the fact of his loss of sight, which he proudly attributes to his having overtasked it in the defence of truth and liberty ; and in the character of the blinded Samson, he undoubtedly shadows forth his own infirmity and his own feelings. A. D. 1608-1674.] JOHN MILTON. 101 Connected with Milton's engagement in the service of the Republican Government are passages, both in prose and verse, in which he ex- presses his sympathy with the glorious administration and great personal qualities of Cromwell : but his eulogy, though warm and enthusiastic, is free from every trace of adulation. He probably, though disapprov- ing of the despotic and military character of the Protector's rule, gave liis adherence to it as the least in a choice of many evils, and pardoned eomo of the unavoidable severities of a revolutionary government, in consideration of the great benefits which accompanied, and the patriotic spirit which animated it. It made England, for the time, the terror of the Continental nations and the representative of the Protestant interest. Milton's most celebrated controversy was that with Salmasius (de Saumaise) on the subject of the right of the English people to make war upon, to dethrone, and" to decapitate their King, on the ground of his attempts to infringe the Constitution in virtue of which he reigned. The misfortunes and the tragic death of Charles I. naturally excited in the minds of sovereigns at that time something of the same horror ar d alarm as the execution of Louis XVI. afterwards spread throughout Europe : and the eccentric Christian of Sweden employed de Saumaise, one of the most learned men of that day, to write what may be called a ponderous Latin pamphlet for Latin was the language universally employed at that time in diplomacy, in controversy, and in science invoking the vengeance of Heaven upon the regicide Parliament of Eng- land. Milton replied in his DefensioPopuli Angllcani. maintaining the right and justifying the conduct of his countrymen. His invectives are not less violent than those of his antagonist, his Latinity is not less elegant, but the controversy is as little honorable to the one as to the other combatant. The tone of literary warfare was then coarse and ferocious ; and in their vehemence of mutual vituperation these two great scholars descend to personal abuse, in which exquisite Latinity forms but a poor excuse for brutal violence. It would be tiresome to the reader, and inappropriate to a work like the present, to give a detailed list of all Milton's Prose writings. Their subjects, for the most part, had only a temporary interest; and their style, whether Latin or English, generally resembles, in its wonderful power, grandeur, and picturesqueness, and in a sort of colossal and elaborate involution, that of the writings which I have already men- tioned. I may, however, note the Apology for Smectymnuus, in which Milton defends the conclusions of that famous pamphlet, the strange name of which is a kind of anagram composed of the initials of its five authors, the chief of whom was Thomas Young, Milton's deeply- venerated Puritan preceptor, the book called Iconoclasies or the Image-brcaket intended to neutralize the effect of the celebrated Icon J3asilike, written by Bishop Gauden in the character of Charles I., in which the piety, resignation, and sufferings of the Roj'al martyr were represented in so lively a manner that this work probably contributed more than anything else to excite the public commiseration. Othei li*2 JOHN MILTOfr. [CHAi-. XI treatises, among which may be mentioned The Reason of Church Gov- ernment Urged against Prelr f y, A Ready nnd Easy Way to Establish a True Commonwealth, sufficiently exhibit in their titles the nature of their subjects. What is now most interesting to us in these controver- sial writings of Milton is firstly the astonishing grandeur of eloquence to which he occasionally rises in those outbursts of enthusiasm that are intermingled with drier matter, and secondly the frequent notices of h:s own personal feelings, studies, and mode of life, which, in his eager- ness to defend himself against calumnious attacks on his moral charac- ter, he has frequently interspersed. For example, both the Areopagitica and his pamphlet against Prelacy, contain a most glorious epitome of his studies, his projects, and his literary aspirations. The only work that I need particularly mention, besides those already enumerated, is his curious Tractate of Education. In this Milton has drawn up a beautiful, but entirely Utopian, scheme fora-emodelling the whole sys- tem of training and reducing it to something like the antique pattern. Milton proposes the entire abolition of the present system both of School and University; he would bring up young men with as much attention to physical as to intellectual development, by a mechanism borrowed from the prytaneia of the ancient Greeks, public institutions in which instruction should have an encyclopaedic character, and where all the arts, trades, and sciences should be taught, so as to produce sages, patriots, and soldiers. This treatise was published in 1644. 5. With the Restoration, in 1660, begins the last, the most gloomy, and yet the most glorious period of the great poet's career. That event was naturally the signal of distress and persecution to one who by his writings had shown himself the most consistent, persevering, and formidable enemy of monarchy and episcopacy, and who had attacked, with particular vehemence, the character of Charles I. Milton was excepted, together with all those who had taken any share in the trial and execution of the king, from the general amnesty. He was im- prisoned, but liberated after a confinement of some months ; and the indulgence with which he was treated may be attributed either to con- sideration for his learning, poverty, and blindness, or, perhaps, to the intercession of some who knew how to appreciate his virtues and his genius. It is said that Sir W. Davenant successfully used his influence to spare the aged poet any further persecution. From this period till his death he lived in close retirement, busily occupied in the compo- sition of Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. The former of these works was finished in 1665, and had been his principal employment during about seven years. The companion epic, a work of much shorter extent, as well as the noble and pathetic tragedy of Samson Ag- cuisfes, are attributed to the year 1671. On the 8th of November, 1674, Milton died, at the age of sixty-six, and was buried in Cripplegate churchyard. He had b(-en thrice married, first to Mary Powell, by whom he had three daughters, all of whom survived him, and who are said to have treated him in his old age with harshness and disrespect. There is a tradition of his having employed his daughters to read to A. D. 1608-1674.] JOHN MILTON". 193 him and 'to write under his dictation, but this is hardly probable, as there are documents which prove them to have been almost entirely without education. His second wife, Katharine Woodcock, he espoused in 1656, and this union, though of short duration, appears to have been far better suited than the first; his wife Katharine died two years after, in childbed, and Milton had also the grief of losing his infant. He married for the third time at the advanced age of fifty-five, probably with a view of obtaining that comfort and care which his helpless state so much required. The lady was Elizabeth Minshull, and was much younger than the poet, whom she survived. 6. Milton's literary career divides itself naturally into three great periods that of his youth, that of his manhood, and that of his old age. The first may be roughly stated as extending from 1623 to 1640; the second from 1640 to 1660, the date of the Restoration ; and the third from the Restoration to the poet's death in 1674. During the first of these he produced the principal poetical works marked by a graceful, tender character, and on miscellaneous subjects ; during the second he was chiefly occupied with his prose controversies ; and in the third we see him slowly elaborating the Paradise Lost, the Paradise Regained, and the Samson Agonistes. I will now examine, somewhat more in de- tail, the works belonging to each phase of his intellectual development, premising only that the first epoch is mainly characterized by grace, the second by force and vehemence, and the third by unapproachable sublimity. In the early, almost boyish productions of Milton's muse as the Verses at a Solemn Music, the poetical exercises written at school and college, the Hymn on the Nativity no reader can fail to- remark that this author already exhibits qualities of thought and expression which distinguish him from all poets of any age or country. The chief of these qualities is a peculiar majesty of conception, combined with con- summate though somewhat austere harmony and grace. His poetry is like his own Eve a consummate type of loveliness, uniting the severe yet sensuous beauty of classical sculpture with the ideal and abstracted elevation of Christian art. In all these works we see a scholarship so vast and complete that it would have overwhelmed and crushed a power of original conception less mighty than that of Milton, and a power of original conception that derives a duly subordinate adornment from the inexhaustible stores of erudition. Above all there is visible, in even the least elaborate of Milton's poems, a peculiar solemn weighty melody of versification that fills and satisfies the ear like the billowy sound of a mighty organ. How wonderfully has he, in the Hymn on the Nativity, combined with the pictures of simple rural innocence the shepherds sitting ere the break of dawn, the picturesque legends connected with the cessation of the Pagan oracles at the period of our Lord's incarnation, the pictures of the horrible rites of Moloch and Osiris, the grand image of universal peace that then reigned throughout the world, with the kings sitting still with " awful eye " of expectation, and the glimpse into l he unspeakable splendors of hearen, 17 194 JOHN MILTON. [CHAP. XI. the " helmed cherubim and sworded seraphim harping in loud and solemn quire" before the throne of the Almighty i This magnificent ode is a fitting prelude to the Paradise Lost. In my remarks upon the dramatic literature of the age of Elizabeth and James I., I took occasion to speak of that peculiar and exquisitely fanciful species of entertainment called the Masque, of which Ben Jonson and other poets had produced such delicious examples. It was reserved to Milton to equal the great poets who preceded him in the elegance and refinement which characterize this kind of half-dramatic, half-lyric composition, while he far surpassed them in loftiness and parity of sentiment. They had exhausted their courtly and scholar- like fancy in inventing elaborate compliments to some of the most worthless and contemptible of princes ; Milton communicated to what was originally a mere vehicle for elegant adulation a pure and lofty ethical tone that soars into the very empyrean of moral speculation. The Masque of Comus was written to be performed at Ludlow Castle, in the presence of the Earl of Bridgewater, then Governor-General of the Welsh Marches, an accomplished nobleman, and one of the most powerful personages of the time. His daughter, Lady Alice Egerton, and his two sons had lost their way in the woods when walking; and out of this simple incident Milton created the most beautiful pastoral drama that has hitherto been produced. It was represented by the young people who were the heroes of the incident on which it was founded, and the other characters were filled by Milton's friend, Henry Lawes, a composer who had studied in Italy, and who furnished the graceful music that accompanied its lyric portions. The character.", are few, consisting of the Lady, the two Brothers, Comus (a wicked en- chanter, the allegorical representative of vicious and sensual pleasure, a personage enacted by Lawes), and the Guardian Spirit, disguised as a shepherd, which part one pleases one's self in fancying may have been filled by the poet. The plot is exceedingly simple, rather lyric than dramatic. The delineation of passion forms no part of the poet'u aim; and perhaps the very abstract and ideal nature of the charac- ters their impersonality, so to say adds to the intended effect by raising the mind of the reader into the pure and ethereal atmosphere of philosophical beauty. The dialogues are inexpressibly noble, not however as dialogues, for they must rather be regarded as a series of exquisite soliloquies setting forth, in pure and musical eloquence, like that of Plato, the loftiest abstractions of love and virtue. They have the severe and sculptural grace of the Grecian drama, but combined with the warmest coloring of natural beauty; for the frequent descrip- tions of rural objects possess the richness, the accuracy, and the fanci- fulness of Fletcher, of Jonson, or of Shakspeare himself. Though the dialogue itself be lyrical in its character, the songs interspersed are of con ummate melody. For instance, the drinking chorus of Comus's rout, the Echo-song, and the admirable passages with which the At- tendant Spirit opens and concludes the piece. The general character of this production Milton undoubtedly borrowed from Fletcher's Faitk A. D 1608-1674.] JOHN MILTON. 195 ful Shepherdess, from Jonson's Masques and his delicious fragment of a pastoral drama, and probably also from the same Italian sources as had suggested to those great poets the general tone and construction of the pastoral allegory; but .in elevation, purity, and dignity, if not also in exquisite delineation of natural beauty, Milton has surpassed Fletcher and Jonson as much as they surpassed Tasso, or as Tasso had surpassed Guarini. In a somewhat similar strain to Comas, Milton composed a fragment entitled Arcades, performed at Harefield before the Countess of Derby by different members of that illustrious family. In this masque Milton wrote only the poetical portion, the rest of the entertainment, as was frequently the case on such occasions, being made up of dances, music, and scenic transformations. Though the portion contributed by the poet is comparatively inconsiderable, it exhibits all his usual characteristics. 7. The pastoral elegy entitled Lycidas was a tribute of affection to the memory of Milton's friend and fellow-student Edward King, lost at sea in a voyage to Ireland, where he was about to undertake the duties of a clergyman. He was a young man of virtue and accomplishments, and the pastoral form of elegy was not inappropriate either to symbolize early conformity of studies between him and his elegist, or to the pro- fession to which he was about to devote himself. In the general tone of the poem, and in the irregular and ever-varying music of the verse, Milton imitated those Italian models with whose scholarlike and elab- orate spirit he was so deeply saturated. The poem is a Canzone, and one of which even the greatest poets of Italy might well have been proud. Throughout we meet with a mixture of rural description, classical and mythological allegory, and theological allusions borrowed from the Christian system ; and nothing is more singular than the skih with which the poet has combined such apparently discordant elements into one harmonious whole. The shock given to the reader's taste by this apparent incongruity is in a great measure softened aAvay by the abstract and poetical air of the whole, by the art with which the transi- tions are managed, and in some degree by the exquisite descriptions of natural scenery, flowers, and the famous rivers immortalized by the great pastoral poets of antiquitj'. Nevertheless the ordinary reader is somewhat surprised to find St. Peter making his appearance among the sea-nj-mphs, and allusions to the corruptions of the Episcopal Church and the happiness of just mer. made perfect brought into connection with the fables of Pagan myfnology. But the force of imagination and the exhaustless beauty of imagery which is displayed from the beginning to the end make the truly sensitive reader entirely forget what are inconsistencies only to the logical reasoning. In this poem we see how great was Milton's mastery over the whole scale of melody of which the English language is capable. From a solemn and psalm- like grandeur to the airiest and most delicate playfulness, every variety of music may be found in Lycidas ; and the poet has shown that om northern speech, though naturally harsh and rugged, may be made t