IJ>- Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/englishliteraturOOcrusrich ENGLISH LITERATURE THROUGH THE AGES )> ^ Wv W vatnu. ^ piM IJjFfi 'Va[t to imttt odjtt* uttti m tctnon^ltmice GOo tn^ to -yis tti8ttntfVt0^if^cf|c ^ 2^^wf3F7ctiSc. ' " ' * * ' ^he Authentic Portrait of Chaucer PVom MS. of Thomas Occleve's Poem, De re^imine Principum, in the British Museum. (Early XVth Century) ENGLISH LITERATURE THROUGH THE AGES BEOWULF TO STEVENSON BY AMY CRUSE Author of " Elizabethan Lyrists and their Poetry " etc. NEW YORK FREDERICK A, STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS k ^c^.um pa me cofeie- pititlTum in]?v »,/ ;^,v jte-^feirmnTi fiiw^*!^ ^poTnon ji'irr-^ti •5-t^me]»e- fi^e- fcyl^a^ |u>ri>a<''^ni;n lien jh bVjinan nj 11^5 ion fuJf (b^t^o ^urnena z:e rcyb^r >]^^^ r>7icix" i^mm ]ielm.if^^ A Fragment of the MS. of "Beowulf In the British Museum BEOWULF gruous, did not appear strange to them. How far their work extended we do not know, but it seems probable that to these singers of the lay some, at least, of the Christian interpolations are due. At last the time came when the poem was written down. In the tenth century (so much the language of the manuscript indicates) a copyist, who was probably a monk, undertook the work. The north of England was at this period the great home of learning, and it is believed that the first copy of Beowulf was made in a Northumbrian monastery. Who the copyist was that did this great service to his country, and under whose orders he worked we do not know. Whether he found the poem ready to his hand, or whether he brought together several separate lays and combined them into the Beowulf as we have it now can only be a matter of conjecture. Perhaps he was attracted to the story by some fighting instinct in himself, either inherited or surviving from a warhke youth before he left the turbulence of the world for the quiet of the cloister ; perhaps he felt something of the old joy of battle revive as he wrote down the minstrel's words. But he would realize that, as a follower of the White Christ, he must try to conquer this feeling, and it may be that, partly as a result of this consciousness, he tried to give to the old pagan epic some transforming touches which should cause it to redound to the honour and glory of God. Many copies of the original manuscript were probably made, and in this new form Beowulf again went on its way through the country. All the copies have perished or remain still hidden, saving only that which is now treasured in the British Museum. A close examination of the text of this has led scholars to the belief that the poem was first written in the Northern or Midland dialect, and then copied out in West Saxon, the dialect of the south. To a monastery in the south of England, therefore, this manuscript probably belonged. It would appear that at some time or other it was subjected to revision, for there are 23 ENGLISH LITERATURE interpolations and alterations to be distinguished, obviously written in a different ink from that used in the original work. But for long years it probably lay unnoticed on a shelf in the monastery library along with many other manuscripts which the diUgence of the copyists belonging to the establishment had produced. After the Norman Conquest there was little demand for poems of the character of Beowulf. The minstrels sang softer ditties, of which the main theme was love, and when warfare was described it was the warfare of chivalry not of the rough Teutons. For a time the glory of the older literature was eclipsed. During the five centuries that followed the Conquest, the Church passed through times of danger and times of triumph, and each monastery had its chequered history. But the manuscript of the Saxon monk seems to have remained on some remote shelf, undisturbed. At last, in the sixteenth century came the dissolution of the monasteries, and the scattering of their treasures. Many manuscripts were lost, many were destroyed or defaced. Many, we know, from discoveries made since, were used in the binding of new books. Some were employed for purposes still more ignoble. Men used them. Bishop Bale tells us, " some to scour their candle- sticks, and some to rub their boots. Some they sold to the grocers and soap-sellers, and some over sea to the bookbinders, not in small number, but at times whole ships full, to the wondering of the foreign nations." Some, however, were recovered by the efforts of munificent friends of learning who knew the value of the treasure that had been so roughly treated. Among these was Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (born 1571) . He made a diligent search for the scattered manuscripts, hunting them out from the most unlikely hiding- places, and he managed to recover a large number, which included the copy of Beowulf. These formed the foundation of the famous library since known by his name. His son and grandson made large additions to the library, and it was handed over to the State for public use in 1702. In 1730 the books were removed to Ashburnliam House, Westminster. Here, H BEOWULF In the following year, a fire broke out, which seriously damaged many invaluable manuscripts. Among them was the Beowulf MS. Fortunately, however, parchment resists very strongly the action of fire. A few holes were burnt in the latter pages of the book, but the chief damage consisted in the charring of the edges of the leaves, which rendered them so brittle that a considerable part has since crumbled away, carrying with it letters and even words of the poem. For a time the manu- scripts were sheltered in the old dormitory at Westminster, but in 1753 they were transferred to the British Museum. Here the value of the Beowulf MS. was discovered by the scholars who had access to it, and on their representations, the authorities took steps to arrest the process of destruction set up by the fire. It is now treasured with the care that befits its value as the only known copy of the first English epic. 25 CHAPTER II CiEDMON'S PARAPHRASE ON the wildest and stormiest part of the Yorkshire coast, where the River Esk flows out between two great headlands to the sea, there grew up in the early part of the seventh century a small hamlet. Groups of fisher- men's huts stood on the margin of the beach, and were scattered over the lower slopes of the chff which rose darkly behind the little bay. A winding road led to the rounded and grass- covered headland above, and passed on over green slopes, still ascending, until it reached the edge of a great moor. Here, in 657, Hild, a daughter of the royal house of Northumbria, built her famous monastery. The monastery, like the hamlet, was at first called Streoneshalh, but two hundred years after its foundation both received from the Danes the name which they now bear — Whitby. Northumbria was at this time chief among the Saxon kingdoms. After a long period of struggle it had attained at last to the overlordship of the country, and, after Oswy's victory over Mercia in 655, it enjoyed a short period of peace and prosperity. Christianity had been introduced into Northumbria from Kent about 627, but in the struggle for the overlordship of the country the new religion had been forgotten, and almost all traces of it had disappeared. It was reintroduced by missionaries from Ireland. These brought with them something more than the doctrines of Christianity. They brought the fire, enthusiasm, and passion which at that time distinguished the Celtic Church ; they brought the ardent love of learning which seemed in those troubled days to have died out save in remote and unmolested Ireland. The whole- 26 H[ C^DMON'S PARAPHRASE earted devotion of such men as Columba and Aidan, the beauty of their Hves and the fervour of their preaching kindled the imagination and stirred the hearts of the Northumbrians. A wave of rehgious enthusiasm passed over the country. Men and women were eager to dedicate their hves to the service of God ; kings and nobles gave large gifts of land and money to the church, and monasteries began to rise in all parts of the kingdom. Of these the monastery of Streoneshalh quickly became the richest and most famous. Much of its renown was due to Hild, its founder and first abbess. Her figure, though history shows it to us but dimly, has a large and simple grandeur suited to the scenes in which she worked. She was the mother of her monastery, known and revered by its humblest members ; she was the counsellor of kings and of bishops ; she was the wise and saintly teacher, to whom came a crowd of scholars eager to learn the lore of the Christian life. Many men and women who afterward became famous studied at that grey monastery beside the Northumbrian sea. Bthelfleda, daughter of King Oswy, spent almost all her life within its walls, and throughout England during the next generation there were priests and bishops who had been Hild's scholars. But the fame of these has faded, and their names are almost forgotten ; not one of the wealthy, high-born and learned inmates of the monastery has given to it half the renown which has come from one of its humblest servants — a cowherd named Csedmon, who is the first of the English poets. We know nothing of the life of Caedmon except what Bede tells us in his Ecclesiastical History, written about fifty years later. " In the monastery of this abbess," he says, " was a certain brother especially marked by Divine grace since he was wont to make songs suited to rehgion and piety, so that what- ever he had learnt from the Divine writings through inter- preters, this he in a little while produced in poetical expressions composed with the greatest harmony and accuracy, in his own tongue, that is, in that of the Angles. By his songs the 27 ENGLISH LITERATURE minds of many were excited to contemn the world, and desire the celestial Hfe. And, indeed, others also after him in the nation of the Angles attempted to compose religious poems, but none could equal him. For he himself did not learn the art of poetry from men, or by being instructed by man ; but, being divinely assisted, received gratuitously the gift of singing, on which account he never could compose any frivolous or idle poem, but those only which pertain to religion suited his religious tongue. For having lived in the secular habit unto the time of advanced age, he had never learned anything of singing. Whence, sometimes at a feast, when it was determined for the sake of mirth that all should sing in order, he, when he saw the harp approaching him, used to rise in the midst of supper, and, having gone out, walk back to his home. " Which when he was doing on a time, and, having left the house of entertainment, had gone out to the stables of the beasts of burden, the care of which was entrusted to him on that night, and there, at the proper hour, had resigned his limbs to sleep, a certain one stood by him in a dream, who saluting him, and calling him by his name, said, ' Gaedmon, sing me something.' Then he answering said, ' I know not how to sing ; and for that reason I went out from the feast and retired hither, because I could not sing.' Again he who was talking with him said, ' Yet you have something to sing to me.' ' What,' said he, ' must I sing ? ' The other said, ' Sing the beginning of created things.' Having received this reply, he immediately began to sing verses in praise of God the Creator, which he had never heard, whereof this is the purport. Now we must praise the Author of the celestial kingdom, the power of the Creator and His counsel, the deeds of the Father of glory. How He, being eternal God, was the author of all wonderful things ; who first created heaven for the sons of men, as the roof of their dwelling and afterwards created the earth, being the omnipotent guardian of mankind. This is the sense, but not the exact order of the words which he sang in his sleep, for songs, however excellently composed, 28 CiEDMON'S PARAPHRASE cannot be translated from one tongue into another, word for word, without some loss of their beauty and spirit. Moreover, on his rising up from sleep, he retained in memory all that he had sung in his dream, and presently added to it more words of song worthy of God, after the same fashion. " And coming in the morning to the steward who was set over him, he told him what a gift he had received ; and having been brought to the abbess, he was ordered, in the presence of many learned men, to declare his dream and to repeat the song, that it might be tested by the judgment of all, what or whence it was that he related. And all concluded that a celestial gift had been granted him by the Lord. And they interpreted to him a certain passage of sacred history or doc- trine, and ordered him to transpose it, if he could, into poetical rhythm. And he, having undertaken it, departed, and returning in the morning, brought back what he was ordered to do, composed in most excellent verse. Whereupon presently the abbess, embracing heartily the grace of God in the man, instructed him to leave the secular habit, and to take the monastic vow ; and having, together with all her people, received him into the monastery, associated him with the company of the brethren, and ordered him to be instructed in the whole course of sacred history. And he converted into most sweet song whatever he could learn from hearing, by thinking it over by himself, and, as though a clean animal, by ruminating ; and by making it resound more sweetly, made his teachers in turn his hearers. Moreover, he sang of the creation of the world, and the origin of mankind, and the whole history of Genesis ; concerning the going out of Israel from Egypt, and their entrance into the land of promise, and of many other histories of Holy Scripture ; of the Lord's incarnation, passion, resurrection, and ascension into heaven ; of the coming of the Holy Ghost,and the teaching of the apostles. He also made many songs concerning the terror of the future judgment, and the horror of the punishment of Gehenna, and the sweetness of the heavenly kingdom; besides many more, concerning the Divine benefits and judgments, in all which 29 ENGLISH LITERATURE he endeavoured to draw men away from the love of wickedness, and to excite them to the love and diligent practice of well- doing. For he was a very religious man, and humbly subject to the rules of regular discipHne ; but inflamed with a zeal of great fervour against those who would act contrary ; wherefore also he made a fair ending of his life." The fame of Gsedmon's poem soon spread. " Others after him," as Bede tells us, " tried to make religious poems." He was thus the founder of a school of poets, which handed on the traditions of his work to that later school of Saxon poets of whom Cynewulf was the chief. (See next chapter.) It seems certain that many copies of Caedmon's poem were made, but what became of them we do not know. We read that King Alfred, in the ninth century, had copies sent to him from the North, and we expect that he gave these to the library of his school at Winchester ; but all trace of them is lost. We should have no knowledge at all of the earliest English poem written in England (except for the opening passage quoted by Bede) , if it had not been for a happy accident that restored to us a manuscript, part at least of which we may believe to be the work of Caedmon. In the early years of the seventeenth century Archbishop Ussher was searching diligently for books and manuscripts for the library of Trinity College, Dublin, and among those which he managed to procure was one that seemed by the handwriting to belong to the tenth century. It contained poems answering to the description given by Bede of those written by Caedmon. The Archbishop gave the manuscript to Francis Dujon (whose name in Hterature is Junius, from whom the MS. is sometimes called the Junian MS.). Junius was a scholar of I^eyden, a great lover of the Anglo-Saxon language, which he had studied diligently. He had the manuscript printed at Amsterdam in 1650 and pubhshed it as the work of Caedmon. He brought the manu- script back to England, and showed it to his hterary friends, chief among these being Milton. It is impossible for us to say whether the poem of the old Saxon poet had any influence upon the work of his seventeenth-century successor : but we 30 A Scribe Writing From a MS. of the XVth century in the British Museum 3" V IP CiEDMON'S PARAPHRASE like to think of the interest with which Milton, absorbed as he was in the poHtical struggles of the time and already- conscious of the first warning symptoms of the disease which brought his blindness, must have scanned the newly discovered treasure brought him by his friend. We know that he must have appreciated keenly the fine descriptive passages of the elder poet ; we can fancy him reading them and giving them some- thing of the majestic movement which marked his own verse ; and we hke to imagine that certain turns of expression and descriptive touches in his Paradise Lost came from hngering memories of the work of this brother-poet who had lived a thousand years before. The manuscript, at first accepted without reserve as the work of Caedmon, was at a later time subjected to criticism. Some critics say that not a Hne was written by Caedmon, others allow him some share in it. It seems to be certain that he did not write the whole, but general opinion assigns to him the first and oldest part — Genesis, as it is called. We may safely call this Caedmon's paraphrase. But it is not as a paraphrase that the work is valuable. The passages which are of the highest poetic merit are those in which the writer leaves his original, and gives expression to his own ideas, or describes the experiences of his own life. He gives to the events of which he tells the setting famihar to him in his wild northern home. When he describes the deluge in the time of Noah, it is clear that his thoughts turn to the storms which so often beat upon the coastlands of Northumbria : Then sent forth the I«ord Heavy rain from heaven ; eke he hugely let All the welling burns on the world throng in Out of every earth vein ; let the ocean streams Swarthy, sound aloud ! Then upstepped the sea O'er the shore-stead walls. Strong was he and wroth Who the waters wielded, who with his wan wave Cloaked and covered then all the sinful children Of this middle earth. The battle passages contained in the poem might be de- scriptions of the fierce encounters which had taken place not so long before between the Northumbrians and the Mercians. 31 ENGLISH LITERATURE Satan is pictured as a great war-leader, and his group of falkn angels resemble the company of * war companions ' which, in Saxon times gathered in close comradeship rour.d a prince. The proud exultation in strength and prowess, the keen joy in revenge, remird the reader sometimes of the pagan epic of Beowulf ; for the old spirit had not entirely died out under the influence of Christian teaching. But there are tender and pathetic passages, too, which breathe the pure spirit of the new reHgion — such are the description of the joys of heaven, or of the repentance of Adam and Eve. The poem is worthy to stand as the first great work of purely English origin, the fore- runner of Paradise Lost. 32 CHAPTER III THE EXETER BOOK I HE Exeter Book is so called because, since about 1071, it has been preserved in the library of Exeter Cathedral. Its real title is Mycel Englisc hoc he gehwilcum 'pingum on leod-wisan geworht, which, translated into modem EngUsh is, "A large EngUsh book, on all sorts of things, wrought in verse/' It was presented to the cathedral Hbrary by Leofric, Bishop of Devon and Cornwall and Chancellor to King Edward the Confessor. When he became Bishop in 1050, he found his cathedral at Exeter despoiled and neglected. There were only five books in the Hbrary and few treasures of any kind to give glory and sanctity to the famous building. This state of things Ivcofric set himself to remedy, and among other benefactions, he collected and presented to the cathedral library sixty volumes, some written in EngHsh, some in Latin. The Hst of these has been preserved, and in it appears the Mycel Englisc hoc, a collection of Anglo-Saxon poetry. The manuscript dates from the late tenth or early eleventh century, when the poems were collected and written out, but many of them were composed much earher. Some, it is con- jectured, originated from lays sung by minstrels in the fourth century. The manuscript now consists of 246 pages, and, although it has not been subjected to the dangers and chances which have beset the Beowulf manuscript, it has not escaped dilapidation. Several leaves are missing, both at the beginning and the end of the book, and the outside pages are worn and ink-stained ; these injuries are probably the results of the book having been left for a considerable time unbound. There is a hole through the last twelve pages which looks as if it c 33 ENGLISH LITERATURE had been burnt by a piece of lighted wood or paper falling upon the volume. The poems contained in the Exeter Book fall naturally into two groups. Those contained in the first group are pagan in tone and spirit — though Christian interpolations are to be found — and belong to the period previous to the Saxon occupa- tion of England. Some are thought to be even older than Beowulf. The poems of the second group are Christian, and most of them deal with religious subjects. Chief among these are the poems of Cynewulf and his followers, who belong to the second half of the eighth century and in whose work the influence of Csedmon is plainly to be seen. The oldest poem in the book is called Widsith, or " The Far Traveller." It is the song of a minstrel who may, it is thought, have lived in the fourth century. There were two classes of Anglo-Saxon minstrels — the scop, who was generally attached to the train of a king or noble, and who composed, as well as sang, his lays ; and the gleeman, who was of an inferior order and wandered about the country singing to the people of the towns and villages the songs which he had, in most instances, learnt from others. Widsith was a minstrel of the former class. *' Many men and rulers have I known," he sang, *' through many strange lands I have fared, throughout the spacious earth, parted from my kinsmen. Therefore I may sing in the mead- hall how the high-born gave me gifts." He looked back over a Hfe filled with adventure and with happiness, and he sang his song in praise of his calling and of the great men who had befriended him. Success and praise had followed him, and the comradeship of his fellow craftsmen had made his Ufe pleasant : Scilling then and with him I in a voicing clear, Lifted up the lay to our lord the conqueror ; Ivoudly at the harping lilted high our voice. Then our hearers many, haughty of their heart. They that couth it well, clearly said in words That a better lay listed had they never. So he had gone on from one triumph to another — 34 THE EXETER BOOK Till all flits away — Life and light together — laud who getteth so. Hath beneath the heaven high established power. The next poem of the group — TJie Complaint of Dcor — gives the other side of the minstrers hfe. Deor, too, was a scop, but he lost favour with his lord and was superseded ; so he sang his sad song, reminding himself that trouble comes to all men, and as others have overcome it, so also may he. I Whilom was I scop of the Heodenings ; Dear unto my lord I Deor was my name. Well my service was to me many winters through. Loving was my Lord ; till at last Heorreuda, — Skilled in song the man ! — seized upon my laud-right That the guard of eark granted erst to me. That one over^vent ; this also may I. The reader of Anglo-Saxon poetry soon becomes famihar with the mournful note that sounds in Deor's lament. It sounds in almost every work of those early times, giving to them a characteristic melancholy. The Wanderer, the next poem of the group we are considering, deals with a subject similar to that of Deor — the sorrows of a man who has lost his lord. Sadly comes the mourning note again : All is full of trouble, all this realm of earth I Doom of weirds is changing all the world below the skies ; Here our foe is fleeting, here the friend is fleeting. Fleeting here is man, fleeting is the woman. All the earth's foundation is an idle thing become. The Seafarer, which follows The Wanderer, tells of the hard and painful life led by him who must seek his daily bread in the " ice-cold ocean paths" to which he is yet drawn with an irresistible fascination. For the harp he has no heart, nor for having of the rings. Nor in woman is his weal ; in the world he's no delight. Nor in anything whatever save the tossing o'er the waves. O for ever he has longing who is urged toward the sea. These four poems are the chief of what may be called the old pagan group. Of the Christian poems contained in the Exeter Book the most important, as has been said, are those written by the poet Cynewulf. Cynewulf and Caedmon are the only poets of these early times of whose personahty we 35 ENGLISH LITERATURE know anything, and even of them we do not know very much. Cynewulf was probably a Northumbrian, born between 720 and 730. From his writings we learn that he was a scop in the service of a great lord. He was certainly a scholar who under- stood Latin, and had studied the best Latin works of the time From various references in his works a kind of biography has been built up, which, however, has little soHd evidence to rest upon. It is conjectured that he was, during his youth, a gay and thoughtless singer who dehghted in the splendour of noble houses and in the company of the great ; that in his later middle age he had a vision of the holy rood, which turned his heart to Christ, and that from thenceforward he devoted him- self to the writing of poetry which should serve to advance the glory of God. " I am old,'' he says in one of his later poems, *' and ready to depart, having woven wordcraft and pondered deeply in the darkness of the world. Once I was gay in the hall and received gifts, appled gold and treasures. Yet was I buffeted with care, fettered by sins, beset with sorrows, until the Lord of all might and power bestowed on me grace, and revealed to me the mystery of the holy cross. Now know I that the joys of life are fleeting, and that the Judge of all the world is at hand to deal to every man his doom." Gynewulf's Crist is the first poem in the Exeter Book. It is in three parts, the first telling of the coming of Christ to earth, the second of His ascension, the third of His second coming and of the Judgment Day. An intense personal feeling of religion marks the work throughout and gives it a simple but lofty beauty. The closing passage describes the heavenly home to which the poet hopes soon to follow his Master. Rest for righteous doers, rest withouten strife. For the good and blessed. Without gloom the day, Bright and full of blossoming ; bliss that's sorrowless ; Peace all friends between ever without enmity. Love that envieth not in the union of the saints For the happy ones of Heaven ! Hunger is not there, nor thirst. Sleep nor heavy sickness, nor the scorching of the sun, Neither cold nor care, but the happy company Sheenest of all hosts shall enjoy for aye Grace of God their King, Glory with their Lord. 36 THE EXETER BOOK The second part of Crist is signed with Cynewulf 's name in the Runic letters used by the old Teutonic race. The next poem, Juliana, is signed in the same manner. It is the story of a Christian martyr in the time of the Kmperor Maximian. Three other poems in the Exeter Book, though not signed, are thought to have been written by Cynewulf or by the school of poets that followed him. These are The Life of St. Guthlac, Azarias, and The Phcenix. Azarias contains the beautiful lines describ- ing the effect of the coming of the angel to the fiery furnace into which Daniel and his two companions have been thrust. Then 'twas in the oven when the angel came. Windy cool and winsome, to the weather likest When is sent to earth in the summer tide. Dropping down of dew-rain at the dawn of day. In The Phcenix occurs what is judged to be Cynewulf 's finest descriptive passage : Winsome is the wold there ; there the wealds are green Spacious spread below the skies ; there may neither snow nor rain, Nor the furious air of frost, nor the flare of fire. Nor the headlong squall of hail, nor the hoar-frost's fall. Nor the burning of the sun, nor the bitter cold. Nor the weather over-warm, nor the winter shower. Do their wrong to any wight — but the wold abides Ever happy, healthful there. Honoured is that land. All ablown with blossoms. A curious and characteristic form of composition in Old Enghsh, which was imitated from I^atin examples, was the riddle. The Exeter Book contains eighty-nine of these riddles. They have been attributed, though somewhat doubtfully, to Cynewulf. Some of them are of real beauty, and show high imaginative power. The thirtieth riddle is : I have seen a wight wonderfully shapen. Bearing up a booty, in between his horns, A Ivift- Vessel flashing light and with loveliness bedecked. Bearing home this booty brought from his war-marching I He would in the burg build himself a bower. Set it skilfully if it so might be. Then there came a wondrous wight o'er the world-wall's roof, — Elnown to all he is of the earth's indwellers — Snatched away his war-spoil, and his will against. Homeward drove the wandering wretch ! Thence he westward went. With a vengeance faring hastened further on. 37 ENGLISH LITERATURE Dust arose to heaven, dew fell on the earth. Onward went the night, and not one of men. Of the wandering of that wight ever wotted more. The answer to this riddle is, The new moon with the old moon in its arms, driven from the sky by the rising of the sun. The other poems contained in the Exeter Book are of minor importance. There is a fragment of a Physiologus, a charac- teristic composition of these early times, in which descriptions of various beasts are first given and afterward an allegorical meaning supplied for each detail. The panther, the whale, and the partridge are thus dealt with in the Exeter Book. There are also a few short religious poems, and a collection of proverbs that occupies 206 lines. The Exeter Book may be called our first English anthology. It is valuable first by reason of the real beauty of many of the poems it contains, especially of those attributed to Cyne- wulf. It is valuable also for its historical importance as a witness to an age long gone by. [The quotations from the Exeter Book are taken from Mr. Stopford Brooke's Early English Literature, by kind permission of the author.] 38 CHAPTER IV BEDELS ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH RACE U^TT^HE Ecclesiastical History cannot, in one sense, claim to I be an English book, for it was originally written in JL lyatin. It was, however, written in England, its author was Enghsh, its subject is the Enghsh race. It was translated into the Enghsh language by King Alfred about a hundred and fifty years after it was written, so that a version in the vulgar tongue has existed for more than a thousand years. It was the avowed model of the chroniclers of succeed- ing ages, who borrowed its facts and imitated its style. For these reasons, and because the history is of so great value and interest to Englishmen, even in the present day, it is classed here as an English book. Its story takes us back to that short, brilliant period in the history of Northumbria during which she became a centre of intellectual activity such as had not before been known in England. The day of her political supremacy was over. King Ecgfrith had fallen in the battle of Nechtansmere 685, and the glory of Northumbria had departed. The scene of the struggle for supremacy in England had shifted from the north to the south. Northumbria for a time was left in peace to recover, as best she might, from the blow she had received. Steadily and quietly she won for herself a new supremacy, the glory of which has, in the eyes of the ages that have followed, caused her earlier triumphs to grow pale. She became a centre of learning and culture. Scholars flocked to the schools established within her borders, and the fame of her teachers was spread far and wide. She founded a literature, 39 EiNGLISH LITERATURE and she fostered, in a noble and liberal spirit, all the forms of intellectual activity which had arisen in her dominions. There seemed some stirring influence abroad urging men to great efforts. History tends to show that the periods most favour- able to literary activity are those which follow a long term of conflict and disturbance, when the stimulus of the struggle remains, though the burden of it has passed. So it was in the days of the Elizabethans ; so it was in the days of the Saxons of Northumbria. Rehgion had a great part in promoting this intellectual movement. The fervour of the previous period had by no means passed away, though, in 664, after the Synod of Whitby, the Irish monks had left Northumbria. Their influence re- mained, and the Roman Church which superseded the Irish, brought men who, though of different nature, and working by different methods, were in devotion and earnestness little behind their Irish brethren. Of these one of the most renowned is Benedict Biscop, who founded the great twin monasteries — St. Peter at Wearmouth and St. Paul at Jarrow. It is with these two monasteries that the greatest of all Northumbrians scholars — Bseda, or as he is known in history, the Venerable Bede — is connected. " I was born," Bede tells us, " on the lands of the same monastery [that is, of the allied monasteries of St. Peter and St. Paul], and when I was seven years of age I was entrusted by my relatives to the most reverend Abbot Benedict [of Wear- mouth] to be brought up, and afterwards to Ceolfrid [of Jarrow] ; and dwelling all the succeeding time of my Hfe under the roof of the same monastery, I gave all my attention to the study of the Scriptures ; and while observing the regular discipline, and the daily charge of singing in the church, I always took delight in learning, teaching and writing." In these few words the simple history of Bede's uneventful life is told. He never left the monastery of Jarrow, and he took no part in the great national events of his times. " Ivcarning, teaching and writing " he passed his Hfe, and it is as scholar, teacher, and author that we remember him. 40 : ^ aattSn Uinodni ^ t^j irrro: ^cUrccnicc qitccm jmnsulcc vcavne' ccnre-i^ af«^ TV>|rtm3t3 jnoniaJni^ yfaMVt)^- ]4uUanvi! ^p^ rcU »>r^«W v^^' Page from MS. copy of Bede's "Ecclesiastical History (Vlllth century) In the British Museum 40 IP BEDE'S ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY The fame of his teaching drew crowds of eager learners to the quiet Northumbrian monastery. Six hundred English monks, besides strangers from other lands made up his school. Groups of them gathered round him in the great cloister which formed the centre of the daily life of a mediaeval monastery. The cloister was a quadrangle, enclosed by the high walls of the monastery buildings ; all round it ran a covered arcade, and in the middle was a grass plot or flower-garden. It was in the cloister that the monk of these days spent nearly all the time not occupied by services in the church or meals in the refectory. Here the children who came to the convent for instruction were taught ; here monks worked at the copying and illumination of manuscripts ; here the psalms for the church services were practised ; and amid all the stir and bustle, soHtary monks essayed the difficult task of fixing their minds on devotional exercises and meditating upon sacred things. We may picture Bede seated in the sunny cloister of J arrow with a group of his scholars gathered round him. His gentle, kindly face is alight with enthusiasm as he lovingly handles one of the precious manuscripts with which the zeal of Benedict Biscop has provided the convent hbrary. Something of his fervour passes to the scholars to whom he is discoursing, and within them begins to kindle the same deep love of learning which has given beauty and dignity to the quiet life of their teacher. I^ater, they sit down to their copying, or to the study of the treatises on theology, astronomy, physics, music, philosophy, grammar, rhetoric or medicine, which Bede, from the great and varied knowledge gathered by his studious research, has written for them. From time to time a scholar brings some difficulty he has found in his work, to the teacher, and receives from him ready help, with perhaps a kindly, half- pla3rful word of praise or admonition. When winter came — and even in the sheltered southern side of the cloister the keen winter winds numbed the fingers of the shivering monks — it is probable that Bede, with a small party of his scholars, was provided with a cell or small room within the convent. This was an indulgence not common in those days, 41 ENGLISH LITERATURE for the monks were expected to inure themselves to hardships and rise superior to the love of comfort. But it is probable i that, at least in the later years of his life, Bede enjoyed some i relaxation of the rigours of the ordinary monastic life. It was i in the seclusion of the cell that his great work, the Ecclesiastical | History, was probably written. It was undertaken, Bede tells j us, chiefly by the advice of Albinus, Abbot of the monastery of ! Canterbury. From Albinus Bede received the records and i letters relating to the coming of Augustine, and the spread of \ Christianity in Kent. In similar ways he gained information ; concerning the other English kingdoms, and he is careful in each j case to state the authority on which he relies. " I humbly i entreat the reader," he says, " that if anywhere in this that I^ have written he finds any things set down otherwise than as^ the truth is, he will not impute this to me, since according to;^ the true rule of history, I have laboured sincerely to commit to^ writing, for the instruction of posterity, such things as I collected from common report." ^ The best passages in the book, however, are the accounts of events which have come under Bede's personal observation, i He tells his stories in a style so clear, straightforward and ; simple, yet of such perfect art, that the reader cannot help : being charmed. Throughout, the personality of the writer | appears in all he says. We know more of Bede when we have read his great book than it is possible to know of some writers ] the records of whose lives are full and complete. His gentle, j sunny nature, the wisdom and nobihty of his aims, his absolute j sincerity and complete unselfishness all become clear to us. ■ The Ecclesiastical History deserves a high place among the | books of England. "If," says Dr. Rhodes James, in The | Cambridge History of Literature, " a panegyric were likely to j induce our readers to turn to it for themselves, that panegyric i should be attempted here." It is hoped that this short account I of the writer and his book may lead many to hold the history of ; the old Northumbrian monk in honoured remembrance, and to \ read carefully some selections, at least, from its pages. Four years after the History was finished Bede's long and 42 ; BEDE'S ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY useful life came to an end. His disciple Cuthbert gives, in a letter to Cuthwin, an account of the last days of their " father and master, whom God loved." " During these days," says Cuthbert, ** he laboured to compose two works well worthy to be remembered, viz., he translated the Gospel of St. John . . . into our own tongue for the benefit of the Church ; and some collections out of the Book of Notes of Bishop Isidorus. . . . And on the shining of the morn, that is, at the fourth hour, he diligently charged us to write what we had begun ; and this was done unto the third hour. But from the third hour we walked in procession, with the reliques of the saints, as the custom of the day demanded. There was, however, one of us with him who said to him, * Most beloved master, there is yet one chapter wanting, and it seems to be troubhng you to ask you more. Then he said, ' It is no trouble. Take your pen and mend it, and write quickly.' And he did so. Moreover at the ninth hour he said to me, * I have some things of value in my chest — that is, pepper, napkins, and incense ; but run ''quickly and bring the priests of our monastery to me, that I also may distribute to them such gifts as God has given me. The rich indeed of this world aim at giving gold, silver, and whatsoever else is precious, but I will give with much charity and joy to my brethren what God hath given me.' And this I did with fear and in haste. And he addressed each one, ad- monishing and entreating them to say masses and prayers for him, which they readily promised to do. Moreover all bewailed and wept, chiefly because he had said that they should see his face no more in this world ; but they rejoiced in that he said, ' It is time that I should return to Him who made me, who created me, who formed me out of nothing. I have lived a long time. The good Judge hath well ordained my life for me. The time for me to be set free is at hand, for indeed my soul much desires to behold my Eling Christ in His beauty.* These and many other things he spoke and passed the day in cheerful- ness until the evening. And the aforesaid boy said, ' Most beloved master, one sentence is still unwritten.' Then he said, * Write it quickly.' After a little while the boy said, ' The 43 ENGLISH LITERATURE sentence is finished now/ Then he said, * It is well. You have spoken the truth. It is finished. Take my head in your hands, because I have great delight in sitting opposite my holy place, in which I was wont to pray, in order that I also sitting may be able to call upon my Father.* And then on the pave- ment of his cell while he was saying * Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit ' he breathed forth his last breath from his body, and so departed to the heavenly kingdom." 44 CHAPTER V THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE »k FTER the death of Bede there was very Httle attempt /\ at writing history until the twelfth century brought A \. the age of the great chroniclers. In the monasteries throughout the country a diary of passing events was more or less regularly kept, but this usually related only to affairs immediately concerning the establishment, and the record took the form of brief disconnected notes. Occasionally a fuller entry marked a more than ordinarily important piece of news ; in such cases the rule was that the person giving the information should write his version on a piece of loose parch- ment, and put it inside the book of annals, that the ofl&cer whose special work it was to keep the records might copy it in if he thought fit. But in the period immediately succeeding that of Bede the entries in all the monastic records seem to have been few and unimportant. Gradually in some of the monasteries these brief unconnected jottings grew into something which might be called a chronicle. The monastery of Winchester, capital of the West-Saxon king- dom began, in the eighth century, the record which developed into The English Chronick. Its early entries are meagre and infrequent, but the simphcity and vigour of the style gives the short descriptions that are occasionally attempted a certain picturesqueness. One of the earliest entries is under the ^^^^ 755- It tells how Cynewulf , a West Saxon noble, took the kingdom of Wessex from Sigebright '* for unrighteous deeds," and with the consent of the Witan established himself in Sige- bright' s place ; how Cyneheard, brother of Sigebright, after- ward attacked Cynewulf who had ridden out with only a few 45 ENGLISH LITERATURE followers to visit at a house in Merton ; how the house was surrounded and a desperate fight fought against great odds by the king's little band until they all lay dead upon the ground. This is probably the earliest existing piece of prose in any Teutonic language. Early in the ninth century an attempt was made by the monks of Winchester to extend the record backward by writing the history of the Saxons in England, from the landing ; of Hengist and Horsa. The mass of oral tradition that existed j among the countryfolk was examined in such imperfect fashion ; as the opportunities of the writers allowed. Old ballads were ] collected, and portions of them incorporated in the Chronicle. ! From a literary point of view, the result was not highly success- j full, but as an historical record it has considerable value. In 871 Alfred succeeded to the throne of Wessex, and with j his accession came a stirring in almost every department of : national life. The early part of his reign was so troubled | by Danish incursions that internal reform was impossible, but I when peace had been made Alfred turned his thoughts to the 1 improvement of his kingdom. We cannot here follow him in his manifold activities as statesman, administrator, soldier ' and social reformer, but of his zeal and enthusiasm for letters, : some mention must be made. i What the state of learning in England was when he came ; to the throne his own often-quoted words will tell. " When , I began to reign," he says, " I cannot remember one priest 1 south of the Thames who could understand his service-book, ; and very few in other parts of the country." The flourishing • schools in Northumbria had been destroyed by the Danes, and i learning had been almost entirely stamped out. Scholars had , fled the country, and there was no place in England where a i man, however ardently he desired to learn, could find capable | teachers. A great darkness of ignorance had fallen on the | land. Into this darkness Alfred strove to bring light. He j brought over teachers from the famous Continental schools of i Charlemagne ; he established schools in England, and taught 1 in them himself ; he made laws to further learning ; he trans- | 46 \ 'i f^*^' pi ■f A Page from the MS. of " The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" Containing the account of the Battle of Ashdown 46 (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge) Nf THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE ated into English famous I^atin works which he thought might be useful to his people ; and he wrote in his own vigorous and direct prose addresses in which he strove to show his people how good and beautiful and altogether desirable was the know- ledge they neglected and despised. He breathed life into the dry bones of the Winchester annals, and of a dull and meagre record he made an inspiring history. From 866 to 887 the Chronicle is continuous, no year being omitted. The whole of this part of the Chronicle seems to be the work of one hand, and, not improbably, was written by Alfred himself. Toward the end of his reign the early part of the Chronicle was again revised, and many passages from Bede's Ecclesiastical History inserted to fill up gaps. After the death of Alfred the learning he had worked so hard to foster rapidly died out. Once more the fierce on- slaughts of the Danes drove all save thoughts of war from the minds of the people. The monasteries sank back into a state of ignorance, the poets were silent. The entries in the Chronicle during this period tell of httle else but fierce fighting, disastrous raids on the countryside, and cruel suffering among the people. Yet the patriotic fervour which was aroused by these national misfortunes gives vigour and fluency to the accounts, and makes the Chronicle of real literary value in this barren period. " The Chronicle alone marks for more than half a century the continuance of literary activity in England." During the middle part of the tenth century there are few entries, and these are of no great interest, with the exception of several ballads which are inserted under the dates of the incidents of which they treat. Chief of these is the ballad describing the battle of Brunanburh, 937, in which Athelstan defeated the alHed forces of Scots, Welsh and Danes. This ballad is best known through Tennyson's noble translation. The Chronicle did not remain permanently in the hands of the monks of Winchester. It seems to have been taken at different times to various other monasteries, and collated with records kept in those estabhshments ; and these new forms were in turn copied and enlarged by monks of other districts. So 47 ENGLISH LITERATURE that it is probable a large number of copies of the Chronicle, varying in details and in the attention given to local matters, ^ were made. Several of these have come down to us. In their - essential features, however, they are so much aUke that we are j justified in regarding them as forming one book. ^ Various recensions were made by different hands, and . ultimately the history was extended as far back as B.C. 60. The longest of the various forms of the Chronicle is that ! which goes by the name of the Peterborough Chronicle, and \ extends to the year 1154. It contains the famous and often- ] quoted passage describing the terrible condition of the country ^ in the days of Stephen. The English Chronicle thus covers the history of England i for more than two and a half centuries. On the whole the • period with which it deals is a dark one, and the impression j left after reading it is an impression of gloom and disaster, ■ though the story is not without its brighter passages. Its Hterary merit is, naturally, very unequal, seeing that it is the work of many hands. But its importance in the history of English prose is great, and its importance in the history of the EngUsh nation still greater. " From an historical point of view the Chronicle was the first national, continuous history of a western nation in its own language ; from a literary point of view it was the first great book in English prose." 48 Middle English Period BY the middle of the thirteenth century the struggle between the languages of the conquering Normans and the conquered Saxons was almost over. The EngUsh language had come out of the conflict without injury to its vigour or its beauty. The loss of inflexions had rendered it less stiff and more adaptable, and it had increased its resources by large plunderings from the Normans. But it had become terribly disorganized, and there was urgent need for a master hand to remove the marks of stress and strain, to repress the exuberance of victory, and to make ready the language of England for great and serious uses. Yet even in its disordered state it managed to achieve some notable pieces of work. Several dehghtful lyrics date from this period, and these have a freshness, a gaiety and a free musical movement that the more sombre spirit of the earHer literature could not compass. The Normans had introduced into England the metrical romance, and its influence was I strong enough to originate here a new form of Hterature. Old stories and legends were worked up into this form ; the stories of King Arthur, of Charlemagne, of Alexander, and the Siege of Troy were especially popular. ReHgion, which, as we have seen, had become the chief subject of the poetry of the Anglo- Saxon period, kept a prominent place in the Hterature of the Middle Ages, and long didactic and moral poems were common. Toward the end of the fourteenth century came the work of Chaucer, which marks an entirely new era in EngUsh poetry. Chaucer is commonly called ' The Father of EngUsh Poetry.' The title is perhaps a trifle misleading, for, as we have seen, some work of high poetic value had been produced before his time. The experimental stage was over, and poetical D 49 ENGLISH LITERATURE traditions were established. Yet, in another sense, the title is well deserved. Chaucer is our first great poet. He produced not one happy lyric, not a few noble poetic passages standing out from a mass of mediocre verse, but a body of work of sustained excellence. He did not blindly follow a convention or a tradition, either with regard to his subject or his versifica- tion. He laid the whole varied experience of his life under contribution for his poems. He used a fresh and flowing metre full of clear harmonies. The service he rendered to our English speech would, of itself, entitle him to remembrance. Out of the chaos he made order. He welded the French and English elements which were existing side by side, yet without union, into one speech which was a perfect medium for the expression of poetic thought. He set up a standard which was accepted by all who came after him. (^ c x5. ^ i U^*^ i-K^haucer is thus the last and the greatest of our mediaeval poets, and the first of a new line which appeared in its full glory pn the days of Elizabeth. His work has, therefore, a peculiar interest and value in the history of English literature. y^Tb^y^^^^ The prose of the period consisted chiefly of the lyatin works of the chroniclers, until, toward its close came Wiclif's trans- *^^ lation of the Bible and The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. ' - A new literary form which developed during this period must also be noted. The twelfth century gave us our first example of the miracle-play, which marks the beginning of the drama in England. The miracle-play originated in the services of the Church, into which, as early as the fifth century, an element of dramatic representation had been introduced. For example, on Easter morning the empty sepulchre was shown : the holy women came with their spices and ointments, and were met by the angel. Mary spoke with the risen Christ, believing him to be the gardener ; St. John and St. Peter entered the tomb. The extension of this practice produced a play, which was intended to illustrate some doctrine of the Church, or some event of the Bible story. At first the plays were performed in the church, with priests for actors ; they closely followed the Scripture narrative, and made little attempt at dramatic SO MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD characterization, and still less at literary excellence. After a time, however, the representation passed from the control of the clergy and came under that of the trade guilds and corpora- tions. The plays were acted in open spaces in the city, and laymen were engaged as actors. Under these circumstances many new developments took place. The plays lost some of their didactic purpose, incidents being chosen with a view to their dramatic effect rather than to their doctrinal significance ; characters and incidents for which the Scriptures gave no warrant were introduced : even a comic element found its way into the story. It was at a comparatively advanced stage of its develop- ment that the religious drama found its way into England. It was introduced from the Continent by the Normans. We have a record of a play dealing with the life of St. Katherine being performed at Dunstable about mo, but the play itself is lost. It was not until the fourteenth century that the miracle-play reached its full development, and that the great ' cycles ' or series of plays came into existence. Four of these cycles — those of Chester, Coventry, Wakefield and York — have come down to us ; and it is almost certain that other large towns possessed similar collections, which were acted on certain stated festivals during the year. The greater freedom of treatment allowed in the later miracle- plays led to the introduction of various alle goricj al characters ; and this element, once introduced, developed rapidly. Plays were written in which all the characters were of this nature, and these plays were called moralitie s. In these, various vices and virtues, and such abstractions as time, riches, and death, were personified. The morahty plays, although they never became as popular as the miracle-plays from which they were derived, were acted until the early part of the seventeenth century, gradually dying out when the regular drama, which for more than a century had been growing up side by side with them, had reached a very advanced stage of development. 51 I ^^ CHAPTER VI THE CHRONICA MAJORA OF MATTHEW PARIS THE Chronica Majora, like the Ecclesiastical History, is written in I^atin, but the reasons for including it among ' English books ' are as strong as in the former case. The Chronica Majora is a type of a whole class of books written in England during several centuries, and these form a connect- ing link between the English Chronicle and the * history ' of modern times. Very little prose of any other kind was written during this period. Moreover, the writing of the Chronica Majora illustrates an important phase of the literary life of the country, and shows how literature was kept alive during the Middle Ages. It thus helps to bridge over the gap which inter- venes between the Anglo-Saxon period and that foreshadowing of the great Revival of learning which came in the days of Chaucer. The last entry in the English Chronicle was made, as we have seen, in 1154. But before that time the task of writing the annals of England had been taken up by a new order of chroniclers. William I and his Norman followers had con- quered, and settled in the country, and the Normans brought to the work of Chronicle-writing quahties which the native writers did not possess. They had a natural taste for history, and by virtue of their lyatin origin they had also a power of ordered, logical thought which was not one of the charac- teristics of the Saxo;is. The chronicles of the Normans were still written in I^atin, and at first the writers dealt with English history after the manner of foreigners, taking, on all questions, the Continental rather than the insular point of S3 ENGLISH LITERATURE view. But as the years went on, and Norman and Saxon were gradually welded into one nation, the tone of the Chronicles changed. They were still written in I,atin, for the idea that the vulgar tongue could be used for serious literary purposes had not been accepted, indeed hardly conceived, by any of the scholars of Europe. But they became distinctly English in tone and sentiment, and it is quite apparent that in the minds of the writers, there was now little difference between Norman and Saxon. The interests of the two races were regarded as identical. The work of the twelfth and early thirteenth century chroniclers shows great and notable qualities. They wrote real histories, not simply annals. They had a keen historic sense, which taught them how to select and arrange their material, to trace the connexion of cause and effect, and to judge rightly of the importance of particular events in in- fluencing the course of affairs. English historians of modern times find their works invaluable, and even writers on Con- tinental history are often glad to use them, for no other Euro- pean country possesses chronicles of the Middle Ages which can approach the English in fullness, accuracy and lucidity. Monks were still, for the most part, the chief chronicle writers. But they were monks who held a very different position from that held by the unknown and sequestered writers of the English Chronicle. They were learned, but they were not simply scholars ; they were men of the world. Many of them had been employed by the King in State affairs, and had spent a considerable time at the court. They were in the midst of the stir and movement of public life, and they took a keen interest in the poHtics of the day. This first-hand know- ledge and personal enthusiasm are clearly shown in their works. From the fame of these chroniclers the monasteries where they lived gained an added importance. St. Albans Abbey was especially noted for its chronicle, which was mainly the work of two men — Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris. St. Albans was one of the richest and most important of the 54 nrnfcv^M^nodiint ©fcJrn fin <^iutv*liC1«rtK> t d» ^dlt^^lmlfe!r » ptOni m W Da&fltlni i»nc qtan infcof torilir ftifatJuA; tj(»in>mir fttJtrt cfma \K tr fiutbtr ^^iwntr- V^ \n- rnUmicw'&ictr fii^fttTilt;'- niup mr vpiihiri"^ marrdiSTofeTreiip iijr nir.r tinffWdjjl'findf^frfin" TO ntgnfiBfilw uniufis fnV»*irrb;nio in* iir i>i^»tr ftfr nattn ^t? ♦tm >tVf m Utc rcnp«nKi' l^iir .ul f htx U fut- Jn^" Wmoo Cdlli5c,vr.iniuir i\c m^uRft- u«r fuitft >X9> l>\fiaitiitii>ufen P-ct w alcin S" a *tC\iinf ^immnrcr • .il'ntiJ>mfl-.>Wii»r T^^eljA <|iiaf» Umii^ wptnlwrtjiuouw tt^r mna uVn-jj^.c Ibtturn fcr ab mS Uf trthn"tv^n,^Knv Pi'fiuifm tic i:;ii>itJ)M i^f li ua-i'ia uj Aiti mTtf Cnnnt'i iuaiibiiujij ii5h'h« r4lK{tu)tdnnR< Bufli *; Im'l Miumj-ta' uun cuitni 'K't{' I'b c;Ui^\ lmS> T k inur >tv :r r^^iw Ja i^ tKomfphra tioiicnnn Aial^iwJhTtr: o« \'tfimsnmi^itCttfitnbi»b«mbihf8>r SfhknnA ? tncsnlnaf ioptidsrt ntt hi^bn- .^ i.W. HWi«oVc\"vUniif l«>6 -nWoniiC^y tmh:<»>»pu.««f olTw «filia bcnnu fcy^ S n5l«tei^*lol crtm.v:(ttTt Mm.^ cctt% ,i^>: Olmr T lU* pftc n*Knf«"»nf f tiro |«i^ (fvi-Vn- qji&c oM' t tnastwgtwftctnf ratw pItdW9^ ^im9 AfiB^' »^V>«<' ,j>fautur f .:ii; no fcr'wrn c^'rc:n;:iam W' ? Page of the MS. of " Chronica Majora " at the point where the Author's work breaks off in 1259 54 The illustration is a portrait of Matthew Paris upon his deathbed and is thought to be by himself. From the Royal MS, in the British Museum CHRONICA MAJORA English monastic establishments. Its situation enabled its inmates to keep in touch with all the great movements of the time. A constant stream of travellers, passing to or from Ivondon, sought, at the Abbey, the hospitahty always so freely given to strangers, and these brought the latest news of what was going on in the capital. The office of historiographer at St. Albans Abbey was created in the latter part of the twelfth century. It was first held by Roger of Wendover. He compiled, from old documents and traditions, a chronicle beginning at the Norman Conquest and going on to liis own day. He was industrious and painstaking in all that he did, and that part of the chronicle which is his own original work shows that he possessed many of the gifts which distinguished the chroniclers of the age. While Roger of Wendover was diligently fulfilling the duties of his office, a boy was growing up in the Abbey School who was destined to be his successor, and also his superior in the art of the historiographer. In 12 17 this boy became a novice in the monastery, and assisted Roger of Wendover in some of the less important parts of his work. He learnt to draw, to paint, to illuminate, and to work in metals ; he studied the science of heraldry as well as the usual subjects of the mediaeval student's course. The convent, recognizing his abiUty, sent him to the University of Paris, then at the height of its fame, that he might continue his studies there. Whether it is to this fact that he owes his surname we do not know, but in all the records in which he is mentioned his name is given as Matthew Paris. In 1236 Roger of Wendover died, and Matthew Paris succeeded him as historiographer to the Abbey of St. Albans. He soon became a man of considerable consequence in England, highly esteemed as a scholar, writer, and man of affairs. He Uved for long periods at the Court, on terms of close intimacy with the greatest men of the day. He was high in the favour of Hemy III, and it is said that a large part of the material for his chronicle was gathered in conversation with the king. But Court favour did not make Matthew Paris a courtier, in the sense of a sayer of smooth and flattering things to please 55 ENGLISH LITERATURE the royal ear. His chief characteristic, and that for which his countrymen loved him during his lifetime, and revered his memory after he was dead, was his sturdy patriotism, which showed itself in outspoken opposition to any attack on the liberty or well-being of England. Foreign interference more especially aroused his ire. He was a good Catholic, yet he spoke in the strongest terms of the Pope's unlawful exactions, and opposed with all his might the emissaries sent from Rome. Harpies and bloodsuckers he called them, plunderers who did not merely shear but skin the sheep. He did not hesitate to reprove the king for not offering a stronger resistance to these ill-doers. The clergy of England, he said, looked to the king for support, but they found him "as it were the stalk of a reed on which those who lean in confidence are wounded by the fragments." In all the writings of Matthew Paris these qualities of patriotism and outspokenness are plainly to be seen. The alterations and additions which he made to the Chronicle of Roger of Wendover are nearly always such as serve to bring out these traits. For example, after the account of the fall of Hubert de Burgh he inserts the famous refusal of the smith to put irons on the justiciar — " Is he not that most faithful and noble Hubert who so often saved England from foreigners ? " Another quality which made his writings acceptable to the men of his own day was the homely pungency of their language. We are reminded as we read some of his exhortations, of the style of another great ecclesiastic who lived three hundred years later — Hugh I^atimer. " Did not we find the bones of our brethren there, hard by the High Altar," wrote Matthew Paris, " when we were beautifying the same ? O ye degenerate sons of this degenerate age ! Two centuries ago and our monks were men of faith and prayer. In the year of grace one thousand two hundred and fifty-one we found more than thirty of them buried together, and their bones were lying there, white and sweet, redolent with the odour of sanctity every one ; each man had been buried as he died, in his monas- tic habit, and his shoes upon his feet too. Aye, and such shoes S6 IPI CHRONICA MAJORA — shoes made for wear and not for wantonness. The soles of the shoes were sound and strong, they might have served the purpose for poor men's naked feet even now, after centuries of lying in the grave. Blush ye ! ye with your buckles, and your pointed toes and your fiddle faddle. These shoes upon the holy feet that we dug up were as round at the toe as at the heel, and the latchets were all of one piece with the uppers. No rosettes in those days, if you please ! They fastened their shoes with a thong, and they wound that thong round their blessed ankles, and they cared not in those holy days whether their shoes were a pair. lycf t foot and right foot, each was as the other ; and we, when we gazed at the holy relics — we bowed our heads at the edifying sight, and we were dumb- founded even to awe as we swung our censers over the sacred graves of the ages past." The only part of the Chronica Majora which is entirely Matthew Paris's work is the history of the years 1235-1253. During this time his home was the great abbey of St. Albans, although, as we have seen, he spent long periods at the Court ; also in 1248 he was sent by the Pope on a mission to the monks of Norway, and was absent about a year. We can imagine him returning to the monastery after one of these absences, eager to write down all the news that he had gathered, and to receive the report of the monks of St. Albans, who had been making their daily record for him while he had been away. No sort of news came amiss to him. His chronicle contains reports of the weather and of the harvest, records of births, marriages and deaths, quaint anecdotes, stories of trivial offences against monastic rule, and of crimes committed by obscure individuals, ; with their punishment — all these side by side with the accounts of great national events. This miscellaneous budget of news he transcribed in the beautiful hand learnt in his convent-bred youth. Some of his work was probably done in the small private apartment which the dignity and importance of his office secured for his special use, but for the most part, he sat, we think, in the scriptorium, working in company with his convent brethren. 57 \ ENGLISH LITERATURE \ The scriptorium was a special apartment for the use of ) copyists and other workers concerned in the making of books. \ It was to be found in those monasteries where this work was j carried on on too large a scale for the accommodation of the j cloister to suffice. As early as the end of the eleventh century \ a scriptorium had been established at St. Albans, by Paul, the fourteenth abbot, who was a kinsman of I^anfranc. I^anfranc i himself had given active help and encouragement in the \ work. The scriptorium adjoined the cloister, and was large j enough for about twenty scribes to carry on their work. The j writers sat at tables " carefully and artificially constructed." ] Each was supplied by the armarius — the official in charge of the ! scriptorium — with the implements and materials for his work — quill pens and ink of various colours — gold, silver, black, red, i blue and yellow ; rulers, penknives, chalk, pumice stone for erasing errors, weights to keep down the parchment. Round the walls of the scriptorium hung scrolls bearing rules and admonitions. The chief rule was that absolute silence must be maintained. Even if a writer wanted a book of reference ] he must not ask for it in words, but by means of a code of ? signals. An extended hand drew the attention of the armarius, | who waited for the sign to follow. If a missal or service book 1 was wanted, the applicant made the sign of the cross ; for a I psalter he put his hands on his head in the form of a crown, :' signifying King David ; if he required the work of a pagan ': author he scratched his ear, as a dog might do, for pagans i were esteemed but as dogs. j In the silent, orderly, busy room, work of various kinds went i on. The boys and younger monks of the monastery copied i letters, or transcribed service books for the use of the house. ! The more skilled writers made copies of rare manuscripts, j Several were probably employed in making drafts of the * material required by the historiographer for his chronicle, | writing out extracts from documents, or making fair copies of i each section as it was finished. Some were kept busy with the ^ legal documents which the business of the establishment \ necessitated ; for monasteries in those days held much property 58 CHRONICA MAJORA in land, derived from various sources, and deeds of gift, trans- ferences, leases, and agreements were constantly wanted. There were besides documents connected with lawsuits, of which a great abbey commonly had at least one proceeding. Secular scribes employed by the estabUshment, worked side by side with the regular inmates. These did a great part of the work of illuminating. They put in capital letters, rubrics, marginal ornaments and illustrations. Work of a very par- ticular nature was done in a smaller room opening out of the scriptorium. It is thought that the illustrations of the Chronica Majora, as well as the actual writing, are the work of Matthew Paris himself. Some of these are very curious. There is a picture of a Gothic shrine, carried by monks, which paralytics attempt to touch — the figures quaint and conventional in the extreme ; and another of " a strange animal little known in England " — an elephant, " drawn from nature," the first, says Matthew Paris, that has been seen in the country. The work of writing and copying was highly esteemed, and regarded as one of the most important of a monastery's activities. Benefactors often left lands to be devoted to the upkeep of the scriptorium, or the monastery itself set aside a special fund for the purpose. No difiiculty was found in dis- posing of the works produced. A system of exchange between the various monasteries was carried on, by means of which each was able to acquire a varied selection of books. Rich men were beginning to take an interest in literature and learning and were willing to pay high prices for copies of rare manu- scripts which they would either present to cathedral or monastic Hbraries, or keep as hoarded treasures in their own houses. In this way the mediaeval Church preserved the works of the fathers, and such of the ancient classics as were within its reach. In this way, too, it added to the store original works, which, although not of supreme literary merit, had yet their value and interest to their own age and to the ages to come. Of these Matthew Paris's Chronica Majora is one of the most 59 ENGLISH LITERATURE important. In it the art of the chroniclers reached its highest point. After his death in 1259 came a decHne, and no other historian of any note arose in England until the Renaissance brought a revival in every department of literature. 60 CHAPTER VII PEARL : SIR GAWAYNE AND THE GREEN KNIGHT We lost you, for how long a time, — True pearl of our poetic prime ! We found you, and you gleam re-set In Britain's lyric coronet. Tennyson »^ I "^HE ' pearl ' of Lord Tennyson's verse is a beautiful I fourteenth-century poem, the manuscript of which, X having lain unnoticed for perhaps three or four hundred years, was brought to hght in the early part of the nineteenth century. It is a wonderful little poem, and more wonderful still if it is considered in connexion with the age in which it was written. The tliirteenth and early fourteenth centuries were, in English Hterature, the flourishing period of the romance. The love of story-teUing, which we have seen, was strong among the people when the minstrel dehghted his Saxon audiences with Beowulf ^ had never died out, though, with the coming of the Normans the nature of the stories that were told had changed. Minstrels sang of gorgeous banquets and glittering tournaments, of the dazzhng beauty of fair ladies and the marvellous deeds that knights wrought in their service. Among all this mass of literature, of which the gold and the tinsel aUke shone with surpassing splendour, was set the pure radiance of Pearl. No other title could so aptly describe the quiet lovehness of the story told by an unknown singer of the fourteenth century. It is the story of the love of a father for his httle two-year-old motherless daughter, his pearl so round and radiant, who in his eyes was always beauti- ful. But the baby girl died — " I lost it — in an arbour — alas ! 6i \ ENGLISH LITERATURE it passed from me from grass to earth/' The lonely father \ mourned for his treasure, mourned, it seems, for many years. ; Then one day he went into the * arbour green,' where his | pearl had passed from his keeping. It was August, and \ the reapers were busy among the corn ; the landscape was \ bright with the glory of summer flowers. The father sat by his child's grave and mused, and, as he sat, a vision came I to him. He dreamed that he was transported to a wonder- j ful land, such as no man had ever seen. A great joy possessed ] him, and he forgot his loss and his loneliness. He wandered along by the side of a stream, and as he went, his gladness ■; increased. He looked across the stream, to where on the \ other side shone a crystal cliff. At its foot sat a girl. The j father knew his child again, though the baby had grown 5 into a gradous maiden. " I knew her well," he said, " long ago I had seen her face." He longed to speak to his daughter, ; but a fear, born of the strangeness of all things round him, \ kept back his words. Then the girl lifted her lovely face and | looked at her father, and with that look intense longing and } fear and joy thrilled through him, so that he knew not what \ to do. The girl stood up, and he saw more plainly the beauty of her face and of her array. Pure white pearls decked the crown that she wore upon her head, and the shining white robe whose burnished folds fell around her ; on her breast shone a pearl of marvellous loveliness, whose worth no man could :' estimate. The father tells how he spoke across the stream to ] his daughter. " Art thou my Pearl," he asked, " the baby girl j I have loved and mourned ? How didst thou come to this : glorious home, so far from thy father who has been joyless since \ he lost thee ? " The maiden again lifted her grey eyes to his face. " Thy Pearl is not lost," she said, " but in this joyful j garden, free from sin and sorrow, is safely treasured." So ] they talked together. Pearl told of her wonderful happiness, ! and lovingly reproved her father when he wished to cross the stream and enter the heavenly country. He had, she said, ] quite misunderstood the laws of that country, and the way in which men might come to it. She bade him have patience 62 ( Reproduced from the Illumination in the Cotton MS. of " Pearl " 62 At the British Museum PEARL until he was called ; meanwhile, if he would, he might look upon a vision of the New Jerusalem that was his daughter's home. The vision passed before him, and he describes the glories of the city in words inspired by the Book of Revelation. As he looked on it, the streets were thronged with maidens radiantly bedecked, like his own blest one, and in the midst of them he saw her, his ' little queen.' Then he forgot all the splendours before him in joy at looking on the face which was to him the face of the baby girl he had lost so long before. But suddenly the vision faded, and he awoke to find himself lying on the grass alone. The only copy of Pearl known to be in existence is to be found among the Cottonian collection of manuscripts. It is bound up with some thirteenth-century theological treatises, and the unattractive appearance of these probably discouraged readers from attempting further investigations. But early in the reign of Queen Victoria, Sir Frederick Madden, Keeper of the Manuscripts in the British Museum, made a thorough examina- tion of the works under his charge. He discovered that the volume in question contained, besides the theological treatises, four Middle English poems, which have been called Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight. Professor Gollancz describes the handwriting of the manu- script as small, sharp and irregular, belonging apparently to the end of the fourteenth or the beginning of the fifteenth century. There are neither titles nor rubrics, the chief divisions being marked by large initial letters of blue flourished with red. The manuscript contains several coarsely executed illuminations, each occupying a full page. No single line of any of the four poems has been discovered in any other manuscript. Pearl is written in twelve-lined stanzas, the alternate lines rhyming. Alliteration is freely used, but not according to any regular plan as in the earlier poems. Various editions and translations of them have been issued and have been received with delight by all lovers of poetry. For a translation of Pearl, by Mr. Israel Gollancz, lyord Tennyson wrote the quatrain placed at the head of this chapter. 63 ENGLISH LITERATURE ^ i Of the four poems contained in the manuscript, Pearl un- 1 doubtedly stands highest. Next to it comes Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight, which is one of the best examples we j possess of the Arthurian romances that were so common at : this period. It was probably taken from some French original, < for the author states that it was long " locked in lettered lore," ; before he gave it to his countrymen. . Gawayne, the nephew of King Arthur, was one of the' favourite figures of mediaeval romance. He was distinguished above all the other knights of the Round Table for truth, ' courage and chastity, as well as for his great personal beauty \ and wonderful strength. No one could match this " falcon of \ the month of May " who was so gentle and courtly, yet so ■ terrible on the field of battle. The story of Sir Gawayne and . the Green Knight tells how Arthur and his Court were feasting i at Camelot one New Year's Day, when a knight, " the mightiest \ that might mount a steed," entered the hall. His hair and hisi beard were " thick and green as a bush ; " his rich dress wasj green ; he rode a green horse, with trappings and harness all of! green. He challenged any one of Arthur's knights to " strike him one stroke for another," promising that he would abide | the stroke unarmed. Gawayne took up the challenge and^ smote the knight " so that his fair head fell to the earth, the ^ blood spurted forth, and glistened on the green raiment but ji the knight neither faltered nor fell ; he started forward with " outstretched hand and caught the head," then with the head ] in his hand addressed Sir Gawayne, teUing him to seek him at ] the Green Chapel on the next New Year's Day, and there, j according to the covenant made between them, abide, in his \ turn, a blow. Then he rode away, and " whither he went j none knew." \ Next comes a beautiful passage in which the poet describes \ how the year passed away, season succeeding season, until the \ appointed time came round. Sir Gawayne took a sorrowful \ farewell of Arthur and his knights, then set out on his quest. , " Many a cliff did he chmb in that unknown land, where afar from his friends he rode as a stranger. Never did he come to a, 64 SIR GAWAYNE "tream or a ford, but he found a foe before him, and that one so marvellous, so foul and fell, that it behoved him to fight. So many wonders did he behold that it were too long to tell a tenth part of them." Thus in peril and pain and many a hardship he rode alone till Christmas Eve. At last he saw before him a castle standing in a meadow with a park all about it. Gawayne asked for admittance, and was received with much courtesy. When his name was made known to the lords and ladies assembled they rejoiced greatly to learn that the far-famed Sir Gawayne had come among them. So he stayed at the castle three days, and then, mindful of his quest, asked his host if he could help him to find the Green Chapel. The host promised that a guide should take him thither by the shortest way. It lay so near the castle that there was no need to start until the dawn of the appointed day itself. " Now I thank you for this above all else," said Gawayne, " now my quest is achieved I will dwell here at your will, and otherwise do as ye shall ask." " We will make a covenant," answered the host, " you shall remain at home and I will go out to hunt. Whatsoever I win in the wood shall be yours, and whatever may fall to your share, that shall ye exchange for it " ; and Gawayne laughingly agreed. The next morning the host went forth to hunt. Gawayne remained with the lady of the castle, who made great show of love to him ; but he resisted all her advances, keeping true faith with his host. Only, at parting, he received from her a kiss. The lord returned, with many deer that he had killed. These he gave to Gawayne, and received in return the kiss. The next day passed in the same way ; at evening Gawayne had two kisses to render in return for a mighty boar. Next day, which was the last of his stay, the lady gave him three kisses, and after much persuasion prevailed on him to accept as a parting gift the green girdle which she wore. It had magic power, she said, for whatever knight was girded with it " no man over heaven can overcome him, for he may not be slain for any magic on earth." For this reason, and not as a love pledge, Gawayne took the girdle. E 6$ ENGLISH LITERATURE Next morning he set forth and came by guidance of a servant, to a wild and dreadful place, where he found that a grass-grown mound with a hole at either end was the Green Chapel that he sought. From it came out the Green Knight. Gawayne bared his neck, but as the blow was about to descend he shrank ever so slightly. The knight withheld the stroke and taunted Gawayne with his fear. " At King Arthur's Court," said the Green Knight, " I stood firm to abide your blow. Where is the promise that you made that you in turn would abide mine ? " "I shrank once," answered Sir Gawayne, " but so will I no more." Again the Knight feigned to strike, and Gawayne did not flinch. A third time, and the axe touched his neck lightly, so that the blood flowed. Then the Green Knight revealed himself as the lord of the castle, the host at the Christmas revels. Gawayne had been tried, he said, in courage and in loyalty, for it was at the desire of her lord that the lady of the castle had tempted him. Had he not retained the girdle he would have passed the ordeal unhurt ; the sHght wound was punishment for slight disloyalty. In everything else he had shown himself true knight. " In sooth," said the lord, *' I think thou art the most faultless knight that ever trod earth. As a pearl among white peas is of more worth than they, so is Gawayne, i' faith, by other knights." Gawayne, however, could not overlook his one act of un- faithfulness, and bitterly lamented it. He would not return to the castle, but departed sorrowfully for Arthur's court. The two other poems. Cleanness and Patience, are of slighter merit and are for our purpose sufiiciently described by the titles. We have no record of the writer or writers of these poems, no mention in any contemporary work, no inscription on the manuscript. All we have to trust to is the internal evidence derived from the poems themselves. From this critics have concluded that all four poems are by the same hand, and have built up a biography of the supposed author, which is probably true in its main outlines, if not in all its details. The poet was born in I^ancashire or the neighbouring district, about 1330. His father was himself neither wealthy nor 66 Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight 66 From the Cotton MS. in the British Museum SIR GAWAYNE well born, but was connected as steward or in some similar capacity with a family of high rank. The boy, therefore, had daily opportunities of becoming familiar with the hfe led by men of great birth and position. He heard the songs sung by the minstrels in the hall, he watched the hunting parties as they started gaily on a winter's morning, and as he grew older he accompanied them and shared in the sport. He saw the rich dresses of lords and ladies, heard their soft voices, noted the grace and courtesy of all their actions. He learnt what qualities distinguish an ideal knight, and how a high born lady should bear herself as mistress of a great castle. The boy was educated, and it seems probable that as he grew up he became a clerk, that is, he entered one of the minor orders of the Church. An intensely rehgious feeling is shown in all his work, and a close acquaintance with Church practices. He did not become a priest, for he married, and one child, a Httle girl, was bom to him. There is no mention of his wife in any of his works ; perhaps his marriage was not a very happy one ; probably, indeed, almost certainly, his wife was dead when he lost his little daughter. Only two years his baby girl stayed with him, but that was long enough for her to gain the whole love of his heart. When she died he was left desolate. Other trials came upon him — poverty, distress, and loss of friends — but his faith never failed him, and the great hope of his life was always that he might see his child again. Such was the man, we must needs believe, who, out of the glad memories of his early days, wrote Sir Gawayne, and after he had been laid low by a great sorrow, transcribed his beautiful vision of Pearl. In the evening of his days, when he sat alone, waiting for the time when he should rejoin his ** spotless one," he moralized on ' Patience ' and ' Cleanness.' How his life ended — whether he entered a convent, as some have fancied, or died alone in poverty and wretchedness — we do not know. But his work has brought him fame which, though long-delayed, will be lasting, and will grow greater as the gallant Gawayne and the tender lovely Pearl become known to a wider circle of readers. 67 CHAPTER VIII THE VISION OF PIERS PLOWMAN^ . THIERS PLOWMAN, like Pearl, is the work of an un- t-^ known author. In this case, however, tradition and -X^ a few chance references in the hterature of the time supplement the inferences gathered from the poem itself. Moreover, in the poem the writer makes several distinct allu- sions to his own circumstances. Carefully putting together all this evidence we can make our story of the book. The name of the poet was William Langland. His parents were of lowly birth and position — ^they may even have been serfs. They Hved in the little village of Cleobury Mortimer amongst the Malvern Hills, probably on land belonging to Malvern Priory, which stood in the valley under the Great Hill. Will, their son, born about 1332, was a clever lad, but * The Vision of Piers Plowman has, up to quite recent times, been regarded as the work of a single author. Skeat and Jusserand, the two great authorities on the poem, arrived, quite independently, at conclusions concerning its authorship which are, except in small points of detail, identical. On these conclusions the chapter on Piers Plowman contained in this book is based. In 1908, however. Professor Manly pubUshed in the second volimie of the Cambridge History of Literature the results of his exhaustive examination of the text of the poem. He has been led to believe that Piers Plowman is the work not of one, but of five authors. One, who may be identified with William Langland, wrote the Prologue and Passus I to VIII. Passus IX to XII were. Professor Manly beUeves, written by a continuator who attempted, with small success, to imitate the style of the earher part ; and the remaining lines by a scribe or minstrel named John But. The second version (or B text, as it is called) he attributes to a fourth writer who was probably a cleric ; the third version, or C text, to " a man of much learning, of true piety, and of genuine interest in the welfure of the nation, but tmimaginative, cautious, and a very pronoimced pedant." Professor Manly's view is considered by the best authorities on Early EngUsh literature to be worthy of very serious consideration, and the investigation opened by him will probably be carefully followed up in the near future. 68 THE VISION OF PIERS PLOWMAN strange, so the neighbours thought. He was shy and quiet and dreamy in his ways, and had little to do with the sports and frolics of the village boys. The monks at the Priory school found him so apt a pupil that they talked proudly of his attainments to visitors who came to the convent ; and so there were friends ready to help the clever boy and lift him from the lowly place his birth had given him. But Will was preparing himself for a future which held little chance of worldly pros- perity. He was by nature a dreamer, and even in those early years, when he wandered over the fair hillsides of Malvern, his brain was haunted with visions and perplexed with doubts. Real life as he knew it among the " poor folk in cots " with whom he lived day by day was hard and cruel enough, and the lad was vaguely puzzled to know why this should be so. Burdened with children and chief lords' rent, What they spare from their spinning they spend it in house hire ; Both in milk and in meal to make a mess o' porridge. To satisfy therewith the children that cry out for food. Also themselves suffer much hunger And woe in winter time with waking of nights To rise 'twixt the bed and the wall and rock the cradle ; Both to card and to comb, to patch and to wash, To tub and to reel, rushes to peel ; That pity 'tis to read or to show in rhyme The woe of these women that dwell in cots. There were lords and ladies, he knew, whose lives were far different ; they had ease and luxury, and good things. Why should the poor man " swynke and sweat and sow for both ? " Somewhere truth and righteousness must exist, he knew it by the vague though glowing visions which flashed across his brain. But where could a man find them ? How could he. Will lyangland, search them out ? So, while he was yet a lad he brooded on the inequalities of life, and his sympathy with the poor folk of the land was kindled. When he climbed to the top of the Great Hill, and looked down on the grassy plain beneath him, where the shining Severn ran, and the bordering hills, covered with gorse and heather and fern, stretched away until they were lost in a blue haze, it was not the beauty of the scene that filled his 69 ENGLISH LITERATURE mind. For him that " faire felde " was an image of the world. It was " ful of folke." Of all manner of men, the mean and the rich. Working and wandering as the world asketh. Some put them to the plough, full seldom they play, In setting and in sowing labour too hard And win that which wasters with gluttony destroy. As he brooded, bit by bit, the vision extended itself, until it grew into a kind of symbolic picture of the life of the time. Again and again he came back to it, and each time his imagi- nation added further details. vSoon he began to shape his thoughts into a regular poem, and to write down the verses as he made them. All his experiences were put into it. He told how the poor folk lived, and what they ate, how they talked to each other, and how bravely they bore the hardships of their lot. He told also how the spirit of discontent was growing among them, how they were beginning to realize the oppression from which they suffered, and the corruption of the rulers they were bound to obey. All the vague political talk which was going about from one poor cot to another, and which, thirty years later, was to bring the great rising of the peasants, he faithfully reported. He had many a time heard hard-handed labouring men talk of the king and nobles, and of what might be expected from them ; of the Church and how it had fallen away from Truth ; and ever more and more clearly he saw that if the lot of the poor man was to be improved it was from himself and his own efforts that the improvement must come. The man who worked was the true hero, for he lived according to truth and righteousness ; therefore I^angland made a poor ploughman the hero of his tale. So the vision shaped itself in the mind of the dreaming boy. He saw Flattery, Falsehood, and Guile, in the guise of the rich and noble, mingling with the crowd ; and, worst of all, he saw Ivady Meed, drawing to herself a large company of followers : A wommen wortheli yclothed. Hire arraye me ravished, such richness saw I never. 70 THE VISION OF PIERS PLOWMAN These ruled the world, though Conscience did her best to bring their evil plans to naught. Then Reason preached to the people, bidding them forsake their sins, and turn and ask God's mercy. Truth should deliver them. All were willing to seek for Truth, but where was he to be found ? In that great company there seemed to be none who knew him. Many saints they knew, to whose shrines they had made pilgrimages, but none of these was named Truth. Then a ploughman, who was called Piers, stepped forward. He could guide them, he said, to Truth. I knowe him as kindly as clerk doth his books : I have been his follower for these fifty winters. He promised to take them on their way when he had finished ploughing his half-acre ; for work must not be neglected, all must work if they would find Truth and escape from Hunger. By this time Truth (who is God the Father) had heard of those who were searching for him, and sent them a message of pardon for their sins. But a priest, jealous of the priestly privilege of bestowing pardon, declared the message to be false, and in the strife which arose concerning it, the dreamer awoke. This, very briefly, is the outline of the story. It is full of teaching concerning the duties of the king, the nobles, and the commons, the loveliness of Truth, and the obhgation which lies upon all Christians to love one another. There was, it is evident, in the mind of the young poet, a high and beautiful ideal of what hfe, worthily lived, should be ; and his anger and contempt for those who live unworthily proceeded from his intense longing that men should rise to the heights of which, he felt, they were capable. Time went on, and Will grew to be a man. The friends who had interested themselves in his education were still disposed to help him. In those days the best way to advancement for a poor and penniless youth was through the Church. Will must take orders, and his friends would perhaps be able to find for him some preferment. So he became a clerk. But he felt very strongly within himself that life in the quiet Shropshire village could not long content him. He was moody 71 ENGLISH LITERATURE and restless. He wanted juany things which he had not the energy to strive for. " All the sciences under sun and all the subtil crafts, I would I knew and understood well in my heart." But as he goes on to tell us, he was " eager to learn but loth for to study. He was too ready to follow ' Ymaginatif ' to give his mind earnestly to any practical work. Exactly when he left his country home we do not know. He probably spent some time wandering about the country, then came to I^ondon. He married, and so cut himself off from all hope of advancement in the Church, for though those who had entered the minor orders only were not for- bidden to take wives, there could be no married priests. We know nothing about I^angland's wife, except that her name was Katherine, or Kit, as he calls her. A daughter was born to him, whom he named Nicolette or Calote, but of her, too, we know nothing. The three lived together in a little house in Cornhill, near St. Paul's. They were poor — so poor that they sometimes were in want of bread. I^angland's poem, The Vision of Piers Plowman, had been finished by this time, and was widely known all over the country, so that many of the poor folk had learnt it by heart, and passed it on from one to another by word of mouth. But it brought in little money, and I^angland's earnings in other ways were small. He acted as a chantry priest, that is, he sang masses for the repose of the souls of the dead, he copied manuscripts and wrote out legal documents. Of his life at this time he tells us : And I live in I^ndon, and on lyondon both. The lomes [utensils] that I labour with and livelihood deserve Is Paternoster and my primer, placebo and dirige. And my psalter sometimes and my seven psalms ; Thus I sing for the souls of such as me helpen. And those that find me my food. " It requires no great stretch of imagination," says Professor Skeat, " to picture to ourselves the tall, gaunt figure of lyong Will in his long robes and with his shaven head striding along Cornhill, saluting no man by the way, minutely observant of the gay dresses to which he paid no outward reverence." He tells us that " he was loath to reverence lords or ladies, or 72 #rtml tKiictc tto cnriic bttsiui •bi tm coiioul be i ^'itc^ Au mvpc i>f bvtttf wlifn^v*^ fUflJJiti'e ittc uciir) v* ant? yMUJ tjrt-cujhnirtJ mo am'i*bi l:iioU;c !im iic IbolFe ;nrtc Oj Iff*? rtiii) (XiK Mon^ tint? fu uj yt* Z)C(H' ill i)ut'ameith'cl>o««vrtt-n!.iji{Mncii ri»ri|KT*'^»» ♦<♦**»* »^«^ ^ . iTf^t wAin umics nwh-» Wm tui*i$ Ujol^ni ^iffjruc Ane ?c ^oijftv of jtmjnco*of frc^tc iiuni a Ujahc |U* l\JCK )*«f ott- i>f yc tuutminP \ouiS^ bm:in»"tulbrt j^ ibUrtrytrf mcnrls be inciu't^S'' nwti yAtbcu um^ijc ^piu' ;jrr i liiott iiwnwf "»«w tint» uf > idic 4^f brtwnw i>f bity\5vi^*i?» Anfi bim^c mcti uf yyi^tir Tbtfbb'u»rtli£> tbtnncKo Ibty* liouP<5- .Vit^ t^vtiuni f\»i)« y»clonjjv t^m^Ujif Ami frtue t^mmt^mme***"^** — ^-^ (JIFoUtftf mii» be»>i UiiancjJ* cyuHi bircv i)iiir bow ■^ UUc :9rilc J^t^aue >•< felt) fill i>f tvloi )cinU;pUj |^K fclicltc ^ j-JjlJotu'U I'.uH of lcvc«in litiihritc t di>;vf' ^ ^ ~ i Ant' |Vit»c Ujillc I'dcvctt yolU fccjt )'oft yu? ^jcyic h ^ Iboll^ bifi r***" )*^i bcii*il rt bojifte yo ithi^'c* • » i» « i « ^ i v 1 1 1 ^ < * /n^v u:o|t« 4Jt>>ti,*co|i f l^4>9J^c•|^•»^4)rt^Ycy' cups C>]»c • H« Mi'^cu )'0 lboi|d»t»c Ml )'u? Q^>il^}• )h:i lbititi7> tiubca>4: ''I r -^ otv> bciicjjf t«rwiV.cK»l'^l^'» V^^ norrt!c-»v*.i^ v». lev V c. -- CTtotl^ H ^^ of 1> ji)c ftifc « >*4Ui Iff !i- frtu lfevjw'» jyt" |Vi^' nitf>a tnd£>inK' ♦jTbi inrtjijc lone of litfiiWiO**.. » * » ^ ^]jiv tDUK oil yc ti)ft»U»bttqtiitU brt- bi lUinc B-. Page of the MS. of " Piers Plowman " showing the end of the First Canto and the beginning of the Second 72 From the Cotton MS. in the British Museum THE VISION OF PIERS PLOWMAN persons dressed in fur or wearing silver ornaments ; he never would say * God save you ' to Serjeants whom he met, for all of which proud behaviour, then very uncommon, people looked upon him as a fool." Somewhere about 1377 it is probable that I^angland began a new version of his poem. The nation was at this time in a dissatisfied and uneasy state. The Black Prince was dead. Edward III was entirely under the influence of evil advisers, the heir to the throne was a child of twelve. Langland roused himself to a fresh effort. He knew now something of the sorrows of the poor of London, as well as of those who Hved among the Malvern Hills. He added to his poem until it was three times the length it had been at first. Almost all the additions that he made increased the value of the work. His version of the well-known fable of the rats who wanted to bell the cat, now appeared in the poem for the first time. In this second version of his poem Langland made a great change in the character of his ploughman hero. At first he had been simply an honest. God-fearing peasant, whose singleness of purpose stood out in strong contrast to the falsehood and self-seeking of those around him. But now he became a type of perfected human nature, until at last he came to stand for the God-Man, Jesus Christ. He had been a seeker after Truth, he was now Truth itself. The poem in its new form became almost a gospel to the discontented peasantry, who were in the dangerous restless state which comes before open rebellion. Piers Plowman they made their hero, the typical working man, who stood for all that was best in their own order. In 138 1 came the great Peasant Revolt under Wat Tyler, gangland himself had nothing to do with this, and there was nothing in his poem which can be said to have encouraged it. He taught that strife should end and love should reign between different classes of men, that the king should care for his people and the people should trust their king. But because he exalted a ploughman above rulers and nobles, the popular voice acclaimed him as a teacher of rebellion. 73 ENGLISH LITERATURE The rising of the peasants failed, and we can imagine how I/angland, grieved over the fate of those his poor brothers, on whom punishment had fallen. The case of the peasant seemed more hopeless than ever. Fresh burdens were put upon him, a harder, sterner hand held him down. The misery of it all must have overwhelmed the poet who, from his boyhood, had suffered in the sufferings of his brethren and who had longed so earnestly for better things. In his poor I^ondon home, almost within sight of the destruction which the disastrous rising had caused, he grew ever sadder and more hopeless. His only consolation was the poem which had been the work of his youth and which now, in his old age, he set himself to rewrite once more. This third version was probably begun about 1390. Ivangland looked back over his past life, recalling as those who are growing old love to do, the scenes of his earlier days. These he described in his poem, with power still, but power weakened by garrulousness and occasional irrele- vance. Before the work was finished he seems to have left lyondon. Where the rest of his life was spent, and whether with his wife and daughter, or quite alone, we have no means of knowing. In a contemporary poem, Richard the Redeles, that has been thought to be by I^angland, the author says that in 1399 he was at the City of Bristol. This is the last trace that can be found, though a vague tradition which we should like to believe, says that he came back to the old Priory among the Malvern Hills to die. 74 CHAPTER IX THE CANTERBURY TALES WE have seen how Piers Plowman represents the work of its author's whole hfe, how he put into it all that he had seen and heard and thought and felt from boyhood to age. Quite as truly, the Canterbury Tales may be said to constitute the life-work of Chaucer. He did not, it is true, work at the poem through long years, altering, adding, and retouching. It is probable that no word of the work was written until Chaucer was nearing fifty, and that it was finished in at most four or five years. But his whole life had been a preparation for it. Through all his crowded busy years he had been storing up the impressions that his quick brain had registered : he had been learning to know the men and women of the world around him, and to know them so well that he could re-create them in the manner as they lived, and set their living, breathing semblances before his readers. ^ He had been learning, too, the wide charity, which could teach his keen, observant eye and mirthful spirit to look upon the weaknesses and foibles of men with kindly indulgence and to laugh at them without bitterness. The technique of his art he had learnt by the best of all methods — practice. He had read, translated, and imitated works of classic fame and works of his own day. We need only read the first few hues of the Prologue to realize the difference between his verse and that of I^angland and the author of Pearl. Freedom and ease have come with the final casting off of the bonds which the rigid scheme of Anglo- Saxon verse had bequeathed to Chaucer's Middle English predecessors. The influence of French models has given 75 ENGLISH LITERATURE lightness and grace, the poet's own genius has given the verse harmonies which sound all through his work. The story of the Canterbury Tales, therefore, must include some account of the life of Geoffrey Chaucer. We must watch the artist gathering his materials and find out, as far as this is possible, how the skill with which they are used was gained. Our story begins in lyondon about the year 1340. Geoffrey Chaucer, we beUeve, was born in Thames Street, in a house that stood beside the little stream of Walbrook, which at that time flowed down from Finsbury Moor to the Thames. His father was John Chaucer, vintner, a citizen of wealth and standing who had, at the time of his son's birth, but lately returned from Flanders, where he had gone in attendance on Edward III and Queen Philippa. By the side of I^ondon's great river, then a busy highway of trade, the poet grew up. While Will I/angland, a moody, restless youth, was wandering solitary over the Malvern Hills, the little lad, Geoffrey Chaucer, was taking his childish part in the busy life of a great city. I^ingering in his father's shop, he saw the citizens of various qualities coming in for their draught of wine, and heard their solemn talk over civic affairs, and the state of trade. He saw strange ships coming up the Thames, bringing goods from other lands, and men who looked and spoke in a way that seemed to him curious and uncouth ; like the shipman " woning (dwelling) far by weste " of whom he gives a portrait in the famous Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, who " knew wel alle the havens, as thei were, From Scotland to the cape of Fynestere, And every creek in Bretayne and in Spain." Sometimes, per- haps, the boy went with his father to the Hall of the Hanse Merchants, where sober men with " forked herds " wearing " Flaundrish bever hats spak full solempnely " concerning the ** encrease of their wynnyngs " or denounced the pirates who infested the seas between England and the Continent. No part of this experience was lost on him, though he probably gave little sign of the keen interest he felt in all he saw and heard. His father's friends very likely regarded him as a quiet, 76 1 I^^The canterbury tales harmless boy who gave little trouble, and * sat still * longer than boys are wont to do. They were not warned by the humorous twinkle in the quiet boy's eye, and did not know that they were sitting for their portraits for all posterity. Time went on, and young Geoffrey Chaucer was sent to school, probably to the cathedral school of St. Paul's. He was, we expect, a good scholar, and a source of pride to his master, though he may have been too shy to take part in the proceedings when " upon festival days the masters made solemn meetings in the churches, where their scholars dis- puted logically and demonstratively ; . . . the boys of diverse schools did cap or pot verses, and contended of the principles of grammar ; there were some which on the other side with epigrams and rymes, nipping and quipping their fellows and the faults of others, though suppressing their names, moved thereby much laughter among their auditors. ' ' Out of school there were many sports in which he might join with his schoolfellows — ball and baton, or running at the quintain set up in Comhill ; or in winter, " when the great fen or moor which watereth the walls of the city on the north side;" was frozen, taking part in the play going on there, — '* some, striding as wide as they may, do slide swiftly ; others make themselves seats of ice, as great as millstones, one sits down, many hand in hand to draw him, and one slipping on a sudden, all fall together ; some tie bones to their feet and under their heels, and shoving them- selves by a little picked staff, do sHde as swiftly as a bird flieth in the air, or an arrow out of a cross-bow." Perhaps Geoffrey Chaucer liked, almost better than anything else, to sit out- side his father's shop in the summer twilight, particularly on festival days like the Eve of St. John, and watch how the flames of the bonfires that had been kindled at intervals down the street, lit up the faces of the citizens as they stopped to taste the " sweet bread and good drink" which John Chaucer, like others of the ' wealthier sort ' had set out on a table before his door, " whereunto they would invite their neighbours and passengers also to sit and be merry with them in great familiarity, praising God for his benefits bestowed on them." n ENGLISH LITERATURE Then there were the May-day sports, the Midsummer Watch, the Christmas mummings, the pageants, processions and miracle- plays. The life led by the lyondoners of the Middle Ages was, at least on one of its sides, a merry one, full of colour and hfe. Their homes were comfortless, and a long spell of bad weather — such as that which came when Geoffrey Chaucer was about nine years old, when it rained from Midsummer to Christmas — must have reduced them to despair. But such discomforts only made them the more eager to get all the enjoyment they could from the outdoor life, when this was possible. To the son of the rich vintner lyondon life showed itself under its most pleasant aspect. He Hved, naturally, in an atmo- sphere of busy prosperity. His father's friends were mostly sober folk, but they had sons and daughters, and there was probably a good deal of laughter and blithe merrymaking among the youths and maidens. The comedy of life was spread out before Chaucer, with its ordinary people, its everyday humours, its unheroic incidents. It is thus that he best loved to regard it, though, at the same time, he could rise to heroic heights when the *' crowded hour of glorious life " came to him. Nor did tragedy lie outside his keen human sympathy, and in the lyondon streets, then as now, there were tragedies to be seen by those whose eyes were open to note them. It was per- haps in his boyhood, perhaps in later life, that Chaucer saw some poor, pale, trembling wretch, followed by a savage, yelling crowd, dragged to meet the summary justice of those rough days ; and the glimpse that he had of the doomed man's face so impressed itself on his mind that years after- ward he could convey something of its terror to his readers : Have ye not seen some time a pale face, Among a press of him that hath been led Toward his death, where as him gat no grace. And such a colour in his face hath had, Men mighte know his face that was bestead Amonges all the faces in that rout. At what time Chaucer's school life ended we do not know. Some of his biographers think that he went to one of the 78 1 THE CANTERBURY TALES Universities, pointing to the knowledge that he had of University customs, and to his portrait of the ' clerk of Oxen- ford ' who ** had but a litel gold in cofre : But al that he might of his frendes hente. On bookes and his lernyng he it spent,'* in support of their conjecture. If he did he must have ended his stay there at an age which was young even for the Middle Ages, when students of thirteen and fourteen were common at the Universities ; for in the early part of the year 1357, and probably for some time previously, he was a mem- ber of the household of the Duke of Clarence. His father had, we suppose, enough influence at Court to procure for his son the advantage of a training in a great household — an advantage very highly esteemed in those days. For the vintner's house and the London streets were now substituted the crowded palace, and a succession of brilliant scenes of Court life as the Duchess and her train moved in semi-royal progresses through the country. Chaucer probably held the position of page, whose duty was to give personal attendance to his lady both indoors and out. In the long winter evenings the pages often read aloud to the assembled household, usually from some rehgious work, or from the romances which were so immensely popular at the period. We can imagine how Chaucer must have delighted in this duty when a happy chance gave him such a romance as Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight, or A ucassin and Nicolette to read, and we can see how the memory of such romances influenced his work in several of his Canterbury Tales. But at this time the romance literature had reached its highest point, and was rapidly declining. The favourite romances of the late fourteenth century were long, stilted, tedious effusions, and it is difficult to see how anyone could have taken much interest in them. But poor Geoffrey Chaucer must needs read them, if his noble mistress so willed, and we can see him, as night after night he took up the thread of some interminable, high-flown story — his sly glance round to test the appreciation of his audience, the half-amused impatience which he must hide under an outward appearance of courteous interest. But he 79 ENGLISH LITERATURE remembered these long-winded romances, and when, years afterward, he made fine sport of them in his Tale of Sir Thopas, he put into the mouth of the host of the Tabard Inn his long-delayed but not less lively criticism : " No more of this, for Goddes dignitee 1 " Quoth our Hoste, " for thou makest me So wery of thy very lewednesse That, also wisly God my soule blesse, Myn eeres aken of thy drasty speche. Thy drasty ryming is not worth a flye ; Thou dost nought else but spendist al our tyme." In Long Will, a novel which deals with the days of I^angland and Chaucer, the author has imagined a meeting between the two poets on the Malvern Hills, on the occasion of the train of the Duchess of Clarence stopping for a few nights at Malvern Priory. It is not impossible that such a meeting did take place, though we must fear that it is improbable. Coincidence can scarcely be trusted to have brought about an event so altogether interesting and delightful ; but there could be few exercises of the imagination more helpful to the student in forming a conception of the spirit and temper of the two poets, than to picture for himself such a meeting. Chaucer did not long remain in the service of the Duchess. In the autumn of 1359 ^^ was with the army of Edward III in France. He was taken prisoner, and released, in 1360, by the Treaty of Bretigny, on payment of a ransom. He probably returned at once to England. It is difficult to think of Chaucer as a soldier — perhaps he was employed in some other capacity. In any case, his short military experience was of great value to him. It helped him to describe his " verray parfit gentil knight," and to add little details which give an air of reality to his descriptions of various encounters. The history of the next ten years of Chaucer's life has to be gathered from scanty notices contained in official documents, and from references in his own works. These seem to show that he entered the royal household as " valet of the King's Chamber " soon after 1360, and that while he held this position 80 Chaucer reading to Edward III] Ford Madox Brown fboto. W. A. lUnieU A Oo. I THE CANTERBURY TALES he fell desperately in love with a lady whose high rank made his suit hopeless. Like Palamon, in his Knighte's Tale, he complains : Thy fresshe beautee sleeth me sodeynly. And but I have hir mercy and hir grace, That I may seen her atte leste weye I nam but deed ; there nis no more to seye. Some part of the fervour of the language which he uses in his poems written at this time is probably due to the fashion of the day. The necessity which the laws of chivalry laid upon every true knight of professing a profound devotion to the lady of his love had had a great influence on literature ; and the Courts of Love — assemblies of knights and ladies that laid down exact rules as to the behaviour and duties of a lover — had made it incumbent on every poet to write in high-flown, exaggerated style of his lady's beauty and his own passion. The Courts of Love were introduced into England from France, and French influence was at this time at its height in England. Chaucer, living as he did in the very centre of Court influence, was largely affected, as is seen in all the poems he wrote at this period, which is commonly known as his French period. The opening of the next decade saw the poet entering upon a new series of experiences. Between 1370 and 1380 he was sent on seven diplomatic missions to various countries of Europe. A journey which he made to Italy in 1372 was the most important of these. He was absent nearly twelve months, and visited several ItaHan cities. At this time Petrarch was Hving in a small village near Padua, and the early biographers of Chaucer state that -a meeting took place between the two poets. There is no reliable evidence that this was so, though it seems highly probable. Chaucer, with all the enthusiasm of a poet conscious of the power to do greater things than any he had yet done, would naturally be anxious to see the older poet who, at nearly seventy years of age had such a splendid record behind him, not only of works that he had written but of service rendered in searching out and bringing to light the great works F 8i ENGLISH LITERATURE of early classical literature. In the Canterbury Tales Chaucer makes his Clerk of Oxenf ord say : I will you tell a tale, which that I Lemed at Padowe of a worthy clerk, 1 Y proved by his wordes and his werk. { He is now ded, and nayl^d in his chest, I pray to God so yeve his soule rest ! Praunces Petrark, the laureat po^te, Highte this clerk, whose retoricke swete Illumynd al Ytail of poetrie. . . . ,,; But forth to tellen of this worthy man, '^ That taughte me this tale. ) There has been a general belief that in these words Chaucer ] was referring to his own experiences. The tale is the beautiful I story of Griselda, a version of which Petrarch wrote in Latin. ^ Soon after Chaucer's return from this mission it is probable ] that he married Philippa, one of the ladies of the Queen's ; Chamber, who was not the lady of his early love. We know nothing about her, except through references in official docu- ] ments, and nothing at all about their married life. In 1374 the ; Corporation of lyondon granted to Chaucer a lease for his hfe | of " the whole of the dwelling-house above the gate of Aldgate, | with the rooms built over, and a certain cellar beneath the i same gate." A lucrative Court appointment and a pension \ were given to him, and, with a comfortable income, he settled j down to the quiet, studious life which he loved far better than j the busy and brilliant scenes in which, so far, the greater part ! of his time had been of necessity passed. Not far away I^ang- land in his poor house on Cornhill was living hardly and toiling \ at work which was distasteful to him, and, through all, building up his great poem. Chaucer, too, was busy ; he was produc- \ ing work which showed in a very marked manner the influence ! of his stay in Italy, and of the study of Itahan literature which ] the visit had inspired. When the work that his appoint- ment required was done he came back to his rooms at Aldgate, , and there in the city he loved, with the sounds of busy life ' coming up from the street below and giving him the sense of \ human companionship that was so necessary to him, he sat , 82 ! THE CANTERBURY TALES down to study and to write. He says of himself in his House of Fame : Thou herest neyther that nor this. For when thy labour doon al ys, And hast made al thy rekennynges, Instede of reste and newe thynges. Thou goost home to thy house anoon, And, al so domb as any stoon, Thou sittest at another booke, Tyl fully dasewyd ys thy looke. And lyvest thus as an heremyte. Although thyn abstynence ys lite. In this last line Chaucer, in his own characteristic manner, pokes sly fun at himself. His " abstinence is little," he is no ascetic, but enjoys all the good things of this world, including good things to eat and drink. This quiet life was not uninterrupted. Other missions, followed by other grants and rewards, were undertaken from time to time. He does not seem to have gone abroad after 1380, but the duties of his various appointments kept his time well occupied at home. In 1386 the tide of his good fortune turned. King Edward III had died in 1377, and the young king was in the hands of guardians. Of these John of Gaunt had always been Chaucer's great friend and supporter ; but now John of Gaunt was abroad, and the Duke of Gloucester was at the head of affairs. He regarded Chaucer as a supporter of the party opposed to his own, and dismissed him from his posts. Soon we find Chaucer in money difficulties, raising small sums on the two pensions that remained to him — though these also two years after were taken away. In 1387 his wife died. Yet in this, the darkest hour of his hfe, he lost neither courage nor energy. In the midst of poverty and distress he began his Canterbury Tales, the greatest of all his works. The worst pressure of poverty was removed when, in 1389, the I^ancastrian party was restored to power, and Chaucer was appointed Clerk of the King's Works at Westminster. Other small appointments and pensions followed, but the poet seems never again to have been in comfortable circumstances. Perhaps in the dark years from 1386 to 1389 he had become 83 ENGLISH LITERATURE so deeply involved in debt that he was unable to clear him- self. However this may be, the last ten years of his life were undoubtedly shadowed by poverty, and probably by ill- health. The brilliant, successful days were over, but the poet did not sit down and sigh for what he had lost. He did better than that ; by the power of his imagination he recreated the past, and in his lonely rooms above the Aldgate gateway he called up around him the figures which had been familiar to his boyhood and earher manhood, and gave to them a certain ^ immortality. All that he had learnt of men, of life, and of books, all that he had felt, and enjoyed, and suffered, all the unquenchable fun and humour that had survived his troubles, all the fine charity and mellow judgment that years had brought, these the genius of the poet wrought into his great crowning, representative work. The French and Italian influences which had so strongly affected Chaucer's earlier poems had by this time lost their predominance and become only single elements in the whole vast mass of memories that were shaping his work. The I Canterbury Tales are entirely English in tone and spirit. The main idea of the framework is essentially English. Twenty- nine pilgrims, bound for the shrine of St. Thomas at Canter- bury, meet at a London inn. They agree to travel together, and agree, also, at the suggestion of the host, each to tell two stories to enliven the way. Only twenty-four of the stories were written, and these, with the wonderful Prologue, make up the Canterbury Tales. It is interesting to consider each of the characters and each of the stories in connexion with the known facts of Chaucer's life and to note the wonderful skill with which he has used the material that his varied experience has provided. He gives us, incidentally, a portrait of himself in his later years, for he himself is one of the pilgrims whom he represents as taking part in that memorable ride. The host of the Tabard Inn thus addresses him : Oure Host to jape then bigan And then at erst he loked upon me, And sayde thus ; " What man art thou ? " quoth he. 84 L THE CANTERBURY TALES " Thou lokest as thou woldest fynde an hare, For ever upon the ground I see thee stare. Approche near, and loke up merily. Now ware you, sirs, and let this man have place. He in the waist is shape as wel as I ; This were a popet in an arm to embrace For any woman, smal and fair of face. He semeth elvish by his countenance, For unto no wight doth he dahaunce." Chaucer, it seems, had grown portly as the years had gone on. His retiring habits had been strengthened, and he went about, avoiding as far as possible the notice of his fellows. But his interest in life had not decreased, and his downcast eyes were as keenly observant as they had ever been. The Canterbury Tales were probably begun in 1388, and as each was finished it was given to the public. The tales won immediate popularity. Chaucer's fellow poets recognized that a greater than themselves had arisen, and they gave him warm and generous praise. Nothing like this had been seen before in England ; even Chaucer's own earlier works could not compare with his latest achievement. Here was true poetry, breadth of movement, free and generous character- painting. A new era in the history of poetry had opened, a way had been made in which other men might follow The sky was bright with promise of a great time to come. At the end of 1399 Chaucer removed from his Aldgate dwelling to a house in the garden of the Chapel of St. Mary, Westminster, and here, less than a year afterward, he died. As far as we know he left no descendants ; his one son, I^ewis, probably died young. Chaucer was buried in Westminster Abbey, and about two hundred years later a monument was erected to his memory, which was the beginning of what is now known as " Poet's Comer." Fifty manuscripts of the Tales are known to be in existence at the present time. Not one of these copies was made in Chaucer's hfetime, but several date from the fifty years that followed his death. Caxton printed the Canterbury Tales at his press at Westminster in 1478 and again in 1483. In his preface to this edition he praised the book with great warmth. " He 85 ENGLISH LITERATURE (Chaucer) excelleth in my opinion," he wrote, *' all other writers in English ; for he writeth no void words, but all his matter is full of high and quick sentence." Chaucer continued to be held in high esteem until toward the end of the sixteenth century. His fame declined steadily throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, although during that period he received generous appreciation from the poet Dry den, whose pronouncement, " Here is God's plenty," still stands, by virtue of its terseness and compre- hensiveness, first among all the critical judgments that have been passed upon the Canterbury Tales. There seemed to be a chance that the works of our first great English poet would pass into the ranks of the unread books, which are only remembered because they once were famous. But toward the end of the eighteenth century came a change. A new edition of Chaucer's works was published by Thomas Tyrwhitt, and this gave a great impulse to Chaucerian study. During the nine- teenth century Chaucer regained his former position, and stands now, by common consent, in the very front rank of great poets, with Shakespeare, Milton and Spenser. 86 CHAPTER X WICLIFS BIBLE THERE is no work which has had such an immense influence on the language and literature of England as the English translation of the Bible. From thci sixteenth century onward it has coloured both the literary- diction of our great writers, and the common speech of the people. Milton's style may be said to be founded upon it. Ruskin declared that any excellences his own prose writings possess are due to the fact that his mother made him, during his boyhood, read the whole Bible through every year, and learn large portions by heart. It is seldom, indeed, that one can read even a few pages of any great author without being able to trace the influence of the Bible either in the phraseology or the turns of the sentences. In the everyday speech of ordinary people there is a large, unconscious ad- mixture of Biblical language, which marks how thoroughly the English Bible has become the property of the Enghsh nation. As a piece of literature, entirely apart from its supreme value as the sacred book of the Christian religion, the Bible holds a unique and remarkable position. Many names are connected with the story of the English Bible, and one of the most honoured of these is John Wiclif. Wiclif, like Chaucer, belonged to that great awakening period of the fourteenth century when it seemed as if the mental habits of the Middle Ages were breaking up, and new ideals, new methods, and new standards were to take the place of the old. The movement, as we shall see, died out, but the work of Wiclif as well as the work of Chaucer remained, and exercised a great and lasting influence on the literature of succeeding ages. 87 ENGLISH LITERATURE Nothing in Wiclif's early life gave any promise of the work he was to do in his later years. He belonged to an old and wealthy north country family, and was born about 1324. He went to the University of Oxford, where he greatly dis- tinguished himself, and when he was about thirty-five he became Master of Balliol College. Soon he was known as the foremost of the Schoolmen. The great educational movement of the Middle Ages was Scholasticism, which began to emerge from earlier systems in the eighth century, reached its height in the thirteenth, then gradually died away until the Renaissance brought it to extinction. It consisted in the study of early lyatin philosophic writings, and the application of the principles laid down in these to the teaching of the Church. If the two would not readily agree, they were commented upon and their meaning twisted until it was possible to fit them into the accepted scheme. Naturally such a system gave rise to endless arguments on minute points, and the man who could best follow out a long and complicated chain of reasoning in which the finest distinctions were made and the subtlest of arguments introduced was accounted the best scholar. To do this adequately, it must be remembered, required an acquaintance with almost all that it was then possible to learn of science, mathematics, and Hterature. But the splitting of straws sometimes reached a point where it became not only futile, but absurd. We are told, for example, that these grave and learned Schoolmen, arguing upon the nature and constitution of the angels, occupied themselves in a profound discussion as to how many of these beings could stand on the point of a needle. Among these subtle metaphysicians Wiclif, as has been said, stood first. His fine keen mind delighted in matching itself against other minds in strenuous logical exercises, and for a time this seems to have occupied a great part of his energies. But soon his study of the Scriptures and of ecclesiastical matters gave him more serious and engrossing subjects of thought. Here were questions of living interest, involving men's welfare in this world and in the world to come. The Church on earth F8 JohnrWiclif 88 KWICLIF'S BIBLE as very far from the ideal state which, theoretically, was hers. Greed, oppression and corruption sullied her, and she had ceased to fulfil her great mission. Wiclif turned from subtle disquisitions on abstract subjects to the consideration of the practical abuses of his time. The great fight, which was to go on throughout the last twenty years of Wiclif's life, began. He was not the first fighter, but he was the strongest and most determined that had yet appeared. His frail body, worn by study and discipline, matched but ill his strong and resolute spirit. He was, says one of his followers, " held by many the holiest of all in his day, lean of body, spare and almost deprived of strength, most pure in his life.'* He faced not only the thunders of the Pope, but the yells and shouts of angry mobs with a fine courage ; and never wavered in the position which he had taken up. A band of devoted followers gathered round him, for he seems to have possessed that personal charm which is so often a characteristic of leaders in great movements. Some of his friends were powerful enough to give him valuable protection, and chief of these was John of Gaunt, though in his case it was not any special care for Wichf and his work which supphed the motive, but, rather, considerations of pohcy. It is not proposed to tell here in detail the story of Wichf's long struggle : how from criticizing the practice of the Church he advanced to a criticism of her doctrine, and so lost his most powerful friends ; how he organized his band of ' Poor Priests,' and sent them through- out England to teach the pure word of God ; how the band of ' I/ollards ' as his followers were mockingly called, increased in numbers and in enthusiasm. All these things belong to history, but not to the history of Wiclif's Bible. We will take up the story at the point when Wiclif, expelled from Oxford and condemned by the Archbishop's Council, settled down in his little parish of IvUtterworth in Leicestershire, retiring for a breathing-space from the thickest of the conflict. The days of active fighting were over, but Wiclif's work was not yet done. The old man of sixty had yet to accomplish that which, of itself, would have sufficed to make his name 89 ENGLISH LITERATURE famous throughout the ages. For many years he had earnestly desired that the Bible might be rendered into the native j tongue of the people. Christ, said Wiclif, when he was on : earth with his disciples " taughte hem oute this prayer (the i lyord's Prayer) bot be thou syker, nother in I^atin, nother in | Frensche, bot in the langage that they used to speke." i When, therefore, a time of comparative leisure came to him, \ he eagerly took up the work of translation. Several of his i followers were with him at I^utterworth. There was John ] Purvey, his curate, who had several times suffered persecu- \ tion and imprisonment for what the Church called his heretical \ opinions. There was Nicholas Hereford, a scholar, who had ; worked with Wiclif at Oxford, and like him had been cited ] before the council at lyondon ; and there were others of less : note. The translation was the joint work of the band, and it j is probable that Wiclif himself only translated a part of the i New Testament. But he was the inspiration of all that was - done, and the resulting version of the Scriptures may with | justice be called, Wiclif 's Bible. I The English were at this time not entirely without native J versions of the Scriptures. The earliest of these was Csedmon's j paraphrase (see p. 26), which belongs to the seventh century. ^ Alfred the Great, in the ninth century, translated the Psalms, j the Commandments, the 21st, 22nd, and part of the 23rd : chapters of Exodus. Other versions of the various parts of ; the Bible — the Gospels, the Pentateuch, and the historical books ^ — were probably in existence before the Conquest, judging j from the evidence of the literature of the time, but these have been lost. In the twelfth or early thirteenth century, Orm, a monk of the order of Augustine, wrote a metrical version of the Gospels and the Acts, which extended to 20,000 lines. This is known as Orm's Ormulum. Early in the fourteenth century William of Shoreham translated the Psalms, of which several other versions had been made by unknown authors during the century preceding. All these translations Wiclif might have had to help him in his work, but we do not think he consulted any of them. 90 WICLIF'S BIBLE His translation was made from the Vulgate, the Latin version of the Bible made by St. Jerome about 383. Neither Wiclif nor his disciples understood the original Greek or Hebrew. Latin was the language of the Schoolmen ; Greek came only with the Renaissance. The translation was designed for simple and unlearned men, and this the translators seem to have kept well in mind throughout. The language is simple and vigorous, the true language of the people, though it sometimes becomes awkward and stilted by following too closely the idiom of the Latin original. Their rendering of part of Psalm VIII may be given as a specimen : 1. Lord oure Lord ; hou myche mervellous is thi name in al the erthe. 2. For rered up is thi grete doing, over hevenes. 3. Of the mouth of unspekende childer and soukende thou performedist praising, for thin enemys ; that thou destroye the enemy and the ventiere. 4. For I shal see thin hevenes, the werkis of thi fingris ; the mone and the sterris, that thou hast founded. For the last two years of Wiclif 's life (1382-1384) he was, one of his early biographers tells us, partially paralysed. But in spite of this the amount of work he is known to have done is enormous. Tract after tract was issued and sent through the country, written in the homely, vigorous prose characteristic of him. His sermons and his duties at the parish church were not neglected. He died on the last day of the year 1384. After Wiclif's death it is probable that John Purvey under- took a revision and retranslation of the Bible, at which they had worked together. This version is freer in its style than the previous one, and is not such an absolutely hteral transla- tion of the Latin. The method employed is set down by the translator in his very interesting preface. " A simple creature,*' he says, " hath translated the Bible out of Latin into English. First this simple creature had much travail, with divers fellows and helpers to gather many old Bibles and other doctors' and common glosses, and to make one Latin Bible some deal true ; and then to study it anew, the text with the gloss and other doctors as he might get, and specially Lire (Nicholas de 91 ENGLISH LITERATURE Lyra, a celebrated commentator on the Scriptures) on the Old Testament, that helped full much in this work ; the third time to counsel with old grammarians and old divines, of hard words and hard sentences, how they might best be understood and translated ; the fourth time to translate as clearly as he could to the sense, and to have many good fellows and cunning at the correcting of the translation/' Both these versions were extensively used among the people, until the growing feeling against lyoUardry caused them to be prohibited, because they were the work of I/oUard writers. But no very active steps were taken, and many faithful Churchmen possessed copies of the Wicliffite versions of the Holy Scripture. One hundred and seventy manuscripts of Wiclif's Bible are still in existence, testifying to the number which must have been made in the days before printing became common. 92 CHAPTER XI THE VOIAGE AND TRAVAILE OF SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE THE title of ' the father of EngHsh prose * is usually given to John Wiclif, but he has a rival in the person of a younger contemporary, the much-travelled and ingenuous Sir John Mandeville, knight. This rival has grown more formidable as time has gone on, especially (though this statement may appear to be in the nature of an Irish bull) since it has been established beyond all reasonable doubt that no such person ever existed. The meaning of this paradox is that ^critics in modem times have been busily at work on the book, and have been led to appreciate more and more fully the ease, fluency and vigour of the language, and the flexibility which makes it fit for all the various purposes of hterary narrative ; while at the same time they have discovered such discrepancies between the writer's account of himself and his book, and ascer- tained facts, as have made them conclude that the Sir John Mandeville who is credited with so many adventures is an altogether fictitious person. ^ We will, however, take the knight's account of himself as it stands, and make some examination of his book before we proceed to the destructive criticism which, in the nineteenth century, laid low the famous figure that for four hundred and fifty years had been familiar not to England only, but to all Europe. The first book of the Travels was sent out from Liege toward the end of the fourteenth century. The author states that his name is Jehan de Mandeville, that he is an English knight, bom at St. Albans, that he crossed the sea on Michaelmas Day 1322, and started on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. 93 ENGLISH LITERATURE ;l His travels were extended far beyond their original goal, and he claims to have visited every part of the known world. In 1343 he turned homeward, and on his way was attacked by arthritic gout, which forced him to remain for some time at ] lyiege. He was attended by ' Dr. John,' a physician whom he j had previously met at Cairo, and it was at the physician's ; suggestion that Sir John Mandeville, to beguile the tedium of ; his illness, wrote a book describing his travels. The book was i finished in 1357. \ To this account must be added the story of the claim made ] by a famous physician of I^i^ge who died in 1372. He was j known as " Jean de Bourgogne dit k la Barbe." On his death- ] bed he stated that he was an Englishman, and that his real name \ was " Messire Jean de Mandeville, Chevalier Comte de Montfort ^ en Angleterre, et Seigneur de I'isle de Campdi et du Chateau i Perouse." He had left his country in consequence of having ; killed " a Count or Karl," and had undertaken a long pil- grimage ; this being finished he had settled down at lyi^ge in '■ 1343. ^ ; So much for Sir John Mandeville. As for his book it claims ] to be a guide for pilgrims to Jerusalem, and describes all j possible routes by which the Holy City may be reached from j Europe. It is written in simple, straightforward narrative ' style, and it goes on smoothly and easily from point to point. \ There is no striving after effect, no apparent desire to be i instructive, improving or striking ; the writer aims only at • being entertaining. Yet there is no flippancy and little con- , scions humour. In quiet, dignified fashion Sir John tells of ; things that interested him and that he believes will interest his i readers. ^ The book is crammed with stories of every kind, and frag- ; ments of every species of learning. There are legends of | saints. Scripture narratives, tales of dragons and enchanters, of fabulous beasts and haunted solitudes ; there are scraps of ' natural history, of geology, of botany, of classical learning, of . history, of medicine. Each place that he visited had its marvel \ or its legend./ At Jaffa, which is " one of the oldest towns in j 94 Sir John Mandeville From a MS. of the XVth century in the British Museum 94 Ip^ SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE the world, founded before Noah's flood," Sir John saw marks in the rock " there as the iron chains were fastened that Andromeda, a great giant, was bounden with, and put in prison before Noah's flood, of the which giant is a rib of his side that is forty feet long." In Armenia he heard of the " sparrow- hawk upon a perch, right fair and right well-made, and a fair lady of faerie that keepeth it." Whoever will watch this sparrow-hawk seven days and seven nights, without sleep, his wish, whatever it may be, will be granted him. This, Sir John gravely tells us, he knows to be the truth, for many people have so obtained their desire, and he proceeds to give instances. In Ethiopia he saw folk " that have but one foot, and they go so fast that it is a marvel, and the foot is so large that it shadoweth all the body against the sun when they will lie and rest them." He saw also men with no heads, whose eyes were in their shoulders ; men whose faces were flat and featureless, with small round holes for their eyes and mouth ; men with underlips so large that they could lie in the sun and draw them over their faces ; men who had ears that hung down to their feet, men who had hoofs, like horses. Marvellous trees, too, he found during his travels — trees that bore apples of Paradise, marked with a cross, and others that bore apples of Adam, which had a bite out of the side ; trees that bore " very short gourds which, when ripe, men open and find a little beast with flesh and blood and bone, Hke a little lamb." He tells us of the " field of seven wells " which Christ made with his feet when he went to play there with other children ; of the field Floridus, near Bethlehem, which is full of roses, for there a fair maid, who had been wrongfully accused, was taken to be burnt, but when she was brought to the fire, it immediately went out, and the burning brands turned to red rose-trees, those that were unkindled to white, " and these were the first rose-trees, and roses, both white and red, that ever any man saw " ; of the garden of Gethsemane, where Christ suffered, and " the Jews made him a crown of the branches of albespine, that is white thorn, and set it on his head, so fast and so sore, that the blood ran down by many places of His visage, and of 95 ENGLISH LITERATURE His neck, and of His shoulders. And therefore hath the white- thorn many virtues, for he that beareth a branch on him thereof, no thunder ne no manner of tempest may dere (hurt) him ; nor in the house that it is in, may no evil ghost enter nor come unto the place that it is in." He tells of the wonderful regions of the great rulers Pr ester John and the Great Cham, of the fountain of youth, the earthly paradise, the valley of devils, the loadstone mountains. Neither does he neglect the smaller details of the people's everyday life ; in Tartary, we are told, " they have no napery ne towels, but if it be before great lords : but the common people hath none " ; they do not wash their dishes, eat but once a day, and " live full wretchedly." In Cairo " there is a common house that is full of small furnaces, and thither bring women of the town their eyren [eggs] of hens, of geese, and of ducks for to be put into those furnaces. And at the end of three weeks or a month they come again and take their chickens and nourish them and bring them forth, so that all the country is full of them." We can imagine with what delight our ancestors received this book, which was put into their hands during the closing years of the fourteenth century. " Ye shall understand," says its author, " that I have put this book out of I^atin into French, and translated it again out of French into English, that every man of my nation may understand it." This statement, however, like most of those that the author has made concern- ing himself and his book, has been proved to be incorrect. In- ternal evidence shows that the French version was written first ; the Latin versions are evidently translations from a French original. But it is true that manuscripts in I^atin, French and English were circulated during the last years of the fourteenth century, and these were commonly believed to be the work of Mandeville himself. The work became immensely popular, both in England and on the Continent. There are at the present time three hundred manuscripts in existence, showing how very great was the demand for copies. But the learning of modern scholars has proved the undoing of Sir John Mandeville. Gradually, the works which were 96 \ Pilgrims Setting Out From a MS. of the XVth century in the British Museum The principal figure (hailing vessel) is probably Sir John Mandeville 96 SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE ^pen to a mediaeval reader — not only great and famous books, but also those of less note — became familiar to critics of a later generation. Curious similarities began to be noticed between the adventures of Sir John and the adventures of earlier travellers. Stories contained in books written several centuries before his time were found to be identical with some of his most famous passages. These things went beyond the limits to which coincidence could extend — here was a clear case of wholesale borrowing. The clue once gained was keenly followed up, with the result that the Voiage and Travaile was proved to be simply a compilation from books of all kinds and all dates. Chief among the sources thus recognized are the account of the First Crusade by Albert of Aix, written in the early part of the eleventh century, the itinerary of William of Boldensele, 1336, and various pilgrims' books belonging to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. For his pygmies and giants the compiler has evidently gone to classical sources, for his science to Pliny. Scraps have been taken from all possible works of reference, classical and mediaeval. Nor has this un- scrupulous pilferer been particular as to the use made of his spoils. A note concerning Britain in Caesar's Commentaries has been applied to Ceylon, and statements relating to a con- dition of things that existed three hundred years before have been boldly brought up to date. Yet, on the whole, the skill with which the compilation has been made is wonderful. The accumulation of material is so cleverly welded together that the reader has no suspicion that the book is not a naturally developed and organic whole. >^The question remains as to who really was the author or compiler of the book. The answer must come mainly from the internal evidence the work affords. He was not an Englishman, for he shows no acquaintance with the manners, customs, or physical features of any part of England, while of some matters with which an Enghshman would naturally be familiar — such as the English measurements of distance — he is obviously ignorant. He never visited the places he described, for his narrative when closely examined displays G 97 ENGLISH LITERATURE such discrepancies as are quite incompatible with first-hand knowledge. He was a man of education, of wonderfully wide and varied reading, and possessed of a marvellous memory. He was quite free from boastfulness and egotism ; he has told us nothing about himself, his appearance, or his prowess. He wrote like a gentleman, with a simple dignity of manner and an entire freedom from coarseness or meanness of thought. This is all that we can say about him, except that he probably lived at lyiege, whence the book was sent out some time before 1371. The disappearance of " Sir John Mandeville, Knight," has not, however, affected the value of the Voiage and Travaile, and this, though it has lost some of the fascination that it had for earlier readers, has still a characteristic interest and charm. ^ 98 The Renaissance Period THE last years of the fourteenth century seemed to promise that a great period of Hterary activity was at hand. After the death of Chaucer, however, the signs that had been so hopeful gradually died away. No great poet arose to take his place, and his imitators wrote without inspiration. The old sources of stimulus — religion and romance — worked languidly and ineffectively. In all our literary history there is no period so unproductive as the fifteenth century. This unproductiveness is partly due to the long and wasting wars that absorbed the energies of the people. But it is doubtful whether, even under the most favourable circumstances, the spirit that then animated our literature would have been able of itself to produce any very vigorous results. Some impulse from outside was necessary to impart to it new life and energy. The impulse came through that great awakening movement which during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries stirred the whole of Europe. It is impossible to give any exact account of the causes to which the movement was due. The nations of Europe had reached such a spiritual and mental condition as made them ready for change. They had outgrown the teaching that the Middle Ages could give ; mediaeval ideals no longer awoke their enthusiasm ; they were waiting for new teaching and new ideals. Just at this stage a series of events took place that transformed man's conception of the natural world. Copernicus showed our earth to be a minute portion of a vast universe. Columbus and his fellows opened out upon I the earth itself vast and undreamt-of regions for enterprise and adventure. The mighty literature of the ancient Greeks re- vealed new spiritual and intellectual regions, even more vast, 99 ENGLISH LITERATURE I Men responded eagerly to the stimulus given them, and the j tremendous activity that marked the Renaissance period was i the result. j V In the revival of letters Italy led the way, and her progress \ was immensely quickened by the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453. The company of scholars assembled i there fled, carrying with them the precious manuscripts of 1 ancient Greece which had been treasured in the great library j of the Eastern capital. Many of these scholars came to Italy, j and introduced Greek learning there. Famous schools arose^ ' and students from all parts of Europe gathered at these centres, t The cities of northern Italy were specially noted. Thither ' went English students eager for this hitherto unattainable ! learning. They brought back to their own country a know- ledge of Greek literature, and all the wonderful new ideas that 1 such knowledge had given them. So began the Renaissance i in England. j But its progress was slow. The small band of scholars — ^Thomas More, Colet, Grocyn, lyinacre, and a few others — who had received an inspiration from Italy, relied upon \ learning and culture gradually making their way in the | country and transforming national life. They lectured and ; taught at the Universities, and set themselves to establish ' schools and centres of learning in different parts of the country. 1 lyiterature soon showed signs of the new spirit that was at j work. Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey brought ' from Italy the new Italian verse forms, and English poetry | 5 entered upon a fresh stage of development. Sir Thomas 1 jMore's Utopia is representative of this period — of its noble, ] yet sober ideals, its delight in ctdture, its vision of a | commonwealth that gave ample time and opportunities for self -improvement. i But before this teaching had taken any hold upon the country, a new development of the Renaissance spirit overthrew it : almost completely. The religious ideals of the Continental reformers reached England, and were taken up with the 1 strongest enthusiasm. To More and his friends the work of 100 j • - . • / THE RENAISSANCE PERIOD Luther was hateful. They recognized the abuses of the Church, and worked heart and soul for their removal, but they wished for a quiet and gradual reform, not a violent overturning of established order. They foresaw that in the struggle that must result, the learning they loved would be destroyed, and the country would sink again into intellectual torpor. More suffered death upon the scaffold for his opposition to the new rehgion, and for a time it seemed as if the New Ivcarning in England had come to an untimely end. One book, and that a great one, the Protestant Reformation gave us — ^Tindale's translation of the Bible. The value and influence of this — speaking only from the literary standpoint — can hardly be over-estimated. " It gives to the poor and the unlearned opportunities of the truest culture ; it forbids the veriest hind who never left his village, to be ignorant of the existence of other countries and other civilizations, and of a great past stretching back to the furthest limits of the oldest civilizations of the world." ^ For nearly thirty years the religious strife continued, and absorbed the energies of the nation. Then came the reign of BHzabeth, when a strong settled government was established, and men had time to look around them and think of other things besides their own personal safety. It needed but little to revive the flame that Colet and More and their friends had kindled. From Italy, where all this time the great movement had been going on, came fresh inspiration, and England began once more to attempt literary production. For the first twenty years of Elizabeth's reign the efforts made were chiefly experimental and imitative. The publication of Spenser's Shepheard's Calendar in 1579 marks the opening of the great period of original production. Its progress may be traced through the great books that, as the years went on, made the reign glorious. One other outstanding feature of the Renaissance age must be mentioned — the invention of printing. Without this in- vention the literary treasures which the age produced would have been known only to a comparatively small section of those 1 Huxley. lOI :'.;;.4:;:'ENGLISH LITERATURE who were prepared 'c6 receive and delight in them. There is , perhaps no event in the history of the world which has had i more important and far-reaching consequences. It is im- i possible to say with certainty with whom the idea of printing i originated. Since the earliest years of the fifteenth century | workers in various parts of Europe had been striving to put into practical form the idea which had either been conceived ; independently by each, or had been gained from some master \ mind, and eagerly passed on from one to another. Progress I was slow and halting. Mechanical difficulties had to be over- ] come, and defects remedied after careful trial. At last, about \ the middle of the century, a book — the Mazarine Bible — was ] printed by John Gutenburg at Mainz, and soon other works I followed. After this the knowledge of the art spread rapidly, i and many improvements in the mechanism of the first rough ! printing presses were made. In 1476 William Caxton, a native / of Kent, who had learnt the new art at Cologne, set up his print- ^ ing press in the Almonry, Westminster. The first book issued : from this press was The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers, j and others followed in quick succession. The works of Chaucer, j Ivydgate, and Mandeville were among the earliest of these ; j later came The Golden Legend or Lives of the Saints, Msop*s \ Fables, Le Morte d' Arthur,'^ and part of Virgil's Mneid. Books j for which there was a large demand, such as psalters, : missals, works on etiquette and cookery were produced in i large numbers. Caxton made many improvements in the machinery with which he worked, and in the methods employed. | After his death in 149 1, his work was continued by his assistant, Wynkyn de Worde. ! 1 I haue after the fymple connynge that god hath fente to me vnder the j f auour and correflyon of al noble lordes and gentylmen enpryfed to enprynte • a book of the noble hyftoryes of the fayd Kynge Arthur and of certeyn of 1 his knyghtes after a copye vnto me delyuered whyche copye Syr Thomas ^ Malorye dyd take oute of certeyn bookes of frenfflie and reduced it in to { Englifflie. — From Caxton 's Preface to Le Morte Darthur. \ 102 CHAPTER XII UTOPIA THE first book that the Renaissance gave to England was the Utopia of Sir Thomas More. It is a book of ideals — ideals of statecraft, of political and social order, of religion, of education, of home life, of dress — of all things, that is to say, that go to make up a perfect state. In its general plan the book is not original ; it belongs to a class of which examples can be found in ancient as well as in modern literature. Plato and St. Augustine before Sir Thomas More, and Bacon, Harrington, I^ytton, and Mr. H. G. Wells since his time, are among those who have attempted to give us their ideal of a perfect State. In each case the nature of the dream country is decided, first, by the actual existing state of things in the world around him, and secondly, by the writer's own tastes and disposition. He starts from what he knows, and the shortcomings of the actual suggest the perfection of the ideal. The special interest which attaches to Sir Thomas More's Utopia is due to the exceptional nature of these two factors in its making. It was produced at one of the most momen- tous and wonderful epochs in the history of Europe, when great forces were at work, transforming both life and litera- ture ; and it was written by a man who was broadly typical of the little group of Englishmen that first received the inspiration of the Renaissance ; who was both courtier and scholar, and who, moreover, possessed those rare personal qualities that are necessary to give any literary work an intimate and individual charm. During the Middle Ages there had been little or no literature 103 ENGLISH LITERATURE of the type of the Utopia. The Vision of Piers Plowman perhaps comes nearest to it ; but Langland would have scorned what he would have considered the altogether material ideal of Sir Thomas More. The whole teaching of the time discouraged men from looking for any great joy in this world, except through the medium of religion. They were taught to fix their thoughts upon the world to come, to make that the object of all their aspirations, and all their dreams; to picture an ideal state on earth was almost impious. But with the Renaissance came a different spirit — the spirit of the ancient Greeks. The Greeks had loved beauty — natural, physical, and moral — and the men of Europe learned to love beauty too. They learned to delight in all that pleased the senses and satisfied the emotions. They learned that this life was not to be regarded merely as a passage to the next, but as something which might be, in itself, good and lovely ; that it must be lived beautifully, as well as worthily, with the strenuous exercise of all the powers of body, mind and spirit. This sense of the dignity and worth of human life is to be seen in every page of the Utopia. The book does not disdain the smallest and most prosaic details which can add to the daily happiness of the ordinary man. Yet Utopia has some qualities which show that the spirit of ^ its author was not entirely at one with the spirit of the age. Of the turbulence of the Renaissance, its restless energy, its impatience of restraint, its spirit of root-and-branch reform, there is no trace. It is true that these qualities were not so noticeable in the early stages of the movement as they were when it had reached its fullest development in the glorious days of Elizabeth. But they were gathering the strength which was, later, to overwhelm More and men like-minded with himself. For More, though he was a reformer, was no revolutionary. He loved order, peace, seemliness ; he hated any kind of confusion, strife, or squalor. He loved the graces of life, he loved mirth and laughter and music ; yet he had the temper of the ascetic, and in his early days had seriously purposed 104 UTOPIA entering the monastery of the Carthusians. " Young Master More " he was called at Oxford, and he kept the name for many years, a tribute to the perpetual youth which seemed to abide with him. " When," said Erasmus, who first met More during his college days, " did Nature mould a character more gentle, endearing and happy than Thomas More's. . . . All things of this world amuse him, even the most serious With men of learning he is ravished by their wisdom, with fools he is delighted at their folly. . . . From childhood he had such a love for witty jests, that he seemed to have been sent into the world for the sole purpose of making them." An extract from the Life of Sir Thomas More, by his son-in- law, William Roper, shows the other side of his character. " And albeit he appeared honourably outwardly, and like one of his calling, yet inwardly he no such vanities esteeming, secretly next his body wore a shirt of hair. . . . He used also some- times to punish his body with whips, the cords knotted, which was known only to my wife, his eldest daughter, whom for her secrecy above all other he specially trusted, caused her, as need required, to wash the same shirt of hair." It has been said that Sir Thomas More realized his dream of Utopia, on a small scale, in his own home. Here he ruled over a busy, peaceful, happy little community, to each member of which he seemed to give something of his own loving and mirthful spirit. When, in 1507, he married his first wife, Jane Colt, of New Hall, Essex, he lived in Bucklersbury ; later he built a house at Chelsea, where he spent the rest of his life. In 15 14 his wife died, leaving him with three daughters — ^Margaret, Elizabeth, and Cicely — and one son, John. " A few months after his wife's death," Erasmus tells us, *' he married a widow (Alice Middleton), who might take care of his children (the eldest, Margaret, was barely five). She was neither young nor fair, as he would say laughingly, but an active and vigilant housewife, with whom he lived as pleasantly and sweetly as if she had all the charms of youth. You will scarcely find a husband who, by authority or severity, has gained such ready compliance as More by pla3'^ful flattery. What, indeed, would los ENGLISH LITERATURE he not obtain, when he has prevailed on a woman already getting old, and by no means of a pliable disposition and intent on domestic affairs, to learn to play the harp, the lute, the monochord and the flute, and, by the appointment of her husband, to devote to this task a fixed time every day." The house at Chelsea was a modest, unimposing building, with a pleasant garden leading down to the river. It was situated close to the place where the statue of Thomas Carlyle now stands. Inside, it was comfortable, even beautiful, and the mode of living, though there was no display, was dignified and liberal. The most generous hospitality was practised. More was not a rich man, but he was a great and successful lawyer, who had built up for himself a lucrative private practice. I^ater, though much against his will, he occupied high offices in the State. *' He tried as hard," his son-in-law tells us, " to keep out of Court as most men try to get into it." King Henry delighted in his company, and would have him always within call. " When Sir Thomas More perceived so much in his talk to dehght, that he could not once in a month get leave to go home to his wife and children (whose company he most desired) and to be absent from the Court two days together, but that he should be thither sent for again, he, much misliking this restraint of liberty, began thereupon somewhat to dissemble his nature, and so by little and little from his former mirth to disuse himself so that he was of them from thenceforth no more so ordinarily sent for." Only by this means could More find time to " commune with his wife, chat with his children, and talk with his servants " ; which things, he says, he " reckons and accounts among business, for as much as they must of necessity be done, unless a man will be a stranger in his own house." *' In that house," wrote Erasmus, " you will find no one idle, no one busied in feminine trifles. Titus lyivius is in their hands. They have advanced so far that they can read such authors and understand them without a translation, unless there occurs some such word as would perhaps perplex myself. His wife, who excels in good sense and experience rather than io6 UTOPIA in learning, governs the little company with wonderful tact, assigning to each a task, and requiring its performance. His whole house breathes happiness, and no one enters it who is not the better for the visit." Many visitors came to the pleasant house by the riverside, among them men whose names stand highest among the scholars of the day. There was the gentle Dean Colet, full of enthusiasm for the new school he had lately established at St. Paul's. The children of the house gathered round him to hear stories of the boys who were being brought up at this school under the rule of kindness with which the Dean had replaced the harsh almost barbarous methods common in that age. Such a system was strange to most of the men and women of the day, but it was not strange to the children of Sir Thomas More. The only birch in the house at Chelsea was * a bundle of peacock's feathers,' and for every stripe their father had given them, they had received from him * a hundred kisses.* He and the good Dean were at one in their ideas concerning the bringing-up of children. William Lilly, the grammarian, first head master of the St. Paul's School, came too, and lyinacre, the King's physician, and Grocyn, the great Oxford teacher. All these had been friends of Sir Thomas More since his boyish days. Erasmus, the great Greek scholar, each time he came to England, spent many weeks with the friend he had known and loved so well at Oxford. " Erasmus, my darling," More calls him in his letters, and Erasmus does not come behind in expressions of affection, " If he bade me to dance on the tight-rope I should obey without a murmur." It is to Erasmus that we owe a great part of our knowledge of the Chelsea household. The children wrote to him in Latin, telling him all about the birds, monkeys, foxes, ferrets, weasels, and other animals that they kept in the house as pets ; about the lessons they had from their tutor, or, best of all, from their adored father, who loved to teach them when he could spare the time from his other duties ; about the fool, Henry Paterson, their father's humble and devoted servant, whose jokes sometimes amused and some- 107 ENGLISH LITERATURE times vexed them ; and all the little matters that made up their busy, happy lives. It is said that Holbein, the great Dutch painter, spent a long period at More's house when he was driven out of Switzerland, and that it is to this visit we owe the portrait group which has made us familiar with the outward appearance of the members of the household. Especially valuable is the present- ment it gives of More himself. " The keen, irregular face, the grey, restless eye, the thin mobile lips, the tumbled brown hair, the careless gait and dress, as they remain stamped on the canvas of Holbein, picture the inner soul of the man, his vivacity, his restless, all-devouring intellect, his keen and even reckless wit, the kindly, half-sad humour that drew its strange veil of laughter and tears over the deep, tender reverence of the soul within." lyast in this list of visitors comes King Henry VIII himself. " For the pleasure he took in his company, would his Grace suddenly sometimes come home to his house at Chelsea to be merry with him, whither on a time unlooked for he came to dinner, and after dinner in a fair garden of his, walked with him by the space of an hour, holding his arm about his neck." As time went on the little society in the house at Chelsea in- creased in numbers. " There he lives," wrote Erasmus, in a letter of a later date than that already quoted, " surrounded by his numerous family, including his wife, his son and his son's wife, his three daughters and their husbands, with eleven grandchildren. There is not any man living so affec- tionate to his children as he, and he loveth his old wife as if she were a girl of fifteen. Such is the excellence of his disposi- tion that whatever happeneth that could not be helped, he is as cheerful and as well pleased as though the best thing possible had been done. In More's house you would say that Plato's academy was revived again, only whereas in the academy the discussion turned upon geometry and the power of numbers, the house at Chelsea is a veritable school of Christian religion. In it is none, man or woman, but readeth or studieth the liberal arts, yet is their chief care piety. There is never any 1 08 UTOPIA seen idle ; the head of the house governs it, not by a lofty carriage and oft rebukes, but by gentleness and amiable manners. Every member is busy in his place performing his duty with alacrity, nor is sober mirth wanting." Such was the small kingdom of Utopia which Sir Thomas More established on the banks of the Thames. But he was a statesman and a patriot as well as a loving father and a faith- ful friend. He looked outside the walls of his home, and saw the ills under which his country was suffering. He longed for the time when men should cease to be swayed by their passions, when the weaker should no longer be pitilessly trodden under foot in the greedy rush for the riches which, after all, could not give happiness. He was an ardent disciple of the New Learning, a fervent behever in the innate dignity and worth of man's nature if only it were allowed to develop itself as God intended. Reason, culture, gentleness, persuasion, toleration of other men's opinions and moderation in pushing one's own — these were the means, as he beheved, by which the new Golden Age was to be brought to the earth. It was because he held these opinions that he so bitterly opposed the violence of the Protestant reforming party, who, he thought were destroying all the work that Colet and his friends had done, by introducing strife and dissension into religion, and bringing men's minds into a new bondage when they had with pains escaped from the old. Had Sir Thomas More lived in the days of Elizabeth, we can imagine with what delight he would have listened to the stories of the voyagers about the new lands over the sea, and how his zeal for colonizing would have outrun that of Raleigh himself. In a new land he would have been able to give practical expression to the ideas and theories that he had thought over for so many years. He might have been the founder of a stable, flourishing colony ; but then he would probably never have written the Utopia, to be the dehght and inspiration of the generations which followed him. The way in which he came to write the book was, as he tells it, thus : " The most victorious and triumphant King of 109 ENGLISH LITERATURE England, Henry the Eighth of that name, . . . had of late in controversy with Charles, the right high and mighty King of Castile, weighty matters and of great importance. For the debatement and final determination whereof, the King's Majesty sent me ambassador into Flanders. . . . Whiles I was there abiding " (at Antwerp) " did visit me one Peter Giles, a man there in his country of honest reputation. . . . Upon a certain day when I had heard the divine service in our I^ady's Church, . . . and was ready to go home to my lodging, I chanced to espy this aforesaid Peter talking with a certain stranger, a man well stricken in age, with a black sunburned face, a long beard, and a cloak cast homely about his shoulders, whom by his favour and apparel, forthwith I judged to be a mariner." This man Peter Giles introduced as Ralph Hyth- loday, a learned man, who had voyaged in the western seas, and had seen many strange lands. The three adjourned to More's lodging, and there, in the garden " upon a bench covered with green turf " they sat down talking together. The stranger willingly answered the questions of the other two concerning his travels. " But as for monsters," says Sir Thomas More, with an obvious reference to Sir John Mandeville's Travels, and similar books, " because they be no news, of them we were nothing inquisitive. For nothing is more easy to be found then be barking Scyllas, ravening Celenos, and I^oestrygonians devourers of people, and such like great and incredible monsters. But to find Citizens ruled by good and wholesome laws, that is an exceeding rare and hard thing." Such a state Hythloday had seen in the island of Utopia. The description of this island, and of its chief city, Amaurote, shows that More had in his mind all the time he was writing his own well-known and dearly loved lyOndon. But when we come to his description of the streets of Utopia, " very commodious and handsome " and twenty feet broad, where stand *' fair and gorgeous houses " with large gardens and vineyards, and " all manner of fruit, herbs and flowers," it is clear that he is no longer drawing a picture of the actual lyondon of his time. There were, it is true, a few " fair and no Sir Thomas More After Holbein Photo. W. A. Hansen ft Co. m UTOPIA gorgeous houses " belonging to noblemen, built along the Strand and in the other chief thoroughfares ; but for the most part I^ondon was made up of " divers small alleys " separated by ditches into which " much filth " was thrown, and " both sides built up with small tenements." In Holland More may have seen the broad streets and well-built houses which he transferred to his Utopia, but not in his own country. In Utopia there are fifty-four " large and fair cities " built after this fashion, each being at least twenty-four miles distant from the next. In the country districts are farms, at each of which forty persons, men and women, with two bondmen, live. " Out of every one of these families or farms cometh every year, into the city twenty persons, which have con- tinued two years before in the country. In their place so many fresh be sent thither out of the city, who, of them that have been there a year already, and be therefore expert and cunning in husbandry, shall be instructed and taught. And they the next year shall teach other." The Utopians are governed by magistrates elected by the people, and these magistrates elect the prince. " The prince's office continueth all his hfetime, unless he be deposed or put down for suspicion of tyranny." The day is so divided that all may have a due share of labour and of rest. " For they dividing the day and the night into twenty-four just hours, appoint and assign only six of these hours to work before noon, upon the which they go straight to dinner ; and after dinner when they have rested two hours, then they work three hours and upon that they go to supper. About eight of the clock in the evening, they go to bed : eight hours they give to sleep. All the void time that is between the hours of work, sleep and meat, that they be suffered to bestow, every man as he liketh best himself." " For their garments which throughout all the island be of one fashion (saving that there is a difference between the man's garment and the woman's, betw^een the married and the un- married) and this one continueth for evermore unchanged, seemly and comely to the eye, no let to the moving and wielding of the body, also fit both for winter and summer : as for these III ENGLISH LITERATURE j garments (I say) every family maketh their own." " But now j again to the conversation of the citizens among themselves. ; The eldest ruleth the family. The wives be ministers to their i husbands, the children to their parents, and to be short the ; younger to their elders. Every city is divided into four equal ' parts, or quarters. In the midst of every quarter there is a market place of all manner of things. Thither the works of ' every family be brought into certain houses. And every kind \ of thing is laid up several in barns or store houses. From i thence the father of every family fetcheth whatsoever he and ' his have need of, and carrieth it away with him without money, ; without exchange, without gage, pawn or pledge. For why should anything be denied unto him ? Seeing there is j abundance of all things, and that it is not to be feared lest j any man will ask more than he needeth." And, to conclude j this slight sketch of the Utopians and their ways : " They ; define virtue to be life ordered according to nature, and that ■ we be hereunto ordained by God." The manuscript of the Utopia was passed about among : More's friends, and received great praise. In 15 16 it was j printed, and thus reached a wider circle, and gained increased I popularity. It is said that some readers were so struck by the i real and lifeHke touches that More gave to his narrative that \ they could not believe his land of * Nowhere ' to be wholly 1 imaginary, and talked seriously of chartering ships and sending i out missionaries to convert the people to their own religious | views. 1 While More was writing his Utopia the storm that was to ^ destroy him was gathering. In 15 17 came I^uther's open ^ defiance of the Pope, and soon the strife between Protestant j and Catholic was raging fiercely throughout Northern Europe. : In England, it bore down as the lovers of the New I^earning had i foreseen that it would do, all interest in intellectual pursuits. \ More quickly became involved in the struggle. He held stead- \ f astly to the religious principles that had guided all his previous life, and in 1535, for his refusal to acknowledge the Act of ] Supremacy, he suffered death upon the scaffold. \ 112 ^ \W UTOPIA No English version of the Utopia was pubHshed during More's lifetime. In 15 51 appeared " A fruitful and pleasaunte worke of the beste state of a publyke weale, and of the newe yle called Utopia : written in I^atine by Syr Thomas More knyght, and translated into Englyshe by Ralphe Robynson Citiyein and Goldsmythe of I^ondon, at the procurement, and earnest request of George Tadlowe Citiyein and Haberdassher of the same Citie." This translation, written as it is in the language of More's own day, has held the first place against several others of a later date, and from it the quotations given in this chapter are taken. 113 \ CHAPTER XIII TINDALE'S BIBLE WHEN Henry VIII came to the throne in 1509 a hundred and twenty-five years had passed since the death of Wiclif, and I^ollardry had apparently long ago been crushed. Yet it had never really died out. In each generation it had numbered its scanty band of followers, whose desire for a purer form of religion had been strong enough to make them brave the penalties for heresy which the bishops rigorously enforced. Among this Httle company was William Tindale, who at the time of which we are speaking, was a student at the University of Oxford. From here, in 1515, he passed to Cambridge, where the memory of the great scholar Erasmus, and of his Greek lectures, was still fresh in all men's minds. Tindale, we know, read and enjoyed Erasmus' books, and doubtless gained from them some of the inspiration which urged him toward his great work. Erasmus, like Sir Thomas More, strongly disap- proved of the measures taken by the more violent of the Protestant reformers, who, in a few years were to set Europe in turmoil ; but he heartily sympathized with those who were working at the translation of the Scriptures. *' I totally dissent," he says, '* from those who are unwilling that the sacred Scriptures translated into the vulgar tongue should be read by private individuals. The mysteries of kings it were perhaps better to conceal, but Christ wishes his mysteries to be published as widely as possible. I would wish even all women to read the Gospel and St. Paul's Epistles, and I wish they were translated into all languages of all people, that they might be read and known, not merely by the Scotch and 114 P TINDALE'S BIBLE Irish, but even by the Turks and Saracens. I wish that the husbandman would sing parts of them at his plough, that the weaver may warble them at his shuttle, that the traveller may with their narratives beguile the weariness of the way." It is impossible not to recognize the influence of these words in Tindale's own memorable utterance concerning his transla- tion of the Bible. " If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause the boy that driveth the plow to know more of the Scriptures than you (a theologian) do." To this purpose he devoted his life, and the great learning and skill in languages which he had industriously acquired. When he left the University he settled down to work in his native county of Gloucestershire, but here he met with many hindrances and much opposition from the unlearned clergy around. He resolved to come to London, and applied to the Bishop of London, whom Erasmus " praiseth exceedingly for his great learning," for a place in his household. But the Bishop, after much delay, answered that " his house was full, he had more than he could well find." " And so," says Tindale, " in London I abode almost one year, . . . and understood at the last not only that there was no room in my Lord of London's palace to translate the New Testament, but also that there was no place to do it in all England." In May 1524 Tindale left England, to suffer during long years, " poverty, exile, bitter absence from friends, hunger and thirst and cold, great dangers and innumerable other hard and sharp fightings." He went first to Wittenberg, then the Holy City of the reformers, for there Luther had struck the first blow for Protestant truth. Then he settled at Hamburg, where he proceeded rapidly with his translation. Some help perhaps he gained from the Wicliifite versions, but his main dependence was upon the original Greek text, as edited by Erasmus. Soon the Gospels and Epistles were ready for the printer, and Tindale went on to Cologne, where the printing was begun. Sympathizers gathered round him, followers of Luther, and scholars from Cambridge. A busy little company was engaged in the great work of preparing and printing the IIS ENGLISH LITERATURE New Testament, as well as various tracts by Wiclif and lyUther. Quietly as they proceeded, the attention of neighbouring Catholics was attracted towards them, and one of these ob- tained an order from the Senate of Cologne, forbidding the printing of heretical works. Tindale and his friends escaped to Worms, taking the precious sheets with them, and again the work went on, until at last, by the end of 1525 the New Testament was finished. Many copies were smuggled over to England, and were spread through the country by the help of the rapidly growing body of Protestants there. In 1526 the King was warned of what was being done, and the strictest precautions were taken against the introduction of any more copies. But in spite of this, the work went on " The Council threatened, the bishops anathematized. They opened subscriptions to buy up the hated and dreaded volumes. They burnt them pubHcly in St. Paul's. The whip, the gaol, the stake did their worst ; and their worst was nothing." Tindale' s courage and resolution remained unshaken. " In burning the New Testament they did none other thing than that I looked for ; no more shall they do if they burn me also, if it be God's will it shall be so." Sir Thomas More was one of the foremost in denouncing the work. It was, he said, ignorant, dishonest and heretical — so far did prejudice in- fluence the judgment of a man usually as fair-minded as he was learned, and who admitted that Tindale *' before he fell into his I^utheran frenzies was full prettily learned." Sy 1530, six editions, making probably fifteen thousand copies, had been distributed. Of the first edition only a fragment of one copy remains, and that was discovered accidentally in 1836, when a lyondon bookseller found the first twenty chapters of St. Matthew's Gospel bound up with a tract. Of the second edition we have one copy ; of the others two or three. In 1527 Tindale retired to Marburg, and entered with fervour into the religious controversies of the day. But this did not hinder him from proceeding with his great work. In 1530 his translation of the Pentateuch, from the original 116 \ Hebrew, was printed at Marburg. The only perfect copy of this edition is in the British Museum. In 153 1 Tindale was at Antwerp, and here he translated Joshua, Kings, and Chronicles, During these years his life was in constant danger. The English king had demanded his surrender, and he had many bitter private enemies who were waiting for an opportunity to betray him. The sword hung above his head, and in calmness he waited for it to fall. Each day brought the stroke nearer, and each day found him serenely at work, with such complete detachment from personal fears as witnessed to his large and lofty courage. In 1535 the sword fell. Tindale was living at the house of an English merchant in Antwerp, and while there he was com- paratively safe. But one of those who had long been plotting his destruction — a fanatical Papist, to whom his works were as the works of Antichrist — managed to decoy him outside the boundaries of the town, and deliver him into the hands of the Emperor's agents. He was imprisoned in the castle of Velvorde. His friends did ever3rthing that could be done to help him, but without avail. He was charged with heresy, tried, condemned, and sentenced to death. On October 6 the sentence was carried out. Tindale was strangled, and his body burnt at the stake. The life that had been so wholly devoted to the service of God and man was at an end. Before Tindale's death things had changed in England. The Reformation had become an accomplished fact, and in 1533 a decree was issued that the Bible should be published in the native tongue. Miles Cover dale, a friend of Cranmer's, was employed to collect and revise the translations of Tindale, and the Bible which he edited appeared in 1535, " Set forth with the Kynge's most gracious license." So Tindale's life-work was accomplished, and the Bible which was the gift he gave to his countrymen, and paid for with his own life, was brought, as he had dreamed that it should be, within the reach of the humblest Enghshman. The tre- mendous influence which his translation has had upon the country is seen both in the history of the nation and the history 117 ENGLISH LITERATURE of its literature. Early in the seventeenth century came the revision which gave us our Authorized Version. But this is substantially the version of Tindale, with a few modifications and corrections, such as he himself had foreseen might be necessary. " The peculiar genius, if such a word may be per- mitted,'' says Mr. Froude, " that breathes through it [the Authorized Version] — the mingled tenderness and majesty — the Saxon simplicity — the preternatural grandeur — unequalled, unapproached in the attempted improvements of modern scholars — all are here, and bear the impress of the mind of one man — ^WilHam Tindale." It is not necessary to give here any extracts from Tindale's translation. Its words are familiar to every one throughout the land. The man who in his humility described himself as " evil-favoured in this world, and without grace in the sight of men, speechless and rude, dull and slow-witted," has been I during three hundred and fifty years honoured by his country- I men for his part in giving them the Book which is at once the I purest version of the truths of their religion and their greatest I English classic. Ii8 CHAPTER XIV EUPHUES: THE ANATOMIE OF WIT IT is, in spite of occasional tediousness and pedantry, as brave, righteous, and pious a book as a man need look into; and I wish for no better proof of the nobleness and virtue of the Elizabethan age than the fact that Euphues and the Arcadia were the two popular romances of the day. . . . Let those who have not read Euphues believe that if they could train a son after the pattern of his Ephoebus to the great saving of their own money and his virtue, all fathers, even in these money-making days, would rise up and call them blessed." These are the words of Charles Kingsley concerning John Lyly's book Euphues, and it is well to remember them, because as a rule, the subject-matter of the book is disregarded, and attention given only to the curious style in which it is written. The style, indeed, constitutes the book's chief claim to be considered as one of the memorable works of the EHzabethan era ; but the matter also is, as Kingsley says, worthy of attention. The author of Euphues came to the court of EUzabeth from the University of Oxford in 1575, when he was about twenty- two years old. His ancestry was not undistinguished. He was born, he tells us, in " the wyld of Kent, of honest parents." His grandfather was William Lyly, the grammarian, the friend of More, and of Colet, the first headmaster of St. Paul's School. Little of this great man's love of learning seems to have passed to his grandson. John Lyly left the University with no great reputation as a scholar ; he was, his biographer tells us, " always averse to the crabbed studies of logic and philosophic. 119 ENGLISH LITERATURE . . . His genie being naturally bent on the pleasant paths of poetry, he did, in a manner, neglect academical studies." Some of his critics would have us believe that he did far worse than merely neglect his studies. " He spent his time," say^ Gabriel Harvey, the friend of Spenser, " gaming, fooling and knaving," and was " himself a mad lad as ever twang'd, nfever troubled with any substance of wit or circumstance of honestie." But Gabriel Harvey was a strict and hostile critic, who had no sympathy with the high spirits and superabundant life so characteristic of the younger writers of his day. It seems probable that Lyly's sins, thus sternly denounced, were only the excesses of a youth intoxicated, as nearly all the Eliza- bethan youths were intoxicated, with the sense of freedom and opportunity which came with that glorious and adventurous age. lyyly gained among the brilliant group of students beginning to gather at both Universities (most of whom shared his aversion to " logic and philosophic ") a great reputation as a wit, and this reputation seems to have been his great asset when he came to London to seek his fortune. The easiest road to fortune in those days was the patronage of some great man. Lyly applied to I^ord Burleigh, and was given a post, the nature of which is not certain. But it served to admit him to the Court of EHzabeth, to which all who desired either to push their fortunes or to enjoy the pleasures of intellectual intercourse must come. The Court was the centre of influence, and the centre of taste. " It was not only a royal court ; it was also a great club." Among all the proud, high-born nobles who flocked to this splendid centre of a great kingdom, the young, unnoted Oxford scholar daily moved. Sidney was there, just returned from his Continental tour, the darling of the whole Court, the brightest jewel in Elizabeth's crown. His sister, Mary Sidney, herself a poet and a friend of poets, was there, too, and the great Earl of Pembroke, her affianced husband. Walter Raleigh, the young, unknown Devonshire squire, had lately by means of readiness, gallantry and a handsome face, gained for himself a place in Elizabeth's favour, which made him a dangerous rival 120 1EUPHUES the brilliant Essex, and even of the magnificent lyeicester. eat statesmen like Cecil, Walsingham and Sir Nicholas .con, looked gravely on at the pageants and shows with which the great queen loved to be entertained ; and their wives and daughters, forsaking spacious and beautiful country houses, hurried up to town, to cramp themselves and their belongings into the one small chamber which the parsimony of Ehzabeth allotted as adequate private accommodation for a great lady. Probably few of these splendid and stately personages at first noticed " the witty, comical, facetiously quick and unparalleled John Lyly," whom it is thought that Ben Jonson had in his mind when he drew the character of Fastidious Brisk, in Every Man Out of his Humour. " A neat, spruce, affecting courtier, one that wears clothes well and in fashion ; practised by his glass how to salute ; speaks good remnants notwithstanding the base viol and tobacco ; swears tersely and with variety ; cares not what lady's favour he belies, or great man's familiarity ; a good property to per- fume the boot of a coach. ' ' The picture is doubtless exaggerated but it probably gives a very fair idea of the man whom we imagine to have been as neat, precise, and dainty in his person as he was in his works. Nothing in the Court life around him escaped his shrewd observation. He noted the affecta- tions of the great lords and ladies, and their half-unconscious efforts to attain to a distinctive, courtly mode of speech. He saw how eagerly the stay-at-homes tried to imitate the Italian mannerisms brought back and proudly displayed by those who had been so fortunate as to visit the country which was at that time the object of the highest admiration to one class of Englishmen, and of the deepest abhorrence to another. I^yly saw his opportunity, and he set to work upon the book which was to have so memorable an influence on the manners and the literature of the Elizabethan age, and was to add a new word to the English language. " Fitting his work with delicate intuition to a wavering irresolute tendency, uncertain as yet of its object, he left that tendency by reaction a self-conscious fashion/' 121 ENGLISH LITERATURE Euphues appeared in 1579. I^ claims to be a story telling of the adventures of a young man making the fashionable tour of Europe; but the story is of the shghtest. At every possible I opportunity the writer digresses into moralizings upon subjects jsuch as friendship, love, constancy and, above all, education. JBuphues is, Lyly tells us, a youth " of more wit than wealth, and yet of more wealth than wisdom." He sets out for Italy with his friend Philautus, and they arrive at Naples, " a place of more pleasure than profit, and yet of more profit than pietie." Here they meet with a lady, lyUcilla, and become rivals for her love. Philautus is first favoured, then Kuphues, but finally the lady rejects both in favour of a worthless fellow. Curio. The two, reconciled by their common misfortune, first mourn together, then seek comfort in various moral reflections. '* Come therefore to me,'* says Euphues, *' al ye lovers that have bene deceived by fancy, the glasse of pestilence, or deluded by woemen, the gate to perdition, be as earnest to seeke a medicine, as you were eager to runne into a mischief e, the earth bringeth forth as well Endive to delight the people, as Hemlocke to endaunger the patient, as wel the Rose to distil, as the Nettle to sting, as well the Bee to give Hunny as the Spyder to yield poyson." The rest of the book is taken up with an Epistle, Euphues and his Ephcebus, and other letters of Euphues addressed to various friends, in which a complete theory of education is given. The tone of these epistles justifies Kingsley's praise. " The Rose that is eaten with the Canker is not gathered because it groweth on that stalke that the sweet doth, neither was Helen made a Starre bicause she came of that Egge with Castor, nor thou a gentleman in that thy auncestores were of nobilitie. It is not ye descent of birth but ye consent of condi- tions that maketh Gentlemen, neither great manors but good manners that expresse the true Image of dignitie. There is copper coin of the stamp that gold is, yet it is not currant, there commeth poyson of the fish as well as good oyle, yet is it not wholsome, and of man may proceede an evill Childe and yet no Gentleman. For as the Wine that runneth on the lees, 122 is not therefore to be accompted neat bicause it was drawn of the same peece. Or as the water that springe th from the fountaines head and floweth into the filthy channel is not to be called cleere bicause it came of the same streame ; so neither is he that descendeth of noble parentage, if he desist from noble deeds to be esteemed a Gentleman." In 1580 a second part of the work appeared under the title of Euphues and his England. This tells how Euphues and Philautus set out on a visit to England, land at Dover, and proceed to Canterbury, where they meet Fidus, an old bee- keeper, who tells them a very long and somewhat tedious story of his own life. After this they go on to London and visit the Court, which far surpasses all their expectations. *' I was driven into a maze," says Euphues, " to behold the lusty and brave gallants, the beautiful and chaste ladies, the rare and goodly orders." Philautus falls in love with one of these ladies, but is again unfortunate in his suit. Euphues writes several letters to his friend full of praises of the Court, and especially of Lord Burleigh and Queen Elizabeth. From the few extracts that have been given the reader will have little diflficulty in recognizing the main qualities of the style of Euphues. These may be briefly summed up as follows : (i) Alliteration ; (2) Balanced, antithetical sentences ;, (3) Metaphors of a curious, far-fetched character, piled one upon another ; (4) Illustrations from an " unnatural natural history." This last quality may be further illustrated by the following extracts. " The filthy Sow when she is sick eateth the Sea Crab, and is immediately recured." '* Is not poyson taken out of the Hunny suckle by the Spider ? " " The Estrich that taketh the greatest pride in her feathers picketh some of the worst out, and burneth them." Euphues received at Court a universal and immediate welcome. From one of the most insignificant members of society Lyly became at once almost the best known and most eagerly sought after. Great ladies petitioned him to teach them the incomparable graces of his style, and deferred to his opinion in all questions of elegance of diction. " Our nation 123 ENGLISH LITERATURE is in his debt," wrote Edward Blount, a bookseller of the time of Charles I, "for a new English which he taught them. Euphues and his England began first that language. All our Ladies were then his Schollers. And that Beautie in Court which could not Parley Euphuisme, was as little regarded as she which now there speaks not French." It is to ladies that the book is specially addressed. " Euphues had rather lye shut in a I^adye's casket," wrote lyyly, " than open in a Scholler's Studie." As has been said, his wishes in this respect were fully accompHshed. Ben Jonson throughout his Every Man Out of His Humour, makes fun of I^yly's popularity with the ladies of the Court. " O sweet Fastidious Brisk ! O fine courtier ! " he makes one of them exclaim at intervals ; and Fastidious Brisk apologises for being late for an appoint- ment by pleading the demands the ladies make upon his time. " Good faith, I must crave pardon, I was invited this morning ere I was out of my bed, by a bevy of ladies, to a banquet, whence it was almost one of Hercules's labours for me to come away, but that the respect of my promise did so prevail with me. I know they'll take it very ill." Lyly's influence on the writers of his day was scarcely less marked than his influence on the Court. Robert Greene (see p. 139), whom Gabriel Harvey called "the ape of Euphues," has some passages which might have come straight from I^yly's book itself. " The Turtle pearketh not on barren trees," he wrote in his novel Menaphon, " Doves delight not in foule cottages, the I^yon frequents not putrified haunts. . . , He that grafteth JilUflowers upon the Nettle marreth the smell ; who coveteth to tie the I^ambe and the lyion in one tedder maketh a brawle." Peele and Nash and the other University wits also show marks of the same influence. When Euphues first appeared, Shakespeare, a lad of fifteen, was still at Stratford-on-Avon. But he came up to I^ondon before the rage for the book had subsided, and the influence of I/yly can be traced in all his early works. The pedantical school master, Holof ernes, and the solemn curate. Sir Nathaniel, in Love's Labour s Lost are both Euphuists ; and Beatrice 124 and Benedict in Much Ado About Nothing, might well be a lady and gentleman of Queen Elizabeth's Court, highly proficient in the fashionable speech of their day. There was, in fact, scarcely any work published during the ten^ears which followed the appearance of Euphues that did _ , ^ not show some signs of being affected by the fashion set in this book ; and for another ten years its influence, though not so strong, was still felt. Then it died out completely. " When literary popularity is based on faults accepted by the bad taste of an epoch for transcendent merits," says J. A. Symonds, " it is foredoomed to a dechne as rapid as its uprise, and to reaction as powerful as the force which promoted it. Euphues en- tranced society in the sixteenth century because our literature,^ in common wtththat'of Italy and Spain and France,was passing through a phase of affectation for which Euphuism was the natural expression. It corresponded to something in the manners^and^modes of thinking jvhich prevailed in Europ e at that period. It was the English type of an all but universS disease. There would have been Euphuism in some form or other without Euphues." Later writers who have attempted to imitate this style have met with little success. Scott's Sir Piercie Shafton in The Monastery is intended as a picture of the fashionable gallant of EHzabeth's day, given over entirely to Euphuism, but he only succeeds in being a caricature. The immense popularity of Euphues, though it brought Lyly much fame, does not appear to have brought him much money. We know very little of his after life, but we know that he was often in great straits through poverty. He married, and children were born to him, but who his wife was, and whether his home life was happy or miserable we cannot tell. About 1581 lyyly turned to a new Hterary enterprise, which was probably suggested to him by the Earl of Oxford, in whose service he then was. The taste for dramatic representations had been steadily growing in England, and at this time there were in existence several companies of actors, each under the patronage of some great person. These companies acted the I2S ENGLISH LITERATURE masques, interludes, and other dramatic productions then available. Some of them consisted of the boys who formed the choir of a church, and one of the most noted was the Com- pany of Child Players of the Chapel Royal. I^yly's new project was the writing of plays for this company, and it was highly successful. The dainty, tuneful lyrics which are to be found in these plays give him as great a claim to the remem- brance of succeeding ages as does his once famous Euphues. For thirteen years Lyly was the Court playwright. His ambition was to attain the post of Master of the Revels, but although from time to time hopes were held out to him, nothing substantial followed. He seems to have kept at least a portion of his high spirits through all his trials, and a certain quality of humour which enabled him to see the laughable side even of his disappointments. Two petitions which he addressed to the queen have survived, and in the second of these, dated 1601, he prays that since he seems born to have nothing, he may have a protection to pay nothing, " which suite is like his, that having followed the Court ten years, for recompence of his servis committed a Robberie and took it out in a pardon." When his petitions failed to bring any improvement in his circumstances, he sought consolation in the means that were at hand. From his youth, he had been *' a hungry reader of good books " and now he read more than ever ; and he had been among the first to use the newly introduced tobacco. So that we may think of him, as the years went by and the brilliant Court lost its attractions, comforting himself in a fashion very familiar to our own day, with a pipe, and a favourite book, perhaps, too, with some of the philosophic reflections he had put forward so sagely in his Euphues. He died in November 1606 being then fifty-two years of age. 126 CHAPTER XV THE SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SIDNEY ABOUT three years after the publication of I^yly's Euphues, wliile its phrases were still constantly in the L mouths of ladies and gentlemen of fashion, a new topic of literary interest began to occupy the attention of the Court. A series of sonnets was being handed about in certain circles, and each fresh one as it appeared was bringing interest and excitement to a higher point. Not that the bare fact of a courtier having written verses had in it anything remarkable. Every Elizabethan gentleman could do as much ; verse- writing was almost as necessary and as ordinary an accomplish- ment as dancing. But these sonnets were pronounced by all who read them to be of exceptional and wonderful beauty ; and their author was Sir Philip Sidney. No other name could have been so potent, for Sidney was the darling of the Court. He was the son of Sir Henry Sidney, Lord Deputy of Ireland, and the nephew of Elizabeth's brilliant favourite, the Earl of I^icester. He was the friend of the new poet, Edmund Spenser, whose praise was at that moment in everybody's mouth ; it was at Sidney's beautiful home of Penshurst that Spenser's Shepheard's Calendar had been written. But it was not only through his connexions and friends that Philip Sidney was famous. Though he was only twenty-six years old he had made a notable place for himself even among the crowd of brilliant men and women that Elizabeth had gathered round her. Others might have done greater deeds, or shown greater genius, but none was loved like Philip Sidney. Men loved him for his noble, generous nature, for his courage, for his knightly skill 127 ENGLISH LITERATURE and grave courtesy, for his gallant bearing and his handsome face. Every one who came near him felt the singular charm of a character, which, even across the three centuries that separate his age from our own, has power to capture our imaginations and stir our hearts. The Queen herself loved this " brightest jewel of her crown," though, a little before the time of which we have been speaking, her wrath had been hot against him for the plain words he, a stripling, had ventured to address to her on the subject of her proposed marriage with the Duke of Anjou. Sidney had, in fact, but just returned from a year's retirement from the Court, made necessary by the Queen's displeasure. He had spent the year very happily at Wilton, the home of his sister, Mary, CountCvSS of Pembroke, and there he had written for her his famous romance of Arcadia. Now the Queen's anger had abated, and he had returned, with the glory of a sturdy and proved patriotism added to all his other graces. Further than this, the interest of the Court had been aroused by a love story of which Sidney was the hero, and which was, at that very time, the subject of general conversation. It was comparatively an old story, for it had begun five years before. Philip, then a youth of twenty-one, had just returned from the Continental tour, which was intended to put the final touch to an education carried on at Shrewsbury School and the University of Oxford. He had arrived home in time to join the train of nobles who followed Elizabeth in the famous progress through England which culminated in the historic revels at Kenilworth. One of the places visited was Chartley, the seat of the old Earl of Essex, who was already well known to Sidney. Penelope, daughter of the Earl of Essex, was at this time about thirteen years old, and it occurred to the Earl that the young man whose rare qualities he had already recog- nized, would be an altogether desirable bridegroom for his daughter. Some arrangement seems to have been made between the two families, though there was no formal betrothal, and friends on both sides spoke of the marriage as a settled thing. There were ladies at the Court who had heard it so 128 Sir Philip Sidney From a curious Print after Isaac Oliver Photo. W. A. Manaell & Co. 128 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY referred to by Sidney's mother and by his sisters. In the next year the Earl of Essex died, leaving a message for Sidney. " Tell him I sent him nothing, but I wish him well ; so well that if God do move their hearts I wish that he might match with my daughter. I call him son ; he is so wise, virtuous and godly. If he go on in the course he hath begun, he will be as famous and worthy a gentleman as England ever bred." Still, for some years, nothing further is heard, and we do not know what were the thoughts and wishes of either Penelope or Philip. Circumstances which have not come to light may have made it impossible for the young man to begin his wooing ; perhaps there was a delay owing to money difficulties, for the Sidneys were poor. But we cannot quite think that if Philip had been really ardent in his love for Penelope he would have failed to make, during these five years, some deter- mined effort to win her. He does not seem to have done so ; and the explanation probably is that he was wholly taken up with the ambitious dreams of youth, with the great schemes and the glorious future of which he and his little group of friends — Fulke Greville, Edward Dyer and Edmund Spenser — talked together with such high-hearted hopefulness. In this state of comfortable indifference, or assurance, he seems to have remained until he returned to Court after his year's stay at Wilton, and was met with the news that Penelope Devereux had lately married Lord Rich — a nobleman, wealthy, but much older than herself. It was of this story that the lords and the ladies of EHza- beth's Court were talking when Sidney's sonnets, signed * Astrophel ' and addressed to * Stella,' began to be handed about among the privileged friends of the writer. Gradually the circle of readers was extended, and every gentleman who wished to be considered in the front rank of fashion made haste to address to his lady a poem modelled upon these greatly lauded productions. The sonnet had been intro- duced from Italy long before, in the days of Wyatt and Surrey (see p. lOo) ; but it had not found much favour. Now its vogue was established. During the next twenty years there I 129 ENGLISH LITERATURE was scarcely a poet of any note — not excepting Shakespeare himself — who did not produce a sonnet series, and many versifiers of no note at all also attempted the fashionable exercise. Some of the popularity of Sidney's sonnets was undoubtedly due to the fame of the writer, but much was a genuine tribute to their merit. We cannot deny to the Elizabethans a measure of literary taste large enough to enable them to recognize how superior these sonnets were to all but the very highest ex- amples of the mass of verse which the age was producing. The judgment of modern criticism has fully confirmed the contem- porary verdict. We do not know in what order the sonnets were written, or over what period the writing of the series extended, though something can be gathered by carefully following out the line of thought that runs through them. Critics believe that they were completed within a year, and are inclined to place first in order a group of sonnets in which the writer treats, with much fervour, of Stella's perfections, her husband's unworthiness, and his own passion. He tells how, to ease his pain, he was impelled to write the sonnets yet could find no fitting words, until — " Fool I " said my Muse to me, " look in thy heart and write." And out of his heart, as it must still seem to the reader, though modern criticism has much to say about the common Uterary conventions of the time, and about wholesale borrowings from French and Latin, Sidney wrote. It is true, he says, that beauty is but external, and passing, that men make for them- selves gods unworthy of their worship, — True, and yet true that I must Stella love. Reason shows how much loss such an attachment must bring him — I see, and yet no greater sorrow take Than that I lose no more for Stella's sake. Men see his pensiveness, and guess that some great enterprise is occupying his mind, — Alas, the race Of all my thoughts hath neither stop nor start But only Stella's eyes and Stella's heart. 130 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY The heavens interest him no more, only " those two stars in Stella's face." Politics, once so dear, have now no existence for him ; when Questions busy wits to me do frame, I, cumbered with good manners, answer do, But know not how ; for still I think of you. Then, after the beautiful sonnet addressed to the moon (" With how sad steps, O Moon,"), come lamentations for his early insensibility : I might I imhappy word — Oh me, I might. And then would not, or could not see my bliss. Till now wrapt in a most infernal night. I find how heavenly day, wretch 1 I did miss. He calls on sleep to free him for a time from his pains : Come, Sleep ! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace. The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe. He prays that if he is to continue to suffer such pangs, they may be allowed to kill him at once : A kind of grace it is to slay with speed. Then follows a group of sonnets in which it appears that, in answer to his continued pleadings, Stella has shown him some signs of favour, and has acknowledged that her love is given to him, as his to her. Gone is the winter of my misery ! My spring appears : O see what here doth grow. For Stella hath, with words where faith doth shine. Of her high heart given me the monarchy. But this does not last long. Stella repents of her lapse from the duty she owes to her husband, — When I was forced from Stella ever dear — Stella, food of my thoughts, heart of my heart — Stella, whose eyes make all my tempests clear — By Stella's laws of duty to depart ; For a time he rails against the fate that has separated them, then sadly submits : Stella, since thou so right a princess art Of all the powers which life bestows on me. That ere by them ought undertaken be. They first resort unto that sovereign part ; ENGLISH LITERATURE Sweet, for a while give respite to my heart. Which pants as though it still should leap to thee : And on my thoughts give thy lieutenancy To this great cause which needs both use and art. And as a queen, who from her presence sends Whom she employs, dismiss from thee my wit. Till it have wrought what thy own will attends. On servants' shame oft masters' blame doth sit : O let not fools in me thy works reprove. And scorning say, " See what it is to love I " What the ' great cause ' was we do not know ; perhaps some scheme for the colonization of the western lands, such as, we know, occupied his thoughts at this time. If so, it is probable that the Queen, as she had done before, refused to allow him to leave her kingdom on such an enterprise. But he found other ' great causes ' in which to spend himself ; and, on the field of Zutphen, in 1586, he received his death-wound. On the same field he gained for himself undying glory, not by any fierce onslaught or deed of valour, but by a quiet, simple, yet stupendous act of unselfishness, of which all the world has heard. He was carried to Arnheim, and there, twenty-five days later, he died, after enduring great suffering with a brave patience that witnessed " that those sweet and large affec- tions in him could no more be contracted with the narrowness of pain, grief or sickness than any sparkle of our immortality can be privately buried in the shadow of death." 13* CHAPTER XVI DR. FAUSTUS: FRIAR BACON AND FRIAR BUNGAY THROUGHOUT the Middle Ages there had been current all over Europe a legend of a man who had sold his soul to the devil in return for certain privileges ; and students of the period have seen in this legend the un- conscious expression of mediaeval man's strongly felt, yet hardly reahzed needs. Like the hero of the legend he rebelled instinctively against the cramping conditions which the age imposed upon him. He longed for a larger, fuller and richer life, for wider experiences and more ample opportunities. He wanted to be lifted out of the narrow present by magic whispers from the past, and glorious visions of the future. Like the hero of the legend, also, he was reckless as to the price he paid if he only could compass his wish ; let him but get the cup in his hands he would drain it to the last drop before he thought of the reckoning. The growth of this feeling among the more ardent and im- passioned natures was one of the many factors which, working together, brought about the Renaissance. As the time drew near when Europe should be delivered from the straitness of mediaeval bonds, the old legend took definite form and finally attached itself to the person of a certain Dr. Faustus, who lived in Thuringia during the early part of the sixteenth century. Its details were decided by the new spirit which was then so powerfully moving the whole of Europe. Faustus was said to have sold his soul to the devil in return for twenty-four years of life, during which all knowledge and all pleasure should lie open before him, aU the riches of the world should be within 133 ENGLISH LITERATURE his grasp, and an attendant fiend should be allotted to him to do his will. Rude versions of the story were written down, and one of these was published at Frankfort in 1587. At that period the literary influence of the Continent was strongly felt in England, and a crowd of translators were busy turning into English any work, either classical or modern, which they thought would be acceptable to the public ; it was not long, therefore, before an English version of the Faustbuch was to be bought at the bookstalls in St. Paul's Churchyard. The story soon became popular in England. Its wild daring fell in witli the temper of the nation, fresh from a victory over Spain, and full of the hot spirit of adventure ; its supernatural element suited the taste of a public which still devoutly believed in the black art, and punished with the greatest barbarity old women accused of witchcraft. Among its readers the Faustbuch seems to have numbered some members of a remarkable group of writers who were at this time settled in I/ondon. This group furnishes striking examples of the class of men typified in the Faust legend — men in whom the spirit of the Renaissance burnt fiercely and without restraint. Its most prominent members were George Peele, Robert Greene, Thomas Nash, Christopher Marlowe, and Thomas Kyd. All of them had been educated at one or other -of the Universities, and they are sometimes known as the ' University Wits.' One by one they had drifted up to I/ondon. They had no settled occupation or means of liveli- hood, but they were willing to sacrifice all hope of position and advancement, all the comforts and even the necessities of existence to the passion by which they were consumed — the burning desire to taste all that life could offer, to know, to feel, to enter into full possession of the golden world which seemed in those wonderful days to be opening before them. Their poverty drove them to the poorer quarters of I^ondon, and they had their homes in foul streets, amid squalor and wretchedness. But nothing daunted the wild spirit of adventure within them. They revelled and rioted and feasted while any money remained, and when there was none they starved until 134 DR. FAUSTUS their ready pens had managed to produce something saleable — a pamphlet, a story, a poem, a ballad to be sung in the streets, a set of doggerel verses upholding one or other side in the many controversies of the day. Soon they turned eagerly to the theatre as offering a more fruitful source of income. The drama was rapidly growing in popularity. Dramatic shows of various kinds had long been common at the Court and at the houses of the great nobles. Now they began to spread among the people. Rough dramas, acted first in inn-yards, drove the old miracle and morality plays quite out of the field. The strong, virile taste of the Elizabethans found these older works tasteless and insipid. It required something nearer to real life, and thus the regular drama grew up to satisfy a public demand. At the time when the University wits were leading their struggUng, hand to hand life in lyondon, its vogue had so greatly increased that at least two theatres had been built for the representation of plays, and these were flourishing greatly. Players could earn large incomes, fare sumptuously, and go in silks and satins, while poor authors starved in garrets. No wonder the eyes of the University wits turned longingly in the direction of the theatre. Some of them became actors, others wrote new plays or touched up old ones — did, in fact, any kind of odd literary work that was required, by means of which they could fill their empty purses. Thus came into existence a body of dramatic literature, which, although only in a few cases of real, lasting merit, was valuable in helping for- ward the great dramatic development which was to culminate in the work of Shakespeare. Among this wild and riotous band, the most daring, the most reckless, and the greatest was Christopher Marlowe. He alone of them all can be called a great genius. The others were capable of moments of inspiration in which they produced work of rare quality. But wild Kit Marlowe rose high above them all. When he was only twenty-four years old, he produced his play of Tamhurlaine the Great, which raised a storm among the critics of the day. It was, they declared, a violation of all known rules, a piece of * swelling bombast,' a ranting, raging, I3S 1 ENGLISH LITERATURE extravagant turbulent riot of noise and horror. Yet the public of the day came in crowds to see Tamhurlaine acted ; and critics of later times have recognized that in this play, crude and violent as it is, the great EHzabethan drama began. In 1588 Marlowe turned to the story of Dr. Faustus, the subject of which was so congenial to his restless, insatiable spirit of curiosity. In his hands Faustus becomes, not an ordinary vulgar magician, but a learned doctor whose desire for know- ledge and for power has in it some of the noble elements that inspire the true scholar. The veritable Renaissance hunger and thirst is upon him. He is learned in the lore of the School- men, and has found it barren and unprofitable, leading to no full and large hfe such as he longs to lead. Magic alone seems to promise him his heart's desire. O what a world of profit and delight, Of power, of honour, of omnipotence Is promised to the studious artizan I All things that move between the quiet poles Shall be at my command. . . . A sound magician is a mighty god. The thought of the power that is to be his intoxicates him, and he bursts into rapturous anticipations of the use he will make of it : Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please. Resolve me of all ambiguities, Perform what desperate enterprise I will ? I'll have them fly to India for gold, Ransack the ocean for orient pearl. And search all corners of the new-found world For pleasant fruits and princely delicates ; I'll have them read me strange philosophy And tell the secrets of all foreign kings ; Much of this sounds like a magniloquent description of what men actually did in the great Elizabethan age, when new worlds, both actual and intellectual, were discovered by daring adventurers. The compact with the Evil One is signed, and Faustus enters upon the joys he has dreamed of. He travels to and fro all over the world, he works miracles to his heart's desire. The 136 « DR. FAUSTUS forces of nature obey him, he has riches at command, and his attendant fiend, Mephistophilis, is obedient to his will. Much of what he does seems, to modern readers, puerile and un- worthy of the great scheme of the play. But it must be re- membered that Marlowe had to please an Elizabethan audience, and that the Elizabethans had a childlike taste for marvels and a keea enjoyment of what we should now consider silly practi- cal jokes or rough horse-play. Even Shakespeare found that some concessions had to be made to the * groundUngs ' who were powerful to make or to mar a new production ; and in his royal and splendid fashion he gave them the childish playthings they asked for, wrought of fine gold and precious stones ; and so we get his matchless series of fools. Marlowe could not do this ; he could give only the ordinary glass and tinsel, and he flung these down scornfully, with no attempt to disguise his contempt of " such conceits as Clownage keeps in pay." The clowning element, however, forms after all but a small part in the adventures of Dr. Faustus. He makes the treasures of the classic past his own : i)> Have I not made blind Homer sing to me Of Alexander's love and CEnon's death ? And hath not he, that built the walls of Thebes, "With ravishing sound of his melodious harp, Made music with my Mephistophilis ? I He calls up the bodily presence of Helen of Troy, and his address to her is one of the finest poetical passages in the whole play: Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships And burnt the topless towers of Ilium ? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. Here, again, the legend is made a kind of allegory, shadowing man's recovery of the old classic works of Greece and Rome. \ " All through the Middle Ages, uneasy, imperfect memories of / Greece and Rome had haunted Europe. . * . That for which Faustus sold his soul . . . was yielded to the world, without price, at the Renaissance." The twenty-four years is nearly over, and Faustus must pay the price. He returns to Wittenberg and there awaits the 137 ENGLISH LITERATURE ! coming of the fiends who are to carry off his soul to hell. The \ agony of this last scene is almost intolerable : - ' O Faustus, \ Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, i And then thou must be damned perpetually I ; Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven. That time may cease, and midnight never come ; j Fair Nature's eye, rise, rise again, and make | Perpetual day ; or let this hour be but A year, a month, a week, a natural day. That Faustus may repent and save his soul ! . . . . The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, I The devil will come, and Faustus must be danin'd. ■ O, I'll leap up to God ! Who pulls me down ? See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament 1 ' One drop of blood would save my soul, half a drop ; ah, my Christ, Rend not my heart for naming of my Christ I Yet will I call on him ; O, spare me, I^ucifer 1 So Marlowe brings his tragic story to its close. It is no ! wonder that when Dr. Faustus was acted before an Elizabethan ! audience its effect was stupendous. The celebrated tragic '■ actor, Edward AUeyn, took the part of Faustus. Men | trembled, we are told, as if the fiends on the stage had really > come from the lower world. Fifty years later Prynne tells of ' a tradition current in his day, that the visible apparition of : the Devil appeared " on the stage at the Belsavage Play- house (to the great amazement both of the actors and the spectators) whilst they were prophanely playing the History of .; Faustus, the truth of which I have heard from many now alive, | who well remember it, there being some distracted with that I fearful sight." The rest of the story of Marlowe's short life and tragical death is soon told. He wrote other plays — Edward II, The Jew of \ Malta, Dido of Carthage. The first of these has been judged ' by some critics to rival Shakespeare's Richard III ; the other \ two are of inferior merit. In May 1593 a warrant was \ issued by the Star Chamber summoning him to appear | before their I^ordships to answer to some charge, the nature \ of which was not specified. He appears to have been i examined and released, and to have left I^ondon immediately ] for Deptford. Drake's famous vessel. The Golden Hind, \ 138 Illustration to Marlowe's '< Dr. Faustus' From an ancient engraving '38 I DR. FAUSTUS /as at this time lying at Deptford, and was daily visited by crowds of eager sight-seers. Marlow went among the rest, and on board this ship he met his death. According to tradition he was stabbed in a brawl with one of his com- panions. He was buried in the parish church, and the record in the register runs, " Christopher Marlowe, slain by Francis Archer." About six months after Dr. Faustus was put upon the stage, another play dealing with the same subject was produced by Robert Greene. Greene also belonged to the company of the University wits, and his life was wild and dissolute. vShortly before his death he wrote a kind of confession which he called, A Groatsworth of Wit Bought with a Million of Repentance. In this he told of the life he had led since he left the University and came to I^ondon. " I became," he says, " an author of plays, and a penner of love pamphlets, so that I soon grew famous in that qualitie, that who for that trade grown so ordinary about I^ondon as Robin Greene ? Yong yet in years, though olde in wickednesse, I began to resolve that there was nothing bad that was profitable, where- upon I grew so rooted in all mischiefe that I had as great delight in wickednesse as sundry hath in godlinesse and as much fehcitie I took in villainy as others had in honestie." He tired out the patience of his friends and reduced himself to the extremest poverty, so that he was compelled to write stories, plays, poems as quickly as possible, and sell them for any wretched sum the publishers and managers would offer him. " For these my vaine discourses," he goes on, " I was beloved of the more vainer sort of people, who, being my continual companions, came still to my lodging, and there would con- tinue quaffing, corousing and surfeting with me all the day long." We cannot help thinking that there is some exaggera- tion in this picture. Greene's plays are pure in tone, and the lyrics scattered through them are of fresh and wonderful beauty ; his women characters have a delicacy and a charm which lift them high above the creations of every other dramatist of the day, with the single exception of Shakespeare. It is hard to ENGLISH LITERATURE \ believe that the man who created the fair rustic maid, Margaret" of Fressingfield, was the tall ragged fellow, with rough headi of hair and long red beard who swaggered and bullied and:] brawled through the streets of I^ondon, so that peaceablel citizens dreaded the name of Robin Greene. Yet so his own account and the accounts of his contemporaries show him^ to us ; and we marvel the more at the work which he , produced. ' Greene chose as the foundation of his play an EngHsh prose i tract which connected the old legend with Roger Bacon, the' learned Schoolman of the thirteenth century. He dealt withj it in a Hghter vein than that of Marlowe in Dr. Faustus, and' he introduced a love story which divided attention with the/ main theme of the play. Briefly told, the story is as follows :\ Edward, Prince of Wales, son of Henry III, comes with hisj companions, I^ord I^acy and others, into Suffolk. There he| sees Margaret, daughter of the keeper of Fressingfield, where] *' among the cream bowls she did shine," and at once falls in love with her. *' A bonnier wench," he says, "all Suffolk! cannot yield. All Suffolk ! nay, all England holds not such." It is suggested to him that he shall attempt to win Margaret's i love by the aid of Friar Bacon, the wizard who lives at Oxford, and he goes off to find him, commissioning I^acy to meet! Margaret at Fressingfield Fair and woo her for his prince, j lyacy, however, falls in love with Margaret on his own account, j and she with him, and after some attempt to keep faith with the prince, he asks her to marry him. She consents, audi Friar Bungay, who is also a magician, though inferior in power » to Friar Bacon, promises to aid them. This scene Bacon, by j his magic power enables the prince to witness in his crystal; glass ; the prince is infuriated, and Bacon causes a devil to , enter and carry off Bungay on his back. Many other marvels J are performed, and then we come to the account of Bacon's i great and crowning work. He and Friar Bungay have made i a great brazen head, formed within and without, like thej head of a man, and by the power of the evil spirits that they have called up they have learnt how it may be made to speak. | 140 FRIAR BACON & FRIAR BUNGAY (Certain substances must be burnt before it, and incanta- tions said ; then in about a month's time — the spirits cannot j^ive the exact date — it will speak. Bacon and Bungay design to learn from it how they can build round England a wall of jrass — a wall so strong That if ten Caesars liv'd and reign'd in Rome, With all the legions Europe doth contain. They should not touch a grass of English ground. The fateful time when the figure shall speak has almost come, and Bacon addresses his servant, Miles : Thou know'st that I have dived into hell And sought the darkest palaces of fiends ; That with my magic spells great Belcephon Hath left his lodge and kneelM at my cell ; The rafters of the earth rent from the poles And three-form'd Luna hid her silver looks. Trembling upon her concave continent. When Bacon read upon his magic book. With seven years tossing necromantic charms, Poring upon dark Hecat's principles, I have framed out a monstrous head of brass, That by the enchanting forces of the devil Shall tell out strange and uncouth aphorisms. And girt fair England with a wall of brass. Bimgay and I have watched these three-score days. And now our vital spirits crave some rest. Miles is bidden to watch the head, and wake his master as soon as it shows signs of speaking. At midnight the lips move and the words *' Time is," are solemnly spoken. Miles, however, scoffs at this utterance, and presently the head speaks again, " Time was." Again Miles answers with ribald joking when for the third time words come from the image. " Time is past," it says, and at the same moment lightning flashes forth, a hand appears and smashes the head with a hammer. Bacon wakes and learns what has happened, and how all his toil has been in vain. He pours curses on the terrified Miles, and so the scene ends. The next scene shows Bacon repentant, determined to abjvire his magic art, and spend the rest of his life in attempting to win God's pardon. He brings the love affairs of the fair maid of Fressingfield to a happy conclusion. She marries I^acy, and the prince is reconciled to them. 141 ENGLISH LITERATURE Greene's play may be called the comedy, as Marlowe's is the tragedy, of the old legend. It is full of rough jovial fun, as thej devils appear and play their rollicking pranks, but the country! scenes in which the love story of Margaret of Fressingfield isl told have a fresh and peaceful beauty. l Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay was written in 1589. Three i years later Greene died, in extreme poverty and misery, at the J age of thirty-two. A long carouse with his friend Thomas Nash ) and others is said to have been the immediate cause of hisi death. During his last illness he was sheltered and tended by! a poor shoemaker, and his djdng message to his neglected and^ deserted wife speaks of his gratitude to this man. '* Doll, I| charge thee, by the love of our youth, and by my soule's rest, that thou wilt see this man paide ; for if hee and his wife had! not succoured me, I had died in the streete." ': So, prematurely and miserably, ended the lives of these two^ representatives of the early Elizabethan dramatists. Both* died before they had reached the fullness of their powers, j Marlowe, some critics think, might, if he had lived, have^ equalled Shakespeare, and Greene too gave promise of great^ things. In their early deaths literature sustained a most serious loss. ^ 142 CHAPTER XVII THE FAERIE QUEENE AT the time of Sidney's death his friend, Edmund /\ Spenser, was in Ireland. Soon after the pubUcation ^ V. of the Shepheard's Calendar he had been appointed Private Secretary to Lord Grey de Wilton, the new I^ord Deputy, and in August 1580 he left England. The two friends probably took leave of one another at Penshurst, where Sidney was still in retirement, and they never met again. Spenser remained in Ireland for nearly ten years, and when the news of Sidney's death came to him there, he wrote, in memory of his friend, Colin Clout's Mournful Ditty for the Death of Astrophel. In Ireland Spenser entered into a new world. The Desmond rebelHon was at its height, and Lord Grey took the sternest measures to quell it. The state of the country was terrible. Death in warfare, death from an ambushed foe, death by treachery, death by pestilence, death by starvation, death at the hands of the pubUc executioner — these were so common that men had almost ceased to look upon them with horror. The land was laid desolate. ** The curse of God was so great, and the land so barren both of man and beast that whosoever did travel from one end to the other of all Munster, even from Waterford to Smerwick, about six score miles, he should not meet man, woman, or child saving in cities or towns, nor yet see any beasts save foxes, wolves, or other ravening beasts." Lord Grey left Ireland in 1582, but Spenser remained behind, and held in the years that followed, various offices under the government. In 1586 he received a grant of the manor and castle of Kilcolman, a ruined house that had belonged to the H3 I ENGLISH LITERATURE family of the Desmonds, and there he lived from that time forward. Kilcolman was in the midst of one of the most dangerous and disaffected districts in all Ireland. North of it stretched a desolate tract, half forest, half bog, which extended far across Munster, and here lurked savage wolves and savage men. The Desmonds had their ' great fastness ' in its dreary depths, and outlaws and rebels congregated there, making it a place of terror. The country immediately surrounding Spenser's house had a wild beauty. In front lay a small lake, and the Galtee Mountains rose behind. Spenser has celebrated " Arlo, the best and fairest hill in all the holy island's heights," and the " soft rombling brooks " which run from it tlurough the defiles in the mountains. " A most beautifuU and sweet countrey as any is under heaven," it would have been, had | not man laid his desolating hand upon it. I Such was the home in which Edmund Spenser wrote his ! great poem The Faerie Queene. For a long time he had been \ thinking over it, and as early as 1579 some portion had \ been written. This was submitted to Gabriel Harvey — a noted j Cambridge scholar of his day and the friend and Hterary guide ' of both Sidney and Spenser — ^for his criticism. Harvey did ^ not think very highly of it ; it was too startling a departure j from classical tradition to win his approval. He was surprised ■ that Spenser himself should regard it as a really serious piece ! of work, and, he prayed that God or some good angel would put his friend in a better mind. But, happily, no such ' better i mind ' came to Spenser, and as soon as his official duties gave him leisure, he took up, at lonely Kilcolman, the work on 1 . which his heart had so long been set. | During the three most j [ eventful years in Elizabeth's reign — the year of Sidney's 1 death and Shakespeare's appearance in London, the year of , the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, the year of the great ^ I Armada — the Faerie Queene came into being. Amid scenes j ^of strife and misery and crime, and poverty in its most re- volting forms, without, as far as we can tell, companionship i or encouragement, Spenser worked on. \ Many elements went to the making of his great work. He I 144 ^ THE FAERIE QUEENE put into it, as a true poet must, the best of himself and of what life had given him. He did not, as Chaucer had done when he set himself to write the Canterbury Tales, look back over his life and recreate the scenes and the people that had been famiUar to him. Spenser, like Chaucer, was born and bred in London. But the years he had spent there seem to have left little impression upon his mind. He wrote, it is true, in one of his poems, of " merry London my most kindly nurse," but we cannot recognize in the stories of the Faerie Queene the figures of any of those with whom he must have been famiHar in his home, in the streets, or at the school of the Merchant Taylors' Company where he was educated. Save for a few references to " CleopoUs, the fairest citty that might be seen," there is nothing to indicate that Spenser was familiar with EUzabeth's great capital. The reason for this difference between the Canterbury Tales and the Faerie Queene lies in the different natures of the two i poets. Spenser was more highly imaginative than Chaucer, j He had not so keen an appreciation of the common things of life, but loved, rather, that which was strange and unusual. He had, too, a delight in beauty beyond what is common, even in poets. Beauty of form, of colour, of sound, and above all, , moral and spiritual beauty he loved with a great passion. Lovely shapes flitted before his eyes. He saw the white radiance of truth, the enchanting grace of courtesy, the grave loveliness of temperance with such a rapture of realization that he must needs make for himself some image to embody his conception and receive his worship. These images turned to hving men and women beneath his hand, but they were not the men and women of common earth. Theirs must be a country of mystery and wonder ; and Fortune was good to - Spenser in leading him to his lonely Irish home. For certainly ^ not in England could he have found a region which would have helped his imagination to picture that country as wild Ireland helped it. There he found the dark background against which his visionary men and women showed like forms of Hght ; there were the forests " not perceable with power of any K 145 ENGLISH LITERATURE Starr," the " wilderness and wastful deserts *' where they adventured like fairy knights and ladies in the days when the world was young, yet with the grace and dignity of high-born couxtiers of the great Queen. There, too, was the bestial crew of savage and treacherous foemen, who should test the knight's j valour and the lady's purity. J Yet there was a stern Puritan strain in Spenser's nature that made it impossible for him to abandon himself entirely to these seductive dreams of beauty. He could not justify himself in his own eyes if he produced a work which had no high moral jy purpose. i^His conception of a poet — a conception common to ^ his time — was that he should be first of all a great teac her. To this end he fashioned his work. It was to be, essentially, an exposition^of spiritual and moral truth.v " The generall end of all the booke," he wrote, later, to his friend, Sir Walter Raleigh, " is to fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipHne : which for that I conceived shoulde be most plausible and pleasing, being coloured with an historicall fiction. ... I chose the historye of King Arthure. ... I labour to pourtraict in Arthure, before he was king, the image of a brave knight, perfected in the twelve private morall vertues, as Aristotle hath devised ; the which is the purpose of these first twelve bookes ; which if I finde to be well accepted, I may be perhaps encoraged to frame the other part of poUiticke vertues in his person, after hee came to be king." I The work, therefore, is an allegory, in which the characters I represent_ certain virtues and vices. But Spenser put into it more than this. He had a hvely concern in what was happen- ing around him and Hke most BHzabethans, he was a keen poHtician ; moreover, his short experience at Court had taught him that some part of the scheme of his poem must allow of the introduction of extravagant praise and flattery addressed t. to the Queen. For these reasons the Faerie Queene became I a double allegory ; the characters were made to take on a I second signification, and to stand for important poHtical ' \characters of the day. Nor does this complete the '* allegori- 146 THE FAERIE QUEENE cal tangle." " In the Faerie Queene," says Spenser, " I meane Glory in my general intention : but in my particular I conceive the most excellent and glorious person of our soveraine the Queene and her kingdome in Fairyland." " And yet," he goes on, " in some places els, I doe otherwise shadow her. For considering she beareth two persons, the one of a most royall Queene or Empresse, the other of a most vertuous and beautiful! Lady, the latter part in some places I doe expresse in Bel- phoebe." And so with other characters of the poem. They stand variously for several personages, as well as for a moral quality. All this is very perplexing, and if the reader tries con- scientiously to keep all the different threads clear in his mind as he reads, his enjoyment of the poem will be sadly marred. But he need not do this. Spenser himself often forgets all about his allegory and loses himself in the sheer delight of the story. (^ The best way to read the Faerie Queene is to consider it simply as a beautiful fairy story, and disregard altogether the allegorical intention. Then nothing but pure pleasure can result. The first three books of the poem were finished when, in 1589, Sir Walter Raleigh came to Kilcolman. He was, for the time, out of favour with the Queen ; his rival, Essex, was in the ascendant. Raleigh thought it best to leave England, and he came over to Ireland to look after the estates he held there. Spenser, in his poem Colin Clout's Come Home Again, has told the story of Raleigh's visit. In this poem the rustic style of the Shepheard's Calendar, is again adopted, and Spenser is ' Colin Clout ' and Raleigh the ' Shepheard of the Ocean,' who appears before his friend and complains of the hardness of his lot. His song was all a lamentable lay Of great unkindness and of usage hard, Of Cynthia, the Ladie of the Sea, Which from her presence faultlesse him debar'd. Spenser, to divert his friend's mind from these sorrows, brought out the first three books of the Faerie Queene, Raleigh's fine and cultured critical taste at once saw the merit of the poem. ENGLISH LITERATURE and he urged Spenser to bring it to the Court of EUzabeth ; or, as Colin Clout tells the story : He gan to cast great lyking to my lore, | And great dislyking to my lucklesse lot, | That banisht had myselfe, like wight forlore. Into that waste, where I was quite forgot. i The which to leave, thenceforth he counseld mee, | Unmeet for man in whom was ought regardf ull. And wend with him, his Cynthia for to see ; i Whose grace was great, and bounty most rewardfull ; . . f I So what with hope of good and hate of ill. He me perswaded forth with him to fare. Nought took I with me but mine oaten quill ; i Small needments else need shepheard to prepare. ^ The two friends crossed the sea, and made their appearance at j the Court of Elizabeth. To Raleigh's great delight, the mood ,| of his royal mistress had changed. Cynthia smiled upon him once more, and upon his poet-companion. j The Shepheard of the Ocean (quoth he) f Unto that Goddesse grace me first enhanced, i And to my oaten pipe inclined her eare, That she thenceforth therein 'gan take delyht ; And it desired at timely houres to heare, I All were my notes but rude and roughly dight ; ] Spenser soon perfected himself in the courtier's art of flattery, \ and doubtless Elizabeth afterward read with complete satisfac- • tion his account of the impression she at this time made upon : his mind. But if I her like ought on earth might read, I would her lyken to a crown of lillies. Upon a virgin brydes adorned head, ■ With Roses dight and Goolds and Daffadillies. i He proceeds in this strain for some time, and finding his powers | quite unequal to giving any adequate idea of her transcendent ' qualities, he concludes : More fit it is t' adore with himible mind The image of the heavens in shape humane. Either in gratitude for this praise, or in acknowledgment of the great merit of the Faerie Queen, Elizabeth gave to Spenser a pension of £50 a year. 148 THE FAERIE QUEENE Spenser next made his appeal to a larger public. The follow- ing entry is to be found in the register of the Stationers' Com- pany, under the date December i, 1589. " Entered ... a book intytuled the fayrye Queene dysposed into xij bookes &c, authorysed under thandes of the Archbishop of Canterbery and bothe the Wardens." The poem being thus authorized, the first three books were published in 1590, with a dedication to the Queen : To The Most High, Mightie and Magnificent Empresse, Renowned for piety, vertue, and all gratious government, El^IZABETH, By the Grace of God, Queene of England, Fraunce, and Ireland, and of Virginia, Defendeur of the Faith, &c.. Her most humble Servaunt Edmund Spenser Doth in all humilitie Dedicate, present, and consecrate These his labours. To live with the etemitie of her fame. The claim is a bold one — " To live with the eternitie of her fame " ; but it has been justified. It would be impossible here even to outUne all the stories contained in the Faerie Queene. We will quote Spenser's own account of his general plan, and then deal, very briefly, with the First Book. " I devise," he says in the letter to Raleigh, part of which has been already quoted, " that the Faery Queene kept her Annuall feaste xii dayes ; uppon which xh severall dayes, the occasions of the xii severall adventures hapned, which being undertaken by xii severall knights, are in these xii books severally handled and discoursed. The first was this. In the beginning of the feast, there presented him selfe a tall clownishe younge man, who falHng before the Queene of Faries desired a boone (as the manner then was) which during that feast she might not refuse ; which was that hee might have the achievement of any adventure, which during that feaste should happen : that being graunted, he rested him on the floore, unfitte through his rusticity for a better place. ENGLISH LITERATURE Soone after entred a faire I^adye in mourning weedes, riding on a white Asse, with a dwarfe behinde her leading a warlike steed, that bore the Armes of a knight, and his speare in the dwarfe's hand. Shee, falling before the Queene of Faeries, complayned that her father and mother, an ancient King and Queene, had beene by an huge dragon many years shut up in a brasen Castle, who thence suffered them not to yssew ; and therefore besought the Faery Queene to assygne her some one of her knights to take on him that exployt. Presently that clownish person, upstarting, desired that adventure : whereat the Queene much wondering and the I^ady much gainsaying yet he earnestly importuned his desire. In the end the I^ady told him, that unlesse that armour which she brought would serve him (that is, the armour of a Christian man specified by Saint Paul, Ephes. VI.) that he could not succeed in that enterprise ; which being forthwith put upon him, with dew furnitures there- unto, he seemed the goodliest man in al that company, and was well liked of the lady. And eftsoones taking on him knight- hood, and mounting on that straunge courser, he went forth with her on that adventure : where beginneth the first booke, viz. : A gentle knight was pricking on the plaine, &c. This " tall clownishe younge man " is the Knight of HoUness, afterward St. George, the patron Saint of England. The lady is Una, or Truth, one of the loveliest in all the bright throng of Spenser's heroines. It is she who upholds her knight through the toils and adventures of their quest, who reclaims him from error, strengthens him when he is weak, and rewards him in the hour of victory. Spenser gives, throughout the book, a series of pictures of Una. He shows her first when she starts with the Red Cross Knight : A lovely Ladie rode him faire beside. Upon a lowly Asse more white then snow, Yet she much whiter, but the same did hide Under a vele, that wimpled was full low. And over all a black stole shee did throw. As one that inly moumd : so was she sad. And heavie sat upon her palfrey slow ; Seemed in heart some hidden care she had. And by her in a line a milk white lambe she lad. ISO Una is rescued by a Troupe of Fauns and Satyrs 150 Gertrude Demain Hammond, R.I. Ip THE FAERIE QUEENE And again : I One day nigh wearie of the yrksome way. From her unhastie beast she did aUght, And on the grasse her dainty limbs did lay In secret shadow, farre from all men's sight : Prom her fayre head her fillet she imdight. And layd her stole aside. Her angel's face As the great eye of heaven shyned bright ; And made a sunshine in the shadie place ; Did never mortall eye behold such heavenly grace. Marvels of every kind meet the knight and his lady as they proceed on their journey. In "a hollow cave amid the thickest woods " they encounter the foul monster Error, whom the knight slays. He becomes subject to the spells of an En- chanter, Archemago, who deceives him by means of false dreams, brought from the house of Morpheus, where P A trickling streame from high rock tumbling downe. And ever-drizling raine upon the loft, Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowne Of swarming Bees, did cast him in a swowne : No other noyse, nor people's troublous cryes. As still are wont t' annoy the walled towne, Might there be heard ; but careless Quiet lyes. Wrapt in etemall silence far from enemyes. The knight forsakes Una, and takes another lady, the false Duessa. Una, " forsaken, wofull, soHtarie mayd " wanders " through woods and wastnesse wide " seeking her champion ; a lion constitutes himself her bodyguard, until he is slain by the Paynim Knight, Sansloy ; from Sansloy Una is rescued by a troupe of Faunes and Satyres, and for a time she lives with them in the wood as their queen, teaching them " trew sacred lore, which from her sweet lips did redound.*' From this wood by the help of the rustic Knight Satyrane, she escapes, meets Prince Arthur, and is courteously protected by him. Meanwhile the Red Cross knight is taken by Duessa to the House of Pride, where he fights with and overcomes Sansjoy, brother to Sansfoy and Sansloy. By the arts of Duessa, Sansjoy is conveyed from the field, and taken to regions below the earth to be cured. The knight, warned by his attendant dwarf, who has seen the horrors in the secret parts of the House of Pride, steals away ft ENGLISH LITERATURE the next morning, is taken prisoner by the giant Orgoglio, and rescued by Prince Arthur, whom Una brings to his aid, she having met the dwarf and learnt from him of his master's plight. Orgoglio is killed and his house overthrown by Prince Arthur. The Red Cross Knight, feeble and unfit for warfare, is taken by Una to the House of Holiness, where he is strengthened and made ready for his struggle with the dragon, the end of his quest. For two days he fights with this terrible monster, and at last kills him, and rescues Una's father and mother. The last canto is taken up with an account of the betrothal and marriage of Una and the Red Cross Knight. The second book deals in a similar manner with the ad- ventures of Sir Guyon, the Knight of Temperance ; the third with those of Britomart, the maiden Knight of Chastity. For about a year and a half after the publication of the first three books of the Faerie Queene, Spenser remained in England, enjoying the fame which his work had brought him. Every- where he was acclaimed as a great poet ; generous and lavish praise was poured upon him by his brother-poets, and men of letters. During this year and a half he wrote several of his shorter poems. Then, disappointed that his great work had not brought him some substantial result in the shape of a liberal pension or a lucrative oifice, he returned to Ireland. Here, in 1594, he married ; and though we know nothing at all about his wife except that her name was Elizabeth, the glorious marriage hymn, Epithalamium, which her husband wrote in her honour, raises her in our imaginations to a place beside the radiant figures of Una and Britomart. At Kilcol- man, lonely no longer, Spenser during the following year finished the next three books of the Faerie Queene, of which the heroes are the Knight of Friendship, the Knight of Justice, the Knight of Courtesy. In 1595 he came to England to see after the publication of these books, which completed the first half of his projected work. In less than a year he was back in Ireland. He took up the life which, in spite of some hankerings after the splendour of the Court, and the cultured society which London alone could afford, he really loved the best. Children 152 IP THE FAERIE QUEENE were born to him, he had leisure for the work in which he delighted, his home wa5 lovely and peaceful. But peace in the Ireland of that time was, as Spenser well knew, an insecure possession. In 1598 a new rebelUon broke out. The rebels poured from their fastness on Arlo Hill and Kilcolman was sacked and burnt. Spenser and his wife, broken-hearted, escaped to Cork, and then to England. A few months later, January 16, 1599, Spenser died. There is a tradition, founded on a statement of Ben Jonson, that he died in want. '* He died," said Jonson, " for lack of bread, in King Street, West- minster, and refused twenty pieces sent to him by my I^ord of Essex, saying that he had no time to spend them." But there is no confirmation of this statement, and it seems un- likely that it is true. Spenser was buried, with all honour, in Westminster Abbey, near the grave of his great predecessor, Chaucer. We do not know how much more of his great work was completed before his death. Perhaps the fire at Kilcolman robbed us of many cantos we might otherwise have had. One fragment on Mulabilitie, supposed to be part of the book of Constancy, was printed with the other six books, by a bookseller, in 1609, but where it came from we do not know. The work remains incomplete, but even in its incompleteness it suffices to give Spenser a place in the front rank of our poets. IS3 CHAPTER XVIII THE PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE THE year 1564 was of all years the most important for the Elizabethan drama. In the stormy days of February was born the wild and unhappy genius, Christopher Marlowe ; and when gusty March had passed and the rain and sunshine of April had made the earth beautiful, - there came into it another, a greater, and a happier genius, | William Shakespeare. He was born in one of the loveUest '' districts of the English Midlands. The quiet Avon flowed through it, and on either side of the river there stretched, in I Shakespeare's day, wide, rich meadow-lands, starry and fragrant * with " daisies pied and violets blue, and lady-smocks all 1 silver- white." Wild flowers grew along the river banks, and } in every shady woodland glade, — 'pale primroses' and ] * bold oxlips,' the ' azured harebell * and the ' lush eglan- • tine.' To the north lay the Forest of Arden, then really a : forest, and a paradise of woodland beauty. If there was nothing ■ grand or wild to fire the imagination there was everywhere a ' sweet and peaceful loveliness that stirred the heart. ^ On the left bank of the Avon, just where the old Roman ■', road had crossed the river by means of a ford, stood the little ^ town of Stratford. A fine stone bridge, which is still standing, ', had replaced the ford, and the grey church — old even when > Shakespeare was a lad — stood by the river side. Quaint streets \ of dark-timbered houses made up the little town. The house ^ in Henley Street, where Shakespeare was born was gabled I and picturesque, like its neighbours, with small, low-ceilinged , rooms and heavy oaken beams. John Shakespeare, the poet's ' 154 i THE PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE father, had been living there for twelve years at the time of his son's birth. He was a trader in all sorts of farm produce, especially in wool, leather and meat, so that he has been variously described as a glover, butcher, and farmer. He belonged to an old yeoman family that had been settled in Warwickshire for many generations. He was a busy and prosperous man, standing high in the estimation of his fellow townsmen. In 1565 he became an alderman of Stratford, and in 1568 reached the dignity of BaiHfE or Mayor. WilUam Shakespeare grew up in a comfortable home, well supphed with the necessities of life, and probably also with such luxuries as the age afforded. He grew up also with that sense of belonging to a family well reputed and highly esteemed, which is so important an element in a wholesome and stimulat- ing self-respect. From his father it does not seem likely that he received very much help or guidance. John Shakespeare appears to have been one of those well-meaning but ineffectual men, of restless energy and short-sighted optimism, who take up with enthusiasm a number of projects, but fail to make a lasting success of anything. He was constantly going ' to law,' and it is probable that his son William owes the know- ledge of legal procedure and legal terms which has led some critics to declare that he must have been familiar with the w^ork of a lawyer's office, to the conversations which he heard at home about his father's many law suits. These, however, during his early boyhood, were mainly concerned with the re- covery of small debts, and did not affect the prosperity of the family. John Shakespeare's position in the town, joined with his genial, social temper, and the quiet, high-bred courtesy of his wife — she was of gentle birth, and, in a modest way, an heiress — must have attracted many visitors to the house in Henley Street, and made it a centre of social as well as of family life. In due time, as we believe, WilHam Shakespeare went to the old Grammar School of Stratford-on-Avon. Here most of his time was spent in the study of lyatin, and he learnt to read with a fair amount of facility the I^atin authors of the ordinary schoolboy. I^illy's I^atin Grammar, then universally used in .ENGLISH LITERATURE f schools, he probably knew by heart, for he quotes sentences t from it in Love\s Labour's Lost and in The Merry Wives of | Windsor, Sir Hugh Evans {Merry Wives), the pedantic Holo- j femes (Love's Labour's Lost) and the conjuring schoolmaster | Pinch (Comedy of Errors) probably embody many of Shake- \ speare's recollections of the masters who taught him at the \ Stratford Grammar School. ^ We have no record of Shakespeare's school-days, nothing to i tell us whether he ranked with the good boys or with the dunces, no hint as to who were his friends, or, most important : of all, how he occupied himself when school was over. Doubt- \ less he played with the other boys at the games which were j popular in Elizabethan days. But we think that he must | have spent a great deal of his time in roaming over the lovely f country which lay around his home, learning its features so ( well that through all his years in I^ondon they were never forgotten ; making friends with all the shepherds, pedlars, innkeepers, village constables, sextons — even with the beggars and the village ' innocents ' — to be found in the countryside ; listening to all the stories they could be induced to tell him ; picking up local traditions, old ballads, proverbs, and folk tales ; learning the homely, racy, expressive English which the good yeoman of the Midlands had at command. We know that he must have taken a keen interest in the field- sports of the neighbourhood, for he shows in his plays a familiar acquaintance with hunting, hawking and coursing, and metaphors drawn from them are common. Yet if we may judge from the two most notable references in his works, his sympathies were often with the hunted, not with the hunter. He noted the " poor sequestered stag That from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt," and marked how " the big round tears Coursed one another down his innocent nose In piteous chase." He saw the hare, " poor Wat, far off upon a hill. Stand on his hinder legs with Hstening ear. To hearken if his foes pursue him still," and he speaks with sorrowful pity of the ** dew-bedabbled wretch," who was so sorely bested. By the time WilUam Shakespeare was ten years old he had IS6 1. Shakespeare's Birthplace 2. Ann Hathaway's Cottage X56 n THE PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE three brothers and a sister for playfellows in his Henley Street home. But the old easy comfort of the house was changing. The father's business had decHned and he was harassed by want of money. Debts began to accumulate, and the whisper went round the town that the once prosperous tradesman was in serious difficulties. John Shakespeare seems to have struggled desperately to retrieve his position, but each year as it passed saw him in a more hopeless case. Of the two farms owned by his wife one was mortgaged in 1578, the other sold in 1579- O^^ of t^s business arose a vexatious law-suit, which helped to make him still poorer. In 1585 a distraint was ordered upon his goods, which resulted in a declaration that he possessed no goods which could be distrained upon. Next year he was deprived of his position as Alderman, because he " doth not come to hall, nor hath not done of long time." Poor John Shakespeare 1 Perhaps he was afraid to venture out of his own home for fear of arrest ; and so, with all his other losses, his civic dignity, too, departed from him. Long before this time — in 1577 says a tradition, to which the circumstances of the case give strong support — Shake- speare had left school. He was the eldest son, and must do what he could to help the family in those evil days. How he spent the next few years we do not know. One biographer says that he " exercised his father's trade " of butcher, and adds, " but when he kill'd a calf, he would doe it in a high style and make a speech." We may perhaps infer from this that t>y 1577 John Shakespeare had given up, one by one, the other branches of trade which he had formerly carried on, and was now struggUng to make a Uving as a butcher. We can imagine how uncongenial such a life must have been to his son, who, however, does not seem to have made any very determined effort to escape from it. The few slight notices we can gather of his life at this time, seem to show him as an idler, seeking abroad some relief from the harshness of his home circumstances. In 1582, when he was only eighteen years old, and when his father's difficulties were at an acute stage, he married. His wife was Ann Hathaway, daughter of a husbandman of ^7 ENGLISH LITERATURE Shottery, a small hamlet separated by a few fields from the town of Stratford. Even this new responsibility does not seem to have roused Shakespeare to any great effort. How the young couple lived for the next few years it is hard to imagine. Ann Hathaway had inherited a little money from her father, and Shakespeare perhaps, managed to find some sort of occupation ; tradition says that he became a school- master. In 1583 a daughter was born to him, and in 1585 a twin son and daughter. By this time, it would seem, the better mind of William Shakespeare was coming back to him. He had allowed him- self to become disheartened by the unfavourable circumstances of his life, had drifted along without any set purpose, and had yielded easily to the temptations that came in his way. Now the resolution that had so much influence on his after career was slowly forming in his mind — the resolution to mend his father's broken fortunes, to make the name of Shakespeare respected once more in Stratford-on-Avon, to give his family a happy prosperous home in his native place. The careless, happy-tempered lad whose good looks and frank manners had gained for him many friends in whose company it was so easy and pleasant to be idle, was soon to develop into the brave- hearted strenuous worker who, from the humblest beginning, rose by his own exertions to fame and fortune. The crisis came through an incident which made Shake- speare's departure from Stratford a necessity. " He had," wrote Nicholas Rowe, his first biographer, " by a misfortune common enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company, and among them, some that made a frequent practice of deer-stalking, engaged him with them more than once in robbing a park that belonged to Sir Thomas lyucy, of Charlecote, near Stratford. For this he was prosecuted by that gentleman, as he thought, somewhat too severely ; and, in order to revenge that Ul- usage, he made a ballad upon him, and though this, probably the first essay of his poetry, be lost, .yet it is said to have been so very bitter that it redoubled the prosecution against him to that degree that he was obliged to leave his business 158 HE PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE family in Warwickshire and shelter himself in lyondon." It IS even been said that Sir Thomas Lucy caused him to be whipped. The story, probably, is not correct in all its details, but various small pieces of evidence now available seem to show that Shakespeare really was involved in a poaching affray on Sir Thomas I^ucy's ground. Six or seven years after, when he was writing The Merry Wives of Windsor, he recalled this incident. But all bitterness of feeling had long since passed away, and he contented himself with holding up his old enemy to the ridicule of his own and succeeding ages as the immortal Justice Shallow with the " dozen white luces in his coat." II By 1586 or 1587 Shakespeare, we believe, was in London, unknown and nearly penniless. One friend he had — Richard Field, a Stratford man, son of a friend of Shakespeare's father. We beheve that Field did his best for his young townsman, but he could give him little help in the matter that had brought him to lyondon. WiUiam Shakespeare must make his way for himself. Nothing daunted, he set to work. From the first he seems to have turned to the theatres as the best means of enabhng him to gain a livelihood. He brought from Stratford many memories of the players who had from time to time visited the town, and of the pageants and shows which the taste of the age had caused to become common throughout the country. He had, perhaps, witnessed the historic revels at Kenilworth in 1575, for Kenilworth was only fifteen miles from Stratford, and Shakespeare's father might well have ridden over with his son on such a famous occasion. Like many other young men, he had, perhaps, dreamt of the stage as providing him with the opportunity of a glorious and triumphant career. But the road by which he approached the object of his desire was a very humble one. He seems to have hung about the doors of the theatres waiting for chance employment, for a tradition of the time tells us that he gained a meagre Hving by holding the horses of gentleman who came to the play. Very IS9 ENGLISH LITERATURE soon he was noticed by the authorities of the theatre, and was ** received into the company then in being, at first in a very mean rank." So says Nicholas Rowe, and there is a stage tradition that Shakespeare's first employment was that of call-boy. Whatever it was he had to do, he did it well, and made himself so useful and notable, either by his suggestions or by help given in emergencies, that he was quickly advanced. By 1594 he was a member of the lyord Chamberlain's Company of players, and was of some note as an actor. All this time — the years, be it remembered, which preceded and followed the coming of the Armada — Shakespeare was probably living poorly enough — lodging in an attic in an obscure and dirty street, dining at tavern ordinaries, put to all kinds of shifts, and suffering many hardships. But he suffered j them in a gay and gallant spirit, and he turned with an eager | zest to the compensations which life in Elizabethan I^ondon | offered. There were the great thoroughfares of the City J where on any holiday one might see some splendid pageant or * gorgeous procession, and where, even on working days, there | were life and colour enough to delight a poet. There were the ' bookstalls in St. Paul's Churchyard, with their " innumerable i sorts of English books and infinite fardels of printed pamphlets, * * 1 and even a poor actor might sometimes spare the pence which would buy one of the new fashioned ' novellas ' or a transla- tion of some old classic. Perhaps it was at one of these book- ' stalls that Shakespeare bought the copy of HoHnshed's i Chronicle, and of Plutarch's Lives, which we think he certainly possessed. In the atidiences that gathered at the theatres, too, I he must have found much that both interested and delighted 1 him. All classes of society were represented, from the splendid : court gallant who sat upon the stage, to the pickpocket who quietly plied his trade among the crowd of poor and ragged | citizens that pushed and struggled for standing room in the pit — a large space, without flooring or seats, in the middle ^ of the theatre. For companions Shakespeare had his fellow \ actors, with several of whom he formed lifelong friendships. | We do not know what relations existed between Shakespeare j 160 ! William Shakespeare From the Chandos Portrait) i6o 1 H I THE PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE and the ' University Wits.' He did not, it would seem, join in their riotous Hving, but he probably met them in the theatres and the taverns of the town. It is abundantly evident that he felt a real admiration for Marlowe, and strove, in his early works, to copy his great predecessor, whom he looked upon as his master in dramatic art ; but we have no conclusive evi- dence that in the seven years during which they were both Uving and working in I^ndon, the two poets ever met. Robert Greene, we know, was bitterly jealous of Shakespeare. In the Groatsworth of Wit Greene says, " There is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tyger's heart wrappt in a players hide supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you ; and being an absolute Johannes factotum is, in his owne conceit, the only Shakescene in a countrie." This attack by Greene is valuable in many ways. It is a distinct reference to Shakespeare and proves that, by 1592, he had made for himself some reputation not only as an actor but as a playwright. The words " Tyger's heart wrappt in a players hide " are a parody of a Hne in the third part of Henry VI, and show that this play was written before 1592. The accusation that Shakespeare had taken the credit for work that really belonged to Greene and his friends, points to the fact that Shakespeare began his career as a dramatist in the ordinary way — ^by furbishing up old plays. In those days plays were sold outright to the managers of theatres, and, as occasion required, the staff of the theatre was employed to touch up or add to any play so as to make it more acceptable to the changing taste of the pubHc. Shakespeare had probably been employed in this way on a play called Henry VI, which, on March 3, 1592, was acted at the Rose Theatre. The author of the original play we do not know. It was probably one of a large number written to minister to the patriotic feelings which were upper- most in men's minds diiring the years which followed England's great victory over Spain. Needy dramatists took the work of the old chroniclers, and seizing upon likely dramatic passages, hastily turned them into rough plays which would satisfy the L 161 ENGLISH LITERATURE ^ demand of the playgoers, and fill the theatre. It is not un- \ likely that Greene and Marlowe, and perhaps Peele, had joined j in producing the old play which Shakespeare revised. j Henry VI was received with enthusiasm. " How would it ' have joyed brave Talbot (the terror of the French)," wrote ' Nash, " to thinke that after he had lyne two hundred yeares in , his Tombe, hee should triumphe againe on the Stage, and have I his bones newe embalmed with the teares of ten thousand spectators at least (at severall times) who, in the Tragedian that , represents his person, imagine they behold him fresh bleeding ! " : Very soon afterward appeared another play, continuing the \ historical narrative — " The First Part of the Contention be- : twixt the two famous houses of York and I^ancaster " ; and i in 1593 came still another continuation under the name of | " The True Tragedie of Richard, Duke of Yorke, and the death of good King Henry the Sixt, as it was sundrie times acted by the Karl of Pembroke his servants." All three were after- | ward again thoroughly revised by Shakespeare. How much I of these plays, as we now have them, was written by him we i do not know. Critics allot to him only a small part of Henry VI ; of the second play it is agreed that the larger part is ' his ; of the third, less than a half. The three plays were j published, after Shakespeare's death, as the first, second j and third parts of Henry VI. ' It is almost certain that at least in a part of the work of revision, Shakespeare was helped by some other dramatist, and critics are incUned to think that this helper was Christopher Marlowe. Marlowe died June i, 1593, possibly before the revision was completed, but some Hues in the first two plays are so distinctly in his vein that it is difiicult to believe he did not write them (e.g. II Hy. VI ; IV, i. i-ii). So began the series of Chronicle plays which was continued in Richard III, Richard II, King John, Henry IV, and Henry V, all probably written before 1599. During this early period of dramatic authorship Shakespeare wrote also a series of light and mirthful comedies — Love's Labour's Lost, The Comedy of Errors, The Two Gentlemen of 162 THE PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE Verona, A Midsummer Night's Dream — all of which show more or less the influence of John I^yly ; one tragedy — Romeo and Juliet — also belongs to this period. Ill All this time Shakespeare's reputation as a poet, playwright, and actor had been steadily rising. He began to be known at the court. Twice he acted before Elizabeth during the Christ- mas season 1594. He was fortunate enough to gain the good- will of the Karl of Southampton, one of the most magnificent of the young gallants who made the Court of Elizabeth splendid. Southampton was a munificent patron of letters, and to Shakespeare he showed not only kindness, but real friendship. The poet on his part felt a warm and affectionate attachment to his young patron. To Southampton he dedicated Venus and Adonis and Lucrece, two poems published in 1593 and 1594 respectively, and it is almost certain that the ' fair friend ' on whom in his Sonnets he lavishes such loving praise, is Southampton also. Sir Sidney Lee calculates that in the years immediately pre- ceding 1599 Shakespeare's income was over £130, that is about £1040 of our present money. His easier circumstances made it possible for him to pay longer and more frequent visits to Stratford-on-Avon, and to take the first steps in carrying out the purpose which, through all these years, he had kept steadily before him. John Shakespeare was in even worse difficulties than he had been at the time of his son leaving Stratford, and he and his wife shared with Shakespeare's wife and children the prosperity which the years in London had brought. In 1596 Shakespeare's only son, Hamnet, died. This must have been a terrible blow both to Shakespeare's affections and to his ambition of founding a family in his native place. It has been conjectured that Prince Arthur in King John was drawn from this son, of whom, otherwise, we know nothing. But in spite of this loss, he persevered in his intention. In 1597 he bought New Place, the largest and most important dwelhng- 163 ENGLISH LITERATURE house in Stratford, for £60, or £480 of our present money. It was in an almost ruinous condition, and for some years Shake- speare did not inhabit it, but occupied himself in restoring and beautifying the house, in building new barns, and in buying, as opportunity occurred, adjacent lands to enlarge and enrich his domain. From this time onward he spent a considerable part of each year in his native town. Shakespeare had now passed through the early experi- mental stages, during which he was learning his art from the , work of other dramatists and from the actual business of the theatre. The year 1598 saw the completion of the series of j historical plays ; and during the next two years Shakespeare j wrote his three most perfect comedies — Much Ado About ^ Nothing, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night. It is difficult to i select from this trio one play which has a special claim to con- ] sideration, but As You Like It perhaps illustrates more clearly ' than either of the others some of Shakespeare's characteristic j quaUties and methods, and we will therefore briefly review that. In 1590 was pubUshed a novel by Thomas I^odge, called ■ Rosalynde, Euphues Golden Legacy, Rosalynde was to some ' extent founded upon an older story, The Cook's Tale ofGamelyn, 1 which has been wrongly attributed to Chaucer, and included ] in some editions of The Canterbury Tales. On this novel i Shakespeare founded his play oi As You Like It, though he ; made many alterations, introduced several new characters, \ and transformed the whole tone and spirit of the earlier work. \ It is the finest example of Shakespeare's * open air ' comedies. ; In Love's Labour's Lost we are taken to the park of the King of ; Navarre, we catch sight of the royal hunting-party and stand : under the cool shade of the sycamore-trees. But the men and ; women we meet are of the court, and they speak the artificial \ language of Euphues ; the wit sparkles so brilliantly below that we forget to look up and see the bright sun above. In ■ A Midsummer Night's Dream we spend a summer night in an ; enchanted wood, where ' faint primrose beds ' and banks of I wild thyme shine under the white radiance of a magic moon. • But even here, altogether delightful as the atmosphere is, there ; 164 i IP THE PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE is a feeling of seclusion, and we know that we could never find our way to that forest by the light of the everyday sun. In As You Like It we are in the veritable Forest of Arden that Shakespeare knew and loved ; the free winds blow over us, sometimes keen and biting, but always healthful, the noon- day sun shines with fullest Hght, the common sounds of wood- land life are in our ears. Professor Sir Walter Raleigh, in a striking passage, has pointed out with what wonderful skill these effects are gained. " A minute examination of the play has given a curious result. No single bird, or insect, or flower, is mentioned by name. The words ' flower ' and ' leaf ' do not occur. The trees of the forest are the oak, the hawthorn, the palm-tree, and the olive. For animals, there are the deer, one lioness, and one green and gilded snake. The season is not easy to determine ; perhaps it is summer ; we hear only of the biting cold and the wintry wind. * But these are all lies,* as RosaUnd would say, and the dramatic truth has been expressed by those critics who speak of ' the leafy soHtudes sweet with the song of birds.' It is nothing to the outlaws that their forest is poorly furnished with stage-properties ; they fleet the time carelessly in a paradise of gaiety and indolence, and there is summer in their hearts. So Shakespeare attains his end without the bathos of an allusion to the soft green grass, which must needs have been represented by the boards of the theatre." For it must be remembered that in Shakespeare's day no scenery of effects were used. " You shall have Asia of the one side, and Africke of the other," wrote Sir PhiUp Sidney, " and so many other under-kingdomes, that the Plaier when hee comes in must ever begin with telling where hee is, or else the tale will not be conceived. Now shall you have three I^adies walke to gather flowers, and then we must beleeve the stage to be a garden. By and by wee heare newes of shipwracke in the same place, then wee are to blame if we accept it not for a rocke ; . . . while in the meantime two armies flie in, represented with f oure swordes and bucklers, and then what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field." Rosalind, the heroine, takes her place among the company of 165 ENGLISH LITERATURE girl-characters which is one of the notable glories of Shake speare's works. Like her namesake in Love's Labour's Lost and like Beatrice in Much Ado, she is high-spirited and mischief- loving ; like them, too, she has a sharp edge to her tongue, and can hold her own in a combat of wit with any opponent. But she is not quite so brilUant as these others, a shade softer, and just a trifle sweeter. She is younger and more girlish ; there are touches which seem to indicate that she has not long left the ' tomboy ' stage of childhood behind her. It has been suggested that Shakespeare studied his girl-heroines from his own daughter, Judith. In 1599, when, as we believe, Shakespeare paid his first long visit to Stratford, Judith was about sixteen, a fresh, bright, country girl with a share of her father's wit, and a share of his good looks. It is quite possible that Shakespeare was captivated by the graces of his own daughter, and that Judith found in her famous father a play- fellow beyond all her previous imaginings. So that Rosalind, daughter of a banished Duke, who sought her father in the French forest, may be really Judith, daughter of WilUam Shakespeare, who, in theffingUsh forest by the River Avon, showed her father how sweet and bright and lovable a girl heroine should be. An additional interest is given to As You Like It by the probability that Shakespeare himself took the part of Adam when the play was first produced. Oldys (an early biographer of Shakespeare) says that a younger brother of the poet, who was alive after the Restoration, used in his old age to speak of how he had often come up to London to see his brother act. Naturally, he was closely and eagerly questioned. " But all that could be recollected from him of his brother Will in that station was the faint, general and almost lost ideas he had of having once seen him act a part in one of his own comedies, wherein, being to personate a decrepit old man, he wore a long beard, and appeared so weak and drooping and unable to walk, that he was forced to be supported and carried by another person to a table, at which he was seated among some company, who were eating, and one of them sung a song." 166 IfrHE PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE (To this period also belong The Merchant of Venice, All's Well that Ends Well, Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida and Julius Ccesar.) IV The end of the sixteenth century marks, roughly speaking, a turning-point in Shakespeare's career. He had by this time attained the object of his early ambition. He had made for himself a name and position in his native town ; he was no longer young Will Shakespeare, the idle, poaching son of the ruined butcher, but the wealthy Mr. William Shakespeare, gentleman, of New Place, who had made the name of Stratford famous even in far-off London. He had estabUshed his family honourably in the comfortable house he had bought and restored. He was able to make easy the last days of his father, who died in 1601, and to provide a home for his mother in the old house in Henley Street, until she too died, in 1608. In London Shakespeare was admired and respected. He was a popular actor and a noted playwright. The new Globe Theatre, which had been built on the Bankside, South- wark, in 1599, was largely under his management, and he drew a considerable share of the profits which were made in it. He was high in the favour of James I as he had been in that of Elizabeth. His life was, apparently, cheerful and sociable ; his company was sought after by men of all ranks. Tradition says that he was the centre of the brilUant group that assembled at the Mermaid Tavern, Bread Street, where Sir Walter Raleigh had established a kind of club for literary men, and of which Beaumont writes in his well-known lines What things have we seen Done at the Mennaid ! heard words that have been So nimble, and so full of subtle flame. As if that every one from whom they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest. And had resolved to live a fool the rest Of his dull Ufe. But as we pass on to the examination of the plays that Shakespeare produced in the early years of the new century all 167 ENGLISH LITERATURE this brightness of prosperity disappears, and we are aware of a black cloud into which our poet has entered. It is not a cloud that dimmed his genius, for some of his most wonderful works were written while it overshadowed him. It is a cloud which, for a time, hid from him the bright face of heaven, and all the simple, beautiful and joyous things in which his nature had delighted. It made the earth a dark, unhappy place, where men walked bHndly, oppressed by the awful and mysterious dispensations of a terrible God. Perhaps some great sorrow of which we know nothing came to Shakespeare at this time ; perhaps the change we notice in him is simply due to the necessity imposed upon a soul such as his of entering into all the deep and dark places of human nature. He may have suffered in an attempt to consider, if not to solve, the terrible problems which present themselves to every thoughtful man and woman on the way through life. However this may be, all the plays written between 1602 and 1608 show an ever-increasing sense of the strength of the powers of evil in the world, of dark depths of sin and sorrow toward which man, thoughtlessly or bhndly, advances. '■ The four great tragedies — Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth — written between 1602 and 1606 — give the fullest expression to the thoughts which seem to have possessed Shakespeare's mind at this period. In King Lear, for example, there is depicted an agony so stupendous and heart-breaking that to contemplate it calmly is almost an impossibility. Dr. Johnson is among those who have acknowledged that they have shrunk in dread from reading or witnessing the play a second time, so deep and awful is the impression which the sufferings of the poor mad king have made upon them. It is illuminating to note the basis on which Shakespeare builds up this, his most heartrending tragedy. There is no fearful national convulsion, no devastating war, no deeply laid plot. The rending of natural, human ties, the rejection of natural, human duties — from these apparently small beginnings the great agony proceeds. Yet we are shown the other side also. If Shakespeare l68 IP THE PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE makes us shudder at the realization that the utter disregard of filial obUgations may tend to produce fiends such as Regan and Goneril, he uplifts us, too, by reminding us that the simple, loving fulfilment of a daughter's duty suffices to make a heroine. A stem sense of the compulsion laid upon a man to do the plain duty appointed for him and not evade it on any pretext, however specious, constrains Shakespeare in his creation of I/car ; but it constrains him also in his creation of Kent and Edmund and the poor, faithful fool. The cloud was thick and black, but Shakespeare never lost his faith that somewhere behind it there was still a sun in the heavens ; and soon the sun shone through the clouds, and made a glorious ending to the poet's splendid, though not unclouded day. The last years of Shakespeare's life were spent mainly at Stratford. His wife and his daughter Judith were with him at New Place. His elder daughter, Susannah, had, in 1607, married John Hall, a somewhat famous doctor of medicine, and there was a Httle daughter now in their home. Friends from I^ondon came occasionally to Stratford to visit Shake- speare in his retirement. His actor friends — Richard Burbage, who had taken the part of the hero in almost all the Shake- peare's tragedies, Heminge and Condell, who were his literary executors and edited the folio edition of his works after his death — these came many times. The poets, Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton, came at least once. In this happy retire- ment the great moral problems of the world ceased to oppress Shakespeare's mind. He had passed through his season of doubt and stress. He had met his difficulties bravely, not weakly shrinking from the pain that the encounter involved, or thrusting unwelcome questions aside to be dealt with at a more convenient season. He had won, through struggle, to peace. In these last years he wrote three dramas — The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, and The Tempest — ^which it is difficult to classify. They are comedies in that they end happily, but they have not the mirthful comedy spirit ; they are full of a radiant loveliness which transfigures and etherealizes them without 169 ENGLISH LITERATURE . taking away from their warm living interest. The title of ' romance ' has been given to these plays to distinguish them ! from the earlier comedies. I The difference between the romances and the comedies may , be illustrated by a comparison of the heroine of each. Perdita, Imogen and Miranda stand apart. There has been nothing i like them in any of the previous plays. They are neither brilHant nor witty, they have none of the charming airs and , graces that delight us in Shakespeare's earlier creations. ' They are sweet, lovable, loving girls, of an exquisite purity | and rare beauty of character that, in some wonderful way is shown in their every word and action. It is perhaps not | too fanciful to see Judith Shakespeare once more as her I father's model. He has learnt now that there is more in his daughter than the high spirits and the grace which first : charmed him ; he has learnt to reverence girlhood in her ' person, and to spend all his creative skill in doing it honour. ) The last play that Shakespeare wrote was, as we suppose, The Tempest, and with this he crowned all his previous achieve- ; ments. Dainty Ariel is the Puck of Midsummer Night* s Dream etherealized and glorified by the / deHcate air ' of the enchanted , island. The whole play is, like the island, full of " sounds and | sweet airs that give deUght and hurt not." In Prospero it is j inevitable that we should see some shadow of the writer of the play. Shakespeare himself, one cannot help thinking, ! meant to signify an intention of bringing his work as a dramatist | to a close when he wrote the words | I'll break my staff, ■ Bury it certain fathoms in the earth. And deeper than did ever plummet soimd I'll drown my book. j ' This was his farewell, and though he lived some six years i longer, he wrote no more. He died on April 23, 1616, at the ; age of fifty-two, and was buried in the chancel of Stratford , Church. \ [During Shakespeare's lifetime sixteen of his plays had been 1 170 j w O (U e at V Cl, M 4) HE PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE iblished in quarto, at sixpence each. In 1623 John Heminge id Henry Condell, assisted by various printers and pub- lers, brought out the first complete edition of his works, of which about a hundred and forty copies are known to be still in existence. This edition is now known as the First Folio.] 171 I CHAPTER XIX ENGLAND'S HELICON HEUCON, we are told, was a mountain in Boeotia, in Greece, sacred to Apollo and the Muses ; on it were situated the fountains Hippocrene and Aganippe, the grand sources of poetic inspiration. One is inclined to believe that, during the Elizabethan age, this mountain was, by art or magic, transported to the realms of England ; and that the man, whoever he might be, who gave the title of England's Helicon to the collection of verse pubHshed in 1600, was attempting no fanciful piece of symboUsm, but was making open reference to a well-known fact. It is difficult to account, except on some such theory as this, for the great impulse which set all England singing during the last twenty years of the reign of Elizabeth. Never was there such a great and tuneful chorus. Men sang freely, carelessly, joyously, because the singing impulse was in them, and because all around them others were singing too. They sang of sweet May mornings and fragrant summer nights, of love and kisses and maids with hair of beaten gold and eyes like stars ; of daffodils and prim- roses and winking Mary-buds, of frisking lambs and morn- waking birds ; of gowns of green and quoifs and laces and stomachers ; of curds and cream and nappy ale. They sang, too, of graver things — of truth and falsehood, of sorrow and death, and of the service due to the King of Heaven. But whatever the theme, the song came with a swing and a lilt delightful to the ear. The writers invented new measures and cadences, and ornamented them with little joyous trills and merry refrains ; or made the sound of fairy feet dance through them, marking a magic rhythm ; or gaily " hunted the letter " 172 |p ENGLAND'S HELICON down the winding ways of a dainty ditty — all for sheer delight in their work. There is nothing in all literature like the lyrics that were written in this wonderful age. As we read them now they sing themselves in our ears after their old enchanting fashion, and that joy of living which their makers felt so strongly stirs all our pulses. For our share in these treasures of the Elizabethan age we are largely indebted to men who, like the unknown compilers of England's Helicon, collected and preserved them. For the writers themselves took small trouble in this matter. The song had served to express some passing mood, to make, for a moment, the air vocal for the singer and his friends, and having done this, might be forgotten. At the Court of Elizabeth men like Spenser, Raleigh and Sidney led a chorus of song, in which almost every courtier took part. Each set of verses as it was written was handed about among the writer's friends, perhaps set to music and sung, copied in ladies' albums, talked about, imitated. In the house of every nobleman, gentleman and merchant, the same sort of thing, in its degree, was going on. Musicians were busy setting the verses to music, for music, both vocal and instrumental, was widely cultivated ; the two arts of poetry and music had, indeed, an immense influence the one upon the other. At the theatres the crowded audiences demanded that music should form part of the entertainment, and Greene, I^odge, Peele, and Shakespeare himself, followed the example set by John lyyly, and introduced into their plays the charming lyrics which form so important a part of the Elizabethan collection. It is not to be supposed that among this mass of production all songs were of equal merit. Some, indeed, of those that have come down to us, are merely mechanical and imitated jingles. But by far the greater part have fluency, charm and tunefulness, and many are great Ijnric poems. Naturally, enterprising booksellers disapproved of the waste of precious material which was so lavishly and so con- stantly going on. As early as 1557 ^^ attempt had been made to collect some of the most famous of the lyrics of the 173 ENGLISH LITERATURE time, and this had resulted in the publication of Tottell's t Miscellany. It contained the poems of Surrey, Wyatt, and ^ about forty other writers. At intervals during the reign of \ Elizabeth other collections appeared. It is from these collec- ' tions, and from the song books, also published in large numbers ' during this period, that most of the treasures of Elizabethan -^ lyric poetry have been recovered. ■ The most celebrated and the best of these miscellanies is the j one to which reference has already been made — England's \ Helicon, published 1600. It was planned by John Boden- ham, and edited by an anonymous ''A. B." One or other, or both of these men must have possessed a very iSne poetic ; taste, for the very best of all the Elizabethan lyrics known i to us are included in it. All the plays, romances, sonnet- sequences, song-books and miscellanies of the period must have been ransacked, and treasures from these placed side 1 by side with hitherto unpublished poems. Twenty-seven | poets, living and dead, are represented. In the Hst of these | are to be found the well-known names of Shakespeare, Spenser, ' Sidney, Surrey, Drayton, Raleigh, Greene, lyodge and Peele, \ with those of lesser poets such as Edmund Bolton, Nicholas Breton, Richard Barnefield, Sir Edward Dyer, Henry Con- ; stable, and John Wootton. ' Shakespeare is represented only by the song from Love's ' Labour's Lost, On a day (alack, the day). The ode, As it j fell upon a day, is ascribed to him but has since been \ proved to be the work of Richard Barnefield. There are I three poems by Spenser, one being the beautiful elegy on Sir PhiUp Sidney, Colin Clout's Mournful Ditty for the Death of j Astrophel. The other two are taken from the Shepheard's , Calendar. One of these is called Hobbinol's Ditty in Praise of ' Eliza, and is an excellent example of the extravagant flattery ! that the fashion of the day obliged the courtly poets to pay to , the Queen. Tell me, have ye beheld her angel's face, ; Like Phoebe fair ! Her heavenly behaviour, her princely grace Can well compare ; \ 174 ENGLAND'S HELICON The red rose medled^ and the white yiere,* In either cheek depeincted lively cheer. Her modest eye. Her majesty. Where have you seen the like but there ? I saw Phoebus thrust out his golden head On her to gaze : But when he saw how broad her beams did spread It did him maze. He blush'd to see another sun below, He durst again his fiery face outshow ; Let him if he dare His brightness compare. With hers to have the overthrow. There are several poems by Sidney, including his Dirge, said to have been written at the time when its author first heard of the marriage of Penelope Devereux to I^rd Rich : Ring out your bells, let mourning shews be spread ; For Love is dead : All love is dead, infected With plague of deep disdain ; Worth, as nought worth, rejected, And Faith fair scorn doth gain. From so ungrateful fancy. From such a female frenzy. From them that use men thus, Good Lord, deliver us ! Many of the poems take the conventional pastoral form, and | the writer speaks of himself as a shepherd and of his lady as \ a shepherdess. There is, necessarily, a certain artificiality ■ about this pastoral imagery, but it gave an opportunity for i some fresh and beautiful country lyrics. < i Phylida was a fayer mayde, :; And fresh as any flowre, ' Surrey had sung, in the days of Henry VIII, and the Eliza- bethans took up his note : Come live with me, and be my love ; And we will all the pleasures prove That hiUs and valleys, dales and fields. Woods or steepy moimtain yields. » Mixed. * Companions. 175 J ENGLISH LITERATURE So Marlowe's " Passionate Shepherd " entreated his love, and| Raleigh replied for the nymph : i If all the world and love were young, | And truth in every shepherd's tongue, { These pretty pleasures might me move ''. To live with thee and be thy love. ] Michael Drayton, who, like his friend Shakespeare, was ai native of Warwickshire, was a great writer of pastorals. His! Shepherd's Daffodil is one of the freshest and daintiest of itsj class : : Gorbo, as thou cam'st this way j By yonder little hill, I Or as thou through the fields didst stray, j Saw'st thou my daffodil ? She's in a frock of Lincoln-green, j The colour maids deUght ; '; And never hath her beauty seen ■ But through a veil of white, ' Than roses richer to behold i That dress up lovers' bowers ; | The pansy and the marigold ; Are Phcebus' paramours. / I The poems of England's Helicon show the greatest variety in ! form. Some are written in the old ' poulter's measure,' so | called because it was said to resemble the jog-trot of a farmer carrying his goods to market. Shakespeare ridicules it in hisj As You Like It. "I'll rhyme you so eight years together,! dinners and suppers and sleeping hours excepted," sayS; Touchstone, " it is the right butter- woman's rank to market " ;; and he goes on to give proof of his ability : i i If a hart do lack a hind, ' Let him seek out Rosalind. i If the cat will after kind, ' So be sure will Rosalind. i But the later Elizabethans had learnt how to transform this! 'jog-trot' measure into something much more smooth and; flowing, and some most successful examples are to be found in, 176 I ENGLAND'S HELICON lland's Helicon. Richard Barnefield used it for the beauti- Ode ' which has abready been mentioned. As it fell upon a day. In the merry month of May, Sitting in a pleasant shade Which a grove of myrtles made, Beasts did leap and birds did spring ; ^Everything did banish moan Save the nightingale alone. She, poor bird, as all forlorn, Iveaned her breast up-tiU a thorn And there sung the dolefull'st ditty That to hear it was great pity. The larger number of the poems, however, illustrate the tendency of the time to invent new, varied, and sometimes almost fantastic measures. I^ge, who is one of the sweetest and most tuneful of the Elizabethan singers, shows a mastery over a wide range of metres. His charming song To Phyllis the Fair Shepherdess is founded upon the ' poulter's measure/ I ^H My Phyllis hath the morning Sun, I ^B At first to look upon her ; I^K And Phyllis hath mom- waking birds, I^P^ Her rising still to honour. But in some of his songs he goes very far from this. For example : J Phoebe sat, 1 Sweet she sat, i Sweet sat Phoebe when I saw her. White her brow. Coy her eye, \ Brow and eye how much you please me ! | Words I span, J Sighs I sent, \ Sighs and words could never draw her. j O my love ! j Thou art lost, c Since no sight could ever ease thee. I Other less known writers show the same tendency. A \ little poem, signed " W. H.,*' runs thus : How shall I her pretty tread Express ! When she doth walk ? \ Scarce she does the primrose head ^ Depress, , M 177 ; ENGLISH LITERATURE Or tender stalk Of blue vein'd violets ? Whereon her foot she sets, \ Virtuous she is for we find ,- In body fair a beauteous mind. ', The form of the poem is often decided by the fact that it ; is written for the purpose of being set to music. Sometimes, ; as in the case of Thomas Campion, the poet and the musician ^ are united in one person, and so words and air take shape \ together. ■ Elizabethan composers used two quite distinct ' musical forms — ^the madrigal and the ayre. The madrigal i was one unbroken piece of music, forming a complete whole 1 without division or repetition. The corresponding lyric ; form is also called a madrigal, and follows the music. ' Hark, jolly shepherds, < Hark, yon lusty ringing, | How cheerfully the bells dance The whilst the lads are springing ! Go we then, why sit we here delaying ? And all yond merry, wanton lasses playing ? How gaily Flora leads it. And sweetly treads it. The woods and groves they ring. Lovely resounding, ,d With echoes rebounding. | The ayre was written for poems which were divided into ; stanzas, and was repeated for each stanza ; e.g. : ^ Tune on my pipe the praises of my love, jj Ivove fair and bright ; ; Till earth with sound, and airy heavens above Heaven's Jove's delight, ! With Daphnis' praise. j To pleasant Tempe groves and plains about, \ Plains shepherds' pride, i Resounding echoes of her praise ring out, 1 Ring far and wide 4 My Daphnis' praise. j It is impossible here to give any account of all the beautiful j poems which this Elizabethan anthology contains. Almost ! every one is a gem. Most of the quotations in this chapter have been, designedly, taken from some of the least-known i 178 ■ IP ENGLAND'S HELICON poems in the collection, but we will finish with the one that is perhaps the best known of them all — Robert Greene's lovely Content : Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content ; The quiet mind is richer than a crown ; Sweet are the nights in careless slumber spent ; The poor estate scorns fortune's angry frown : Such sweet content, such minds, such sleep, such bliss. Beggars enjoy, when princes oft do miss. The homely house that harbours quiet rest ; The cottage that affords no pride nor care ; The mean that 'grees with country music best ; The sweet consort of mirth and music's fare ; Obscured life sets down a type of bliss, A mind content both crown and kingdom is. 179 CHAPTER XX HAKLUYrS VOYAGES RICHARD HAKIvUYT was one of those supremely fortunate persons who go through life with a great . absorbing purpose set clear and plain before them. While he was yet a boy the passion was kindled within him which led him on through years of hardships, and made his toil a delight. He tells us himself, just how it happened. " I do remember," he says, " that being a youth and one of her Majesty's scholars at Westminster, that fruitful nurserie, it was my hap to visit the chamber of Mr, Richard Hakluyt my Cosin, a Gentleman of the Middle Temple, at a time when I found lying open upon his boord certeine bookes of Cosmo- graphie, with an Universalle Mappe. He seeing me some- what curious in the view thereof began to instruct my ignorance by showing me the division of the earth into three partes after the olde account, and then according to the latter and better distribution more ; he pointed with his wand to all the knowen Seas, Gulfs, Bayes, Straights, Capes, Rivers, Empires, Kingdoms, Dukedoms and Territories of ech part, with declaration also of their special commodities and par- ticular wants, which by the benefit of traffike and entercourse of merchants are plentifully supplied. From the map he brought me to the Bible, and turning to the 107th Psalme directed me to the 23rd and 24th verses, where I read that ' they that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters ; these see the works of the lyord, and His wonders in the deep.' Which words of the Prophet together with my cousin's discourse (things of high and rare delight to my young nature) tooke in me so deepe an impression, that I 180 KHAKLUYT'S VOYAGES nstantly resolved, if ever I were preferred to the University, wnere better time and more convenient place might be ministered for these studies, I would, by God's assistance, prosecute that knowledge and kind of Hterature the doores whereof (after a sort) were so happily opened before me." Hakluyt was fortunate, too, in the age in which he Hved. There never was such an age for the student of ' Cosmo- graphic ' and for the man who took " a high and rare delight " in learning of the ** wonders in the deep/' It was nearly a hundred years since Columbus had sailed on that memorable voyage which opened to us a new world, and his example, and the great " fame and report " that he gained, Ut in other hearts " a great flame of desire to attempt some notable thing." So said Sebastian Cabot, a Venetian merchant, who, in 1497, sailed from Bristol and discovered the coast of Labrador ; and after him came many others, Portuguese and Spaniards and ItaUans, and, last of all, EngUsh. The BngUsh age of exploration did not begin until half-way through the sixteenth century. But though late in the field, they did not long lag behind. Hugh Willoughby, Richard Chancellor, John Hawkins, Humphrey Gilbert, Walter Raleigh, Francis Drake, Martin Frobisher, John Davys — ^these all stand in the front rank of sixteenth-century explorers. For the stay-at-homes as well as for the travellers, these voyages of exploration opened out new worlds of beauty and wonder. The returned sailors filled every port in the country with marvellous stories of their adventures, and from the ports the stories travelled inland. A traveller's yam, as strange as any that Sir John Mandeville had offered his readers, might be heard in almost every place where a few men were gathered together — in the market, the tavern, the barber's shop,the open street. And it was not only of the marvels of the new lands that the seamen spoke. They had nobler stories to tell of perils bravely met and difficulties overcome. The spirit of English- men rose high as the brave tales went round, and men heard Daily how through hardy enterprise Many great Regions are discovered. 181 ENGLISH LITERATURE For a long time the written records of the voyages were very imperfect and scanty. Captains kept their logs, and sometimes on their return home pubHshed a narrative compiled from these ; or sometimes a member of an expedition wrote a more or less detailed, independent personal narrative. John Hawkins wrote A True Declaration of the Troublesome voyage of Mr. John Hawkins to the parts of Guinea and the West Indies in the years of our Lord, 1567 and 1568, and in 1570 Sir Humphrey Gilbert wrote his Discourse of a Discover ie for a new passage to Cataia. Frobisher and Richard Hawkins also published some account of their voyages. All these attracted much attention, and throughout the country men were eagerly asking for more of these fascinating and heart-stirring stories. But many voyages remained entirely unrecorded, and much splendid material for epic narrative was in danger of being lost. It seems strange when we think of the number of men who were at this time writing poetry in England, that nobody seized upon one of these great heroic stories and made it the basis of an epic poem. To write a lyric was, in those golden days, the ordinary accomplishment of a gentleman, to write a play was in the day's work of a Hterary hack. But no one, it seems, thought of writing an epic, though the material lay so ready to hand. For some unexplained reason such work did not suit the genius of the age. It responded freely and fully to the stimulus which came from this tremendous expansion of natural activity ; the literature of the day is full of the ad- ventures of the voyagers, it breathes the spirit of the sea and sings triumphantly of the glories of the new lands. But for that full commendation, which should suffice to pass their names down to posterity, the great Elizabethan seamen waited for Richard Haklujrt. Hakluyt was not a sailor, and his home was in the inland county of Herefordshire. He came of a learned stock, and received a scholarly education to fit him for his destined place as a clergyman of the English Church. He does not seem ever to have travelled farther than Paris. Yetfhe will always be closely associated with great deeds done upon the 182 HAKLUYT'S VOYAGES high seas, and wonderful adventures in distant lands. The fascination which these things had for him kept him faithful all his life long to the purpose which he had formed in his boyish days. When he went from Westminster School to Christ Church, Oxford, he followed, with a single mind, the path he had marked out for himself. He learnt six languages in order that he might be able to read all the narratives of voyages that he could possibly obtain. He studied geography, as far as it was then known ; more especially he paid attention to the construction of maps. He learned the art of navigation, with the use of the navigator's instruments. When he left the University he lectured on these subjects, probably to merchants and shipmen of the Port of I^ondon, " to the singular pleasure and general contentment of his audience." By this time he had begun to collect the scattered narratives of the ear her voyagers, and to attempt, as he said, " to in- corporate into one body the torn and scattered Umbs of our ancient and late navigations by sea." Of some voyages no written account existed. Hakluyt set himself dihgently to work to collect such facts as might enable him to supply the omission. Every possible source of information — official docu- ments, letters, chance references in hterature, the stories current in the common gossip of the day — was dealt with in able and painstaking fashion. Once Hakluyt rode two hundred miles for an interview with the last survivor of Master Hoare's expedition to America, 1536. Some facts concerning the memorable and unrecorded voyages of Sebastian Cabot he gathered from an account given to " Certaine Gentlemen of Venice " by the Pope's Legate in Spain, who had it from Cabot himself, in his old age. " What restless nights, what painful days, what heat, what cold, I have endured ; how many long and chargeable journeys I have travelled ; how many famous Hbraries I have searched into ; what variety of ancient and modern writers I have perused ; what a number of old records, patents, privileges, letters, etc., I have redeemed from ob- scurity and perishing ; into how manifold acquaintance I have entered ; what expenses I have not spared." 183 ENGLISH LITERATURE In 1582 Hakluyt published Divers Voyages touching the Discoverie of America, which he dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney. From 1583 to 1588 he was living in Paris, as chaplain to the English embassy. Here the stories which he heard of foreign enterprise made him still more eager to continue his work, and " to wade still further and further in the sweet studie of the historic of cosmographie." In 1590 he became Rector of Wetheringsett in Suffolk, and married in 1594. In 1589 his great work, The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation, made by sea or over land to the most remote and farthest distant quarters of the earth at any time within the compasse of these fifteen hundred yeares, was published. This book, as Froude has said, " may be called the Prose Epic of the modern English nation. . . . We have no longer kings or princes for chief actors, to whom the heroism, like the dominion of the world had in time past been confined. But, as it was in the days of the Apostles, when a few poor fishermen from an obscure lake in Palestine assumed, under the Divine mission, the spiritual authority over mankind, so, in the days of our own Elizabeth, the seamen from the banks of the Thames and the Avon, the Plym and the Dart, self- taught and self-directed, with no impulse but what was beating in their own royal hearts, went out across the unknown seas fighting, discovering, colonizing, and graved out the channels, paving them at last with their bones, through which the com- merce and enterprise of England have flowed out over all the world. We can conceive nothing, not the songs of Homer himself, which would be read among us with more enthusiastic interest than these plain massive tales." Charles Kingsley, who founded his great book Westward Ho ! on Hakluyt's Voyages, speaks of the sailor heroes with the same enthusiasm. " I have been living in those Elizabethan books," he says, " among such grand, beautiful, silent men, that I am learning to be sure of what I all along suspected, that I am a poor, queasy, hysterical, half-baked sort of fellow, so that I am by no means hopeful about my book, which seems J84 IP HAKLUYT'S VOYAGES to me only half as good as I could have written, and only one- hundredth part as good as ought to be written on the matter," It is, indeed, a great and notable company to which Hakluyt introduces us. There is Sebastian Cabot, " a very gentle person," who laid down wise laws for his " companie of Mar- chants adventurers," directing that all the crew shall be "so knit and accorded in unitie, love, conformitie, and obedience in everie degree on all sides, that no dissention, variance or con- tention may rise or spring betwixt them and the mariners of this companie to the damage or hindrance of the voyage." There is Martin Frobisher, so bent upon his great enterprise of discovering the North- West Passage to India that " he deter- mined and resolved with himself to go make full proof thereof, and to accomplish or bring true certificate of the truth, or else never to return again ; knowing this to be the only thing of the world that was left yet undone, whereby a notable mind might be made famous and fortunate." There is Sir Richard Hawkins, who sailed in his ship Repentance, which his mother had named because, she said, " repentance was the safest ship we could sail in to purchase" the ^aveh of heaven." There is Francis Drake, full of '* invincible courage and industry," climbing a tree in Panama, so that two oceans lay stretched beneath his gaze, and vowing that he would sail a ship into the unknown Pacific ; crawling out upon the cliffs of Terra Del Fuego, and leaning his head over the southernmost angle of the world ; " scoring a furrow round the globe with his keel," and receiving the homage of the barbarians of the antipodes in the name of the Virgin Mary ; " singeing the King of Spain's beard " in that '* strange and happy enter- prise " in which he " burnt, sunk or brought away " thirty ships from the harbour of Santa Cruz, including " one new ship of extraordinary hugeness, being in burden about 1200 tons, belonging to the Marquis of Santa Cruz, at that instant high admiral of Spain," which exploit " bred such a corrosive in the heart of the marquis, that he never enjoyed good day after." There is Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who went down in his little ship the Squirrel, dying in a fashion " well beseeming 185 ENGLISH LITERATURE \ a soldier resolute m Jesus Chnst/' and whose great words \ written in his Discourse sum up the grand and simple creed by ^ which these brave mariners directed their lives : " Never, j therefore, mislike with me for taking in hand any laudable and \ honest enterprise, for if through pleasure or idleness we purchase | shame, the pleasure vanisheth, but the shame abideth for ever. | Give me leave, therefore, without offence, always to hve and \ die in this mind : that he is not worthy to live at all that, for | fear or danger of death, shunneth his country's service and his i own honour, seeing that death is inevitable and the fame of I virtue immortal." j z' It is to Richard Hakluyt that we owe our intimate know- 1 ledge of all these great heroes, and of many more, not lesS; than they. Their histories had long lain " miserably scattered i in mustie corners, and retchlessly hidden in mistie darknesse, and were very like for the greatest part to have been buried in perpetuall oblivion." Hakluyt recovered them for us, and' in so doing gained for himself an honoured place in the history of English literature. 1 86 CHAPTER XXI ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY WE have seen how, throughout the reign of Elizabeth the spirit of the Renaissance had mounted ever higher and higher, and had produced a literature such as has hardly been equalled during all the ages of the world's history. But underneath all the riot of wit and glory of imagination, the sober, serious spirit of the Englishman still persisted. There were still many men in the country to whom reUgion was the great central fact of life. While the first notes were rising from the great company of singers whose chorus was to fill the land with music, Cranmer, with his band of helpers was perfecting that glory of the English Church, the Book of Common Prayer ; while Marlowe was thriUing the crowds that flocked to the Belsavage Playhouse with his riotous Tamhurlaine or his terrible Faust, EngHshmen who were exiles for the faith were watching with envious admiration the godly, strictly ordered community which Calvin had estabHshed in Geneva ; and in the same year that Shakespeare's mirthful fairy play, A Midsummer Night's Dream, was first produced, Richard Hooker from his quiet country parsonage at Bishopsbourne sent out the first part of his great theological work. The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. The title is not a very attractive one, nor is the ' judicious Hooker * at first sight a very attractive personality, especially when he is placed beside the great and gallant figures which crowd that glorious age. " What went they out to see," says his biographer, Izaak Walton, referring to the visitors whom Hooker's fame attracted to his quiet country home, " A man clothed in purple and fine linen ? No, indeed ; but an obscure, 117 ENGLISH LITERATURE I harmless man ; a man in poor clothes, his loins usually girt j in a coarse gown, or canonical coat ; of a mean stature, and! stooping, and yet more lowly in the thoughts of his soul ; hisl body worn out, not with age, but study and holy mortifica-^ tions ; his face full of heat pimples, begot by his unactivity^ and sedentary life. . , . God and nature blessed him with so ^ blessed a bashfulness, that as in his younger days his pupils] might easily look him out of countenance ; so neither then, nor | in his age, did he ever wilHngly look any man in the face : j and was of so mild and humble a nature, that his poor parish i clerk and he did never talk but with both their hats on, or '\ both o£E, at the same time : and to this may be added, that j though he was not purblind, yet he was short or weak-sighted ; '\ and where he fixed his eyes at the beginning of his sermon, there i they continued till it was ended." j Yet, if a great work, nobly conceived and finely executed, | can dignify its author there is a very real grandeur in the in- ? significant figure thus described, and Richard Hooker deserves ■' to be remembered among those other * men of Devon ' who ^ shed glory upon their native county in the reign of the great . Queen. He was born at Heavytree, near Exeter, March 1554, i and was educated at the Exeter High School. He was, even as ] a boy, slow, grave, and earnest in manner, of a fine modesty, 1 and with a keen intellectual curiosity united to a serene quiet- ' ness of temper. Everywhere these quaHties gained him j friends. It was under the patronage of the great Bishop | Jewel — himself a Devonshire man — that he entered Corpus ' Christi College, Oxford, in 1568, and he remained there, first ' as student, and then as Fellow, until 1584, when he married. 1 His wife is credited with shrewishness of temper, and several of j Hooker's friends have represented him as a most pitiably hen- ] pecked and oppressed husband. But it is probable that in this there has been considerable exaggeration. For a year after i his marriage Hooker held a small living in Buckinghamshire. \ Here he was visited by two of his pupils, Edwin Sandys and : George Cranmer. They found him with the Odes of Horace in his hand, tending the sheep, while the servant was away at 188 B ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY ner. Being released from this occupation, Hooker engaged eager conversation with his visitors, but was soon called away to rock the cradle of his baby daughter, Joan. The two young men, wrathful and indignant, left the house early the next morning. To an unprejudiced judgment, however. Hooker's case does not seem to have been such a very terrible one. To tend sheep is an occupation neither harmful nor degrading, and as for rocking the cradle, why, as Mr. Stopford Brooke says, " Richard could not have had a sweeter employ- ment ; he was precisely in the place assigned to him in the divine order of the universe." He himself, as far as we can tell, never showed by his words or his actions any feehng toward his wife, save respect and affection, and he proved his confidence in her by making her the sole executrix of his will. In 1585 Hooker was appointed Master of the Temple, where he soon became famous as a preacher who upheld with power and abiHty the estabHshed order of the English Church. But he was not nearly as happy here as he had been in his quiet home in Buckinghamshire. It was Hooker's duty to preach the morning sermon. In the afternoon his place was taken by IMr. Walter Travers, a man of upright character, and great zeal, but a strong upholder of the Presbyterian form of church government. Travers was a very popular preacher, and people flocked in crowds to the Temple to hear his heated attacks on the bishops of the Church. So, as witty, gossiping Thomas Fuller tells us, in his Worthies of England, written some fifty years after, " The pulpit of the Temple spoke pure Canterbury in the morning and Geneva in the afternoon. At the building of Solomon's temple neither hammer nor axe nor tool of iron was heard therein. Whereas, alas ! in this Temple, not only much knocking was heard, but (which was the worst) the nails and pins which one master-builder drave in were driven out by the other." Such a state of things was terribly distressing to poor Hooker. He could not Hve amid bitterness and strife. The authorities were on his side, and Archbishop Whitgift pro- hibited Travers from preaching on the ground that his ordina- 189 ENGLISH LITERATURE tion was irregular. But even this did not free Hooker from J his difficulties. Travers carried on the war in print, and hisb unwilling adversary was forced to reply. Utterly weary of it I all, Hooker addressed an almost piteous petition to the Arch- \ bishop. " My lyord, when I lost the freedom of my cell, which ^ was my college, yet I found some degree of it in my quiet; country parsonage ; but I am weary of the noise and opposi- tions of this place, and, indeed, God and nature did not intend me for contentions, but for study and quietness." He goes.^ on to speak with modesty, yet with a due sense of its im--^ portance, of the work on which he is engaged, and his desire to ,j write a book that shall be worthy of his great subject. " I shall ^^ never be able to do this, but where I may study and pray for ^ God's blessing on my endeavours, and keep myself in peace and privacy, and behold God's blessing spring out of my mother earth, and eat my own bread without opposition." The Archbishop Hstened to Hooker's plea, and recognized] its justice. In 1591 the living of Boscum, near Salisbury, wasj given to him. Here in ' peace and privacy ' he laboured- with good heart at his great work, and in 1594 the first four I books of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity were pubHshed. " All ^ things written in this booke," Hooker wrote in the Preface, '' I j humbly and meekly submit to the censure of the grave andj reverend Prelates within this land, to the judgment of learned \ men, and the sober consideration of all others. Wherein I j may haply erre as others before me have done, but an heretike j by the help of Almighty God I will never be." Hooker's book attempts to set forward, clearly and in order, i the laws on which the English Church, as estabHshed by \ Elizabeth, was founded ; and, in doing so, to claim and gain \ for it the allegiance of all EngHshmen, including those who looked yearningly after the ancient glories of the Church of : Rome, and those who were attracted by the strict moral code ; of the Puritans. This was not an easy matter, for the lines of the settlement had been decided by State policy rather than j by any consideration of what was theoretically perfect. \ There had been so much compromise, so many attempts to | 190 ^ Ii ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY fcng in men of all shades of opinion that the Church had Hally no firm basis of definite law on which to stand. Her constitution was chaotic and uncertain. Hooker rendered to her the great service of deducing her laws from her practice, and setting these out clearly, persuasively and attractively. The task suited both his temperament and his gifts. He was warmly attached to the Church of England, and a notable member of the small band which was already, in these early days, gathering round her in loyal devotion. He loved above all things order and peace. " What are you thinking of," his friend, Dr. Saravia, asked him, as he lay in bed during his last illness. " I was meditating," replied Hooker, " on the number and nature of angels, and their blessed obedience and order, without which peace could not be in heaven ; and oh, that it might be so on earth I '* This was his aspiration always — peace on earth ; and at first sight it may seem strange that a man of such a temperament should find his life-work in a book controversial in its character. But it is to this love of peace that his book owes much of its fine and rare quality. Hooker was, to use his own words, one of those who do " not so much incUne to that severity which delighteth to reprove the least it seeth amiss, as to that charity which is unwilling to behold anything that duty bindeth it to reprove." He does not address those who are attacking the position he has undertaken to defend as if they were enemies who must be smitten down, overthrown, exterminated. Rather he holds out a hand to them, and says, " Come with me. You do not know how strong and rich and fair is the city you would destroy. I^et me show you her bulwarks, her treasures, the vastness of her domains which can shelter all mankind, the beneficence of her government which takes count of each unit in the throng. When you have seen all this the desire of attacking her will pass from you, and you will lead in the little colony which has estabUshed itself outside her walls to be cherished under the wise and tender care of this great Mother of Men." The contrast between Hooker's calm concihatory tone and the heated and abusive railing commonly used in the religious 191 ENGLISH LITERATURE j controversies of the day helps to show how great a book the ' Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity is. It Hf ted the whole matter to a ^ higher plane ; it gave dignity to what had been mere bitterness : and squabbling. The book is a Hterary masterpiece — ^the first great Enghsh prose classic. Its style is high and serene. Sentence follows sentence in majestic order, each heavy with meaning but bare of ornament. The very quietness of the style is in itself im- pressive. Hooker, as it were, never raises his voice, uses no repetitions, does not stamp his foot, nod his head or wave his " arms. He stands, as we are told he did when he preached i from visible pulpits, quite still, perhaps even a trifle too still. ] But by the exquisite modulations of his voice and the fine* quaHty of its tone he gains effects more striking than any that j the ordinary rhetorical devices can produce. We will take, r as an example, the passage in which he defines a law : | " All things that are have some operation not violent or | casual. Neither doth anything ever begin to exercise the * same, without some fore-conceived end for which it worketh. - And the end which it worketh for is not obtained, unless the \ work be also fit to obtain it by. For unto every end every j operation will not serve. That which doth assign unto each ; thing the kind, that which doth moderate the force and power, \ that which doth appoint the form and measure of working, \ that we term a I^aw.'' \ Or another beautiful passage on the same subject : \ *' Of I^aw there can be no less acknowledged than that her j seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world : \ all things in heaven and earth do her homage ; the very least j as feeHng her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her i power : both Angels and men, and creatures of what condi- ' tion soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all i with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their j peace and joy." ' In 1595 a better living, that of Bishopsbourne in Kent, was j given to him. Here he worked diligently at the completion of ; his book, interrupted only by visits from scholars eager to see j 192 \ lb 3 5s o (/} o O "^ » ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY man whose rare learning was famous throughout England ; here his gentle, pious, studious life drew quietly toward end. He died November 2, 1600. The fifth book of the Ecclesiastical Polity had been published in 1597 ; the sixth and ;hth were pubHshed after his death, in 1648, the seventh in 62. In the chancel of the beautiful church of Bishopsbourne a portrait bust of Richard Hooker was placed, shortly after his death. *' It is," wrote Dean Stanley, " of the same style and form as the nearly contemporary one of Shakespeare, in the church of Stratford-on-Avon. Unlike that more famous monument this has the good fortune to have retained the colour without whitewash. ... It represents Hooker in his college cap, his hair black, without a tinge of grey, his fore- head high and broad and overhanging, lively piercing eyes, deep set beneath it, his cheeks ruddy, and a powerful mouth." This is probably a portrait of Hooker in his early manhood, the learned scholar who was the pride of his University. But we like better to think of him as Izaak Walton has shown him to us, the Hooker of later years, sitting in " peace and privacy." raising his noble memorial to the Church he loved. 193 From the Death of Elizabeth to the Restoration THE first sixty years of the seventeenth century repre- sent an interval between two great literary periods, and the writings of the time possess some of the characteristics of each of these. During the reign of James I the Renaissance spirit, though enfeebled, was still operative ; c-nly it worked with greater sobriety and restraint, and through raan's intellectual rather than through his imaginative powers. So we get the brilUant philosophical and scientific works of I'Vancis Bacon, and the dramas of Ben Jonson somewhat overweighted with their classical learning. All through the reign the general interest in religious ques- tions was deepening, and soon these began to absorb the attention of the finest intellects of the age. In 1625, when Charles I succeeded his father, Puritanism had become so > powerful a force in the country that it was clear it must, *^^ sooner or later, have a large influence upon the national literature. Anglicanism, which, since the days of Elizabeth's Cliurch Settlement, had been striving to establish itself, had been greatly advanced by Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity ; and the new king's strong attachment to the national Church raised it to a still higher position. The poems of Herbert, Crashaw, Vaughan, and Sandys, and in a lesser degree those of Robert Herrick, show how effectively AngUcanism was working as a literary force. There was also a group of Court poets, led by I^ovelace and Suckling. These produced a quantity of pleasant and [/ tuneful verse that had much of the careless grace of the Elizabethan lyrics, but little of their freshness and spontaneity. 'S ENGLISH LITERATURE 1 Most of these singers were silenced at the breaking out of tl great Civil War which, by diverting the energies of the natio operated against the production of any really great work. The supremacy of the Puritans closed the theatres, and i put a stop to dramatic production. It turned Milton fro: a poet into a writer of violent political pamphlets ; it dro^ Cowley and Waller, poets of high repute in their day, in^ exile. So that as we approach the end of this period, it seer almost as if English literature is threatened with extinction. 196 CHAPTER XXII THE ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING HAVE taken all knowledge to be my province." Even if we did not know who it was that said these words we should guess that he belonged to the age in which uch large and splendid utterances were common ; the age vhen Spenser dedicated the Faerie Queene to Elizabeth " to ive with the eternity of her fame," and when Shakespeare said )f the Sonnets that he addressed to the Earl of Southampton, — So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. It was not boastfulness or vainglory that led the men of the Elizabethan age to make these large claims, but rather a high ;ense of the glory and dignity which belonged to the work they lad set themselves to do ; and most notably was this the case pvith Francis Bacon. When, in a letter to his kinsman, I^ord purghley, he made the proud claim, ** I have taken all know- ledge to be my province," he added, " This is so fixed in my ind as it cannot be moved." How true were his words his hole life showed. It was not a stainless life, " a composition f the best and honour ablest things," such as Milton said the ife of a great writer ought to be. Bacon was bent upon btaining money and power and position — not for any ignoble nd, but that he might have leisure and opportunity to study ^nd to write. But his heart was too cold, his conception of tuman nature too low, and his moral fibre too weak for this desire to be to him the wholesome incentive that it was to Shakespeare. Instead, it made him time-serving and mean and faithless — a man who knew the right, but did the wrong. Yet, in spite of this, the figure of Francis Bacon, as history 197 ENGLISH LITERATURE shows it to us, is not without nobility, and even grandeur. Th< breadth and glory of his intellectual visions, the loyalty witl which he followed them, the hard and painful labour that h( gave to their fulfilment, compel admiration. His place amond the great Elizabethans is assured. Strictly speaking, however, Bacon, as a writer, is not aij Elizabethan. He was born in 1561, or to quote his owr graceful answer to the Queen when she asked his age, he wat; " two years younger than Her Majesty's happy reign.'' In the letter to lyord Burleigh, to which reference has already beer made, he said, " I wax now somewhat ancient ; one and thirtj years is a great deal of sand in the hour glass,'' and it was nol until fourteen years later, when James I had been two year* I on the throne, that he published the first instalment of hi.'; great work. But its plan had been sketched when he was sj young law student at Gray's Inn, in the days before the Armada | and, moreover, in tone and spirit Bacon is entirely Elizabethan! He has the largeness of aim and breadth of conception, the' daring delight in adventuring into regions new and unex-' plored, which characterized the generation that, as he wrote,: was rapidly passing away. I In a letter belonging to the last year of his life he looks back( toward this early period. " It is now forty years," he says,) ** since I put together a youthful essay on these matters, which,i with vast confidence I called by the high-sounding title The^ Greatest Birth of Time.'* This was his earliest effort towardi the accomplishment of the great purpose which had dominated! his life and " in that purpose my mind never waxed old, inj that long interval of time it never cooled." He designed to! write a great work, which was to be called the Magna In^ stauratio or Great Instauration. "It is to be divided," sa}^ Bacon's biographer, Mr. Ellis, " into six portions, of whichi the first is to contain a general survey of the present state ol knowledge. In the second men are to be taught how to usd their understanding aright in the investigation of nature. In^ the third, all the phenomena of the universe are to be stored^ up as in a treasure-house, as the materials on which the new< 198 , I Sir Francis Bacon Paul van Somen Photo. Emery Walker Ltd 198 IIdvancement of learning ^lethod is to be employed. In the fourth, examples are to be given of its operation and of the results to which it leads. The £fth is to contain what Bacon had accomplished in natural philosophy without the aid of his own method. It is therefore less important than the rest, and Bacon declares that he will not bind himself to the conclusions which it contains. Moreover, its value will altogether cease when the sixth part can be completed, wherein will be set forth the new philosophy — the results of the application of the new method to all the phenomena of the universe. But to complete this, the last part of the Instauratio, Bacon does not hope." Only a very small part of this plan was, in fact, completed. Bacon's time was mainly taken up with affairs of State, and with the duties of the various oflSces which at different times he held. But amidst all the press of business he managed to steal some hours for the work he loved ; and there were intervals when he was out of favour or out of office. Such an interval came in 1605 when, having finished his work as a Commissioner for the Union of England and Scotland in December 1604, he had no further pubUc work to occupy him until Parliament met in November 1605. He used this time to finish the first part of his great work, the Two Books of the Advancement of Learning. This, contrary to his usual custom, he wrote in English. Most of his learned works were written in I^atin, and such as were not — the Essays, the History of Henry VII and the Advancement — he was careful to cause to be translated into the ' general language ' as soon as might be. " For these modern languages," he wrote to one of his correspondents, " will at one time or another play the bankrupt with books, and since I have lost much time with this age, I would be glad if God would give me leave to recover it with posterity " ; and when the Advancement was afterwards translated into I^atin he sent a copy of it to Prince Charles, with the words, " It is a book that will live, and be a citizen of the world, as EngUsh books are not." Bacon hurried over the last stages of the Advancement because 199 ENGLISH LITERATURE he wished to bring it, as soon as possible, to the notice of James I. The King had the reputation of being a scholar, and would, Bacon thought, be ready to give sympathy and encouragement to the great scheme when it was set before him. The first book, therefore, opens with an address to the King, in which flattery, as open and extravagant as that which the poets of the previous reign addressed to Elizabeth, is mixed with the noble and sincere expression of the scholar's devotion to learning. *' I^eaving aside the other parts of your virtue and fortune," he says, " I have been touched, yea, and possessed with an extreme wonder at those your virtues and faculties, which the Philosophers call intellectual ; the largeness of your capacity, the faithfulness of your memory, the swiftness of your appre- hension, the penetration of your judgment, and the facility and order of your elocution." Then after a great deal more flattery, in which the King's intellectual qualities are ex- tolled. Bacon goes on to say that such a ruler deserves, " in some solid work a fixed memorial and immortal monument." *' Therefore I did conclude with myself, that I could not make unto your Majesty a better oblation than of some treatise tending to that end, whereof the sum will consist of these two parts ; the former, concerning the excellency of learning and knowledge, and the excellency of the merit and true glory in the augmentation and propagation thereof : the latter, what the particular acts and works are, which have been embraced and undertaken for the advancement of learning ; and again, what defects and undervalues I find in such particular acts: to the end that though I cannot positively or affirmatively advise your Majesty, or propound unto you framed par- ticulars, yet I may excite your princely cogitations to visit the excellent treasure of your own mind, and thence to extract particulars for this purpose, agreeable to your magnanimity and wisdom." The plan thus set down Bacon faithfully followed out in detail ; and he produced a book which is not only memorable in the history of science, but has a still more important place in the history of EngUsh prose The style is not the style of 200 ADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING Hooker, with grand, rolling finished periods and majestic harmonies. The language is completely dominated by the subject and the arrangement under headings and sub-headings interferes with the regular flow of the whole. But, in spite of these things, the Advancement is a noble piece of English prose. " It is a book," says Dean Church, *' which we can never open without coming on some noble interpretation of the realities of nature or the mind ; some unexpected discovery of that quick and keen eye which arrests us by its truth ; some felicitous and unthought-of illustration, yet so natural as almost to be doomed to become a commonplace ; some bright touch of his incorrigible imaginativeness, ever ready to force itself in amid the driest details of his argument." Among the manuscripts of Bacon that have been preserved to our own time are some which contain notes and jottings for future use, and these are of extreme interest as illustrating the manner in which he worked. He wrote down everything that he thought might be useful in the way of illustration or of ornament. Proverbs, anecdotes, jokes, fragments of dialogue, witty or pointed remarks, turns of speech which supply a telling way of opening or closing a paragraph — all these are recorded. There are sets of quotations bearing on special subjects, observations on particular faults or virtues, maxims bearing upon a branch of conduct or a department of business — all grouped together. Many of these materials are used over and over again in his published works. In the Advancement he uses as part of his argument to prove the high esteem in which learning should be held an illustration to which he returned time after time in later works, " The Glory of God,'* he quotes, " is to conceal a thing, hut the glory of the king is to find it out ; as if, according to the innocent play of children, the Divine Majesty took delight to hide his works to the end to have them found out ; and as if kings could not obtain a greater honour than to be God's playfellows in that game." But this repetition is not due to any poverty of invention or narrowness of range. On the contrary, an examination of the comparisons and metaphors used in the two books of the Advancement reveals 201 ENGLISH LITERATURE a delightful variety and originality. " Behaviour/' he says, " seemeth to me as a garment of the mind, and to have the conditions of a garment. For it ought to be made in fashion ; it ought not to be too curious ; it ought to be shaped so as to set forth any good making of the mind and hide any deformity ; and above all, it ought not to be too strait or restrained for exercise or motion.'* He defends himself against those who would decry learning in that it gives a knowledge of evil as well as of good by reference to the fable of the basilisk. " For as the fable goeth of the basilisk, that if he see you first, you die for it ; but if you see him first, he dieth : so is it with deceits and evil arts ; which if they be first espied they leese their life ; but if they prevent, they endanger." He illustrates the growth of a man in virtue in the following beautiful passage : " For if these two things be supposed that a man set before him honest and good ends, and again, that he be resolute, constant and true unto them ; it will follow that he shall mould himself into all virtue at once. And this is indeed like the work of nature ; whereas the other course is like the work of the hand. For as when a carver makes an image, he shapes only that part whereupon he worketh : as if he be upon the face, that part which shall be the body is but a rude stone still, till such times as he comes to it. But contrariwise when nature makes a flower or living creature she f ormeth rudiments of all the parts at one time. So in obtaining virtue by habit, while a man practiseth temperance, he doth not profit much to fortitude, nor the like : but when he dedicateth and applieth himself to good ends, look, what virtue soever the pursuit and passage toward those ends doth commend unto him, he is invested of a precedent disposition to conform himself thereunto. Which state of mind Aristotle doth excellently express himself that it ought not to be called virtuous, but divine." The Advancement failed to kindle in King James the en- thusiasm which Bacon had so confidently expected. James's learning was of the solid, conventional order, and his m ind was shrewd rather than brilliant. He saw little that was attractive in the great prospect that Bacon opened out before 202 IpADVANCEMENT OF LEARNING r him, and he distrusted Bacon's splendid promises of glory I to be gained by a king who would prove himself a true friend I to learning. For the time Bacon's great literary venture ! remained unappreciated and almost unknown. But he was not disheartened. The splendid courage and perseverance which had brought him so far on his way were unaffected by disappointment or neglect. He took up his work again, and gave to the production of his next book the leisure moments which he could gain through the following fifteen years. During these years he rose to high honour in his pro- fession. In 1618 he became I^ord Chancellor and Baron Verulam. In 1620 his Novum Organum, the second part of his great work was published. In this book Bacon set forth in detail the great plan of which some indications had been given in the Advancement. It professed to expound a method by means of which man might learn the secrets of the material world — to be in fact, a key to all the sciences. The exact importance of this work in the history of science is a matter upon which critics are disagreed. It is generally allowed, however, that it falls far short of the claims that its author makes for it. As a practical guide to scientific investigation it is almost useless. Yet Bacon is awarded, by almost universal consent, an honoured place among the pioneers of science, and from his work men date the beginning of the modem era. ' To him belongs the great merit of having set forth clearly and eloquently the truth that scientific research must depend upon patient, faithful observation of the phenomena of nature, that close examination and careful experiment must underlie all theories and build up all chains of reasoning. He saw how men had been led astray by their neglect of this simple rule, and he tried to bring them back to the only path by which they could arrive at truth. " For we copy the sin of our first parents while we suffer for it. They wished to be like God, but their posterity wish to be even greater. For we create worlds, we direct and domineer over nature, we will have it that all things are as in our folly we think they should be, not 203 ENGLISH LITERATURE as seems fittest to the Divine wisdom, or as they are found to be in fact ; and I know not whether we more distort the facts of nature or of our own wits." He entreats men " to approach with humility and veneration to unroll the volume of Creation, to linger and meditate therein, and with minds washed clean from opinions to study it in purity and integrity. For this is that sound and language which ' went forth into all lands,' and did not incur the confusion of Babel ; this should men study to be perfect in, and becoming again as Httle children con- descend to take the alphabet of it into their hands, and spare no pains to search and unravel the interpretation thereof, but pursue it strenuously and persevere even unto death." Less than six months after the Novum Organum was pub- lished came Bacon's fall. He was accused of corruption in his office of judge, was fined £40,000, and imprisoned in the Tower during the King's pleasure. The fine was remitted, and after two days' imprisonment Bacon was released. But his public career was over. How far he was guilty of the charges brought against him is a question which cannot here be discussed. His own confession shows that he was not entirely innocent. Five years of life remained to him, and he spent these in retirement, still working unweariedly and courageously on the great scheme which in his youth he had set before himself. He pub- lished his De Augmentis, which is the Advancement translated into Latin and much enlarged, his History of Henry VII, a complete edition of his Essays, and some further papers in- tended to form part of his great work. He died on April 9, 1626. " For my name and memory," he said in his will, " I leave it to men's charitable speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next ages." The "next ages" have justified his implied con- fidence. They have given him an honoured place among scientists, and they have recognized his Essays, his History of Henry VII, and his Advancement of Learning as belonging to the great English classics. 204 CHAPTER XXIII THE ALCHEMIST WHEN Shakespeare had been some twelve years in London, and had gained for himself a leading posi- tion among the actors and dramatists of his time, there was sent in one day to the managers of The Theatre, Shoreditch, a new play called Every Man in His Humour, by Ben Jonson. The author was not unknown, for although he was a young man of twenty-five years old, he had been living in London for some years, and had written several plays. Every Man in His Humour was, however, so different in its character from the comedies that then held the stage that the managers hesitated to accept it. The influence of Shakespeare, so says tradition, turned the scale, and the play was produced. Shakespeare acted in it, taking, we think, the part of Knowell. It had a great success, and raised Jonson above the crowd of needy playwrights struggling for pubUc favour, to a place next below Shakespeare's. But Jonson had not the wholesome happy temperament of the greater dramatist — the temperament that grows sweeter, kinder, and more genial in the sunshine of success. Nor had he Shakespeare's charm of manner and comeliness of person. He was vain, quarrelsome and obstinately set on his own opinions, brusque and rough in his intercourse with other men, of a clumsy and unwieldy figure and rugged features. These were quahties which became more quickly apparent than did his honesty of purpose, his manly firmness of character, his true generosity of soul. His hot temper involved him in con- stant disputes. A few months after the appearance of Every Man in His Humour he fought a duel with an actor, Gabriel 205 ENGLISH LITERATURE Spencer, whom he killed. He was imprisoned for a short time and only escaped further punishment by pleading his ' benefit of clergy/ A little later, when Jonson had strengthened his reputation by the production of another comed3% Every Man Out of His Humour, the envy of less successful playwrights and his own boastful arrogance brought on another quarrel. Dekker and Marston led the forces of the theatres against Jonson, and many hard words were spoken on either side. Shakespeare, when Robert Greene had made a spiteful attack upon him, had gone calmly on his way and said nothing. But such a course was impossible to the irritable temper of Ben Jonson, and his two next plays, Cynthia's Revels and The Poetaster remain to show with what vigour he struck back when he was attacked. Jonson next tried his hand at tragedy, and in 1603 his play of Sejanus was produced by the Lord Chamberlain's Com- pany, with Shakespeare as one of the actors. It was not very successfuL Its author's excessive anxiety to make it historically correct gave it an over-learned air, and his careful fidelity to classic models made it too rigid in structure for the taste of an Elizabethan audience. Jonson wisely returned to comedy, and wrote in collaboration with Chapman and Marston the play Eastward Hoe I which deals in a delightfully realistic fashion with the lighter side of I/ondon citizen life. It brought its authors, however, into serious trouble. King James was now on the throne, and some reflections contained in the play upon the * industrious Scots,' aroused his ire. The three authors suffered a short imprisonment but escaped the mutilation which was sometimes the punishment for offences of this nature. Shortly afterward Jonson seems to have managed to make his peace with the King, for he was employed in the production of a number of masques and Court entertain- ments which proved extremely profitable to him, and he retained the royal favour till the end of King James's life. Jonson now entered upon the most successful and happy period of his career. During the next ten years he wrote his four greatest comedies — Volpone (1605), The Silent Woman 206 Ben Jonson Gerard Honthorst 306 I THE ALCHEMIST (1609), The Alchemist (1610), and Bartholomew Fair (1614). AH of these are masterpieces of their kind. The Alchemist perhaps stands first, by virtue of its wonderfully constructed plot. The threads of a highly complex action are woven into a smooth and perfect whole with an art which has been the admiration of critics from Jonson's day to our own. The play illustrates all its author's most characteristic qualities. It is a fine example of the * comedy of humours ' which he introduced — the word ' humour ' being used in its Elizabethan sense of a predominating trait caused by the presence in the body of a large quantity of one particular * humour ' or fluid. It is realistic, forsaking the fanciful and romantic themes that Ben Jonson scorned, and deahng, as he affirms, with life as it really is. It follows the rules of classical drama, and observes the " Unities of Time, Place, and Action." In his prologue to Every Afdn in Hts Humour Ben Jonson had set forth his views of what comedy should be. The author of the play, he says : Hath not so loved the stage. As he dare serve the ill customs of the age. Or purchase your dehght at such a rate, As, for it, he himself must justly hate : To make a child now swaddled, to proceed Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed, Past three-score years ; or, with three rusty swords. And help of some few foot and half -foot words. Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars. And in the Tyring house bring wounds to scars. He rather prays you will be pleased to see One such to-day, as other plays should be ; Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas. Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please ; Nor tiimble squib is seen to make afear'd The gentlewomen ; nor rolled bullet heard To say, it thunders ; nor tempestuous drum Rumbles, to tell you when the storm doth come ; But deeds, and language, such as men do use. And persons, such as comedy would choose. When she would show an image of the times. And sport with human follies, not with crimes. Jonson's * sport ' is somewhat heavy, and his humour a Httle grim. His work has none of the lightness and grace that distinguish the work of the early EHzabethans. Its merit lies 207 / xj ENGLISH LITERATURE in Its strong, robust manly tone, and the vigour of its concep- tion and execution. In 1610, when The Alchemist was first produced, quacks and | pretended magicians were to be found in such numbers in i I/Ondon that they had become a serious public nuisance. \ Jonson directed his satire against their knavery and the fooHsh [ creduUty of those who consulted them, with the result, we \ are told, that the trade of the alchemists became far less \ profitable. The play tells the story of a pretended alchemist, ^ his confederates and his dupes. The scene is laid in lyondon \ during a season in which the plague has been raging in the city. ^ Ivovewit, a wealthy gentleman, has fled from the infection and j left his house in charge of his butler. Face. Face, who is a witty, | impudent, amusing rascal, meets the alchemist. Subtle, as he| afterward reminds him ^ At Pie-corner, ': Taking your meal of steam in from cook's stalls, Where, like the father of hunger, you did walk. The two enter into an agreement, and procure the services of j a female accomplice, Dol Common. Subtle takes up his abode| in I/Ovewit's house, sets up his forge and all the apparatus of his'j deception, and awaits the dupes whom it is the business of| Face and Dol Common to send in. Face is by turns a swagger-l ing captain, rufiiing it in the places of public resort, and the] assistant of Subtle in his mysteries. The procession of dupes-^ begins with a lawyer's clerk, Dapper. "I lighted on him,"- says Face, " last night, in Holborn, at the Dagger." The clerk^ is given to betting, and Face has persuaded him that the] alchemist can provide him with a ' familiar ' who will make- him successful in all his ventures. Him the two accomplices; fool to the utmost. Face pretending the greatest reverence f orj Subtle and lauding his mysterious powers. They persuade; poor Dapper that the Queen of Fairy claims him for herj nephew, and is anxious to see him, they promise him a famiharj that shall enable him to " win up all the money in the town,"' and *' blow up gamester after gamester as they do crackers in a puppet play," and on this understanding he parts with all thei 208 THE ALCHEMIST money he has about him. He is to come again that noon, and meanwhile is to prepare himself by fasting and purification for the mystic rites. Next comes Abel Drugger, a seller of tobacco. I am a young beginner, and am building Of a new shop, an't like your worship, just At comer of a street : — Here is the plot on 't — And I would know by art, sir, of your worship, Which way I should make my door, by necromancy. And where my shelves ; and which should be for boxes. And which for pots. I would be glad to thrive, sir. And I was wish'd to your worship by a gentleman. One Captain Face, that says you know men's planets And their good angels and their bad. Abel receives a learned answer, and goes away happy — with empty pockets, and an engagement to come again. A more notable figure now appears, Sir Epicure Mammon. With him comes Pertinax Surly, a gamester. Sir Epicure desires no less than the philosopher's stone, which can convert all metals into gold. His visions of wealth to come are dazzUng in their magnificence, and he believes that they are on the point of being realized. This is the day, wherein to all my friends I will pronoimce the happy word, be rich 1 Surly is incredulous, but Face, now disguised as a servant, and Subtle, in his grave alchemist's habit, so work upon Sir Epicure that his friend's warnings fall useless, and he goes away convinced that the operation is nearly completed, and not regretting the ten pounds he has given to the alchemist to buy new materials required in the work. Scarcely has he gone when another knock is heard, and there enters a messenger, one Ananias, from the church at Amsterdam. Subtle and Face combine to mystify him by talking unmeaning jargon, about Ars sacra Or chrysopoeia or spagyrica, Or the pamphysick or panarchick knowledge, and so on. But Ananias is not overawed, and delivers his message, which is that the brethren will not venture more than the hundred and twenty pounds they have already given o 209 ENGLISH LITERATURE until they see some result from the work. At this Subtle J pretends to fly into a rage and drives Ananias forth, bidding him i Send your elders i Hither to make atonement for you quickly, j And give me satisfaction ; or out goes 1 The fire ; and down the alembics, and the furnace. ... ; All hope of rooting out the bishops ] Or the antichristian hierarchy, shall perish, : If they stay three-score minutes. | He speedily returns with a pastor of the church, Tribulation ; Wholesome, whom Subtle soon persuades of his power to 1 supply the Church with a talisman, i To pay an army in the field, to buy \ The King of France out of his realm, or Spain ■ Out of his Indies. ... ^ Even the med'cnal use shall make you a faction, ] And party in the realm. As put the case, J That some great man in state, he have the gout, < Why you but send three drops of your elixir, j You help him straight : there you have made a friend. \ Tribulation is induced to give money for more coal and ■ other necessaries. ; The procession of dupes is concluded by KastrU, a young man ] who has just inherited a fortune of three thousand a year, ; A gentleman newly warm in his land, , Scarce cold in his one and twenty, ; who wishes to learn how to carry himself as a gallant about ] town. He comes with his sister, a rich young widow, who wishes \ for a second husband. How all these return to I^ovewit's house ^ Sit the times appointed, the compUcations that ensue, the; sudden return of the master of the house. Face's hasty change back to his original role, of butler, his attempts to deceive : his master and their failure, his confession and league withi IvOvewit, the threatening of Dol Common and Subtle with the j terrors of the law, their hasty flight, and the division of the] spoils left behind — ^including the widow, who becomes Mrs. lyovewit — these bring the comedy to a triumphant conclusion. , The Alchemist does not appear to have had, at first, anj altogether favourable reception. Perhaps it hit too hard at the! 210 I I IP THE ALCHEMIST ollies of some in the audience. The poet Herrick, who was one of the band of young men who proudly called themselves the ' sons ' of Ben Jonson, speaks indignantly of the * ignorance ' of those Who once hist At thy nneqnall'd play the Alchemist. Soon, however, it triumphed over this temporary prejudice and became one of the most popular plays of the day. When the theatres were re-opened at the Restoration, it was revived, and Pepys notes in his diary that he went twice during the summer of 1661 to see that " most incomparable play The Alchemist." We do not know when Shakespeare and Ben Jonson became personally acquainted — whether before or after the production of Every Man in His Humour. But we know that for many years they lived on terms of close friendship. Jonson has been charged with a spiteful jealousy of his greater comrade, but careful inquiry has shown that there is no foundation for the charge. He is known to have given some unfavourable criticisms of Shakespeare's works, but in this there was no personal feeling. Jonson had a definite theory of the art of dramatic writing, and was quick — possibly a little too quick — to denounce work not done in accordance with it. But no praise could be more generous and more discriminating than that which he gave to Shakespeare, in the lines that he wrote for the first folio of the collected plays, in 1623. .... I confess thy writings to be such As neither Man nor Muse can praise too much. . . . Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show To whom alj scenes of Europe homage owe. He was not of an age, but for all time ! Such is the strain in which he sings of his ' master * Shake- speare. " Within a very few years of Shakespeare's death," says Sir Sidney I^e, " Sir Nicholas I^'Kstrange, an industrious collector of anecdotes, put into writing an Anecdote . . . attesting the amicable relations that habitually subsisted between Shakespeare and Jonson. ' Shakespeare,' ran the 211 ENGLISH LITERATURE \ story, * was godfather to one of Ben Jonson's children, and after the christening, being in a deep study, Jonson came to I cheer him up and asked him why he was so melancholy. 1 ' No, faith, Ben,' says he, ' not I, but I have been considering a great while what should be the fittest gift for me to bestow I upon my godchild, and I have resolved at last.' ' I pr'y thee, ! what ? ' sayes he. * I' faith, Ben, I'll e'en give him a dozen, good Lattin spoons, and thou shalt translate them.' " I^atten, j it should be remembered, is a mixed metal resembling brass. j Of the celebrated meetings between the two poets at the j Mermaid Tavern, Bread Street, Thomas Fuller has given us \ an account. " Many were the wit-combats betwixt him [Shakespeare] and Ben Jonson, which two I behold like a j Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war; Master j Jonson (Uke the former) was built far higher in learning, solid j but slow in his performances. Shakespeare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds by j the quickness of his wit and invention." !Later, after the death of Shakespeare, the meeting-place of , the wits was changed from the Mermaid to the Apollo (or big \ room) of the Devil Tavern, Temple Bar. Here Jonson reigned i as a king among a band of loyal and devoted subjects. The younger poets of the day gathered round him and offered him \ enthusiastic homage. They have preserved for us the memory ; of the old poet grown corpulent and unwieldy with age, of his \ * rocky face,' the stoop of his great shoulders, his loud voice \ and hectoring manner. We see him sitting at the head of the ^ table while toasts were drunk and witty jests went round, and ; the mirth grew faster and more furious as the night advanced. \ Among the company was a young man named Robert Herrick, j son of a goldsmith of Cheapside, who had lately left St. John's j College, Cambridge, and settled in I^ondon. He was one of I the most devoted of the poet's * sons,' and highly favoured by I the ' master ' for his wit, his good-fellowship and his poetic | talent. He it is who has told us, in the poems addressed to ; 212 -! I leasts. THE ALCHEMIST n Jonson, much of what we know about those ' lyric Where we such clusters had. As made us nobly wild, not mad ; j And yet each verse of thine i Out-did the meat, out-did the frolic wine | My Ben 1 Or come again : Or send to us, Thy wit's great overplus ; j But teach us yet 1 Wisely to husband it r " Lest we that talent spend, « ^ And having once brought to an end \ That precious stock ; the store J Of such a wit the world should have no more. ' Ben Jonson died in 1637, and was buried in Westminster ^ Abbey, where his grave bears the inscription, best known \ perhaps of all that have been written on the graves of poets — | " O rare Ben Jonson ! " J 213 i J CHAPTER XXIV THE TEMPLE HISTORY shows us the reign of Charles I as a long grim struggle between the Parliament and the King — a struggle which grew ever more bitter and more intense up to the closing tragedy of January 1649. But the Hterature of the period — until the actual breaking out of the Civil War — reflects little of this strife. Milton, in his studious retreat at Horton, was writing his dehghtful pastoral poems U Allegro and // Penseroso. Herrick in his lovely Devonshire parsonage was celebrating the deHghts of the once ' loathed west/ Of the lesser poets two main groups may be distinguished. The first consisted of the gay and brilUant company that gathered at the Court, of whom lyovelace and Suckling were the chief. These paid but small heed to grave matters of State. They lounged about Whitehall, and showed themselves, exquisitely attired, in all the fashionable resorts of the day. They were gallants of the new school, who had discarded the fervid enthusiasm of the Elizabethans, and had taken in its place a gay audacity, an airy recklessness, which left its mark upon the brilHant Hterature they produced. They sang of their pleasures and their loves in graceful, tuneful songs, and they produced occasionally, and almost as it were by chance, some really beautiful lyric like Suckling*s Ballad on a Wedding, or I^ove- lace's To Altheafrom Prison, by means of which they won for themselves immortality. The second group consisted of poets whose work was of a very different character. Of these Mr. Shorthouse has said that " their pecuHar mission seems to have been to show the English people what a fine gentleman, one who was also a 214 THE TEMPLE iristian and a Churchman, might be." Chief among the roup was George Herbert, a member of the noble family of jmbroke. In the year 1627, he gave up his ofi&ce as Orator 'bf Cambridge, and the honourable and distinguished career that lay before him, in order to be ordained as a clergy- man of the Church of England. " He did," says Izaak Walton, who was Herbert's first biographer, " acquaint a court friend with his resolution to enter into sacred Orders, who persuaded him to alter it, as too mean an employment, and too much below his birth, and the excellent abilities and endow- ments of his mind. To whom he replied, ' It hath been formerly adjudged that the domestic servants of the King of Heaven should be of the noblest families of earth. And though the iniquity of the late times has made clergymen meanly valued, and the sacred name of Priest contemptible ; yet I will labour to make it honourable, by consecrating all my learning, and all my poor abilities to advance the glory of that God that gave them ; knowing that I can never do too much for Him, that hath done so much for me, as to make me a Christian. And I will labovu: to be like my Saviour, by making humility lovely in the eyes of all men, and by following the merciful and meek example of my dear Jesus.* " In this spirit he took up his work. In 1630 he was presented by the King to the hving of Bemerton in Wiltshire. The tiny church of Bemerton stood on the high road between Salisbury and Wilton, and was in a ruinous condition when Herbert became rector. He caused it to be put in thorough repair, and he rebuilt the parsonage of which " almost three parts were fallen down and decayed." The situation of the parsonage was, Walton tells us, more pleasant than healthful. Its windows looked out over low-lying meadow-lands, and across the slow-flowing little River Madder, to where the spire of Salisbury Cathedral rose in the distance. It was not the best home for a man who, like Mr. Herbert, had " a body apt to a consumption and to fevers and other infirmities," and it probably helped to bring about his early death. But before the end came there were three years of life to be lived — years 215 ENGLISH LITERATURE which he filled so full of love and devotion and willing service that they stand out clear to our later age, radiant with " the beauty of hoHness." Of these three years The Temple is the record and memorial. Mr. George Herbert was, Walton tells us, " of a stature incUning towards tallness ; his body was very straight, and so far from being cumbered with too much flesh that he was lean to extremity. His aspect was cheerful, and his speech and motion did both declare him a gentleman.'' His beau- tiful, high-born wife had given up with *' a cheerful willing- ness the dignity which had belonged to her position in her father's house," to become the wife of a parish priest who " can challenge no precedence or place but that which she pur- chases by her obliging humility." With them in the parsonage were Mr. Herbert's two nieces, living, as he wrote to his brother, " so lovingly, lying, eating, walking, praying, working still together, that I take a comfort therein." These four made up the household, where * plain living ' was dignified by ' high thinking/ and where Mr. Herbert's precept — Let thy mind's sweetness have his operation Upon thy body, clothes, and habitation, was most fully carried out. In his parish Herbert Hved " a life so full of charity, humility, and all Christian virtues that it deserves the eloquence of St. Chrysostom to commend and declare it." He was the personal friend of each member of his flock, and gave them loving sympathy as well as alms. The joy of loving service grew with each day's labour, and the fastidious Cambridge scholar whose chief fault had been noted as a certain haughtiness toward those inferior to him in station — the courtier who had shown " a genteel humour for cloathes and courtlike company " — learnt to welcome the opportunity of performing any act of helpfulness, however humble its nature. Once when he was on his way to Salis- bury to join his musical friends in an * appointed private music meeting ' he met on the road a carrier who was in diffi- culties with his load. Herbert stopped and throwing off his 216 %jiuthor' of those Sacred 'Paetns callcd\ 216 Photo. Smery Walker Ltd KTHE TEMPLE t, helped the man to unload and rearrange the horse's den ; then proceeded on his way to Salisbury, with his array somewhat disordered. Some of his friends expressed surprise that " Mr. George Herbert, who used to be so trim and clean, came into that company so soiled and discomposed." He told his story, and then, in answer to those who blamed him for undertaking such " dirty employment " he said, that his conscience would not have allowed him to be easy had he I neglected such an obvious duty. " For if I be bound to pray for all that be in distress," he said, " I am sure I am bound, so far as it is in my power, to practise what I pray for. And though I do not wish for the like occasion every day, yet let me tell you, I would not wilUngly pass one day of my life without comforting a sad soul or showing mercy ; and I praise God for this occasion. And now let's tune our instruments." For the Church and for its services Herbert felt a strong and passionate attachment. Every day, at ten o'clock and at four, he with his family and his servants, came to the little church and joined in public worship to God. Soon from the gentlemen's families around about among whom the " holy Mr. Herbert " was held in high esteem, came one after another to increase the numbers of the Httle congregation ; and " some of the meaner sort of his parish did so love and reverence Mr. Herbert that they would let their plough rest when Mr. Herbert's Saints' bell rung to prayers, that they might also offer their devotions to God with him, and would then return back to their plough." He taught his people that God should be worshipped with outward decorum as well as with inward reverence ; he preached to them plainly and simply on the great truths of their religion, and he instructed them with zeal and thoroughness in the doctrines of the Church, showing them *' that the whole service of the Church was a reasonable and therefore an acceptable sacrifice to God." Gradually, in this life of constant devotion, the conception of the Church as the symbol of man's spiritual life grew clearer and clearer in Herbert's mind, and the idea of his book. The Temple, was formed. It is probable that many of the poems 217 ENGLISH LITERATURE that he wove into it were written before he came to Bemerton. Some of them show unmistakable signs of having been written during those years when Herbert had been torn between a desire for the fame and the reward that a worldly career would give him, and a consciousness that in the humble and obscure office of a parish priest he could best glorify God. The book is a record of the writer's spiritual life, the doubt, the wavering, the depression and keen agony through which he came to thej happy serenity of his later years ; and this thread of personal) experience running through it helps to give unity to the whole and to make it not merely a collection of poems but a book. First comes a long poem of seventy-eight stanzas, called The \ Church Porch, which tells how man must strive to purify his I heart and life before he can hope to attain to full spiritual com- \ munion with God. Plain duties are set forward with a direct- i ness and vigour of language that have made the poem dear to! ordinary, everyday men and women from the seventeenth! century to our own time. Lie not : but let thy heart be true to God, ; Thy mouth to it, thy actions to them both ; r : Cowards tell lies, and those that fear the rod ; - ' The stormy working soul spits lies and froth. J Dare to be true. Nothing can need a lie ; ^ A fault, which needs it most, grows two thereby. ■•, Chase brave employments with a naked sword j Throughout the world. Fool not ; for all may have, J If they dare try, a glorious life, or grave. f Pitch thy behaviour low, thy projects high ; A So shalt thou humble and magnanimous be : ^ Sink not in spirit ; who aimeth at the sky, " ^ Shoots higher much than he that means a tree. '- In brief, acquit thee bravely, play the man. ' These are a few typical extracts from The Church Porch;^ enough, perhaps, to show something of its tone and spirits There follow a hundred and sixty-nine short poems which show the greatest variety in subject and in form. Somd continue the allegory implied in the name The Temple. ■ Thou, whom the former precepts have Sprinkled and taught, how to behave Thyself in church ; approach, and taste The Church's mystical repast. 2X8 THE TEMPLE Avoid profaneness ; come not here : Nothing but holy, pure, and clear. Or that which groaneth to be so. May at his peril further go. IBrhere are poems on Church Monuments, Church Music, The Church Lock and Key, The Church Floor, The Church Windows. To all these objects is given a curious and sometimes beautiful symbolism. The chequered marble of the floor denotes various moral virtues : . . . That square and speckled stone Which looks so firm and strong, is Patience. And the other black and grave, wherewith each one Is chequered all along, Hximility. and each is joined to the others by the cement of love and charity. This series of poems culminates in The Altar, in which the lines are arranged so that the whole, as printed, actually forms the shape of an altar. In this instance, as in his use of far-fetched conceits and over-fanciful images, Herbert was affected by the prevaiHng but perverted taste of his day. His own inclination is toward simplicity and direct- ness, and in his noblest verses these qualities are finely shown. To all the different seasons of the Church's year poems are allotted. There are poems also on Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, and then come a number which do not fall directly into the structural plan, but which set forth the various phases of the spiritual life. The titles of these are in many cases quaint and homely, giving no idea of the subject of the poem. The Pulley, for example, tells how God, when He first made man, bestowed upon him " strength, beauty, wisdom, honour, pleasure " ; then Made a stay. Perceiving that alone of all his treasure, Rest in the bottom lay. For if I should (said He) Bestow this jewel also on my creature. He would adore my gifts instead of me. And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature So both should losers be. 219 ENGLISH LITERATURE Yet let him keep the rest. But keep them with repining restlessness ; Let him be rich and weary, that at least. If goodness lead him not, yet weariness May toss him to My breast. The Collar tells of the rebellion of a soul against the restraints that religion would impose upon it ; the passion rises, and swells to defiant resolution ; then comes the wonderful close, so full of poetic beauty, so surprising, and yet so satisfying. But as I rav'd, and grew more fierce and wild At every word, Methought I heard one calling " Child ! " And I reply'd, " My I^ord." Perhaps the best known of all the poems of The Temple is that j on ' Virtue,' which owes its familiarity partly to the fact that \ it is quoted in Izaak Walton^s Compleat Angler. " And now," he says, " look about you and see how pleasantly that meadow looks ; nay, and the earth smells as sweetly too. Come, let i me tell you what holy Mr. Herbert says of such days and flowers as these ; and then we will thank God that we enjoy | them, and walk to the river and sit down quietly, and try to i catch the other brace of trouts." And then he quotes thai poem, which begins : j Sweet Day, so cool, so calm, so bright, ] The bridad of the earth and sky ; ^ The dew shall weep thy fall to-night ; ^ For thou must die. i The form and metre of the poems show, like their subject- \ matter, the greatest variety. " Out of one hundred and sixty- ■ nine poems, one hundred and sixteen are written in metres^ that are not repeated." i The book was finished by the beginning of 1633, and by i that time George Herbert's life was drawing toward its end. | *' He died," says Izaak Walton, " like a saint unspotted of the 1 world, full of alms-deeds, full of humihty, and all the examples j of a virtuous life." He was buried March 3, 1633, in his own i church, under the altar. From his deathbed Herbert sent the manuscript of The \ 220 • ||itti THE TEMPLE Temple to his friend Nicholas Ferrar. *' Tell him," he said, *' that he shall find in it a picture of the many spiritual con- fiicts that have passed betwixt God and my soul, before I could subject mine to the will of Jesus my Master ; in whose service I have now found perfect freedom : desire him to read it ; and then, if he can think it may turn to the advantage of any dejected poor soul, let it be made public : if not let him burn it." Nicholas Ferrar was, next to Herbert, the man to whom the Anglican Church of the days of Charles I owed most. He ^vrote no poetry himself, but he was the friend and the inspirer of poets. He had founded at Little Gidding, a village about eighteen miles from Cambridge, the community which was mockingly called by his enemies the " Protestant nunnery," and which plays such an important part in Mr. Shorthouse's jine novel, John Inglesant. Here Ferrar, with various members of his family, thirty in all, lived a life of retirement, devotion, and good works. He had been Herbert's friend, when both were young students at Cambridge, and though in after life they had seen little of each other, their aims and ideals remained in perfect sympathy. Ferrar took the manuscript of The Temple home to Little Gidding, and it is probable that it was first privately printed for circulation among the members of the community there. Before the end of the year 1633 it was pubUshed, with a preface by Nicholas Ferrar. It became at once very popular. When Walton wrote his Life of George Herbert in 1674, twenty thousand copies, he tells us, had been sold ; and fresh editions have been issued at intervals up to the present day. Its influence on the poets of the generation immediately succeeding Herbert's was immense. Crashaw and Vaughan, the greatest of these, may be regarded as Herbert's spiritual sons ; and of the mass of religious poetry which the Caroline age produced it is the representative and consummation. 221 ^ CHAPTER XXV THE HESPERIDES I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers. Of April, May, of June and July flowers ; I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes. Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal cakes. . . . I write of groves, of twilights, and I sing The Court of Mab, and of the Fairy King. ' I write of Hell : I sing, and ever shall, I Of Heaven — and hope to have it after all. IT was during the dark days when the great Civil War was \ nearly over, and the people of England were beginning ; to realize, with passionate horror or with stern satisfac- i tion, that Charles I must die, that Herrick's book of poems, \ thus introduced, was pubUshed. There could scarcely have ! been a time when men would have been less ready to Hsten ; to his fresh and fragrant songs. All the other Cavalier singers I were hushed. Carew had met his death before the troubles , began. I/Dvelace and SuckHng had fought in the King's I cause, and had died ruined and in misery. Crashaw was in! Rome ; and Cowley was traveUing hither and thither over the t. Continent working desperately for the Royal cause. Herrick ' alone had sung on through all those years of strife ; and when 1 the triumph of the Parliamentary cause had driven him to .; lyondon, he had sat down, with the cries of conflicting parties \ in his ears, to prepare for publication his sparkling and joyous j lays. ^ Yet Herrick too was a Royahst, and had followed the course I of the war with keen interest, and celebrated the King's ^ victories in triumphant verse. But he was, above everything J else, a poet, and his nature was dreamy and sensuous rather '\ than quick and ardent. He was content to look on while other • 222 men agonized and fought. Yet though Herrick was no hero, he W2is a man of sweet, kindly and sincere nature, and it was a true instinct that kept him out of the conflict that destroyed so many of his brethren, and beat down for a time even the soaring genius of John Milton. It was his work to cherish the Renaissance spirit while from the world around him it was quickly passing away, and to bring back by his joyous light- hearted songs some of the colour and glory of the Elizabethan age. But in 1648 few men were in the mood to listen to him, and The Hesperides received but scant attention. In the next }'ear the tragedy of the King's execution sent a thrill of horror through the country. Men read in a passion of pity and recovered loyalty, the book which purported to show them their Eling, patient, suffering, forgiving, the martyr of an un- grateful people. This book, the Eikon Basilike, went through lifty editions in England and on the Continent in 1648-49, and men turned from it to enter eagerly into the pamphlet war which was going on between the two great parties in the State. For the next ten years little was read in England save works on poHtics and rehgion. By the Puritans Herrick's work would under any circumstances have been regarded with horror, and the RoyaUsts had Uttle heart for his junketings and merry- makings. f The book, however, is well worthy of the consideration that a later age has given it. " It is," says Mr. Edmund Gosse, " a storehouse of lovely things, full of tiny beauties of various kind and workmanship, like a box full of all sorts of jewels and ropes of seed-pearls, opals set in old-fashioned shifting settings, antique gilt trifles sadly tarnished by time ; here a ruby, here an amethyst, and there a stray diamond, priceless and luminous, flashing hght from all its facets, and dulling the faded jewellery with which it is so promiscuously huddled." There are in all 1231 poems in the book, though many of them are very short, some consisting of two lines only. A few were prob- ably written during Herrick's early years in lyondon, when he worshipped at the shrine of Ben Jonson, and frequented the 223 V ENGLISH LITERATURE taverns at which the wits held their meetings. Such is perhaps the date of the careless, pagan lyric beginning : I fear no earthly powers, But care for crowns of flowers ; And love to have my beard With wine and oil besmeared. This day I'll drown all sorrow ; Who knows to live to-morrow ? In 1629, when he was thirty-seven years old, Herrickf obtained the living of Dean Prior, in South Devon. He was ' not the model parish priest that we have seen in George Herbert ; yet he took up his charge at Dean Prior with the most sincere resolution to do his duty, and to occupy himself 1 in nothing that could be deemed unworthy of his high calHng. | To this end he began by solemnly renouncing his poetic craft, i In a poem that strikes a higher note than most of his lyrics, j he bade his Farewell unto Poetry : But unto me be only hoarse, since now (Heaven and my soul bear record of my vow) I my desires screw from thee, and direct J Them and my thoughts to that sublim'd respect J And conscience unto priesthood. ... ! '" But, fortunately for KngUsh poetry, the vow was not kept. The poetic impulse was too strong for any barrier to stand! against it, and soon Herrick was writing as freely as ever, only striving, as he tells us, to keep his verses pure, and free from'^ the licence which had marred the j Unbaptized rhymes "'4 Writ in my wild, unhallowed times. The sweetest and most characteristic of the verses contained' in The Hesperides Herrick wrote in his quiet Devonshire' parsonage. At first he railed against the fate that had exiled; him to the ' loathed west,' far from the society which wasj nowhere to be found save in " the blest place of his nativity."' But later he grew to love his beautiful home, and he gained i from it a sweeter and more wholesome inspiration than would j have visited him in I^ondon. The parsonage at Dean Prior was,j we gather, an old and rather dilapidated building. An ancientj 224 I Robert Herrick From a contemporary Engraving Pboto.:Fmery Walker Iitd. 334 IP THE HESPERIDES serving-maid, named Prudence Baldwin, looked after the vicar's comfort, and, if we may judge by the epitaph he after- ward wrote upon her, served him very faithfully. A pig that he had taught how to drink out of a tankard, a tame lamb, a dog, a cat, a goose, a cock and a hen were Herrick's household companions. His own description of his home in the poem A Thanksgiving to God, is quaint and beautiful. He thanks God for giving him *' A little house whose humble roof is waterproof," and goes on : Like as my parlour, so my hall And kitchen's small. A little buttery, and therein A little bin. Which keeps my little loaf of bread Unchipt, imflead. These, with his fire, his food, his drink, the plenty of his land, and the produce of his animals — All these and better thou dost send L| Me to this end, — [■ That I should render for my part A thankful heart. He grew to know and love all the sights and sounds of the country, which had seemed so strange to him at first. On the fresh spring mornings he rose with the sweet-singing lark ; and when the day came on which the '* budding boys and girls went out to bring in May," Herrick was there too, and saw them come ** with white-thorn laden home " ; then while Aurora threw " her fair fresh-quilted colours through the air," he walked with the merry company through the village where Each field turns a street ; each street a park. Made green and trimmed with trees : see how Devotion gives each house a bough Or branch : each porch, each door ere this, An ark, a tabernacle is Made up of white-thorn neatly interwove. Doubtless, too, he shared in the ' cakes and cream ' which awaited the revellers when they reached home. He walked about the fields, and wove his quaint fancies concerning the p 225 ENGLISH LITERATURE flowers. " Why do you weep, sweet babes ? " he asked the primroses that bent under their load of morning dew, Speak, whim'pring younglings, and make known The reason why Ye droop and weep ; Is it for want of sleep. Or childish lullaby ? Or that ye have not seen as yet The violet ? When he saw the tall, wliite liUes growing in a cottage garden, he promised some imaginary love that from the dust of their golden anthers he would make sweet " cream of cowsHps '* which she should spread as butter upon the bread made of *' paste of filberts," that he would bring her. His fancy peopled the pleasant meadows with tiny fairy shapes, and saw them spread their little mushroom table with a feast for Oberon, the Fairy King. And now we must imagine first. The elves present to quench his thirst A pure seed-pearl of infant dew. Brought and besweeten'd in a blue And pregnant violet ; and so we are taken through the other items of the feast — ^the horns of papery butterflies, the httle f uz-ball pudding that was too coarse for his Majesty's taste, the emmet's eggs, the beards of mice, the newt's stewed thigh, with all the rest of the fantastic dishes on which Herrick's fancy dwelt so merrily. Or, again, the deserted meadows call up to the poet's mind a still fairer picture of the maids who have " spent their hours " in them and now are gone. Ye have beheld how they With wicker arks did come. To kiss and bear away The richer cowslips home. You've heard them sweetly sing. And seen them in a rotmd ; Each virgin, like a spring. With honeysuckles crown'd. But now we see none here. Whose silvery feet did tread. And with dishevell'd hair Adom'd this smoother mead. 226 \ At all the merry-makings round about — the wakes and morns dances, the Christmas mummings and Twelfth night revels, Herrick was a familiar figure. We can imagine that he was outdone by none of his parishioners in his enjoyment of the " tarts and custards, creams and cakes," the pageants, the players, the dancing — even the ' cudgel-play ' that came " near the dying of the day." We can imagine too that the parson's genial face, with its massive jaw and Roman nose, and its crown of thick, curUng black hair, was a welcome sight to every lass and lad and man and woman who joined in the simple revels. His parishioners were his friends, and though he did not labour for their spiritual welfare with the devoted zeal that marked George Herbert's work as a parish priest, he did his best for them according to the Hght that was in him " The threshold of my door," he says. Is worn by th' poor. Who thither come, and freely get Good words, or meat. If any strict and solemn Puritan happened to find his way from the warring outside world to the peaceful remoteness of Dean Prior he probably found Httle that encouraged him to remain, for it would have been difficult to convince the members of that happy community, upheld as they were by the authority of their vicar, that mince-pies at Christmas were sinful, and that to dance round the maypole showed an unregenerate heart. They might have answered him in Herrick's own words — which they probably knew, for his poems were freely passed about in manuscript before they were printed : Come, let us go, while we are in our prime. And take the harmless folly of the time. Thus Herrick's busy, though not laborious days passed happily away, and when the evening came he went home to his little parlour, where the " brittle sticks of thorn or brier " made his fire. We can think of him sitting there in the ease and warmth that he loved, with nothing to disturb his luxurious musings save ** a choir of singing crickets by the fire " ; the 227 ENGLISH LITERATURE " green-eyed kitling " sitting by his side, on the watch for the " brisk mouse " who might be tempted from its hole by the unbroken quiet. Then all sorts of lovely fancies came throng- ing into his head, and set themselves to rich though deHcate music and strains from the old classical poems. Perhaps he called up the figures of those airy, unsubstantial loves of his — Julia, Corinna, Perilla, Anthea and the rest — whom he met in the White Island of Dreams, where he was wont to wander, and addressed them with pretty trifling or dainty flattery ; or rose even to that note of real passion which is heard in such verses as the last of those addressed " To Anthea " : Thou art my life, my love, my heart. The very eyes of me ; And hast command of every part. To live and die for thee. Sometimes his thoughts took a graver turn, and he mused on the things belonging to religion and to holiness. In such a mood he wrote his famous Litany. In the hour of my distress, "When temptations me oppress. And when I my sins confess. Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! When I lie within my bed. Sick in heart, and sick in head, And with doubts discomforted. Sweet Spirit, comfort me 1 But it was difficult for Herrick to think even of his own death without surrounding it with sweet sensuous images that take away its terrors. So we soon find him adjuring Anthea to bury him " under that holyoak, or gospel tree," where there will be room for her to lie beside him, — For my embalming, Sweetest, there will be No need of spices, when I'm laid by thee. Perilla is bidden to Follow me weeping to my turf, and there lyct fall a primrose, and with it a tear. 228 and even the Robin Red-breast must help to give sweetness to his obsequies. I Laid out for dead, let thy last kindness be With leaves and moss-work for to cover me ; And while the wood-nymphs my cold corpse inter. Sing thou my dirge, sweet-warbling chorister I For epitaph, in foliage, next write this : Here, here the tomb of Robin Herrick is I But Robert Herrick had some troublous times to go through before his final epitaph could be written. In 1647 "^^^ trium- phant Parliamentary party was engaged in forcing Presby- terianism on a reluctant people, and even remote Dean Prior did not escape the visitation of its commissioners. We can imagine with what grief and surprise the villagers saw their vicar, who had become such a familiar part of their lives, driven from his place. To Herrick, at first, the change does not seem to have been quite unwelcome. London had re- mained to him, through all his eighteen years of exile, the City of Desire, the brilliant home of great reputations and fulfilled ambitions. He hurried away from the west, taking with him the store of poems that he had collected, and when he got to London, he hastened, as we have seen, to get these into print. He put them together without classification or arrangement, and with nothing to indicate the order in which they were written. Only the religious poems, Nohle Numbers as he called them, were placed by themselves and dated 1647. So in the midst of clamour and harsh cries while the two forces of the State strove in their last death-grapple, this book of sunshine and flowers and perfumes gathered in the far-ofiF west, came into being. Poor Herrick ! He had dreamed perhaps at Dean Prior of the time when he should bring his poems to London and receive the acclamations of the wits and the poets assembled in just such a company as, in the old days, had gathered round his master, Ben Jonson. He had looked for fame and honour and general applause and all he received was cold neglect. The pubHc did not want his poems, and all the wits of his day were dead or scattered. He could not look across the ages and 229 \ ENGLISH LITERATURE see the renown which waited for him there. He was lonely and poor and growing old, and lyondon was no longer his kindly birthplace, but a city strange and hard. We do not know how he spent the fourteen years of his lyondon life, but we know he was obscure and unprosperous, and we feel sure that he was unhappy. In 1662, when King Charles II had been for two years on the throne, and Herrick had probably almost despaired of receiving any sign of royal favour, his Hving was restored to him. He went back to Dean Prior and there spent the remaining twelve years of his life — peacefully, as we suppose, though no record remains to tell how the old man of seventy- one settled down in his former place. He sang no more ; his muse seems to have deserted him with the quenching of his gaiety, and though we cannot think that he ever really lost his delight in life, yet it is a sobered and a chastened Herrick whom we picture sitting in the familiar Uttle parlour of the parsonage house. We hope that his new maid, whoever she was, attended to his wants as cheerfully and faithfully as old Prew had done ; and we hope that the men and matrons of the village, whom he had known as toddHng children and as blooming youths and maidens were kind and gentle to the old vicar who had helped to make their earHer years glad and bHthe. But we do not know, for the only record that remains to us is that contained in the church register of Dean Prior, "Robert Herrick, Vicker, was buried ye 15th day of October 1674." Z3Q The Restoration Period BY the time that Charles II came to the throne the Elizabethan spirit had entirely died out of our litera- ture. The gay, daring, gallant note was gone, and in its place sounded the deep and solemn music of conquered but unsubdued Puritanism. The intense moral earnestness of the Puritan, and his pre-occupation with matters of religion made it impossible for him to write on light or secular subjects ; while the echo of the long and bitter strife which had ended in the Restoration gave added sternness to his words. It was not long, however, before a new influence came to drive out the spirit of Puritanism. The brilHant, witty and dissolute court of Charles II inspired a literature which reflected its own quahties. More especially is this the case with the drama of the period ; no more sparkling comedies can be found than those of Congreve, Wycherley and their school, and none of such low moral tone. Enthusiasm gave way to a cool cynicism, wit was valued far more highly than the finest imaginative quahties. At the same time all exuberance of expression was pruned away, and a clear, lucid, concise style was cultivated, both in poetry and prose. The great creative age with its adventurous methods was over, and an age of intellectual brilhancy took its place. 231 CHAPTER XXVI PARADISE LOST MILTON is the only one among our great English poets who, consciously and with solemn purpose prepared and educated himself for the work he was to do. As a young man he resolved that he would one day write a great poem ; and thenceforth his whole life was ordered to fit him for this end. It was not, as with Richard Hakluyt, a strong attraction of interest that drew him toward his life-work ; nor was he, like Francis Bacon, impelled by a great intellectual passion. The force that worked within him was an intense moral earnestness, induced partly by his Puritan upbringing, partly by the natural gravity of his disposition. Life, as he conceived it, meant work for the glory of God and the edifi- cation of man. The reckless Hterary improvidence of the Elizabethans, who flung their treasures of wit and poetry on this side and that, was impossible to John Milton. Not so would he spend the powers bestowed on him, but would cherish them with a careful passion, waiting through long years till they grew stronger and more disciplined, and fit for the work which in due season they were to accomplish. Not only the intellec- tual powers, but the whole man must be chastened and per- fected ; or, in Milton's own noble words, " He who would not be frustrated of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be a true poem, . . . not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men or famous cities unless he have in himself the experience and practice of all that is praise- worthy." The outward circumstances of Milton's life during childhood, youth, and early manhood, were entirely favourable to the ENGLISH LITERATURE attainment of this ideal. His father was a scrivener who hacS prospered in his calling. So that when his son John was boru' in 1608, he was living in Bread Street, which was then ' wholly- inhabited by rich merchants.' Here, above the father's shopi or office, the family lived. There were John Milton the elderJ his wife, of whom we know nothing, his two sons, John and* Christopher, and his daughter Anne. The house was an ideal nursery for a poet. The father was a man of high character and culture, a skilful musician, and a composer of some note.] He had many friends among musicians and men of learning^ who often gathered at his house. So that although Puritan^ ideals of order and regularity governed the household, there wasj Uttle of Puritan gloom or narrowness. The father seemS; from the very first to have recognized that his eldest son wa^ not quite as other children were, and could not be made to fil^ in with ordinary rules, or judged by ordinary standards. The^ boy was treated always as one marked out and dedicated for a| great work. f The early years of Milton's life were the closing years o^ Shakespeare's ; and in after days Milton must have thoughts with a thrill of keenest interest, of the many times that the^ elder poet had passed before the house where he himself was growing out of infancy into boyhood. For the Mermaid Tavern was in Bread Street, and when Shakespeare came up| from Stratford to I^ondon, as we believe he often did during^ the last peaceful years of his life, he doubtless went sometimesj to join the company of wits and poets at the famous club. Mr./ Masson, Milton's biographer, suggests that perhaps on one of these occasions Shakespeare may have met in the street the; fair-haired, beautiful Httle boy who was afterwards to stand] with him in the front rank of English poets ; and that memories: of his own son, Hamnet, who had died so many years before, j may have kindled within him for a moment a feeling of loving, ■ fatherly interest. It is not impossible that such a meeting; took place, and it is pleasant to think of even such a slight] connexion between our two great poets. I We know very little of Milton's childhood, beyond what he 234 P PARADISE LOST himself has told us in autobiographical passages of his works. He went to St. Paul's School — Dean Colet's famous founda- tion — and his father engaged for him also a private tutor, Thomas Young, who was " esteemed to have such an excellent way of training up youth that none in his time went beyond it." Milton showed the greatest ardour for learning, which, he says, " I seized with such eagerness that from the twelfth year of my age I scarce ever went to bed before midnight." His father looked on, well pleased to sanction even this excessive devotion to study. He hoped to see his son a great and famous divine of the English Church, and he felt, at second hand, the fervour that inspired the boy. Books, teachers, leisure — all things that a student could desire were Milton's. There are three books that we know, by the internal evidence of his works, that he must have specially studied. First in order of importance is the Bible. The Authorized Version was pub- lished when Milton was three years old, and we may be sure that a copy of it soon made its way to the scrivener's house- hold. Milton had that close and intimate knowledge of its language which comes only of early familiarity. Its phrases and cadences entered into his speech as its teaching entered into his life. Spenser's Faerie Queene was undoubtedly the chief of those ' lofty fables and romances,' among which, he tells us, his " young feet wandered," and its influence, also, is clearly seen in his work. Third on the Ust comes a long epic poem. The Divine Weeks, written in 1578 by a French Huguenot, Du Bartas. It treats of the Creation, and perhaps gave Milton some ideas for his Paradise Lost. It was translated into EngHsh in 1606. In 1625, when he was sixteen years old, Milton went to Christ's College, Cambridge. Various stories are told of his university career, and it seems certain that at least once he got into serious trouble with the authorities. The offence had probably something to do with his religious opinions. The nickname, " the lady of Christ's," given him in good-natured mockery by his fellow students, testified to the purity, and perhaps to the ultra-scrupulousness of his conduct. } ENGLISH LITERATURE During the seven years that he spent at the university,; Milton's attitude toward the Church of England was slowly changing, and when he left, at the age of twenty-three, he had I quite made up his mind that he could not enter on the career I that had been planned for him. By this time Archbishop j lyaud had made himself supreme in the English Church and had , introduced ceremonies which were highly distasteful to Milton's ] Puritan notions. "To the service of the Church," he says, | " I was destined of a child, and in mine own resolutions, till i coming to some maturity of years, and perceiving what ^ tyranny had invaded in the Church, that he who would take orders must subscribe slave. ... I thought it better to prefer j a blameless silence hei&!0i^ sacred office of speaking, bought i and begun with servitude and forswearing." j e disappointment fell heavily on the elder John Milton,! ad been to some extent prepared for it, and would in no | way attempt to interfere with his son's honest convictions.! Milton had by this time decided that his life-work was to be the| production of a great poem. He refused to enter one of the| learned professions, or, indeed, any profession at all. He^^ wanted, he said, some years of quietness and leisure, during which he might read, think, observe, and prepare himself, | according to the utmost of his powers, for his life-work. He J felt that those powers were at present crude and immature ; J :hat, as he expresses it in the sonnet, "On his being arrived | to the age of twenty-three," he had none of the " inward ripe- j less . . . that some more timely happy spirits indueth." ] Many fathers might have felt that, after seven years of miversity life, the request for more time in which to study ] vas unreasonable. But the father of John Milton, had, as has \ >een said, a strong and understanding sympathy with his great j .on, and once more the way was made smooth for that son's j eet. Milton felt his father's kindness deeply, and acknowledged j t warmly. " For thou didst not, my father," he says, " bid j ne go where the broad way is open, the ready mart of exchange, ] «rhere there shines the sure and golden hope of heaping up coin, i . . but desiring me rather to enrich my mind by cultivation, 236 PARADISE LOST allowest me far from the noise of town, and shut up in p retreats to wander, a happy companion by Apollo's side, ough the leisured sweetness of Aonian glades/' The ' deep retreat ' was the httle village of Horton, in 'Buckinghamshire, where his father, having retired with a I comfortable fortune, had estabUshed himself. Though Horton j was only seventeen miles from lyondon there was, in those days, i little communication with the capital. It was a true country village ; the River Colne flowed through it, and there were great stretches of meadowland and wooded slopes all around. Windsor Castle, set on a hill among its noble trees, was to be seen in the distance. Five quiet happy years were spent at Horton, free, as far as |we can tell, from any trace of care or strife. During this time !!Milton wrote his two dehghtful country poems, L' Allegro and II Penseroso, his elegy Lycidas, and the masques Arcades and IComus. These, though they alone would entitle him to a jhigh place among EngUsh poets, he counted but as small things, mere experiments in the art to which he had devoted himself. He had a '* mind made and set wholly on the accomplishment of greatest things/' He did not seek knowledge with the .true scholar's love of knowledge as an end in itself. In the strictest sense of the word he was not a scholar. He sought bnly to know " that which is of use to know," which means all ihat would help him to write his great poem. I As the fifth year at Horton drew to a close it seems to have \ )een decided by Milton and his father that the time had come I "or foreign travel to take its part in this great scheme of educa- j ion, and early in 1638 Milton started on a Continental tour. be visited Paris, Nice, Genoa, Florence, Rome and Naples. He met in familiar intercourse the most eminent men of learning n Italy ; at Florence he visited Galileo ; and everywhere he ^as praised and admired both for his personal quaUties, and "or his poems. Hearing of the troubles in England, he resolved .0 cut his tour short, and he reached home in August 1639. The time for the fulfilment of his great purpose seemed now .0 have come, and there are signs that he himself felt that the 237 ENGLISH LITERATURE preparation was almost complete. ** You make many in- quiries as to what I am about/' he had written just before he started for the Continent, to his friend, Charles Diodati, " what am I thinking of ? Why, with God's help, of immortaHty I Forgive the word, I only whisper it in your ear ! Yes, I am pluming my wings for a flight." In 1638 we have in one of his I^atin poems the first indication that he had thought of some definite subject as suitable for his great work. " I shall revive in song our native princes, and among them Arthur moving to the fray even in the nether world." There are other indications that for some time the story of King Arthur occupied his thoughts, and that he almost decided to make it his subject. When Milton returned from the Continent he did not go back to Horton, but settled in I^ondon, took a house in Alders-* gate, and received into it the two sons of his sister Anne, John and Edward Phillips, whom he undertook to educate. Still the thought of his poem was uppermost in his mind. He felt/ he says, " an inward prompting which now grows daily upotf me that by labour and intent study, which I take to be m^ portion in this Hfe, joined with the strong propensity of nature^ I might perhaps leave something so written to aftertimes a^ they should not willingly let it die." There is in the librarj^ of Trinity College, Cambridge, a manuscript written by Milton* in 1641. It contains a list of about a hundred subjects, jottedj down, apparently from time to time, as they occurred to hisj mind. They are all either historical or Scriptural. Thd historical subjects are chosen from British history, and Kingi Arthur appears among them. The Scriptural are taken frora^ both the Old and the New Testament. Four are concerned! with the Fall of Man, and for one of these the actual title! Paradise Lost is used. The plan of these four is sketched out! much more fully than is the case with the other subjects, somej of which are merely named. It is evident that Milton now felt^ that he had drawn near to the great work which he had seen! from afar through so many years. Yet still he did not seriously j set his hand to the task, though he probably drew up manyj 238 i PARADISE LOST mes and wrote out some passages that he incorporated later his poem. In his pamphlet, The Reason of Church Govern- nt, 1642, he says, with regard to his Uterary projects, " The iaccompHshment of them lies not but in a power above man's to promise ; but that none hath by more studious ways en- deavoured, and with more unwearied spirit that none shall, that I dare almost aver of myself as far as life and free leisure will extend, and that the land had once enfranchised herself from his impertinent yoke of Prelaty under whose inquisitorial and yrannical duncery no free and splendid wit can flourish. Neither do I think it shame to covenant with any knowing •( ader that for some few years yet I may go on trust with him oward the payment of what I am indebted, as being a work lot to be raised from the heat of youth or the vapours of wine, ike that which flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar imorist or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite, nor to be )])tained by the invocation of Dame Memory and her Siren laughters, but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit which an enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his craphim with the hallowed fire of his altar to touch and purify he life of whom he pleases. To this must be added industrious nd select reading, steady observation, insight into all seemly I id generous acts and affairs." This pamphlet On Church Government shows that Milton as, in 1641, becoming absorbed in the great struggle that was 1st opening ; and for twenty years that struggle claimed all is energies. He left " a calm and pleasing soUtariness, fed ith cheerful and confident thoughts to embark in a troubled ia of noises and harsh disputes." From the remote heights here he had dwelt apart, undisturbed by the ordinary cares i life, he had come down to the crowded lowland ; and where le crowd was thickest, the noise greatest, and the strife most itter, there he was to be found during all those unquiet ears. He fought hard, but he fought ineffectually, for the ioofness of his life had taught him Httle concerning the nature ^ man or of the great human forces with which he now had ) do. II 239 1 ENGLISH LITERATURE ' During this period Milton wrote pamphlet after pamphlet,^ most of which make painful reading for those who have! idealized him as the author of Paradise Lost. He attacked! the enemies of the ParUamentary Party with unmeasured, abuse. Taunts, scoffs, personal insults, spiteful railing served, him for argument. He threw mud, and mud was thrown back)^ at him ; and with it all he probably failed to influence, in the smallest degree, the course of events. When the Common-i wealth was established he became I^atin Secretary to the^ Council of State, and in that capacity was involved in the? undignified and disastrous controversy with Salmasius, sd scholar of I^eyden University, which was, as he believed, thej final cause of his blindness. For years his eyes had been faik; ing ; by 1650 the sight of the left had gone. His doctoi^ warned him that only perfect rest could save the other. '* Thdl choice lay before me," says Milton, " between dereHction of a supreme duty and loss of eyesight ; in such a case I could noti listen to the physician, not if iEsculapius himself had spokexl from his sanctuary ; I could not but obey that inward monitor^] I know not what, that spake to me from heaven. I considerecj with myself that many had purchased less good with worse ill»!! as they who give their lives to reap only glory, and I thereupon! concluded to employ the little remaining eyesight I was tQ»l enjoy in doing this, the greatest service to the common weal it I was in my power to render." In the volume of poHtical literature which Milton was at thisi time writing with such fluency and fervour, there were, it need I scarcely be said, many great and noble passages, rich in all thei graces that his splendid imagination could bestow. But these I are, after all, a poor exchange for the poems he might havej given us had party strife not claimed him. In his own home Milton failed to find the peace which might j have made up to him for the turbulence of his public career. I He married in 1643, Mary Powell, daughter of a Royalist j Oxfordshire squire. The marriage was hasty and ill-advised, i There could be very little prospect of sympathy between the^ grave poet of thirty-five, with his great enthusiasms audi 240 I PARADISE LOST absorbing projects, and the country girl of seventeen, used to the gay and stirring Hfe of a Royalist household. Her hus- band's lofty austerity chilled and frightened her, the long days spent in his quiet, frugal home had neither interest not variety. Milton, on his side, found that she could not enter into his great schemes, and could not give him the intelUgent, soothing com- panionship he had hoped to gain. At the end of the first month of married life she entreated to be allowed to pay a visit to her home, and once there, refused to return. It was not until two years later when the failure of the RoyaHst cause had ruined her father, and placed the whole family in danger, that she sought forgiveness and reconciliation. Milton, with the fine magnanimity of his nature, not only received her, but sheltered and protected her relations in his own home. Of the seven years that followed tliis reconcihation we know Httle. Mary Milton died in 1652, leaving her husband with three Uttle daughters, the oldest six years of age. In 1656 he married Catherine Woodcock, but she died fifteen months later, and he was again left alone. His father, his best and most sympa- thetic friend, had died in 1646. In 1660 came the Restoration, and with it the end of Milton's political career. For a time he was in danger of imprisonment, and was actually in the custody of the sergeant-at-arms. He suffered heavy money losses, including £2000 he had placed in Government securities under the Commonwealth. But he was not held to be of sufficient importance for the new govern- ment to concern itself greatly about him, and he was left in peace. The long interval of twenty years was over ; the battle was finished, the champion had retired, unsubdued but inglorious, from the field. Milton was free once more to follow the vision of his earUer days, which for so long had been hidden by the smoke and dust of the conflict. He must have looked back, as these thoughts passed through his mind, to the time which seemed so long ago, when he had just returned from the Con- tinent, young, hopeful, ardent, with all the powers of body and mind of the finest and most perfect temper. And then he Q 241 ENGLISH LITERATURE | must have thought sadly of his present self in the dark year i of 1660 — prematurely old, bHnd, and worn with strenuous \ Jiving ; impoverished, though not actually poor, neglected j and little thought of, owing his safety to the contemptuous ^ toleration of his political opponents. But the bitterest ■ element in his suffering must have been the realization that, i after all, the evil had triumphed over the good, the saints I of the earth had been overthrown by the men of Belial, j For this was what the Restoration meant to John Milton ; ] the cause with which he had so long identified himself, he \ held, with all his heart and soul, to be the cause of God. j If he had sat down in inaction, pleading that he had fought \ a good fight, offering, as the fulfilment of his youthful pledge, I the work that he had done for his country and his rehgion, we I might have been incHned to admit the justice of his plea. But he ^ did not do this. At the age of fifty-two he began the great work | of his life. His powers were as great as they had ever been, ^ and were chastened and matured by the experiences of his life. » Milton's first idea had been to put his great work in the form of a drama, after the model of the " lofty grave tragedians of '{ Greece." But as years brought maturity of judgment, a truer S instinct led him to the epic. So soon as his short imprison- ' ment was over, and he had settled down in a small house at , Holborn, the few fragments of his work which had been pre- | viously written, were brought out and reviewed, and work \ was begun in earnest. And now Milton felt, to the fullest extent, how terrible was the darkness that had fallen upon him. { He could not work as he would, his genius must wait upon ^ the pleasure of others ; and he had no one near him to give ^ the effectual, ready help that his infirmity claimed. Hired 1 helpers failed through lack of education and intelligent sym- j pathy. His daughters, now growing up to an age at which . they might be useful, should have been his loving, willing I assistants. But they seem to have had httle love for their ] father, and no interest in this work. This was, it cannot be ] doubted, partly Milton's own fault. His views concerning the | nature and position of women he has set forth in detail in some ] 242 i PARADISE LOST of his prose works ; they were, he asserted, naturally inferior to man in all respects, and were created to minister to him and live in subjection to his will. These theories he had carried out in the upbringing of his daughters, and the evil results were now to be seen. The help he exacted from them was given in a grudging and sullen spirit. They had received but Httle education, and Milton had refused to have them taught any language but their own. One tongue, he said scornfully, was enough for a woman. Yet when his blindness made a reader necessary to him, he was at pains to teach them the pro- nunciation of five or six languages, in which they were com- pelled to read to him, without having any notion of the sense. It is perhaps Httle wonder that they rebelled. They did more. Milton's house was mismanaged, his money wasted, his servants encouraged to deceive him. A thousand petty miseries vexed and distracted his soul, and prevented him from *' beholding the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies." He had, indeed, " fallen on evil days . . . in darkness . . . and soUtude." Yet, through all, the great work went on. Outside his own home he found friends and helpers. He seems, indeed, to have had a special attraction for young and able men with scholarly tastes. " He had daily about him," we are told by his nephew, Edward Phillips, " one or other to read to him ; some persons of man's estate, who, of their own accord greedily catch'd at the opportunity of being his reader, that they might as well reap the benefit of what they read to him, as obUge him by the benefit of their reading ; others of younger years sent by their parents to the same end." These bear witness to the charm of his con- versation and the winning cheerfulness of his manner, quaUties which his home relations failed to bring out. Milton was unfortunate in this, that his complete absorption in ideas and theories stood between him and the ordinary, everyday interests of life, so that he too often appeared harsh and unloving when he was only preoccupied. After three years of hard and sometimes distressful labour Paradise Lost was finished, saving only the repolishing and 243 ENGLISH LITERATURE revision. Milton wrote, as he believed, under the direct in- spiration of the Muse — My celestial patroness, who deigns Her nightly visitation unimplored. And dictates to me slumb'ring, or inspires Kasy my unpremeditated verse. Of the poem it is praise enough to say that it is worthy of the long preparation, the pains and toil and weary waiting which went to its making. We regret the long years that Milton spent in political controversy, yet they too helped to give glory to this crowning achievement. The depth and passion of Paradise Lost would have been unattainable to the untried student who knew sin and sorrow only as far-off evils that had not entered into his carefully cherished and sequestered life. ^ The vastness of the conception needed mature powers for its working out. Its scene is the universe, its characters include not men alone, but devils, angels — even God himself. Heaven he pictures as the " pure empyrean, high throned above all highth, infinitely extended," and walled with a crystal wall, with towers and battlements. A gate in this wall opens on to Chaos — A dark Illimitable ocean, without bound. Without dimension, where length, breadth and highth. And time and place, are lost ; where eldest Night And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold Eternal anarchy, amidst the noise Of endless wars, and by confusion stand : For Hot, Cold, Moist, and Dry, four champions fierce, Strive here for mastery and to battle bring Their embryon atoms. In the depths of Chaos is Hell, " the house of woe and pain," with a fiery lake in the middle round which Hes a dismal stretch of land " that ever burned with solid, as the lake with liquid fire," and beyond lies " a frozen continent, dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms of whirlwind and dire hail." Our Universe God shaped out of Chaos. In six days He finished the work of creation, then fastened His new- made world safely by a golden chain to heaven. He made 244 John Milton Pieter Van der Plaas] Photo. W. A. MansoU * Co. :244 P PARADISE LOST also a staircase, " ascending by degrees magnificent up to the wall of heav'n," and at the top placed " a kingly palace gate, with frontispiece of diamond and gold embeUished." The hero, if so he may be called, of the epic is Satan, and nowhere has Milton shown more nobihty and largeness of con- ception than in his presentment of this chief of the fallen angels. The devil of mediaeval legend, grotesque and horrible, has disappeared. In his place comes one who Above the rest In shape and gesture proudly eminent. Stood like a tow'r ; his form had not yet lost All her original brightness, nor appeared Less than Arch-angel ruined, and th' excess Of glory obscured. . . . , But his face IH|^ Deep scars of thunder had intrenched, and care ^Kl Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows ^B^ Of daimtless courage, and considerate pride ^M* Waiting revenge : cruel his eye, but cast ^F Signs of remorse and passion to behold ^V ■ The fellows of his crime. . . . ^H He now prepared to speak. . . . W/m , Thrice he assayed, and thrice in spite of scorn, ^^ Tears, such as angels weep, burst forth. Soon after Paradise Lost was finished Milton married for the third time, probably mainly for the purpose of securing for himself domestic comfort. His third wife seems to have been a kindly, capable woman who managed his household well, and shielded him from the petty annoyances which before had disturbed him. Under these happier circumstances the revision of Paradise Lost went on, and was completed by 1665. Then came the dreadful plague year, followed by the year of the Great Fire, which delayed the publication until the autumn of 1667. Milton was paid £5 down and was to receive an additional £5 for each edition disposed of. He received in his lifetime the payment for the first edition, making £10 in all, and after his death his wife compounded for her interest in the poem for the sum of £8. It gained at first httle attention, for^ the spirit of the time was not in accordance with its lofty and ^ religious tone. It has never become widely popular, thot^h ithas had in every age its band of enthusiasts. Milton^s ENGLISH LITERATURE aspiration that he might find " fit audience, though few," has been fulfilled. The remaining years of the poet's life were calm and peace- ful. In 1663 he had removed to a house situated in what is now known as Bunhill Row, and here he lived until his death, eleven years later. His daughters, who, still formed an ele- ment of discord in his home, were sent out, about 1668, to learn the art of gold and silver embroidery, in order that they might be able to support themselves. His wife attended faithfully to his material wants, and he had devoted friends, chief among them the young Quaker, Thomas Ellwood, who gave him ready help. Two other great poems he produced during those quiet years. Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, His life was simple and regular. He had renounced his old habit of sitting up far into the night, though now, alas, the night and the day held for him little difference. He went to bed at nine, and rose at four in summer and five in winter. Sometimes a long wake- ful night was spent in an effort at composition, and yet in the morning, not a single line was forthcoming for dictation to the amanuensis. At other times he composed readily, and next day poured out long passages which his brain had fashioned during the night hours. Sometimes verses came to him as he walked in his garden, or sat ' contemplating ' in his study. The morning was given to his work, the afternoon to exercise and recreation. In the evening from six to eight he received his friends, and recreated his mind with conversation. His old taste for music and his skill as a performer remained to him, and he was accustomed to play both on the organ and the bass viol. So his days passed away. Visitors have told how they found him sitting in the sunshine at the door of his house, clad in a *' grey, coarse, cloth coat," his hands, swollen with gout, resting on his knees, his eyes shining " with an unclouded light, just like the eyes of one whose vision is perfect." He grew gradually weaker, and on November 8, 1674, just a month before his sixty-sixth birthday, he died, " with so Httle pain that the time of his expiring was not perceived by those in the room." 246 I CHAPTER XXVII ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL WHEN Charles II came back after his long exile, there were two great poets living in England. One was the blind and prematurely old John Milton, the other was John Dry den. Dry den was then nearly thirty years old and had left the University of Cambridge in 1657. He had written one notable poem on the death of Cromwell, and had probably done a good deal of unacknowledged hack-work for the bookseller in whose house he lodged. The Restoration, which condemned Milton to poverty and obscurity, gave Dryden a chance of fame and fortune. It reopened the playhouses which the Puritan rule had closed, and thus restored play-writing to the position it had formerly held as the branch of Uterary art Hkely to bring the quickest and fullest return both in reputation and in money. It gave an opportunity also for adulatory verse addressed to the new ruler, and of this Dryden was so quick to avail himself that he produced, in the year of the Restoration, his poem Astraa Redux, a panegyric on the coronation of Charles. This was followed by various other pieces of the same class, the chief being Annus Mirahilis (1667). But it was to dramatic poetry that Dryden most confidently trusted. He began liis career as a playwright in 1663 with a comedy. The Wild Gallant, and for seventeen years he con- tinued to write industriously for the stage. Not one among the many comedies and tragedies that he produced is of supreme merit, although most of them contain passages that show the masterful way in which he could manage the metre he had chosen for his work — the heroic couplet, and that have an energy of thought and diction peculiarly Dryden's own. They 247 ENGLISH LITERATURE have done little, almost nothing, to increase his permanent reputation as a poet, though they made him famous in his own day, and provided him with a comfortable income on which to bring up his three sons. The tone of nearly all the Restoration literature is dissolute in the extreme, and Dryden allowed his work to be tainted with the prevaihng fault of the day, so that few of his works could be presented on a modern stage. The chief value of his plays was as a prepara- tion for the greater work that he was to accomplish at a later time. '' They acted,'* Professor Saintsbury says, "as a filtering reservoir for his poetical powers, so that the stream which when it ran into them, was the turbid and rubbish-laden current oi Annus Mirahilis flowed out as impetuous, as strong, but clear and without base admixture, in the splendid verse of Absalom and Achitophel." The story of Absalom and Achitophel is concerned with the politics of the day. Charles II had been reigning for twenty years, and the nation had begun to discover something of the real nature of the king they had welcomed so warmly in 1660. One cause of dissatisfaction lay in the common rumour that Charles was, like his brother, a Roman CathoHc ; another in the suspicion of a dishonourable alliance with France. As one disclosure followed another the temper of the people rose to a dangerous pitch of angry excitement. There were not wanting men ready to take advantage of this state of f eeUng for personal or pohtical purposes. In 1678 Titus Gates, a discredited clergyman, pretended to discover a plot on the part of the Roman CathoHcs to murder the King and place the Duke of York on the throne. The nation, excited and uneasy, gave full beUef to this and other preposterous stories which Gates and his followers swore to vehemently. A panic followed, and the unfortunate victims accused by these infamous men of compHcity in Popish plots had Uttle chance of justice from the frenzied juries before whom they appeared. A series of ' judicial murders ' followed. The nation completely lost its head, and a shuddering horror of their Roman CathoUc neigh- bours possessed all except a small and over- mastered minority. 248 PABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL The scheming and ambitious I^ord Shaftesbury saw how this " no Popery " cry might be used for party purposes. He skilfully fomented the agitation, and introduced in 1679, when the frenzy was at its wildest, a Bill to exclude the Duke of York from succession to the throne. Charles saved his brother's interests by dissolving ParUament, but this only incited Shaftesbury to more daring schemes. Fresh stories of plots and massacres maintained the public excitement, and, in 1680, Monmouth, an illegitimate son of Charles II, was openly paraded in London as the heir to the throne, chosen by the Protestants. Soon, however, the tide began to turn. A feeling of horror at the butcheries which had been committed in the name of justice took possession of the people. The King took advantage of these signs of Shaftesbury's waning influence to cause him to be impeached on a charge of suborning false witnesses to the plot. Excitement rose again, for Shaftes- bury was regarded by the Protestant party as their main hope. London, more especially, was devoted to him, and his trial \ threw the whole city into a state of angry consternation. It 4 was at this crisis, about the middle of November 1681, that Absalom and Achitophel appeared. ^ It is said that Charles himself suggested to Dryden that he should come to the assistance of the Court party by writing a satire on its opponents. Whether this was so or not cannot be certainly known, but there is no doubt that Dryden's work did do that party great service. Produced as it was in haste, at a time when party spirit was at its wildest and bitterest, we might perhaps have expected that the poem would prove simply a temporary squib, worthless when once let off. In- stead of that it has taken its place among the classics of English literature. It is the greatest satirical poem in the language. The poem is founded on the account of Absalom's rebellion against Eling David, given in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth chapters of the Second Book of Samuel. David is, of course, Charles II, and Absalom is the Duke of Monmouth. Dryden is careful throughout to treat Monmouth with tender- ness, for the King's affection for him was well known. He is ^ 249 ENGLISH LITERATURE represented as being led away by evil counsellors, who work upon his consciousness of royal birth and kingly quaUties to f draw him into an enterprise from which at first he shrinks in horror. Extravagant praise is lavished upon him : Whate'er he did was done with so much ease. In him alone 'twas natural to please ; His motions all accompanied with grace. And Paradise was opened in his face. For a time all went well, and ! i Praised and loved the noble youth remained, i While David undisturbed in Zion reigned. But soon the people grew discontented. The Jews (that is, the] BngHsh), I A headstrong, moody, murmuring race As ever tried the extent and stretch of grace. Began to dream they wanted liberty. ' A plot was formed, for i Plots, true or false, are necessary things, [ To raise up commonwealths and ruin kings. i The movers in the plot were the Jebusites (Roman Catholics) ,| and though it failed it had a " deep and dangerous consequence."! Several factions from this first ferment ^ Work up to foam and threat the government. * Discontented men everywhere seized the opportunity of turning upon the monarch whose ' fatal mercy ' had in many cases pardoned those who had before shown themselves to be his enemies, and had even raised some of them to ' power and pubHc office high.' Then follows the bitter and masterly sketch of Shaftesbury, under the name of Achitophel. Of these the false Achitophel was first, ^ A name to all succeeding ages curst, j{ For close designs and crooked counsels fit. Sagacious, bold and turbulent of wit. Restless, unfixed in principles and place. In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace ; A fiery soul, which working out its way. Fretted the pigmy body to decay And o'er-informed the tenement of clay. 250 Il John Dryden From an engraving after Thos. Hudson 250 ABSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL A daring pilot in extremity, H^ Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high He sought the storms ; but for a calm unfit, ^ Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit. , . . In friendship false, implacable in hate. Resolved to ruin or to rule the state. This dangerous and unscrupulous man looked round to find some one whom he could set up in opposition to King David, and " none was found so fit as warlike Absalom." So with "studied arts to please" Achitophel attempted to draw the young man into a rebellion against his father — at first unsuccess- fully, for Absalom repUes, " What pretence have I, To take up arms for pubHc liberty ? " But at last he was won over, and Achitophel proceeded to unite " the malcontents of all the Israelites," chief among them the " Solymoean rout," or city rabble — for Shaftesbury's great strength lay among the citizens of lyondon. In the list of those who joined the rebellion comes iri, who stands for the Duke of Buckingham, A man so various that he seemed to be Not one, but all mankind's epitome : Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong. Was everything by starts, and nothing long ; But in the course of one revolving moon Was chymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon. After him comes Shimei, or Slingsby Bethel, a Sheriff of London and a noted repubUcan. When two or three were gathered to declaim Against the monarch of Jerusalem, Shimei was always in the midst of them. Then Corah, or Titus Oates, His memory, miraculously great, Could plots exceeding man's belief repeat ; Which therefore cannot be accounted lies. For human wit could never such devise. Led by these false friends, Absalom raised the standard of rebellion. Now what relief can righteous David bring ? How fatal 'tis to be too good a king ! Then follow the names of those who were faithful to the King in his adversity. Barzillai (the Duke of Ormond) " crowned 251 ENGLISH LITERATURE 1 with honour and with years," then Hushai (Laurence Hyd|J||| who " joined experience to his native truth," are the chief of i these. The poem ends with a speech by David, threatening i his enemies, with the vengeance they have provoked. " The i conclusion of the story," wrote Dry den in his preparatory note j '* To the Reader," '* I purposely forbore to prosecute, because I could not obtain from myself to show Absalom unfortunate. | . . . Were I the inventor, who am only the historian, I should i certainly conclude the piece with the reconcilement of Absalom \ to David. And who knows but this may come to pass ? " The poem was pubHshed in November 1681, probably on ! the 17th, just a week before Shaftesbury's trial for high treason at the Old Bailey. The Court party probably hoped that the poem would help to ensure his conviction, but if so they were ■ disappointed. I^ondon remained faithful to Shaftesbury, and \ the grand jury threw out the Bill of indictment. Nevertheless 1 Absalom and Achitophel must be accounted a great success. It i was pubhshed anonymously, though the fact of Dryden's 1 authorship was well known. Its sale was enormous. The first : edition was soon exhausted, and a second, which contained a i few additions, was produced within a month. The Court party | was delighted, and the Exclusionists were furious. j Several answers to this great satire — which was being read j everywhere, and extolled or reviled according to the opinions; of the readers — were attempted. But none of them was worthy ; of serious consideration and most contented themselves with | abuse of the author, and neglected to answer the charges he i had made. Dry den replied to them collectively in a second : poem called The Medal. Shaftesbury's friends had caused a medal to be struck commemorating his acquittal, and it was '' on this that Dry den based his new satire, pubHshed March 1682. j " I have only one favour to desire of you at parting," said j Dryden, at the end of his Epistle to the Whigs, which preceded I The Medal, " that when you think of answering this poem, you I would employ the same pens against it who have combated with j so much success against Absalom and Achitophel ; for then you ; may assure yourselves of a clear victory, without the least reply. 252 AfiSALOM AND ACHITOPHEL Rail at me abundantly, and, not to break a custom, do it k without wit." The ' favour ' was granted ; or if the answers I to The Medal were not by the same hand as were the answers to Absalom and Achitophel, they were equally scurrilous and equally dull. One, written by Thomas Shadwell, passed all bounds of decency. It was a bitter personal attack upon Dryden, who was accused of the most scandalous conduct in both his pubUc and his private life. Dryden retahated with Mac Flecknoe, which later gave Pope the idea for his Dunciad. Nor was this the only castigation that Shadwell received. In November 1682 appeared the second part of Absalom and I Achitophel. The pubhsher, Jacob Tonson, gave the following I account of its origin and authorship. *' In the year 1680 Mr. Dryden undertook the poem of Absalom and Achitophel upon the desire of King Charles the Second. The performance was applauded by every one, and several persons pressing him to write a second part, he, upon declining it himself, spoke to Mr. Tate to write one, and gave him his advice in the direction of it ; and that part beginning : Next these, a tioop of busy spirits press, and ending, To talk like Doeg and to write like thee, containing near two hundred verses, were entirely Mr. Dryden's composition, besides some touches in other places." Dryden was now a noted man, the head of the republic of letters, a great Uterary dictator, as Ben Jonson had been before him. His headquarters were at Will's Coffee-House, Covent Garden. Here from the armchair which was placed near the fire in winter, and on the balcony in summer, he talked with the crowd of wits and gallants who gathered round him. On one of these occasions, during the last year of Dryden's life, it is said that a little boy, not twelve years old, undersized, delicate and deformed, but with brilliant eyes shining out of his pale face, was brought into the room where he sat. The boy was the son of Roman CathoHc parents who lived at Binfield, but in 1699 he was a boarder at a school near Hyde Park Corner, and at his earnest entreaties, his schoolmaster had taken him to 253 ENGLISH LITERATURE ' Will's ' that he might catch a ghmpse of the great man. His name was Alexander Pope, and he was to be England's next famous poet. Dryden's two great poems, Religio Laid (1682) and Th& Hind and the Panther (1687), with some well-known elegies and odes written during these later years, raised his reputation to a i very high point, and he was in a position of comfortable in- dependence when the Revolution of 1688 swept away his offices j and pensions. The last years of his life were spent, not inj poverty, but in reduced and straitened circumstances, though i he retained his position as literary dictator. Being forced to j write for a living he returned again to the theatre, but met with little success. He next attempted some classical translations, and these were very favourably received, as was his modernized rendering of parts of Chaucer, produced during the last year of j his life. He died on April 30, 1700. ^ 254 CHAPTER XXVIII THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS WHEN Milton in 1667 published his Paradise Lost he probably believed himself to be the last prophet of a fallen cause, and as such he appeared to the small company of cultured Puritans — remnant of a great party — that gathered round him during his later years. A new litera-^ ture was growing up — the brilUant, witty, dissolute literature of the Restoration. Dry den and Wycherley were at work on their Hcentious comedies, and a crowd of courtly writers — Waller, Roscommon, Sedley and Rochester — were writing verses whose lightness and grace could not, to those who remembered the solemn music of Paradise Lost and the sober loveliness of Comus, atone for an utter lack of lofty or serious purpose. They looked around and saw no one who could be the Ehsha to the great prophet they revered, and receive the mantle of inspiration which was soon to fall from his shoulders. Yet the man destined to be Milton's successor as the prophet of religion was, at that very time, almost ready to take up his great work. He was one whom Milton would probably have been loth to acknowledge as a fellow-worker, for he beloi^ed to the * common people,' the * miscellaneous rabble,' that the poet of Paradise Lost regarded with lofty contempt. His name was John Bunyan, and he came, as he tells us, " of a low and inconsiderable generation," his father's house " being of that rank that is meanest and most despised of all the families in the land." During the five years of studious retire- ment which Milton spent at Horton, John Bunyan, some miles away, was growing up in the home of his father, the poor 255 ENGLISH LITERATURE tinker of Elstow. The lives of these two representative Puritans present, indeed, in almost every particular the most complete contrast. In place of Milton's early devotion to learning we have Bunyan's confession that although " not- withstanding the meanness and inconsiderableness of my parents, it pleased God to put it into their hearts to put me to i school, to learn me both to read and write ; the which I als< attained according to the rate of other men's children," yel ** to my shame I confess I did soon lose that Httle I learned] even almost utterly." At an age when Milton was still a student at Cambridge, Bunyan had served for a year in thej ParUamentary army, had married, was the father of twoi children, and was earning a Uving for his family by the exercise j of his father's trade. During the latter years of the Common- ! wealth he added to these labours the work of a preacher of the i Baptist community ; and the Restoration, which drove Milton j into retirement, placed John Bunyan in jail, as an offender I against the newly revived Act of Uniformity. In jail hei remained for twelve years until the Declaration of Indulgence! issued by Charles II released him in 1672. He took up hisj work as a preacher once more, and during the years which saw Milton's decline and death, his fame increased so that he became known as the greatest Hving Protestant preacher. In 1675 he was again imprisoned, and while in jail he began] his great work. The Pilgrim's Progress. He was released early j in 1676, and left unmolested in his work, until his death in: 1688. The mental and spiritual development of these two great | men, shows an even greater contrast than their outward circum- stances. The nature of John Milton expanded freely and naturally, as a flower opens under favourable influences of sun- j shine and fresh air. But John Bunyan reached the maturity j of his powers through agony and striving, with the bursting of strong chains, with hard blows that wounded the man while they broke his fetters. The conviction of sin worked in him i so strongly that when he was only nine or ten years old he ; believed that he ** had few equals " for cursing, swearing, lying j 256 . I THE PILGRIM^S PROGRESS and blaspheming the holy name of God. " Yea, so settled and rooted was I in these things, that they became as a second nature to me ; the which, as I have also with soberness con- sidered since, did so offend the I^ord, that even in my childhood he did scare and affrighten me with fearful dreams, and did terrify me with fearful visions. For often, after I had spent this and the other day in sin, I have in my bed been greatly afflicted, while asleep, with the apprehensions of devils and wicked spirits, who, still as I then thought, laboured to draw me away with them, of which I could never be rid." We are quite sure, from the records of Bunyan's Hfe and from the instances that he gives us of specific offences, that he took the very darkest view of his own spiritual condition, and that what appeared to him as terrible sin was often nothing more than the natural thoughtlessness and high spirits of youth. But he spoke according to his convictions, and the agony that he suffered was as real as if it had followed the blackest crime. All through his childhood his torments continued, but as he grew older " those terrible dreams did leave me, which also I soon forgot ; for my pleasures did quickly cut off the remembrance of them as if they had never been, ... so that until I came to the state of marriage, I was the very ringleader of all the youth that kept me company, in all manner of vice and ungodUness." With marriage came a change of life. " My mercy," says Bunyan, " was to light upon a wife whose father was counted godly. This woman and I, though we came together as poor as poor might be, not having so much house- hold stuff as a dish or spoon between us both, yet this she had for her part. The Plain Mans Pathway to Heaven and The Practice of Piety, which her father had left her when he died." In these she read with her husband, helping him to recover the lost knowledge of his schooldays, and holding up before him the example of her father, who had Hved " a strict and holy life both in words and deeds." " Wherefore these books, with the relation, though they did not reach my heart to awaken it about my sad and sinful state, yet they did beget within me some desires to reform my vicious life and fall in very eagerly R 257 ENGLISH LITERATURE with the reHgion of the times, to wit, to go to church twice a day, and that too with the foremost." From this merely \ formal reHgion he was soon driven. One day the sermon at : church dealt with Sabbath-breaking, in which matter Bunyan \ was a great offender. A conviction of guilt came upon him, " but behold it lasted not, for before I had well dined, the ; trouble began to go off my mind, and my heart returned to its ] old course." " But the same day," he goes on, " as I was in ' the midst of a game of cat, and having struck it one blow from j the hole, just as I was about to strike it a second time, a voice ' did suddenly dart from heaven into my soul, which said, * Will ' thou leave thy sins and go to heaven, or have thy sins and go I to hell ? ' At this I was put to an exceeding maze ; wherefore, j leaving my bat upon the ground, I looked up to heaven, and was as if 1 had with the eyes of my understanding seen the 1 Lord Jesus looking down upon me, as being very hotly dis- ' pleased with me, and as if he did severely threaten me with some | grievous pum'shment for these and other ungodly practices." ' Conviction of sin was thus reawakened, and for years Bunyan < was tormented with fear of God's wrath and of hell fire. J Sometimes a Httle comfort came to him and he was able to lay j hold on the promises of Holy Scripture ; then again despair ^ overwhelmed him and he felt that he was lost. One by one he gave up the sinful practices that he beHeved were keeping him from God — swearing, to which he tells us he was inordinately given ; ringing the church bells, which seemed to him so great a sin that the thought that the steeple might fall upon him in punishment " did so continually shake my mind that I durst not stand at the steeple-door any longer, but was forced to flee " ; and dancing, " I was full a year before I could quite leave that." Still he came no nearer to finding peace. " I was tossed between the devil and my own ignorance, and so per- plexed, especially at some times, that I could not tell what to do." " Thus I continued for a time all on flame to be converted to Jesus Christ." " I was more loathsome in mine own eyes than a toad, and I thought I was so in God's eyes too." 258 John Bunyan Thomas Sadler Photo. W. A. • ManaeU'ck. Co. 258 THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS At last, with many falls, and groans of agony, and fresh iginnings, he came to a place of peace. ** But because my former frights and anguish were very sore and deep, therefore it oft befell me still as it befalleth those that have been scared with fire. I thought every voice was Fire, Fire, every little touch would hurt my tender conscience." The worst part of the spiritual conflict was over, but there was other discipline for John Bunyan before his faith could be perfected. He became a preacher, and was " indicted for an upholder and maintainer of unlawful assemblies and con- venticles, and for not conforming to the national worship of the Church of England." For this " being deUvered up to the jailer's hand, I was had home to prison, and there have lain now complete for twelve years." Here he found a great increase of spiritual content, and joy in the things of reHgion. ** But not- withstanding these helps I found myself a man encompassed with infirmities ; the parting with my wife and poor children hath often been to me in this place as pulHng the flesh from the bones, and that not only because I am somewhat too fond of these great mercies, but also because I would have often brought to my mind the many hardships, miseries and wants that my poor family were like to meet with should I be taken from them." During this imprisonment Bunyan wrote three books, Profitable Meditations, a verse dialogue ; The Holy City, which originated in a sermon which he preached to the other inmates of the jail one Sunday morning ; and Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, the famous autobiography from which the quotations given in this chapter have been taken. During his second imprisonment Bunyan began to write his book. The Pilgrim's Progress. Here again we note a great difference between the manner in which his work was evolved, and the long thought and careful preparation which went to the making of Paradise Lost. His own words, though put into verse which has in itself httle merit, give a more lively and realistic account of the way in which the book originated than any commentator can hope to put together. 259 ENGLISH LITERATURE When at the first I took my pen in hand Thus for to write, I did not understand That I at all should make a little book In such a mode : nay, I had undertook To make another, which, when almost done. Before I was aware, I tWs begun. And thus it was : I, writing of the way And race of saints in this our gospel-day. Fell suddenly into an allegory About their journey and the way to glory, In more than twenty things which I set down. This done, I twenty more had in my crown ; And they again began to multiply. Like sparks that from the coals of fire do fly. Nay then, thought I, if that you breed so fast, I'll put you by yourselves, lest you at last ^ Should prove ad infinitum, and eat out The book that I already am about. Well, so I did ; but yet I did not think To show to all the world my pen and ink In such a mode ; I only thought to make I knew not what : nor did I imdertake Thereby to please my neighbour ; no, not I ; I did it my own self to gratify. . . . Well when I had thus put mine ends together, i I showed them others that I might see whether i They would condemn them, or them justify ; I And some said, Let them live ; some. Let them die : j Some said, John, print it ; others said. Not so : ] Some said it might do good ; others said. No. \ I Now was I in a strait, and did not see \ Which was the best thing to be done by me : ] At last I thought. Since ye are thus divided, I print it will ; and so the case decided. j For, thought I, some I see would have it done. Though others in that channel do not run : j To prove, then, who advised for the best. Thus I thought fit to put it to the test. ! The test showed that Bunyan had done right in publishing his work. It is computed that one hundred thousand copies were | sold in Bunyan' s own lifetime. Nor was its literary influence \ confined to his own country. Three years after its publica- i tion, it was reprinted by the Puritan colony in America, there i receiving, as Bunyan himself tells us, " much loving counten- i ance." And there it has continued ever since, in an untold ' number of editions ; and, with Shakespeare, it forms part of \ 260 THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS the literary bond which unites the two English-speaking peoples on each side of the Atlantic. It was translated into Dutch, French and German, and these editions also were sold in large numbers. The Pilgrim's Progress is written " in the similitude of a dream/' " As I walked through the wilderness of this world," it begins, " I lighted on a certain place where was a den, and laid me down in that place to sleep ; and as I slept, I dreamed a dream." The dream showed the passage of a man whose name was Christian, from the city of Destruc- tion, along the narrow way and through the Valley of HumiUation and the Valley of the Shadow of Death to the Celestial City. All the difficulties which beset a man in his efforts to find salvation, the difficulties with which Bunyan himself had so manfully wrestled, are shown under the form of an allegory. Spenser had dealt with a similar subject, and had treated it allegorically ; but The Pilgrim's Progress bears little likeness to the Faerie Queene. Its meaning is plain and un- encumbered, and is consistent throughout ; there is no shifting of the ground or confusing of the issues. Its scene, like that of Paradise Lost, includes earth, heaven and hell. But Bunyan does not attempt to frame a complete plan of the universe, or to transport his readers to vast ilUmitable regions such as give grandeur to the action of Milton's poem. His scenes are the common scenes of earth — mountains and valleys, rivers, precipices, miry roads, gardens and houses : each of these has a spiritual significance which is made clear in perfectly plain and definite fashion by the name which is given to it — the Slough of Despond, the Valley of Humiliation, the Delectable Mountains. His characters are labelled in the same way, so that when Obstinate, PUable, Mr. Worldly Wiseman, Mr. Talkative or Mr. Greatheart makes his appearance, the reader knows at once how he is going to behave, and the nature of ' the part he will take in the action. Yet the names are so aptly fitted, the scenes and characters are introduced so naturally, the personified virtues and vices are so exactly like the ordinary men that one meets every day in real life, that the reader is never 261 ENGLISH LITERATURE ] either irritated or bored, but is interested in the story as a, story although the moral is writ so large that one might well ; imagine it would allow no attention to be given to anything but ; itself. ! The world as Bunyan sees it in his dream, is a town called | the City of Destruction, which stands in the midst of a widel plain. Heaven is the celestial city, built upon a mighty hill' in the country of Beulah, whose air is very sweet and pleasant, where the birds sing continually and every day the flowers | appear on the earth and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land. Its foundations are higher than the clouds, it is builded of pearls and precious stones, also the streets thereof are paved; with gold. Before it flows the dark river of Death, and there : is no bridge to go over and it is very deep. Hell lies between Heaven and Earth, in the Valley of the Shadow of Death ; its i mouth stands hard by the wayside, and ever and anon flame | and smoke come out in abundance with sparks and hideous j noises. - Perhaps the most remarkable and significant instance of the \ difference between the methods of Bunyan and Milton is their presentation of the Devil. Milton's Satan we have seen ; here j is Bunyan's. Apollyon, the 'foul fiend,' was hideous to' behold : "He was clothed with scales Hke a fish (and they are , his pride), he had wings like a dragon, and feet Hke a bear, and | out of his belly came fire and smoke, and his mouth was as the i mouth of a lion." He fought with Christian in the Valley of i Humiliation, and the sore combat lasted for above half a day. i " In this combat no man can imagine unless he had seen and heard, as I did," says the dreamer, " what yelUng and hideous \ roaring Apollyon made all the time of the fight ; he spake ■ like a dragon. It was the dreadfullest sight that ever Ij saw." Apollyon, when he was vanquished, "spread forth' his dragon wings and sped him away, that Christian for a^ season saw him no more." This, as we call it now, is the vulgar conception of the devil ;] most of us have outgrown the belief which Bunyan held so| fervently. To him Apollyon was a real being ; he himself, inj 262 THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS Ids earlier days, had dreaded that the fiend might come in just such a form and carry him off. To Bunyan, Milton's Satan ^vould have been unintelligible. He had not the sublimity of imagination which could dispense with outward and visible signs, and see in the careworn, dignified, and only less than noble figure that Milton presents, a more awful being than the most terrifying monster with horns and hoofs. Yet Bunyan possessed two quahties that Milton lacked, and these gave him a hold upon the hearts of common men, so that where Milton has one reader, Bunyan counts his by hundreds. He had, in the largest degree, that hearty human sympathy which was so conspicuously wanting in the other ; and he had besides, though it was often obscured by his intense earnestness, the gift of humour. He drew men to him by the force of his personal qualities. " In countenance," one of his friends tells us, " he appeared to be of a stern and rough temper, but in his conversation mild and affable ; not given to loquacity or to much discourse in company unless some urgent occasion required it : observing never to boast of himself or his parts but rather to seem low in his own eyes, and submit himself to the judgment of others ; abhorring lying and swearing, being just, in all that lay in his power, to his word ; not seeming to revenge injuries, loving to reconcile differences and make friendships with all. He had a sharp quick eye, with an excellent discerning of persons, being of good judgment and quick wit." For twelve years after he was released from his second imprisonment, Bunyan lived peaceably and quietly in Bedford. The success of the first part of The Pilgrim's Progress had shown him his power as a writer and encouraged him to go on with this branch of his work. He revised Part I of his book, and made some notable additions to it. In 1680 he pubHshed The Life and Death of Mr. Badman, which forms a kind of companion picture to The Pilgrim's Progress, describing the downward career of a man wholly given over to evil. In 1682 was pub- lished Bunyan' s second great allegory. The Holy City. In 1685 appeared the second part of The Pilgrim's Progress. It 263 i ENGLISH LITERATURE , describes the journey of Christian's wife, and her four children; to the celestial city, and is very far inferior both in interest and in style, to the first part. Bunyan died in 1688, a few months before the Prince of Orange landed in England. He had ridden from Bedford toi Reading on one of the errands of mediation which were commonl to his later years, and for which his peace-loving nature and| the great weight which men of his own religious community!; attached to his opinion, made him especially fitted. He was 5 riding home, by way of I^ondon, when a storm came on, and? before he could find shelter he was wet through. He was| in a weak state of health, the result of an attack of the ' sweat- 1 ing sickness ' from which he had suffered in the previous year,'! and the chill which he sustained through this unfortunate f accident brought on a fever. He reached the house of onej of his lyondon friends, and there, ten days later he died. He:r was buried in the famous burying-ground of the Dissenters at ? Bunhill Fields. ! Bunyan left behind him, in The Pilgrim's Progress, a unique:!t monument. The book can be read with interest and delight j by children, by the unlearned and ignorant, by cultured men ] of the world and by great scholars. It is a religious work, i written in an age that was bitterly controversial, yet there' is in it no bitterness and no controversy ; Nonconformists \ and Anglicans alike can read it without disagreement. It was^ written by a man who was almost entirely without education, \ whose library had consisted of the Bible, Foxe^s Book ofi Martyrs, and a few popular religious treatises ; and it challenges^ comparison with two of the greatest works in English literature — ^Milton's Paradise Lost and Spenser's Faerie Queene — written | by men who were both scholars and great literary artists. ^ Yet the comparison shows that, as a religious work, it has had j far greater influence than Paradise Lost, and, as an allegory, it ; is far nearer perfection than is the Faerie Queene. I 264 I BOOK TWO The Augustan Age 'f I ^HB reign of Queen Anne is the urban age of English I literature. * The town ' absorbed the attention of JL the writers both of poetry and of prose. Dryden's fine and clear-cut style was brought to a still higher state of polished perfection, though some of its vigour was lost in the process. The grossness of the previous age was less apparent, though many great works were still disfigured by it. Political literature resulted from the disturbed condition of the country and the heated state of parties, and theological literature from the new theories concerning reUgion. No great work of the highest order was produced, but much that is worthy of attention by virtue of its concise and clear expression and its pleasant, easy flow of carefully thought-out ideas. 265 ■■ CHAPTER XXIX THE TATLER : THE SPECTATOR ■ /^""^V N April 12, 1709, the numerous coffee-houses of Queen I 1 Anne's lyondon were stirred by a small thrill of pleasant V«>^ excitement. Copies of a new periodical, with the in- viting and suggestive name of The Tatler, had that morning been distributed among them. The man of fashion had found one on his table at White's coffee-house when he sauntered in late in the afternoon for his cup of chocolate, and had noted with languid approbation that the paper promised " accounts of Gallantry and Pleasure." At Will's, the wits were making merry over the new paper. They commended highly the editor's choice of a pseudonym, for he appeared before his readers as Isaac Bickerstaff. The name was familiar to the whole town, since, about a year before, Jonathan Swift had used it in an attack on the almanack-makers who pretended to predict the events of the coming year. He had written a pamphlet in which he had gravely foretold the death of the most noted among them. Partridge by name, at 11 p.m. on March 29 ; and when that date had passed he had insisted, in spite of angry protests from Partridge, that the man really was dead — could not, in fact, by the laws of logic and reason, be alive. All the wits of the day had joined in keeping up the joke, and the town was kept in uproarious laughter for months. It had scarcely died away when The Tatler appeared with the name of the then famous astrologer on its title-page. At the Grecian coffee-house lawyers and Templars wondered how far the promised articles on learning and Uterature would deserve serious attention. At Child's such of the clergy as were not so entirely given over to politics as to have 267 ENGLISH LITERATURE forgotten their proper duties, welcomed the announcement that the new paper would be on the side of moraUty. At Jonathan's and the less important coffee-houses of the capital, merchants ! and citizens speculated as to the probable reliability of the| domestic and foreign news. The announcement that the' paper was designed to supply reading for the ' fair sex I caused much amusement, and men went home to joke wittj their wives and daughters about the new means of entertain- ment offered to them. But to the thoughtful among al classes there was in the editor's address one sentence of specia. interest. " The general purpose of this Paper," said Isaac j Bickerstaff, "is to expose the false arts of life, to pull off thej disguises of cunning, vanity and affectation, and to recom-j mend a general simphcity in our dress, our discourse, and our behaviour." It was for the means of doing these things that the societ};! of the day had for some time been vaguely seeking. Thej profligacy that had marked the Court of Charles II had, undei; the rule of Wilham III and Queen Anne, passed into something more resembling decency of behaviour ; but though men hadj grown somewhat ashamed of the excesses their fathers had practised, they had not learned to adapt their speech and{ manners to a much higher standard. Sobriety and decorum were still looked upon as the badge of a despised Puritanism.) and fine gentlemen still drank, and swore, and diced, and madd love to their neighbours' wives, not so much because theyj enjoyed doing so as because their reputations depended oe| their proficiency in these arts. Dress was still extravagantj and the fashions of the day in many cases ridiculous and un-i sightly. Men took their pleasures coarsely, and women ha^ little to occupy them except frivolity. | The great mass of the middle class — the city merchants anq small country squires — though they had been but slightljf affected by the licentiousness of Court life, had suffered from the lack of inspiring examples and the general lowering of th« standard of manners and conduct. It was this class, no^ grown rich and important and ambitious, that felt mo^ 268 I Sir Richard Steele W. HoU Ip THE TATLER acutely its need of an ideal that would direct and enlighten its blundering efforts toward gentler manners, purer pleasures, more refined social intercourse, a more humane and kindly spirit in the business of life. The Tatler promised to do this ; and if, to us, it seems absurd that a penny newspaper, published three times a week, should set out to effect what was Httle less than a complete revolution in manners and morals, we must remember the difference between those times and our own. The Press to-day works as a great whole, and no one paper can be said to exert a very marked influence ; but, taken collec- tively, the effect of our periodical literature is enormous. In the days of The Tatler only a few comparatively feeble efforts had been made to use the great and powerful instrument which is now in such active operation, but these had revealed the fact that a mighty force was there only waiting for a skilled hand to make it effective. Add to this a public ready and eager to be influenced, and the highest hopes will not seem unjustifiable. So thought Richard Steele, the man to whom The Tatler owed its existence. With a true instinct he had seized the right moment and the right means for the work he wished to do. He was no faultless hero or calm philosopher who, looking down on society from a serene height, formulated a plan for its regeneration. He was an impulsive, kind-hearted, reckless, improvident, lovable Irishman, whose fine impulses and lofty aspirations were continually being brought to nought by a pleasure-loving disposition and a lack of stern moral fibre. He had been educated at the Charterhouse and at Oxford, had left the University with discredit and enlisted as a trooper in the Guards. For this his father, a prosperous Irish attorney, had disinherited him. Steele remained in the army until he rose to the rank of captain, and made himself a noted figure among the wild gallants of the town. He Uved extravagantly, was always in debt ; he drank, and diced, and brawled in the taverns and coffee- houses. But he never lost his keen appreciation of all that was lofty and beautiful in human life, and he loved the ideal which he always saw shining in the distance before him, 269 ENGLISH LITERATURE though he never gathered up his strength in a real attempt to approach it. So, in the midst of his dissipations, he astonished the town by producing a little book called The Christian Hero, in which he tried to show that through the teaching of Chris- tianity alone could man become a true hero and a true gentle- ' man. It is a sincere and manly little book, full of the loftiest l moral and reHgious sentiments ; yet we cannot wonder that | it brought upon Steele much ridicule — ^his theory and his prac- ! tice were so entirely opposed the one to the other. Nothing I daunted, he turned to another department of Hterature, and ■ tried to reform the notoriously licentious drama by writing i three comedies in which virtue instead of vice should be interest- ing and triumphant. He was not without power as a dramatist, ] but he allowed his moral purpose to overweight his story, and he replaced the brilliant wit of the Restoration comedy by i an excessive sentimentality which tended to become insipid. So he gained Httle fame from his work for the theatre, though : he gained some money, and that to impecunious, thriftless I Dick Steele was a matter of considerable importance. But \ by 1708 all this money had gone, as well as the money which ; two successive marriages with rich heiresses had brought him. ; He was glad indeed to accept the post of gazetteer, or editor of \ the official news sheet The London Gazette, which was under \ the control of the Government, at a salary of £250 a year. It | was this position which first suggested to him the idea of , The Tatler, He had, through his position as gazetteer, almost a monopoly of official news, domestic and foreign, and it seemed \ to him that with this advantage he could produce a news- paper that would sell well, and so bring reUef to his extremely \ distressed finances. It would also, he hoped, give him an opportunity of bringing forward, in a form in which they would reach just the class they were designed to benefit, | those views on moral and social questions that were so ! dear to his heart. So with a sanguine spirit he started his i work. From the first he addressed himself especially to the , frequenters of the coffee-houses, for his knowledge of I^ondon life taught him that these really formed the centres of public ; 270 ■ THE TATLEiR ion. In his first number he wrote : " All accounts of illantry, Pleasure, and Kntertainment, shall be under the article of White's Chocolate-House ; Poetry under that of Will's Coffee-House ; learning under the title of Grecian ; Foreign and Domestic News you will have from Saint James's Coffee-House ; and what else I have to offer on any other subject shall be dated from my own apartment." For a short time the original plan of The Taller was adhered to with a fair degree of consistency ; but soon the natural bent of the editor's mind began to influence and modify it. I^ess stress was laid upon news, and more upon the comments and reflections which it suggested, and the essays, originally only an unimportant element in the whole, became the leading feature. Steele, in the character of the old astrologer, dis- coursed freely to his readers on the various social questions of the day. He attacked the fashionable vices of gaming and drunkenness, the practice of duelling, and the unhealthy state of pubhc opinion which caused a man to boast of his im- morality and blush to be detected in an act of piety or sober virtue. He depreciated the wit which the age prized as one of the first quaUties distinguishing a gentleman. A gentle- man, said Steele, is one who is thoughtfvd of the feeUngs of others and would rather miss the opportunity for a briUiant repartee than humiliate or discomfit a fellow man ; who can hold steadfastly to his opinions without offensively thrusting them in the faces of those who think differently ; who is dignified without being self-assertive, and genial without being unduly famiHar. Again and again, in successive numbers of The Tatter Steele placed this ideal before his readers. He touched, too, with a lighter hand, affectations of dress and manner, ridiculing " the order of the insipids " as he called the super- exquisite fine gentlemen, in merciless fashion. The fact that few of his readers knew who the editor of The Tatter was gave him confidence, and, as he said, when the time came for him to wish them farewell, " Mr. Bickerstaff was able to attack pre- vailing and fashionable vices with a freedom of spirit that would have lost both its beauty and efficacy had it been 271 ENGLISH LITERATURE pretended to by Mr. Steele." The character of Isaac Bickerstaff was developed as time went on. He was represented as an aged, soHtary man, who, like the astrologers of an earlier time, lived surrounded by the mysterious instruments and appliances necessary to his art. He had a familiar spirit, named Pacolet, who was able to read men's thoughts and reveal to his master their secrets. This plan gave to Steele a wide range of subjects, for the astrologer through his own powers and those of his servant could bring all mankind under his observation ; and in order to include womankind also in the survey, Steele, at an early stage of his venture, invented a lady editor, Jenny Distaff, half-sister to the astrologer. With her help The Tatler was made to extend its observations to things specially concern- ing women, and the articles which from time to time dealt with these were among the most interesting and characteristic to be found in the paper. At a time when women were thought of but lightly, when the false gallantry of the Restoration period had debased them in the public eye, when they were sneered at for devoting* themselves to the frivolous and trifling occupations which were all that the custom of the time allowed them, Steele's chivalry was unfailing. He attempted neither gallantry nor satire ; he discussed feminine failings and virtues in the same way as he had discussed those of men, as freely but more gently ; and his fine compliment to I^ady Elizabeth Hastings is an indirect compliment to all her sex — " To love her was a hberal education." Not many numbers of The Tatler had appeared before Steele's intimate friends began to suspect who Isaac Bickerstaff really was. Number 5 revealed him to Joseph Addison. The two had been at the Charterhouse School and at Oxford together. Steele, in his impulsive fashion, had early formed an enthusiastic, worshipping attachment to the boy who, though exactly his own age, was so far beyond him in gravity, self-control and strength of purpose, as well as in scholarship. The two boys became friends, and Steele visited Addison in his home at Milston Rectory, in Wiltshire. After their college days Steele and Addison for some time saw Httle of each other. 272 THE TATLER Addison left the University with a reputation for scholarship especially for excellence in lyatin verse. He became known to Dry den, and to other prominent men of letters. He pub- lished various translations and compUmentary poems, and received in 1699, when he was twenty-seven years old, a pension from the Crown. He travelled on the Continent, and shortly after his return he wrote, at the request of the Ministry, the poem that estabHshed his fortune. This was The Campaign, which celebrated Marlborough's victory at Blenheim. It was extraordinarily popular, and Addison received from the govern- ment, as a reward, the post of Under-Secretary, and entered upon a poUtical career. When the first Tatter appeared Addison was in Ireland, where he had gone as Secretary to the lyord Lieutenant. He was not in the secret of the new enterprise, but, as has been said, he speedily recognized Steele's hand in it. He offered to become a contributor to the paper, and his offer was very gladly accepted. The first article he sent {Tatter, No. 18) dealt with the conclusion of peace negotiations with France. It is in Addison's characteristic tone of deUcate and playful irony. -' There is another sort of gentleman," he says, aft^r speaking of the soldiers who would now lose their employment, " whom I am much more concerned for, and that is the ingenious fraternity of which I have the honour to be an unworthy member ; I mean the news-writers of Great Britain, whether Post-men or Post-boys or by what other name or title soever dignified or distinguished. The case of these gentlemen is, I think, more hard than that of the soldiers considering that they have taken more towns, and fought more battles. They have been upon parties and skirmishes when our armies have lain still, and given the general assault to many a place when the besiegers were quiet in their trenches. They have made us masters of several strong towns many weeks before our generals could do it, and completed victories when our greatest captains have been glad to come off with a drawn battle." The influence of the new contributor to the paper was soon very strongly felt. " I have only one gentleman," Steele 273 ENGLISH LITERATURE said, in his preface to the collected edition of The Taller, " who will be nameless, to thank for any frequent assistance to me, which indeed it would have been barbarous in him to have denied to one with whom he has lived in intimacy from child- hood, considering the great ease with which he is able to dispatch the most entertaining pieces of this nature. This good office he performed with such force of genius, humour, wit and learning, that I fared like a distressed prince who calls in a powerful neighbour to his aid ; I was undone by my own auxihary ; when I had once called him in I could not subsist without dependence on him." But in saying this Steele undervalues his own services to the paper in order to exalt those of his friend. To Steele belongs the credit of originating the ideas which Addison developed so successfully. He had greater initiative and greater daring than his friend, and was quicker to receive impressions from the world about him. In literary workmanship, however, he could not approach Addison, whose perfection of style becomes more marvellous the more closely one examines it. His deHcate playful humour is like nothing else that literature can show, and in his clear, beautifully turned sentences there is such a suggestion of refinement and finish that the reader's mind is uplifted by the sound as well as by the sense of what he writes. One cannot imagine a coarse sentiment expressed in Addisonian English. As the Hterary element in the paper became more and more prominent the news element receded into the background. It is probable that both Addison and Steele felt themselves hampered by the original plan, which was still supposed to guide them in their conduct of The Taller, and more especially by the political principles which had been at first ardently professed. On January 2, 1711, the last number of The Taller appeared. The reason given for its discontinuance was that since the pubHc had discovered Richard Steele in Isaac Bickerstaff the work- ing of the paper had become ineffective. Two months passed ; and then, on March i, 171 1, came the first number of a new paper. The Speclalor, which Addison and Steele combined to make famous. It was published every day, 274 THE SPECTATOR ?nd each number dealt in the form of an essay with a single subject. Isaac BickerstafE had disappeared, and ** the Spectator " was installed in his place. In the first number this gentleman introduces himself. He is, he tells his readers, a country gentleman of good though not high birth, and of respectable though not great fortune. From his childhood he has been noted for a singular gravity of demeanour, and a taciturnity which has increased with his years. He is a scholar, and a man who has seen the world, both at home and abroad. He has lived for some years in I^ondon and has frequented all places of public resort, though he has taken no part in what he has seen going on. "I have acted," he says, " in all parts of my life as a looker-on, which is the character I intend to preserve in this paper." This first number was written by Addison. In the second Steele described the other members of a club of which " the Spectator " was a member. The first of these is the famous Sir Roger de Coverley, a country gentleman, whose delightful simplicity of character and kindliness of heart have made him one of the best known and best loved among the heroes of fiction. There follow a gentleman of the Inner Temple whose name is not given ; Sir Andrew Freeport, *' a merchant of great eminence in the City of IvOndon ; " Captain Sentry, " a gentleman of great courage, good understanding, but invincible modesty ; " and " gallant Will Honeycomb," the elderly beau who is still a great man among the ladies, and can tell stories of the reigning belles of two generations. These, with a clergyman who is an occasional visitor, make up the club. The papers in which Mr. Spectator tells of the doings of himself and his friends are among the best of the whole series. At other times he discourses upon every variety of subject — social, literary, rehgious, philosophical. In the tenth number he tells what are his general aims in the conduct of the paper. " My pubHsher tells me that there are already three thousand of them distributed every day, so that if I allow twenty readers to every paper, which I look upon as a modest computation, I may reckon about three score thousand disciples in I^ondon 275 ENGLISH LITERATURE and Westminster, who I hope will take care to distinguish themselves from the thoughtless herd and of their ignorant and unattentive brethren. Since I have raised to myself so great an audience, I shall spare no pains to make their instruction agree- able and their diversion useful. For which reasons I shall endeavour to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality, that my readers may, if possible, both ways find their account in the speculation of the day. It was said of Socrates that he brought philosophy down from heaven to inhabit among men ; and I shall be ambitious to have it said of me that I have brought philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea- tables and in coffee-houses." He recommends, therefore, that in all well-regulated families where an hour is set apart every morning for tea and bread and butter. The Spectator shall be punctually served up, as part of the tea-equipage. " There are none," he goes on to say, " to whom this paper will be more useful than to the female world. I have often thought there has not been sufficient pains taken in finding out proper em- ployments and diversions for the fair ones. Their amusements seem contrived for them, rather as they are women, than as they are reasonable creatures, and are more adapted to the sex than to the species. The toilet is their great scene of business, and the right adjusting of their hair the principal employment of their Hves. The sorting of a suit of ribbons is reckoned a very good morning's work ; and if they make an excursion to a mercer's or a toy-shop, so great a fatigue makes them unfit for anything else all the day after. Their more serious occupations are sewing and embroidery, and their greatest drudgery the preparation of jelHes and sweetmeats. This, I say, is the state of ordinary women ; though I know there are multitudes of those of a more elevated life and conversation, that move in an exalted sphere of knowledge and virtue, that join all the beauties of the mind to the ornaments of dress, and inspire a kind of awe and respect, as well as love, into their male be- holders. I hope to increase the number of these by pubHsh- ing this daily paper, which I shall always endeavour to make 276 THE SPECTATOR ^'innocent, if not an improving entertainment, and by that means at least divert the minds of my female readers from greater trifles. At the same time, as I would fain give some finishing touches to those which are already the most beautiful pieces of human nature, I shall endeavour to point out all those imperfections that are the blemishes, as well as those virtues which are the embellishments of the sex." The means by which The Spectator attempted to accomplish the objects thus set forward were many and various. Great use was made of " the Club," and sometimes paper followed paper in which one or other of its members gave the Spectator his excuse for offering disquisitions on miscellaneous subjects. In the week which ended July 7, 171 1, for example, five out of six of the papers were of this character. On Monday morning Addison told his readers how the Spectator visited Sir Roger de Coverley at his country house, and described the members of his household. On Tuesday Steele took up the story, and told of Sir Roger's relations with his servants — " the lower part of his family." On Wednesday Addison introduced his readers to Will Wimble, a friend of Sir Roger's, the younger son of an ancient family, who " being bred to no business and born to no estate," *' has frittered away his time in trivialities, and put the real talents that he possesses to no useful purpose." On Thursday Steele related how Sir Roger took the Spectator round his picture gallery and showed him the portraits of his ancestors, and incidentally the characteristics of a gentleman were discussed. Addison, it may be remarked, looked upon Sir Roger as his own creation, and was very jealous of his being touched by any other hand. It is not often that, as here, Steele is allowed to make the knight the subject of two almost succes- sive papers ; and after this he says no more about Sir Roger until a full year has gone by. On Friday Addison resumed his account of Sir Roger at home, and told of a conversation between the knight and the Spectator on the subject of apparitions. It was the practice of the editors to give to their readers on Saturdays a *' serious paper," that they might be put into a proper frame of mind 277 ENGLISH LITERATURE for the observance of their religious duties on Sunday. This particular Saturday brought an essay On Immortality, of which the main theme was " the progress of a finite spirit to perfec- tion." So, for one day, the history of Sir Roger was inter- rupted, only to begin again on Monday with one of the most delightful of all the Coverley papers, Sir Roger at Church, Sometimes a course of papers on the same subject was con- tinued throughout the week. During the week that ended May 12, 171 1, for example, Addison wrote six successive papers on True and False Wit, which are among his finest critical efforts. But this was exceptional, and the week that followed (May 14-19) is far more typical. On Monday Steele discoursed on Fashions in Mourning, showing how these had been at first natural and reasonable, but had degenerated into unmeaning formalism. Tuesday brought another paper by Steele, in which he took up the subject of wit, dealt with by Addison a few days before, and " followed it to the playhouse," showing how it was exhibited in the comedies of the day. He ridiculed especially Ktherege's The Man of Mode, which was very popular at the time. Sir Fopling Flutter, the hero, whom the fashionable world had agreed to regard as a model of good breeding, he declared to be "a direct knave in his designs and a clown in his language." All the readers of The Spectator were laughing that morning at the admired Sir Fopling, and he lost for ever the proud eminence to which he had attained. Wednesday morning brought a paper written by John Hughes, one of the occasional contributors who helped Addison and Steele in their work. Hughes was a writer of some reputation, and a friend of Pope's. His subject was the educa- tion of young girls, and he wrote his paper in the form of letters, a device very common in The Spectator, Many letters were received from correspondents, and where these were suitable they were used. But letters were also obtained from other sources. The very natural and affecting love-letter from a footman that forms No. 71 of The Spectator was written by a servant of the Hon. Bd. Wortley, to whom it was given in mistake for one of his own. When the footman asked for its 278 Joseph Addison Sir Godfrey Kneller Plioto. Emery Walker Ltd. 278 THE SPECTATOR I, the master answered, " No, James, you shall be a great man and the letter must appear in The Spectator** It is said, too, that Steele in one paper used some of his own love-letters. Sometimes, however, the letters were pure fabrications, written in the same way as any other part of the paper. Such were — to return to John Hughes — ^the two letters which were read at many breakfast tables on Wednesday morning, May i6, 171 1. The first was signed " Celim^ne," and professed to come from a lady who desired the Spectator's advice as to what she should do with a country girl lately come to town, pretty, but awk- ward and unformed. " Help me," said Celim^ne, " to make her comprehend the visible graces of speech and the dumb eloquence of motion." The other letter was written by a man and dealt with the same subject from the opposite point of view. " I who am a'rough man, am afraid the young girl is in a fair way to be spoilt ; therefore, Mr. Spectator, let us have your opinion of this fine thing called fine breeding ; for I am afraid it differs too much from the plain thing called good breeding." " The Spectator " took the opportunity these letters gave him of attacking the usual system of female education as being showy and worthless. On Thursday morning appeared a letter (whether real or fictitious does not appear) from a tradesman, who told how he went to a dance with his eldest daughter and was shocked at the immodest and familiar manners of the dancers. He described the two dances Hunt the Squirrel and Moll Pately, both of which offended his sense of decorum. The Spectator sympathised with the outraged father, and pictured how his horror would have been increased had some of the popular " kissing dances " been included in the programme. The remaining two papers of the week were contributed by Addison. On Friday he gave his readers an essay on Friendship. He quoted from various writers on the subject and commented on these. He added : " If I were to give my opinion upon such an exhausted subject, I should join to these other qualifica- tions a certain equability or evenness of behaviour. ... It is very unlucky for a man to be entangled in friendship with one, 279 ENGLISH LITERATURE who by these changes and vicissitudes of humour is sometimes! amiable, and sometimes odious ; and as most men are at some' times in an admirable frame and disposition of mind, it should i be one of the greatest tasks of wisdom to keep ourselves wellj when we are so and never to go out of that which is the agreeable j part of our character/' This is very characteristic of the sweet-tempered, placid Addison. j Saturday brought a paper on British Commerce, prefixed by^ a long quotation from Virgil and a longer one from Dryden. i " There is no place in the town," says Addison, " which I S0| much love to frequent as the Royal Exchange. It gives me aj secret satisfaction, and in some measure gratifies my vanity, j as I am an Englishman, to see so rich an assembly of country-^ men and foreigners consulting together upon the private] business of mankind, and making the metropoUs a kind o£^ emporium for the whole earth." And he goes on to discoursd upon the benefits of commerce and the importance of mer-. chants to the community, finishing with a finely imaginative paragraph in which he pictures one of our old kings standingj in person where he is represented in effigy, and looking dowi^ upon the wealthy concourse of people with which that place i^ every day filled. ^ The most famous of the " Saturday papers " are those iii| which Addison criticises Paradise Lost. These were begun ini the early part of 1712, and were continued during eighteen; weeks. They are very valuable critical exercises, although in] them Addison regards Milton's great work from a point o^ view which differs considerably from that taken by more modern critics. But he helped his age to appreciate, in somel measure, a style of literature immeasurably above the artificial and over-elaborated works of their own day, and in so doin^ he rendered it a great service. Addison's early expressed hope that his paper might form ans indispensable part of the breakfast equipage in every reading household, came, as time went on, very near being realizedj and some of the letters published in The Spectator illustrate this very amusingly. " Mr. Spectator," writes a lady who callsj 280 THE SPECTATOR lierself " Leonora," " your paper is part of my tea-equipage, and my servant knows my humour so well that, calling for my breakfast this morning (it being past my usual hour) she answered The Spectator was not yet come in, but the tea-kettle boiled, and she expected it every moment." When, in August 17 12, a Government tax was imposed upon periodicals, and the price of The Spectator was, in consequence, raised from a penny to twopence, it might reasonably have been feared that its circulation would sufFer ; but the effect was only shght and temporary. Addison wrote a paper upon the imposition of the tax in his usual inimitable style. " This is the day," he said, " on which many eminent authors will publish their last words. ... A facetious friend of mine, who loves a pun, calls this present mortality among authors the fall of the lea/:* It was in the nature of things, however, that such a paper as The Spectator could not go on indefinitely. Its charm con- sisted in its freshness and variety, in the lightness of touch which permitted it to deal with almost every department of social life. But as the enterprise grew somewhat stale to its originators, there came a perceptible falling off in these qualities. The later numbers of The Spectator are more serious in tone and not so uniformly excellent in style as the earlier ones. Both editors began to think that it was time to stop, and with its 555th number, on December 6, 1712, the career of The Spectator was brought to an end. The subsequent careers of Addison and Steele may be briefly told. A new paper, The Guardian, succeeded The spectator, but failed to keep itself free from poUtical entangle- ments and soon came to an end. It was followed by a violently partisan paper The Englishman, edited by Steele alone, but this, too, was unsuccessful. Addison turned from periodical literature to the theatre, and in 1713 produced his tragedy, Cato, which was received with enthusiasm by the critics of England and of France, but has not sustained its reputation. In 17 16 he married the Dowager Countess of Warwick, and hence- forward gave most of his attention to politics. An unfortunate T 281 \. ENGLISH LITERATURE i quarrel took place between him and his old friend RichardJ Steele, who was opposed to him in political opinions. Addisoi^ died in 1719, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. 1 Steele, by his espousal of the Hanoverian cause won thei favour of George I, was given various small offices, entered] Parliament, and was knighted. He wrote one more comedy,' The Conscious Lovers, and various political pamphlets. Hej died in 1729. \ 282 CHAPTER XXX THE RAPE OF THE LOCK : THE ESSAY ON MAN IN the number of The Spectator which appeared on the morning of December 20, 171 1, there appeared a review of a new poem called an Essay upon Criticism. On the whole the reviewer spoke very highly of the work, though he noted as blots some venomous reference to contemporary v^'riters which it contained. The author of the poem was the sickly, misshapen boy, whom we have seen gazing with fervent hero-worship at the burly figure of old John Dryden seated ill his armchair at Will's coffee-house. The boy had grown into a young man of twenty-three, but he was still sickly, still undersized and crooked of figure, still filled with a restless eager ambition to be great in the world of letters and make his name famous. His home was still at Binfield with the father md mother, now growing old, who adored him and whom he benderly loved ; but he made frequent visits to I^ondon, where )y favour of the old dramatist, Wycherley, he was introduced nto the society of many of the famous wits of the day. But le had apparently never met Addison or Steele, and the f avour- ible review of his poem was prompted by no personal feeling. Pope, always eager for praise, was overjoyed at obtaining uch recognition from what was then regarded as the highest critical authority. He wrote a letter to Steele thanking him n the most heartfelt terms. Steele replied that Addison, not le, was the writer of the article, and promised to introduce Pope to the great man at the earUest opportunity. Accord- ngly, Pope betook himself one evening to Button's coffee- louse, and saw there, surrounded by a little group of admiring 283 ENGLISH LITERATURE friends, the mild and kindly literary dictator, who ruled his little company by means of a gentle urbanity which was, however, as potent as the more robust methods of Ben Jonson and Dry den had ever been. It is not to be expected that Pope would feel very much at home among this little group made up of the staff of The Spectator, His nature was not a sociable one ; he was capable of sincere and faithful friendship, but his restless egotism and uneasy consciousness of his own physical defects disqualified him for general society. He professed a great admiration for Addison, and wrote a prologue to the great man's Cato when it was produced about two years later. He wrote, also, one or two papers for The Spectator and for its successor, The Guardian, but his irritable vanity took offence at the scant notice which The Spectator gave to some Pastorah which he published, and there ensued between him and the Addisonian group a coolness, though no actual rupture tooi place. I By this time — ^for the relations between the two writers dia not reach the stage to which we have brought them untL 1714 — Pope had raised himself to a position in the world oi literature only second to that of Addison himself. Aftei many experiments he had discovered just the class of subject and style of treatment suited to his particular genius ; an<^ this he had done through a trifling incident in which hei originally, had no concern. A quarrel, that threatened t<, become serious, had arisen between two Roman Catholiii families. lyord Petre had, in a youthful frolic, cut a lock O; hair from the head of Miss Arabella Fermor. This familiarity i was highly resented by the lady and her family, and the entir