A Literary History of the English People BY THE SAME AUTHOR. * * * * * ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE IN THE MIDDLE AGES (XIVth Century). Translated byL. T. Smith. Revised and Enlarged by the Author. 4th Edition. 61Illustrations. Large crown 8vo, cloth, 7s. 6d. "An extremely fascinating book. "--_Times. _ THE ENGLISH NOVEL IN THE TIME OF SHAKESPEARE. Translated by E. Lee. Revised and Enlarged by the Author. Illustrated by6 Heliogravures by Dujardin, and 21 full-page and many smallerillustrations. 3rd Edition. Large crown 8vo, cloth, 7s. 6d. "One of the brightest, most scholarly, and most interesting volumes ofliterary history. "--_Speaker. _ A FRENCH AMBASSADOR AT THE COURT OF CHARLES II. : Le Comte de Cominges, from his unpublished correspondence. 10 Portraits. Second Edition. Large crown 8vo, cloth, 7s. 6d. "The whole book is delightful reading. "--_Spectator. _ PIERS PLOWMAN: A Contribution to the History of English Mysticism. Translated by M. E. R. Revised and Enlarged by the Author. Illustrated. Demy 8vo, cloth, 12s. "This masterly interpretation of an epoch-making book. "--_Standard. _ * * * * * London: T. FISHER UNWIN. [Illustration: HÉLIOG DUJARDIN IMP. CH. WITTMANN PARIS MEDIÆVAL LONDON_from manuscript 16 F. II in the British Museum_ ] A Literary History ofThe English People from the OriginsTo the Renaissance By J. J. Jusserand LondonT. Fisher UnwinMdcccccv PREFACE Many histories have preceded this one; many others will come after. Suchis the charm of the subject that volunteers will never be lacking toundertake this journey, so hard, so delightful too. As years go on, the journey lengthens: wider grows the field, furtheradvance the seekers, and from the top of unexplored headlands, throughmorning mists, they descry the outlines of countries till then unknown. They must be followed to realms beyond the grave, to the silent domainsof the dead, across barren moors and frozen fens, among chill rushes andbriars that never blossom, till those Edens of poetry are reached, theechoes of which, by a gift of fairies or of muses, still vibrate to themelody of voices long since hushed. More has been done during the last fifty years to shed light on theorigins than in all the rest of modern times. Deciphering, annotating, printing, have gone on at an extraordinary pace and withoutinterruption; the empire of letters has thus been enlarged, according tothe chances of the explorers' discoveries, by gardens and deserts, cloudy immensities, and boundless forests; its limits have receded intospace: at least so it seems to us. We laugh at the simplicity of honestRobertson, who in the last century wondered at the superabundance ofhistorical documents accessible in his time: the day is not far distantwhen we shall be laughed at in the same way for our own simplicity. The field of literary history widens in another manner yet, and one thataffects us more nearly. The years glide on so rapidly that the travellerwho started to explore the lands of former times, absorbed by his task, oblivious of days and months, is surprised on his return at beholdinghow the domain of the past has widened. To the past belongs Tennyson, the laureate; to the past belongs Browning, and that ruddy smiling face, manly and kind, which the traveller to realms beyond intended todescribe from nature on his coming back among living men, has fadedaway, and the grey slab of Westminster covers it. A thing of the past, too, the master who first in France taught the way, daring in hisresearches, straightforward in his judgments, unmindful of consequences, mindful of Truth alone; whose life was a model no less than his work. The work subsists, but who shall tell what the life has been, and whatthere was beneficent in that patriarchal voice with its clear, soft, anddignified tones? The life of Taine is a work which his other works havenot sufficiently made known. The task is an immense one; its charm can scarcely be expressed. No onecan understand, who has not been there himself, the delight found inthose far-off retreats, sanctuaries beyond the reach of worldlytroubles. In the case of English literature the delight is the greaterfrom the fact that those silent realms are not the realms of deathabsolute; daylight is perceived in the distance; the continuity of lifeis felt. The dead of Westminster have left behind them a posterity, youthful in its turn, and life-giving. Their descendants move around us;under our eyes the inheritors of what has been prepare what shall be. Inthis lies one of the great attractions of this literature and of theFrench one too. Like the French it has remote origins; it is ample, beautiful, measureless; no one will go the round of it; it is impossibleto write its complete history. An attempt has been made in this line forFrench literature; the work undertaken two centuries ago byBenedictines, continued by members of the Institute, is still inprogress; it consists at this day of thirty volumes in quarto, and onlythe year 1317 has been reached. And with all that immense past and thosefar-distant origins, those two literatures have a splendid presentbetokening a splendid future. Both are alive to-day and vigorous; readyto baffle the predictions of miscreants, they show no sign of decay. They are ever ready for transformations, not for death. Side by side orface to face, in peace or war, both literatures like both peoples havebeen in touch for centuries, and in spite of hates and jealousies theyhave more than once vivified each other. These actions and reactionsbegan long ago, in Norman times and even before; when Taillefer sangRoland, and when Alcuin taught Charlemagne. The duty of the traveller visiting already visited countries is to notlimit himself to general descriptions, but to make with particular carethe kind of observations for which circumstances have fitted him best. If he has the eye of the painter, he will trace and colour withunfailing accuracy hues and outlines; if he has the mind of thescientist, he will study the formation of the ground and classify theflora and fauna. If he has no other advantage but the fact thatcircumstances have caused him to live in the country, at various times, for a number of years, in contact with the people, in calm days andstormy days, he will perhaps make himself useful, if, while diminishingsomewhat in his book the part usually allowed to technicalities andæsthetic problems, he increases the part allotted to the people and tothe nation: a most difficult task assuredly; but, whatever be his toolegitimate apprehensions, he must attempt it, having no other chance, when so much has been done already, to be of any use. The work in such acase will not be, properly speaking, a "History of English Literature, "but rather a "Literary History of the English People. " Not only will the part allotted to the nation itself be greater in sucha book than habitually happens, but several manifestations of itsgenius, generally passed over in silence, will have to be studied. Theages during which the national thought expressed itself in languageswhich were not the national one, will not be allowed to remain blank, asif, for complete periods, the inhabitants of the island had ceased tothink at all. The growing into shape of the people's genius will have tobe studied with particular attention. The Chapter House of Westminsterwill be entered, and there will be seen how the nation, such as it wasthen represented, became conscious, even under the Plantagenets, of itsexistence, rights and power. Philosophers and reformers must bequestioned concerning the theories which they spread: and not withoutsome purely literary advantage. Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke are theancestors of many poets who have never read their works, but who havebreathed an air impregnated with their thought. Dreamers will befollowed, singers, tale-tellers, and preachers, wherever it pleases themto lead us: to the Walhalla of the north, to the green dales of Erin, to the Saxon church of Bradford-on-Avon, to Blackheath, to the "Tabard"and the "Mermaid, " to the "Globe, " to "Will's" coffee house, amongruined fortresses, to cloud-reaching steeples, or along the furrow sownto good intent by Piers the honest Plowman. The work, the first part of which is now published, is meant to bedivided into three volumes; but as "surface as small as possible must beoffered to the shafts of Fortune, " each volume will make a completewhole in itself, the first telling the literary story of the English upto the Renaissance, the second up to the accession of King Pope, thelast up to our own day. The present version has been prepared with thehelp of M. E. R. , who have once more lent me their most kind andvaluable assistance. I beg them to accept the expression of my heartfeltgratitude. No attempt has been made to say everything and be complete. Many noteswill however allow the curious to go themselves to the sources, toverify, to see with their own eyes, and, if they find cause (_absitomen!_), to disagree. In those notes most of the space has been filledby references to originals; little has been left for works containingcriticisms and appreciations: the want of room is the only reason, notthe want of reverence and sympathy for predecessors. To be easily understood one must be clear, and, to be clear, qualifications and attenuations must be reduced to a minimum. The readerwill surely understand that many more "perhapses" and "abouts" were inthe mind of the author than will be found in print; he will make, in hisbenevolence, due allowance for the roughness of that instrument, speech, applied to events, ideas, theories, things of beauty, as difficult tomeasure with rule as "the myst on Malverne hulles. " He will know thatwhen Saxons are described as having a sad, solemn genius, and notnumbering among their pre-eminent qualities the gift of repartee, itdoes not mean that for six centuries they all of them sat and weptwithout intermission, and that when asked a question they never knewwhat to answer. All men are men, and have human qualities more or lessdeveloped in their minds; nothing more is implied in those passages butthat one quality was _more_ developed in one particular race of men andthat in another. When a book is just finished, there is always for the author a mostdoleful hour, when, retracing his steps, he thinks of what he hasattempted, the difficulties of the task, the unlikeliness that he hasovercome them. Misprints taking wrong numbers by the hand, black andthorny creatures, dance their wild dance round him. He is awe-stricken, and shudders; he wonders at the boldness of his undertaking;"Qu'allait-il faire dans cette galère?" The immensity of the task, theinsufficience of the means stand in striking contrast. He had startedsinging on his journey; now he looks for excuses to justify his havingever begun it. Usually, it must be confessed, he finds some, prints themor not, and recovers his spirits. I have published other works; I thinkI did not print the excuses I found to explain the whys and thewherefores; they were the same in all cases: roadway stragglers, PiersPlowman, Count Cominges, Tudor novelists, were in a large measureleft-off subjects. No books had been dedicated to them; the attempt, therefore, could not be considered as an undue intrusion. But in thepresent case, what can be said, what excuse can be found, when so manyhave written, and so well too? The author of this book once had a drive in London; when it wasfinished, he offered the cabman his fare. Cabman glanced at it; it didnot look much in his large, hollow hand; he said: "I want sixpencemore. " Author said: "Why? It is the proper fare; I know the distancevery well; give me a reason. " Cabman mused for a second, and said: "Ishould like it so!" I might perhaps allege a variety of reasons, but the true one is thesame as the cabman's. I did this because I could not help it; I loved itso. J. _All Souls Day, 1894. _ TABLE OF CONTENTS. Preface 1 BOOK I. _THE ORIGINS. _ CHAPTER I. BRITANNIA. I. Fusion of Races in France and in England. --First inhabitants--Celtic realms--The Celts in Britain--Similitude with the Celts of Gaul--Their religion--Their quick minds--Their gift of speech 3 II. Celtic Literature. --Irish stories--Wealth of that literature--Its characteristics--The dramatic gift--Inventiveness--Heroic deeds--Familiar dialogues--Love and woman--Welsh tales 9 III. Roman Conquest. --Duration and results--First coming of the Germanic invader 18 CHAPTER II. THE GERMANIC INVASION. The mother country of the Germanic invader--Tacitus--Germans and Scandinavians--The great invasions--Character of the Teutonic nations--Germanic kingdoms established in formerly Roman provinces. Jutes, Frisians, Angles, and Saxons--British resistance and defeat--Problem of the Celtic survival--Results of the Germanic invasions in England and France 21 CHAPTER III. THE NATIONAL POETRY OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS. I. The Poetry of the North. --The Germanic period of English literature--Its characteristics--Anglo-Saxon poetry stands apart and does not submit to Celtic influence--Comparison with Scandinavian literature--The Eddas and Sagas; the "Corpus Poeticum Boreale"--The heroes; their tragical adventures--Their temper and sorrows 36 II. Anglo-Saxon Poems. --War-songs--Epic tales--Waldhere, Beowulf--Analysis of "Beowulf"--The ideal of happiness in "Beowulf"--Landscapes--Sad meditations--The idea of death--Northern snows 45 CHAPTER IV. CHRISTIAN LITERATURE AND PROSE LITERATURE OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS. I. Conversion. --Arrival of Augustine--The new teaching--The imperial idea and the Christian idea--Beginnings of the new faith--Heathen survivals--Convents and schools--Religious kings and princes--Proselytism, St. Boniface 60 II. Latin Culture. --Manuscripts--Alcuin, St. Boniface, Aldhelm, Æddi, Bede--Life and writings of Bede--His "Ecclesiastical History"--His sympathy for the national literature 65 III. Christian Poems. --The genius of the race remains nearly unchanged--Heroical adventures of the saints--Paraphrase of the Bible--Cædmon--Cynewulf--His sorrows and despair--"Dream of the Rood"--"Andreas"--Lugubrious sights--The idea of death--Dialogues--Various poems--The "Physiologus"--"Phoenix" 68 IV. Prose--Alfred the Great. --Laws and charters--Alfred and the Danish invasions--The fight for civilisation--Translation of works by St. Gregory, Orosius (travels of Ohthere), Boethius (story of Orpheus)--Impulsion given to prose--Werferth--Anglo-Saxon Chronicles--Character of Alfred. 78 V. St. Dunstan--Sermons. --St. Dunstan (tenth century) resumes the work of Alfred--Translation of pious works--Collections of sermons--Ælfric, Wulfstan, "Blickling" homilies--Attempt to reach literary dignity. End of the Anglo-Saxon period 88 BOOK II. _THE FRENCH INVASION. _ CHAPTER I. BATTLE. I. The Invaders of the Year 1066. --England between two civilisations--The North and South--The Scandinavians at Stamford-bridge. The Normans of France--The army of William is a French army--Character of William--The battle--Occupation of the country 97 II. England bound to Southern Civilisations. --Policy of William--Survey of his new domains--Unification--The successors of William--Their practical mind and their taste for adventures--Taste for art--French families settled in England--Continental possessions of English kings--French ideal--Unification of origins--Help from chroniclers and poets--The Trojan ancestor 104 CHAPTER II. LITERATURE IN THE FRENCH LANGUAGE UNDER THE NORMANAND ANGEVIN KINGS. I. Diffusion of the French Language. --The French language superimposed on the English one--Its progress; even among "lowe men"--Authors of English blood write their works in French 116 II. The French Literature of the Normans and Angevins. --It is animated by their own practical and adventurous mind--Practical works: chronicles, scientific and pious treatises 120 III. Epic Romances. --The Song of Roland and the Charlemagne cycle--Comparison with "Beowulf"--The matter of Rome--How antiquity is _translated_--Wonders--The matter of Britain--Love--Geoffrey of Monmouth--Tristan and Iseult--Lancelot and Guinevere--Woman--Love as a passion and love as a ceremonial 125 IV. Lays and Chansons. --Shorter stories--Lays of Marie de France--Chansons of France--Songs in French composed in England 141 V. Satirical and Ironical Works. --Such works introduced in England--The pilgrimage of Charlemagne--The "Roman de Renart, " a universal comedy--Fabliaux--Their migrations--Their aim--Their influence in England 146 CHAPTER III. LATIN. I. The Ties with Rome. --William I. , Henry II. , John--Church lands--The "exempt" abbeys--Coming of the friars--The clergy in Parliament--Part played by prelates in the State--Warrior prelates, administrators, scavants, saints 157 II. Spreading of Knowledge. --Latin education--Schools and libraries--Book collectors: Richard of Bury--Paris, chief town for Latin studies--The Paris University; its origins, teaching, and organisation--English students at Paris--Oxford and Cambridge--Studies, battles, feasts--Colleges, chests, libraries 166 III. Latin Poets. --Joseph of Exeter and the Trojan war--Epigrammatists, satirists, fabulists, &c. --Nigel Wireker and the ass whose tail was too short--Theories: Geoffrey of Vinesauf and his New Art of Poetry 176 IV. Latin Prosators--Tales and Exempla. --Geoffrey of Monmouth--Moralised tales--"Gesta Romanorum"--John of Bromyard--"Risqué" tales, fables in prose, miracles of the Virgin, romantic tales--A Latin sketch of the "Merchant of Venice"--John of Salisbury; Walter Map--Their pictures of contemporary manners 181 V. Theologians, Jurists, Scientists, Historians. --The "Doctors"; Scot, Bacon, Ockham, Bradwardine, &c. --Gaddesden the physician--Bartholomew the encyclopædist--Roman law and English law--Vacarius, Glanville, Bracton, &c. History--Composition of chronicles in monasteries--Impartiality of chroniclers--Their idea of historical art--Henry of Huntingdon, William of Malmesbury, Matthew Paris--Observation of manners, preservation of characteristic anecdotes, attempt to paint with colours--Higden, Walsingham and others 193 CHAPTER IV. LITERATURE IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. I. Pious Literature. --A period of silence--First works (pious ones) copied, translated or composed in English after the Conquest--Sermons--Lives of saints--Treatises of various sort--"Ancren Riwle"--Translation of French treatises--Life and works of Rolle of Hampole 204 II. Worldly Literature. --Adaptation and imitation of French writings--The "Brut" of Layamon--Translation of romances of chivalry--Romances dedicated to heroes of English origin--Satirical fabliaux--Renard in English--Lays and tales--Songs--Comparison with French chansons 219 BOOK III. _ENGLAND TO THE ENGLISH. _ CHAPTER I. THE NEW NATION. I. Fusion of Races and Languages. --Abolition of the presentment of Englishery, 1340--Survival of the French language in the fourteenth century--The decline--Part played by "lowe men" in the formation of the English language--The new vocabulary--The new prosody--The new grammar--The definitive language of England an outcome of a transaction between the Anglo-Saxon and the French language 235 II. Political Formation. --The nation coalesces--The ties with France and Rome are loosening or breaking--A new source of power, Westminster--Formation, importance, privileges of Parliament under the Plantagenets--Spirit of the Commons--Their Norman bargains--Comparison with France 248 III. Maritime Power; Wealth and Arts. --Importance of the English trade in the fourteenth century--The great traders--Their influence on State affairs--The English, "rois de la mer"--Taste for travels and adventures. Arts--Gold, silver and ivory--Miniatures and enamels--Architecture--Paintings and tapestries--Comparative comfort of houses--The hall and table--Dresses--The nude--The cult for beauty 255 CHAPTER II. CHAUCER. The Poet of the new nation 267 I. Youth of Chaucer. --His London life--London in the fourteenth century--Chaucer as a page--His French campaigns--Valettus cameræ Regis--Esquire--Married life--Poetry à la mode--Machault, Deguileville, Froissart, Des Champs, &c. --Chaucer's love ditties--The "Roman de la Rose"--"Book of the Duchesse" 268 II. Period of the Missions to France and Italy. --The functions of an ambassador and messenger--Various missions--Chaucer in Italy, 1372-3, 1378-9--Influence of Italian art and literature on Chaucer--London again; the Custom House; Aldgate--Works of this period--Latin and Italian deal--The gods of Olympus, the nude, the classics--Imitation of Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio--"Hous of Fame" 282 III. Troilus and Criseyde. --Plot derived from Boccaccio but transformed--A novel and a drama--Life and variety--Heroism and vulgarity--Troilus, Pandarus, Cressida--Scenes of comedy--Attempt at psychological analysis--_Nuances_ in Cressida's feelings--Her inconstancy--Melancholy and grave ending--Difference with Boccaccio and Pierre de Beauveau 298 IV. English Period. --Chaucer a member of Parliament--Clerk of the king's works--"Canterbury Tales"--The meeting at the "Tabard"--Gift of observation--Real life, details--Difference with Froissart--Humour, sympathy--Part allotted to "lowe men. " The collections of tales--The "Decameron"--The aim of Chaucer and of Boccaccio--Chaucer's variety; speakers and listeners--Dialogues--Principal tales--Facetious and coarse ones--Plain ones--Fairy tales--Common life--Heroic deeds--Grave examples--Sermon. The care for truth--Good sense of Chaucer--His language and versification--Chaucer and the Anglo-Saxons--Chaucer and the French 312 V. Last Years. --Chaucer, King of Letters--His retreat in St. Mary's, Westminster--His death--His fame 341 CHAPTER III. THE GROUP OF POETS. Coppice and forest trees 344 I. Metrical Romances. --Jugglers and minstrels--Their life, deeds, and privileges--Decay of the profession towards the time of the Renaissance--Romances of the "Sir Thopas" type--Monotony; inane wonders--Better examples: "Morte Arthure, " "William of Palerne, " "Gawayne and the Green Knight"--Merits of "Gawayne"--From (probably) the same author, "Pearl, " on the death of a young maid--Vision of the Celestial City 344 II. Amorous Ballads and Popular Poetry. --Poetry at Court--The Black Prince and the great--Professional poets come to the help of the great--The _Pui_ of London; its competitions, music and songs--Satirical songs on women, friars, fops, &c. 352 III. Patriotic Poetry. --Robin Hood--"When Adam delved"--Claims of peasants--Answers to the peasants' claims--National glories--Adam Davy--Crécy, Poictiers, Neville's Cross--Laurence Minot--Recurring sadness--French answers--Scottish answers--Barbour's "Bruce"--Style of Barbour--Barbour and Scott 359 IV. John Gower. --His origin, family, turn of mind--He belongs to Angevin England--He is tri-lingual--Life and principal works--French ballads--Latin poem on the rising of the peasants, 1381, and on the vices of society--Poem in English, "Confessio Amantis"--Style of Gower--His tales and _exempla_--His fame 364 CHAPTER IV. WILLIAM LANGLAND AND HIS VISIONS. Langland first poet of the period after Chaucer 373 I. Life and Works. --A general view--Birth, education, natural disposition--Life at Malvern--His unsettled state of mind--Curiosities and failures--Life in London--Chantries--Disease of the will--Religious doubts--The faith of the simple--His book a place of refuge for him 374 II. Analysis of the Visions. --The pilgrims of Langland and the pilgrims of Chaucer--The road to Canterbury and the way to Truth--Lady Meed; her betrothal, her trial--Speech of Reason--The hero of the work, Piers the Plowman--A declaration of duties--Sermons--The siege of hell--The end of life 382 III. Political Society and Religious Society. --Comparison with Chaucer--Langland's crowds--Langland an insular and a parliamentarian--The "Visions" and the "Rolls of Parliament" agree on nearly all points--Langland at one with the Commons--Organisation of the State--Reforms--Relations with France, with the Pope--Religious buyers and sellers--The ideal of Langland 388 IV. Art and Aim. --Duplication of his personality--"Nuit de Décembre"--Sincerity--Incoherences--Scene-shifting--Joys forbidden and allowed--A motto for Langland--His language, vocabulary, dialect, versification--Popularity of the work--Fourteenth and fifteenth centuries--Time of the Reformation 394 CHAPTER V. PROSE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. The "father of English prose" 403 I. Translators and Adaptators. --Slow growth of the art of prose--Comparison with France; historians and novelists--Survival of Latin prose--Walsingham and other chroniclers--Their style and eloquence--Translators--Trevisa--The translation of the Travels of "Mandeville"--The "Mandeville" problem--Jean de Bourgogne and his journey through books--Immense success of the Travels--Style of the English translation--Chaucer's prose 404 II. Oratorical Art. --Civil eloquence--Harangues and speeches--John Ball--Parliamentary eloquence--A parliamentary session under the Plantagenet kings--Proclamation--Opening speech--Flowery speeches and business speeches--Debates--Answers of the Commons--Their Speaker--Government orators, Knyvet, Wykeham, &c. --Opposition orators, Peter de la Mare--Bargains and remonstrances--Attitude and power of the Commons--Use of the French language--Speeches in English 412 III. Wyclif. His Life. --His parentage--Studies at Oxford--His character--Functions and dignities--First difficulties with the religious authority--Scene in St. Paul's--Papal bulls--Scene at Lambeth--The "simple priests"--Attacks against dogmas--Life at Lutterworth--Death 422 IV. Latin Works of Wyclif. --His Latin--His theory of the _Dominium_--His starting-point: the theory of Fitzralph--Extreme, though logical, consequence of the doctrine: communism--Qualifications and attenuations--Tendency towards Royal supremacy 427 V. English Works of Wyclif. --He wants to be understood by all--He translates the Bible--Popularity of the translation--Sermons and treatises--His style--Humour, eloquence, plain dealing--Paradoxes and utopies--Lollards--His descendants in Bohemia and elsewhere 432 CHAPTER VI. THE THEATRE. I. Origins. Civil Sources. --Mimes and histrions--Amusements and sights provided by histrions--How they raise a laugh--Facetious tales told with appropriate gestures--Dialogues and repartees--Parodies and caricatures--Early interludes--Licence of amusers--Bacchanals in churches and cemeteries--Holy things derided--Feasts of various sorts--Processions and pageants--"Tableaux Vivants"--Compliments and dialogues--Feasts at Court--"Masks" 439 II. Religious Sources. --Mass--Dialogues introduced in the Christmas service--The Christmas cycle (Old Testament)--The Easter cycle (New Testament). The religious drama in England--Life of St. Catherine (twelfth century)--Popularity of Mysteries in the fourteenth century--Treatises concerning those representations--Testimony of Chaucer William of Wadington--Collection of Mysteries in English. Performances--Players, scaffolds or pageants, dresses, boxes, scenery, machinery--Miniature by Jean Fouquet--Incoherences and anachronisms 456 III. Literary and Historical value of Mysteries. --The ancestors' feelings and tastes--Sin and redemption--Caricature of kings--Their "boast"--Their use of the French tongue--They have to maintain silence--Popular scenes--Noah and his wife--The poor workman and the taxes--A comic pastoral--The Christmas shepherds--Mak and the stolen sheep 476 IV. Decay of the Mediæval Stage. --Moralities--Personified abstractions--The end of Mysteries--They continue being performed in the time of Shakespeare 489 CHAPTER VII. THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES. I. Decline. --Chaucer's successors--The decay of art is obvious even to them--The society for which they write is undergoing a transformation--Lydgate and Hoccleve 495 II. Scotsmen. --They imitate Chaucer but with more freedom--James I. --Blind Harry--Henryson--The town mouse and the country mouse--Dunbar--Gavin Douglas--Popular ballads--Poetry in the flamboyant style 503 III. Material welfare; Prose. --Development of the lower and middle class--Results of the wars--Trade, navy, savings. Books of courtesy--Familiar letters; Paston Letters--Guides for the traveller and trader--Fortescue and his praise of English institutions--Pecock and his defence of the clergy--His style and humour--Compilers, chroniclers, prosators of various sort--Malory, Caxton, Juliana Berners, Capgrave, &c. 513 IV. The Dawn of the Renaissance. --The literary movement in Italy--Greek studies--Relations with Eastern men of letters--Turkish wars and Greek exiles--Taking of Constantinople by Mahomet II. --Consequences felt in Italy, France, and England 523 Index 527 BOOK I. _THE ORIGINS. _ CHAPTER I. _BRITANNIA. _ I. The people that now occupies England was formed, like the French people, by the fusion of several superimposed races. In both countries the sameraces met and mingled at about the same period, but in differentproportions and under dissimilar social conditions. Hence the strikingresemblances and sharply defined contrasts that exist in the genius ofthe two nations. Hence also the contradictory sentiments which mutuallyanimated them from century to century, those combinations andrecurrences of esteem that rose to admiration, and jealousy that swelledto hate. Hence, again, the unparalleled degree of interest they offer, one for the other. The two people are so dissimilar that in borrowingfrom each other they run no risk of losing their nationalcharacteristics and becoming another's image; and yet, so much alike arethey, it is impossible that what they borrowed should remain barren andunproductive. These loans act like leaven: the products of Englishthought during the Augustan age of British literature were mixed withFrench leaven, and the products of French thought during the Victor Hugoperiod were penetrated with English yeast. Ancient writers have left us little information concerning the remotestperiod and the oldest inhabitants of the British archipelago; workswhich would be invaluable to us exist only in meagre fragments. Important gaps have fortunately been filled, owing to modern Science andto her manifold researches. She has inherited the wand of the departedwizards, and has touched with her talisman the gate of sepulchres; thetombs have opened and the dead have spoken. What countries did thywar-ship visit? she inquired of the Scandinavian viking. And in answerthe dead man, asleep for centuries among the rocks of the Isle of Skye, showed golden coins of the caliphs in his skeleton hand. These coins arenot a figure of speech; they are real, and may be seen at the EdinburghMuseum. The wand has touched old undeciphered manuscripts, and brokenthe charm that kept them dumb. From them rose songs, music, love-ditties, and war-cries: phrases so full of life that the livinghearts of to-day have been stirred by them; words with so much colour inthem that the landscape familiar to the eyes of the Celts and Germanshas reappeared before us. Much remains undiscovered, and the dead hold secrets they may yetreveal. In the unexplored tombs of the Nile valley will be found oneday, among the papyri stripped from Ptolemaic mummies, the account of ajourney made to the British Isles about 330 B. C. , by a Greek ofMarseilles named Pytheas, a contemporary of Aristotle and Alexander theGreat, of which a few sentences only have been preserved. [1] But evennow the darkness which enveloped the origin has been partly clearedaway. To the primitive population, the least known of all, that reared thestones of Carnac in France, and in England the gigantic circles ofStonehenge and Avebury, succeeded in both countries, many centuriesbefore Christ, the Celtic race. The Celts ([Greek: keltai]) were thus called by the Greeks from the nameof one of their principal tribes, in the same way as the French, English, Scottish, and German nations derive theirs from that of one oftheir principal tribes. They occupied, in the third century before ourera, the greater part of Central Europe, of the France of to-day, ofSpain, and of the British Isles. They were neighbours of the Greeks andLatins; the centre of their possessions was in Bavaria. From there, andnot from Gaul, set out the expeditions by which Rome was taken, Delphiplundered, and a Phrygian province rebaptized Galatia. Celtic cemeteriesabound throughout that region; the most remarkable of them wasdiscovered, not in France, but at Hallstadt, near Salzburg, inAustria. [2] The language of the Celts was much nearer the Latin tongue than theGermanic idioms; it comprised several dialects, and amongst them theGaulish, long spoken in Gaul, the Gaelic, the Welsh, and the Irish, still used in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. The most important of theCeltic tribes, settled in the main island beyond the Channel, gaveitself the name of Britons. Hence the name of Britain borne by thecountry, and indirectly that also of Great Britain, now the officialappellation of England. The Britons appear to have emigrated from Gauland established themselves among the other Celtic tribes already settledin the island, about the third century before Christ. During several hundred years, from the time of Pytheas to that of theRoman conquerors, the Mediterranean world remained ignorant of what tookplace among insular Britons, and we are scarcely better informed thanthey were. The centre of human civilisation had been moved from countryto country round the great inland sea, having now reached Rome, withoutanything being known save that north of Gaul existed a vast country, surrounded by water, rich in tin mines, covered by forests, prairies, and morasses, from which dense mists arose. Three centuries elapse; the Romans are settled in Gaul. Cæsar, at thehead of his legions, has avenged the city for the insults of the Celticinvaders, but the strife still continues; Vercingetorix has not yetappeared. Actuated by that sense of kinship so deeply rooted in theCelts, the effects of which are still to be seen from one shore of theAtlantic to the other, the Britons had joined forces with theircompatriots of the Continent against the Roman. Cæsar resolved to leadhis troops to the other side of the Channel, but he knew nothing of thecountry, and wished first to obtain information. He questioned thetraders; they told him little, being, as they said, acquainted only withthe coasts, and that slightly. Cæsar embarked in the night of August24th-25th, the year 55 before our era; it took him somewhat more time tocross the strait than is now needed to go from Paris to London. Hisexpedition was a real voyage of discovery; and he was careful, duringhis two sojourns in the island, to examine as many people as possible, and note all he could observe concerning the customs of the natives. Thepicture he draws of the former inhabitants of England strikes us to-dayas very strange. "The greater part of the people of the interior, " hewrites, "do not sow; they live on milk and flesh, and clothe themselvesin skins. All Britons stain themselves dark blue with woad, which givesthem a terrible aspect in battle. They wear their hair long, and shaveall their body except their hair and moustaches. " Did we forget the original is in Latin, we might think the passage wasextracted from the travels of Captain Cook; and this is so true that, inthe account of his first journey around the world, the great navigator, on arriving at the island of Savu, notices the similitude himself. With the exception of a few details, the Celtic tribes of future Englandwere similar to those of future France. [3] Brave like them, with anundisciplined impetuosity that often brought them to grief (theimpetuosity of Poictiers and Nicopolis), curious, quick-tempered, promptto quarrel, they fought after the same fashion as the Gauls, with thesame arms; and in the Witham and Thames have been found bronze shieldssimilar in shape and carving to those graven on the triumphal arch atOrange, the image of which has now recalled for eighteen centuries Romantriumph and Celtic defeat. Horace's saying concerning the Gaulishancestors applies equally well to Britons: never "feared theyfunerals. "[4] The grave was for them without terrors; their faith in theimmortality of the soul absolute; death for them was not the goal, butthe link between two existences; the new life was as complete anddesirable as the old, and bore no likeness to that subterraneanexistence, believed in by the ancients, partly localised in thesepulchre, with nothing sweeter in it than those sad things, rest andoblivion. According to Celtic belief, the dead lived again under thelight of heaven; they did not descend, as they did with the Latins, tothe land of shades. No Briton, Gaul, or Irish could have understood themelancholy words of Achilles: "Seek not, glorious Ulysses, to comfort mefor death; rather would I till the ground for wages on some poor man'ssmall estate than reign over all the dead. "[5] The race was anoptimistic one. It made the best of life, and even of death. These beliefs were carefully fostered by the druids, priests andphilosophers, whose part has been the same in Gaul, Ireland, andBritain. Their teaching was a cause of surprise and admiration to theLatins. "And you, druids, " exclaims Lucan, "dwelling afar under thebroad trees of the sacred groves, according to you, the departed visitnot the silent Erebus, nor the dark realm of pallid Pluto; the samespirit animates a body in a different world. Death, if what you say istrue, is but the middle of a long life. Happy the error of those thatlive under Arcturus; the worst of fears is to them unknown--the fear ofdeath!"[6] The inhabitants of Britain possessed, again in common with those ofGaul, a singular aptitude to understand and learn quickly. A short timeafter the Roman Conquest it becomes hard to distinguish Celtic fromRoman workmanship among the objects discovered in tombs. Cæsar isastonished to see how his adversaries improve under his eyes. They weresimple enough at first; now they understand and foresee, and baffle hismilitary stratagems. To this intelligence and curiosity is due, with allits advantages and drawbacks, the faculty of assimilation possessed bythis race, and manifested to the same extent by no other in Europe. The Latin authors also admired another characteristic gift in the men ofthis race: a readiness of speech, an eloquence, a promptness of reparteethat distinguished them from their Germanic neighbours. The people ofGaul, said Cato, have two passions: to fight well and talk cleverly(_argute loqui_). [7] This is memorable evidence, since it reveals to usa quality of a literary order: we can easily verify its truth, for weknow now in what kind of compositions, and with what talent the men ofCeltic blood exercised their gift of speech. II. That the Celtic tribes on both sides of the Channel closely resembledeach other in manners, tastes, language, and turn of mind cannot bedoubted. "Their language differs little, " says Tacitus; "their buildingsare almost similar, "[8] says Cæsar. The similitude of their literarygenius is equally certain, for Cato's saying relates to continentalCelts and can be checked by means of Irish poems and tales. Welshstories of a later date afford us evidence fully as conclusive. If wechange the epoch, the result will be the same; the main elements of theCeltic genius have undergone no modification; Armoricans, Britons, Welsh, Irish, and Scotch, are all inexhaustible tale-tellers, skilful indialogue, prompt at repartee, and never to be taken unawares. Gerald deBarry, the Welshman, gives us a description of his countrymen in thetwelfth century, which seems a paraphrase of what Cato had said of theGaulish Celts fourteen hundred years before. [9] Ireland has preserved for us the most ancient monuments of Celticthought. Nothing has reached us of those "quantities of verses" that, according to Cæsar, the druids taught their pupils in Gaul, with thecommand that they should never be written. [10] Only too well was theinjunction obeyed. Nothing, again, has been transmitted to us of theimprovisations of the Gallic or British bards ([Greek: bardoi]), whosefame was known to, and mentioned by, the ancients. In Ireland, however, Celtic literature had a longer period of development. The country wasnot affected by the Roman Conquest; the barbarian invasions did notbring about the total ruin they caused in England and on the Continent. The clerks of Ireland in the seventh and eighth centuries committed towriting the ancient epic tales of their land. Notwithstanding the adventof Christianity, the pagan origins constantly reappear in thesenarratives, and we are thus taken back to the epoch when they wereprimarily composed, and even to the time when the events related aresupposed to have occurred. That time is precisely the epoch of Cæsar andof the Christian era. Important works have, in our day, thrown a lighton this literature[11]; but all is not yet accomplished, and it has beencomputed that the entire publication of the ancient Irish manuscriptswould fill about a thousand octavo volumes. It cannot be said that thepeople who produced these works were men of scanty speech; and hereagain we recognise the immoderate love of tales and the insatiablecuriosity that Cæsar had noticed in the Celts of the Continent. [12] Most of those Irish stories are part of the epic cycle of Conchobar andCuchulaïnn, and concern the wars of Ulster and Connaught. They are inprose, interspersed with verse. Long before being written, they existedin the shape of well-established texts, repeated word for word by menwhose avocation it was to know and remember, and who spent their livesin exercising their memory. The corporation of the _File_, or seers, wasdivided into ten classes, from the _Oblar_, who knew only seven stories, to the _Ollam_, who knew three hundred and fifty. [13] Unlike the bards, the File never invented, they remembered; they were obliged to know, notany stories whatsoever, but certain particular tales; lists of them havebeen found, and not a few of the stories entered in these catalogueshave come down to us. If we look through the collections that have been made of them, we cansee that the Celtic authors of that period are already remarkable forqualities that have since shone with extreme brilliancy among variousnations belonging to the same race: the sense of form and beauty, thedramatic gift, fertility of invention. [14] This is all the morenoticeable as the epoch was a barbarous one, and a multitude of passagesrecall the wild savageness of the people. We find in these legends asmany scenes of slaughter and ferocious deeds as in the oldest Germanicpoems: _Provincia ferox_, said Tacitus of Britain. The time is stilldistant when woman shall become a deity; the murder of a man iscompensated by twenty-one head of cattle, and the murder of a woman bythree head only. [15] The warlike valour of the heroes is carried as faras human nature and imagination allow; not even Roland or Ragnar Lodbrokdie more heroically than Cuchulaïnn, who, mortally wounded, diesstanding: "He fixed his eye on this hostile group. Then he leaned himself againstthe high stone in the plain, and, by means of his belt, he fastened hisbody to the high stone. Neither sitting nor lying would he die; but hewould die standing. Then his enemies gathered round him. They remainedabout him, not daring to approach; he seemed to be still alive. "[16] At the same time, things of beauty have their place in these tales. There are birds and flowers; women are described with loving admiration;their cheeks are purple "as the fox-glove, " their locks wave in thelight. Above all, such a dramatic gift is displayed as to stand unparalleled inany European literature at its dawn. [17] Celtic poets excel in the artof giving a lifelike representation of deeds and events, of graduatingtheir effects, and making their characters talk; they are matchless forspeeches and quick repartees. Compositions have come down to us that areall cut out into dialogues, so that the narrative becomes a drama. Insuch tales as the "Murder of the Sons of Usnech, " or "Cuchulaïnn'sSickness, " in which love finds a place, these remarkable traits are tobe seen at their best. The story of "Mac Datho's Pig" is as powerfullydramatic and savage as the most cruel Germanic or Scandinavian songs;but it is at the same time infinitely more varied in tone and artisticin shape. Pictures of everyday life, familiar fireside discussionsabound, together with the scenes of blood loved by all nations in theseason of their early manhood. "There was, " we read, "a famous king of Leinster, called Mac Datho. Thisking owned a dog, Ailbe by name, who defended the whole province andfilled Erin with his fame. "[18] Ailill, king of Connaught, andConchobar, king of Ulster, claim the dog; and Mac Datho, muchperplexed, consults his wife, who suggests that he should promise Ailbeto both. On the appointed day, the warriors of the two countries come tofetch the dog of renown, and a grand banquet is served them by MacDatho, the principal dish of which is a rare kind of pig--"three hundredcows had fed him for seven years. " Scarcely are the guests seated, whenthe dialogues begin: "That pig looks good, " says Conchobar. "Truly, yes, " replies Ailill; "but, Conchobar, how shall he be carved?" "What more simple in this hall, where sit the glorious heroes of Erin?"cried, from his couch, Bricriu, son of Carbad. "To each his share, according to his fights and deeds. But ere the shares are distributed, more than one rap on the nose will have been given and received. " "So be it, " said Ailill. "'Tis fair, " said Conchobar. "We have with us the warriors who defendedour frontiers. " Then each one rises in turn and claims the honour of carving: I didthis. --I did still more. --I slew thy father. --I slew thy eldest son. --Igave thee that wound that still aches. The warrior Cet had just told his awful exploits when Conall of Ulsterrises against him and says: "Since the day I first bore a spear, not often have I lacked the head ofa man of Connaught to pillow mine upon. Not a single day or night haspassed in which I slew not an enemy. " "I confess it, " said Cet, "thou art a greater warrior than I; but wereAnluan in this castle, he at least could compete with thee; 'tis a pityhe is not present. " "He is here!" cried Conall, and drawing from his belt Anluan's head, heflung it on the table. In the "Murder of the Sons of Usnech, "[19] woman plays the principalpart. The mainspring of the story is love, and by it the heroes are ledto death, a thing not to be found elsewhere in the European literatureof the period. Still, those same heroes are not slight, fragiledreamers; if we set aside their love, and only consider their ferocity, they are worthy of the Walhalla of Woden. By the following example wemay see how the insular Celts could love and die. The child of Fedelmid's wife utters a cry in its mother's womb. Theyquestion Cathba the chief druid, who answers: "That which has clamouredwithin thee is a fair-haired daughter, with fair locks, a majesticglance, blue eyes, and cheeks purple as the fox-glove"; and he foretellsthe woes she will cause among men. This girl is Derdriu; she is broughtup secretly and apart, in order to evade the prediction. One day, "shebeheld a raven drink blood on the snow. " She said to Leborcham: "The only man I could love would be one who united those three colours:hair as black as the raven, cheeks red as blood, body as white as snow. " "Thou art lucky, " answered Leborcham, "the man thou desirest is not farto seek, he is near thee, in this very castle; it is Noïsé, son ofUsnech. " "I shall not be happy, " returned Derdriu, "until I have seen him. " Noïsé justifies the young girl's expectations; he and his two brothersare incomparably valiant in war, and so swift are they that they outrunwild animals in the chase. Their songs are delightfully sweet. Noïsé isaware of the druid's prophecy, and at first spurns Derdriu, but sheconquers him by force. They love each other. Pursued by their enemiesthe three brothers and Derdriu emigrate to Scotland, and take refugewith the king of Albion. One day the king's steward "sees Noïsé and hiswife sleeping side by side. He went at once and awoke the king. "'Till now, ' he said, 'never had we found a woman worthy of thee; butthe one who lies in the arms of Noïsé is the one for thee, king of theWest! Cause Noïsé to be put to death, and marry his wife. ' "'No, ' answered the king; 'but bid her come to me daily in secret. ' "The steward obeyed the king's commands, but in vain; what he toldDerdriu by day she repeated to her husband the following night. " The sons of Usnech perish in an ambush. Conchobar seizes on Derdriu, butshe continues to love the dead. "Derdriu passed a year with Conchobar;during that time never was a smile seen on her lips; she ate not, sleptnot, raised not her head from off her knees. When the musicians andjugglers tried to cheer her grief by their play, she told . . . " she toldher sorrow, and all that had made the delight of her life "in a timethat was no more. " "I sleep not, I dye no more my nails with purple; lifeless is my soul, for the sons of Usnech will return no more. I sleep not half the nighton my couch. My spirit travels around the multitudes. But I eat not, neither do I smile. " Conchobar out of revenge delivers her over for a year to the man shemost hates, the murderer of Noïsé, who bears her off on a chariot; andConchobar, watching this revolting sight, mocks her misery. She remainssilent. "There in front of her rose a huge rock, she threw herselfagainst it, her head struck and was shattered, and so she died. " An inexhaustible fertility of invention was displayed by the Celticmakers. They created the cycle of Conchobar, and afterwards that ofOssian, to which Macpherson's "adaptations" gave such world-wide renownthat in our own century they directed Lamartine's early steps towardsthe realms of poetry. Later still they created the cycle of Arthur, mostbrilliant and varied of all, a perennial source of poetry, from whencethe great French poet of the twelfth century sought his inspiration, andwhence only yesterday the poet laureate of England found his. Theycollect in Wales the marvellous tales of the "Mabinogion"[20]; in themwe find enchanters and fairies, women with golden hair, silken raiment, and tender hearts. They hunt, and a white boar starts out of the bushes;following him they arrive at a castle there, "where never had they seentrace of a building before. " Pryderi ventures to penetrate into theprecincts: "He entered and perceived neither man, nor beast; no boar, nodogs, no house, no place of habitation. On the ground towards the middlethere was a fountain surrounded by marble, and on the rim of thefountain, resting on a marble slab, was a golden cup, fastened by goldenchains tending upwards, the ends of which he could not see. He wasenraptured by the glitter of the gold, and the workmanship of the cup. He drew near and grasped it. At the same instant his hands clove to thecup, and his feet to the marble slab on which it rested. He lost hisvoice, and was unable to utter a word. " The castle fades away; the landbecomes a desert once more; the heroes are changed into mice; the wholelooks like a fragment drawn out of Ariosto, by Perrault, and told by himin his own way to children. No wonder if the descendants of these indefatigable inventors are menwith rich literatures, not meagre literatures of which it is possible towrite a history without omitting anything, but deep and inexhaustibleones. The ends of their golden chains are not to be seen. And if acopious mixture of Celtic blood flows, though in different proportions, in the veins of the French and of the English, it will be no wonder ifthey happen some day to produce the greater number of the plays that areacted, and of the novels that are read, all over the civilised world. III. After a second journey, during which he passed the Thames, Cæsardeparted with hostages, this time never to return. The real conquesttook place under the emperors, beginning from the reign of Claudius, andfor three centuries and a half Britain was occupied and ruled by theRomans. They built a network of roads, of which the remains stillsubsist; they marked the distances by milestones, sixty of which havebeen found, and one, at Chesterholm, is still standing; they raised, from one sea to the other, against the people of Scotland, two greatwalls; one of them in stone, flanked by towers, and protected by moatsand earth-works. [21] Fortified after the Roman fashion, defended bygarrisons, the groups of British huts became cities; and villas, similarto those the remains of which are met with under the ashes of Pompeiiand in the sands of Africa, rose in York, Bath, London, Lincoln, Cirencester, Aldborough, Woodchester, Bignor, and in a multitude ofother places where they have since been found. Beneath the shade of thedruidical oaks, the Roman glazier blew his light variegated flasks; themosaic maker seated Orpheus on his panther, with his fingers on theThracian lyre. Altars were built to the Roman deities; later to the Godof Bethlehem, and one at least of the churches of that period stillsubsists, St. Martin of Canterbury. [22] Statues were raised for theemperors; coins were cast; weights were cut; ore was extracted from themines; the potter moulded his clay vases, and, pending the time whenthey should be exhibited behind the glass panes of the British Museum, the legionaries used them to hold the ashes of their dead. However far he went, the Roman carried Rome with him; he required hisstatues, his coloured pavements, his frescoes, his baths, all thecomforts and delights of the Latin cities. Theatres, temples, towers, palaces rose in many of the towns of Great Britain, and some years ago abathing room was discovered at Bath[23] a hundred and eleven feet long. Several centuries later Gerald de Barry passing through Caerleon noticedwith admiration "many remains of former grandeur, immense palaces . . . Agigantic tower, magnificent baths, and ruined temples. "[24] The emperorscould well come to Britain; they found themselves at home. Claudius, Vespasian, Titus, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius came there, either to win thetitle of "the Britannic" or to enjoy the charms of peace. Severus diedat York in 211, and Caracalla there began his reign. Constantius Chloruscame to live in this town, and died there; and the prince destined tosanction the Romans' change of religion, Constantine the Great, wasproclaimed emperor in the same city. Celtic Britain, the England thatwas to be, had become Roman and Christian, a country of land tillers whomore or less spoke Latin. [25] But the time of transformation was drawing nigh, and an enemy wasalready visible, against whom neither Hadrian's wall nor Antoninus'ramparts could prevail; for he came not from the Scottish mountains, but, as he himself said in his war-songs, "by the way of the whales. " Anew race of men had appeared on the shores of the island. After relatingthe campaigns of his father-in-law, Agricola, whose fleet had sailedaround Britain and touched at the Orkneys, the attention of Tacitus hadbeen drawn to Germany, a wild mysterious land. He had described it tohis countrymen; he had enumerated its principal tribes, and among manyothers he had mentioned one which he calls _Angli_. He gives the name, and says no more, little suspecting the part these men were to play inhistory. The first act that was to make them famous throughout the worldwas to overthrow the political order, and to sweep away thecivilisation, which the conquests of Agricola had established amongstthe Britons. FOOTNOTES: [1] On Pytheas, see Elton, "Origins of English History, " London, 1890, 8vo (2nd ed. ), pp. 12 and following. He visited the coasts of Spain, Gaul, Britain, and returned by the Shetlands. The passages of hisjournal preserved for us by the ancients are given on pp. 400 and 401. [2] See, on this subject, A. Bertrand, "La Gaule avant les Gaulois, "Paris, 1891, 8vo (2nd ed. ), pp. 7 and 13; D'Arbois de Jubainville, "Revue Historique, " January-February, 1886. [3] "Proximi Gallis, et similes sunt. . . . Sermo haud multum diversus: indeposcendis periculis eadem audacia . . . Plus tamen ferociæ Britannipræferunt, ut quos nondum longa pax emollierit . . . Manent quales Gallifuerunt. " Tacitus, "Agricola, " xi. "Ædificia fere Gallicis consimilia, "Cæsar "De Bello Gallico, " v. The south was occupied by Gauls who hadcome from the Continent at a recent period. The Iceni were a Gallictribe; the Trinobantes were Gallo-Belgæ. [4] Te non paventis funera Galliæ Duraque tellus audit Hiberiæ. ("Ad Augustum, " Odes, iv. 14. ) [5] "Odyssey, " xi. L. 488 ff. [6] Et vos . . . Druidæ . . . . . . Nemora alta remotis Incolitis lucis, vobis auctoribus, umbræ Non tacitas Erebi sedes, Ditisque profundi Pallida regna petunt; regit idem spiritus artus Orbe alio: longæ (canitis si cognita) vitæ Mors media est. Certe populi quos despicit Arctos, Felices errore suo, quos ille timorum Maximus, haud urget leti metus. ("Pharsalia, " book i. ) [7] "Pleraque Gallia duas res industriosissime persequitur, remmilitarem et argute loqui. " "Origins, " quoted by the grammarianCharisius. In Cato's time (third-second centuries B. C. ) the word Galliahad not the restricted sense it had after Cæsar, but designed the wholeof the Celtic countries of the Continent. The ingenuity of the Celtsmanifested itself also in their laws: "From an intellectual point ofview, the laws of the Welsh are their greatest title to glory. Theeminent German jurist, F. Walter, points out that, in this respect, theWelsh are far in advance of the other nations of the Middle Ages. Theygive proof of a singular precision and subtlety of mind, and a greataptitude for philosophic speculation. " "Les Mabinogion, " by Lot, Paris, 1889, 2 vols. 8vo, vol. I. P. 7. [8] See _supra_, p. 7, note. [9] "De curia vero et familia viri, ut et circumstantibus risum moveantsibique loquendo laudem comparent, facetiam in sermone plurimamobservant; dum vel sales, vel lædoria, nunc levi nunc mordaci, subæquivocationis vel amphibolæ nebula, relatione diversa, transpositioneverborum et trajectione, subtiles et dicaces emittunt. " And he citesexamples of their witticisms. "Descriptio Kambriæ, " chap. Xiv. , Deverborum facetia et urbanitate. "Opera, " Brewer, 1861-91, 8 vols. , vol. Vi. , Rolls. [10] He says, in reference to the pupils of the Druids, "De BelloGallico, " book vi. : "Magnum ibi numerum versuum ediscere dicuntur, itaque nonnulli annos vicenos in disciplina permanent; neque fas esseexistimant ea litteris mandare. " One of the reasons of this interdictionis to guard against the scholars ceasing to cultivate their memory, afaculty considered by the Celts as of the highest importance. [11] Those, among others, of MM. Whitley Stokes, Rhys, d'Arbois deJubainville, Lot, Windisch, Zimmer, Netlau, and Kuno-Meyer. [12] "Est autem hoc Galliæ consuetudinis; ut et viatores etiam invitosconsistere cogant: et quod quisque eorum de quaque re audierit autcognoverit quærant, et mercatores in oppidis vulgus circumsistat: quibusex regionibus veniant, quasque res ibi cognoverint pronunciare cogant. "Book iv. [13] To wit, two hundred and fifty long and a hundred short ones. D'Arbois de Jubainville, "Introduction à l'étude de la LittératureCeltique, " Paris, 1883, 8vo, pp. 322-333. [14] See, with reference to this, the "Navigation of Mael-Duin, " achristianised narrative, probably composed in the tenth century, underthe form in which we now possess it, but "the theme of which isfundamentally pagan. " Here are the titles of some of the chapters: "Theisle of enormous ants. --The island of large birds. --The monstroushorse. --The demon's race. --The house of the salmon. --The marvellousfruits. --Wonderful feats of the beast of the island. --Thehorse-fights. --The fire beasts and the golden apples. --The castleguarded by the cat. --The frightful mill. --The island of black weepers. "Translation by Lot in "L'Épopée Celtique, " of D'Arbois de Jubainville, Paris, 1892, 8vo, pp. 449 ff. See also Joyce, "Old Celtic Romances, "1879; on the excellence of the memory of Irish narrators, even at thepresent day, see Joyce's Introduction. [15] D'Arbois de Jubainville, "L'Épopée Celtique, " pp. Xxviii andfollowing. "Celtic marriage is a sale. . . . Physical paternity has not thesame importance as with us"; people are not averse to having childrenfrom their passing guest. "The question as to whether one is physicallytheir father offers a certain sentimental interest; but for a practicalman this question presents only a secondary interest, or even none atall. " _Ibid. _, pp. Xxvii-xxix. [16] The Murder of Cuchulaïnn, "L'Épopée Celtique en Irlande, " p. 346. [17] The same quality is found in the literature of Brittany; the majorpart of its monuments (of a more recent epoch) consists of religiousdramas or mysteries. These dramas, mostly unpublished, are exceedinglynumerous. [18] "L'Épopée Celtique, " pp. 66 and following. [19] "L'Épopée Celtique en Irlande, " pp. 217 and following. [20] From "Mabinog" apprentice-bard. They are prose narratives, ofdivers origin, written in Welsh. They "appear to have been written atthe end of the twelfth century"; the MS. Of them we possess is of thefourteenth; several of the legends in it contain pagan elements, andcarry us back "to the most distant past of the history of the Celts. ""Les Mabinogion, " translated by Lot, with commentary, Paris, 1889, 2vols. 8vo. [21] In several places have been found the quarries from which the stoneof Hadrian's wall was taken, and inscriptions bearing the name of thelegion or of the officer charged with extracting it: "Petra Flavi[i]Carantini, " in the quarry of Fallowfield. "The Roman Wall, a descriptionof the Mural Barrier of the North of England, " by the Rev. J. C. Bruce, London, 1867, 4to (3rd ed. ), pp. 141, 144, 185. _Cf. Athenæum_, 15th and19th of July, 1893. [22] C. F. Routledge, "History of St. Martin's Church, Canterbury. " Theruins of a tiny Christian basilica, of the time of the Romans, werediscovered at Silchester, in May, 1892. [23] Quantities of statuettes, pottery, glass cups and vases, arms, utensils of all kinds, sandals, styles for writing, fragments ofcolossal statues, mosaics, &c. , have been found in England, and arepreserved in the British Museum and in the Guildhall of London, in themuseums of Oxford and of York, in the cloisters at Lincoln, &c. Thegreat room at Bath was discovered in 1880; the piscina is in a perfectstate of preservation; the excavations are still going on (1894). [24] "Itinerarium Cambriæ, " b. I. Chap. V. [25] "Ut qui modo linguam abnuebant, eloquentiam concupiscerent: indeetiam habitus nostri honor, et frequens toga; paullatimque discessum etdilinimenta vitiorum, porticus et balnea, et conviviorum elegantiam. "Tacitus, "Agricolæ Vita, " xxi. CHAPTER II. _THE GERMANIC INVASION. _ "To say nothing of the perils of a stormy and unknown sea, who wouldleave Asia, Africa, or Italy for the dismal land of the Germans, theirbitter sky, their soil the culture and aspect of which sadden the eyeunless it be one's mother country?" Such is the picture Tacitus draws ofGermany, and he concludes from the fact of her being so dismal, and yetinhabited, that she must always have been inhabited by the same people. What others would have immigrated there of their own free will? For theinhabitants, however, this land of clouds and morasses is their home;they love it, and they remain there. The great historian's book shows how little of impenetrable Germany wasknown to the Romans. All sorts of legends were current respecting thiswild land, supposed to be bounded on the north-east by a slumbering sea, "the girdle and limit of the world, " a place so near to the spot wherePhoebus rises "that the sound he makes in emerging from the waters canbe heard, and the forms of his steeds are visible. " This is the popularbelief, adds Tacitus; "the truth is that nature ends there. "[26] In this mysterious land, between the forests that sheltered them fromthe Romans and the grey sea washing with long waves the flat shores, tribes had settled and multiplied which, contrary to the surmise ofTacitus, had perhaps left the mild climate of Asia for this barrencountry; and though they had at last made it their home, many of themwhose names alone figure in the Roman's book had not adopted it forever; their migrations were about to begin again. This group of Teutonic peoples, with ramifications extending far towardsthe pole was divided into two principal branches: the Germanic branch, properly so called, which comprised the Goths, Angles, Saxons, the upperand lower Germans, the Dutch, the Frisians, the Lombards, the Franks, the Vandals, &c. ; and the Scandinavian branch, settled farther north andcomposed of the Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes. The same region whichTacitus describes as bordering on the place "where nature ends, " heldthus in his day tribes that would later have for their capitals, townsfounded long before by Celts: London, Vienna, Paris, and Milan. Many hundred years before settling there, these men had already foundthemselves in contact with the Celts, and, at the time the latter werepowerful in Europe, terrible wars had arisen between the two races. Butall the north-east, from the Elbe to the Vistula, continuedimpenetrable; the Germanic tribes remained there intact, they unitedwith no others, and alone might have told if the sun's chariot wasreally to be seen rising from the ocean, and splashing the sky with saltsea foam. From this region were about to start the wild host destined toconquer the isle of Britain, to change its name and rebaptize it inblood. Twice, during the first ten centuries of our era, the Teutonic racehurled upon the civilised world its savage hordes of warriors, streamsof molten lava. The first invasion was vehement, especially in the fifthcentury, and was principally composed of Germanic tribes, Angles, Franks, Saxons, Burgundians, Vandals; the second exercised its greatestravages in the ninth century, at the time of Charlemagne's successors, and proceeded mostly from the Scandinavian tribes, called Danish orNorman by contemporary chroniclers. From the third century after Christ, fermentation begins among theformer of these two groups. No longer are the Germanic tribes contentwith fighting for their land, retreating step by step before the Latininvader; alarming symptoms of retaliation manifest themselves, like therumblings that herald the great cataclysms of nature. The Roman, in the meanwhile, wrapped in his glory, continued to rule theworld and mould it to his image; he skilfully enervated the conquerednations, instructed them in the arts, inoculated them with his vices, and weakened in them the spring of their formerly strong will. Theycalled civilisation, _humanitas_, Tacitus said of the Britons, what wasactually "servitude. "[27] The frontiers of the empire were now so fardistant that the roar of the advancing tide scarcely reached Rome. Whatwas overheard of it acted as a stimulus to pleasure, added point to therhetorician's speeches, excitement to the circus games, and a halo tothe beauty of red-haired courtesans. The Romans had reached that pointin tottering empires, at which the threat of calamities no longerarouses dormant energy, but only whets and renews the appetite forenjoyment. Meanwhile, far away towards the north, the Germanic tribes, continuallyat strife with their neighbours, and warring against each other, withoutriches or culture, ignorant and savage, preserved their strength andkept their ferocity. They hated peace, despised the arts, and had noliterature but drinking and war-songs. They take an interest only inhunting and war, said Cæsar; from their earliest infancy they endeavourto harden themselves physically. [28] They were not inventive; theylearned with more difficulty than the Celts; they were violent andirrepressible. The little that is known of their customs and characterpoints to fiery souls that may rise to great rapturous joys but have anunderlayer of gloom, a gloom sombre as the impenetrable forest, sad asthe grey sea. For them the woods are haunted, the shades of night arepeopled with evil spirits, in their morasses half-divine monsters liecoiled. "They worship demons, " wrote the Christian chroniclers of themwith a sort of terror. [29] These men will enjoy lyric songs, but notcharming tales; they are capable of mirth but not of gaiety; powerfulbut incomplete natures that will need to develop fully without having towait for the slow procedure of centuries, an admixture of new blood andnew ideas. They were to find in Britain this double graft, and anadmirable literary development was to be the consequence. They set outthen to accomplish their work and follow their destiny, having doubtlessmuch to learn, but having also something to teach the enervated nations, the meaning of a word unknown till their coming, the word "war"(_guerre, guerra_). After the time of the invasions "bellicose, ""belliqueux, " and such words lost their strength and dignity, and wereleft for songsters to play with if they liked; a tiny phenomenon, thesign of terrible transformations. The invaders bore various names. The boundaries of their tribes, asregards population and territory, were vague, and in nowise resembledthose of the kingdoms traced on our maps. Their groups united anddissolved continually. The most powerful among them absorb theirneighbours and cause them to be forgotten for a time, their namesfrequently recur in histories; then other tribes grow up; other namesappear, others die out. Several of them, however, have survived: Angles, Franks, Saxons, Burgundians, Lombards, Suevi, and Alemanni, which becamethe names of great provinces or mighty nations. The more important ofthese groups were rather an agglomeration of tribes than nationsproperly so called; thus under the name of Franks were comprised, in thethird century, the Sicambers, the Chatti, the Chamavi; while the Sueviunited, in the time of Tacitus, the Lombards, Semnones, Angles, andothers. But all were bound by the tie of a common origin; theirpassions, customs, and tastes, their arms and costumes were similar. [30] This human multitude once put in motion, nothing was able to stop it, neither the military tactics of the legions nor the defeats which itsuffered; neither rivers nor mountains, nor the dangers of unknown seas. The Franks, before settling in Gaul, traversed it once from end to end, crossed the Pyrenees, ravaged Spain, and disappeared in Mauritania. Transported once in great numbers to the shores of the Euxine Sea, andimprudently entrusted by the Romans with the defence of their frontiers, they embark, pillage the towns of Asia and Northern Africa, and returnto the mouth of the Rhine. Their expeditions intercross each other; wefind them everywhere at once; Franks are seen at London, and Saxons atAngers. In 406, Gaul is overrun with barbarians, Vandals, Saxons, Burgundians, Alemanni; every point of the territory is in flames; thenoise of a falling empire reaches St. Jerome, in his cell at Bethlehem, and in an eloquent letter he deplores the disaster of Christendom: "Whocould ever have believed the day would come when Rome should see war ather very gates, and fight, not for glory but for safety? Fight, say I?Nay, redeem her life with treasure. "[31] Treasure did not suffice; the town was taken and retaken. Alaric sackedthe capital in 410, and Genseric in 455. During several centuries allwho emerge from this human tide, and are able to rule the tempest, areeither barbarians or crowned peasants. In the fifth and sixth centuriesa Frank reigns at Paris, Clovis to wit; an Ostrogoth at Ravenna, Theodoric; a peasant at Byzantium, Justinian; Attila's conqueror, Aetius, is a barbarian; Stilicho is a Vandal in the service of theEmpire. A Frank kingdom has grown up in the heart of Gaul; a Visigothkingdom has Toulouse for its capital; Genseric and his Vandals aresettled in Carthage; the Lombards, in the sixth century, cross themountains, establish themselves in ancient Cisalpine Gaul, and driveaway the inhabitants towards the lagoons where Venice is to rise. Theisle of Britain has likewise ceased to be Roman, and Germanic kingdomshave been founded there. Mounted on their ships, sixty to eighty feet long, by ten or fifteenbroad, of which a specimen can be seen at the museum of Kiel, [32] thedwellers on the shores of the Baltic and North Sea had at firstorganised plundering expeditions against the great island. They cameperiodically and laid waste the coasts; and on account of them theinhabitants gave to this part of the land the name _Littus Saxonicum_. Each time the pirates met with less resistance, and found the countrymore disorganised. In the course of the fifth century they saw they hadno need to return annually to their morasses, and that they couldwithout trouble remain within reach of plunder. They settled first inthe islands, then on the coasts, and by degrees in the interior. Amongthem were Goths or Jutes of Denmark (Jutland), Frisians, Franks, Anglesfrom Schleswig, and Saxons from the vast lands between the Elbe andRhine. These last two, especially, came in great numbers, occupied wideterritories, and founded lasting kingdoms. The Angles, whose name was toremain affixed to the whole nation, occupied Northumberland, a part ofthe centre, and the north-east coast, from Scotland to the presentcounty of Essex; the Saxons settled further south, in the regions whichwere called from them Essex, Sussex, Middlesex, and Wessex: Saxons ofthe east, south, centre, and west. It was in these two groups oftribes, or kingdoms, that literature reached the greatest development, and it was principally between them also that the struggle for supremacyset in, after the conquest. Hence the name of Anglo-Saxons generallygiven to the inhabitants of the soil, in respect of the period duringwhich purely Germanic dialects were spoken in England. This compositeword, recently the cause of many quarrels, has the advantage of beingclear; long habit is in its favour; and its very form suits an epochwhen the country was not unified, but belonged to two principalagglomerations of tribes, that of the Angles and that of the Saxons. [33] In the same way as in Gaul, the invaders found themselves in thepresence of a people infinitely more civilised than themselves, skilledin the arts, excellent agriculturists, rich traders, on whose soil arosethose large towns that the Romans had fortified, and connected by roads. Never had they beheld anything like it, nor had they names for suchthings. They had in consequence to make additions to their vocabulary. Not knowing how to designate these unfamiliar objects, they left themthe names they bore in the language of the inhabitants: _castrum_, _strata_, _colonia_; which became in their language _chester_, _street_, or _strat_, as in Stratford, and _coln_ as in Lincoln. The Britons who had taken to the toga--"frequens toga, " saysTacitus--and who were no longer protected by the legions, made a vainresistance; the advancing tide of barbarians swept over them, theyceased to exist as a nation. Contributions were levied on the cities, the country was laid waste, villas were razed to the ground, and on allthe points where the natives endeavoured to face the enemy, fearfulhecatombs were slaughtered by the worshippers of Woden. They could not, however, destroy all; and here comes in the importantquestion of Celtic survival. Some admirers of the conquerors credit themwith superhuman massacres. According to them no Celt survived; and therace, we are told, was either driven back into Wales or destroyed, sothat the whole land had to be repopulated, and that a new and whollyGermanic nation, as pure in blood as the tribes on the banks of theElbe, grew up on British soil. But if facts are examined it will befound that this title to glory cannot be claimed for the invaders. Thedeed was an impossible one; let that be their excuse. To destroy a wholenation by the sword exceeds human power, and there is no example of it. We know, besides, that in this case the task would have been anespecially hard one, for the population of Britain, even at the time ofCæsar, was dense: _hominum infinita multitudo_, he says in hisCommentaries. The invaders, on the other hand, found themselves inpresence of an intelligent, laborious, assimilable race, trained by theRomans to usefulness. The first of these facts precludes the hypothesisof a general massacre; and the second the hypothesis of a totalexpulsion, or of such extinction as threatens the inassimilable nativeof Australia. In reality, all the documents which have come down to us, and all theverifications made on the ground, contradict the theory of anannihilation of the Celtic race. To begin with, we can imagine nosystematic destruction after the introduction of Christianity among theAnglo-Saxons, which took place at the end of the sixth century. Then, the chroniclers speak of a general massacre of the inhabitants, inconnection with two places only: Chester and Anderida. [34] We canascertain even to-day that in one of these cases the destructioncertainly was complete, since this last town was never rebuilt, and onlyits site is known. That the chroniclers should make a special mention ofthe two massacres proves these cases were exceptional. To argue from thedestruction of Anderida to the slaughter of the entire race would be aslittle reasonable as to imagine that the whole of the Gallo-Romans wereannihilated because the ruins of a Gallo-Roman city, with a theatreseating seven thousand people have been discovered in a spot uninhabitedto-day, near Sanxay in Poictou. Excavations recently made in Englandhave shown, in a great number of cemeteries, even in the region termed_Littus Saxonicum_, where the Germanic population was densest, Britonsand Saxons sleeping side by side, and nothing could better point totheir having lived also side by side. Had a wholesale massacre takenplace, the victims would have had no sepulchres, or at all events theywould not have had them amongst those of the slayers. In addition to this, it is only by the preservation of thepre-established race that the change in manners and customs, and therapid development of the Anglo-Saxons can be explained. These rovingpirates lose their taste for maritime adventure; they build no moreships; their intestine quarrels are food sufficient for what is left oftheir warlike appetites. Whence comes it that the instincts of thisimpetuous race are to some degree moderated? Doubtless from the quantityand fertility of the land they had conquered, and from the facility theyfound on the spot for turning that land to account. These facilitiesconsisted in the labour of others. The taste for agriculture did notbelong to the race. Tacitus represents the Germans as cultivating onlywhat was strictly necessary. [35] The Anglo-Saxons found in Britain widetracts of country tilled by romanised husbandmen; after the time of thefirst ravages they recalled them to their toil, but assigned its fruitsto themselves. Well, therefore, might the same word be used by theconquerors to designate the native Celt and the slave. They establishedthemselves in the fields, and superintended their cultivation aftertheir fashion; their encampments became boroughs: Nottingham, Buckingham, Glastonbury, which have to the present day retained thenames of Germanic families or tribes. The towns of more ancientimportance, on the contrary, have retained Celtic or Latin names:London, York, Lincoln, Winchester, Dover, Cirencester, Manchester, &c. [36] The Anglo-Saxons did not destroy them, since they are stillextant, and only mingled in a feeble proportion with their population, having, like all Germans, a horror of sojourning in cities. "Theyavoided them, regarding them as tombs, " they thought that to live intowns was like burying oneself alive. [37] The preservation in England ofseveral branches of Roman industry is one proof more of the continuanceof city life in the island; had the British artisans not survived theinvasion, there would never have been found in the tombs of theconquerors those glass cups of elaborate ornamentation, hardlydistinguishable from the products of the Roman glass-works, and whichthe clumsy hands of the Saxon were certainly incapable of fusing andadorning. [38] The Britons, then, subsist in large numbers, even in the eastern andsouthern counties, where the Germanic settlement was most dense, butthey subsist as a conquered race; they till the ground in the country, and in the cities occupy themselves with manual labour. Wales andCornwall alone, in the isle of Britain, were still places of refuge forindependent Celts. The idiom and traditions of the ancient inhabitantswere there preserved. In these distant retreats, at the foot of Snowdon, in the valley of St. David's, beneath the trees of Caerleon, popularsingers accompany on their harps the old national poems; perhaps theyeven begin to chaunt those tales telling of the exploits of a herodestined to the highest renown in literature, King Arthur. But in the heart of the country the national tongue had been for a longtime constantly losing ground; the Britons had learnt Latin, many ofthem; they now forget it by degrees, as they had previously forgottenCeltic, and learn instead the language of their new masters. It was oneof their national gifts, a precious and fatal one; they were swift tolearn. In France the result of the Germanic conquest was totally different; theCeltic language reappeared there no more than in England. It has onlysurvived in the extreme west. [39] But in France the Germanic idiom didnot overpower the Latin; the latter persisted, so much so that theFrench tongue has remained a Romance language. This is owing to twogreat causes. Firstly, the Germans came to France in much smallernumbers than to England, and those that remained had been long incontact with the Romans; secondly, the romanising of Gaul had been morecomplete. Of all the provinces of the Empire, Gaul, the birthplace ofCornelius Gallus, Trogus Pompeius, Domitius Afer, Petronius, Ausonius, Sidonius Apollinaris, prided itself on speaking the purest Latin, and onproducing the best poets. Whether we take material monuments or literaryones, the difference is the same in the two countries. In Englandtheatres, towers, temples, all marks of Latin civilisation, had beenerected, but not so numerous, massive, or strong that the invaders wereunable to destroy them. At the present time only shapeless remnantsexist above ground. In France, the barbarians came, plundered, burnt, razed to the ground all they possibly could; but the work of destructionwas too great, the multitude of temples and palaces was more than theirstrength was equal to, and the torch fell from their tired hands. Whereas in England excavations are made in order to discover theremains of ancient Latin civilisation, in France we need only raise oureyes to behold them. Could the grave give up a Roman of the time of theCæsars, he would still at this day be able to worship his divineemperors in the temples of Nîmes and Vienne; pass, when entering Reims, Orange, or Saintes under triumphal arches erected by his ancestors; hemight recognise their tombs at the "Aliscamps" of Arles; could see_Antigone_ played at Orange, and seated on the gradines of theamphitheatre, facing the blue horizon of Provence, still behold bloodflowing in the arena. Gaul was not, like Britain, disorganised and deprived of its legionswhen the Germanic hordes appeared; the victor had to reckon with thevanquished; the latter became not a slave but an ally, and thisadvantage, added to that of superior numbers and civilisation, allowedthe Gallo-Roman to reconquer the invader. Latin tradition was sopowerful that it was accepted by Clovis himself. That long-hairedchieftain donned the toga and chlamys; he became a _patrice_; althoughhe knew by experience that he derived his power from his sword, itpleased him to ascribe it to the emperor. He had an instinct of whatRome was. The prestige of the emperor was worth an army to him, andassisted him to rule his latinised subjects. Conquered, pillaged, sacked, and ruined, the Eternal City still remained fruitful within hercrumbling walls. Under the ruins subsisted living seeds, one, amongstothers, most important of all, containing the great Roman idea, thenotion of the State. The Celts hardly grasped it, the Germans only at alate period. Clovis, barbarian though he was, became imbued with it. Heendeavoured to mould his subjects, Franks, Gallo-Romans, and Visigoths, so as to form a State, and in spite of the disasters that followed, hisefforts were not without some durable results. In France the vanquished taught the victors their language; thegrandsons of Clovis wrote Latin verses; and it is owing to poems writtenin a Romance idiom that Karl the Frank became the "Charlemagne" oflegend and history; so that at last the new empire founded in Gaul hadnothing Germanic save the name. The name, however, has survived, and isthe name of France. Thus, and not by an impossible massacre, can be explained the differentresults of the invasions in France and England. In both countries, butless abundantly in the latter, the Celtic race has been perpetuated, andthe veil which covers it to-day, a Latin or Germanic tissue, is neitherso close nor so thick that we cannot distinguish through its folds theforms of British or Gaulish genius; a very special and easilyrecognisable genius, very different from that of the ancients, anddiffering still more from that of the Teutonic invaders. FOOTNOTES: [26] "De Moribus Germanorum, " b. Ii. Chap. Xlv. [27] "Agricola, " xxi. [28] "Vita omnis in venationibus atque in studiis rei militarisconstitit; ab parvulis labori ac duritiei student. " "De Bello Gallico, "book vi. [29] "Saxones, sicut omnes fere Germaniam incolentes nationes, et naturaferoces et cultui dæmonum dediti. " Eginhard, "Vita Karoli, " vii. [30] The arms of the Franks and those of the Anglo-Saxons, the formerpreserved in the Museum of St. Germain, and the latter in the BritishMuseum, are similar, and differ widely from those of the Celts. Theshields, a part of the equipment, which among all nations are foundhighly ornamented, were equally plain with the Franks and Angles; the_umbo_ or boss in the centre was, in those of both nations, of iron, andshaped like a rude dish-cover, which has often caused them to becatalogued as helmets or military head-pieces. [31] "Innumerabiles et ferocissimæ nationes universas Galliasoccuparunt. . . . Quis hoc crederet?. . . Romam in gremio suo non pro gloria, sed pro salute pugnare? Imo ne pugnare quidem, sed auro et cunctasupellectile vitam redimere. " Epistola cxxiii. Ad Ageruchiam, in the"Patrologia" of Migne, vol. Xxii. , col. 1057-8. [32] This ship was discovered in 1863 in a peat bog of Schleswig; thatis in the very country of the Angles; judging by the coins found at thesame time, it must belong to the third century. It measures 22 metres 67centimetres in length, 3 metres, 33 centim. In breadth, and 1 metre 19centim. In height. Specimens of Scandinavian ships have also beendiscovered. When a chief died his ship was buried with him, as hischariot or horse was in other countries. A description of a Scandinavianfuneral (the chief placed on his boat, with his arms, and burnt, together with a woman and some animals killed for the occasion) has beenhanded down to us in the narrative of the Arab Ahmed Ibn Fozlan, sent bythe caliph Al Moktader, in the tenth century, as ambassador to aScandinavian king established on the banks of the Volga (_JournalAsiatique_, 1825, vol. Vi. Pp. 16 ff. ). In some cases there was aninterment but no incineration, and thus it is that Norse ships have beenfound. Two of these precious relics are preserved in the museum ofChristiania. One of them, discovered in 1880, constructed out of oakenplanks held together by iron nails, still retained several of its oars;they were about seven yards long, and must have been thirty-two, sixteenon each side. This measurement seems to have been normal, for the"Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" says that Alfred had ships built twice the sizeof ordinary ships, and gave them "sixty oars or more" (_sub anno_ 897). A ship constructed on the exact model of the Scandinavian barks wentfrom Bergen to New York at the time of the Chicago Exhibition, 1893. Itwas found to be perfectly seaworthy, even in rough weather. [33] It may be added in favour of this same word that it is difficult toreplace it by another as clear and convenient. Some have proposed "OldEnglish, " an expression considered as having the advantage of betterrepresenting the continuity of the national history, and marking lessconspicuously the break occasioned by the Norman Conquest. "Anglo-Saxon"before the Conquest, "English" after, implies a radical change, a sortof renovation in the people of England. It is added, too, that thispeople already bore in the days of King Alfred the name of English. Butbesides the above-mentioned reasons, it may be pointed out that thisbreak and this renovation are historical facts. In language, forexample, the changes have been such that, as it has been justlyobserved, classical English resembles Anglo-Saxon less than the Italianof to-day resembles Latin. Still it would not be considered wise on thepart of the Italians to give the name of "Old Italians" to their Romanancestors, though they spoke a similar language, were of the same blood, lived in the same land, and called it by the same name. As for Alfred, he calls himself sometimes king of the Saxons "rex Saxonum, " sometimesking of the Angles, sometimes king of the Anglo-Saxons: "Ægo Aelfredus, gratia Dei, Angol Saxonum rex. " Æthelstan again calls himself "rexAngul-Saxonum" (Kemble, "Codex" ii. P. 124; Grein, "Anglia, " i. P. 1; deGray Birch, "Cartularium Saxonicum, " 1885, ii. P. 333). They never callthemselves, as may be believed, "Old English. " The word, besides, is notof an easy use. In a recent work one of the greatest historians of ourday, Mr. Freeman, spoke of people who were "men of old English birth";evidently it would have been simpler and clearer to call themAnglo-Saxons. [34] "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, " Rolls, _sub anno_ 491. [35] "De Moribus Germanorum, " xv. , xxvi. [36] Names of villages recalling German clans or families are verynumerous on the eastern and southern coasts. "They diminish rapidly aswe move inland, and they die away altogether as we approach the purelyCeltic west. Fourteen hundred such names have been counted, of which 48occur in Northumberland, 127 in Yorkshire, 76 in Lincolnshire, 153 inNorfolk and Suffolk, 48 in Essex, 60 in Kent, 86 in Sussex and Surrey, only 2 are found in Cornwall, 6 in Cumberland, 24 in Devon, 13 inWorcester, 2 in Westmoreland, and none in Monmouth. " Grant Allen, "Anglo-Saxon Britain" (S. P. C. K. ), p. 43. [37] Ammianus Marcellinus: "Ipsa oppida, ut circumdata retiis bustadeclinant"; in reference to the Franks and Alemanni, "Rerum Gestarum, "lib. Xvi. , cap. Ii. Tacitus says the same thing for the whole of theGermans: "Nullas Germanorum populis urbes habitari, satis notum est. . . . Colunt discreti ac diversi, ut fons, ut campus, ut nemus placuit. Vicoslocant, non in nostrum morem, connexis et cohærentibus ædificiis: suamquisque domum spatio circumdat. " "De Moribus Germanorum, " xvi. [38] It seems impossible to admit, as has been suggested, that thesefrail objects should have been saved from the plunder and burning of thevillas and preserved by the Anglo-Saxons as _curiosities_. Glasses withknobs, "_à larmes_, " abound in the Anglo-Saxon tombs, and similar oneshave been found in the Roman tombs of an earlier epoch, notably atLépine, in the department of the Marne. [39] Where the Celtic element was reinforced, at the commencement of thesixth century, by a considerable immigration of Britons driven fromEngland. Hence the name of Bretagne, given then for the first time toArmorica. CHAPTER III. _THE NATIONAL POETRY OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS. _ I. Towards the close of the fifth century, the greater part of England wasconquered; the rulers of the land were no longer Celts or Romans, butmen of Germanic origin, who worshipped Thor and Woden instead of Christ, and whose language, customs, and religion differed entirely from thoseof the people they had settled amongst and subjugated. The force of circumstances produced a fusion of the two races, butduring many centuries no literary fusion took place. The mind of theinvader was not actuated by curiosity; he intrenched himself in histastes, content with his own literature. "Each one, " wrote Tacitus ofthe Germans, "leaves an open space around his dwelling. " TheAnglo-Saxons remained in literature a people of isolated dwellings. Theydid not allow the traditions of the vanquished Celts to blend withtheirs, and, in spite of their conversion to Christianity, theypreserved, almost without change, the main characteristics of the racefrom which they were descended. Their vocabulary, save for the introduction of a few words, taken fromthe Church Latin, their grammar, their prosody, all remain Germanic. Intheir verse the cadence is marked, not by an equal number of syllables, but by about the same number of accents; they have not the recurringsounds of rhyme, but they have, like the Germans and Scandinavians, _alliteration_, that is, the repetition of the same letters at thebeginning of certain syllables. "Each long verse has four accentedsyllables, while the number of unaccented syllables is indifferent, andis divided by the cæsura into two short verses, bound together byalliteration: two accented syllables in the first short line and one inthe second, beginning with any vowel or the same consonant"[40] (orconsonants giving about the same sound): _F_lod under _f_oldan · nis thät _f_eor heonon. "The water sinks underground; it is not far from here. " (_Beowulf. _) Therules of this prosody, not very difficult in themselves, are made stilleasier by a number of licenses and exceptions. The taste foralliteration was destined to survive; it has never completelydisappeared in England. We find this ornamentation even in the Latin ofpoets posterior to the Norman Conquest, like Joseph of Exeter in thetwelfth century: _Au_dit et _au_det Dux _f_alli: _f_atisque _f_avet quum _f_ata recuset. [41] The famous Visions of Langland, in the fourteenth century, are inalliterative verse; under Elizabeth alliteration became one of thepeculiarities of the florid prose called Euphuism. Nearer to our owntime, Byron makes a frequent use of alliteration: Our bay Receives that prow which proudly spurns the spray; How gloriously her gallant course she goes: Her white wings flying--never from her foes. (_Corsair. _) The purely Germanic period of the literary history of England lasted sixhundred years, that is, for about the same length of time as divides usfrom the reign of Henry III. Rarely has a literature been moreconsistent with itself than the literature of the Anglo-Saxons. Theywere not as the Celts, quick to learn; they had not the curiosity, loquacity, taste for art which were found in the subjugated race. Theydeveloped slowly. Those steady qualities which were to save theAnglo-Saxon genius from the absolute destruction which threatened it atthe time of the Norman Conquest resulted in the production of literaryworks evincing, one and all, such a similitude in tastes, tendencies, and feelings that it is extremely difficult to date and localise them. At the furthest end of the period, the Anglo-Saxons continued to enjoy, Christian as they were, and in more and more intimate contact withlatinised races, legends and traditions going back to the pagan days, nay, to the days of their continental life by the shores of the Baltic. Late manuscripts have preserved for us their oldest conceptions, bywhich is shown the continuity of taste for them. The early pagancharacter of some of the poetry in "Beowulf, " in "Widsith, " in the"Lament of Deor, " is undoubted; still those poems continued to be copiedup to the last century of the Anglo-Saxon rule; it is, in fact, only inmanuscripts of that date that we have them. An immense amount of labour, ingenuity, and knowledge has been spent on questions of date and place, but the difficulty is such, and that literature forms such a compactwhole, that the best and highest authorities have come on all points tocontrary conclusions. The very greatness of their labour and amplitudeof their science happens thus to be the best proof of the singularcohesion between the various produce of the Anglo-Saxon mind. Of all thepoets of the period, the one who had the strongest individuality, aswell as the greatest genius, one whom we know by name, Cynewulf, theonly one whose works are authentic, being signed, who thus offered thebest chance to critics, has caused as many disagreements among them asany stray leaf of parchment in the whole collection of Anglo-Saxonpoetry. According to Ten Brink he was born between 720 and 730;according to Earle he more probably lived in the eleventh century, atthe other end of the period. [42] One authority sees in his works thecharacteristics of the poetry of Northumbria, another inclines towardsMercia. All possible dates have been assigned to the beautiful poem of"Judith, " from the seventh to the tenth century. "Beowulf" was writtenin Northumbria according to Stopford Brooke, in Mercia according toEarle, in Wessex according to Ten Brink. The attribution of "Andreas" toCynewulf has just been renewed by Gollancz, and denied by Fritzsche. "Dream of the Rood" follows similar fluctuations. The truth is thatwhile there were doubtless movement and development in Anglo-Saxonpoetry, as in all human things, they were very slow and difficult tomeasure. When material facts and landmarks are discovered, still it willremain true that till then authorities, judging poems on their ownmerits, could not agree as to their classification, so little apparentwas the movement they represent. Anglo-Saxon poetry is like the riverSaone; one doubts which way it flows. Let us therefore take this literature as a whole, and confess that thedivision here adopted, of national and worldly and of religiousliterature, is arbitrary, and is merely used for the sake ofconvenience. Religious and worldly, northern and southern literatureoverlap; but they most decidedly belong to the same Anglo-Saxon whole. This whole has strong characteristics of its own, a force, a passion, agrandeur, unexampled at that day. Contrary to what is found in Celticliterature, there is no place in the monuments of Anglo-Saxon thoughtfor either light gaiety, or those shades of feeling which the Celtscould already express at that remote period. The new settlers arestrong, but not agile. Of the two master passions attributed by Cato tothe inhabitants of Gaul, one alone, the love of war, _rem militarem_, isshared by the dwellers on the shores of the northern ocean; the other, _argute loqui_, is unknown to them. Members of the same family of nations established by the shores of theNorth Sea, as the classic nations were on the Mediterranean coasts inthe time of the emperors, the Anglo-Saxon, the German, and theScandinavian tribes spoke dialects of the same tongue, preserved commontraditions and the memory of an identical origin. Grein has collected inhis "Anglo-Saxon Library" all that remains of the ancient literature ofEngland; Powell and Vigfusson have comprised in their "Corpus PoeticumBoreale" all we possess in the way of poems in the Scandinavian tongue, formerly composed in Denmark, Norway, the Orkneys, Iceland, and evenGreenland, within the Arctic circle. [43] The resemblances between thetwo collections are striking, the differences are few. In both seriesit seems as if the same people were revealing its origins, and leadingits heroes to Walhalla. [44] The Anglo-Saxon tale of Beowulf and theScandinavian saga of Gretti, the Anglo-Saxon story of Waldhere and theScandinavian and Germanic tale of the Niblungs and Volsungs, [45] turn onthe same incidents or are dedicated to the same heroes, represent asimilar ideal of life, similar manners, the same race. They are all ofthem part of the literary patrimony common to the men of the North. As happened with the Celts, the greater number of the monuments ofancient Germanic and Scandinavian literature has been preserved in theremotest of the countries where the race established itself; distancehaving better sheltered it from wars, the songs and manuscripts weremore easily saved from destruction. Most of the Celtic tales extant atthis day have been preserved in Ireland; and most of the piecescollected in the "Corpus Poeticum Boreale" have been taken fromIcelandic documents. Manners and beliefs of the northern people are abundantly illustrated bythe poems included in this collection. We find ourselves amid giants anddwarfs, monsters, dragons, unconquerable heroes, bloody battles, gloomyomens, magic spells, and enchanted treasures. The poet leads us throughhalls with ornamented seats, on which warriors spend long hours indrinking; to pits full of serpents into which the vanquished are thrown;in the midst of dismal landscapes where gibbeted corpses swing in thewind; to mysterious islands where whirlwinds of flame shoot from thetombs, and where the heroine arrives on her ships, her "ocean steeds, "to evoke the paternal shade, behold once more the beloved being in themidst of infernal fires, and receive from his hands the enchanted andavenging sword. Armed Valkyrias cross the sky; ravens comment on theactions of men; the tone is sad and doleful, sometimes so curt andabrupt that, in order to follow the poet's fantastic imaginations, amarginal commentary would be necessary, as for the "Ancient Mariner" ofColeridge, in whom lives again something of the spirit of thisliterature. Scenes of slaughter and torture abound of course, as they do with allprimitive nations; the victims laugh in the midst of their sufferings;they sing their death-song. Sigfried roasts the heart of his adversary, Fafni, the man-serpent, and eats it. Eormunrek's feet and hands are cutoff and thrown into the fire before his eyes. Skirni, in order to winGerda's love for his master, heaps curses upon her, threatens to cut offher head, and by these means succeeds in his embassy. [46] Gunnar, wanting to keep for himself the secret of the Niblungen treasure, asksfor the heart of his own brother, Hogni: "Hogni's bleeding heart must be laid in my hand, carved with thekeen-cutting knife out of the breast of the good knight. "They carved the heart of Hialli (the thrall) from out his breast, andlaid it bleeding on a charger, and bore it to Gunnar. "Then spake Gunnar, king of men: 'Here I have the heart of Hialli thecoward, unlike the heart of Hogni the brave. It quakes greatly as itlies on the charger, but it quaked twice as much when it lay in hisbreast. ' "Hogni laughed when they cut out the quick heart of that crested hero;he had little thought of whimpering. They laid it bleeding on thecharger and bore it before Gunnar. "Then spake Gunnar, the Hniflungs' hero: 'Here I have the heart of Hognithe brave, unlike the heart of Hialli the coward; it quakes very littleas it lies on the charger, but it quaked much less when it lay in hisbreast. '" Justice being thus done to his brother, and feeling no regret, Gunnar'sjoy breaks forth; he alone now possesses the secret of the Niblungen(Hniflungs') treasure, and "the great rings shall gleam in the rollingwaters rather than they shall shine on the hands of the sons of theHuns. "[47] From this example, and from others which it would be easy to add, it canbe inferred that _nuances_ and refined sentiments escape thecomprehension of such heroes; they waste no time in describing things ofbeauty; they care not if earth brings forth flowers, or if women havecheeks "purple as the fox-glove. " Neither have these men any aptitudefor light repartee; they do not play, they kill; their jests fell theadversary to the ground. "Thou hast eaten the fresh-bleeding hearts ofthy sons, mixed with honey, thou giver of swords, " says Queen Gudrun toAttila, the historic king of the Huns, who, in this literature, hasbecome the typical foreign hero; "now thou shalt digest the gory fleshof man, thou stern king, having eaten of it as a dainty morsel, and sentit as a mess to thy friends. " Such is the kind of jokes they enjoy; thepoet describes the speech of the Queen as "a word of mockery. "[48] Theexchange of mocking words between Loki and the gods is of the same orderas Gudrun's speech. Cowards! cries Loki to the gods; Prostitutes! crieshe to the goddesses; Drunkard! is the reply of both. There is noquestion here of _argute loqui_. Violent in their speech, cruel in their actions, [49] they love all thatis fantastic, prodigious, colossal; and this tendency appears even inthe writings where they wish to amuse; it is still more marked therethan in the ancient Celtic tales. Thor and the giant go a-fishing, thegiant puts two hooks on his line and catches two whales at once. Thorbaits his hook with an ox's head and draws out the great serpent whichencircles the earth. [50] Their violence and energy spend their force, and then the man, quiteanother man it would seem, veers round; the once dauntless hero is nowdaunted by shadows, by thoughts, by nothing. Those strong beings, wholaugh when their hearts are cut out alive, are the prey of vaguethoughts. Already in that far-off time their world, which appears to usso young, seemed old to them. They were acquainted with causelessregrets, vain sorrows, and disgust of life. No literature has produced agreater number of disconsolate poems. Mournful songs abound in the"Corpus Poeticum" of the North. II. With beliefs, traditions, and ideas of the same sort, the Anglo-Saxonshad landed in Britain and settled there. [51] Established in their"isolated dwellings, " if they leave them it is for action; if theyre-enter them it is for solitary reverie, or sometimes for orgies. Themain part of their original literature, like that of their brothers andcousins on the Continent, consists of triumphal songs and heartrendinglaments. It is contemplative and warlike. [52] They have to fight against their neighbours, or against their kin fromover the sea, who in their turn wish to seize upon the island. Thewar-song remains persistently in favour with them, and preserves, almostintact, its characteristics of haughty pride and ferocity. Its cruelaccents recur even in the pious poems written after the conversion, andin the middle of the monotonous tale told by the national annalist. TheAnglo-Saxon monk who draws up in his cell the chronicle of the events ofthe year, feels his heart beat at the thought of a great victory, and inthe midst of the placid prose which serves to register eclipses of themoon and murders of kings, he suddenly inserts the bounding verse of anenthusiastic war-song: "This year, King Æthelstan, lord of earls, ring-giver of warriors, andhis brother eke Edmund Ætheling, life-long glory in battle won atBrunanburh. . . . The foes lay low, the Scots people and the shipmandeath-doomed fell. The field streamed with warriors' blood what time thesun up, at morning-tide the glorious star, glided o'er grounds, God'scandle bright the eternal Lord's, until the noble creature sank to itssetting. " The poet describes the enemy's defeat and flight, the slaughter thatensues, and with cries of joy calls upon the flocks of wild birds, the"swart raven with horned neb, " and "him of goodly coat, the eagle, " andthe "greedy war hawk, " to come and share the carcases. Never was sosplendid a slaughter seen, "from what books tell us, old chroniclers, since hither from the east Angles and Saxons ('Engle and Seaxe'), cameto land, o'er the broad seas, Britain ('Brytene') sought, proudwar-smiths, the Welsh ('Wealas') o'ercame, men for glory eager, thecountry gain'd. "[53] The writer's heart swells with delight at the thought of so manycorpses, of so great a carnage and so much gore; he is happy andtriumphant, he dwells complacently on the sight, as poets of another dayand country would dwell on the thought of paths "where the wind sweptroses" (où le vent balaya des roses). These strong men lend themselves willingly, as do their kin over thesea, to the ebb and flow of powerful contrary feelings, and rush bodyand soul from the extreme of joy to the acme of sorrow. The mild_sérénité_, enjoyed by men with classical tendencies was to themunknown, and the word was one which no Norman Conquest, no Angevin rule, no "Augustan" imitation, could force into the language; it was unwanted, for the thing was unknown. But they listen with unabated pleasure, latein the period, to the story of heroic deeds performed on the Continentby men of their own race, whose mind was shaped like theirs, and whofelt the same feelings. The same blood and soul sympathy which animatesthem towards their own King Æthelstan, lord of earls, ring-giver ofwarriors--not a myth that one, not a fable his deeds--warms the songsthey devote to King Waldhere of Aquitaine, to the Scandinavian warriorBeowulf, and to others, probably, who belonged to the same Germanicstock. Not a word of England or the Angles is said in those poems; stillthey were popular in England. The Waldhere song, of which some sixtylines have been preserved, on two vellum leaves discovered in thebinding of an old book, told the story of the hero's flight fromAttila's Court with his bride Hildgund and a treasure (treasures play agreat part in those epics), and of his successive fights with Guntherand Hagen while crossing the Vosges. These warriors, after this oneappearance, vanish altogether from English literature, but theirliterary life was continued on the Continent; their fate was told inLatin in the tenth century by a monk of St. Gall, and again they had apart to play in the German "Nibelungenlied. " Beowulf, on the contrary, Scandinavian as he was, is known only through the Anglo-Saxon poet. In"Beowulf, " as in "Waldhere, " feelings, speeches, manners, ideal of lifeare the same as with the heroes of the "Corpus Poeticum Boreale. " Thewhole obviously belongs to the same group of nations. [54] The strange poem of "Beowulf, "[55] the most important monument ofAnglo-Saxon literature, was discovered at the end of the last century, in a manuscript written about the year 1000, [56] and is now preserved inthe British Museum. Few works have been more discussed; it has been thecause of literary wars, in which the learned men of England, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, France, and America have taken part; and peace is notyet signed. This poem, like the old Celtic tales, is a medley of pagan legends, which did not originally concern Beowulf in particular, [57] and ofhistorical facts, the various parts, after a separate literary life, having been put together, perhaps in the eighth century, perhaps later, by an Anglo-Saxon Christian, who added new discrepancies in trying toadapt the old tale to the faith of his day. No need to expatiate on theincoherence of a poem formed of such elements. Its heroes are at oncepagan and Christian; they believe in Christ and in Weland; they fightagainst the monsters of Scandinavian mythology, and see in them thedescendants of Cain; historical facts, such as a battle of the sixthcentury, mentioned by Gregory of Tours, where the victory remained tothe Frankish ancestor, [58] are mixed up with tales of fantastic duelsbelow the waves. According to a legend partly reproduced in the poem, the Danes had nochief. They beheld one day a small ship on the sea, and in it a child, and with him one of those ever-recurring treasures. They saw in thismysterious gift a sign from above, and took the child for their ruler;"and he was a good king. " When that king, Scyld, died, they placed himonce more on a bark with treasures, and the waters bore him away, no oneever knew whither. One of his successors, Hrothgar, [59] who held his court, like the Danishkings of to-day, in the isle of Seeland, built in his old age a splendidhall, Heorot, wherein to feast his warriors and distribute rings amongthem. They drank merrily there, while the singer sang "from far-off agesthe origin of men. " But there was a monster named Grendel, who lived inthe darkness of lonely morasses. He "bore impatiently for a season tohear each day joyous revelry loud-sounding in the hall, where was themusic of the harp, and the clear piercing song" of the "scôp. " Whennight came, the fiend "went to visit the grand house, to see how theRing-Danes after the beer-drinking had settled themselves in it. Thenfound he therein a crowd of nobles (æthelinga) asleep after the feast;they knew no care. "[60] Grendel removed thirty of them to his lair, andthey were killed by "that dark pest of men, that mischief-workingbeing, grim and greedy, savage and fierce. " Grendel came again and"wrought a yet worse deed of murder. " The thanes ceased to care much forthe music and glee of Heorot. "He that escaped from that enemy kepthimself ever afterwards far off in greater watchfulness. " Higelac, king of the Geatas (who the Geatas were is doubtful; perhapsGoths of Gothland in Sweden, perhaps Jutes of Jutland[61]), had anephew, Beowulf, son of Ecgtheow, of the royal Swedish blood, who heardof the scourge. Beowulf went with his companions on board a ship; "thefoamy-necked cruiser, hurried on by the wind, flew over the sea, mostlike to a bird, " and followed "the path of the swans. " For the North Seais the path of the swans as well as of the whales, and the wild swanabounds to this day on the coasts of Norway. [62] Beowulf landed on theDanish shore, and proposed to Hrothgar to rid him of the monster. Hrothgar does not conceal from his guests the terrible danger they arerunning: "Often have boasted the sons of battle, drunken with beer, overtheir cups of ale, that they would await in the beer-hall, with theirdeadly sharp-edged swords, the onset of Grendel. Then in the morning, when the daylight came, this mead-hall, this lordly chamber, was stainedwith gore, all the bench-floor drenched in blood, the hall incarnage. . . . " The Geatas persist in their undertaking, and they arefeasted by their host: "Then was a bench cleared for the sons of theGeatas, to sit close together in the beer-hall; there the stout-heartedones went and sat, exulting clamorously. A thane attended to theirwants, who carried in his hands a chased ale-flagon, and poured thepure bright liquor. " Night falls; the Geat and his companions remain in the hall and "bowthemselves to repose. " Grendel the "night walker came prowling in thegloom of night . . . From his eyes there issued a hideous light, most liketo fire. In the hall he saw many warriors, a kindred band, sleeping alltogether, a group of clansmen. Then he laughed in his heart. " He did nottarry, but seized one of the sleepers, "tore him irresistibly, bit hisflesh, drank the blood from his veins, swallowed him by large morsels;soon had he devoured all the corpse but the feet and hands. " He thenfinds himself confronted by Beowulf. The fight begins under the soundingroof, the gilded seats are overthrown, and it was a wonder the hallitself did not fall in; but it was "made fast with iron bands. " At lastGrendel's arm is wrenched off, and he flees towards his morasses to die. While Beowulf, loaded with treasure, returns to his own country, anotherscourge appears. The mother of Grendel wishes to avenge him, and, duringthe night, seizes and eats Hrothgar's favourite warrior. Beowulf comesback and reaches the cave of the fiends under the waters; the fight isan awful one, and the hero was about to succumb, when he caught sight ofan enormous sword forged by the giants. With it he slays the foe; andalso cuts off the head of Grendel, whose body lay there lifeless. At thecontact of this poisonous blood the blade melts entirely, "just likeice, when the Father looseneth the bonds of frost, unwindeth the ropesthat bind the waves. " Later, after having taken part in the historic battle fought against theFranks, in which his uncle Higelac was killed, Beowulf becomes king, andreigns fifty years. In his old age, he has to fight for the last time, amonster, "a fierce Fire-drake, " that held a treasure. He is victorious;but sits down wounded on a stone, feeling that he is about to die. "Nowgo thou quickly, dear Wiglaf, " he says to the only one of his companionswho had come to his rescue, "to spy out the hoard under the hoar rock;. . . Make haste now that I may examine the ancient wealth, the goldenstore, may closely survey the brilliant cunningly-wrought gems, that soI may the more tranquilly, after seeing the treasured wealth, quit mylife, and my country, which I have governed long. " Bowls and dishes, asword "shot with brass, " a standard "all gilded, . . . Locked by strongspells, " from which issued "a ray of light, " are brought to him. Heenjoys the sight; and here, out of love for his hero, the Christiancompiler of the story, after having allowed him to satisfy so much ofhis heathen tastes, prepares him for heaven, and makes him utter wordsof gratitude to "the Lord of all, the King of glory, the eternal Lord";which done, Beowulf, a heathen again, is permitted to order for himselfsuch a funeral as the Geatas of old were accustomed to: "Rear a mound, conspicuous after the burning, at the headland which juts into the sea. That shall, to keep my people in mind, tower up on Hrones-ness, thatseafaring men may afterwards call it Beowulf's Mound, they who drivefrom far their roaring vessels over the mists of the floods. " Wiglafvainly tries to revive him with water; and addressing his unworthycompanions, who then only dare to come out of the wood, expresses gloomyforebodings as to the future of his country: "Now may the people expecta time of strife, as soon as the king's fall shall become widely knownto the Franks and Frisians. . . . To us never after [the quarrel in whichHigelac died] was granted the favour of the Merovingians(_Mere-Wioinga_). Nor do I expect at all any peace or faith from theSwedish people. . . . " The serpent is thrown "over the wall-cliff; they letthe waves take, the flood close upon, the keeper of the treasures. " Amound is built on the hill, "widely visible to seafaring men. . . . Theyplaced on the barrow rings and jewels, . . . They let the earth hold thetreasure of earls, the gold in the sand where it now yet remaineth, asuseless to men as it [formerly] was. "[63] They ride about the mound, recounting in their chants the deeds of the dead: "So mourned the peopleof the Geatas, his hearth-companions, for their lord's fall; said thathe was among world-kings the mildest and the kindest of men, mostgracious to his people and most desirous of praise. " The ideal of a happy life has somewhat changed since the days ofBeowulf. Then, as we see, happiness consisted in the satisfaction ofvery simple and primitive tastes, in fighting well, and after the fighteating and drinking heartily, and listening to songs and music, andafter the music enjoying a sound sleep. The possession of many rings, handsome weapons and treasure, was also indispensable to make upcomplete happiness; so much so that, out of respect towards the chief, some of his rings and jewels were buried with him, "useless to men, " asthe author of "Beowulf" says, not without a touch of regret. Such wasthe existence led by those companions of Hrothgar, who are described asenjoying the happiest of lives before the appearance of Grendel, and who"knew no care. " All that is tender, and would most arouse thesensibility of the sensitive men of to-day, is considered childish, andawakes no echo: "Better it is for every one that he should avenge hisfriend than that he should mourn exceedingly, " says Beowulf; verydifferent from Roland, the hero of France, he too of Germanic origin, but living in a different _milieu_, where his soul has been softened. "When Earl Roland saw that his peers lay dead, and Oliver too, whom heso dearly loved, his heart melted; he began to weep; colour left hisface. " Li cons Rodlanz, quant il veit morz ses pers Ed Olivier qu'il tant podeit amer, Tendror en out, commencet à plorer, En son visage fut molt descolorez. [64] Beowulf crushes all he touches; in his fights he upsets monsters, in histalks he tumbles his interlocutors headlong. His retorts have nothingwinged about them; he does not use the feathered arrow, but the ironhammer. Hunferth taunts him with not having had the best in a swimmingmatch. Beowulf replies by a strong speech, which can be summed up in fewwords: liar, drunkard, coward, murderer! It seems an echo from thebanqueting hall of the Scandinavian gods; in the same manner Loki andthe goddesses played with words. For the assembled warriors ofHrothgar's court Beowulf goes in nowise beyond bounds; they are notindignant, they would rather laugh. So did the gods. Landscape painting in the Anglo-Saxon poems is adapted to men of thisstamp. Their souls delight in the bleak boreal climes, the north wind, frost, hail, ice, howling tempest and raging seas, recur as often inthis literature as blue waves and sunlit blossoms in the writings of mento whom these exquisite marvels are familiar. Their descriptions are allshort, save when they refer to ice or snow, or the surge of the sea. TheAnglo-Saxon poets dwell on such sights complacently; their tongue thenis loosened. In "Beowulf, " the longest and truest description is that ofthe abode of the monsters: "They inhabit the dark land, wolf-hauntedslopes, windy headlands, the rough fen-way, where the mountain stream, under the dark shade of the headlands, runneth down, water under land. It is not far from hence, a mile by measure, that the mere lies; over ithang groves of [rimy] trees, a wood fast-rooted, [and] bend shelteringlyover the water; there every night may [one] see a dire portent, fire onthe flood. No one of the sons of men is so experienced as to know thoselake-depths. Though the heath-ranging hart, with strong horns, pressedhard by the hounds, seek that wooded holt, hunted from far, he willsooner give up his life, his last breath on the bank, before he will[hide] his head therein. It is not a holy place. Thence the turbid waveriseth up dark-hued to the clouds, when the wind stirreth up foulweather, until the air grows gloomy, the heavens weep. " The same unchanging genius manifests itself in the national epic, in theshorter songs, and even in the prose chronicles of the Anglo-Saxons. Totheir excessive enthusiasms succeed periods of complete depression;their orgies are followed by despair; they sacrifice their life inbattle without a frown, and yet, when the hour for thought has come, they are harassed by the idea of death. Their national religion foresawthe end of the world and of all things, and of the gods even. Listen, once more, to the well-known words of one of them: "Human life reminds me of the gatherings thou holdest with thycompanions in winter, around the fire lighted in the middle of the hall. It is warm in the hall, and outside howls the tempest with itswhirlwinds of rain and snow. Let a sparrow enter by one door, and, crossing the hall, escape by another. While he passes through, he issheltered from the wintry storm; but this moment of peace is brief. Emerging from the cold, in an instant he disappears from sight, andreturns to the cold again. Such is the life of man; we behold it for ashort time, but what has preceded and what is to follow, we knownot. . . . "[65] Would not Hamlet have spoken thus, or Claudio? Ay, to die and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction. . . . Thus spoke, nine centuries before them, an Anglo-Saxon chief who hadarisen in the council of King Eduini and advised him, according to Bede, to adopt the religion of the monks from Rome, because it solved thefearful problem. In spite of years and change, this anxiety did not dieout; it was felt by the Puritans, and Bunyan, and Dr. Johnson, and thepoet Cowper. Another view of the problem was held by races imbued with classicalideas, the French and others; classical equanimity influenced them. Letus not poison our lives by the idea of death, they used to think, atleast before this century; there is a time for all things, and it willbe enough to remember death when its hour strikes. "Mademoiselle, " saidLa Mousse to the future Madame de Grignan, too careful of her beautifulhands, "all that will decay. " "Yes, but it is not decayed yet, " answeredMademoiselle de Sévigné, summing up in a single word the philosophy ofmany French lives. We will sorrow to-morrow, if need be, and even then, if possible, without darkening our neighbours' day with any grief ofours. Let us retire from life, as from a drawing-room, discreetly, "asfrom a banquet, " said La Fontaine. [66] And this good grace, which is notindifference, but which little resembles the anguish and enthusiasms ofthe North, is also in its way the mark of strong minds. For they werenot made of insignificant beings, those generations who went to battleand left the world without a sneer or a tear; with ribbons on theshoulder and a smile on the lips. [67] Examples of Anglo-Saxon poems, either dreamy or warlike, could easily bemultiplied. We have the lamentations of the man without a country, ofthe friendless wanderer, of the forlorn wife, of the patronless singer, of the wave-tossed mariner; and these laments are always associated withthe grand Northern landscapes of which little had been made in ancientliteratures: "That the man knows not, to whom on land all falls out most joyfully, how I, miserable and sad on the ice-cold sea, a winter pass'd, withexile traces . . . Of dear kindred bereft, hung o'er with icicles, thehail in showers flew; where I heard nought save the sea roaring, theice-cold wave. At times the swan's song I made to me for pastime . . . Night's shadow darken'd, from the north it snow'd, frost bound the land, hail fell on the earth, coldest of grain. . . . " Or, in another song:"Then wakes again the friendless mortal, sees before him fallow ways, ocean fowls bathing, spreading their wings, rime and snow descendingwith hail mingled; then are the heavier his wounds of heart. "[68] There are descriptions of dawn in new and unexpected terms: "The guestslept within until the black raven, blithe-hearted, gave warning of thecoming of the heaven's joy, the bright sun, and of robbers fleeingaway. "[69] Never did the terraces of Rome, the peristyles of Athens, thebalconies of Verona, see mornings dawn like unto these, to the raven'smerry shriek. The sea of the Anglo-Saxons is not the Mediterranean, washing with its blue waves the marble walls of villas; it is the NorthSea, with its grey billows, bordered by barren shores and chalky cliffs. FOOTNOTES: [40] H. Sweet, "Sketch of the History of Anglo-Saxon poetry, " inHazlitt's Warton, ii. P. 3. [41] "De Bello Trojano, " iii. , line 108. Rhyme, however, commenced toappear in a few Christian poems of the end of the Anglo-Saxon period. Onthe use, rather rare, of alliteration in old French, which neverthelesshas been preserved in several current expressions, such as "gros etgras, " "bel et bon, " &c. , see Paul Meyer, "Romania, " vol. Xi. P. 572:"De l'allitération en Roman de France. " [42] "His date has been variously estimated from the eighth to theeleventh century. The latter is the more probable. " Earle, "Anglo-SaxonLiterature, " 1884, p. 228. [43] Grein, "Bibliothek der Angelsächsischen Poesie, " ed. Wülker;Cassel, 1883 ff. , 8vo; "Corpus Poeticum Boreale, The poetry of the oldnorthern tongue, from the earliest to the XIIIth Century, " edited andtranslated by G. Vigfusson and F. York Powell, Oxford, 1883, 2 vols. 8vo; vol. I. , Eddic poetry; vol. Ii. , Court poetry. Other importantmonuments of Scandinavian literature are found in the followingcollections: "Edda Snorri, " Ion Sigurdsson, Copenhagen, 1848, 2 vols. ;"Norroen Fornkvædi, " ed. S. Bugge, Christiania, 1867, 8vo. (contains thecollection usually called Edda Sæmundi); "Icelandic Sagas, " ed. Vigfusson, London, 1887, 2 vols. 8vo (collection of the "Master of theRolls"; contains, vol. I. , "Orkneinga Saga" and "Magnus Saga"; vol. Ii. , "Hakonar Saga"); "Sturlunga Saga, " including the "Islendiga Saga ofLawman Thordsson, and other works, " ed. Vigfusson, Oxford, 1878, 2 vols. 8vo; "Heimskringla Saga, or the Sagas of the Norse Kings, from theIcelandic of Snorre Sturlason, " ed. S. Laing, second edition, revised byR. B. Anderson, London, 1889, 4 vols. 8vo. The two Eddas and theprincipal Sagas will be comprised in the "Saga Library, " founded in 1890by W. Morris and Eirikr Magnusson (Quaritch, London). _Edda_ meansgreat-grandmother; the prose Edda is a collection of narratives of thetwelfth century, retouched by Snorri in the thirteenth; the Edda inverse is a collection of poems of various dates that go back in part tothe eighth and ninth centuries. _Saga_ means a narrative; the Sagas arenarratives in prose of an epic character; they flourished especially inthe twelfth and thirteenth centuries. [44] The Anglo-Saxon and the Scandinavian collections both contain thesame kind of poems, and especially epic poems, elegies and laments, moral poems, war songs, aphorisms, riddles, some of which continue topuzzle the wisest of our day. [45] The most ancient fragments of this epic are found in the _Edda_ inverse; a complete version exists in Icelandic prose ("Volsunga Saga") ofthe twelfth century; the German version ("Nibelungenlied") is of the endof the same century. [46] "Lay of Skirni. "--"Corpus Poeticum, " i. P. 114. [47] "Alta-Kvida. "--"Corpus Poeticum, " i. P. 48. This is one of the mostancient poems in the collection. [48] "Alta-Kvida. "--"Corpus Poeticum, " i. P. 51. [49] A single example will be as good as many: "One of the Vikingleaders got the nickname of Börn (Child) because he had been sotender-hearted as to try and stop the sport of his followers, who weretossing young children in the air and catching them upon their spears. No doubt his men laughed not unkindly at this fancy of his, and gave himthe nickname above mentioned. " C. F. Keary, "The Vikings in WesternChristendom, " 789-888, London, 1891, 8vo, p. 145. [50] "Hymis-Kvida. "--"Corpus Poeticum, " i. P. 222. [51] The most valuable monuments of Anglo-Saxon literature and art arecontained in the following MSS. : I. _Poetry. _--MS. Of "Beowulf, " preserved in the British Museum, Cotton. Vitell. A. Xv. , written towards the end of the tenth or beginning of theeleventh century. It contains also the fine poem of "Judith, " &c. A fragment of a poem on Waldhere, preserved in the Copenhagen Library. The Exeter MS. , "Codex Exoniensis, " written in the tenth or eleventhcentury and given, in 1046, by Leofric, first bishop of Exeter, to thecathedral library of this town, where it is still preserved. It containsa variety of poetic pieces (Christ, St. Guthlac, Phenix, Wanderer, Seafarer, Widsith, Panther, Whale, Deor, Ruin, Riddles, &c. ). The "Codex Vercellensis, " preserved at Vercelli in Lombardy, containing:Andreas, The Departed Soul's Address to the Body, Dream of the HolyRood, Elene, &c. , written in the eleventh century. The Bodleian MS. , Junius xi. , containing a poetical version of part ofthe Bible, some of which is attributed to Cædmon, written in the tenthcentury. The Paris Anglo-Saxon Psalter (Bibliothèque Nationale, Lat. 8824), written in the eleventh century, 50 psalms in prose, 100 in verse. II. _Prose. _--The Epinal MS. Containing an Anglo-Saxon glossary (eighthcentury according to Mr. Sweet, ninth according to Mr. Maunde Thompson). The Bodleian MS. , Hatton 20, containing King Alfred's translation of St. Gregory's "Regula Pastoralis" (the copy of Werferth, bishop ofWorcester). The MS. Of the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, " the Winchester text, in thelibrary of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS. Lxxiii. The MSS. Of the homilies of Ælfric and Wulfstan, Junius xxii. And Juniusxcix. , in the Bodleian, and the MS. Of the Blickling homilies (BlicklingHall, Norfolk). III. _Miniatures. _--See especially, the Lindisfarne Gospels, MS. Cotton. Nero, D. Iv. , in the British Museum, eighth-ninth century, in Latin withAnglo-Saxon glosses. Reproductions of these miniatures and otherexamples of the same art are to be found in J. O. Westwood, "Facsimilesof the Miniatures and Ornaments of Anglo-Saxon and Irish MSS. " London, Quaritch, 1868, fol. , and "Palæographia Sacro Pictoria, " London, 1844, fol. See also the fine pen-and-ink drawings in the above-mentioned MS. Junius xi. , in the Bodleian Library. [52] _Cf. _ Tacitus, who says of the Germans: "Celebrant carminibusantiquis (quod unum apud illos memoriæ et annalium genus est). . . . " "DeMoribus, " i. Eginhard in the ninth century notices the same sort ofsongs among the Franks established in Gaul: "Item barbara etantiquissima carmina, quibus veterum regum actus et bellacanebantur. . . . " "Vita Karoli, " cap. Xxix. (ed. Ideler, "Leben und WandelKarl des Grossen, " Hamburg and Gotha, 1839, 2 vols. 8vo, vol. I. P. 89). [53] "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" (Rolls), i. P. 200; ii. P. 86; year 937. The song on the battle of Brunanburh, won by the Anglo-Saxons over theScotch and Danes, has been translated by Tennyson. Other war songs, afew out of a great many, have come down to us, some inserted in theAnglo-Saxon Chronicle (like the song on the death of Byrhtnoth, defeatedand killed by the Danes after a hard fight, at the battle of Maldon, 991), some in separate fragments. Among the more remarkable is the veryold fragment on the "Battle of Finnsburg, " discovered, like the Waldherefragment, in the binding of a book. This battle is alluded to in"Beowulf. " The fragment has been printed by Grein in his "Bibliothek, "vol. I. , and by Harrison and Sharp with their "Beowulf, " Boston, thirded. , 1888. [54] G. Stephens, "Two leaves of King Waldere's lay, " Copenhagen andLondon, 1860, 8vo; R. Peiper, "Ekkehardi primi Waltharius, " Berlin, 1873, 8vo. [55] "Autotypes of the unique Cotton MS. Vitellius, A. Xv. In theBritish Museum, " with transliteration and notes, by J. Zupitza, EarlyEnglish Text Society, 1882, 8vo. "Beowulf" (Heyne's text), ed. Harrisonand Sharp, Boston, third ed. 1888, 8vo. "Beowulf, a heroic Poem of theVIIIth Century, with a translation, " by T. Arnold, London, 1876, 8vo. "The deeds of Beowulf . . . Done into modern prose, " ed. Earle, OxfordClarendon Press, fifth ed. , 1892, 8vo. On English place names recallingpersonages in "Beowulf, " see D. H. Haigh, "Anglo-Saxon Sagas, " London, 1861, 8vo (many doubtful conclusions). The poem consists of 3, 183 longlines of alliterative verse, divided into 41 sections; it is not quiteequal in length to a third of the Æneid. [56] Such is the opinion of Mr. Ward, "Catalogue of Romances, " vol. Ii. , London, 1893, p. 1. [57] This explains how we find them used in Scandinavian literature aspart of the life of totally different heroes; the Icelandic saga ofGretti tells how Glam, another Grendel, is destroyed by Gretti, anotherBeowulf. On these resemblances, see Excursus iii. In the "CorpusPoeticum Boreale, " vol. Ii. P. 501; and H. Gering, "Der Beówulf und dieIslaendische Grettisaga, " in "Anglia, " vol. Iii. P 74. [58] In Gregory of Tours, book iii. Chap. 3 ("Historia EcclesiasticaFrancorum, " Société de l'histoire de France, vol. I. P. 270); in"Beowulf" II. 1202 _et seq. _-- Gehwearf thá in Francna fæthm feorh cynninges;-- "The life of the king [Higelac] became the prey of the Franks. "Grundtvig was the first to identify Higelac with the Chlochilaicus ofGregory of Tours. The battle took place about 515; the Scandinavians ledby "Chlochilaicus" were plundering lands belonging to Thierri, king ofAustrasia (511-534), eldest son of Clovis, when he sent against them hisson Theodebert, famous since, who was to die on his way toConstantinople in an expedition against the Emperor Justinian. Theodebert entirely routed the enemy, and took back their plunder, killing their chief, the Chlochilaicus of Gregory, the Huiglaucus "quiimperavit Getis, et a Francis occisus est" of an old "Liber monstrorum, "the Higelac of our poem. See H. L. D. Ward, "Catalogue of Romances inthe British Museum, " vol. Ii. 1893, pp. 6 ff. [59] According to the poem, the line of succession was: Scyld, Beowulf(not our hero), Healfdene, Heorogar, Hrothgar. [60] "Beowulf, " 1876, T. Arnold's translation. [61] This last opinion has been put forward with great force byFahlbeck, and accepted by Vigfusson. See Ward, "Catalogue of Romances, "ii. P. 15, and Appendix. [62] They are numerous especially in the province of Finmarken; they areto be found further south in winter. [63] According to the account of a Scandinavian burial left by Ahmed IbnFozlan (tenth century, see above, p. 27), the custom was to bury withthe dead ornaments and gold embroideries to the value of a third part ofwhat he left. [64] "Chanson de Roland, " line 2804. [65] "Talis mihi videtur, vita hominum præsens in terris adcomparationem ejus, quod nobis incertum est, temporis, quale cum teresidente ad coenam cum ducibus ac ministris tuis tempore brumali, accenso quidem foco in medio et calido effecto coenaculo, furentibusautem foris per omnia turbinibus hiemalium pluviarum vel nivium, adveniensque unus passerum, citissime pervolaverit; qui cum per unumostium ingrediens, mox per aliud exierit. Ipso quidem tempore quo intusest, hiemis tempestati non tangitur, sed tamen parvissimo spatioserenitatis ad momentum excurso, mox de hieme in hiemem regrediens, tuisoculis elabitur. Ita hæc vita hominum ad modicum apparet; quid autemsequatur, quidve præcesserit, prorsus ignoramus. Unde si hæc novadoctrina certius aliquid attulit merito esse sequenda videtur. ""Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, " book ii. Cap. 13, year 627. [66] Je voudrais qu'à cet âge, On sortît de la vie ainsi que d'un banquet, Remerciant son hôte. (viii. 1. ) [67] Ragnar Lodbrok, thrown among serpents in a pit, defies his enemies, and bids them beware of the revenge of Woden ("Corpus Poeticum Boreale, "vol. Ii. Pp. 341 ff. ). In the prisons, at the time of the Terreur, theguillotine was a subject for _chansons_. The mail steamer _la France_caught fire, part of the cargo being gunpowder; the ship is about to beblown up; a foreign witness writes thus: "Tous jusqu'aux petitsmarmitons rivalisaient d'élan, de bravoure et de cette gaieté gauloisedans le péril qui forme un des beaux traits du caractère national. "Baron de Hübner, "Incendie du paquebot la France, " Paris, 1887. Thisaccount was written, according to what the author told me, on the dayafter the fire was unexpectedly mastered. [68] "Codex Exoniensis, " "Seafarer, " p. 306, "Wanderer, " p. 291. Seealso "Deor the Scald's Complaint, " one of the oldest poems in "CodexExoniensis, " the "Wife's Complaint, " the "Ruin, " also in "CodexExoniensis"; the subject of this last poem has been shown by Earle to beprobably the town of Bath. [69] T. Arnold's "Beowulf, " p. 118, l. 1820. CHAPTER IV. _THE CHRISTIAN LITERATURE AND PROSE LITERATURE OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS. _ I. Augustine, prior of St. Martin of Rome, sent by Gregory the Great, arrived in 597. To the Germanic pirates established in the isle ofBritain, he brought a strange teaching. The ideas he tried to spreadhave become so familiar to us, we can hardly realise the amazement theymust have caused. To these fearless warriors who won kingdoms at thepoint of their spears, and by means of their spears too won their wayinto Walhalla, who counted on dying one day, not in their beds, but inbattle, so that the Valkyrias, "choosers of the slain, " might carry themto heaven on their white steeds, to these men came a foreign monk, andsaid: Be kind; worship the God of the weak, who, unlike Woden, willreward thee not for thy valour, but for thy mercy. Such was the seed that Rome, ever life-giving, now endeavoured to sowamong triumphant sea-rovers. The notion of the State and the notion ofthe Church both rose out of the ruins of the Eternal City; ideas equallypowerful, but almost contradictory, which were only to be reconciledafter centuries of confusion, and alternate periods of violence anddepression. The princes able to foresee the necessary fusion of thesetwo ideas, and who made attempts, however rude, to bring it about wererare, and have remained for ever famous: Charlemagne in France andAlfred the Great in England. The miracle of conversion was accomplished in the isle, as it had beenon the Continent. Augustine baptized King Æthelberht, and celebratedmass in the old Roman church of St. Martin of Canterbury. The religionfounded by the Child of Bethlehem conquered the savage Saxons, as it hadconquered the debauched Romans; the difficulty and the success wereequal in both cases. In the Germanic as in the Latin country, the newreligion had to stem the stream; the Romans of the decadence and the menof the North differed in their passions, but resembled each other in theimpetuosity with which they followed the lead of their instincts. Toboth, the apostle came and whispered: Curb thy passions, be hard uponthyself and merciful to others; blessed are the simple, blessed are thepoor; as thou forgivest so shalt thou be forgiven; thou shalt notdespise the weak, thou shalt _love_ him! And this unexpected murmur washeard each day, like a counsel and a threat, in the words of the morningprayer, in the sound of the bells, in the music of pious chants. The conversion was at first superficial, and limited to outwardpractices; the warrior bent the knee, but his heart remained the same. The spirit of the new religion could not as yet penetrate his soul; heremained doubtful between old manners and new beliefs, and after fits ofrepentance and relapses into savagery, the converted chieftain finallyleft this world better prepared for Walhalla than for Paradise. Thosewho witnessed his death realised it themselves. When Theodoric the Greatdied in his palace at Ravenna, piously and surrounded by priests, Wodenwas seen, actually seen, bearing away the prince's soul to Walhalla. The new converts of Great Britain understood the religion of Christ muchas they had understood that of Thor. Only a short distance divided manfrom godhood in heathen times; the god had his passions and hisadventures, he was intrepid, and fought even better than his people. Fora long time, as will happen with neophytes, the new Christians continuedto seek around them the human god who had disappeared in immensity, theyaddressed themselves to him as they had formerly done to the deifiedheroes, who, having shared their troubles, must needs sympathise withtheir sorrows. For a long time, contradictory faiths were held side byside. Christ was believed in, but Woden was still feared, and secretlyappeased by sacrifices. Kings are obliged to publish edicts, forbiddingtheir subjects to believe in the ancient divinities, whom they now term"demons"; but that does not prevent the monks who compile the"Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" from tracing back the descent of their princesto Woden: if it is not deifying, it is at least ennobling them. [70] Be your obedience qualified by reason, St. Paul had said. That of theAnglo-Saxons was not so qualified. On the contrary, they believed out ofobedience, militarily. Following the prince's lead, all his subjects areconverted; the prince goes back to heathendom; all his people becomeheathens again. From year to year, however, the new religionprogresses, while the old is waning; this phenomenon is brought about, in the south, by the influence of Augustine and the monks from Rome; andin the north, owing mainly to Celtic monks from the monastery of Iona, founded in the sixth century by St. Columba, on the model of theconvents of Ireland. About the middle of the seventh century the work isnearly accomplished; the old churches abandoned by the Romans have beenrestored; many others are built; one of them still exists atBradford-on-Avon in a perfect state of preservation[71]; monasteries arefounded, centres of culture and learning. Some of the rude princes whoreign in the country set great examples of devotion to Christ andsubmission to the Roman pontiff. They date their charters from the"reign of our Lord Jesus Christ, reigning for ever. "[72] The PrincessHilda founds, in the seventh century, the monastery of Streoneshalch, and becomes its abbess; Ceadwalla dies at Rome in 689, and is buried inSt. Peter's, under the _Porticus Pontificum_, opposite the tomb of St. Gregory the Great. [73] Æthelwulf, king of the West Saxons, goes also ona pilgrimage to Rome "in great state, and remains twelve months, afterwhich he returns home; and then Charles, king of the Franks, gave himhis daughter in marriage. "[74] He sends his son Alfred to the EternalCity; and the Pope takes a liking to the young prince, who was to beAlfred the Great. The notion of moderation and measure is unknown to these enthusiasts, who easily fall into despair. In the following period, after the NormanConquest, when manners and customs were beginning to change, thechronicler, William of Malmesbury, trying to draw a correct picture ofthe ancient owners of the land, is struck by the exaggerations of theSaxons' temperament. Great numbers of them are drunkards, they leaddissolute lives, and reign as ferocious tyrants; great numbers of them, too, are pious, devout, faithful even unto martyrdom: "What shall I sayof so many bishops, hermits, and abbots? The island is rendered famousby the relics of native saints, so numerous that it is impossible tovisit a borough of any importance without hearing the name of a newsaint. Yet the memory of many has vanished, for lack of writers topreserve it!"[75] The taste for proselytism, of which the race has since given so manyproofs, is early manifested. Once converted, the Anglo-Saxons producemissionaries, who in their turn carry the glad tidings to their paganbrothers on the Continent, and become saints of the Roman Church. St. Wilfrith leaves Northumberland about 680, and goes to preach the Gospelto the Frisians; St. Willibrord starts from England about 690, andsettles among the Frisians and Danes[76]; Winfrith, otherwise called St. Boniface (an approximate translation of his name), sojourns in Thuringiaand Bavaria, "sowing, " as he says, "the evangelical seed among the rudeand ignorant tribes of Germany. "[77] He reorganises the Church of theFranks, and dies martyrised by the Frisians in 755. Scarcely is thehive formed when it begins to swarm. The same thing happened with allthe sects created later in the English land. II. With religion had come Latin letters. Those same Anglo-Saxons, whoseliterature at the time of their invasion consisted in the songsmentioned by Tacitus, "carmina antiqua, " which they trusted to memoryalone, who compiled no books and who for written monuments had Runicinscriptions graven on utensils or on commemorative stones, now have, intheir turn, monks who compose chronicles, and kings who know Latin. Libraries are formed in the monasteries; schools are attached to them;manuscripts are there copied and illuminated in beautiful caligraphy andsplendid colours. The volutes and knots with which the worshippers ofWoden ornamented their fibulæ, their arms, the prows of their ships, arereproduced in purple and azure, in the initials of the Gospels. The usemade of them is different, the taste remains the same. The Anglo-Saxon missionaries and learned men correspond with each otherin the language of Rome. Boniface, in the wilds of Germany, remains inconstant communication with the prelates and monks of England; he begsfor books, asks for and gives advice; his letters have come down to us, and are in Latin. Ealhwine or Alcuin, of York, called by Charlemagne tohis court, freely bestows, in Latin letters, good advice on hiscountrymen. He organises around the great Emperor a literary academy, where each bears an assumed name; Charlemagne has taken that of David, his chamberlain has chosen that of Tyrcis, and Alcuin that of HoratiusFlaccus. In this "hôtel de Rambouillet" of the Karlings, the affectedstyle was as much relished as at the fair Arthénice's, and Alcuin, inhis barbarous Latin, has a studied elegance that might vie with theconceits of Voiture. [78] Aldhelm (or Ealdhelm, d. 709) writes a treatise on Latin prosody, and, adding example to precept, composes riddles and a Eulogy of Virgins inLatin verse. [79] Æddi (Eddius Stephanus) writes a life, also in Latin, of his friend St. Wilfrith. [80] The history of the nation had never been written. On the Continent, andfor a time in the island, rough war-songs were the only annals of theAnglo-Saxons. Now they have Latin chronicles, a Latin which Tacitusmight have smiled at, but which he would have understood. Above all, they have the work of the Venerable Bede (Bæda), the most importantLatin monument of all the Anglo-Saxon period. Bede was born in Northumbria, about 673, the time when the finalconversion of England was being accomplished. He early entered theBenedictine monastery of Jarrow, and remained there till his death. Itwas a recently founded convent, established by Benedict Biscop, who hadenriched it with books brought back from his journeys to Rome. In thisretreat, on the threshold of which worldly sounds expired, screened fromsorrows, surrounded by disciples who called him "dear master, belovedfather, " Bede allowed the years of his life to glide on, his soleambition being to learn and teach. The peaceful calm of this sheltered existence, which came to an endbefore the time of the Danish invasions, is reflected in the writings ofBede. He left a great number of works: interpretations of the Gospels, homilies, letters, lives of saints, works on astronomy, a "De NaturaRerum" where he treats of the elements, of comets, of winds, of theNile, of the Red Sea, of Etna; a "De Temporibus, " devoted tobissextiles, to months, to the week, to the solstice; a "De TemporumRatione" on the months of the Greeks, Romans, and Angles, the moon andits power, the epact, Easter, &c. He wrote hymns in Latin verse, and alife of St. Cuthberht; lastly, and above all, he compiled in Latinprose, a "Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, "[81] which hasremained the basis of all the histories composed after his. In it Bedeshows himself as he was: honest, sincere, sedate, and conscientious. Hequotes his authorities which are, for the description of the island andfor the most ancient period of his history, Pliny, Solinus, Eutropius, Orosius, Gildas. From the advent of Augustine his work becomes his own;he collects documents, memoranda, testimonies, frequently legends, andpublishes the whole without any criticism, but without falsifications. He lacks art, but not straightforwardness. Latinist though he was, he did not despise the national literature inspite of its ruggedness. He realised it was truly a literature; he madetranslations in Anglo-Saxon, but they are lost; he was versed in thenational poetry, "doctus in nostris carminibus, " writes his pupilCuthberht, [82] who pictures him on his deathbed, muttering Anglo-Saxonverses. He felt the charm of the poetic genius of his nation, and forthat reason has preserved and naïvely related the episodes of Cædmon inhis stable, [83] and of the Saxon chief comparing human life to thesparrow flying across the banquet hall. Bede died on the 27th of May, 735, leaving behind him such a renown forsanctity that his bones were the occasion for one of those pious theftscommon in the Middle Ages. In the eleventh century a priest of Durhamremoved them in order to place them in the cathedral of that town, wherethey still remain. St. Boniface, on receiving the news of this death, far away in Germany, begged his friends in England to send him the worksof his compatriot; the homilies of Bede would assist him, he said, incomposing his own, and his commentaries on the Scriptures would be "aconsolation in his sorrows. "[84] III. Anglo-Saxon monks now speak Latin; some, since the coming of Theodore ofTarsus, [85] even know a little Greek; an Anglo-Saxon king sleeps atRome, under the portico of St. Peter's; Woden has left heaven; on thesoil convulsed by so many wars, the leading of peaceful, shelteredlives, entirely dedicated to study, has become possible: and such wasthe case with Bede. Has the nation really changed, and do we findourselves already in the presence of men with a partly latinised genius, such men as the English were hereafter to be? Not yet. The heart andmind remain the same; the surface alone is modified, and that slightly. The full infusion of the Latin element, which is to transform theAnglo-Saxons into English, will take place several centuries hence, andwill be the result of a last invasion. The genius of the Teutonicinvaders continues nearly intact, and nothing proves this more clearlythan the Christian poetry composed in the native tongue, and produced inBritain after the conversion. The same impetuosity, passion, andlyricism, the same magnificent apostrophes which gave its character tothe old pagan poetry are found again in Christian songs, as well as thesame recurring alternatives of deep melancholy and noisy exultation. The Anglo-Saxon poets describe the saints of the Gospel, and it seems asthough the companions of Beowulf stood again before us: "So, we havelearned, in days of yore, of twelve beneath the stars, heroes gloriouslyblessed. " These "heroes, " these "warriors, " are the twelve apostles. Oneof them, St. Andrew, arrives in an uninhabited country; not a desert inAsia, nor a solitude in Greece; it might be the abode of Grendel: "Thenwas the saint in the shadow of darkness, warrior hard of courage, thewhole night long with various thoughts beset; snow bound the earth withwinter-casts; cold grew the storms, with hard hail-showers; and rime andfrost, the hoary warriors, locked up the dwellings of men, thesettlements of the people; frozen were the lands with cold icicles, shrunk the water's might; over the river streams, the ice made a bridge, a pale water road. "[86] They have accepted the religion of Rome; they believe in the God ofMercy; they have faith in the apostles preaching the doctrine of love tothe world: peace on earth to men of good will! But that warlike racewould think it a want of respect to see in the apostles mere _pacifici_, and in the Anglo-Saxon poems they are constantly termed "warriors. " At several different times these new Christians translated parts of theBible into verse, and the Bible became Anglo-Saxon, not only inlanguage, but in tone and feeling as well. The first attempt of thiskind was made by that herdsman of the seventh century, named Cædmon, whose history has been told by Bede. He was so little gifted by naturethat when he sat, on feast days, at one of those meals "where the customis that each should sing in turn, he would leave the table when he sawthe harp approaching and return to his dwelling, " unable to find versesto sing like the others. One night, when the harp had thus put him toflight, he had, in the stable where he was keeping the cattle, a vision. "Sing me something, " was the command of a mysterious being. "I cannot, "he answered, "and the reason why I left the hall and retired here isthat I cannot sing. " "But sing thou must. " "What shall I sing, then?""Sing the origin of things. " Then came at once into his mind "excellentverses"; Bede translates a few of them, which are very flat, but hegenerously lays the fault on his own translation, saying: "Verses, eventhe very best, cannot be turned word for word from one language intoanother without losing much of their beauty and dignity, "[87] a remarkwhich has stood true these many centuries. Taken to the abbess Hilda, ofStreoneshalch, Cædmon roused the admiration of all, became a monk, anddied like a saint, "and no one since, in the English race, has ever beenable to compose pious poems equal to his, for he was inspired by God, and had learnt nothing of men. " Some tried, however. An incomplete translation of the Bible in Anglo-Saxon verses has comedown to us, the work apparently of several authors of differentepochs. [88] Cædmon may be one of them: the question has been the causeof immense discussion, and remains doubtful. The tone is haughty and peremptory in the impassioned parts; abruptappositions keep the attention fixed upon the main quality of thecharacters, the one by which they are meant to live in memory;triumphant accents accompany the tales of war; the dismal landscapes aredescribed with care, or rather with loving delight. Ethereal personagesbecome in this popular Bible tangible realities. The fiend approachesParadise with the rude wiles of a peasant. Before starting he takes ahelmet, and fastens it tightly on his head. He presents himself to Adamas coming from God: "The all-powerful above will not have troublehimself, that on his journey he should come, the Lord of men, but he hisvassal sendeth. "[89] Hell, the deluge, the corruption of the grave, the last judgment, thecataclysms of nature, are favourite subjects with these poets. Inwardsorrows, gnawing thoughts that "besiege" men, doubts, remorse, gloomylandscapes, all afford them abundant inspiration. Satan in his hell hasfits of anguish and hatred, and the description of his tortures seems arude draft of Milton's awful picture. Cynewulf, [90] one of the few poets of the Anglo-Saxon period known byname, and the greatest of all, feels the pangs of despair; and thenrises to ecstasies, moved by religious love; he speaks of his return toChrist with a passionate fervour, foreshadowing the great conversions ofthe Puritan epoch. He ponders over his thoughts "in the narrowness ofnight . . . I was stained with my deeds, bound by my sins, buffeted withsorrows, bitterly bound, with misery encompassed. . . . " Then the crossappears to him in the depths of heaven, surrounded by angels, sparklingwith jewels, flowing with blood. A sound breaks through the silence ofthe firmament; life has been given to "the best of trees, " and itspeaks: "It was long ago, yet I remember it, that I was cut down, at theend of a wood, stirred from my sleep. " The cross is carried on the topof a mountain: "Then the young hero made ready, that was AlmightyGod. . . . I trembled when the champion embraced me. "[91] The poem in which St. Andrew figures as a "warrior bold in war, "attributed also to the same Cynewulf, is filled by the sound of the sea;all the sonorities of the ocean are heard, with the cadence and thevariety of the ancient Scandinavian sagas; a multitude of picturesqueand living expressions designate a ship: "Foamy-necked it fareth, likestunto a bird it glideth over ocean;" it follows the path of the swans, and of the whales, borne by the ocean stream "to the rolling of thewaters . . . The clashing of the sea-streams . . . The clash of the waves. "The sea of these poets, contrary to what Tacitus thought, was not aslumbering sea; it quivers, it foams, it sings. St. Andrew decides to punish by a miracle the wild inhabitants of theland of Mermedonia. We behold, as in the Northern sagas, an impressivescene, and a fantastic landscape: "He saw by the wall, wondrous fastupon the plain, mighty pillars, columns standing driven by the storm, the antique works of giants. . . . "Hear thou, marble stone! by the command of God, before whose face allcreatures shall tremble, . . . Now let from thy foundation streams bubbleout . . . A rushing stream of water, for the destruction of men, a gushingocean!. . . "The stone split open, the stream bubbled forth; it flowed over theground, the foaming billows at break of day covered the earth. . . . " The sleeping warriors are awakened by this "bitter service of beer. "They attempt to "fly from the yellow stream, they would save their livesin mountain caverns"; but an angel "spread abroad over the town palefire, hot warlike floods, " and barred them the way; "the waves waxed, the torrents roared, fire-sparks flew aloft, the flood boiled with itswaves;" on all sides were heard groans and the "death-song. "[92] Let usstop; but the poet continues; he is enraptured at the sight; no otherdescription is so minutely drawn. Ariosto did not find a keener delightin describing with leisurely pen the bower of Alcina. The religious poets of the Anglo-Saxons open the graves; the idea ofdeath haunts them as much as it did their pagan ancestors; they lookintently at the "black creatures, grasping and greedy, " and follow theprocess of decay to the end. They address the impious dead: "It wouldhave been better for thee very much, . . . That thou hadst been created abird, or a fish in the sea, or like an ox upon the earth hadst foundthy nurture going in the field, a brute without understanding; or in thedesert of wild beasts the worst, yea, though thou hadst been of serpentsthe fiercest, then as God willed it, than thou ever on earth shouldstbecome a man, or ever baptism should receive"[93] This soul should fly from me, And I be changed into some brutish beast All beasts are happy, for when they die Their souls are soon ditched in elements O soul! be changed into small water drops, And fall into the ocean; ne'er be found So will, unknown to him, the very same thoughts be expressed by anEnglish poet of a later day. [94] Dialogues are not rare in these poems, but they generally differ verymuch from the familiar dialogue of the Celts. They are mostly epic incharacter, lyric in tone, with abrupt apostrophes causing the listenerto start, like the sudden sound of a trumpet. When the idea is morefully developed the dialogue becomes a succession of discourses, full ofeloquence and power sometimes, but still discourses. We are equally farin both cases from the conversational style so frequent in the Irishstories. [95] The devotional poetry of the Anglo-Saxons includes translations of thePsalms, [96] lives of saints, maxims, moral poems, and symbolic ones, where the supposed habits of animals are used to illustrate the dutiesof Christians. One of this latter sort has for its subject the whale"full of guile, " another the panther[97]; a third (incomplete) thepartridge; a fourth, by a different hand, and evincing a very differentsort of poetical taste, the phenix. This poem is the only one in thewhole range of Anglo-Saxon literature in which the warmth and hues ofthe south are preserved and sympathetically described. It is a greatchange to find a piece of some length with scarcely any frost in it, nostormy waves and north wind. The poet is himself struck by thedifference, and notices that it is not at all there "as here with us, "for there "nor hail nor rime on the land descend, nor windy cloud. " Inthe land of the phenix there is neither rain, nor cold, nor too greatheat, nor steep mountains, nor wild dales; there are no cares, and nosorrows. But there the plains are evergreen, the trees always bearfruit, the plants are covered with flowers. It is the home of thepeerless bird. His eyes turn to the sun when it rises in the east, andat night he "looks earnestly when shall come up gliding from the eastover the spacious sea, heaven's beam. " He sings, and men never heardanything so exquisite. His note is more beautiful than the sound of thehuman voice, than that of trumpets and horns, than that of the harp, than "any of those sounds that the Lord has created for delight to menin this sad world. " When he grows old, he flies to a desert place in Syria. Then, "when thewind is still, the weather is fair, clear heaven's gem holy shines, theclouds are dispelled, the bodies of waters stand still, when every stormis lull'd under heaven, from the south shines nature's candle warm, " thebird begins to build itself a nest in the branches, with forest leavesand sweet-smelling herbs. As the heat of the sun increases "at summer'stide, " the perfumed vapour of the plants rises, and the nest and birdare consumed. There remains something resembling a fruit, out of whichcomes a worm, that develops into a bird with gorgeous wings. Thus man, in harvest-time, heaps grains in his dwelling, before "frost and snow, with their predominance earth deck, with winter weeds. " From these seedsin springtime, as out of the ashes of the phenix, will come forth livingthings, stalks bearing fruits, "earth's treasures. " Thus man, at thehour of death, renews his life, and receives at God's hands youth andendless joy. [98] There are, doubtless, rays of light in Anglo-Saxon literature, whichappear all the more brilliant for being surrounded by shadow; but thisexample of a poem sunny throughout is unique. To find others, we mustwait till Anglo-Saxon has become English literature. IV. Besides their Latin writings and their devotional poems, the convertedAnglo-Saxons produced many prose works in their national tongue. Germanic England greatly differed in this from Germanic France. In thelatter country the language of the Franks does not become acclimatised;they see it themselves, and feel the impossibility of resisting; Latinas in general use, they have their national law written in Latin, _LexSalica_. The popular speech, which will later become the Frenchlanguage, is nothing but a Latin _patois_, and is not admitted to thehonour of being written. Notwithstanding all the care with whicharchives have been searched, no specimens of French prose have beendiscovered for the whole time corresponding to the Anglo-Saxon periodsave one or two short fragments. [99] With the Anglo-Saxons, laws, [100]chronicles, and sermons for the common people were written in thenational tongue; and, as Latin was only understood by few, to thesemonuments was added a series of translations. [101] The English countrycan thus pride itself upon a literature which for antiquity isunparalleled in Europe. The chief promoter of the art of prose was that Alfred (or Aelfred) whomPope Leo IV. Had adopted as a spiritual son, and who reigned over theWest Saxons from 871 to 901. Between the death of Bede and the accessionof Alfred, a great change had occurred in the island; towards the end ofthe eighth century a new foe had appeared, the Scandinavian invader. Stormy days have returned, the flood-gates have reopened; human torrentssweep the land, and each year spread further and destroy more. In vainthe Anglo-Saxon kings, and in France the successors of Charlemagne, annually purchase their departure, thus following the example of fallingRome. The northern hordes come again in greater numbers, allured by theransoms, and they carry home such quantities of English coins that "atthis day larger hoards of Æthelred the Second's coins have been found inthe Scandinavian countries than in our own, . . . And the national museumat Stockholm is richer in this series than our own nationalcollection. "[102] These men, termed Danes, Northmen, or Normans, by theAnglo-Saxon and French chroniclers, reappeared each year; then, likethe Germanic pirates of the fifth century, spared themselves the troubleof useless journeys, and remained in the proximity of plunder. Theysettled first on the coasts, then in the interior. We find themestablished in France about the middle of the ninth century; in Englandthey winter in Thanet for the first time in 851, and after that do notleave the country. The small Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, alive only to localinterests, and unable to unite in a common resistance, are for them aneasy prey. The Scandinavians move about at their ease, sacking Londonand the other towns. They renew their ravages at regular intervals, asmen would go fishing at the proper season. [103] They are designatedthroughout the land by a terribly significant word: "the Army. " When theAnglo-Saxon chronicles make mention of "the Army" the northern vikingsare always meant, not the defenders of the country. Monasteries areburnt by the invaders with no more remorse than if they were peasants'huts; the vikings do not believe in Christ. Once more, and for the lasttime, Woden has worshippers in Britain. Harassed by the Danes, having had to flee and disappear and hidehimself, Alfred, after a long period of reverses, resumed the contestwith a better chance, and succeeded in setting limits to theScandinavian incursions. England was divided in two parts, the northbelonging to the Danes, and the south to Alfred, with Winchester for hiscapital. [104] In the tumult caused by these new wars, what theSaxons had received of Roman culture had nearly all been swept away. Books had been burnt, clerks had forgotten their Latin; the people wererelapsing by degrees into barbarism. Formerly, said Alfred, recalling tomind the time of Bede and Alcuin, "foreigners came to this land insearch of wisdom and instruction, and we should now have to get themfrom abroad if we wanted to have them. " He does not believe thereexisted south of the Thames, at the time of his accession, a singleEnglishman "able to translate a letter from Latin into English. When Iconsidered all this, I remembered also how I saw, before it had been allravaged and burnt, how the churches throughout the whole of Englandstood filled with treasures and books, and there was also a greatmultitude of God's servants, but they had very little knowledge of thebooks, for they could not understand anything of them, because they werenot written in their own language. " It is a great wonder that men of thepreceding generation, "good and wise men who were formerly all overEngland, " wrote no translation. There can be but one explanation: "Theydid not think that men would ever be so careless, and that learningwould so decay. " Still the case is not absolutely hopeless, for thereare many left who "can read English writing. " Remembering which, "Ibegan, among other various and manifold troubles of this kingdom, totranslate into English the book which is called in Latin Pastoralis, andin English Shepherd's Book ('Hirdeboc'), sometimes word for word, andsometimes according to the sense, as I had learnt it from Plegmund myarchbishop, and Asser my bishop, and Grimbold my mass-priest, and Johnmy mass-priest. "[105] These learned men, and especially the WelshmanAsser, who was to Alfred what Alcuin was to Charlemagne, helped him tospread learning by means of translations and by founding schools. Theyexplained to him the hard passages, to the best of their understanding, which it is true was not always perfect. Belonging to the Germanic race by his blood, and to the Latin realm byhis culture, keeping as much as he could the Roman ideal before hiseyes, Alfred evinced during all his life that composite genius, at oncepractical and passionate, which was to be, after the Norman Conquest, the genius of the English people. He was thus an exceptional man, andshowed himself a real Englishman before the time. Forsaken by all, hisdestruction being, as it seemed, a question of days, he does not yield;he bides his time, and begins the fight again when the day has come. Hissoul is at once noble and positive; he does not busy himself withlearning out of vanity or curiosity or for want of a pastime; he wishesto gather from books substantial benefits for his nation and himself. Inhis wars he remembers the ancients, works upon their plans, and findsthat they answer well. He chooses, in order to translate them, bookslikely to fill up the greatest gaps in the minds of his countrymen, "some books which are most needful for all men to know, "[106] the bookof Orosius, which will be for them as a handbook of universal history;the Ecclesiastical History of Bede, that will instruct them concerningtheir own past. He teaches laymen their duties with the "Consolation" ofBoethius, and ecclesiastics with the Pastoral Rule of St. Gregory. [107] His sole aim being to instruct, he does not hesitate to curtail hisauthors when their discourses are useless or too long, to comment uponthem when obscure, to add passages when his own knowledge allows him. Inhis translation of Bede, he sometimes contents himself with the titlesof the chapters, suppressing the rest; in his Orosius he supplements thedescription of the world by details he has collected himself concerningthose regions of the North which had a national interest for hiscompatriots. He notes down, as accurately as he can, the words of aScandinavian whom he had seen, and who had undertaken a voyage ofdiscovery, the first journey towards the pole of which an account hascome down to us: "Ohthere told his lord, king Alfred, that he dwelt northmost of allNorthmen. He said that he dwelt in the land to the northward, along thewest sea. [108] He said, however, that that land is very long north fromthence, but it is all waste, except in a few places where the Fins hereand there dwell, for hunting in the winter, and in the summer forfishing in that sea. He said that he was desirous to try, once on atime, how far that country extended due north; or whether any one livedto the north of the waste. He then went due north, along the country, leaving all the way, the waste land on the right, and the wide sea onthe left, for three days: he was as far north as the whale-hunters go atthe farthest. Then he proceeded in his course due north as far as hecould sail within another three days. Then the land there inclined dueeast, or the sea into the land, he knew not which; but he knew that hethere waited for a west wind, or a little north, and sailed thenceeastward along that land, as far as he could sail in four days. " Hearrives at a place where the land turns to the south, evidentlysurrounding the White Sea, and he finds a broad river, doubtless theDwina, that he dares not cross on account of the hostility of theinhabitants. This was the first tribe he had come across since hisdeparture; he had only seen here and there some Fins, hunters andfishers. "He went thither chiefly, in addition to seeing the country, onaccount of the walruses, because they have very noble bones in theirteeth; some of those teeth they brought to the king; and their hides arevery good for ship ropes. " Ohthere, adds Alfred, was very rich; he hadsix hundred tame reindeer; he said the province he dwelt in was calledHelgoland, and that no one lived north of him. [109] The traveller gavealso some account of lands more to the south, and even more interestingfor his royal listener, namely Jutland, Seeland, and Sleswig, that is, as Alfred is careful to notice, the old mother country: "In these landsthe Angles dwelt, before they came hither to this land. " When he has to deal with a Latin author, Alfred uses as much liberty. Hetakes the book that the adviser of Theodoric the Great, Boethius, hadcomposed while in prison, and in which we see a personified abstraction, Wisdom, bringing consolation to the unfortunate man threatened withdeath. No work was more famous in the Middle Ages; it helped to spreadthe taste for abstract personages, owing to which so many shadows, men-virtues and men-vices, were to tread the boards of the mediævalstage, and the strange plays called _Moralities_ were to enjoy a lastingpopularity. The first in date of the numerous translations made ofBoethius is that of Alfred. Under his pen, the vague Christianity of Boethius[110] becomes a naïveand superabundant faith; each episode is moralised; the affectedelegance of the model disappears, and gives place to an almost childlikeand yet captivating sincerity. The story of the misfortunes of Orpheus, written by Boethius in a very pretentious style, has in Alfred'stranslation a charm of its own, the charm of the wild flower. Among the innumerable versions of this tale, the king's is certainly theone in which art has the least share, and in which emotion is mostcommunicative: "It happened formerly that there was a harper in thecountry called Thrace, which was in Greece. The harper was inconceivablygood. His name was Orpheus. He had a very excellent wife who was calledEurydice. Then began men to say concerning the harper that he could harpso that the wood moved, and the stones stirred themselves at the sound, and the wild beasts would run thereto, and stand as if they were tame;so still that though men or hounds pursued them, they shunned them not. Then said they that the harper's wife should die, and her soul should beled to hell. Then should the harper become so sorrowful that he couldnot remain among other men, but frequented the wood, and sat on themountain both day and night, weeping and harping, so that the woodsshook, and the rivers stood still, and no hart shunned any lion, norhare any hound; nor did cattle know any hatred, or any fear of others, for the pleasure of the sound. Then it seemed to the harper that nothingin this world pleased him. Then thought he that he would seek the godsof hell and endeavour to allure them with his harp, and pray that theywould give him back his wife. " He goes down to the nether region; at the sweetness of his harping, Cerberus "began to wag his tail. " Cerberus was "the dog of hell; heshould have three heads. " "A very horrible gatekeeper, " Charon by name, "had also three heads, " according to the calculation of Alfred, whosemythology is not very safe. Charon welcomes the harper, "because he wasdesirous of the unaccustomed sound"; all sufferings cease at the melodyof the harp; the wheel of Ixion ceases to turn; the hunger of Tantalusis appeased; the vulture ceases to torment King Tityus; and the prayerof Orpheus is granted. "But men can with difficulty, if at all, restrain love!" Orpheusretraces his steps, and, contrary to his promise, looks behind andstretches his hand towards the beloved shadow, and the shadow fadesaway. Moral--for with Alfred everything has a moral--when going toChrist, never look behind, for fear of being beguiled by the tempter: apractical conclusion not to be found in Boethius. [111] Following the king's example, the bishops and monks set to work again. Werferth, bishop of Worcester, translates the famous dialogues of St. Gregory, filled with miracles and marvellous tales. [112] In themonasteries the old national Chronicles, written in the Anglo-Saxontongue, are copied, corrected, and continued. These Chronicles existedbefore Alfred, but they were instilled with a new life owing to hisinfluence. Seven of them have come down to us. [113] It is not yethistory; events are registered in succession, usually without comment;kings ascend the throne and they are killed; bishops are driven fromtheir seats, a storm destroys the crops; the monk notes all thesethings, and does not add a word showing what he thinks of them. [114] Hewrites as a recorder, chary of words. The reader's feelings will bemoved by the deeds registered, not by the words used. Of kings thechronicler will often say, "he was killed, " without any observation:"And king Osric was killed. . . . And king Selred was killed. . . . " Why saymore? it was an everyday occurrence and had nothing curious about it. But a comet is not seen every day; a comet is worth describing:"678. --In this year, the star [called] comet appeared in August, andshone for three months every morning like sunbeam. And bishop Wilfrithwas driven from his bishopric by king Ecgferth. " We are far from the artof Gibbon or Carlyle. Few monuments, however, are more precious thanthose old annals; for no people in Europe can pride itself on havingchronicles so ancient written in its national language. "Every craft and every power, " said Alfred once, speaking there his ownmind, "soon becomes old and is passed over in silence, if it be withoutwisdom. . . . This is now especially to be said, that I wished to livehonourably whilst I lived, and, after my life, to leave to the men whowere after me my memory in good works. "[115] It happened as he hadwished. Long after his death, his influence was still felt; he was theideal his successors strove to attain to; even after the Norman Conquesthe continued to be: "Englene herde, Englene derling. "[116] V. Alfred disappears; disturbances begin again; then, in the course of thetenth century, comes a fresh period of comparative calm. Edgar is on thethrone, and the archbishop St. Dunstan rules under his name. [117] Helped by Bishop Æthelwold, Dunstan resumed the never-ending andever-threatened task of teaching the people and clergy; he endowedmonasteries, and like Alfred created new schools and encouraged thetranslation of pious works. Under his influence collections of sermonsin the vulgar tongue were formed. [118] Several of these collections havecome down to us: one of them, the Blickling Homilies (from BlicklingHall, Norfolk, where the manuscript was found), was compiled before971[119]; others are due to the celebrated monk Ælfric, who became abbotof Eynsham in 1005, and wrote most of his works about this time[120];another collection includes the sermons of Wulfstan, bishop of York from1002 to 1023. [121] These sermons, most of which are translated from the Latin, "sometimesword for word and sometimes sense for sense, " according to the exampleset by Alfred, were destined for "the edification of the ignorant, whoknew no language" except the national one. [122] The congregation being made up mostly of rude, uneducated people, mustbe interested in order that it may listen to the sermons; the homiliesare therefore filled with legendary information concerning the HolyLand, with minute pictures of the devil and apostles, with edifyingtales full of miracles. In the homilies of Blickling, the church of theHoly Sepulchre is described in detail, with its sculptured portals, itsstained-glass and its lamps, that threefold holy temple, existing faraway at the other extremity of the world, in the distant East. [123] Thischurch has no roof, so that the sky into which Christ's body ascendedcan be always seen; but, by God's grace, rain water never falls there. The preacher is positive about his facts; he has them from travellerswho have seen with their own eyes this cathedral of Christendom. Ælfric also keeps alive the interest of the listeners by propoundingdifficult questions to them which he answers himself at once. "Now manya man will think and inquire whence the devil came?. . . Now some man willinquire whence came his [own] soul, whether from the father or themother? We say from neither of them; but the same God who created Adamwith his hands . . . That same giveth a soul and life to children. "[124]Why are there no more miracles? "These wonders were needful at thebeginning of Christianity, for by these signs was the heathen folkinclined to faith. The man who plants trees or herbs waters them so longuntil they have taken root; when they are growing he ceases fromwatering. Also, the Almighty God so long showed his miracles to theheathen folk until they were believing: when faith had sprung up overall the world, then miracles ceased. "[125] The lives of the saints told by Ælfric recall at times tales in theArabian Nights. There are transformations, disparitions, enchantments, emperors who become hermits, statues that burst, and out of which comesthe devil. "Go, " cries the apostle to the fiend, "go to the waste whereno bird flies, nor husbandman ploughs, nor voice of man sounds. " The"accursed spirit" obeys, and he appears all black, "with sharp visageand ample beard. His locks hung to his ankles, his eyes were scatteringfiery sparks, sulphureous flame stood in his mouth, he was frightfullyfeather-clad. "[126] This is already the devil of the Mysteries, the onedescribed by Rabelais, almost in the same words. We can imagine theeffect of so minute a picture on the Saxon herdsmen assembled on Sundayin their little mysterious churches, almost windowless, like that ofBradford-on-Avon. One peculiarity makes these sermons remarkable; in them can be discerneda certain effort to attain to literary dignity. The preacher tries hisbest to speak well. He takes all the more pains because he is slightlyashamed, being himself learned, to write in view of such an illiteratepublic. He does not know any longer Alfred's doubts, who, beinguncertain as to which words best express the meaning of his model, putsdown all those his memory or glossary supply: the reader can choose. Theauthors of these homilies purposely write prose which comes near thetone and forms of poetry. Such are almost always the beginnings ofliterary prose. They go as far as to introduce a rude cadence in theirwritings, and adapt thereto the special ornament of Germanic verse, alliteration. Wulfstan and Ælfric frequently afford their audience thepleasure of those repeated sonorities, so much so that it has beenpossible to publish a whole collection of sermons by the latter in theform of poems. [127] Moreover, the subject itself is often poetic, andthe priest adorns his discourse with images and metaphors. Many passagesof the "Blickling Homilies, " read in a translation, might easily betaken for poetical extracts. Such are the descriptions ofcontemporaneous evils, and of the signs that will herald the end of theworld, that world that "fleeth from us with great bitterness, and wefollow it as it flies from us, and love it although it is passingaway. "[128] Such are also the descriptions of landscapes, where even now, in thisfinal period of the Anglo-Saxon epoch, northern nature, snow and ice arevisibly described, as in "Beowulf, " with delight, by connoisseurs: "AsSt. Paul was looking towards the northern region of the earth, fromwhence all waters pass down, he saw above the water a hoary stone, andnorth of the stone had grown woods, very rimy. And there were darkmists; and under the stone was the dwelling-place of monsters andexecrable creatures. "[129] * * * * * Thus Anglo-Saxon literature, in spite of the efforts of Cynewulf, Alfred, Dunstan, and Ælfric goes on repeating itself. Poems, histories, and sermons are conspicuous, now for their grandeur, now for the emotionthat is in them; but their main qualities and main defects are very muchalike; they give an impression of monotony. The same notes, not verynumerous, are incessantly repeated. The Angles, Saxons, and otherconquerors who came from Germany have remained, from a literary point ofview, nearly intact in the midst of the subjugated race. Theirliterature is almost stationary; it does not perceptibly move anddevelop. A graft is wanted; Rome tried to insert one, but a few branchesonly were vivified, not the whole tree; and the fruit is the same eachyear, wild and sometimes poor. The political state of the country leaves on the mind a similarimpression. The men of Germanic blood established in England remain, ornearly so, grouped together in tribes; their hamlet is the mothercountry for them. They are unable to unite against the foreign foe. Their subdivisions undergo constant change, much as they did, centuriesbefore, on the Continent. A swarm of petty kings, ignored by history, are known to have lived and reigned, owing to their name having beenfound appended to charters; there were kings of the Angles of the South, kings of half Kent, kings with fewer people to rule than a village mayorof to-day. They are killed, and, as we have seen, the thing is of noimportance. The Danes come again; at one time they own the whole of England, whichis thus subject to the same king as Scandinavia. Periods of unificationare merely temporary, and due to the power or the genius of a prince:Alfred, Æthelstan, Cnut the Dane; but the people of Great Britain keeptheir tendency to break up into small kingdoms, into earldoms, as theywere called in the eleventh century, about the end of the period; intotribes, in reality, as when they inhabited the Germanic land. Out ofthis chaos how can a nation arise? a nation that may give birth toShakespeare, crush the Armada, people the American continent? No lessthan a miracle is needed. The miracle took place: it was the battle ofHastings. FOOTNOTES: [70] "Hengest and Horsa . . . Were the sons of Wihtgils; Wihtgils was theson of Witta, Witta of Wecta, Wecta of Woden. From Woden sprang all ourroyal kin, and the Southumbrians also" (year 449, "Anglo-SaxonChronicle, " Peterborough text). "Penda was the son of Pybba, Pybba ofCryda . . . Wærmund of Wihtlæg, Wihtlæg of Woden" (_Ibid. _ year 626). Orderic Vital, born in England, and writing in Normandy, in the twelfthcentury, continues to trace back the descent of the kings of England toWoden: "a quo Angh feriam [iv]am Wodenis diem nuncupant" ("Hist. Eccl. , " ed. Le Prevost, vol. Iii. P 161). "Wodenis dies" has becomeWednesday. In the same fashion, and even more characteristically, thefeast of the northern goddess Eostra has become "Easter":"Eostur-monath, qui nunc paschalis mensis interpretatur, quondam a deaeorum quæ Eostre vocabatur . . . Nomen habuit. " Bede, "De TemporumRatione" in Migne's "Patrologia, " xc. , col. 357. Similar genealogiesoccur in Matthew Paris, thirteenth century, "Chronica Majora, " vol. I. Pp. 188-9, 422 (Rolls). [71] This unique monument seems to be of the eighth century. _Cf. _"Pre-Conquest Churches of Northumbria, " an article by C. Hodges in the"Reliquary, " July, 1893. [72] For example, charter of Offa, dated 793, "Matthæi Parisiensis . . . Chronica Majora, " ed. Luard (Rolls), vol. Vi. , "Additamenta, " pp. 1, 25, &c. : "Regnante Domino nostro Jesu Christo in perpetuum. " [73] "King Ceadwalla's tomb in the ancient basilica of St. Peter, " by M. Tesoroni, Rome, 1891, 8vo. [74] "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, " year 855. The princess was Judith, daughter of Charles the Bald. Hincmar, archbishop of Reims, blessed themarriage. [75] "Quid dicam de tot episcopis . . . " &c. "Willelmi Malmesbiriensis. . . . Gesta regum Anglorum, " ed. Hardy, London, 1840, 2 vols. 8vo, vol. Ii. P. 417. [76] See his will and various documents concerning him in Migne's"Patrologia, " vol. Lxxxix. , col. 535 _et seq. _ [77] "Fraternitatis vestræ pietatem intimis obsecramus precibus ut nosinter feras et ignaras gentes Germaniæ laborantes, vestris sacrosanctisorationibus adjuvemur. " Boniface to Cuthberht and others, year 735, inMigne's "Patrologia, " vol. Lxxxix. , col. 735. [78] "Ideo hæc Vestræ Excellentiæ dico . . . Ut aliquos ex pueris nostrisremittam, qui excipiant nobis necessaria quæque, et revehant in Franciamflores Britanniæ: ut non sit tantummodo in Eborica hortus conclusus, sedin Turonica emissiones Paradisi cum pomorum fructibus, ut veniens Austerperflare hortos Ligeris fluminis et fluant aromata illius. . . . " Migne's"Patrologia, " vol. C. , col. 208. Many among Alcuin's letters aredirected to Anglo-Saxon kings whom he does not forbear to castigate, threatening them, if need be, with the displeasure of the mightyemperor: "Ad Offam regem Merciorum;" "Ad Coenulvum regem Merciorum, "year 796, col. 213, 232. [79] Works in Migne's "Patrologia, " vol. Lxxxix. Col. 87 _et seq. _ Theyinclude, besides his poetry ("De laude Virginum, " &c. ), a prosetreatise: "De Laudibus Virginitatis, " and other works in prose. He usesalliteration in his Latin poems. [80] "Vita Sancti Wilfridi episcopi Eboracensis, auctore EddioStephano, " in Gale's "Historiæ Britannicæ, Saxonicæ, Anglo-DanicæScriptores x. " Oxford, 1691, 2 vols. Fol. , vol. I. Pp. 50 ff. [81] Ed. G. H. Moberly, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1881, 8vo (orStevenson, London, 1838-41, 2 vols. 8vo). Complete works in Migne's"Patrologia, " vol. Xc. Ff. [82] Letter of Cuthberht, later abbot of Jarrow, to his friend Cuthwine, on the death of Bede, printed with the "Historia ecclesiastica. " Bede isrepresented, on his death-bed, "in nostra lingua, ut erat doctus innostris carminibus, dicens de terribili exitu animarum e corpore: Fore the nei-faerae Naenig uniurthit Thonc snoturra. . . . " Bede had translated the Gospel of St. John, but this work is lost. [83] See below, p. 70. [84] Letter of the year 735, "Cuthberto et aliis"; letter of 736 toEcgberht, archbishop of York. He receives the books, and expresses hisdelight at them; he sends in exchange pieces of cloth to Ecgberht;letter of the year 742; "Patrologia, " vol. Lxxxix. [85] Archbishop of Canterbury, seventh century. [86] J. M. Kemble, "Codex Vercellensis, " London, Ælfric Society, 1847-56; Part I. , ll. 1 ff. , 2507 ff. , "Andreas, " attributed toCynewulf. On this question, see Gollancz, "Cynewulf's Christ, " London, 1892, p. 173. [87] "Neque enim possunt carmina, quamvis optime composita ex alia inaliam linguam ad verbum sine detrimento sui decoris ac dignitatistransferri. " "Historia Ecclesiastica, " book iv. Chap. Xxiv. [88] "Cædmon's metrical paraphrase of parts of the Holy Scripture inAnglo-Saxon, with an English translation, " by B. Thorpe, London, Societyof Antiquaries, 1832, 8vo. An edition by Junius (Francis Dujon by histrue name, born at Heidelberg, d. At Windsor, 1678) had been publishedat Amsterdam in 1655, and may have been known to Milton (_cf. _ "Cædmonund Milton, " by R. Wülcker, in "Anglia, " vol. Iv. P. 401). Junius wasthe first to attribute this anonymous poem, or rather collection ofpoems ("Genesis, " "Exodus, " "Daniel, " "Christ and Satan") to Cædmon. "Genesis" is made up of two different versions of different dates, clumsily put together. German critics, and especially Prof. Ed. Sievers("Der Heliand, " Halle, 1875), have conclusively shown that lines 1 to234, and 852 to the end, belong to the same and older version (possiblyby Cædmon); lines 235 to 851, inserted without much care, as they retellpart of the story to be found also in the older version, are of a morerecent date, and show a strong resemblance to the old Germanic poem"Heliand" (Healer, Saviour) in alliterative verse, of the ninth century. Another biblical story was paraphrased in Anglo-Saxon verse, and was thesubject of the beautiful poem of "Judith, " preserved in the same MS. As"Beowulf. " Grein's "Bibliothek, " vol. I. [89] "Metrical Paraphrase, " pp. 29 ff. [90] Four poems have come down to us signed by means of an acrostic onthe Runic letters of his name: "Elene" (on the finding of the cross), "Fates of the Apostles" (both in "Codex Vercellensis"), "Juliana" and"Christ" (in "Codex Exoniensis"); a separate edition of "Christ" hasbeen given by M. Gollancz, London, 1892, 8vo. Many other poems, and eventhe whole of "Codex Vercellensis, " have been attributed to him. Theeighty-nine riddles of "Codex Exoniensis, " some of which continue topuzzle the readers of our day, are also considered by some as his: oneof the riddles is said to contain a charade on his name, but there aredoubts; ample discussions have taken place, and authorities disagree:"The eighty-sixth riddle, which concerns a wolf and a sheep, wasrelated, " said Dietrich, "to Cynewulf;" but Professor Morley considersthat this same riddle "means the overcoming of the Devil by the hand ofGod. " Stopford Brooke, "Early English Literature, " chap. Xxii. Many ofthose riddles were adapted from the Latin of Aldhelm and others. Thissort of poetry enjoyed great favour, as the Scandinavian "CorpusPoeticum" also testifies. What is "Men's damager, words' hinderer, andyet words' arouser?"--"Ale. " "Corpus Poeticum, " i. P. 87. [91] "Elene, " in "Codex Vercellensis, " part ii. P. 73, and "Holy Rood"(this last of doubtful authorship), _ibid. _ pp. 84 ff. Lines resemblingsome of the verses in "Holy Rood" have been found engraved in Runicletters on the cross at Ruthwell, Scotland; the inscription and crossare reproduced in "Vetusta Monumenta, " vol. Iv. P. 54; see also G. Stephens, "The old Northern Runic monuments of Scandinavia and England, "London, 1866-8, 2 vols. Fol. , vol. I. Pp. 405 ff. Resemblances have alsobeen pointed out, showing the frequence of such poetical figures, withthe Anglo-Saxon inscription of a reliquary preserved at Brussels: "Roodis my name, I once bore the rich king, I was wet with dripping blood. "The reliquary contains a piece of the true cross, which is supposed tospeak these words. The date is believed to be about 1100. H. Logeman, "L'Inscription Anglo-Saxonne du reliquaire de la vraie croix au trésorde l'église des SS. Michel et Gudule, " Gand, Paris and London, 1891, 8vo(with facsimile), pp. 7 and 11. [92] "Codex Vercellensis, " part i. Pp. 29, 86 ff. "Andreas" is imitatedfrom a Greek story of St. Andrew, of which some Latin version wasprobably known to the Anglo-Saxon poet. It was called "[Greek: PraxeisAndreou kai Matthaiou];" a copy of it is preserved in the NationalLibrary, Paris, Greek MS. 881, fol. 348. [93] "Departed Soul's Address to the Body, " "Codex Vercellensis, " partii. P. 104. [94] Marlowe's "Dr. Faustus. " See also, "Be Domes Dæge, " a poem on theterrors of judgment (ed. Lumby, Early English Text Society, 1876). [95] See examples of such dialogues and speeches in "Andreas", "The HolyRood" (in "Cod Vercell"); in Cynewulf's "Christ" ("Cod. Exoniensis"), &c. In this last poem occurs one of the few examples we have of familiardialogue in Anglo Saxon (a dialogue between Mary and Joseph, the tone ofwhich recalls the Mysteries of a later date); but it seems to be"derived from an undiscovered hymn arranged for recital by half choirs. "Gollancz, "Christ, " Introd. , p. Xxi. Another example consists in thescene of the temptation in _Genesis_ (_Cf. _ "S. Aviti . . . ViennensisOpera, " Paris, 1643 p. 230). See also the prose "Dialogue of Salomon andSaturnus" (Kemble, Ælfric Society, 1848, 8vo), an adaptation of a workof eastern origin, popular on the Continent, and the fame of whichlasted all through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance; it was wellknown to Rabelais: "Qui ne s'adventure n'a cheval ni mule, ce dictSalomon. --Qui trop s'adventure perd cheval et mule respondit Malcon. ""Vie de Gargantua. " Saturnus plays the part of the Malcon or Marcol ofthe French version; the Anglo-Saxon text is a didactic treatise, cutinto questions and answers: "Tell me the substance of which Adam thefirst man was made. --I tell thee of eight pounds by weight. --Tell mewhat they are called. --I tell thee the first was a pound of earth, " &c. (p. 181). [96] MS. Lat. 8824 in the Paris National Library, Latin and Anglo-Saxon, some pen-and-ink drawings: "Ce livre est au duc de Berry--Jehan. " It hasbeen published by Thorpe: "Libri Psalmorum, cum paraphrasiAnglo-Saxonica, " London, 1835, 8vo. See also "Eadwine's Canterburypsalter" (Latin and Anglo-Saxon), ed. F. Harsley, E. E. T. S. , 1889 ff. , 8vo. [97] In "Codex Exoniensis. " Series of writings of this kind enjoyed atan early date a wide popularity; they were called "Physiologi"; thereare some in nearly all the languages of Europe, also in Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopian, &c. The original seems to have been composed in Greek, atAlexandria, in the second century of our era (F. Lauchert, "Geschichtedes Physiologus, " Strasbourg, 1889, 8vo). To the "Physiologi" succeededin the Middle Ages "Bestiaries, " works of the same sort, which were alsovery numerous and very popular. A number of commonplace sayings orbeliefs, which have survived up to our day (the faithfulness of thedove, the fatherly love of the pelican), are derived from "Bestiaries. " [98] "Codex Exoniensis, " pp. 197 ff. This poem is a paraphrase of a"Carmen de Phoenice" attributed to Lactantius, filled with conceits inthe worst taste: Mors illi venus est; sola est in morte voluptas; Ut possit nasci hæc appetit ante mori. Ipsa sibi proles, suus est pater et suus hæres. Nutrix ipsa sui, semper alumna sibi; Ipsa quidem, sed non eadem, quæ est ipsa nec ipsa est. . . . "Incerti auctoris Phoenix, Lactantio tributus, " in Migne's"Patrologia, " vol. Vii. Col. 277. [99] The most important of which is the famous Strasbourg pledge, February 19, 842, preserved by the contemporary historian Nithard. See"Les plus anciens monuments de la langue française, " by Gaston Paris, Societé des anciens Textes, 1875, fol. [100] Thorpe, "Ancient Laws and Institutes of England, " London, 1840, 1vol. Fol. ; laws of Ina, king of Wessex, 688-726, of Alfred, Æthelstan, &c. We have also considerable quantities of deeds and charters, some inLatin and some in Anglo-Saxon. See J. M. Kemble, "Codex Diplomaticus ÆviSaxonici, " English Historical Society, 1839-40, 6 vols. 8vo; De GrayBirch, "Cartularium Saxonicum, or a Collection of Charters relating toAnglo-Saxon History, " London, 1885 ff. 4to; Earle, "A Handbook to theLand Charters, and other Saxonic Documents, " Oxford, 1888, 8vo. [101] Translations of scientific treatises such as the "De Natura Rerum"of Bede, made in the tenth century (Wright's "Popular Treatises onScience, " 1841, 8vo); various treatises published by Cockayne, "Leechdoms, Wortcunnings and Starcraft . . . Being a Collection ofDocuments . . . Illustrating the History of Science . . . Before the NormanConquest, " 1864, 3 vols. 8vo (Rolls). --Translation of the so-called"Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem" (Cockayne, "Narratiunculæ, " 1861, 8vo, and "Anglia, " vol. Iv. P. 139); of the history of "Apollonius ofTyre" (Thorpe, London, 1834, 12mo). --Translations by King Alfred and hisbishops, see below pp. 81 ff. The monuments of Anglo-Saxon prose havebeen collected by Grein, "Bibliothek der Angelsächsischen Prosa, " ed. Wülker, Cassel, 1872 ff. [102] Grueber and Keary, "A Catalogue of English Coins in the BritishMuseum, " Anglo-Saxon series, vol. Ii. 1893, 8vo, p. Lxxxi. [103] According to evidence derived from place-names, the Danishinvaders have left their strongest mark in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, and after that in "Leicestershire, Rutland, Nottingham, and EastAnglia. " Keary, "Vikings in Western Christendom, " 1891, p. 353. [104] Peace of Wedmore, sworn by Alfred and Guthrum the Dane, 878. Thetext of the agreement has been preserved and figures among the laws ofAlfred. [105] H. Sweet, "King Alfred's West-Saxon version of Gregory's PastoralCare, with an English translation, " London, Early English Text Society, 1871-72, 8vo, pp. 2 ff. Plegmund was an Anglo-Saxon, Asser a Welshman, Grimbold a Frank, John a Saxon from continental Saxony. [106] Preface of Gregory's "Pastoral Care. " [107] King Alfred's "Orosius, " ed. H. Sweet, Early English Text Society, 1883, 8vo. Orosius was a Spaniard, who wrote at the beginning of thefifth century. --"The Old English Version of Bede's EcclesiasticalHistory of the English People, " ed. T. Miller, E. E. T. S. , 1890. Theauthenticity of this translation is doubtful; see Miller'sintroduction. --"King Alfred's Anglo-Saxon Version of Boethius, " ed. S. Fox, London, 1864, 8vo. --"King Alfred's West-Saxon version of Gregory'sPastoral Care, " ed. H. Sweet, E. E. T. S. , 1871-2. This last is the mostfaithful of Alfred's translations; he attached great importance to thework, and sent a copy of it to all his bishops. The copy of Werferth, bishop of Worcester, is preserved in the Bodleian Library. [108] The sea to the west of Norway, that is the German Ocean. [109] To-day Helgeland, in the northern part of Norway. Alfred's"Orosius, " Thorpe's translation, printed with the "Life of Alfred theGreat, " by Pauli, in Bohn's Antiquarian Library, pp. 249 ff. ;Anglo-Saxon text in Sweet, "King Alfred's Orosius, " 1883, p. 17. Alfredadds the account of yet another journey, undertaken by Wulfstan. [110] The researches of Usener have placed beyond a doubt that Boethiuswas a Christian; but Christianity is scarcely visible in the"Consolatio, " which is entirely "inspirée d'Aristote et de Platon. "Gaston Paris, _Journal des Savants_, 1884, p. 576. [111] S. Fox, "King Alfred's Boethius, " 1864, 8vo, chap. Xxxv. [112] The Anglo-Saxon translation made by Werferth (with a preface byAlfred) is still unpublished. Earle has given a detailed account of itin his "Anglo-Saxon Literature, " 1884, pp. 193 ff. [113] These seven Chronicles, more or less complete, and differing moreor less from one another, are the chronicles of Winchester, St. Augustine of Canterbury, Abingdon, Worcester, Peterborough, thebilingual chronicle of Canterbury, and the Canterbury edition of theWinchester chronicle. They begin at various dates, the birth of Christ, the crossing of Cæsar to Britain, &c. , and usually come down to theeleventh century. The Peterborough text alone continues as late as theyear 1154. The Peterborough and Winchester versions are the mostimportant; both have been published by Plummer and Earle, "Two of theSaxon Chronicles, " Oxford, 1892, 8vo. The seven texts have been printedby Thorpe, with a translation. "The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, " 1861, 2vols. 8vo (Rolls). The Winchester chronicle contains the poems on thebattle of Brunanburh (_supra_, p. 46), the accession of Edgar, &c. ; theMS. Is preserved in the library of Corpus Christi, Cambridge; thePeterborough MS. Is in the Bodleian Library (Laud, 636). [114] Except in some very rare cases. For example, year 897: "Thanks beto God, the Army had not utterly broken up the Angle race. " Comments aremore frequent in the latter portions of the Chronicles, especially atthe time of and after the Norman invasion. [115] S. Fox, "King Alfred's Boethius, " London, 1864, 8vo, chap. Xvii. P. 61. This chapter corresponds only to the first lines of chap. Vii. Book ii. Of the original. Most of it is added by Alfred, who gives in ithis opinion of the "craft" of a king, and of the "tools" necessary forthe same. [116] In the "Proverbs of Alfred, " an apocryphal compilation made afterthe Norman Conquest; published by Kemble with the "Dialogue of Salomonand Saturnus, " 1848, 8vo. [117] King from 959 to 975; St. Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury, diedin 988. See Stubbs, "Memorials of St. Dunstan" (Rolls Series). [118] The anonymous translation of the Gospels compiled in the time ofAlfred was copied and vulgarised in this period; ed. Skeat, "The Gospelsin Anglo-Saxon, " Cambridge, 1871-87, 4 vols. 4to. [119] See Sermon XI. ; "The Blickling Homilies, " ed. R. Morris, 1874 ff. E. E. T. S. , 8vo. [120] "The Sermones Catholici, or Homilies of Ælfric, " ed. Thorpe, London, Ælfric Society, 1844-6, 2 vols. 8vo; "Ælfric's Lives of Saints, being a set of Sermons, " &c. , ed. W. W. Skeat, E. E. T. S. , 1881 ff. Ælfrictranslated part of the Bible: "Heptateuchus, Liber Job, " &c. , ed. Thwaites, Oxford, 1698, 8vo. He wrote also important works on astronomyand grammar, a "Colloquium" in Latin and Anglo-Saxon: "Ælfric'sGrammatik und Glossar, " ed. J. Zupitza, 1880, 8vo, &c. [121] The homilies of Wulfstan were published by Arthur Napier:"Wulfstan, Sammlung der ihm zugeschriebenen Homilien nebstUntersuchungen über ihre Echtheit, " Berlin, 1883, 8vo (sixty-two pieces, some of which are very short). [122] "Transtulimus hunc codicem ex libris latinorum . . . Obædificationem simplicium . . . Ideoque nec obscura posuimus verba, sedsimplicem Anglicam, quo facilius possit ad cor pervenire legentium velaudientium, ad utilitatem animarum suarum quia alia lingua nesciunterudiri quam in qua nati sunt. Nec ubique transtulimus verbum ex verbo, sed sensum ex sensu. . . . Hos namque auctores in hac explanatione sumussequuti, videlicet Augustinum Hipponensem, Hieronimum, Bedam, Gregorium, Smaragdum et aliquando Haymonem. " Ælfric's preface for his "SermonesCatholici. " In the preface of his sermons on the lives of Saints, Ælfricstates that he intends not to translate any more, "ne forte despectuihabeantur margarite Christi. " [123] "The Blickling Homilies, " Sermon XI. [124] "Sermones Catholici", pp. 12-13. [125] _Ibid. _ pp. 304-5. See also, in the sermon on St. John theBaptist, a curious satire on wicked talkative women, pp. 476-7. [126] Sermon for the 25th of August, on the martyrdom of St. Bartholomew, pp. 454 ff. The portrait of the saint is as minutely drawn:"he has fair and curling locks, is white of body, and has deep eyes andmoderate nose, " &c. [127] Skeat, "Ælfric's Lives of Saints, " 1881. [128] "The Blickling Homilies, " Sermons X. And XI. [129] _Ibid. _, Sermon XVII. BOOK II. _THE FRENCH INVASION. _ CHAPTER I. _BATTLE. _ I. Germanic England gave itself a king for the last time at the death ofEdward the Confessor. Harold, son of Godwin, was elected to succeed him. A momentous crisis, the greatest in English history, was drawing near. An awful problem had to be solved. Divided, helpless, uncertain, Englandcould no longer remain what she had been for six hundred years. Shestood vacillating, drawn by contrary attractions to opposite centres, half-way between the North, that had last populated the land, and theSouth, that had taught and christianised the nation. On both sides freshinvaders threaten her; which will be the winner? Should the Northtriumph, England will be bound for centuries to the Germanic nations, whose growth will be tardy, and whose literary development will be slow, so slow indeed that men still alive to-day may have seen with their owneyes the great poet of the race, Goethe, who died in 1832. Should theSouth carry the day, the growth will be speedy and the preparationrapid. Like France, Italy, and Spain, England will have at theRenaissance a complete literature of her own, and be able to produce aShakespeare, as Italy produced an Ariosto, Spain a Cervantes, and Francea Montaigne, a Ronsard and a Rabelais. The problem was solved in the autumn of 1066. On the morrow of Harold'selection, the armies of the North and South assembled, and the last ofthe invasions began. The Scandinavians took the sea again. They were led by Harold Hardrada, son of Sigurd, a true romance hero, who had fought in many wars, andonce defended by his sword the throne of the eastern emperors. [130] Tothe South another fleet collected, commanded by William of Normandy; he, too, an extraordinary man, bastard of that Robert, known in legend asRobert the Devil who had long since started on a pilgrimage to Jerusalemfrom which he never returned. The Norman of Scandinavia and the Normansof France were about to play a match of which England was the stake. The Scandinavians were the first to land. Hardrada entered York, and fora moment it seemed as if victory would belong to the people of theNorth. But Harold of England rushed to meet them, and crushed them atStamford-bridge; his brother, the rebel Tosti, fell on the field ofbattle, and Hardrada died of an arrow-wound in the throat. All was overwith Scandinavia; there remained the Normans of France. Who were these Normans? Very different from those of the other army, they no longer had anything Scandinavian or Germanic about them; andthus they stood a chance of furnishing the Anglo-Saxons with the graftthey needed. Had it not been for this, their invasion would have carriedno more important result than that of the Danes in the ninth century;but the consequences were to be very different. The fusion betweenRollo's pirates, and the already dense population of the rich provincecalled after them Normandy, had been long accomplished. It was less afusion than an absorption, for the natives were much more numerous thanthe settlers. From the time of the second duke, French had again becomethe language of the mass of the inhabitants. They are Christians; theyhave French manners, chivalrous tastes, castles, convents, and schools;and the blood that flows in their veins is mostly French. Thus it isthat they can set forth in the eleventh century for the conquest ofEngland as representatives of the South, of Latin civilisation, ofRomance letters, and of the religion of Rome. William comes blessed bythe Pope, with a banner borne before him, the gift of Alexander II. , wearing a hair of St. Peter's in a ring, having secured by a vow thefavour of one of France's patrons, that same St. Martin of Tours, whosechurch Clovis had enriched, and whose cape Hugues Capet had worn: whencehis surname. No Beowulf, no northern hero is sung of in William's army; but thereresound the verses of the most ancient masterpiece of French literature, at that time the most recent. According to the poet Wace, well informed, since his father took part in the expedition, the minstrel Tailleferrode before the soldiers, singing "of Charlemagne, and of Roland, andOliver, and the vassals who fell at Roncevaux. "[131] The army, moreover, was not exclusively composed of men fromNormandy. [132] It was divided into three parts; to the left the Bretonsand Poictevins; the Normans in the centre; and to the right the French, properly so called. No doubt was possible; William's army was a Frencharmy; all contemporary writers describe it as such, and both partiesgive it that name. In the "Domesday Book, " written by order of William, his people are termed "Franci"; on the Bayeux tapestry, embroidered soonafter the Conquest, at the place where the battle is represented, theinscription runs: "Hic Franci pugnant" (Here fight the French). Crownedking of England, William continues to call his followers"Frenchmen. "[133] The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, on the other side, describe the invaders sometimes as Normans and sometimes as Frenchmen, "Frenciscan. " "And the French had possession of the place of carnage, "says the Worcester annalist, after giving an account of the battle ofHastings; and he bestows the appellation of Normans upon the men ofHarold Hardrada. A similar view is taken farther north. Formerly, weread in a saga, the same tongue was spoken in England and Norway, butnot after the coming of William of Normandy, "because he wasFrench. "[134] As to Duke William, he led his army of Frenchmen in French fashion, thatis to say gaily. His state of mind is characterised not by any overflowof warlike joy or fury, but by good humour. Like the heroes of theCeltic poems, like the inhabitants of Gaul in all ages, he is prompt atrepartee (_argute loqui_). He stumbles in stepping off the ship, whichis considered by all as a bad omen: "It is a most fatal omen, " we readin an ancient Scandinavian poem, "if thou stumble on thy feet whenmarching to battle, for evil fairies stand on either side of thee, wishing to see thee wounded. "[135] It means nothing, said the duke tohis followers, save that I take possession of the land. At the moment ofbattle he puts his hauberk on the wrong way: another bad omen. Not atall, he declares, it is a sign I shall turn out different; "King I shallbe, who duke was": Le nom qui ert de duchée Verreiz de due en rei torné; Reis serai qui duc ai esté. [136] He challenges Harold to single combat, as the Gauls did theiradversaries, according to Diodorus Siculus; and as Francis I. Will dolater when at feud with Charles V. He was to die in an expeditionundertaken out of revenge for an epigram of the king of France, and tomake good his retort. The evening of the 14th of October, 1066, saw the fate of Englanddecided. The issue of the battle was doubtful. William, by a series ofingenious ideas, secured the victory. His foes were the victims of hiscleverness; they were "ingenio circumventi, ingenio victi. "[137] Heordered his soldiers to simulate a flight; he made his archers shootupwards, so that the arrows falling down among the Saxons wrought greathavoc. One of them put out Harold's eye; the English chief fell by hisstandard, and soon after the battle was over, the most memorable everwon by an army of Frenchmen. The duke had vowed to erect on the field of the fight an abbey to St. Martin of Tours. He kept his word, but the building never bore among menthe name of the saint; it received and has retained to this day theappellation of "Battle. " Its ruins, preserved with pious care, overlookthe dales where the host of the Conqueror gathered for the attack. Faroff through the hills, then covered by the yellowing leaves of theforest of Anderida, glistens, between earth and sky, the grey sea thatbrought over the Norman fleet eighteen centuries ago. Heaps of stones, overgrown with ivy, mark the place where Harold fell, the last king ofEnglish blood who ever sat upon the throne of Great Britain. It is asecluded spot; large cedars, alders, and a tree with white foliage forma curtain, and shut off from the outer world the scene of the terribletragedy. A solemn silence reigns; nothing is visible through thebranches, save the square tower of the church of Battle, and the onlysound that floats upwards is that of the old clock striking the hours. Ivy and climbing roses cling to the grey stones and fall in lightclusters along the low walls of the crypt; the roses shed their leaves, and the soft autumn breeze scatters the white petals on the grass, amidst fragments to which is attached one of the greatest memories inthe history of humanity. The consequences of "the Battle" were indeed immense, far more importantthan those of Agincourt or Austerlitz: a whole nation was transformedand became a new one. The vanquished Anglo-Saxons no more knew how todefend themselves and unite against the French than they had formerlyknown how to unite against the Danes. To the momentary enthusiasm thathad gathered around Harold many energetic supporters succeeded a gloomydejection. Real life exhibited the same contrasts as literature. Stirredby sudden impulses, the natives vainly struggled to free themselves, incapable even in this pressing danger of combined and vigorous action;then they mournfully submitted to fate. The only contemporaryinterpreter of their feelings known to us, the Anglo-Saxon chronicler, bewails the Conquest, but is more struck by the ravages it occasionsthan by the change of domination it brings about. "And Bishop Odo andEarl William [Fitz-Osbern], " he says, "remained here and wrought castleswidely throughout the nation, and oppressed the poor people, and everafter that it greatly grew in evil. May the end be good when God will. "So much for the material disaster, now for the coming of the foreigner:"And then came to meet him Archbishop Ealdred [of York], and Eadgarchild and Earl Eadwine, and Earl Morkere, and all the best men ofLondon, and then, from necessity, submitted when the greatest harm hadbeen done, and it was very imprudent that it was not done earlier, asGod would not better it for our sins. "[138] People with a mind so full of elegiac sentiments fall an easy prey tomen who know how to _will_. Before dying William had taken everything, even a part of Wales; he was king of England, and had so completelychanged the fortunes of his new country that its inhabitants, so used toinvasions, were never again to see rise, from that day to this, thesmoke of an enemy's camp. II. From the outset William seems to have desired and foreseen it. Practical, clear-minded, of firm will, imbued with the notion of State, he possessed in the highest degree the qualities his new subjects mostlacked. He knew neither doubts nor vain hesitations; he was an optimist, always sure of success: not with the certitude of the blind who walkconfidently to the river, but with the assurance of clear-sightedpeople, who leave the goddess Fortune so little to do, it were a miracleif she did less for them. His lucid and persistent will is never atfault. In the most critical moment of the battle a fatal report iscirculated that the duke has been killed; he instantly tears off hishelmet and shows himself with uncovered face, crying: "I am alive! hereI stand, and by God I shall conquer!"[139] All his life, he conforms his actions to his theories; having come asthe heir of the Anglo-Saxon princes, he behaves as such. He visits hisestate, rectifies its boundaries, protects its approaches, and, in spiteof the immensity of the work, takes a minute inventory of it. [140] This inventory is the Domesday, a unique monument, such that no nationin Europe possesses the like. On the coins, he so exactly imitates thetype adopted by his predecessors that it is hard to distinguish thepennies of William from those of Edward. Before the end of his reign, hewas the master or conqueror of all, and had made his authority felt andaccepted by all, even by his brother Bishop Odo, whom he arrested withhis own hands, and caused to be imprisoned "as Earl of Kent, " he said, with his usual readiness of word, to avoid a quarrel with the Church. And so it was that, in spite of their terrible sufferings, thevanquished were unable to repress a certain sentiment which predisposedthem to a fusion with the victor, namely admiration. Never had they seenenergy, power, or knowledge like unto that. The judgment of theAnglo-Saxon chronicler on William may be considered as being thejudgment of the nation itself concerning its new masters: "That KingWilliam about whom we speak was a very wise man, and very powerful, moredignified and strong than any of his predecessors were. He was mild tothe good men who loved God, and over all measure severe to the men whogainsayed his will. . . . So also was he a very rigid and cruel man, sothat no one durst do anything against his will. . . . He spared not his ownbrother named Odo. . . . Among other things is not to be forgotten the goodpeace that he made in this land, so that a man who had any confidence inhimself might go over his realm with his bosom full of gold unhurt. " Theland of the Britons, "Brytland" or Wales, was in his power, Scotlandlikewise; he would have had Ireland besides had he reigned two yearslonger. It is true he greatly oppressed the people, built castles, andmade terrible game-laws: "As greatly did he love the tall deer as if hewere their father. He also ordained concerning the hares that theyshould go free. "[141] Even in the manner of presenting grievances wedetect that special kind of popularity which attaches itself to thetyranny of great men. The England of the Anglo-Saxons had been defeated, but brilliant destinies were in store for the country; the master washated but not despised. These great destinies were realised. The qualities of which William gavethe example were rare in England, but common in France; they were thoseof his race and country, those of his lieutenants; they naturallyreappear in many of his successors. These are, as a rule, energetic andheadstrong men, who never hesitate, who believe in themselves, arealways ready to run all hazards, and to attempt the impossible, with thefirm conviction that they will succeed; they are never weary of fightingand taking; the moment never comes when they can enjoy their conquestsin peace; in good as in evil they never stop half-way; those who inclineto tyranny become, like Stephen, the most atrocious tyrants[142]; thosewho incline to the manners and customs of chivalry carry them, likeRichard Coeur de Lion, as far as possible, and forget that they have akingdom to rule. The most intelligent become, like Henry II. , incomparable statesmen; those who have a taste for art give themselvesup to it with such passion that they jeopardise, like Henry III. , eventheir crown, and care for nothing but their masons and painters. Theyare equally ready for sword and word fights, and they offer both to allcomers. They constantly risk their lives; out of twelve Norman orAngevin princes six die a violent death. All their enterprises are conceived on a gigantic scale. They carry warinto Scotland, into Ireland, into Wales, into France, into Gascony, later on into the Holy Land and into Spain. The Conqueror was on his wayto Paris when he received, by accident, being at Mantes, fifteen leaguesfrom the capital, a wound of which he died. These qualities are in theblood. A Frenchman, Henry of Burgundy, seizes on the county of "Porto"in 1095, out of which his successors make the kingdom of "Portugal"; aNorman, Robert Guiscard, conquers Sicily, takes Naples, forces hisalliance upon the Pope, overawes Venice, and the same year beats the twoemperors; his son Bohemond establishes himself as reigning prince inAntioch in 1099, and fighting with great composure and equanimityagainst Turk and Christian, establishes out of hand a little kingdomwhich lasted two centuries. They find in England miserable churches;they erect new ones, "of a style unknown till then, " writes William ofMalmesbury, [143] which count among the grandest ever built. The splendidnaves of St. Albans, Westminster, Canterbury, Winchester, York, Salisbury, rise heavenwards; the towers of Ely reach to the skies; thewest front of Lincoln, adorned with marvellous carvings, rears itself onthe hill above the town; Peterborough opens its wide bays, deep as theportals of French churches; Durham, a heavy and massive pile built byknight-bishops, overlooks the valley of the Wear, and seems a divinefortress, a castle erected for God. The donjons of the conquerors, Rochester, London, Norwich, Lincoln, are enormous, square and thick, sohigh and so solid that the idea of taking these giant structures couldnever occur to the native dreamers, who wait "till the end shall be goodwhen God pleases"! The masters of the land are ever ready for everything, and find time foreverything: if their religious edifices are considered, it seems asthough they had cared for nothing else; if we read the accounts of theirwars, it appears as if they were ever on their way to militaryexpeditions, and never left the field of battle. Open the innumerablemanuscripts which contain the monuments of their literature: these workscan be meant, it seems, but for men of leisure, who have interminabledays to spend in lengthy pastimes; they make their Benoits deSainte-More give them an account of their origins in chronicles of43, 000 lines. This literature is ample, superabundant, with numberlessbranches and endless ramifications; they have not even one literatureonly; they have three: a French, a Latin, and later an English one. Their matchless strength and their indomitable will further oneparticular cause: the infusion of French and Latin ideas in theAnglo-Saxon people, and the connection of England with the civilisationsof the South. The task was arduous: Augustine, Alfred, Dunstan, kingsand saints, had attempted it and failed; the Normans tried andsucceeded. They were ever successful. Powerful means were at their disposal, and they knew how to make thebest of them. Firstly, the chiefs of the nation are French; their wivesare mostly French too: Stephen, Henry II. , John, Henry III. , Edward I. , Edward II. , Richard II. , all marry Frenchwomen. The Bohuns (from whomcame the Herefords, Essexes, Northamptons), the Beauchamps (Warwick), the Mowbrays (Nottingham, Norfolk), the Bigods (Norfolk), the Nevilles(Westmoreland, Warwick), the Montgomerys (Shrewsbury, Pembroke, Arundel), the Beaumonts and the Montforts (Leicester), are Frenchmen. People of less importance married to English women--"matrimonia quoquecum subditis jungunt"[144]--rear families which for many years remainFrench. During a long period, the centre of the thoughts and interests of thekings of England, French by origin, education, manners, and language, isin France. William the Conqueror bequeaths Normandy to his eldest son, and England to his younger. Not one of them is buried at Westminsterbefore 1272; they sleep their last sleep most of them at Caen orFontevrault[145]; out of the thirty-five years of his reign, Henry II. Spends more than twenty-one in France, and less than fourteen inEngland. [146] Before his accession Richard Coeur-de-Lion only came toEngland twice in twenty years. They successively make war on France, notfrom hatred or scorn, not because they wish to destroy her, but becausethey wish to be kings of France themselves. They admire and wish topossess her; their ideal, whether moral, literary, administrative, orreligious, is above all a French ideal. They are knights, and introduceinto England the fashion of tournaments, "conflictus gallici, " saysMatthew Paris. They wish to have a University, and they copy for Oxfordthe regulations of Paris. Henry III. Quarrels with his barons, and whomdoes he select for an arbiter but his former enemy, Louis IX. , king ofFrance, the victor of Taillebourg? They organise in England a religioushierarchy, so similar to that of France that the prelates of one countryreceive constantly and without difficulty promotion in the other. Johnof Poictiers, born in Kent, treasurer of York, becomes bishop ofPoictiers and archbishop of Lyons, while still retaining the living ofEynesford in Kent; John of Salisbury, secretary of the archbishop ofCanterbury, becomes bishop of Chartres; Ralph de Sarr, born in Thanet, becomes dean of Reims[147]; others are appointed bishops of Palermo, Messina, and Syracuse. Impetuous as are these princes, ready at every instant to run all risksand play fast and loose, even when, like William I. , old and ill, oneprecious quality of their temper diminishes the danger of theirrashness. They undertake, as though for a wager, superhuman tasks, butonce undertaken they proceed to the fulfilling of them with a lucid andpractical mind. It is this practical bent of their mind, combined withtheir venturesome disposition, that has made of them so remarkable arace, and enabled them to transform the one over which they had nowextended their rule. Be the question a question of ideas or a question of facts, they behavein the same manner. They perceive the importance both of ideas and ofthose who wield them, and act accordingly; they negotiate with the Pope, with St. Martin of Tours, even with God; they promise nothing fornothing; however exalted the power with which they treat, what theyagree to must be bargains, Norman bargains. The bull "Laudabiliter, " by which the English PopeNicholas Breakspeare (Adrian IV. ) gives Ireland to Henry II. , is aformal bargain; the king buys, the Pope sells; the price is minutelydiscussed beforehand, and set down in the agreement. [148] But the mostremarkable view suggested to them by this practical turn of their mindconsisted in the value they chose to set, even at that distant time, on"public opinion, " if we may use the expression, and on literature as ameans of action. This was a stroke of genius; William endeavoured, and his successorsimitated him, to do for the past what he was doing for the present: tounify. For this, the new dynasty wanted the assistance of poets, and itcalled upon them. William had persistently given himself out to be notonly the successor, but the rightful heir of Edward the Confessor, andof the native kings. During several centuries the poets who wrote in theFrench tongue, the Latin chroniclers, the English rhymers, as thoughobedient to a word of command, blended all the origins together in theirbooks; French, Danes, Saxons, Britons, Trojans even, according to them, formed one sole race; all these men had found in England a commoncountry, and their united glories were the general heritage ofposterity. With a persistency which lasted from century to century, theydisplaced the national point of view, and ended by establishing, withevery one's assent, the theory that the constitution and unity of anation are a question not of blood but of place; consanguinity matterslittle; the important point is to be compatriots. All the inhabitants ofthe same country are one people: the Saxons of England and the French ofEngland are nothing but Englishmen. All the heroes who shone in the British Isle are now indiscriminatelysung by the poets, who celebrate Brutus, Arthur, Hengist, Horsa, Cnut, Edward, and William in impartial strains. They venerate in the samemanner all saints of whatever blood who have won heaven by the practiceof virtue on English ground. Here again the king, continuing the wisepolicy of his ancestors, sets the example. On Easter Day, 1158, HenryII. And his wife Aliénor of Aquitaine enter the cathedral of Worcester, wearing their crowns, and present themselves before the tomb of the holyprotector of the town. They remove their crowns, place them on his tomb, and swear never to wear them again. The saint was not a French one, butWulfstan, the last Anglo-Saxon bishop, one who held the see at the timeof the Conquest. [149] The word of command has been given; the clerks know it. Here is a poemof the thirteenth century, on Edward the Confessor; it is composed inthe French tongue by a Norman monk of Westminster Abbey, and dedicatedto Aliénor of Provence, wife of Henry III. In it we read: "In this worldthere is, we dare to say, neither country, nor kingdom, nor empire whereso many good kings and saints have lived as in the isle of the English. . . Holy martyrs and confessors, many of whom died for God; others werevery strong and brave as Arthur, Edmond, and Cnut. "[150] This is a characteristic example of these new tendencies. The poem isdedicated to a Frenchwoman by a Norman of England, and begins with thepraise of a Briton, a Saxon, and a Dane. In the compiling of chronicles, clerks proceed in the same manner, andthis is still more significant, for it clearly proves that the pressingof literature into the service of political ideas is the result of adecided will, and of a preconceived plan, and not of chance. Thechroniclers do, indeed, write by command, and by express desire of thekings their masters. One of them begins his history of England with thesiege of Troy, and relates the adventures of the Trojans and Britons, aswillingly as those of the Saxons or Normans; another writes two separatebooks, the first in honour of the Britons, and the second in honour ofthe Normans; a third, who goes back to the time when "the world wasestablished, " does not get down to the dukes of Normandy without havingnarrated first the story of Antenor the Trojan, an ancestor of theNormans, as he believes. [151] The origin of the inhabitants of the landmust no longer be sought for under Scandinavian skies, but on Trojanfields. From the smoking ruins of Pergamus came Francus, father of theFrench, and Æneas, father of Brutus and of the Britons of England. Thusthe nations on both sides of the Channel have a common and classicancestry. There is Trojan blood in their veins, the blood of Priam andof the princes who defended Ilion. [152] From theory, these ideas passed into practice, and thus received alasting consecration; another bond of fraternity was established betweenthe various races living on the soil of Britain: that which results fromthe memory of wars fought together. William and his successors do notdistinguish between their subjects. All are English, and they are allled together to battle against their foes of the Continent. So that thiscollection of scattered tribes, on an island which a resolute invaderhad formerly found it so easy to conquer, now gains victories in itsturn, and takes an unexpected rank among nations. David Bruce is madeprisoner at Neville's Cross; Charles de Blois at Roche Derien; King Johnat Poictiers; Du Guesclin at Navarette. Hastings has made the defeat ofthe Armada possible; William of Normandy stamped on the ground, and anation came forth. FOOTNOTES: [130] The romantic events in the life of Harold Hardrada Sigurdson arethe subject of an Icelandic saga in prose, by Snorre Sturlason (born atHvam in Iceland, 1178): "The Heimskringla Saga, or the Sagas of theNorse kings, from the Icelandic of Snorre Sturlason, " ed. Laing and R. B. Anderson, London, 1889, 4 vols. 8vo, vols. Iii. And iv. A detailedaccount of the battle at "Stanforda-Bryggiur" (Stamford-bridge), will befound in chaps. 89 ff. ; the battle of "Helsingja port" (Hastings), istold in chap. 100. [131] Taillefer ki mult bien chantout, Sor un cheval ki tost alout Devant le duc alout chantant De Karlemaigne et de Rolant E d'Oliver et des vassals Qui morurent en Rencevals. "Maistre Wace's Roman de Rou, " ed. Andresen, Heilbronn, 1877, 2 vols. 8vo, p. 349, a statement reproduced or corroborated by severalchroniclers: "Tunc cantilena Rollandi inochata. . . . " William ofMalmesbury, "Gesta Regum Anglorum, " ed. Hardy, London, 1840, EnglishHistorical Society, book iii. , p. 415. [132] William of Poictiers, a Norman by birth (he derived his name fromhaving studied at Poictiers) and a chaplain of the Conqueror, says thathis army consisted of "Mancels, French, Bretons, Aquitains, andNormans"; his statement is reproduced by Orderic Vital: "Insisterunt eisCenomannici, Franci, Britanni, Aquitani et miserabiliter pereuntescadebant Angli. " "Historia Ecclesiastica, " in Migne, vol. Clxxxviii. Col. 298. Vital was born nine years only after the Conquest, and hespent most of his life among Normans in the monastery of St. Evroult. [133] Charter of William to the city of London: "Will'm kyng gret . . . Ealle tha burhwaru binnan Londone, Frencisce and Englisce, freondlice"(greets all the burghers within London, French and English). At a laterdate, again, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, in a charter for Lincoln, sendshis greetings to his subjects "tam Francis quam Anglis, " A. D. 1194. Stubbs, "Select Charters, " Oxford, 1876, pp. 82 and 266. [134] "Gunnlangs Saga, " in "Three northern Love Stories and otherTales, " edited by Erikr Magnusson, and William Morris, London, 1875, 12mo. [135] "The old play of the Wolsungs, " in "Corpus Poeticum Boreale, " i. P. 34. [136] "Maistre Wace's Roman de Rou, " ed. Andresen, line 7749. The samestory is reproduced by William of Malmesbury (twelfth century). "Armapoposcit, moxque ministrorum tumultu loricam inversam indutus, casumrisu correxit, vertetur, inquiens, fortitudo comitatus mei in regnum. ""Gesta Regum Anglorum, " 1840, English Historical Society, book iii. P. 415. [137] William of Malmesbury, _Ibid. _ [138] "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" (Rolls), year 1066, Worcester text (Tib. B. IV. ). Same statement in William of Malmesbury, who says of hiscompatriots that "uno prælio et ipso perfacili se patriamquepessundederint. " "Gesta Regum Anglorum, " English Historical Society, p. 418. [139] So says William of Poictiers, and Orderic Vital after him: ". . . Nudato insuper capite, detractaque galea exclamans: me inquitconspicite; vivo et vincam, opitulante Deo. " "Orderici Vitalis Angligenæ. . . Historiæ Ecclesiasticæ, Libri XIII. , " in Migne's "Patrologia, " vol. Clxxxviii. Col. 297. [140] The inventory is carried down to details; answers are required toa number of questions: ". . . Deinde quomodo vocatur mansio, quis tenuiteam tempore Regis Eadwardi; quis modo tenet; quot hidæ; quot carrucæ indominio; quot hominum; quot villani; quot cotarii; quot servi; quotliberi homines; quot sochemani; quantum silvæ; quantum prati; quotpascuorum; quot molendina; quot piscinæ, " &c. , &c. "Domesday for Ely";Stubbs, "Select Charters, " Oxford, 1876, p. 86. The Domesday has beenpublished in facsimile by the Record Commission: "Domesday Book, or thegreat survey of England, of William the Conqueror, 1086, " edited by SirHenry James, London and Southampton, 1861-3, 2 vols. 4to. [141] Peterborough text of the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, " year 1086. [142] To the extent that England resembled then Jerusalem besieged byTitus: "Quid multa? In diebus eis multiplicata sunt mala in terra, ut siquis ea summatim recenseat, historiam Josephi possint excedere. " John ofSalisbury, "Policraticus, " book vi chap. Xviii. [143] "Videas ubique in villis ecclesias, in vicis et urbibusmonasteria, novo ædificandi genere consurgere. " The buildings of theAnglo-Saxons, according to the testimony of the same, who may have seenmany as his lived in the twelfth century, were very poor; they werepleased with "pravis et abjectis domibus. " "Gesta Regum Anglorum, " ed. Hardy, 1840, book iii. P. 418. [144] William of Malmesbury, _ut supra_, p. 420. [145] The Conqueror was buried at Caen; Henry II. And RichardCoeur-de-Lion at Fontevrault in Anjou. Henry III. Was buried atWestminster, but his heart was sent to Fontevrault, and the chapter ofWestminster still possesses the deed drawn at the moment when it wasplaced in the hands of the Angevin abbess, 20 Ed. I. (exhibited in thechapter house). [146] "Henry II. , " by Mrs. J. R. Green, 1888, p. 22 ("Twelve EnglishStatesmen"). [147] Stubbs, "Seventeen Lectures, " 1886, p. 131. [148] After having congratulated the king upon his intention to teachmanners and virtues to a wild race, "indoctis et rudibus populis, " thePope recalls the famous theory, according to which all islands belongedof right to the Holy See: "Sane Hiberniam et omnes insulas, quibus soljustitiæ Christus illuxit . . . Ad jus B. Petri et sacrosanctæ RomanæEcclesiæ (quod tua et nobilitas recognoscit) non est dubiumpertinere. . . . " The items of the bargain are then enumerated:"Significasti siquidem nobis, fili in Christo charissime, te Hiberniæinsulam, ad subdendum illum populum legibus, et vitiorum plantaria indeexstirpanda velle intrare, et de singulis domibus annuam unius denariiB. Petro velle solvere pensionem. . . . Nos itaque pium et laudabiledesiderium tuum cum favore congruo prosequentes . . . Gratum et acceptumhabemus ut . . . Illius terræ populus honorifice te recipiat et sicutDominum veneretur. " "Adriani papæ epistolæ et privilegia. --Ad HenricumII. Angliæ regem, " in Migne's "Patrologia, " vol. Clxxxviii. Col. 1441. [149] As little French as could be, for he did not even know thelanguage of the conquerors, and was on that account near being removedfrom his see: "quasi homo idiota, qui linguam gallicam non noverat necregiis consiliis interesse poterat. " Matthew Paris, "Chronica Majora, "year 1095. [150] En mund ne est, (ben vus l'os dire) Pais, reaume, ne empire U tant unt esté bons rois E seinz, cum en isle d'Englois, Ki après règne terestre Or règnent reis en célestre, Seinz, martirs, e cunfessurs, Ki pur Deu mururent plursurs; Li autre, forz e hardiz mutz, Cum fu Arthurs, Aedmunz e Knudz. "Lives of Edward the Confessor, " ed. H. R. Luard (Rolls), 1858;beginning of the "Estoire de Seint Aedward le Rei. " [151] These three poets, all of them subjects of the English kings, lived in the twelfth century; the oldest of the three was Gaimar, whowrote, between 1147 and 1151 (P. Meyer, "Romania, " vol. Xviii. P. 314), his "Estorie des Engles" (ed. Hardy and Martin, Rolls, 1888, 2 vols. , 8vo), and, about 1145, a translation in French verse of the "HistoriaBritonum" of Geoffrey of Monmouth (see below, p. 132). --Wace, born atJersey (1100?-1175, G. Paris), translated also Geoffrey into Frenchverse ("Roman de Brut, " ed. Leroux de Lincy, Rouen, 1836, 2 vols. 8vo), and wrote between 1160 and 1174 his "Geste des Normands" or "Roman deRou" (ed. Andresen, Heilbronn, 1877, 2 vols. 8vo). He wrote alsometrical lives of saints, &c. --Benoit de Sainte-More, besides hismetrical romances (see below, p. 129), wrote, by command of Henry II. , agreat "Chronique des ducs de Normandie" (ed. Francisque Michel, "Documents inédits, " Paris, 1836, 3 vols. 4to). [152] Even under the Roman empire, nations had been known to attributeto themselves a Trojan origin. Lucanus states that the men of Auvergnewere conceited enough to consider themselves allied to the Trojan race. Ammianus Marcellinus, fourth century, states that similar traditionswere current in Gaul in his time: "Aiunt quidam paucos post excidiumTrojæ fugientes Græcos ubique dispersos, loca hæc occupasse tunc vacua. ""Rerum Gestarum, " lib. Xv. Cap. Ix. During the Middle Ages a Romanancestry was attributed to the French, the Britons, the Lombards, theNormans. The history of Brutus, father of the Britons, is in Nennius, tenth century(?); he says he drew his information from "annalibusRomanorum" ("Historia Britonum, " ed. Stevenson, Historical Society, London, 1838, p. 7). The English historians after him, up to moderntimes, accepted the same legend; it is reproduced by Matthew Paris inthe thirteenth century, by Ralph Higden in the fourteenth, by Holinshedin Shakesperean times: "This Brutus . . . Was the sonne of Silvius, thesonne of Ascanius, the sonne of Æneas the Troian, begotten of his wifeCreusa, and borne in Troie, before the citie was destroied. " Chronicles, 1807, 6 vols. Fol. Book ii. Chap. 1. In France at the Renaissance, Ronsard chose for his hero Francus the Trojan, "because, " as he says, "he had an extreme desire to honour the house of France. " CHAPTER II. _LITERATURE IN THE FRENCH LANGUAGE UNDER THE NORMAN AND ANGEVIN KINGS. _ I. What previous invaders of the island had been unable to accomplish, theFrench of William of Normandy were finally to realise. By the rapidityand thoroughness of their conquest, by securing to themselves theassistance of those who knew how to use a pen, by their continentalwars, they were to bring about the fusion of all the races in one, andteach them, whether they intended it or not, what a mother country was. They taught them something else besides, and the results of the Conquestwere not less remarkable from a literary than from a political point ofview. A new language and new ideas were introduced by them into England, and a strange phenomenon occurred, one almost unique in history. Forabout two or three hundred years, the French language remainedsuperimposed upon the English; the upper layer slowly infiltrated thelower, was absorbed, and disappeared in transforming it. But this wasthe work of centuries. "And then comes, lo!" writes an Englishchronicler more than two hundred years after Hastings, "England intoNormandy's hand; and the Normans could speak no language but their own, and they spoke French here as they did at home, and taught it to theirchildren: so that the high men of this land, who are come of theirrace, keep all to that speech which they have taken from them. " Peopleof a lower sort, "low men, " stick to their English; all those who do notknow French are men of no account. "I ween that in all the world thereis no country that holds not to her own speech, save Englandalone. "[153] The diffusion of the French tongue was such that it seemed at one timeas if a disappearance of English were possible. All over the greatisland people were found speaking French, and they were always the mostpowerful, the strongest, richest, or most knowing in the land, whosefavour it was well to gain, and whose example it was well to imitate. Men who spoke only English remained all their lives, as Robert ofGloucester tells us, men of "little, " of nothing. In order to becomesomething the first condition was to learn French. This conditionremained so long a necessary one, it was even impossible to foresee thatit should ever cease to exist; and the wisest, during that period, wereof opinion that only works written in French were assured of longevity. Gerald de Barry, who had written in Latin, regretted at the end of hislife that he had not employed the French language, "gallicum, " whichwould have secured to his works, he thought, a greater and more lastingfame. [154] Besides the force lent to it by the Conquest, the diffusion of theFrench tongue was also facilitated by the marvellous renown it thenenjoyed throughout Europe. Never had it a greater; men of various raceswrote it, and the Italian Brunetto Latini, who used it, gave among otherreasons for so doing, "that this speech is more delightful and morecommon to all people. "[155] Such being the case, it spread quickly inEngland, where it was, for a long time, the language used in laws anddeeds, in the courts of justice, in Parliamentary debates, [156] thelanguage used by the most refined poets of the period. And thus it happened that next to authors, French by race and language, subjects of the kings of England, were found others employing the sameidiom, though of English blood. They strove, to the best of theirpossibility, to imitate the style in favour with the rulers of the land, they wrote chronicles in French, as did, in the twelfth and fourteenthcenturies, Jordan Fantosme[157] and Peter de Langtoft; religious poems, as Robert of Greteham, Robert Grosseteste, William of Wadington did inthe thirteenth; romances in verse, like those of Hue of Rotelande(twelfth century); moralised tales in prose, like those of Nicole Bozon;lyric poems, [158] or _fabliaux_, [159] like those composed by variousanonymous writers; ballads such as those we owe, quite at the end of theperiod, in the second half of the fourteenth century, to Chaucer'sfriend, John Gower. At this distance from the Conquest, French still played an important, though greatly diminished, part; it remained, as will be seen, thelanguage of the Court; the accounts of the sittings of Parliamentcontinued to be written in French; a London citizen registered in Frenchon his note-book all that he knew concerning the history of histown. [160] As Robert of Gloucester had said, the case was anunparalleled one. This French literature, the work of Englishmen, consisted, of course, mainly in imitations of French models, and neednot detain us long; still, its existence must be remembered, for noother fact shows so well how thorough and powerful the French invasionhad been. What, then, were the models copied by these imitators, and what theliterature and ideas that, thanks to the Conquest, French-speaking poetsacclimatised in lately-Germanic England? What sort of works pleased therulers of the country; what writings were composed for them; whatmanuscripts did they order to be copied for their libraries? For it mustnot be forgotten, when studying the important problem of the diffusionof French ideas among men of English race, that it matters littlewhether the works most liked in England were composed by French subjectsof the king of France, or by French subjects of the king of England; itmatters little whether these ideas went across the Channel, carried overby poets, or by manuscripts. What _is_ important is to see andascertain that works of a new style, with new aims in them, andbelonging to a new school of art, enjoyed in England a wide popularityafter the Conquest, with the result that deep and lastingtransformations affected the æsthetic ideal and even the way of thinkingof the inhabitants. What, then, were these ideas, and what was thisliterature? II. This literature little resembled that liked by the late masters of thecountry. It was as varied, superabundant, and many-coloured as the otherwas grand, monotonous, and melancholy. The writings produced or simplyadmired by the conquerors were, like themselves, at once practical andromantic. They had, together with a multitude of useful works, a numberof charming songs and tales, the authors of which had no aim but toplease. The useful works are those so-called scientific treatises in whicheverything is taught that can be learned, including virtue: "Image duMonde, " "Petite Philosophie, " "Lumière des laïques, " "Secret desSecrets, " &c. [161]; or those chronicles which so efficaciously servedthe political views of the rulers of the land; or else pious works thatshowed men the way to heaven. The principal historical works are, as has been seen, those rhymed inthe twelfth century by Gaimar, Wace, and Benoit de Sainte-More, lengthystories, each being more flowery than its predecessor, and more thicklystudded with digressions of all sorts, and descriptions in all colours, written in short and clear verse, with bell-like tinklings. The style islimpid, simple, transparent: it flows like those wide rivers withoutdykes, which cover immense spaces with still and shallow water. [162] In the following century the most remarkable work is the biography inverse of William le Maréchal, earl of Pembroke, one of those knights ofproud mien who still appear to breathe as they lie on their tombs inTemple Church. This Life is the best of its kind and period; theanonymous author who wrote it to order has the gift, unknown to hispredecessors, of condensing his subject, of grouping his characters, ofmaking them move and talk. As in the Temple Church, on the monument heerects to them, they seem to be living. [163] Another century passes, the fashion of writing history in French versestill subsists, but will soon die out. Peter de Langtoft, a trueEnglishman as his language sufficiently proves, yet versifies in French, in the fourteenth century, a history of England from the creation of theworld to the death of Edward I. But the times are changing, and Peter, last representative of an art that is over, [164] is a contemporary ofthat other Englishman, Robert of Gloucester, first representative of anart that begins, a distant ancestor of Gibbon and Macaulay. In sedateand manly, but somewhat monotonous strains, Robert tells in his turn thehistory of his country; differing in this respect from the others, heuses the English tongue; he is by no means cosmopolitan, but only andsolely English. In the very first lines he makes this characteristicdeclaration: "England is a very good land; I ween the best of any. . . . The sea goes all about it; it stands as in an isle; it has the less tofear from foes. . . . Plenty of all goods may be found in England. "[165] The way to heaven is taught, after the Conquest, in innumerable Frenchworks, in verse and prose, paraphrases of the psalms and gospels, livesof the saints, manuals of penitence, miracles of Our Lady, moralisedtales, bestiaries, and sermons. [166] The number of the French-speakingpopulation had so increased in the kingdom that it was not absurd topreach in French, and some of the clergy inclined all the more willinglyto so doing that many of the higher prelates in the land were Frenchmen. "To the simple folk, " says, in French, an Anglo-Norman preacher, "have Isimply made a simple sermon. I did not make it for the learned, as theyhave enough writings and discourses. For these young people who are notscholars I made it in the Romance tongue, for better will theyunderstand the language they have been accustomed to since childhood. " A la simple gent Ai fait simplement Un simple sarmun. Nel fis as letrez Car il unt assez Escriz e raisun. Por icels enfanz Le fis en romanz Qui ne sunt letré Car miel entendrunt La langue dunt sunt Dès enfance usé. [167] Religious works, as well as the chronicles, are mainly written in aclear, thin, transparent style; neither sight nor thought is absorbed bythem; the world can be seen through the light religious veil; thereader's attention wanders. In truth, the real religious poems we owe tothe Normans are those poems in stone, erected by their architects atEly, Canterbury, York, and Durham. Much more conspicuous was the literature of the imagination composed forthem, a radiant literature made of numberless romaunts, songs, andlove-tales. They had no taste for the doleful tunes of the Anglo-Saxonpoet; his sadness was repellent to them, his despairs they abhorred;they turned the page and shut the book with great alacrity. They werehappy men; everything went well with them; they wanted a literaturemeant for happy men. III. First of all they have epic tales; but how different from "Beowulf"! TheSong of Roland, sung at Hastings, which was then the national song ofthe Normans as well as of all Frenchmen, is the most warlike poem in theliterature of mediæval France, the one that best recalls the Germanicorigins of the race; yet a wide interval already separates these originsfrom the new nation; the change is striking. [168] Massacres, it is true, still occupy the principal place, and a scent of blood pervades theentire poem; hauberks torn open, bodies hewn in two, brains scattered onthe grass, the steam rising from the battle, fill the poet's heart withrapture, and his soul is roused to enthusiasm. But a place is also keptfor tender sentiments, and another for winged speeches. Woman is not yetthe object of this tenderness; Charlemagne's peers do not remember Audewhile they fight; they expire without giving her a sigh. But their eyesare dim with tears at the recollection of fair France; they weep to seetheir companions lie prostrate on the grass; the real mistress ofRoland, the one to whom his last thought reverts, is not Aude butDurandal, his sword. This is his love, the friend of his life, whosefate, after he shall be no more, preoccupies him. Just as this sword hasa name, it has a life of its own; Roland wishes it to die with him; hewould like to kill it, as a lover kills his mistress to prevent herfalling into the hands of miscreants. "The steel grates, but neitherbreaks nor notches. And the earl cries: Holy Mary, help me!. . . Ah!Durandal, so dearly beloved, how white and clear thou art! how thoushinest and flashest in the sunlight. . . . Ah! Durandal, fair and holy artthou!"[169] In truth, this is his love. Little, however, does it matterto ascertain with what or whom Roland is in love; the thing to beremembered is that he has a heart which can be touched and moved, andcan indeed feel, suffer, and love. At Roncevaux, as well as at Hastings, French readiness of wit appearseven in the middle of the battle. Archbishop Turpin, so imposing when hebestows the last benediction on the row of corpses, keeps all throughthe fight a good-humour similar to that of the Conqueror. "This Saracenseems to me something of a heretic, "[170] he says, espying an enemy; andhe fells him to earth. Oliver, too, in a passage which shows that ifwoman has no active part assigned to her in the poem she had begun toplay an important one in real life, slays the caliph and says: Thou atleast shalt not go boasting of our defeat, "either to thy wife or to anylady in thy land. "[171] It will finally be noticed that the subject of this epic, the oldest inFrance, is a defeat, thus showing, even in that far-distant age, whatthe heroic ideal of the nation was to be, that is, not so much totriumph as to die well. She will never lay down her arms merely becauseshe is beaten; she will only lay them down when enough of her sons haveperished. Even when victory becomes impossible, the nation, howeverresigned to the inevitable, still fights for honour. Such as we see herin the Song of Roland, such she appears in Froissart, and such she hasever shown herself: "For never was the realm of France so broken, butthat some one to fight against could be found there. "[172] The conquerors of England are complete men; they are not only valiant, they are learned; they not only take interest in the immediate past oftheir own race; they are also interested in the distant past of othercivilised nations; they make their poets tell them of the heroes ofGreece and Rome, and immense metrical works are devoted to thesepersonages, which will beguile the time and drive ennui away fromcastle-halls. These poems form a whole cycle; Alexander is the centre ofit, as Charlemagne is of the cycle of France, and Arthur of the cycle ofBritain. The poets who write about these famous warriors endeavour to satisfy atonce the contradictory tastes of their patrons for marvels and fortruth. Their works are a collection of attested prodigies. They areunanimous in putting aside Homer's story, which does not contain enoughmiracles to please them, and, being in consequence little disposed toleniency, they reject the whole of it as apocryphal. I confess, says oneof them, that Homer was a "marvellous clerk, " but his tales must not bebelieved: "For well we know, past any doubt, that he was born more thana hundred years after the great host was gathered together. "[173] But the worst forger of Alexandria obtains the confidence of our poets;they read with admiration in old manuscripts a journal of the siege ofTroy, and the old manuscripts declare the author of this valuabledocument to be Dares the Phrygian. The work has its counterpart executedin the Grecian camp by Dictys of Crete. No doubt crosses their mind;here is authenticity and truth, here are documents to be trusted; andhow interesting they are, how curious! the very journal of aneye-witness; truth and wonder made into one. For Alexander they have a no less precious text: thePseudo-Callisthenes, composed in Greek at Alexandria, of which a Latinversion of the fourth century still exists. They are all the betterdisposed towards it that it is a long tissue of marvels and fabulousadventures. [174] For the history of Thebes they are obliged to contentthemselves with Statius, and for that of Rome with Virgil, that sameVirgil who became by degrees, in mediæval legends, an enchanter, theMerlin of the cycle of Rome. He had, they believed, some weirdconnection with the powers of darkness; for he had visited them anddescribed in his "Æneid" their place of abode: no one was surprised atseeing Dante take him for a guide. What these poets wished for was a certificate of authenticity atstarting. Once they had it, they took no further trouble; it was theirpassport; and with a well-worded passport one can go a long way. Afterhaving blamed Homer and appealed to Dares, they felt themselves abovesuspicion, laid hands on all they could, and invented in their turn. Here is, for example, an episode in the romance of Alexander, a story ofmaidens in a forest, who sink underground in winter and reappear inspring in the shape of flowers: it will be vainly sought for inCallisthenes; it is of Eastern origin, and is found in Edrisi. For wantof better, and to avoid the trouble of naming names, the authors willsometimes refer their public to "Latin books, " and such was the renownof Rome that the reader asked nothing more. No need to add that manners and dresses were scarcely better observedthan probability. Everything in these poems was really _translated_; notonly the language of the ancients, but their raiment, theircivilisation, their ideas. Venus becomes a princess; the heroes areknights, and their costumes are so much in the fashion of the day thatthey serve us to date the poems. The miniatures conform to the tale;tonsured monks bear Achilles to the grave; they carry tapers in theirhands. Queen Penthesilea, "doughty and bold, and beautiful andvirtuous, " rides astride, her heels armed with huge red spurs. [175]Oedipus is dubbed a knight; Æneas takes counsel of his "barons. " Thismanner of representing antiquity lasted till the Renaissance; and tillmuch later, on the stage. Under Louis XIV. , Augustus wore a perruque"in-folio"; and in the last century Mrs. Hartley played Cleopatra in_paniers_ on the English stage. In accordance with these ideas were written in French, for the benefitof the conquerors of England, such tales as the immense "Roman deTroie, " by Benoit de Sainte-More, in which is related, for the firsttime in any modern language, the story of Troilus and Cressida; the"Roman de Thèbes, " written about 1150; that of "Eneas, " composed duringthe same period; the History of Alexander, or the "Roman de touteChevalerie, " a vast compilation, one of the longest and dullest that be, written in the beginning of the thirteenth century by Eustace or Thomasof Kent; the Romance of "Ipomedon, " and the Romance of "Prothesilaus, "by Hue of Rotelande, composed before 1191; and many others besides[176]:all romances destined to people of leisure, delighting in longdescriptions, in prodigious adventures, in enchantments, intransformations, in marvels. Alexander converses with trees who foretellthe future to him; he drinks from the fountain of youth; he gets into aglass barrel lighted by lamps, and is let down to the bottom of the sea, where he watches the gambols of marine monsters; his army is attacked bywild beasts unaffrighted by flames, that squat in the midst of the firesintended to scare them away. He places the corpse of the admiral whocommanded at Babylon in an iron coffin, that four loadstones hold to thevault. The authors give their imagination full scope; their romances areoperas; at every page we behold a marvel and a change of scene; here wehave the clouds of heaven, there the depths of the sea. I write of thesemore than I believe, "equidem plura transcribo quam credo, " QuintusCurtius had already said. [177] Just as they had curiously inspected their new domains, appropriating tothemselves as much land as possible, so the conquerors inspected theliteratures of their new compatriots. If, as will be seen, they drewlittle from the Saxon, it is not because they were absolutely ignorantof it, but because they never could well understand its genius. Amongstthe different races with which they now found themselves in contact, they were at once attracted by intellectual sympathy to the Celtic, whose mind resembled their own. Alexander had been an amusement, Arthurbecame a passion. To the Anglo-Norman singers are due the most ancientand beautiful poems of the Briton cycle that have come down to us. In the "matter" of France, the heroic valour of the defenders of thecountry forms the principal interest of the stories; in the matter ofRome, the "mirabilia"; and, in the matter of Britain, love. We arefarther and farther removed from Beowulf. At the time of the Conquest a quantity of legends and tales were currentconcerning the Celtic heroes of Britain, some of whom were quiteindependent of Arthur; nevertheless all ended by being grouped abouthim, for he was the natural centre of all this literature: "The Welshhave never ceased to rave about him up to our day, " wrote the graveWilliam of Malmesbury in the century after the Conquest; he was a truehero, and deserved something better than the "vain fancies of dreamers. "William obviously was not under the spell of Arthurian legends. [178] Wales, Brittany, and Cornwall were the centres where these legends haddeveloped; the Briton harpists had, by the beauty of their tales, andthe sweetness of their music, early acquired a great reputation. It wasa recommendation for a minstrel to be able to state that he was aBriton, and some usurped this title, as does Renard the fox, in the"Roman de Renart. "[179] One thing, however, was lacking for a time to the complete success ofthe Arthurian epic: the stamp of authenticity, the Latin starting-point. An Anglo-Norman clerk furnished it, and bestowed upon this literaturethe Dares it needed. Professional historians were silent, or nearly so, respecting Arthur; Gildas, in the sixth century, never mentions him;Nennius, in the tenth, only devotes a few lines to him. [180] Geoffrey ofMonmouth makes up for this deficiency. [181] His predecessors knew nothing, he knows everything; his Britishgenealogies are precise, his narratives are detailed, his enumerationscomplete. The mist had lifted, and the series of these kings about whomso many charming legends were afloat now appeared as clear as thesuccession of the Roman emperors. In their turn they present themselveswith the authority conferred at that time in the world by great Latinbooks. They ceased to be the unacknowledged children of anybody's fancy;they had to own them, not some stray minstrel, but a personage ofimportance, known to the king of the land, who was to become bishop ofSt. Asaph, and be a witness at the peace of 1153, between Stephen ofBlois and the future Henry II. In 1139, the "Historia Regum Britanniæ"had appeared, and copies began to circulate. Henry of Huntingdon, passing at the Abbey of Bec, in Normandy, in the month of January ofthat year, finds one, and is filled with astonishment. "Never, " writeshe to one of his friends, "had I been able to obtain any information, oral or written, on the kings from Brutus to Cæsar. . . . But to myamazement I have just discovered--stupens inveni--a narrative of thesetimes. "[182] It was Geoffrey's book. The better to establish his authority, Geoffrey himself had been carefulto appeal to a mysterious source, a certain book of which no trace hasever been found, and which he pretends was given him by his friendWalter, Archdeacon of Oxford. Armed with this proof of authenticity, which no one could contest, he ends his history by a half-serious, half-joking challenge to the professional chroniclers of his time. "Iforbid William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon to speak of theBritish kings, seeing that they have never had in their hands the bookWalter, Archdeacon of Oxford, brought me from Brittany. " Cervantes neverspoke with more gravity of Cid Hamet-ben-Engeli. Such a book could not fail of success; it had a prodigious fame. Somehistorians lodged protests; they might as well have protested againstDares. Gerald de Barry cried out it was an imposture; and William ofNewbury inveighed against the impudence of "a writer called Geoffrey, "who had made "Arthur's little finger bigger than Alexander's back. "[183]In vain; copies of the "Historia Regum" multiplied to such an extentthat the British Museum alone now possesses thirty-four of them. Theappointed chronicler of the Angevin kings, Wace, translated it intoFrench about 1155, with the addition of several legends omitted byGeoffrey, that of the Round Table among others. [184] It was turned intoLatin verse, into French alexandrines, into Welsh prose; no honour wasdenied it. From this time dates the literary fortune of Arthur, Merlin, Morgan the fairy, Percival, Tristan and Iseult, Lancelot and Guinevere, whose deeds and loves have been sung from century to century, down tothe day of Shakespeare, of Swinburne, and Tennyson. The finest poems the Middle Ages devoted to them were written on Englishground, and especially the most charming of all, dedicated to thatTristan, [185] whom Dante places by Helen of Troy in the group oflovers: "I beheld Helen, who caused such years of woe, and I saw greatAchilles . . . Paris and Tristan. "[186] Tristan's youth was spent in a castle of Léonois, by the sea. One day aNorwegian vessel, laden with stuffs and with hunting-birds, brings tobefore the walls. Tristan comes to buy falcons; he lingers to play chesswith the merchants; the anchor is weighed, and Tristan is borne off inthe ship. A storm drives the vessel on the coast of Cornwall, and theyouth is conducted before King Marc. Harpers were playing; Tristanremembers Briton lays; he takes the harp, and so sweet is his music that"many a courtier remains there, forgetting his very name. "[187] Marc(who turns out to be his uncle) takes a fancy to him, and dubs himknight. "Should any one, " says the author of one of the versions ofTristan, "inquire of me concerning the dress of the knights, I will tellhim in a few words; it was composed of four stuffs: courage, richness, skill, and courtesy. " Morolt, the giant, comes to claim a tribute of sixty youths and maidens, in the name of the king of Ireland. They were proceeding to selectthese victims, when Tristan challenges the giant and kills him; but heis wounded by a poisoned weapon, and, day by day, death draws nearer. Noone can cure this poison except the queen of Ireland, sister of the deadman. Tristan, disguised as a poor harper, has himself put on a bark andarrives in Dublin, where the queen heals him. The queen had a daughter, Iseult, with fair hair; she begs the harper to instruct the young girl. Iseult becomes perfect: "She can both read and write, she composesepistles and songs; above all, she knows many [Briton] lays. She issought after for her musical talent, no less than for her beauty, asilent and still sweeter music that through the eyes insinuated itselfinto the heart. " All her life she remembered the teaching of Tristan, and in her sorrows had recourse to the consoling power of music. Whensitting alone and sad, she would sing "a touching song of love, " on themisfortunes of Guiron, killed for the sake of his lady. This lay "shesings sweetly, the voice accords with the harp, the hands are beautiful, the lay is fine, sweet the voice and low the tone. "[188] Tristan's task being accomplished, he returns to Cornwall. One day aswallow drops at the feet of King Marc a golden hair, so soft andbrilliant, so lovable, that the king swears to marry no other woman buther of the golden hair. [189] Tristan starts in quest of the woman. Thewoman is Iseult; he brings her to Cornwall. While at sea the two youngpeople swallow by mistake an enchanted draught, a "boivre" destined forMarc and his betrothed, which had the virtue of producing a passion thatonly death could end. The poison slowly takes effect; their sentimentsalter. "All that I know troubles me, and all I see pains me, " saysIseult. "The sky, the sea, my own self oppresses me. She bent forward, and leant her arm on Tristan's shoulder: it was her first caress. Hereyes filled with repressed tears; her bosom heaved, her lips quivered, and her head remained bent. " The marriage takes place. Marc adores the queen, but she thinks only ofTristan. Marc is warned, and exiles Tristan, who, in the course of hisadventures, receives a present of a wonderful dog. This dog wore a bellon his neck, the sound of which, so sweet it was, caused all sorrow tobe forgotten. He sends the dog to Iseult, who, listening to the bell, finds that her grief fades from her memory; and she removes the collar, unwilling to hear and to forget. Iseult is at last repudiated, and Tristan bears her off by lonely paths, through forest depths, until they reach a grotto of green marble carvedby giants in ages past. An aperture at the top let in the light, lindensshaded the entrance, a rill trickled over the grass, flowers scented theair, birds sang in the branches. Here nothing more existed for them savelove. "Nor till the might of August"--thought the old poet, and said amore recent one-- Nor till the might of August overhead Weighed on the world, was yet one roseleaf shed Of all their joys warm coronal, nor aught Touched them in passing ever with a thought That ever this might end on any day, Or any night not love them where they lay; But like a babbling tale of barren breath Seemed all report and rumour held of death, And a false bruit the legend tear impearled That such a thing as change was in the world. [190] King Marc's hunt passes by the grotto; through an opening at the top hechances to perceive her who had been "the springtide of his life, fairerthan ever at this moment . . . Her mouth, her brow, every feature was sofull of charm that Marc was fascinated, and, seized with longing, wouldfain on that face have pressed a kiss. . . . A wreath of clover was wovenin her unbound locks. . . . When he saw that the sun overhead let fallthrough the crevice a ray of light on Iseult's face, he feared lest herhue should suffer. He took grass and flowers and foliage with which heclosed the aperture, then blessing the lady, he commended her to God, and departed weeping. "[191] Once more the lovers are separated, this time for ever. Years pass;Tristan has made himself famous by his exploits. He is without news ofhis love, doubtless forgotten. He marries another Iseult, and lives withher near Penmarch in Brittany. Wounded to death in a fight, he might becured by the queen of Cornwall, and in spite of his marriage, and thetime that has elapsed, he sends her word to leave all and join him. IfIseult comes, the ship is to have a white sail; if she refuses, a blackone. Iseult still loves. At the first word she puts to sea; but stormsarise, then follows a dead calm; Tristan feels life ebb from him withhope. At last the vessel appears, and Tristan's wife sees it from theshore with its white sail. She had overheard Tristan's message; shereturns, lies, and announces the arrival of a black sail. Tristan tearsthe bandage from his wound and dies. When the true Iseult lands, theknell is tolling from the steeples of Brittany; she rushes in, findsher lover's corpse already cold, and expires beside him. They wereburied in the same church at Carhaix, one at each end; out of one of thetombs grew a vine, and out of the other grew a rose, and the branches, creeping along the pillars, interlaced under the vaulted roof. The magicdraught thus proved stronger than death. In the ancient epic poems, love was nothing, here it is everything; andwoman, who had no part, now plays the first; warlike feats arehenceforth only a means to win her heart. Grass has grown over thebloody vale of Roncevaux, which is now enamelled with flowers; Roland'slove, Durandal, has ascended to heaven, and will return no more. The newpoets are the exact antithesis of the former ones. Religion, virtue, country, now count for nothing; love defies, nay more, replaces them. Marc's friends, who warn him, are traitors and felons, vowed to scornand hate, as were formerly Gannelons, who betrayed fair France. To be inlove is to be worthy of heaven, is to be a saint, and to practisevirtue. This theory, put forward in the twelfth century by the singersof the British cycle, has survived, and will be found again in the"Astrée, " in Byron, and in Musset. These tales multiply, and their worldly, courteous, amorous characterbecomes more and more predominant. Woman already plays the part that sheplays in the novels of yesterday. A glance opens Paradise to Arthur'sknights; they find in a smile all the magic which it pleases us, theliving of to-day, to discover there. A trite word of farewell from thewoman they cherish is transformed by their imagination, and they keep itin their hearts as a talisman. Who has not cherished similar talismans?Lancelot recalls the past to queen Guinevere: "And you said, God be withyou, fair, gentle friend! Never since have these words left my heart. Itis these words that shall make me a _preux_, if ever I am one; fornever since was I in such great peril but that I remembered these words. They have comforted me in all my sorrows; these words have kept andguarded me from all danger; these words have fed me when hungry and mademe wealthy when poor. " "By my troth, " said the queen, "those words were happily spoken, andblessed be God who caused me to speak them. But I did not put into themas much as you saw, and to many a knight have I spoken the same withoutthinking of more than what they plainly bear. "[192] After being a saint, the beloved object becomes a goddess; her wishesare decrees, her mysterious caprices are laws which must not even bequestioned; harder rules of love are from year to year imposed on theheroes; they are expected to turn pale at the sight of their mistress;Lancelot espying a hair of Guinevere well-nigh faints; they observe thethirty-one regulations laid down by André le Chapelain, to guide theperfect lover. [193] After having been first an accessory, then anirresistible passion, love, that the poets think to magnify, will soonbe nothing but a ceremonial. From the time of Lancelot we border onfolly; military honour no longer counts for the hero; Guinevere out ofcaprice orders Lancelot to behave "his worst"; without hesitating orcomprehending he obeys, and covers himself with shame. Each successiveromance writer goes a step farther, and makes new additions; we come toimmense compositions, to strings of adventures without any visible link;to heroes so uniformly wonderful that they cease to inspire any interestwhatever. Tristan's rose-bush twined itself around the pillars, thepillars are lacking now, and the clusters of flowers trail on theground. Tristan was a harbinger of Musset; Guinevere gives us a desirefor a Cervantes. Meanwhile, the minstrels of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries enjoytheir success and their fame; their number increases; they are welcomedin the castles, hearkened to in the towns; their tales are copied inmanuscripts, more and more magnificently painted. They celebrate, inEngland as in France, Gauvain, "le chevalier aux demoiselles, " Ivain, "le chevalier au lion"; Merlin, Joseph of Arimathea, Percival and thequest of the mysterious Graal, and all the rest of the Round Tableheroes. [194] IV. They have also shorter narratives in prose and verse, the subject ofwhich is generally love, drawn from French, Latin, Greek, and evenHindu legends, [195] stories like those of Amis and Amile, of Floire andBlanchefleur, lays like those of Marie de France. [196] Marie was Norman, and lived in the time of Henry II. , to whom she dedicated her poems. They are mostly graceful love-tales, sweetly told, without affectationor effort, and derived from Celtic originals, some being of Armoricanand some of Welsh descent. Several are devoted to Tristan and otherArthurian knights. In the lay of the Ash, Marie tells a story of femalevirtue, the main incidents of which will be found again later in thetale of Griselda. Her lay of the Two Lovers would have delighted Musset: "Truth is that in Neustria, which we call Normandy, " lived once anobleman who had a beautiful daughter; every one asked her in marriage, but he always refused, so as not to part from her. At last he declaredhe would give his daughter to the man who could carry her to the top ofthe mountain. All tried, but all failed. A young count falls in love with her, and is loved again. She sends himto an old aunt of hers, who lives at Salerno, and will give him certainpotions to increase his strength. He does all she bids him. On the dayappointed, provided with a draught to swallow during the trial, he takesthe fair maiden in his arms. She had fasted for many days so as to weighless, and had put on an exceedingly light garment: "Except her shift, noother stuff she wore"; N'ot drap vestu fors la chemise. He climbs half-way, then begins to flag; but he wishes to owe everythingto his energy, and, without drinking, slowly continues to ascend. Hereaches the top and falls dead. The young girl flings away the nowuseless flask, which breaks; and since then the mountain herbs moistenedby the potion have wonderful healing powers. She looks at her lover anddies, like the Simonne of Boccaccio and of Musset. They were buried onthe mountain, where has since been built "the priory of the Two Lovers. " The rulers of England delight in still shorter poems, but again on thesame subject: love. Like the rest of the French, they have an innatefondness for a kind of literature unknown to their new compatriots:namely, _chansons_. They composed a great number of them, and listenedto many more of all sorts. The subjects of the kings of England becamefamiliar with every variety of the kind; for the Angevin princes nowpossessed such wide domains that the sources of French poetry, poetry ofthe North, poetry of the South, lyrical poetry of Poictou and of Maine, gushed forth in the very heart of their empire. [197] Their English subjects got acquainted with these poems in two ways:firstly, because many of those songs were sung in the island; secondly, because many Englishmen, soldiers, clerks, minstrels, messengers, followed the king and stayed with him in the parts where the main wellsand fountains of the French _chanson_ happened to be. [198] They becamethus familiarised with the "reverdies, " May songs, which celebratespringtime, flowers, and free loves; "carols, " or dancing songs;"pastourelles, " the wise or foolish heroines of which are shepherdesses;"disputoisons" or debates, to which kind belongs the well-known song of"transformations" introduced by Mistral in his "Mireio, " and set tomusic by Gounod; "aube" songs, telling the complaint of lovers, partedby dawn, and in which, long before Shakespeare, the Juliets of the timeof Henry II. Said to their Romeos: It is not yet near day; It was the nightingale and not the lark. Il n'est mie jors, saverouze au cors gent, Si m'aït amors, l'aloete nos ment. [199] "It is not yet near day, my sweet one; love be my help, the lark lies. "In these songs, the women are slight and lithe; they are more gentlethan doves; their faces are all pink and white: "If the flowers of thehawthorn were united to the rose, not more delicate would be theircolour than that on my lady's clear face. " Si les flurs d[el] albespine Fuissent à roses assis, N'en ferunt colur plus fine Ke n'ad ma dame au cler vis. [200] With these songs, Love ventures out of castles; we find him "in cellars, or in lofts under the hay. "[201] He steals even into churches, and asermon that has come down to us, preached in England in the thirteenthcentury, has for text, instead of a verse of Scripture, a verse of aFrench song: "Fair Alice rose at morn, clothed and adorned her body; anorchard she went in, five flowers there she found, a wreath she madewith them of blooming roses; for God's sake, get you gone, you who donot love!" and with meek gravity the preacher goes on: Belle Alice is ormight be the Virgin Mary; "what are those flowers, " if not "faith, hope, charity, virginity, humility?"[202] The idea of turning worldly songsand music to religious ends is not, as we see, one of yesterday. Tristan has led us very far from Beowulf, and fair Alice leads us stillfarther from the mariner and exile of Anglo-Saxon literature. To sum upin a word which will show the difference between the first and secondperiod: on the lips of the conquerors of Hastings, odes have become_chansons_. V. Nothing comes so near ridicule as extreme sentiments, and no men had thesense of the ridiculous to a higher degree than the new rulers of theEnglish country. At the same time with their chivalrous literature, theyhad a mocking one. They did not wait for Cervantes to begin laughing;these variable and many-sided beings sneered at high-flown sentimentsand experienced them too. They sang the Song of Roland, and read withdelight a romance in which the great emperor is represented struttingabout before his barons, his crown on his head and his sword in hishand, asking the queen if he is not the most admirable prince in theworld. [203] To his surprise, the queen says no, there is a better, thereis King Hugon, emperor of Greece and of Constantinople. Charlemagnewishes to verify on the spot, and pledges his word that he will cut thequeen's head off if she has not spoken truth. He mounts a donkey; thetwelve peers follow his example, and in this fashion the flower ofFrench chivalry takes its way to the East. At Constantinople, the city of marvels, which had not yet become thecity of mosques, but was still enriched by the spoils of Athens andRome, where St. Sophia shone with all the glory of its mosaics intact, where the palace of the emperors dazzled the sight with its gold and itsstatues, the French princes could scarcely believe their eyes. At everystep they were startled by some fresh wonder; here bronze childrenblowing horns; there a revolving hall set in motion by the sea-breeze;elsewhere a carbuncle which illuminated apartments at night. The queenmight possibly have spoken truth. Evening draws on, they drink deep, and, excited by their potations, indulge in _gabs_, or boasts, that areoverheard by a spy, and carefully noted. Ogier the Dane will uproot thepillar which supports the whole palace; Aïmer will make himselfinvisible and knock the emperor's head on the table; Roland will soundhis horn so loudly that the gates of the town will be forced open. Threatened and insulted by his guests, Hugon declares they shall eitheraccomplish their _gabs_ or pay for their lies with their heads. This is too much, and the author changes his tone. Will God permit theconfusion of the emperor of the Franks, however well deserved it be?"Vivat qui Francos diligit Christus!" was already written in the Saliclaw: Christ continues to love the Franks. He takes their cause into Hisown hands, not because of their deserts but because they are Franks. Bya miracle, one after another, the _gabs_ are realised; Hugonacknowledges the superiority of Charles, who returns to France, enrichesSt. Denis with incomparable relics, and forgives the queen. This poem isexactly contemporaneous with the Song of Roland. But there is better still, and the comedy is much more general in thefamous "Roman de Renart. "[204] This romance, of which the branches areof various epochs and by various authors, was composed partly in thecontinental estates of the kings of England, partly in the France ofFrench kings. It was built up, part after part, during severalcenturies, beginning with the twelfth: built like a cathedral, eachauthor adding a wing, a tower, a belfry, a steeple; without caring, mostof the time, to make known his name; so that the poem has come down tous, like the poems in stone of the architects, almost anonymously, thework of every one, an expression and outcome of the popular mind. For many Frenchmen of ancient France, a _chanson_ was a sufficientrevenge, or at least served as a temporary one. So much pleasure wastaken in it, that by such means the tyranny of the ruler was forgotten. On more than one occasion where in other countries a riot would havebeen unavoidable, in France a song has sufficed; discontent, thusattenuated, no longer rose to fury. More than one jacquerie has beendelayed, if not averted, by the "Roman de Renart. " In this ample comedy everybody has a part to perform; everybody andeverything is in turn laughed at: the king, the nobles, the citizens, the Pope, the pilgrims, the monks, every belief and every custom, [205]religion, and justice, the powerful, the rich, the hypocrites, thesimple-minded; and, so that nothing shall be wanting, the author scoffsat himself and his caste; he knows its failings, points them out andlaughs at them. The tone is heroi-comical: for the jest to take effect, the contrast must be clearly visible, and we should keep in view theimportance of principles and the majesty of kings: "Lordings, you have heard many a tale, related by many a tale-teller, how Paris ravished Helen, the trouble it brought him, and the sorrow!. . . Also gests and fabliaux; but never did you hear of the war--such a hardone it was, and of such great import--between Renard and Ysengrin. "[206] The personages are animals; their sentiments are human; king lion swearslike a man[207]; but the way in which they sit, or stand, or move, isthat of their species. Every motion of theirs is observed with thatcorrectness of eye which is always found in early times among animalpainters, long before painters of the human figure rise to the sameexcellence. There are perfect descriptions of Ysengrin, who feels veryfoolish after a rebuke of the king's, and "sits with his tail betweenhis legs"; of the cock, monarch of the barn-yard; of Tybert the cat; ofTardif the slug; of Espinar the hedgehog; of Bruin the bear; of Roonelthe mastiff; of Couard the hare; of Noble the lion. The arrival of aprocession of hens at Court is an excellent scene of comedy. "Sir Chanteclair, the cock, and Pinte, who lays the big eggs, and Noire, and Blanche, and la Roussette, were dragging a cart with drawn curtains. A hen lay in it prostrate. . . . Renard had so maltreated her, and sopulled her about with his teeth, that her thigh was broken, and a wingtorn off her side. "[208] Pinte, moved to tears and ready to faint, like Esther before Ahasuerus, tells the king her woes. She had five brothers, Renard has devouredevery one; she had five sisters, but "only one has Renard spared; allthe rest have passed through his jaws. And you, who lie there on yourbier, my sweet sister, my dear friend, how plump and tender you were!What will become of your poor unfortunate sister?"[209] She is very nearadding in Racine's words: "Mes filles, soutenez votre reine éperdue!"Anyhow, she faints. "The unfortunate Pinte thereupon fainted and fell on the pavement; andso did the others, all at once. To assist the four ladies all jumpedfrom their stools, dog and wolf and other beasts, and threw water ontheir brows. "[210] The king is quite upset by so moving a sight: "His head out of anger heshakes; never was so bold a beast, a bear be it or a boar, who does notfear when their lord sighs and howls. So much afraid was Couard the harethat for two days he had the fever; all the Court shakes together, theboldest for dread tremble. He, in his wrath, raises his tail, and ismoved with such pangs that the roar fills the house; and then this washis speech: 'Lady Pinte, ' the emperor said, 'upon my father'ssoul'"[211]. . . . Hereupon follows a solemn promise, couched in the most impressive words, that the traitor shall be punished; which will make all the morenoticeable the utter defeat which verbose royalty soon afterwardsuffers. Renard worsts the king's messengers; Bruin the bear has hisnose torn off; Tybert the cat loses half his tail; Renard jeers at them, at the king, and at the Court. And all through the story he triumphsover Ysengrin, as Panurge over Dindenault, Scapin over Géronte, andFigaro over Bridoison. Renard is the first of the family; he is such anatural and spontaneous creation of the French mind that we see himreappear from century to century, the same character under differentnames. One last point to be noted is the impression of open air given by nearlyall the branches of this romance, in spite of the brevity of thedescriptions. We are in the fields, by the hedges, following the roadsand the footpaths; the moors are covered with heather; the rocks arecrowned by oaken copse, the roads are lined with hawthorn, cabbagesdisplay in the gardens the heavy mass of their clustering leaves. We seewith regret the moment when "the sweet time of summer declines. " Winterdraws near, a north wind blows over the paths leading to the sea. Renard"dedenz sa tour" of Maupertuis lights a great wood fire, and, while hislittle ones jump for joy, grills slices of eels on the embers. Renard was popular throughout Europe. In England parts of the romancewere translated or imitated; superb manuscripts were illustrated for thelibraries of the nobles; the incidents of this epic were represented intapestry, sculptured on church stalls, painted on the margins of Englishmissals. At the Renaissance Caxton, with his Westminster presses, printed a Renard in prose. [212] Above, below, around these greater works, swarms the innumerable legionof satirical fabliaux and laughable tales. They, too, cross the sea, slight, imperceptible, wandering, thus continuing those migrations sodifficult to trace, the laws of which learned men of all nations havevainly sought to discover. They follow all roads; nothing stops them. Pass the mountains and you will find them; cross the sea and they havepreceded you; they spring from the earth; they fall from heaven; thebreeze bears them along like pollen, and they go to bloom on other stemsin unknown lands, producing thorny or poisonous or perfumed flowers, andflowers of every hue. All those varieties of flowers are sometimes foundclustered in unexpected places, on wild mountain sides, along lonelypaths, on the moors of Brittany or Scotland, in royal parks and inconvent gardens. At the beginning of the seventh century the great PopeSt. Gregory introduces into his works a number of "Exempla, " saying:"Some are more incited to the love of the celestial country bystories--exempla--than by sermons;"[213] and in the gardens ofmonasteries, after his day, more and more miscellaneous grow theblossoms. They are gathered and preserved as though in herbals, collections are made of them, from which preachers borrow; tales ofmiracles are mixed with others of a less edifying nature. Stop before the house of this anchoress, secluded from the world, andabsorbed in pious meditations, a holy and quiet place. An old woman sitsunder the window; the anchoress appears and a conversation begins. Letus listen; it is a long time since both women have been listened to. What is the subject of their talk? The old woman brings news of theouter world, relates stories, curious incidents of married and unmarriedlife, tales of wicked wives and wronged husbands. The recluse laughs:"os in risus cachinnosque dissolvitur"; in a word, the old woman amusesthe anchoress with fabliaux in an embryonic state. This is a mostremarkable though little known example, for we can here observe fabliauxin a rudimentary stage, and going about in one more, and that a ratherunexpected way. Is the case of this anchoress a unique one? Not at all;there was scarcely any recluse at that day, "vix aliquam inclusarumhujus temporis, " without a friendly old woman to sit before her windowand tell her such tales: of which testifies, in the twelfth century, Aelred, abbot of Rievaulx. [214] From the thirteenth century, another medium of diffusion, a conspicuousand well-known one, is added to the others: not only minstrels, butwandering friars now carry tales to all countries; it is one of the waysthey count on for securing a welcome. Their sermons raise a laugh, thesuccess of their fables encourages their rivals to imitate them; theCouncils vainly interfere, and reiterate, until after the Renaissance, the prohibition "to provoke shouts of laughter, after the fashion ofshameless buffoons, by ridiculous stories and old wives' tales. "[215]Dante had also protested, and Wyclif likewise, without more success thanthe Councils. "Thus, " said Dante, "the ignorant sheep come home frompasture, wind-fed. . . . Jests and buffooneries are preached. . . . St. Anthony's swine fattens by these means, and others, worse than swine, fatten too. "[216] But collections succeeded to collections, and room wasfound in them for many a scandalous tale, for that of the Weeping Bitch, for example, one of the most travelled of all, as it came from India, and is found everywhere, in Italy, France, and England, among fabliaux, in sermons, and even on the stage. [217] The French who were now living in England in large numbers, introducedthere the taste for merry tales of trickery and funny adventures, stories of curious mishaps of all kinds; of jealous husbands, duped, beaten, and withal perfectly content, and of fit wives for suchhusbands. It already pleased their teasing, mocking minds, fond ofgeneralisations, to make themselves out a vicious race, without faith, truth, or honour: it ever was a _gab_ of theirs. The more one protests, the more they insist; they adduce proofs and instances; they areconvinced and finally convince others. In our age of systems, thismagnifying of the abject side of things has been termed "realism"; forso-called "realism" is nothing more. True it is that if the home oftales is "not where they are born, but where they are comfortable, "[218]France was a home for them. They reached there the height of theirprosperity; the turn of mind of which they are the outcome has by nomeans disappeared; even to-day it is everywhere found, in the publicsquares, in the streets, in the newspapers, theatres, and novels. And itserves, as it did formerly, to make wholesale condemnations easy, veryeasy to judges who may be dazzled by this jugglery of the French mind, who look only at the goods exhibited before their eyes, and who scruplethe less to pass a sentence as they have to deal with a culprit whoconfesses. But judge and culprit both forget that, next to the realismof the fabliaux, there is the realism of the Song of Roland, not lessreal, perhaps more so; for France has _lived_ by her Song of Roland muchmore than by her merry tales, that song which was sung in many ways andfor many centuries. Du Guesclin and Corneille both sang it, each oneafter his fashion. On the same table may be found "La Terre, " and "Grandeur et Servitude. "In the same hall, the same minstrel, representing in his own person thewhole library of the castle, used formerly to relate the shameful taleof Gombert and the two clerks, juggle with knives, and sing of Roland. "I know tales, " says one, "I know fabliaux, I can tell fine new_dits_. . . . I know the fabliau of the 'Denier' . . . And that of Gombertand dame Erme. . . . I know how to play with knives, and with the cord andwith the sling, and every fine game in the world. I can sing at will ofKing Pepin of St. Denis . . . Of Charlemagne and of Roland, and of Oliver, who fought so well; I know of Ogier and of Aymon. "[219] All this literature went over the Channel with the conquerors. Rolandcame to England, so did Renard, so did Gombert. They contributed totransform the mind of the vanquished race, and the vanquished racecontributed to transform the descendants of the victors. FOOTNOTES: [153] Thus com lo Engelond · in to Normandies hond; And the Normans ne couthe speke tho · bot hor owe speche, And speke French as hii dude atom · and hor children dude also teche, So that heiemen of this lond · that of hor blod come Holdeth alle thulke speche · that hii of hom nome; Vor bote a man conne Frenss · me telth of him lute, Ac lowe men holdeth to engliss · and to hor owe speche yute. Ich wene ther ne beth in al the world · contreyes none That ne holdeth to hor owe speche · bote Engelonde one. W. A. Wright, "Metrical Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester" (Rolls), 1887, vol. Ii. P. 543. Concerning Robert, see below, p. 122. [154] Letter of the year 1209, by which Gerald sends to King John thesecond edition of his "Expugnatio Hiberniæ"; in "Giraldi CambrensisOpera" (Rolls), vol. V. P. 410. Further on he speaks of French as of"communi idiomate. " [155] "La parleure est plus delitable et plus commune à toutes gens. ""Li livres dou Trésor, " thirteenth century (a sort of philosophical, historical, scientific, &c. , cyclopædia), ed. Chabaille, Paris, "Documents inédits, " 1863, 4to. Dante cherished "the dear and sweetfatherly image" of his master, Brunetto, who recommended to the poet his"Trésor, " for, he said, "in this book I still live. " "Inferno, " cantoxv. [156] For the laws, see the "Statutes of the Realm, " 1819-28, RecordCommission, 11 vols, fol. ; for the accounts of the sittings ofParliament, "Rotuli Parliamentorum, " London, 1767-77, 6 vols. Fol. ; forthe accounts of lawsuits, the "Year Books, " ed. Horwood, Rolls, 1863 ff. [157] Author of a "Chronique de la guerre entre les Anglois et lesEscossois, " 1173-74, in French verse, ed. R. Howlett: "Chronicles of thereigns of Stephen, Henry II. , and Richard I. " (Rolls), 1884 ff. , vol. Iii. P. 203. [158] See below, pp. 122, 123, 130, 214. [159] Example: "Romanz de un chivaler e de sa dame e de un clerk, "written in French by an Englishman in the thirteenth century, ed. PaulMeyer, "Romania, " vol. I. P. 70. It is an adaptation of the well-known_fabliau_ of the "Bourgeoise d'Orléans" (in Montaiglon and Raynaud, "Recueil général des Fabliaux, " 1872, vol. I. P. 117). See below, p. 225. [160] "Croniques de London . . . Jusqu'à l'an 17 Ed. III. , " ed. AungierCamden Society, 1844, 4to. [161] "Image du Monde, " thirteenth century, a poem, very popular both inFrance and in England, of which "about sixty MSS. Are known, " "Romania, "vol. Xv. P. 314; some of the MSS. Were written in England. --"PetitePhilosophie, " also in verse, being an "abrégé de cosmographie et degéographie, " "Romania, " xv. P. 255. --"Lumière des laïques, " a poem, written in the thirteenth century, by the Anglo-Norman Pierre de Peckhamor d'Abernun, _ibid. _ p. 287. --"Secret des Secrets, " an adaptation, inFrench prose, of the "Secretum Secretorum, " wrongly attributed toAristotle, this adaptation being the work of an Irishman, Geoffrey deWaterford, who translated also Dares and Eutrope, thirteenth century(see "Histoire Littéraire de la France, " vol. Xxi. P. 216). --To thesemay be added translations in French of various Latin works, books on theproperties of things, law books, such as the "Institutes" of Justinian, turned into French verse by the Norman Richard d'Annebaut, and the"Coutume de Normandie, " turned also into verse, by Guillaume Chapu, alsoa Norman, both living in the thirteenth century. [162] See above, p. 113. The wealth of this historical literature in theFrench tongue is greater at first than that of the literature producedby the subjects of the French kings. Besides the great chronicles, manyother works might be quoted, such as lives of saints, which aresometimes historical biographies (St. Edward, St. Thomas Becket, &c. );the "Histoire de la Guerre Sainte, " an account of the third crusade, byAmbrose, a companion of King Richard Coeur-de-Lion (in preparation, byGaston Paris, "Documents inédits"); the "Estoire le roi Dermot, " on thetroubles in Ireland, written in the thirteenth century ("Song of Dermotand the Earl, " ed. Orpen, Oxford, 1892, 8vo; _cf. _ P. Meyer, "Romania, "vol. Xxi. P. 444), &c. [163] This Life was written in the thirteenth century, by order of EarlWilliam, son of the hero of the story. Its historical accuracy isremarkable. The MS. Was discovered by M. Paul Meyer, and published byhim: "Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal, " Paris, 1892 ff. , Société del'histoire de France. On the value of this Life, see an article by thesame, "Romania, " vol. Xi. The slab in the Temple Church is in anexcellent state of preservation; the image of the earl seems to be aportrait; the face is that of an old man with many wrinkles; the swordis out of the scabbard, and held in the right hand; its point is driventhrough the head of an animal at the feet of the earl. [164] Jean de Waurin, who wrote in French prose in the fifteenth centuryhis "Chroniques et anchiennes istoires de la Grant-Bretaigne" (ed. Hardy, Rolls, 1864 ff. ) was a Frenchman of France, who had fought atAgincourt on the French side. The chronicle of Peter de Langtoft, canonof Bridlington, Yorkshire, who lived under Edward I. And Edward II. , wasprinted by Thomas Wright, 1866 (Rolls), 2 vols. 8vo. [165] Engelond his a wel god lond · ich wene ech londe best . . . The see geth him al aboute · he stond as in an yle, Of fon hii dorre the lasse doute · bote hit be thorgh gyle . . . Plente me may in Engelond · of alle gode ise. W. A. Wright, "Metrical Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, " 1887(Rolls), vol. I. Pp. 1, 2. Robert's surname, "of Gloucester, " is notcertain; see Mr. Wright's preface, and his letter to the _Athenæum_, May19, 1888. He is very hard (too hard it seems) on Robert, of whose workhe says: "As literature it is as worthless as twelve thousand lines ofverse without one spark of poetry can be. " [166] Among writings of this sort, written in French either by Frenchmenor by Englishmen, and popular in England, may be quoted: PenitentialPsalms, a French version very popular in England, in a MS. Preserved atthe University Library, Cambridge, thirteenth century ("Romania, " vol. Xv. P. 305). --Explanation of the Gospels: the "Miroir, " by Robert deGreteham, in 20, 000 French verses (_Ibid. _). --Lives of Saints: life ofBecket in "Materials for the history of Thomas Becket, " ed. Robertson, 1875 ff. , 7 vols. , and "Fragments d'une vie de St. Thomas" (with verycurious engravings), edited by Paul Meyer, 1885, 4to, Société desAnciens Textes; life of St. Catherine, by Sister Clemence de Barking, twelfth century (G. Paris, "Romania, " xiii. P. 400); life of St. Josaphaz and life of the Seven Sleepers, by Chardry, thirteenth century("Chardry's Josaphaz, " &c. , ed. Koch, Heilbronn, 1879, 8vo); life of St. Gregory the Great, by Augier, of St. Frideswide's, Oxford, thirteenthcentury (text and commentary in "Romania, " xii. Pp. 145 ff. ); lives ofSt. Edward (ed. Luard, Rolls, 1858); mention of many other lives inFrench (others in English) will be found in Hardy's "DescriptiveCatalogue, " Rolls, 1862 ff. --Manuals and treatises: by RobertGrosseteste, William de Wadington and others (see below, p. 214). --Worksconcerning Our Lady: "Adgars Marien Legenden, " ed. Carl Neuhaus, Heilbronn, 1886, 8vo (stories in French verse of miracles of the Virgin, by Adgar, an Anglo-Norman of the twelfth century; some take place inEngland); "Joies de Notre Dame, " "Plaintes de Notre Dame, " French poemswritten in England, thirteenth century (see "Romania, " vol. Xv. Pp. 307ff. ). --Moralised tales and Bestiaries: "Bestiaire" of Philippe de Thaon, a Norman priest of the twelfth century, in French verse (includes a"Lapidaire" and a "Volucraire, " on the virtues of stones and birds), text in T. Wright, "Popular Treatises on Science, " London 1841, Historical Society, 8vo; (see also P. Meyer, "Recueil d'anciens textes, "Paris, 1877, 8vo, p. 286), the same wrote also an ecclesiastical"Comput" in verse (ed. Mall, Strasbourg, 1873, 8vo); "Bestiaire divin, "by Guillaume le Clerc, also a Norman, thirteenth century (ed. Hippeau, Caen, 1852, 8vo), to be compared to the worldly "Bestiaire d'Amour, " ofRichard de Fournival, thirteenth century (ed. Hippeau, Paris, 1840, 8vo); translation in French prose, probably by a Norman, of the Latinfables (thirteenth century) of Odo de Cheriton, "Romania, " vol. Xiv. P. 388, and Hervieux, "Fabulistes Latins, " vol. Ii. ; "Contes moralisés deNicole Bozon, " ed. P. Meyer and Lucy Toulmin Smith, Paris, 1889, 8vo, Société des Anciens Textes, in French prose, fourteenthcentury. --Sermons: "Reimpredigt, " ed. Suchier, Halle, 1879, 8vo, inFrench verse, by an Anglo-Norman; on sermons in French and in Latin, seeLecoy de la Marche, "La Chaire française an moyen âge, " Paris, 1886, 8vo, 2nd ed. ; at p. 282, sermon on the Passion by Geoffrey de Waterfordin French verse, Anglo-Norman dialect. [167] "Reimpredigt, " ed. Suchier, Halle, 1879, p. 64. There were alsosermons in English (see next chapter); Jocelin de Brakelonde says in hischronicle that sermons were delivered in churches, "gallice vel potiusanglice, ut morum fieret edificatio, non literaturæ ostensio, " year 1200(Camden Society, 1840, p. 95). [168] "La Chanson de Roland, texte critique, traduction et commentaire, "by Léon Gautier, Tours, 1881, 8vo; "La Chanson de Roland, traductionarchaïque et rythmée, " by L. Clédat, Paris, 1887, 8vo. On the romancesof the cycle of Charlemagne composed in England, see G. Paris, "Histoirepoétique de Charlemagne, " 1865, 8vo, pp. 155 ff. The unique MS. Of the"Chanson, " written about 1170, is at Oxford, where it was found in ourcentury. It was printed for the first time in 1837. Other versions ofthe story have come down to us; on which see Gaston Paris's Introductionto his "Extraits de la Chanson de Roland, " 1893, 4th ed. [169] Croist li aciers, ne fraint ne s'esgruignet; Et dist li cuens: "Sainte Marie, aiude!. . . E! Durendal, com iés et clére et blanche! Contre soleil si reluis et reflambes!. . . E! Durendal, com iés bèle et saintisme!" [170] Cil Sarrazins me semblet mult herites. [171] Ne a muillier n'a dame qu'as veüt N'en vanteras el' regne dunt tu fus. [172] "Car le Royaume de France ne fut oncques si desconfis que on n'ytrouvast bien tousjours à qui combattre. " Prologue of the Chronicles, Luce's edition, vol. I. P. 212. [173] Car bien scavons sanz nul espoir Q'il ne fu pius de c ans née Q'il grans ost fu assemblée. MS. Fr. 60 in the National Library, Paris, fol. 42; contains: "LiRoumans de Tiebes qui fu racine de Troie la grant. --Item toutel'histoire de Troie la grant. " [174] "Alexandre le Grand, dans la littérature française du moyen âge, "by P. Meyer, Paris, 1886, 2 vols. 8vo (vol. I. Texts, vol. Ii. Historyof the legend); vol. Ii. P. 182. [175] MS. Fr. 782 at the National Library, Paris, containing poems byBenoit de Sainte-More, fol. 151, 155, 158. [176] Benoit de Sainte-More, a poet of the court of Henry II. , wrote his"Roman de Troie" about 1160 (G. Paris); it was edited by Joly, Paris, 1870, 2 vols. 4to. --"Le Roman de Thèbes, " ed. L. Constans, Paris, 1890, 2 vols. 8vo, wrongly attributed to Benoit de Sainte-More, indirectlyimitated from the "Thebaid" of Statius. --"Eneas, " a critical text, ed. J. Salvedra de Grave, Halle, Bibliotheca Normannica, 1891, 8vo, alsoattributed, but wrongly it seems, to Benoit; the work of a Norman, twelfth century; imitated from the "Æneid. "--The immense poem ofEustache or Thomas de Kent is still unpublished; the author imitates theromance in "alexandrines" of Lambert le Tort and Alexandre de Paris, twelfth century, ed. Michelant, Stuttgart, 1846. --The romances of Hue deRotelande (Rhuddlan in Flintshire?) are also in French verse, and werecomposed between 1176-7 and 1190-1; see Ward, "Catalogue of Romances, "1883, vol. I. Pp. 728 ff. ; his "Ipomedon" has been edited by Kölbing andKoschwitz, Breslau, 1889, 8vo; his "Prothesilaus" is still unpublished. [177] Lib. IX. Cap. Ii. [178] "Hic est Arthur de quo Britonum nugæ hodieque delirant, dignusplane quod non fallaces somniarent fabulæ, sed veraces prædicarenthistoriæ. " "De Gestis, " ed. Stubbs, Rolls, vol. I. P. 11. Henry ofHuntingdon, on the other hand, unable to identify the places of Arthur'sbattles, descants upon the vanity of fame and glory, "popularis auræ, laudis adulatoriæ, famæ transitoriæ. . . . " "Historia Anglorum, " Rolls, p. 49. [179] Says the Wolf: Dont estes vos? de quel païs? Vos n'estes mie nes de France . . . --Nai, mi seignor, mais de Bretaing . . . --Et savez vos neisun mestier? --Ya, ge fot molt bon jogler . . . Ge fot savoir bon lai Breton. "Roman de Renart, " ed. Martin, vol. I. Pp. 66, 67. [180] Gildas, "De Excidio Britanniæ, " ed. J. Stevenson, EnglishHistorical Society, 1838, 8vo; Nennius, "Historia Britonum, " sameeditor, place, and date. [181] His "Historia" was edited by Giles, London, 1844, 8vo, and by SanMarte, "Gottfried von Monmouth Historia regum Britanniæ, " Halle, 1854, 8vo. Geoffrey of Monmouth, or rather Geoffrey Arthur, a name which hadbeen borne by his father before him (Galffrai or Gruffyd in Welsh), first translated from Welsh into Latin the prophecies of Merlin, included afterwards in his "Historia"; bishop of St. Asaph, 1152; diedat Llandaff, 1154. See Ward, "Catalogue of Romances, " vol. I. Pp. 203ff. [182] Ward, "Catalogue of Romances, " vol. I. P. 210. [183] "Quidam nostris temporibus, pro expiandis his Britonum maculis, scriptor emersit, ridicula de eisdem figmenta contexens, . . . Gaufridushic dictus est. . . . Profecto minimum digitum sui Arturi grossiorem facitdorso Alexandri magni. " "Guilielmi Neubrigensis Historia, " ed. Hearne, Oxford, 1719, 3 vols. 8vo, "Proemium"; end of the twelfth century. [184] "Le Roman de Brut, " ed. Le Roux de Lincy, Rouen, 1836-38, 2 vols. 8vo. _Cf. _ P. Meyer, "De quelques chroniques anglo-normandes qui ontporté le nom de Brut, " Paris, 1878, "Bulletin de la Société des AnciensTextes français. " [185] The oldest poem we have in which the early songs on Tristan weregathered into one whole was written in French, on English soil, by Bérouabout 1150. Another version, also in French verse, was written about1170 by another Anglo-Norman, called Thomas. A third was the work of thefamous Chrestien de Troyes, same century. We have only fragments of thetwo first; the last is entirely lost. It has been, however, possible toreconstitute the poem of Thomas "by means of three versions: a Germanone (by Gotfrid of Strasbourg, unfinished), a Norwegian one (in prose, ab. 1225, faithful but compressed), and an English one (XIVth century, agreatly impaired text). " G. Paris, "La Littérature française au moyenâge, " 2nd ed. , 1890, p. 94. See also "Tristan et Iseut, " by the same, _Revue de Paris_, April 15, 1894. Texts: "The poetical Romances of Tristan in French, in Anglo-Norman, andin Greek, " ed. Francisque Michel, London, 1835-9, 3 vols. 8vo. --"DieNordische und die Englische Version der Tristan-Sage, " ed. Kölbing, Heilbronn, 1878-83, 2 vols. 8vo; vol. I. , "Tristrams Saga ok Isoudar"(Norwegian prose); vol. Ii. , "Sir Tristram" (English verse). --"Gottfriedvon Strassburg Tristan, " ed. Reinhold Bachstein, Leipzig, 1869, 2 vols. 8vo (German verse). [186] "Inferno, " canto v. [187] The following analysis is mainly made after "Tristan et Iseult, poème de Gotfrit de Strasbourg, comparé à d'autres poèmes sur le mêmesujet, " by A. Bossert, Paris, 1865, 8vo. Gotfrit wrote before 1203 (G. Paris, "Histoire Littérarie de la France, " vol. Xxx. P. 21). [188] En sa chambre se set un jor, E fait un lai pitus d'am[o]r: Coment dan Guirun fu surpris, Pur l'amur de sa dame ocis. . . . La reine chante dulcement, La voiz acorde el estrument; Les mainz sunt bels, li lais b[o]ns Dulce la voiz [et] bas li tons. Francisque Michel, _ut supra_, vol. Iii. P. 39. [189] On this incident, the earliest version of which is as old as thefourteenth century B. C. , having been found in an Egyptian papyrus ofthat date, see the article by Gaston Paris's, Part I. [190] Swinburne, "Tristram of Lyonesse and other poems. " [191] Bosert, pp. 62, 68, 72, 82. [192] "Et vous deistes, ales a Dieu, beau doulx amis. Ne oncques puis ducueur ne me pot issir; ce fut li moz qui preudomme me fera si je jamaisle suis; car oncques puis ne fus à si grant meschief qui de ce mot ne mesouvenist; cilz moz me conforte en tous mes anuys; cilz moz m'atousjours garanti et gardé de tous périlz; cilz moz m'a saoulé en toutesmes faims; cilz moz me fait riche en toutes mes pouretés. Par foi faitla royne cilz moz fut de bonne heure dit, et benois soit dieux qui direle me fist. Mais je ne le pris pas si acertes comme vous feistes. Amaint chevalier l'ay je dit là où oncques je n'y pensay fors du direseulement. " MS. Fr. 118 in the National Library, Paris, fol. 219;fourteenth century. The history of Lancelot was told in verse and prosein almost all the languages of Europe, from the twelfth century. One ofthe oldest versions (twelfth century) was the work of an Anglo-Norman. The most famous of the Lancelot poems is the "Conte de la Charrette, " byChrestien de Troyes, written between 1164 and 1172 (G. Paris, "Romania, "vol. Xii. P. 463). [193] "Omnis consuevit amans in coamantis aspectu pallescere, " &c. Rulessupposed to have been discovered by a knight at the court of Arthur, andtranscribed in the "Flos Amoris, " or "De Arte honeste amandi, " of Andréle Chapelain, thirteenth century; "Romania, " vol. Xii. P. 532. [194] On these romances, see, in "Histoire Littéraire de la France, "vol. Xxx. , a notice by Gaston Paris. On the MSS. Of them preserved inthe British Museum, see Ward, "Catalogue of MS. Romances, " 1883 (onMerlin, pp. 278 ff. ; on other prophecies, and especially those by Thomasof Erceldoune, p. 328; these last have been edited by Alois Brandl, "Thomas of Erceldoune, " Berlin, 1880, 8vo, "Sammlung EnglischerDenkmäler, " and by the Early English Text Society, 1875). [195] On legends of Hindu origin and for a long time wrongly attributedto the Arabs, see Gaston Paris, "le Lai de l'Oiselet, " Paris, 1884, 8vo. See also the important work of M. Bédier, "les Fabliaux, " Paris, 1893, 8vo, in which the evidence concerning the Eastern origin of tales iscarefully sifted and restricted within the narrowest limits: very fewcome from the East, not the bulk of them, as was generally admitted. [196] For Amis, very popular in England, see Kölbing, "Amis andAmiloun, " Heilbronn, 1884 (_cf. _ below, p. 229), and "Nouvellesfrançoises en prose du treizième siècle, " edited by Moland andd'Héricault, Paris, 1856, 16mo; these "Nouvelles" include: "l'EmpereurConstant, " "les Amitiés de Ami et Amile, " "le roi Flore et la belleJehanne, " "la Comtesse de Ponthieu, " "Aucassin et Nicolette. "--TheFrench text of "Floire et Blanceflor" is to be found in Edelstand duMéril, "Poèmes du treizième siècle, " Paris, 1856, 16mo. --For Marie deFrance, see H. Suchier, "Die Lais der Marie de France, " Halle, Bibliotheca, Normannica, 1885, 8vo; her fables are in vol. Ii. Of"Poésies de Marie de France, " ed. Roquefort, Paris, 1819, 2 vols. 8vo. See also Bédier's article in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, Oct. 15, 1891, also the chapter on Marie in Hervieux, "Fabulistes Latins, " 1883-4, 2ndpart, chap. I. [197] On this subject, see Gaston Paris's criticism of the "Origines dela poésie lyrique en France" of Jeanroy, in the "Journal des Savants, "1892. [198] One fact among many shows how constant was the intercourse on theContinent between Frenchmen of France and Englishmen living ortravelling there, namely, the knowledge of the English language shown inthe twelfth and thirteenth centuries by the authors of several branchesof the "Roman de Renart, " and the caricatures they drew of Englishpeople, which would have amused nobody if the originals of the pictureshad not been familiar to all. (See Branches Ib and XIV. In Martin'sedition. ) [199] Jeanroy, "Origines de la poésie lyrique en France, au moyen âge, "Paris, 1889, 8vo, p. 68. An allusion in a crusade song of the twelfthcentury shows that this _motif_ was already popular then. It is foundalso in much older poetry and more remote countries, for Jeanroy quotesa Chinese poem, written before the seventh century of our era, where, itis true, a mere cock and mere flies play the part of the Verona lark andnightingale: "It was not the cock, it was the hum of flies, " or in theLatin translation of Father Lacharme: "Fallor, non cantavit gallus, sedmuscarum fuit strepitus, " _ibid. _, p. 70. On _chansons_ written in French by Anglo-Normans, see "Mélanges depoésie anglo-normande, " by P. Meyer, in "Romania, " vol. Iv. P. 370, and"Les Manuscrits Français de Cambridge, " by the same, _ibid. _, vol. Xv. [200] Anglo-Norman song, written in England, in the thirteenth century, "Romania, " vol. Xv. P. 254. [201] "La Plainte d'amour, " from a MS. In the University Library, Cambridge, GG I. 1, "Romania, " _ibid. _ [202] Bele Aliz matin leva, Sun cors vesti e para, Enz un verger s'entra, Cink flurettes y truva, Un chapelet fet en a De rose flurie; Pur Deu, trahez vus en là Vus ki ne amez mie. The text of the sermon, as we have it is in Latin; it has long butwrongly been attributed to Stephen Langton; printed by T. Wright in his"Biographia Britannica, Anglo-Norman period, " 1846, p. 446. [203] "Le Pélerinage de Charlemagne, " eleventh century. Only one MS. Hasbeen preserved, written in England, in the thirteenth century; it hasbeen edited by Koschwitz, "Karls des Grossen Reise nach Jerusalem undKonstantinopel, " Heilbronn, 1880, 8vo. _Cf. _ G. Paris, "La poésiefrançaise au moyen âge, " 1885, p. 119, and "Romania, " vol. Ix. [204] "Le Roman de Renart, " ed. E. Martin, Strasbourg, 1882-7, 4 vols. 8vo; contains: vol. I. , the old series of branches; vol. Ii. , theadditional branches; vol. Iii. , variants; vol. Iv. , notes and tables. Most of the branches were composed in Normandy, Ile-de-France, Picardy;the twelfth is the work of Richard de Lison, a Norman, end of thetwelfth century; several, for example the fourteenth, evince on the partof their author a knowledge of the English tongue and manners. Concerning the sources of the "Roman, " see Sudre, "Les Sources du Romande Renart, " Paris, 1892, 8vo. [205] Caricature of a funeral ceremony:-- Brun li ors, prenez vostre estole . . . Sire Tardis li limaçons Lut par lui sol les trois leçons Et Roenel chanta les vers. (Vol. I. P. 12. ) [206] Seigneurs, oï avez maint conte Que maint conterre vous raconte, Conment Paris ravi Eleine, Le mal qu'il en ot et la paine . . . Et fabliaus, chansons de geste . . . Mais onques n'oïstes la guerre, Qui tant fu dure et de grant fin Entre Renart et Ysengrin. (Prologue of Branch II. ) [207] "Or dont, " dit Nobles, "au deable! Por le cuer be, sire Ysengrin, Prendra ja vostre gerre fin?" (Vol. I. P. 8. ) [208] . . . Sire Chanticler li cos, Et Pinte qui pont les ues gros Et Noire et Blanche et la Rossete Amenoient une charete Qui envouxe ert d'une cortine. Dedenz gisoit une geline Que l'en amenoit en litère Fete autresi con une bère. Renart l'avoit si maumenée Et as denz si desordenée Que la cuisse li avoit frete Et une ele hors del cors trete. (Vol. I. P. 9. ) [209] . . . Renart ne l'en laissa De totes cinc que une soule: Totes passèrent par sa goule. Et vos qui là gisez en bère, Ma douce suer m'amie chère, Con vos estieez tendre et crasse! Que fera vostre suer la lasse? (Vol. I. P. 10. ) [210] Pinte la lasse à ces paroles Chaï, pamée el pavement Et les autres tot ensement. Por relever les quatre dames, Se levèrent de leurs escames Et chen et lou et autres bestes, Eve lor getent sor les testes. [211] Par mautalant drece la teste. Onc n'i ot si hardie beste, Or ne sangler, que poor n'et Quant lor sire sospire et bret. Tel poor ot Coars li lèvres Que il en ot deus jors les fèvres. Tote la cort fremist ensemble, Li plus hardis de peor tremble. Par mautalent sa coue drece, Si se débat par tel destrece Que tot en sone la meson, Et puis fu tele sa reson. Dame Pinte, fet l'emperere, Foi que doi à l'ame mon père. . . . [212] Examples of sculptures in the stalls of the cathedrals atGloucester, St. David's, &c. ; of miniatures, MS. 10 E iv. In the BritishMuseum (English drawings of the beginning of the fourteenth century, oneof them reproduced in "English Wayfaring Life, " p. 309); of manuscripts:MS. Fr. 12, 583 in the National Library, Paris, "Cest livre est à Humfreyduc de Gloucester, liber lupi et vulpis"; of a translation in English ofpart of the romance: "Of the Vox and the Wolf" (time of Edward I. , inWright's "Selection of Latin Stories, " Percy Society; see below, pp. 228ff. ). Caxton issued in 1481 "Thystorye of Reynard the Foxe, " reprintedby Thoms, Percy Society, 1844, 8vo. The MS. In the National Library, mainly followed by Martin in his edition, offers "a sort of mixture ofthe Norman and Picard dialects. The vowels generally present Norman ifnot Anglo-Norman characteristics. " "Roman de Renart, " vol. I. P. 2. [213] In Migne's "Patrologia, " vol. Lxxvii. Col. 153. "Dialogorum LiberI. "; Prologue. [214] "De vita eremitica, " in Migne's "Patrologia, " vol. Xxxii. Col. 1451, text below, p. 213. [215] Council of Sens, 1528, in "The Exempla, or illustrative Storiesfrom the Sermones Vulgares of Jacques de Vitry, " ed. T. F. Crane, London, 1890, 8vo, p. Lxix. The collection of sermons with _exempla_, compiled by Jacques de Vitry (born ab. 1180, d. Ab. 1239), was one ofthe most popular, and is one of the most curious of its kind. [216] Si che le pecorelle, che non sanno, Tornan dal pasco pasciute di vento . . . Ora si va con motti, e con iscede A predicare. . . . Di questo ingrassa il porco Sant' Antonio, Ed altri assai, che son peggio che porci, Pagando di moneta senza conio. ("Paradiso, " canto xxix. ) [217] To be found, _e. G. _, in Jacques de Vitry, _ibid. _ p. 105: "Audivide quadam vetula que non poterat inducere quandam matronam ut juveniconsentiret, " &c. See below, pp. 225, and 447. [218] Bédier, "Les Fabliaux, " Paris, 1893, 8vo, p. 241; Bédier'sdefinition of the same is as follows: "Les fabliaux sont des contes àrire, en vers, " p. 6. The principal French collections are: Barbazan andMéon, "Fabliaux et contes des poètes français, " Paris, 1808, 4 vols. 8vo; Montaiglon and Raynaud, "Recueil général et complet des Fabliaux, "Paris, 1872-90, 6 vols. 8vo. [219] Ge sai contes, ge sai fableax, Ge sai conter beax diz noveax, &c. "Des deux bordeors ribauz, " in Montaiglon and Raynaud, "Recueilgénéral, " vol. I. P. 11. CHAPTER III. _LATIN. _ I. The ties with France were close ones; those with Rome were no less so. William had come to England, politically as the heir of the Anglo-Saxonkings, and with regard to ecclesiastical affairs as the Pope's chosen, blessed by the head of Christianity. In both respects, notwithstandingstorms and struggles, the tradition thus started was continued under hissuccessors. At no period of the history of England was the union with Rome closer, and at no time, not even in the Augustan Age of English literature wasthere a larger infusion of Latin ideas. The final consequence of HenryII. 's quarrel with Thomas Becket was a still more complete submission ofthis prince to the Roman See. John Lackland's fruitless attempts toreach absolute power resulted in the gift of his domains to St. Peterand the oath of fealty sworn by him as vassal of the Pope: "We, John, bythe grace of God, king of England, lord of Ireland, duke of Normandy, earl of Anjou, . . . Wishing to humiliate ourselves for Him who humiliatedHimself for us even unto death . . . Freely offer and concede to God andto our lord Pope Innocent and his Catholic successors, all the kingdomof England and all the kingdom of Ireland for the remission of oursins, "[220] May 15, 1213. From the day after Hastings the Church is seen establishing herself onfirm basis in the country; she receives as many, and even more domainsthan the companions of the Conqueror. In the county of Dorset, forinstance, it appears from Domesday that "the Church with her vassals anddependents enjoyed more than a third of the whole county, and that herpatrimony was greater than that of all the Barons and greater feudalistscombined. "[221] The religious foundations are innumerable, especially at the beginning;they decrease as the time of the Renaissance draws nearer. Four hundredand eighteen are counted from William Rufus to John, a period of onehundred years; one hundred and thirty-nine during the three followingreigns: a hundred and eight years; twenty-three in the fourteenthcentury, and only three in the fifteenth. [222] This number of monasteries necessitated considerable intercourse withRome; many of the monks, often the abbots, were Italian or French; theyhad suits in the court of Rome, they laid before the Pope at Rome, andlater at Avignon, their spiritual and temporal difficulties; the mostimportant abbeys were "exempt, " that is to say, under the directjurisdiction of the Pope without passing through the local episcopalauthority. This was the case with St. Augustine of Canterbury, St. Albans, St. Edmund's, Waltham, Evesham, Westminster, &c. The clergy ofEngland had its eyes constantly turned Romewards. This clergy was very numerous; in the thirteenth century its ranks wereswelled by the arrival of the mendicant friars: Franciscans andDominicans, the latter representing more especially doctrine, and theformer practice. The Dominicans expound dogmas, fight heresy, andfurnish the papacy with its Grand Inquisitors[223]; the Franciscans docharitable works, nurse lepers and wretches in the suburbs of the towns. All science that does not tend to the practice of charity is forbiddenthem: "Charles the Emperor, " said St. Francis, "Roland and Oliver, allthe paladins and men mighty in battle, have pursued the infidels todeath, and won their memorable victories at the cost of much toil andlabour. The holy martyrs died fighting for the faith of Christ. Butthere are in our time, people who by the mere telling of their deeds, seek honour and glory among men. There are also some among you who likebetter to preach on the virtues of the saints than to imitate theirlabours. . . . When thou shalt have a psalter so shalt thou wish for abreviary, and when thou shalt have a breviary, thou shalt sit in a chairlike a great prelate, and say to thy brother: 'Brother, fetch me mybreviary. '"[224] Thirty-two years after their first coming there were in England twelvehundred and forty-two Franciscans, with forty-nine convents, dividedinto seven custodies: London, York, Cambridge, Bristol, Oxford, Newcastle, Worcester. [225] "Your Holiness must know, " writes RobertGrosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, to Pope Gregory IX. , "that the friarsilluminate the whole country by the light of their preaching andteaching. Intercourse with these holy men propagates scorn of the worldand voluntary poverty. . . . Oh! could your Holiness see how piously andhumbly the people hasten to hear from them the word of life, to confesstheir sins, and learn the rules of good conduct!. . . "[226] Such was thebeginning; what followed was far from resembling it. The point to beremembered is another tie with Rome, represented by these new Orders:even the troubles that their disorders gave rise to later, theirquarrels with the secular clergy, the monks and the University, theconstant appeals to the Pope that were a result of these disputes, theobstinacy with which they endeavoured to form a Church within theChurch, all tended to increase and multiply the relations between Romeand England. The English clergy was not only numerous and largely endowed; it wasalso very influential, and played a considerable part in the policy ofthe State. When the Parliament was constituted the clergy occupied manyseats, the king's ministers were usually churchmen; the high Chancellorwas a prelate. The action of the Latin Church made itself also felt on the nation bymeans of ecclesiastical tribunals, the powers of which wereconsiderable; all that concerned clerks, or related to faith andbeliefs, to tithes, to deeds and contracts having a moral character, wills for instance, came within the jurisdiction of the religiousmagistrate. This justice interfered in the private life of the citizens;it had an inquisitorial character; it wanted to know if good orderreigned in households, if the husband was faithful and the wifevirtuous; it cited adulterers to its bar and chastised them. Summoners(Chaucer's somnours) played the part of spies and public accusers; theykept themselves well informed on these different matters, wereconstantly on the watch, pried into houses, collected and were supposedto verify evil reports, and summoned before the ecclesiastical courtthose whom Jane's or Gilote's beauty had turned from the path ofconjugal fidelity. It may be readily imagined that such an institutionafforded full scope for abuses; it could hardly have been otherwiseunless all the summoners had been saints, which they were not; someamong them were known to compound with the guilty for money, to call theinnocent before the judge in order to gratify personal spite. [227] Theirmisdeeds were well known but not easy to prove; so that Chaucer'ssatires did more to ruin the institution than all the petitions toParliament. These summoners were also in their own way, mean as thatwas, representatives of the Latin country, of the spiritual power ofRome; they knew it, and made the best of the stray Latin words that hadlodged in their memory; they used them as their shibboleth. Bishops kept seigneurial retinues, built fortresses[228] and lived inthem, had their archers and their dogs, hunted, laid siege to towns, made war, and only had recourse to excommunication when all other meansof prevailing over their foes had failed. Others among them becamesaints: both in heaven and on earth they held the first rank. Like thesovereign, they knew, even then, the worth of public opinion; theybought the goodwill of wandering poets, as that of the press was boughtin the day of Defoe. The itinerant minstrels were the newspapers of theperiod; they retailed the news and distributed praise or blame; theyacquired over the common people the same influence that "printed matter"has had in more recent times. Hugh de Nunant, bishop of Coventry, accuses William de Longchamp, bishop of Ely, and Chancellor of England, in a letter still extant, of having inspired the verses--one mightalmost say the articles--that minstrels come from France, and paid byhim, told in public places, "in plateis, " not without effect, "foralready, according to public opinion, no one in the universe wascomparable to him. "[229] Nothing gives so vivid an impression of the time that has elapsed, andthe transformation in manners that has occurred, as the sight of thatreligious and warlike tournament of which England was the field underRichard Coeur-de-Lion, and of which the heroes were all prelates, towit: these same William de Longchamp, bishop of Ely, and Hugh de Nunant, bishop of Coventry; then Hugh de Puiset, bishop of Durham, GeoffreyPlantagenet, archbishop of York, &c. Hugh de Puiset, a scion of the de Puisets, viscounts of Chartres, grandson of the Conqueror, cousin to King Richard, bishop palatine ofDurham, wears the coat of mail, fortifies his castles, storms those ofhis enemies, builds ships, adds a beautiful "Lady chapel" to hiscathedral, and spends the rest of his time in hunting. William de Longchamp, his great rival, grandson of a Norman peasant, bishop of Ely, Chancellor of England, seizes on Lincoln by force, liveslike a prince, has an escort of a thousand horsemen, adds to thefortifications of the Tower of London and stands a siege in it. He isobliged to give himself up to Hugh de Nunant, another bishop; he escapesdisguised as a woman; he is recognised, imprisoned in a cellar, andexiled; he then excommunicates his enemies. Fortune smiles on him oncemore and he is reinstated in his functions. Geoffrey Plantagenet, a natural son of Henry II. , the only child whoremained always faithful to the old king, had once thought he wouldreach the crown, but was obliged to content himself with becomingarchbishop of York. As such, he scorned to ally himself either withLongchamp or with Puiset, and made war on both impartially. Longchampforbids him to leave France; nevertheless Geoffrey lands at Dover, thecastle of which was held by Richenda, sister of the Chancellor. Hemounts on horseback and gallops towards the priory of St. Martin;Richenda sends after him, and one of the lady's men was putting his handon the horse's bridle, when our lord the archbishop, shod with iron, gave a violent kick to the enemy's steed, and tore his belly open; thebeast reared, and the prelate, freeing himself, reached the priory. There he is under watch for four days, after which he is dragged fromthe very altar, and taken to the castle of Dover. At last he isliberated, and installed in York; he immediately commences to fight withhis own clergy; he enters the cathedral when vespers are half over; heinterrupts the service, and begins it over again; the indignanttreasurer has the tapers put out, and the archbishop continues hispsalm-singing in the dark. He excommunicates his neighbour Hugh dePuiset, who is little concerned by it; he causes the chalices used bythe bishop of Durham to be destroyed as profaned. Hugh de Puiset, who was still riding about, though attacked by thedisease that was finally to carry him off, dies full of years in 1195, after a _reign_ of forty-three years. He had had several children bydifferent women: one of them, Henri de Puiset, joined the Crusade;another, Hugh, remained French, and became Chancellor to King LouisVII. [230] These warlike habits are only attenuated by degrees. In 1323 Edward II. Writes to Louis de Beaumont, bishop of Durham, reproaching a noble likehim for not defending his bishopric any better against the Scotch thanif he were a mutterer of prayers like his predecessor. Command is laidupon bishop Louis to take arms and go and camp on the frontier. In thesecond half of the same century, Henry le Despencer, bishop of Norwich, hacks the peasants to pieces, during the great rising, and makes war inFlanders for the benefit of one of the two popes. Side by side with these warriors shine administrators, men of learning, saints, all important and influential personages in their way. Suchare, for example, Lanfranc, of Pavia, late abbot of St. Stephen at Caen, who, as archbishop of Canterbury, reorganised the Church of England;Anselm of Aosta, late abbot of Bec, also an archbishop, canonised at theRenaissance, the discoverer of the famous "ontological" proof of theexistence of God, a paradoxical proof the inanity of which it wasreserved for St. Thomas Aquinas to demonstrate; Gilbert Foliot, aFrenchman, bishop of London, celebrated for his science, a strongsupporter of Henry II. ; Thomas Becket, of Norman descent, archbishop andsaint, whose quarrel with Henry II. Divided England, and almost dividedChristendom too; Hugh, bishop of Lincoln under the same king, of Frenchorigin, and who was also canonised; Stephen Langton, archbishop ofCanterbury, who contributed as much as any of the barons to the grantingof the Great Charter, and presided over the Council of London, in 1218, where it was solemnly confirmed[231]; Robert Grosseteste, [232] famousfor his learning and holiness, his theological treatises, his sermons, his commentaries on Boethius and Aristotle, his taste for the divine artof music, which according to him "drives away devils. " Warriors orsaints, all these leaders of men keep, in their difficulties, their eyesturned towards Rome, and towards the head of the Latin Church. II. At the same time as the monasteries, and under the shadow of theirwalls, schools and libraries multiplied. The Latin education of thenation is resumed with an energy and perseverance hitherto unknown, andthis time there will be no relapse into ignorance; protected by theFrench conquest, the Latin conquest is now definitive. Not only are religious books in Latin, psalters, missals and decretalscopied and collected in monasteries, but also the ancient classics. Theyare liked, they are known by heart, quoted in writings, and even inconversation. An English chronicler of the twelfth century declares hewould blush to compile annals after the fashion of the Anglo-Saxons;this barbarous manner is to be avoided; he will use Roman salt as acondiment: "et exarata barbarice romano sale condire. "[233] Another, ofthe same period, has the classic ideal so much before his eyes that hemakes William deliver, on the day of Hastings, a speech beginning: "Omortalium validissimi!"[234] A prelate who had been the tutor of the heir to the throne, and diedbishop palatine of Durham, Richard de Bury, [235] collects books with apassion equal to that which will be later displayed at the court of theMedici. He has emissaries who travel all over England, France, and Italyto secure manuscripts for him; with a book one can obtain anything fromhim; the abbot of St. Albans, as a propitiatory offering sends him aTerence, a Virgil, and a Quinctilian. His bedchamber is so encumberedwith books that one can hardly move in it. [236] Towards the end of hislife, never having had but one passion, he undertook to describe it, and, retired into his manor of Auckland, he wrote in Latin prose his"Philobiblon. "[237] In this short treatise he defends books, Greek andRoman antiquity, poetry, too, with touching emotion; he is seized withindignation when he thinks of the crimes of high treason againstmanuscripts, daily committed by pupils who in spring dry flowers intheir books; and of the ingratitude of wicked clerks, who admit into thelibrary dogs, or falcons, or worse still, a two-legged animal, "bestiabipedalis, " more dangerous "than the basilisk, or aspic, " who, discovering the volumes "insufficiently concealed by the protecting webof a dead spider, " condemns them to be sold, and converted for her ownuse into silken hoods and furred gowns. [238] Eve's descendants continue, thinks the bishop, to wrongfully meddle with the tree of knowledge. What painful commiseration did he not experience on penetrating into anill-kept convent library! "Then we ordered the book-presses, chests, andbags of the noble monasteries to be opened; and, astonished at beholdingagain the light of day, the volumes came out of their sepulchres andtheir prolonged sleep. . . . Some of them, which had ranked among thedaintiest, lay for ever spoilt, in all the horror of decay, covered byfilth left by the rats; they who had once been robed in purple and finelinen now lay on ashes, covered with a cilice. "[239] The worthy bishoplooks upon letters with a religious veneration, worthy of the ancientsthemselves; his enthusiasm recalls that of Cicero; no one at theRenaissance, not even the illustrious Bessarion, has praised oldmanuscripts with a more touching fervour, or more nearly attained to theeloquence of the great Latin orator when he speaks of books in his "ProArchia": "Thanks to books, " says the prelate, "the dead appear to me asthough they still lived. . . . Everything decays and falls into dust, bythe force of Time; Saturn is never weary of devouring his children, andthe glory of the world would be buried in oblivion, had not God as aremedy conferred on mortal man the benefit of books. . . . Books are themasters that instruct us without rods or ferulas, without reprimands oranger, without the solemnity of the gown or the expense of lessons. Goto them, you will not find them asleep; question them, they will notrefuse to answer; if you err, no scoldings on their part; if you areignorant, no mocking laughter. "[240] These teachings and these examples bore fruit; in renovated England, Latin-speaking clerks swarmed. It is often difficult while reading theirworks to discover whether they are of native or of foreign extraction;hates with them are less strong than with the rest of theircompatriots; most of them have studied not only in England but inParis; science has made of them cosmopolitans; they belong, above all, to the Latin country, and the Latin country has not suffered. The Latin country had two capitals, a religious capital which was Rome, and a literary capital which was Paris. "In the same manner as the cityof Athens shone in former days as the mother of liberal arts and thenurse of philosophers, . . . So in our times Paris has raised the standardof learning and civilisation, not only in France but in all the rest ofEurope, and, as the mother of wisdom, she welcomes guests from all partsof the world, supplies all their wants, and submits them all to herpacific rule. "[241] So said Bartholomew the Englishman in the thirteenthcentury. "What a flood of joy swept over my heart, " wrote in thefollowing century another Englishman, that same Richard de Bury, "everytime I was able to visit that paradise of the world, Paris! My staythere always seemed brief to me, so great was my passion. There werelibraries of perfume more delicious than caskets of spices, orchards ofscience ever green. . . . "[242] The University of Paris held withoutcontest the first rank during the Middle Ages; it counted among itsstudents, kings, saints, popes, statesmen, poets, learned men of allsorts come from all countries, Italians like Dante, Englishmen likeStephen Langton. Its lustre dates from the twelfth century. At that time a fusiontook place between the theological school of Notre-Dame, where shone, towards the beginning of the century, Guillaume de Champeaux, and theschools of logic that Abélard's teaching gave birth to on St. Geneviève's Mount. This state of things was not created, butconsecrated by Pope Innocent III. , a former student at Paris, whoby his bulls of 1208 and 1209 formed the masters and students intoone association, _universitas_. [243] According to a mediæval custom, which has been perpetuated in the East, and is still found for instance at the great University of El Azhar atCairo, the students were divided into nations: France, Normandy, Picardy, England. It was a division by races, and not by countries; theidea of mother countries politically divided being excluded, in theoryat least, from the Latin realm. Thus the Italians were included in theFrench nation, and the Germans in the English one. Of all theseforeigners the English were the most numerous; they had in Paris sixcolleges for theology alone. The faculties were four in number: theology, law, medicine, arts. Thelatter, though least in rank, was the most important from the number ofits pupils, and was a preparation for the others. The student of artswas about fifteen years of age; he passed a first degree called"déterminance" or bachelorship; then a second one, the licence, afterwhich, in a solemn ceremony termed _inceptio_, the corporation ofmasters invested him with the cap, the badge of mastership. He had then, according to his pledge, to dispute for forty successive days with everycomer; then, still very youthful, and frequently beardless, he himselfbegan to teach. A master who taught was called a Regent, _Magisterregens_. The principal schools were situated in the "rue du Fouarre" (straw, litter), "vico degli Strami, " says Dante, a street that still existsunder the same name, but the ancient houses of which are graduallydisappearing. In this formerly dark and narrow street, surrounded bylanes with names carrying us far back into the past ("rue de laParcheminerie, " &c), the most illustrious masters taught, and the mostsingular disorders arose. The students come from the four corners ofEurope without a farthing, having, in consequence, nothing to lose, andto whom ample privileges had been granted, did not shine by theirdiscipline. Neither was the population of the quarter an exemplaryone. [244] We gather from the royal ordinances that the rue du Fouarre, "vicus ultra parvum pontem, vocatus gallice la rue du Feurre, " had to beclosed at night by barriers and chains, because of individuals who hadthe wicked habit of establishing themselves at night, with their_ribaudes_, "mulieres immundæ!" in the lecture-rooms, and leaving, ontheir departure, by way of a joke, the professor's chair covered with"horrible" filth. Far from feeling any awe, these evil-doers found, onthe contrary, a special amusement in the idea of perpetrating theirjokes in the _sanctum_ of philosophers, who, says the ordinance of thewise king Charles V. , "should be clean and honest, and inhabit clean, decent, and honest places. "[245] Teaching, the principal object of which was logic, consisted in thereading and interpreting of such books as were considered authorities. "The method in expounding is always the same. The commentator discussesin a prologue some general questions relating to the work he is aboutto lecture upon, and he usually treats of its material, formal, final, and efficient causes. He points out the principal divisions, takes thefirst member of the division, subdivides it, divides the first member ofthis subdivision, and thus by a series of divisions, each beingsuccessively cleft into two, he reaches a division which only comprisesthe first chapter. He applies to each part of the work the same processas to its whole. He continues these divisions until he comes to havingbefore him only one phrase including one single complete idea. " Another not less important part of the instruction given consisted inoratorical jousts; the masters disputed among themselves, and the pupilsdid likewise. In a time when paper was scarce and parchment precious, disputes replaced our written exercises. The weapons employed in thesejousts were blunt ones; but as in real tournaments where "armescourtoises" were used, disputants were sometimes carried away bypassion, and the result was a true battle: "They scream themselveshoarse, they lavish unmannerly expressions, abuse, threats, upon eachother. They even take to cuffing, kicking, and biting. "[246] Under this training, rudimentary though it was, superior minds becamesharpened, they got accustomed to think, to weigh the pros and cons, toinvestigate freely; a taste for intellectual things was kept up in them. The greatest geniuses who had come to study Aristotle on St. Geneviève'sMount were always proud to call themselves pupils of Paris. But narrowminds grew there more narrow; they remained, as Rabelais will say later, foolish and silly, dreaming, stultified things, "tout niais, tout rêveuxet rassotés. " John of Salisbury, a brilliant scholar of Paris in thetwelfth century, had the curiosity to come, after a long absence, andsee his old companions "that dialectics still detained on St. Geneviève's Mount. " "I found them, " he tells us, "just as I had leftthem, and at the same point; they had not advanced one step in the artof solving our ancient questions, nor added to their science thesmallest proposition. . . . I then clearly saw, what it is easy todiscover, that the study of dialectics, fruitful if employed as a meansto reach the sciences, remain inert and barren if taken as being itselfthe object of study. "[247] During this time were developing, on the borders of the Isis and theCam, the Universities, so famous since, of Oxford and Cambridge; buttheir celebrity was chiefly local, and they never reached theinternational reputation of the one at Paris. Both towns had flourishingschools in the twelfth century; in the thirteenth, these schools wereconstituted into a University, on the model of Paris; they were grantedprivileges, and the Pope, who would not let slip this opportunity ofintervening, confirmed them. [248] The rules of discipline, the teaching, and the degrees are the same asat Paris. The turbulence is just as great; there are incessant battles;battles between the students of the North and those of the South, "boreales et australes, " between the English and Irish, between theclerks and the laity. In 1214 some clerks are hung by the citizens ofthe town; the Pope's legate instantly makes the power of Rome felt, andavenges the insult sustained by privileged persons belonging to theLatin country. During ten years the inhabitants of Oxford shall remitthe students half their rent; they shall pay down fifty-two shillingseach year on St. Nicholas' day, in favour of indigent students; andthey shall give a banquet to a hundred poor students. Even the bill offare is settled by the Roman authority: bread, ale, soup, a dish of fishor of meat; and this for ever. The perpetrators of the hanging shallcome barefooted, without girdle, cloak or hat, to remove their victimsfrom their temporary resting-place, and, followed by all the citizens, bury them with their own hands in the place assigned to them inconsecrated ground. In 1252 the Irish and "Northerners" begin to fight in St. Mary's Church. They are obliged by authority to appoint twelve delegates, who negotiatea treaty of peace. In 1313 a prohibition is proclaimed against bearingnames of nations, these distinctions being a constant source ofquarrels. In 1334 such numbers of "Surrois" and "Norrois" clerks areimprisoned in Oxford Castle after a battle, that the sheriff declaresescapes are sure to occur. [249] In 1354 a student, seated in a tavern, "in taberna vini, " pours a jug of wine over the tavern-keeper's head, and breaks the jug upon it. Unfortunately the head is broken as well;the "laity" take the part of the victim, pursue the clerks, kill twentyof them, and fling their bodies "in latrinas"; they even betakethemselves to the books of the students, and "slice them with knives andhatchets. " During that term "oh! woe! no degrees in Logic were taken atthe University of Oxford. "[250] In 1364 war breaks out again between thecitizens and students, "commissum fuit bellum, " and lasts four days. Regulations, frequently renewed, show the nature of the principalabuses. These laws pronounce: excommunication against the belligerents;exclusion from the University against those students who harboured"little women" (_mulierculas_) in their lodgings, major excommunicationand imprisonment against those who amuse themselves by celebratingbacchanals in churches, masked, disguised, and crowned "with leaves orflowers"; all this about 1250. The statutes of University Hall, 1292, prohibit the fellows from fighting, from holding immodest conversationstogether, from telling each other love tales, "fubulas de amasiis, " andfrom singing improper songs. [251] The lectures bore on Aristotle, Boethius, Priscian, and Donatus; Latinand French were studied; the fellows were bound to converse together inLatin; a regulation also prescribed that the scholars should be taughtLatin prosody, and accustomed to write epistles "in decent language, without emphasis or hyperbole, . . . And as much as possible full ofsense. "[252] Objectionable passages are to be avoided; Ovid's "Art ofLove" and the book of love by Pamphilus are prohibited. From the thirteenth century foundations increase in number, both atOxford and Cambridge. Now "chests" are created, a kind of pawnbrokinginstitution for the benefit of scholars; now a college is created likeUniversity College, the most ancient of all, founded by William ofDurham, who died in 1249, or New College, established by the illustriousChancellor of Edward III. William of Wykeham. Sometimes books arebequeathed, as by Richard de Bury and Thomas de Cobham in the fourteenthcentury, or by Humphrey of Gloucester, in the fifteenth. [253] Thejourney to Paris continues a title to respect, but it is no longerindispensable. III. With these resources at hand, and encouraged by the example of rulerssuch as Henry "Beauclerc" and Henry II. , the subjects of the kings ofEngland latinised themselves in great numbers, and produced some of theLatin writings which enjoyed the widest reputation throughout civilisedEurope. They handle the language with such facility in the twelfthcentury, one might believe it to be their mother-tongue; the chiefmonuments of English thought at this time are Latin writings. Latintales, chronicles, satires, sermons, scientific and medical works, treatises on style, prose romances, and epics in verse, all kinds ofcomposition are produced by Englishmen in considerable numbers. One of them writes a poem in hexameters on the Trojan war, whichdoubtless bears traces of barbarism, but more resembles antique modelsthan any other imitation made in Europe at the time. It was attributedto Cornelius Nepos, so late even as the Renaissance, though the author, Joseph of Exeter, [254] who composed it between 1178 and 1183, haddedicated his work to Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury, and mentionedin it Arthur, "flos regum Arthurus, " whose return was still expected bythe Britons, "Britonum ridenda fides. " Joseph is acquainted with theclassics; he has read Virgil, and follows to the best of his ability theprecepts of Horace. [255] Differing in this from Benoit de Sainte-Moreand his contemporaries, he depicts heroes that are not knights, and whoat their death are not buried in Gothic churches by monks chantingpsalms. This may be accounted a small merit; at that time, however, itwas anything but a common one, and, in truth, Joseph of Exeter alonepossessed it. In Latin poems of a more modern inspiration, much ingenuity, observation, sometimes wit, but occasionally only commonplace wisdom, were expended by Godfrey of Winchester, who composed epigrams about thecommencement of the twelfth century; by Henry of Huntingdon, thehistorian who wrote some also; by Alexander Neckham, author of a prosetreatise on the "Natures of Things"; Alain de l'Isle and John deHauteville, who both, long before Jean de Meun, made Nature discourse, "de omni re scibili"[256]; Walter the Englishman, and Odo of Cheriton, authors in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries of Latin fables, [257]and last, and above all, by Nigel Wireker, who wrote in picturesquestyle and flowing verse the story of Burnellus, the ass whose tail wastoo short. [258] Burnellus, type of the ambitious monk, escapes from his stable, andwishes to rise in the world. He consults Galen, who laughs at him, andsends him to Salerno. [259] At Salerno he is again made a fool of, andprovided with elixirs, warranted to make his tail grow to a beautifullength. But in passing through Lyons on his return, he quarrels with thedogs of a wicked monk called Fromond; while kicking right and left hekicks off his vials, which break, while Grimbald, the dog, cuts off halfhis tail. A sad occurrence! He revenges himself on Fromond, however, bydrowning him in the Rhone, and, lifting up his voice, he makes then thevalley ring with a "canticle" celebrating his triumph. [260] What can he do next? It is useless for him to think of attainingperfection of form; he will shine by his science; he will go to theUniversity of Paris, that centre of all light; he will become"Magister, " and be appointed bishop. The people will bow down to him ashe passes; it is a dream of bliss, La Fontaine's story of the "Pot auLait. " He reaches Paris, and naturally matriculates among the English nation. He falls to studying; at the end of a year he has been taught manythings, but is only able to say "ya" (semper ya repetit). He continuesto work, scourges himself, follows the lectures for many years, butstill knows nothing but "ya, " and remains an ass. [261] What then? Hewill found an abbey, the rule of which shall combine the delights of allthe others: it will be possible to gossip there as at Grandmont, toleave fasting alone as at Cluny, to dress warmly as among thePremonstrant, and to have a female friend like the secular canons; itwill be a Thélème even before Rabelais. But suddenly an unexpected personage appears on the scene, the donkey'smaster, Bernard the peasant, who had long been on the look-out for him, and by means of a stick the magister, bishop, mitred abbot, is led backto his stall. Not satisfied with the writing of Latin poems, the subjects of theEnglish kings would construct theories and establish the rules of theart. It was carrying boldness very far; they did not realise thattheories can only be laid down with safety in periods of maturity, andthat in formulating them too early there is risk of propagating nothingbut the rules of bad taste. This was the case with Geoffrey de Vinesauf, at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Geoffrey is sure of himself;he learnedly joins example to precept, he juggles with words; he soarson high, far above men of good sense. It was with great reason his workwas called the New art of poetry, "Nova Poetria, "[262] for it hasnothing in common with the old one, with Horace's. It is dedicated tothe Pope, and begins by puns on the name of Innocent[263]; it closeswith a comparison between the Pope and God: "Thou art neither God norman, but an intermediary being whom God has taken into partnership. . . . Not wishing to keep all for himself, he has taken heaven and given theeearth; what could he do better?"[264] Precepts and examples are in the same style. Geoffrey teaches how topraise, blame, and ridicule; he gives models of good prosopopoeias;prosopopoeias for times of happiness: an apostrophe to Englandgoverned by Richard Coeur-de-Lion (we know how well he governed);prosopopoeia for times of sorrow: an apostrophe to England, whosesovereign (this same Richard) has been killed on a certain Friday: "England, of his death thou thyself diest!. . . O lamentable day of Venus!O cruel planet! this day has been thy night, this Venus thy venom; byher wert thou vulnerable!. . . O woe and more than woe! O death! Otruculent death! O death, I wish thou wert dead! It pleased thee toremove the sun and to obscure the soil with obscurity!"[265] Then follow counsels as to the manner of treating ridiculouspeople[266]: they come in good time, and we breathe again, but we couldhave wished them even more stringent and sweeping. Such exaggerationsmake us understand the wisdom of the Oxford regulations prescribingsimplicity and prohibiting emphasis; the more so if we consider thatGeoffrey did not innovate, but merely turned into rules the tastes ofmany. Before him men of comparatively sound judgment, like Joseph ofExeter, forgot themselves so far as to apostrophise in these terms thenight in which Troy was taken: "O night, cruel night! night trulynoxious! troublous, sorrowful, traitorous, sanguinary night!"[267] &c. IV. The series of Latin prose authors of that epoch, grave or facetious, philosophers, moralists, satirists, historians, men of science, romanceand tale writers, is still more remarkable in England than that of thepoets. Had they only suspected the importance of the native languageand left Latin, several of them would have held a very high rank in thenational literature. Romance is represented by Geoffrey of Monmouth, who in the twelfthcentury wrote his famous "Historia Regum Britanniæ, " the influence ofwhich in England and on the Continent has already been seen. Prose taleswere written in astonishing quantities, in the twelfth and thirteenthcenturies, by those pious authors who, under pretext of edifying andamusing their readers at the same time, began by amusing, and frequentlyforgot to edify. They put into their collections all they knew in theway of legends, jokes, and facetious stories. England produced severalsuch collections; their authors usually add a moral to their tales, butsometimes omit it, or else they simply say: "Moralise as thou wilt!" In these innumerable well-told tales, full of sprightly dialogue, can bealready detected something of the art of the _conteur_ which will appearin Chaucer, and something almost of the art of the novelist, destinedfive hundred years later to reach such a high development in England. The curiosity of the Celt, reawakened by the Norman, is perpetuated inGreat Britain; stories are doted on there. "It is the custom, " says anEnglish author of the thirteenth century, "in rich families, to spendthe winter evenings around the fire, telling tales of formertimes. . . . "[268] Subjects for tales were not lacking. The last researches have about madeit certain that the immense "Gesta Romanorum, " so popular in the MiddleAges, were compiled in England about the end of the thirteenthcentury. [269] The collection of the English Dominican John of Bromyard, composed in the following century, is still more voluminous. Some ideacan be formed of it from the fact that the printed copy preserved at theNational Library of Paris weighs fifteen pounds. [270] Everything is found in these collections, from mere jokes and happyretorts to real novels. There are coarse fabliaux in their embryonicstage, objectionable tales where the frail wife derides the injuredhusband, graceful stories, miracles of the Virgin. We recognise inpassing some fable that La Fontaine has since made famous, episodes outof the "Roman de Renart, " anecdotes drawn from Roman history, adventuresthat, transformed and remodelled, have at length found their definitiverendering in Shakespeare's plays. All is grist that comes to the mill of these authors; their stories areof French, Latin, English, Hindu origin. It is plain, however, that theywrite for Englishmen from the fact that many of their stories arelocalised in England, and that quotations in English are here and thereinserted into the tale. [271] In turning the pages of these voluminous works, glimpses will be caughtof the Wolf, the Fox, and Tybert the cat; the Miller, his son and theAss; the Women and the Secret (instead of eggs, it is here a question of"exceedingly black crows"); the Rats who wish to hang a bell about theCat's neck. Many tales, fabliaux, and short stories will be recognisedthat have become popular under their French, English, or Italian shape, such as the lay of the "Oiselet, "[272] the "Chienne qui pleure, " or theWeeping Bitch, the lay of Aristotle, the Geese of Friar Philip, the PearTree, the Hermit who got drunk. Some of them are very indecent, but theywere not left out of the collections on that account, any more thanminiaturists were forbidden to paint on the margins of holy, or almostholy books, scenes that were far from being so. A manuscript of thedecretals, for example, painted in England at the beginning of thefourteenth century, exhibits a series of drawings illustrating some ofthese stories, and meant to fit an obviously unexpurgated text. [273] The Virgin plays her usual part of an indulgent protectress; thestory-tellers strangely deviate from the sacred type set before them inthe Scriptures. They represent her as the Merciful One whose patience nocrime can exhaust, and whose goodwill is enlisted by the slightest actof homage. She is transformed and becomes in their hands anintermediate being between a saint, a goddess, and a fairy. Thesacristan-nun of a convent, beautiful as may be believed, falls in lovewith a clerk, doubtless a charming one, and, unable to live without him, "throws her keys on the altar, and roves with her friend for five yearsoutside the monastery. " Passing by the place at the end of that time, she is impelled by curiosity to go to the convent and inquire concerningherself, the sacristan-nun of former years. To her great surprise shehears that the sister continues there, and edifies the whole communityby her piety. At night, while she sleeps, the Virgin appears to her in avision, saying: "Return, unfortunate one, to thy convent! It is I who, assuming thy shape, have fulfilled thy duties until now. "[274] Aconversion of course follows. A professional thief, who robbed and didnothing besides, "always invoked the Virgin with great devotion, evenwhen he set out to steal. "[275] He is caught and hanged; but the Virginherself holds him up, and keeps him alive; he is taken down, and turnsmonk. Another tale, of a romantic turn, is at once charming, absurd, immoral, edifying, and touching: "Celestinus reigned in the City of Rome. He wasexceedingly prudent, and had a pretty daughter. "[276] A knight fell inlove with her, but, being also very prudent after a fashion, he arguedthus: "Never will the emperor consent to give me his daughter to wife, Iam not worthy; but if I could in some manner obtain the love of themaiden, I should ask for no more. " He went often to see the princess, and tried to find favour in her eyes, but she said to him: "Thy troubleis thrown away; thinkest thou I know not what all these fine speechesmean?" He then offers money: "It will be a hundred marks, " says the emperor'sdaughter. But when evening comes the knight falls into such a deep sleepthat he only awakes on the following morning. The knight ruins himselfin order to obtain the same favour a second time, and succeeds no betterthan at first. He has spent all he had, and, more in love than ever, hejourneys afar to seek a lender. He arrives "in a town where were manymerchants, and a variety of philosophers, among them master Virgil. " Amerchant, a man of singular humour, agrees to lend the money; he refusesto take the lands of the young man as a security; "but thou shalt signwith thy blood the bond, and if thou dost not return the entire sum onthe appointed day, I shall have the right to remove with awell-sharpened knife all the flesh off thy body. " The knight signs in haste, for he is possessed by his passion, and hegoes to consult Virgil. "My good master, " he says, using the sameexpression as Dante, "I need your advice;" and Virgil then reveals tohim the existence of a talisman, sole cause of his irresistible desireto sleep. The knight returns with speed to the strange palace inhabitedby the still stranger daughter of this so "prudent" emperor; he removesthe talisman, and is no longer overpowered by sleep. To many tears succeeds a mutual affection, so true, so strong, accompanied by so much happiness, that both forget the fatal date. However, start he must. "Go, " says the maiden, "and offer him double, ortreble the sum; offer him all the gold he wishes; I will procure it forthee. " He arrives, he offers, but the merchant refuses: "Thou speakestin vain! Wert thou to offer me all the wealth of the city, nothing wouldI accept but what has been signed, sealed, and settled between us. "They go before the judge; the sentence is not a doubtful one. The maiden, however, kept herself well informed of all that went on, and, seeing the turn affairs were taking, "she cut her hair, donned arich suit of men's clothes, mounted a palfrey, and set out for thepalace where her lover was about to hear his sentence. " She asks to beallowed to defend the knight. "But nothing can be done, " says the judge. She offers money to the merchant, which he refuses; she then exclaims:"Let it be done as he desires; let him have the flesh, and nothing butthe flesh; the bond says nothing of the blood. " Hearing this, themerchant replies: "Give me my money and I hold you clear of the rest. ""Not so, " said the maiden. The merchant is confounded, the knightreleased; the maiden returns home hurriedly, puts on her female attire, and hastens out to meet her lover, eager to hear all that has passed. "O my dear mistress, that I love above all things, I nearly lost my lifethis day; but as I was about to be condemned, suddenly appeared a knightof an admirable presence, so handsome that I never saw his like. " Howcould she, at these words, prevent her sparkling eyes from betrayingher? "He saved me by his wisdom, and nought had I even to pay. "_The Maiden. _--Thou might'st have been more generous, and brought hometo supper the knight who had saved thy life. "_The Knight. _--He appeared and disappeared so suddenly I could not. "_The Maiden. _--Would'st thou recognise him again if he returned? "_The Knight. _--I should, assuredly. "[277] She then puts on again her male attire, and it is easy to imagine withwhat transports the knight beheld his saviour in his friend. The end ofthis first outline of a "Merchant of Venice" is not less naïve, picturesque, and desultory than the rest: "Thereupon he immediatelymarried the maiden, " and they led saintly lives. We are not told whatthe prudent emperor Celestinus thought of this "immediately. " Next to these compilers whose works became celebrated, but whose namesfor the most part remained concealed, were professional authors, whowere and wanted to be known, and who enjoyed a great personal fame. Foremost among them were John of Salisbury and Walter Map. John of Salisbury, [278] a former pupil of Abélard, a friend of St. Bernard, Thomas Becket, and the English Pope Adrian IV. , the envoy ofHenry II. To the court of Rome, which he visited ten times in twelveyears, writes in Latin his "Policratic, "[279] or "De nugis Curialium, "his "Metalogic, " his "Enthetic" (in verse), and his eulogy onBecket. [280] John is only too well versed in the classics, and hequotes them to an extent that does more credit to his erudition than tohis taste; but he has the gift of observation, and his remarks on thefollies of his time have a great historical value. In his "Policratic"is found a satire on a sort of personage who was then beginning to playhis part again, after an interruption of several centuries, namely, the_curialis_, or courtier; a criticism on histrions who, with theirindecent farces, made a rough prelude to modern dramatic art; acaricature of those fashionable singers who disgraced the religiousceremonies in the newly erected cathedrals by their songs resemblingthose "of women . . . Of sirens . . . Of nightingales and parrots. "[281] Heridicules hunting-monks, and also those chiromancers for whom Beckethimself had a weakness. "Above all, " says John, by way of conclusion andapology, "let not the men of the Court upbraid me with the follies Itrust them with; let them know I did not mean them in the least, Isatirised only myself and those like me, and it would be hard indeed ifI were forbidden to castigate both myself and my peers. "[282] In his"Metalogic, " he scoffs at the vain dialectics of silly logicians, Cornificians, as he calls them, an appellation that stuck to them allthrough the Middle Ages, and at their long phrases interlarded with somany negative particles that, in order to find out whether yes or no wasmeant, it became necessary to examine if the number of noes was an oddor even one. Bold ideas abound with John of Salisbury; he praises Brutus; he is ofopinion that the murder of tyrants is not only justifiable, but anhonest and commendable deed: "Non modo licitum est, sed æquum etjustum. " Whatever may be the apparent prosperity of the great, the Statewill go to ruin if the common people suffer: "When the people suffer, itis as though the sovereign had the gout"[283]; he must not imagine he isin health; let him try to walk, and down he falls. Characteristics of the same sort are found, with much more sparklingwit, in the Latin works of Walter Map. [284] This Welshman has thevivacity of the Celts his compatriots; he was celebrated at the court ofHenry II. , and throughout England for his repartees and witticisms, socelebrated indeed that he himself came to agree to others' opinion, andthought them worth collecting. He thus formed a very bizarre book, without beginning or end, in which he noted, day by day, [285] all thecurious things he had heard--"ego verbum audivi"--and with greaterabundance those he had said, including a great many puns. Thus ithappens that certain chapters of his "De Nugis Curialium, " a title thatthe work owes to the success of John of Salisbury's, are real novels, and have the smartness of such; others are real fabliaux, with all theircoarseness; others are scenes of comedy, with dialogues, and indicationsof characters as in a play[286]; others again are anecdotes of the East, "quoddam mirabile, " told on their return by pilgrims or crusaders. Like John of Salisbury, Map had studied in Paris, fulfilled missions toRome, and known Becket; but he shared neither his sympathy for France, nor his affection for St. Bernard. In the quarrel which sprung upbetween the saint and Abélard, he took the part of the latter. Though hebelonged to the Church, he is never weary of sneering at the monks, andespecially at the Cistercians; he imputes to St. Bernard abortivemiracles. "Placed, " says Map, "in the presence of a corpse, Bernardexclaimed: 'Walter, come forth!'--But Walter, as he did not hear thevoice of Jesus, so did he not listen with the ears of Lazarus, and camenot. "[287] Women also are for Map the subject of constant satires; hewas the author of that famous "Dissuasio Valerii ad Rufinum de ducendauxore, "[288] well known to the Wife of Bath and which the Middle Agespersistently attributed to St. Jerome. Map had asserted his authorshipand stated that he had written the dissertation "changing only ournames, " assuming for himself the name of Valerius "me qui Walterus sum, "and calling his uxorious friend Rufinus because he was red-haired. Butit was of no avail, and St. Jerome continued to be the author, in thesame way as Cornelius Nepos was credited with having written Joseph ofExeter's "Trojan War, " dedicated though it was to the archbishop ofCanterbury. Map is very strong in his advice to his red-haired friend, who "was bent upon being married, not loved, and aspired to the fate ofVulcan, not of Mars. " As a compensation many poems in Latin and French were attributed to Map, of doubtful authenticity. That he wrote verses and was famous as a poetthere is no question, but what poems were his we do not know forcertain. To him was ascribed most of the "Goliardic" poetry current inthe Middle Ages, so called on account of the principal personage whofigures in it, Golias, the type of the gluttonous and debauched prelate. Some of those poems were merry songs full of humour and _entrain_, perfectly consistent with what we know of Map's fantasy: "My supremewish is to die in the tavern! May my dying lips be wet with wine! Sothat on their coming the choirs of angels will exclaim: 'God be mercifulto this drinker!'"[289] Doubts exist also as to what his French poemswere; most of his jokes and repartees were delivered in French, as weknow from the testimony of Gerald de Barry, [290] but what he wrote inthat language is uncertain. The "Lancelot" is assigned to him in manymanuscripts and is perhaps his work. [291] V. The subjects of the Angevin kings also took part in the scientificmovement. In the ranks of their literary men using the Latin languageare jurists, physicians, savants, historians, theologians, and, amongthe latter, some of the most famous doctors of the Middle Ages:Alexander of Hales, the "irrefragable doctor"[292]; Duns Scot, the"subtle doctor"; Adam de Marisco, friend and adviser of Simon deMontfort, the "illustrious doctor"; Ockham, the "invincible doctor";Roger Bacon, the "admirable doctor"; Bradwardine, the "profound doctor, "and yet others. Scot discusses the greatest problems of soul and matter, and amid manycontradictions, and much obscurity, arrives at this conclusion, thatmatter is one: "Socrates and the brazen sphere are identical in nature. "He almost reaches this further conclusion, that "being is one. "[293] Hisreputation is immense during the Middle Ages; it diminishes at theRenaissance, and Rabelais, drawing up a list of some remarkable books inSt. Victor's library, inscribes on it, between the "Maschefaim desAdvocats" and the "Ratepenade des Cardinaux, " the works of the subtledoctor under the irreverent title of "Barbouillamenta Scoti. "[294] Ockham, in the pay of Philippe-le-Bel--for England, that formerly had tosend for Lanfranc and Anselm, can now furnish the Continent withdoctors--makes war on Boniface VIII. , and, drawing his arguments fromboth St. Paul and Aristotle, attacks the temporal power of thepopes. [295] Roger Bacon endeavours to clear up the chaos of thesciences; he forestalls his illustrious namesake, and classifies thecauses of human errors. [296] Archbishop Bradwardine, [297] who died inthe great plague of 1349, restricts himself to theology, and in a bookfamous during the Middle Ages, defends the "Cause of God" against allsceptics, heretics, infidels, and miscreants, confuting them all, andeven Aristotle himself. [298] No longer is Salerno alone to produce illustrious physicians, or Bologneillustrious jurists. A "Rosa Anglica, " the work of John of Gaddesden, court physician under Edward II. , has the greatest success in learnedEurope, and teaches how the stone can be cured by rubbing the invalidwith a paste composed of crickets and beetles pounded together, "buttaking care to first remove the heads and wings. "[299] A multitude ofprescriptions, of the same stamp most of them, are set down in thisbook, which was still printed and considered as an authority at theRenaissance. Bartholomew the Englishman, [300] another savant, yet more universal andmore celebrated, writes one of the oldest encyclopedias. His Latin book, translated into several languages, and of which there are many verybeautiful manuscripts, [301] comprises everything, from God and theangels down to beasts. Bartholomew teaches theology, philosophy, geography, and history, the natural sciences, medicine, worldlycivility, and the art of waiting on table. Nothing is too high, or toolow, or too obscure for him; he is acquainted with the nature of angels, as well as with that of fleas: "Fleas bite more sharply when it is goingto rain. " He knows about diamonds, "stones of love and reconciliation";and about man's dreams "that vary according to the variation of thefumes that enter into the little chamber of his phantasy"; and aboutheadaches that arise from "hot choleric vapours, full of ventosity"; andabout the moon, that, "by the force of her dampness, sets herimpression in the air and engenders dew"; and about everything in fact. The jurists are numerous; through them again the action of Rome uponEngland is fortified. Even those among them who are most bent uponmaintaining the local laws and traditions, have constantly to refer tothe ancient law-makers and commentators; Roman law is for them a sort ofprimordial and common treasure, open to all, and wherewith to fill thegaps of the native legislation. The first lessons had been given afterthe Conquest by foreigners: the Italian Vacarius, brought by Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, had professed law at Oxford in 1149. [302] ThenAnglo-Normans and English begin to codify and interpret their laws; theywrite general treatises; they collect precedents; and so well do theyunderstand the utility of precedents that these continue to have inlegal matters, up to this day, an importance which no other nation hascredited them with. Ralph Glanville, Chief Justice under Henry II. , writes or inspires a "Treatise of the laws and customs of England"[303];Richard, bishop of London, compiles a "Dialogue of the Exchequer, "[304]full of wisdom, life, and even a sort of humour; Henry of Bracton, [305]the most renowned of all, logician, observer, and thinker, composes inthe thirteenth century an ample treatise, of which severalabridgments[306] were afterwards made for the convenience of the judges, and which is still consulted. In the monasteries, the great literary occupation consists in thecompiling of chronicles. Historians of Latin tongue abounded in mediævalEngland, nearly every abbey had its own. A register was prepared, with aloose leaf at the end, "scedula, " on which the daily events wereinscribed in pencil, "cum plumbo. " At the end of the year the appointedchronicler, "non quicumque voluerit, sed cui injunctum fuerit, " shapedthese notes into a continued narrative, adding his remarks and comments, and inserting the entire text of the official documents sent byauthority for the monastery to keep, according to the custom of thetime. [307] In other cases, of rarer occurrence, a chronicle was compiledby some monk who, finding the life in cloister very dull, the officesvery long, and the prayers somewhat monotonous, used writing as a meansof resisting temptations and ridding himself of vain thoughts and theremembrance of a former worldly life. [308] Thus there exists an almostuninterrupted series of English chronicles, written in Latin, from theConquest to the Renaissance. The most remarkable of these series is thatof the great abbey of St. Albans, founded by Offa, a contemporary ofCharlemagne, and rebuilt by Paul, a monk of Caen, who was abbot in 1077. Most of these chronicles are singularly impartial; the authors freelyjudge the English and the French, the king and the people, the Pope, Harold and William. They belong to that Latin country and that religiousworld which had no frontiers. The cleverest among them are remarkablefor their knowledge of the ancients, for the high idea they conceive, from the twelfth century on, of the historical art, and for the painsthey take to describe manners and customs, to draw portraits and topreserve the memory of curious incidents. Thus shone, in the twelfthcentury, Orderic Vital, author of an "Ecclesiastical History" ofEngland[309]; Eadmer, St. Anselm's biographer[310]; Gerald de Barry, otherwise Geraldus Cambrensis; a fiery, bragging Welshman, who exhibitedboth in his life and works the temperament of a Gascon[311]; William ofMalmesbury, [312] Henry of Huntingdon, [313] &c. These two last have a sort of passion for their art, and a deepveneration for the antique models. William of Malmesbury is especiallyworthy of remembrance and respect. Before beginning to write, he hadcollected a multitude of books and testimonies; after writing he looksover and revises his text; he never considers, with famous Abbé Vertot, that "son siège est fait, " that it is too late to mend. He is alive tothe interest offered for the historian by the customs of the people, andby these characteristic traits, scarcely perceptible sometimes, whichare nevertheless landmarks in the journey of mankind towardscivilisation. His judgments are appreciative and thoughtful; he doessomething to keep awake the reader's attention, and notes down, withthis view, many anecdotes, some of which are excellent prose tales. Seven hundred years before Mérimée, he tells in his own way the story ofthe "Vénus d'Ille. "[314] He does not reach the supreme heights of art, but he walks in the right way; he does not know how to blend his hues, as others have done since, so as to delight the eye with many-colouredsights; but he already paints in colours. To please his reader, hesuddenly and naïvely says: "Now, I will tell you a story. Once upon atime. . . . " But if he has not been able to skilfully practice latter-daymethods, it is something to have tried, and so soon recognised theexcellence of them. In the thirteenth century rose above all others Matthew Paris, [315] anEnglish monk of the Abbey of St. Albans, who in his sincerity andconscientiousness, and in his love for the historical art, resemblesWilliam of Malmesbury. He, too, wants to interest; a skilfuldraughtsman, "pictor peroptimus, "[316] he illustrates his ownmanuscripts; he depicts scenes of religious life, a Gothic shrinecarried by monks, which paralytics endeavour to touch, an architectreceiving the king's orders, an antique gem of the treasury of St. Albans which, curiously enough, the convent lent pregnant women in orderto assist them in child-birth; a strange animal, little known inEngland: "a certain elephant, "[317] drawn from nature, with a replica ofhis trunk in another position, "the first, he says, that had been seenin the country. "[318] The animal came from Egypt, and was a gift fromLouis IX. Of France to Henry III. Matthew notes characteristic detailsshowing what manners were; he gives great attention to foreign affairs, and also collects anecdotes, for instance, of the wandering Jew, whostill lived in his time, a fact attested in his presence by anArchbishop of Armenia, who came to St. Albans in 1228. The porter of theprætorium struck Jesus saying: "Go on faster, go on; why tarriest thou?"Jesus, turning, looked at him with a stern countenance and replied: "Igo on, but thou shalt tarry till I come. " Since then Cartaphilustarries, and his life begins again with each successive century. Matthewprofits by the same occasion to find out about Noah's ark, and informsus that it was still to be seen, according to the testimony of thisprelate, in Armenia. [319] In the fourteenth century the most illustrious chroniclers were RalphHigden, whose Universal History became a sort of standard work, wastranslated into English, printed at the Renaissance, and constantlycopied and quoted[320]; Walter of Hemingburgh, Robert of Avesbury, Thomas Walsingham, [321] not to mention many anonymous authors. Severalamong the historians of that date, and Walsingham in particular, would, on account of the dramatic vigour of their pictures, have held aconspicuous place in the literature of mediæval England had they notwritten in Latin, like their predecessors. [322] From these facts, and from this ample, many-coloured literary growth, may be gathered how complete the transformation was, and how strong theintellectual ties with Rome and Paris had become; also how greatly theinhabitants of England now differed from those Anglo-Saxons, that thevictors of Hastings had found "agrestes et pene illiteratos, " accordingto the testimony of Orderic Vital. Times are changed: "The admirableMinerva visits human nations in turn . . . She has abandoned Athens, shehas quitted Rome, she withdraws from Paris; she has now come to thisisland of Britain, the most remarkable in the world; nay more, itself anepitome of the world. "[323] Thus could speak concerning his country, about the middle of the fourteenth century, when the results of theattempted experiment were certain and manifest, that great lover ofbooks, a late student at Paris, who had been a fervent admirer of theFrench capital, Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham. FOOTNOTES: [220] "Volentes nos ipsos humiliare pro Illo Qui Se pro nobis humiliavitusque ad mortem . . . Offerimus et libere concedimus Deo et . . . Dominonostro papæ Innocentio ejusque catholicis successoribus, totum regnumAngliæ et totum regnum Hiberniæ, cum omni jure et pertinentiis suis, proremissione peccatorum nostrorum. " Hereupon follows the pledge to pay forever to the Holy See "mille marcas sterlingorum, " and then the oath offealty to the Pope as suzerain of England. Stubbs, "Select Charters, "Oxford, 1876, 3rd ed. , pp. 284 ff. [221] R. W. Eyton, "A key to Domesday, showing the Method and Exactitudeof its Mensuration . . . Exemplified by . . . The Dorset Survey, " London, 1878, 4to, p. 156. [222] "Historical maps of England during the first thirteen centuries, "by C. H. Pearson, London, 1870, fol. P. 61. [223] Concerning their power and the part they played, see for examplethe confirmation by Philip VI. Of France, in November, 1329, of theregulations submitted to him by that "religious and honest person, friarHenri de Charnay, of the order of Preachers, inquisitor on the crime ofheresy, sent in that capacity to our kingdom and residing inCarcassonne. " Sentences attain not only men, but even houses; the kingorders: "_Premièrement_, quod domus, plateæ et loca in quibus hæresesfautæ fuerunt, diruantur et nunquam postea reedificentur, sed perpetuosubjaceant in sterquilineæ vilitati, " &c. Isambert's "Recueil desanciennes Lois, " vol. Iv. P. 364. [224] "Speculum vitæ B. Francisci et sociorum ejus, " opera Fratris G. Spoelberch, Antwerp, 1620, 8vo, part i. Chap. Iv. [225] Brewer and Howlett, "Monumenta Franciscana, " Rolls, 1858-82, 8vo, vol. I. P. 10. [226] Letter of the year 1238 or thereabout; "Roberti GrossetesteEpistolæ, " ed. Luard, Rolls, 1861, p. 179. [227] A bettre felaw sholde men noght finde, He wolde suffre, for a quart of wyn, A good felawe to have his concubyn A twelf-month and excuse him atte fulle. Prologue of the "Canterbury Tales. " The name of summoner was held inlittle esteem, and no wonder: "Artow thanne a bailly?"--"Ye, " quod he; He dorste nat for verray filthe and shame Seye that he was a somnour for the name. " ("Freres Tale, " l. 94. ) [228] They built a good many. Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, after havingbeen a parish priest at Caen, first tried his hand as a builder, inerecting castles; he built some at Newark, Sleaford, and Banbury. Hethen busied himself with holier work and endowed Lincoln Cathedral withits stone vault. This splendid church had been begun on a spot easy todefend by another French bishop, Remi, formerly monk at Fécamp:"Mercatis igitur prædiis, in ipso vertice urbis juxta castellum turribusfortissimis eminens, in loco forti fortem, pulchro pulchrum, virginivirgineam construxit ecclesiam; quæ et grata esset Deo servientibus et, ut pro tempore oportebat, invincibilis hostibus. " Henry of Huntingdon, "Historia Anglorum, " Rolls, p. 212. [229] "Epistola Hugonis . . . De dejectione Willelmi Eliensis episcopiRegis cancellarii, " in Hoveden, "Chronica, " ed. Stubbs, Rolls, vol. Iii. P. 141, year 1191: "Hic ad augmentum et famam sui nominis, emendicatacarmina et rhythmos adulatorios comparabat, et de regno Francorumcantores et joculatores muneribus allexerat, ut de illo canerent inplateis: et jam dicebatur ubique, quod non erat talis in orbe. " Seebelow, pp. 222, 345. [230] See Stubbs, Introductions to the "Chronica Magistri Rogeri deHovedene. " Rolls, 1868, 4 vols. 8vo, especially vols. Iii. And iv. [231] Lanfranc, 1005?-1089, archbishop in 1070; "Opera quæ supersunt, "ed. Giles, Oxford, 1843, 2 vols. 8vo. --St. Anselm, 1033-1109, archbishopof Canterbury in 1093; works ("Monologion, " "Proslogion, " "Cur Deushomo, " &c. ) in Migne's "Patrologia, " vol. Clviii. And clix. --StephenLangton, born ab. 1150, of a Yorkshire family, archbishop in 1208, d. 1228. [232] A declared supporter of the Franciscans, and an energetic censorof the papal court, bishop of Lincoln 1235-53, has left a vast number ofwritings, and enjoyed considerable reputation for his learning andsanctity. His letters have been edited by Luard, "Roberti Grosseteste. . . Epistolæ, " London, 1861, Rolls. See below, p. 213. Roger Baconpraised highly his learned works, adding, however: "quia Græcum etHebræum non scivit sufficienter ut per se transferret, sed habuit multosadjutores. " "Rogeri Bacon Opera . . . Inedita, " ed. Brewer, 1859, Rolls, p. 472. [233] "Gesta Regum Anglorum, " by William of Malmesbury, ed. Hardy, 1840, "Prologus. " He knew well the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" and used it: "Suntsane quædam vetustatis indicia chronico more et patrio sermone, perannos Domini ordinata, " p. 2. [234] "Henrici archidiaconi Huntendunensis Historia Anglorum, " Rolls, 1879, p. 201. [235] He derived his name from Bury St. Edmund's, near which he was bornon January 24, 1287. He was the son of Sir Richard Aungerville, Knight, whose ancestors had come to England with the Conqueror. He became theking's receiver in Gascony, fulfilled missions at Avignon in 1330 whenhe met Petrarca ("vir adentis ingenii, " says Petrarca of him), and in1333. He became in this year bishop of Durham, against the will of thechapter, who had elected Robert de Graystanes, the historian. He waslord Treasurer, then high Chancellor in 1334-5, discharged new missionson the Continent, followed Edward III. On his expedition of 1338, anddied in 1345. [236] See "Registrum Palatinum Dunelmense, " ed. Hardy, Rolls, vol. Iii. Introduction, p. Cxlvi. [237] The best edition is that given by E. C. Thomas, "The Philobiblonof Richard de Bury, " London, 1888, 8vo, Latin text with an Englishtranslation. The Introduction contains a biography in which some currenterrors have been corrected, and notes on the various MSS. According toseven MSS. The "Philobiblon" would be the work of Robert Holkot, and notof Richard de Bury, but this appears to be a mistaken attribution. [238] "Occupant etenim, " the books are represented to say, "loca nostra, nunc canes, nunc aves, nunc bestia bipedalis, cujus cohabitatio cumclericis vetabatur antiquitus, a qua semper, super aspidem et basilicumalumnos nostros docuimus esse fugiendum. . . . Ista nos conspectos inangulo, jam defunctæ araneæ de sola tela protectos . . . Mox in capitogiapretiosa . . . Vestes et varias furraturas . . . Nos consulit commutandos"(chap. Iv. P. 32). [239] Chap. Viii. P. 66. [240] Chap. I. Pp. 11, 13. [241] "Sicut quondam Athenarum civitas mater liberalium artium etliterarum, philosophorum nutrix et fons omnium scientiarum Græciamdecoravit, sic Parisiæ nostris temporibus, non solum Franciam imo totiusEuropæ partem residuam in scientia et in moribus sublimarunt. Nam velutsapientiæ mater, de omnibus mundi partibus advenientes recolligunt, omnibus in necessariis subveniunt, pacifice omnes regunt. . . . ""Bartholomæi Anglici De . . . Rerum . . . Proprietatibus Libri xviii. , " ed. Pontanus, Francfort, 1609, 8vo. Book xv. Chap. 57, "De Francia, " p. 653. [242] "Philobiblon, " ed. Thomas, chap. Viii. P. 69. _Cf. _ Neckham, "DeNaturis Rerum, " chap. Clxxiv. (Rolls, 1863, p. 311). [243] On the old University of Paris, see Ch. Thurot's excellent essay:"De l'organisation de l'enseignement dans l'Université de Paris au moyenâge, " Paris, 1850, 8vo. The four nations, p. 16; the English nation, p. 32; its colleges, p. 28; the degrees in the faculty of arts, pp. 43 ff. [244] Their servants were of course much worse in every way; they livedupon thefts, and had even formed on this account an association with acaptain at their head: "Cum essem Parisius audivi quod garcionesservientes scholarium, qui omnes fere latrunculi solent esse, habebantquendam magistrum qui pinceps erat hujus modi latrocinii. " Th. Wright, "Latin stories from MSS. Of the XIIIth and XIVth Centuries, " London, 1842, tale No. Cxxv. [245] May, 1358, in Isambert's "Recueil des anciennes Lois, " vol. V. P. 26. [246] Thurot, _ut supra_, pp. 73, 89. [247] In his "Metalogicus, " "Opera Omnia, " ed. Giles, Oxford, 1848, 5vols. 8vo, vol. V. P. 81. [248] Innocent IV. Confirms (ab. 1254) all the "immunitates etlaudabiles, antiquas, rationabiles consuetudines" of Oxford: "Nulli ergohominum liceat hanc paginam nostræ protectionis infringere vel ausutemerario contraire. " "Munimenta Academica, or documents illustrative ofacademical life and studies at Oxford, " ed. Anstey, 1868, Rolls, 2 vols. 8vo, vol. I. P. 26. _Cf. _ W. E. Gladstone, "An Academic Sketch, " Oxford, 1892. [249] "Rolls of Parliament, " 8 Ed. III. Vol. Ii. P. 76. [250] Robert of Avesbury (a contemporary, he died ab. 1357), "HistoriaEdvardi tertii, " ed. Hearne, Oxford, 1720, 8vo, p. 197. [251] "Vivant omnes honeste, ut clerici, prout decet sanctos, nonpugnantes, non scurrilia vel turpia loquentes, non cantilenas sivefalulas de amasiis vel luxuriosis, aut ad libidinem sonantibusnarrantes, cantantes aut libenter audientes. " "Munimenta Academica, " i. P. 60. [252] Regulation of uncertain date belonging to the thirteenth (or moreprobably to the fourteenth) century, concerning pupils in grammarschools; they will be taught prosody, and will write verses andepistles: "Literas compositas verbis decentibus, non ampullosis autsesquipedalibus et quantum possint sententia refertis. " They will learnLatin, English, and French "in gallico ne lingua illa penitus sitomissa. " "Munimenta Academica, " i. P. 437. [253] Another sign of the times consists in the number of episcopalletters authorizing ecclesiastics to leave their diocese and go to theUniversity. Thus, for example, Richard de Kellawe, bishop of Durham, 1310-16, writes to Robert de Eyrum: "Quum per viros literatos Deiconsuevit Ecclesia venustari, cupientibus in agro studii laborare etacquirere scientiæ margaritam . . . Favorem libenter et gratiam impertimus. . . Ut in loco ubi generale viget studium, a data præsentium usque inbiennium revolutum morari valeas. " "Registrum Palatinum Dunelmense, " ed. Hardy, Rolls, 1873, 4 vols. 8vo, vol. I. P. 288 (many other similarletters). [254] Josephus Exoniensis, or Iscanus, followed Archbishop Baldwin tothe crusade in favour of which this prelate had delivered the sermons, and undertaken the journey in Wales described by Gerald de Barry. Josephsang the expedition in a Latin poem, "Antiocheis, " of which a few linesonly have been preserved. In his Trojan poem he follows, as a matter ofcourse, Dares; the work was several times printed in the Renaissance andsince: "Josephi Iscani . . . De Bello Trojano libri . . . Auctori restituti. . . A Samuele Dresemio, " Francfort, 1620, 8vo. The MS. Lat. 15015 in theNational Library, Paris, contains a considerable series of explanatorynotes written in the thirteenth century, concerning this poem (I printedthe first book of them). [255] For example, in his opening lines, where he adheres to thesimplicity recommended in "Ars Poetica": Iliadum lacrymas concessaque Pergama fatis, Prælia bina ducum, bis adactam cladibus urbem, In cineres quærimus. [256] "Anglo-Latin satirical poets and epigrammatists of the XIIthCentury, " ed. Th. Wright, London, 1872, Rolls, 2 vols. 8vo; contains, among other works: "Godfredi prioris Epigrammata" (one in praise of theConqueror, vol. Ii. P. 149); "Henrici archidiaconi Historiæ liberundecimus" (that is, Henry of Huntingdon, fine epigram "in seipsum, "vol. Ii. P. 163); "Alexandri Neckham De Vita Monachorum" (the same wrotea number of treatises on theological, scientific, and grammaticalsubjects; see especially his "De Naturis Rerum, " ed. Wright, Rolls, 1863); "Alani Liber de Planctu Naturæ" (_cf. _ "Opera, " Antwerp, 1654, fol. , the nationality of Alain de l'Isle is doubtful); "Joannis deAltavilla Architrenius" (that is the arch-weeper; lamentations of ayoung man on his past, his faults, the faults of others; Nature comfortshim and he marries Moderation; the author was a Norman, and wrote ab. 1184). [257] For the Latin fables of Walter the Englishman, Odo de Cheriton, Neckham, &c. , see Hervieux, "les Fabulistes latins, " Paris, 1883-4, 2vols. (text, commentary, &c. ). [258] "Speculum Stultorum, " in Wright, "Anglo-Latin satirical poets";_ut supra_. Nigel (twelfth century) had for his patron William deLongchamp, bishop of Ely (see above, p. 163), and fulfilledecclesiastical functions in Canterbury. [259] In titulo caudæ Francorum rex Ludovicus Non tibi præcellit pontificesve sui. (Vol. I. P. 17. ) [260] Cantemus, socii! festum celebremus aselli! Vocibus et votis organa nostra sonent. Exultent asini, læti modulentur aselli, Laude sonent celebri tympana, sistra, chori! (p. 48. ) [261] Jam pertransierat Burnellus tempora multa Et prope completus septimus annus erat, Cum nihil ex toto quodcunque docente magistro Aut socio potuit discere præter ya. Quod natura dedit, quod secum detulit illuc, Hoc habet, hoc illo nemo tulisse potest . . . Semper ya repetit. (p. 64) [262] "Galfridi de Vinosalvo Ars Poetica, " ed. Leyser, Helmstadt, 1724, 8vo. He wrote other works; an "Itinerarium regis Anglorum Richardi I. "(text in the "Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores" of Gale, 1684 ff. , fol. , vol. Ii. ) has been attributed to him, but there are grave doubts; seeHauréau, "Notices et Extraits des Manuscrits, " vol. Xxix. Pp. 321 ff. According to Stubbs ("Itinerarium peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi, "1864, Rolls), the real author is Richard, canon of the Holy Trinity, London. [263] Papa stupor mundi, si dixero Papa _Nocenti_: Acephalum nomen tribuam tibi; si caput addam, Hostis erit metri, &c. [264] Nec Deus es nec homo, quasi neuter es inter utrumque, Quem Deus elegit socium. Socialiter egit Tecum, partibus mundum. Sed noluit unus Omnia. Sed voluit tibi terras et sibi coelum. Quid potuit melius? quid majus? cui meliori? (p. 95. ) [265] Tota peris ex morte sua. Mors non fuit ejus, Sed tua. Non una, sed publica, mortis origo. O Veneris lacrimosa dies! o sydus amarum! Illa dies tua nox fuit et Venus illa venenum; Illa dedit vulnus . . . O dolor! o plus quam dolor! o mors! o truculenta Mors! Esses utinam mors mortua! quid meministi Ausa nefas tantum? Placuit tibi tollere solem Et tenebris tenebrare solum. (p. 18. ) [266] Contra ridiculos si vis insurgere plene Surge sub hac forma. Lauda, sed ridiculose. Argue, sed lepide, &c. (p. 21. ) [267] Nox, fera nox, vere nox noxia, turbida, tristis, Insidiosa, ferox, &c. ("De Bello Trojano, " book vi. L. 760. ) [268] "Cum in hyemis intemperie post cenam noctu familia divitis adfocum, ut potentibus moris est, recensendis antiquis gestis operamdaret. . . . " "Gesta Romanorum, " version compiled in England, ed. HermannOesterley, Berlin, 1872, 8vo, chap. Clv. [269] Such is the conclusion come to by Oesterley. The original version, according to him, was written in England; on the Continent, where it wasreceived with great favour, it underwent considerable alterations, andmany stories were added. The "Gesta" have been wrongly attributed toPierre Bercheur. Translations into English prose were made in thefifteenth century: "The early English version of the Gesta Romanorum, "ed. S. J. H. Herrtage, Early English Text Society, 1879, 8vo. [270] Seven kilos, 200 gr. "Doctissimi viri fratris Johannis de Bromyard. . . Summ[a] prædicantium, " Nurenberg, 1485, fol. The subjects arearranged in alphabetical order: Ebrietas, Luxuria, Maria, &c. [271] Such is the case in several of the stories collected by Th. Wright: "A Selection of Latin Stories from MSS, of the XIIIth and XIVthCenturies, a contribution to the History of Fiction, " London, PercySociety, 1842, 8vo. In No. XXII. , "De Muliere et Sortilega, " theincantations are in English verse; in No. XXXIV. Occurs a praise ofEngland, "terra pacis et justitiæ"; in No. XCVII. The hermit who gotdrunk repents and says "anglice": Whil that I was sobre sinne ne dede I nowht, But in drunkeschipe I dede ye werste that mihten be thowte. [272] That one in verse, with a mixture of English words. Ha! says thepeasant: Ha thu mi swete bird, ego te comedam. "Early Mysteries and other Latin poems of the XIIth and XIIIthCenturies, " ed. Th. Wright, London, 1838, 8vo, p. 97. _Cf. _ G. Paris, "Lai de l'Oiselet, " Paris, 1884. [273] These series of drawings in the margins are like tales withoutwords; several among the most celebrated of the fabliaux are thusrepresented; among others: the Sacristan and the wife of the Knight; theHermit who got drunk; a story recalling the adventures of Lazarillo deTormes (unnoticed by the historians of Spanish fiction), &c. Somedrawings of this sort from MS. 10 E iv. In the British Museum arereproduced in "English Wayfaring Life, " pp. 21, 28, 405, &c. [274] "Redi, misera, ad monasterium, quia ego, sub tua specie usque modoofficium tuum adimplevi. " Wright's "Latin Stories, " p. 95. Same story inBarbazan and Méon, "Nouveau Recueil, " vol. Ii. P. 154: "De la Segretainequi devint fole au monde. " [275] "Latin Stories, " p. 97; French text in Barbazan and Méon, vol. Ii. P. 443: "Du larron qui se commandoit à Nostre Dame toutes les fois qu'ilaloit embler. " [276] "Latin Stories, " p. 114, from the version of the "GestaRomanorum, " compiled in England: "De milite conventionem faciente cummercatore. " [277] "Ait miles, 'o carissima domina, mihi præ omnibus prædilecta hodiefere vitam amsi; sed cum ad mortem judicari debuissem, intravit subitoquidam miles formosus valde, bene militem tam formosum nunquam anteavidi, et me per prudentiam suam non tantum a morte salvavit, sed etiamme ab omni solutione pecuniæ liberavit. ' Ait puella: 'Ergo ingratusfuisti quod militem ad prandium, quia vitam tuam taliter salvavit, noninvitasti. ' Ait miles: 'Subito intravit et subito exivit. ' Ait puella:'Si cum jam videres, haberes notitiam ejus?' At ille 'Etiam optime. '"_Ibid. _ [278] Born ab. 1120. To him it was that Pope Adrian IV. (NicholasBreakspeare) delivered the famous bull "Laudabiliter, " which gaveIreland to Henry II. Adrian had great friendship for John: "Fatebaturetiam, " John wrote somewhat conceitedly, "publice et secreto quod me præomnibus mortalibus diligebat. . . . Et quum Romanus pontifex esset, me inpropria mensa gaudebat habere convivum, et eundem scyphum et discum sibiet mihi volebat, et faciebat, me renitente, esse communem"("Metalogicus, " in the "Opera Omnia, " ed. Giles, vol. V. P. 205). Johnof Salisbury died in 1180, being then bishop of Chartres, a dignity towhich he had been raised, he said, "divina dignatione et meritis SanctiThomæ" (Demimuid, "Jean de Salisbury, " 1873, p. 275). The very fine copyof John's "Policraticus, " which belonged to Richard de Bury, is now inthe British Museum: MS. 13 D iv. [279] From [Greek: polis] and [Greek: chratein]. [280] "Joannis Saresberiensis . . . Opera omnia, " ed. Giles, Oxford, 1848, 5 vols. 8vo, "Patres Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ. " [281] "Ipsum quoque cultum religionis incestat, quod ante conspectumDomini, in ipsis penetralibus sanctuarii, lascivientis vocis luxu, quadam ostentatione sui, muliebribus modis notularum articulorumquecæsuris stupentes animulas emollire nituntur. Quum præcinentium etsuccinentium, canentium et decinentium, præmolles modulationes audieris, Sirenarum concentus credas esse, non hominum, et de vocum facilitatemiraberis quibus philomena vel psitaccus, aut si quid sonorius est, modos suos nequeunt coæquare. " "Opera, " vol. Iii. P. 38 (see on thissame subject, below, p. 446). [282] "Quæ autem de curialibus nugis dicta sunt, in nullo eorum, sedforte in me aut mei similibus deprehendi; et plane nimis arcta legeconstringor, si meipsum et amicos castigare et emendare non licet. ""Opera, " vol. Iv. P. 379 (Maupassant used to put forth in conversationexactly the same plea as an apology for "Bel-Ami. ") [283] "Afflictus namque populus, quasi principis podagram arguit etconvicit. Tunc autem totius reipublicæ salus incolumis præclaraque erit, si superiora membra si impendant inferioribus et inferiora superioribuspari jure respondeant. " "Policraticus"; "Opera, " vol. Iv. P. 52. [284] Born probably in Herefordshire, studied at Paris, fulfilledvarious diplomatic missions, was justice in eyre 1173, canon of St. Paul's 1176, archdeacon of Oxford, 1197. He spent his last years in hisliving of Westbury on the Severn, and died about 1210. [285] "Hunc in curia regis Henrici libellum raptim annotavi schedulis. ""Gualteri Mapes de Nugis Curialium Distinctiones quinque, " ed. Th. Wright, London, Camden Society, 1850, 4to, Dist. Iv. , Epilogus, p. 140. [286] For example, _ibid. _ iii. 2, "De Societate Sadii et Galonis, "Dialogue between three women, Regina, Lais, Ero, pp. 111 ff. [287] "Galtere, veni foras!--Galterus autem, quia non audivit vocemJhesus, non habuit aures Lazari et non venit. " "De Nugis, " p. 42. [288] "De Nugis, " Dist. Iv. [289] Th. Wright, "The Latin poems commonly attributed to Walter Mapes, "London, Camden Society, 1841, 4to (_cf. _ "Romania, " vol. Vii. P. 94): Meum est propositum in taberna mori; Vinum sit appositum morientis ori, Ut dicant cum venerint angelorum chori: Deus sit propitius huic potatori. ("Confessio Goliæ. ") On "Goliardois" clerks, see Bédier, "les Fabliaux, " Paris, 1893, 8vo, pp. 348 ff. [290] In his prefatory letter to king John, Gerald says that "vir illeeloquio clarus, W. Mapus, Oxoniensis archidiaconus, " used to tell himthat he had derived some fame and benefits from his witticisms andsayings, "dicta, " which were in the common idiom, that is in French, "communi quippe idiomate prolata. " "Opera, " Rolls, vol. V. P. 410. [291] Map, however, never claimed the authorship of this work. Theprobability of his being the author rests mainly on the allusiondiscovered by Ward in the works of Hue de Rotelande, a compatriot andcontemporary of Map, who seems to point him out as having written the"Lancelot. " "Catalogue of Romances, " 1883, vol. I. Pp. 734 ff. [292] Alexander, of Hales, Gloucestershire, lectured at Paris, d. 1245;wrote a "Summa" at the request of Innocent II. : "Alexandri AlensisAngli, Doctoris irrefragabilis . . . Universæ theologiæ Summa, " Cologne, 1622, 4 vols. Fol. He deals in many of his "Quæstiones" with subjects, usual then in theological books, but which seem to the modern readervery strange indeed. A large number of sermons and pious treatises werealso written in Latin during this period, by Aelred of Rievaulx forexample, and by others: "Beati Ailredi Rievallis abbatis Sermones" (andother works) in Migne's "Patrologia, " vols. Xxxii. And cxcv. [293] Studied at Oxford, then at Paris, where he taught with greatsuccess, d. At Cologne in 1308. "Opera Omnia, " ed. Luc Wadding, 1639, 12vols. Fol. See, on him, "Histoire Littéraire de la France, " vol. Xxiv. P. 404. [294] "Pantagruel, " II. , chap. 7. [295] The works of Ockham (fourteenth century) have not been collected. See his "Summa totius logicæ, " ed. Walker, 1675, 8vo, his "Compendiumerrorum Johannis papæ, " Lyons, 1495, fol. , &c. [296] Born in Somersetshire, studied at Oxford and Paris, d. About 1294;wrote "Opus majus, " "Opus minus, " "Opus tertium. " See "Opus majus adClementem papam, " ed. Jebb, London, 1733, fol. ; "Opera inedita, " ed. Brewer, Rolls, 1859. Many curious inventions are alluded to in this lastvolume: diving bells, p. 533; gunpowder, p. 536; oarless and very swiftboats; carriages without horses running at an extraordinary speed: "Itemcurrus possunt fieri ut sine animali moveantur impetu inæstimabili, " p. 533. On the causes of errors, that is authority, habit, &c. , see "Opusmajus, " I. [297] Born at Chichester ab. 1290, taught at Oxford, became chaplain toEdward III. And Archbishop of Canterbury. "De Causa Dei contra Pelagiumet de virtute causarum ad suos Mertonenses, Libri III. , " London, 1618, fol. [298] Conclusion of chap. I. Book I. : "Contra Aristotelem, astruentemmundum non habuisse principium temporale et non fuisse creatum, necpræsentem generationem hominum terminandam, neque mundum nec statummundi ullo tempore finiendum. " [299] "Joannis Anglici praxis medica Rosa Anglica dicta, " Augsbourg, 1595, 2 vols. 4to. Vol. I. P. 496. [300] Concerning Bartholomæus Anglicus, sometimes but wrongly called deGlanville, see the notice by M. Delisle ("Histoire Littéraire de laFrance, " vol. Xxx. Pp. 334 ff. ), who has demonstrated that he lived inthe thirteenth and not in the fourteenth century. It is difficult toadmit with M. Delisle that Bartholomew was not English. As we know thathe studied and lived on the Continent the most probable explanation ofhis surname is that he was born in England. See also his praise ofEngland, xv-14. His "De Proprietatibus" (Francfort, 1609, 8vo, manyother editions) was translated into English by Trevisa, in 1398, inFrench by Jean Corbichon, at the request of the wise king Charles V. , inSpanish and in Dutch. To the same category of writers belongs Gervase ofTilbury in Essex, who wrote, also on the Continent, between 1208 and1214, his "Otia imperialia, " where he gives an account of chaos, thecreation, the wonders of the world, &c. ; unpublished but for a fewextracts given by Stevenson in his "Radulphi de Coggeshall Chronicon, "1875, 8vo, Rolls, pp. 419 ff. [301] There are eighteen in the National Library, Paris. One of thefinest is the MS. 15 E ii. And iii. In the British Museum (Frenchtranslation) with beautiful miniatures in the richest style; _in fine_:"Escript par moy Jo Duries et finy à Bruges le XXVe jour de May, anno1482. " [302] On Vacarius, see "Magister Vacarius primus juris Romani in Angliaprofessor ex annalium monumentis et opere accurate descriptoillustratus, " by C. F. C. Wenck, Leipzig, 1820, 8vo. [303] "Tractatus de Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliæ, " finished about1187 (ed. Wilmot and Rayner, London, 1780, 8vo); was perhaps the work ofhis nephew, Hubert Walter, but written under his inspiraton. [304] "Dialogus de Scaccario, " written 23 Henry II. , text in Stubbs, "Select Charters, " Oxford, 1876, p. 168. [305] "Henrici de Bracton de Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliæ, LibriV. , " ed. Travers Twiss, Rolls, 1878 ff. , 6 vols. 8vo. Bracton adoptssome of the best known among the definitions and maxims of Roman law:"Filius hæres legittimus est quando nuptiæ demonstrant, " vol. Ii. P. 18;a treasure is "quædam vetus depositio pecuniæ vel alterius metalli cujusnon extat modo memoria, " vol. Ii. P. 230. On "Bracton and his relationto Roman law, " see C. Güterbock, translated with notes by Brinton Coxe, Philadelphia, 1866, 8vo. [306] By Gilbert de Thornton, ab. 1292; by the author of "Fleta, " ab. The same date. [307] The loose leaf was then removed, and a new one placed instead, inview of the year to come: "In fine vero anni non quicumque voluerit sedcui injunctum fuerit, quod verius et melius censuerit ad posteritatisnotitiam transmittendum, in corpore libri succincta brevitate describat;et tunc veter scedula subtracta nova imponatur. " "Annales Monastici", ed. Luard, Rolls, 1864-9, 5 vols. 8vo, vol. Iv. P. 355. Annals of thepriory of Worcester; preface. Concerning the "Scriptoria" in monasteriesand in particular the "Scriptorium" of St. Albans, see Hardy, "Descriptive Catalogue, " 1871, Rolls, vol. Iii. Pp. Xi. Ff. [308] "Sedens igitur in claustro pluries fatigatus, sensu habetato, virtutibus frustratus, pessimis cogitationibus sæpe sauciatus, tumpropter lectionum longitudinem ac orationum lassitudinem, propter vanasjactantias et opera pessima in sæculo præhabita. . . . " He has recourse, asa cure, to historical studies "ad rogationem superiorum meorum. ""Eulogium historiarum ab orbe condito usque ad A. D. 1366, " by a monk ofMalmesbury, ed. Haydon, Rolls, 1858, 2 vols. 8vo, vol. I. P. 2. [309] "Orderici Vitalis Angligenæ Historiæ ecclesiasticæ, Libri XIII. , "ed. Le Prevost, Paris, 1838-55, 5 vols. 8vo. Vital was born in England, but lived and wrote in the monastery of St. Evroult in Normandy, wherehe had been sent "as in exile, " and where, "as did St. Joseph in Egypt, he heard spoken a language to him unknown. " [310] "Eadmeri Historia novorum in Anglia, " ed. Martin Rule, Rolls, 1884, 8vo; in the same volume: "De vita and conversatione Anselmi. "Eadmer died ab. 1144. [311] "Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, " ed. Brewer (and others), 1861-91, 8vols. 8vo, Rolls. Gerald was born in the castle of Manorbeer, nearPembroke, of which ruins subsist. He was the son of William de Barry, ofthe great and warlike family that was to play an important part inIreland. His mother was Angareth, grand-daughter of Rhys ap Theodor, aWelsh prince. He studied at Paris, became chaplain to Henry II. , sojourned in Ireland, helped Archbishop Baldwin to preach the crusade inWales, and made considerable but fruitless efforts to be appointedbishop of St. Davids. At length he settled in peace and died there, ab. 1216; his tomb, greatly injured, is still to be seen in the church. Principal works, all in Latin (see above, p. 117); "De Rebus a segestis;" "Gemma Ecclesiastica;" "De Invectionibus, Libri IV. ;" "SpeculumEcclesiæ;" "Topographia Hibernica;" "Expugnatio Hibernica;" "ItinerariumKambriæ;" "Descriptio Kambriæ;" "De Principis Instructione. " [312] "Willelmi Malmesbiriensis Monachi, Gesta Regum Anglorum atqueHistoria Novella, " ed. T. D. Hardy, London, English Historical Society, 1840, 2 vols. 8vo; or the edition of Stubbs, Rolls, 1887 ff. ; "De GestisPontificum Anglorum, " ed. Hamilton, Rolls, 1870. William seems to havewritten between 1114 and 1123 and to have died ab. 1142, or shortlyafter. [313] "Henrici Archidiaconi Huntendunensis Historia Anglorum . . . FromA. C. 55 to A. D. 1154, " ed. T. Arnold, Rolls, 1879, 8vo. Henry writesmuch more as a dilettante than William of Malmesbury; he seems to do itmainly to please himself; clever at verse writing (see above, p. 177), he introduces in his Chronicle Latin poems of his own composition. Hischronology is vague and faulty. [314] "De Annulo statuæ commendato, " "Gesta, " vol. I. P. 354. [315] "Matthæi Parisiensis . . . Chronica Majora, " ed. H. R. Luard, Rolls, 1872 ff. , 7 vols. ; "Historia Anglorum, sive ut vulgo dicitur HistoriaMinor, " ed. Madden, Rolls, 1866 ff. , 3 vols. Matthew was English; hissurname of "Paris" or "the Parisian" meant, perhaps, that he had studiedat Paris, or perhaps that he belonged to one of the families of Pariswhich existed then in England (Jessopp, "Studies by a Recluse, " London, 1893, p. 46). He was received into St. Albans monastery on 1217, and wassent on a mission to King Hacon in Norway in 1248-9. Henry III. , a weakking but an artist born, valued him greatly. He died in 1259. The oldestpart of Matthew's chronicle is founded upon the work of Roger deWendover, another monk of St. Albans, who died in 1236. [316] So says Walsingham; see Madden's preface to the "HistoriaAnglorum, " vol. Iii. P. Xlviii. [317] MS. Nero D i. In the British Museum, fol. 22, 23, 146, 169. Theattribution of these drawings to Matthew has been contested: theirauthenticity seems, however, probable. See, _contra_, Hardy, vol. Iii. Of his "Descriptive Catalogue. " See also the MS. Royal 14 C vii. , withmaps and itineraries; a great Virgin on a throne, with a monk at herfeet: "Fret' Mathias Parisiensis, " fol. 6; fine draperies with manyfolds, recalling those in the album of Villard de Honecourt. [318] Year 1255: "Missus est in Angliam quidam elephas quem rexFrancorum pro magno munere dedit regi Angliæ. . . . Nec credimus aliumunquam visum fuisse in Anglia. " "Abbreviatio Chronicorum, " following the"Historia Anglorum" in Madden's edition, vol. Iii. P. 344. [319] "Chronica Majora, " vol. Iii. Pp. 162 ff. The story of Cartaphiluswas already in Roger de Wendover, who was also present in the monasterywhen the Armenian bishop came. The details on the ark are added byMatthew. [320] "Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden, monachi Cestrensis . . . With theEnglish translation of John Trevisa, " ed. Babington and Lumby, Rolls, 1865 ff. , 8 vols. Higden died about 1363. See below, p. 406. [321] See below, p. 405. [322] A great many other English chroniclers wrote in Latin, and amongtheir number: Florence of Worcester, Simeon of Durham, Fitzstephen, thepseudo Benedict of Peterborough, William of Newburgh, Roger de Hoveden(d. Ab. 1201) in the twelfth century; Gervase of Canterbury, Radulph deDiceto, Roger de Wendover, Radulph de Coggeshall, John of Oxenede, Bartholomew de Cotton, in the thirteenth; William Rishanger, John deTrokelowe, Nicolas Trivet, Richard of Cirencester, in the fourteenth. Alarge number of chronicles are anonymous. Most of those works have beenpublished by the English Historical Society, the Society of Antiquaries, and especially by the Master of the Rolls in the great collection: "TheChronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland . . . Publishedunder the direction of the Master of the Rolls, " London, 1857 ff. , inprogress. See also the "Descriptive Catalogue of materials relating tothe History of Great Britain and Ireland, to the end of the reign ofHenry VII. " by Sir T. D. Hardy, Rolls, 1862-6, 3 vols. 8vo. [323] The contrast between the time when Richard writes and the days ofhis youth, when he studied at Paris, is easy to explain. The HundredYears' War had begun, and well could the bishop speak of the decay ofstudies in the capital, "ubi tepuit, immo fere friguit zelus scholæ tamnobilis, cujus olim radii lucem dabant universis angulis orbis terræ. . . . Minerva mirabilis nationes hominum circuire videtur. . . . Jam Athenasdeseruit, jam a Roma recessit, jam Parisius præterivit, jam adBritanniam, insularum insignissimam, quin potius microcosmum accessitfeliciter. " "Philobiblon, " chap. Ix. P. 89. In the same words nearly, but with a contrary intent, Count Cominges, ambassador to England, assured King Louis XIV. That "the arts and sciences sometimes leave acountry to go and honour another with their presence. Now they have goneto France, and scarcely any vestiges of them have been left here, " April2, 1663. "A French Ambassador at the Court of Charles II. , " 1892, p. 205. CHAPTER IV. _LITERATURE IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. _ I. English in the meanwhile had survived, but it had been also transformed, owing to the Conquest. To the disaster of Hastings succeeded, for thenative race, a period of stupor and silence, and this was not withoutsome happy results. The first duty of a master is to impose silence onhis pupils; and this the conquerors did not fail to do. There wassilence for a hundred years. The clerks were the only exception; men of English speech remained mute. They barely recopied the manuscripts of their ancient authors, the listof whose names was left closed; they listened without comprehending tothe songs the foreigner had acclimatised in their island. The manner ofspeech and the subjects of the discourses were equally unfamiliar; andthey stood silent amidst the merriment that burst out like a note ofdefiance in the literature of the victors. Necessity caused them to take up the pen once more. After as before theConquest the rational object of life continued to be the gaining ofheaven, and it would have been a waste of time to use Latin indemonstrating this truth to the common people of England. French servedfor the new masters, and for their group of adherents; Latin for theclerks; but for the mass of "lowe men, " who are always the mostnumerous, it was indispensable to talk English. "All people cannot, "had said Bishop Grosseteste in his French "Château d'Amour, " "knowHebrew, Greek, and Latin"--"nor French, " adds his English translatorsome fifty years later; for which cause: On Englisch I-chul mi resun schowen Ffor him that con not i-knowen Nouther Ffrench ne Latyn. [324] The first works written in English, after the Conquest, were sermons andpious treatises, some imitated from Bede, Ælfric, and the ancient Saxonmodels, others translated from the French. No originality or invention;the time is one of depression and humiliation; the victor sings, thevanquished prays. The twelfth century, so fertile in Latin and French works, only counts, as far as English works are concerned, devotional books in prose andverse. The verses are uncouth and ill-shaped; the ancient rules, half-forgotten, are blended with new ones only half understood. Manyauthors employ at the same time alliteration and rhyme, and sin againstboth. The sermons are usually familiar in their style and kind in theirtone; they are meant for the poor and miserable to whom tenderness andsympathy must be shown. The listeners want to be consoled and soothed;they are also interested, as formerly, by stories of miracles, andscared into virtue by descriptions of hell; confidence again is giventhem by instances of Divine mercy. [325] Like the ancient churches the collections of sermons bring before theeye the last judgment and the region of hell, with its monstroustorments, its wells of flames, its ocean with seven bitter waves: ice, fire, blood . . . A rudimentary rendering of legends interpreted in theirturn by Dante in his poem, and Giotto in his fresco. [326] The thought ofGiotto especially, when reading those sermons, recurs to the memory, ofGiotto with his awkward and audacious attempts, Giotto so remote and yetso modern, childish and noble at the same time, who represents devilsroasting the damned on spits, and on the same wall tries to paint theUnseen and disclose to view the Unknown, Giotto with his search afterthe impossible, an almost painful search, the opposite of antiquewisdom, and the sublime folly of the then nascent modern age. Not farfrom Padua, beside Venice, in the great Byzantine mosaic of Torcello, can be seen a last reflection of antique equanimity. Here the maincharacter of the judgment-scene is its grand solemnity; and from thiscomes the impression of awe left on the beholder; the idea of rule andlaw predominates, a fatal law against which nothing can prevail; fateseems to preside, as it did in the antique tragedies. In the English sermons of the period it is not the art of Torcello thatcontinues, but the art of Giotto that begins. From time to time amongthe ungainly phrases of an author whose language is yet unformed, amidstmild and kind counsels, bursts forth a resounding apostrophe whichcauses the whole soul to vibrate, and has something sublime in its forceand brevity: "He who bestows alms with ill-gotten goods shall not obtainthe grace of Christ any more than he who having slain thy child bringsthee its head as a gift!"[327] The Psalter, [328] portions of the Bible, [329] lives of saints, [330]were put into verse. Metrical lives of saints fill manuscripts ofprodigious size. A complete cycle of them, the work of several authors, in which are mixed together old and novel, English and foreign, materials, was written in English verse in the thirteenth century: "Thecollection in its complete state is a 'Liber Festivalis, ' containingsermons or materials for sermons, for the festivals of the year in theorder of the calendar, and comprehends not only saints' lives forsaints' days but also a 'Temporale' for the festivals of Christ, "&c. [331] The earliest complete manuscript was written about 1300, anolder but incomplete one belongs to the years 1280-90, orthereabout. [332] In these collections a large place, as might beexpected, is allowed to English saints: Wolle ye nouthe i-heore this englische tale · that is here i-write? It is the story of St. Thomas Becket: "Of Londone is fader was. " St. Edward was "in Engeland oure kyng"; St. Kenelm, Kyng he was in Engelond · of the march of Walis; St. Edmund the Confessor "that lith at Ponteneye, " Ibore he was in Engelond · in the toun of Abyndone. St. Swithin "was her of Engelonde;" St. Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester, Was here of Engelonde . . . The while he was a yong child · clene lif he ladde i-nough; Whenne other children ornen to pleye · toward churche he drough. Seint Edward was kyng tho · that nouthe in heovene is. St. Cuthbert was born in England; St. Dunstan was an Englishman. Of thelatter a number of humorous legends were current among the people, andwere preserved by religious poets; he and the devil played on each othernumberless tricks in which, as behoves, the devil had the worst; theseadventures made the subject of amusing pictures in many manuscripts. Awoman, of beautiful face and figure, calls upon the saint, who isclear-sighted enough to recognise under this alluring shape thearch-foe; he dissembles. Being, like St. Eloi, a blacksmith, as well asa saint and a State minister, he heats his tongs red-hot, and turningsuddenly round, while the other was watching confidently the effect ofhis good looks, catches him by the nose. There was a smell of burntflesh, and awful yells were heard many miles round, for the "tonge wasal afure"; it will teach him to stay at home and blow his own nose: As god the schrewe hadde ibeo · atom ysnyt his nose. [333] With this we have graceful legends, like that of St. Brandan, adaptedfrom a French original, being the story of that Irish monk who, in aleather bark, sailed in search of Paradise, [334] and visited marvellousislands where ewes govern themselves, and where the birds are angelstransformed. The optimistic ideal of the Celts reappears in this poem, the subject of which is borrowed from them. "All there is beautiful, pure, and innocent; never was so kind a glance bestowed on the world, not a cruel idea, not a trace of weakness or regret. "[335] The mirth of St. Dunstan's story, the serenity of the legend of St. Brandan, are examples rarely met with in this literature. Under thelight ornamentation copied from the Celts and Normans, is usually seenat that date the sombre and dreamy background of the Anglo-Saxon mind. Hell and its torments, remorse for irreparable crimes, dread of thehereafter, terror of the judgments of God and the brevity of life, are, as they were before the Conquest, favourite subjects with the nationalpoets. They recur to them again and again; French poems describing thesame are those they imitate the more willingly; the tollings of thefuneral bell are heard each day in their compositions. Why cling to thisperishable world? it will pass as "the schadewe that glyt away;" manwill fade as a leaf, "so lef on bouh. " Where are Paris, and Helen, andTristan, and Iseult, and Cæsar? They have fled out of this world as theshaft from the bowstring: Heo beoth iglyden ut of the reyne, So the scheft is of the cleo. [336] Treatises of various kinds, and pious poems, abound from the thirteenthcentury; all adapted to English life and taste, but imitated from theFrench. The "Ancren Riwle, "[337] or rule for Recluse women, written inprose in the thirteenth century is perhaps an exception: it would be inthat case the first in date of the original treatises written in Englishafter the Conquest. This Rule is a manual of piety for the use of womenwho wish to dedicate themselves to God, a sort of "Introduction à la Viedévote, " as mild in tone as that of St. Francis de Sales, but far morevigorous in its precepts. The author addresses himself specially tothree young women of good family, who had resolved to live apart fromthe world without taking any vows. He teaches them to deprive themselvesof all that makes life attractive; to take no pleasure either throughthe eye, or through the ear, or in any other way. He gives rules forgetting up, for going to bed, for eating and for dressing. His doctrinemay be summed up in a word: he teaches self-renunciation. But he does itin so kindly and affectionate a tone that the life he wishes hispenitents to submit to does not seem too bitter; his voice is so sweetthat the existence he describes seems almost sweet. Yet all that couldbrighten it must be avoided; the least thing may have seriousconsequences: "of little waxeth mickle. " Not a glance must be bestowed on the world; the young recluses must evendeny themselves the pleasure of looking out of the parlour windows. Theymust bear in mind the example of Eve: "When thou lookest upon a man thouart in Eve's case; thou lookest upon the apple. If any one had said toEve when she cast her eye upon it: 'Ah! Eve, turn thee away; thoucastest thine eyes upon thy death, ' what would she have answered?--'Mydear master, thou art in the wrong, why dost thou find fault with me?The apple which I look upon is forbidden me to eat, not to lookat. '--Thus would Eve quickly enough have answered. O my dear sisters, truly Eve hath many daughters who imitate their mother, who answer inthis manner. But 'thinkest thou, ' saith one, 'that I shall leap upon himthough I look at him?'--God knows, dear sisters, that a greater wonderhas happened. Eve, thy mother leaped after her eyes to the apple; fromthe apple in Paradise down to the earth; from the earth to hell, whereshe lay in prison four thousand years and more, she and her lord both, and taught all her offspring to leap after her to death without end. Thebeginning and root of this woful calamity was a light look. Thus often, as is said, 'of little waxeth mickle. '"[338] The temptation to look and talk out of the window was one of thegreatest with the poor anchoresses; not a few found it impossible toresist it. Cut off from the changeable world, they could not helpfeeling an interest in it, so captivating precisely because, unlike thecellular life, it was ever changing. The authors of rules for reclusesinsisted therefore very much upon this danger, and denounced such abusesas Aelred, abbot of Rievaulx, reveals, as we have seen, so early as thetwelfth century: old women, talkative ones and newsbringers, sittingbefore the window of the recluse, "and telling her tales, and feedingher with vain news and scandal, and telling her how this monk or thatclerk or any other man looks and behaves. "[339] Most of the religious treatises in English that have come down to us areof a more recent epoch, and belong to the first half of the fourteenthcentury. In the thirteenth, as has been noticed, many Englishmenconsidered French to be, together with Latin, the literary language ofthe country; they endeavoured to handle it, but not always with greatsuccess. Robert Grosseteste, who, however, recommended his clergy topreach in English, had composed in French a "Château d'Amour, " anallegorical poem, with keeps, castles, and turrets, "les quatre turelesen haut, " which are the four cardinal virtues, a sort of pious Romauntof the Rose. William of Wadington had likewise written in French his"Manuel des Pechiez, " not without an inkling that his grammar andprosody might give cause for laughter. He excused himself in advance:"For my French and my rhymes no one must blame me, for in England was Iborn, and there bred and brought up and educated. "[340] These attempts become rare as we approach the fourteenth century, andEnglish translations and imitations, on the contrary, multiply. We find, for example, translations in English verse of the "Château"[341] and the"Manuel"[342]; a prose translation of that famous "Somme des Vices etdes Vertus, " composed by Brother Lorens in 1279, for Philip III. OfFrance, a copy of which, chained to a pillar of the church of theInnocents, remained open for the convenience of the faithful[343]; (abestiary in verse, thirteenth century), devotional writings on theVirgin, legends of the Cross, visions of heaven and hell[344]; a Courierof the world, "Cursor Mundi, " in verse, [345] containing the history ofthe Old and New Testaments. A multitude of legends are found in the"Cursor, " that of the Cross for instance, made out of three trees, acypress, a cedar, and a pine, symbols of the Trinity. These trees hadsprung from three pips given to Seth by the guardian angel of Paradise, and placed under Adam's tongue at his death; their miraculous existenceis continued on the mountains, and they play a part in all the greatepochs of Jewish history, in the time of Moses, Solomon, &c. Similar legends adorn most of these books: what good could theyaccomplish if no one read them? And to be read it was necessary toplease. This is why verse was used to charm the ear, and romanticstories were inserted to delight the mind, for, says Robert Mannyng inhis translation of the "Manuel des Pechiez, " "many people are so madethat it pleases them to hear stories and verses, in their games, intheir feasts, and over their ale. "[346] Somewhat above this group of translators and adaptators rises a moreoriginal writer, Richard Rolle of Hampole, noticeable for his Englishand Latin compositions, in prose and verse, and still more so by hischaracter. [347] He is the first on the list of those lay preachers, ofwhom England has produced a number, whom an inward crisis brought backto God, and who roamed about the country as volunteer apostles, converting the simple, edifying the wise, and, alas! affording cause forlaughter to the wicked. They are taken by good folks for saints, and formadmen by sceptics: such was the fate of Richard Rolle, of George Fox, of Bunyan, and of Wesley; the same man lives on through the ages, andthe same humanity heaps on him at once blessings and ridicule. Richard was of the world, and never took orders. He had studied atOxford. One day he left his father's house, in order to give himself upto a contemplative life. From that time he mortifies himself, he fasts, he prays, he is tempted; the devil appears to him under the form of abeautiful young woman, who he tells us with less humility than we areaccustomed to from him, "loved me not a little with good love. "[348] Butthough the wicked one shows himself in this case even more wicked thanwith St. Dunstan, and Rolle has no red-hot tongs to frighten him away, still the devil is again worsted, and the adventure ends as it should. Rolle has ecstasies, he sighs and groans; people come to visit him inhis solitude; he is found writing much, "scribentem multum velociter. "He is requested to stop writing, and speak to his visitors; he talks tothem, but continues writing, "and what he wrote differed entirely fromwhat he said. " This duplication of the personality lasted two hours. He leaves his retreat and goes all over the country, preachingabnegation and a return to Christ. He finally settled at Hampole, wherehe wrote his principal works, and died in 1349. Having no doubt that hewould one day be canonised, the nuns of a neighbouring convent causedthe office of his feast-day to be written; and this office, which wasnever sung as Rolle never received the hoped-for dignity, is the mainsource of our information concerning him. [349] His style and ideas correspond well to such a life. His thoughts aresombre, Germanic anxieties and doubts reappear in his writings, the ideaof death and the image of the grave cause him anguish that all his pietycannot allay. His style, like his life, is uneven and full of change; tocalm passages, to beautiful and edifying tales succeed bursts ofpassion; his phrases then become short and breathless; interjections andapostrophes abound. "Ihesu es thy name. A! A! that wondyrfull name! A!that delittabyll name! This es the name that es abowve all names. . . . Iyede (went) abowte be Covaytyse of riches and I fande noghte Ihesu. Irane be Wantonnes of flesche and I fand noghte Ihesu. I satt incompanyes of Worldly myrthe and I fand noghte Ihesu. . . . Tharefore Iturnede by anothire waye, and I rane a-bowte be Poverte, and I fandeIhesu pure, borne in the worlde, laid in a crybe and lappid inclathis. "[350] Rolle of Hampole is, if we except the doubtful case ofthe "Ancren Riwle, "the first English prose writer after the Conquestwho can pretend to the title of original author. To find him we have hadto come far into the fourteenth century. When he died, in 1349, Chaucerwas about ten years of age and Wyclif thirty. II. We are getting further and further away from the Conquest, the woundsinflicted by it begin to heal, and an audience is slowly forming amongthe English race, ready for something else besides sermons. The greater part of the nobles had early accepted the new order ofthings, and had either retained or recovered their estates. Havingrallied to the cause of the conquerors, they now endeavoured to imitatethem, and had also their castles, their minstrels, and their romances. They had, it is true, learnt French, but English remained their naturallanguage. A literature was composed that resembled them, English inlanguage, as French as possible in dress and manners. About the end ofthe twelfth century or beginning of the thirteenth, the translation ofthe French romances began. First came war stories, then love tales. Thus was written by Layamon, about 1205, the first metrical romance, after "Beowulf, " that the English literature possesses. [351] Thevocabulary of the "Brut" is Anglo-Saxon; there are not, it seems, abovefifty words of French origin in the whole of this lengthy poem, and yeton each page it is easy to recognise the ideas and the chivalrous tastesintroduced by the French. The strong will with which they blended thetraditions of the country has borne its fruits. Layamon considers thatthe glories of the Britons are English glories, and he celebrates theirtriumphs with an exulting heart, as if British victories were not Saxondefeats. Bede, the Anglo-Saxon, and Wace, the Norman, "a Frenchis clerc"as he calls him, are, in his eyes, authorities of the same sort and samevalue, equally worthy of filial respect and belief. "It came to him inmind, " says Layamon, speaking of himself, "and in his chief thought thathe would of the English tell the noble deeds. . . . Layamon began tojourney wide over this land and procured the noble books which he tookfor pattern. He took the English book that St. Bede made, " and a Latinbook by "St. Albin"; a third book he took "and laid in the midst, that aFrench clerk made, who was named Wace, who well could write. . . . Thesebooks he turned over the leaves, lovingly he beheld them . . . Pen he tookwith fingers and wrote on book skin. "[352] He follows mainly Wace'spoem, but paraphrases it; he introduces legends that were unknown toWace, and adds speeches to the already numerous speeches of his model. These discourses consist mostly of warlike invectives; before slaying, the warriors hurl defiance at each other; after killing his foe, thevictor allows himself the pleasure of jeering at the corpse, and hismirth resembles very much the mirth in Scandinavian sagas. "Then laughedArthur, the noble king, and gan to speak with gameful words: 'Lie nowthere, Colgrim. . . . Thou climbed on this hill wondrously high, as if thouwouldst ascend to heaven, now thou shalt to hell. There thou mayest knowmuch of your kindred; and greet thou there Hengest . . . And Ossa, Octaand more of thy kin, and bid them there dwell winter and summer, and weshall in land live in bliss. '"[353] This is an example of a speechadded to Wace, who simply concludes his account of the battle by: Mors fu Balduf, mors fu Colgrin Et Cheldric s'en ala fuiant. [354] In such taunts is recognised the ferocity of the primitive epics, thoseof the Greeks as well as those of the northern nations. Thus spokePatroclus to Cebrion when he fell headlong from his chariot, "with theresolute air of a diver who seeks oysters under the sea. " After Layamon, translations and adaptations soon become very plentiful, metrical chronicles, like the one composed towards the end of thethirteenth century by Robert of Gloucester, [355] are compiled on thepattern of the French ones, for the use and delight of the Englishpeople; chivalrous romances are also written in English. The love ofextraordinary adventures, and of the books that tell of them, had creptlittle by little into the hearts of these islanders, now reconciled totheir masters, and led by them all over the world. The minstrels orwandering poets of English tongue are many in number; no feast iscomplete without their music and their songs; they are welcomed in thecastle halls, they can now, with as bold a voice as their Frenchbrethren, bespeak a cup of ale, sure not to be refused: At the beginning of ure tale, Fil me a cuppe of ful god ale, And y wile drinken her y spelle That Crist us shilde all fro helle![356] They stop also on the public places, where the common people flock tohear of Charlemagne and Roland[357]; they even get into the cloister. Inthe thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, nearly all the stories of theheroes of Troy, Rome, France, and Britain are put into verse: For hem that knowe no Frensche · ne never underston. [358] "Men like, " writes shortly after 1300, the author of the "Cursor Mundi": Men lykyn jestis for to here And romans rede in divers manere Of Alexandre the conqueroure, Of Julius Cesar the emperoure, Of Grece and Troy the strong stryf There many a man lost his lyf, Of Brute that baron bold of hond, The first conqueroure of Englond, Of Kyng Artour. . . . How Kyng Charlis and Rowlond fawght With Sarzyns nold they be cawght, Of Trystrem and Isoude the swete, How they with love first gan mete . . . Stories of diverce thynggis, Of pryncis, prelatis and of kynggis, Many songgis of divers ryme, As English Frensh and Latyne. [359] Some very few Germanic or Saxon traditions, such as the story ofHavelok, a Dane who ended by reigning in England, or that of Horn andRymenhild, [360] his betrothed, had been adopted by the French poets. They were taken from them again by the English minstrels, who, however, left these old heroes their French dress: had they not followed thefashion, no one would have cared for their work. Goldborough orArgentille, the heroine of the romance of Havelok, was originally aValkyria; now, under her French disguise, she is scarcely recognisable, but she is liked as she is. [361] Some English heroes of a more recent period find also a place in thispoetic pantheon, thanks again to French minstrels, who make themfashionable by versifying about them. In this manner were written, inFrench, then in English, the adventures of Waltheof, of Sir Guy ofWarwick, who marries the beautiful Felice, goes to Palestine, kills thegiant Colbrant on his return, and dies piously in a hermitage. [362] Thusare likewise told the deeds of famous outlaws, as Fulke Fitz-Warin, aprototype of Robin Hood, who lived in the woods with the fairMahaud, [363] as Robin Hood will do later with Maid Marian. [364] Severalof these heroes, Guy of Warwick in particular, enjoyed such lastingpopularity that it has scarcely died out to this day. Their historieswere reprinted at the Renaissance; they were read under Elizabeth, andplays were taken from them; and when, with Defoe, Richardson, andFielding, novels of another kind took their place in the drawing-room, their life continued still in the lower sphere to which they had beenconsigned. They supplied the matter for those popular _chap books_[365]that have been reprinted even in our time, the authors of which wrote, as did the rhymers of the Middle Ages "for the love of the Englishpeople, of the people of merry England. " _Englis lede of meriIngeland. _[366] "Merry England" became acquainted with every form of French mirth; sheimitated French chansons, and gave a place in her literature to Frenchfabliaux. Nothing could be less congenial to the Anglo-Saxon race thanthe spirit of the fabliaux. This spirit, however, was acclimatised inEngland; and, like several other products of the French mind, wasgrafted on the original stock. The tree thus bore fruit which wouldnever have ripened as it did, without the Conquest. Such are the worksof Chaucer, of Swift perhaps, and of Sterne. The most comic and _risqué_stories, those same stories meant to raise a laugh which we have seenold women tell at parlour windows, in order to cheer recluseanchoresses, were put into English verse, from the thirteenth to thefifteenth century. Thus we find under an English form such stories asthe tale of "La Chienne qui pleure, "[367] "Le lai du Cor, "[368] "LaBourse pleine de sens, "[369] the praise of the land of "Coquaigne, "[370]&c. : Thogh paradis be miri and bright Cokaygn is of fairir sight. What is ther in paradis Bot grasse and flure and grene ris (branches)? Thogh ther be joi and grete dute (pleasure) Ther nis mete bote frute. . . . Bot watir manis thurste to quenche; Beth ther no man but two, Hely and Enok also And it cannot be very pleasant to live without more company; one mustfeel "elinglich. " But in "Cokaygne" there is no cause to be "elinglich";all is meat and drink there; all is day, there is no night: Al is dai, nis ther no nighte, Ther nis baret (quarrel) nother strif. . . . Ther nis man no womman wroth, Ther nis serpent, wolf no fox; no storm, no rain, no wind, no flea, no fly; there is no Enoch nor anyElias to be sure; but there are women with nothing pedantic about them, who are as loving as they are lovable. Nothing less Saxon than such poems, with their semi-impiety, which wouldbe absolute impiety if the author seriously meant what he said. It isthe impiety of Aucassin, who refuses (before it is offered him) to enterParadise: "In Paradise what have I to win? Therein I seek not to enter, but only to have Nicolete, my sweet lady that I love so well. . . . Butinto Hell would I fain go; for into Hell fare the goodly clerks, andgoodly knights that fall in harness and great wars, and stoutmen-at-arms, and all men noble. . . . With those would I gladly go, let mebut have with me Nicolete, my sweetest lady. "[371] We must not takeAucassin at his word; there was ever froth on French wine. Other English poems scoff at chivalrous manners, which are ridiculed inverse, in paintings, and sculptures[372]; or at the elegancies of thebad parson who puts in his bag a comb and "a shewer" (mirror). [373]Other poems are adaptations of the "Roman de Renart. "[374] The newspirit has penetrated so well into English minds that the adaptation issometimes worthy of the original. A vox gon out of the wode go, Afingret (hungered) so that him wes wo; He nes (ne was) nevere in none wise Afingret erour (before) half so swithe. He ne hoeld nouther wey ne strete, For him wes loth men to mete; Him were levere meten one hen, Than half an oundred wimmen. But not a hen does he come across; they are suspicious, and roost out ofreach. At last, half dead, he desires to drink, and sees a well with twopails on the chain; he descends in one of the pails, and finds itimpossible to scramble out: he weeps for rage. The wolf, as a matter ofcourse, comes that way, and they begin to talk. Though wanting very muchto go, hungrier than ever, and determined to make the wolf take hisplace, Renard would not have been Renard had he played off this trick onhis gossip plainly and without a word. He adds many words, all sparklingwith the wit of France, the wit that is to be inherited by Scapin andby Figaro. The wolf, for his part, replies word for word by a verse ofOrgon's. Renard will only allow him to descend into the Paradise whitherhe pretends to have retired, after he has confessed, forgiven all hisenemies--Renard being one--and is ready to lead a holy life. Ysengrinagrees, confesses, and forgives; he feels his mind quite at rest, andexclaims in his own way: Et je verrais mourir frère, enfants, mère et femme, Que je m'en soucierais autant que de cela. [375] Nou ich am in clene live, Ne recche ich of childe ne of wive. The wolf goes down, Renard goes up; as the pails meet, the roguewickedly observes: Ac ich am therof glad and blithe That thou art nomen in clene live, Thi soul-cnul (knell) ich wile do ringe, And masse for thine soule singe. But he considers it enough for his purpose to warn the monks that thedevil is at the bottom of their well. With great difficulty the monksdraw up the devil, which done they beat him, and set the dogs on him. Some graceful love tales, popular in France, were translated and enjoyedno less popularity in England, where there was now a public forliterature of this sort. Such was the case for Amis and Amile, Floireand Blanchefleur, and many others. [376] As for _chansons_, there wereimitations of May songs, "disputoisons, "[377] and carols; love, roses, and birds were sung in sweet words to soft music[378]; so was spring, the season of lilies, when the flowers give more perfume, and the moonmore light, and women are more beautiful: Wymmen waxeth wonder proude. [379] Their beauties and merits are celebrated one by one, as in a litany;for, said one of those poets, an Englishman who wrote in French: Beauté de femme passe rose. [380] In honour of them were composed stanzas spangled with admiringepithets, glittering like a golden shower; innumerable songs werededicated to their ideal model, the Queen of Angels; others to each oneof their physical charms, their "vair eyes"[381] and their eyes "grayy-noh": those being the colours preferred; their skin white as milk, "soft ase sylk"; those scarlet lips that served them to read romances, for romances were read aloud, and not only with the eyes[382]; theirvoice more melodious than a bird's song. In short, from the time ofEdward II. That mixture of mysticism and sensuality appears which was tobecome one of the characteristics of the fourteenth century. The poets who made these songs, charming as they were, rarely succeededhowever in perfectly imitating the light pace of the careless Frenchmuse. In reading a great number of the songs of both countries, one isstruck by the difference. The English spring is mixed with winter, andthe French with summer; England sings the verses of May, rememberingApril, France sings them looking forward to June. Blow northerne wynd, Sent thou me my suetyng, Blow, northerne wynd, blou, blou, blou![383] says the English poet. Contact with the new-comers had modified thegravity of the Anglo-Saxons, but without sweeping it away wholly and forever: the possibility of recurring sadness is felt even in the midst ofthe joy of "Merry England. " But the hour draws near when for the first time, and in spite of alldoleful notes, the joy of "Merry England" will bloom forth freely. Edward III. Is on the throne, Chaucer is just born, and soon the futureBlack Prince will win his spurs at Crécy. FOOTNOTES: [324] "Castel of Love, " "made in the latter half of the XIIIth century, "in Horstmann and Furnivall, "Minor Poems of the Vernon MS. , " E. E. T. S. , 1892, Part I. P. 356, see below, p. 213. Grosseteste had said: . . . Trestuz ne poent mie Saver le langage en fin D'Ebreu de griu ne de latin. (_Ibid. _ p. 355. ) [325] Among the collections of English sermons from the twelfth to thefourteenth century, see "An Old English Miscellany, " ed. Morris, EarlyEnglish Text Society, 1872, 8vo; pp. 26 ff. , a translation in Englishprose of the thirteenth century of some of the sermons of Maurice deSully; p. 187, "a lutel soth sermon" in verse, with good advice tolovers overfond of "Malekyn" or "Janekyn. "--"Old English homilies andhomiletic treatises . . . Of the XIIth and XIIIth centuries, " ed. Morris, E. E. T. S. , 1867-73, 2 vols. 8vo; prose and verse (specimens of music inthe second series); several of those pieces are mere transcripts ofAnglo Saxon works anterior to the Conquest; p. 159, the famous "MoralOde, " twelfth century, on the transitoriness of this life: "Ich em nualder thene ich wes, " &c. , in rhymed verse (_cf. _ "Old EnglishMiscellany, " p. 58, and "Anglia, " i. P. 6). --"The Ormulum, with thenotes and glossary of Dr. R. M. White, " ed. R. Holt, Oxford, 1878, 2vols. 8vo, an immense compilation in verse, of which a part only hasbeen preserved, the work of Ormin, an Augustinian canon, thirteenthcentury; contains a paraphrase of the gospel of the day followed by anexplanatory sermon; _cf. _ Napier, "Notes on Ormulum" in "History of theHoly Rood Tree, " E. E. T. S. , 1894--"Hali Meidenhad . . . An alliterativeHomily of the XIIIth century, " ed. Cockayne, E. E. T. S. , 1866, inprose. --"English metrical Homilies, " ed. J. Small, Edinburgh, 1862, 8vo, homilies interspersed with _exempla_, compiled ab. 1330. --"Religiouspieces in prose and verse, " ed. G. G. Perry, E. E. T. S. , 1867; statementin a sermon by John Gaytrige, fourteenth century, that "oure ffadire thebyschope" has prescribed to each member of his clergy "opynly, oneynglysche apone sonnondayes, preche and teche thaym that thay hase cureoff" (p. 2). [326] Sermon IV. On Sunday (imitated from the French) in Morris's "OldEnglish Homilies, " 1867. St. Paul, led by St. Michael, at the sight ofso many sufferings, weeps, and God consents that on Sundays thecondemned souls shall cease to suffer. This legend was one of the mostpopular in the Middle Ages; it was told in verse or prose in Greek, Latin, French, English, &c. See Ward, "Catalogue of MS. Romances, " vol. Ii. 1893, pp. 397 ff. : "Two versions of this vision existed in Greek inthe fourth century. " An English metrical version has been ed. ByHorstmann and Furnivall, "Minor Poems of the Vernon MS. , " E. E. T. S. , 1892, p. 251. [327] "Old English homilies and homiletic treatises . . . Of the XIIth andXIIIth Centuries, " ed. With translation, by R. Morris, London, E. E. T. S. , 1867, 8vo, vol. I. P. 39. [328] The Psalter was translated into English, in verse, in the secondhalf of the thirteenth century: "Anglo-Saxon and Early English Psalter, "Surtees Society, 1843-7, 8vo; then in prose with a full commentary byRichard Rolle, of Hampole (on whom see below, p. 216): "The Psalter orthe Psalms of David, " ed. Bramley, Oxford, 1884, 8vo; again in prose, towards 1327, by an anonym, who has been wrongly believed to be Williamde Shoreham, a monk of Leeds priory: "The earliest English prosePsalter, together with eleven Canticles, " ed. Bülbring, E. E. T. S. , 1891. The seven penitential psalms were translated in verse in the second halfof the fourteenth century by Richard of Maidstone; one is in Horstmannand Furnivall: "Minor Poems of the Vernon MS. , " p. 12. [329] "The Story of Genesis and Exodus, an early English Song, " ab. 1250, ed. R. Morris, E. E. T. S. , 1865; shortly before that date atranslation in French prose of the whole of the Bible had beencompleted. [330] See, _e. G. _, "The early South-English Legendary or lives ofSaints; I. , MS. Laud, 108, in the Bodleian Library, " ed. C. Horstmann, Early English Text Society, 1887, 8vo. --Furnivall, "Early English Poemsand Lives of Saints, " Berlin, Philological Society, 1862, 8vo. --"Materials for the history of Thomas Becket, " ed. Robertson, Rolls, 1875 ff. , 7 vols. 8vo. --Several separate Lives of Saints havebeen published by the E. E. T. S. [331] Horstmann, "The early South-English Legendary, " p. Vii. The sameintends to publish other texts, and to clear the main problems connectedwith them; "but it will, " he says, "require more brains, the brains ofseveral generations to come, before every question relative to thiscollection can be cleared. " _Ibid. _ [332] The latter is the MS. Laud 108 in the Bodleian, edited byHorstmann; the other is the Harleian MS. 2277 in the British Museum;specimens of its contents have been given by Furnivall in his "EarlyEnglish poems" (_ut supra_). [333] From MS. Harl. 2277, in Furnivall's "Early English poems, " 1862, p. 34. [334] In the faireste lond huy weren · that evere mighte beo. So cler and so light it was · that joye thare was i-nogh; Treon thare weren fulle of fruyt · wel thicke ever-ech bough . . . Hit was evere-more day: heom thoughte, and never-more nyght. Life of St. Brendan who "was here of oure londe, " in Horstmann's"South-English Legendary, " p. 220. See also "St. Brandan, a mediævalLegend of the Sea, " ed. T. Wright, Percy Society, 1844; FrancisqueMichel, "Les Voyages Merveilleux de St. Brandan à la recherche duParadis terrestre, légende en vers du XIIe. Siècle, " Paris, 1878; _cf. _"Navigation de la barque de Mael Duin, " in d'Arbois de Jubainville's"L'Epopée Celtique en Irlande, " 1892, pp. 449 ff. (above p. 12). [335] Renan, "Essais de morale et de critique, " Paris, 1867, 3rdedition, p. 446. [336] By Thomas de Hales, "Incipit quidam cantus quem composuit fraterThomas de Hales. " Thomas was a friend of Adam de Marisco and lived inthe thirteenth century. "Old English Miscellany, " ed. Morris, E. E. T. S. , 1872, p. 94. [337] The "Ancren Riwle, " edited and translated by J. Morton, London, Camden Society, 1853, 4to, thirteenth century. Five MSS. Have beenpreserved, four in English and one in Latin, abbreviated from theEnglish (_cf. _ Bramlette's article in "Anglia, " vol. Xv. P. 478). A MS. In French: "La Reule des femmes religieuses et recluses, " disappeared inthe fire of the Cottonian Library. The ladies for whom this book waswritten lived at Tarrant Kaines, in Dorset, where a convent for monkshad been founded by Ralph de Kaines, son of one of the companions of theConqueror. It is not impossible that the original text was the Frenchone; French fragments subsist in the English version. The anonymousauthor had taken much trouble about this work. "God knows, " he says, "itwould be more agreeable to me to start on a journey to Rome than beginto do it again. " A journey to Rome was not then a pleasure trip. [338] P. 53, Morton's translation. The beginning of the quotation runsthus in the original: "Hwoso hevede iseid to Eve theo heo werp hire eientherone, A! wend te awei! thu worpest eien o thi death! Hwat heved heoionswered? Me leove sire, ther havest wouh. Hwarof kalenges tu me? Theeppel that ich loke on is forbode me to etene, and nout forto biholden. " [339] "Vix aliquam inclusarum hujus temporis solam invenies, ante cujusfenestram non anus garrula vel nugigerula mulier sedeat quæ eam fabulisoccupet, rumoribus aut detractionibus pascat, illius vel illius monachivel clerici, vel alterius cujuslibet ordinis viri formam, vultum, moresque describat. Illecebrosa quoque interserat, puellarum lasciviam, viduarum, quibus libet quidquid libet, libertatem, conjugum in virisfallendis explendisque voluptatibus astutiam depingat. Os interea inrisus cachinnosque dissolvitur, et venenum cum suavitate bibitum perviscera membraque diffunditur. " "De vita eremetica Liber, " cap. Iii. , Reclusarun cum externis mulieribus confabulationes; in Migne's"Patrologia, " vol. Xxxii. Col. 1451. See above, p. 153. Aelred wrotethis treatise at the request of a sister of his, a sister "carne etspiritu. " [340] De le franceis, ne del rimer Ne me dait nuls hom blamer, Kar en Engleterre fu né E norri ordiné et alevé. Furnivall, "Roberd of Brunne's Handlyng Synne, " &c. , Roxburghe Club, 1862, 4to, p. 413. [341] French text of the "Château" in Cooke, "Carmina Anglo-Normannica, "1852, Caxton Society; English versions in Horstmann and Furnivall, "Theminor Poems of the Vernon MS. , " Early English Text Society, 1892, pp. 355, 407; Weymouth: "Castell off Love . . . An early English translationof an old French poem by Robert Grosseteste, " Philological Society, 1864, 4to; Halliwell, "Castle of Love, " Brixton Hill, 1849, 4to. Seeabove, p. 205. [342] The "Manuel des Pechiez, " by William de Wadington, as well as theEnglish metrical translation (a very free one) written in 1303 by RobertMannyng, of Brunne, Lincolnshire (1260?-1340?), have been edited byFurnivall: "Handlyng Synne, " London, Roxburghe Club, 1862, 4to, containsa number of _exempla_ and curious stories. The same Mannyng wrote, afterPeter de Langtoft, an Englishman who had written in French (see above, p. 122), and after Wace, a metrical chronicle, from the time of Noahdown to Edward I. : "The Story of England . . . A. D. 1338, " ed. Furnivall, Rolls, 1887, 2 vols. 8vo. He is possibly the author of a metricalmeditation on the Last Supper imitated from his contemporary St. Bonaventure: "Meditacyuns on the Soper of our Lorde, " ed. Cowper, E. E. T. S. , 1875, 8vo. [343] "The Ayenbite of Inwyt or Remorse of Conscience, in the KentishDialect, 1340 A. D. , edited from the autograph MS. , " by R. Morris, E. E. T. S. The "Ayenbite" is the work of Dan Michel, of Northgate, Kent, who belonged to "the bochouse of Saynt Austines of Canterberi. " The workdeals with the Ten Commandments, the seven deadly sins, informs us that"the sothe noblesse comth of the gentyl herte . . . Ase to the bodye: allewe byeth children of one moder, thet is of erthe" (p. 87). Some of thechapters of Lorens's "Somme" were adapted by Chaucer in his Parson'stale. [344] See in particular: "Legends of the Holy Rood, symbols of thePassion and Cross Poems, in old English of the XIth, XIVth, and XVthcenturies, " ed. Morris, E. E. T. S. , 1871. --"An Old English Miscellanycontaining a Bestiary, Kentish sermons, Proverbs of Alfred and religiouspoems of the XIIIth century, " ed. Morris, E. E. T. S. , 1872. --"Thereligious poems of William de Shoreham, " ed. T. Wright, Percy Society, 1849, on sacraments, commandments, deadly sins, &c. , first half of thefourteenth century. --"The Minor Poems of the Vernon MS. , " ed. Horstmannand Furnivall, E. E. T. S. , 1892; contains a variety of poems in the honourof the Virgin, pious tales, "a dispitison bitweene a good man and thedevel, " p. 329, meditations, laments, vision of St. Paul, &c. , ofvarious authors and dates, mostly of the thirteenth and fourteenthcenturies. --On visions of heaven and hell (vision of St. Paul of Tundal, of St. Patrick, of Thurkill), and on the Latin, French, and Englishtexts of several of them, see Ward, "Catalogue of Romances, " 1893, vol. Ii. Pp. 397 ff. [345] "Cursor Mundi, the cursur of the world, " ed. R. Morris, E. E. T. S. , 1874-93, 7 parts, compiled ab. 1300 from the "Historia Ecclesiastica" ofPeter Comestor, the "Fête de la Conception" of Wace, the "Châteaud'Amour" of Grosseteste, &c. (Haenisch "Inquiry into the sources of theCursor Mundi, " _ibid. _ part vii. ). The work has been wrongly attributedto John of Lindbergh. See Morris's preface, p. Xviii. _Cf. _ Napier, "History of the Holy Rood Tree, " E. E. T. S. , 1894 (English, Latin, andFrench prose texts of the Cross legend). [346] For lewde men y undyrtoke, On Englyssh tunge to make thys boke: For many ben of swyche manere That talys and rymys wyl blethly here Yn gamys and festys and at the ale. "Roberd of Brunne's Handlyng Synne, written A. D. 1303 with . . . Le Manueldes Pechiez by William of Wadington, " ed. Furnivall, London, RoxburgheClub, 1862, 4to, Prologue, p. 2. [347] There exist Latin and English texts of his works, the latter beinggenerally considered as translations made by himself. His principalcomposition is his poem: "The Pricke of Conscience, " ed. Morris, Philological Society, 1863, 8vo. He wrote also a prose translation of"The Psalter, " with a commentary, ed. Bramley, Oxford, 1884, 8vo, andalso "English Prose Treatises, " ed. G. S. , 1866, 8vo. Most of his worksin Latin have been collected under the title: "D. Richardi PampolitaniAnglo-Saxonis eremitæ . . . Psalterium Davidicum atque alia . . . Monumenta, " Cologne, 1536, fol. [348] "When I had takene my syngulere purpos and lefte the seculerehabyte, and I be-ganne mare to serve God than mane, it fell one a nyghteals I lay in my reste, in the begynnynge of my conversyone, thareappered to me a full faire yonge womane, the whilke I had sene be-fore, and the whilke luffed me noght lyttil in gude lufe. " "English ProseTreatises, " p. 5. [349] "Officium de Sancto Ricardo eremita. " The office contains hymns inthe honour of the saint: "Rejoice, mother country of the English!. . . " Letetur felix Anglorum patria . . . Pange lingua graciosi Ricardi preconium, Pii, puri, preciosi, fugientis vicium. "English Prose Treatises, " pp. Xv and xvi. [350] "English Prose Treatises, " pp. 1, 4, 5. _Cf. _ Rolle's Latin text, "Nominis Iesu encomion": "O bonum nomen, o dulce nomen, " &c. , in"Richardi Pampolitani, . . . Monumenta, " Cologne, 1536, fol. Cxliii. Atthe same page, the story of the young woman. [351] "Layamon's Brut or Chronicle of Britain, a poetical Semi-Saxonparaphrase of the Brut of Wace, " ed. By Sir Fred. Madden, London, Society of Antiquaries, 1847, 3 vols. 8vo. --_Cf. _ Ward, "Catalogue ofRomances, " vol. I. 1883: "Many important additions are made to Wace, butthey seem to be mostly derived from Welsh traditions, " p. 269, Wace's"Geste des Bretons, " or "Roman de Brut, " written in 1155, was ed. ByLeroux de Lincy, Rouen, 1836, 2 vols. 8vo. _Cf. _ P. Meyer, "De quelquesChroniques Anglo-Normandes qui ont porté le nom de Brut, " Bulletin de laSociété des Anciens Textes français, 1878. Layamon, son of Leovenath, lived at Ernley, now Lower Arley, on the Severn; he uses sometimesalliteration and sometimes rhyme in his verse. The MS. Cott. Otho C. Xiii contains a "somewhat modernised" version of Layamon's "Brut, " latethirteenth or early fourteenth century (Ward, _ibid. _). On Layamon andhis work, see "Anglia, " i. P. 197, and ii. P. 153. [352] Madden, _ut supra_, vol. I. P. 1. [353] Madden, _ut supra_, vol. Ii. P. 476. The original text (printed inshort lines by Madden and here in long ones) runs thus: Tha loh Arthur · the althele king, And thus yeddien agon · mid gommenfulle worden: Lien nu there Colgrim · thu were iclumben haghe Thu clumbe a thissen hulle · wunder ane hæghe, Swulc thu woldest to hævene · nu thu scalt to hælle; Ther thu miht kenne · muche of thine cunne, And gret thu ther Hengest · the cnihten wes fayerest, Ebissa and Ossa · Octa and of thine cunne ma, And bide heom ther wunie · wintres and sumeres, And we scullen on londe · libben in blisse. [354] "Roman de Brut, " vol. Ii. P. 57. [355] On Robert, see above, pp. 117, 122. On the sources of hischronicle, see Ellmer, "Anglia, " vol. X. Pp. 1 ff and 291 ff. [356] "Lay of Havelok, " ed. Skeat, E. E. T. S. , 1868, end of thirteenthcentury, p. 1. [357] On wandering minstrels and jongleurs, see "English WayfaringLife, " ii. , chap. I. , and below, p. 345, above, p. 162. [358] "Romance of William of Palerne, translated from the French at thecommand of Sir Humphrey de Bohun, ab. 1350, " ed. Skeat, E. E. T. S. , 1867, 8vo. L. 5533. [359] "Cursor Mundi, " ed. Morris, part v. P. 1651. A large number ofEnglish mediæval romances will be found among the publications of theEarly English Text Society (including among others: Ferumbras, Otuel, Huon of Burdeux, Charles the Grete, Four Sons of Aymon, Sir Bevis ofHamton, King Horn, Havelok the Dane, Guy of Warwick, William of Palerne, Generides, Morte Arthure, Lonelich's History of the Holy Grail, Josephof Arimathie, Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight, &c. ), the Camden and thePercy Societies, the Roxburghe and the Bannatyne Clubs. Some also havebeen published by Kölbing in his "Altenglische Bibliothek, " Heilbronn;by H. W. Weber: "Metrical Romances of the XIIIth, XIVth and XVthcenturies, " Edinburgh, 1810, 3 vols. 8vo. &c. See also H. L. D. Ward, "Catalogue of MS. Romances in the British Museum, " 1883 ff. [360] "King Horn, with Fragments of Floriz and Blauncheflur, and of theAssumption of Our Lady, " ed. Rawson Lumby, E. E. T. S. , 1886, 8vo. "Horn"is printed from a Cambridge MS. Of the thirteenth century. A Frenchmetrical version of this story, written by "Thomas" about 1170, wasedited by R. Brede and E. Stengel: "Das Anglonormannische Lied vomwackern Ritter Horn, " Marbourg, 1883, 8vo: "Hic est de Horn bonomilite. " Concerning "Horn, " see Ward, "Catalogue of Romances, " i. P. 447; "Anglia, " iv. P. 342; "Romania, " xv. P. 575 (an article by W. Soderhjelm, showing that the Thomas of "Tristan" and the Thomas of"Horn" are not the same man). [361] Another sign of a Scandinavian origin consists in the flame thatcomes out of the mouth of Havelok at night, and betrays his royalorigin. The events take place at Lincoln, Grimsby, and in Denmark; theseal of Grimsby engraved in the thirteenth century represents, besides"Habloc" and "Goldeburgh, " "Gryem, " the founder of the town, andsupposed father of the hero. Gaimar, the chronicler, wrote in Frenchverse the story of Havelok, and we have it: "Le Lai d'Haveloc leDanois, " in Hardy and Martin "Lestorie des Engles, " Rolls, 1888, vol. I. P. 290. The English text, "Havelok the Dane, " ed. Skeat, E. E. T. S. , 1868, was probably written between 1296 and 1300 (see the letter of J. W. Hales to the _Athenæum_, Feb. 23, 1889), _cf. _ Ward's "Catalogue, " i. P. 423. [362] "Guy of Warwick, " ed. Zupitza, E. E. T. S. , 1875-91 (_cf. _ Ward's"Catalogue of Romances, " i. P. 471). "All the Middle English versions ofthe Romances of Guy of Warwick are translations from the French. . . . TheFrench romance was done into English several times. We possess the wholeor considerable fragments of, at least, four different Middle Englishversions" (Zupitza's Preface). [363] Part of the adventures of Fulke belongs to history; his rebellionactually took place in 1201. His story was told in a French poem, written before 1314 and turned into prose before 1320 (the text, thoughin French, is remarkable for its strong English bias); an English poemon the same subject is lost. (Ward, "Catalogue of Romances, " i. Pp. 501ff. ) The version in French prose has been edited by J. Stephenson, withhis Ralph de Coggeshall, Rolls, 1875, p. 277, and by Moland andd'Héricault in their "Nouvelles en prose du quatorzième Siècle, " Paris, 1858. See also the life of the outlaw Hereward, in Latin, twelfthcentury: "De Gestis Herewardi Saxonis, " in the "ChroniquesAnglo-Normandes, " of F. Michel, Rouen, 1836-40, vol. Ii. [364] It is possible that Robin Hood existed, in which case it seemsprobable he lived under Edward II. "The stories that are told about him, however, had almost all been previously told, connected with the namesof other outlaws such as Hereward and Fulke Fitz-Warin. " Ward, "Catalogue of Romances, " i. Pp. 517 ff. He was the hero of many songs, from the fourteenth century; most of those we have belong, however, tothe sixteenth. [365] On the transformations of Guy of Warwick and representations ofhim in chap books, see "English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare, " pp64, 350. [366] "Cursor Mundi, " i. P. 21. _Cf. _ Bartholomew the Englishman, in his"De Proprietatibus Rerum, " book xv. , chap. Xiv. , thus translated byTrevisa: "Englonde is fulle of myrthe and of game and men oft tymes ableto myrth and game, free men of harte and with tongue, but the honde ismore better and more free than the tongue. "--"Cest acteur monstre bienen ce chapitre qu'il fut Anglois, " observes with some spite Corbichon, the French translator of Bartholomew, writing, it is true, during theHundred Years' War. [367] English text: "Dame Siriz" in Th. Wright, "Anecdota Literaria, "London, 1844, 8vo, p. 1; and in Goldbeck and Matzner, "AltenglischeSprachproben, " Berlin, 1867, p. 103. French text in the "Castoiementd'un père à son fils, " Barbazan and Méon, "Fabliaux, " vol. Ii. TheEnglish text belongs to the end of the thirteenth century, and the storyis localised in England; mention is made of "Botolfston, " otherwise, St. Botolph or Boston. See above, p. 154; on a dramatisation of the story, see below, p. 447. [368] Story of a drinking horn from which husbands with faithless wivescannot drink without spilling the contents. Arthur invites his knightsto try the experiment, and is not a little surprised to find that itturns against himself. French text: "Le lai du Cor, restitutioncritique, " by F. Wulff, Lund, 1888, 8vo, written by Robert Biquet in thetwelfth century; only one MS. (copied in England) has been preserved. English text: "The Cokwolds Daunce, " from a MS. Of the fifteenthcentury, in Hazlitt's "Remains of the early popular poetry of England, "London, 1864, 4 vols, 8vo, vol. I. P. 35. _Cf. _ Le "Mantel Mautaillé, "in Montaiglon and Raynaud, "Recueil Général, " vol. Iii. And "La CoupeEnchantée, " by La Fontaine. [369] French text: "De pleine Bourse de Sens, " by Jean le Galois, inMontaiglon and Raynaud, "Recueil Général, " vol. Iii. P. 88. Englishtext: "How a Merchande dyd his wyfe betray, " in Hazlitt's "Remains" (_utsupra_), vol. I. P. 196. Of the same sort are "Sir Cleges" (Weber, "Metrical Romances, " 1810, vol. I. ), the "Tale of the Basyn" (inHartshorne, "Ancient Metrical Tales, " London, 1829, p. 202), a fabliau, probably derived from a French original, etc. [370] English text: "The Land of Cokaygne" (end of the fourteenthcentury, seems to have been originally composed in the thirteenth), inGoldbeck and Matzner, "Altengische Sprachproben, " Berlin, 1867, part i. , p. 147; also in Furnivall, "Early English Poems, " Berlin, 1862, p. 156. French text in Barbazan and Méon, "Fabliaux, " vol. Iii. P. 175: "C'estli Fabliaus de Coquaigne. " [371] "Aucassin and Nicolete, " Andrew Lang's translation, London, 1887, p. 12. The French original in verse and prose, a _cante-fable_, belongsto the twelfth century. Text in Moland and d'Héricault, "Nouvellesfrançoises en prose, du treizième siècle" (the editors wrongly referred"Aucassin" to that century), Paris, 1856, 16mo. [372] Knights are represented in many MSS. Of English make, fightingagainst butterflies or snails, and undergoing the most ridiculousexperiences; for example, in MS. 10 E iv. And 2 B vii. In the BritishMuseum, early fourteenth century; the caricaturists derive their ideasfrom French tales written in derision of knighthood. Poems with the sameobject were composed in English; one of a later date has been preserved:"The Turnament of Totenham" (Hazlitt's "Remains, " iii. P. 82); thechampions of the tourney are English artisans: Ther hoppyd Hawkyn, Ther dawnsid Dawkyn, Ther trumpyd Tymkyn, And all were true drynkers. [373] He putteth in hys pawtener A kerchyf and a comb, A shewer and a coyf To bynd with his loks, And ratyl on the rowbyble And in non other boks Ne mo; Mawgrey have the bysshop That lat hyt so goo. "A Poem on the times of Edward II. , " ed. Hardwick, Percy Society, 1849, p. 8. [374] "The Vox and Wolf, " time of Edward I. , in Matzner, "AltenglischeSprachproben, " Berlin, 1867, part i. P. 130; also in Th. Wright, "LatinStories, " 1842, p. Xvi. This story of the adventure in the well formsBranch IV. Of the French text. Martin's "Roman de Renart, " Strasbourg, 1882, vol. I. P. 146. [375] Tartufe, i. 6. [376] "Amis and Amiloun, " ed. Kölbing, Heilbronn, 1884, 8vo, French andEnglish texts, in verse. French text in prose, in Moland andd'Héricault, "Nouvelles . . . Du XIIIe. Siècle, " 1856, 16mo. --French textof "Floire" in Edelstand du Méril, "Poèmes du XIIIe. Siècle, " Paris, 1856. English text: "Floris and Blauncheflur, mittelenglisches Gedichtaus dem 13 Jahrhundert, " ed. Hausknecht, Berlin, 1885, 8vo; see alsoLumby, "Horn . . . With fragments of Floriz, " E. E. T. S. , 1886. Thepopularity of this tale is shown by the fact that four or five differentversions of it in English have come down to us. --Lays by Marie de Francewere also translated into English: "Le Lay le Freine, " in verse, of thebeginning of the fourteenth century. English text in "Anglia, " vol. Iii. P. 415; "Sir Launfal, " by Thomas Chestre, fifteenth century, in"Ritson's Metrical Romances, " 1802. [377] Examples of "estrifs, " debates or "disputoisons": "The Thrush andthe Nightingale, " on the merits of women, time of Edward I. (with atitle in French: "Si comence le cuntent par entre le mauvis et larussinole"); "The Debate of the Carpenter's Tools" (both in Hazlitt's"Remains, " vol. I. P. 50, and i. P. 79); "The Debate of the Body and theSoul" (Matzner's "Altenglische Sprachproben, " part i. P. 90), samesubject in French verse, thirteenth century, "Monumenta Franciscana, "vol. I. P. 587; "The Owl and the Nightingale" (ed. Stevenson, RoxburgheClub, 1838, 4to). This last, one of the most characteristic of all, belongs to the thirteenth century, and consists in a debate between thetwo birds concerning their respective merits; they are very learned, andquote Alfred's proverbs, but they are not very well bred, and comealmost to insults and blows. [378] Litanies of love: Love is wele, love is wo, love is geddede, Love is lif, love is deth, &c. Th. Wright, "Anecdota Literaria, " London, 1844, 8vo, p. 96, time ofEdward I. , imitated from the "Chastoiement des Dames, " in Barbazan andMéon, vol. Ii. [379] Th. Wright, "Specimens of Lyric Poetry, composed in England in thereign of Edward I. , " Percy Society, 1842, 8vo, p. 43. [380] They wrote in French, Latin, and English, using sometimes thethree languages in the same song, sometimes only two of them: Scripsi hæc carmina in tabulis! Mon ostel est en mi la vile de Paris: May y sugge namore, so wel me is; Yef hi deye for love of hire, duel hit ys. Wright, "Specimens of Lyric Poetry, " p. 64. [381] Femmes portent les oyls veyrs E regardent come faucoun. T. Wright, "Specimens, " p. 4. [382] Heo hath a mury mouth to mele, With lefly rede lippes lele Romaunz forte rede. Ibid. , p. 34. [383] Ibid. , p. 51. BOOK III. _ENGLAND TO THE ENGLISH. _ CHAPTER I. _THE NEW NATION. _ I. In the course of the fourteenth century, under Edward III. And RichardII. , a double fusion, which had been slowly preparing during thepreceding reigns, is completed and sealed for ever; the racesestablished on English ground are fused into one, and the languages theyspoke become one also. The French are no longer superposed on thenatives; henceforth there are only English in the English island. Until the fourteenth year of Edward III. 's reign, whenever a murder wascommitted and the authors of it remained unknown, the victim was _primâfacie_ assumed to be French, "Francigena, " and the whole county wasfined. But the county was allowed to prove, if it could, that the deadman was only an Englishman, and in that case there was nothing to pay. Bracton, in the thirteenth century, is very positive; an inquest wasnecessary, "ut sciri possit utrum interfectus _Anglicus_ fuerit, vel_Francigena_. "[384] The _Anglicus_ and the _Francigena_ therefore stillsubsisted, and were not equal before the law. The rule had not falleninto disuse, since a formal statute was needed to repeal it; the statuteof 1340, which abolishes the "presentement d'Englescherie, "[385] thussweeping away one of the most conspicuous marks left behind by theConquest. About the same time the fusion of idioms took place, and the Englishlanguage was definitively constituted. At the beginning of thefourteenth century, towards 1311, the text of the king's oath was to befound in Latin among the State documents, and a note was added declaringthat "if the king was illiterate, " he was to swear in French[386]; itwas in the latter tongue that Edward II. Took his oath in 1307; the ideathat it could be sworn in English did not occur. But when the centurywas closing, in 1399, an exactly opposite phenomenon happened. Henry ofLancaster usurped the throne and, in the Parliament assembled atWestminster, pronounced in English the solemn words by which he claimedthe crown: "In the name of Fadir, Son and Holy Gost, I, Henry ofLancastre, chalenge yis Rewme of Yngland. "[387] During this interval, the union of the two languages had taken place. The work of aggregation can be followed in its various phases, andalmost from year to year. In the first half of the century, the "lowemen, " the "rustics, " _rurales homines_, are still keen to learn French, _satagunt omni nisu_; they wish to frenchify, _francigenare_, [388]themselves, in order to imitate the nobles, and be more thought of. Their efforts had a remarkable result, precisely for the reason thatthey never succeeded in speaking pure French, and that in theirill-cleared brains the two languages were never kept distinctly apart. The nobles, cleverer men, could speak both idioms without confoundingthem, but so could not these _rurales_, who lisped the master's tonguewith difficulty, mixing together the two vocabularies and the twogrammars, mistaking the genders, assigning, for want of betterknowledge, the neuter to all the words that did not designate beingswith a sex, in other words, strange as it may seem, creating the newlanguage. It was on the lips of "lowe men" that the fusion first began;they are the real founders of modern English; the "French ofStratford-at-Bow" had not less to do with it than the "French of Paris. " Even the nobles had not been able to completely escape the consequencesof a perpetual contact with the _rurales_. Had these latter beenutterly ignorant of French, the language of the master would have beenkept purer, but they spoke the French idiom after a fashion, and theirmanner of speaking it had a contagious influence on that of the great. In the best families, the children being in constant communicationwith native servants and young peasants, spoke the idiom of Franceless and less correctly. From the end of the thirteenth century andthe beginning of the fourteenth, they confuse French words that beara resemblance to each other, and then also commences for them thatannoyance to which so many English children have been subjected, fromgeneration to generation down to our time: the difficulty of knowingwhen to say _mon_ and _ma_--"kaunt dewunt dire moun et ma"--thatis how to distinguish the genders. They have to be taught by manuals, and the popularity of one written by Walter de Biblesworth, [389] in thefourteenth century, shows how greatly such treatises were needed. "Dearsister, " writes Walter to the Lady Dionyse de Montchensy, "I havecomposed this work so that your children can know the properties ofthe things they see, and also when to say _mon_ and _ma_, _son_ and_sa_, _le_ and _la_, _moi_ and _je_. " And he goes on showing at thesame time the maze and the way out of it: "You have _la lèvre_ and_le lièvre_; and _la livre_ and _le livre_. The _lèvre_ closes the teethin; _le lièvre_ the woods inhabits; _la livre_ is used in trade; _lelivre_ is used at church. "[390] Inextricable difficulties! And all the harder to unravel thatAnglo-Saxon too had genders, equally arbitrary, which did not agree withthe French ones. It is easy to conceive that among the variouscompromises effected between the two idioms, from which English wasfinally to emerge, the principal should be the suppression of thiscumbersome distinction of genders. What happened in the manor happened also in the courts of justice. ThereFrench was likewise spoken, it being the rule, and the trials wereapparently not lacking in liveliness, witness this judge whom we seeparaphrasing the usual formula: "Allez à Dieu, " or "Adieu, " and wishingthe defendant, none other than the bishop of Chester, to "go to thegreat devil"--"Allez au grant déable. "[391]--("'What, ' said Ponocrates, 'brother John, do you swear?' 'It is only, ' said the monk, 'to adorn myspeech. These are colours of Ciceronian rhetoric. '")--But from most ofthe speeches registered in French in the "Year-books, " it is easilygathered that advocates, _serjeants_ as they were called, did notexpress themselves without difficulty, and that they delivered in Frenchwhat they had thought in English. Their trouble goes on increasing. In 1300 a regulation in force atOxford allowed people who had to speak in a suit to express themselvesin "_any_ language generally understood. "[392] In the second half of thecentury, the difficulties have reached such a pitch that a reformbecomes indispensable; counsel and clients no longer understand eachother. In 1362, a statute ordains that henceforward all pleas shall beconducted in English, and they shall be enrolled in Latin; and that inthe English law courts "the French language, which is too unknown in thesaid realm, "[393] shall be discontinued. This ignorance is now notorious. Froissart remarks on it; the English, he says, do not observe treaties faithfully, "and to this they areinclined by their not understanding very well all the terms of thelanguage of France; and one does not know how to force a thing intotheir head unless it be all to their advantage. "[394] Trevisa, aboutthe same time, translating into English the chronicle of Ralph Higden, reaches the passage where it is said that all the country peopleendeavour to learn French, and inserts a note to rectify the statement. This manner, he writes, is since the great pestilence (1349) "sumdeli-chaunged, " and to-day, in the year 1385, "in alle the gramere scolesof Engelond, children leveth Frensche and construeth and lerneth anEnglische. " This allows them to make rapid progress; but now they"conneth na more Frensche than can hir (their) lift heele, and that isharme for hem, and (if) they schulle passe the see and travaille instraunge landes and in many other places. Also gentil men haveth nowmoche i-left for to teche here children Frensche. "[395] The English themselves laugh at their French; they are conscious ofspeaking, like Chaucer's Prioress, the French of Stratford-at-Bow, or, like Avarice in the "Visions" of Langland, that "of the ferthest end ofNorfolke. "[396] There will shortly be found in the kingdom personages of importance, exceptions it is true, with whom it will be impossible to negotiate inFrench. This is the case with the ambassadors sent by Henry IV. , thatsame Henry of Lancaster who had claimed the crown by an English speech, to Flanders and France in 1404. They beseech the "Paternitates acMagnificentias" of the Grand Council of France to answer them in Latin, French being "like Hebrew" to them; but the Magnificents of the GrandCouncil, conforming to a tradition which has remained unbroken down toour day, refuse to employ for the negotiation any language but theirown. [397] Was it not still, as in the time of Brunetto Latini, themodern tongue most prized in Europe? In England even, men were found whoagreed to this, while rendering to Latin the tribute due to it; and theauthor of one of the numerous treatises composed in this country for thebenefit of those who wished to keep up their knowledge of French said:"Sweet French is the finest and most graceful tongue, the noblest speechin the world after school Latin, and the one most esteemed and belovedby all people. . . . And it can be well compared to the speech of theangels of heaven for its great sweetness and beauty. "[398] In spite of these praises, the end of French, as the language "mostesteemed and beloved, " was near at hand in England. Poets like Gowerstill use it in the fourteenth century for their ballads, and prosewriters like the author of the "Croniques de London"[399]; but these areexceptions. It remains the idiom of the Court and the great; the BlackPrince writes in French the verses that will be graven on his tomb:these are nothing but curious cases. Better instructed than the lawyersand suitors in the courts of justice, the members of Parliament continueto use it; but English makes its appearance even among them, and in 1363the Chancellor has opened the session by a speech in English, the firstever heard in Westminster. The survival of French was at last nothing but an elegance; it was stilllearnt, but only as Madame de Sévigné studied Italian, "pour entretenirnoblesse. " Among the upper class the knowledge of French was atraditional accomplishment, and it has continued to be one to our day. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the laws were still, accordingto habit, written in French; but complaints on this score were made toHenry VIII. , and his subjects pointed out to him that this token of theancient subjection of England to the Normans of France should beremoved. This mark has disappeared, not however without leaving sometrace behind, as laws continue to be assented to by the sovereign inFrench: "La Reine le veut. " They are vetoed in the same manner: "LaReine s'avisera"; though this last manner is less frequently resorted tothan in the time of the Plantagenets. French disappears. It does not disappear so much because it is forgottenas because it is gradually absorbed. It disappears, and so does theAnglo-Saxon; a new language is forming, an offspring of the two others, but distinct from them, with a new grammar, versification, andvocabulary. It less resembles the Anglo-Saxon of Alfred's time than theItalian of Dante resembles Latin. The vocabulary is deeply modified. It numbered before the Conquest a fewwords of Latin origin, but not many; they were words recalling the greatworks of the Romans, such as _street_ and _chester_, from _strata_ and_castrum_, or else words borrowed from the language of the clerks, andconcerning mainly religion, such as _mynster_, _tempel_, _bisceop_, derived from _monasterium_, _templum_, _episcopus_, &c. The Conquest wasproductive of a great change, but not all at once; the languages, as hasbeen seen, remained at first distinctly separate; then in thethirteenth, and especially in the fourteenth century, they permeatedeach other, and were blended in one. In 1205, only fifty words of Latinorigin were found in the sixteen thousand long lines of Layamon's"Brut"; a hundred can be counted in the first five hundred lines ofRobert of Gloucester about 1298, and a hundred and seventy in the firstfive hundred lines of Robert Mannyng of Brunne, in 1303. [400] As we advance further into the fourteenth century, the change is stillmore rapid. Numerous families of words are naturalised in England, andlittle by little is constituted that language the vocabulary of whichcontains to-day twice as many words drawn from French or Latin as fromGermanic sources. At the end of Skeat's "Etymological Dictionary, "[401]there is a table of the words of the language classified according totheir derivation; the words borrowed from Germanic or Scandinavianidioms fill seven columns and a half; those taken from the French, andthe Romance or classic tongues, sixteen columns. It is true the proportion of words used in a page of ordinary Englishdoes not correspond to these figures. With some authors in truth it issimply reversed; with Shakespeare, for instance, or with Tennyson, whoexhibit a marked predilection for Anglo-Saxon words. It is neverthelessto be observed: first, that the constitution of the vocabulary with itsmajority of Franco-Latin words is an actual fact; then that in a page ofordinary English the proportion of words having a Germanic origin isincreased by the number of Anglo-Saxon articles, conjunctions, andpronouns, words that are merely the servants of the others, and are, asthey should be, more numerous than their masters. A nearer approach tothe numbers supplied by the lists of Skeat will be made if real wordsonly are counted, those which are free and independent citizens of thelanguage, and not the shadow nor the reflection of any other. The contributive part of French in the new vocabulary corresponds to thebranches of activity reserved to the new-comers. From their maternalidiom have been borrowed the words that composed the language of war, ofcommerce, of jurisprudence, of science, of art, of metaphysics, of purethought, and also the language of games, of pastimes, of tourneys, andof chivalry. In some cases no compromise took place, neither the Frenchnor the Anglo-Saxon word would give way and die, and they have both comedown to us, alive and irreducible: _act_ and _deed_; _captive_ and_thrall_; _chief_ and _head_, &c. [402] It is a trace of the Conquest, like the formula: "La Reine le veut. " Chaucer, in whose time these double survivals were naturally far morenumerous than they are to-day, often uses both words at once, sure ofbeing thus intelligible to all: They callen love a woodnes or a folye. [403] Versification is transformed in the same proportion; here again the twoprosodies arrive at a compromise. Native verse had two ornaments: thenumber of accents and alliteration; French verse in the fourteenthcentury had also two ornaments, the number of syllables and rhyme. TheFrench gave up their strict number of syllables, and consented to notethe number of accents; the natives discarded alliteration and acceptedrhyme in its stead. Thus was English verse created, its cadence beingGermanic and its rhyme French, and such was the prosody of Chaucer, whowrote his "Canterbury Tales" in rhymed English verse, with five accents, but with syllables varying in number from nine to eleven. The fusion of the two versifications was as gradual as that of the twovocabularies had been. Layamon in the thirteenth century mingled bothprosodies in his "Brut, " sometimes using alliteration, sometimes rhyme, and occasionally both at once. The fourteenth century is the last inwhich alliterative verse really flourished, though it survived evenbeyond the Renaissance. In the sixteenth century a new form was tried;rhyme was suppressed mainly in imitation of the Italians and theancients, and blank verse was created, which Shakespeare and Milton usedin their masterpieces; but alliteration never found place again in thenormal prosody of England. Grammar was affected in the same way. In the Anglo-Saxon grammar, nounsand adjectives had declensions as in German; and not very simple ones. "Not only had our old adjectives a declension in three genders, but morethan this, it had a double set of trigeneric inflexions, Definite andIndefinite, Strong and Weak, just like that which makes the beginner'sdespair in German. "[404] Verbs were conjugated without auxiliaries; andas there was no particular inflection to indicate the future, thepresent was used instead, a very indifferent substitute, which did notcontribute much to the clearness of the phrase. Degrees of comparison inthe adjectives were marked, not by adverbs, as in French, but bydifferences in the terminations. In short, the relations of words toeach other, as well as the particular part they had to play in thephrase, were not indicated by other special words, prepositions, adverbsor auxiliaries, those useful menials, but by variations in the endingsof the terms themselves, that is, by inflections. The necessity for acompromise with the French, which had lost its primitive declensions andinflections, hastened an already begun transformation and resulted inthe new language's possessing in the fourteenth century a grammarremarkably simple, brief and clear. Auxiliaries were introduced, andthey allowed every shade of action, action that has been, or is, or willbe, or would be, to be clearly defined. The gender of nouns used topresent all the singularities which are one of the troubles in German orFrench; _mona_, moon, was masculine as in German; _sunne_, sun, wasfeminine; _wif_, wife, was not feminine but neuter; as was also _mæden_, maiden. "A German gentleman, " as "Philologus, " has so well observed, "writes a masculine letter of feminine love to a neuter young lady witha feminine pen and feminine ink on masculine sheets of neuter paper, andencloses it in a masculine envelope with a feminine address to hisdarling, though neuter, Gretchen. He has a masculine head, a femininehand, and a neuter heart. "[405] Anglo-Saxon gentlemen were in about thesame predicament, before William the Conqueror came in his own way totheir help and rescued them from this maze. In the transaction whichtook place, the Anglo-Saxon and the French both gave up thearbitrariness of their genders; nouns denoting male beings becamemasculine, those denoting female beings became feminine; all the othersbecame neuter; _wife_ and _maiden_ resumed their sex, while _nation_, _sun_ and _moon_ were neuter. Nouns and adjectives lost theirdeclensions; adjectives ceased to vary in their endings according to thenouns they were attached to, and yet the clearness of the phrase was notin the least obscured. In the same way as with the prosody and vocabulary, these changes wereeffected by degrees. Great confusion prevailed in the thirteenthcentury; the authors of the "Brut" and the "Ancren Riwle" have visiblyno fixed ideas on the use of inflections, or on the distinctions of thegenders. Only under Edward III. And Richard II. Were the main principlesestablished upon which English grammar rests. As happened also for thevocabulary, in certain exceptional cases the French and the Saxon useshave been both preserved. The possessive case, for instance, can beexpressed either by means of a proposition, in French fashion: "Theworks of Shakespeare, " or by means of the ancient genitive:"Shakespeare's works. " Thus was formed the new language out of a combination of the two others. In our time, moved by a patriotic but rather preposterous feeling, somehave tried to react against the consequences of the Conquest, and undothe work of eight centuries. They have endeavoured to exclude from theirwritings words of Franco-Latin origin, in order to use only thosederived from the Anglo-Saxon spring. A vain undertaking: the progress ofa ship cannot be stopped by putting one's shoulder to the bulkheads; asingular misapprehension of history besides. The English people is theoffspring of two nations; it has a father and a mother, whose union hasbeen fruitful if stormy; and the parent disowned by some to-day, undercover of filial tenderness, is perhaps not the one who devoted the leastcare in forming and instructing the common posterity of both. II. The race and the language are transformed; the nation also, consideredas a political body, undergoes change. Until the fourteenth century, thecentre of thought, of desire, and of ambition was, according to thevocation of each, Rome, Paris, or that movable, ever-shifting centre, the Court of the king. Light, strength, and advancement in the world allproceeded from these various centres. In the fourteenth century, whattook place for the race and language takes place also for the nation. Itcoalesces and condenses; it becomes conscious of its own limits; itdiscerns and maintains them. The action of Rome is circumscribed;appeals to the pontifical Court are prohibited, [406] and, though theystill continue to be made, the oft-expressed wish of the nation is thatthe king should be judge, not the pope; it is the beginning of thereligious supremacy of the English sovereigns. Oxford has grown; it isno longer indispensable to go to Paris in order to learn. Limits areestablished: the wars with France are royal and not national ones. Edward III. , having assumed the title of king of France, his subjectscompel him to declare that their allegiance is only owed to him as kingof England, and not as king of France. [407] No longer is the nationAnglo-French, Norman, Angevin, or Gascon; it is English; the nebulacondenses into a star. The first consequences of the Conquest had been to bind England to thecivilisations of the south. The experiment had proved a successful one, the results obtained were definitive; there was no need to go further, the ties could now without harm slacken or break. Owing to thatevolutionary movement perpetually evinced in human affairs, this firstexperiment having been perfected after a lapse of three hundred years, acounter-experiment now begins. A new centre, unknown till then, gradually draws to itself every one's attention; it will soon attractthe eyes of the English in preference to Rome, Paris, or even the king'sCourt. This new centre is Westminster. There, an institution derivedfrom French and Saxonic sources, but destined to be abortive in France, is developed to an extent unparalleled in any other country. Parliament, which was, at the end of the thirteenth century, in an embryonic state, is found at the end of the fourteenth completely constituted, endowedwith all its actual elements, with power, prerogatives, and an influencein the State that it has rarely surpassed at any time. Not in vain have the Normans, Angevins, and Gascons given to the men ofthe land the example of their clever and shrewd practice. Not in vainhave they blended the two races into one: their peculiar characteristicshave been infused into their new compatriots: so much so that from thefirst day Parliament begins to feel conscious of its strength, itdisplays bias most astonishing to behold: it thinks and acts and behavesas an assembly of Normans. The once violent and vacillatingAnglo-Saxons, easily roused to enthusiasm and brought down to despair, now calculate, consider, deliberate, do nothing in haste, act withdiplomatic subtlety, _bargain_. All compromises between the Court andParliament, in the fourteenth century, are a series of bargains;Parliament pays on condition that the king reforms; nothing for nothing;and the fulfilling of the bargain is minutely watched. It comes to thisat last, that Parliament proves more Norman than the Court; itmanoeuvres with more skill, and remains master of the situation; "àNormand, Normand et demi. " The Plantagenets behold with astonishment therise of a power they are now unable to control; their offspring ishardy, and strong, and beats its nurse. After the attempts of Simon de Montfort, Edward I. Had convened, in1295, the first real Parliament. He had reasserted the fundamentalprinciple of all liberties, by appropriating to himself the old maximfrom Justinian's code, according to which "what touches the interests ofall must be approved by all. "[408] He forms the habit of appealing tothe people; he wants them to know the truth, and decide according totruth which is in the right, whether the king or his turbulentbarons[409]; he behaves on occasion as if he felt that _over_ him wasthe nation. And this strange sight is seen: the descendant of the Normanautocrats modestly explains his plans for war in Flanders and inFrance, excuses himself for the aid he is obliged to ask of hissubjects, and even condescends to solicit the spiritual benefit of theirprayers: "He the king, on this and on the state of himself and of hisrealm, and how the business of his realm has come to nothing, makes itknown and wants that all know the truth, which is as follows. . . . He canneither defend himself nor his realm without the help of his goodpeople. And it grieves him sorely to have them, on this account, soheavily charged. . . . And he prays them to take as an excuse for what hehas done, that that he did not do in order to buy lands and tenements, or castles and towns, but to defend himself, and them, and the wholekingdom. . . . And as he has great faith that the good prayers of his goodpeople will help him very much in bringing this business to a good end, he begs that they will intently pray for him and those that with himgo. "[410] At first, Parliament is astonished: such excess of honour alarms it;then it understands the chance that offers, and guesses that in theproffered bargain it may very well be the winner. This once understood, progress is rapid, and from year to year can be observed the growth ofits definitive privileges. The Commons have their Speaker, "M. Thomas deHungerford, knight, who had the words for the Commons of England"[411];they want deputies to be elected by "due election, " and they protestagainst all interference of the Government; against officialcandidatures, and against the election of royal functionaries. Ondifficult questions, the members request to be allowed to return totheir counties and consult with their constituents before voting. [412]In spite of all the aristocratic ideas with which they are still imbued, many of those audacious members who clamour for reforms and oppose theking are very inconsiderable people, and such men are seen taking theirseats at Westminster as "Walterus l'espicer, " "Paganus le tailour, ""Radulphus le teynturer, " "Ricardus orfèvre. "[413] Great is the power of this mixed gathering. No new taxes can be leviedwithout its consent; every individual, every personage, every authorityhaving a petition to present, or a complaint to make, sends it to theassembly of Westminster. The king consults it on peace or war: "So, "says the Chamberlain to the Commons in 1354, "you are willing to assentto a permanent treaty of peace, if one can be obtained? And the saidCommons answered entirely and unanimously: Yes, yes! (Oïl! Oïl!)"[414] Nothing is too great or too small for Parliament to attend to; thesovereign appeals to it, and the clergy too, and beggars also. In 1330, the poor, the "poverail" of Greenwich, complain that alms are no longerbestowed on them as formerly, to the great detriment, say they, of thesouls of the benefactors of the place "who are in Purgatory. "[415]Convents claim privileges that time has effaced; servants ask for theirwages; the barber of Edward II. Solicits the maintenance of favoursgranted by a prince he had bled and shaved for twenty-six years. [416] And before the same gathering of men, far different quarrels are broughtforth. The king's ministers, Latymer and Neville, are impeached; hismistress Alice Perrers hears sentence[417]; his household, personalattendants and expenses are reformed; and from then can be foreseen atime when, owing to the tread of centuries, the king will reign but nolonger govern. Such is almost the case even in the fourteenth century. Parliament deposes Richard II. , who fancied himself king by rightdivine, and claimed, long before the Stuarts, to hold his crown, "deldoun de Dieu, " as a "gift of God. "[418] In the list of grievances drawnup by the assembly to justify the deposition, figures the assertionattributed to the king "that the laws proceeded from his lips or fromhis heart, and that he alone could make or alter the laws of hiskingdom. "[419] In 1399 such language was already held to be criminal inEngland. In 1527 Claude Gaillard, prime President of the Parliament ofParis, says in his remonstrance to Francis I. , king of France: "We donot wish, Sire, to doubt or question your power; it would be a kind ofsacrilege, and we well know you are above all law, and that statutesand ordinances cannot touch you. . . . "[420] The ideas on political"sacrilege" differed widely in the two countries. From the end of the fourteenth century, an Englishman could already sayas he does to-day: My business is not the business of the State, but thebusiness of the State is my business. The whole of the Englishconstitution, from the vote on the taxes to the _habeas corpus_, iscomprised in this formula. In France the nation, practical, lucid, andlogical in so many things, but easily amused, and too fond of chansons, neglected the opportunities that offered; the elect failed to attend thesittings; the bargains struck were not kept to. The WestminsterParliament voted subsidies on condition that reforms would beinstituted; the people paid and the king reformed. In France, on thecontrary, during the Middle Ages, the people tried not to pay, and theking tried not to reform. Thus the levying of the subsidy voted by theStates-General of 1356-7, was the cause of bloody riots in France; thepeople, unenlightened as to their own interests, did their best todestroy their defenders: the agents of the States-General were massacredat Rouen and Arras; King John "the Good" published a decree forbiddingthe orders of the States to be fulfilled, and acquired instantpopularity by this the most tyrannic measure of all his reign. These differences between the two political bodies had importantconsequences with regard to the development of thought in the twocountries; they also excited the wonder and sometimes the admiration ofthe French. "The king of England must obey his subjects, " saysFroissart, "and do all they want him to. "[421] "To my mind, " writesCommines, "of all the communities I know in the world, the one wherepublic business is best attended to, where the people are least exposedto violence, where there are no buildings ruined and pulled down onaccount of wars, that one is England. "[422] "The English are the mastersof their king, " writes Ambassador Courtin in 1665, in almost the samewords as Froissart, "their king can do nothing, unless what he wants iswhat they will. "[423] III. Now are the vanquished and the victors of Hastings blended into onenation, and they are endowed with a Parliament as a safeguard for theirliberties. "This is, " Montesquieu said later, "the nation in the worldthat has best known how to avail itself at the same time of those threegreat things: religion, trade, and liberty. "[424] Four hundred yearsbefore Montesquieu it already availed itself of these three greatthings; under Edward and Richard Plantagenets, England was what it hasever been since, a "merchant island. "[425] Its mines are worked, even those of "sea-coal, " as it was then called, "carboun de meer. "[426] It has a numerous mercantile navy which carriesto the Baltic, to Iceland, to Flanders, to Guyenne, and to Spain, wool, skins, cloth, wheat, butter and cheese, "buyre et furmage. " Each yearthe galleys of Venice come laden with cotton, silks from Damascus, sugar, spices, perfumes, ivory, and glass. The great commercial houses, and the merchant corporations are powers in the State; Edward III. Grants to the London gilds the right of electing members to Parliament, and they preserved this right until the Reform Bill of 1832. The wealthymerchants lent money to the king; they were called to his councils; theybehaved as great citizens. Anthony Blache lends Edward III. 11, 720pounds; the Blankets of Bristol gather enormous wealth; John Blanketdies in 1405, bequeathing a third of his fortune to his wife, a third tohis children, and a third to the poor; John Philpot, a grocer of London, embarks on his ships and fights for the kingdom; Richard Whittington, heof the legendary cat, is famed in history for his wealth and liberality, and was mayor of London in 1398, 1406, and 1419. These merchants areennobled, and from their stock spring earls and dukes; the De la Poles, wool-merchants of Hull, mortgage their property for the king. William dela Pole rescues Edward III. , detained in Flanders by want of money, andis made a knight-banneret; his son Michael is created earl of Suffolk;one of his grandsons is killed at Agincourt; another besieges Orléans, which is delivered by Joan of Arc; he becomes duke of Suffolk, isimpeached in 1450 for high treason and beheaded; no honour is lacking tothe house. From the time of the Edwards, the Commons are very touchy upon thesubject of the maritime power and glory of their country; they alreadyconsider the ocean as their appointed realm. Do they observe, or fancythey observe, any diminution in the strength of England? They complainto the king in remonstrances more than once heard again, word for word, within the halls of Westminster: "Twenty years ago, and always before, the shipping of the Realm was in all the ports and good towns upon thesea or rivers, so noble and plenteous that all the countries held andcalled our said sovereign, the King of the Sea. "[427] At this time, 1372, the country is, without possibility of doubt, the England of theEnglish. From that period the English are found either singly or in small bandson all the seas and on all the highways. [428] Their nature has beenmodified; the island no longer suffices them as it sufficed theAnglo-Saxons. "Il ne sait rien, qui ne va hors"--he knows nothing whostirs not out--think they with Des Champs; they are keen to see whatgoes on elsewhere, and like practical folks to profit by it. When theopportunity is good they seize it, whatsoever its nature; encounteringSaracens they slay them: so much towards Paradise; moving about in Italythey are not long in discovering the advantages offered by acondottiere's existence. They adopt and even perfect it, and after theirdeath are magnificently buried in the cathedral of Florence, and PaoloUccello paints their portrait on the wall. [429] On every occasion theybehave like Normans; in the halls of Westminster, in their City countinghouses, on the highroads of Italy and on the ocean they everywhereresemble the rulers whose spirit has passed into them, and provethemselves to be at once adventurous and practical. "They are goodwalkers and good horsemen, " said Ralph Higden of them in the fourteenthcentury, adding: "They are curious, and like to tell the wonders theyhave seen and observed. " How many books of travel we owe to thispropensity! "They roam over all lands, " he continues, "and succeed stillbetter in other countries than in their own. . . . They spread over theearth; every land they inhabit becomes as their own country. "[430] Theyare themselves, and no longer seek to be any one else; they cease bydegrees to _francigenare_. This combination of boldness and obstinacythat is theirs, is the blend of qualities by which distant settlementscan be established and kept; to these qualities must be traced thefounding of the English colonial empire, and the power which allowed thePlantagenet kings to aspire, as early as the fourteenth century, to bethe "Rois de la Mier. " Trade brings luxury, comfort, and the love of art in its train. The samehappened in London as in Venice, Florence, and Bruges; these merchantsand nobles were fond of beautiful things. It is an era of prosperity forimagers, miniaturists, painters, and sculptors. [431] The wealthy orderto be chiselled for themselves ivory Virgins whose tender, half-mundanesmile, is not less charming for the doubt it leaves whether it is ofearth or of heaven; devotional tablets in painted ivory, in gold, ortranslucid enamels; golden goblets with figures, silver cups "enamelledwith children's games, " salt-cellars in the shape of lions or dogs, "golden images of St. John the Baptist, in the wilderness, "[432] allthose precious articles with which our museums are filled. Edward II. Sends to the Pope in 1317, among other gifts, a golden ewer and basin, studded with translucid enamels, supplied by Roger de Frowyk, a Londongoldsmith, for the price of one hundred and forty-seven pounds, Humphreyde Bohun, who died in 1361, said his prayers to beads of gold; EdwardIII. Played chess on a board of jasper and crystal, silver mounted. Theminiaturists represent Paradise on the margin of missals, or set forthin colours some graceful legend or fantastic tale, with knights, flowers, and butterflies. [433] In spite of foreign wars, localinsurrections, the plague that returns periodically, 1349, 1362, 1369, 1375, the great uprising of the peasantry, 1381, the troubles andmassacres which followed, art prospers in the fourteenth century, andwhat chiefly characterises it is that it is all a-smile. That such things were coeval is not so astonishing as it may seem. Lifewas still at that time so fragile and so often threatened, that thenotion of its being suddenly cut off was a familiar one even fromchildhood. Wars, plagues, and massacres never took one unawares; theywere in the due course of things, and were expected; the possibility ofsuch misfortunes saddened less in prospective than it does now that theyhave become less frequent. People were then always ready to fight, tokill, and to be killed. Games resembled battles, and battles games: thefavourite exercises were tournaments; life was risked for nothing, as anamusement. Innumerable decrees[434] forbade those pastimes on account ofthe deaths they caused, and the troubles they occasioned; but theamusement was the best available, and the decrees were left unobserved. Edward starts on his war to France, and his knights, following hisexample, take their falconers and their hounds along with them, asthough they were going to a hunt. [435] Never was felt to a greaterdegree what Rabelais terms "the scorn of fortuitous things. " Times havechanged, and until we go back to a similar state of affairs, which isnot impossible, we come into the world with ideas of peace and order, and of a life likely to be a long one. We are indignant if it isthreatened, very sad when the end draws near; with more lastinghappinesses we smile less often. Froissart paints in radiant colours, and the subject of his pictures is the France of the Hundred Years' War. The "merry England" of the "Cursor Mundi" and after is the England ofthe great plagues, and of the rising of the peasants, which had twokings assassinated out of four. It is also the England whose Madonnassmile. In architecture the English favour the development of that kind ofspecial Gothic of which they are the inventors, the Perpendicular, arich and well-ordered style, terrestrial, practical, pleasant to lookupon. No one did more to secure it a lasting fame than the Chancellor ofEdward III. And of Richard II. , William of Wykeham, bishop ofWinchester, the restorer of Windsor, founder of New College at Oxford, the greatest builder of the century. [436] The walls and vaulted roofs ofchapels are thick inlaid with ornaments; broad windows let in differentcoloured lights through their stained-glass panes; golden-haired angelsstart from the cornices; architecture smiles too, and its smile, likethat of the Madonnas, is half religious and half mundane. Less care is taken to raise strong houses than formerly; among thenumerous castles with which the land bristles may be seen, in thedistant valley where the ancient town of St. David's lies screened, abishop's palace that would have suited neither William de Longchamp norHugh de Puiset, a magnificent dwelling, without towers of defence, ormoats, or drawbridges, an exceptional dwelling, built as though theinhabitants were already secure of the morrow. [437] The outside is less rude, and the inside is adorned and enriched; lifebecomes more private than it used to be; existence less patriarchal andmore refined; those who still cling to old customs complain that therich man dines in a chamber with a chimney, and leaves the large hallwhich was made for men to take their meals in together. [438] The wallsof these chambers with chimneys are painted or covered with hangings;tapestries represent (as do those of Edward II. ) the king surrounded byhis nobles, [439] or (like those of the Black Prince) the "Pas deSaladin, " or "sea-sirens, " with a border of "swans with ladies' heads, "in other words, chimeras, "and ostrich feathers"; or, again, like thoseof Sir John Falstofe, in the following century, the adoration of theshepherds, a hawking scene, the siege of Falaise (taken in 1417), awoman playing the harp near a castle, "a giant piercing a boar with aspear": all of which are the more noticeable as they are nothing butliterature put into colours or embroidery. [440] The conveniences and elegancies of the table are now attended to; cookswrite out their recipes in English; stewards draw up in the samelanguage protocols concerning precedence, and the rules which awell-trained servant should observe. Such a one does not scratch hishead, and avoids sneezing in the dish; he abstains from wiping theplates with his tongue, and in carving takes the meat in his left handand the knife in his right, forks being then unknown; he gives each onehis proper place, and remembers "that the Pope hath no peere. " When themaster dresses, he must be seated on a chair by the fire, a "kercheff"is spread over his shoulders, and he is "curteisly" combed with an ivorycomb; he is rinsed "with rose-watur warme"; when he takes a bath the airis scented with herbs hanging from the ceiling. When he goes to bed thecats and dogs which happen to be in his room should be driven away, orelse a little cloth provided for them. The food is rich and combines extraordinary mixtures. Hens and rabbitsare eaten chopped up with pounded almonds, raisins, sugar, ginger, herbsdipped in grease, onions and salt; if the mixture is not thick enough, rice flour is added, and the whole coloured with saffron. Cranes, herons, and peacocks are cooked with ginger. Great attention is paid tooutward appearance and to colour; the dishes must be yellow or green, oradorned with leaves of gold and silver, a fashion still preserved in theEast. Elaborate cakes, "subtleties" as they were then termed, are alsoserved; they represent: Maydon Mary that holy virgyne And Gabrielle gretynge hur with an Ave. [441] People adorn their bodies as well as their houses; luxury in dress iscarried to such an excess that Parliament finds it necessary tointerfere, and forbids women of the lower classes to wear any fursexcept cat and rabbit. [442] Edward III. Buys of master Paul de Monteflorgowns for the queen, in "stuffs from over the sea, " to the enormousamount of 1, 330 pounds. He himself wears a velvet waistcoat, on which hehas caused golden pelicans to be embroidered by William Courtenay, aLondon embroiderer. He gives his mistress Alice Perrers 21, 868 largepearls, and thirty ounces of smaller ones. His daughter Margaretreceives from him two thousand pearls as a wedding present; he buys hissister Aliénor a gilded carriage, tapestried and embroidered, withcushions and curtains of silk, for which he pays one thousandpounds. [443] At that time one might for the same sum have bought a herdof sixteen hundred oxen. The sense of beauty, together with a reverence for and a worship of it, was spreading among the nation whose thoughts shortly before used to runin quite different lines. Attention is paid to physical beauty, such asit had never received before. Men and women wear tight garments, showingthe shape of the figure. In the verses he composed for his tomb atCanterbury, the Black Prince mourns over "his beauty which has allgone. " Richard II. , while still alive, has graven on his tomb that hewas "corpore procerus. "[444] The taste of the English for finery becomesso well known, that to them is ascribed, even in France, the inventionof new fashions. Recalling to his daughters, in order to teach themmodesty, that "the deluge in the time of Noah happened for the pride anddisguises of men, and mostly of women, who remodelled their shapes bymeans of gowns and attire, " the Knight de la Tour Landry gives theEnglish ladies the credit, or rather the discredit, of having inventedthe immeasurable head-dresses worn at that day. It is an evil sign; inthat country people amuse themselves too much: "In England many thereare that have been blamed, the report goes, I know not whether it iswrongly or rightly. "[445] Owing to the attention paid to physical beauty in England, sculptors nowbegin--a rare thing at that time--to have living models, and to copy thenude. In the abbey of Meaux, "Melsa, " near Beverley, on the banks of theHumber, was seen in the fourteenth century a sight that would have beenrather sought for by the banks of the Arno, under the indulgent sky ofItaly. The abbot Hugh of Leven having ordered a new crucifix for theconvent chapel, the artist "had always a naked man under his eyes, andhe strove to give to his crucifix the beauty of form of his model. "[446] One last trait may be added to the others: not only the beauty of livebeings, but that also of inanimate things is felt and cared for, thebeauty of landscapes, and of trees. In 1350-1 the Commons complain ofthe cutting down of the large trees overshadowing the houses, thoselarge trees, dear already to English hearts, and point out in Parliamentthe loss of this beauty, the great "damage, loss, and blemish" thatresults from it for the dwellings. [447] In nearly every respect, thus, the Englishman of to-day is formed, andreceives his chief features, under the Angevin princes Edward III. AndRichard II. : practical, adventurous, a lover of freedom, a greattraveller, a wealthy merchant, an excellent sailor. We have had aglimpse of what he is; let us now listen to what he says. FOOTNOTES: [384] "De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliæ, " book iii. Treatise ii. Chap. Xv. (Rolls, vol. Ii. P. 385. ) No fine if the defunct is English:"Pro Anglico vero et de quo constari possit quod Anglicus sit, nondabitur murdrum. " [385] "Statutes of the Realm, " 14 Ed. III. Chap. 4. [386] "Si rex fuerit litteratus, talis est. . . . Forma juramenti si Rexnon fuerit litteratus: Sire, voilez vous graunter et garder . . . Les leyset les custumes . . . &c. " "Statutes of the Realm, " _sub anno_ 1311, vol. I. P. 168. [387] "Rotuli Parliamentorum, " vol. Iii. P. 422; see below, p. 421. [388] Ralph Higden, "Polychronicon" (Rolls), vol. Ii. P. 158. "Hæcquidem nativæ linguæ corruptio provenit hodie multum ex duobus quodvidelicet pueri in scolis contra morem cæterarum nationum, a primoNormannorum adventu derelicto proprio vulgari, construere gallicecompelluntur; item quod filii nobilium ab ipsis cunabulorum crepundiisad gallicum idioma informantur. Quibus profecto rurales hominesassimilari volentes ut per hoc spectabiliores videantur, francigenaresatagunt omni nisu. " [389] "A volume of Vocabularies, from the Xth to the XVth Century, " ed. Thomas Wright, London, 1857, 4to, pp. 143 ff. See also P. Meyer, "Romania, " vol. Xiii. P. 502. [390] Vus avet la levere et le levere E la livere et le livere. La levere si enclost les dens; Le levre en boys se tent dedens, La livere sert en marchaundye, Le livere sert en seynt eglise. [391] Apostrophe of judge John de Moubray, Easter session, 44 Ed. III. , "Year-books of Edward I. , " ed. Horwood (Rolls), 1863 ff. , vol. I. P. Xxxi. Judge Hengham interrupts a counsel, saying: "Do not interpret thestatute in your own way; we know it better than you, for we madeit. "--"Ne glosez point le statut; nous le savoms meuz de vous, qar nousle feimes. " _Ibid. _ [392] "Grosso modo et idiomate quocunque communiter intelligibili factumproponant. " "Munimenta Academica" (Rolls), p. 77. [393] "Pur ce qe monstré est souventefoitz au Roi par prélatz, ducs, counts, barons et toute la commune, les grantz meschiefs qe sont advenuzas plusours du realme de ce qe les leyes, custumes et estatutz du ditrealme ne sont pas conuz communément en mesme le realme, par cause q'ilssont pledez, monstrez et juggez en lange Franceis q'est trop desconue endit realme, issint qe les gentz qi pledent ou sont empledez en lescourtz le Roi et les courtz d'autres n'ont entendement ne conissance dece q'est dit por eulx ne contre eulx par lour sergeantz et autrespledours. . . . " that henceforth all plaids "soient pledetz, monstretz, defenduz, responduz, debatuz et juggez en la lange engleise; et q'ilssoient entreez et enroullez en latin. " 36 Ed. III. , stat. I. Chap. 15, "Statutes of the Realm. " In spite of these arrangements, the accounts ofthe pleas continued to be transcribed in French into the "Year-books, "of which several have been published in the collection of the Master ofthe Rolls. Writing about the year 1300, the author of the Mirror ofJustice had still made choice of French as being the "language bestunderstood by you and the common people. " [394] "Chroniques, " ed. Luce, vol. I. P. 306. [395] "Polychronicon" (Rolls), vol. Ii. P. 159 (contains the Latin textof Higden and the English translation of Trevisa). [396] And I can no Frenche in feith · but of the ferthest ende of Norfolke. "Visions, " ed. Skeat, text B, passus v. Line 239. The MS. DD 12. 23 ofthe University Library, Cambridge, contains "a treatise on Frenchconjugations. " It does not furnish any useful information as regards thehistory of French conjugations; "it can only serve to show how great wasthe corruption of current French in England in the fourteenth century. "P. Meyer, "Romania, " vol. Xv. P. 262. [397] The ambassadors are: "Thomas Swynford, miles, custos castri villæCalisii et Nicholaus de Rysshetoun, utriusque juris professor. " Theyadmit that French is the language of treatises; but Latin was used bySt. Jerome. They write to the duchess of Burgundy: "Et quamvis treugægenerales inter Angliam et Franciam per Dominos et Principes temporales, videlicet duces Lancastriæ et Eboraci necnon Buturiæ ac Burgundiæ, bonæmemoriæ, qui perfecte non intellexerunt latinum sicut Gallicum, deconsensu eorumdem expresso, in Gallico fuerunt captæ et firmatæ, litterætamen missivæ ultro citroque transmissæ . . . Continue citra in Latino, tanquam idiomate communi et vulgari extiterunt formatæ; quæ omniahabemus parata ostendere, exemplo Beati Ieronimi. . . . " In no wise touchedby this example, the French reply in their own language, and theambassadors, vexed, acknowledge the receipt of the letter in somewhatundiplomatic terms: "Vestras litteras scriptas in Gallico, nobisindoctis tanquam in idiomate Hebraico . . . Recipimus Calisii. " "Royal andHistorical Letters, " ed. Hingeston, 1860 (Rolls), vol. I. Pp. 357 and397. A discussion of the same kind takes place, with the same result, under Louis XIV. See "A French Ambassador at the Court of Charles II. , "p. 140. [398] "Doulz françois qu'est la plus bel et la plus gracious language etplus noble parler, après latin d'escole, qui soit ou monde, et de tousgens mieulx prisée et amée que nul autre. . . . Il peut bien comparer auparler des angels du ciel, pour la grant doulceur et biaultée d'icel. ""La manière de Langage, " composed in 1396, at Bury St. Edmund's, ed. Paul Meyer, "Revue Critique, " vol. X. P. 382. [399] Middle of the fourteenth century, ed. Aungier, Camden Society, 1884, 4to. [400] As an example of a composition showing the parallelism of the twovocabularies in their crude state, one may take the treatise on Dreams(time of Edward II. ), published by Wright and Halliwell, which beginswith the characteristic words: "Her comensez a bok of Swevenyng. ""Reliquiæ Antiquæ. " [401] London, 1882. [402] See a list of such words in Earle, "Philology of the EnglishTongue, " 5th edition, Oxford, 1892, 8vo, p. 84. On the disappearance ofAnglo-Saxon proper names, and the substitution of Norman-French names, "William, Henry, Roger, Walter, Ralph, Richard, Gilbert, Robert, " seeGrant Allen, "Anglo-Saxon Britain, " ch. Xix. , Anglo-Saxon Nomenclature. [403] "Troilus, " iii. Stanza 191. [404] Earle's "Philology of the English Tongue, " 5th ed. , Oxford, 1892, p. 379. [405] _Ibid. _ p. 377. [406] See the series of the statutes of _Provisors_ and _Præmunire_, andthe renewals of the same (against presentations to benefices by the Popeand appeals to the Court of Rome), 25 Ed. III. St. 6; 27 Ed. III. St. 2;3 Rich. II. Chap. 3; 12 Rich. II. Chap. 15; 13 Rich. II. St. 2, chap. 2;16 Rich. II. Chap. 5. All have for their object to restrict the actionof the Holy See in England, conformably to the desire of the Commons, who protest against these appeals to the Roman Court, the consequencesof which are "to undo and adnul the laws of the realm" (25 Ed. III. 1350-1), and who also protest against "the Court of Rome which ought tobe the fountain-head, root, and source of holiness, " and which fromcoveteousness has assumed the right of presenting to numberlessbenefices in England, so much so that the taxes collected for the Popeon this account "amount to five times as much as what the king gets fromall his kingdom each year. " Good Parliament of 1376, "RotuliParliamentorum, " vol. Ii. P. 337; see below, p. 419. [407] Year 1340, 14 Ed. III. , "Rotuli Parliamentorum, " vol. Ii. P. 104. [408] "Sicut lex justissima, provida circumspectione sacrorum principumstabilita, hortatur et statuit ut quod omnes tangit ab omnibusapprobetur. . . . " Rymer, "Foedera, " 1705, vol. Ii. P. 689. This Romanmaxim was known and appealed to, but not acted upon in France. SeeCommines, "Mémoires, " book v. Chap. Xix. [409] "For some folks, " says he, "might say and make the people believethings that were not true. " By some folks, "acuns gentz, " he means Bohunand Bigod. Proclamation of 1297, in Rymer, "Foedera", 1705, vol. Ii. P. 783. [410] Rymer, "Foedera, " 1705, vol. Ii. P. 783, year 1297; original inFrench. [411] "Monsieur Thomas de Hungerford, chivaler, qui avoit les parolespour les Communes d'Engleterre en cest Parlement. " Parliament of 1376-7, 51 Ed. III. "Rotuli, " vol. Ii. P. 374. [412] Examples: that the deputies of the counties "soient esluz parcommune élection de les meillours gentz des dity countées et nemyecertifiez par le viscont (sheriff) soul, saunz due élection. " GoodParliament of 1376. --Petition that the sheriffs shall not be able tostand for the counties while they continue in office, 1372, 46 Ed. III. , "Rotuli Parliamentorum, " vol. Ii. P. 310; that no representative "nesoit viscont ou autre ministre, " 13 Ed. III. , year 1339. --Petition ofthe members of Parliament to be allowed to return and consult theirconstituents: "Ils n'oseront assentir tant qu'ils eussent conseillez etavysez les communes de lour pais. " 1339, "Rot. Parl. ", vol. Ii. P. 104;see below, p. 418. [413] "Return of the names of every member returned to serve in eachParliament, " London, 1878, fol. (a Blue Book). --There is no doubt inseveral cases that by such descriptions was meant the _actual_profession of the member. Ex. : "Johannes Kent, mercer, " p. 217. [414] "Rot. Parl. , " vol. Ii. P. 262. [415] Petition of the "poverail" of Greenwich and Lewisham on whom almsare no longer bestowed (one _maille_ a week to every beggar that came)to the "grant damage des poores entour, et des almes les fondours quesont en Purgatorie. " 4 Ed. III. "Rotuli Parliamentorum, " vol. Ii. P. 49. [416] 4 Ed. III. , "Rotuli Parliamentorum, " vol. Ii. P. 33. [417] Good Parliament of 1376. [418] The Commons had been bold enough to complain of the expenses ofthe king and of the too great number of prelates and ladies hesupported: "de la multitude d'Evesques qui ont seigneuries et sontavancez par le Roy et leur meignée; et aussi de pluseurs dames et leurmeignée qui demuront en l'ostel du Roy et sont à ses costages. " Richardreplies in an angry manner that he "voet avoir sa régalie et la libertéeroiale de sa corone, " as heir to the throne of England "del doun deDieu. " 1397, "Rotuli Parliamentorum, " vol. Iii. P. 339. The Commons saynothing more, but they mark the words, to remember them in due time. [419] "Dixit expresse, velut austero et protervo, quod leges sue erantin ore suo et aliquotiens in pectore suo. Et quod ipse solus possetmutare et condere leges regni sui. " "Rotuli Parliamentorum, " vol. Iii. P. 419. [420] Chéruel, "Dictionnaire des Institutions de la France, " at the word_Parlement_. As early as the thirteenth century, Bracton, in England, declared that "laws bound the legislator, " and that the king ought toobey them; his theory, however, is less bold than the one according towhich the Commons act in the fourteenth century: "Dicitur enim rex, "Bracton observes, "a bene regendo et non a regnando, quia rex est dumbene regit, tyrannus dum populum sibi creditum violenter opprimitdominatione. Temperet igitur potentiam suam per legem quæ frenum estpotentiæ, quod secundum leges vivat, quod hoc sanxit lex humana quodleges suum ligent latorem. " "De Legibus, " 3rd part chap. Ix. [421] "Chroniques, " ed. S. Luce, i. P. 337. [422] "Mémoires, " ed. Dupont, Société de l'histoire de France, 1840 ff. , vol. Ii. P. 142, _sub anno_, 1477. [423] Unpublished letter to M. De Lionne, from London, July 6, 1665, Archives of the Affaires Étrangères, vol. Lxxxvi. [424] "Esprit des Lois, " vol. Xx. Chap. Vii. , "Esprit de l'Angleterresur le Commerce. " [425] A. Sorel, "l'Europe et la Révolution Française, " vol. I. P. 337. [426] Parliament reverts at different times to these mines in thefourteenth century: "Come en diverses parties deinz le Roialmed'Engleterre sont diverses miners des carbons, dont les Communes du ditpartie ont lour sustenantz en grande partie. . . . " 51 Ed. III. , "RotuliParliamentorum. " [427] 46 Ed. III. , "Rotuli Parliamentorum, " vol. Ii. P. 311. The kingreturns a vague answer. See below, pp. 515, 517. [428] "They travaile in every londe, " says Gower of them, in his"Confessio Amantis, " ed. Pauli, vol. Iii. P. 109. [429] "Joannes Acutus, eques Britannicus (John Hawkwood) . . . Reimilitaris peritissimus . . . Pauli Vccelli opus, " inscription on the"grisaille, " painted by Uccello, in the fifteenth century, in memory ofHawkwood, who died in the pay of Florence, in 1394. He was the son of atanner, and was born in Essex; the Corporation of Tailors claimed thathe had started in life among them; popular tales were written about him:"The honour of the Taylors, or the famous and renowned history of SirJohn Hawkwood, knight, containing his . . . Adventures . . . Relating tolove and arms, " London, 1687, 4to. The painting by Uccello has beenremoved from the choir, transferred on canvas and placed against thewall at the entrance of the cathedral at Florence. [430] "Polychronicon, " ed. Babington, Rolls, vol. Ii. Pp. 166, 168. [431] The most brilliant specimens of the paintings of the time were, inEngland, those to be seen in St. Stephen's chapel in the palace ofWestminster. It was finished about 1348, and painted afterwards. Thechief architect was Thomas of Canterbury, master mason; the principalpainters (judging by the highest salaries) were Hugh of St. Albans andJohn Cotton ("Foedera, " 1705, vol. V. P. 670; vi. 417). This chapelwas burnt in our century with the rest of the Houses of Parliament;nothing remains but the crypt; fragments of the paintings have beensaved, and are preserved in the British Museum. They represent the storyof Job. The smiling aspect of the personages should be noted, especiallythat of the women; there is a look of happiness about them. [432] See the jewels and other valuables enumerated in the English willsof the fourteenth century: "A collection of . . . Wills, " London, Nichols, 1780, 4to, pp. 37, 50, 112, 113, and in "The ancient Kalendars andInventories of the Treasury, " ed. Palgrave, London, 1836, 3 vols. 8vo, Chess-table of Edward III. , vol. Iii. P. 173. _Cf. _ for France, "Inventaire du mobilier de Charles V. , " ed. Labarte ("Documentsinédits"), 1879, 4to. [433] Edward III. Buys of Isabella of Lancaster, a nun of Aumbresbury, amanuscript romance that he keeps always in his room, for the price of66_l. _ 13_s. _ and 4_d. _ for (at that time the price of an ox was abouttwelve shillings). For the young Richard were bought two volumes, onecontaining the Romaunt of the Rose, the other the Romances of Percevaland Gawain; the price paid for them, and for a Bible besides being28_l. _ ("Issues of the Exchequer, " ed. Devon, 1837, pp. 144, 213). OnEnglish miniaturists, see "Histoire Littéraire de la France, " xxxi. P. 281. [434] More than forty for the reign of Edward II. Are to be found in the"Foedera. " [435] "Et si y avoit pluiseurs des seigneurs et des riches hommes quiavoient leurs chiens et leurs oizins ossi bien comme li rois leurssirs. " Campaign of 1360, ed. Luce, book i. Chap. 83. [436] Born at Wykeham, Hampshire, 1324, of an obscure family (whence hisfamous motto, "Manners makyth man, " that is to say, moral qualitiesalone make a man of worth), clerk of the king's works in 1356, presentat the peace of Brétigny, bishop of Winchester 1366, Chancellor in 1367, and again under Richard II. He died at eighty-four years of age, underHenry IV. The list of his benefices (Oct. , 1366) fills more than fourpages in Lowth ("Life of W. Of Wykeham, " Oxford, 1777, pp. 28 ff. ). Froissart notes the immense influence which "Wican" had in the State. [437] Built almost entirely by Bishop Gower, 1328-47, the "Wykeham ofSaint David's. " "History and Antiquities of St. David's, " by Jones andFreeman, London, 1856, 4to, pp. 189 ff. There now remain only ruins, butthey are among the most beautiful that can be seen. [438] Now hath uche riche a reule · to eten by hym-selve In a pryve parloure · for pore mennes sake, Or in a chambre with a chymneye · and leve the chief halle, That was made for meles · men te eten inne. "Visions Concerning Piers Plowman" (ed. Skeat), text B, passus x. Line96. [439] For this tapestry the king paid thirty pounds to Thomas deHebenhith, mercer of London. ("Wardrobe accounts of EdwardII. "--"Archæologia, " vol. Xxvi. P. 344. ) [440] Will of the Black Prince, in Nichols, "A Collection of Wills, "London, 1780, 4to; inventory of the books of Falstofe (who died underHenry VI. ), "Archæologia, " vol. Xxi. P. 232; in one single castlebelonging to him, that of Caister near Yarmouth, were found after hisdeath 13, 400 ounces of silver. Already, in the thirteenth century, HenryIII. , who had a passion for art, had caused to be painted in his chamberin the Tower the history of Antioch (3rd crusade), and in his palace ofClarendon that "Pas de Saladin" which was the subject of one of theBlack Prince's tapestries; he had a painting of Jesse on the mantelpieceof his chimney at Westminster. (Hardy, "A description of the close rollsin the Tower, " London, 1833, 8vo, p. 179, and Devon, "Issues of theExchequer, " 1837, p. 64. ) He was so fond of the painting executed forhim at Clarendon, that he ordered it to be covered with a linen cloth inhis absence, so that it would not get injured. In the fourteenth centurythe walls were hung instead of being painted, as in the thirteenth; richpeople had "salles"--that is to say, suits of hangings for a room. Common ones were made at Norwich; the finest came from Flanders. [441] These recipes and counsels are found in: "The forme of Cury, aroll of ancient English cookery compiled about A. D. 1390, by themaster-cook of King Richard II. , " ed. Pegge, London, 1780, 8vo (foundtoo in the "Antiquitates Culinariæ, " of Warner, 1791, 4to). The prologueinforms us that this master-cook of Richard's had been guided byprinciple, and that the book "was compiled by assent and avysement ofmaisters [of] phisik and of philosophie that dwellid in hiscourt. "--"The boke of Nurture folowyng Englondis gise by me JohnRussell, " ed. Furnivall, Early English Text Society, 1868, 8vo. Russellwas marshal of the hall to Humphrey, duke of Gloucester; he wrote whenhe was old, in the first part of the fifteenth century; as he claims toteach the traditions and good manners of former times, it must besupposed the customs he describes date from the reign of Richard II. Seebelow, p. 515. [442] Year 1363. The "aignel" and the "gopil" are, however, tolerated. "Rotuli Parliamentorum, " vol. Ii. P. 281. [443] "Issues of the Exchequer, " ed. Devon, 1837, pp. 142, 147, 189, 209, 6 Ed. III. Richard II. Pays 400 pounds for a carriage for thequeen, and for a simple cart 2 pounds only. _Ibid. _, pp. 236 and 263. [444] The verses of the Black Prince (below, page 353) are found in hiswill, together with minute details concerning the carvings with whichhis tomb must be adorned, and the manner he wishes to be represented onit, "tout armez de fier de guerre. " Stanley, "Historical Memorials ofCanterbury, " 1885, p. 132. The tomb of Richard II. At Westminster wasbuilt in his lifetime and under his eyes. The original indentures havebeen preserved, by which "Nicholas Broker et Godfrey Prest, citeins etcopersmythes de Loundres" agree to have the statues of Richard and Annemade, such as they are seen to day with "escriptures en tour la ditetoumbe, " April 14, 1395. Another contract concerns the marble masonry;both are in the Record Office, "Exchequer Treasury of the recipt, ""Miscellanea, " 3/40. [445] "Le livre du chevalier de la Tour Landry pour l'enseignement deses filles, " ed. Montaiglon, Paris, 1854, 12mo, pp. 46 and 98, writtenin 1371. [446] "Et hominem nudum coram se stantem prospexit, secundum cujusformosam imaginem crucifixum ipsum aptius decoraret. " "Chronicamonasterii de Melsa, " ed. Bond, Rolls, 1868, vol. Iii. P. 35. Hugh ofLeven, who ordered this crucifix, was abbot from 1339 to 1349. Thomas ofBurton, author of the chronicle, compiled it at the end of thefourteenth century. [447] The Commons point out that, as the royal purveyors "abatent etount abatuz les arbres cressauntz entour les mansions des gentz deladite commune, en grant damage, gast et blemissement de lour mansions, qe plese à Nostre Seigneur le Roi que desoremes tiels arbres ne serontcopés ne pris en contre la volonté des seigneurs des ditz mansions. " Answer: "Il semble au conseil qe ceste petition est resonable. " "RotuliParliamentorum, " 25 Ed. III. , vol. Ii. P. 250. CHAPTER II. _CHAUCER. _ The new nation had its poet, Geoffrey Chaucer. By his origin, hiseducation, his tastes, his manner of life, as well as by his writings, Chaucer represents the new age; he paints it from nature, and is a partof it. His biography is scarcely less characteristic than his works, forhe describes nothing through hearsay or imagination. He is himself anactor in the scenes he depicts; he does not dream, he sees them. His history is a sort of reduction of that of the English people at thatday. They are enriched by trade, and Chaucer, the son of merchants, grows up among them. The English people no longer repair to Paris inorder to study, and Chaucer does not go either; their king wages war inFrance, and Chaucer follows Edward along the military roads of thatcountry; they put more and more trust in Parliament, and Chaucer sits inParliament as member for Kent. They take an interest in things ofbeauty, they are fond of the arts, and want them to be all aglow withornamentation and bright with smiles; Chaucer is clerk of the king'sworks, and superintends the repairs and embellishments of the royalpalaces. Saxon monotony, the sadness that followed after Hastings, areforgotten past memory; this new England knows how to laugh and also howto smile; she is a merry England, with bursts of joy, and also anEngland of legends, of sweet songs, and of merciful Madonnas. TheEngland of laughter and the England of smiles are both in Chaucer'sworks. I. Chaucer's life exactly fills the period we have now come to, duringwhich the English people acquired their definitive characteristics: hewas born under Edward III. And he died shortly after the accession ofHenry of Lancaster. At that time Petrarch and Boccaccio were long sincedead, France had no poet of renown, and Chaucer was without comparisonthe greatest poet of Europe. His family belonged to the merchant class of the City. His father, JohnChaucer, his uncle, Thomas Heyroun, and other relations besides, weremembers of the Corporation of Wine Merchants, or Vintners. John Chaucerwas purveyor to the Court, and he accompanied Edward III. On his firstexpedition to the Continent: hence a connection with the royal family, by which the future poet was to profit. The Chaucers' establishment wassituated in that Thames Street which still exists, but now counts onlymodern houses; Geoffrey was probably born there in 1340, or a littleearlier. [448] Chaucer spent the years of his childhood and youth in London: a Londonwhich the great fire of 1666 almost totally destroyed, that old London, then quite young, of which illuminated manuscripts have preserved to usthe picturesque aspect. The paternal house was near the river, and bythe side of the streamlet called Walbrook, since covered over, but whichthen flowed in the open air. On the noble river, the waters of whichwere perhaps not as blue as illuminators painted them, but which werenot yet the liquid mud we all know, ships from the Mediterranean and theBaltic glided slowly, borne by the tide. Houses with several stories andpointed roofs lined the water, and formed, on the ground floor, colonnades that served for warehouses, and under which merchandise waslanded. [449] The famous London Bridge, built under King John, almost newstill, for it was only entering upon its second century and was to livesix hundred years, with its many piers, its sharp buttresses, the housesit bore, its chapel of St. Thomas, stood against the line of thehorizon, and connected the City with the suburb of Southwark. On thatside were more houses, a fine Gothic church, which still exists, hostelries in abundance, for it was the place of arrival for thosecoming by land; and with the hostelries, places of amusement of everykind, a tradition so well established that most of the theatres in thetime of Elizabeth were built there, and notably the celebrated Globe, where Shakespeare's plays were performed. Save for this suburb, theright shore of the Thames, instead of the warehouses of to-day, offeredto view the open country, trees, and green meadows. Some way down, onthe left side, rose the walls of the Tower; and further up, towards theinterior of the City, the massive pile of St. Paul's stood out above thehouses. It was then a Gothic cathedral; Wren, after the great fire, replaced it by the Renaissance edifice we see to-day. The town wassurrounded by walls, portions of which still remain, with Romanfoundations in some places. [450] At intervals gates opened on thecountry, defended by bastions, their memory being preserved at this dayby names of streets: Aldgate, Bishopsgate, &c. The town itself was populous and busy. The streets, in which Chaucer'schildhood was spent, were narrow, bordered by houses with projectingstories, with signs overhanging the way, with "pentys" barring thefootpath, and all sorts of obstructions, against which innumerablemunicipal ordinances protested in vain. Riders' heads caught in thesigns, and it was enjoined to make the poles shorter; manners beingviolent, the wearing of arms was prohibited, but honest folk aloneconformed to the law, thus facilitating matters for the others;cleanliness was but indifferent; pigs ran hither and thither. A decreeof the time of Edward I. Had vainly prescribed that they should all bekilled, except those of St. Anthony's Hospital, which would berecognised by the bell hanging at their neck: "And whoso will keep apig, let him keep it in his own house. " Even this privilege waswithdrawn a little later, so elegant were manners becoming. [451] In this laborious city, among sailors and merchants, acquiring a tastefor adventure and for tales of distant lands, hearing his fatherdescribe the beautiful things to be seen at Court, Geoffrey grew up, from a child became a youth, and, thanks to his family's acquaintances, was appointed, at seventeen, page to Elizabeth, wife of Lionel, son ofEdward III. [452] In his turn, and not as a merchant, he had access tothe Court and belonged to it. He dressed in the fashion, and spent sevenshillings for a short cloak or paltock, shoes, and a pair of red andblack breeches. In 1359 he took part in the expedition to France, led by the king. Itseemed as if it must be a death-blow to the French: the disaster ofPoictiers was not yet repaired; the Jacquerie had just taken place, aswell as the Parisian riots and the betrayal and death of Marcel; theking of France was a prisoner in London, and the kingdom had for itsleader a youth of twenty-two, frail, learned, pious, unskilled in war. It looked as though one had but to take; but once more the saying ofFroissart was verified; in the fragile breast of the dauphin beat theheart of a great citizen, and the event proved that the kingdom was not"so discomfited but that one always found therein some one against whomto fight. " The campaign was a happy one neither for Edward nor forChaucer. The king of England met with nothing but failures: he failedbefore Reims, failed before Paris, and was only too pleased to sign thetreaty of Brétigny. Chaucer was taken by the French, [453] and his fatewould not have been an enviable one if the king had not paid his ransom. Edward gave sixteen pounds to recover his daughter-in-law's page. Everything has its value: the same Edward had spent fifty pounds over ahorse called Bayard, and seventy for another called Labryt, which wasdapple-grey. After his return Chaucer was attached to the person of Edward in thecapacity of valet of the chamber, "valettus cameræ regis"; this isexactly the title that Molière was later to honour in his turn. Hisfunctions consisted in making the royal bed, holding torches, andcarrying messages. A little later he was squire, _armiger_, _scutifer_, and as such served the prince at table, and rode after him in hisjourneys. [454] His duties do not seem to have absorbed all his thoughts, for he found time to read many books, to write many poems, to be madlyenamoured of a lovely unknown person who did not respond to hispassion, [455] to marry "Domicella" or "Damoiselle" Philippa, attached tothe service of the queen, then to the service of Constance, second wifeof John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster--without ceasing however, because hecould not, as he assures us, do otherwise, still to love his unknownbeauty. [456] He reads, he loves, he writes, he is a poet. We do not know whom heloved, but we know what he read and what he wrote at that time. He readthe works which were in fashion in the elegant society he lived among:romances of chivalry, love-songs, allegorical poems, from "Roland" and"Tristan" to the "Roman de la Rose. " Poets, even the greatest, rarelyshow their originality at twenty, and Chaucer was no exception to therule; he imitated the writings best liked by those around him, which, atthe Court of the king, were mostly French books. However it might bewith the nation, the princes had remained French; the French languagewas their native tongue; the beautiful books, richly illustrated, thatthey kept to divert themselves with on dull days, in their"withdrawing-room, " or "chambre de retrait, " were French books, of whichthe subject for the most part was love. In this respect there was, evenat that time, no difference between the north and the south. Froissartstays at Orthez, in 1388, with Monseigneur Gaston Phébus de Foix; and atEltham, at the Court of Richard II. In 1394. In each case he usesexactly the same endeavours to please: both personages are men of thesame kind, having the same ideal in life, imbued with the same notions, and representing the same civilisation. He finds them both speakingFrench very well; Gaston "talked to me, not in his own Gascon, but infair and good French"; Richard, too, "full well spoke and read French. "The historian was duly recommended to each of them, but he reliedespecially, to make himself welcome, on a present he had brought, thesame in both cases, a French manuscript containing amorous poems, whichmanuscript "the Comte de Foix saw full willingly; and every night, afterhis supper, I read to him from it. But in reading none durst speak norsay a word; for he wanted me to be well heard. " He takes the same precautions when he goes to England, where he had notbeen seen for a quarter of a century, and where he scarcely knew any onenow: "And I had beforehand caused to be written, engrossed andilluminated and collected, all the amorous and moral treatises that, inthe lapse of thirty-four years, I had, by the grace of God and of Love, made and compiled. " He waits a favourable opportunity, and one day whenthe councils on the affairs of State are ended, "desired the king to seethe book that I had brought him. Then he saw it in his chamber, for allprepared I had it; I put it for him upon his bed. He opened it andlooked inside, and it pleased him greatly: and please him well it might, for it was illuminated, written and ornamented and covered in scarletvelvet, with ten silver nails gilded with gold, and golden roses in themiddle, and with two great clasps gilded and richly worked in the middlewith golden roses. "Then the king asked me of what it treated, and I told him: of Love. "With this answer he was much rejoiced, and looked inside in severalplaces, and read therein, for he spoke and read French full well; andthen had it taken by one of his knights, whom he called Sir RichardCredon, and carried into his withdrawing-room, and treated me better andbetter. "[457] Long before this last journey of the illustrious chronicler, Chaucer wasfamiliar with his poems, and he was acquainted, as most men around himwere, with those of his French contemporaries: Deguileville, Machault, Des Champs, and later Granson. [458] He sings like them of love, ofspring, of the field-daisy[459]; he had read with passionate admirationthe poem, composed in the preceding century, which was most liked ofall the literature of the time, the "Roman de la Rose. " This famous poem was then at the height of a reputation which was tolast until after the Renaissance. The faults which deter us from itcontributed to its popularity as much as did its merits; digressions, disquisitions, and sermons did not inspire the terror they do now;twenty-three thousand lines of moralisation, psychological analysis, abstract dissertations, delivered by personified abstractions, did notweary the young imagination of the ancestors. The form is allegorical:the rose is the maiden whom the lover desires to conquer: this form, which fell later into disfavour, delighted the readers of the fourteenthcentury for whom it was an additional pleasure to unriddle these easyenigmas. The Church had helped to bring allegories into vogue; commentators hadearly explained the New Testament by the Old, one being an allegory ofthe other: the adventure of Jonah and the whale was an allegory of theresurrection; the Bestiaries were series of allegories; the litanies ofthe Virgin lists of symbols. The methods of pious authors were adoptedby worldly ones; Love had his religion, his allegories, his litanies, not to speak of his paradise, his hell, and his ten commandments. He hada whole celestial court of personified abstractions, composed of thosetenuous and transparent beings who welcome or repel the lover in thegarden of the Rose. It was a new religion, this worship of woman, unknown to the ancients; Ovid no longer sufficed, imitators could nothelp altering his aim and ideal; the new cult required a gospel; thatgospel was the "Roman de la Rose. "[460] The discrepancies in the book did not shock the generality of readers;art at that time was full of contrasts, and life of contradictions, andthe thing was so usual that it went unnoticed. Saints prayed on thethreshold of churches, and gargoyles laughed at the saints. Guillaume deLorris built the porch of his cathedral of Love, and placed in theniches tall, long figures of pure and noble mien. Jean de Meun, fortyyears later, continued the edifice, and was not sparing of gargoyles, mocking, grotesque, and indecent. Thence followed interminablediscussions, some holding for Guillaume, others for Jean, some rejectingthe whole romance, others, the most numerous, accepting it all. Thesedissensions added still more to the fame of the work, and it was sopopular that there exist more than two hundred manuscripts of it. [461]The wise biographer of the wise king Charles V. , Christina of Pisan, protested in the name of insulted women: "To you who have beautifuldaughters, and desire well to introduce them to honest life, give tothem, give the Romaunt of the Rose, to learn how to discern good fromevil; what do I say, but evil from good! And of what utility, nor whatdoes it profit listeners to hear such horrible things?" The author"never had acquaintance nor association with an honourable or virtuouswoman"; he has known none save those of "dissolute and evil life, " andhas taken all the others to be according to that pattern. [462] Theillustrious Gerson, in the fifteenth century, did the romance the honourof refuting it by a treatise according to rule; but the poem was nonethe less translated into Latin, Flemish, and English, printed a numberof times at the Renaissance and rejuvenated and edited by Marot. There were several English translations, and one of them was the work ofour young "Valettus cameræ regis. " This translation by Chaucer islost, [463] but we are aware not only that it existed, but even that itwas celebrated; its merit was known in France, and Des Champs, insending his works to Chaucer, [464] congratulates him, above all things, on having "planted the rose-tree" in "the isle of giants, " the "angelicland, " "Angleterre, " and on being there the god of worldly loves: Tu es d'amours mondains dieux on Albie Et de la Rose en la terre Angélique . . . En bon anglès le livre translatas. This authority in matters of love which Des Champs ascribes to hisEnglish brother-author, is real. Chaucer composed then a quantity ofamorous poems, in the French style, for himself, for others, to whileaway the time, to allay his sorrows. Of them said Gower: The lande fulfylled is over all. Most of them are lost; but we know, from contemporaneous allusions, thatthey swarmed, and from himself that he wrote "many an ympne" to the Godof love, "balades, roundels, virelayes, " bokes, songes, dytees, In ryme, or elles in cadence, each and all "in reverence of Love. "[465] A few poems, however, of thatearly period, have reached us. They are, amongst others, his "Compleynteunto Pite"-- Pite, that I have sought so yore ago With herte sore, and ful of besy peyne . . . --a rough sketch of a subject that Sidney was to take up later and bringto perfection, and his "Book of the Duchesse, " composed on the occasionof the death of Blanche of Lancaster, wife of John of Gaunt. The occasion is sad, but the setting is exquisite, for Chaucer wishes toraise to the Duchess who has disappeared a lasting monument, that shallprolong her memory, an elegant one, graceful as herself, where herportrait, traced by a friendly hand, shall recall the charms of a beautythat each morning renewed. So lovable was she, and so full ofaccomplishment, That she was lyk to torche bright, That every man may take of light Ynogh, and hit hath never the lesse. [466] Already the descriptions have a freshness that no contemporaries equal, and show a care for truth and a gift of observation not often found inthe innumerable poems in dream-form left to us by the writers of thefourteenth century. Tormented by his thoughts and deprived of sleep, the poet has a bookbrought to him to while away the hours of night, one of those books thathe loved all his life, where "clerkes hadde in olde tyme" rhymed storiesof long ago. The tale, "a wonder thing" though it was, puts him tosleep, and it seems to him that it is morning. The sun rises in a puresky; the birds sing on the tiled roof, the light floods the room, whichis all painted according to the taste of the Plantagenets. On the wallsis represented "al the Romaunce of the Rose"; the window-glass offers toview the history of Troy; coloured rays fall on the bed; outside, the welken was so fair, Blew, bright, clere was the air . . . Ne in al the welken was a cloude. A hunt goes by, 'tis the hunt of the Emperor Octavian; the young manmounts and rides after it under those great trees, "so huge ofstrengthe, so ful of leves, " beloved of the English, amid meadows thickstudded with flowers, As thogh the erthe envye wolde To be gayer than the heven. A little dog draws near; his movements are observed and noted with anaccuracy that the Landseers of to-day could scarcely excel. The dogwould like to be well received, and afraid of being beaten, he creeps upand darts suddenly away: Hit com and creep to me as lowe, Right as hit hadde me y-knowe, Hild doun his heed and joyned his eres, And leyde al smothe down his heres. I wolde han caught hit, and anoon Hit fledde and was fro me goon. In a glade apart was a knight clothed in black, John of Lancaster. Chaucer does not endeavour to console him; he knows the only assuagementfor such sorrows, and leads him on to speak of the dead. John recallsher grace and gentleness, and praises qualities which carry us back to atime very far from our own. She was not one of those women who, to trytheir lovers, send them to Wallachia, Prussia, Tartary, Egypt, orTurkey: She ne used no suche knakkes smale. [467] From these "knakkes smale" we may judge what the others must have been. They discourse thus a long while; the clock strikes noon, and the poetawakes, his head on the book which had put him to sleep. II. In the summer of 1370 Chaucer left London and repaired to the Continentfor the service of the king; this was the first of his diplomaticmissions, which succeeded each other rapidly during the ensuing tenyears. The period of the Middle Ages was not a period of _nuances_; that_nuance_ which distinguishes an ambassador from a messenger was held asinsignificant, and escaped observation; the two functions formed butone. "You, " said Eustache Des Champs, "you, ambassador and messenger, who go about the world to do your duty at the Courts of great princes, your journeys are not short ones!. . . Don't be in such a hurry; your pleamust be submitted to council before an answer can be returned: just waita little more, my good friend; . . . We must talk of the matter with thechancellor and some others. . . . Time passes and all turns outwrong. "[468] Precedents are a great thing in diplomacy; here we find atime-honoured one. Recourse was often had to men of letters, for these mixed functions, andthey were filled by the most illustrious writers of the century, Boccaccio in Italy, Chaucer in England, Des Champs in France. Thelatter, whose career much resembles Chaucer's, has traced the mostlamentable pictures of the life led by an "ambassador and messenger" onthe highways of Europe: Bohemia, Poland, Hungary; in these regions theking's service caused him to journey. His horse is half dead, and "sitson his knees"[469]; the inhabitants have the incivility to speak onlytheir own language, so that one cannot even order one's dinner; you mustneeds take what is served: "'Tis ill eating to another's appetite. "[470] The lodging is worse: "No one may lie by himself, but two by two in adark room, or oftener three by three, in one bed, haphazard. " One maywell regret sweet France, "where each one has for his money what hechooses to ask for, and at reasonable price: room to himself, fire, sleep, repose, bed, white pillow, and scented sheets. "[471] Happily for Chaucer, it was in Flanders, France, and Italy that henegotiated for Edward and Richard. In December, 1372, he traverses allFrance, and goes to Genoa to treat with the doge of commercial matters;then he repairs to Florence, and having thus passed a whole winter farfrom the London fogs (which already existed in the Middle Ages), hereturns to England in the summer of 1373. In 1376 a new mission isentrusted to him, this time a secret one, the secret has been well keptto this day; more missions in 1377 and 1378. "On Trinity Sunday, " 1376, says Froissart, "passed away from this world the flower of England'schivalry, my lord Edward of England, Prince of Wales and Aquitaine, inthe palace of Westminster by London, and was embalmed and put into aleaden chest. " After the obsequies, "the king of England made hischildren recognise . . . The young _damoisel_ Richard to be king after hisdeath. " He sends delegates to Bruges to treat of the marriage of hisheir, aged ten, with "Madame Marie, daughter of the king of France"; inFebruary other ambassadors are appointed on both sides: "Towards Lent, asecret treaty was made between the two kings for their party to be atMontreuil-on-sea. Thus were sent to Calais, by the English, MessireGuichard d'Angle, Richard Stury, and Geoffrey Chaucer. "[472] Thenegotiation failed, but the poet's services seem nevertheless to havebeen appreciated, for in the following year he is again on the highways. He negotiates in France, in company with the same Sir Guichard, nowbecome earl of Huntingdon; and again in Italy, where he has to treatwith his compatriot Hawkwood, [473] who led, in the most agreeablemanner possible, the life of a condottiere for the benefit of the Pope, and of any republic that paid him well. These journeys to Italy had a considerable influence on Chaucer's mind. Already in that privileged land the Renaissance was beginning. Italyhad, in that century, three of her greatest poets: the one whom Virgilhad conducted to the abode of "the doomed race" was dead; but the othertwo, Petrarch and Boccaccio, still lived, secluded, in the abode whichwas to be their last on earth, one at Arqua, near Padua, the other inthe little fortified village of Certaldo, near Florence. In art, it is the century of Giotto, Orcagna, and Andrew of Pisa. Chaucer saw, all fresh still in their glowing colours, frescoes thattime has long faded. Those old things were then young, and what seems tous the first steps of an art, uncertain yet in its tread, seemed tocontemporaries the supreme effort of the audacious, who represented thenew times. Chaucer's own testimony is proof to us that he saw, heard, and learnt asmuch as possible; that he went as far as he could, letting himself beguided by "adventure, that is the moder of tydinges. " He arrived withoutany preconceived ideas, curious to know what occupied men's minds, asattentive as on the threshold of his "Hous of Fame": For certeynly, he that me made To comen hider, seyde me, I shulde bothe here et see, In this place wonder thinges . . . For yit peraventure, I may lere Some good ther-on, or sumwhat here, That leef me were, or that I wente. [474] He was thus able to see with his own eyes the admirable activity, owingto which rose throughout Italy monuments wherein all kinds ofcontradictory aspirations mingled, and which are nevertheless soharmonious in their _ensemble_, monuments of which Giotto's campanile isthe type, wherein we still recognise the Middle Ages, even while weforesee the Renaissance--with Gothic windows and a general aspect whichis classic, where the sentiment of realism and everyday life is combinedwith veneration for antique art, where Apelles is represented painting atriptych of Gothic shape. Pisa had already, at that day, its leaningtower, its cathedral, its baptistery, the exterior ornamentation ofwhich had just been changed, its Campo Santo, the paintings of whichwere not finished, and were not yet attributed to Orcagna. Along thewalls of the cemetery he could examine that first collection of antiqueswhich inspired the Tuscan artists, the sarcophagus, with the story ofPhædra and Hippolytus, which Nicholas of Pisa took for his model. Hecould see at Pistoja the pulpit carved by William of Pisa, with themagnificent nude torso of a woman, imitated from the antique. AtFlorence the Palazzo Vecchio, which was not yet called thus, wasfinished; so were the Bargello, Santa-Croce, Santa-Maria-Novella. Or-San-Michele was being built; the Loggia of the Lansquenets wasscarcely begun; the baptistery had as yet only one of its famous doorsof bronze; the cathedral disappeared under scaffoldings; the workmenwere busy with the nave and the apse. Giotto's campanile had beenfinished by his pupil Gaddi, the Ponte Vecchio, which did not deservethat name any better than the palace, had been rebuilt by the sameGaddi, and along the causeway which continued it, through clusters ofcypress and olive trees, the road led up to San Miniato, all resplendentwith its marbles, its mosaics, and its paintings. On other ranges ofhills, amid more cypress and more olive trees, by the side of Romanruins, arose the church of Fiesole, and half-way to Florence waved inthe sunlight the thick foliage overshadowing the villa which, during thegreat plague had sheltered the young men and the ladies of the"Decameron. " The movement was a general one. Each town strove to emulate itsneighbour, not only on the battlefields, which were a very frequenttrysting-place, but in artistic progress; paintings, mosaics, carvings, shone in all the palaces and churches of every city; the activity wasextreme. Giotto, who had his studio, his "botega, " in Florence, workedalso at Assisi, Rome, and Padua. Sienna was covering the walls of herpublic palace with frescoes, some figures of which resemble thepaintings at Pompeii. [475] An antique statue found within her territorywas provoking universal admiration, and was erected on the Gaïa fountainby the municipality; but the Middle Ages did not lose their rights, and, the republic having suffered reverses, the statue fell into disgrace. The god became nothing more than an idol; the marble was shattered andcarried off, to be treacherously interred in the territory ofFlorence. [476] The taste for collections was spreading; the commerce of antiquitiesflourished in Northern Italy. Petrarch bought medals, and numbered amonghis artistic treasures a Madonna of Giotto, "whose beauty, " he says inhis will, "escaped the ignorant and enraptured the masters of theart. "[477] This brightening of the land was the result of concurringwills, nor did it pass unobserved even then; towns enjoyed theirmasterpieces, and, like young women, "se miraient en leur beauté. "Contemporaries did not leave to posterity the care of crowning thegreat poets of the time. Italy, the mother of art, wished the laurel toencircle the brow of the living, not to be simply the ornament of atomb. Rome had crowned, in 1341, him who, "cleansing the fount ofHelicon from slime and marshy rushes, had restored to the water itspristine limpidity, who had opened Castalia's grotto, obstructed by anetwork of wild boughs, and destroyed the briers in the laurel grove":the illustrious Francis Petrarch. [478] Though somewhat tardy, the honourwas no less great for Dante: public lectures on the "Divine Comedy" wereinstituted in Florence, and the lecturer was Boccaccio. [479] It was impossible that a mind, from infancy friendly to art and books, should not be struck by this general expansion; the charm of thisliterary springtime was too penetrating for Chaucer not to feel it; hefollowed a movement so conformable to his tastes, and we have a proof ofit. Before his journeys he was ignorant of Italian literature; now heknows Italian, and has read the great classic authors of the Tuscanland: Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Dante. The remembrance of their workshaunts him; the "Roman de la Rose" ceases to be his main literary ideal. He was acquainted with the old classics before his missions; but thetone in which he speaks of them now has changed; to-day it is a tone ofveneration; one should kiss their "steppes. " He expresses himself aboutthem as Petrarch did; it seems, so great is the resemblance, as if wefound in his verses an echo of the conversations they very likely hadtogether by Padua in 1373. [480] In the intervals between his missions Chaucer would return to London, where administrative functions had been entrusted to him. For twelveyears, dating from 1374, he was comptroller of the customs, and duringthe ten first years he was obliged, according to his oath, to write theaccounts and to draw up the rolls of the receipts with his own hand: "Yeshall swere that . . . Ye shall write the rolles by your owne handedemesned. "[481] To have an idea of the work this implies, one shouldsee, at the Record Office, the immense sheets of parchment fastenedtogether, one after the other, which constitute these rolls. [482] Afterhaving himself been present at the weighing and verifying of themerchandise, Chaucer entered the name of the owner, the quality andquantity of the produce taxed, and the amount to be collected: endless"rekeninges!" Defrauders were fined; one, John Kent, of London, havingtried to smuggle some wools to Dordrecht, the poet, poet though he was, discovered the offence; the wools were confiscated and sold, and Chaucerreceived seventy-one pounds four shillings and sixpence on the amount ofthe fine John Kent had to pay. Chaucer lived now in one of the towers under which opened the gates ofLondon. The municipality had granted him lodgings in the Aldgatetower[483]; his friend the philosopher and logician, Ralph Strode, livedin the same way in rooms above "Aldrichgate"[484]; both were to quit theplace at any moment if the defence of the town rendered it necessary. Chaucer lived there twelve years, from 1374 to 1386. There, his labourended, he would come home and begin his _other life_, his poet's life, reading, thinking, remembering. Then all he had known in Italy wouldreturn to his memory, campaniles, azure frescoes, olive groves, sonnetsof Petrarch, poems of Dante, tales of Boccaccio; he had brought backwherewithal to move and to enliven "merry England" herself. Once more inhis tower, whither he returned without speaking to any one, "domb, " hesays, "as any stoon, " the everyday world was done with; his neighbourswere to him as though they had lived at the ends of earth[485]; his realneighbours were Dante and Virgil. He wrote during this period, and chiefly in his tower of Aldgate, the"Lyf of Seinte Cecile, " 1373; the "Compleynt of Mars, " 1380; atranslation of Boethius in prose; the "Parlement of Foules;" "Troilusand Criseyde, " 1382; the "Hous of Fame, " 1383-4; the "Legend of GoodWomen, " 1385. [486] In all these works the ideal is principally anItalian and Latin one; but, at the same time, we see some beginning ofthe Chaucer of the last period, who, having moved round the world ofletters, will cease to look abroad, and, after the manner of his ownnation, dropping in a large measure foreign elements, will show himselfabove all and mainly an Englishman. At this time, however, he is as yet under the charm of Southern art andof ancient models; he does not weary of invoking and depicting the godsof Olympus. Nudity, which the image-makers of cathedrals had inflictedas a chastisement on the damned, scandalises him no more than it did thepainters of Italy. He sees Venus, "untressed, " reclining on her couch, "a bed of golde, " clothed in transparent draperies, Right with a subtil kerchef of Valence, Ther was no thikker cloth of no defence; or with less draperies still: I saw Beautee withouten any atyr[487]; or again: Naked fleting in a see; her brows circled with a "rose-garlond white and reed. "[488] He callsher to his aid: Now faire blisful, O Cipris, So be my favour at this tyme! And ye, me to endyte and ryme Helpeth, that on Parnaso dwelle By Elicon the clere welle. [489] His "Compleynt of Anelida" is dedicated to Thou ferse god of armes, Mars the rede, and to Polymnia: Be favourable eek, thou Polymnia, On Parnaso that, with thy sustres glade, By Elicon, not fer from Cirrea, Singest with vois memorial in the shade, Under the laurer which that may not fade. [490] Old books of antiquity possess for him, as they did for the learned menof the Renaissance, or for Petrarch, who cherished a manuscript of Homerwithout being able to decipher it, a character almost divine: For out of olde feldes, as men seith, Cometh al this newe corn fro yeer to yere; And out of olde bokes, in good feith, Cometh al this newe science that men lere. [491] Poggio or Poliziano could not have spoken in more feeling words. Glory and honour, Virgil Mantuan, Be to thy name![492] exclaims he elsewhere. "Go, my book, " he says to his "Troilus andCriseyde, " And kis the steppes, wher-as thou seest pace Virgile, Ovyde, Omer, Lucan, Stace. [493] Withal strange discrepancies occur: none can escape entirely theinfluence of his own time. With Chaucer the goddess of love is also asaint, "Seint Venus"; her temple is likewise a church: "This nobletemple . . . This chirche. " Before penetrating into its precincts, thepoet appeals to Christ: "O Crist, " thought I, "that art in blisse, Fro fantom and illusioun Me save!" and with devocioun Myn yen to the heven I caste. [494] This medley was inevitable; to do better would have been to excel theItalians, and Dante himself, who places the Erinnyes within the circlesof his Christian hell, or Giotto, who made Apelles paint a triptych. As for the Italians, Chaucer borrows from them, sometimes a line, anidea, a comparison, sometimes long passages very closely translated, oragain the plot or the general inspiration of his tales. In the "Lyf ofSeinte Cecile" a passage (lines 36-51) is borrowed from Dante's"Paradiso. " The same poet is quoted in the "Parlement of Foules, " wherewe find a paraphrase of the famous "Per me si va"[495]; another passageis imitated from the "Teseide" of Boccaccio; "Anelida and Arcite"contains several stanzas taken from the same original; "Troilus andCriseyde" is an adaptation of Boccaccio's "Filostrato"; Chaucerintroduces into it a sonnet of Petrarch[496]; the idea of the "Legend ofGood Women" is borrowed from the "De claris Mulieribus" of Boccaccio. Dante's journeys to the spirit-world served as models for the "Hous ofFame, " where the English poet is borne off by an eagle of golden hue. In it Dante is mentioned together with the classic authors of antiquity. Read: On Virgil, or on Claudian, Or Daunte. [497] The eagle is not an invention of Chaucer's; it had already appeared inthe "Purgatorio. "[498] Notwithstanding the quantity of reminiscences of ancient or Italianauthors that recur at every page; notwithstanding the story of Æneasrelated wholly from Virgil, the first lines being translated word forword[499]; notwithstanding incessant allusions and quotations, the "Housof Fame"[500] is one of the first poems in which Chaucer shows forthclearly his own personality. Already we see manifested that gift forfamiliar dialogue which is carried so far in "Troilus and Criseyde, " andalready appears that sound and kindly judgment with which the poet willview the things of life in his "Canterbury Tales. " Evil does not preventhis seeing good; the sadness he has known does not make him rebelagainst fate; he has suffered and forgiven; joys dwell in his memoryrather than sorrows; despite his moments of melancholy, his turn of mindmakes him an optimist at heart, an optimist like La Fontaine andAddison, whose names often recur to the memory in reading Chaucer. Hisphilosophy resembles the "bon-homme" La Fontaine's; and several passagesin the "Hous of Fame" are like some of Addison's essays. [501] He is modern, too, in the part he allots to his own self, a self which, far from being odious ("le moi est haïssable, " Pascal said), is, on thecontrary, charming; he relates the long vigils in his tower, where hespends his nights in writing, or at other times seated before a book, which he reads until his eyes are dim in his "hermyte's" solitude. The eagle, come from heaven to be his guide, bears him off where hisfancy had already flown, above the clouds, beyond the spheres, to thetemple of Fame, built upon an ice mountain. Illustrious names graven inthe sparkling rock melt in the sun, and are already almost illegible. The temple itself is built in the Gothic style of the period, allbristling with "niches, pinnacles, and statues, " and . . . Ful eek of windowes As flakes falle in grete snowes. [502] There are those rustling crowds in which Chaucer loved to mix at times, whose murmurs soothed his thoughts, musicians, harpists, jugglers, minstrels, tellers of tales full "of weping and of game, " magicians, sorcerers and prophets, curious specimens of humanity. Within thetemple, the statues of his literary gods, who sang of the Trojan war:Homer, Dares, and also the Englishman Geoffrey of Monmouth, "EnglishGaufride, " and with them, Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, Claudian, and Statius. Atthe command of Fame, the names of the heroes are borne by the wind tothe four corners of the world; a burst of music celebrates the deeds ofthe warriors: For in fight and blood-shedinge Is used gladly clarioninge. [503] Various companies flock to obtain glory; the poet does not forget thegroup, already formed in his day, of the braggarts who boast of theirvices: We ben shrewes, every wight, And han delyt in wikkednes, As gode folk han in goodnes; And joye to be knowen shrewes . . . Wherfor we preyen yow, a-rowe, That our fame swich be-knowe In alle thing right as it is. [504] As pressing as any, they urgently claim a bad reputation, a favour whichthe goddess graciously grants them. Elsewhere we are transported into the house of news, noisy and surgingas the public square of an Italian city on a day when "something" hashappened. People throng, and crush, and trample each other to see, although there is nothing to see: Chaucer describes from nature. Thereare assembled numbers of messengers, travellers, pilgrims, sailors, eachbearing his bag, full of news, full of lies: "Nost not thou That is betid, lo, late or now?" --"No, " quod the other, "tel me what. " And than he tolde him this and that, And swoor ther-to that hit was sooth-- "Thus hath he seyd"--and "thus he dooth"-- "Thus shal hit be"--"Thus herde I seye"-- "That shal be found"--"That dar I leye. "[505] Truth and falsehood, closely united, form an inseparable body, and flyaway together. The least little nothing, whispered in secret in afriend's ear, grows and grows, as in La Fontaine's fable: As fyr is wont to quikke and go, From a sparke spronge amis, Til al a citee brent up is. [506] III. Heretofore Chaucer has composed poems of brightest hue, chiefly devotedto love, "balades, roundels, virelayes, " imitations of the "Roman de laRose, " poems inspired by antiquity, as it appeared through the prism ofthe Middle Ages. His writings are superior to those of his English orFrench contemporaries, but they are of like kind; he has fine passages, charming ideas, but no well-ordered work; his colours are fresh butcrude, like the colours of illuminations, blazons, or oriflammes; hisnights are of sable, and his meadows seem of sinople, his flowers are"whyte, blewe, yelowe, and rede. "[507] In "Troilus and Criseyde" wefind another Chaucer, far more complete and powerful; he surpasses noweven the Italians whom he had taken for his models, and writes the firstgreat poem of renewed English literature. The fortunes of Troilus had grown little by little in the course ofcenturies. Homer merely mentions his name; Virgil devotes three lines tohim; Dares, who has seen everything, draws his portrait; Benoit deSainte-More is the earliest to ascribe to him a love first happy, thentragic; Gui de Colonna intermingles sententious remarks with thenarrative; Boccaccio develops the story, adds characters, and makes ofit a romance, an elegant tale in which young Italian noblemen, equallyhandsome, youthful, amorous, and unscrupulous, win ladies' hearts, losethem, and discourse subtly about their desires and their mishaps. [508] Chaucer appropriates the plot, [509] transforms the personages, altersthe tone of the narrative, breaks the monotony of it, introducesdifferences of age and disposition, and moulds in his own way thematerial that he borrows, like a man now sure of himself, who dares tojudge and to criticise; who thinks it possible to improve upon a romanceeven of Boccaccio's. The literary progress marked by this work isastonishing, not more so, however, than the progress accomplished inthe same time by the nation. With the Parliament of Westminster as withChaucer's poetry, the real definitive England is beginning. In Chaucer, indeed, as in the new race, the mingling of the origins hasbecome intimate and indissoluble. In "Troilus and Criseyde" the Celt'sready wit, gift of repartee, and sense of the dramatic; the care for theform and ordering of a narrative, dear to the Latin races; the Norman'sfaculty of observation, are allied to the emotion and tenderness of theSaxon. This fusion had been brought about slowly, when however the timecame, its realisation was complete all at once, almost sudden. Yesterdayauthors of English tongue could only lisp; to-day, no longer content totalk, they sing. In its semi-epic form, the poem of "Troilus and Criseyde" is connectedwith the art of the novel and the art of the drama, to the developmentof which England was to contribute so highly. It is already the Englishnovel and drama where the tragic and the comic are blended; where theheroic and the trivial go side by side, as in real life; where Juliet'snurse interrupts the lovers leaning over the balcony of the Capulets, where princesses have no confidants, diminished reproductions of theirown selves, invented to give them their cue; where sentiments areexamined closely, with an attentive mind, friendly to experimentalpsychology; and where, nevertheless, far from holding always to subtiledissertations, all that is material fact is clearly exposed to view, ina good light, and not merely talked about. The vital parts of the dramaare all exhibited before our eyes and not concealed behind the scenes;heroes are not all spirit, neither are they mere images; we are as farfrom the crude illuminations of degenerate minstrels as from LaCalprenède's heroic romances; the characters have muscles, bones andsinews, and at the same time, hearts and souls; they are real men. Thedate of "Troilus and Criseyde" is a great date in English literature. The book, like Froissart's collection of poems, treats "of love. " Itrelates how Criseyde, or Cressida, the daughter of Calchas, left in Troywhile her father returned to the Greek camp, loves the handsome knightTroilus, son of Priam. Given back to the Greeks, she forgets Troilus, who is slain. How came this young woman, as virtuous as she was beautiful, to lovethis youth, whom at the opening of the story she did not even know? Whatexternal circumstances brought them together, and what workings of theheart made them pass from indifference to doubts and anxieties, and thento love? These two orders of thought are untwined simultaneously, onparallel lines by Chaucer, that dreamer who had lived so much in reallife, that man of action who had dreamed so many dreams. Troilus despised love, and mocked at lovers: If knight or squyer of his companye Gan for to syke, or lete his eyen bayten On any woman that he coude aspye; He wolde smyle, and holden it folye, And seye him thus, "God wot she slepeth softe For love of thee, whan thou tornest ful ofte. "[510] One day, in the temple, he sees Cressida, and his fate is sealed; hecannot remove his gaze from her; the wind of love has swept by; all hisstrength has vanished; his pride has fallen as the petals fall from arose; he drinks deep draughts of an invincible poison. Far from her, hisimagination completes what reality had begun: seated on the foot of hisbed, absorbed in thought, he once more sees Cressida, and sees her sobeautiful, depicted in outlines so vivid, and colours so glowing, thatthis divine image fashioned in his own brain is henceforth the only onehe will behold; forever will he have before his eyes that celestial formof superhuman beauty, never more the real earthly Cressida, the fraildaughter of Calchas. Troilus is ill for life of the love illness. He has a friend, older than himself, sceptical, trivial, experienced, "that called was Pandare, " Cressida's uncle. He confides to him hiswoes, and asks for help. Pandarus, in Boccaccio, is a young nobleman, sceptical too, but frivolous, disdainful, elegant, like a personage ofMusset. Chaucer transforms the whole drama and makes room for thegrosser realities of life, by altering the character of Pandarus. Hemakes of him a man of mature years devoid of scruples, talkative, shameless, wily, whose wisdom consists in proverbs chosen among theeasiest to follow, much more closely connected with Molière's orShakespeare's comic heroes than with Musset's lovers. Pandarus is asfond of comparisons as Gros-René, as fond of old saws as Polonius; he iscoarse and indecent, unintentionally and by nature, like Juliet'snurse. [511] He is totally unconscious, and thinks himself the bestfriend in the world, and the most reserved; he concludes interminablespeeches by: I jape nought, as ever have I joye. Every one of his thoughts, of his words, of his attitudes is the veryopposite of Cressida's and her lover's, and makes them stand out inrelief by a contrast of shade. He is all for tangible and presentrealities, and does not believe in ever foregoing an immediate andcertain pleasure in consideration of merely possible consequences. With this disposition, and in this frame of mind, he approaches hisniece to speak to her of love. The scene, which is entirely of Chaucer'sinvention, is a true comedy scene; the gestures and attitudes areminutely noted. Cressida looks down; Pandarus coughs. The dialogue is sorapid and sharp that one might think this part written for a play, notfor a tale in verse. The uncle arrives; the niece, seated with a book onher knees, was reading a romance. Ah! you were reading! What book was it? "What seith it? Tel it us. Is itof Love?" It was of Thebes; "this romaunce is of Thebes;" she hadsecured as it seems a very early copy. She excuses herself for indulgingin so frivolous a pastime; she would perhaps do better to read "on holyseyntes lyves. " Chaucer, mindful above all of the analysis of passions, does not trouble himself about anachronisms; he cares nothing to know ifthe besieged Trojans could really have drawn examples of virtue from theLives of the Saints; history matters little to him: let those who takean interest in it look "in Omer or in Dares. "[512] The motions of thehuman heart, that is his real subject, not the march of armies; from themoment of its birth, the English novel is psychological. With a thousand precautions, and although still keeping to the vulgarityof his rôle, Pandarus manages so as to bring to a sufficiently seriousmood the laughter-loving Cressida; he contrives that she shall praiseTroilus herself, incidentally, before he has even named him. With hisfrivolities he mingles serious things, wise and practical advice like agood uncle, the better to inspire confidence; then he rises to departwithout having yet said what brought him. Cressida's interest is excitedat once, the more so that reticence is not habitual to Pandarus; hercuriosity, irritated from line to line, becomes anxiety, almost anguish, for though Cressida be of the fourteenth century, and the first of along line of heroines of romance, with her appears already the nervouswoman. She starts at the least thing, she is the most impressionable ofbeings, "the ferfullest wight that might be"; even the state of theatmosphere affects her. What is then the matter? Oh! only this: . . . The kinges dere sone, The goode, wyse, worthy, fresshe, and free, Which alwey for to do wel is his wone, The noble Troilus, so loveth thee, That, bot ye helpe, it wol his bane be. Lo, here is al, what sholde I more seye? Do what yow list. [513] The conversation continues, more and more crafty on the part ofPandarus; his friend asks for so little: look less unkindly upon him, and it will be enough. But here appears Chaucer's art in all its subtilty. The wiles ofPandarus, carried as far as his character will allow, might havesufficed to make a Cressida of romance yield; but it would have been tooeasy play for the master already sure of his powers. He makes Pandarussay a word too much; Cressida unmasks him on the spot, obliges him toacknowledge that in asking less he desired more for his friend, and nowshe is blushing and indignant. Chaucer does not want her to yield todisquisitions and descriptions; all the cleverness of Pandarus is thereonly to make us better appreciate the slow inward working that is goingon in Cressida's heart; her uncle will have sufficed to stir her; thatis all, and, truth to say, that is something. She feels for Troilus noclearly defined sentiment, but her curiosity is aroused. And just then, while the conversation is still going on, loud shouts are heard, thecrowd rushes, balconies are filled, strains of music burst forth; 'tisthe return, after a victorious sally, of one of the heroes who defendTroy. This hero is Troilus, and in the midst of this triumphal scene, the pretty, frail, laughing, tender-hearted Cressida beholds for thefirst time her royal lover. In her turn she dreams, she meditates, she argues. She is not yet, likeTroilus, love's prisoner; Chaucer does not proceed so fast. She keepsher vision lucid; her imagination and her senses have not yet done theirwork and reared before her that glittering phantom, ever present, whichconceals reality from lovers. She is still mistress of herself enough todiscern motives and objections; she discusses and reviews elevatedreasons, low reasons, and even some of those practical reasons whichwill be instantly dismissed, but not without having produced theireffect. Let us not make an enemy of this king's son. Besides, can Iprevent his loving me? His love has nothing unflattering; is he not thefirst knight of Troy after Hector? What is there astonishing in hispassion for me? If he loves me, shall I be the only one to be loved inTroy? Scarcely, for Men loven wommen al this toun aboute. Be they the wers? Why, nay, withouten doute. Am I not pretty? "I am oon of the fayrest" in all "the toun of Troye, "though I should not like people to know that I know it: Al wolde I that noon wiste of this thought. After all I am free; "I am myn owene woman"; no husband to say to me"chekmat!" And "_par dieux!_ I am nought religious!" I am not a nun. But right as whan the sonne shyneth brighte In March that chaungeth ofte tyme his face And that a cloud is put with wind to flighte Which over-sprat the sonne as for a space, A cloudy thought gan thorugh hir soule pace, That over-spradde hir brighte thoughtes alle. [514] Now she unfolds contradictory arguments supported by considerationsequally decisive; she is suffering from that _diboulia_ (alternate will)familiar to lovers who are not yet thoroughly in love. There are twoCressidas in her; the dialogue begun with Pandarus is continued in herheart; the scene of comedy is renewed there in a graver key. Her decision is not taken; when will it be? At what precise moment doeslove begin? One scarcely knows; when it has come one fixes the date inthe past by hypothesis. We say: it was that day, but when that day wasthe present day, we said nothing, and knew nothing; a sort of "perhaps"filled the soul, delightful, but still only a perhaps. Cressida is inthat obscure period, and the workings within her are shown by theimpression which the incidents of daily life produce upon her mind. Itseems to her that everything speaks of love, and that fate is in leagueagainst her with Pandarus and Troilus: it is but an appearance, theeffect of her own imagination, and produced by her state of mind; inreality it happens simply that now the little incidents of life impressher more when they relate to love; the others pass so unperceived thatlove alone has a place. She might have felt anxious about herself if shehad discerned this difference between then and now; but the blindnesshas commenced, she does not observe that the things appertaining to lovefind easy access to her heart, and that, where one enters so easily, itis usually that the door is open. She paces in her melancholy mood thegardens of the palace; while she wanders through the shady walks, ayoung girl sings a song of passion, the words of which stir Cressida toher very soul. Night falls, And whyte thinges wexen dimme and donne; the stars begin to light the heavens; Cressida returns pensive; themurmurs of the city die out. Leaning at her window, facing the bluehorizon of Troas, with the trees of the garden at her feet, and bathedin the pale glimmers of the night, Cressida dreams, and as she dreams amelody disturbs the silence: hidden in the foliage of a cedar, anightingale is heard; they too, the birds, celebrate love. And whensleep comes, of what will she think in her dreams if not of love? She is moved, but not vanquished; it will take yet many incidents; theywill all be small, trivial, insignificant, and will appear to hersolemn, superhuman, ordered by the gods. She may recover, at times, before Pandarus, her presence of mind, her childlike laugh, and bafflehis wiles: for the double-story continues. Cressida is still able tounravel the best-laid schemes of Pandarus, but she is less and less ableto unravel the tangled web of her own sentiments. The meshes drawcloser; now she promises a sisterly friendship: even that had beenalready invented in the fourteenth century. She can no longer seeTroilus without blushing; he passes and bows: how handsome he is! . . . She hath now caught a thorn; She shal not pulle it out this next wyke. God sende mo swich thornes on to pyke![515] The passion and merits of Troilus, the inventions ofPandarus, the secret good-will of Cressida, a thunderstorm which breaksout opportunely (we know how impressionable Cressida is), lead to theresult which might be expected: the two lovers are face to face. Troilus, like a sensitive hero, swoons: for he is extremely sensitive;when the town acclaims him, he blushes and looks down; when he thinkshis beloved indifferent he takes to his bed from grief, and remainsthere all day; in the presence of Cressida, he loses consciousness. Pandarus revives him, and is not slow to perceive that he is no longerwanted: For ought I can espyen This light nor I ne serven here of nought. And he goes, adding, however, one more recommendation: If ye ben wyse, Swowneth not now, lest more folk aryse. [516] What says Cressida?--What may "the sely larke seye" when "the sparhauk"has caught it? Cressida, however, says something, and, of all theinnumerable forms of avowal, chooses not the least sweet: Ne hadde I er now, my swete herte dere Ben yolde, y-wis, I were now not here![517] Were they happy? But juggeth, ye that han ben at the feste Of swich gladnesse. [518] The gray morn appears in the heavens; the shriek of "the cok, comuneastrologer, " is heard; the lovers sing their song of dawn. [519] All thevirtues of Troilus are increased and intensified by happiness; it isthe eternal thesis of poets who are in love with love. The days and weeks go by: each one of our characters pursues his part. Pandarus is very proud of his; what could one reproach him with? He doesunto others as he would be done by; he is disinterested; he has moreovercertain principles of honour, that limit themselves, it is true, torecommending secrecy, which he does not fail to do. Can a reasonablewoman expect more? Calchas and the Greeks claim Cressida, and the Trojans decide to giveher up. The unhappy young woman faints, but must needs submit. In anexcellent scene of comedy, Chaucer shows her receiving thecongratulations of the good souls of the town: so she is going to seeonce more her worthy father, how happy she must be! The good soulsinsist very much, and pay interminable visits. [520] She goes, swearing to return, come what may, within ten days. Thehandsome Diomedes escorts her; and the event proves, what experiencealone could teach, and what she was herself far from suspecting, thatshe loved Troilus, no doubt, above all men, but likewise, and apart fromhim, love. She is used to the poison, and can no longer do without it;she prefers Troilus, but to return to him is not so easy as she hadthought, and to love or not to love is now for her a question of beingor being not. Troilus, who from the start had most awful presentiments, feeling that, happen what may, his happiness is over, though yet notdoubting Cressida, writes the most pressing letters, and signs them inFrench, "le vostre T. " Cressida replies by little short letters (thatshe signs "la vostre C. "), in which she excuses herself for her brevity. The length of a letter means nothing; besides she never liked to write, and where she is now it is not convenient to do it; let Troilus resteasy, he can count upon her friendship, she will surely return; true, it will not be in ten days; it will be when she can. [521] Troilus is told of his misfortune, but he will never believe it: "Thou seyst nat sooth, " quod he, "thou sorceresse!" A brooch torn from Diomedes which he had given her on the day ofparting, In remembraunce of him and of his sorwe, allows him to doubt no more, and he gets killed by Achilles after afurious struggle. As we have drawn nearer to the catastrophe, the tone of the poem hasbecome more melancholy and more tender. The narrator cannot help lovinghis two heroes, even the faithless Cressida; he remains at leastmerciful for her, and out of mercy, instead of letting us behold hernear as formerly, in the alleys or on her balcony, dreaming in thestarlight, he shows her only from afar, lost among the crowd in whichshe has chosen to mix, the crowd in every sense, the crowd of mankindand the crowd of sentiments, all commonplace. Let us, he thinks, remember only the former Cressida. He ends with reflections which are resigned, almost sad, and hecontemplates with a tranquil look the juvenile passions he has justdepicted. Troilus, resigned too, beholds, from heaven, the field underthe walls of Troy, where he was slain, and smiles at the remembrance ofhis miseries; and Chaucer, transforming Boccaccio's conclusion like allthe rest, addresses a touching appeal, and wise, even religious advice, to you, O yonge fresshe folkes, he or she, In which that love up groweth with your age. [522] This return to seriousness is quite as noteworthy as the mixture ofeveryday life, added by the poet to the idea borrowed from his model. Bythese two traits, which will be seen again from century to century, inEnglish literature, Chaucer manifests his true English character; and ifwe wish to see precisely in what consists the difference between thistemperament and that of the men of the South, whom Chaucer wasnevertheless so akin to, let us compare this conclusion with that of the"Filostrato" as translated at the same time into French by Pierre deBeauveau: "You will not believe lightly those who give you ear; youngwomen are wilful and lovely, and admire their own beauty, and holdthemselves haughty and proud amidst their lovers, for vain-glory oftheir youth; who, although they be gentle and pretty more than tonguecan say, have neither sense nor firmness, but are variable as a leaf inthe wind. " Unlike Chaucer, Pierre de Beauveau contents himself with suchgraceful moralisation, [523] which will leave no very deep impression onthe mind, and which indeed could not, for it is itself as light as "aleaf in the wind. " IV. After 1379 Chaucer ceased to journey on the Continent, and until hisdeath he lived in England an English life. He saw then several aspectsof that life which he had not yet known from personal experience. Afterhaving been page, soldier, prisoner of the French, squire to the king, negotiator in Flanders, France, and Italy, he entered Westminster the1st of October, 1386, as member of Parliament; the county of Kent hadchosen for its representatives: "Willielmus Betenham" and "GalfridusChauceres. "[524] It was one of the great sessions of the reign, and oneof the most stormy; the ministers of Richard II. Were impeached, andamong others the son of the Hull wool merchant, Michel de la Pole, Chancellor of the kingdom. For having remained faithful to hisprotectors, the king and John of Gaunt, Chaucer, looked upon with illfavour by the men then in power, of whom Gloucester was the head, losthis places and fell into want. Then the wheel of Fortune revolved, andnew employments offered a new field to his activity. At the end of threeyears, Richard, having dismissed the Council which Parliament hadimposed upon him, took the authority into his own hands, and the poet, soldier, member of Parliament, and diplomate, was appointed clerk of theroyal works (1389). For two years he had to attend to the constructionsand repairs at Westminster, at the Tower, at Berkhamsted, Eltham, Sheen, at St. George's Chapel, Windsor, and in many others of those castleswhich he had described, with "pinacles, imageries, and tabernacles, "and ful eek of windowes As flakes falle in grete snowes. [525] His great literary occupation, during that time, was the composition ofhis famous "Canterbury Tales. "[526] Experience had ripened him; he hadread all there was to read, and seen all there was to see; he hadvisited the principal countries where civilisation had developed: he hadobserved his compatriots at work on their estates and in theirparliaments, in their palaces and in their shops. Merchants, sailors, knights, pages, learned men of Oxford and suburban quacks, men of thepeople and men of the Court, labourers, citizens, monks, priests, sagesand fools, heroes and knaves, had passed in crowds beneath hisscrutinising gaze; he had associated with them, divined them, andunderstood them; he was prepared to describe them all. On an April day, in the reign of Richard II. , in the noisy suburb ofSouthwark, the place for departures and arrivals, with streets borderedwith inns, encumbered with horses and carts, resounding with cries, calls, and barks, one of those mixed troops, such as the hostelries ofthat time often gathered together, seats itself at the common board, inthe hall of the "Tabard, faste by the Belle"[527]; the inns were allclose to each other. It was springtime, the season of fresh flowers, theseason of love, the season, too, of pilgrimages. Knights returned fromthe wars go to render thanks to the saints for having let them beholdagain their native land; invalids render thanks for their restoration tohealth; others go to ask Heaven's grace. Does not every one need it?Every one is there; all England. There is a knight who has warred, all Europe over, against heathens andSaracens. It was easy to meet them; they might be found in Prussia andin Spain, and our "verray parfit gentil knight" had massacred enormousnumbers of them "at mortal batailles fiftene" for "our faith. " Next tohim, a squire who had, like Chaucer, fought in France, with May in hisheart, a song upon his lips, amorous, elegant, charming, embroidered asa meadow--"as it were a mede"--with white and red flowers; a stoutmerchant, who looked so rich, was so well furred, and "fetisly" dressedthat Ther wiste no wight that he was in dette; a modest clerk, who had come from the young University of Oxford, poor, patched, threadbare, with hollow cheeks, mounted on a lean horse, andwhose little all consisted in Twenty bokes, clad in blak and reed; an honest country franklin, with "sangwyn" visage and beard white "as isthe dayesye, " a sort of fourteenth-century Squire Western, kindly, hospitable, good-humoured, holding open table, with fish and roasts and_sauce piquante_ and beer all day long, so popular in the county that, Ful ofte tyme he was knight of the shire; a shipman who knew every creek, from Scotland to Spain, and hadencountered many a storm, with his good ship "the Maudelayne, " With many a tempest hadde his berd been shake; a physician who had driven a thriving trade during the plague, learned, and acquainted with the why and the wherefore of every disease, Were it of hoot or cold, or moiste or drye; who knew by heart Hippocrates and Galen, but was on bad terms with theChurch, for His studie was but litel on the Bible. With them, a group of working men from London, a haberdasher, acarpenter, dyer, weaver, and cook; people from the country, a ploughman, a miller, His mouth as greet was as a great forneys, a group of men-at-law devoured with cares, close shaven, bitter ofspeech-- Ful longe were his legges, and ful lene, Y-lyk a staf, ther was no calf y-sene-- bringing out their Latin on every occasion, terrible as adversaries, buteasy to win over for money, and after all, as Chaucer himself says, "lesmeilleurs fils du monde": A bettre felawe sholde men noght finde. Then a group of Church-folk, men and women, of every garb and everycharacter, from the poor parish priest, who lives like a saint, obscureand hidden, visiting, in rain and cold, the scattered cottages of hispeasants, forgetting to receive his tithes, a model of abnegation, tothe hunting monk, dressed like a layman, big, fat, with a head as shinyas a ball, who will make one day the finest abbot in the world, to thedegenerate friar, who lives at the expense of others, a physician becomepoisoner, who destroys instead of healing them, and to the pardoner, arascal of low degree, who bestows heaven at random by his own "heighpower" on whoever will pay, and who manufactures precious relics out ofthe pieces of his "old breech. " Finally there are nuns, reserved, quiet, neat as ermines, who are going to hear on the way enough to scandalisethem all the rest of their lives. Among them, Madame Eglantine, theprioress, with her French of Stratford, For Frensh of Paris was to hir unknowe, who imitated the style of the Court, and, consequently, Ne wette hir fingres in hir sauce depe. She was "so pitous" that she wept to see a mouse caught, or if one ofher little dogs died. Can one be more "pitous"? All those personages there were, and many more besides. There was theWife of Bath, that incomparable gossip, screaming all the louder as shewas "som-del deef. " There was the jovial host, Harry Bailey, used togovern and command, and to drown with his brazen voice the tumult of thecommon table. There is also a person who looks thoughtful and kindly, who talks little but observes everything, and who is going toimmortalise the most insignificant words pronounced, screamed, grumbled, or murmured by his companions of a day, namely, Chaucer himself. Withits adventurers, its rich merchants, its Oxford clerks, its members ofParliament, its workmen, its labourers, its saints, its great poet, itis indeed the new England, joyous, noisy, radiant, all youthful and fullof life, that sits down, this April evening, at the board of "the Tabardfaste by the Belle. " Where are now the Anglo-Saxons? But where are thelast year's snows? April has come. The characters of romance, the statues on cathedrals, the figures inmissals, had been heretofore slender or slim, or awkward or stiff;especially those produced by the English. Owing to one or the other ofthese defects, those representations were not true to nature. Now wehave, in an English poem, a number of human beings, drawn from theoriginal, whose movements are supple, whose types are as varied as inreal life, depicted exactly as they were in their sentiments and intheir dress, so that it seems we see them, and when we part theconnection is not broken. The acquaintances made at "the Tabard faste bythe Belle" are not of those that can be forgotten; they are life-longremembrances. Nothing is omitted which can serve to fix, to anchor in our memory, thevision of these personages. A half-line, that unveils the salient traitof their characters, becomes impossible to forget; their attitudes, their gestures, their clothes, their warts, the tones of their voices, their defects of pronunciation-- Somwhat he lipsed for his wantonnesse-- their peculiarities, the host's red face and the reeve's yellow one, their elegances, their arrows with peacock feathers, their bagpipes, nothing is left out; their horses and the way they ride them aredescribed; Chaucer even peeps inside their bags and tells us what hefinds there. So the new England has its Froissart, who is going to tell feats of armsand love stories glowing with colour, and take us hither and thither, through highways and byways, giving ear to every tale, observing, noting, relating? This young country has Froissart and better thanFroissart. The pictures are as vivid and as clear, but two greatdifferences distinguish the ones from the others: humour and sympathy. Already we find humour well developed in Chaucer; his sly jestspenetrate deeper than French jests; he does not go so far as to wound, but he does more than merely prick skin-deep; and in so doing, helaughs silently to himself. There was once a merchant, That riche was, for which men helde him wys. [528] The "Sergeant of Lawe" was a busy man indeed: No wher so bisy a man as he ther nas, And yet he semed bisier than he was. Moreover, Chaucer sympathises; he has a quivering heart that tears move, and that all sufferings touch, those of the poor and those of princes. The rôle of the people, so marked in English literature, affirms itselfhere, from the first moment. "There are some persons, " says, for hisjustification, a French author, "who think it beneath them to bestow aglance on what opinion has pronounced ignoble; but those who are alittle more philosophic, who are a little less the dupes of thedistinctions that pride has introduced into the affairs of this world, will not be sorry to see the sort of man there is inside a coachman, andthe sort of woman inside a petty shopkeeper. " Thus, by a great effort ofaudacity, as it seems to him, Marivaux expresses himself in 1731. [529]Chaucer, even in the fourteenth century, is curious to see the sort ofman a cook of London may be, and the sort of woman a Wife of Bath is. How many wretches perish in Froissart! What blood; what hecatombs; andhow few tears! Scarcely here and there, and far apart, words absentlyspoken about so much suffering: "And died the common people of hunger, which was great pity. "[530] Why lament long, or marvel at it? It is thebusiness and proper function of the common people to be cut to pieces;they are the raw material of feats of arms, and as such only figure inthe narrative. They figure in Chaucer's narrative, because Chaucer _loves_ them; heloves his plowman, "a true swinker and a good, " who has strength enoughand to spare in his two arms, and helps his neighbours for nothing; hesuffers at the thought of the muddy lanes along which his poor parsonmust go in winter, through the rain, to visit a distant cottage. Thepoet's sympathy is broad; he loves, as he hates, with all his heart. One after another, all these persons of such diverse conditions havegathered together, twenty-nine in all. For one day they have the sameobject in view, and are going to live a common life. Fifty-six milesfrom London is the shrine, famous through all Europe, which contains theremains of Henry the Second's former adversary, the Chancellor ThomasBecket, assassinated on the steps of the altar, and canonised. [531]Mounted each on his steed, either good or bad, the knight on a beaststurdy, though of indifferent appearance; the hunting monk on a superbpalfrey, "as broun as is a berye"; the Wife of Bath sitting astride herhorse, armed with great spurs and showing her red stockings, they setout, taking with them mine host of the "Tabard, " and there they go, atan easy pace, along the sunny road lined with hedges, among the gentleundulations of the soil. They will cross the Medway; they will passbeneath the walls of Rochester's gloomy keep, then one of the principalfortresses of the kingdom, but sacked recently by revolted peasantry;they will see the cathedral built a little lower down, and, as it were, in its shade. There are women and bad riders in the group; the millerhas drunk too much, and can hardly sit in the saddle; the way will belong. [532] To make it seem short, each one will relate two tales, andthe troop, on its return, will honour by a supper the best teller. Under the shadow of great romances, shorter stories had sprung up. Theforest of romance was now losing its leaves, and the stories wereexpanding in the sunlight. The most celebrated collection wasBoccaccio's, written in delightful Italian prose, a many-sided work, edifying and licentious at the same time, a work audacious in every way, even from a literary point of view. Boccaccio knows it, and justifieshis doings. To those who reproach him with having busied himself with"trifles, " neglecting "the Muses of Parnassus, " he replies: Who knowswhether I have neglected them so very much? "Perhaps, while I wrotethose tales of such humble mien, they may have come sometimes and seatedthemselves at my side. "[533] They bestowed the same favour on Chaucer. The idea of "Troilus and Criseyde, " borrowed from Boccaccio, had beentransformed; the general plan and the setting of the "Tales" aremodified more profoundly yet. In Boccaccio, it is always young noblemenand ladies who talk: seven young ladies, "all of good family, beautiful, elegant, and virtuous, " and three young men, "all three affable andelegant, " whom the misfortunes of the time "did not affect so much as tomake them forget their amours. " The great plague has broken out inFlorence; they seek a retreat "wherein to give themselves up to mirthand pleasure"; they fix upon a villa half-way to Fiesole, now villaPalmieri. "A fine large court, disposed in the centre, was surrounded bygalleries, halls and chambers all ornamented with the gayest paintings. The dwelling-house rose in the midst of meadows and magnificent gardens, watered by cool streams; the cellars were full of excellent wines. "Every one is forbidden, "whencesoever he may come, or whatever he mayhear or see, to bring hither any news from without that be notagreeable. " They seat themselves "in a part of the garden which thefoliage of the trees rendered impenetrable to the sun's rays, " at thetime when, "the heat being in all its strength, one heard nothing savethe cicadæ singing among the olive-trees. " Thanks to the stories theyrelate to each other, they pleasantly forget the scourge which threatensthem, and the public woe; yonder it is death; here they play. Chaucer has chosen for himself a plan more humane, and truer to nature. It is not enough for him to saunter each day from a palace to a garden;he is not content with an alley, he must have a road. He puts his wholetroop of narrators in motion; he stops them at the inns, takes them todrink at the public-houses, obliges them to hurry their pace whenevening comes, causes them to make acquaintance with the passers-by. Hispeople move, bestir themselves, listen, talk, scream, sing, exchangecompliments, sometimes blows; for if his knights are real knights, hismillers are real millers, who swear and strike as in a mill. The interest of each tale is doubled by the way in which it is told, andeven by the way it is listened to. The knight delights his audience, which the monk puts to sleep and the miller causes to laugh; one isheard in silence, the other is interrupted at every word. Each story isfollowed by a scene of comedy, lively, quick, unexpected, and amusing;they discuss, they approve, they lose their tempers; no strict rules, but all the independence of the high-road, and the unforeseen of reallife; we are not sauntering in alleys! Mine host himself, with his deepvoice and his peremptory decisions, does not always succeed in makinghimself obeyed. After the knight's tale, he would like another in thesame style to match it; but he will have to listen to the miller's, which, on the contrary, will serve as a contrast. He insists; the millershouts, he shouts "in Pilates vois, " he threatens to leave them all and"go his wey" if they prevent him from talking. "Wel, " says the host, "Tel on, a devel wey! Thou art a fool, thy wit is overcome, " What would Donna Pampinea and Donna Filomena have said, hearing suchwords? At other times the knight is obliged to interfere, and then the tone isvery different. He does not have to scream; a word from him is enough, and the storms are calmed. Moreover, the host himself becomes moregentle at times; this innkeeper knows whom he has to deal with; with allhis roughness, he has a rude notion of differences and distances. Hislanguage is the language of an innkeeper; Chaucer never commits thefault of making him step out of his rôle; but the poet is too keen anobserver not to discern _nuances_ even in the temper of a jovial host. One should see with what politeness and what salutations and whatembarrassed compliments he informs the abbess that her turn has come torelate a story: "My lady Prioresse, by your leve, So that I wist I sholde yow nat greve, I wolde demen that ye telle sholde A tale next, if so were that ye wolde. Now wol ye vouche-sauf, my lady dere?" --"Gladly, " quod she, and seyde as ye shal here. The answer is not less suitable than the request. Thus, in these little scenes, we see, put into action, the descriptionsof the prologue; the portraits step out of their frames and come downinto the street; their limbs have become immediately supple and active;the blood courses through their veins; life fills them to the end oftheir fingers. No sooner are they on their feet than they turnsomersaults or make courtesies; and by their words they charm, enliven, edify, or scandalise. Their personality is so accentuated that it makesthem unmanageable at times; their temper rules them; they are notmasters of their speech. The friar wants to tell a story, but he is soblinded by anger that he does not know where he is going; he stammers, he chokes, and his narrative remains shapeless; the pardoner is soclosely bound to his profession that he cannot for a moment move out ofit; shirt and skin make one, to use a familiar phrase of Montaigne's;his tale resembles a sermon, and he concludes as though he were inchurch: Now, goode men, God forgeve yow your trespas . . . I have relikes and pardon in my male As faire as any man in Engelond . . . It is an honour to everich that is heer, That ye mowe have a suffisant pardoneer Tassoille yow, in contree as ye ryde, For aventures which that may bityde. Peraventure ther may falle oon or two Doun of his hors, and breke his nekke atwo. Look what a seuretee is it to yow alle That I am in your felaweship y-falle, That may assoille yow, bothe more and lasse, Whan that the soule shal fro the body passe. I rede that our hoste heer shal biginne, For he is most envoluped in sinne. Com forth sir hoste, and offre first anon, And thou shalt kisse the reliks everichon, Ye, for a grote! unbokel anon thy purs![534] A most happy idea! Mine host makes a reply which cannot be repeated. In other cases the personage is so wordy and impetuous that it isimpossible to stop him, or set him right, or interrupt him; he cannotmake up his mind to launch into his narrative; he must needs remainhimself on the stage and talk about his own person and belongings; healone is a whole comedy. One must perforce keep silence when the Wife ofBath begins to talk, irresistible gossip, chubby-faced, over-fed, ever-buzzing, inexhaustible in speech, never-failing in arguments, fullof glee. She talks about what she knows, about her specialty; herspecialty is matrimony; she has had five husbands, "three of hem weregode and two were badde;" the last is still living, but she is alreadythinking of the sixth, because she does not like to wait, and becausehusbands are perishable things; they do not last long with her; in hereyes the weak sex is the male sex. She is not going to break her heartabout a husband who gives up the ghost; her conscience is easy; thespouse departs quite ready for a better world: By God, in erthe I was his purgatorie, For which I hope his soule be in glorie. Some praise celibacy, or reason about husbands' rights; the merry gossipwill answer them. She discusses the matter thoroughly; sets forth thepros and cons; allows her husband to speak, then speaks herself; she hasthe best arguments in the world; her husband, too, has excellent ones, but it is she who has the very best. She is a whole _École des Maris_ inherself. The tales are of every sort, [535] and taken from everywhere. Chaucernever troubled himself to invent any; he received them from all hands, but he modelled them after his own fashion, and adapted them to hischaracters. They are borrowed from France, Italy, ancient Rome; theknight's tale is taken from Boccaccio, that of the nun's priest isimitated from the "Roman de Renart"; that of "my lord the monk" fromLatin authors and from Dante, "the grete poete of Itaille. " The miller, the reeve, the somnour, the shipman, relate coarse stories, and theirlicentiousness somewhat embarrasses the good Chaucer, who excuseshimself for it. It is not he who talks, it is his road-companions; andit is the Southwark beer which inspires them, not he; you must blame theSouthwark beer. The manners of the people of the lower classes, theirloves, their animosities and their jealousies, are described to the lifein these narratives. We see how the jolly Absolon goes to work to charmthe carpenter's wife, who prefers Nicholas; he makes music under herwindows, and brings her little presents; he is careful of his attire, wears "hoses rede, " spreads out hair that shines like gold, He kempte hise lokkes brode, and made him gay. If on a feast-day they play a Mystery on the public place before thechurch, he gets the part of Herod allotted to him: who could resist aperson so much in view? Alison resists, however, not out of virtue, butbecause she prefers Nicholas. She does not require fine phrases to repelAbsolon's advances; village-folk are not so ceremonious: Go forth thy wey, or I wol caste a ston. Blows abound in stories of that kind, and the personages go off with"their back as limp as their belly, " as we read in one of the narrativesfrom which Chaucer drew his inspiration. Next to these great scenes of noise there are little familiar scenes, marvellously observed, and described to perfection; scenes of home-lifethat might tempt the pencil of a Dutch painter; views of the mysteriouslaboratory where the alchemist, at once duped and duping, surroundedwith retorts, "cucurbites and alembykes, " his clothes burnt to holes, seeks to discover the philosopher's stone. They heat, they pay greatattention, they stir the mixture; The pot to-breketh, and farewel! al is go! Then they discuss; it is the fault of the pot, of the fire, of themetal; it is just as I thought; Som seyde, it was long on the fyr-making, Som seyde, nay! it was on the blowing. . . . "Straw, " quod the thridde, "ye been lewede and nyce, It was nat tempred as it oghte be. " A fourth discovers a fourth cause: "Our fyr was nat maad of beech. " Whatwonder, with so many causes for a failure, that it failed? We will beginover again. [536] Or else, we have representations of those interested visits thatmendicant friars paid to the dying. The friar, low, trivial, hypocritical, approaches: "Deus hic, " quod he, "O Thomas, freend, good day. " He lays down his staff, wallet, and hat; he takes a seat, the cat was onthe bench, he makes it jump down; he settles himself; the wife bustlesabout, he allows her to, and even encourages her. What could he eat? Oh!next to nothing, a fowl's liver, a pig's head roasted, the lightestrepast; his "stomak is destroyed;" My spirit hath his fostring in the Bible. He thereupon delivers to the sick man a long and interested sermon, mingled with Latin words, in which the verb "to give" comes in at everyline: whatever you do, don't give to others, give to me; give to myconvent, don't give to the convent next door: A! yif that covent half a quarter otes! A! yif that covent four and twenty grotes! A! yif that frere a peny and let him go. . . . Thomas, of me thou shalt nat ben y-flatered; Thou woldest ban our labour al for noght. [537] Pay then, give then, give me this, or only that; Thomas gives lessstill. Familiar scenes, equally true but of a more pleasing kind, are found inother narratives, for instance in the story of Chauntecleer the cock, sowell localised with a few words, in a green, secluded country nook: A poure widwe, somdel stope in age Was whylom dwelling in a narwe cotage, Bisyde a grove, standing in a dale. Her stable, her barn-yard are described; we hear the lowing of the cowsand the crowing of the cock; the tone rises little by little, and we getto the mock-heroic style. Chauntecleer the cock, In al the land of crowing nas his peer. His vois was merier than the mery orgon On messe-days that in the chirche gon; Wel sikerer was his crowing in his logge Than is a clokke, or an abbey orlogge. . . . His comb was redder than the fyn coral, And batailed, as it were a castel-wal! He had a black beak, white "nayles, " and azure legs; he reignedunrivalled over the hens in the barn-yard. One of the hens was hisfavourite, the others filled subalternate parts. One day-- This storie is al-so trewe, I undertake As is the book of Launcelot de Lake, That wommen holde in ful gret reverence, --he was looking for "a boterflye, " and what should he see but a fox!"Cok, cok!" he cries, with a jump, and means to flee. "Gentil sire, allas! wher wol ye gon? Be ye affrayed of me that am your freend?" says the good fox; I came only to hear you sing; you have the familytalent: My lord your fader (God his soule blesse!), sang so well; but you sing better still. To sing better still, the cockshuts his eye, and the fox bears him off. Most painful adventure! It wasa Friday: such things always befall on Fridays. O Gaufred, dere mayster soverayn, That whan the worthy King Richard was slayn With shot, compleynedest his deth so sore, Why ne had I now thy sentence and thy lore, The Friday for to chide, as diden ye?[538] Great commotion in the barn-yard; and here we find a picture charmingfor its liveliness: "Out! harrow! and weyl-away! Ha, ha, the fox!" everyone shrieks, yells, runs; the dogs bark, Ran cow and calf, and eek the verray hogges; the ducks scream, The gees for fere flowen over the trees, and the bees come out of their hives. The prisoner is set free; he willbe more prudent another time; order reigns once more in the domains ofChauntecleer. Side by side with such tales of animals, we have elegant stories of theRound Table, borrowed from the lays of "thise olde gentil Britons, " andwhich carry us back to a time when, In tholde dayes of the King Arthour Of which that Britons speken greet honour, Al was this land fulfild of fayerye; The elf-queen, with hir joly companye, Daunced ful ofte in many a grene mede; oriental legends, which the young squire will relate, with enchantments, magic mirrors, a brass horse that transports its rider through the air, here or there according as one touches a peg in its ears, an ancestordoubtless of "Clavilegno, " the steed of Don Quixote in the Duchesse'spark; biographies of Appius and Virginia, of Cæsar, of Nero, ofHolophernes, of Hugolino in the tower of hunger, taken from Romanhistory, the Bible and Dante; adventures of chivalry, in which figuresTheseus, duke of Athens, where blood flows profusely, with all thedigressions and all the embellishments which still continued to pleasegreat men and great ladies, and that is why the story is told by theknight, and Chaucer retains purposely all the faults of that particularsort of story. In opposition to his usual custom, he contents himselfhere with lending a little life to illuminations of manuscripts. [539] Grave personages relate grave stories, like canticles or sermons, coloured as with the light of stained glass, perfumed with incense, accompanied by organ music: story of the pious Constance, of St. Cecilia, of a child killed by the Jews; dissertations of dame Prudence(a tale of wondrous dulness, [540] which Chaucer modestly ascribes tohimself); story of the patient Griselda; discourse of the poor parson. Awhile ago we were at the inn; now we are in church; in the Middle Agesstriking colours and decided contrasts were best liked; the faded tintsthat have since been in fashion, mauve, cream, old-green, did not touchany one; and we know that Chaucer, when he was a page, had a superbcostume, of which one leg was red and the other black. Laughter wasinextinguishable; it rose and fell and rose again, reboundingindefinitely; despair was immeasurable; the sense of _measure_ wasprecisely what was wanting; its vulgarisation was one of the results ofthe Renaissance. Panegyrics and satires were readily carried to theextreme. The logical spirit, propagated among the learned by ascholastic education, was producing its effect: writers drew apart onesingle quality or characteristic and descanted upon it, neglecting allthe rest. Thus it is that Griselda becomes Patience, and JanicolaPoverty, and that by an easy and imperceptible transition the abstractpersonages of novels and the drama are created: Cowardice, Valiance, Vice. Those typical beings, whose names alone make us shudder, wereconsidered perfectly natural; and, indeed, they bore a strikingresemblance to Griselda, Janicola, and many other heroes of the mostpopular stories. The success of Griselda is the proof of it. That poor girl, married tothe marquis of Saluces, who repudiates her in order to try her patience, and then gives her back her position of wife, enjoyed an immensepopularity. Boccaccio had related her misfortunes in the "Decameron";Petrarch thought the story so beautiful that it appeared to him worthyof that supreme honour, a Latin translation: Chaucer translated it inhis turn from Latin into English, and made of it his Clerk of Oxford'stale;[541] it was turned several times into French. [542] Pinturicchiorepresented the adventures of Griselda in a series of pictures, nowpreserved in the National Gallery; the story furnished the subject ofplays in Italy, in France, and in England. [543] These exaggerateddescriptions were just what went to the very heart; people wept overthem in the fourteenth century as over Clarissa in the eighteenth. Petrarch, writing to Boccaccio about Griselda, uses almost the sameterms as Lady Bradshaigh, writing to Richardson about Clarissa: "Had you seen me, I surely should have moved your pity. When alone, inagonies would I lay down the book, take it up again, walk about theroom, let fall a flood of tears, wipe my eyes, read again--perhaps notthree lines--throw away the book, crying out: 'Excuse me, good Mr. Richardson, I cannot go on; it is your fault, you have done more than Ican bear. '"[544] I made "one of our mutual friends from Padua, " writes Petrarch, "a manof elevated mind and vast learning, read this story. He had hardly gothalf through, when suddenly he stopped, choking with tears; a momentafter, having composed himself, he took up the narrative once more tocontinue reading, and, behold, a second time sobs stopped his utterance. He declared it was impossible for him to continue, and he made a personof much instruction, who accompanied him, finish the reading. " Aboutthat time, in all probability, Petrarch, who, as we see in the sameletter, liked to renew the experience, gave the English poet andnegotiator, who had come to visit him in his retreat, this tale to read, and Chaucer, for that very reason less free than with most of his otherstories, scarcely altered anything in Petrarch's text. With him as withhis model, Griselda is Patience, nothing more; everything is sacrificedto that virtue; Griselda is neither woman nor mother; she is only thepatient spouse, Patience made wife. They take her daughter from her, tobe killed, as they tell her, by order of the marquis. So be it, repliesGriselda: "Goth now, " quod she, "and dooth my lordes heste; But o thing wil I preye yow of your grace. That, but my lord forbad yow, atte leste, Burieth this litel body in som place, That bestes ne no briddes it to-race. " But he no word wol to that purpos seye, But took the child and wente upon his weye. [545] Whereupon every one goes into ecstasies, and is greatly affected. Theidea of entreating her husband, of throwing herself at his feet, oftrying to move him, never enters her mind; she would no longer beplaying her part, which is not to be a mother, but to be: Patience. Chaucer left his collection of tales uncompleted; we have less than thehalf of it; but he wrote enough to show to the best his manifoldqualities. There appear in perfect light his masterly gifts ofobservation, of comprehension, and of sympathy; we well see with whatart he can make his characters stand forth, and how skilfully they arechosen to represent all contemporaneous England. The poet shows himselffull of heart, and at the same time full of sense; he is not withoutsuspicion that his pious stories, indispensable to render his picturecomplete, may offend by their monotony and exaggerated good sentiments. In giving them place in his collection, he belongs to his time and helpsto make it known; but a few mocking notes, scattered here and there, show that he is superior to his epoch, and that, in spite of his longdissertations and his digressions, he has, what was rare at that period, a certain notion, at least theoretical, of the importance of proportion. He allows his heroes to speak, but he is not their dupe; in fact he isso little their dupe that sometimes he can stand their talk no longer, and interrupts them or laughs at them to their very face. He laughs inthe face of the tiresome Constance, on the night of her wedding; heshows us his companions riding drowsily on their horses to the sound ofthe monk's solemn stories, and hardly preserved from actual slumber bythe noise of the horse's bells. He allows the host abruptly to interrupthim when, to satirise the romances of chivalry, he relates, in "rymdogerel, " the feats of arms and marvellous adventures of the matchlessSir Thopas. [546] Before we could even murmur the word "improbable, " hewarns us that the time of Griseldas has passed, and that there exist nomore such women in our day. As the pilgrims draw near Canterbury, and itbecomes seemly to finish on a graver note, he causes his poor parson tospeak, and the priest announces beforehand that his discourse will be asermon, a real sermon, with a text from Scripture: "Incipit sermo, " saysone of the manuscripts. He will speak in prose, as in church: Why sholde I sowen draf out of my fest, Whan I may sowen whete if that me lest? All agree, and it is with the assent of his companions, who become moreserious as they approach the holy city, that he commences, for the goodof their souls, his ample "meditation. " The coarse story told by themiller had been justified by excuses no less appropriate to the personand to the circumstances; the person was a clown, and chanced to bedrunk; now the person is a saint, and, as it happens, they are justnearing the place of pilgrimage. The good sense which caused the poet to write his "Canterbury Tales"according to a plan so conformable to reason and to nature, is one ofthe most eminent of Chaucer's qualities. It reveals itself in thedetails as in the whole scheme, and inspires him, in the midst of hismost fanciful inventions, with reassuring remarks which show that earthand real life are not far away, and that we are not in danger of fallingfrom the clouds. He reminds us at an opportune moment that there is acertain nobility, the highest of all, which cannot be bequeathed in awill; that the corrupt specimens of a social class should not cause thewhole class to be condemned: Of every ordre som shrewe is, parde;[547] that, in the education of children, parents should be careful not totreat them too soon as men; if one takes them to merry-makings beforetime, they become "to sone rype and bold, . . . Which is ful perilous. " Heexpresses himself very freely about great captains, each of whom wouldhave been called "an outlawe or a theef" had they done less harm. [548]This last idea is put forth in a few lines of a humour so truly Englishthat it is impossible not to think of Swift and Fielding; and, indeed, Fielding can the more appropriately be named here as he has devoted allhis novel of "Jonathan Wild the Great" to the expounding of exactly thesame thesis. Finally, we owe to this same common sense of Chaucer's a thing moreremarkable yet: namely, that with his knowledge of Latin and of French, and living in a circle where those two languages were in great favour, he wrote solely in English. His prose, like his verse, his "Treatise onthe Astrolabe" like his tales, are in English. He belongs to the Englishnation, and that is why he writes in that language; a reason of thatsort is sufficient for him: "Suffyse to thee thise trewe conclusiouns inEnglish, as wel as suffyseth to thise noble clerkes Grekes thise sameconclusiouns in Greek, and to Arabians in Arabik, and to Jewes in Ebrew, and to the Latin folk in Latin. " Chaucer, then, will make use of plainEnglish, "naked wordes in English"; he will employ the nationallanguage, the king's English--"the king that is lord of thislangage. "[549] And he will use it, as in truth he did, to expressexactly his thoughts and not to embellish them; he hates travesty, heworships truth; he wants words and things to be in the closest possiblerelation: The wordes mote be cosin to the dede. [550] The same wisdom is again the cause why Chaucer does not spend himself invain efforts to attempt impossible reforms, and to go against thecurrent. It has been made a subject of reproach to him in our day; andsome, from love of the Saxon past, have been indignant at the number ofFrench words Chaucer uses; why did he not go back to the origins of thelanguage? But Chaucer was not one of those who, as Milton says, think"to pound up the crows by shutting their park gates;" he employed thenational tongue, as it existed in his day; the proportion of Frenchwords is not greater with him than with the mass of his contemporaries. The words he made use of were living and fruitful, since they are stillalive, they and their families; the proportion of those that havedisappeared is wonderfully small, seeing the time that has elapsed. Asto the Anglo-Saxons, he retained, as did the nation, but without beingaware of it, something of their grave and powerful genius; it is not hisfault if he ignored these ancestors; every one in his day ignored them, even such thinkers as Langland, in whom lived again with most force thespirit of the ancient Germanic race. The tradition was broken; in theliterary past one went back to the Conquest, and thence withouttransition to "thise olde gentil Britons. " In his enumeration ofcelebrated bards, Chaucer gives a place to Orpheus, to Orion, and to the"Bret Glascurion"; but no author of any "Beowulf" is named by him. Shakespeare, in the same manner, will derive inspiration from thenational past; he will go back to the time of the Roses, to the time ofthe Plantagenets, to the time of Magna Charta, and, passing over theAnglo-Saxon period, he will take from the Britons the stories of Learand of Cymbeline. The brilliancy with which Chaucer used this new tongue, the instant fameof his works, the clear proof afforded by his writings that Englishcould fit the highest and the lowest themes, assured to that idiom itsdefinitive place among the great literary languages. English still had, in Chaucer's day, a tendency to resolve itself into dialects; as, in thetime of the Conquest, the kingdom had still a tendency to resolve itselfinto sub-kingdoms. Chaucer knew this, and was concerned about it; he wasanxious about those differences of tongue, of orthography, and ofvocabulary; he did all in his power to regularise these discordances; hehad set ideas on the subject; and, what was rare in those days, thewhims of copyists made him shudder. Nothing shows better the faith hehad in the English tongue, as a literary language, than his reiteratedinjunctions to the readers and scribes who shall read his poems aloud orcopy them. He experiences already, concerning his work, the anxieties ofthe poets of the Renaissance: And for ther is so greet diversitee In English, and in writyng of our tonge, So preye I God, that noon miswryte thee, Ne thee mysmetre for defaute of tonge, And red wher-so thou be, or elles songe, That thou be understonde I God beseche![551] Chaucer himself looked over the transcriptions done from his originalmanuscripts by his amanuensis Adam; he corrected with minute care everyfault; he calls down all manner of woe upon the "scriveyn's" head, if, copying once more "Boece" or "Troilus, " he leaves as many errorsagain. [552] We seem to hear Ronsard himself addressing his supplicationsto the reader: "I implore of you one thing only, reader, to pronouncewell my verses and suit your voice to their passion . . . And I imploreyou again, where you will see this sign: (!) to raise your voice alittle, to give grace to what you read. "[553] Chaucer's efforts were not exercised in vain; they assisted the work ofconcentration. After him, the dialects lost their importance; the one heused, the East Midland dialect, has since become the language of thenation. His verse, too, is the verse of the new literature, formed by acompromise between the old and the new prosody. Alliteration, which isnot yet dead, and which is still used in his time, he does not like; itsjingle seems to him ridiculous: I can nat geste--run, ram, ruf--by lettre. [554] Ridiculous, too, in his eyes is the "rym dogerel" of the popularromances of which "Sir Thopas" is the type. His verse is the rhymedverse, with a fixed number of accents or beats, and a variable number ofsyllables. Nearly all the "Tales" are written in heroic verse, rhymingtwo by two in couplets and containing five accentuated syllables. The same cheerful, tranquil common sense which made him adopt thelanguage of his country and the usual versification, which prevented himfrom reacting with excess against received ideas, also prevented hisharbouring out of patriotism, piety, or pride, any illusions about hiscountry, his religion, or his time. He belonged to them, however, asmuch as any one, and loved and honoured them more than anybody. Stillthe impartiality of judgment of this former prisoner of the French iswonderful, superior even to Froissart's, who, the native of aborder-country, was by birth impartial, but who, as age crept on, showedin the revision of his "Chronicles" decided preferences. Towards theclose of the century Froissart, like the Limousin and the Saintonge, ranked among the conquests recovered by France. Chaucer, from thebeginning to the end of his career, continues the same, and the fact isall the more remarkable because his turn of mind, his inspiration andhis literary ideal, become more and more English as he grows older. Heremains impartial, or, rather, outside the great dispute, in which, however, he had actually taken part; his works do not contain a singleline directed against France, nor even any praise of his country inwhich it is extolled as the successful rival of its neighbour. For this cause Des Champs, a great enemy of the English, who had notonly ravaged the kingdom in general but burnt down his own privatecountry house, made an exception in his hatred, and did homage to thewisdom and genius of the "noble Geoffrey Chaucer, " the ornament of the"kingdom of Eneas, " England. V. The composition of the "Canterbury Tales" occupied the last years ofChaucer's life. During the same period he also wrote his "Treatise onthe Astrolabe" in prose, for the instruction of his son Lewis, [555] anda few detached poems, melancholy pieces in which he talks of shunningthe world and the crowd, asks the prince to help him in his poverty, retreats into his inner self, and becomes graver and more and moreresigned: Fle fro the prees, and dwelle with sothfastnesse, Suffyce unto thy good, though hit be smal. . . . Forth, pilgrim, forth! Forth, beste out of thy stal!. . . Hold the hye wey, and lat thy gost thee lede: And trouth shal delivere, hit is no drede. [556] In spite of this melancholy, he was at that time the uncontested king ofEnglish letters; a life-long friendship bound him to Gower[557]; theyoung poets, Hoccleve, Scogan, Lydgate, came to him and proclaimed himtheir master. His face, the features of which are known to us, thanks tothe portrait we owe to Hoccleve, had gained an expression of gentlegravity; he liked better to listen than to talk, and, in the "CanterburyTales, " the host rallies him on his pensive air and downcast eyes: "What man artow?" quod he; "Thou lokest as thou woldest finde an hare, For ever up-on the ground I see thee stare. " Age had bestowed on him a corpulency which made him a match for HarryBailey himself. [558] When Henry IV. Mounted the throne, within the four days that followedhis accession, he doubled the pension of the poet (Oct. 3, 1399), whothen hired, for two pounds thirteen shillings and four pence a year, ahouse in the garden of St. Mary's, Westminster. The lease is stillpreserved in the archives of the Abbey. [559] He passed away in thefollowing year, in that tranquil retreat, and was interred atWestminster, not far from the sepulchres where slept his patrons, EdwardIII. And Richard II. , in that wing of the transept which has since beencalled the Poets' Corner, where lately we saw Browning's coffin lowered, and where, but yesterday, Tennyson's was laid. No English poet enjoyed a fame more constantly equal to itself. In thefifteenth century writers did scarcely anything but lament and copy him:"Maister deere, " said Hoccleve, O maister deere and fadir reverent, Mi maister Chaucer, flour of eloquence, Mirour of fructuous entendement, O universal fadir of science, Allas that thou thyn excellent prudence In thi bed mortel mightist noght byquethe![560] At the time of the Renaissance Caxton printed his works twice, [561] andHenry VIII. Made an exception in their favour in his prohibition of"printed bokes, printed balades, . . . And other fantasies. "[562] UnderElizabeth, Thynne annotated them, [563] Spenser declared that he "ofTityrus, " that is of Chaucer, "his songs did lere, "[564] and Sidneyexalted him to the skies. [565] In the seventeenth century Drydenrejuvenates his tales, in the eighteenth century the admiration isuniversal, and extends to Pope and Walpole. [566] In our time the learnedmen of all countries have applied themselves to the task of commentatinghis works and of disentangling his biography, a Society has been foundedto publish the best texts of his writings, [567] and but lately his"Legend of Good Women" inspired with an exquisite poem the Laureate whosleeps to-day close to the great ancestor, beneath the stones of thefamous Abbey. FOOTNOTES: [448] The date 1328 has long but wrongly been believed to be the trueone. The principal documents concerning Chaucer are to be found in theAppendix to his biography by Sir H. Nicolas, in "Poetical Works, " ed. R. Morris, Aldine Poets, vol. I. P. 93 ff. , in the "Trial Forewords, " ofDr. Furnivall, 1871, and in the "Life Records of Chaucer, " 1875 ff. , Chaucer Society. One of the municipal ordinances meant to check thefrauds of the vintners is signed by several members of the corporation, and among others by John Chaucer, 1342. See Riley, "Memorials, ofLondon, " p. 211. [449] See the view of London, painted in the fifteenth century, obviously from nature, reproduced at the beginning of this vol. , fromMS. Royal 16 F ii, in the British Museum, showing the Tower, the Bridge, the wharfs, Old St. Paul's, etc. [450] Such is the case with a tower in the churchyard of St. Giles's, Cripplegate. [451] "Et qi pork voedra norir, le norise deinz sa measoun. " Fourjurymen were to act as public executors: "Quatuor homines electi etjurati ad interficiendos porcos inventos vagantes infra muroscivitatis. " Riley "Munimenta Gildhallæ, " Rolls, 1859, 4 vols. 8vo;"Liber Albus, " pp. 270 and 590. [452] April, 1357, an information gathered from a fragment of theaccounts of the household of Elizabeth found in the binding of a book. [453] In the controversy between Sir Richard Scrope and Sir RobertGrosvenor, concerning a question of armorial bearings, Chaucer, beingcalled as witness, declares (1386) that he has seen Sir Richard use thedisputed emblems "en France, devant la ville de Retters . . . Et issint il[le] vist armez par tout le dit viage tanque le dit Geffrey estoitpris. " "The Scrope and Grosvenor controversy, 1385-90, " London, 2 vols. Fol. , vol. I. P. 178. "Retters" is Réthel in Champagne (not Retiers inBrittany, where the expedition did not go). Chaucer took part in anothercampaign "in partibus Franciæ, " in 1369. [454] On this see Furnivall, "Chaucer as valet and esquire, " ChaucerSociety, 1876. [455] A passage in Chaucer's "Book of the Duchesse" (1369), lines 30ff. , leaves little doubt as to the reality of the unlucky passion hedescribes. The poet interrupts the train of his speech to answer asupposed question put to him as to the causes of his depression and"melancolye": I holdë hit be a siknesse That I have suffred this eight yere, And yet my bote is never the nere; For ther is phisicien but oon, That may me hele. Proem of the "Book. " See, in connection with this, the "Compleynte untoPite. " Who was the loved one we do not know; could it be that the poetwas playing upon her name in such lines as these: For kindly by your heritage right Ye been annexed ever unto Bountee? (l. 71). There were numerous families of Bonamy, Bonenfaut, Boncoeur. A Williamde Boncuor is named in the "Excerpta e Rotulis Finium, " of Roberts, vol. Ii. Pp. 309, 431, 432. [456] The date of Chaucer's marriage has not been ascertained. We knowthat his wife was called Philippa, that one Philippa Chaucer belonged tothe queen's household in 1366, and that the Philippa Chaucer, wife ofthe poet, was at a later date in the service of the Duchess ofLancaster, after having been in the service of the queen. It seems mostlikely that the two women were the same person: same name, samefunction, same pension of ten marks, referred to in the same words inpublic documents, for example: 1º 42 Ed. III. , 1368, "Philippæ Chaucercui dominus Rex decem marcas annuatim ad scaccarium percipiendas probono servitio per ipsam Philippam Philippe Regine Anglie impenso perliteras suas patentes nuper concessit. . . . " 2º 4 Ric. II. , 1381, "Philippæ Chaucer nuper uni domicellarum Philippæ nuper RegineAnglie"--she had died in 1369--"cui dominus Rex Edwardus avus Regishujus X marcas annuatim ad scaccarium suum percipiendas pro bonoservitio per ipsam tam eidem domino Regi quam dicte Regine impenso perliteras suas patentes nuper concessit . . . In denariis sibi liberatis permanus predicti Galfridi mariti sui. . . . " "Poetical Works, " ed. Morris, i. P. 108. Who Philippa was by birth is doubtful, but it seems likely thatshe was Philippa Roet, daughter of Sir Payne Roet, who hailed, like thequeen herself, from Hainault--hence her connection with the queen--andsister of Catherine Roet who became the mistress and then the third wifeof John of Gaunt--hence the favour in which the poet and his familystood with the Lancastrians. It seems again very probable, though notabsolutely certain, that Thomas Chaucer, who used at different timesboth the Chaucer and the Roet arms, Speaker of the House of Commonsunder Henry V. , a man of great influence, was one of the children of thepoet. [457] Book iv. Chap. 40. [458] Froissart declares concerning his own poems that he "les commenchaà faire sus l'an de grâce Nostre Seigneur, 1362. " He wrote them "àl'ayde de Dieu et d'Amours, et à le contemplation et plaisance depluisours haus et nobles signours et de pluisours nobles et vaillansdames. " MS. Fr. 831 in the National Library, Paris. --On Guillaume deDeguileville, who wrote about 1330-5, see Ward, "Catalogue of Romances, "1893, vol. Ii. P. 558; Hill, "An Ancient Poem of G. De Guileville, "London, 1858, 4to, illustrated, and my "Piers Plowman, " chap. Vii. Chaucer imitated from him his "A. B. C. , " one of his first works. --OnMachault, who died in 1377, see Tarbé, "Oeuvres Choisies, " Reims andParis, 1849, 8vo, and Thomas, "Romania, " x. Pp. 325 ff. (papal bullsconcerning him, dated 1330, 1332, 1333, 1335). --On Des Champs, see"Oeuvres Complètes publiées d'après le Manuscrit de la BibliothèqueNationale, " by the Marquis de Queux de St. Hilaire, Société des AnciensTextes, 1878 ff. (which MS. Contains, _e. G. _, 1175 ballads, 171roundels, and 80 virelais), and A. Sarradin, "Etude sur Eustache desChamps, " Versailles, 1878, 8vo. --On Granson, a knight and a poet slainin a judicial duel, in 1397, see Piaget, "Granson et ses poésies, ""Romania, " vol. Xix. ; Chaucer imitated in his later years his "Compleyntof Venus, " from a poem of "Graunson, flour of hem that make in Fraunce. " [459] Chaucer's favourite flower; he constantly praises it; it is forhim a woman-flower (see especially the prologue of the "Legend of GoodWomen"). This flower enjoyed the same favour with the French models ofChaucer. One of the ballads of Froissart has for its burden: "Sus toutesflours j'aime la margherite" ("Le Paradis d'Amour, " in "Poésies, " ed. Scheler, Brussels, 1870, 3 vols. 8vo), vol. I. P. 49. Des Champs praisedthe same flower; Machault wrote a "Dit de la Marguerite" ("OeuvresChoisies, " ed. Tarbé, p. 123): J'aim une fleur qui s'uevre et qui s'encline Vers le soleil, de jour quand il chemine; Et quand il est couchiez soubz sa courtine Par nuit obscure, Elle se clost ainsois que le jour fine. [460] Guillaume de Lorris wrote the first part of the "Roman" ab. 1237;Jean de Meun wrote the second towards 1277. On the sources of the poemsee the important work of Langlois: "Origines et Sources du Roman de laRose, " Paris, 1891, 8vo. M. Langlois has traced the originals for 12, 000out of the 17, 500 lines of Jean de Meun; he is preparing (1894) amuch-needed critical edition of the text. [461] One of them has a sort of biographical interest as having belongedto Sir Richard Stury, Chaucer's colleague in one of his missions (seebelow, p. 284); it was afterwards purchased for Thomas, duke ofGloucester, son of Edward III. , and is now in the British Museum, MS. Royal 19 B xiii. "Ceste livre est à Thomas fiz au Roy, duc de Glouc', achates dez executeurs Mons' Ric' Stury. " It has curious miniaturesexemplifying the way in which people pictured to themselves at that timeOlympian gods and romance heroes. The "Dieu d'amour" figures as a tallperson with a tunic, a cloak, and a crown, a bow in his hand and largered wings on his back. See fol. 16, "coment li diex d'amours navral'amant de ses saietes. " [462] "A vous qui belles filles avez et bien les désirez à introduire àvie honneste, bailliez leur, bailliez le Rommant de la Rose, pouraprendre à discerner le bien du mal, que diz-je, mais le mal du bien. Età quel utilité ne à quoy proufite aux oyans oïr tant de laidures?" Jeande Meun "oncques n'ot acointance ne hantise de femme honorable nevertueuse, mais par plusieurs femmes dissolues et de male vie hanter, comme font communément les luxurieux cuida ou faingny savoir que toutestelles feussent car d'autres n'avoit congnoissance. " "Débat sur leRommant de la Rose, " in MS. Fr. 604 in the National Library, Paris, fol. 114 and 115. [463] An incomplete translation of the "Roman" in English verse has comedown to us in a single MS. Preserved in the Hunterian collection, Glasgow. It is anonymous; a study of this text, by Lindner and byKaluza, has shown that it is made up of three fragments of differentorigin, prosody, and language. The first fragment ends with line 1705, leaving a sentence unfinished; between the second and third fragmentsthere is a gap of more than 5, 000 lines. The first fragment alone might, on account of its style and versification, be the work of Chaucer, butthis is only a surmise, and we have no direct proof of it. The "Romaunt"is to be found in Skeat's edition of the "Complete Works" of Chaucer, 1894, vol. I. For Fragment I. The French text is given along with theEnglish translation. [464] Mais pran en gré les euvres d'escolier Que par Clifford de moy avoir pourras. For Des Champs, Chaucer is a Socrates, a Seneca, an Ovid, an "aigle trèshault, " "Oeuvres Completes, " Paris, 1878 ff. , vol. Ii. P. 138. [465] "Hous of Fame, " line 622; "Legend of Good Women, " line 422, "Complete Works, " 1894, vol. I. Pp. 19 and 96. Such was the reputationof Chaucer that a great many writings were attributed to him--a way toincrease their reputation, not his. The more important of them are: "TheCourt of Love"; the "Book of Cupid, " otherwise "Cuckoo and Nightingale";"Flower and Leaf, " the "Romaunt of the Rose, " such as we have it; the"Complaint of a Lover's Life"; the "Testament of Love" (in prose, seebelow, page 522); the "Isle of Ladies, " or "Chaucer's Dream"; variousballads. Most of those works (not the "Testament") are to be found inthe "Poetical Works" of Chaucer, Aldine Poets, ed. Morris. [466] And every day hir beaute newed. (ll. 906, 963. ) [467] "Book of the Duchesse, " ll. 339, 406, 391, 1033. John of Gauntfound some consolation in marrying two other wives. Blanche, the firstwife, was buried with him in old St. Paul's. See a view of their tombfrom Dugdale's "St. Paul's, " in my "Piers Plowman, " p. 92. [468] Vous Ambasseur et messagier, Qui alez par le monde es cours Des grans princes pour besongnier, Vostre voyage n'est pas cours . . . Ne soiez mie si hastis! Il fault que vostre fait soit mis Au conseil pour respondre à plain; Attendez encore mes amis . . . Il faut parler au chancelier De vostre fait et à plusours . . . Temps passe et tout vint arrebours. "Oeuvres Complètes, " Société des Anciens Textes, vol. Vii. P. 117. [469] De laissier aux champs me manace, Trop souvent des genoulx s'assiet, Par ma foy, mes chevaulx se lace. (_Ibid. _, p. 32. ) [470] Mal fait mangier à l'appétit d'autruy. (_Ibid. _, p. 81. ) [471] O doulz pais, terre très honorable, Où chascuns a ce qu'il veult demander Pour son argent, et à pris raisonnable, Char, pain et vin, poisson d'yaue et de mer, Chambre à par soy, feu, dormir, reposer, Liz, orilliers blans, draps flairans la graine, Et pour chevaulz, foing, litière et avaine, Estre servis, et par bonne ordonnance, Et en seurté de ce qu'on porte et maine; Tel pais n'est qu'en royaume de France. (_Ibid. _, p. 79. ) [472] Book i. Chap. 692. [473] The order for the payment of the expenses of "nostre cher et féalchivaler Edward de Berklé, " and "nostre féal esquier Geffray Chaucer, "is directed to William Walworth, then not so famous as he was to be, andto the no less notorious John Philpot, mercer and naval leader. Bothenvoys are ordered "d'aler en nostre message si bien au duc de MelanBarnabo come à nostre cher et foial Johan Haukwode ès parties deLumbardie, pur ascunes busoignes touchantes l'exploit de nostre guerre, "May 12, 1378. Berkeley receives 200 marcs and Chaucer 100; the sums areto be paid out of the war subsidy voted by Parliament the year before. The French text of the warrant has been published by M. Spont in the_Athenæum_ of Sept. 9, 1893. During this absence Chaucer appointed to behis representatives or attorneys two of his friends, one of whom was thepoet Gower. See document dated May 22, 1378, in "Poetical Works, " ed. Morris, i. P. 99. [474] ll. 1982, 1990, 1997. [475] Figure of "Peace, " by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, 1339. See a drawing ofit in Müntz, "Les Précurseurs de la Renaissance, " Paris, 1882, 4to, p. 29. [476] Müntz, _ibid. _, p. 30. [477] "F. Petrarcæ Epistolæ, " ed. Fracassetti, Florence, 1859, vol. Iii. P. 541. [478] Letter of Boccaccio "celeberrimi nominis militi Jacopo Pizzinghe. "Corazzini, "Le Lettere edite ed inedite di Giovanni Boccaccio, "Florence, 1877, 8vo, p. 195. [479] Chaucer could not be present at the lectures of Boccaccio, whobegan them on Sunday, October 23, 1373; he had returned to London in thesummer. Disease (probably diabetes) soon obliged Boccaccio to interrupthis lectures; he died in his house at Certaldo on December 21, 1375. SeeCochin, in _Revue des Deux Mondes_, July 15, 1888. [480] This meeting, concerning which numerous discussions have takenplace, seems to have most probably happened. "I wol, " says the clerk ofOxford in the "Canterbury Tales, " I wol yow telle a tale which that I Lerned at Padowe of a worthy clerk . . . He is now deed and nayled in his cheste . . . Fraunceys Petrark, the laureat poet. Such a circumstantial reference is of a most unusual sort; in mostcases, following the example of his contemporaries, Chaucer simply saysthat he imitates "a book, " or sometimes he refers to his models by awrong or fancy name, such being the case with Boccaccio, whom he calls"Lollius, " a name which, however, does duty also with him, at anotherplace, for Petrarch. But on this occasion it seems as if the poet meantto preserve the memory of personal intercourse. We know besides that atthat date Chaucer was not without notoriety as a poet on the Continent(Des Champs' praise is a proof of it), and that at the time when he cameto Italy Petrarch was at Arqua, near Padua, where he was precisely busywith his Latin translation of Boccaccio's story of Griselda. [481] "The Othe of the Comptroler of the Customes, " in Thynne's"Animadversions, " Chaucer Society, 1875, p. 131. [482] None in the handwriting of Chaucer have been discovered as yet;but some are to be seen drawn, as he was allowed to have them later, byanother's hand, under his own responsibility: "per visum et testimoniumGalfridi Chaucer. " [483] The lease is dated May 10, 1374; Furnivall, "Trial Forewords, " p. 1. Such grants of lodgings in the gates were forbidden in 1386 inconsequence of a panic (described, _e. G. _, in the "Chronicon Angliæ, "Rolls, p. 370) caused by a rumour of the coming of the French. SeeRiley, "Memorials of London, " pp. 388, 489. A study on the too neglectedRalph Strode is being prepared (1894) by M. Gollancz. [484] "Dimissio Portæ de Aldgate facta Galfrido Chaucer. --Concessio deAldrichgate Radulpho Strode. --Sursum-redditio domorum supraAldrichesgate per Radulphum Strode. " Among the "Fundationes etpræsentationes cantariarum . . . Shoparum . . . Civitati pertinentium. ""Liber Albus, " Rolls, pp. 553, 556, 557. [485] Chaucer represents Jupiter's eagle, addressing him thus: And noght only fro fer contree That ther no tyding comth to thee But of thy verray neyghebores, That dwellen almost at thy dores, Thou herest neither that ne this; For whan thy labour doon al is, Thou gost hoom to thy hous anoon, Thou sittest at another boke, Til fully daswed is thy loke, And livest thus as an hermyte. "Hous of Fame, " book ii. L. 647; "Complete Works, " iii. P. 20. [486] All these dates are merely approximative. Concerning thechronology of Chaucer's works, see Ten Brink, "Chaucer Studien, "Münster, 1870, 8vo; Furnivall, "Trial Forewords, " 1871, Chaucer Society;Koch, "Chronology, " Chaucer Society, 1890; Pollard, "Chaucer, ""Literature Primers, " 1893; Skeat, "Complete Works of Chaucer, " vol. I. , "Life" and the introductions to each poem. "Boece" is in vol. Ii. Of the"Complete Works" (_cf. _ Morris's ed. , 1868, E. E. T. S. ). The "Lyf ofSeinte Cecile" was transferred by Chaucer to his "Canterbury Tales, "where it became the tale of the second nun. The good women of the"Legend" are all of them love's martyrs: Dido, Ariadne, Thisbe, &c. ; itwas Chaucer's first attempt to write a collection of stories with aPrologue. In the Prologue Venus and Cupid reproach him with havingcomposed poems where women and love do not appear in a favourable light, such as "Troilus" and the translation of the "Roman de la Rose, " which"is an heresye ageyns my lawe. " He wrote his "Legend" to make amends. [487] "Parlement of Foules, " ll. 272, 225, "Complete Works, " vol. I. [488] "Hous of Fame, " l. 133 _ibid. _, vol. Iii. [489] "Hous of Fame, " l. 518. [490] "Complete Works, "vol. I. P. 365. This beginning is imitated fromBoccaccio's "Teseide. " [491] "Parlement of Foules, " in "Complete Works, " vol. I. P. 336. Chaucer alludes here to a book which "was write with lettres olde, " andwhich contained "Tullius of the dreme of Scipioun. " [492] "Legend of Dido, " in "Complete Works, " vol. Iii. P. 117. [493] Book v. St. 256. [494] "Hous of Fame, " ll. 469, 473, 492. [495] Thorgh me men goon in-to that blisful place . . . Thorgh me men goon unto the welle of Grace, &c. These lines were "over the gate with lettres large y-wroghte, " ll. 124, 127. [496] S'amor non è, che dunque è quel ch'i sento? which becomes in Chaucer the "Cantus Troili": If no love is, O God, what fele I so? (Book i. Stanza 58. ) [497] l. 449. [498] In sogno mi parea veder sospesa Un' aquila nel ciel con penne d'oro Con l'ali aperte, ed a calare intesa. . . . Poi mi parea, che piu rotata un poco, Terribil come folgor discendesse, E me rapisse suso infino al foco. ("Purgatorio, " canto ix. ) In Chaucer: Me thoughte I saw an egle sore . . . Hit was of golde and shoon so bright That never saw men such a sighte . . . Me, fleinge, at a swappe he hente, And with his sours agayn up wente, Me caryinge in his clawes starke. (ll. 449, 503, 542. ) [499] I wol now singe, if that I can The armes, and al-so the man, &c. (l. 142. ) Hereupon follows a complete but abbreviated account of the events in theÆneid, Dido's story being the only part treated at some length. [500] "Complete Works, " vol. Iii. The poem was left unfinished; it iswritten in octosyllabic couplets, with four accents or beats. [501] Compare, for example, the beginning of "Hous of Fame, " and No. 487of _The Spectator_ (Sept. 18, 1712): God turne us every dreem to gode! For hit is wonder, by the rode, To my wit what causeth swevenes Either on morwes or on evenes; And why the effect folweth of somme, And of somme hit shal never come; Why this is an avisioun, And this a revelacioun . . . Why this a fantom, these oracles. Addison writes: "Tho' there are many authors who have written on Dreams, they have generally considered them only as revelations of what hasalready happened in distant parts of the world, or as presages of whatis to happen in future periods of time, " &c. [502] l. 1191. [503] l. 1242. [504] l. 1830. [505] l. 2047. [506] l. 2078. _Cf. _ La Fontaine's "Les Femmes et le Secret. " [507] "Parlement of Foules, " l. 186. [508] Boccaccio's story is told in stanzas of eight lines, and has forits title "Il Filostrato" (love's victim: such was at least the senseBoccaccio attributed to the word). Text in "Le Opere volgari di Giov. Boccaccio, " Florence, 1831, 8vo, vol. Xiii. [509] Text in "Complete Works, " vol. Iii. It is divided into five booksand written in stanzas of seven lines, rhyming _a b a b b c c_. See thedifferent texts of this poem published by the Chaucer Society; alsoKitredge, "Chaucer's Language in his Troilus, " Chaucer Society, 1891. For a comparison between the English and the Italian texts see Rossetti"Troylus and Cressida, compared with Boccaccio's Filostrato, " ChaucerSociety, 1875. About one-third of Chaucer's poem is derived fromBoccaccio. It is dedicated to Gower and to "philosophical Strode" (seeabove, p. 290), both friends of the poet. [510] Book i. St. 28. [511] And, as the nurse, gets out of breath, so that he cannot speak: . . . O veray God, so have I ronne! Lo, nece myn, see ye nought how I swete? Book ii. St. 210. Says the Nurse: Jesu, what haste! can you not stay awhile? Do you not see that I am out of breath? [512] Turned later into English verse by Lydgate, to be read as asupplementary Tale of Canterbury: "Here begynneth the sege of Thebes, ful lamentably told by Johnn Lidgate monke of Bury, annexynge it to yetallys of Canterbury, " MS. Royal 18 D ii. In the British Museum. Theexquisite miniatures of this MS. Represent Thebes besieged with greatguns, fol. 158; Creon's coronation by two bishops wearing mitres andgold copes, fol. 160, see below, p. 499. [513] Book ii. St. 46. [514] Book ii. St. 100 ff. [515] Book ii. St. 182. [516] Book iii. St. 163 and 170. [517] Book iii. St 173. Boccaccio's Griselda has nothing to be comparedto those degrees in feeling and tenderness. She laughs at the newlywedded ones, and ignores blushes as well as doubts ("Filostrato, " iii. St. 29 ff. ). [518] Book iii. St. 188. [519] What me is wo That day of us mot make desseveraunce! (Book iii. St. 203, 204. ) [520] Book iv. St. 98 ff. [521] Yet preye I yow on yvel ye ne take, That it is short which that I to yow wryte; I dar not, ther I am, wel lettres make, Ne never yet ne coude I wel endyte. Eek greet effect men wryte in place lyte. Thentente is al, and nought the lettres space And fareth now wel, God have you in his grace. La vostre C. Book v. St. 233. Troilus had written at great length, of course, "thepapyr al y-pleynted. " St. 229. [522] Book v. St. 263. [523] Pierre de Beauveau's translation of the passage (in Moland andd'Héricault, "Nouvelles françoises en prose, du XIVe Siècle, " 1858, p. 303) does not differ much from the original. Here is the Italian text: Giovane donna è mobile, e vogliosa È negli amanti molti, e sua bellezza Estima piu ch'allo specchio, e pomposa Ha vanagloria di sua giovinezza; La qual quanto piaccevole e vezzosa È piu, cotanto più seco l'apprezza; Virtù non sente ni conoscimento, Volubil sempre come foglia al vento. ("Opere Volgari, " Florence, 1831, vol. Xiii. P. 253. ) [524] "Return of the names of every member [of Parliament], " 1878, fol. A Blue Book, p. 229. [525] "Hous of Fame, " l. 1189. [526] "Complete Works, " ed. Skeat, Oxford, 1894, 6 vols. 8vo, vol. Iv. [527] The "Tabard, " a sleeveless overcoat, then in general use, was, like the "Bell, " a frequent sign for inns. The Tabard Inn, famous inChaucer's day, was situated in the Southwark High Street; often repairedand restored, rebaptised the "Talbot, " it lasted till our century. [528] Beginning of the "Shipmannes Tale. " [529] "Vie de Marianne, " Paris, 1731-41. [530] Book i. Chap. 81, Luce's edition. [531] The canonisation took place shortly after the death of thearchbishop, 1170-73. There is nothing left to-day but an old marblemosaic, greatly restored, to indicate the place in the choir where theshrine used to be. [532] A map of the road from London to Canterbury, drawn in theseventeenth century, but showing the line of the old highway, has beenreproduced by Dr. Furnivall in his "Supplementary Canterbury Tales--I. The Tale of Beryn, " Chaucer Society, 1876, 8vo. [533] "E forse a queste cose scrivere, quantunque sieno umilissime, sisono elle venute parecchi volte a starsi meco. " Prologue of "GiornataQuarta. " [534] "Pardoner's Tale, " ll. 904, 920, 931. [535] The setting of the tales into their proper order is due toBradshaw and Furnivall; see Furnivall's "Temporary Preface" for the"Six-text edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, " Chaucer Society, 1868. The order, subject, and originals of the tales are follows:-- _1st Day. _ London to Dartford, 15 miles. --Tale of the Knight, history ofPalamon and Arcyte, derived from Boccaccio's "Teseide. "--Tale of theMiller: story of Absolon, Nicholas and Alisoun the carpenter's wife, source unknown. --Reeve's tale, imitated from the French fabliau ofGombert and the two clerks (above, p. 155); same tale in Boccaccio, ix. 6, from whom La Fontaine took it: "le Berceau. "--Cook's tale, unfinished; the tale of Gamelyn attributed by some MSS. To the Cookseems to be simply an old story which Chaucer intended to remodel; itwould suit the Yeoman better than the Cook (in "Complete Works, " as anappendix to vol. Iv. ). _2nd Day. _ Stopping at Rochester, 30 miles. --Tale of the Man of Law:history of the pious Constance, from the French of Trivet, an Englishmanwho wrote also Latin chronicles, &c. , same story in Gower, who wrote itab. 1393. --Shipman's tale: story of a merchant of St. Denys, his wife, and a wicked monk, from some French fabliau, or from "Decameron, " viii. 1. --Tale of the Prioress: a child killed by Jews, from the French ofGautier de Coinci. --Tales by Chaucer: Sir Thopas, a caricature of theromances of chivalry; story of Melibeus, from a French version of the"Liber consolationis et consilii" of Albertano of Brescia, thirteenthcentury. --Monk's tale: "tragedies" of Lucifer, Adam, Sampson, Hercules, Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Zenobia, Pedro the Cruel, Pierre de Lusignanking of Cyprus, Barnabo Visconti (d. 1385), Hugolino, Nero, Holofernes, Antiochus, Alexander, Cæsar, Croesus; from Boccaccio, Machault, Dante, the ancients, &c. --Tale of the Nun's Priest: Story of Chauntecleer, samestory in "Roman de Renart" and in Marie de France. _3rd Day. _ Rest at Ospringe, 46 miles. --Tale of the Physician: Appiusand Virginia, from Titus Livius and the "Roman de la Rose;" same storyin Gower. --Pardoner's tale: three young men find a treasure, quarrelover it and kill each other, an old legend, of which, however, we haveno earlier version than the one in the "Cento Novelle antiche, " nov. 82. --Tale of the Wife of Bath: story of the young knight saved by an oldsorceress, whom he marries and who recovers her youth and beauty; thefirst original of this old legend is not known; same story in Gower(Story of Florent), and in Voltaire: "Ce qui plait aux Dames. "--Friar'stale: a summoner taken away by the devil, from one of the oldcollections of _exempla_. --Tale of the Summoner (somnour, sompnour): afriar ill-received by a moribund; a coarse, popular story, a version ofwhich is in "Til Ulespiegel. "--Clerk of Oxford's tale: story ofGriselda from Petrarch's Latin version of the last tale in the"Decameron. "--Merchant's tale: old January beguiled by his wife May andby Damian; there are several versions of this story, one in the"Decameron, " vii. 9, which was made use of by La Fontaine, ii. 7. _4th Day. _ Reach Canterbury, 56 miles. --Squire's tale: unfinished storyof Cambinscan, king of Tartary; origin unknown, in part from the Frenchromance of "Cleomades. "--Franklin's tale: Aurelius tries to obtainDorigen's love by magic; same story in Boccaccio's "Filocopo, " and inthe "Decameron, " x. 5. --Tale of the second nun: story of St. Cecilia, from the Golden Legend. --Tale of the Canon's Yeoman: frauds of analchemist (from Chaucer's personal experience?). --Manciple's tale: acrow tells Phoebus of the faithlessness of the woman he loves; fromOvid, to be found also in Gower. --Parson's tale, from the French "Sommedes Vices et des Vertus" of Friar Lorens, 1279. [536] "Complete Works, " vol. Iv. P. 538. The canon and his man join thepilgrims during the fourth day's journey. Contrary to Chaucer's use, such a keen animosity appears in this satire of alchemists that it seemsas if the poet, then rather hard up, had had himself a grudge againstsuch quacks. [537] l. 1963. Compare the mendicant friar in Diderot, who drew him fromnature, centuries later; it is the same sort of nature. Friar John"venait dans notre village demander des oeufs, de la laine, duchanvre, des fruits à chaque saison. " Friar John "ne passait pas dansles rues que les pères, les mères et les enfants n'allassent à lui et nelui criassent: Bonjour, frère Jean, comment vous portez vous, frèreJean? Il est sûr que quand il entrait dans une maison, la bénédiction duciel y entrait avec lui. " "Jacques le Fataliste et son Maître, " ed. Asseline, p. 46. [538] "Complete Works, " vol. Iv. P. 285; on Geoffrey de Vinesauf andRichard, see above, p. 180. [539] See for example his description of a young lady gathering flowersat dawn in a garden, at the foot of a "dongeoun, " Knight's Tale, l. 190, "Complete Works, " iv. P. 31. [540] But very popular, derived from the "Liber Consolationis" ofAlbertano of Brescia, written ab. 1246, ed. Thor Sundby, ChaucerSociety, 1873. It was translated into French (several times), Italian, German, Dutch. French text in MS. Reg. 19, C vii. In the British Museum:"Uns jouvenceauls appelé Melibée, puissant et riches ot une femme nomméPrudence, et de celle femme ot une fille. Advint un jour. . . . " "A youngman, " says Chaucer, whose tale is also in prose, "called Melibeus, mighty and riche, bigat up-on his wyf that called was Prudence, adoghter which that called was Sophie. Upon a day befel. . . . " (iv. 119). [541] Unlike most of the tales, this one is written in stanzas, Chaucer's favourite seven-line stanza, rhyming _a b a b b c c_. [542] It is to be found in the "Ménagier de Paris, " ab. 1393, the authorof which declares that he will "traire un exemple qui fut ja pieçatranslaté par maistre François Petrarc qui à Romme fut couronné poète"("Ménagier, " 1846, vol. I. P. 99). The same story finds place in"Melibeus, " MS. Reg. 19 C vii. In the British Museum, fol. 140. AnotherFrench translation was printed ab. 1470: "La Patience GriselidisMarquise de Saluces. " Under Louis XIV. , Perrault wrote a metricalversion of the same story: "La Marquise de Saluces ou la patience deGriselidis, " Paris, 1691, 12mo. A number of ballads in all countrieswere dedicated to Griselda; the popularity of an English one is shown bythe fact of other ballads being "to the tune of Patient Grissel. " One ofMiss Edgeworth's novels has for its title and subject: "The ModernGriselda. " [543] One in French was performed at Paris in 1395 ("Estoire deGriselidis . . . Par personnages, " MS. Fr. 2203 in the National Library, Paris), and was printed at the Renaissance, by Bonfons, ab. 1550: "LeMystère de Griselidis"; one in German was written by Hans Sachs in 1550. In Italy it was the subject of an opera by Apostolo Zeno, 1620. InEngland, Henslowe, on the 15th of December, 1599, lends three pounds toDekker, Chettle and Haughton for their "Pleasant comodie of PatientGrissil, " printed in 1603, reprinted by the Shakespeare Society, 1841. The English authors drew several hints from the French play, but theirsis the best written on the subject (parts of Julia, the witty sister ofthe Marquis, of Laureo, the poor student, brother of Griselda, as proudas she is humble, &c. ). [544] Lady Bradshaigh to Richardson, January 11, 1749. "Correspondenceof Samuel Richardson, " ed. Barbauld, London, 1804, 6 vols. 12mo, vol. Iv. P. 240. [545] "Complete Works, " vol. Iv. P. 568. [546] Listeth, lordes, in good entent, And I wol telle verrayment Of mirthe and of solas, &c. The caricature of the popular heroic stories of the day is extremelyclose (see below, p. 347). [547] Tale of the Canon's Yeoman, l. 995. [548] . . . For the tyrant is of gretter might, By force of meynee for to sleen doun-right, And brennen hous and hoom, and make al plain, Lo! therfor is he cleped a capitain; And, for the outlawe hath but smal meynee, And may nat doon so greet an harm as he, Ne bringe a contree to so greet mescheef, Men clepen him an outlawe or a theef. (Maunciple's tale, in "Complete Works, " iv. P. 562. ) [549] "A Treatise on the Astrolabe" in "Complete Works, " vol. Iii. P. 175. [550] "General Prologue, " l. 742. [551] "Troilus, " Book v. St. 257. [552] "Chaucer's wordes unto Adam, his owne Scriveyn, " in "CompleteWorks, " vol. I. P. 379. [553] "Je te suppliray seulement d'une chose, lecteur, de vouloir bienprononcer mes vers et accomoder ta voix à leur passion . . . Et je tesupplie encore de rechef, où tu verras cette marque: (!) vouloir un peueslever ta voix pour donner grâce à ce que tu liras. " Preface of the"Franciade. " [554] So says the Parson, who adds: Ne, God wot, rym holde I but litel bettre. Parson's Prologue, l. 43. It will be observed that while _naming_ simplyrhyme, he _caricatures_ alliteration. [555] 1391, in "Complete Works, " vol. Iii. On that other, _possible_ sonof Chaucer, Thomas, see _ibid. _, vol. I. P. Xlviii. , and above, p. 273. [556] "Truth, " or "Balade de bon Conseyl, " in "Complete Works, " vol. I. P. 390. Belonging to the same period: "Lak of Stedfastnesse" (advice tothe king himself); "L'Envoy de Chaucer à Scogan"; "L'Envoy de Chaucer àBukton, " on marriage, with an allusion to the Wife of Bath; "TheCompleynt of Venus"; "The Compleint of Chaucer to his empty purse, " &c. , all in vol. I. Of "Complete Works. " [557] It has been said, but without sufficient cause, that thisfriendship came to an end some time before the death of Chaucer. [558] He in the waast is shape as wel as I. (Prologue to Sir Thopas. ) [559] To be seen (1894) under glass in the Chapter House. [560] "Hoccleve's Works, " ed. Furnivall, E. E. T. S. , 1892, vol. I. P. Xxi. [561] One ab. 1478, the other ab. 1484; this last is illustrated. See in"English Novel in the time of Shakespeare, " p. 45, a facsimile of thewoodcut representing the pilgrims seated at the table of the Tabard inn. [562] "Animadversions uppon the Annotacions and corrections of someimperfections of impressiones of Chaucers workes. . . . " by Francis Thynne, ed. Furnivall and Kingsley, Chaucer Society, 1876, p. Xiv. [563] _Ibid. _ [564] "Shepheard's Calender, " December. [565] "Of whom, truly I know not, whether to mervaile more, either thathe in that mistie time could see so clearly, or that wee in this cleareage walke so stumblingly after him. " "Apologie for Poetrie, " ed. Arber, p. 62. [566] The subject of Chaucer's fame is treated at great length inLounsbury's "Studies in Chaucer, his life and writings, " London, 1892, 3vols. 8vo, vol. Iii. Ch. Vii. , "Chaucer in Literary History. " [567] The Chaucer Society, founded by Dr. Furnivall, which has publishedamong other things, the "Six-text edition of the Canterbury Tales"; some"Life Records of Chaucer"; various "Essays" on questions concerning thepoet's works; a collection of "Originals and Analogues" illustrative ofthe "Canterbury Tales, " &c. Among modern tributes paid to Chaucer may beadded Wordsworth's modernisation of part of "Troilus" (John Morley'sed. , p. 165), and Lowell's admirable essay in his "Study Windows. " CHAPTER III. _THE GROUP OF POETS. _ The nation was young, virile, and productive. Around Chaucer was a wholeswarm of poets; he towers above them as an oak towers above a coppice;but the oak is not isolated like the great trees that are sometimes seenbeneath the sun, alone in the midst of an open country. Chaucer iswithout peer but not without companions; and, among those companions, one at least deserves to be ranked very near him. He has companions of all kinds, nearly as diverse as those with whom hehad associated on the road to Canterbury. Some are continuators of theold style, and others are reformers; some there are, filled with thedreamy spirit of the Anglo-Saxons; there are others who care little fordreams and theories, who are of the world, and will not leave the earth;some who sing, others who hum, others who talk. Certain poems are likeclarions, and celebrate the battle of Crécy, of which Chaucer had notspoken; others resemble lovers' serenades; others a dirge for the dead. I. The old styles are continued; the itinerant poets, jugglers, andminstrels have not disappeared; on the contrary, they are more numerousthan ever. "Merry England" favours them; they continue to play, asunder the first Angevins, [568] a very considerable and multiple part, which it is difficult to estimate. Those people, with their vast memory, are like perambulating libraries; they instruct, they amuse, they edify. Passing from county to county, hawking news, composing satirical songs, they fill also the place of a daily gazette; they represent publicopinion, sometimes create it, and often distort it; they are livingnewspapers; they furnish their auditors with information about themisdeeds of the Government, which, from time to time, seizes the mosttalkative, and imprisons them to keep them silent. The king hasminstrels in his service; they are great personages in their way, pensioned by the prince and despising the others. The nobles also keepsome in their pay, which does not prevent their welcoming those whopass; they feast them when they have sung well, and give them furredrobes and money. [569] They continue to prosper in the following century. We see at that timethe king of England's minstrels, people clever and of good instruction, protesting against the increasing audacity of sham minstrels, whoseignorance casts discredit on the profession. "Uncultured peasants, " saysthe king in a vengeful statute, "and workmen of different kinds in ourkingdom of England . . . Have given themselves out to be our ownminstrels. "[570] Without any experience or understanding of the art, they go from place to place on festival days, and gather all the moneythat should have enriched the true artists, those who really devotethemselves to their profession and ply no manual craft. Vain efforts;decline was imminent; minstrels were not to recover their formerstanding. The Renaissance and the Reformation came; and, owing to theprinting-press, gay scavoir found other means of spreading through thecountry. In the sixteenth century, it is true, minstrels still abound, but they are held in contempt; right-minded people, like Philip Stubbes, have no terms strong enough to qualify "suche drunken sockets and bawdyeparasits as range the cuntreyes, ryming and singing of uncleane, corrupt, and filthie songes in tavernes, ale-houses, innes, and otherpublique assemblies. . . . Every towne, citie, and countrey is full ofthese minstrelles to pype up a dance to the devill; but of dyvines, sofew there be as they maye hardly be seene. "[571] Before this awful time comes for them, however, the minstrels thriveunder the last Plantagenets. Their bill is a varied one, and includesthe best and the worst; they sometimes recite the "Troilus" ofChaucer, [572] and sometimes the ancient romances of chivalry, altered, spoiled, shorn of all their poetry. Chaucer had ridiculed these versionsof the old heroic stories, written in tripping verses, but in vain. Throughout his life, after as well as before "Sir Thopas, " he couldwonder and laugh at the success of stories, composed in the very styleof his own burlesque poem, about heroes who, being all peerless, arenecessarily all alike: one is "stalworthe and wyghte, " another "hardyand wyght, " a third also "hardy and wyght"; and the fourth, fifth, andhundredth are equally brave and invincible. They are called Isumbras, Eglamour, Degrevant[573]; but they differ in their names and in nothingmore. The booksellers of the Renaissance who printed their historiescould make the same woodcut on the cover serve for all their portraits. By merely altering the name beneath, they changed all there was tochange; one and the same block did duty in turn for Romulus or Robertthe Devil. [574] Specimens of this facile art swarm indefinitely; theyare scattered over the country, penetrate into hamlets, find their wayinto cottages, and make the people acquainted with the doughty deeds ofEglamour and Roland. We now find ourselves really in the copse. In the middle of the copse are trees of finer growth. Some among thepoets, while conforming to the old style, improve upon their models asthey proceed; they add an original note of their own, and on thataccount deserve to be listened to. Far above those empty, trippingmetrical stories, and superior even to "Morte Arthure" and to "Williamof Palerne, "[575] written in English verse at the time of Chaucer, ranks"Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight, "[576] being incomparably the bestspecimen of the style. Instead of puppets with jerky movements, andwooden joints that we hear crack, the English poet shows in this workreal men and women, with supple limbs and red lips; elegant, graceful, and charming to behold. These knights and ladies in their well-fittingarmour or their tight dresses, whom we see stretched in churches ontheir fourteenth-century tombs, have come back to life once more; andnow they move, they gaze on each other, they love again. On Christmas day, in presence of Arthur and his whole Court, Sir Gawaynecuts off the head of the Green Knight. This giant knight is doubtless anenchanter, for he stoops, picks up his head, and, remounting his horse, bids Sir Gawayne meet him a year hence at the Green Chapel, where hewill give him blow for blow. The year passes. Gawayne leaves the Court with his horse "Gringolet, "and without quitting England, rides through unknown lands, having noone to speak to save God. He reaches the gate of a splendid castle, andis welcomed by a knight of ordinary stature, under whose presentappearance he does not recognise his adversary the giant. Three days areleft before the date of the tryst; they are spent in amusements. Theknight goes daily to hunt; he agrees to give all his game to his guest, who remains at home with the lady of the castle, the most beautifulwoman ever seen, on condition that Gawayne, in his turn, will give himwhat he has taken during his absence. Every night they gaily sup in thehall; a bright light burns on the walls, the servants set up waxtorches, and serve at table. The meal is cheered by music and "carolesnewe, "[577] jests, and the laughter of ladies. [578] At three o'clockeach morning the lord of the castle rises, hears mass, and goesa-hunting. Gawayne is awakened from sleep by his hostess; she enters hisroom, with easy and graceful movements, dressed in a "mery mantyle" andfurred gown, trailing on the floor, but very low in the neck: Hir breste bare bifore, and bihinde eke. She goes to the window, opens it, and says, "with hir riche wordes": A! mon, hou may thou sleep, This morning is so clere![579] She seats herself, and refuses to go. Gawayne is assailed by terribletemptations. The thought of the Green Chapel, fortunately, helps him toovercome them, and the first, second, and third night his fair friendfinds him equally coy. She kisses him once, twice, thrice, and jeers athim for forgetting each day what she had taught him on the previous one, namely, to kiss. When the hunter returns in the evening, Gawayne giveshim the kisses he has received in exchange for the spoils of the chase:a buck, a boar, and a fox. He had, however, accepted besides amarvellous belt, which protected the wearer from all danger, but he saysnothing about this, and puts it on: "Aux grands coeurs donnez quelquesfaiblesses, " our author obviously thinks, with Boileau. On the fourth day Gawayne starts with a guide, and reaches the GreenChapel; the Green Giant is there, ready to give him back the blowreceived a year before. Gawayne stoops his head under the dreadful axe, and just as it falls cannot help bending his shoulders a little. You arenot that Gawayne, says the giant, held in such high esteem. At this, Arthur's knight straightens himself; the giant lifts his axe again andstrikes, but only inflicts a slight wound. All is now explained: for thekisses Gawayne should have received mortal blows, but he gave them back;he kept the belt, however, and this is why he will bear through life ascar on his neck. Vexed, he throws away the belt, but the giant returnsit to him, and consoles him by admitting that the trial was a superhumanone, that he himself is Bernlak de Haut-Désert, and that his guest hasbeen the sport of "Morgan the fairy, " the companion of his hostess: Thurgh myght of Morgne la Faye that in my hous lenges (dwells). Gawayne declares that should he ever be tempted by pride, he need onlylook at the belt, and the temptation will vanish. He rejoins Arthur andhis peers, and tells his adventures, which afford food both for laughterand for admiration. The poem is anonymous. The same manuscript contains another, on atotally different subject, which seems to be by the same author. Thispoem has been called "The Pearl;"[580] it is a song of mourning. It musthave been written some time after the sad event which it records, whenthe bitterness of sorrow had softened. The landscape is bathed insunlight, the hues are wonderfully bright. The poet has lost hisdaughter, his pearl, who is dead; his pearl has fallen in the grass, andhe has been unable to find it; he cannot tear himself away from the spotwhere she had been. He entered in that arbour green; it was August, thatsunny season, when the corn has just fallen under the sickle; there thepearl had "trendeled doun" among the glittering, richly-coloured plants, gilly-flowers, gromwell seed, and peonies, splendid in their hues, sweeter in their smell. [581] He sees a forest, rocks that glisten inthe sun, banks of crystal; birds sing in the branches, and neithercistern nor guitar ever made sweeter music. The sound of waters, too, isheard; a brook glides over pebbles shining like the stars in a winter'snight, at the hour when the weary sleep. [582] So great is the beauty of the place that the father's grief is soothed, and he has a marvellous vision. On the opposite side of the stream hesees a maiden clothed in white; and as he gazes he suddenly recognisesher: O pearl art thou in sooth my pearl, so mourned and wept for throughso many nights? Touching and consoling is the answer: Thou hast lost nopearl, and never hadst one; that thou lost was but a rose, that floweredand faded; now only has the rose become a pearl for ever. [583] Thefather follows his child to where a glimpse can be caught of theCelestial City, with its flowers and jewels, the mystic lamb, and theprocession of the elect; it seems as if the poet were describingbeforehand, figure by figure, Van Eyck's painting at St. Bavon of Ghent. II. An immense copse surrounds the oak. About Chaucer swarm innumerableminstrels, anonymous poets, rhyming clerks, knightly ballad makers. [584]The fragile works of these rhyming multitudes are for the most partlost, yet great quantities of them still exist. They are composed byeverybody, and written in the three languages used by the English; somebeing in French, some in English, some in Latin. The Plantagenets were an art-loving race. Edward III. Never thought ofcost when it came to painting and gilding the walls of St. Stephen'sChapel; Richard II. Disliked a want of conformity in architecturalstyles, and, having the conscience of an artist, gave an example of arare sort in the Middle Ages, for he continued Westminster Abbey in thestyle of Henry III. Members of the royal family were known to writeverses. The hero of Poictiers inserted in his will a piece of poetry inFrench, requesting that the lines should be graven on his tomb, wherethey can still be read in Canterbury Cathedral: "Such as thou wast, sowas I; of death I never thought so long as I lived. On earth I enjoyedample wealth, and I used it with great splendour, land, houses, andtreasure, cloth, horses, silver and gold; but now I am poor and bereft, I lie under earth, my great beauty is all gone. . . . And were you to seeme now, I do not think you would believe that ever I was a man. "[585] The nobles followed suit; they put their passions into verse; but allhad not sufficient skill for such delicate pastimes. Many contentedthemselves with copying some of those ready-made ballads, of whichprofessional poets supplied ready-made collections; just as sermons werewritten for the benefit of obtuse parish priests, under the significanttitle of "Dormi Secure"[586] (Sleep in peace, tomorrow's sermon isready). We find also in English manuscripts rubrics like the following:"Loo here begynnethe a Balade whiche that Lydegate wrote at the requestof a squyer yt served in Love's court. "[587] In their most elegantlanguage, with all the studied refinement of the flowery style, thepoets, writing to order, amplified, embellished, and spoilt: "ce mot, lemot des dieux et des hommes: je t'aime!" We are not even in the copsenow, and we must stoop close to earth in order to see these blossoms ofa day. Among men of the people, and plain citizens, as well as at Court, thetaste for ballads and songs imported from France became general in thefourteenth century. In the streets of London, mere craftsmen could beheard singing French burdens: for in spite of the progress of thenational tongue, French was not yet entirely superseded in GreatBritain. Langland in his Visions has London workmen who sing: "Dieu voussauve dame Emma. "[588] Chaucer's good parson bears witness to thepopularity of another song, and declares in the course of his sermon:"Wel may that man that no good werke ne dooth, singe thilke newe Frenshesong: "J'ay tout perdu mon temps et mon labour. "[589] In imitation of what was done in the northern provinces of France, a_Pui_ had been founded in London, that is an association established forthe purpose of encouraging the art of the _chanson_, which awardedprizes to the authors of the best verses and the best music. [590] In thefourteenth century the Pui of London was at the height of itsprosperity; it included both foreign and English merchants. It had beeninstituted so that "jolity, peace, courtesy, gentleness, debonairity, and love without end might be maintained, all good promoted, and evilprevented. " These merchants of divers countries evidently agreed inthinking that music softens the manners, and tried to extinguish theirquarrels by songs. At the head of the Pui was a "prince" surrounded bytwelve "compaignouns, " elected by the brotherhood, whose missionincluded the duty of pacifying the squabblers. Each year a new princewas chosen and solemnly enthroned. On the appointed day "the old princeand his companions must go from one end of the hall to the other, singing; the old prince will bear on his head the crown of the Pui, andhave in his hand a gilt cup full of wine. And when they shall have goneall round, the old prince must give the one they have elected to drink, and also give him the crown, and that one shall be prince. " To pass judgment on _chansons_ is no trifle, and the deed is surroundedby every precaution befitting so important a sentence. The decisionrests with the old prince and the new, assisted by about fifteen "of themost knowing among the companions, " who are all obliged to take a solemnoath: "They must find which is the best song, to the best of theircapacity, under oath that they will not fail for love, for hate, forfavour, for promise, for neighbourhood, for lineage, for any tie old ornew, or for any reason whatsoever. " Moreover, two or three judges shallbe appointed "who are skilled in singing and music, " to examine the tuneof the song: "For unless it be accompanied by music, a written textcannot be called a _chanson_, neither can a _chanson royale_ be crownedunless it be accompanied with the sweetness of melodious singing. " Thewinner is to receive the crown, and his composition, copied and fairlywritten out, will be posted up in the hall, under the prince's coat ofarms: "The prince shall cause to be fastened under his coat of arms thesong crowned on the day he was chosen to be the new prince, clearlywritten, and correctly, without fault. " At one time the Pui society was nearly ruined, owing to the expenseincurred for decking the hall. In future it will be more moderate: "Itis agreed henceforth that part of the hall where the feast of the Puiis held, be not hung with silk or cloth of gold, neither shall the hallitself be draped, but only fairly garnished with green boughs, the floorstrewn with rushes, benches prepared, as befits such a feast royal; onlythe seat for the singers who are to sing the _chansons royales_ shall becovered with cloth of gold. " After the competition, all dine together. Here is the bill of fare forthe feast: "And the bill of fare is thus ordained; be all the companionsliberally served, the poorest as well as the richest, after thisfashion, to wit, that to them be served good bread, good ale and goodwine, and then potage and a course of strong meat, and after that adouble roast in a dish, and cheese, and nothing else. " Women were notadmitted to these gatherings, and so that slanderers might not say itwas for fear of quarrels, or worse, we are told by the society itselfthat it was to teach the members to "honour, cherish, and praise them asmuch in their absence as in their presence. " No feast was complete in the Middle Ages without a procession orprogress through the streets; the amusement was thus shared by thepeople. The members of the Pui did not fail in this: "As soon as theyshall have given the crown to the best singer, they shall mount theirhorses and ride through the town, and then accompany their new prince tohis hostel, and there all get down, and dance before departing; anddrink once, and return each to his hostel. " With its songs and music, its kind purpose, its crowns and green branches, this association seemslike a peaceful and verdant corner of Arcadia in the midst of LondonCity, peaceful and merry in spite of mercantile jealousies andinternational hatreds. This oasis is all the more charming to the sight because it is only anoasis. Such sentiments were too courteous to be very common. While ourfriends of the Pui endeavour to cherish and praise women even in theirabsence, other makers of songs follow another mediæval tradition andsatirise them mercilessly. Triads were dedicated to them, which werenothing but slanderous litanies: Herfor, and therfor, and therfor I came And for to preysse this praty woman. There wer three wylly, three wyly ther wer, A fox, a fryyr and a woman. Ther wer three angry, three angry ther wer: A wasp a wesyll and a woman. [591] So the litany continues, very different from the litany of the beautiesof woman sung in the same period, perhaps by the same men. Friars, monks, and fops who adopt absurd fashions, and wear hose so tight thatthey cannot stoop for fear of bursting them, [592] are, with women, thesubjects of these satirical songs: Preste, ne monke, ne yit chanoun, Ne no man of religioun, Gyfen hem so to devocioun As done thes holy frers, For summe gyven ham chyvalry, Somme to riote and ribaudery; Bot ffrers gyven ham to grete study And to grete prayers. [593] An account follows of doings, studies, and prayers, by no meansedifying, and which recalls Chaucer rather than St. Francis. III. The tone becomes more elevated; and then we have forest songs in honourof the outlaw Robin Hood. [594] The satire ceases to be simply mocking;the singer's laughter no longer consoles him for abuses; he wantsreforms; he chides and threatens. In his speech to the rebel peasants in1381, the priest John Ball takes from a popular song the burden thatcomprises his whole theory: Whan Adam dalf and Eve span, Who was thanne the gentilman?[595] The anonymous poet makes the dumb peasant speak, describe his woes, anddraw up a list of his complaints. By way of reply, anonymous clerkscompose songs, half English and half Latin, a favourite mixture at thattime, in which they express their horror of the rebels. [596] Otherssound the praises of the English heroes of the Hundred Years' War. Contrary to what might be supposed, the number of these last songs isnot great, and their inspiration not exalted. The war, as has been seen, was a royal and not a national one; and it happened, moreover, that noneof the famous poets of the time saw fit to celebrate Crécy andPoictiers. We have, therefore, nothing but rough sketches, akin topopular prints, barbarous in design, and coarse in colouring, but ofstrong intent. Clerks, in their Latin, pursue France and Philip deValois, with opprobrious epithets: Lynxea, viperea, vulpina, lupina, medea, Callida, syrena, crudelis, acerba, superba. Such is France according to them, and as to her king, his fate ispredicted in the following pun: O Philippus Valeys, Xerxes, Darius, Bituitus, Te faciet _maleys_ Edwardus, aper polimitus. [597] To which the French replied: Puis passeront Gauloys le bras marin, Le povre Anglet destruiront si par guerre, Qu'adonc diront tuit passant ce chemin: Ou temps jadis estoit ci Angleterre. [598] But both countries have survived, for other quarrels, other troubles, and other glories. The battles of Edward III. Were also celebrated in a series of Englishpoems, that have been preserved for us in a single manuscript, togetherwith the name of their author, Laurence Minot, [599] concerning whomnothing is known. In his rude verse, where alliteration is sometimescombined with rhyme, both being very roughly handled, Minot followsEdward step by step, and extols his prowess with the best will, but inthe worst poetry. Grand subjects do not need magnifying; and whenmagnified by unskilful artists they run the risk of recalling the SirThopas example: this risk Edward incurs at the hands of Laurence Minot. On the other hand absurd and useless expletives, "suth to saine, ""i-wis, " and especially "both day and night" continually help Minot toeke out his rhymes; and the reader is sorely tempted uncourteously toagree with him when he exclaims: Help me God, my wit es thin![600] Besides these war-songs, and at the same time, laments are heard, as informer days, sad and desponding accents. Defeats have succeeded tovictories, and they contribute to raise doubts as to the validity ofEdward's claims. [601] What if, after all, this ruinous war, the issue ofwhich is uncertain, should turn out to be an unjust war as well? Versesare even composed on the subject of wrongs done to inoffensive people inFrance: "Sanguis communitatis Franciæ quæ nihil ei nocebat quæritur apudDeum. "[602] In war literature the Scots did not fare better than the French at thehands of their neighbours. At this time, and for long after, they werestill the foe, just as the Irish or French were. Following the examplegiven by the latter, the Scots replied; several of their replies, beingin English, belong to the literature of England. The most energetic isthe semi-historical romance called "The Bruce"; it is the best of thepatriotic poems deriving their inspiration from the wars of thefourteenth century. "The Bruce, " composed about 1375 by John Barbour, [603] is divided intotwenty books; it is written in the dialect spoken in the south ofScotland from Aberdeen to the frontier, the dialect employed later byJames I. And Sir David Lyndesay, who, like Barbour himself, called it"inglis. " Barbour's verse is octo-syllabic, forming rhymed couplets; itis the same as Chaucer's in his "Hous of Fame. " Barbour's intention is to write a true history; he thus expects, hesays, to give twofold pleasure: firstly because it is a history, secondly because it is a true one. But where passion has a hold it israre that Truth reigns paramount, and Barbour's feeling for his countryis nothing short of passionate love; so much so that, when a legend isto the credit of Scotland, his critical sense entirely disappears, andmiracles become for him history. Thus with monotonous uniformity, throughout his poem a handful of Scotchmen rout the English multitudes;the highlanders perform prodigies, and the king still surpasses them invalour; everything succeeds with him as in a fairy tale. This love ofthe soil, of its rocks and its lochs, of its clans and their chieftains, brings to mind the most illustrious of the literary descendants ofBarbour, Walter Scott, who more than once borrowed from "The Bruce" thesubjects of his stories. [604] Besides the love of their land, the two compatriots have in common ataste for picturesque anecdotes, and select them with a view of makingtheir heroes popular; the sense of humour is not developed to an equaldegree, but it is of the same quality in both; and the same kind ofhappy answers are enjoyed by the two. Barbour delights, and with goodreason, in preserving the account of the fight in which the king, traitorously attacked by three men while alone in the mountains, "by awode syde, " smites them "rigorously, " and kills them all, and, whencongratulated on his return: "Perfay, " said he, "I slew bot ane forouten ma, God and my hound has slane the twa. "[605] Barbour likes to show the king, simple, patriarchal and valorous, sternto his foes, and gentle to the weak. He makes him halt his army inIreland, because the screams of a woman have been heard; it is a poorlaundress in the pangs of child-birth; the march is interrupted; a tentis spread, under which the poor creature is delivered in peace. [606] To England's threats Barbour replies by challenges, and by his famousapostrophe to liberty: A! fredome is a noble thing!. . . [607] Some people, continues the good archdeacon, who cannot long keep to thelyric style, have compared marriage to bondage, but they areunexperienced men who know nothing about it; of course marriage is theworst state in which it is possible to live, the thing is beyonddiscussion; but in bondage one cannot live, one dies. IV. A little above the copse another head rises; that of Chaucer's greatfriend, John Gower. Unlike Chaucer in this, Gower hated and despisedcommon people; when he allows them room in his works, the place assignedto them is an unenviable one. He is aristocratic and conservative bynature, so that he belongs to old England as much as to the new nation, and is the last in date of the recognisable representatives of AngevinBritain. Like the latter, Gower hesitates between several idioms; he isnot sure that English is the right one; he is tri-lingual, just asEngland had been; he writes long poems in Latin and English, and when headdresses himself to "the universality of all men" he uses French. Hewrites French "of Stratford, " it is true; he knows it and confesses it;but nothing shows better how truly he belongs to the England of timesgone, the half-French England of former days: he excuses himself andpersists. "And if I stumble in my French, forgive me my mistakes;English I am; and beg on this plea to be excused. "[608] Unlike Chaucer, Gower was rich and of good family. His life was a longone; born about 1325, he died in 1408. He was related to Sir RobertGower; he owned manors in the county of Kent and elsewhere; he was knownto the king, and to the royal family, but undertook no public functions. To him as we have seen, and to Strode, Chaucer dedicated his "Troilus": O moral Gower, this book I directe To thee and to the philosophical Strode, To vouchen sauf, ther nede is, to corecte Of your benignitees and zeles gode. [609] Gower, in his turn, represents Venus addressing him as follows: . . . Grete well Chaucer whan ye mete As my disciple and my poete, For in the floures of his youth, In sundry wise as he well couth, Of dittees and of songes glade, The which he for my sake made, The lond fulfilled is over all. [610] Gower was exceedingly pious. When old age came he retired with his wifeto the priory of St. Mary Overy's (now St. Saviour), in that same suburbof Southwark where Chaucer preferred to frequent the "Tabard, " and spenthis last years there in devout observances. He became blind in 1400, anddied eight years after. He bequeathed to his wife three cups, twosalt-cellars, twelve silver spoons, all his beds and chests, and theincome of two manors; he left a number of pious legacies in order tohave lamps kept burning, and masses said for his soul. He gave theconvent two chasubles of silk, a large missal, a chalice, a martyrologyhe had caused to be copied for this purpose, and begged that in exchangehe might be buried in the chapel of St. John the Baptist at St. MaryOvery's; which was done. His tomb, restored and repainted, still exists. He is represented lying with his hands raised as if for prayer, histhick locks are bound by a fillet adorned with roses. The head of theplump, round-cheeked poet rests on his three principal works; he wearsabout his neck a collar of interwoven SS, together with the swan, emblemof Henry IV. Of England. [611] The worthy man wrote immoderately, and in especial three great poems:the "Speculum Meditantis, " in French; the "Vox Clamantis, " in Latin; the"Confessio Amantis, " in English. The first is lost; only an analysis ofit remains, and it shows that Gower treated there of the vices andvirtues of his day. [612] The loss is not very great: Gower has toldpretty clearly elsewhere what he thought of the vices of his time, and, even had he not, it would have been easy to guess, for he was tooright-minded a man not to have thought of them all the evil possible. Some French works of Gower have, however, come down to us; they areballads and madrigals, for imaginary Iris, [613] Court poems, imitationsof Petrarch, [614] the light verses of a well-taught man. He promiseseternal service to his "douce dame"; his "douce dame" being no one inparticular. He writes for others, and they are welcome to draw from hisworks: "The love-songs thus far are composed specially for those whoexpect love favours through marriage. . . . The ballads from here to theend of the book are common to all, according to the properties andconditions of lovers who are diversely wrought upon by ficklelove. "[615] Here and there some fine similes are found in which figurethe chameleon, for instance, who was supposed to live on air alone, orthe hawk: "Chameleon a proud creature is, that lives upon air withoutmore; thus may I say in similar fashion only through the love hopeswhich I entertain is my soul's life preserved. "[616] He excused himself, as we have seen, for the mistakes in his Frenchworks, but neglected to do the same for his Latin poems: in which he waswrong. The principal one, the "Vox Clamantis, "[617] was suggested to himby the great rising of 1381, which had imperilled the Crown and thewhole social order. Gower, being a landowner in Kent, was in the bestsituation fully to appreciate the danger. In order to treat this terrible subject, Gower, who is not inventive, adopts the form of a dream, just as if it were a new "Romaunt of theRose. " It is springtime, and he falls asleep. Let us not mind itovermuch, we shall soon do likewise; but our slumber will be a brokenone; in the midst of the droning of his sermon, Gower suddenly screams, roars, flies into a passion--"Vox Clamantis!" His hearers open an eye, wonder where they are, recognise Gower, and go off to sleep again. Gower heaps up enormous and vague invectives; he fancies his styleresembles that of the apostle in Patmos. Animals and monsters fight andscream; the common people have been turned into beasts, oxen, hogs, dogs, foxes, flies, frogs; all are hideous or dangerous. Cursing as hegoes along, Gower drives before him, with hissing distichs, the strangeherd of his monsters, who "dart sulphureous flames from the cavern oftheir mouth. "[618] These disasters are caused by the vices of the time, and Gowerlengthily, patiently, complacently, draws up an interminable catalogueof them. A University education has taught him the importance of correctdivisions; he divides and subdivides according to the approvedscholastic methods. Firstly, there are the vices of churchmen; thesevices are of different kinds, as are ecclesiastics themselves; here-divides and re-subdivides. Some parsons "give Venus the tithes thatbelong to God"; others are the terror of hares: "lepus visa periclafugit, " and hearken to no chime but the "vociferations" of thehounds[619]; others trade. Knights are too fond of women "with goldenlocks"; peasants are slothful; merchants rapacious and dishonest; theymake "false gems out of glass. "[620] The king himself does not escape alecture: let him be upright, pious, merciful, and choose his ministerswith care; let him beware of women: "Thou art king, let one sole queensuffice thee. "[621] In one particular, however, this sermon is a remarkable one. Whatpredominates in these long tirades of poor verses is an intense feelingof horror and dismay; the quiet Gower, and the whole community to whichhe belonged, have suddenly been brought face to face with somethingunusual and terrifying even for that period. The earth shook, and a gulfopened; hundreds of victims, an archbishop of Canterbury among them, disappeared, and the abyss still yawns; the consternation is general, and no one knows what remedy to expect. Happily the two edges of thechasm have at last united; it has closed again, hiding in its depths aheaving sea of lava, the rumblings of which are still heard, and givewarning that it may burst forth at some future day. Gower, in themeantime, scans his distichs. Chaucer wrote in English, naturally, his sole reason being that it wasthe language of the country. Gower, when he uses this idiom, [622] offersexplanations: And for that fewe men endite In oure Englishe, I thenke make, A boke for Englondes sake. [623] He has no idea to what extent this apology, so common a hundred yearsbefore, is now out of place after the "Troilus" of Chaucer. His Englishbook is a lengthy compilation, written at the request of the young KingRichard, [624] wherein Gower seeks both to amuse and to instruct, givingas he does, Somwhat of lust, somwhat of lore. In his turn, and after Boccaccio, he invents a plot that will allow himto insert a whole series of tales and stories into one single work;compositions of this sort being the fashion. Gower's collection containsa hundred and twelve short stories, two or three of which are very welltold; one, the adventure of Florent, being, perhaps, related even betterthan in Chaucer. [625] The rest resembles the Gower of the "VoxClamantis. " What will be the subject of this philosopher's talk? He will tell us ofa thing: . . . Wherupon the world mote stonde, And hath done sithen it began, And shall while there is any man, And that is love. [626] In order to treat of this subject, and of many others, Boccaccio hadconceived the idea of his gathering in the villa near Florence, andChaucer that of his pilgrimage. Moral Gower remains true to hischaracter, and imagines a confession. The lover seeks a priest of Venus, a worthy and very learned old man, called Genius, who had alreadyfigured as confessor in the "Roman de la Rose"[627]: "Benedicite, " saysthe priest; "Dominus, " answers the lover; and a miniature shows thelover in a pink gown, kneeling in a meadow at the feet of Genius, atonsured monk in frock and cowl. [628] We find ourselves again among vices and virtues, classifications, divisions, and subdivisions. Genius condemns the vices (those of hisgoddess included, for he is a free speaking priest). He hates, above allthings, Lollardry, "this new tapinage, " and he commends the virtues; thestories come in by way of example: mind what your eyes do, witnessActæon; and your ears, witness the Sirens. He passes on to the sevendeadly sins which were apparently studied in the seminary where thispriest of Venus learnt theology. After the deadly sins the mists andmarvels of the "Secretum Secretorum" fill the scene. At last the loverbegs for mercy; he writes Venus a letter: "with the teres of min eye instede of inke. " Venus, who is a goddess, deciphers it, hastens to thespot, and scornfully laughs at this shivering lover, whom age andwrinkles have left a lover. Gower then decides to withdraw, and make, ashe says, "beau retraite. " In a last vision, the poor "olde grisel" gazesupon the series of famous loving couples, who give themselves up to thedelight of dancing, in a paradise, where one could scarcely haveexpected to find them together: Tristan and Iseult, Paris and Helen, Troilus and Cressida, Samson and Dalila, David and Bathsheba, andSolomon the wise who has for himself alone a hundred or so of "Jewes ekeand Sarazines. " In spite of the immense difference in their merit, the names of Chaucerand Gower were constantly coupled; James of Scotland, Skelton, Dunbar, always mention them together; the "Confessio" was printed by Caxton;under Elizabeth we find Gower on the stage; he figures in "Pericles, "and recites the prologue of this play, the plot of which is borrowedfrom his poem. FOOTNOTES: [568] See above, p. 162. [569] Against those practices Langland strongly protests in his"Visions, " text C. X. 133; xvi. 200. See following Chapter. [570] Rymer, "Foedera, " April 24, 1469. The classic instrument of theminstrel was the vielle or viol, a sort of violin, which only trueartists knew how to use well (one is reproduced in "English WayfaringLife, " p. 202). Therefore many minstrels early replaced this difficultinstrument by the common tabor, which sufficed to mark the cadence oftheir chants. Many other musical instruments were known in the MiddleAges; a list of them has been drawn up by H. Lavoix: "La Musique autemps de St. Louis, " in G. Raynaud's "Recueil des motets français desXIIe et XIIIe Siècles, " vol. Ii. P. 321. [571] "Anatomy of Abuses, " ed. Furnivall, London, 1877-79, 8vo, pp. 171, 172. [572] Chaucer himself expected his poem to be said or _sung_; he says tohis book: And red wher-so thou be, or elles songe; That thou be understonde, I God beseche! (Book v. St. 257. ) [573] I wille yow telle of a knyghte That bothe was stalworthe and wyghte. (_Isumbras. _) Y schalle telle yow of a knyght That was bothe hardy and wyght. (_Eglamour. _) And y schalle karppe off a knyght That was both hardy and wyght. (_Degrevant. _) "The Thornton Romances, " ed. Halliwell (Camden Society, 1844, pp. 88, 121, 177), from a MS. Preserved in the cathedral of Lincoln, thatcontains romances, recipes, prayers, &c. , copied in the first half ofthe fifteenth century, on more ancient texts. See notes on many similarromances in Ward's "Catalogue of MS. Romances, " 1883, vol. I. Pp. 760ff. [574] See in "English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare, " pp. 57 and 65, facsimiles of woodcuts which served about 1510 and 1560 to represent, the first, Romulus, Robert the Devil, &c. , the second, Guy of Warwick, Graund Amoure, and the "Squyr of Lowe Degre. " [575] Both published by the Early English Text Society: "Morte Arthure, "ed. Brock, 1871; "William of Palerne, " ed. Skeat, 1867. Both are inalliterative verse; the first composed about the end, and the secondabout the middle, of the fourteenth century. [576] The unique MS. Of this poem is in the British Museum: Cotton, NeroA 10. It is of small size, and in a good handwriting of the fourteenthcentury, but the ink is faded. It contains some curious, though notfine, miniatures, representing the Green Knight leaving the Court, hishead in his hand; Gawayne and his hostess; the scene at the GreenChapel; the return to King Arthur. The text has been published, _e. G. _, by R. Morris: "Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight, an alliterative romancepoem, " London, Early English Text Society, 1864, 8vo. The date assignedto the poem by Morris (1320-30) seems to be too early; the work belongsmore probably to the second half of the century. The immediate originalof the tale is not known; it was, however, certainly a French poem. Seeon this subject Ward, "Catalogue of Romances, " 1883, p. 387, and G. Paris, "Histoire Littéraire de la France, " vol. Xxx. [577] Much glam and gle glent up ther-inne, Aboute the fyre upon flat (floor) and on fele (many) wyse, At the soper and after, mony athel songez, As coundutes of Kryst-masse and caroles newe. . . . [578] With merthe and mynstralsye, wyth metez at hor wylle, Thay maden as mery as any men moghten With laghyng of ladies, with lotes of bordes (play upon words). (l. 1952. ) [579] l. 1746. [580] "Pearl, an English Poem of the Fourteenth Century, edited withmodern rendering by Israel Gollancz, " London, 1891, 8vo. The poem iswritten in stanzas (_a b a b a b a b b c b c_); the author employs bothrhyme and alliteration. "Pearl" belongs apparently, like "Sir Gawayne, "and some other poems on religious subjects, contained in the same MS. , to the second half of the fourteenth century; there are, however, doubtsand discussions concerning the date. Some coarsely-painted miniatures, by no means corresponding to the gracefulness of the poem, represent thechief incidents of "Pearl;" they are by the same hand as those of "SirGawayne. " See the reproduction of one of them in "Piers Plowman, acontribution to the History of English Mysticism, " London, 1894, 8vo, p. 12. [581] I entred in that erber grene, In Augoste in a hygh seysoun, Quen corne is corven with crokez kene; On huyle ther perle it trendeled doun; Schadowed this wortes (plants) full schyre and schene, Gilofre, gyngure and gromylyoun, And pyonys powdered ay betwene. Yif hit wacz semly on to sene, A fayrie tiayr yet fro hit flot. (St. 4. ) [582] As stremande sternes quen strothe men slepe, Staren in welkyn in wynter nyght. (St. 10. ) [583] For that thou lestes wacs bot a rose, That flowred and fayled as kynde hit gefe. (St. 23. ) [584] The principal collections containing lyrical works and popularballads of that period are: "Ancient Songs and Ballads from the reign ofHenry II. To the Revolution, " collected by John Ritson, revised by W. C. Hazlitt, London, 1877, 12mo; "Specimens of Lyric Poetry, composed inEngland in the reign of Edward I. , " ed. Th. Wright, Percy Society, 1842, 8vo; "Reliquiæ Antiquæ, scraps from ancient MSS. Illustrating chieflyEarly English Literature, " ed. T. Wright and J. O. Halliwell, London, 1841-43, 2 vols. 8vo; "Political Songs of England, from the reign ofJohn to that of Edward II. , " ed. Th. Wright, Camden Society, 1839, 4to;"Songs and Carols now first printed from a MS. Of the XVth Century, " ed. Th. Wright, Percy Society, 1847, 8vo; "Political Poems and Songs, fromEdward III. To Richard III. , " ed. Th. Wright, Rolls, 1859-61, 2 vols. 8vo; "Political, Religious and Love Poems, " ed. Furnivall, London, EarlyEnglish Text Society, 1866, 8vo; "Bishop Percy's Folio MS. " ed. J. W. Hales and F. J. Furnivall, Ballad Society, 1867, 8vo; "The English andScottish Popular Ballads, " ed. F. J. Child, Boston, 1882 ff. Usefulindications will be found in H. L. D. Ward's "Catalogue of MS. Romancesin the British Museum, " vol. I. , 1883. [585] Tiel come tu es je autie fu, Tu seras til come je su. De la mort ne peusay-je mie Tant come j'avoy la vie. En terre avoy grand richesse Dont je y fis grand noblesse, Terre, mesons et grand tresor, Draps, chivalx, argent et or, Mes ore su-je povres et cheitifs, Perfond en la terre gys, Ma grand beauté est tout alée . . . Et si ore me veissez, Je ne quide pas qe vous deeisez Qe j'eusse onqes hom esté. (Stanley, "Historical Memorials of Canterbury. ") [586] Compiled in France in 1395. Lecoy de la Marche, "la Chairefrançaise au moyen âge, " 2nd ed. , Paris, 1886, 8vo, p. 334. [587] MS. R. Iii. 20, in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, fol. 33. In the same MS. : "A roundell made . . . By my lorde therlle ofSuffolk": Quel desplaysier, quel courous quel destresse, Quel griefs, quelx mauls viennent souvent d'amours, &c. (fol. 36). The author is the famous Earl, afterwards Duke of Suffolk, who wasbeaten by Joan of Arc, who married Alice, daughter of Thomas Chaucer, and was beheaded in 1450. For ballads of the same kind, by Gower, seebelow, p. 367. The same taste reigned in France; without mentioningCharles d'Orléans, Pierre de Beauveau writes: "Le joyeulx temps passésouloit estre occasion que je faisoie de plaisant diz et gracieuseschançonnetes et balades. " "Nouvelles Françoises du XIVe Siècle, " ed. Moland and d'Héricault, 1858, p. 303. [588] "Visions concerning Piers Plowman, " A. Prol. L. 103, written about1362-3. See following Chapter. [589] "Parson's Tale. "--"Complete Works, " vol. Iv. P. 581. [590] "Munimenta Gildhallæ Londiniensis. "--"Liber albus, Libercustumarum; Liber Horn, " Rolls, 1859, ed. Riley. The regulations (inFrench) relating to the Pui are drawn from the "Liber Custumarum, "compiled in 1320 (14 Ed. II. ), pp. 216 ff. "The poetical competitionscalled _puis_, " established in the north of France, "seem to have givenrise to German and Dutch imitations, such as the _Master Singers_ andthe _Chambers of Rhetoric_. " G. Paris, "Littérature française au moyenâge, " paragraph 127. To these we can add the English imitation which nowoccupies us. [591] "Songs and Carols now first printed, " ed. Th. Wright, PercySociety, 1847, 8vo, p. 4. [592] For hortyng of here hosyn Non inclinare laborant. In the same piece, large collars, wide sleeves, big spurs are satirised. Th. Wright, "Political Poems and Songs from Ed. III. To Ric. III. , "Rolls, 1859, 2 vols. 8vo, vol. I. P. 275. [593] "Political Poems, " _ibid. _, vol. I. P. 263. [594] The greater part of those that have come down to us are of thefifteenth and sixteenth centuries; but Robin was very popular, and hispraises were sung as early as the fourteenth century. The lazy parson inLangland's Visions confesses that he is incapable of chanting theservices: But I can rymes of Robin Hood · and Randolf erle of Chestre. Ed. Skeat, text B. V. 402. See above, p. 224. [595] Walsingham, "Historia Anglicana, " Rolls, vol. Ii. P. 32. See anEnglish miniature representing Adam and Eve, so occupied, reproduced in"English Wayfaring Life, " p. 283. [596] Nede they fre be most, Vel nollent pacificari, &c. "Political Poems, " vol. I. P. 225. Satire of the heretical Lollards:"Lollardi sunt zizania, " &c. _Ibid. _, p. 232; of friars become peddlers, p. 264. [597] "Political Poems. " _ibid. _, vol. I. Pp. 26 ff. [598] Ballad by Eustache des Champs, "Oeuvres Complètes, " ii. P. 34. [599] "The Poems of Laurence Minot, " ed. J. Hall, Oxford, 1887, 8vo, eleven short poems on the battles of Edward III. Adam Davy may also beclassed among the patriotic poets: "Davy's five dreams about EdwardII. , " ed. Furnivall, Early English Text Society, 1878, 8vo. They aredreams interspersed with prophecies; the style is poor and aims at beingapocalyptic. Edward II. Shall be emperor of Christendom, &c. Variouspious works, a life of St. Alexius, a poem on the signs betokeningDoomsday, &c. , have been attributed to Davy without sufficient reason. See on this subject, Furnivall, _ibid. _, who gives the text of thesepoems. [600] _Ibid. _, p. 21. [601] Vices and faults of Edward: "Political Poems, " vol. I. P. 159, 172, &c. [602] "Political Poems, " vol. I. P. 172. [603] "The Bruce, or the book of the most excellent and noble PrinceRobert de Broyss, King of Scots, " A. D. 1375, ed. Skeat, E. E. T. S. , 1879-89. Barbour, having received safe conducts from Edward III. , wentto Oxford, and studied there in 1357 and in 1364, and went also toFrance, 1365, 1368. Besides his "Bruce" he wrote a "Brut, " and agenealogy of the Stuarts, "The Stewartis Oryginale, " beginning withNinus founder of Nineveh; these two last poems are lost. Barbour wasarchdeacon of Aberdeen; he died in 1395 in Scotland, where a royalpension had been bestowed upon him. [604] "The incidents on which the ensuing novel mainly turns are derivedfrom the ancient metrical chronicle of the Bruce by Archdeacon Barbour, and from, " &c. "Castle Dangerous, " Introduction. --"The authorities usedare chiefly those . . . Of Archdeacon Barbour. . . . " "Lord of the Isles, "Advertisement to the first edition. [605] Book vii. Line 483. [606] Book xvi. Line 270. [607] Book i. Line 235. [608] Et si jeo n'ai de François la faconde, Pardonetz moi qe jeo de ce forsvoie; Jeo suis Englois. "Balades and other Poems by John Gower, " London, Roxburghe Club, 18184to, _in fine_. [609] Book v. St. 266. [610] "Confessio Amantis, " ed. Pauli, London, 1857, 3 vols, 8vo. Vol. Iii. P. 374. [611] Henry, then earl of Derby, had given him a collar in 1393; theswan was the emblem of Thomas, duke of Gloucester, Henry's uncle, assassinated in 1397; Henry adopted it from that date. A view of Gower'stomb is in my "Piers Plowman, " 1894, p. 46. [612] "Primus liber, gallico sermone editus in decem dividitur partes ettractans de viciis et virtutibus necnon de variis hujus seculi gradibusviam, qua peccator transgressus, ad sui Creatoris agnicionem rediredebet, recto tramite docere conatur. Titulusque libelli istius SpeculumMeditantis nuncupatus est. " This analysis is to be found in severalMSS. ; also in the edition of the "Confessio, " printed by Caxton; Pauligives it too: "Confessio, " i. P. Xxiii. The "Speculum Meditantis" wassure to resemble much those works of moralisation (hence Chaucer's"moral Gower"), numerous in French mediæval literature, which werecalled "bibles. " See for example "La Bible Guiot de Provins": Dou siècle puant et orrible M'estuet commencier une bible. "On this stinking and horrid world, I want to begin a bible;" and Guiotreviews all classes of society, all trades and professions, and blameseverything and everybody; Gower did the same; everything for them is"puant. " Rome is not spared: "Rome nos suce et nos englot, " says Guiot. See text of Guiot's "Bible" in Barbazan and Méon, "Fabliaux, " 1808, vol. Ii. P. 307. [613] "Balades and other Poems, " Roxburghe Club, 1818, 4to. [614] Jeo ris en plour et en santé languis, Ars en gelée et en chalour frémis. Ballad ix. No passage in Petrarch has been oftener imitated. Villonwrote: Je meurs de soif auprès de la fontaine . . . Je ris en pleurs et attens sans espoir, &c. [615] "Les balades d'amour jesqes enci sont fait especialement pourceaux q'attendont lours amours par droite mariage. Les balades d'icijesqes au fin du livere sont universeles à tout le monde selonc lespropertés et les condicions des amants qui sont diversement travailez enla fortune d'amour. " [616] Camélion c'est une beste fière Qui vit tansoulement de l'air sanz plus; Ensi pour dire en mesme la manière, De soule espoir qe j'ai d'amour conçuz Sont mes pensers en vie sustenuz. Ballad xvi; what a chameleon is, was thus explained in a Vocabulary ofthe fifteenth century: "Hic gamelion, animal varii coloris et sola aerevivit--_a buttyrfle_" (Th. Wright, "Vocabularies, " 1857, 4to, p, 220). [617] "Poema quod dicitur Vox Clamantis, " ed. Coxe, Roxburghe Club, 1850, 4to. He also wrote in Latin verse "Chronica Tripartita" (whereinhe relates, and judges with great severity, the reign of Richard II. , from 1387 to the accession of Henry IV. ), and several other poems on thevices of the time, the whole printed by Th. Wright, in his "PoliticalPoems, " vol. I. Rolls. The "Chronica" are also printed with the "VoxClamantis. " [618] P. 31. He jeers at the vulgarity of their names: Hudde ferit, quos Judde terit, dum Cobbe minatur . . . Hogge suam pompam vibrat, dum se putat omni Majorem Rege nobilitate fore. Balle propheta docet, quem spiritus ante malignus Edocuit . . . (p. 50. ) The famous John Ball is here referred to, the apostle of the revolt, whodied quartered. See below, p. 413. [619] Est sibi crassus equus, restatque scientia macra . . . Ad latus et cornu sufflans gerit, unde redundant Mons, nemus, unde lepus visa pericla fugit. . . . Clamor in ore canum, dum vociferantur in unum, Est sibi campana psallitur unde Deo. Stat sibi missa brevis devotio longaque campis, Quo sibi cantores deputat esse canes. (p. 176. ) [620] Conficit ex vitris gemma oculo pretiosas. (p. 275. ) [621] Rex es, regina satis est, tibi sufficit una. (p. 316. ) [622] "Confessio Amantis. " There exists of it no satisfactory edition, and it is to be hoped the Early English Text Society, that has alreadyrendered so many services, will soon render this greatly needed one, Pauli's edition, London, 1857, 3 vols. 8vo, is very faulty; H. Morley'sedition (Carisbrooke Library, London, 1889, 8vo) is expurgated. Gowerwrote in English some minor poems, in especial "The Praise of Peace" (inthe "Political Poems, " of Wright, Rolls). The "Confessio" is written inocto-syllabic couplets, with four accents. This poem should be comparedwith French compilations of the same sort, and especially with the"Castoiement d'un père à son fils, " thirteenth century, a series oftales in verse, told by the father to castigate and edify the son, textin Barbazan and Méon, "Fabliaux, " Paris, 1808, 4 vols. 8vo, vol. Ii. [623] "Confessio, " Pauli's ed. , p. 2. [624] Gower wrote two successive versions of his poem: the first about1384, the second about 1393. In this last one, having openly taken theside of the future Henry IV. (which was very bold of him), he suppressedall allusions to Richard. In the first version, instead of, A boke for Englondes sake, he had written: A boke for King Richardes sake. [625] Vol. I. Pp. 89 ff. In Chaucer, the story is told by the Wife ofBath. [626] Beginning of Book i. [627] Already had been seen in the "Roman": Comment Nature la déesse A son prêtre se confesse . . . "Génius, dit-elle, beau prêtre, D'une folie que j'ai faite, A vous m'en vuel faire confesse;" and under pretence of confessing herself, she explains the varioussystems of the universe at great length. [628] In Mrs. Egerton, 1991, fol. 7, in the British Museum, reproducedin my "Piers Plowman, " p. 11. CHAPTER IV. _WILLIAM LANGLAND AND HIS VISIONS. _ Gower's books were made out of books. Chaucer's friend carries us inimagination to the paradise of Eros, or to a Patmos of his owninvention, from whence he foretells the end of the world; but whateverhe does or says we are always perfectly aware of where we are: we are inhis library. It is quite different with another poet of this period, a mysterious andintangible personage, whose very name is doubtful, whose writings hadgreat influence, and that no one appears to have seen, concerning whomwe possess no contemporaneous information. Like Gower, strong ties bindhim to the past; but Gower is linked to Angevin England, and WilliamLangland, if such be really his name, to the remote England of theSaxons and Scandinavians. His books are not made out of books; they aremade of real life, of things seen, of dreams dreamt, of feelingsactually experienced. He is the exact opposite of Gower, he completesChaucer himself. When the "Canterbury Tales" are read, it seems asthough all England were described in them; when the Visions of Langlandare opened, it is seen that Chaucer had not said everything. Langlandis without comparison the greatest poet after Chaucer in the mediævalliterature of England. [629] I. His Visions have been preserved for us in a considerable number ofmanuscripts. They differ greatly among each other; Langland appears tohave absorbed himself in his work, continually remodelling and adding toit. No poem has been more truly lived than this one; it was the author'sshelter, his real house, his real church; he always came back there topray, to tell his sorrows--to live in it. Hence strange incoherencies, and at the same time many unexpected lights. The spirit by whichLangland is animated is the spirit of the Middle Ages, powerful, desultory, limitless. A classic author makes a plan, establishes nobleproportions, conceives a definite work, and completes it; the poet ofthe Middle Ages, if he makes a plan, rarely keeps to it; he alters it ashe goes along, adding a porch, a wing, a chapel to his edifice: acathedral in mediæval times was never finished. Some authors, it istrue, were already touched by classic influence, and had an idea ofmeasure; such was the case with Chaucer, but not with Langland; anythingand everything finds place in his work. By collecting the morecharacteristic notes scattered in his poem, sketch-books full ofstriking examples might be formed, illustrative of English life in thefourteenth century, to compare with Chaucer's, of the political andreligious history of the nation, and also of the biography of theauthor. Allusions to events of the day which abound in the poem enable us todate it. Three principal versions exist, [630] without counting severalintermediate remodellings; the first contains twelve cantos or _passus_, the second twenty, the third twenty-three; their probable dates are1362-3, 1376-7, and 1398-9. [631] The numerous allusions to himself made by the author, principally in thelast text of his poem, when, according to the wont of old men, he choseto tell the tale of his past life, allow us to form an idea of what hismaterial as well as moral biography must have been. He was probably bornin 1331 or 1332, at Cleobury Mortimer, as it seems, in the county ofShrewsbury, not far from the border of Wales. He was (I think) of lowextraction, and appears to have escaped bondage owing to the help ofpatrons who were pleased by his ready intelligence. From childhood hewas used to peasants and poor folk; he describes their habits as onefamiliarised with them, and their cottages as one who knows them well. His life oscillated chiefly between two localities, Malvern and London. Even when he resides in the latter place, his thoughts turn to Malvern, to its hills and verdure; he imagines himself there; for tender ties, those ties that bind men to mother earth, and which are only formed inchildhood, endear the place to him. A convent and a school formerlyexisted at Malvern, and there in all likelihood Langland first studied. The church where he came to pray still exists, built of red sandstone, astructure of different epochs, where the Norman style and perpendicularGothic unite. Behind the village rise steep hills, covered with gorse, ferns, heather, and moss. Their highest point quite at the end of thechain, towards Wales, is crowned by Roman earthworks. From thence can bedescried the vast plain where flows the Severn, crossed by streamsbordered by rows of trees taking blue tints in the distance, spottedwith lights and shadows, as the clouds pass in the ever-varying sky. Meadows alternate with fields of waving grain; the square tower ofWorcester rises to the left, and away to the east those mountains areseen that witnessed the feats of Arthur. This wide expanse was later togive the poet his idea of the world's plain, "a fair feld ful of folke, "where he will assemble all humanity, as in a Valley of Jehoshaphat. Heenjoys wandering in this "wilde wildernesse, " attracted by "the layesthe levely foules made. " From childhood imagination predominates in him; his intellectualcuriosity and facility are very great. He is a vagabond by nature, bothmentally and physically; he roams over the domains of science as he didover his beloved hills, at random, plunging into theology, logic, law, astronomy, "an harde thynge"; or losing himself in reveries, readingromances of chivalry, following Ymagynatyf, who never rests: "Idel was Inevere. " He studies the properties of animals, stones, and plants, alittle from nature and a little from books; now he talks as Euphues willdo later, and his natural mythology will cause a smile; and now hespeaks as one country-bred, who has seen with his own eyes, like Burns, a bird build her nest, and has patiently watched her do it. Sometimesthe animal is a living one, that leaps from bough to bough in thesunlight; at others, it is a strange beast, fit only to dwell among thestone foliage of a cathedral cornice. He knows French and Latin; he has some tincture of the classics; hewould like to know everything: Alle the sciences under sonne · and alle the sotyle craftes, I wolde I knewe and couth · kyndely in myne herte![632] But, in that as in other things, his will is not on a par with hisaspirations: this inadequacy was the cause of numberlessdisappointments. Thou art, Clergye says most appropriately, one of thosewho want to know but hate to study: The wer lef to lerne · but loth for to stodie. [633] Even in early youth his mind seems to lack balance; being as yet a boy, he is already a soul in trouble. His dreams at this time were not all dark ones; radiant apparitions cameto him. Thou art young and lusty, said one, and hast years many beforethee to live and to love; look in this mirror, and see the wonders andjoys of love. I shall follow thee, said another, till thou becomest alord, and hast domains. [634] But one by one the lights faded around him;his patrons died, and this was the end of his ambitions; for he was notone of those men able by sheer strength of will to make up for outsidehelp when that fails them. His will was diseased; an endless grief beganfor him. Being dependent on his "Clergye" for a livelihood, he went toLondon, and tried to earn his daily bread by means of it, of "thatlabour" which he had "lerned best. "[635] Religious life in the Middle Ages had not those well-defined and visiblelandmarks to which we are accustomed. Nowadays one either is or is notof the Church; formerly, no such obvious divisions existed. Religiouslife spread through society, like an immense river without dykes, swollen by innumerable affluents, whose subterranean penetrationsimpregnated even the soil through which they did not actually flow. Fromthis arose numerous situations difficult to define, bordering at once onthe world and on the Church, a state of things with which there is noanalogy now, except in Rome itself, where the religious life of theMiddle Ages still partly continues. Numerous semi-religious and slightly remunerative functions wereaccessible to clerks, who were not, however, obliged to renounce theworld on that account. The great thing in the hour of death being toensure the salvation of the soul, men of fortune continued, andsometimes began, their good works at that hour. They endeavoured to winParadise by proxy; they left directions in their will that, by means oflawful hire, soldiers should be sent to battle with the infidel; andthey also founded what were called "_chantries_. " A sum of money wasleft by them in order that masses, or the service for the dead, or both, should be chanted for the repose of their souls. The number of these chantries was countless; every arch in the aisles ofthe cathedrals contained some, where the service for the dead was sung;sometimes separate edifices were built with this view. A priestcelebrated masses when the founder had asked for them; and clerksperformed the office of choristers, having, for the most part, simplyreceived the tonsure, and not being necessarily in holy orders. It was, for them all, a career, almost a trade; giving rise to discussionsconcerning salaries, and even to actual strikes. These services derivedthe name under which they commonly went from one of the words of theliturgy sung; they were called _Placebos_ and _Diriges_. The word"dirge" has passed into the English language, and is derived from thelatter. To psalmody for money, to chant the same words from day to day and fromyear to year, transforming into a mere mechanical toil the divine giftand duty of prayer, could not answer the ideal of life conceived by aproud and generous soul filled with vast thoughts. Langland, however, was obliged to curb his mind to this work; _Placebo_ and _Dirige_ becamehis _tools_: The lomes that ich laboure with · and lyflode deserve. [636] Like many others whose will is diseased, he condemned the abuse andprofited by it. The fairies at his birth had promised riches, and he waspoor; they had whispered of love, and an unsatisfactory marriage hadclosed the door on love, and debarred him from preferment to the highestecclesiastical ranks. Langland lives miserably with his wife Catherineand his daughter Nicolette, in a house in Cornhill, not far from St. Paul's, the cathedral of many chantries, [637] and not far from thattower of Aldgate, to which about this time that other poet, Chaucer, directed his steps, he, too, solitary and lost in dreams. Langland has depicted himself at this period of his existence a great, gaunt figure, dressed in sombre garments with large folds, sad in agrief without end, bewailing the protectors of his childhood and hislost illusions, seeing nothing but clouds on the horizon of his life. Hebegins no new friendships; he forms ties with no one; he follows thecrowded streets of the city, elbowing lords, lawyers, and ladies offashion; he greets no one. Men wearing furs and silver pendants, richgarments and collars of gold, brush past him, and he knows them not. Gold collars ought to be saluted, but he does not do it; he does not sayto them: "God loke yow Lordes!" But then his air is so absent, sostrange, that instead of quarrelling with him people shrug theirshoulders, and say: He is "a fole"; he is mad. [638] Mad! the word recursagain and again under his pen, the idea presents itself incessantly tohis mind, under every shape, as though he were possessed by it: "fole, ""frantyk, " "ydiote!" He sees around him nothing but dismal spectres:Age, Penury, Disease. To these material woes are added mental ones. In the darkness of thisworld shines at least a distant ray, far off beyond the grave. But, attimes, even this light wavers; clouds obscure and apparently extinguishit. Doubts assail the soul of the dreamer; theology ought to elucidate, but, on the contrary, only darkens them: The more I muse there-inne · the mistier it seemeth, And the depper I devyne · the darker me it thinketh. [639] How is it possible to reconcile the teachings of theology with our ideaof justice? And certain thoughts constantly recur to the poet, and shakethe edifice of his faith; he drives them away, they reappear; he isbewitched by them and cannot exorcise these demons. Who had a moreelevated mind than Aristotle, and who was wiser than Solomon? Still theyare held by Holy-Church "bothe ydampned!" and on Good Friday, what dowe see? A felon is saved who had lived all his life in lies and thefts;he was saved at once "with-outen penaunce of purgatorie. " Adam, Isaiah, and all the prophets remained "many longe yeres" with Lucifer, and-- A robbere was yraunceouned · rather than thei alle![640] He wishes he had thought less, learnt less, "conned" fewer books, andpreserved for himself the quiet, "sad bileve" of "plowmen andpastoures"; happy men who can Percen with a _pater noster_ · the paleys of hevene![641] In the midst of these trials and sorrows, Langland had one refuge: hisbook. His poem made up for those things which life had denied him. Whymake verses, why write, said Ymagynatyf to him; are there not "bokesynowe?"[3] But without his book, Langland could not have lived, likethose fathers whose existence is bound up in that of their child, andwho die if he dies. When he had finished it, and though his intentionwas never to touch it again, for in it he announced his own death, hestill began it over again, once, twice; he worked at it all his life. What was the end of that life? No one knows. Some indications tend toshow that in his later years he left London, where he had led histroubled life to return to the Western country. [642] There we shouldlike to think of him, soothed, healed, resigned, and watching that sundecline in the west which he had seen rise, many years before, "in asomere seyson. " II. In this summer season, in the freshness of the morning, to the musicalsound of waters, "it sowned so murrie, " the poet, lingering on thesummit of Malvern hills, falls asleep, and the first of his visionsbegins. He contemplates Al the welthe of this worlde · and the woo bothe; and, in an immense plain, a "feld ful of folke, " he notices the bustleand movements of mankind, Of alle maner of men · the mene and the riche. Mankind is represented by typical specimens of all sorts: knights, monks, parsons, workmen singing French songs, cooks crying: Hot pies!"Hote pyes, hote!" pardoners, pilgrims, preachers, beggars, janglers whowill not work, japers and "mynstralles" that sell "glee. " They are, ornearly so, the same beings Chaucer assembled at the "Tabard" inn, on theeve of his pilgrimage to Canterbury. This crowd has likewise apilgrimage to make, not, however, on the sunny high-road that leads fromSouthwark to the shrine of St. Thomas. No, they journey through abstractcountries, and have to accomplish, some three hundred years beforeBunyan's Christian, their pilgrim's progress in search of Truth and ofSupreme Good. A lady appears, who explains the landscape and the vision; she isHoly-Church. Yonder tower is the tower of Truth. This castle is the"Castel of Care" that contains "Wronge. " Holy-Church points out howmankind ought to live, and teaches kings and knights their duties withregard to Truth. Here comes Lady Meed, a lady of importance, whose friendship meansperdition, yet without whom nothing can be done, and who plays animmense part in the world. The monosyllable which designates her has avague and extended signification; it means both reward and bribery. Disinterestedness, the virtue of noble minds, being rare in this world, scarcely anything is undertaken without hope of recompense, and whatman, toiling solely with a view to recompense, is quite safe frombribery? So Lady Meed is there, beautiful, alluring, perplexing; to geton without her is impossible, and yet it is hard to know what to do withher. She is about to marry "Fals"; the friends and witnesses havearrived, the marriage deed is drawn up; the pair are to have the"Erldome of Envye, " and other territories that recall the worst regionsof the celebrated map of the Tendre. Opposition is made to the marriage, and the whole wedding party starts for Westminster, where the cause isto be determined; friends, relations, bystanders; on foot, on horseback, and in carriages; a singular procession! The king, notified of the coming of this _cortège_, publicly declares hewill deal justice to the knaves, and the procession melts away; most ofthe friends disappear at a racing pace through the lanes of London. Thepoet hastens to lodge the greatest scoundrels with the people he hates, and has them received with open arms. "Gyle" is welcomed by themerchants, who dress him as an apprentice, and make him wait on theircustomers. "Lyer" has at first hard work to find shelter; he hides inthe obscure holes of the alleys, "lorkynge thorw lanes"; no door opens, his felonies are too notorious. At last, the pardoners "hadden pite andpullede hym to house"; they washed him and clothed him and sent him tochurch on Sundays with bulls and seals appended, to sell "pardons forpans" (pence). Then leeches send him letters to say that if he wouldassist them "waters to loke, " he should be well received; spicers havean interview with him; minstrels and messengers keep him "half a yereand eleve dayes"; friars dress him as a friar, and, with them, he formsthe friendliest ties of all. [643] Lady Meed appears before the king's tribunal; she is beautiful, shelooks gentle, she produces a great effect; she is Phryne before herjudges with the addition of a garment. The judges melt, they cheer her, and so do the clerks, the friars, and all those that approach her. Sheis so pretty! and so kind! Anything you will, she wills it too; no onefeels bashful in her presence; she is indeed so kind! A friar offers herthe boon of an absolution, which he will grant her "himself"; but shemust do good to the brotherhood: We have a window begun that will costus dear; if you would pay for the stained glass of the gable, your nameshould be engraved thereon, and to heaven would go your soul. Meed iswilling. The king appears and examines her; he decides to marry her, notto Fals, but to the knight Conscience. Meed is willing; she is alwayswilling. The knight comes, refuses, and lays bare the ill-practices of Meed, whocorrupts all the orders of the kingdom, and has caused the death of"yowre fadre" (your father, King Edward II. ). She would not be anamiable spouse; she is as "comune as the cart-wey. " She connives withthe Pope in the presentation to benefices; she obtains bishoprics forfools, "theighe they be lewed. " Meed weeps, which is already a good answer; then, having recovered theuse of speech, she defends herself cleverly. The world would fall into atorpor without Meed; knights would no longer care for kings; priestswould no longer say masses; minstrels would sing no more songs;merchants would not trade; and even beggars would no longer beg. The knight tartly replies: There are two kinds of Meed; we knew it;there is reward, and there is bribery, but they are always confounded. Ah! if Reason reigned in this world instead of Meed, the golden agewould return; no more wars; no more of these varieties of tribunals, where Justice herself gets confused. At this Meed becomes "wroth as thewynde. "[644] Enough, says the king; I can stand you no longer; you must both serveme: "Kisse hir, " quod the kynge · "Conscience, I hote (bid). " --"Nay bi Criste!"[645] the knight answers, and the quarrel continues. They send forReason to decide it. Reason has his horses saddled; they haveinterminable names, such as "Suffre-til-I-see-my-time. " Long beforethe day of the Puritans, our visionary employs names equivalentto sentences; we meet, in his poem, with a little girl, calledBehave-well-or-thy-mother-will-give-thee-a-whipping, [646] scarcely apractical name for everyday life; another personage, Evan the Welshman, rejoices in a name six lines long. Reason arrives at Court; the dispute between Meed and Conscience isdropped and forgotten, for another one has arisen. "Thanne come Peesinto Parlement;" Peace presents a petition against Wrong, andenumerates his evil actions. He has led astray Rose and Margaret; hekeeps a troup of retainers who assist him in his misdeeds; he attacksfarms, and carries off the crops; he is so powerful that none dare stiror complain. These are not vain fancies; the Rolls of Parliament, theactual Parliament that was sitting at Westminster, contain numbers ofsimilar petitions, where the real name of Wrong is given, and where theking endeavours to reply, as he does in the poem, according to thecounsels of Reason. Reason makes a speech to the entire nation, assembled in that plainwhich is discovered from the heights of Malvern, and where we foundourselves at the beginning of the Visions. Then a change of scene. These scene-shiftings are frequent, unexpected, and rapid as in an opera. "Then, . . . " says the poet, without furtherexplanation: then the scene shifts; the plain has disappeared; a newpersonage, Repentance, now listens to the Confession of the Deadly Sins. This is one of the most striking passages of the poem; in spite of theirabstract names, these sins are tangible realities; the author describestheir shape and their costumes; some are bony, others are tun-bellied;singular abstractions with warts on their noses! We were just now inParliament, with the victims of the powerful and the wicked; we now hearthe general confession of England in the time of the Plantagenets. [647] That the conversion may be a lasting one, Truth must be sought after. Piers Plowman appears, a mystic personage, a variable emblem, that heresimply represents the man of "good will, " and elsewhere stands forChrist himself. He teaches the way; gates must be entered, castlesencountered, and the Ten Commandments will be passed through. Aboveall, he teaches every one his present duties, his active and definiteobligations; he protests against useless and unoccupied lives, againstthose who have since been termed "dilettante, " for whom life is a sight, and who limit their function to being sight-seers, to amusing themselvesand judging others. All those who live upon earth have actual practicalduties, even you, lovely ladies: And ye lovely ladyes · with youre longe fyngres. All must defend, or till, or sow the field of life. The ploughingcommences, but it is soon apparent that some pretend to labour andlabour not; they are lazy or talkative, and sing songs. Piers succeedsin mastering them by the help of Hunger. Thanks to Hunger and Truth, distant possibilities are seen of a reform, of a future Golden Age, anisland of England that shall be similar to the island of Utopia, imagined later by another Englishman. The vision rises and fades away; another vision and another pilgrimagecommence, and occupy all the remainder of the poem, that is, from theeleventh to the twenty-third passus (C. Text). The poet endeavours tojoin in their dwellings Dowel, Dobet, and Dobest; in other terms:Good-life, Better-life, and Best-life. All this part of the book isfilled with sermons, most of them energetic, eloquent, spirited, full ofmasterly touches, leaving an ineffaceable impression on the memory andthe heart: sermon of Study on the Bible and on Arts and Letters; sermonsof Clergye and of Ymagynatyf; dialogue between Hawkyn (active life) andPatience; sermons of Faith, Hope, and Charity. Several visions areintermingled with these sermons: visions of the arrival of Christ inJerusalem, and of the Passion; visions of hell attacked by Jesus, anddefended by Satan and Lucifer with guns, "brasene gonnes, " a then recentinvention, which appeared particularly diabolical. Milton's Satan, inspite of having had three hundred years in which to improve his tactics, will find nothing better; his batteries are ranged in good order; aseraph stands behind each cannon with lighted match; at the firstdischarge, angels and archangels fall to the ground: By thousands, Angel on Archangel rolled. They are not killed, but painfully suffer from a knowledge that theylook ridiculous: "an indecent overthrow, " they call it. The fiends, exhilarated by this sight, roar noisily, and it is hard indeed for us totake a tragical view of the massacre. [648] In the Visions, Christ, conqueror of hell, liberates the souls thatawait his coming, and the poet awakes to the sounds of bells on Eastermorning. The poem ends amid doleful apparitions; now comes Antichrist, then OldAge, and Death. Years have fled, death draws near; only a short timeremains to live; how employ it to the best advantage? (Dobet). Adviseme, Nature! cries the poet. "Love!" replies Nature: "Lerne to love, " quod Kynde · "and leve of alle othre. " III. Chaucer, with his genius and his manifold qualities, his gaiety and hisgracefulness, his faculty of observation and that apprehensiveness ofmind which enables him to sympathise with the most diverse specimens ofhumanity, has drawn an immortal picture of mediæval England. In certainrespects, however, the description is incomplete, and one must borrowfrom Langland some finishing touches. We owe to Chaucer's horror of vain abstractions the individuality ofeach one of his personages; all classes of society are represented inhis works; but the types which impersonate them are so clearlycharacterised, their singleness is so marked, that on seeing them wethink of them alone and of no one else. We are so absorbed in thecontemplation of this or that man that we think no more of the class, the _ensemble_, the nation. The active and actual passions of the multitude, the subterranean lavaswhich simmer beneath a brittle crust of good order and regularadministration, all the latent possibilities of volcanoes which thisinward fire betokens, are, on the contrary, always present to the mindof the visionary; rumblings are heard, and they herald the earthquake. The vehement and passionate England that produced the great rising of1381, and the heresy of Wyclif, that later on will give birth to theCavaliers and Puritans, is contained in essence in Langland's work; wedivine, we foresee her. Chaucer's book is, undoubtedly, not incontradiction to that England, but it screens and allows her to beforgotten. In their anger Chaucer's people exchange blows on thehighway; Langland's crowds in their anger sack the palace of the Savoy, and take the Tower of London. Langland thus shows us what we find in none of his contemporaries:crowds, groups, classes, living and individualised; the merchant class, the religious world, the Commons of England. He is, above all, the onlyauthor who gives a sufficient and contemporaneous idea of that grandphenomenon, the power of Parliament. Chaucer who was himself a member ofthat assembly, sends his franklin there; he mentions the fact, andnothing more; the part played by the franklin in that group, amid thatconcourse of human beings, is not described. On the other hand, anadmirable picture represents him keeping open house, and orderingcapons, partridges, and "poynant sauce" in abundance. At home, hispersonality stands out in relief; but yonder, at Westminster, thefranklin was doubtless lost in the crowd; and crowds had little interestfor Chaucer. In two documents only does that power appear great and impressive as itreally was, and those documents are: the Rolls wherein are recorded theacts of Parliament, and the poem of William Langland. No one before him, none of his contemporaries, had seen so clearly how the matter stood. The whole organisation of the English State is summed up in a line ofadmirable conciseness and energy, in which the poet shows the kingsurrounded by his people: Knyghthod hym ladde, Might of the comunes · made hym to regne. [649] The power of the Commons is always present to the mind of Langland; heobserves the impossibility of doing without them. When the king isinclined to stretch his prerogative beyond measure, when he gives in hisspeeches a foretaste of the theory of divine right, when he speaks asdid Richard II. A few years after, and the Stuarts three centurieslater, when he boasts of being the ruler of all, of being "hed of lawe, "while the Clergy and Commons are but members of the same, Langland stopshim, and through the mouth of Conscience, adds a menacing clause: "In condicioun, " quod Conscience, · "that thow konne defende And rule thi rewme in resoun · right wel, and in treuth. "[650] The deposition of Richard, accused of having stated, nearly in the sameterms, "that he dictated from his lips the laws of his kingdom, "[651]and the fall of the Stuarts, are contained, so to say, in these almostprophetic words. On nearly all the questions which agitate men's minds in the fourteenthcentury, Langland agrees with the Commons, and, as we follow from yearto year the Rolls of Parliament, petitions or decisions are foundinspired by the same views as those Langland entertained; his work attimes reads like a poetical commentary of the Rolls. Langland, as theCommons, is in favour of the old division of classes, of the continuanceof bondage, and of the regulation of wages by the State; he feelsnothing but hatred for Lombard and Jew bankers, for royal purveyors, andforestallers. In the same way as the Commons, he is in favour of peacewith France; his attention is concentrated on matters purely English;distant wars fill him with anxiety. He would willingly have kept to thepeace of Brétigny, he hopes the Crusades may not recommence. He is aboveall _insular_. Like the Commons he recognises the religious authority ofthe Pope, but protests against the Pope's encroachments, and against theinterference of the sovereign-pontiff in temporal matters. The extensionof the papal power in England appears to him excessive; he protestsagainst appeals to the Court of Rome; he is of opinion that the wealthof the Church is hurtful to her; he shares the sentiments of the Commonsof the Good Parliament towards what they do not hesitate to term thesinful town of Avignon: "la peccherouse cité d'Avenon. "[652] He isindignant with the bishops, masters, and doctors that allow themselvesto become domesticated, and: . . . Serven as servantz · lordes and ladyes, And in stede of stuwardes · sytten and demen. [653] Going down in this manner, step by step, Langland reaches the strange, grimacing, unpardonable herd of liars, knaves, and cheats who traffic inholy things, absolve for money, sell heaven, deceive the simple, andappear as if they "hadden leve to lye al here lyf after. "[654] In thisnethermost circle of his hell, where he scourges them with incessantraillery, the poet confines pell-mell all these glutted unbelievers. Like hardy parasitical plants, they have disjoined the tiles and stonesof the sacred edifice, so that the wind steals in, and the rainpenetrates: shameless pardoners they are, friars, pilgrims, hermits, with nothing of the saint about them save the garb, whose example, unless a stop is put to it, will teach the world to despise clericaldress, those who wear it, and the religion, even, that tolerates andsupports them. At this depth, and in the dim recesses where he casts the rays of hislantern, Langland spares none; his ferocious laugh is reverberated bythe walls, and the scared night-birds take to flight. His mirth is notthe mirth of Chaucer, itself less light than the mirth of France; notthe joyous peal of laughter which rang out on the Canterbury road, welcoming the discourses of the exhibitor of relics, and the far fromdisinterested sermons of the friar to sick Thomas. It is a woful andterrible laugh, harbinger of the final catastrophe and doom. What theyhave heard in the plain of Malvern, the accursed ones will hear again inthe Valley of Jehoshaphat. They have now no choice, but must come out of their holes; and they comeforward into the light of day, hideous and grotesque, saturated with themoisture of their dismal vaults; the sun blinds them, the fresh airmakes them giddy; they present a sorry figure. Unlike the pilgrims ofCanterbury, they derive no benefit from the feelings of indulgence thatsoftens our hearts on a gay April morn; they will learn to know thedifference between the laugh that pardons and the laugh that kills. Langland takes them up, lets them fall, and takes them up again; henever wearies of this cruel sport; he presents them to us nowseparately, and now collectively: packs of pilgrims, "eremytes on anhep, " pilgrims that run to St. James's in Spain, to Rome, to Rocamadourin Guyenne, who have paid visits to every saint. But have they eversought for St. Truth? No, never! Will they ever know the real placewhere they might find St. James? Will they suspect that St. James should be souht · ther poure syke lyggen (he) In prisons and in poore cotes?[655] They seek St. James in Spain, and St. James is at their gates; theyelbow him each day, and they recognise him not. What sight can comfort us for these sad things? That of the poor anddisinterested man, of the honest and courageous labourer. Langland hereshows himself truly original: the guide he has chosen differs as muchfrom the Virgil of Dante as from the Lover that Guillaume de Lorrisfollows through the paths of the Garden of the Rose. The Englishvisionary is led by Piers Plowman; Piers is the mainspring of the State;he realises that ideal of disinterestedness, conscience, reason, whichfills the soul of our poet; he is the real hero of the work. Bent overthe soil, patient as the oxen that he goads, he performs each day hissacred task; the years pass over his whitening head, and, from the dawnof life to its twilight, he follows ceaselessly the same endless furrow, pursuing behind the plough his eternal pilgrimage. Around him the idle sleep, the careless sing; they pretend to cheerothers by their humming; they trill: "Hoy! troly lolly!" Piers shallfeed every one, except these useless ones; he shall not feed "Jakke thejogeloure and Jonet . . . And Danyel the dys-playere and Denote the baude, and frere the faytoure, . . . " for, all whose name is entered "in thelegende of lif" must take life seriously. [656] There is no place in thisworld for people who are not in earnest; every class that is content toperform its duties imperfectly and without sincerity, that fulfils themwithout eagerness, without passion, without pleasure, without strivingto attain the best possible result and do better than the precedinggeneration, will perish. So much the more surely shall perish the classthat ceases to justify its privileges by its services: this is the greatlaw propounded in our own day by Taine. Langland lets loose upon theindolent, the careless, the busybodies who talk much and work little, afoe more terrible and more real then than now: Hunger. Piers undertakesthe care of all sincere people, and Hunger looks after the rest. Allthis part of the poem is nothing but an eloquent declaration of man'sduties, and is one of the finest pages of this "Divine Comedy" of thepoor. IV. Langland speaks as he thinks, impetuously; a sort of dual personalityexists in him; he is the victim and not the master of his thought. Andhis thought is so completely a separate entity, with wishes opposed tohis desires, that it appears to him in the solitudes of Malvern; and themelody of lines heard not long ago occurs to the memory: Je marchais un jour à pas lents Dans un bois, sur une bruyère; Au pied d'un arbre vint s'asseoir Un jeune homme vêtu de noir Qui me ressemblait comme un frère . . . [657] Filled with a similar feeling, the wandering dreamer had met, fivehundred years before, in a "wilde wildernesse and bi a wode-syde, " a"moche man" who looked like himself; who knew him and called him byname: And thus I went wide-where · walkyng myne one (alone), By a wilde wildernesse · and bi a wode-syde . . . And under a lynde uppon a launde · lened I a stounde . . . A moche man, as me thoughte · and lyke to my-selve Come and called me · by my kynde name, "What artow, " quod I tho (then) · "that thow my name knowest?" "That thow wost wel, " quod he · "and no wyghte bettere. " "Wote I what thow art?" · "Thought, " seyde he thanne, "I have suwed (followed) the this sevene yere · sey thow me no rather (sooner)?"[658] "Thought" reigns supreme, and does with Langland what he chooses. Langland is unconscious of what he is led to; his visions are for himreal ones; he tells them as they rise before him; he is scarcely awarethat he invents; he stares at the sight, and wonders as much as we do;he can change nothing; his personages are beyond his reach. There istherefore nothing prepared, artistically arranged, or skilfullycontrived, in his poem; the deliberate hand of a man of the craft isnowhere to be seen. He obtains artistic effects, but without seeking forthem; he never selects or co-ordinates; he is suddenly led, and leadsus, from one subject to another, without any better transition than an"and thanne" or a "with that. " And "thanne" we are carried a hundredmiles away, among entirely different beings, and frequently we hear nomore of the first ones. Or sometimes, even, the first reappear, but theyare no longer the same; Piers Plowman personifies now the honest man ofthe people, now the Pope, now Christ. Dowel, Dobet and Dobest have twoor three different meanings. The art of transitions is as much dispensedwith in his poem as at the opera: a whistle of the scene-shifter--an"and thanne" of the poet--the palace of heaven fades away, and we findourselves in a smoky tavern in Cornhill. Clouds pass over the sky, and sometimes sweep by the earth; theirthickness varies, they take every shape: now they are soft, indolentmists, lingering in mountain hollows, that will rise towards noon, ladenwith the scent of flowering lindens; now they are storm-clouds, threatening destruction and rolling with thunder. Night comes on, andsuddenly the blackness is rent by so glaring a light that the plainassumes for an instant the hues of mid-day; then the darkness fallsagain, deeper than before. The poet moves among realities and abstractions, and sometimes the firstdissolve in fogs, while the second condense into human beings, tangibleand solid. On the Malvern hills, the mists are so fine, it is impossibleto say: here they begin and here they end; it is the same in theVisions. In the world of ethics, as among the realities of actual life, Langlandexcels in summing up in one sudden memorable flash the whole doctrinecontained in the nebulous sermons of his abstract preachers; he thenattains to the highest degree of excellence, without striving after it. In another writer, the thing would have been premeditated, and theresult of his skill and cunning; here the effect is as unexpected forthe author as for the reader. He so little pretends to such felicitiesof speech that he never allows the grand impressions thus produced tolast any time; he utilises them, he is careful to make the best of theoccasion. It seems as if he had conjured the lightning from the cloudsunawares, and he thinks it his duty to turn it to use. The flash hadunveiled the uppermost summits of the realm of thought, and there willremain in our hands a flickering rushlight that can at most help usupstairs. The passionate sincerity which is the predominant trait of Langland'scharacter greatly contributed to the lasting influence of his poem. Eachline sets forth his unconquerable aversion for all that is mereappearance and show, self-interested imposture; for all that isantagonistic to conscience, abnegation, sincerity. Such is the great andfundamental indignation that is in him; all the others are derived fromthis. For, while his mind was impressed with the idea of the seriousnessof life, he happened to live when the mediæval period was drawing to itsclose; and, as usually happens towards the end of epochs, people nolonger took in earnest any of the faiths and feelings which had suppliedforegoing generations with their strength and motive power. He saw withhis own eyes knights preparing for war as if it were a hunt; learned menconsider the mysteries of religion as fit subjects to exercise one'sminds in after-dinner discussions; the chief guardians of the flock busythemselves with their "owelles" only to shear, not to feed them. Meedwas everywhere triumphant; her misdeeds had been vainly denounced; herreign had come; under the features of Alice Perrers she was now theparamour of the king! At all such men and at all such things, Langland thunders anathema. Lackof sincerity, all the shapes and sorts of "faux semblants, " or"merveilleux semblants, " as Rutebeuf said, fill him withinextinguishable hatred. In shams and "faux semblants" he sees the truesource of good and evil, the touchstone of right and wrong, the maindifference between the worthy and the unworthy. He constantly recurs tothe subject by means of his preachings, epigrams, portraits, caricatures; he broadens, he magnifies and multiplies his figures andhis precepts, so as to deepen our impression of the danger and number ofthe adherents of "Fals-Semblant. " By such means, he hopes we shall atlast hate those whom he hates. Endlessly, therefore, in season and outof season, among the mists, across the streets, under the porches of thechurch, to the drowsy chant of his orations, to the whistle of hissatires, ever and ever again, he conjures up before our eyes thehideous grinning face of "Fals-Semblant, " the insincere. Fals-Semblantis never named by name; he assumes all names and shapes; he is the kingwho reigns contrary to conscience, the knight perverted by Lady Meed, the heartless man of law, the merchant without honesty, the friar, thepardoner, the hermit, who under the garment of saints conceal heartsthat will rank them with the accursed ones. Fals-Semblant is the popewho sells benefices, the histrion, the tumbler, the juggler, the adeptof the vagrant race, who goes about telling tales and helping hislisteners to forget the seriousness of life. From the unworthy pope downto the lying juggler, all these men are the same man. Deceit standsbefore us; God's vengeance be upon him! Whenever and wherever Langlanddetects Fals-Semblant, he loses control over himself; anger blinds him;it seems as if he were confronted by Antichrist. No need to say whether he is then master of his words, and able tomeasure them. With him, in such cases, no _nuances_ or extenuations areadmissible; you are with or against Fals-Semblant; there is no middleway; a compromise is a treason; and is there anything worse than atraitor? And thus he is led to sum up his judgment in such lines asthis: He is worse than Judas · that giveth a japer silver. [659] If we allege that there may be some shade of exaggeration in such asentence, he will shrug his shoulders. The doubt is not possible, hethinks, and his plain proposition is self-evident. No compromise! Travel through life without bending; go forward in astraight line between the high walls of duty. Perform your ownobligations; do not perform the obligations of others. To do your dutyover-zealously, to take upon you the duty of others, would trouble theState; you approach, in so doing, the borderland of Imposture. Theknight will fight for his country, and must not lose his time in fastingand in scourging himself. A fasting knight is a bad knight. Many joys are allowed. They are included, as a bed of flowers, betweenthe high walls of duty; love-flowers even grow there, to be plucked, under the blue sky. But take care not to be tempted by that wonderfulfemale Proteus, Lady Meed, the great corruptress. She disappears andreappears, and she, too, assumes all shapes; she is everywhere at thesame time: it seems as if the serpent of Eden had become the immensereptile that encircles the earth. This hatred is immense, but stands alone in the heart of the poet. Beside it there is place for treasures of pity and mercy; the idea of somany Saracens and Jews doomed wholesale to everlasting pain repels him;he can scarcely accept it; he hopes they will be all converted, and"turne in-to the trewe feithe"; for "Cryste cleped us alle. . . . Sarasenesand scismatikes . . . And Jewes. "[660] There is something pathetic, andtragic also, in his having to acknowledge that there is no cure for manyevils, and that, for the present, resignation only can soothe thesuffering. With a throbbing heart he shows the unhappy and the lowly, who must die before having seen the better days that were promised, theonly talisman that may help them: a scroll with the words, "Thy will bedone!"[661] The truth is that there was a tender heart under the rough and ruggedexterior of the impassioned, indignant, suffering poet; and thus he wasable to sum up his life's ideal in this beautiful motto: _Disce, Doce, Dilige_; in these words will be found the true interpretation of Dowel, Dobet, and Dobest: "Learn, Teach, Love. "[662] The poet's language is, if one may use the expression, like himself, above all, sincere. Chaucer wished that words were "cosyn to the dede;"Langland holds the same opinion. While, in the mystic parts of hisVisions, he uses a superabundance of fluid and abstract terms, that looklike morning mists and float along with his thoughts, his style becomessuddenly sharp, nervous, and sinewy when he comes back to earth andmoves into the world of realities. Let some sudden emotion fill hissoul, and he will rise again, not in the mist this time, but in the raysof the sun; he will soar aloft, and we will wonder at the grandeur ofhis eloquence. Whatever be his subject, he will coin a word, or distorta meaning, or cram into an idiom more meaning than grammar, custom, ordictionary allow, rather than leave a gap between word and thought; bothmust be fused together, and made one. If the merchants were honest, theywould not "timber" so high--raise such magnificent houses. [663] In otherparts he uses realistic terms, noisy, ill-favoured expressions, which itis impossible to quote. His vocabulary of words is the normal vocabulary of the period, the samenearly as Chaucer's. The poet of the "Canterbury Tales" has been oftenreproached with having used his all-powerful influence to obtain rightsof citizenship in England for French words; but the accusation does notstand good, for Langland did not write for courtly men, and theadmixture of French words is no less considerable in his work. The Visionary's poem offers a combination of several dialects; one, however, prevails; it is the Midland dialect. Chaucer used theEast-Midland, which is nearly the same, and was destined to survive andbecome the English language. Langland did not accept any of the metres used by Chaucer; he preferredto remain in closer contact with the Germanic past of his kin. Rhyme, the main ornament of French verse, had been adopted by Chaucer, but wasrejected by Langland, who gave to his lines the ornament best liked byAnglo-Saxons, Germans, and Scandinavians, namely, alliteration. [664] While their author continued to live obscure and unknown, the Visions, as soon as written, were circulated, and acquired considerablepopularity throughout England. In spite of the time that has elapsed, and numberless destructions, there still remain forty-five manuscriptsof the poem, more or less complete. "Piers Plowman" soon became a signand a symbol, a sort of password, a personification of the labouringclasses, of the honest and courageous workman. John Ball invoked hisauthority in his letter to the rebel peasants of the county of Essex in1381. [665] The name of Piers figured as an attraction on the title ofnumerous treatises: there existed, as early as the fourteenth century, "Credes" of Piers Plowman, "Complayntes" of the Plowman, &c. Piers'credit was made use of at the time of the Reformation, and in his namewere demanded the suppression of abuses and the transformation of theold order of things; he even appeared on the stage; Langland would havebeen sometimes greatly surprised to see what tasks were assigned to hishero. Chaucer and Langland, the two great poets of the period, representexcellently English genius, and the two races that have formed thenation. One more nearly resembles the clear-minded, energetic, firm, practical race of the latinised Celts, with their fondness for straightlines; the other resembles the race which had the deepest and especiallythe earliest knowledge of tender, passionate, and mystic aspirations, and which lent itself most willingly to the lulls and pangs of hope anddespair, the race of the Anglo-Saxons. And while Chaucer sleeps, as heshould, under the vault of Westminster, some unknown tuft of Malvernmoss perhaps covers, as it also should, the ashes of the dreamer whotook Piers Plowman for his hero. FOOTNOTES: [629] Further details on Langland and his Visions, and in particular theelucidation (as far as I have been able to furnish it) of severaldoubtful points, may be found in "Piers Plowman, a contribution to theHistory of English Mysticism, " London, 1894. Some passages of thepresent Chapter are taken from this work. [630] Mr. Skeat has given two excellent editions of these three texts(called texts A. B. And C. ): Iº "The Vision of William concerning PiersPlowman, together with Vita de Dowel, Dobet et Dobest, secundum Wit etResoun, " London, Early English Text Society, 1867-84, 4 vols. 8vo; 2º"The Vision of William concerning Piers Plowman, in three paralleltexts, together with Richard the Redeless, " Oxford (Clarendon Press), 1886, 2 vols. 8vo. [631] The reasons in favour of these dates are given in "Piers Plowman, a contribution to the history of English Mysticism, " chap, ii. , and in apaper I published in the _Revue Critique_, Oct. 25th, and Nov. 1, 1879. Mr. Skeat assigns the date of 1393 to the third text, adding, however, "I should not object to the opinion that the true date is later still. "I have adduced proofs ("Piers Plowman, " pp. 55 ff. ) of this finalrevision having taken place in 1398 or shortly after. [632] B. Xv. 48. [633] A. Xii. 6. [634] _Concupiscencia carnis_ · colled me aboute the nekke, And seyde, "Thou art yonge and yepe · and hast yeres yn Forto lyve longe · and ladyes to lovye. And in this myroure thow myghte se · myrthes ful manye That leden the wil to lykynge · al thi lyf-tyme. " The secounde seide the same · "I shal suwe thi wille; Til thow be a lorde and have londe. " (B. Xi. 16. ) [635] C. Vi. 42. [636] C. Vi. 45. [637] On which see W. S. Simpson, "St. Paul's Cathedral and old Citylife, " London, 1894, 8vo, p. 95: "The chantry priests of St. Paul's. " Alist of those chantries in a handwriting of the fourteenth century hasbeen preserved; there are seventy-three of them. _Ibid. _, p. 99. [638] C. Beginning of passus vi. ; B. Beginning of passus xv. : "My wittewex and wanyed til I a fole were. " [639] B. X. 181. [640] B. X. 420. [641] . . . None sonner saved · ne sadder of bileve, Than plowmen and pastoures · and pore comune laboreres. Souteres and shepherdes · suche lewed jottes Percen with a _pater-noster_ · the paleys of hevene, And passen purgatorie penaunceles · at her hennes-partynge, In-to the blisse of paradys · for her pure byleve, That inparfitly here · knewe and eke lyved. (B. X. 458. ) And thow medlest with makynges · and myghtest go sey thi sauter, And bidde for hem that giveth the bred · for there ar bokes ynowe To telle men what Dowel is. . . . (B. Xii. 16. ) [642] He seems to have written at this time the fragment called by Mr. Skeat: "Richard the Redeless, " and attributed by the same with greatprobability to our author. [643] C. Iii. 211 ff. [644] B. Iii. 328. [645] B. Iv. 3. [646] Daughter of Piers Plowman: Hus douhter hihte Do-ryght-so- · other-thy-damme-shal-the-bete. (C. Ix. 81. ) [647] See in particular Gloton's confession, with a wonderfullyrealistic description of an English tavern, C. Vii. 350. [648] "Paradise Lost, " canto vi. 601; invention of guns, 470. [649] B. Prol. 112. [650] B. Xix. 474. [651] "Rotuli Parliamentorum, " vol. Iii. P. 419. See above, p. 253. [652] Good Parliament of 1376. [653] B. Prol. 95. [654] B. Prol. 49. [655] B. Prol. 46; xii. 37; v. 57; C. V. 122. [656] B. Vi. 71; C. Ix. 122. [657] Musset, "Nuit de Décembre. " [658] B. Viii. 62. [659] B. Ix. 90. [660] B. Xi. 114. [661] But I loked what lyflode it was: that Pacience so preysed, And thanne was it a pece of the _Pater noster_ · "_Fiat voluntas tua_. " B. Xiv. 47. [662] B. Xiii. 137. [663] Thei timbrede not so hye. (A. Iii. 76. ) [664] Langland's lines usually contain four accentuated syllables, twoin each half line; the two accentuated syllables of the first half line, and the first accentuated syllable of the second half line arealliterated, and commence by the same "rhyme-letter:" I _sh_ópe me in _sh_roúdes · as I a _sh_épe wére. (B. Prol. 2. ) It is not necessary for alliteration to exist that theletters be exactly the same; if they are consonants, nothing more iswanted than a certain similitude in their sounds; if they are vowelseven less suffices; it is enough that all be vowels. [665] Walsingham, "Historia Anglicana, " vol. Ii. P. 33. Rolls. CHAPTER V. _PROSE. _ For a long time, and up to our day, the title and dignity of "Father ofEnglish prose" has been borne by Sir John Mandeville, of St. Albans, knight, who, "in the name of God glorious, " left his country in the yearof grace 1322, on Michaelmas Day, and returned to Europe after anabsence of thirty-four years, twice as long as Robinson Crusoe remainedin his desert island. This title belongs to him no longer. The good knight of St. Albans, whohad seen and told so much, has dwindled before our eyes, has lost hissubstance and his outline, and has vanished like smoke in the air. Hiscoat of mail, his deeds, his journeys, his name: all are smoke. He firstlost his character as a truthful writer; then out of the three versionsof his book, French, English, and Latin, two were withdrawn from him, leaving him only the first. Existence now has been taken from him, andhe is left with nothing at all. Sir John Mandeville, knight, of St. Albans, who crossed the sea in 1322, is a myth, and never existed; hehas joined, in the kingdom of the shades and the land of nowhere, hiscontemporary the famous "Friend of God of the Oberland, " who some timeago also ceased to have existed. One thing however remains, and cannot be blotted out: namely, the bookof travels bearing the name of Mandeville the translation of which isone of the best and oldest specimens of simple and flowing Englishprose. I. The same phenomenon already pointed out in connection with theAnglo-Saxons occurs again with regard to the new English people. For along time (and not to speak of practical useful works), poetry aloneseems worthy of being remembered; most of the early monuments of the newlanguage for the sake of which the expense of parchment is incurred arepoems; verse is used, even in works for which prose would appear muchbetter fitted, such as history. Robert of Gloucester writes hischronicles in English verse, just as Wace and Benoit de Sainte-More hadwritten theirs in French verse. After some while only it is noticed thatthere is an art of prose, very delicate, very difficult, very worthy ofcare, and that it is a mistake to look upon it in the light of a vulgarinstrument, on which every one can play without having learnt how, andto confine oneself to doing like Molière's Monsieur Jourdain "de laprose sans le savoir. " At the epoch at which we have arrived, and owing to the renovation andnew beginnings occasioned by the Conquest, English prose found itselffar behind French. In the fourteenth century, if French poets are poor, prose-writers are excellent; as early as the twelfth and thirteenththere were, besides Joinville, many charming tale writers who had toldin prose delightful things, the loves of Aucassin and Nicolette, forexample; now, without speaking of the novelists of the day, there isFroissart, and to name him is to say enough; for every one has read atleast a few pages of him, and a single page of Froissart, takenhaphazard in his works, will cause him to be loved. The language glideson, clear, limpid, murmuring like spring water; and yet, in spite ofits natural flow, art already appears. Froissart selects and chooses;the title of "historian, " which he gives himself, is no mean one in hiseyes, and he strives to be worthy of it. The spring bubbles up in thedepths of the wood, and without muddying the water the artist knows howto vary its course at times, to turn it off into ready preparedchannels, and make it gush forth in fountains. In England nothing so far resembles this scarcely perceptible and yetskilful art, a mixture of instinct and method, and many years will passbefore prose becomes, like verse, an art. In the fourteenth centuryEnglish prose is used in most cases for want of something better, fromnecessity, in order to be more surely understood, and owing to this itsmonuments are chiefly translations, scientific or religious treatises, and sermons. An English Froissart would at that time have written inLatin; several of the chronicles composed in monasteries, at St. Albansand elsewhere, are written in a brisk and lively style, animated now byenthusiasm and now by indignation; men and events are freely judged;characteristic details find their place; the personages live, and move, and utter words the sound of which seems to reach us. Walsingham'saccount of the revolt of the peasants in 1381, for example, welldeserves to be read, with the description of the taking of London thatfollowed, the sack of the Tower and the Savoy Palace, the assassinationof the archbishop, [666] the heroic act of the peasant Grindecobbe who, being set free on condition that he should induce the rebels to submit, meets them and says: "Act to-day as you would have done had I beenbeheaded yesterday at Hertford, "[667] and goes back to his prison tosuffer death. Every detail is found there, even the simple picturesquedetail; the rebels arm themselves as they can, with staves, rustyswords, old bows blackened by smoke, arrows "on which only a singlefeather remained. " The account of the death of Edward III. In the sameannals is gloomy and tragic and full of grandeur. In the "ChroniconAngliæ, "[668] the anonymous author's burning hatred for John of Gauntinspires him with some fiery pages: all of which would count among thebest of old English literature, had these historians used the nationalidiom. The prejudice against prose continued; to be admitted to thehonours of parchment it had first to be ennobled; and Latin served forthat. Translations begin to appear, however, which is already an improvement. Pious treatises had been early turned into English. John of Trevisa, born in Cornwall, vicar of Berkeley, translates at a running pace, withnumerous errors, but in simple style, the famous Universal History, "Polychronicon, " of Ralph Higden, [669] and the scientific encyclopædia, "De Proprietatibus Rerum, "[670] of Bartholomew the Englishman. The firstof these works was finished in 1387, and had at the Renaissance thehonour of being printed by Caxton; the second was finished in 1398. The English translation of the Travels of Mandeville enjoyed stillgreater popularity. This translation is an anonymous one. [671] It hasbeen found out to-day that the original text of the "Travels" wascompiled in French by Jean de Bourgogne, physician, usually calledJohn-with-the-Beard, "Joannes-ad-Barbam, " who wrote various treatises, one in particular on the plague, in 1365, who died at Liège in 1372, andwas buried in the church of the Guillemins, where his tomb was still tobe seen at the time of the French Revolution. [672] John seems to haveinvented the character of Mandeville as Swift invented Gulliver, andDefoe Robinson Crusoe. Now that his imposture is discovered, the leastwe can do is to acknowledge his skill: for five centuries Europe hasbelieved in Mandeville, and the merit is all the greater, seeing thatJohn-with-the-Beard did not content himself with merely making his herotravel to a desert island; that would have been far too simple. No, heunites beforehand a Crusoe and a Gulliver in one; it is Crusoe atBrobdingnag; the knight comes to a land of giants; he does not see thegiants, it is true, but he sees their sheep (the primitive sheep ofCentral Asia); elsewhere the inhabitants feed on serpents and hiss asserpents do; some men have dogs' faces; others raise above their head anenormous foot, which serves them for a parasol. Gulliver was not tobehold anything more strange. Still the whole was accepted withenthusiasm by the readers of the Middle Ages; with kindness and goodwillby the critics of our time. The most obvious lies were excused and evenjustified, and the success of the book was such that there remain aboutthree hundred manuscript copies of it, whereas of the authentic travelsof Marco Polo there exist only seventy-five. "Mandeville" had more thantwenty-five editions in the fifteenth century and Marco Polo onlyfive. [673] Nothing, indeed, is more cleverly persuasive than the manner in whichJean de Bourgogne introduces his hero. He is an honest man, somewhatnaïve and credulous perhaps, but one who does not lack good reasons tojustify if need be his credulity; he has read much, and does not hidethe use he makes of others' journals; he reports what he has seen andwhat others have seen. For his aim is a practical one; he wants to writea guide book, and receives information from all comers. The informationsometimes is very peculiar; but Pliny is the authority: who shall bebelieved in if Pliny is not trusted? After a description of wonders, theknight takes breathing time and says: Of course you won't believe me;nor should I have believed myself if such things had been told me, andif I had not seen them. He felt so sure of his own honesty that hechallenged criticism; this disposition was even one of the causes why hehad written in French: "And know you that I should have turned thisbooklet into Latin in order to be more brief: but for the reason thatmany understand better romance, " that is French, "than Latin, I wrote inromance, so that everybody will be able to understand it, and that thelords, knights, and other noblemen, who know little Latin or none, andhave been over the sea, perceive and understand whether I speak truth ornot. And if I make mistakes in my narrative for want of memory or forany cause, they will be able to check and correct me: for things seenlong ago, may be forgotten, and man's memory cannot embrace and keepeverything. "[674] And so the sail is spread, and being thus amply supplied with oratoricalprecautions, our imaginary knight sets out on his grand voyage ofdiscovery through the books of his closet. Having left St. Albans tovisit Jerusalem, China, the country of the five thousand islands, hejourneys and sails through Pliny, Marco Polo, Odoric de Pordenone, [675]Albert d'Aix, William of Boldensele, Pierre Comestor, Jacques de Vitry, bestiaries, tales of travels, collections of fables, books of dreams, patching together countless marvels, but yet, as he assures us, omittingmany so as not to weary our faith: It would be too long to say all; "yseroit trop longe chose à tot deviser. " With fanciful wonders aremingled many real ones, which served to make the rest believed in, andwere gathered from well-informed authors; thus Mandeville's immensepopularity served at least to vulgarise the knowledge of some curiousand true facts. He describes, for example, the artificial hatching ofeggs in Cairo; a tree that produces "wool" of which clothing is made, that is to say the cotton-plant; a country of Asia where it is a mark ofnobility for the women to have tiny feet, on which account they arebandaged in their infancy, that they may only grow to half their naturalsize; the magnetic needle which points out the north to mariners; thecountry of the five thousand islands (Oceania); the roundness of theearth, which is such that the inhabitants of the Antipodes have theirfeet directly opposite to ours, and yet do not fall off into space anymore than the earth itself falls there, though of much greater weight. People who start from their own country, and sail always in the samedirection, finally reach a land where their native tongue is spoken:they have come back to their starting-point. In the Middle Ages the English were already passionately fond oftravels; Higden and others had, as has been seen, noted this trait ofthe national character. This account of adventures attributed to one oftheir compatriots could not fail therefore greatly to please them; theydelighted in Mandeville's book; it was speedily translated, [676] soonbecame one of the classics of the English language, and served, at thetime of its appearance, to vulgarise in England the use of that simpleand easy-going prose of which it was a model in its day, the best thathad been seen till then. [677] Various scientific and religious treatises were also written in prose;those of Richard Rolle, hermit of Hampole, count amongst the oldest andmost remarkable. [678] We owe several to Chaucer; they pass unnoticed inthe splendour of his other works, and it is only fair they should. Chaucer wrote in prose his tale of the parson, and his tale of Melibeus, both taken from the French, his translation of Boethius, and histreatise on the Astrolabe. His prose is laboured and heavy, sometimesobscure; he, whose poetical similes are so brilliant and graceful, comesto write, when he handles prose, such phrases as this: "And, right byensaumple as the sonne is hid whan the sterres ben clustred (that is toseyn, whan sterres ben covered with cloudes) by a swifte winde thathighte Chorus, and that the firmament stant derked by wete ploungycloudes, and that the sterres nat apperen up-on hevene, so that thenight semeth sprad up-on erthe: yif thanne the wind that highte Borias, y-sent out of the caves of the contree of Trace, beteth this night (thatis to seyn, chaseth it a-wey, and discovereth the closed day): thanshyneth Phebus y-shaken with sodein light, and smyteth with his bemes inmervelinge eyen. "[679] Chaucer, the poet, in the same period of hislife, perhaps in the same year, had expressed, as we have seen, the sameidea thus: But right as whan the sonne shyneth brighte In march that chaungeth ofte tyme his face, And that a cloud is put with wind to flighte Which over-sprat the sonne as for a space, A cloudy thought gan thorugh hir soule pace, That over-spradde hir brighte thoughtes alle. [680] Accustomed to poetry, Chaucer sticks fast in prose, the least obstaclestops him; he needs the blue paths of the air. High-flying birds are badwalkers. II. Under a different form, however, prose progressed in England during thecourse of the fourteenth century. This form is the oratorical. The England of Chaucer and Langland, that poetical England whose prosetook so long to come to shape, was already, as we have seen, theparliamentary England that has continued up to this day. She defendedher interests, bargained with the king, listened to the speeches, sometimes very modest ones, that the prince made her, and answered byremonstrances, sometimes very audacious. The affairs of the State beingeven then the affairs of all, every free man discussed them; public lifehad developed to an extent with which nothing in Europe could becompared; even bondmen on the day of revolt were capable of assigningthemselves a well-determined goal, and working upon a plan. They destroythe Savoy as a means of marking their disapprobation of John of Gauntand his policy; but do not plunder it, so as to prove they are fightingfor an idea: "So that the whole nation should know they did nothing forthe love of lucre, death was decreed against any one who should dare toappropriate anything found in the palace. The innumerable gold andsilver objects there would be chopped up in small pieces with a hatchet, and the pieces thrown into the Thames or the sewers; the cloths of silkand gold would be torn. And it was done so. "[681] Many eloquent speeches were delivered at this time, vanished words, thememory of which is lost; the most impassioned, made on heaths or inforest glades, are only known to us by their results: these burningwords called armed men out of the earth. These speeches were in English;no text of them has been handed down to us; of one, however, the mostcelebrated of all, we have a Latin summary; it is the famous Englishharangue made at Blackheath, by the rebel priest, John Ball, at the timeof the taking of London. [682] Under a quieter form, which might already be called the "parliamentary"form, but often with astonishing boldness and eloquence, publicinterests are discussed during this century, but nearly always in Frenchat the palace of Westminster. There, documents abound; the Rolls ofParliament, an incomparable treasure, have come down to us, and nothingis easier than to attend, if so inclined, a session in the time of thePlantagenets. Specimens of questions and answers, of Government speechesand speeches of the Opposition, have been preserved. Moreover, some ofthe buildings where these scenes took place still exist to-day. [683] First of all, and before the opening of the session, a "generalproclamation" was read in the great hall of Westminster, that hall builtby William Rufus, the woodwork of which was replaced by Richard II. , andthat has been lately cleared of its cumbrous additions. [684] Thisproclamation forbids each and all to come to the place where Parliamentsits, "armed with hoquetons, armor, swords, and long knives or othersorts of weapons;" for such serious troubles have been the result ofthis wearing of arms that business has been impeded, and the members ofParliament have been "effreietz, " frightened, by these long knives. Then, descending to lesser things, the proclamation goes on to forbidthe street-boys of London to play at hide-and-seek in the palace, or toperform tricks on the passers-by, such as "to twitch off their hoods"for instance, which the proclamation in parliamentary style termsimproper games, "jues nient covenables. " But as private liberty shouldbe respected as much as possible, this prohibition is meant only for theduration of the session. [685] On the day of the opening the king repairs to the place of the sittings, where he not unfrequently finds an empty room, many of the members or ofthe "great" having been delayed on the way by bad weather, bad roads, orother impediments. [686] Another day is then fixed upon for the solemnopening of the business. All being at last assembled, the king, the lords spiritual and temporaland the Commons, meet together in the "Painted Chamber. " The Chancellorexplains the cause of the summons, and the questions to be discussed. This is an opportunity for a speech, and we have the text of a goodmany of them. Sometimes it is a simple, clear, practical discourse, enumerating, without any studied phrases or pompous terms, the pointsthat are to be treated; sometimes it is a flowery and pretentiousoration, adorned with witticisms and quotations, and complimentsaddressed to the king, as is for instance the speech (in French) of thebishop of St. David's, Adam Houghton, Chancellor of England in 1377: "Lords and Gentlemen, I have orders from my lord the Prince herepresent, whom God save, " the youthful Richard, heir to the throne, "toexpound the reason why this Parliament was summoned. And true it is thatthe wise suffer and desire to hear fools speak, as is affirmed by St. Paul in his Epistles, for he saith: _Libenter suffertis insipientes cumsitis ipsi sapientes. _ And in as much as you are wise and I am a fool, Iunderstand that you wish to hear me speak. And another cause there is, which will rejoice you if you are willing to hear me. For the Scripturesaith that every messenger bringing glad tidings, must be alwayswelcome; and I am a messenger that bringeth you good tidings, whereforeI must needs be welcome. " All these pretty things are to convey to them that the king, EdwardIII. , then on the brink of the grave, is not quite so ill, which shouldbe a cause of satisfaction for his subjects. Another cause of joy, foreverything seems to be considered as such by the worthy bishop, is thisillness itself; "for the Scripture saith: _Quos diligo castigo_, whichproves that God him loves, and that he is blessed of God. " The king isto be a "vessel of grace, " _vas electionis_. [687] The Chancellorcontinues thus at length, heedless of the fact that the return of AlicePerrers to the old king belies his Biblical applications. Simon Sudbury, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was to die such a dreadfuldeath, from the eighth blow of the axe, after having lost the hand whichhe carried to the first wound, spoke in much the same style. He openedin these terms the first parliament of Richard II. : "_Rex tuus venit tibi. _--Lords and Gentlemen, the words which I havespoken signify in French: Your king comes to thee. --And thereupon, thesaid archbishop gave several good reasons agreeing with his subject, anddivided his said subject in three parts, as though it had been asermon. " In truth it is a sermon; the Gospel is continually quoted, and servesfor unexpected comparisons. The youthful Richard has come to Parliament, just as the Blessed Virgin went to see St. Elizabeth; the joy is thesame: "_Et exultavit infans in utero ejus. _"[688] Fortunately, all did not lose themselves in such flowery mazes. WilliamThorpe, William of Shareshull, William of Wykeham, John Knyvet, &c. , make business-like speeches, simple, short, and to the point: "My Lords, and you of the Commons, " says Chancellor Knyvet, "you well know howafter the peace agreed upon between our lord the King and hisadversaries of France, and openly infringed by the latter, the king sentsoldiers and nobles across the sea to defend _us_, which they do, butare hard pressed by the enemy. If they protect us, we must help them. " The reasoning is equally clear in Wykeham's speeches, and with the sameskill he makes it appear as if the Commons had a share in all the king'sactions: "Gentlemen, you well know how, in the last Parliament, theking, _with your consent_, again took the title of King ofFrance. . . . "[689] These speeches being heard, and the "receivers" and "triers" ofpetitions having been appointed, [690] the two houses divided, anddeliberated apart from each other; the Lords retired "to the WhiteChamber"; the Commons remained "in the Painted Chamber. " At other times"the said Commons were told to withdraw by themselves to their old placein the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey, "[691] that beautiful ChapterHouse still in existence, which had been built under Henry III. Then the real debates began, interrupted by the most impassionedspeeches. They were not reported, and only a faint echo has reached us. Traces of the sentiments which animated the Commons are found, however, in the petitions they drew up, which were like so many articles of thebargains contracted by them. For they did not allow themselves to becarried away by the eloquent and tender speeches of the Governmentorators; they were practical and cold-blooded; they agreed to makeconcessions provided concessions were made to them, and they added anannulling clause in case the king refused: "In case the conditions arenot complied with, they shall not be obliged to grant the aid. "[692] Thediscussions are long and minute in both houses; members do not meet forform's sake; decisions are not lightly taken: "Of which things, " we readin the Rolls, "they treated at length. "[693] In another case, theCommons, from whom a ready-made answer was expected, announce that "theywish to talk together, " and they continue to talk from the 24th ofJanuary to the 19th of February. [694] Only too glad was the Governmentwhen the members did not declare "that they dare not assent withoutdiscussing the matter with the Commons of their shire, "[695] that is tosay, without consulting their constituents. And this they do, thoughWilliam de la Pole and others, sent "by our lord the king from thence(that is from France) as envoys, " had modestly explained the urgency ofthe case, and "the cause of the long stay the king had made in theseaforesaid parts, without riding against his enemies, "[696] this causebeing lack of money. When the Commons have at last come to a decision, they make it known inthe presence of the Lords through the medium of their Speaker, or, as hewas called in the French of the period, the one who had the words forthem: "Qui avoit les paroles pur les Communes d'Engleterre en cestParlement. "[697] In these replies especially, and in the petitionspresented at the same time, are found traces of the vehemence displayedin the Chapter House. The boldness of the answers and of theremonstrances is extraordinary, and from their tone can be conceivedwith what power and freedom civil eloquence, of which England has sinceproduced so many admirable specimens, displayed itself, even at thatdistant epoch. The most remarkable case is that of the Good Parliament of 1376, inwhich, after having deliberated apart, the Commons join the other house, and by the mouth of their Speaker, Peter de la Mare, bring in their billof complaints against royalty: "And after that the aforesaid Commonscame to Parliament, openly protesting that they were as willing anddetermined to help their noble liege lord . . . As any others had everbeen, in any time past. . . . But they said it seemed to them an undoubtedfact, that if their liege lord had always had around him loyalcounsellors and good officers . . . Our lord the king would have been veryrich in treasure, and therefore would not have had such great need ofburdening his Commons, either with subsidy, talliage, or otherwise. . . . "A special list of grievances is drawn up against the principalprevaricators; their names are there, and their crimes; the king'smistress, Alice Perrers, is not forgotten. Then follow the petitions ofthe Commons, the number of which is enormous, a hundred and forty inall, in which abuses are pointed out one by one. [698] Formerly, say the Commons, "bishoprics, as well as other benefices ofHoly Church, used to be, after true elections, in accordance withsaintly considerations and pure charity, assigned to people found to beworthy of clerical promotion, men of clean life and holy behaviour, whose intention it was to stay on their benefices, there to preach, visit, and shrive their parishioners. . . . And so long as these goodcustoms were observed, the realm was full of all sorts of prosperity, ofgood people and loyal, good clerks and clergy, two things that always gotogether. . . . " The encroachments of the See of Rome in England are, forall right-minded people, "great subject of sorrow and of tears. " Cursedbe the "sinful city of Avignon, " where simony reigns, so that "a sorryfellow who knows nothing of what he ought and is worthless" will receivea benefice of the value of a thousand marcs, "when a doctor of decreeand a master of divinity will be only too glad to secure some littlebenefice of the value of twenty marcs. " The foreigners who are givenbenefices in England "will never see their parishioners . . . And moreharm is done to Holy Church by such bad Christians than by all the Jewsand Saracens in the world. . . . Be it again remembered that God hascommitted his flock to the care of our Holy Father the Pope, that theymight be fed and not shorn. "[699] The Commons fear nothing; neither kingnor Pope could make them keep silence. In their mind the idea begins todawn that the kingdom is theirs, and the king too; they demand thatRichard, heir to the throne, shall be brought to them; they wish to seehim; and he is shown to them. [700] In spite of the progress made by the English language, French continuedto be used at Westminster. It remained as a token of power and an emblemof authority, just as modern castles are still built with towers, thoughnot meant to be defended by cannon. It was a sign, and this sign hassubsisted, since the formula by which the laws are ratified is still inFrench at the present time. English, nevertheless, began to make anappearance even at Westminster. From 1363, [701] the opening speeches aresometimes in English; in 1399, the English tongue was used in the chiefacts and discourses relating to the deposition of Richard. On Monday, the 29th of September, the king signed his act of resignation; on thefollowing day a solemn meeting of Parliament took place, in presence ofall the people, in Westminster Hall; the ancient throne containingJacob's stone, brought from Scotland by Edward I. , and which can stillbe seen in the abbey, had been placed in the hall, and covered withcloth of gold, "cum pannis auri. " Richard's act of resignation was read"first in Latin, then in English, " and the people showed theirapprobation of the same by applause. Henry then came forward, claimedthe kingdom, in English, and seated himself on the throne, in the midstof the acclamations of those present. The Archbishop of Canterburydelivered an oration, and the new king, speaking again, offered histhanks in English to "God, and yowe Spirituel and Temporel, and alle theAstates of the lond. "[702] There is no more memorable sign of thechanges that had taken place than the use made of the English languageon an occasion like this, by a prince who had no title to the crown butpopular favour. III. All these translators were necessarily wanting in originality (less, however, than they need have been), and all these orators spoke for themost part in French. In their hands, English prose could not beperfected to a very high degree. It progressed, however, owing to them, but owing much more to an important personage, who made common Englishhis fighting weapon, John Wyclif, to whom the title of "Father ofEnglish prose" rightfully belongs, now that Mandeville has dissolved insmoke. Wyclif, Langland, and Chaucer are the three great figures ofEnglish literature in the Middle Ages. Wyclif belonged to the rich and respected family of the Wyclifs, lordsof the manor of Wyclif, in Yorkshire. [703] He was born about 1320, anddevoted himself early to a scientific and religious calling. He studiedat Oxford, where he soon attracted notice, being one of those men ofcharacter who occupy from the beginning of their lives, without seekingfor it, but being, as it seems, born to it, a place apart, amid the limpmultitude of men. The turn of his mind, the originality of his views, the firmness of his will, his learning, raised him above others; he wasone of those concerning whom it is at once said they are "some one;" andseveral times in the course of his existence he saw the University, theking, the country even, turn to him when "some one" was needed. He was hardly thirty-five when, the college of Balliol at Oxford havinglost its master, he was elected to the post. In 1366 Parliament ruledthat the Pope's claim to the tribute promised by King John should nolonger be recognised, and Wyclif was asked to draw up a pamphletjustifying the decision. [704] In 1374 a diplomatic mission was entrustedto him, and he went to Bruges, with several other "ambassatores, " tonegotiate with the Pope's representatives. [705] He then had the title ofdoctor of divinity. Various provincial livings were successively bestowed upon him: that ofFillingham in 1361; that of Ludgarshall in 1368; that of Lutterworth, inLeicestershire, in 1374, which he kept till his death. He divided histime between his duties as rector, his studies, his lectures at Oxford, and his life in London, where he made several different stays, andpreached some of his sermons. These quiet occupations were interrupted from time to time owing to thestorms raised by his writings. But so great was his fame, and so eminenthis personality, that he escaped the terrible consequences that heresythen involved. He had at first alarmed religious authority by hispolitical theories on the relations of Church and State, next on thereformation of the Church itself; finally he created excessive scandalby attacking dogmas and by discussing the sacraments. Summoned the firsttime to answer in respect of his doctrines, he appeared in St. Paul's, in 1377, attended by the strange patrons that a common animosity againstthe high dignitaries of the Church had gained for him; John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and Lord Henry Percy accompanied him. The duke, little troubled by scruples, loudly declared, in the middle of thechurch, that he would drag the bishop out of the cathedral by the hairof his head. These words were followed by an indescribable tumult. Indignant at this insult, the people of the City drove the duke from thechurch, pursued him through the town, and laid siege to the house ofJohn of Ypres, a rich merchant with whom he had gone to sup. Luckily forthe prince, the house opened on the Thames. He rose in haste, knockinghis legs against the table, and, without stopping to drink the cordialoffered him, slipped into a boat and fled, as fast as oars could carryhim, to his sister-in-law's, the Princess of Wales, at Kennington. [706]The summoning of Wyclif thus had no result. But the Pope, in the same year, launched against the English theologianbulls pointing out eighteen erroneous propositions contained in hiswritings, and enjoining that the culprit should be put in prison if herefused to retract. The University of Oxford, being already a power atthat time, proud of its privileges, jealous in maintaining solidaritybetween its members, imbued with those ideas of opposition to the Popewhich were increasing in England, considered the decree as an excessiveexercise of authority. It examined the propositions, and declared themto be orthodox, though capable of wrong interpretations, on whichaccount Wyclif should go to London and explain himself. [707] He is found, therefore, in London in the beginning of 1378; thebishops are assembled in the still existing chapel of Lambeth Palace. But by one of those singularities that allow us to realise howthe limits of the various powers were far from being clearly defined, ithappened that the bishops had received positive orders not to condemnWyclif. The prohibition proceeded from a woman, the Princess of Wales, widow of the Black Prince. The prelates, however, were spared thetrouble of choosing between the Pope and the lady; for the second timeWyclif was saved by a riot; a crowd favourable to his ideas invaded thepalace, and no sentence could be given. Any other would have appearedthe more guilty; he only lived the more respected. He was then at theheight of his popularity; a new public statement that he had just issuedin favour of the king against the Pope had confirmed his reputation asadvocate and defender of the kingdom of England. [708] He resumed, therefore, in peace his work of destruction, and began toattack dogmas. Besides his writings and his speeches, he used, in orderto popularise his doctrines, his "simple priests, " or "poor priests, "who, without being formed into a religious order, imitated the wanderinglife of the friars, but not their mendicity, and strove to attain theideal which the friars had fallen short of. They went about preachingfrom village to village, and the civil authority was alarmed by thepolitical and religious theories expounded to the people by thesewanderers, who journeyed "from county to county, and from town to town, in certain habits under dissimulation of great holiness, without licenseof our Holy Father the Pope, or of the ordinary of the diocese. "[709]Wyclif justified these unlicensed preachings by the example of St. Paul, who, after his conversion, "preechide fast, and axide noo leve of Petirherto, for he hadde leve of Jesus Crist. "[710] From this time forth Wyclif began to circulate on the sacraments, andespecially on the Eucharist, opinions that Oxford even was unable totolerate; the University condemned them. Conformably to his own theory, which tended, as did that of the Commons, towards a royal supremacy, Wyclif appealed not to the Pope but to the king, and in the meantimerefused to submit. This was carrying boldness very far. John of Gauntseparates from his _protégé_; Courtenay, bishop of London, callstogether a Council which condemns Wyclif and his adherents (1382); thefollowers are pursued, and retract or exile themselves; but Wyclifcontinues to live in perfect quiet. Settled at Lutterworth, from whencehe now rarely stirred, he wrote more than ever, with a more and morecaustic and daring pen. The papal schism, which had begun in 1378, hadcast discredit on the Holy See; Wyclif's work was made the easier by it. At last Urban VI. , the Pope whom England recognised, summoned him toappear in his presence, but an attack of paralysis came on, and Wyclifdied in his parish on the last day of the year 1384. "Organumdiabolicum, hostis Ecclesiæ, confusio vulgi, hæreticorum idolum, hypocritarum speculum, schismatis incentor, odii seminator, mendaciifabricator"[711]: such is the funeral oration inscribed in his annals, at this date, by Thomas Walsingham, monk of St. Albans. By order of theCouncil of Constance, his ashes were afterwards thrown to the winds, andthe family of the Wyclifs of Wyclif, firmly attached to the old faith, erased him from their genealogical tree. When the Reformation came, thefamily remained Catholic, and this adherence to the Roman religion seemsto have been the cause of its decay: "The last of the Wyclifs was a poorgardener, who dined every Sunday at Thorpe Hall, as the guest of SirMarmaduke Tunstall, on the strength of his reputed descent. "[712] IV. Wyclif had begun early to write, using at first only Latin. [713]Innumerable treatises of his exist, many of which are stillunpublished, written in a Latin so incorrect and so English in its turnsthat "often the readiest way of understanding an obscure passage is totranslate it into English. "[714] He obviously attracted the notice ofhis contemporaries, not by the elegance of his style, but by the powerof his thought. His thought deserved the attention it received. His mind was, above all, a critical one, opposed to formulas, to opinions without proofs, totraditions not justified by reason. Precedents did not overawe him, themysterious authority of distant powers had no effect on his feelings. Heliked to look things and people in the face, with a steady gaze, and themore important the thing was and the greater the authority claimed, theless he felt disposed to cast down his eyes. Soon he wished to teach others to open theirs, and to see forthemselves. By "others" he meant every one, and not only clerks or thegreat. He therefore adopted the language of every one, showing himselfin that a true Englishman, a partisan of the system of freeinvestigation, so dear since to the race. He applied this doctrine toall that was then an object of faith, and step by step, passing from theabstract to the concrete, he ended by calling for changes, very similarto those England adopted at the Reformation, and later on in the time ofthe Puritans. His starting-point was as humble and abstract as his conclusions were, some of them, bold and practical. A superhuman ideal had been proposedby St. Francis to his disciples; they were to possess nothing, but begtheir daily bread and help the poor. Such a rule was good for apostlesand angels; it was practised by men. They were not long able towithstand the temptation of owning property, and enriching themselves;in the fourteenth century their influence was considerable, and theirpossessions immense. Thin subterfuges were resorted to in order tojustify this change: they had only the usufruct of their wealth, thereal proprietor being the Pope. From that time two grave questions aroseand were vehemently discussed in Christendom: What should be thought ofthe poverty and mendicity of Christ and his apostles? What is property, and what is the origin of the power whence it proceeds? In the first rank of the combatants figured, in the fourteenth century, an Englishman, Richard Fitzralph, archbishop of Armagh, "Armachanus, "who studied the question of property, and contested the theory of thefriars in various sermons and treatises, especially in his work: "Depauperie Salvatoris, " composed probably between 1350 and 1356. [715] Wyclif took his starting-point from the perfectly orthodox writings ofFitzralph, and borrowed from him nearly the whole of his great theory of"Dominium, " or lordship, power exercised either over men, or overthings, domination, property, possession. But he carried his conclusionsmuch farther, following the light of logic, as was the custom ofschools, without allowing himself to be hindered by the radicalism ofthe consequences and the material difficulties of the execution. The theory of "Dominium, " adopted and popularised byWyclif, is an entirely feudal one. According to him, all lordship comesfrom God; the Almighty bestows it on man as a fief, in consideration ofa service or condition the keeping of His commandments. Deadly sinbreaks the contract, and deprives the tenant of his right to the fief;therefore no man in a state of deadly sin possesses any of the lordshipscalled property, priesthood, royalty, magistracy. All which is summed upby Wyclif in his proposition: any "dominium" has grace for itsfoundation. By such a theory, the whole social order is shaken; neitherPope nor king is secure on his throne, nor priest in his living, norlord in his estate. The confusion is all the greater from the fact that a multitude of othersubversive conclusions are appended to this fundamental theory: Whilesinners lose all lordship, the good possess all lordship; to man, in astate of "gratia gratificante, " belongs the whole of what comes fromGod; "in re habet omnia bona Dei. "[716] But how can that be? The easiestthing in the world, replies Wyclif, whom nothing disturbs: all goodsshould be held in common, "Ergo omnia debent esse communia"[717]; wivesshould be alone excepted. --The Bible is a kind of Koran in whicheverything is found; no other law should be obeyed save that one alone;civil and canonical laws are useless if they agree with the Bible, andcriminal if they are opposed to it. [718]--Royalty is not the best formof government; an aristocratic system is better, similar to that of theJudges in Israel. [719]--Neither heirship nor popular election issufficient for the transmission of the crown; grace is neededbesides. [720]--The bequeathing to the Church of estates which willbecome mortmain lands is inadmissible: "No one can transmit more rightsthan he possesses, and no one is personally possessed of rights of civillordship extending beyond the term of life. "[721]--If the convent or thepriest make a bad use of their wealth, the temporal power will be doing"a very meritorious thing" in depriving them of it. [722] The whole order of things is unhinged, and we are nearing chaos. It isgoing so far that Wyclif cannot refrain from inserting some of thoseslight restrictions which the logicians of the Middle Ages were fond ofslipping into their writings. In time of danger this was the secret doorby which they made their escape, turning away from the stake. Wyclif isan advocate of communism; but he gives to understand that it is not fornow; it is a distant ideal. After us the deluge! Not so, answer thepeasants of 1381; the deluge at once: "Omnia debent esse communia!" If all lordship vanishes through sin, who shall be judge of the sin ofothers? All real lordship vanishes from the sinner, answered Wyclif, butthere remains to him, by the permission of God, a power _de facto_, thatit is not given us to remove; evil triumphs, but with God's consent; theChristian must obey the wicked king and bishop: "Deus debet obedirediabolo. "[723] But the dissatisfied only adopted the first part of thetheory, and instead of submitting to Simon Sudbury, their archbishop, ofwhom they disapproved, they cut off his head. These were certainly extreme and exceptional consequences, to whichWyclif only contributed in a slight measure. The lasting and permanentresult of the doctrine was to strengthen the Commons of England in theaim they already had in view, namely, to diminish the authorityexercised over them by the Pope, and to loosen the ties that bound thekingdom to Rome. Wyclif pointed out that, contrary to the theory ofBoniface VIII. (bull "Unam Sanctam"), there does not exist in this worldone single supreme and unequalled sovereignty; the Pope is not the soledepositary of divine power. Since all lordship proceeds from God, thatof the king comes from Him, as well as that of the Pope; kingsthemselves are "vikeris of God"; beside the Pope, and not below him, there is the king. [724] V. The English will thus be sole rulers in their island. They must also besole keepers of their consciences, and for that Wyclif is to teach themfree investigation. All, then, must understand him; and he begins towrite in English. His English works are numerous; sermons, treatises, translations; they fill volumes. [725] Before all the Book of truth was to be placed in the hands of everybody, so that none need accept without check the interpretations of others. With the help of a few disciples, Wyclif began to translate the Bibleinto English. To translate the Scriptures was not forbidden. The Churchonly required that the versions should be submitted to her for approval. There already existed several, complete or partial, in variouslanguages; a complete one in French, written in the thirteenthcentury, [726] and several partial ones in English. Wyclif's versionincludes the whole of the canonical books, and even the apocryphal ones;the Gospels appear to have been translated by himself, the Old Testamentchiefly by his disciple, Nicholas of Hereford. The task was an immenseone, the need pressing; the work suffered from the rapidity with whichit was performed. A revision of the work of Nicholas was begun underWyclif's direction, but only finished after his death. [727] No attempt at elegance is found in this translation; the language isrugged, and on that account the better adapted to the uncouthness of theholy Word. Harsh though it be we feel, however, that it is tendingtowards improvement; the meaning of the words becomes more precise, owing to the necessity of giving to the sacred phrases their exactsignification; the effort is not always successful, but it is acontinued one, and it is an effort in the right direction. It was soonperceived to what need the undertaking answered. Copies of the workmultiplied in astonishing fashion. In spite of the wholesale destructionwhich was ordered, there remain a hundred and seventy manuscripts, moreor less complete, of Wyclif's Bible. For some time, it is true, thecopying of it had not been opposed by the ecclesiastical authority, andthe version was only condemned twenty-four years after the death of theauthor, by the Council of Oxford. [728] In the England of thePlantagenets could be foreseen the England of the Tudors, under whomthree hundred and twenty-six editions of the Bible were printed in lessthan a century, from 1525 to 1600. But Wyclif's greatest influence on the development of prose wasexercised by means of his sermons and treatises. In these, the reformergives himself full scope; he alters his tone at need, employs all means, from the most impassioned eloquence down to the most trivial pleasantry, meant to delight men of the lower class. Put to such varied uses, prosecould not but become a more workable instrument. True it is that Wyclifnever seeks after artistic effect in his English, any more than in hisLatin. His sermons regularly begin by: "This gospel tellith. . . . Thisgospel techith alle men that . . . " and he continues his arguments in aclear and measured style, until he comes to one of those burningquestions about which he is battling; then his irony bursts forth, heuses scathing similes; he thunders against those "emperoure bishopis, "taken up with worldly cares; his speech is short and haughty; he knowshow to condense his whole theory in one brief, clear-cut phrase, easy toremember, that every one will know by heart, and which it will not beeasy to answer. Why are the people preached to in a foreign tongue?Christ, when he was with his apostles, "taughte hem oute this prayer, bot be thou syker, nother in Latyn nother in Frensche, bot in thelangage that they usede to speke. "[729] How should popes be above kings?"Thus shulden popis be suget to kynges, for thus weren bothe Crist andPetre. "[730] How believe in indulgences sold publicly by pardoners onthe market-places, and in that inexhaustible "treasury" of merits laidup in heaven that the depositaries of papal favour are able todistribute at their pleasure among men for money? Each merit is rewardedby God, and consequently the benefit of it cannot be applicable to anyone who pays: "As Peter held his pees in grauntinge of siche thingis, soshulden thei holden ther pees, sith thei ben lasse worth thanPetir. "[731] Next to these brief arguments are familiar jests, gravely uttered, withscarcely any perceptible change in the expression of the lips, jeststhat Englishmen have been fond of in all times. If he is asked of whatuse are the "letters of fraternity, " sold by the friars to theircustomers, to give them a share in the superabundant merits of the wholeorder, Wyclif replies with a serious air: "Bi siche resouns thinken manymen that this lettris mai do good for to covere mostard pottis. "[732] It is difficult to follow him in all the places where he would fain leadus. He terrified the century by the boldness of his touch; when he wasseen to shake the frail holy thing with a ruthless hand, all eyes turnedaway, and his former protectors withdrew from him. [733] He did not, however, carry his doubt to the extreme end; according to his doctrinethe _substance_ of the host, the particle of matter, is not the matteritself, the living flesh of the body that Jesus Christ had on earth;this substance is bread; only by a miracle which is the effect ofconsecration, the body of Christ is present sacramentally; that is tosay, all the benefits, advantages, and virtues which emanate from itare attached to the host as closely as the soul of men is united totheir body. [734] The other sacraments, [735] ecclesiastical hierarchy, the tithescollected by the clergy, are not more respectfully treated by him. Thesecriticisms and teachings had all the more weight owing to the fact thatthey were delivered from a pulpit and fell from the lips of anauthorised master, whose learning was acknowledged even by hisadversaries: "A very eminent doctor, a peerless and incomparableone, "[736] says Knighton. Still better than Langland's verses, hisforcible speech, by reason of his station, prepared the way for thegreat reforms of the sixteenth century. He already demands theconfiscation of the estates of the monasteries, accomplished later byHenry VIII. ; he appeals at every page of his treatises to the seculararm, hoping by its means to bring back humility by force into the heartof prelates. But he is so far removed from its realisation that his dream dazzleshim, and urges him on to defend chimerical schemes. He wishes the wealthof the clergy to be taken from them and bestowed upon poor, honest, brave, trustworthy gentlemen, who will defend the country; and he doesnot perceive that these riches would have fallen principally into thehands of turbulent and grasping courtiers, as happened in the sixteenthcentury. [737] He is carried away by his own reasonings, so that theUtopian or paradoxical character of his statements escape him. Wantingto minimise the power of the popes, he protests against the rulesfollowed for their election, and goes on to say concerning the vote byballot: "Sith ther ben fewe wise men, and foolis ben without noumbre, assent of more part of men makith evydence that it were foli. "[738] His disciples, _Lollards_ as they were usually called, a name the originof which has been much discussed, survived him, and his simple priestscontinued, for a time, to propagate his doctrines. The master'sprincipal propositions were even found one day in 1395, posted up on thedoor of St. Paul's Cathedral, in the heart of London. Among them figuredeclarations that, at a distance of three centuries, seem aforeshadowing of the theories of the Puritans; one for instance, affirming "that the multitude of useless arts allowed in the kingdom arethe cause of sins without number. " Among the forbidden arts are includedthat of the goldsmiths, and another art of which, however, the Puritanswere to make a somewhat notorious use, that of the armorers. [739] At the University, the followers of Wyclif were numerous; in the countrythey continued to increase until the end of the fourteenth century. Energetic measures were adopted in the beginning of the fifteenth; thestatute "De hæretico comburendo" was promulgated in 1401 (but rarelyapplied at this period); the master's books were condemned andprohibited; from that time Wyclifism declined, and traces of itssurvival can hardly be found at the period when the Reformation wasintroduced into England. By a strange fate Wyclif's posterity continued to flourish out of thekingdom. Bohemia had just given a queen to England, and used to sendstudents every year from its University of Prague to study at Paris andOxford. In that country the Wyclifite tenets found a multitude ofadepts; the Latin works of the thinker were transcribed by Czechstudents, and carried back to their own land; several writings of Wyclifexist only in Czech copies. His most illustrious disciple, John Hus, rector of the University of Prague, was burnt at the stake, by order ofthe Council of Constance, on the 6th of July, 1415. But the doctrinesurvived; it was adopted with modifications by the Taborites and theMoravian Brethren, and borrowed from them by the Waldenses[740]; thesame Moravian Brethren who, owing to equally singular vicissitudes, wereto become an important factor in the English religious movement of theeighteenth century: the Wesleyan movement. In spite of differences intheir doctrines, the Moravian Brethren and the Hussites stand as aconnecting link between Wesley and Wyclif. [741] FOOTNOTES: [666] "Historia Anglicana, " vol. I. Pp. 453 ff. By the same: "Gestaabbatum monasterii Sancti Albani, " 3 vols. , "Ypodigma Neustriæ, " 1 vol. Ed. Riley, Rolls, 1863, 1876. [667] _Ibid. _, vol. Ii. P. 27. See above, p. 201. [668] "Chronicon Angliæ, " 1328-88, Rolls, ed. Maunde Thompson, 1874, 8vo. Mr. Thompson has proved that, contrary to the prevalent opinion, Walsingham has been copied by this chronicler instead of copying himhimself; but the book is an important one on account of the passagesreferring to John of Gaunt, which are not found elsewhere. [669] "Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden . . . With the English translation ofJohn Trevisa, " ed. Babington and Lumby, Rolls, 1865, 8 vols. 8vo. [670] See above, p. 195. [671] "The buke of John Maundeuill, being the travels of Sir JohnMandeville, Knight, 1322-56, a hitherto unpublished English version fromthe unique copy (Eg. MS. 1982) in the British Museum, edited togetherwith the French text, " by G. F. Warner; Westminster, Roxburghe Club, 1889, fol. In the introduction will be found the series of proofsestablishing the fact that Mandeville never existed; the chain seems nowcomplete, owing to a succession of discoveries, those especially of Mr. E. B. Nicholson, of the Bodleian, Oxford (_Cf. _ an article of H. Cordierin the _Revue Critique_ of Oct. 26, 1891). A critical edition of theFrench text is being prepared by the Société des Anciens Textes. TheEnglish translation was made after 1377, and twice revised in thebeginning of the fifteenth century. On the passages borrowed from"Mandeville" by Christine de Pisan, in her "Chemin de long Estude, " seein "Romania, " vol. Xxi. P. 229, an article by Mr. Toynbee. [672] The church and its dependencies were sold and demolished in 1798:"Adjugés le 12 nivôse an vi. , à la citoyenne épouse, J. J. Fabry, pour46, 000 francs. " Warner, _ibid. _, p. Xxxiii. [673] Warner, _ibid. _, p. V. [674] "Et sachies que je eusse cest livret mis en latin pour plusbriefment deviser, mais pour ce que plusieurs entendent miex roumant quelatin, j'e l'ay mis en roumant par quoy que chascun l'entende, et queles seigneurs et les chevalers et les autres nobles hommes qui nescevent point de latin ou pou, qui ont esté oultre mer sachent etentendent se je dis voir ou non at se je erre en devisant pour nonsouvenance ou autrement que il le puissent adrecier et amender, carchoses de lonc temps passées par la veue tournent en oubli et mémoired'omme ne puet tout mie retenir ne comprendre. " MS. Fr. 5637 in theNational Library, Paris, fol. 4, fourteenth century. [675] On Odoric and Mandeville, see H. Cordier, "Odoric de Pordenone, "Paris, 1891, Introduction. [676] A part of it was even put into verse: "The Commonyng of Ser JohnMandeville and the gret Souden;" in "Remains of the early popular Poetryof England, " ed. Hazlitt, London, 1864, 4 vols. 8vo, vol. I. P. 153. [677] Here is a specimen of this style; it is the melancholy end of thework, in which the weary traveller resigns himself, like RobinsonCrusoe, to rest at last: "And I John Maundeville, knyghte aboveseyd(alle thoughe I ben unworthi) that departed from oure contrees andpassed the see the year of grace 1322, that have passed many londes andmany isles and contrees, and cerched manye fulle straunge places, andhave ben in many a fulle gode honourable companye and at many a fairedede of armes (alle beit that I dide none my self, for myn unableinsuffisance) now I am comen hom (mawgre my self) to reste; for gowtesartetykes, that me distreynen, tho diffynen the ende of my labour, agenst my wille (God knowethe). And thus takynge solace in my wreccedreste, recordynge the tyme passed, I have fulfilled theise thinges andputte hem wryten in this boke, as it wolde come in to my mynde, the yearof grace 1356 in the 34 yeer that I departede from oure contrees. Werfore I preye to alle the rederes and hereres of this boke, yif itplese hem that thei wolde preyen to God for me, and I schalle preye forhem. " Ed. Halliwell, London, 1866, 8vo, p. 315. [678] See above, p. 216. [679] "Boethius, " in "Complete Works, " vol. Ii. P. 6. [680] "Troilus, " II. 100. See above, p. 306. _Cf. _ Boece's "DeConsolatione, " Metrum III. [681] "Et ut patesceret totius regni communitati eos non respectuavaritiæ quicquam facere, proclamari fecerunt sub poena decollationis, ne quis præsumeret aliquid vel aliqua ibidem reperta ad proprios ususservanda contingere, sed ut vasa aurea et argentea, quæ ibi copiosahabebantur, cum securibus minutatim confringerent et in Tamisiam vel incloacas projicerent, pannos aureos et holosericos dilacerarent. . . . Etfactum est ita. " Walsingham, "Historia Anglicana, " vol. I. P. 457(Rolls). [682] "Ad le Blakeheth, ubi ducenta millia communium fuere simulcongregata hujuscemodi sermonem est exorsus: Whann Adam dalfe and Eve span Who was thanne a gentil man? Continuansque sermonem inceptum, nitebatur, per verba proverbii quod prothemate sumpserat, introducere et probare, ab initio omnes pares creatosa natura, servitutem per injustam oppressionem nequam hominumintroductam, contra voluntatem Dei; quia si Deo placiusset servoscreasse utique in principio mundi constituisset quis servus, quisvedominus futurus fuisset. " Let them therefore destroy nobles and lawyers, as the good husbandman tears up the weeds in his field; thus shallliberty and equality reign: "Sic demum . . . Esset inter eos æqualibertas, par dignitas, similisque potestas. " "Chronicon Angliæ, " ed. Maunde Thompson (Rolls), 1874, 8vo, p. 321; Walsingham, vol. Ii. P. 32. [683] "Rotuli Parliamentorum, ut et petitiones et placita inParliamento. " London, 7 vols. Fol. (one volume contains the index). [684] Richard restored it entirely, and employed English master masons, "Richard Washbourn" and "Johan Swalwe. " The indenture is of March 18, 1395; the text of it is in Rymer, 1705, vol. Vii. P. 794. [685] "Rotuli Parliamentorum, " vol. Ii. P. 103. [686] Ex. 13 Ed. III. , 17 Ed. III. , "Rotuli Parliamentorum, " vol. Ii. Pp. 107, 135. [687] "Rotuli Parliamentorum, " vol. Ii. P. 361. [688] "Seigneurs et Sires, ces paroles qe j'ay dist sont tant à due enFranceys, vostre Roi vient à toy. " _Ibid. _, vol. Iii. P. 3. A speech ofthe same kind adorned with puns was made by Thomas Arundel, Archbishopof Canterbury, to open the first Parliament of Henry IV. : "Cesthonorable roialme d'Angleterre q'est le plus habundant Angle de richesseparmy tout le monde, avait estée par longe temps mesnez, reulez etgovernez par enfantz et conseil de vefves. . . . " 1399, _Ibid. _, p. 415. [689] "Rotuli Parliamentorum. " Speech of Knyvet, vol. Ii. P. 316; ofWykeham, vol. Ii. P. 303. This same Knyvet opens the Good Parliament of1376 by a speech equally forcible. He belonged to the magistracy, andwas greatly respected; he died in 1381. [690] Ex: "Item, meisme le jour (that is to say the day on which thegeneral proclamation was read) fut fait une crie qe chescun qi vodramettre petition à nostre seigneur le Roi et à son conseil, les metteentre cy et le lundy prochein à venir. . . . Et serront assignez dereceivre les pétitions . . . Les sousescritz. " _Ibid. _, vol. Ii. P. 135. [691] _Ibid. _, vol. Ii. Pp. 136, 163. "Fut dit à les ditz Communes depar le Roy, q'ils se retraiassent par soi à lour aunciene place en lamaison du chapitre de l'abbeye de Westm', et y tretassent etconseillassent entre eux meismes. " [692] Vol. Ii. P. 107, second Parliament of 1339. [693] "Ils tretèrent longement, " _Ibid. _, ii. P. 104. [694] "Sur quele demonstrance il respoundrent q'il voleient parlerensemble et treter sur cest bosoigne. . . . Sur quel bosoigne ceux de laCommune demorèrent de lour respons doner tant qe à Samedi, le XIX. Jourde Feverer. " A. D. 1339, "Rotuli Parliamentorum, " vol. Ii. P. 107. [695] "Ils n'osoront assentir tant qu'ils eussent conseillez et avysezles Communes de lour pais. " They promise to do their best to persuadetheir constituents. A. D. 1339; "Rotuli Parliamentorum, " vol. Ii. P. 104. [696] "Et les nuncia auxi la cause de la longe demore quele il avoitfaite es dites parties saunz chivaucher sur ses enemys; et coment il lecovendra faire pur defaute d'avoir. " "Rotuli Parliamentorum, " vol. Ii. P. 103, first Parliament of 1339. [697] 51 Ed. III. , "Rotuli Parliamentorum, " ii. P. 374. [698] "Rotuli Parliamentorum, " vol. Ii. P. 323. This speech created agreat stir; another analysis of it exists in the "Chronicon Angliæ"(written by a monk of St. Albans, the abbot of which, Thomas de la Mare, sat in Parliament): "Quæ omnia ferret æquanimeter [plebs communis] sidominus rex noster sive regnum istud exinde aliquid commodi velemolumenti sumpsisse videretur; etiam plebi tolerabile, si inexpediendis rebus bellicis, quamvis gestis minus prospere, tanta pecuniafuisset expensa. Sed palam est, nec regem commodum, nec regnum ex hacfructum aliquem percepisse. . . . Non enim est credible regem carereinfinita thesauri quantitate si fideles fuerint qui ministrant ei" (p. 73). The drift of the speech is, as may be seen, exactly the same as inthe Rolls of Parliament. Another specimen of pithy eloquence will befound in the apostrophe addressed to the Earl of Stafford by JohnPhilpot, a mercer of London, after his naval feat of 1378. _Ibid. _, p. 200. [699] "Rotuli Parliamentorum, " ii. Pp. 337 ff. [700] June 25, 1376. [701] The speech of this year was made "en Engleis, " by Simon, bishop ofEly; but the Rolls give only a French version of it: "Le prophet Daviddit que . . . " &c. , vol. Ii. P. 283. [702] "Sires, I thank God, and yowe Spirituel and Temporal and alle theAstates of the lond; and do yowe to wyte, it es noght my will that noman thynk yt be waye of conquest I wold disherit any man of hisheritage, franches, or other ryghtes that hym aght to have, no put hymout of that that he has and has had by the gude lawes and custumes ofthe Rewme: Except thos persons that has ben agan the gude purpose andthe commune profyt of the Rewme. " "Rotuli Parliamentorum, " vol. Iii. P. 423. In the fifteenth century the Parliamentary documents are writtensometimes in French, sometimes in English; French predominates in thefirst half of the century, and English in the second. [703] On Wyclif's family, see "The Birth and Parentage of Wyclif, " by L. Sergeant, _Athenæum_, March 12 and 26, 1892. This spelling of his nameis the one which appears oftenest in contemporary documents. (Note by F. D. Matthew, _Academy_, June 7, 1884. ) [704] "Determinatio quedam magistri Johannis Wyclyff de Dominio contraunum monachum. " The object of this treatise is to show "quod Rex potestjuste dominari regno Anglic negando tributum Romano pontifici. " The textwill be found in John Lewis: "A history of the life and sufferings of. . . John Wiclif, " 1720, reprinted Oxford, 1820, 8vo, p. 349. [705] "Ambassatores, nuncios et procuratores nostros speciales. " Lewis, _ibid. _, p. 304. [706] All these details are found in the "Chronicon Angliæ, " 1328-88, ed. Maunde Thompson, Rolls, 1874, 8vo, p. 123, one of the rarechronicles the MS. Of which was not expurgated, in what relates to Johnof Gaunt, at the accession of the Lancasters. (See above, p. 406. ) [707] This extreme leniency caused an indignation of which an echo isfound in Walsingham: "Oxoniense studium generale, " he exclaims, "quamgravi lapsu a sapientiæ et scientiæ culmine decidisti!. . . Pudetrecordationis tantæ impudentiæ, et ideo supersedeo in husjusmodi materiaimmorari, ne materna videar ubera decerpere dentibus, quæ dare lac, potum scientiæ, consuevere. " "Historia Anglicana, " Rolls, vol. I. P. 345, year 1378. [708] See in the "Fasciculi Zizaniorum magistri Johannis Wyclif cumtritico, " ed. Shirley, Rolls, 1858, 8vo, p. 258: "Responsio magistriJohannis Wycclifi ad dubium infra scriptum, quæsitum ab eo, per dominumregem Angliæ Ricardum secundum et magnum suum consilium anno regni suiprimo. " The point to be elucidated was the following: "Dubium est utrumregnum Angliæ possit legitime, imminente necessitate suæ defensionis, thesaurum regni detinere, ne deferatur ad exteros, etiam domino papa subpoena censurarum et virtute obedientiæ hoc petente. " [709] "Statutes of the Realm, " 5 Rich. II. , st. 2, chap. 5. Walsinghamthus describes them; "Congregavit . . . Comites . . . Talaribes indutosvestibus de russeto in signum perfectionis amplioris, incedentes nudispedibus, qui suos errores in populo ventilarent, et palam ac publice insuis sermonibus prædicarent. " "Historia Anglicana, " _sub anno_ 1377, Rolls, vol. I. P. 324. A similar description is found (they presentthemselves, "sub magnæ sanctitatis velamine, " and preach errors "tam inecclesiis quam in plateis et aliis locis profanis") in the letter of thearchbishop of Canterbury, of May 28, 1382, "Fasciculi, " p. 275. [710] "Select English Works, " ed. T. Arnold, Oxford, 1869, vol. I. P. 176. [711] "Historia Anglicana, " Rolls, vol. Ii. P. 119. Elsewhere, inanother series of unflattering epithets ("old hypocrite, " "angel ofSatan, " &c. ), the chronicler had allowed himself the pleasure of makinga little pun upon Wyclif's name: "Non nominandus Joannes Wicliffe, velpotius Wykbeleve. " Year 1381 vol. I. P. 450. [712] L. Sergeant, "The Birth and Parentage of Wyclif, " in the_Athenæum_ of March 12, 1892. [713] The Wyclif Society, founded in London by Dr. Furnivall, haspublished a great part of the Latin works of Wyclif: "Polemical Works inLatin, " ed. Buddensieg, 1883, 8vo; "Joannis Wyclif, de compositioneHominis, " ed. R. Beer, 1884; "Tractatus de civili Dominio . . . From theunique MS. At Vienna, " ed. R. Lane Poole, 1885 ff. ; "Tractatus deEcclesia, " ed. Loserth, 1886; "Dialogus, sive speculum Ecclesiemilitantis, " ed. A. W. Pollard, 1886; "Tractatus de benedictaIncarnatione, " ed. Harris, 1886; "Sermones, " ed. Loserth and Matthew, 1887; "Tractatus de officio Regis;" ed. Pollard and Sayle, 1887; "DeDominio divino libri tres, to which are added the first four books ofthe treatise 'De pauperie Salvatoris, ' by Richard Fitzralph, archbishopof Armagh, " ed. R. L. Poole, 1890; "De Ente prædicamentali, " ed. R. Beer, 1891; "De Eucharistia tractatus maior; accedit tractatus deEucharistia et Poenitentia, " ed. Loserth and Matthew, 1892. Manyothers are in preparation. Among the Latin works published outside of the Society, see "Tractatusde officio pastorali, " ed. Lechler, Leipzig, 1863, 8vo; "Trialogus cumsupplemento Trialogi, " ed. Lechler, Oxford, 1869, 8vo; "De Christo etsuo Adversario Antichristo, " ed. R. Buddensieg, Gotha, 1880, 4to. Manydocuments by or concerning Wyclif are to be found in the "FasciculiZizaniorum magistri Joannis Wyclif cum tritico, " ed. Shirley, Rolls, 1858, 8vo (compiled by Thomas Netter, fifteenth century). See alsoShirley, "A Catalogue of the Original Works of John Wyclif, " Oxford, 1865, 8vo, and Maunde Thompson, "Wycliffe Exhibition in the King'sLibrary, " London, 1884, 8vo. [714] R. Lane Poole, "Wycliffe and Movements for Reform, " London, 1889, 8vo, p. 85. [715] On this treatise, and on the use made of it by Wyclif, see:"Johannis Wycliffe De Dominio divino libri tres. To which are added thefirst four books of the treatise 'De pauperie Salvatoris, ' by RichardFitzralph, " ed. R. Lane Poole, 1890. The "De Dominio divino, " of Wyclif, seems to have been written about 1366; his "De Dominio Civili, " about1372. [716] "Quilibet existens in gratia gratificante, finaliter nedum habetjus, sed in re habet omnia bona Dei. " "De Dominio Civili, " chap. I. P. 1. [717] "De Dominio Civili, " chap. Xiv. P. 96, chap. Xvii. Pp. 118-120. [718] "Vel esset lex superaddita in lege evangelica implicata, velimpertinens, vel repugnans. " "De Dominio Civili, " chap. Xvii. [719] The worst is the ecclesiastical form: "Pessimum omnium est quodprelati ecclesie secundum tradiciones suas immisceant se negociis etsolicitudinibus civilis dominii. " Chap. Xxvii. P. 195. [720] Chap. Xxx. P. 212. [721] Chap. Xxxv. P. 250. [722] Chap. Xxxvii. P. 266. [723] A conclusion pointed out as heretical by the archbishop ofCanterbury in his letter of 1382. "Fasciculi, " p. 278. [724] "Kingis and lordis schulden wite that thei ben mynystris andvikeris of God, to venge synne and ponysche mysdoeris. " "Select EnglishWorks, " ed. Arnold, vol. Iii. P. 214. [725] The principal ones will be found in: T. Arnold, "Select EnglishWorks of John Wyclif, " Oxford, 1869-71, 3 vols. 8vo; F. D. Matthew, "TheEnglish Works of Wyclif, hitherto unprinted, " London, Early English TextSociety, 1880, 8vo. (Many of the pieces in this last collection are notby Wyclif, but are the work of his followers. In the first, too, theauthenticity of some of the pieces is doubtful. ) See also: "Wyclyffe'sWycket, which he made in Kyng Richard's days the Second" (a famoussermon on the Eucharist), Nuremberg, 1546, 4to; Oxford, ed. T. P. Pantin, 1828. [726] S. Berger, "La Bible française au moyen âge, " Paris, 1884, p. 120. This version was circulated in England, and was recopied by Englishscribes; a copy (incomplete) by an English hand is preserved in theUniversity Library at Cambridge; P. Meyer, "MSS. Français de Cambridge, "in "Romania, " 1886, p. 265. [727] "The Holy Bible . . . Made from the Latin of the Vulgate, by JohnWycliffe and his followers, " ed. By J. Forshall and Sir Fred. Madden, Oxford, 1850, 2 vols. 4to. On the share of Wyclif, Hereford, &c. , in thework, see pp. Vi, xvi, xvii, xx, xxiv. _Cf. _ Maunde Thompson, "WycliffeExhibition, " London, 1884, p. Xviii. The first version was probablyfinished in 1382, the second in 1388 (by the care of John Purvey, adisciple and friend of Wyclif). [728] Labbe, "Sacrorum Conciliorum . . . Collectio, " vol. Xxvi. Col. 1038. [729] "Select English Works, " vol. Iii. P. 100. [730] "Select English Works, " vol. Ii. P. 296. [731] _Ibid. _, i. P. 189. [732] _Ibid. _, i. P. 381. [733] His adversaries, perhaps exaggerating his sayings, attribute tohim declarations like the following: "Quod sacramentum illud visibileest infinitum abjectius in natura, quam sit panis equinus, vel panisratonis; immo, quod verecundum est dicere vel audire, quod stercusratonis. " "Fasciculi Zizaniorum, " p. 108. [734] "Ille panis est bene miraculose, vere el realiter, spiritualiter, virtualiter et sacramentaliter corpus Christi. Sed grossi noncontentantur de istis modis, sed exigunt quod panis ille, vel saltem peripsum, sit substantialiter et corporaliter corpus Christi; sic enimvolunt, zelo blasphemorum, Christum comedere, sed non possunt. . . . Ponimus venerabile sacramentum altaris esse naturaliter panem et vinum, sed sacramentaliter corpus Christi et sanguinem. " "Fasciculi, " pp. 122, 125; Wyclif's statement of his beliefs after his condemnation by theUniversity in 1381. Again, in his sermons: "Thes ben to rude heretikesthat seien thei eten Crist bodili, and seien thei parten ech membre ofhim, nekke, bac, heed and foot. . . . This oost is breed in his kynde asben other oostes unsacrid, and sacramentaliche Goddis bodi. " "SelectEnglish Works, " vol. Ii. P. 169. This is very nearly the theory adoptedlater by Latimer, who declares "that there is none other presence ofChrist required than a spiritual presence; and that presence issufficient for a Christian man;" there remains in the host the substanceof bread. "Works, " Parker Society, Cambridge, 1844, vol. Ii. P. 250. [735] Auricular confession, that "rowninge in preestis eere, " is not thetrue one, according to Wyclif; the true one is that made to God. "SelectEnglish Works, " vol. I. P. 196. [736] "Doctor in theologia eminentissimus in diebus illis, inphilosophia nulli reputabatur secundus, in scolasticis disciplinisincomparabilis. " "Chronica de eventibus Angliæ, " _sub anno_ 1382, inTwysden, "Decem Scriptores, " col. 2644. [737] "Select English Works, " vol. Iii. Pp 216, 217. [738] _Ibid. _, ii. P. 414. [739] Conclusion No. 12. "Henrici de Blandeforde . . . Annales, " ed. Riley, Rolls, 1866, p. 174. [740] "The old belief that the Waldenses (or Vaudois) represent acurrent of tradition continuous from the assumed evangelical simplicityof the primitive church has lost credit. . . . The imagined primitiveChristianity of these Alpine congregations can only be deduced fromworks which have been shown to be translations or adaptations of theHussite manuals or treatises. " "Wycliffe, " by Reginald Lane Poole, 1889, p. 174. _Cf. _ J. Loserth, "Hus und Wiclif, " Leipzig, 1884. [741] The great crisis in Wesley's religious life, what he terms his"conversion, " took place on the 24th of February, 1738, under theinfluence of the Moravian Peter Böhler, who had convinced him, he saysin his Journal, "of the want of that faith whereby we are saved. " CHAPTER VI. _THE STAGE. _ I. Dramatic art, in which the English people was to find one of the mostbrilliant of its literary glories, was evolved slowly from distant andobscure origins. In England, as in the rest of Europe, the sources of modern drama wereof two sorts: there were civil and religious sources. The desire for amusement and the craving for laughable things neverdisappeared entirely, even in the darkest days; the sources of the laydrama began to spring and flow, owing to no other cause. The meansformerly employed to amuse and raise a laugh cannot be expected to haveshown much refinement. No refinement was to be found in them, and allmeans were considered good which ensured success; kicks were among thesimplest and oftenest resorted to, but not at all among the grossest;others were worse, and were much more popular. Let us not wonderovermuch: some of them have recovered again, quite recently, a part oftheir pristine popularity. They were used by jugglers or players, "joculatores, " nomadic sometimes, and sometimes belonging to thehousehold of the great. The existence of such men is testified to fromcentury to century, during the whole of the Middle Ages, mainly by theblame and condemnation they constantly incurred: and so it is that thebest information concerning these men is not to be sought for in themonuments of the gay literature, but rather in pious treatises and inthe acts of Councils. Treatises and Councils, however, might to our advantage have been evenmore circumstantial; the pity is that they, naturally enough, considerit below their dignity to descend to very minute particulars; it isenough for them to give an enumeration, and to condemn in one phrase allthe mimes, tumblers, histrions, wrestlers, and the rest of the jugglingtroup. Sometimes, however, a few particulars are added; the peculiartricks and the scandalous practices of the ill-famed race are mentioned;and an idea can thus be formed of our ancestors' amusements. John ofSalisbury in the twelfth century alludes to a variety of pastimes, andwhile protesting against the means used to produce laughter, places themon record: a heavy laughter indeed, noisy and tumultuous, Rabelais'laughter before Rabelais. Of course, "such a modest hilarity as anhonest man would allow himself" is not to be reproved, and John did notforbear to use this moderate way of enjoyment; but the case is differentwith the jugglers and tumblers: "much better it would be for them to donothing than to act so wickedly. "[742] No doubt was possible. The jesters did not care in the least to keepwithin the bounds of "a modest hilarity"; nor did their audience, for inthe fourteenth century we find these men described in the poem ofLangland, and they have not altered in any way[743]; their tricks arethe same, the same shameful exhibitions take place with the samesuccess; for two hundred years they have been laughed at withoutintermission. Many things have come and gone; the nation has got tiredof John's tyranny, of Henry the Third's weakness, of the Pope'ssupremacy, but the histrions continue to tumble and jump; "their pointsbeing broken, down fall their hose, " (to use Shakespeare's words), andthe great at Court are convulsed with laughter on their benches. Besides their horseplay, jugglers and histrions had, to please theiraudience, retorts, funny answers, witticisms, merry tales, which theyacted rather than told, for gestures accompanied the delivery. This partof the amusement, which came nearest the drama, sharp repartees, impromptu dialogues, is the one we know least about. Voices have longbeen silent, and the great halls which heard them are now but ivy-cladruins, yielding no echo. Some idea, however, can be formed of what tookplace. First we know from innumerable testimonies that those histrions spokeand told endless nonsense; they have been often enough reproached withit for no doubt to remain as to their talking. Then there issuperabundant proof of the relish with which men enjoyed, in the MiddleAges, silly, teazing or puzzling answers; the questioner remaining atthe end rolled up in the repartees, gasping as a fly caught in aspider's web. The Court fool or buffoon had for his principal merit hisclever knack of returning witty or confusing answers; the best of themwere preserved; itinerant minstrels remembered and repeated them;clerks turned them into Latin, and gave them place in their collectionsof _exempla_. They afforded amusement for a king, an amusement of amixed sort, sometimes: --Why, says the king, are there no longer any Rolands?--Because, thefool answers, there are no longer any Charlemagnes. [744] Walter Map, as we saw, was so fond of happy answers that he formed abook of all those he heard, knew, or made in his day. The fabliau of the"Jongleur d'Ely, " written in England in the thirteenth century, is agood specimen of the word-fencing at which itinerant amusers wereexpert. The king is unable to draw from the jongleur any answer to anypurpose: What is his name?--The name of his father. --Whom does he belongto?--To his lord. --How is this river called?--No need to call it; itcomes of its own accord. --Does the jongleur's horse eatwell?--"Certainly yes, my sweet good lord, he can eat more oats in a daythan you would do in a whole week. "[745] This is a mere sample of an art that lent itself to many uses, and towhich belonged debates, "estrifs, " "disputoisons, " "jeux-partis, "equally popular in England and in France. Some specimens of it are asold as the time of the Anglo-Saxons, such as the "Dialogue of Salomonand Saturnus. "[746] There are found in the English language debates ordialogues between the Owl and Nightingale, thirteenth century; theThrush and Nightingale; the Fox and Wolf, time of Edward I. ; theCarpenter's Tools, and others. [747] Collections of silly answers werealso made in England; one of them was composed to the confusion of theinhabitants of Norfolk; another in their honour and for theirdefence. [748] The influence of those estrifs, or debates, on thedevelopment of the drama cannot be doubted; the oldest dramatic fragmentin the English language is nothing but an estrif between Christ andSatan. The author acknowledges it himself: A strif will I tellen on, says he in his prologue. [749] Debates enjoyed great favour in castle halls; impromptu ones which, asCathos and Madelon said, centuries later, "exerçaient les esprits del'assemblée, " were greatly liked; they constituted a sort of societygame, one of the oldest on record. A person among those present waschosen to answer questions, and the amusement consisted in putting orreturning questions and answers of the most unexpected or puzzlingcharacter. This was called the game of the "King who does not lie, " orthe game of the "King and Queen. "[750] By a phenomenon which has beenobserved in less remote periods, after-dinner conversations often took alicentious turn; in those games love was the subject most willinglydiscussed, and it was not as a rule treated from a very ethereal pointof view; young men and young ladies exchanged on those occasionsobservations the liberty of which gave umbrage to the Church, who triedto interfere; bishops in their Constitutions mentioned those amusements, and forbade to their flock such unbecoming games as "ludos de Rege etRegina;" Walter de Chanteloup, bishop of Worcester, did so in 1240. [751]Some of that freedom of speech survived, however, through the MiddleAges up to the time of Shakespeare; while listening to the dialogues ofBeatrix and Benedick one wonders sometimes whether they are not playingthe game "de Rege et Regina. " Parody also helped in its way to the formation of the drama. There was ataste for masking, for the imitation of other people; for thecaricaturing of some grave person or of some imposing ceremony, massfor example, for the reproduction of the song of birds or the noise of astorm, gestures being added to the noise, the song, or the words. Somejugglers excelled in this; they were live gargoyles and were paid "theone to play the drunkard, another the fool, a third to imitate the cat. "The great minstrels, "grans menestreus, " had a horror of thosegargoyles, the shame of their profession;[752] noblemen, however, didnot share these refined, if not disinterested, feelings, and asked totheir castles and freely rewarded the members of the wandering tribe whoknew how to imitate the drunkard, the fool, or the cat. On histrionic liberties introduced even into church services, Aelred, abbot of Rievaulx in the twelfth century, gives some unexpectedparticulars. He describes the movements and attitudes of certainchanters by which they "resembled actors": so that we thus getinformation on both at the same time. Chanters are found in variouschurches, he says, who with inflated cheeks imitate the noise ofthunder, and then murmur, whisper, allow their voice to expire, keepingtheir mouth open, and think that they give thus an idea of the death orecstasy of martyrs. Now you would think you hear the neighing of horses, now the voice of a woman. With this "all their body is agitated byhistrionic movements"; their lips, their shoulders, their fingers aretwisted, shrugged, or spread out as they think best to suit theirdelivery. The audience, filled with wonder and admiration at thoseinordinate gesticulations, at length bursts into laughter: "It seems tothem they are at the play and not at church, and that they have only tolook and not to pray. "[753] The transition from these various performances to little dramas orinterludes, which were at first nothing but tales turned into dialogues, was so natural that it could scarcely attract any notice. Few specimenshave survived; one English one, however, is extant, dating from the timeof Edward I. , and shows that this transition had then taken place. Itconsists in the dramatising of one of the most absurd and most populartales told by wandering minstrels, the story, namely, of the WeepingBitch. A woman or maid rejects the love of a clerk; an old woman (DameSiriz in the English prose text) calls upon the proud one, having in herhands a little bitch whom she has fed with mustard, and whose eyesaccordingly weep. The bitch, she says, is her own daughter, sotransformed by a clerk who had failed to touch her heart; the youngwoman at once yields to her lover, fearing a similar fate. There existFrench, Latin, and English versions of this tale, one of the few whichare of undoubted Hindu origin. The English version seems to belong tothe thirteenth century. [754] The turning of it into a drama took place a few years later. Nothing waseasier; this fabliau, like many others, was nearly all in dialogues; tomake a play of it, the jongleur had but to suppress some few lines ofnarrative; we thus have a drama, in rudimentary shape, where a deepstudy of human feelings must not be sought for. [755] Here is theconversation between the young man and the young maid when they meet: _Clericus. _ Damishel, reste wel. _Puella. _ Sir, welcum, by Saynt Michel! _Clericus. _ Wer esty (is thy) sire, wer esty dame? _Puella. _ By Gode, es noner her at hame. _Clericus. _ Wel wor suile (such) a man to life That suile a may (maid) mihte have to wyfe! _Puella. _ Do way, by Crist and Leonard. . . . Go forth thi way, god sire, For her hastu losye al thi wile. After some more supplications, the clerk, who is a student at theUniversity, goes to old Helwis (Siriz in the prose tale) and then theauthor, more accustomed, it seems, to such persons than to the companyof young maidens, describes with some art the hypocrisy of the matron. Helwis will not; she leads a holy life, and what is asked of her willdisturb her from her pious observances. Her dignified scruples areremoved at length by the plain offer of a reward. In this way, some time before Chaucer's birth, the lay drama came intoexistence in Shakespeare's country. Other stories of the same sort were also turned into plays; we have noneof them, but we know that they existed. An Englishman of the fourteenthcentury calls the performance of them "pleyinge of japis, "[756] byopposition to the performance of religious dramas. Other amusements again, of a strange kind, helped in the same earlyperiod to the formation of the drama. A particularly keen pleasure wasafforded during the Middle Ages by songs, dances, and carols, whenperformed in consecrated places, such as cemeteries, cloisters, churches. A preference for such places may seem scarcely credible; stillit cannot be doubted, and is besides easily explainable. To theunbridled instincts of men as yet half tamed, the Church had opposedrigorous prescriptions which were enforced wholesale. To resistexcessive independence, excessive severity was needful; buttresses hadto be raised equal in strength to the weight of the wall. But from timeto time a cleft was formed, and the loosened passions burst forth withviolence. Escaped from the bondage of discipline, men foundinexpressible delight in violating all prohibitions at once; the dayfor the beast had come, and it challenged the angel in its turn. The propelling power of passions so repressed was even increased bycertain weird tastes very common at that period, and by the merryreactions they caused. Now oppressed by, and now in revolt against, theidea of death, the faithful would at times answer threats with sneers;they found a particular pleasure in evolving bacchanalian processionsamong the tombs of churchyards, not only because it was forbidden, butalso on account of the awful character of the place. The watching of thedead was also an occasion for orgies and laughter. At the University, even, these same amusements were greatly liked; students delighted insinging licentious songs, wearing wreaths, carolling and deep drinkingin the midst of churchyards. Councils, popes, and bishops never tired ofprotesting, nor the faithful of dancing. Be it forbidden, says InnocentIII. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, to perform "theatricalgames" in churches. Be this prohibition enforced, says Gregory IX. Alittle later. [757] Be it forbidden, says Walter de Chanteloup, bishop ofWorcester, to perform "dishonest games" in cemeteries and churches, especially on feast days and on the vigils of saints. [758] Be itforbidden, says the provincial council of Scotland in 1225, "to caroland sing songs at the funeral of the dead; the tears of others ought notto be an occasion for laughter. "[759] Be it forbidden, the Universityof Oxford decrees in the same century, to dance and sing in churches, and wear there disguises and wreaths of flowers and leaves. [760] The year was divided by feasts; and those feasts, the importance ofwhich in everybody's eyes has dwindled much, were then great events;people thought of them long before, saw them in the distance, toweringabove the common level of days, as cathedrals above houses Everyday lifewas arrested, and it was a time for rejoicings, of a religious, andsometimes of an impious, character: both kinds helped the formation ofdrama, and they were at times closely united On such great occasions, more than ever, the caricature and derision of holy things increased theamusement. Christmas-time had inherited the licence as well as itoccupied the date of the ancient Roman saturnalia; and whatever be theperiod considered, be it early or late in the Middle Ages, it will befound that the anniversary was commemorated, piously and merrily, bysneering and adoring multitudes For the one did not prevent the other;people caricatured the Church, her hierarchy and ceremonials, but didnot doubt her infallibility; they laughed at the devil and feared him. "Priests, deacons, and sub-deacons, " says the Pope, are bold enough, onthose mad days, "to take part in unbecoming bacchanals, in the presenceof the people, whom they ought rather to edify by preaching the Word ofGod. "[761] In those bacchanals parodies of the Church prayers wereintroduced; a Latin hymn on the Nativity was transposed line for line, and became a song in honour of the good ale. Here, as a sample, are twostanzas, both of the original and of the parody, this last having, as itseems, been composed in England: Letabundus Exultet fidelis chorus, Alleluia! Regem Regum Intacte perfundit thorus: Res miranda! Angelus consilii Natus est de Virgine, Sol de Stella, Sol occasum nesciens, Stella semper rutilans, Semper clara. Or i parra: La Cerveise nos chantera _Alleluia!_ Qui que en beit, Se tele seit com estre deit, _Res miranda!_ Bevez quant l'avez en poing; Bien est droit, car mout est loing _Sol de Stella_; Bevez bien et bevez bel, El vos vendra del tonel _Semper clara_. "You will see; the ale will make us sing, Alleluia! all of us, if theale is as it should be, a wonderful thing! (Res miranda). Drink of itwhen you hold the jug; 'tis a most proper thing, for it is a good longway from sun to star (Sol de Stella); drink well! drink deep! it willflow for you from the tun, ever clear! (Semper clara). "[762] So rose from earth at Christmastide, borne on the same winds, angelsand demons, and the ancient feast of Saturn was commemorated at the sametime as Christ's. In the same way, again, the scandalous feasts of theFools, of the Innocents, and of the Ass, were made the merrier withgrotesque parodies of pious ceremonies; they were celebrated in thechurch itself, thus transformed, says the bishop of Lincoln, RobertGrosseteste, into a place for pleasure, amusement, and folly: God'shouse was defiled by the devil's inventions. He forbade, in consequence, the celebration of the feast of Fools, "festum Stultorum, " on the day ofCircumcision in his cathedral, and then in the whole diocese. [763] The feast of the Innocents was even more popular in England. Theperformers had at their head a "boy bishop, " and this diminutive prelatepresided, with mitre on his head, over the frolics of his madcapcompanions. The king would take an interest in the ceremony; he wouldorder the little dignitary to be brought before him, and give him apresent. Edward II. Gave six shillings and eight pence to the youngJohn, son of Allan Scroby, who had played the part of the "boy bishop"in the royal chapel; another time he gave ten shillings; Richard II. , more liberal, gave a pound. [764] Nuns even were known to forget oncertain occasions their own character, and to carol with laymen on theday of the Innocents, or on the day of Mary Magdalen, to commemorate thelife of their patroness, in its first part as it seems. [765] The passion for sightseeing, which was then very keen, and which was tobe fed, later, mainly on theatrical entertainments, was indulged induring the Middle Ages in various other ways. Processions were one ofthem; occasions were numerous, and causes for them were not difficult tofind. Had the _Pui_ of London awarded the crown to the writer of thebest _chanson_, a procession was formed in the streets in honour of theevent. A marriage, a pilgrimage to Palestine, a patronal feast, weresufficient motives; gilds and associations donned their liveries, drewtheir insignia from their chest, and paraded the streets, including inthe "pageant, " when the circumstance allowed of it, a medley of giantsand dwarfs, monsters, gilt fishes, and animals of all sorts. On granddays the town itself was transformed; with its flower-decked houses, itstapestries and hangings, it gave, with some more realism about it, theimpression we receive from the painted scenery of an opera. The town at such times was swept with extraordinary care; even"insignificant filth" was removed, Matthew Paris notes with wonderingpen in 1236. [766] The procession moved forward, men on horseback and onfoot, with unfurled banners, along the decorated streets, to the soundof bells ringing in the steeples. At road-crossings the processionstopped; after having been a sight, the members of it became in theirturn sightseers. Wonders had been prepared to please them: here a forestwith wild beasts and St. John the Baptist; elsewhere scenes from theBible, or from knightly romances, the "pas de Saladin, " for example, where the champion of England, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, fought thechampion of Islam. At times it was a dumb-show, a sort of _tableauvivant_, at others actors moved but did not speak; at others again theydid both, and complimented the king. A day came when the complimentswere cut into dialogues; such practice was frequent in the fifteenthcentury, and it approached very near to the real drama. In 1236, Henry III. Of England having married Aliénor of Provence madehis solemn entry into his capital. On this occasion were gatheredtogether "so many nobles, so many ecclesiastics, such a concourse ofpeople, such a quantity of histrions, that the town of London couldscarcely hold them in her ample bosom--_sinu suo capace_. --All the townwas adorned with silk banners, wreaths, hangings, candles and lamps, mechanisms and inventions of extraordinary kinds. "[767] The same town, fond above all others of such exhibitions, and one of thelast to preserve vestiges of them in her Lord Mayor's Show, outdid allthat had been seen before when, on the 29th of August, 1393, Richard II. Made his entry in state, after having consented to receive the citizensagain into his favour. [768] The streets were lined with cloth of goldand purple; "sweet smelling flowers" perfumed the air; tapestries withfigures hung from the windows; the king was coming forth, splendid tolook at, very proud of his good looks, "much like Troilus;" queen Annetook part also in the procession. A variety of scenes stop the progressand delight the onlookers; one had an unforeseen character. The queenwas nearing the gate of the bridge, the old bridge with defensive towersand gates, and two cars full of ladies were following her, when one ofthe cars, "of Phaetonic make" says the classical-minded narrator, suddenly broke. Grave as saints, beautiful as angels, the ladies, losingtheir balance, fell head downwards; and the crowd, while full ofadmiration for what they saw, "could not suppress their laughter. " Theauthor of the description calls it, as Fragonard would have done, "alucky chance, " _sors bona_; but there was nothing of Fragonard in himexcept this word: he was a Carmelite and Doctor of Divinity. Things having been set right again, the procession entered Cheapside, and there was seen an "admirable tower"; a young man and a young maidencame out of it, addressed Richard and Anne, and offered them crowns; atthe Gate of St. Paul's a concert of music was heard; at Temple Bar, "barram Templi, " a forest had been arranged on the gate, with animals ofall sorts, serpents, lions, a bear, a unicorn, an elephant, a beaver, amonkey, a tiger, a bear, "all of which were there, running about, bitingeach other, fighting, jumping. " Forests and beasts were supposed torepresent the desert where St. John the Baptist had lived. An angel waslet down from the roof, and offered the king and queen a little diptychin gold, with stones and enamel representing the Crucifixion; he madealso a speech. At length the queen, who had an active part to play inthis opera, came forward, and, owing to her intercession, the king, withdue ceremony, consented to bestow his pardon on the citizens. Many other examples might be adduced; feasts were numerous, and for atime caused pains to be forgotten: "oubliance était au voir, " asFroissart says so well on an occasion of this sort. [769] There were alsofor the people the May celebrations with their dances and songs, theimpersonation of Robin Hood, later the performance of short plays ofwhich he was the hero[770]; and again those chimes, falling from thesteeples, filling the air with their joyous peals. At Court there werethe "masks" or "ballets" in which the great took part, wrapped in starrydraperies, disguised with gold beards, dressed in skins or feathers, aswere at Paris King Charles VI. And his friends on the 29th of January, 1392, in the famous Ballet of Wild Men, since called, from thecatastrophe which happened, "Ballet des Ardents" (of men in fire). Thetaste for ballets and Masks was one of long duration; the Tudors andStuarts were as fond of them as the Plantagenets, so much so that abranch apart in dramatic literature was created on this account, and itincludes in England such graceful and touching masterpieces as the "SadShepherd" of Ben Jonson and the "Comus" of Milton. II. While histrions and amusers give a foretaste of farce and comedy incastle halls, while romantic drama is foreshadowed in the "pas deSaladin" and the "Taking of Troy, " and the pastoral drama begins withMay games, other sources of the modern dramatic art were springing up inthe shadow of the cloister and under the naves of churches. The imitation of any action is a step towards drama. Conventional, liturgical, ritualistic as the imitation was, still there was animitation in the ceremony of mass; and mass led to the religious drama, which was therefore, at starting, as conventional, liturgical, andritualistic as could be. Its early beginning is to be sought for in theantiphoned parts of the service, and then it makes one with the serviceitself. In a similar manner, outside the Church lay drama had begun withthe alternate _chansons_, debates, poetical altercations of the singersof facetious or love-songs. A great step was made when, at the principalfeasts of the year, Easter and Christmas, the chanters, instead ofgiving their responses from their stalls, moved in the Church to recallthe action commemorated on that day; additions were introduced into thereceived text of the service; religious drama begins then to have anexistence of its own. "'Tell us, shepherds, whom do you seek in this stable?--They willanswer: 'Christ the Saviour, our Lord. '"[771] Such is the starting-point; it dates from the tenth century; from thisis derived the play of Shepherds, of which many versions have come downto us. One of them, followed in the cathedral of Rouen, gives a minuteaccount of the performance as it was then acted in the midst of thereligious service: "Be the crib established behind the altar, and be theimage of the Blessed Mary placed there. First a child, from before thechoir and on a raised platform, representing an angel, will announce thebirth of the Saviour to five canons or their vicars of the second rank;the shepherds must come in by the great gate of the choir. . . . As theynear the crib they sing the prose _Pax in terris_. Two priests of thefirst rank, wearing a dalmatic, will represent the midwives and stand bythe crib. "[772] These adventitious ornaments were greatly appreciated, and from year toyear they were increased and perfected. Verse replaced prose; thevulgar idiom replaced Latin; open air and the public square replaced thechurch nave and its subdued light. It was no longer necessary to haverecourse to priests wearing a dalmatic in order to represent midwives;the feminine parts were performed by young boys dressed as women: thiswas coming much nearer nature, as near in fact as Shakespeare did, forhe never saw any but boys play the part of his Juliet. There were evencases in which actual women were seen on the mediæval stage. Thoseameliorations, so simple and obvious, summed up in a phrase, were thework of centuries, but the tide when once on the flow was the strongerfor waiting. The drama left the church, because its increased importancehad made it cumbersome there, because it was badly seen, and becausehaving power it wanted freedom. Easter was the occasion for ornaments and additions similar to thoseintroduced into the Christmas service. [773] The ceremonies of Holy Week, which reproduced each incident in the drama of the Passion, lentthemselves admirably to it. Additions following additions, the whole ofthe Old Testament ended by being grouped round and tied to the Christmasfeast, and the whole of the New Testament round Easter. Both wereclosely connected, the scenes in the one being interpreted as symbols ofthe scenes in the other; complete cycles were thus formed, representingin two divisions the religious history of mankind from the Creation toDoomsday. Once severed from the church, these groups of plays often gotalso separated from the feast to which they owed their birth, and wererepresented at Whitsuntide, on Corpus Christi day, or on the occasionof some solemnity or other. As the taste for such dramas was spreading, a variety of tragicalsubjects, not from the Bible, were turned into dialogues: first lives ofsaints, later, in France, some few subjects borrowed from history orromance: the story of Griselda, the raising of the siege at Orléans byJoan of Arc, &c. [774] The English adhered more exclusively to the Bible. Dramas drawn from the lives of saints were usually called Miracles;those derived from the Bible, Mysteries; but these appellations hadnothing very definite about them, and were often used one for the other. The religious drama was on the way to lose its purely liturgicalcharacter when the conquest of England had taken place. Under the reignof the Norman and Angevin kings, the taste for dramatic performancesincreased considerably; within the first century after Hastings we findthem numerous and largely attended. The oldest representation the memory of which has come down to us tookplace at the beginning of the twelfth century, and had for its subjectthe story of that St. Catherine of Alexandria whom the Emperor Maximinuscaused to be beheaded after she had converted the fifty oratorsentrusted with the care of bringing her back to paganism by dint oftheir eloquence. The fifty orators received baptism, and were burntalive. [775] The representation was managed by a Mancel of good familycalled Geoffrey, whom Richard, abbot of St. Albans, had asked to comefrom France to be the master of the Abbey school. But as he was late instarting, he found on his coming that the school had been given toanother; in his leisure he caused to be represented at Dunstable a play, or miracle, of St. Catherine, "quendam ludum de Sancta Katerina quemmiracula vulgariter appellamus. " He borrowed from the sacristan at St. Albans the Abbey copes to dress his actors in; but the night followingupon the performance, the fire consumed his house; all his books wereburnt, and the copes too: "Wherefore, not knowing how to indemnify Godand St. Albans, he offered his own person as a holocaust and took thehabit in the monastery. This explains the zeal with which, having becomeabbot, he strove to enrich the convent with precious copes. " For hebecame abbot, and died in 1146, after a reign of twenty-six years, [776]and Matthew Paris, to whom we owe those details, and whose taste forworks of art is well known, gives a full enumeration of the splendidpurple and gold vestments, adorned with precious stones, with which theMancel Geoffrey enriched the treasury of the Abbey. [777] A little later in the same century, Fitzstephen, who wrote under HenryII. , mentions as a common occurrence the "representations of miracles"held in London. [778] In the following century, under Henry III. , somewere written in the English language. [779] During the fourteenthcentury, in the time of Chaucer, mysteries were at the height of theirpopularity; their heroes were familiar to all, and the sayings of thesame became proverbs. Kings themselves journeyed in order to be presentat the representations; Chaucer had seen them often, and the charactersin his tales make frequent allusions to them; his drunken miller cries"in Pilates vois"; "Jolif Absolon" played the part of "king Herodes, "and is it to be expected that an Alisoun could resist king Herodes? TheWife of Bath, dressed in her best garments, goes "to pleyes ofmiracles, " and there tries to make acquaintances that may be turned intohusbands when she wants them. "Hendy Nicholas" quotes to the credulouscarpenter the example of Noah, whose wife would not go on board, and whoregretted that he had not built a separate ship for "hir-self allone. " A treatise, written in English at this period, against suchrepresentations, shows the extreme favour in which they stood with allclasses of society. [780] The enthusiasm was so general and boundlessthat it seems to the author indispensable to take the field and retort(for the question was keenly disputed) the arguments put forward tojustify the performance of mysteries. The works and miracles of Christ, he observes, were not done for play; He did them "ernystfully, " and weuse them "in bourde and pleye!" It is treating with great familiaritythe Almighty, who may well say: "Pley not with me, but pley with thipere. " Let us beware of His revenge; it well may happen that "God takithmore venjaunce on us than a lord that sodaynly sleeth his servaunt forhe pleyide to homely with hym;" and yet the lord's vengeance cannot beconsidered a trifling one. What do the abettors of mysteries answer to this? They answer that "theipleyen these myraclis in the worschip of God"; they lead men to thinkand meditate; devils are seen there carrying the wicked away to hell;the sufferings of Christ are represented, and the hardest are touched, they are seen weeping for pity; for people wept and laughed at therepresentations, openly and noisily, "wepynge bitere teris. " Besides, there are men of different sorts, and some are so made that they cannotbe converted but by mirthful means, "by gamen and pley"; and suchperformances do them much good. Must not, on the other hand, all menhave "summe recreatioun"? Better it is, "or lesse yvele, that thei hanthyre recreacoun by pleyinge of myraclis than bi pleyinge of otherjapis. " And one more very sensible reason is given: "Sithen it isleveful to han the myraclis of God peyntid, why is not as wel leveful tohan the myraclis of God pleyed . . . And betere thei ben holden in mennusmynde and oftere rehersid by the pleyinge of hem than by the peyntynge, for this is a deed bok, the tother a quick. " To those reasons, which he does not try to conceal, but on the contrarypresents very forcibly, the fair-minded author answers his best. Theserepresentations are too amusing; after such enjoyments, everyday lifeseems plain and dull; women of "yvil continaunse, " Wives of Bath maybe, or worse, flock there and do not remain idle. The fact that they comedoes not prevent the priests from going too; yet it is "uttirly"forbidden them "not onely to been myracle pleyere but also to heren orto seen myraclis pleyinge. " But they set the decree at nought and "pleynin entirlodies, " and go and see them: "The prestis that seyn hemsilfholy, and besien hem aboute siche pleyis, ben verry ypocritis andlyeris. " All bounds have been overstepped; it is no longer a taste, buta passion; men are carried away by it; citizens become avaricious andgrasping to get money in view of the representations and the amusementswhich follow: "To peyen ther rente and ther dette thei wolen grucche, and to spende two so myche upon ther pley thei wolen nothinge grucche. "Merchants and tradesmen "bygilen ther neghbors, in byinge and sellyng, "that is "hideous coveytise, " that is "maumetrie"; and they do it "to hanto spenden on these miraclis. " Many documents corroborate these statements and show the accuracy of thedescription. The fondness of priests for plays and similar pastimes isdescanted upon by the Council of London in 1391. [781] A hundred yearsearlier an Englishman, in a poem which he wrote in French, had pointedout exactly the same abuses: from which can be perceived how deeplyrooted they were. Another folly, William de Wadington[782] had said, hasbeen invented by mad clerks; it consists in what is called Miracles; inspite of decrees they disguise themselves with masks, "li forsené!"[783]Purely liturgical drama, of course, is permissible (an additional proofof its existence in England); certain representations can be held, "provided they be chastely set up and included in the Church service, "as is done when the burial of Christ or the Resurrection is represented"to increase devotion. "[784] But to have "those mad gatherings in thestreets of towns, or in the cemeteries, after dinner, " to prepare forthe idle such meeting-places, is a quite different thing; if they tellyou that they do it with good intent and to the honour of God, do notbelieve them; it is all "for the devil. " If players ask you to lend themhorses, equipments, dresses, and ornaments of all sorts, don't fail torefuse. For the stage continued to live upon loans, and the example ofthe copes of St. Albans destroyed by fire had not deterred convents fromcontinuing to lend sacred vestments to actors. [785] In the case ofsacred vestments, says William, "the sin is much greater. " In all this, as well as in all sorts of dances and frolics, a heavy responsibilityrests with the minstrels; they ply a dangerous trade, a "trop perilusmester"; they cause God to be forgotten, and the vanity of the world tobe cherished. Not a few among these English dramas, so popular in former days, havecome down to us. Besides separate pieces, histories of saints (veryscarce in England), or fragments of old series, several collections havesurvived, the property whilom of gilds or municipalities. A number oftowns kept up those shows, which attracted visitors, and were at thesame time edifying, profitable, and amusing. From the fourteenth centurythe performances were in most cases intrusted to the gilds, each crafthaving as much as possible to represent a play in accordance with itsparticular trade. Shipwrights represented the building of the ark;fishermen, the Flood; goldsmiths, the coming of the three kings withtheir golden crowns; wine merchants, the marriage at Cana, where amiracle took place very much in their line. In other cases the playswere performed by gilds founded especially for that purpose: gild ofCorpus Christi, of the Pater Noster, &c. This last had been createdbecause "once on a time, a play setting forth the goodness of the Lord'sPrayer was played in the city of York, in which play all manner of vicesand sins were held up to scorn and the virtues were held up to praise. This play met with such favour that many said: 'Would that this playcould be kept in this city, for the health of souls and for the comfortof citizens and neighbours!' Hence the keeping up of that play in timesto come" (year 1389). [786] In a more or less complete state, the collections of the Mysteriesperformed at Chester, Coventry, Woodkirk, and York have been preserved, without speaking of fragments of other series. Most of those textsbelong to the fourteenth century, but have been retouched at a laterdate. [787] Old Mysteries did not escape the hand of the improvers, anymore than old churches, where any one who pleased added paintings, porches, and tracery, according to the fashion of the day. These dramatic entertainments, which thrilled a whole town, to whichflocked, with equal zeal, peasants and craftsmen, citizens, noblemen, kings and queens, which the Reformation succeeded in killing only afterhalf a century's fight, enlivened with incomparable glow the monotonouscourse of days and weeks. The occasion was a solemn one; preparation wasbegun long beforehand; it was an important affair, an affair of State. Gilds taxed their members to secure a fair representation of the playassigned to them; they were fined by the municipal authority in casethey proved careless and inefficient, or were behind their time tobegin. Read as they are, without going back in our minds to times past andtaking into account the circumstances of their composition, Mysteriesmay well be judged a gross, childish, and barbarous production. Still, they are worthy of great attention, as showing a side of the soul of ourancestors, who in all this did _their very best_: for those performanceswere not got up anyhow: they were the result of prolonged care andattention. Not any man who wished was accepted as an actor; someexperience of the art was expected; and in some towns even examinationstook place. At York a decree of the Town Council ordains that longbefore the appointed day, "in the tyme of lentyn" (while the performanceitself took place in summer, at the Corpus Christi celebration) "thereshall be called afore the maire for the tyme beyng four of the mosteconnyng discrete and able players within this Citie, to serche, here andexamen all the plaiers and plaies and pagentes thrughoute all theartificers belonging to Corpus Christi plaie. And all suche as thayshall fynde sufficiant in personne and connyng, to the honour of theCitie and worship of the saide craftes, for to admitte and able; and allother insufficiant personnes, either in connyng, voice, or personne todischarge, ammove and avoide. " All crafts were bound to bring "furthether pageantez in order and course by good players, well arayed andopenly spekyng, upon payn of lesying 100 s. To be paide to the chambrewithout any pardon. "[788] These texts belong to the fifteenth century, but there are older ones; and they show that from the beginning thedifference between good and bad actors was appreciated and greatimportance was attached to the gestures and delivery. The Mystery of"Adam" (in French, the work, it seems, of a Norman), which belongs tothe twelfth century, commences with recommendations to players: "Be Adamwell trained so as to answer at the appropriate time without anyslackness or haste. The same with the other actors; let them speak insedate fashion, with gestures fitting the words; be they mindful not toadd or suppress a syllable in the verses; and be their pronunciationconstantly clear. "[789] The amusement afforded by such exhibitions, thepersonal fame acquired by good actors, suddenly drawn from the shadow inwhich their working lives had been spent till then, acted so powerfullyon craftsmen that some would not go back to the shop, and, leaving theirtools behind them, became professional actors; thus showing that therewas some wisdom in the reproof set forth in the "Tretise of Miraclispleyinge. " Once emerged from the Church, the drama had the whole town in which todisplay itself; and it filled the whole town. On these days the citybelonged to dramatic art; each company had its cars or scaffolds, _pageants_ (placed on wheels in some towns), each car being meant torepresent one of the places where the events in the play happened. Thecomplete series of scenes was exhibited at the main crossings, or on theprincipal squares or open spaces in the town. The inhabitants ofneighbouring houses sat thus as in a front row, and enjoyed a mostenviable privilege, so enviable that it was indeed envied, and at York, for example, they had to pay for it. After 1417 the choosing of theplaces for the representations was regulated by auction, and the playswere performed under the windows of the highest bidders. In other casesthe scaffolds were fixed; so that the representation was performed onlyat one place. The form of the scaffolds varied from town to town. At Chester "thesepagiantes or cariage was a highe place made like a house with two rowmesbeinge open on ye tope: the lower rowme they apparrelled and dressedthem selves; and in the higher rowme they played: and they stoode uponsix wheeles. And when they had done with one cariage in one place, theywheeled the same from one streete to an other. "[790] In some cases thescaffolds were not so high, and boards made a communication between theraised platform and the ground; a horseman could thus ride up thescaffold: "Here Erode ragis in the pagond and in the strete also. "[791] Sometimes the upper room did not remain open, but a curtain was drawn, according to the necessity of the action. The heroes of the play movedabout the place, and went from one scaffold to another; dialogue thentook place between players on the ground and players on the boards:"Here thei take Jhesu and lede hym in gret hast to Herowde; and theHerowdys scaffald xal unclose, shewyng Herowdes in astat, alle the Jewysknelyng except Annas and Cayaphas. "[792] Chaucer speaks of the "scaffoldhye" on which jolif Absolon played Herod; king Herod in fact was alwaysenthroned high above the common rabble. The arrangements adopted in England differed little, as we see, from theFrench ones; and it could scarcely be otherwise, as the taste for thesedramas had been imported by the Normans and Angevins. Neither inEngland nor in France were there ever any of those six-storied theatresdescribed by the brothers Parfait, each story being supposed torepresent a different place or country. To keep to truth, we should, onthe contrary, picture to ourselves those famous buildings stretched allalong on the ground, with their different compartments scattered roundthe public square. But we have better than words and descriptions to give us an idea of thesight; we have actual pictures, offering to view all the details of theperformances. An exquisite miniature of Jean Fouquet, preserved atChantilly, which has never been studied as it ought to be with referenceto this question, has for its subject the life of St. Apollinia. Insteadof painting a fancy picture, Fouquet has chosen to represent themartyrdom of the saint as it was acted in a miracle play. [793] The mainaction takes place on the ground; Apollinia is there, in the middle ofthe executioners. Round the place are scaffolds with a lower room andan upper room, as at Chester, and there are curtains to close them. Oneof those boxes represents Paradise; angels with folded arms, quietlyseated on the wooden steps of their stairs, await the moment when theymust speak; another is filled with musicians playing the organ and otherinstruments; a third contains the throne of the king. The throne isempty; for the king, Julian the apostate, his sceptre, adorned with_fleurs-de-lys_, in his hand, has come down his ladder to take part inthe main action. Hell has its usual shape of a monstrous head, withopening and closing jaws; it stands on the ground, for the betteraccommodation of devils, who had constantly to interfere in the drama, and to keep the interest of the crowd alive, by running suddenly throughit, with their feathers and animals' skins, howling and grinning; "tothe great terror of little children, " says Rabelais, who, like Chaucer, had often been present at such dramas. Several devils are to be seen inthe miniature; they have cloven feet, and stand outside the hell-mouth;a buffoon also is to be seen, who raises a laugh among the audience andshows his scorn for the martyr by the means described three centuriesearlier in John of Salisbury's book, exhibiting his person in a way"quam erubescat videre vel cynicus. " Besides the scaffolds, boxes or "estableis" meant for actors, others arereserved for spectators of importance, or those who paid best. Thiscommingling of actors and spectators would seem to us somewhatconfusing; but people were not then very exacting; with them illusionwas easily caused, and never broken. This magnificent part of theaudience, besides, with its rich garments, was itself a sight; and solittle objection was made to the presence of beholders of that sort thatwe shall find them seated on the Shakesperean stage as well as on thestage of Corneille and of Molière. "I was on the stage, meaning tolisten to the play . . . " says the Éraste of "Les Facheux. " In the timeof Shakespeare the custom followed was even more against theatricalillusion, as there were gentlemen not only on the sides of the scene, but also behind the actors; they filled a vast box fronting the pit. The dresses were rich: this is the best that can be said of them. Saintsenwreathed their chins with curling beards of gold; God the Father wasdressed as a pope or a bishop. For good reasons the audience did not askmuch in the way of historical accuracy; all it wanted was _signs_. Copesand tiaras were in its eyes religious signs by excellence, and in thewearer of such they recognised God without hesitation. The turban of theSaracens, Mahomet the prophet of the infidels, were known to the mob, which saw in them the signs and symbols of irreligiousness and impiety. Herod, for this cause, wore a turban, and swore premature oaths by"Mahound. " People were familiar with symbols, and the use of them wascontinued; the painters at the Renaissance represented St. Stephen witha stone in his hand and St. Paul with a sword, which stone and swordstood for symbols, and the sight of them evoked all the doleful tale oftheir sufferings and death. The authors of Mysteries did not pay, as we may well believe, greatattention to the rule of the three Unities. The events included in theFrench Mystery of the "Vieil Testament" did not take place in one day, but in four thousand years. The most distant localities were representednext to each other: Rome, Jerusalem, Marseilles. The scaffolds huddledclose together scarcely gave an idea of geographical realities; theimagination of the beholders was expected to supply what was wanting:and so it did. A few square yards of ground (sometimes, it must beacknowledged, of water) were supposed to be the Mediterranean;Marseilles was at one end, and Jaffa at the other. A few minutes didduty for months, years, or centuries. Herod sends a messenger toTiberius; the tetrarch has scarcely finished his speech when his man isalready at Rome, and delivers his message to the emperor. Noah gets intohis ark and shuts his window; here a silence lasting a minute or so; thewindow opens, and Noah declares that the forty days are past ("ChesterPlays"). To render, however, his task easier to the public, some precautions weretaken to let them perceive where they were. Sometimes the name of theplace was written on a piece of wood or canvas, a clear and honestmeans. [794] It worked so successfully that it was still resorted to inElizabethan times; we see "Thebes written in great letters upon an oldedoore, " says Sir Philip Sidney, and without asking for more we are bound"to beleeve that it is Thebes. " In other cases the actor followed thesneering advice Boileau was to express later, and in very simple fashiondeclared who he was: I am Herod! I am Tiberius! Or again, when theymoved from one place to another, they named both: now we are arrived, Irecognise Marseilles; "her is the lond of Mercylle. "[795] Most of thoseinventions were long found to answer, and very often Shakespeare had nobetter ones to use. The same necessities caused him to make up for thedeficiency of the scenery by his wonderful descriptions of landscapes, castles, and wild moors. All that poetry would have been lost had he hadpainted scenery at his disposal. Some attempts at painted scenery were made, it is true, but so plain andprimitive that the thing again acted as a symbol rather than as therepresentation of a place. A throne meant the palace of the king. Goddivides light from darkness: "Now must be exhibited a sheet painted, know you, one half all white and the other half all black. " The creationof animals comes nearer the real truth: "Now must be let loose littlebirds that will fly in the air, and must be placed on the ground, ducks, swans, geese . . . With as many strange beasts as it will have beenpossible to secure. " But truth absolute was observed when the state ofinnocence had to be represented: "Now must Adam rise all naked and lookround with an air of admiration and wonder. "[796] Beholders doubtlessreturned his wonder and admiration. In the Chester Mysteries a practicalrecommendation is made to the actors who personate the first couple:"Adam and Eve shall stande nakede, and shall not be ashamed. "[797] Theproper time to be ashamed will come a little later. The serpent steals"out of a hole"; man falls: "Now must Adam cover himself and feign to beashamed. The woman must also be seized with shame, and cover herselfwith her hands. "[798] If painted scenery was greatly neglected, machinery received moreattention. That characteristic of modern times, yeast through which theold world has been transformed, the hankering after the unattainable, which caused so many great deeds, had also smaller results; it affectedthese humble details. Painted canvas was neglected, but people labouredat the inventing of machinery. While a sheet half white and half blackwas hung to represent light and chaos, in the drama of "Adam, " so earlyas the twelfth century, a self-moving serpent, "serpens artificiosecompositus, " tempted the woman in Paradise. Wondering Eve offered butsmall resistance. Elsewhere an angel carried Enoch "by a subtile engine"into Paradise. In the Doomesday play of the Chester Mysteries, "Jesuswas to come down as on a cloud, if that could be managed. " But sometimesit could not; in Fouquet's miniature the angels have no other machinerybut a ladder to allow them to descend from heaven to earth. In the "MaryMagdalene" of the Digby Mysteries a boat appeared with mast and sail, and carried to Palestine the King of Marseilles. Hell was in all times most carefully arranged, and it had the bestmachinery. The mouth opened and closed, threw flames from its nostrils, and let loose upon the crowd devils armed with hooks and emitting awfulyells. From the back of the mouth appalling noises were heard, beingmeant for the moans of the damned. These moans were produced by a simpleprocess: pots and frying-pans were knocked against each other. In"Adam, " the heroes of the play are taken to hell, there to await thecoming of Christ; and the scene, according to the stage direction in themanuscript, was to be represented thus: "Then the Devil will come andthree or four devils with him with chains in their hands and iron ringswhich they will put round the neck of Adam and Eve. Some push them andothers draw them toward hell. Other devils awaiting them by the entrancejump and tumble as a sign of their joy for the event. " After Adam hasbeen received within the precincts of hell, "the devils will cause agreat smoke to rise; they will emit merry vociferations, and knocktogether their pans and caldrons so as to be heard from the outside. After a while, some devils will come out and run about the place. " Panswere of frequent use; Abel had one under his tunic, and Cain, knockingon it, drew forth lugubrious sounds, which went to the heart of theaudience. The machinery became more and more complicated toward the time of theRenaissance; but much money was needed, and for long the Court or themunicipalities could alone use them. In England fixed or movable sceneryreaches great perfection at Court: Inigo Jones shows a genius inarranging elegant decorations; some of his sketches have beenpreserved. [799] But such splendid inventions were too costly to betransferred to the stages for which Shakespeare wrote; and he never usedany other magic but that of his poetry. Inigo Jones had finescene-shiftings with the help of his machinists, and Shakespeare withthe help of his verses; these last have this advantage, that they havenot faded, and can still be seen. III. Whatever may be thought of so much simplicity, childishness, orbarbarity of those ivy-clad ruins, the forms of which can scarcely bediscerned, they must be subjected to a closer inspection; and if therewere no other, this one consideration would be enough to incline us toit: while in the theatre of Bacchus the tragedies of Sophocles wereplayed once and no more, the Christian drama, remodelled from century tocentury, was represented for four hundred years before immensemultitudes; and this is a unique phenomenon in the history ofliterature. The fact may be ascribed to several causes, some of which have alreadybeen pointed out. The desire to see was extremely keen, and there wasseen all that could be wished: the unattainable, the unperceivable, miracles, the king's Court, earthly paradise, all that had been heard ofor dreamt about. Means of realisation were rude, but the public heldthem satisfactory. What feasts were in the year, sacraments were in the existence of men;they marked the great memorable stages of life. A complete net ofobservances and religious obligations surrounded the months and seasons;bells never remained long silent; they rang less discreetly than now, and were not afraid to disturb conversations by their noise. At eachperiod of the day they recalled that there were prayers to say, and tothose even who did not pray they recalled the importance of religion. Existences were thus impregnated with religion; and religion was in itsentirety explained, made accessible and visible, in the Mysteries. The verses spoken by the actors did not much resemble those inShakespeare; they were, in most cases, mere tattle, scarcely verses;rhyme and alliteration were sometimes used both together, and bothanyhow. And yet the emotion was deep; in the state of mind with whichthe spectators came, nothing would have prevented their being touched bythe affecting scenes, neither the lame verse nor the clumsy machinery;the cause of the emotion was the subject, and not the manner in whichthe subject was represented. All the past of humanity and its eternalfuture were at stake; players, therefore, were sometimes interrupted bythe passionate exclamations of the crowd. At a drama lately representedon the stage of the Comédie Française, one of the audience astonishedhis neighbours by crying: "Mais signe donc! Est-elle bête!. . . " In theopen air of the public place, at a time when manners were less polished, many such interjections interrupted the performance; many insultingapostrophes were addressed to Eve when she listened to the serpent; andthe serpent spoke (in the Norman drama of "Adam") a language easy tounderstand, the language of everyday life: "_Diabolus. _--I saw Adam; he is an ass. " "_Eva. _--He is a little hard. " "_Diabolus. _--We shall melt him; but at present he is harder than iron. " But thou, Eve, thou art a superior being, a delicate one, a delight forthe eyes. "Thou art a little tender thing, fresher than the rose, whiterthan crystal, or snow falling on the ice in a dale. The Creator hasbadly matched the couple; thou art too sweet; man is too hard. . . . Forwhich it is very pleasant to draw close to thee. Let me have a talk withthee. "[800] And for such cajolery, for such folly, thought the crowd, for this sinof our common mother, we sweat and we suffer, we observe Lent, weexperience temptations, and under our feet this awful hell-mouth opens, in which, maybe, we shall some day fall. Eve, turn away from theserpent! Greater even was the emotion caused by the drama of the Passion, thesufferings of the Redeemer, all the details of which were familiar toeverybody. The indignation was so keen that the executioners haddifficulty sometimes in escaping the fury of the multitude. The Middle Ages were the age of contrasts; what measure meant was thenunknown. This has already been noticed _à propos_ of Chaucer; thecleverest _compensated_, as Chaucer did, their Miller's tales withstories of Griselda. When they intend to be tender the authors ofMysteries fall in most cases into that mawkish sentimentality by whichthe man of the people or the barbarian is often detected. A feeling formeasure is a produce of civilisation, and men of the people ignore it. Those street daubers who draw on the flags of the London foot-pathsalways represent heartrending scenes, or scenes of a sweetnessunspeakable: here are fires, storms, and disasters; now a soldier, inthe middle of a battle, forgets his own danger, and washes the wound ofhis horse; then cascades under an azure sky, amidst a spring landscape, with a blue bird flying about. Many such drawings might be detected inDickens, many also in the Mysteries. After a truly touching scenebetween Abraham and his son, the pretty things Isaac does and says, hisprayer not to see the sword so keen, cease to touch, and come very nearmaking us laugh. The contrast between the fury of Herod and thesweetness of Joseph and Mary is similarly carried to an extreme. Thissame Joseph who a minute ago insulted his wife in words impossible toquote, has now become such a sweet and gentle saint that one canscarcely believe the same man addresses us. He is packing before hisjourney to Egypt; he will take his tools with him, his "_smale_instrumentes. "[801] Is there anything more touching? Nothing, exceptperhaps the appeal of the street painter, calling our attention to thefact that he draws "on the _rude_ stone. " How could the passer-by not betouched by the idea that the stone is so hard? In the Middle Ages peoplemelted at this, they were moved, they wept; and all at once they were ina mood to enjoy the most enormous buffooneries. These fill a large placein the Mysteries, and beside them shine scenes of real comedy, evincinggreat accuracy of observation. The personages worst treated in Mysteries are always kings; they aremostly represented as being grotesque and mischievous. The playwrightsmight have given as their excuse that their kings are miscreants, andthat black is not dark enough to paint such faces. But to thiscommendable motive was added a sly pleasure felt in caricaturing thosegreat men, not only because they were heathens, but also because theywere kings; for when Christian princes and lords appear on the stage, the satire is often continued. Thus Lancelot of the Lake appearsunexpectedly at the Court of king Herod, and after much rant the loverof queen Guinevere draws his invincible sword and massacres theInnocents ("Chester Plays"). Herod, Augustus, Tiberius, Pilate, Pharaoh, the King of Marseilles, always open the scenes where they figure with a speech, in which theysound their own praise. It was an established tradition; in the same wayas God the Father delivered a sermon, these personages made what themanuscripts technically call "their boast. " They are the masters of theuniverse; they wield the thunder; everybody obeys them; they swear andcurse unblushingly (by Mahomet); they are very noisy. They strut about, proud of their fine dresses and fine phrases, and of their French, French being there again a token of power and authority. The EnglishHerod could not claim kinship with the Norman Dukes, but the subjects ofAngevin monarchs would have shrugged their shoulders at therepresentation of a prince who did not speak French. It was for them thesign of princeship, as a tiara was the sign of godhead. Herod thereforespoke French, a very mean sort of French, it is true, and the Parliamentof Paris which was to express later its indignation at the faultygrammar of the "Confrères de la Passion" would have suffered much if ithad seen what became of the noble language of France on the scaffolds atChester. But it did not matter; any words were enough, in the same wayas any sword would do as an emblem for St. Paul. One of the duties of these strutting heroes was to maintain silence. Itseemed as if they had a privilege for noise making, and they repressedencroachments; their task was not an easy one. Be still, "beshers, "cries Augustus; "beshers" means "beaux sires" in the kingly French ofthe Mysteries: Be stylle, beshers, I commawnd you, That no man speke a word here now Bot I my self alon. And if ye do, I make a vow, Thys brand abowte youre nekys shalle bow, For-thy by stylle as ston. [802] Silence! cries Tiberius. Silence! cries Herod: Styr not bot ye have lefe, For if ye do I clefe You smalle as flesh to pott. [803] Tiberius knows Latin, and does not conceal it from the audience: Stynt, I say, gyf men place, quia sum dominus dominorum, He that agans me says rapietur lux oculorum. [804] And each of them hereupon moves about his scaffold, and gives the bestidea he can of the magnitude of his power: Above all kynges under the cloudys crystall, Royally I reigne in welthe without woo . . . I am Kyng Herowdes. [805] Be it known, says another: That of heven and hell chyff rewlar am I, To wos magnyfycens non stondyt egall, For I am soveren of al soverens. [806] Make room, says a third: A-wantt, a-want the, on-worthy wrecchesse! Why lowtt ye nat low to my lawdabyll presens?. . . I am a sofereyn semely, that ye se butt seyld; Non swyche onder sonne, the sothe for to say . . . I am kyng of Marcylle![807] Such princes fear nothing, and are never abashed; they are on familiarterms with the audience, and interpellate the bystanders, which was asure cause of merriment, but not of good order. Octavian, being wellpleased with the services of one of his men, tells him: Boye, their be ladyes many a one, Amonge them all chouse thee one, Take the faierest, or elles non, And freely I geve her thee. [808] Every lord bows to my law, observes Tiberius: Is it nat so? Sey yow all with on showte. and a note in the manuscript has: "Here answerryt all the pepul atons, 'Ya, my lord, ya. '"[809] All this was performed with appropriategesture, that is, as wild as the words they went with, a tradition thatlong survived. Shakespeare complained, as we know, of the delivery ofthose actors who "out-heroded Herod. " The authors of English Mysteries had no great experience of Courts; theydrew their caricatures somewhat haphazard. They were neither verylearned nor very careful; anachronisms and mistakes swarm under theirpen. While Herod sacrifices to Mahomet, Noah invokes the Blessed Virgin, and the Christmas shepherds swear by "the death of Christ, " whose birthis announced to them at the end of the play. The psychology of these dramas is not very deep, especially when thequestion is of personages of rank, and of feelings of a refined sort. The authors of Mysteries speak then at random and describe by hearsay;they have seen their models only from afar, and are not familiar withthem. When they have to show how it is that young Mary Magdalen, asvirtuous as she was beautiful, consents to sin for the first time, theydo it in the plainest fashion. A "galaunt" meets her and tells her thathe finds her very pretty, and loves her. "Why, sir, " the young ladyreplies, "wene you that I were a kelle (prostitute)?" Not at all, saysthe other, but you are so pretty! Shall we not dance together? Shall wedrink something? Soppes in wyne, how love ye? Mary does not resist those proofs of true love, and answers: As ye dou, so doth me; I am ryth glad that met be we; My love in yow gynnyt to close. Then, "derlyng dere, " let us go, says the "galaunt. " _Mary. _ Ewyn at your wyl, my dere derlyng! Thow ye wyl go to the woldes eynd, I wol never from yow wynd (turn). [810] Clarissa Harlowe will require more forms and more time; here twenty-fiveverses have been enough. A century and a half divides "Mary Magdalene"from the dramatised story of the "Weeping Bitch"; the interpretation ofthe movements of the feminine heart has not greatly improved, and we arevery far as yet from Richardson and Shakespeare. But truth was more closely observed when the authors spoke of what theyknew by personal experience, and described men of the poorer sort withwhom they were familiar. In this lies the main literary merit of theMysteries; there may be found the earliest scenes of real comedy in thehistory of the English stage. This comedy of course is very near farce: in everything people then wentto extremes. Certain merry scenes were as famous as the rant of Herod, and they have for centuries amused the England of former days. Thestrife between husband and wife, Noah and his wife, Pilate and his wife, Joseph and Mary, this last a very shocking one, were among the mostpopular. In all the collections of English Mysteries Noah's wife is an untamedshrew, who refuses to enter the ark. In the York collection, Noah beingordered by "Deus" to build his boat, wonders somewhat at first: A! worthy lorde, wolde thou take heede, I am full olde and oute of qwarte. He sets to work, however; rain begins; the time for sailing has arrived:Noah calls his wife; she does not come. Get into the ark and "leve theharde lande?" This she will not do. She meant to go this very day totown, and she will: Doo barnes, goo we and trusse to towne. She does not fear the flood; Noah remarks that the rain has beenterrific of late, and has lasted many days, and that her idea of goingjust then to town is not very wise. The lady is not a whit pacified; whyhave made a secret of all this to her? Why had he not consulted her? Itturns out that her husband had been working at the ark for a hundredyears, and she did not know of it! Life in a boat is not at allpleasant; anyhow she will want time to pack; also she must take hergossips with her, to have some one to talk to during the voyage. Noah, who in building his boat has given some proof of his patience, does notlose courage; he receives a box on the ear; he is content with saying: I pray the, dame, be stille. The wife at length gets in, and, as we may believe, stormy days in moresenses than one are in store for the patriarch. [811] St. Joseph is a poor craftsman, described from nature, using thelanguage of craftsmen, having their manners, their ignorances, theiraspirations. Few works in the whole range of mediæval literaturecontain better descriptions of the workman of that time than theMysteries in which St. Joseph figures; some of his speeches ought tohave a place in the collections of Political Songs. The Emperor Augustushas availed himself of the occasion afforded by the census to establisha new tax: "A! lorde, " says the poor Joseph, what doth this man nowe heare! Poore mens weale is ever in were (doubt), I wotte by this bolsters beare That tribute I muste paye; And for greate age and no power I wan no good this seven yeaire; Nowe comes the kinges messingere, To gette all that he maye. With this axe that I beare, This perscer and this nagere, A hamer all in feare, I have wonnen my meate. Castill, tower ne manere Had I never in my power; But as a simple carpentere With these what I mighte gette. Yf I have store nowe anye thing, That I must paye unto the kinge. [812] Only an ox is left him; he will go and sell it. It is easy to fancythat, in the century which saw the Statutes of Labourers and the risingof the peasants, such words found a ready echo in the audience. As soon as men of the people appear on the scene, nearly always thedialogue becomes lively; real men and women stand and talk before us. Beside the workmen represented by St. Joseph, peasants appear, represented by the shepherds of Christmas night. They are true Englishshepherds; if they swear, somewhat before due time, by Christ, allsurprise disappears when we hear them name the places where they live:Lancashire, the Clyde valley, Boughton near Chester, Norbury nearWakefield. Of all possible ales, Ely's is the one they prefer. They talktogether of the weather, the time of the day, the mean salaries theyget, the stray sheep they have been seeking; they eat their meals underthe hedge, sing merry songs, exchange a few blows, in fact behave astrue shepherds of real life. Quite at the end only, when the "Gloria" isheard, they will assume the sober attitude befitting Christmas Day. In the Mysteries performed at Woodkirk, the visit to the new-born Childwas preceded by a comedy worthy to be compared with the famous farce of"Pathelin, " and which has nothing to do with Christmas. [813] It isnight; the shepherds talk; the time for sleeping comes. One among them, Mak, has a bad repute, and is suspected of being a thief; they ask himto sleep in the midst of the others: "Com heder, betwene shalle thou lygdowne. " But Mak rises during the night without being observed. How hardthey sleep! he says, and he carries away a "fatt shepe, " and takes it tohis wife. _Wife. _ It were a fowlle blotte to be hanged for the case. _Mak. _ I have skapyd, Gelott, oft as hard as glase. _Wife. _ Bot so long goys the pott to the water, men says, At last Comys it home broken. I remember it well, says Mak, but it is not a time for proverbs andtalk; let us do for the best. The shepherds know Mak too well not tocome straight to his house; and so they do. Moans are heard; the causebeing, they learn, that Mak's wife has just given birth to a child. Asthe shepherds walk in, Mak meets them with a cheerful countenance, andwelcomes them heartily: Bot ar ye in this towne to-day? Now how fare ye? Ye have ryn in the myre, and ar weytt yit; I shalle make you a fyre, if ye wille syt. His offers are coldly received, and the visitors explain what hashappened. Nowe if you have suspowse, to Gille or to me, Com and rype oure howse! The woman moans more pitifully than ever: _Wife. _ Outt, thefys, fro my barne! negh hym not thore. _Mak. _ Wyst ye how she had farne, youre hartys wold be sore. Ye do wrang, I you warne, that thus commys before To a woman that has farne, bot I say no more. _Wife. _ A my medylle! I pray God so mylde, If ever I you begyld, That I ete this chylde That lyges in this credylle. The shepherds, deafened by the noise, look none the less about thehouse, but find nothing. Their host is not yet, however, at the end ofhis trouble. _Tertius Pastor. _ Mak, with youre lefe, let me gyf youre barne Bot six pence. _Mak. _ Nay, do way, he slepys. _Pastor. _ Me thynk he pepys. _Mak. _ When he wakyns he wepys; I pray you go hence. _Pastor. _ Gyf me lefe hym to kys, and lyft up the clowth. What the deville is this? he has a long snowte! And the fraud is discovered; it was the sheep. From oaths they werecoming to blows, when on a sudden, amid the stars, angels are seen, andtheir song is heard in the night: Glory to God, peace to earth! theworld is rejuvenated. . . . Anger disappears, hatreds are effaced, and therough shepherds of England take, with penitent heart, the road toBethlehem. IV. The fourteenth century saw the religious drama at its height in England;the fifteenth saw its decay; the sixteenth its death. The form underwhich it was best liked was the form of Mysteries, based upon the Bible. The dramatising of the lives of saints and miracles of the Virgin wasmuch less popular in England than in France. In the latter countryenormous collections of such plays have been preserved[814]; in theother the examples of this kind are very few; the Bible was the mainsource from which the English dramatists drew their inspiration. As wehave seen, however, they did not forbear from adding scenes andcharacters with nothing evangelical in them; these scenes contributed, with the interludes and the facetious dialogues of the jongleurs, to theformation of comedy. Little by little, comedy took shape, and it will befound existing as a separate branch of dramatic art at the time of theRenaissance. In the same period another sort of drama was to flourish, the origin ofwhich was as old as the fourteenth century, namely, _Moralities_. Theseplays consisted in pious treatises and ethical books turned into dramas, as Mysteries offered a dramatisation of Scriptures. Psychology was therecarried to the extreme, a peculiar sort of psychology, elementary andexcessive at the same time, and very different from the delicate art infavour to-day. Individuals disappeared; they were replaced byabstractions, and these abstractions represented only a single qualityor defect. Sins and virtues fought together and tried to draw mankind tothem, which stood doubtful, as Hercules "at the starting point of adouble road;" in this way, again, was manifested the fondness felt inthe Middle Ages for allegories and symbols. The "Roman de la Rose" inFrance, "Piers Plowman" in England, the immense popularity in all Europeof the Consolation of Boethius, had already been manifestations of thosesame tendencies. In these works, already, dialogue was abundant, in the"Roman de la Rose" especially, where an immense space is occupied byconversations between the Lover and Fals-Semblant. [815] The names of thespeakers are inscribed in the margin, as if it were a real play. When headmitted into his collection of tales the dialogued story of Melibeusand Prudence, Chaucer came very near to Moralities, for the work heproduced was neither a treatise nor a tale, nor a drama, but hadsomething of the three; a few changes would have been enough to make ofit a Morality, which might have been called the Debate of Wisdom andMankind. Abstractions had been allowed a place in the Mysteries so far back asthe fourteenth century; death figures in the Woodkirk collection; in"Mary Magdalene" (fifteenth century) many abstract personages are mixedwith the others: the Seven Deadly Sins, Mundus, the King of the Flesh, Sensuality, &c. ; the same thing happens in the so-called Coventrycollection. This sort of drama, for us unendurable, gradually separated fromMysteries; it reached its greatest development under the early Tudors. The authors of Moralities strove to write plays not merely amusing, asfarces, then also in great favour, but plays with a useful and practicalaim. By means of now unreadable dramas, virtues, religion, morals, sciences were taught: the Catholic faith was derided by Protestants, and the Reformation by Catholics. [816] The discovery, then quite new, ofAmerica was discoursed about, and great regret was expressed at itsbeing not due to an Englishman: O what a thynge had be than, If they that be Englyshemen Myght have ben furst of all That there shuld have take possessyon![817] Death, as might be expected, is placed upon the stage with a particularzeal and care, and meditations are dedicated to the dark future of man, and to the gnawing worm of the charnel house. [818] Fearing the audience might go to sleep, or perhaps go away, the scienceand the austere philosophy taught in these plays were enlivened bytavern scenes, and by the gambols of a clown, fool, or buffoon, calledVice, armed, as Harlequin, with a wooden dagger. And often, such ishuman frailty, the beholders went, remembering nothing but the madpranks of Vice. It was in their eyes the most important character in theplay, and the part was accordingly entrusted to the best actor. Shakespeare had seen Vice still alive, and he commemorated his deeds ina song: I am gone, sir, And anon, sir, I'll be with you again, In a trice, Like to the old Vice, Your need to sustain, Who, with dagger of lath, In his rage and his wrath, Cries, ah ha! to the devil. [819] This character also found place on the French stage, where it was calledthe "Badin. " Rabelais had the "Badin" in great esteem: "In this mannerwe see, among the jongleurs, when they arrange between them the cast ofa play, the part of the Sot, or Badin, to be attributed to the cleverestand most experienced in their company. "[820] In the meanwhile, common ancestors of the various dramatic tribes, source and origin of many sorts of plays, the Mysteries, which hadcontributed to the formation of the tragical, romantic, allegorical, pastoral, and comic drama, were still in existence. Reformation hadcome, the people had adopted the new belief, but they could not give upthe Mysteries. They continued to like Herod, Noah and his wife, and thetumultuous troup of devils, great and small, inhabiting hell-mouth. Prologues had been written in which excuses were offered on account ofthe traces of superstition to be detected in the plays, but consciencebeing thus set at rest, the plays were performed as before. TheProtestant bishop of Chester prohibited the representation in 1572, butit took place all the same. The archbishop of York renewed theprohibition in 1575, but the Mysteries were performed again for fourdays; and some representations of them took place even later. [821] AtYork the inhabitants had no less reluctance about giving up their olddrama; they were sorry to think that religious differences now existedbetween the town and its beloved tragedies. Converted to the new faith, the citizens would have liked to convert the plays too, and the marginsof the manuscript bear witness to their efforts. But the task was adifficult one; they were at their wits' end, and appealed to men morelearned than they. They decided that "the booke shalbe carried to myLord Archebisshop and Mr. Deane to correcte, if that my LordArchebisshop do well like theron, " 1579. [822] My Lord Archbishop, wiseand prudent, settled the question according to administrative precedent;he stored the book away somewhere, and the inhabitants were simplyinformed that the prohibition was maintained. The York plays thus died. In France the Mysteries survived quite as late; but, on account of theradical effects of the Renaissance there, they had not the sameinfluence on the future development of the drama. They continued to berepresented in the sixteenth century, and the Parliament of Pariscomplained in 1542 of their too great popularity: parish priests, andeven the chanters of the Holy Chapel, sang vespers at noon, a mostunbecoming hour, and sang them "post haste, " to see the sight. Six yearslater the performance of Mysteries was forbidden at Paris; but the crossand ladder, emblems of the "Confrères de la Passion, " continued to beseen above the gates of the "Hôtel de Bourgogne, " and the privilege ofthe Confrères, which dated three centuries back, was definitelyabolished in the reign of Louis XIV. , in December, 1676. [823] Molièrehad then been dead for three years. In England, at the date when my Lord Archbishop stopped therepresentation at York, [824] the old religious dramas had produced alltheir fruit: they had kept alive the taste for stage plays, they leftbehind them authors, a public, and companies of players. Then wasgrowing in years, in a little town by the side of the river Avon, thechild who was to reach the highest summits of art. He followed onweek-days the teaching of the grammar school; he saw on Sundays, paintedon the wall of the Holy Cross Chapel, a paradise and hell similar tothose in the Mysteries, angels of gold and black devils, and thatimmense mouth where the damned are parboiled, "où damnés sont boulus, "as the poor old mother of Villon says in a ballad of her son's. [825] At the date of the York prohibition, William Shakespeare was fifteen. FOOTNOTES: [742] "Nostra ætas prolapsa ad fabulas et quævis inania, non modo sureset cor prostituit vanitati, sed oculorum et aurium voluptate suam mulcetdesidiam. . . . Nonne piger desidiam instruit et somnos provocatinstrumentorum suavitate, aut vocum modulis, hilaritate canentium autfabulantium gratia, sive quod turpius est ebrietate vel crapula?. . . Admissa sunt ergo spectacula et infinita tyrocinia vanitatis, quibus quiomnino otiari non possunt perniciosius occupentur. Satius enim fueratotiari quam turpiter occupari. Hinc mimi, salii vel saliares, balatronesæmiliani, gladiatores, palæstritæ, gignadii, præstigiatores, maleficiquoque multi et tota joculatorum scena procedit. Quorum adeo errorinvaluit, ut a præclaris domibus non arceantur, etiam illi qui obscenispartibus corporis oculis omnium eam ingerunt turpitudinem, quamerubescat videre vel cynicus. Quodque magis mirere, nec tunc ejiciuntur, quando tumultuantes inferius crebro sonitu aerem foedant, et turpiterinclusum turpius produnt. . . . Jucundum quidem est et ab honeste nonrecedit virum probum quandoque modesta hilaritate mulcere. ""Policraticus, " Book i. Chap. Viii. , in "Opera Omnia, " ed. Giles, Oxford, 1848, vol. Iii. P. 42. [743] C. , xvi. 205. [744] "De Mimo et Rege Francorum, " in Wright, "Latin Stories, " 1842, No. Cxxxvii. [745] Le roi demaund par amour: Ou qy estes vus, sire Joglour? E il respount sauntz pour: Sire, je su ou mon seignour. Quy est toun seignour? fet le Roy. Le baroun ma dame, par ma foy. . . . Quei est le eve apelé, par amours? L'em ne l'apele pas, eynz vint tous jours. Concerning the horse: Mange il bien, ce savez dire. Oïl certes, bel douz sire; Yl mangereit plus un jour d'aveyne Que vus ne frez pas tote la semeyne. Montaiglon and Raynaud, "Recueil général des Fabliaux, " vol. Ii. P. 243. [746] "Dialogue of Salomon and Saturnus, " in prose, ed. Kemble, ÆlfricSociety, 1848, 8vo. See also the "estrif" between Joseph and Mary in"Cynewulf's Christ, " ed. Gollancz, 1892, p. 17; above, p. 75. [747] "The Owl and the Nightingale, " ed. J. Stevenson, Roxburghe Club, 1838, 4to. "The Thrush and the Nightingale"; "Of the Vox and the Wolf"(see above, p. 228); "The Debate of the Carpenter's Tools, " in Hazlitt, "Remains of the early Popular Poetry of England, " 1864, 4 vols. 8vo, vol. I. Pp. 50, 58, 79. [748] "Anonymi Petroburgensis Descriptio Norfolcensicum" (end of thetwelfth century); "Norfolchiæ Descriptionis Impugnatio, " in Latin verse, with some phrases in English, in Th. Wright, "Early Mysteries and otherLatin Poems of the XIIth and XIIIth centuries, " London, 1838, 8vo. [749] "Harrowing of Hell. " This work consists in a dramatic dialogue orscene, but it was not meant to be represented. Time of Henry III. ; textin Pollard, "English Miracle Plays, " Oxford, 1890, p. 166. [750] This game is described in the (very coarse) fabliau of the"Sentier batu" by Jean de Condé, fourteenth century: De plusieurs deduis s'entremistrent Et tant c'une royne fistrent Pour jouer au Roy qui ne ment. Ele s'en savoit finement Entremettre de commander Et de demandes demander. Montaiglon and Raynaud, "Recueil général des Fabliaux, " vol. Iii. P. 248. [751] "Prohibemus etiam clericis ne intersint ludis inhonestis, velchoreis, vel ludant ad aleas, vel taxillos; nec sustineant ludos fieride Rege et Regina, " &c. "Constitutiones Walteri de Cantilupo, Wigorniensis episcopi . . . Promulgatæ . . . A. D. 1240, " art. Xxxviii. , inLabbe, "Sacrorum conciliorum . . . Collectio, " l. Xxiii. Col. 538. [752] The two sorts are well described by Baudouin de Condé in his"Contes des Hiraus, " thirteenth century. The author meets a servant andasks him questions about his master. Dis-moi, par l'âme de ton père, Voit-il volentiers menestreus? --Oïl voir, biau frère, et estre eus En son hostel à giant solas. . . . . . . Et quant avient C'aucuns grans menestreus là vient, Maistres en sa menestrandie, Que bien viele ou ki bien die De bouce, mesires l'ascoute Volenticis. . . . Mais peu souvent i vient de teus Mais des félons et des honteus, who speak but nonsense and know nothing, and who, however, receivebread, meat, and wine, . . . L'un por faire l'ivre, L'autre le cat, le tiers le sot; Li quars, ki onques rien ne sot D'armes s'en parole et raconte De ce preu due, de ce preu conte. "Dits et Contes de Baudouin de Condé, " ed. Scheler, Brussels, 1866, 3vols. 8vo, vol. I. P 154. [753] "Ad quid illa vocis contractio et infractio? Hic succinit, illediscinit. . . . Aliquando, quod pudet dicere, in equinos hinnitus cogitur;aliquando virili vigore deposito in femineæ vocis gracilitatesacuitur. . . . Videas aliquando hominem aperto ore quasi intercluso habituexpirare, non cantare, ac ridiculosa quadam vocis interceptione quasiminitari silentium; nunc agones morientium, vel extasim patientiumimitari. Interim histrionicis quibusdam gestibus totum corpus agitatur, torquentur labia, rotant, ludunt humeri; et ad singulas quasque notasdigitorum flexus respondet. Et hæc ridiculosa dissolutio vocaturreligio!. . . . Vulgus . . . Miratur . . . Sed lascivas cantantiumgesticulationes, meretricias vocum alternationes et infractiones, nonsine cachinno risuque intuetur, ut eos non ad oratorium sed ad theatrum, nec ad orandum sed ad spectandum æstimes convenisse. " "SpeculumChantatis, " Book ii. Chap. 23, in Migne's "Patrologia, " vol. Cxcv. Col. 571. [754] Latin text in "The Exempla . . . Of Jacques de Vitry, " thirteenthcentury, ed. T. F. Crane, London, 1890, 8vo, p. 105 (No. Ccl. ), and inTh. Wright, "A Selection of Latin Stories, " 1842, Percy Society, p. 16:"De Dolo et Arte Vetularum. " French text in Barbazan and Méon, "Fabliaux, " vol. Ii. , included into the "Castoiement d'un père à sonfils, " thirteenth century. English text in Th. Wright, "AnecdotaLiteraria, " London, 1844, 8vo, p. 1; the title is in French: "Cicommence le fables et le cointise de dame Siriz. " [755] Text in Wright and Halliwell, "Reliquiæ Antiquæ, " London, 1841, 2vols. 8vo, vol. I. P. 145. "Hic incipit interludiam de Clerico andPuella. " [756] "Here bigynnis a tretise of Miraclis Pleyinge, " end of fourteenthcentury, in Wright and Halliwell, "Reliquiæ Antiquæ, " vol. Ii. P. 46. Elsewhere in the same treatise, "to pley in rebaudye" is opposed to"pley in myriclis, " p. 49. [757] "Ludi theatrales, etiam prætextu consuetudinis in ecclesiis velper clericos fieri non debent. " Decretal of Innocent III. , year 1207, included by Gregory IX. In his "Compilatio. " Richter and Friedberg, "Corpus Juris Canonici, " Leipzig, 1879, vol. Ii. P. 453. [758] "Constitutiones Walteri de Cantilupo, A. D. 1240, " in Labbe's"Sacrorum Conciliorum . . . Collectio, " vol. Xxiii. Col. 526. [759] Wilkins, "Concilia Magnæ Britanniæ, " London, 1737, 4 vols. Fol. , vol. I. P. 617, Nos. Lxxiv. , lxxv. The same prohibition is made byWalter de Chanteloup, _ut supra_, art. Lv. The custom was a very oldone, and existed already in Anglo-Saxon times; see "Ælfric's Lives ofSaints, " 1881, E. E. T. S. , p. 461. [760] ". . . Ne quis choreas cum larvis seu strepitu aliquo in ecclesiisvel plateis ducat, vel sertatus, vel coronatus corona ex folus arborum, vel florum vel aliunde composita, alicubi incedat . . . Prohibemus, "thirteenth century, "Munimenta Academica, " ed. Anstey, Rolls, 1868, p. 18. [761] Decretal of Innocent III. , reissued by Gregory IX. "In aliquibusanni festivitalibus, quæ continue natalem Christi sequuntur, diaconi, presbyteri ac subdiaconi vicissim insaniæ suæ ludibria exercerepræsumunt, per gesticulationum suarum debacchationes obscoenas inconspectu populi decus faciunt clericale vilescere, quem potius illotempore verbi Dei deberent prædicatione mulcere. " Richter and Friedberg, "Corpus Juris Canonici, " vol. Ii. P. 453. [762] Thirteenth century. See Gaston Paris, "Romania, " vol. Xxi. P. 262. Songs of a much worse character were also sung at Christmas. To deterhis readers from listening to any such Gascoigne writes (first half ofthe fifteenth century): "Cavete et fugite in hoc sacro festo viciosa etturpia, et præcipue cantus inhonestos et turpes qui libidinem excitantet provocant . . . Et ymagines imprimunt in mente quas expelleredifficillimum est. Novi ego, scilicet Gascoigne, doctor sacræ paginæ quihæc scripsi, unum magnum et notabilem virum talem cantum turpem in festoNatalis audivisse. " He could never forget the shameful things he hadheard, and fell on that account into melancholy, by which he was drivento death. "Loci e libro veritatum . . . Passages selected from Gascoigne'sTheological Dictionary, " ed. Thorold Rogers, Oxford, 1881, 4to. On theChristmas festivities at the University and on the "Rex Natalicius"(sixteenth century and before), see C. R. L. Fletcher, "Collectanea, "Oxford, 1885, 8vo, p. 39. [763] "Cum domus Dei, testaute propheta Filioque Dei, domus sitorationis, nefandum est eam in domum jocationis, scurrilitatis etnugacilatis convertere, locumque Deo dicatum diabolicis adinventionibusexecrare; cumque circumcisio Domini nostri Jesu Christi prima fuerit necmodicum acerba ejusdem passio, signum quoque sit circumcisionisspiritualis qua cordium præputia tolluntur . . . Execrabile estcircumcisionis Domini venerandam solemnitatem libidinosarum voluptatumsordibus prophanare: quapropter vobis mandamus in virtute obedientiæfirmiter injungentes, quatenus Festum Stultorum cum sit vanitate plenumet voluptatibus spurcum, Deo odibile et dæmonibus amabile, ne de cæteroin ecclesia Lincolniensi, die venciandæ solemnitatis circumcisionisDomini permittatis fieri. " "Epistolæ, " ed. Luard, Rolls, 1861, p. 118, year 1236(?). Same defence for the whole diocese, p. 161. [764] "Wardrobe Accounts, " in "Archæologia, " vol. Xxvi. P. 342; "IssueRoll of Thomas de Brantingham, " ed. Devon, 1835, p. Xlvi; "Issues of theExchequer, " ed. Devon, p. 222, 6 Rich. II. [765] "Inhibemus ne de cetero in festis Innocentium et Beate MarieMagdalene ludibria exerceatis consueta, induendo vos scilicet vestissecularium aut inter vos, sed cum secularibus, choreas ducendo, necextra refectorium comedatis, " &c. Eudes Rigaud, archbishop of Rouen, tothe nuns of Villarciaux, thirteenth century. "Registrum Visitationum"ed. Bonnin, 1842, 4to, p. 44. [766] "Historia Major, " Rolls, vol. Iii. P. 336. [767] Matthew Paris, _ibid. _ [768] Described by Richard of Maidstone (d. 1396) in a Latin poem:"Richardi Maydiston de Concordia inter Regem Ricardum II. Et civitatemLondon, " in the "Political Poems and Songs" of Wright, Rolls, vol. I. P. 282. [769] Entry of Isabeau of Bavaria into Paris, in 1384. [770] On the popularity of Robin Hood in the fourteenth century, seeabove, p. 224. In the fifteenth century he was the hero of playsperformed during the May festivities: "Reced for the gathering of theMay-play called Robin Hood, on the fair day, 19s. " Accounts of thechurch of St. Lawrence at Reading, year 1499, in the _Academy_, October6, 1883, p. 231. [771] "Quem quæritis in præsepe, pastores? Respondent: SalvatoremChristum Dominum. " Petit de Julleville, "Histoire du Théâtre enFrance. --Les Mystères, " 1880, vol. I. P. 25. [772] Petit de Julleville, _ibid. _, vol. I. P. 26. [773] Same beginning and same gradual development: "Quem queritis insepulchro o Christicole?--Jesum Nazarenum crucifixum o celicole. --Nonest hic, surrexit sicut predixerat; ite nunciate quia surrexit. Alleluia. " In use at Limoges, eleventh century. "Die lateinischenOsterfeiern, untersuchungen über den Ursprung und die Entwicklung derliturgisch-dramatischen Auferstehungsfeier, " by Carl Lange, Munich, 1887, 8vo, p. 22. [774] "Ci comence l'estoire de Griselidis;" MS. Fi. 2203, in theNational Library, Paris, dated 1395, outline drawings (privatelyprinted, Paris, 1832, 4to). --"Le Mistère du siège d'Orléans, " ed. Guessard and Certain, Paris, 1862, 4to (Documents inédits). [775] This story was very popular during the Middle Ages, in France andin England. It was, _e. G. _, the subject of a poem in English verse, thirteenth century: "The Life of St. Katherine, " ed. Einenkel, EarlyEnglish Text Society, 1884, 8vo. [776] "Vitæ . . . Viginti trium abbatum Sancti Albani, " in "Matthæi Parismonachi Albanensis [Opera], " London, 1639-40, 2 vols. Fol. , vol. Ii. P. 56 "Gaufridus decimus sextus [abbas]. " [777] _Ibid. _, p. 64. [778] He writes, twelfth century: "Londonia pro spectaculistheatralibus, pro ludis scenicis, ludos habet sanctiores, representationes miraculorum. . . . " "Descriptio nobilissimæ civitatisLondoniæ, " printed with Stow's "Survey of London, " 1599, 4to [779] This can be inferred from the existence of that "estrif" the"Harrowing of Hell, " written in the style of mysteries, which has comedown to us, and belongs to that period. See above, p. 443. Religiousdramas were written in Latin by subjects of the kings of England, and, among others, by Hilary, a disciple of Abélard, twelfth century, whoseems to have been an Anglo-Norman; "Hilarii versus et Ludi, " ed. Champollion-Figeac, Paris, 1838. A few lines in French are mixed withhis Latin. [780] "Here bigynnis a tretise of miraclis pleyinge, " in Wright andHalliwell, "Reliquiæ Antiquæ, " London, 1842, vol. Ii. P. 42; end offourteenth century. [781] "Item quod tabernas, spectacula aut alia loca inhonesta, seu ludosnoxios at illicitos non frequentent, sed more sacerdotali se habeant etin gestu, ne ipsorum ministerium, quod absit, vituperio, scandalo veldespectui habeatur. " Labbe, vol. Xxvi. Col. 767. The inhibition is meantfor priests of all sorts: "presbyteri stipendarii aut alii sacerdotes, propriis sumptibus seu alias sustentati. " Innocent III. And Gregory IX. Had vainly denounced the same abuses, and tried to stop them: "Clericiofficia vel commercia sæcularia non exerceant, maxime inhonesta. Mimis, joculatoribus et histrionibus non intendant. Et tabernas prorsusevitent, nisi forte causa necessitatis in itinere constituti. " Richterand Friedberg, "Corpus Juris Canonici, " ii. P. 454. [782] "Roberd of Brunne's Handlyng Synne (written A. D. 1303), with theFrench treatise on which it is founded, 'Le Manuel des Pechiez, ' byWilliam de Wadington, " ed. Furnivall, Roxburghe Club, 1862, 4to, pp. 146ff. [783] Un autre folie apert Unt les fols clercs contrové, Qe "miracles" sunt apelé; Lur faces unt la déguisé Par visers, li forsené. [784] Fere poent representement, Mes qe ceo seit chastement En office de seint église Quant hom fet la Deu servise, Cum Jesu Crist le fiz Dee En sepulcre esteit posé, Et la resurrectiun Pur plus aver devociun. [785] Ki en lur jus se délitera, Chivals on harneis les aprestera. Vesture ou autre ournement, Sachez il fet folement. Si vestemens seient dediez, Plus grant d'assez est le pechez; Si prestre ou clerc les ust presté Bien dust estre chaustié. [786] Toulmin Smith, "English Gilds, " London, 1870, E. E. T. S. , p. 139. [787] The principal monuments of the English religious stage are thefollowing: "Chester Plays, " ed. Th. Wright, Shakespeare Society, 1843-7, 2 vols. , 8vo (seem to have been adapted from the French, perhaps from anAnglo-Norman original, not recovered yet). "The Pageant of the Company of Sheremen and Taylors in Coventry . . . Together with other Pageants, " ed. Th. Sharp, Coventry, 1817, 4to. Bythe same: "A Dissertation on the Pageants or Dramatic Mysteriesanciently performed at Coventry . . . To which are added the Pageant ofthe Shearmen and Taylors Company, " Coventry, 1825, 4to (illustrated). "Ludus Coventriæ, " ed. Halliwell, Shakespeare Society, 1841, 8vo (thereferring of this collection to the town of Coventry is probably wrong). "Towneley Mysteries" (a collection of plays performed at Woodkirk, formerly Widkirk, near Wakefield; see Skeat's note in _Athenæum_, Dec. 3; 1893) ed. Raine, Surtees Society, Newcastle, 1836, 8vo. "York Plays, the plays performed by the crafts or mysteries of York onthe day of Corpus Christi, in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries, " ed. Lucy Toulmin Smith, Oxford, 1885, 8vo. "The Digby Mysteries, " ed. Furnivall, New Shakspere Society, 1882, 8vo. "Play of Abraham and Isaac" (fourteenth century), in the "Boke of Brome, a commonplace book of the xvth century, " ed. Lucy Toulmin Smith. 1886, 8vo. --"Play of the Sacrament" (story of a miracle, a play of a typescarce in England), ed. Whitley Stokes, Philological SocietyTransactions, Berlin, 1860-61, 8vo, p. 101. --"A Mystery of the Burial ofChrist"; "A Mystery of the Resurrection": "This is a play to be playedon part on gudfriday afternone, and the other part opon Esterdayafternone, " in Wright and Halliwell, "Reliquiæ Antiquæ, " 1841-3, vol. Ii. Pp. 124 ff. , from a MS. Of the beginning of the sixteenthcentury. --See also "The ancient Cornish Drama, " three mysteries inCornish, fifteenth century, ed. Norris, Oxford, 1859, 2 vols. 8vo (witha translation). --For extracts, see A. W. Pollard, "English MiraclePlays, Moralities and Interludes, " Oxford, 1890, 8vo. On the question of the formation of the various cycles of Englishmysteries and the way in which they are connected, see A. Hohlfield, "Die altenglischen kollektivmisterien, " in "Anglia, " xi. P. 219, and Ch. Davidson, "Studies in the English Mystery Plays, a thesis, " YaleUniversity, 1892, 8vo. [788] "York Plays, " pp. Xxxiv, xxxvii. [789] This preliminary note is in Latin: "Sit ipse Adam bene instructusquando respondere debeat, ne ad respondendum nimis sit velox aut nimistardus, nec solum ipse, sed omnes persone sint. Instruantur ut compositeloquentur; et gestum faciant convenientem rei de qua loquuntur, et, inrithmis nec sillabam addant nec demant, sed omnes firmiter pronuncient. ""Adam, Mystère du XIIe. Siècle, " ed. Palustre, Paris, 1877, 8vo. [790] "Digby Mysteries, " p. Xix. [791] "The Pageants . . . Of Coventry, " ed. Sharp. [792] [So called] "Coventry Mysteries, " Trial of Christ. [793] The French drama written on this subject is lost (it is, however, mentioned in the catalogue of a bookseller of the fifteenth century; see"Les Mystères, " by Petit de Julleville, vol. Ii. Chap, xxiii. , "Mystèresperdus"); but the precision of details in the miniature is such that Ihad no difficulty in identifying the particular version of the storyfollowed by the dramatist. It is an apocryphal life of Apollinia, inwhich is explained how she is the saint to be applied to when sufferingtoothache. This episode is the one Fouquet has represented. Asked torenounce Christ, she answers: "'Quamdiu vivero in hac fragili vita, lingua mea et os meum non cessabunt pronuntiare laudem et honoremomnipotentis Dei. ' Quo audito jussit [imperator] durissimos stipitesparari et in igne duros fieri et præacutos ut sic dentes ejus et pertales stipites læderent, radices dentium cum forcipe everenturradicitus. In illa hora oravit S. Apollinia dicens: 'Domine JesuChriste, precor te ut quicumque diem passionis meæ devote peregerint . . . Dolorem dentium aut capitis nunquam sentiant passiones. '" The angelsthereupon (seated on wooden stairs, in Fouquet's miniature) come downand tell her that her prayer has been granted. "Acta ut videnturapocrypha S. Apolloniæ, " in Bollandus, "Acta Sanctorum, " Antwerp, vol. Ii. P. 280, under the 9th February. See also the miniatures of a later date (sixteenth century) in the MS. Of the Valenciennes Passion, MS. Fi. 15, 236 in the National Library, andthe model made after one of them, exhibited in the Opéra Museum, Paris. [794] What the place is-- . . . Vous le povez congnoistre Par l'escritel que dessus voyez estre. Prologue of a play of the Nativity, performed at Rouen, 1474; Petit deJulleville, "Les Mystères, " vol. I. P. 397. [795] "Digby Mysteries, " ed. Furnivall, p. 127. [796] "Mystère du vieil Testament, " Paris, 1542, with curious cuts, "pour plus facile intelligence. " Many other editions; one modern one byBaron J. De Rothschild, Société des Anciens Textes Français, 1878 ff. [797] "Chester Plays, " ii. [798] "Adoncques doit Adam couvrir son humanité, faignant avoir honte. Icy se doit semblablement vergongner la femme et se musser de sa main. ""Mystère du vieil Testament. " [799] Reproduced by Mr. R. T. Blomfield, in the _Portfolio_, May, June, July, 1889. [800] _Diabolus. _ Jo vis Adam, mais trop est fols. _Eva. _ Un poi est durs. _Diabolus. _ Il serra mols; Il est plus durs que n'est un fers . . . Tu es fieblette et tendre chose, Et es plus fresche que n'est rose; Tu es plus blanche que cristal, Que nief qui chiet sor glace en val. Mal cuple en fist le criatur; Tu es trop tendre et il trop dur . . . Por ço fait bon se treire à tei; Parler te voil. [801] All my smale instrumentes is putt in my pakke. ("Digby Mysteries, " p. 11. ) [802] "Towneley Mysteries. " [803] _Ibid. _--Magnus Herodes. [804] "Towneley Mysteries. "--Processus Talentorum. [805] "Digby Mysteries. "--Candlemas Day, p. 3. [806] "Digby Mysteries. "--Mary Magdalen, p. 55. [807] _Ibid. _, p. 90. [808] "Chester Plays. "--Salutation and Nativity. [809] "Digby Mysteries, " p. 56. [810] "Digby Mysteries, " pp. 74, 75. After living wickedly MaryMagdalen repents, comes to Marseilles, converts the local kingand performs miracles. This legend was extremely popular; it wastold several times in French verse during the thirteenth century;see A. Schmidt, "Guillaume, le Clerc de Normandie, insbesondere seineMagdalenenlegende, " in "Romanische Studien" vol. Iv. P. 493; Doncieux, "Fragment d'un Miracle de Sainte Madeleine, texte restitué, " in"Romania, " 1893, p. 265. There was also a drama in French based on thesame story: "La Vie de Marie Magdaleine . . . Est à xxii. Personages, "Lyon, 1605, 12mo (belongs to the fifteenth century). [811] "York Plays, " viii. , ix. See also, _e. G. _, as specimens of comicalscenes, the discussions between the quack and his man in the "Play ofthe Sacrament": "Ye play of ye conversyon of ser Jonathas ye Jewe bymyracle of ye blyssed sacrament. " Master Brundyche addresses theaudience as if he were in front of his booth at a fair. He will cure thediseases of all present. Be sure of that, his man Colle observes, What dysease or syknesse yt ever ye have, He wyll never leve yow tylle ye be in your grave. Ed. Whitley Stokes, Philological Society, Berlin, 1860-61, p. 127(fifteenth century). [812] "Chester Plays. "--Salutation and Nativity. [813] "Towneley Mysteries. "--Secunda Pastorum. [814] See, for instance, "Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages, " ed. G. Paris and U. Robert, Société des Anciens Textes, 1876-91, 6 vols. 8vo. [815] In Méon's edition, Paris, 1813, vol. Ii. Pp. 326 ff. [816] Plays of this kind were written (without speaking of many anonyms)by Medwall: "A goodly Enterlude of Nature, " 1538, fol. ; by Skelton, "Magnyfycence, " 1531, fol. ; by Ingelend, "A pretie Enterlude called theDisobedient Child, " printed about 1550: by John Bale, "A comedyeconcernynge thie Lawes, " London, 1538, 8vo (against the Catholics); allof them lived under Henry VIII. , &c. The two earliest English moralitiesextant are "The Pride of Life" (in the "Account Roll of the priory ofthe Holy Trinity, " Dublin, ed. J. Mills, Dublin, 1891, 8vo), and the"Castle of Perseverance" (an edition is being prepared, 1894, by Mr. Pollard for the Early English Text Society), both of the fifteenthcentury; a rough sketch showing the arrangement of the representation ofthe "Castle" has been published by Sharp, "A Dissertation on thePageants at Coventry, " plate 2. [817] "Interlude of the four Elements, " London, 1510(?), 8vo. [818] See, for example, the mournful passages in the "DisobedientChild, " the "Triall of Treasure, " London, 1567, 4to, and especially in"Everyman, " ed. Goedeke, Hanover, 1865, 8vo, written at the beginning ofthe reign of Henry VIII. [819] Song of the Clown in "Twelfth Night, " iv. 3. [820] "Pantagruel, " iii. 37. [821] Furnivall, "Digby Mysteries, " p. Xxvii. [822] "York Plays, " p. Xvi. [823] Petit de Julleville, "Les Mystères, " 1880, vol. I. Pp. 423 ff. [824] They continued later in some towns, at Newcastle, for example, where they survived till 1598. At this date "Romeo" and the "Merchant ofVenice" had already appeared. There were even some performances at thebeginning of the seventeenth century. [825] A drawing of this fresco, now destroyed, has been publishedby Sharp: "Hell-mouth and interior, from the chapel atStratford-upon-Avon"; "A Dissertation on the pageants . . . AtCoventry, " 1825, plate 6. CHAPTER VII. THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES. I. In the autumn of the year 1400, Geoffrey Chaucer, the son of the ThamesStreet vintner, universally acknowledged the greatest poet of England, had been borne to his tomb in the transept of Westminster Abbey. Not farfrom him sleep the Plantagenet kings, his patrons, Edward III. AndRichard II. Wrapped in their golden robes. With them an epoch has drawnto its close; a new century begins, and this century is, for Englishthought, a century of decline, of repose, and of preparation. So evident is the decline that even contemporaries perceive it; for ahundred years poets unceasingly mourn the death of Chaucer. They are nolonger able to discover new ways; instead of looking forward as theirmaster did, they turn, and stand with eyes fixed on him, and handsoutstretched towards his tomb. An age seeking its ideal in the epochthat has just preceded it is an age of decline; so had been in pasttimes the age of Statius, who had professed such a deep veneration forVirgil. For a century thus the poets of England remain with their gaze fastenedon the image of the singer they last heard, and at each generation theirvoice becomes weaker, like an echo that repeats another echo. Lydgateimitates Chaucer, and Stephen Hawes imitates Lydgate. [826] Around and below them countless rhymers persist in following the oldpaths, not knowing that these paths have ceased to lead anywhere, andthat the time has come to search for new ones. The most skilful add tothe series of English fabliaux, borrowed from France; others put intorhyme, disfiguring them as they go along, romances of chivalry, lives ofthe saints, or chronicles of England and Scotland. Very numerous, nearlyall devoid of talent, these patient, indefatigable word-joiners write inreality, they too, as M. Jourdain, "de la prose sans le savoir. "[827] These poets of the decline write for a society itself on the decline, and all move along, lulled by the same melody to a common death, out ofwhich will come a new life that they can never know. The old feudal andclerical aristocracy changes, disappears, and decays; many of the greathouses become extinct in the wars with France, or in the fierce battlesof the Two Roses; the people gain by what the aristocracy lose. Theclergy who keep aloof from military conflicts are also torn byinternecine quarrels; they live in luxury; abuses publicly pointed outare not reformed; they are an object of envy to the prince and of scornto the lower classes; they find themselves in the most dangeroussituation, and do nothing to escape from it. Of warnings they have nolack; they receive no new endowments; they slumber; at the close of thecentury nothing will remain to them but an immense and frail dwelling, built on the sand, that a storm can blow over. How innovate when versifying for a society about to end? Chaucer'ssuccessors do not innovate; they fasten their work to his works, andpatch them together; they build in the shadow of his palace. They dreamthe same dreams on a May morning; they erect new Houses of Fame; theyadd a story to the "Canterbury Tales. "[828] A gift bestowed on them by a spiteful fairy makes the matter worse: theyare incredibly prolific. All they write is poor, and the spiteful fairy, spiteful to us, has granted them the faculty to write thus, without anytrouble, for ever. Up to this day Lydgate's works have baffled theattempts of the most enterprising literary societies; the Early EnglishText Society has some time ago begun to publish them; if it carries outthe undertaking, it will be a proof of unparalleled endurance. Lydgate and Hoccleve are the two principal successors of Chaucer. Lydgate, a monk of the monastery of Bury St. Edmund's, [829] a worthyman, it seems, if ever there was one, and industrious, and prolific, above all prolific, writes according to established standards, tales, lays, [830] fabliaux satires, [831] romances of chivalry, poeticaldebates, ballads of former times, [832] allegories, lives of the saints, love poems, fables[833]; five thousand verses a year on an average, andbeing precocious as well as prolific, leaves behind him at his death ahundred and thirty thousand verses, merely counting his longer works. Virgil had only written fourteen thousand. He copies Latin, French, and English models, but especiallyChaucer, [834] he adds his "Story of Thebes"[835] to the series of the"Canterbury Tales, " he has met, he says, the pilgrims on their homewardjourney; the host asked him who he was: I answerde my name was Lydgate, Monk of Bery, nygh fyfty yere of age. Admitted into the little community, he contributes to the entertainmentby telling a tale of war, of love, and of valorous deeds, in which theGreeks wear knightly armour, are blessed by bishops, and batter townwalls with cannon. His "Temple of Glas"[836] is an imitation of the"Hous of Fame"; his "Complaint of the Black Knight" resembles the "Bookof the Duchesse"; his "Falle of Princes"[837] is imitated from Boccaccioand from the tale of the Monk in Chaucer. The "litel hevynesse" whichthe knight noticed in the monk's stories is particularly well imitated, so much so that Lydgate himself stops sometimes with uplifted pen toyawn at his ease in the face of his reader. [838] But his pen goes downagain on the paper, and starts off with fresh energy. From it proceeds a"Troy Book, or Historie of the Warres betwixte the Grecians and theTroyans, " of thirty thousand lines, where pasteboard warriors hew eachother to pieces without suffering much pain or causing us muchsorrow[839]; a translation of that same "Pélerinage" of Deguileville, which had inspired Langland; a Guy of Warwick[840]; Lives of Our Lady, of St. Margaret, St. Edmund, St. Alban; a "pageant" for the entry ofQueen Margaret into London in 1445; a version of the "SecretumSecretorum, " and a multitude of other writings. [841] Nothing but deathcould stop him; and, his last poem being of 1446, his biographers haveunanimously concluded that he must have died in that year. The rules of his prosody were rather lax. No one will be surprised atit; he could say like Ovid, but for other reasons: "I had but to write, and it was verses. " He is ready for everything; order them, and you willhave at once verses to order. These verses are slightly deformed, maybe, and halt somewhat; he does not deny it: I toke none hede nouther of shorte nor longe. [842] But let us not blame him; Chaucer, his good master, would, he assuresus, have excused his faulty prosody, and what right have we to be moresevere than Chaucer?[843] To this there is, of course, nothing toanswer, but then if we cannot answer, at least we can leave. We can goand visit the other chief poet of the time, Thomas Hoccleve; he does notlive far off, the journey will be a short one; we have but to call atthe next door. This other poet is a public functionary; he is a clerk of the PrivySeal[844]; his duties consist in copying documents; an occupation hefinds at length somewhat tiresome. [845] By way of diversion he frequentstaverns; women wait on him there, and he kisses them; a wicked deed, headmits; but he goes no further; at least so he assures us, beingdoubtless held back by a remembrance of officialdom and promotion. [846]At all events this little was even too much, for we soon find him sickunto death, rhyming supplications to the god of health, and to LordFournivall, another kind of god, very useful to propitiate, for he wasLord Treasurer. He writes a good many detached pieces in which, thanksto his mania for talking about himself, he makes us acquainted with thenooks and corners of the old city, thus supplying rare and curiousinformation, treasured by the historian. He composes, in order to makehimself noticed by the king, a lengthy poem on the Government ofPrinces, "De Regimine Principum, " which is nothing but a compilationtaken from three or four previous treatises; he adds a prologue, and init, following the example of Gower, he abuses all classes of society. Hedoes not fail to begin his confession over again: from which we gatherthat he is something of a drunkard and of a coward, that he is vainwithal and somewhat ill-natured. He had, however, one merit, and, in spite of his defects, all lovers ofliterature ought to be grateful to him; the best of his works is not hisGovernment of Princes; it is a drawing. He not only, like Lydgate, lovedand mourned Chaucer, but wished to keep the memory of his features, andhe caused to be painted on the margin of a manuscript the portraitmentioned above, which agrees so well with the descriptions contained inthe writings of the master that there is no doubt as to thelikeness. [847] II. Let us cross the hills, and we shall still find Chaucer; as in England, so is he wept and imitated in Scotland. But the poets live there in adifferent atmosphere; the imitation is not so close a one; a greaterproportion of a Celtic blood maintains differences; more originalitysurvives; the decline is less apparent. The best poets of Englishtongue, "Inglis" as they call it, "oure Inglis, " Dunbar says, are, inthe fifteenth century, Scots. Among them are a king, a monk, aschoolmaster, a minstrel, a bishop. The king is James I. , son of Robert III. , of the family of those Stuartsnearly all of whom were destined to the most tragic fate. This one, taken at sea by the English, when only a child, remained nineteen yearsconfined in various castles. Like a knight of romance, and a personagein a miniature, he shortened the hours of his captivity by music, reading, and poetry; the works of Chaucer and Gower filled him withadmiration. Then he found a better comfort for his sorrows; this knightof miniature and of romance saw before him one day the maiden so oftenpainted by illuminators, the one who appears amidst the flowers and thedew, Aucassin's Nicolette, the Emily of the Knight's Tale, the one whobrings happiness. She appeared to the king, not in a dream but inreality; her name was Jane Beaufort, she was the daughter of the Earl ofSomerset, and great grand-daughter of John of Gaunt. In her family, too, there were many tragic destinies; her brother was killed at the battleof St. Albans; her three nephews perished in the Wars of the Roses; hergrand-nephew won the battle of Bosworth and became king Henry VII. Amutual love sprang up between the two young people, and when James wasable to return to Scotland he took back with him his queen of romance, whom he had wedded before the altar of St. Mary Overy's, next to thegrave of one of his literary masters, the poet Gower. His reign lasted thirteen years, and they were thirteen years ofstruggle: vain endeavours to regulate and centralise a kingdom composedof independent clans, all brave and ready for foreign wars, but quite asready, too, for civil ones. Assisted by his queen of romance, theknightly poet displayed in this task an uncommon energy, and was, withall his faults, one of the best kings of Scotland. He had many children;one of his daughters became dauphiness of France, and another duchess ofBrittany. Towards the end of 1436, he had so many enemies among theturbulent chieftains that sinister prophecies began to circulate; one ofthem announced the speedy death of a king; and as he played at chess onChristmas eve with a knight surnamed the "king of love, " he said to him:"There are no other kings in Scotland save me and you; I take heed tomyself, do you likewise. " But the king of love had nothing to fear. During the night of the 20th of February, 1437, an unwonted noise wassuddenly heard in the courtyard of the monastery of Perth where Jameslodged; it was Robert Graham and his rebel band. Vainly did the kingoffer resistance, though unarmed; the foe were too numerous, and theystretched him dead, pierced with sixteen sword wounds. The constant love of the king for Jane Beaufort had been celebrated byhimself in an allegorical poem, imitated from Chaucer: "The King'sQuhair, " a poem all aglow with bright hues and with the freshness ofyouth. [848] The prince is in bed at night, and, like Chaucer in his poemof the Duchess, unable to sleep, he takes up a book. It is the"Consolation" of Boethius, and the meditations of "that noble senatoure"who had also known great reverses, occupied his thoughts while the nighthours glided on. The silence is broken by the matin bell: Bot now, how trowe ye? suich a fantasye Fell me to mynd, that ay me-thoght the bell Said to me: "Tell on, man, quhat the befell. " And the king, invoking Clio and Polymnia, like Chaucer, and addingTysiphone whom he takes for a Muse, because he is less familiar withmythology than Chaucer, tells what befell him, how he parted with hisfriends, when quite a boy, was imprisoned in a foreign land, and fromthe window of his tower discovered one day in the garden: The fairest or the freschest yong floure That ever I sawe. The maid was so beautiful that all at once his "hert became hir thrall": A! suete, are ye a warldly creature, Or hevinly thing in likenesse of nature? To be cleared from his doubts the royal poet ventures into the kingdomof Venus, and finds her stretched on her couch, her white shoulderscovered with "ane huke, " a loose dress that Chaucer had not placed uponthem. Then he reaches the kingdom of Minerva; and passing throughdissertations, beds of flowers, and groups of stars, he returns toearth, reassured as to his fate, with the certitude of a happinesspromised him both by Venus and Minerva. A eulogy on Gower and Chaucercloses the poem, which is written in stanzas of seven lines, sincecalled, because of James, "Rhyme Royal. "[849] Blind Harry, the minstrel, sings the popular hero, William Wallace. [850]We are in the midst of legends. Wallace causes Edward I. To tremble inLondon; he runs extraordinary dangers and has wonderful escapes; heslays; he is slain; he recovers; his body is thrown over the castlewall, and picked up by his old nurse; the daughter of the nurse, nurseherself, revives the corpse with her milk. The language is simple, direct and plain; the interest lies in the facts, and not in the mannerin which they are told; and this, to say the truth, is also the casewith chap-books. Blind Harry continues Barbour rather than Chaucer, but Chaucer resumeshis rights as an ancestor with Henryson and Dunbar. The former[851] sitswith his feet to the fire one winter's night, takes "ane drink" to cheerhim, and "Troilus" to while away the time. The little homely scene isdescribed in charming fashion; one seems, while reading, to feel thewarmth of the cosy corner, the warmth even of the "drink, " for it musthave been a warm one: I mend the fyre, and beikit (basked) me about, Than tuik ane drink my spreitis to comfort, And armit me weill fra the cold thairout; To cut the winter nicht and mak it schort, I tuik ane quair and left all uther sport, Writtin be worthie Chaucer glorious Of fair Cresseid and worthie Troilus. He read, but unable to understand the master's leniency towards thefrail and deceitful woman, he takes pen and adds a canto to the poem:the "Testament of Cresseid, " where he makes her die a dreadful death, forsaken by all. A greater pleasure will be taken in his rustic poems, ballads, orfables. His "Robene and Makyne" is a "disputoison" between a shepherdand shepherdess. Makyne loves Robin, and tells him so; and heaccordingly cares not for her. Makyne goes off, her eyes full of tears;but Robin is no sooner left alone than he begins to love: Makyne, the nicht is soft and dry, The weddir is warme and fair And the grene woid rycht neir us by To walk atour (over) all quhair (everywhere); Thair ma na janglour us espy That is to lufe contrair; Thairin, Makyne, bath ye and I Unsene we ma repair. In her turn Makyne is no longer willing; she laughs now, and he weeps, and she leaves him in solitude under a rock, with his sheep. This is alamentable ending; but let us not sorrow overmuch; on these pathlessmoors people are sure to meet, and since they quarrelled and parted forever, in the fifteenth century, Robin and Makyne have met many times. Another day, Henryson has a dream, after the fashion of the Middle Ages. In summer-time, among the flowers, a personage appears to him, His hude of scarlet, bordowrit weill with silk. In spite of the dress he is a Roman: "My native land is Rome;" and thisRoman turns out to be Æsop, "poet laureate;" there is no room for doubt:we are in the Middle Ages. Æsop recites his fables in such a new andgraceful manner, with such a pleasing mixture of truth and fancy, thathe never told them better, not even when he was a Greek slave, and savedhis head by his wit. Henryson takes his time; he observes animals and nature, and departs asmuch as possible from the epigrammatic form common to most fabulists. The story of the "uplandis Mous and the burges Mous, " so often related, has never been better told than by Henryson, and this can be affirmedwithout forgetting La Fontaine. The two mice are sisters; the elder, a mouse of importance, establishedin town, well fed on flour and cheese, remembers, one day, her littlesister, and starts off at dusk to visit her. She follows lonely paths atnight, creeps through the moss and heather of the interminable Scottishbogs, and at last arrives. The dwelling strikes her as strangelymiserable, frail, and dark; a poor little thief like the younger sisterdoes not care much about burning dips. Nevertheless, great is the joy atmeeting; the "uplandis mous" produces her choicest stores; the "burgesmous" looks on, unable to quite conceal her astonishment. Is it notnice? inquires the little sister. Excuse me, replies the other, but: Thir widderit (withered) peis and nuttis, or thay be bord, Will brek my teith and make my wame full sklender. . . . Sister, this victuall and your royal feist May well suffice unto ane rurall beist. Lat be this hole, and cum in-to my place, I sall to yow schaw be experience My Gude-fryday is better nor your Pace (Easter). And off they trot through the bushes, and through those heathery bogswhich have by turns charmed and wearied many others besides mice. They reach the elder sister's. There are delicious provisions, cheese, butter, malt, fish, and dishes without number. And lordis fair thus couth thay counterfeit, Except ane thing: thay drank the watter cleir Instead of wyne; bot yit thay maid gude cheir. The little sister admires and nibbles. But how long will this last?Always, says the other. Just at that moment a rattle of keys is heard;it is the _spenser_ coming to the pantry. A dreadful scene! The greatmouse runs to her hole, and the little one, not knowing where to hideherself, faints. Luckily, the man was in a hurry; he takes what he came for, and departs. The elder mouse creeps out of her hole: How fair ye sister? cry peip quhair-ever ye be. The other, half dead with fright, and shaking in her four paws, isunable to answer. The great mouse warms and comforts her: 'tis all over, do not fear; Cum to your meit, this perell is overpast. But no, it is not all over, for now comes "Gilbert" (for Tybert, thename of the cat in the "Roman de Renart"), "our jolie cat"; another routensues. This time, perched on a partition where Tybert cannot reach her, the field mouse takes leave of her sister, makes her escape, goes backto the country, and finds there her poverty, her peas, her nuts, and hertranquillity. The mouse of Scotland has been fortunate in her painters; another, and astill better portrait was to be made of the "wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie, " by the great poet of the nation, Robert Burns. With Gavin Douglas, bishop of Dunkeld, of the illustrious house of theDouglas, earls of Angus, the translator of Virgil, and with WilliamDunbar, a mendicant friar, favourite of James IV. , sent by him onmissions to London and Paris, we cross the threshold of a new century;they die in the midst of the Renaissance, but with them, nevertheless, the Chaucerian tradition is continued. Douglas writes a "Palice ofHonour, " imitated from Chaucer. [852] Dunbar, [853] with never flaggingspirit, attempts every style; he composes sentimental allegories andcoarse tales (very coarse indeed), satires, parodies, laments. [854] Hisfits of melancholy do not last long; he must be ill to be sad; howeverkeen his satires, they are the work of an optimist; they end withlaughter and not with tears. He is nearer to Jean des Entommeures thanto William Langland. His principal poems, "The Goldyn Targe, " on the targe or shield ofReason exposed to the shafts of Love; "Thrissil and the Rois" (thistleand rose) are close imitations of the Chaucer of the "Parlement ofFoules" and of the "Hous of Fame, " with the same allegories, the sameabstract personages, the same flowers, and the same perfumes. The"Thrissil and the Rois, " written about 1503, celebrates the marriage ofMargaret, rose of England, daughter of Henry VII. , to James IV. , thistleof Scotland, the flower with a purple crown: that famous marriage whichwas to result in a union of both countries under the same sceptre. Endowed with an ever-ready mind and an unfailing power of invention, Dunbar, following his natural tastes, and wishing, at the same time, toimitate Chaucer, decks his pictures with glaring colours, and"out-Chaucers Chaucer. " His flowers are too flowery, his odours toofragrant; by moments it is no longer a delight, but almost a pain. It isnot sufficient that his birds should sing, they must sing amongperfumes, and these perfumes are coloured; they sing Amang the tendir odouris reid and quhyt. [855] These are undoubted signs of decline; they are found, in differentdegrees, among the poets of England and of Scotland, nearly withoutexception. The anonymous poems, "The Flower and the Leaf, " "The Court ofLove, " &c. , [856] imitated from Chaucer, exhibit the same symptoms. Theonly ones who escape are, chiefly in the region of the Scottish border, those unknown singers who derive their inspiration directly from thepeople, who leave books alone, and who would not be found, likeHenryson, sitting by the fireside with "Troilus" on their knees. Thesesingers remodel in their turn ballads that will be remade afterthem, [857] and which have come down stirring and touching; love-songs, doleful ditties, the ride of the Percy and the Douglas[858] ("ChevyChase"), that, in spite of his classic tastes, Philip Sidney admired inthe time of Elizabeth. Though declining in castles, poetry still thrillswith youth along the hedges and in the copses; and the best works ofpoets with a name like Dunbar or Henryson are those in which are foundan echo of the songs of the woods and moors. This same echo lends itscharm to the music of the "Nut-brown Maid, "[859] that exquisitelove-duo, a combination of popular and artistic poetry written by anameless author, towards the end of the period, and the finest of the"disputoisons" in English literature. But apart from the songs the wayfarer hums along the lanes, the works ofthe poets most appreciated at that time, Lydgate, Henryson, Dunbar, Stephen Hawes, [860] represent a dying art; they write as architectsbuild, and their literature is a florid one; their poems are in HenryVII. 's style. Their roses are splendid, but too full-blown; they haveexpended all their strength, all their beauty, all their fragrance; nostore of youth is left to them; they have given it all away; and whathappens to such roses? They shed their leaves; of this past glory therewill soon remain nothing save a stalk without petals. III. The end of the feudal world has come, its literature is dying out; butat the same time a double revival is preparing. The revival mostdifficult to follow, but not the least considerable, originated in themiddle and lower classes of society. While great families destroy eachother, humble ones thrive: only lately has this fact been sufficientlynoticed. So long as the historian was only interested in battles and inroyal quarrels, the fifteenth century in England was considered by everyone, except by that keen observer, Commines, to be the time of the warof the Two Roses, of the murder of Edward's children, and nothing else. It seemed as though the blood of the youthful princes had stained theentire century, and as if the whole nation, stunned with horror, hadremained aghast and immobile. Curiosity has been felt in our days as towhether this impression was a correct one, and it has been ascertainedto be false. Instead of being absorbed in the contemplation of thesedreadful struggles, holding its breath at the sight of the slaughter, the nation paid very little attention to them, and regarded these doingsin the light of "res inter alios acta. " Feudalism was perishing, as human organisations often perish, from thevery fact of its having attained its full development; feudal nobles hadso long towered above the people that they were now almost completelysevered from them; feudalism had pushed its principle so far that it wasabout to die, like the over-blown roses of Dunbar. While the nobles andtheir followers, that crowd of _bravi_ that the statutes againstmaintenance had vainly tried to suppress, strewed the fields ofWakefield, Towton, and Tewkesbury with their corpses, the real nation, the mass of the people, stood apart and was engaged in a far differentoccupation. It strove to enrich itself, and was advancing by degreestowards equality between citizens. A perusal of the innumerabledocuments of that epoch, which have been preserved and which concernmiddle classes, leave a decided impression of peaceful development, ofloosening of bondage, of a diffusion of comfort. The time is becomingmore remote, when some sat on thrones and others on the ground; itbegins to be suspected that one day perhaps there may be chairs foreverybody. In the course of an examination bearing on thousands ofdocuments, Thorold Rogers found but two allusions to the civilwars. [861] The duration of these wars must not, besides, be exaggerated;by adding one period of hostilities to another it will be found theylasted three years in all. The boundaries between the classes are less strictly guarded; war helpsto cross them; soldiers of fortune are ennobled; merchants likewise. Theimportance of trade goes on increasing; even a king, Edward IV. , makesattempts at trading, and does not fear thus to derogate; English shipsare now larger, more numerous, and sail farther. The house of theCanynges of Bristol has in its pay eight hundred sailors; its tradingnavy counts a _Mary Canynge_ and a _Mary and John_, which exceed in sizeall that has hitherto been seen. A duke of Bedford is degraded from thepeerage because he has no money, and a nobleman without money is temptedto become a dangerous freebooter and live at the expense of others. [862]For the progress is noticeable only by comparison, and, without speakingof open wars, brigandage, which is dying out, is not yet quite extinct. The literature of the time corroborates the testimony of documentsexhumed from ancient muniment rooms. It gives an impression of awealthier nation than formerly, counting more free men, with a moreextensive trade. The number of books on courtesy, etiquette, goodbreeding, good cooking, politeness, with an injunction not to take"always" the whole of the best morsel, [863] is a sign of theseimprovements. The letters of the Paston family are another. [864] Inspite of all the mentions made in these letters of violent and barbarousdeeds; though in them we see Margaret Paston and her twelve defendersput to flight by an enemy of the family, and Sir John Paston besieged inhis castle of Caister by the duke of Norfolk, a multitude of detailsgive something of a modern character to this collection, the oldestseries of private English letters we possess. In spite of aristocratic alliances, these people think and write likeworthy citizens, economical, practical and careful. During her husband'sabsence, Margaret Paston keeps him informed of all that goes on, shelooks after his property, renews leases, collects rents. Reading herletters one seems to see her home as neat and clean as a Dutch house. Ifa disaster occurs, instead of wasting her time in lamentations, sherepairs it to the best of her ability and takes precautions for thefuture. She loves her husband, and may be believed when, knowing him tobe ill, she writes: "I would ye were at home, if it were your ease, andyour sore might be as well looked to here as it is where ye be, nowliefer than a gown though it were of scarlet. "[865] John Paston, shut inthe Fleet prison, where he makes the acquaintance of Lord Henry Percy, for prisons were then a place where the best society met, sendsMargaret playful verses to amuse her: My lord Persy and all this house, Recommend them to yow, dogge catte and mowse, And wysshe ye had be here stille, For they sey ye are a good gille. The old and new times are no longer so far apart; in such a prison, Fielding and Sheridan would not have felt out of place. [866] Books of advice to travellers, itineraries or guides to foreignparts, [867] vocabularies, dictionaries, and grammars, [868] commercialguides, the "Libelle of Englyshe Polycye, "[869] are also signs of thetimes. This last document is a characteristic one; it is a sort ofconsular report in verse, very similar (the verses excepted) tothousands of consular reports with which "Livres Jaunes" and "BlueBooks" have since been filled. The author points out for each countrythe goods to be imported and exported, and the guileful practices to befeared in foreign parts; he insists on the necessity of England's havinga strong navy, and exaggerates the maritime power of rival countries, sothat Parliament may vote the necessary supplies. England should be thefirst on the sea, and able to impose "pease by auctorité. " She shouldestablish herself more firmly at Calais; only the word Calais would bealtered now and replaced by Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, or the Cape. Theauthor enumerates the products of Prussia, Flanders, France, Spain, Portugal, Genoa, &c. ; he has even information on the subject of Iceland, and its great cod-fish trade. He wishes for a spirited colonial policy;it is not yet a question of India, but only of Ireland; at any price"the wylde Iryshe" must be conquered. He dwells at length on the misdeeds of the wicked Malouins, who arestopped by nothing, obey no one, and are protected by the innumerablerocks of their bays, amidst which they alone know the passages. Conclusion: Kepte (keep) than the see about in specialle Whiche of England is the rounde walle; As thoughe England were lykened to a cité, And the walle enviroun were the see; Keep than the see that is the walle of Englond, And then is Englond kepte by Goddes sonde. The anxious injunctions scattered in the "Libelle" must not be taken, any more than Parliamentary speeches of later date, as implying that thenation had no confidence in itself. The instinct of nationality, formerly so vague, has grown from year to year since the Conquest: theEnglish are now proud of everything English; they are proud of theirnavy, in spite of its defects; of their army, in spite of the reversesit suffered; of the wealth of the Commons; they even boast of theirrobbers. Anything one does should be well done; if they have thieves, these thieves will prove the best in the world. The testimony of SirJohn Fortescue, knight, Lord Chief Justice, and Chancellor of England, who must have known about the thieves, is decisive on this point. Hewrites, in English prose, a treatise on absolute and limitedmonarchy[870]; admiration for his country breaks out on every page. Itis the time of the Two Roses, but it matters little with him; like manyothers in his day, he does not pay while writing much attention to theRoses. England is the best governed country in the world; it has thebest laws; the king can do nothing unless his people consent. In thismanner a just balance is maintained: "Our Comons be riche, and therforthey gave to their kyng, at sum tymys quinsimes and dismes, and oftentymys other grete subsydyes. . . . This might thay not have done, if theyhad ben empoveryshyd by their kyng, as the Comons of Fraunce. " Fortescueputs forth a theory often confirmed since then: if the Commons rebelsometimes, it is not the pride of wealth that makes them, but tyranny;for, were they poor, revolts would be far more frequent: "If thay be notpoer, thay will never aryse, but if their prince so leve Justice, thathe gyve hymself al to tyrannye. " It is true that the Commons of Francedo not rebel (Louis XI. Then reigned at Plessis-lez-Tours); Fortescue isshocked at that, and remonstrates against their "lacke of harte. " Some people might say that there are a great many thieves in England. They are numerous, Fortescue confesses, there is no doubt as to that;but the country finds in them one more cause to be proud: "It hath benoften seen in Englond that three or four thefes, for povertie hath settupon seven or eight true men and robbyd them al. " The thieves of Franceare incapable of such admirable boldness. On this account "it is rightseld that French men be hangyd for robberye, " says Fortescue, who hadnever, judging by the way he talks, passed by Montfaucon, nor comeacross poor Villon; "thay have no hertys to do so terryble an acte. There be therfor mo men hangyd in Englonde in a yere for robberye andmanslaughter than their be hangid in Fraunce for such cause of crime inseven yers. "[871] As a judge, Fortescue hangs the thieves; as anEnglishman he admires their performances: the national robber issuperior to all others. An engraving in _Punch_ represents a Londondrunkard carried off by two policemen; the street boys make comments:"They couldn't take my Father up like that, " says one of them, "it takessix Policemen to run him in!" If this boy ever becomes Chief Justice, hewill write, in the same spirit, another treatise like Fortescue's. Thus is popularised in that century the art of prose; the uses made ofit are not unprecedented, but they are far more frequent. This is onemore sign that the nation settles and concentrates; does not stand ontiptoe, but sits comfortably. Previous examples are followed; there areschools of prose writers as of poets. Bishop Pecock employs Wyclif'sirony to defend what Wyclif had attacked; pilgrimages, friars, thepossessions of the clergy, the statues and paintings in churches. [872]His forcible eloquence is embittered by sarcasms; he continues atradition, dear to the English race, and one which, constantly renewed, will come down to Swift and to the humourists of the eighteenthcentury. Boiling over with passion, he does his best to speak coldly andwithout moving a finger. Wyclif wants everything to be found in theBible, and forbids pilgrimages, which are not spoken of in it. But then, says Pecock, we are greatly puzzled, for how should we dare to wearbreeches, which the Bible does not mention either? How justify the useof clocks to know the hour? And with great seriousness, in a calm voice, he discusses the question: "For though in eeldist daies, and though inScripture, mensioun is maad of orologis, schewing the houris of the daibi the schadew maad bi the sunne in a cercle, certis nevere, save inlate daies, was eny clok telling the houris of the dai and nyht bi peiseand bi stroke; and open it is that noughwhere in holi scripture isexpresse mensioun made of eny suche. " Where does the Bible say that itshould be translated into English?[873] In the same tone of voice Wyclifhad pointed out, in the preceding century, the abuses of the Church; inthe same tone of voice the author of "Gulliver" will point out, threecenturies later, the happy use that might be made of Irish children asbutcher's meat. The thing to be remembered for the moment is that the number ofprose-writers increases. They write more abundantly than formerly; theytranslate old treatises; they unveil the mysteries of hunting, fishing, and heraldry; they compose chronicles; they rid the language of itsstiffness. To this contributes Sir Thomas Malory, with his compilationcalled "Morte d'Arthur, " in which he includes the whole cycle ofBritain. The work was published by Caxton, the first English printer, who was also a prose-writer. [874] They even write on love; prose nowretaliates upon verse, and trespasses on the domains of poetry. [875] The diminished importance of the nobles and of the feudal aristocracy, the increased importance of the citizens and of the working class, bringthe various elements of the nation nearer to each other, and this factwill have a considerable effect on literature: the day will come whenthe same author can address the whole audience and write for the wholenation. In a hundred years it will be necessary to take intoconsideration the judgment of the English people, both "high men" and"low men, " on intellectual things; there will stand in the pit a mobwhose declared tastes and exigences will cause the most stubborn of theElizabethan poets to yield. Ben Jonson will be less classic and moreEnglish than he would have liked to be; he intended to introduce achorus into his tragedy of "Sejanus"; the fear of the pit prevented him;he grumbles, but submits. [876] The thrift and the toil of the Englishpeasant and craftsman in the fifteenth century had thus an unexpectedinfluence on literature: they contributed to form an audience forShakespeare. IV. The new times are preparing, in still another manner; the gods are tocome down from Olympus and dwell once more among men. While the ancient literature is dying out, another is growing which isto replace it in France, but which will continue it, transformed andrejuvenated, in England. Rome and Athens will give England a signal, notlaws; but this signal is an important one; happy the nations who haveheard it; it was the signal for awakening. In that Italy visited by Chaucer in the fourteenth century, the passionfor antiquity goes on increasing; the Latins no longer suffice, theGreeks must be known. Petrarch worshipped a manuscript of Homer, but itwas for him a dumb fetish: the fetish has now become a god, and uttersoracles that all the world understands. The city of the Greek emperorsis still standing, and there letters shine with a last lustre. While thefoe is at its gates, it rectifies its grammars, goes back to origins, rejects new words, and revives the ancient language of Demosthenes. Never had the town of Constantine been more Greek than on the eve of itsdestruction. [877] The fame of its rhetoricians is spread abroad; mencome from Italy to hear John Argyropoulos, the Chrysoloras, the famousChrysococcès, deacon of St. Sophia and chief Saccellary. But the fatal hour is at hand, the era of the Crusades is over; anirresistible ebb has set in; Christendom draws back in its turn. Nolonger is it necessary to go to Jerusalem to battle against the infidel;he is found at Nicopolis and Kossovo. The illustrious towns of theGreek world fall one after the other, and the exiled grammarians seekshelter with the literate tyrants of Italy, bringing with them theirmanuscripts. Some, like Theodore Gaza, have been driven fromThessalonica, and teach at Mantua and at Sienna; others left after thefall of Trebizond. On the throne of the Paleologues sits Constantine XII. , Dragassès. Brusais no longer the capital of the Turks; they have left far behind themthe town of the green mosques, of the great platanes and tombs of thecaliphs, they have crossed the Bosphorus and are established atSalonica, Sophia, Philippopolis. Adrianople is their capital for thetime being; Mahomet II. Commands them. Opposite the "Castle of Asia, "Anatoli Hissar, he has built on the Bosphorus the "Castle of Europe, "Roumel Hissar, with rose-coloured towers; he is master of both shores. He approaches nearer to the town, and draws up his troops under the wallfacing Europe; he has a hundred and thirty cannon; he opens fire on the11th of April, 1453. On the 28th of May, the Turks take up theirpositions for the onset; whilst in Byzantium a long procession ofpriests and monks, carrying the wood of the true cross, miraculousstatues and relics of saints, wends its way for the last time. Theassault begins at two o'clock in the morning; part of a wall, near thegate of St. Romanus, falls in; the "Cercoporta" gate is taken. Thestruggle goes on in the heart of the town; the emperor is killed; thebasilica erected by Justinian to Divine Wisdom, St. Sophia, which was inthe morning filled with a praying multitude, contains now only corpses. The smoke of an immense fire rises under the sky. All that could flee exiled themselves; the Greeks flocked to Italy. Outof the plundered libraries came a number of manuscripts, with whichNicholas V. And Bessarion enriched Rome and Venice. The result of thedisaster was, for intellectual Europe, a new impulse given to classicstudies. With the glare of the fire was mingled a light as of dawn; its rays wereto illuminate Italy and France, and, further towards the North, Englandalso. FOOTNOTES: [826] I try, repeatedly says Stephen Hawes, To followe the trace and all the perfitnes Of my maister Lydgate. "The Historie of Graund Amoure and La Bell Pucle, called the Pastime ofPlesure, contayning the Knowledge of the Seven Sciences and the Courseof Man's life in this Worlde, " London, 1554, 4to, curious woodcuts(reprinted by the Percy Society, 1845, 8vo; the quotation above, p. 2). It is an allegory of unendurable dulness, in which Graund Amoure (loveof knowledge apparently) visits Science in the Tower of Doctrine, thenGrammar, &c. Hawes lived under Henry VII. [827] On the fabliaux introduced into England, see above, p. 225; thegreater number of them are found in Hazlitt: "Remains of the earlypopular Poetry of England, " London, 1864, 4 vols. One of the best, "TheWright's Chaste Wife, " written in English, about 1462, by Adam deCobsam, has been published by the Early English Text Society, ed. Furnivall, 1865, with a supplement by Mr. Clouston, 1886; it is the oldstory of the honest woman, who dismisses her would-be lovers afterhaving made fun of them. That story figures in the "Gesta Romanorum, " inthe "Arabian Nights, " in the collection of Barbazan (story of Constantdu Hamel). It has furnished Massinger with the subject of his play, "ThePicture, " and Musset with that of "la Quenouille de Barberine. "--On theromances of chivalry, see above, pp. 219 ff. A great number of rhymedversions of these romances are of the fifteenth century. --Ex. Of piousworks in verse, of the same century: Th. Brampton, "Pharaphrase on theseven penitential psalms, 1414, " Percy Society, 1842; Mirk, "Duties of aParish Priest, " ed. Peacock, E. E. T. S. , 1868, written about 1450;Capgrave (1394-1464), "Life of St. Katharine, " ed. Horstmann andFurnivall, E. E. T. S. , 1893 (various other edifying works by the same);many specimens of the same kind are unpublished. --Ex. Of chronicles:Andrew de Wyntoun, "Orygynal Cronykil of Scotland, " finished, about1424, ed. Laing, Edinburgh, 1872 ff. , 3 vols. 8vo; Hardyng (1378-1465?), "Chronicle in metre, " London, 1543, 8vo. Hardyng sold for a large price, to the brave Talbot, who knew little about palæography, spuriouscharters establishing England's sovereignty over Scotland; thosecharters exist at the Record Office, the fraud was proved by Palgrave. All these chronicles are in "rym dogerel. " [828] "The Story of Thebes, " by Lydgate (below p. 499); "The Tale ofBeryn, " with a prologue, where are related in a lively manner theadventures of the pilgrims in Canterbury and their visit to thecathedral (ed. Furnivall and Stone, Chaucer Society, 1876-87, 8vo);Henryson adds a canto to "Troilus" (below p. 507). Other poems are somuch in the style of Chaucer that they were long attributed to him: "TheCourt of Love"; "The Flower and the Leaf"; "The Isle of Ladies, orChaucer's Dream, " &c. They are found in the Morris edition of Chaucer'sworks. All these poems are of the fifteenth century. [829] Born about 1370, at Lydgate, near Newmarket; sojourned in Paris in1426, died in 1446, or soon after. Concerning the chronological order ofhis works, and his versification, see "Lydgate's Temple of Glas, " ed. J. Schick, Early English Text Society, 1891, Introduction. His "Troy Book"is of 1412-20; his "Story of Thebes, " of 1420-22; his translation ofDeguileville, of 1426-30; his "Fall of Princes" was written about 1430. [830] He gave an English version of the famous story called in French, "Le Lai de l'Oiselet" (ed. G. Paris, 1884): "The Chorle and the Byrde. " [831] Ex. His picturesque "London Lickpenny. " [832] Same idea as in Villon; refrain: All stant in chaunge like a mydsomer rose, Halliwell, "Selections from Lydgate, " 1840, p. 25. [833] "Lydgate's Æsopübersetzung, " ed. Sauerstein; "Anglia, " 1866, p. 1;eight fables. He excuses himself: Have me excused, I was born in Lydegate, Of Tullius gardyn I entrid nat the gate. (p. 2. ) [834] O ye maysters, that cast shal yowre looke Upon this dyté made in wordis playne, Remembre sothely that I the refreyn tooke Of hym that was in makyng soverayne, My maister, Chaucier, chief poete of Bretayne. Halliwell, "Selections from . . . Lydgate, " 1840, p. 128. Similar praisein the "Serpent of Division" (in prose). See L. Toulmin Smith, "Gorboduc, " Heilbronn, 1883, p. Xxi. [835] The British Museum possesses a splendid copy of it (Royal 18 Dii. , with miniatures of the time of the Renaissance, see above, p. 303). The E. E. T. S. Is preparing, 1894, an edition of it; there exist previousones, the first of which is of 1500, "Here begynneth . . . The Storye ofThebes, " London, 4to. [836] "Lydgate's Temple of Glas, " ed. J. Schick, 1891, 8vo, EarlyEnglish Text Society. [837] First edition: "Here begynnethe the boke calledde John Bochas, descrivinge the Falle of Princes. " [1494], folio. [838] Myn hand gan tremble, my penne I felte quake . . . I stode chekmate for feare whan I gan see, In my way how little I had runne. "Fall of Princes, " prologue to Book iii. , Schick, "Story of Thebes, " p. Cv. [839] Example, fight between Ulysses and Troilus: He smote Ulyxes throughout his viser . . . But Ulyxes tho lyke a manly man, Of that stroke astoned not at all, But on his stede, stiffe as any wall, With his swerde so mightely gan race, Through the umber into Troylus face, That he him gave a mortal wounde, of which, naturally, Troilus does not die. "The auncient historie . . . Ofthe Warres, betwixte the Grecians and the Troyans, " London, 1555, 4to, Book iii. , chap xxii. First edition, 1513. The work had been composedfor Henry V. And at his request. Thomas Heywood gave a modernisedversion of it: "The Life and Death of Hector, " 1614. [840] Ed. Zupitza, Early English Text Society. [841] A selection of his detached poems, mixed with many apocryphalones, was edited by Halliwell: "A Selection from the minor Poems of DanJohn Lydgate" (Percy Society), 1840, 8vo. [842] "Troy Book"; in Schick, "Lydgate's Temple of Glas, " p. Lvi. In hislearned essay Mr. Schick pleads extenuating circumstances in favour ofLydgate. [843] This appeal to Chaucer is in itself quite touching; here it is: For he that was grounde of well sayinge, In all his lyfe hyndred no makyng, My maister Chaucer yt founde ful many spot Hym list not pynche nor grutche at every blot. . . . Sufferynge goodly of his gentilnesse, Full many thynge embraced with rudenesse, And if I shall shortly hym discrive, Was never none to thys daye alive, To reken all bothe of yonge and olde, That worthy was his ynkehorne for to holde. "The Auncient Historie, " London, 1554, 4to, Book v. Chap, xxxviii. [844] Thomas Hoccleve was born about 1368-9 and entered the "Privy Seal"in 1387-8; he died about 1450. His works are being published by theEarly English Text Society: "Hoccleve's Works, " 1892, 8vo; I. , "TheMinor Poems. " His great poem, "De Regimine principum, " has been editedby Th. Wright, Roxburghe Club, 1860, 4to. Two or three of his tales inverse are imitated from the "Gesta Romanorum"; another, the "Letter ofCupid, " from the "Epistre an Dieu d'Amours, " of Christine de Pisan. "Hoccleve's metre is poor, so long as he can count ten syllables by hisfingers he is content. " Furnivall, "Minor Poems, " p. Xli. [845] It seems like nothing, he says, but just try and see: Many men, fadir, wennen that writynge No travaile is; thei hold it but a game . . . But who-so list disport hym in that same, Let hym continue and he shall fynd it grame; It is wel gretter labour than it seemeth. ("Minor Poems, " p. Xvii. ) [846] "La Male Règle de Thomas Hoccleve, " in the "Minor Poems, " pp. 25ff. [847] Al-thogh his lyfe be queynt, the résemblaunce Of him hath me so fressh lyflynesse, That, to putte othir men in rémembraunce Of his persone, I have heere his lyknesse Do makë, to this ende, in sothfastnesse, That thei that have of him lest thought and mynde, By this peynturë may ageyn him fynde. ("Minor Poems, " p. Xxxiii. ; on this portrait see above, p. 341. ) [848] "Poetical Remains of James I. Of Scotland, " ed. Ch. Rogers, Edinburgh, 1873. The "King's Quhair" is found entire in Eyre Todd:"Abbotsford series of the Scotch poets, " Glasgow, 1891, 3 vols, _Cf. _"Le roman d'un roi d'Écosse, " with details from an unprinted MS. , Paris, 1894. [849] Though used by others before him, and especially by Chaucer; theyrhyme _a b a b b c c_. Chaucer wrote in this metre "Troilus, " "Parlementof Foules, " &c. Here is an example, consisting in the commendation ofthe book to Chaucer and Gower: Unto [the] impnis of my maisteris dere, Gowere and Chaucere, that on the steppis satt Of rethorike quhill thai were lyvand here, Superlative as poetis laureate, In moralitee and eloquence ornate, I recommend my buk in lynis sevin, And eke thair soulis un-to the blisse of hevin. [850] "The Actis and Deidis of . . . Schir William Wallace, Knicht ofEllerslie, " by Henry the Minstrel, commonly known as Blind Harry, ed. J. Moir, Edinburgh, 1884-99, Scottish Text Society. Blind Harry diedtowards the end of the fifteenth century. [851] Henryson was born before 1425, and wrote under James II. And JamesIII. Of Scotland; he was professor, perhaps schoolmaster, atDunfermline. His works have been edited by David Laing, Edinburgh, 1865. [852] "The Works of Gavin Douglas, " ed. J. Small, Edinburgh, 1874, 4vols. 8vo. Born in 1474-5, died in 1522. He finished his "Palice ofHonour" in 1501, an allegorical poem resembling the ancient models: Maymorning, Vision of Diana, Venus and their trains, descriptions of thePalace of Honour, &c. We shall find, at the Renaissance, Douglas atranslator of Virgil; his Æneid was printed only in 1553. [853] Born about 1460, studies at St. Andrews, becomes a mendicant friarand is ordained priest, sojourns in France, where the works of Villonhad just been printed, then returns to the Court of James IV. , where heis very popular. He died probably after 1520. "The Poems of WilliamDunbar, " ed. Small and Mackay, Edinburgh, Scottish Text Society. [854] See, for example, his "Lament for the Makaris quhen he wes seik, "a kind of "Ballade des poètes du temps jadis, " a style which Lydgate andVillon had already furnished models of. In it he weeps: The noble Chaucer, of makaris flouir, The monk of Bery and Gower all three. [855] Beginning of the "Thrissil and the Rois" (to be compared with theopening of the "Canterbury Tales"): Quhen March wes with variand windis past, And Appryl had, with his silver schouris, Tane leif at Nature with ane orient blast, And lusty May, that muddir is of flouris, Had maid the birdis to begyn their houris Amang the tendir odouris reid and quhyt, Quhois armony to heir it was delyt. . . . [856] Text in the Morris edition of Chaucer's poetical works, London, Aldine poets, vol. Iv. [857] Principal work to consult: F. J. Child, "The English and ScottishPopular Ballads, " Boston, 1882. See above, p. 352. [858] In "Bishop Percy's Folio MS. , " ed. Hales and Furnivall, London, Ballad Society, 1867, 8vo. [859] Text, _e. G. _, in Skeat, "Specimens of English Literature, " Oxford, 4th ed. 1887, p. 96, written, under the form in which we now have it, about the end of the fifteenth century. [860] The pillers of yvery garnished with golde, With perles sette and brouded many a folde, The flore was paved with stones precious, &c. Stephen Hawes, "Pastime of Pleasure, " Percy Society, 1845, p. 125. [861] "A History of Agriculture and Prices, " vol. Iv. , Oxford, 1882, p. 19. See also the important chapters on Industry and Commerce in Mrs. Green's "Town Life in the XVth Century, " London, 1894, 2 vols. 8vo, vol. I. Chaps. Ii. And iii. [862] This title, since conferred upon the Russells, had been given toGeorge Neville. The king, who had intended to endow the new duke in aproper manner, had given up the idea; and on the other hand, "as it isopenly knowen that the same George hath not, nor by enheritance meyhave, eny lyffelode to support the seid name, estate and dignite, or enyname of estate; and oft time it is sen that when eny lord is called tohigh estate and have not liffelode conveniently to support the samedignite, it induces gret poverty, indigens, and causes oftymes greteextortion, embracere and mayntenaunce to be had. . . . Wherfore the kyng, by the advyse . . . [&c. ] exactith that fro hensfforth the same erectionand making of Duke, and all the names of dignite guyffen to the seidGeorge, or the seid John Nevele his fader, be from hens fors voyd and ofno effecte. " 17 Ed. IV. Year 1477, "Rotuli Parliamentorum, " vol. Vi. P. 173. [863] See "Stans puer ad mensam, " by Lydgate, printed by Caxton: T' enboce thi jowes with brede it is not due . . . Thy teth also ne pike not with the knyff . . . The best morsell, have this in remembraunce, Hole to thiself alway do not applye. Hazlitt, "Remains, " 1864, vol. Iii. P. 23. Many other treatises onetiquette cooking, &c. See chiefly: "The Babes Book . . . The Book ofNorture, " &c. , ed. Furnivall, 1868, 8vo; "Two fifteenth century CookeryBooks, " ed. T. Austin, 1888, 8vo; "The Book of quinte essence, " about1460-70, ed. Furnivall, 1866 (medical recipes); "Palladius on husbondrie. . . " about 1420, ed. Lodge, 1872-9 (on orchards and gardens); "The Bookof the Knight of la Tour Landry . . . Translated in the reign of HenryVI. , " ed. T. Wright, 1868, 8vo (the whole published by the Early EnglishText Society). [864] "The Paston Letters, " 1422-1509, ed. J. Gairdner, 1872, 3 vols. 8vo. [865] Or in the worthy Margaret's spelling: "Yf I mythe have had mywylle, I xulde a seyne yow er dystyme; I wolde ye wern at hom, yf it weryour ese, and your sor myth ben as wyl lokyth to her as it tys there yeben, now lever dan a goune thow it wer of scarlette. " (Sept 28, 1443, vol. I. P. 49). [866] Sept. 21, 1465, vol. Ii. P. 237. [867] _E. G. _, "The Itineraries of William Wey" (pilgrimages), London, Roxburghe Club, 1857; much practical information; specimens ofconversations in Greek, &c. ; "The Stacions of Rome, " ed. Furnivall, E. E. T. S, 1868 (on Rome and Compostella). [868] See among others: "Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies, " byTh. Wright, ed. Wülcker, London, 1884, 2 vols. 8vo; "PromptoriumParvulorum, sive clericorum . . . _circa_ A. D. 1440, " ed. Albert Way, Camden Society, 1865, 4to, by Geoffrey the Grammarian, a Dominican ofNorfolk; "Catholicon Anglicum, an English Latin wordbook, dated 1483, "ed. Herrtage, E. E. T. S. , 1881, 8vo. [869] In the "Political Poems, " ed. Th. Wright, Rolls, vol. Ii. P. 157. Probable date, 1436. _Cf. _ the "Débat des hérauts de France etd'Angleterre, " (written about 1456), ed. P. Meyer, Société des AnciensTextes, 1877, 8vo; on the navy, p. 9. [870] "De Dominio regali et politico. " In it he treats of (chap. I. )"the difference between Dominium regale and Dominium politicum etregale, " a difference that consists principally in this, that in thesecond case the king "may not rule hys people by other lawys than suchas they assenten unto. " Fortescue was born about 1395, and died after1476. He wrote in Latin a treatise, "De natura Legis Naturæ, " andanother, "De laudibus Legum Angliæ. "--"Works of Sir John Fortescue . . . Now first collected, " by Thomas [Fortescue] Lord Clermont, London, 1869, 2 vols. 4to. [871] Chaps. Xii. And xiii. , vol. I. Pp. 465 ff. [872] In his principal work, the "Repressor of over much blaming of theClergy, " ed. Babington, Rolls, 1860, 2 vols. 8vo. Pecock was born about1395; he was a fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, bishop of St. Asaph, then bishop of Chichester. He wrote, besides the "Repressor, " a quantityof works ("Donet"; "Book of Faith"; "Follower of Donet, " &c. , unpublished), also in English prose. The Church found that he went toofar, and allotted too great a part to reason; his writings werecondemned and burnt; he was relegated to the abbey of Thorney in 1459, and died there a short time after. [873] "Repressor, " i, ch. Xix. [874] "The Boke of St. Albans, by Dame Juliana Berners, containingtreatises on hawking, hunting and cote armour, printed at St. Albans, bythe Schoolmaster printer in 1486, reproduced in fac simile, " by W. Blades, London, 1881, 4to (partly in verse and partly in prose; adaptedfrom the French). --"A Chronicle of England" (from the creation to 1417), by Capgrave, born in 1394, died in 1464, ed. Hingeston, Rolls, 1858. (Ofthe same, a "Liber de illustribus Henricis, " in Latin, ed. Hingeston, Rolls, 1858, and other works; see above, p. 496. ) "A Book of the nobleHistoryes of Kynge Arthur and of certen of his Knyghtes, " printed byCaxton in 1485; reprinted with notes ("Le Morte Darthur, " by Sir ThomasMalory) by O. Sommer and Andrew Lang, London, 1889, 2 vols. 8vo. Maloryand Caxton will be mentioned again in connection with the Renaissance. [875] The "Testament of Love, " in English prose. It has been attributedto Chaucer. Mr. Skeat has shown, by deciphering an anagram, that theauthor's name was Kitsun: "Margaret of Virtw have mercy on Kitsun"(_Academy_, March 11, 1893). [876] He has not observed, he admits, "the strict laws of time, " and hehas introduced no chorus; but it is not his fault. "Nor is it needful, or almost possible in these our times, and to such auditors as commonlythings are presented, to observe the old state and splendor of dramaticpoems, with preservation of any popular delight. "--_To the readers. _ [877] H. Vast, "Le Cardinal Bessarion, " Paris, 1878, 8vo, p. 14. INDEX. Abbeys, 158 ff. _A. B. C. _, 275. Abel, 475. Abélard, 170, 461. Abernun, P. D', 120. Abraham and Isaac, a play, 466. Abstractions, personified, 218, 331, 490. Achilles, 129, 310. _Acta Sanctorum_, 470. Actors, 446 ff. , 467 ff. Adam, in Anglo-Saxon Bible, 72, and Eve, 359; 381, a mystery, 468 ff. , 474 ff. Adam, "scriveyn, " 339. Addison, 296. Adgar, 123. Adrian IV. , pope, 111, 188. Ælfric, 45, 88 ff. , 205, 449. Aelred of Rievaulx, 154, 193, 213, 445 ff. Æneas the Trojan, 114, 129, 295, _see_ "Enéas. " Æsop, 508. Æthelberht, 61. Æthelred, 79. Æthelstan, 28, 46, 93. Æthelwold, 88. Æthelwulf, 63. Aetius, 26. Agricola, 20. Ailill, 13. Aïmer, 147. Aix, Albert d', 409. Alaric, 26. Albin, St. , 220. Alchemist, in Chaucer, 325, 327. Alcuin, 65 ff. , 81, 82. Aldhelm, 66, his riddles, 72. "Alemanni, " 25. Alexander, romances on, 127 ff. ; 222. Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, 162. Alfred the Great, 27, 28, 61, 63, life and works, 79 ff. ; 243. Aliénor of Aquitaine, 112. Aliénor of Provence, 112, 454. Allegories, in _Roman de la Rose_, 276 ff. Allen, Grant, on Germanic names, 31, on Norman names, 244. Alliteration, in Anglo-Saxon and in French, 37 ff. , in Aldhelm, 66, after the Conquest, 205 ff. ; 245, Chaucer's opinion about, 339; 348, 351, in Langland, 401. Ambrose, companion of Richard Coeur-de-Lion, 121. America, discovered, 491. _Amis and Amile_, 142, 229. Ammianus Marcellinus, 32, 114. _Anatomy of Abuses_, 346. Anchoresses, 153, 211 ff. _Ancren Riwle_, 211 ff. , 218, 247. Anderida, 30. _Andreas_, 39, 69, 73 ff. _Anelida_ see _Complaint_. Angevin England, literature of, Bk. Ii. C. Ii. , iii. , iv. , 116 ff. ; survives in Gower, 364. Angle, Sir Guichard d', 284. Angles, 22, 25, 27, 84. "Angli, " 20. Anglo-Saxons, their name, 28, vocabulary, 29, national poetry, Bk. I. C. Iii. , 36 ff. , Mss. And art of, 45, 63, 65, despondency of, 47 ff. , 56 ff. , their idea of death, 57 ff. , their Christian literature, Bk. I. C. Iv. , 60 ff. , their internal divisions, 93, how transformed by Norman conquest, 203 ff. , 250, mind and genius of, 300, 316, 344, 402, Chaucer and the, 338 ff. _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_, 46, 47, 62, 86 ff. , on Hastings, 100, 103, on William, 105 ff. Anne of Bohemia, 265, 454 ff. Annebaut, R. D', 120. Anselm, St. , 165, 193, 198. Antenor, the Trojan, 113. _Antigone_ of Sophocles, 34. _Antiocheis_, 176. Antoninus Pius, 19, 20. Apelles, 286, 294. Apollinia, life of St. , and drama on, 470 ff. _Apollonius of Tyre_, in A. S. , 79. _Appius and Virginia_, 325, 330. Aquinas, St. Thomas, 165. _Arabian Nights_, 496. Arbois de Jubainville, d', on Celts, 5 ff. Arc, Joan of, 256, 354, 459. Architecture, of the Anglo-Saxons, 63, Norman, 107, perpendicular, 261, with "pinnacles, " 297; 353, of Westminster Hall, 414. Argentille, 223. Argyropoulos, 523. Ariosto, 17, 97. Aristotle, 120, 165, 173, 194, 380. "Armachanus, " _see_ Fitzralph. Armenia, 201. Armorica, 33. "Army, " the Danish, 80. Arnold, T. , on _Beowulf_, 48, on Wyclif, 432. Art: Henry III. 's style, 200, 262, gold and silver tablets, cups, &c. , 258 ff. , pictures, 258, 262, miniatures, 259, tapestries, 262, embroidery, 264, statue from the nude, 265, painted walls and stained glass, 280, in Italy, 285 ff. , antique, 287 ff. , portrait of Chaucer, 341, 503, favoured by Plantagenets, 353 ff. , tomb of Gower, 365, Malvern Church, 376, picture by Fouquet, 470 ff. , fresco at Stratford-on-Avon, 494; _see_ Architecture, Miniatures. Arthur, King, early songs on, 32; 112, 113, 127; cycle of, 131 ff. ; 177, in Layamon, 220 ff. ; 222, 226, 348 ff. Ass, feast of the, 452. Asser, 81, 82. _Astrée_, 139. _Astrolabe_, 337, 341, 411. Attila, 26, 44, 48. Aucassin, 227, 404, 503. Augier, of St. Frideswide's, 123. Augustine, comes to England, 60 ff. Augustus, the emperor, 129, 481, 486. Aungerville, Sir R. , 166. Ausonius, 33. Avebury, circles at, 4. Avesbury, Robert of, 174, 201. Avignon, 158, 391, 420. Avit, St. , bishop of Vienna, 75. _Ayenbite of Inwyt_, 214. Aymon, 156. Bacchanals, 449 ff. Bacchus, theatre of, 476. Bacon, Roger, 165, 193, 194. "Badin, " on the stage, 492. Bailey, Harry, of the "Tabard, " 316 ff. , 321 ff. , 341. _Balade de bon Conseyl_, 341. Balduf, 221. Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury, 176, 177, 198. John Ball, priest, 359, 368, 401, 413, 491. Ballads, by Chaucer, 271, on Griselda, 332; 352 ff. , by Gower, 366 ff. ; 512, _see_ "Chansons, " and Songs. Ballets, 456. Barbour, J. , 361 ff. , 507. Bards, Celtic, 10. Barking, Clemence of, 123. Barry, Gerald de, on Welshmen, 10; 19, 117, 134, 176, 192, 198. Barry, Richard de, 203. Barry, William de, 198. Bartholomew, St. , life of, in A. S. , 91. Bartholomew the Englishman, 169, 195, 225, 406. Bath, ruins at, 19, 59. "Battle, " Bk. Ii. C. I. , 97 ff. Battle abbey, 102 ff. Bavaria, Isabeau of, 455. Bayard, a horse, 271. Bayeux tapestry, 100. Beauchamp, family of, 109. Beaufort, Jane, 504. Beaumont, Louis de, bishop of Durham, 162. Beauty, physical, 264, Chaucer's idea of, 292; 353 ff. Beauveau, Pierre de, 311, 354. Becket, St. Thomas, life in French, 123; 156, 165, 188 ff. , 208, 319. Bede, 57, 62, life and works, 66 ff. , 81, translated by Alfred, 82 ff. ; 205, 220. Bedford, George Neville, duke of, 515. Bédier, on fabliaux, 142. _Bello Trojano, De_, 176. _Beowulf_, 37 ff. , 45, 47, analysis of, 48 ff. , compared with Roland, 54 ff. ; 99, 219, 338. Bercheur, Pierre, 183. Berger, S. , on Bible, 433. Berkeley, Edward of, 284. Bernard, St. , 188, 191. Berners, Dame Juliana, 522. Bernlak de Haut Désert, 350. Bérou, author of a _Tristan_, 134. Berry, Jean duc de, 76. _Beryn_, tale of, 320. Bessarion, 168, 525. _Bestiaire d'Amour_, 123. Bestiaries, 76, 123, 214, 276, 409. Betenham, William, 312. _Bevis of Hampton_, 223. Bible, in Anglo-Saxon, 71 ff. , by Ælfric, 87, in English, in French, 207; 315, quoted in Parliament, 415 ff. , translated by Wyclif, 432 ff. , dramatised, 489, Pecock on, 521. "Bibles, " moral works, 366. Biblesworth, Walter de, 237. Bigod, 250, 109. Biquet, Robert, 226. Biscop, Benedict, 66. Bishops, warrior, learned, saintly, 162 ff. Blacke, Anthony, 256. Black Prince, 232, 242, 262, 264, 284, 425. Blanket, of Bristol, 256. _Blickling Homilies_, 45, 88 ff. Boccaccio, 143, 268, 282, 288 ff. , 299 ff. , 320 ff. , 332, 370 ff. , 499. _Body and Soul_, debate of, 230. Boece, translated by Alfred, 82, 84 ff. ; 165, 175, translated by Chaucer, 291; 339, 411, 490, 505. Bohemia, heresies in, 438. Bohemond, of Antioch, 107. Böhler, Peter, 438. Bohun, 109, 250. Boileau, 330, 473. _Boke of Nurture_, 264, _of St. Albans_, 522. Boldensele, William of, 409. Bollandus, 470. Bonaventure, St. , 214. Boncuor, William de, 272. Boniface, St. , 64, 65, 68. Boniface VIII. , 432. _Book of Cupid_, 279, _of the Duchesse_, 272, 279 ff. , 499, _of Nurture_, 264, _of St. Albans_, 522. "Börn, " 44. Bossert, on _Tristan_, 135 ff. Bourgogne, Jean de, à la barbe, 407 ff. _Bourse pleine de sens_, 226. Bozon Nicole, 118, 123. Bracton, H. De, 196, 235, 254. Bradford-on-Avon, Anglo-Saxon Church at, 63. Bradshaigh, lady, 333. Bradshaw, on Chaucer, 324 ff. Bradwardine, archbishop, 193, 194. Brakelonde, Jocelin de, 124. Brampton, Thomas, 496. Brandan, St. , 209, 210. Brantingham, Thomas de, 452. Breakspeare, Nicolas, 111, 188. Brescia, Albertano de, 325, 331. Brétigny, peace of, 271, 391. Britain, Celtic, Bk. I. C. I. , 3 ff. Britons, 7 ff. , not destroyed by Anglo-Saxons, 29 ff. ; 177, "gentil, " 330, 338. Brittany, its literature, 13, how populated, 33; 132. Broker, Nicolas, 265. Bromyard, John of, 183. Brooke, Stopford, 39, 72. Browning, Robert, 342, and Preface. Bruce, David, 115. _Bruce_, the, 361. _Brunanburh_, ode on, 46. Brunne, _see_ Mannyng. _Brut_ of Layamon, 219 ff. Brutus the Trojan, 112, 114. Bukton, 341. Bunyan, 57, 216, 382. Burgundy, Henry of, 107. Burnellus, the ass, 178. Burns, Robert, 510. Burton, Thomas of, 266. Bury, Richard of, 166 ff. , 169, 175, 188, 202, 203. Byrhtnoth, 47. Byron, lord, 38, 139. Cædmon, 45, 68, life and works, 70 ff. Cæsar, on Celts, 6, 7, 11, 18, on Germans, 23; 29, 222. Cain, 475. Callisthenes, pseudo, 128, 129. Cambinscan, 325. Cambrensis, _see_ Barry. Cambridge, University of, 173 ff. Canterbury, Gervase of, 202. " Thomas of, 258. _Canterbury Tales_, 245, 296, 313 ff. , 373, 497, 499, 511. Canynges, of Bristol, 515. Capet, Hugues, 99. Capgrave, 496, 522. Caracalla, 19. Carlyle, T. , 87. Carols, 349. _Carpenter's Tools_, 230, 443. Cartaphilus, 201. _Castle of Love_, 214. _Castle of Perseverance_, 491. _Castoiement d'un père à son fils_, 370, 447. Cathedrals, Norman, 107 ff. , 124, 162. Catherine, life of St. , 459, drama on St. , 459 ff. Cato on Gauls, 9. _Causa Dei, De_, 194. Caxton, 152, 342, 366, 372, 406, 515, 521, 522. Ceadwalla, 63. Celestinus, 185. Cecile, St. , _see_ Lyf of. Celts, name, origin, literature, religion of the, 5 ff. ; fate after the A. S. Conquest, 29 ff. , their ideal, 210, wit and genius, 300, 402, in Scotland, 503. Cemeteries, dances in, 448 ff. _Cento Novelle Antiche_, 325. Cervantes, 97, 133, 141, 330. Champeaux, Guillaume de, 170. _Chanson de Roland_, 54 ff. , 125 ff. , 146, 156, 273. Chansons, French, 142 ff. , 148, sung in London, 355 ff. Chantecleer, the cock, 149 ff. , 325, 328 ff. Chanteloup, Walter de, 444, 449. Chantries, 378 ff. Chap-books, 225, 506. Chapelain, André le, 140. Chapu, Guillaume, 120. Chardry, 123. Charisius, 9. Charlemagne, 35, 61, 65 ff. , 79, 99, 125; caricatured, 146 ff. ; 156, 222, 441. Charles the Bald, 63. Charles V. Of France, 171, 195, 259. " VI. ", 456. " V. Of Germany, 101. Charnay, Henri de, inquisitor, 159. _Chastoiement des Dames_, 230. _Château d'Amour_, 213. Chaucer, Alice, 354. " Geoffrey, his "somnour, " 161; 182, 215, 218, 225, 232, 240, 244; life and works, Bk. Iii. C. Ii. , 267 ff. , his contemporaries, Bk. Iii. C. Iii. , 344 ff. ; 369; compared with Langland, 372 ff, 388 ff. , 392, 402; 379, 382, 422; on miracle plays, 461, 469, 478, 490; successors and imitators, Bk. Iii. C. Vii. , 495 ff. Chaucer, John, 268. " Philippa, 272. " Thomas, 273, 354. "Chaucer Society, " 343. Cheldric, 221. Cheriton, Odo de, 178. _Chester Plays_, 465 ff. , their end, 492. Chester, Randolf, earl of, 359. Chestre, Thomas, 230. "Chests, " at the University, 175. Chettle, 332. _Chevy Chase_, 512. _Chienne qui pleure_, 154, 184, 225 ff. , 447 ff. Child, Prof. , on ballads, 353. Chimneys, 262. Chlochilaicus, 50. _Christ_, 72, 75. Christianity, in Roman England, 18, in Anglo-Saxon England, 30, 57, 60 ff. Christmas, how celebrated, 450 ff. , plays, 457 ff. Chronicles, Anglo-Norman, 113 ff. , 121, Latin, 166 ff. , 197 ff. , in the XVth century, 496 ff. Chrysococcès, 523. Chrysoloras, 523. Church, the English, 157 ff. , Wyclif on, 423 ff. , 430 ff. , decaying in the XVth century, 497. Cicero, 168, 498. Cirencester, Richard of, 202. _Claris Mulieribus, De_, 294. Clarissa Harlowe, 333, 484. Classic influences and models, 166, 374. Claudian, 295, 297. Claudius the emperor, 18, 19. "Clavilegno, " 330. _Cleges_, 226. _Cleomades_, 325. Cleopatra, on the stage, 129. Clerc, Guillaume le, 123, 483. Clerk of Oxford, Chaucer's, 314, 325, 332 ff. Clerks, slothful, 167 ff. , at the University, 169 ff. , belong to the Latin country, 176 ff. Clovis, 26, a Romanised barbarian, 34, 50, 99. Cnut the Dane, 93, 112, 113. Coal mines, 255. Cobham, Thomas de, 175. Cobsam, Adam de, 496. Cochin, H. , on Boccaccio, 288. _Codex Exoniensis_, 45. _Codex Vercellensis_, 45. Coenewulf, 66. Coggeshall, Radulphus de, 195, 202. Coinci, Gautier de, 325. Coins, Anglo-Saxon, 79. _Cokaygne_, 226. _Cokwolds' Dance_, 226. Coleridge, S. T. , 42. Colgrim, 220. Colonna, Gui de, 299. Columba, St. , 63. Comedy, scenes of, 484 ff. Comestor, Pierre, 215, 409. Cominges, Count de, 202. Commines, 250, 255. Commons, of England, 250 ff. , 266, Langland on the, 389 ff. _Complaint of Anelida_, 292, 294, _of a Lover's Life_, 279, _unto Pite_, 272, 279, _of the Plowman_, 401, _of Venus_, 275, 341. Communism, Wyclif on, 430 ff. _Comus_, 456. Conchobar, 11 ff. Condé, Baudouin de, 445. " Jean de, 444. _Confessio Amantis_, 365, 366, 369 ff. "Confrères de la Passion, " 480, 493. Conquest, Norman-French, Bk. Ii. , 95 ff. , silence after the, 204 ff. Constance, Chaucer's Story of, 325, 331, 335. _Constant du Hamel_, 496. Constantius Chlorus, 19. Constantine the Great, 20. Constantine XII. , 524. Constantinople, taken by the Turks, 524. _Conte des Hiraus_, 445. Corbichon, Jean, translates Bartholomew the Englishman, 195, 225. Cook, Captain, 7. Cookery, 263 ff. , 516. Cordier, H. , on Mandeville, 407, 409. Corneille, Pierre, 156, 471. Cornelius Gallus, 33. Cornelius, Nepos, 176, 191. Cornish drama, 466. Cornwall, Celtic, 32, 132. Corpus Christi plays, 459. _Corpus Poeticum Boreale_, 40 ff. Cotton, Bartholomew de, 202. Cotton, John, a painter, 258. Councils, on the drama, 440 ff. , 449. _Coupe Enchantée_, 226. Court, amusements at, 441 ff. , fool, 441 ff. , dramas, 476, poetry, 353 ff. , 366 ff. _Court of Love_, 279, 497, 512. Courtenay, embroiderer, 264. Courtenay, bishop of London, 426. Courtesy, books of, 515 ff. Courtin, Honoré, ambassador, 255. _Coventry Mysteries_ and _pageants_, 465 ff. Cowper, William, 57. Coxe, Brinton, on Bracton, 196. Credon, Sir Richard, 275. Cressida, 301 ff. , _see_ Troilus. _Croniques de London_, 119, 242. Cuchulaïnn, 11 ff. _Cursor Mundi_, 215 ff. , 222, 225, 260. Cuthberht, 64, 67, 68. Cuthwine, 67. Cycles of France, Rome and Britain, 125 ff. Cynewulf, 39, 70, works and genius of, 72 ff. , 92. Daisy, praise of the, 275 ff. Dalila, 372. _Dame Siriz_, 225 ff. Danes, place names recalling them, 80; 120. Dante, 118, 128, 154, 169, 186, 206, 288, 290, 294 ff. , 325 ff. , 330, 393. Dares the Phrygian, 128 ff. , 134, 297, 299. David, King, 272. Davidson, Ch. , on Mysteries, 466. Davy Adam, 360. Deadly Sins, in Langland, 386. Death, Celts' idea of, 7 ff. , Greeks', 7 ff. , Frenchmen's, 57 ff. , Anglo-Saxons', 56 ff. , 74, Rolle of Hampole's, 218, Black Prince's, 353; an occasion for jokes, 449, on the stage, 490, 491. _Débat des Hérauts de France et d'Angleterre_, 517. _Decameron_, 287, 320 ff. , 325. Defoe, 162, 224, 407. _Degrevant_, 347. Deguileville, 275, 498, 500. Dekker, 332. Delisle, Leopold, on Bartholomew the Englishman, 195. Des Champs, Eustache, 257, 275, on Chaucer, 278, on diplomatic service, 282; 289, 340, 360. _Deor_, 38, 59. _Departed Soul's Address_, 75. Derdriu, 15 ff. Dermot, 121. Despencer, Henry le, bishop of Norwich, 164. Devil, described by Ælfric, 90, and St. Dunstan, 209, tempts Rolle of Hampole, 217, on the stage, 471, 475. Dialect, of Chaucer, 338 ff. , of Langland, 401, Scotch, 503. Dialogues, in Celtic Literature, 13 ff. , in Anglo-Saxon, 75, in Latin, 187, 191, in _Troilus_, 303; 442 ff. , after dinner, 444, in interludes, 446 ff. , in pageants, 454 ff. , in Mysteries, 477 ff. , in _Roman de la Rose_, 490. _Dialogus de Scaccario_, 196. Diceto, Radulph de, 202. Dictys of Crete, 128 ff. Diderot, 328. Dido (in Chaucer), 295. Dietrich, 72. _Digby Mysteries_, 466 ff. Diodorus Siculus, 101. "Dirige, " 379. _Disobedient Child_, 491. "Disputoisons" or Debates, 144, 230, 441 ff. _Dissuasio Valerii ad Rufinum_, 191. "Doctors, " 193 ff. Dogmas, attacked by Wyclif, 425, 435 ff. Domesday Book, 100, 104 ff. , 158. Dominicans, 159 ff. "Dominium" Fitzralph and Wyclif on, 429. Domitius Afer, 33. Donatus, 175. _Dormi Secure_, 354. Douglas, Gavin, 510. "Dowel, Dobet, Dobest, " 375 ff. , 387, 395, 400. Dragons and monsters, 50, 55 ff. Drama, Bk. Iii. C. Vi. , 439 ff. ; civil 439 ff. , religious, 456 ff. Dramatic genius of the Celts, 13. Dreams, Chaucer and Addison on, 296, Davy's, 367, Gower's, 368, poets', 497. Dresemius, S. , 117. Druids, 9 ff. Dryden, 343. _Duchesse_, _see_ Book of. Dujon, _see_ Junius. Dunbar, 372, 503, 507, life and works, 510, 513. Dunstable, play at, 460. Dunstan, St. , 88 ff. , 209, 210, 217. Durham, Simeon of, 202. " William of, 175. Duries, J. , a scribe, 195. _Duties of a Parish Priest_, 496. Eadgar child, 103. Eadmer, 198. _Eadwine's Canterbury Psalter_, 76. Eadwine, earl, 103. Ealdred, archbishop of York, 103. Ealwhine (Alcuin), 65. Earle, on A. S. Literature, 39, on _Beowulf_, 48, on A. S. Chronicle, 87. Easter, origin of the name, 62, drama, 457 ff. Ecgberht, 68. Ecgferth, 87. _École des Maris_, 324. _Edda_, 40 ff. Edgar, king, 87, 88 ff. Edgeworth, Miss, 332. Edmund, St. , 113, 209. Edrisi, 129. Eduini, king, 57. Edward, king, the confessor, 97, 111, life of, in French, 123; 208. Edward I. , 250, 270, 421, 443, 506. " II. , 108, 163, 194, 236, 253, 259, 260, 360, 384, 452. Edward III. , 232, 235, 247, 249, 256, 264, 266, 272, 284, 360 ff. , 406, 415, 495. Edward IV. , 513 ff. Eginhard, 24, 46. _Eglamour_, 347. Ekkehard, 48. _Elene_, 72 ff. Elizabeth, queen, 372. " wife of Lionel son of Edward III. , 270. Eloi, St. , 209. _Enéas_, 130. England, first inhabitants of, 3 ff. , between northern and southern civilisations, 97 ff. , described by Robert of Gloucester, 122, "merry, " 225, 232, 260, 267, 345, to the English, Bk. Iii. , 232 ff. , trade and navy of, 255 ff. , Chaucer's, 314 ff. , threatening and threatened, 360, 363, Langland's, 374 ff. , 389, parliamentary, 413 ff. "Englescherie, " presentment of, 235. English, literature, under Norman and Angevin kings, 204 ff. , revived, 216; use of, by upper classes, 219 ff. , authors adopt French tastes, 219 ff. , fusion of, with French, 235 ff. , people, how formed, 247 ff. , Chaucer's, 337, Gower's, 369, used in Parliament, 421 ff. , Wyclif's, 432, dramas, 460 ff. , spoken in Scotland, 503, pride, 518. Enoch, 227, 475. Eostra, the goddess, 62. _Epinal Glossary_, 45. Erceldoune, Thomas of, his prophecies, 141. _Estorie des Engles_, 113 ff. "Estrifs, " 230, 443, _see_ Disputoisons. _Eulogium Historiarum_, 197. Euphuism, 38. Eutrope, 120. _Everyman_, 491. "Exempla, " 153 ff. , 182 ff. Exeter, Joseph of, 37, 176 ff. , 181, 191. Eyck, van, 352. Eyrum, Robert de, 176. Fables, Latin, 178, by Lydgate, 498, by Henryson, 508 ff. "Fabliaux, " French, 118, 152 ff. , Latin, 183, 184, English, 225 ff. , 325, 442 ff. , turned into dramas, 447, of the XVth century, 496, 498. Fahlbeck, on Geatas, 51. _Falle of Princes_, 498 ff. Fals Semblant, 397 ff. , 490. Falstofe, Sir J. , 262. _Fame_, see _Hous of_. Fantosme, Jordan, 118. _Fasciculi Zizaniorum_, 425, 428, 431, 435. Fashions, 265, ridiculed, 358. _Fates of the Apostles_, 72. _Ferumbras_, 223. Fielding, H. , 224, 336, 517. Figaro, 151, 229. "File, " 11. _Filocopo_, 325. _Filostrato_, 294, 299 ff. _Finsburg_, song on the battle of, 47. Fitzosbern, William, 103. Fitzralph, Richard, 427, 429 ff. Fitzstephen, 202, 460. Fitzwarin, Fulke, 224. _Fleta_, 197. _Floire and Blanchefleur_, 142, 229. Florence, mediæval, 286 ff. , plague at, 320. _Flower and Leaf_, 497, 512. Foix, Gaston Phébus de, 273 ff. Foliot, Gilbert, 165. Fontevrault, royal tombs at, 109. Fools, feast of, 452. _Forme of Cury_, 263. Fortescue, Sir John, 518. Fouquet, Jean, picture by, 470 ff. _Four Elements_, 491. _Four Sons of Aymon_, 223. Fournival, Richard de, 123. Fournivall, lord, 502. Fox, George, 216. _Fox and Wolf_, 228 ff. , 443. Fozlan, Ahmed Ibn, 27. Fragonard, 455. France, first inhabitants of, 3 ff. , a home for fabliaux, 155; satirised, 360, _see_ French. France, Marie de, _see_ Marie. _Franciade_, 114, 339. Francis, St. , of Assisi, 159, 429. Francis, St. , of Sales, 211. Francis I. , King of France, 101, 253. Franciscans, 159 ff. , 165. Francus the Trojan, 114. Franklin, Chaucer's, 314, 325, 390 ff. Franks, 22, 23, 25, 27, in _Beowulf_, 49, 53, loved by Christ, 147. Freeman, Prof. , 28. French, invasion, Bk. Ii. , 95 ff. , followers of William, 100, families and manners, 109, literature under Norman and Angevin kings, Bk. Ii. C. Ii. , 116 ff. ; language, in general use, 118 ff. , at Court and in Parliament, 119, 420 ff. , character, 126 ff. , ideal, 155 ff. , taught at the University, 175, not known by the "lowe men, " 205; used by English authors, 213 ff. , 219 ff. ; fusion of the, with the English, Bk. Iii. C. I. , 235 ff. , in the courts of law, 238 ff. , at Oxford, 239, disuse of, 239 ff. , in diplomatic relations, 240 ff. , survival of, 242 ff. , Chaucer studies, 273, spoken by Richard II. And Gaston de Foix, 274, words in Chaucer, 337 ff. , used by the Black Prince, 353 ff. , songs, 355, Gower's, 364, 366 ff. , Langland's 377, 400, Mandeville in, 408, not used by Christ, 434, of kings in Mysteries, 480. Friar, Chaucer's, 323, 325, 327 ff. , Diderot's, 328, derided, 358, Langland's, 384, 429 ff. , 435. Friday, "chidden, " 285, 329. "Friend of God of the Oberland, " 403. Frisians, 22, 27, in _Beowulf_, 53; 65. Fritzsche, on _Andreas_, 39. Froissart, 127, 239, 255, 260, 261, 271, 273 ff. , 301, compared with Chaucer, 317 ff. ; 340, 404 ff. , 455. Furnivall, F. J. , founder of the Early English Text Society, Chaucer, and Wyclif Society, &c. , on Chaucer's tales, 324 ff. Gaddesden, John of, 194. Gaddi, Taddeo, 286. Gaillard, Claude, 253. Gaimar, 113 ff. , 121, 223. Galen, 178, 315. Galois, Jean le, 226. _Gamelyn_, tale of, 324. Games, 414, 439 ff. , 444. Gascoigne, the theologian, 451. Gaunt, John of, Duke of Lancaster, 272, 280 ff. , 312, 406, 423, 426. _Gauvain_, 141, 259. _Gawayne and the Green Knight_, 223, 348 ff. Gaytrige, John, 206. Gaza, Theodore, 524. Geatas, 51 ff. _Genesis and Exodus_ in English, 207. "Genius, " 371. Genseric, 26. Geoffrey, abbot of St. Albans, his play, 459 ff. Geoffrey the grammarian, 517. Gerald, _see_ Barry. Gerda, 42. Gering, H. , on Gretti, 49. Germans, origin, manners, religion, war-songs of the, 21 ff. , compared with the Celts, 240 ff. Gerson, 278. _Gesta Regum Anglorum_, 199. _Gesta Romanorum_, 182, 183, 185 ff. , 496, 501. Gibbon, 122. Gildas, 67, 132. Gilds, perform religious plays, 465. Giotto, 206 ff. , 284, 286 ff. , 294. Giraldus Cambrensis, _see_ Barry. Gladstone, W. E. , on University life, 173. Glanville, Ralph, 196. Glascurion, 338. "Globe, " the, 268. Gloucester, Humphrey, Duke of, 152, 176, 264. Gloucester, Robert of, 116 ff. , 119, 122, 221, 243, 404. Gloucester, Thomas, Duke of, 277, 312, 365. Goethe, 97. Grosseteste, Robert, 118, 123, 160, 165, 205, 213 ff. , 452. Goldborough, 223. Golias, 192. Gollancz, 3, 39, 70, 75. _Gombert_, 156, 324. Gospels, copied by Anglo-Saxons, 65, in A. S. , 88, in French, 123. Gower, John, 119, 242, 257, 279, 285, 299, 325, 341, 354, life and works, 364 ff. , compared with Langland, 373 ff. , 502 ff. , 510. Gower, Sir Robert, 364. Graal, quest of the, 141. Graham, Sir Robert, 504. Grammar, A. S. And English, 245. Granson, O. De, 275. "Graund Amoure, " 347, 496. Graystanes, Robert de, 166. Greek classics, 523 ff. Green, Mrs. , on XVth century trade and navy, 514. Gregory of Tours, 49. Gregory the Great, St. , 63; translated by Alfred, 81 ff. ; 123, 153. Gregory IX. , 160, 449 ff. , 463. Grein's _Bibliothek_, 40, 79. Grendel, 50 ff. , 69. Greteham, Robert of, 118, 123. Gretti and Beowulf, 49. Grignan, Madame de, 57. Grim, of Grimsby, 223. Grimbold, 81. Grindecobbe, 405. Griselda, 142, 289, 325, 331 ff. , 459, 478. Grosvenor, Sir Robert, 271. Grueber (and Keary) on A. S. Coins, 79. Gudrun, Queen, 44. Guesclin, Du, 115, 156. Guinevere, Queen, 139 ff. Guiron, lay of, 136. Guiscard, Robert, 107. _Gulliver_, 407. Gunnar, 42 ff. Güterbock on Bracton, 196. Guthrum, 80. _Guy of Warwick_, 223 ff. , 347, 500. Hacon, King, 200. Hadrian, 19. Haigh, D. H. , on _Beowulf_, 49. Hales, Alexander of, 193. " Thomas of, 211. _Hali Meidenhad_, 206. Hamlet, 57. Hampole, Rolle of, 207, life and works, 216 ff. ; 411. _Handlyng Synne_, 214, 216. Hardy, Sir T. D. , on Matthew Paris, 200. Hardyng, 497. Harold, Godwinson, 97 ff. , 198. Harold Hardrada, 98 ff. _Harrowing of Hell_, 443, 460. Harry, Blind, the minstrel, 506 ff. Hartley, Mrs. , the actress, 129. Hastings, battle of, Bk. Ii. C. I. , 97 ff. Haughton, 332. Hauréau, on G. De Vinesauf, 180. Hauteville, Jean de, 177. _Havelok_, lay of, 222, 223. Hawes, Stephen, 496, 513. Hawkwood, Sir J. , 257, 284. Hebenhith, Thomas de, 262. Hector of Troy, 305. Helen of Troy, 210. _Heliand_, 71. Hell, painted by Giotto, 206, represented at Torcello, 207, described, 210, besieged, 388, in Mysteries, 475, painted at Stratford-on-Avon, 494. Helwis, 448. Hemingburgh, Walter of, 201. Hengest, 62, 112, 220. Hengham, Judge, 238. Henry I. , Beauclerc, 176. Henry II. Of England, 106, 108, 109, 111, 112, 133, 156, 165, 176, 190, 198, 319. Henry III. , 107 ff. , 112, 200, 201, 262, 417, 441, 454. Henry IV. , 236, 240, 342, 365, 421. Henry V. , 500. Henry VII. , 202, 504, 511, 513. Henry VIII. , 242, 342, 436. Henryson, 497, 507 ff. , 513. Henslowe, Philip, 332. Hereford, Nicolas de, 433. Hereward, 224. _Hermit who got drunk_, 183. Herod, King, 326, 461, 469, 473, 479, 480 ff. Herrtage, on _Gesta Romanorum_, 183. Hervieux, on fabulists, 178. Heyroun, Thomas, 268. Heywood, Thomas, 500. Higden, Ralph, 201, 236, 240, 258, 406. Higelac (in _Beowulf_), 50 ff. Hilary, his Latin plays, 460. Hilda, abbess of Streonshalch, 63, 70. Hildgund, 48. Hincmar, of Reims, 63. Hippocrates, 315. _Hirdboc_, 81. _Historia Anglorum_, 199. _Historia ecclesiastica_ of Bede, 67 ff. , of Orderic Vital, 198. _Historia Novorum_, 198. _Historia Regum Britannia_, 133 ff. Histrions, 440 ff. Hniflungs (Niblungs), 43. Hoccleve, 341, 342, 496, 498, life and works, 501. Hohlfield, on Mysteries, 466. Holinshed, 114. Holkot, Robert, 167. Holy-Church, in Langland, 380. Holy-Grail, 223. Homer, 8, 127 ff. , 293, 297, 299, 523. Homilies, English, 206. Honecourt, Villard de, 200. Hood, Robin, 224, 359, 456. Horace, on Gauls, 7; 177, 180. _Horn_, 223. Horsa, 62, 112. Horstmann, on Lives of Saints, 208. Houghton, Adam, 415. _Hous of Fame_, 279, 285, 291, 294 ff. , 362, 497, 499. Hoveden, Roger de, 162, 164, 202. Hrothgar, in _Beowulf_, 50 ff. Hübner, baron de, 58. Hugh, St. , bishop of Lincoln, 165. Hugo, Victor, 3. Hugolino, 325, 330. Hugon, of Constantinople, 146. Humour, Chaucer's, 317 ff. , Wyclif's, 434 ff. , Pecock's, 520. Hundred Years' War, 202. Hungerford, Sir Thomas, 251. Huntingdon, Henry de, 132, 133, 166, 177, 199 ff. Huntingdon, earl of, 284. _Huon de Burdeux_, 223. Hus, John, 438. Iceland, its literature, 40 ff. _Image du Monde_, 120. _Inferno_, 118. Ingelend, 491. Innocent III. , 170, 449, 450, 463. Innocent IV. , 173. Innocents, feast of, 452. Invasions, Germanic, Bk. I. C. Ii. , 21 ff. , Scandinavian, 22 ff. , Frankish, 25, 33, Anglo-Saxon, 28 ff. , Danish, 79 ff. , French, Bk. Ii. , 95 ff. _Ipomedon_, 130. Ireland, its literature, 10 ff. , monks from, 63; 518. Irish language and literature, 10 ff. , at the University, 173 ff. Iscanus, 176. Iseult, 211, _see_ Tristan. _Isle of Ladies_, 279, 497. _Isumbras_, 347. Italy, models from, copied by Chaucer, 291 ff. , travels in, 283 ff. , early Renaissance in, 285 ff. Itineraries, 517. _Ivain_, 141. Jacquerie, 271. _Jacques le Fataliste_, 328. James, St. , 393. James I. Of Scotland, 372, 503 ff. " IV. " 510, 511. Jarrow, monastery of, 66. Jerome, St. , 26, 191, 241. Jessopp, Dr. , on Matthew Paris, 200. Jew, Wandering, 201. Jews, saved, 399, 420, 485. John the Baptist, St. , 455. John, King, Lackland, 108, 157, 441. John, King of France, 115, 254. John, the Saxon, 81. Johnson, Dr. , 57. Joinville, 404. _Jonathan Wild_, 336. Jonathas, the Jew, 485. Jones, Inigo, 476. Jongleur, d'Ely, 442. Jonson, Ben, 456, 522. Joseph and Mary, 479, 484, as a workman, 485. Joseph of Arimathea, 144, 223. Judas, 398. _Judith_, 39, 45, 71. Jugglers, 439 ff. Julian the Apostate, 471. _Juliana_, 72. Julleville, Petit de, on Mysteries, 457 ff. Junius (F. Dujon), 71. Jurists, 196 ff. Justinian, 26, 50, 120, 250. Jutes, 27 ff. , 51. Kaines, Ralph de, 211. Kaluza, on _Romaunt of the Rose_, 278. Keary, C. F. , on Vikings, 44, on coins, 79, on Danish place-names, 80. Kellawe, Richard de, 176. Kenelm, St. , 208. Kent, Eustache or Thomas of, 130. Kent, John, 290. "King and Queen, " Game of the, 444. _King Horn_, 223. _King's Quhair_, 505 ff. Kings, Wyclif on, 432. Kitredge, on _Troilus_. Kitsun, 522. Knight, Chaucer's, 314, 321, 324, 330, 504. Knighton, on Wyclif, 436. Knights, in Langland, 399. Knyvet, John, 416, 417. Koch, on Chaucer, 291. Kölbing, on romances, 223. La Calprenède, 300. Lactantius, 77. La Fontaine, 58, 179, 183, 226, 296, 298, 324, 325, 508. _Lai de l'Oiselet_, 142. _Lai du Cor_, 225. Lamartine, 17. _Lament for the Makaris_, 510. Lancaster, Blanche, duchess of, 280 ff. Lancaster, Henry of, 236, 240, _see_ Henry IV. Lancaster, _see_ Gaunt. Lancaster, Isabella of, 259. Lancelot of the Lake, 139 ff. , 192, 480. Landscapes, in Anglo-Saxon literature, 55, 58 ff. , 69 ff. , 71 ff. , 74, 92; in _Renart_, 152, in Chaucer, 281, 298, Scotch, 363, 508 ff. , Shakespeare's, 473. Lanfranc, 165, 193. Lang, Andrew, on Aucassin, 237. Lange, C. , on Easter, 458. Langland, William, 37, 240, 262, 345, 355, 359, life and works, Bk. Iii. C. Iv. , 373 ff. ; 422, 436, 441. Langlois, on _Roman de la Rose_, 276. Langtoft, Peter de, 118, 122, 214. Langton, Stephen, 145, 165, 169. Lapidaire, 123. Latimer, Hugh, 436. Latin, in Roman Britain, 20, in A. S. Britain, 65 ff. , in France, 78, in England after the Conquest, Bk. Ii. C. Iii. , 157 ff. , used by summoners, 161, poems, 176 ff. , fables, 178, romances and tales, 182 ff. , treatises 188 ff. , chronicles 197 ff. , despatches, 241, models of Chaucer, 291 ff. , Gower's, 367 ff. , Langland's, 377, survival of, 405, chroniclers, 405 ff. ; Wyclifs, 427 ff. ; 434; dramas, 457 ff. , 460, 481. Latini, Brunetto, 118, 241. Latymer, impeached, 253. Lauchert, on _Physiologus_, 76. "Laudabiliter, " bull, 110. _Launfal_, 230. Lavoix, H. , on mediæval music, 345. Laws, Welsh, 9, A. S. , 78, Roman, Anglo-Norman and English, 196. Lay, of Guiron, 222, of Havelok, 222. Layamon, 219 ff. , 243, 245, 247. Lazarillo de Tormes, 184. Leechdoms, A. S. , 79. _Legende of Good Women_, 279, 294, 343. _Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliæ, De_, 196. Leo IV. , Pope, 79. Leovenath, 219. Letters of the Paston family, 516. Leven, Hugues of, 265. Lewis, son of Chaucer, 341. Lewis, John, on Wyclif, 423. _Lex Salica_, 78. _Libelle of Englyshe Polycye_, 517 ff. _Liber Festivalis_, 208. Libraries, 166 ff. , 175, 524. Lincoln cathedral, 162. Lindbergh, John of, 215. Lindner on _Romaunt of the Rose_, 278. Lionne, Hugues de, 255. L'Isle, Alain de, 177. Lison, Richard de, 147. "Littus Saxonicum, " 27, 30. Lives of Saints, in A. S. , 76, by Ælfric, 91, in French, 121 ff. , in English, 203, 303, by Lydgate, 500. Lodbrok, Ragnar, 58. Logeman, on A. S. Reliquary, 73. Logic, taught in the Universities, 171. Loki, 44, 55. Lollards, 359, 437 ff. "Lollius, " 289. Lombards, 22, 23, 25, 26, 114. London, mediæval, 268 ff. , Chaucer's life in, 289 ff. , pageants in, 453 ff. , Mysteries, 460. _London Lickpeny_, 498. Lonelich, 223. Longchamp, William de, 162 ff. , 178, 261. Lorens, friar, 214, 215, 325. Lorenzetti, Ambrogio, 287. Lorris, Guillaume de, 276 ff. , 293. Loserth, on Hus, 438. Lot, J. , 11. Louis VII. Of France, 164. Louis IX. " 110, 201. Louis XI. " 519. Louis XIV. " 203, 241, 493. Lounsbury, on Chaucer, 343. Love, in Irish literature, 15 ff. , in Scandinavian literature, 42, in _Tristan_, 137 ff. , in Arthurian poems, 139 ff. , as a ceremonial, 140, in chansons, 143 ff. , in Latin tales, 185 ff. , in English songs, 230, poems by Chaucer, 272 ff. , 279, by Froissart, 274 ff. , in _Roman de la Rose_, 276 ff. , in Boccaccio, 299, 321, in Chaucer's _Troilus_, 301 ff. , in _Gawayne_, 349, songs, 354, in Gower, 366 ff. , 370 ff. , in Langland, 388, 399, in the early drama, 447, in _Mary Magdalene_, 483 ff. , "king of, " 505, in _King's Quhair_, 505 ff. , written about in prose, 522. "Lowe men, " their English, 204 ff. , and their French, 236 ff. Lowell, on Chaucer, 343. Lucanus, on Druids, 8; 114, 293, 297. _Lumière des laïques_, 120. Lutterworth, 423, 426. Lydgate, 303, 341, 354, 496, life and works, 498 ff. ; 502, 513, 515. _Lyf of Seinte Cecile_, 291, 294, 325, 331. _Mabinogion_, 9, 17. Macaulay, 122. _Mac Datho's Pig_, 13. Machault, 275, 325. Machinery, stage, 474 ff. Macpherson, 16. Mael Duin, 12. _Magnyfycence_, 491. Mahomet, 472, 483. Mahomet II. , 524. Maidstone, Richard of, 207, 454 ff. Maldon, battle of, 47. _Male règle de T. Hoccleve_, 502. Malmesbury, William of, 64, 100 ff. , 107, on Arthurian legends, 131 ff. , 166, 199. Malmesbury, Monk of, 197. Malory, Sir Thomas, 521, 522. Malvern, 375 ff. , 382 ff. , 394. Mandeville, Sir John, 403, 406 ff. _Manière de Langage_, 241. _Mantel Mautaillé_, 226. Mannyng, Robert, of Brunne, 214, 216, 243, 462. _Manuel des Pechiez_, 213, 216, 463 ff. Manuscripts, A. S. , 45, purchased for the king, 259, rich, 274, 303, of the _Roman de la Rose_, 277, of Chaucer, 338, of _Gawayne_, 351. Map, Walter, 188, life and works, 190 ff. Marcel, Etienne, 271. Marcol, 76. Mare, Peter de la, 419, Thomas de la, 419. Maréchal, William le, 121. Margaret, queen of Scotland, 511. Marguerite, la, poems on, 275. Marie de France, 142 ff. , 229, 325. Marisco, Adam de, 193, 211. Marivaux, 318. Marlowe, 75. Marseilles, king of, 430 ff. Martin, St. , of Tours, 99, 102, 110. Mary, _see_ Virgin. Mary Magdalen, St. , 452. _Mary Magdalene_, a drama, 475, 483 ff. , 490. "Masks, " 456. Mass, caricatured, 445. Massinger, 496. Matthew, F. D. , on Wyclif, 422, 432. Matthew, _see_ Paris. Maupassant, Gui de, 189. Maximinus, emperor, 459. May plays, 456. May songs, 230. Measure, sense of, 331 ff. , 479. Medicine, 194. Medwall, 491. Meed, Lady, 383 ff. , 397. _Melibeus_, tale of, 325, 331, 332, 490. _Ménagier de Paris_, 332. _Merchant of Venice_, Latin sketch of, 185 ff. Merchants, English, their wealth, 256, fond of art, 258 ff. , Chaucer's, 318, 325, fond of songs, 355 ff. , Gower's, 369, Langland's, 383 ff. , 400, of London, 424, at the play, 463. Mérimée, 199. Merlin, 134, 141. Merovingians, in _Beowulf_, 53. _Metalogicus_, 188 ff. Meun, Jean de, 177, 276 ff. Meyer, Kuno, 4. Meyer, Paul, on Alexander the Great, 128, on _Brut_, 219. Miller, Chaucer's, 321, 322, 324, 326, 335, 478. Milton, 71, 72, 245, 456. Mimes, 440 ff. Miniatures, A. S. , 45; 184, attributed to Matthew Paris, 201 ff. ; 227, 259, 277, 303, 341, 351, 371, by Fouquet, 470 ff. ; in the MS. Of the Valenciennes Passion, 470; 503. Minot, Laurence, 360 ff. Minstrels, 221, 345 ff. , in Langland, 382; 439 ff. , high and low, 445 ff. Miracle plays, 459. _Miracles de Notre Dame_, 489. _Miraclis pleyinge_, treatise on, 461 ff. , 468. _Mireio_, 144. Mirk, 496. _Miroir de Justice_, 239. Minstral, 144. Moktader, Caliph Al, 27. Molière, 229, 302, 404, 443, 472, 493. Monasteries, their wealth, 158; 179, literary work in, 197 ff. , Wyclif on, 437. Monk, Chaucer's, 315, 321, 325, 499. Monmouth, Geoffrey of, 114, life and works, 132 ff. , 182, 297. Monsters, in A. S. Literature, 50, 55 ff. , 92. Montaigne, 97, 323. Monteflor, Paul de, 264. Montesquieu, 255. Montfort, Simon de, 193, 250. _Moral Ode_, 206. Moralities, 84, 489 ff. Moravian Brethren, 438. Morgan the fairy, 134, 350. Morley, John, 343. Morris, William, 41. _Morte Arthure_, 223, 348, 521. Moubray, John de, 238. _Mous, uplandis_, 508 ff. Mowbray, family of, 109. Müntz, on Renaissance, 287. Musset, Alfred de, 139, 141, 143, 302, 394, 496. Mysteries, 326, 332, 459 ff. , decay of, 489 ff. , French, their end, 493. Napier, on _Ormulum_, 206. "Nature, " her discourses, 177, 371. _Nature_, an interlude, 491. _Naturis Rerum, De_, 177, 178. Navy, German and Scandinavian, 26 ff. , Alfred's, 27, English, 256 ff. , in the XVth century, 515, 517 ff. Neckham, Alexander, 177. Nennius, 114, 132. Netlau, 11. Netter, Thomas, 428. Neville, impeached, 253. Nevilles, family of the, 109. Newbury, William of, 134, 202. _Nibelungenlied_, 41, 48. Niblungs, 41, 43. Nicholas V. , 524. Nicholson, E. B. , on Mandeville, 407. Nithard, 78. Noah, his ark, 201, his wife, 484 ff. Norfolk, men of, 443. Normans, of France, Bk. Ii. C. I. , 97 ff. , their turn of mind, 182, 250. Norsemen, 27. Northgate, Michel of, 215. _Nova Poetria_, 179 ff. _Nugis Curialium, De_, 188 ff. , 190 ff. Nunant, Hugh de, 162 ff. _Nut-brown Maid_, 512. "Oblar, " 11. Ockham, 193, 194. Octa, 220. Octavian, 482. Odo, Bishop, 103, 105. Oedipus, 129. Oesterley, on _Gesta Romanorum_, 182, 183. Offa, 63, 68, 198. Ogier, 147, 156. Ohthere, travels of, 83 ff. "Old English, " 28. Oliver (and Roland), 55, 99, 159. "Ollam, " 11. Orcagna, 285. Orléans, Charles d', 354. Ormin, 206. _Ormulum_, 206. Orosius, 67, translated by Alfred, 82 ff. Orpheus, history of, told by Alfred, 85 ff. ; 338. Osric, King, 87. Ossa, 220. Ossian, 16. _Otia Imperialia_, 195. Otuel, 223. Ovid, 175, 276, 278, 293, 297, 325, 500. _Owl and Nightingale_, 330, 443. Oxenede, John of, 202. Oxford, University of, 110, 173 ff. , 248, and Wyclif, 423 ff. , council of, 434, lollardry at, 437; bacchanals at, 449. Pageants, 453 ff. , 468 ff. _Palace of Honour_, 510. _Palladius on Husbondrie_, 516. Palmieri, villa, 320. Pamphilus, 175. Pandarus, 302 ff. Panurge, 151. Pardoner, Chaucer's, 315, 323, 325; 435. Parfait, the brothers, 470. Paris, University of, 169 ff. Paris, Alexander de, 130. Paris, Gaston, 135, 141, 355. Paris, Matthew, 62, 63, 109, 112, 114, 200 ff. , 453, 459 ff. _Parlement of Foules_, 294. Parliament, churchmen in, 160, institution and authority of, 249 ff. , "good, " 246, 419; Chaucer in, 312, Langland on, 386, 390 ff. , sittings and debates, 413 ff. Parodies, 444 ff. Parson, Chaucer's, 315, 319, 325, 335, 339, 355, Langland's, 359. _Paston Letters_, 516 ff. _Patient Grissil_, 332. Patrick, St. , 215. Patroclus, 221. Paul, St. , 62, his vision, 92, 206, 215; 426, 472. Paul, monk of Caen, 198. Pauli, on Alfred the Great, 84. _Pearl_, 351 ff. Peasants, aspirations and revolt of, 359, 367 ff. , 389, 405 ff. , 412, reach heaven, 381, in the XVth century, 514. _Pechiez_, _see_ Manuel. Peckham, Pierre de, 120. Pecock, Bishop, 520 ff. Pedro the cruel, 325. _Pélerinage de Charlemagne_, 146 ff. Penthesilea, Queen, 129. Pepin, 156. Percival, 134, 141, 259. Percy, Bishop, 353. Percy, Lord Henry, 223, 516. _Pericles_, 372. Perrault, on Griselda, 332. Perrers, Alice, 253, 264, 397, 415, 419. Peter, St. , 435. Peterborough, pseudo Benedict of, 202. _Petite Philosophie_, 120. Petrarch, 166, 268, 285, 287 ff. , meets Chaucer (?) 289, 333; 293, 294, 325, 332, 366, 523. Petronius, 33. Pharaoh, 480 ff. Philip III. , of France, 214. Philip le Bel, " 193. Philip VI. , " 159, 360. Philippa of Hainaut, Queen, 273. Philippa Chaucer, 272 ff. _Philobiblon_, 167 ff. Philpot, John, 256, 284, 419. _Phoenix_, 76 ff. _Physiologus_, 76 ff. _Piers Plowman_, 374 ff. , 490. Pilate, 461, 480 ff. , his wife, 484. Pilgrims, Canterbury, 313 ff. , Langland's, 382 ff. Pinte, the hen, 150. Pisa, mediæval, 286. Pisa, Andrew of, 285, Nicholas of, 286, William of, 286. Pisan, Christina de, 277, 501. Pizzinghe, Jacopo, 288. "Placebo, " 379. Plantagenet, Geoffrey, archbishop of York, 163 ff. Players, 446 ff. , 467 ff. , 477. Plays, Bk. Iii. C. Vi. , 439 ff. Plegmund, 81. Pliny, 67, 408, 409. _Plowman's Crede, Complaint_, &c. , 401 ff. Poggio, 293. Poictiers, John of, 110, William of, 100, 104. Pole, Michel de la, 312, William de la, 417. _Policraticus_, 188 ff. Poliziano, 293. Polo, Marco, 408, 409. Poole, R. Lane on Wyclif, 428 ff. Pope, the, William blessed by, 99, and Norman kings, 110, gives Ireland to Henry II. , 110, derided, 148, suzerainty of, over England, 157, appeals to, 158, and the University, 170, 173 ff. , praised by Geoffrey of Vinesauf, 180, revenues of, drawn from England, 248, receives presents from Edward II. , 259, has no peer, 263, Langland on, 391, Commons hostile to, 420, and Wyclif, 423 ff. , on drama, 449 ff. , and king, 432. Pordenone, Odoric de, 409. Porto, county of, 107. Powell, York, 40. "Præmunire, " 248. _Praise of Peace_, 370. Prest, Godfrey, 265. _Pricke of Conscience_, 216. _Pride of Life_, 491. "Priests, simple or poor, " Wyclif's, 425 ff. Priests at the play, 450 ff. ; 463. Prioress, Chaucer's, 316, 321, 325. Priscian, 175. Processions, 357, 449, 453 ff. _Proprietatibus Rerum, De_, 195. Prose, A. S. , 78 ff. , English, 211 ff. , of Rolle of Hampole, 218, Chaucer's, 337, 411; XIVth century, Bk. Iii. C. V. , 403 ff. , English, compared with French, 404 ff. , Wyclif's, 432 ff. , Sir John Fortescue's, 519 ff. , Pecock's, 520, Malory's, 521, Caxton's, 521. Prosody, English, after the Conquest, 205, 245, Chaucer's, 339, Lydgate's, 501, Hoccleve's, 501. Prothesilaus, 130. _Proverbs of Alfred_, 88. Provins, Guiot de, 366. "Provisors, " 248. Pryderi, 17. Psalter, A. S. , 45, 76, French, 123, English, 207, 496. "Pui" of London, 355 ff. , 452. Puiset, Hugh de, 162 ff. , 261. _Punch_, 520. _Purgatorio_, 294, 295. Puritans, 57, 72, 389, 428, 437. Purvey, J. , 433. Pytheas, 4, 5. _Quenouille de Barberine_, 496. Quinctilian, 167. Quintus Curtius, 131. Racine, Jean, 150. Rabelais, 76, 91, 97, 172, 179, 193, 259, 440, 471, 492. Reason, speech of, 385. Recluse women, 211 ff. Reformation, 402, 427, 428, 491, and the drama, 492 ff. _Regimine Principum, De_, 501 ff. _Regula Pastoralis_, 81. Remi, bishop of Lincoln, 162. Renaissance, early in Italy, 285 ff. ; 346, 476, 510, 523 ff. Renan, E. , 210. _Renart_, _see_ Roman de. _Repressor_, Pecock's, 520. _Resurrection_, Mystery of the, 466. "Reverdies, " 144. "Rhyme Royal, " 506. Rhys on Celts, 11. Rhys ap Theodor, 198. Richard Coeur-de-Lion, 100, 106, 109, 163, praised by Geoffrey de Vinesauf, 180, 181; 329. Richard II. , 109, 247, 253, 264 ff. , 274, 284, 367, 375, 390, 414, 416, 420 ff. , 432, 452, 454 ff. , 495. Richard, bishop of London, 196. Richard, canon of Holy Trinity, 180. _Richard the Redeless_, 375, 382. Richardson, Samuel, 224, 333. Richenda, sister of W. De Longchamp, 163 ff. Riddles, A. S. And Scandinavian, 72. Rigaud, Eudes, 453. Rishanger, William, 202. _Robene and Makyne_, 507. Robert the Devil, 98, 347. _Robinson Crusoe_, 403, 407. Rocamadour, 393. Roet, Sir Payne, 273; Catherine, 373. Rogers, Thorold, 514. Roland, 54 ff. , 99, 100, 126, 139, 147, 159, 222, 347, 442, see _Chanson de_. Rollo, 99. Rolle, _see_ Hampole. Rolls, Master of the, Chronicles ed. Under his direction, 202. Roman, conquest of Britain, 18 ff. ; remains, 33 ff. ; law, 196. _Roman de la Rose_, 213, 259, 273, 276 ff. , English translation of, 278 ff. , 280, 288; 291, 298, 325, 371, 490. _Roman de Renart_, 132, 144, 147 ff. , 183, 228, 325, 328. _Roman de Rou_, 99, 101. _Roman de Thèbes_, 130. _Roman de Troie_, 129 ff. Romances, French, 126 ff. , caricatured, 146, 149, 335; English, 219; read by Chaucer, 273. Rome, sends monks to England, 60 ff. , notion of Church and State, derived from, 60 ff. , ties with, 157 ff. ; 248, blamed, 366, religious life in, 378, Langland on, 391, encroachments of, 420; 432. _Romulus_, 347. Ronsard, 97, 114, 339. Rood, A. S. , dream of the, 39, legends of the, 215. _Rose_, see _Roman de la_. Rossetti, on _Troilus_, 299. Rotelande, Hue de, 118, 130, 192. Rothschild, Baron James de, on Mysteries, 474. Round Table, 134, 330. Rufinus, Map's friend, 191. _Ruin_, 59. Runes, 65, 72, 73. Russell, John, 264. Rutebeuf, 397. Ruthwell cross, 73. Rymenhild, 223. Rysshetoun, Nicholas de, 241. Sachs, Hans, 332. _Sacrament_, play of the, 466, 485. _Sad Shepherd_, 456. Sagas, 40 ff. St. Albans, "Scriptorium" of, 197; chronicles of, 198, 405 ff. ; copies burnt, 460. St. David's, 32, 198, 261. _St. Josaphaz_, 123. St. Paul's Cathedral, 269, 281, 379, 423, 455. _Sainte Madeleine_, 484. Sainte More, Benoit de, 108, 114, 121, 129, 177, 299, 404. Saladin, 454, 456. Salisbury, John of, 106, 110, on Paris University, 172 ff. , life and works, 188 ff. , on jugglers, 440, 471. _Salomon and Saturnus_, 75, 443. Sanxay, ruins at, 30. Saracens, saved, 399; 420, 472. Sarr, Ralph de, 110. Sarradin, on Des Champs, 275. Satan, in A. S. Poems, 72. Satires and satirical poems, French, 146 ff. , Latin, 178 ff. , English, 225 ff. , 358, by Langland, 391 ff. , 397 ff. , by Dunbar, 510. "Saturnalia, " 450, 452. Saxons, 22 ff. , 25, 27. Scandinavian Literature, 40 ff. Schick, J. , on Lydgate, 498, 501. Schmidt, A. , on Mary Magdalen, 483. Sciences, among Anglo Saxons, 79, under Angevin kings, 193 ff. ; 410 ff. Scogan, 341. Scot, Duns, 193. Scotland, poets of, 362, 503 ff. Scott, Sir Walter, 362. "Scriptoria, " 197. Scroby, Allan, 452. Scrope, Sir R. , 271. Scyld, 50. _Seafarer_, 59. _Secret des Secrets_, 120. _Secretum Secretorum_, 500. _Secunda Pastorum_, 486 ff. _Sejanus_, 522. Selred, King, 87. Seneca, 278. _Sentier batu_, 444. Sergeant, L. , on Wyclif, 422, 427. Sergeant, Chaucer's, 318, 325. Sermons, A. S. , 88 ff. , French, 123 ff. , Latin, 146, with "exempla, " 154, English, 205 ff. , in Chaucer, 335, 354, in Langland, 387, by Wyclif, 434. _Serpent of Division_, 499. Severus, Emperor, 19. Sévigné, Madame de, 242. Shakespeare, 57, 93, 97, 134, 144, 244 ff. , 269, 302, 338, 441, 458, 472 ff. , 476 ff. , 482, 484, 492, 494, 523. Shareshull, William de, 416. Shepherds, play of, 457, 483, 486 ff. Sheridan, 517. Shipman, Chaucer's, 314, 325. Shoreham, William de, 207, 215. Shows, 453 ff. Sidney, Sir Philip, 279, 343, 473, 512. Sidonius Apollinaris, 33. _Siège d'Orléans_, a drama, 459. Sienna, mediæval, 287. Sievers, E. , on Cædmon, 71. Sigfried, 42. Simon, bishop of Ely, 421. Simpson, W. S. , on St. Paul's, 379. _Siriz, Dame_, 447 ff. Skeat, W. W. , 243, 244, on Langland, 375, on _Testament of Love_, 522. Skelton, 372, 491. Skirni, 42. Smith, Lucy Toulmin, on Mysteries, 466; 499. Socrates, 193, 278. Soderhjelm, on _Horn_, 223. Solomon, King, 372, 380. _Somme des Vices et des Vertus_, 214, 215, 325. Songs, "Goliardois, " 192; English, 230 ff. , 349, at Christmas, 450 ff. ; 512. Sophocles, 476. Sorel, Albert, 255. Southwark, 269, 313, 326, 365. Speaker, the, 251, 418, 419. _Spectator_, 296. _Speculum Charitatis_, 446. _Speculum Meditantis_, 366. _Speculum Stultorum_, 178 ff. Speeches, in Parliament, 236, 242, 413 ff. Spencer, H. , _see_ Despencer. Spenser, Edmund, 343. Spont, on Chaucer, 284. Squire, Chaucer's, 314, 325. _Squyr of Lowe Degre_, 347. _Stacions of Rome_, 517. Stafford, earl of, 419. Stage, the, Bk. Iii. C. Vi. , 439 ff. Stamford-bridge, 98. State, Roman idea of, 60 ff. , Wyclif on the rights of, 423 ff. , 430 ff. States General, in France, 254. Statius, 128, 293, 297, 495. Stephen, King, 106, 108, 133. Sterne, 225. Stilicho, 26. Stoker, Whitley, 11. Stonehenge, 4. Stow, J. , 460. Strasbourg, Gotfrit of, 135 ff. Stratford-at-Bow, French of, 240. Strode, Ralph, 290, 299, 364. Stuarts, 253, 362, 456, 503. Stubbes, Philip, 346. Stury, Sir Richard, 284, 377. Sudbury, Simon, 415, 431. Sudre, on _Renart_, 147. Suffolk, Duke of, 256, 354. Sully, Maurice de, 206. Summoners or Somnours, 161, Chaucer's, 325. Swalwe, John, 414. Swedes, in _Beowulf_, 53. Sweet, H. , 37, 45. _Swevenyng_, Book of, 243. Swift, 225, 336, 407, 520. Swinburne, 134, 136 ff. Swithin, St. , 209. Swynford, Thomas, 241. Tabard inn, 313 ff. , 342, 365, 382. Taborites, 438. Tacitus, 7, 9, 12, 20 ff. , 29, 31 ff. , 36, 46, 66, 73. Taillefer, at Hastings, 99. Taine, II. , 394, and Preface. Talbot, J. , earl of Shrewsbury, 497. Tale, tales, moralised, 123, French, 152 ff. , Latin, 182 ff. , English, 225, of the Basyn, 226, of Beryn, 320, and short stories, 320 ff. , of Gamelyn, 324, of Melibeus, 325, 331, 332, 490, by Gower, 370, told by histrions, 441, by Dunbar, 510. Tapestries, 262. _Tartufe_, 229. _Temple of Glas_, 498 ff. Ten Brink, 39, on Chaucer, 291. Tennyson, 17, 47, 134, 244, 342 ff. , and Preface. Terence, 167. _Teseide_, 294, 324. Tesoroni, on Ceadwalla, 63. _Testament of Cresseid_, 507. _Testament of Love_, 279, 522. Teutonic races, 22 ff. Thaon, Philippe de, 123. _Thebes_, Story of, 303, 497 ff. Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, 196. Theodebert, 50. Theodore of Tarsus, 68. Theodoric the Great, 26, 61, 84. Theseus, duke of Athens, 330. Thierri, king of Austrasia, 50. Thomas, author of _Horn_, in French, 223. Thomas, author of a _Tristan_, 134. Thompson, Maunde, 45, 406, 428, 433. _Thopas, Sir_, 325, 335, 340, 346. Thor, 44, 62. Thornton, Gilbert of, 197. _Thornton Romances_, 347. Thorpe, W. , 416. _Thre Lawes_, a comedy by John Bale, 491. _Thrissil and the Rois_, 511. _Thrush and Nightingale_, 230, 443. Thurkill, 215. Thurot, on the Paris University, 170 ff. Thynne, F. , 343. Tiberius, 473. Til Ulespiegel, 325. Tilbury, Gervase of, 195. Titus, 19, 106. Torcello, mosaic at, 207. Tort, Lambert le, 130. Tour Landry, Kt. De la, 265, 516. Tournaments, 109, 227, 260. _Towneley Mysteries_, 466 ff. Toynbee, on Mandeville, 407. Trade, English, 256 ff. , 514 ff. , 517 ff. Travels, by Englishmen, 257 ff. , in France, Bohemia, Italy, 282 ff. , of Mandeville, 403, 406 ff. Treasures in Scandinavian literature, 43, in A. S. Literature, 52 ff. Trees, not to be cut, 266. Trevisa, John of, 195, 201, 225, 240, 406. _Triall of Treasure_, 491. _Tristan and Iseult_, 134 ff. , 211, 222, 273, 372. Trivet, Nicholas, 202, 325. Trogus Pompeius, 33. _Troilus_ (and Cressida), 130, 293 ff. , 298 ff. , 339, 346, 364, 370, 372, 411, 454, 497, 500, 507, 512. Trojans, ancestors of European nations, 111 ff. _Trojan War_, 176. Trokelowe, John de, 202. _Troy Book_, 498 ff. Troyes, Chrestien de, 140. Tudors, 456, 490. _Turnament of Totenham_, 227. Tundal, 215. Tunstall, Sir Marmaduke, 427. Turks, besiege Constantinople, 524. Turpin, archbishop, 126. Tybert, the cat, 149 ff. , 184, 510. Uccello, Paolo, 257. Ulysses, 500. "Unam Sanctam, " bull, 432. University of Paris, 169 ff. , of Oxford and Cambridge, 173 ff. , 181 ff. _Uplandis Mous_, 508. Urban VI. , 426. Usener, on Boece, 85. Usnech, 13. _Utopia_, 387. Vacarius, 196. Valenciennes Passion, 470. Valerius (_alias_ Map), 191. Valkyrias, 42, 60, 223. Vandals, 22, 23, 26. Vandois, 438. Venus, described by Chaucer, 292, by Gower, 365, 372, by James I. , 506, _see_ Complaint. Vercingetorix, 6. Vespasian, 19. "Vice, " in Moralities, 491 ff. _Vices et Vertus_, _see_ Somme. _Vieil Testament_, Mystère du, 472 ff. Vigfusson, G. , 40. Vigny, Alfred de, 156. Vikings, 4, 44. Villon, 366, 498, 510, 520. Vinesauf, Geoffrey de, 179 ff. , 329. Virgil, 128, 167, 177, 186, 285, 293, 295, 299, 393, 495, 499, 510. Virgin Mary, 123, 183, 184 ff. , 215, 231, _see_ Joseph. Visconti, Barnabo, 284, 325. Visions, of St. Paul, Tundal, Thurkill, St. Patrick, 215, of Rolle of Hampole, 217, concerning Piers Plowman, 373 ff. Vital, Orderic, 62, 100, 104, 198, 202. Vitry, Jacques de, 154, 155, 409. Vocabulary, 237 ff. , after the Conquest, 243 ff. , of Chaucer, 338, 367, of Langland, 400, in the XVth century, 517. Voiture, 66. Volsungs, 41. Voltaire, 325. _Volucraire_, 123. _Vox and Wolf_, 152. _Vox Clamantis_, 366 ff. Wace, on Hastings, 99, 101; 114, 121, 134, 214, 215, 219 ff. , 404. Wadington, William of, 118, 123, 213, on drama, 463 ff. _Waldhere_, 41, 47, 48. Wales, partly conquered by William, 104, 105, described by Gerald de Barry, 188; _see_ Welsh. Walhalla, 41, 60, 61. Wall, of Hadrian, 18. Wallace, William, 506. Walsingham, Thomas, 200, 201, 359, 405 ff. , 412 ff. , on Wyclif, 424, 426, 427. Walter, archdeacon of Oxford, 133. Walter the Englishman, 177. Walter, Hubert, 196. Waltheof, 224. Walworth, Sir William, 284. Warner, G. F. , on Mandeville, 406. _Wanderer_, 59. Wandering Jew, 201. War-songs, Germanic, 46, A. S. , 46 ff. , 65. Ward, H. L. D. , on _Beowulf_, 49, on Map, 192. Warwick, _see_ Guy. Washbourn, Richard, 414. Waterford, Geoffrey de, 120, 123. Waurin Jean de, 122. Weber, H. W. , on Romances, 223. Wedmore, peace of, 80. "Wednesday, " 62. _Weeping Bitch_, 154, 184, 447 ff. , 484. Weland, 49. Welsh language, 5, laws, 9, literature, 17, 47, legends on Arthur, 131, traditions, 210. Wendover, Roger de, 200 ff. Werferth, bishop of Worcester, 83, 86. Wesley, 216, 438. Westminster Abbey, 342. Wey, William, 517. Whitsuntide plays, 459. Whittington, Richard, 256. _Widsith_, 38. Wife of Bath, 191, 316, 318, 324, 325, 370, 461, 462. _Wife's Complaint_, 59. Wilfrith, St. , 64, 66. William the Conqueror, 98 ff. , 110, 111, 116, 157, 198, 247. William Rufus, 158, 414. _William of Palerne_, 223, 348. Willibrord, St. , 64. Winchester, Godfrey of, 177. Windisch, 11. Winfrith (St. Boniface), 64. Wireker, Nigel, 178 ff. Woden, 29, 58, 60 ff. , 65, 69, 80. Woman, in Celtic literature, 15 ff. , in Scandinavian literature, 42, in A. S. Sermons, 90, in _Chanson de Roland_, 125 ff. , in chansons, 144 ff. , satirised by Map, 191, in English songs, 230 ff. , in Chaucer, 303 ff. , 332 ff. , in Boccaccio, 308, 321, in _Gawayne_, 349, excluded from the _Pui_ Society, 357, satirised, 358, 369, in Langland, 387. Women, _see_ Legend. Woodkirk Mysteries, 465 ff. Worcester, Florence of, 202. Wordsworth, 343. Workmen, London, in Chaucer, 315, singing, 355, St. Joseph one of them, 485 ff. Wren, Christopher, 269. Wright, Aldis, on Robert of Gloucester, 122. _Wright's Chaste Wife_, 496. Wulfstan, the homilist, 89. Wulfstan, the traveller, 84. Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester, 112, 209. Wülcker, on Cædmon, 71. Wyclif, 154, 218, 389, life and works, 422 ff. , 520 ff. Wyclif Society, 427. Wykeham, William of, 175, 261, 416 ff. Wyntoun, Andrew de, 496. _Year Books_, 118, 238 ff. Ymagynatyf, 376. _York plays_, 465 ff. , their end, 493. Ypres, John of, 424. Ysengrin, 149 ff. Zeno, Apostolo, 332. Zimmer, 11. Zupitza, on _Beowulf_, 48, on Guy of Warwick, 224. Transcriber's Notes The year in Roman numerals has been retained as it is in the original. Changed owned to owed on page 249, "allegiance is only owed"Added opening parenthesis in footnote 166, "see also P. Meyer"Added opening parenthesis in footnote 337, "cf. Bramlette's article"