A Literary History of the English People Part 38

... 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 "Complete Works," vol. i. p. 379.

[553] "Je te suppliray seulement d'une chose, lecteur, de vouloir bien p.r.o.noncer mes vers et accomoder ta voix a leur pa.s.sion ... et je te supplie encore de rechef, ou tu verras cette marque: (!) vouloir un peu eslever ta voix pour donner grace a ce que tu liras." Preface of the "Franciade."

[554] So says the Parson, who adds:

Ne, G.o.d wot, rym holde I but litel bettre.

Parson's Prologue, l. 43. It will be observed that while _naming_ simply rhyme, he _caricatures_ alliteration.

[555] 1391, in "Complete Works," vol. iii. On that other, _possible_ son of 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 to the king himself); "L'Envoy de Chaucer a Scogan"; "L'Envoy de Chaucer a Bukton," on marriage, with an allusion to the Wife of Bath; "The Compleynt 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 this friendship 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 gla.s.s 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 ill.u.s.trated. See in "English Novel in the time of Shakespeare," p. 45, a facsimile of the woodcut representing the pilgrims seated at the table of the Tabard inn.

[562] "Animadversions uppon the Annotacions and corrections of some imperfections 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 that he in that mistie time could see so clearly, or that wee in this cleare age walke so stumblingly after him." "Apologie for Poetrie," ed. Arber, p. 62.

[566] The subject of Chaucer's fame is treated at great length in Lounsbury's "Studies in Chaucer, his life and writings," London, 1892, 3 vols. 8vo, vol. iii. ch. vii., "Chaucer in Literary History."

[567] The Chaucer Society, founded by Dr. Furnivall, which has published among other things, the "Six-text edition of the Canterbury Tales"; some "Life Records of Chaucer"; various "Essays" on questions concerning the poet's works; a collection of "Originals and a.n.a.logues" ill.u.s.trative of the "Canterbury Tales," &c. Among modern tributes paid to Chaucer may be added Wordsworth's modernisation of part of "Troilus" (John Morley's ed., 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 whole swarm 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 seen beneath the sun, alone in the midst of an open country. Chaucer is without 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 he had a.s.sociated on the road to Canterbury. Some are continuators of the old style, and others are reformers; some there are, filled with the dreamy spirit of the Anglo-Saxons; there are others who care little for dreams 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 like clarions, and celebrate the battle of Crecy, of which Chaucer had not spoken; others resemble lovers' serenades; others a dirge for the dead.

I.

The old styles are continued; the itinerant poets, jugglers, and minstrels have not disappeared; on the contrary, they are more numerous than ever. "Merry England" favours them; they continue to play, as under 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.

Pa.s.sing from county to county, hawking news, composing satirical songs, they fill also the place of a daily gazette; they represent public opinion, sometimes create it, and often distort it; they are living newspapers; they furnish their auditors with information about the misdeeds of the Government, which, from time to time, seizes the most talkative, and imprisons them to keep them silent. The king has minstrels in his service; they are great personages in their way, pensioned by the prince and despising the others. The n.o.bles also keep some in their pay, which does not prevent their welcoming those who pa.s.s; they feast them when they have sung well, and give them furred robes and money.[569]

They continue to prosper in the following century. We see at that time the king of England's minstrels, people clever and of good instruction, protesting against the increasing audacity of sham minstrels, whose ignorance casts discredit on the profession. "Uncultured peasants," says the king in a vengeful statute, "and workmen of different kinds in our kingdom of England ... have given themselves out to be our own minstrels."[570] Without any experience or understanding of the art, they go from place to place on festival days, and gather all the money that should have enriched the true artists, those who really devote themselves to their profession and ply no manual craft. Vain efforts; decline was imminent; minstrels were not to recover their former standing. The Renaissance and the Reformation came; and, owing to the printing-press, gay scavoir found other means of spreading through the country. 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 bawdye parasits as range the c.u.n.treyes, ryming and singing of uncleane, corrupt, and filthie songes in tavernes, ale-houses, innes, and other publique a.s.semblies.... Every towne, citie, and countrey is full of these minstrelles to pype up a dance to the devill; but of dyvines, so few there be as they maye hardly be seene."[571]

Before this awful time comes for them, however, the minstrels thrive under the last Plantagenets. Their bill is a varied one, and includes the best and the worst; they sometimes recite the "Troilus" of Chaucer,[572] and sometimes the ancient romances of chivalry, altered, spoiled, shorn of all their poetry. Chaucer had ridiculed these versions of the old heroic stories, written in tripping verses, but in vain.

Throughout his life, after as well as before "Sir Thopas," he could wonder and laugh at the success of stories, composed in the very style of his own burlesque poem, about heroes who, being all peerless, are necessarily all alike: one is "stalworthe and wyghte," another "hardy and wyght," a third also "hardy and wyght"; and the fourth, fifth, and hundredth are equally brave and invincible. They are called Isumbras, Eglamour, Degrevant[573]; but they differ in their names and in nothing more. The booksellers of the Renaissance who printed their histories could make the same woodcut on the cover serve for all their portraits.

By merely altering the name beneath, they changed all there was to change; one and the same block did duty in turn for Romulus or Robert the Devil.[574] Specimens of this facile art swarm indefinitely; they are scattered over the country, penetrate into hamlets, find their way into cottages, and make the people acquainted with the doughty deeds of Eglamour and Roland. We now find ourselves really in the copse.

In the middle of the copse are trees of finer growth. Some among the poets, while conforming to the old style, improve upon their models as they proceed; they add an original note of their own, and on that account deserve to be listened to. Far above those empty, tripping metrical stories, and superior even to "Morte Arthure" and to "William of Palerne,"[575] written in English verse at the time of Chaucer, ranks "Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight,"[576] being incomparably the best specimen of the style. Instead of puppets with jerky movements, and wooden joints that we hear crack, the English poet shows in this work real men and women, with supple limbs and red lips; elegant, graceful, and charming to behold. These knights and ladies in their well-fitting armour or their tight dresses, whom we see stretched in churches on their fourteenth-century tombs, have come back to life once more; and now they move, they gaze on each other, they love again.

On Christmas day, in presence of Arthur and his whole Court, Sir Gawayne cuts off the head of the Green Knight. This giant knight is doubtless an enchanter, for he stoops, picks up his head, and, remounting his horse, bids Sir Gawayne meet him a year hence at the Green Chapel, where he will give him blow for blow.

The year pa.s.ses. Gawayne leaves the Court with his horse "Gringolet,"

and without quitting England, rides through unknown lands, having no one to speak to save G.o.d. He reaches the gate of a splendid castle, and is welcomed by a knight of ordinary stature, under whose present appearance he does not recognise his adversary the giant. Three days are left before the date of the tryst; they are spent in amus.e.m.e.nts. The knight 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 beautiful woman ever seen, on condition that Gawayne, in his turn, will give him what he has taken during his absence. Every night they gaily sup in the hall; a bright light burns on the walls, the servants set up wax torches, and serve at table. The meal is cheered by music and "caroles newe,"[577] jests, and the laughter of ladies.[578] At three o'clock each morning the lord of the castle rises, hears ma.s.s, and goes a-hunting. Gawayne is awakened from sleep by his hostess; she enters his room, with easy and graceful movements, dressed in a "mery mantyle" and furred 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 a.s.sailed by terrible temptations. The thought of the Green Chapel, fortunately, helps him to overcome them, and the first, second, and third night his fair friend finds him equally coy. She kisses him once, twice, thrice, and jeers at him for forgetting each day what she had taught him on the previous one, namely, to kiss. When the hunter returns in the evening, Gawayne gives him 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 a marvellous belt, which protected the wearer from all danger, but he says nothing about this, and puts it on: "Aux grands coeurs donnez quelques faiblesses," our author obviously thinks, with Boileau.

On the fourth day Gawayne starts with a guide, and reaches the Green Chapel; the Green Giant is there, ready to give him back the blow received a year before. Gawayne stoops his head under the dreadful axe, and just as it falls cannot help bending his shoulders a little. You are not that Gawayne, says the giant, held in such high esteem. At this, Arthur's knight straightens himself; the giant lifts his axe again and strikes, but only inflicts a slight wound. All is now explained: for the kisses 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 a scar on his neck. Vexed, he throws away the belt, but the giant returns it to him, and consoles him by admitting that the trial was a superhuman one, that he himself is Bernlak de Haut-Desert, and that his guest has been 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 only look at the belt, and the temptation will vanish. He rejoins Arthur and his peers, and tells his adventures, which afford food both for laughter and for admiration.

The poem is anonymous. The same ma.n.u.script contains another, on a totally different subject, which seems to be by the same author. This poem has been called "The Pearl;"[580] it is a song of mourning. It must have been written some time after the sad event which it records, when the bitterness of sorrow had softened. The landscape is bathed in sunlight, the hues are wonderfully bright. The poet has lost his daughter, his pearl, who is dead; his pearl has fallen in the gra.s.s, and he has been unable to find it; he cannot tear himself away from the spot where she had been. He entered in that arbour green; it was August, that sunny season, when the corn has just fallen under the sickle; there the pearl 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 in the sun, banks of crystal; birds sing in the branches, and neither cistern nor guitar ever made sweeter music. The sound of waters, too, is heard; a brook glides over pebbles shining like the stars in a winter's night, at the hour when the weary sleep.[582]