A Literary History of the English People Part 46

[657] Musset, "Nuit de Decembre."

[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, two in each half line; the two accentuated syllables of the first half line, and the first accentuated syllable of the second half line are alliterated, and commence by the same "rhyme-letter:"

I _sh_ope me in _sh_roudes as I a _sh_epe were.

(B. Prol. 2.) It is not necessary for alliteration to exist that the letters be exactly the same; if they are consonants, nothing more is wanted than a certain similitude in their sounds; if they are vowels even 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 t.i.tle and dignity of "Father of English prose" has been borne by Sir John Mandeville, of St. Albans, knight, who, "in the name of G.o.d glorious," left his country in the year of grace 1322, on Michaelmas Day, and returned to Europe after an absence of thirty-four years, twice as long as Robinson Crusoe remained in his desert island.

This t.i.tle belongs to him no longer. The good knight of St. Albans, who had seen and told so much, has dwindled before our eyes, has lost his substance and his outline, and has vanished like smoke in the air. His coat of mail, his deeds, his journeys, his name: all are smoke. He first lost his character as a truthful writer; then out of the three versions of his book, French, English, and Latin, two were withdrawn from him, leaving him only the first. Existence now has been taken from him, and he 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; he has joined, in the kingdom of the shades and the land of nowhere, his contemporary the famous "Friend of G.o.d of the Oberland," who some time ago also ceased to have existed.

One thing however remains, and cannot be blotted out: namely, the book of travels bearing the name of Mandeville the translation of which is one of the best and oldest specimens of simple and flowing English prose.

I.

The same phenomenon already pointed out in connection with the Anglo-Saxons occurs again with regard to the new English people. For a long time (and not to speak of practical useful works), poetry alone seems worthy of being remembered; most of the early monuments of the new language for the sake of which the expense of parchment is incurred are poems; verse is used, even in works for which prose would appear much better fitted, such as history. Robert of Gloucester writes his chronicles in English verse, just as Wace and Benoit de Sainte-More had written theirs in French verse. After some while only it is noticed that there is an art of prose, very delicate, very difficult, very worthy of care, and that it is a mistake to look upon it in the light of a vulgar instrument, on which every one can play without having learnt how, and to confine oneself to doing like Moliere's Monsieur Jourdain "de la prose sans le savoir."

At the epoch at which we have arrived, and owing to the renovation and new beginnings occasioned by the Conquest, English prose found itself far behind French. In the fourteenth century, if French poets are poor, prose-writers are excellent; as early as the twelfth and thirteenth there were, besides Joinville, many charming tale writers who had told in prose delightful things, the loves of Auca.s.sin and Nicolette, for example; now, without speaking of the novelists of the day, there is Froissart, and to name him is to say enough; for every one has read at least a few pages of him, and a single page of Froissart, taken haphazard in his works, will cause him to be loved. The language glides on, clear, limpid, murmuring like spring water; and yet, in spite of its natural flow, art already appears. Froissart selects and chooses; the t.i.tle of "historian," which he gives himself, is no mean one in his eyes, and he strives to be worthy of it. The spring bubbles up in the depths of the wood, and without muddying the water the artist knows how to vary its course at times, to turn it off into ready prepared channels, and make it gush forth in fountains.

In England nothing so far resembles this scarcely perceptible and yet skilful art, a mixture of instinct and method, and many years will pa.s.s before prose becomes, like verse, an art. In the fourteenth century English prose is used in most cases for want of something better, from necessity, in order to be more surely understood, and owing to this its monuments are chiefly translations, scientific or religious treatises, and sermons. An English Froissart would at that time have written in Latin; several of the chronicles composed in monasteries, at St. Albans and elsewhere, are written in a brisk and lively style, animated now by enthusiasm 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's account of the revolt of the peasants in 1381, for example, well deserves to be read, with the description of the taking of London that followed, the sack of the Tower and the Savoy Palace, the a.s.sa.s.sination of 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 been beheaded yesterday at Hertford,"[667] and goes back to his prison to suffer death. Every detail is found there, even the simple picturesque detail; the rebels arm themselves as they can, with staves, rusty swords, old bows blackened by smoke, arrows "on which only a single feather remained." The account of the death of Edward III. in the same annals is gloomy and tragic and full of grandeur. In the "Chronicon Angliae,"[668] the anonymous author's burning hatred for John of Gaunt inspires him with some fiery pages: all of which would count among the best of old English literature, had these historians used the national idiom. The prejudice against prose continued; to be admitted to the honours of parchment it had first to be enn.o.bled; and Latin served for that.

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, with numerous errors, but in simple style, the famous Universal History, "Polychronicon," of Ralph Higden,[669] and the scientific encyclopaedia, "De Proprietatibus Rerum,"[670] of Bartholomew the Englishman. The first of these works was finished in 1387, and had at the Renaissance the honour of being printed by Caxton; the second was finished in 1398.

The English translation of the Travels of Mandeville enjoyed still greater popularity. This translation is an anonymous one.[671] It has been found out to-day that the original text of the "Travels" was compiled in French by Jean de Bourgogne, physician, usually called John-with-the-Beard, "Joannes-ad-Barbam," who wrote various treatises, one in particular on the plague, in 1365, who died at Liege in 1372, and was buried in the church of the Guillemins, where his tomb was still to be seen at the time of the French Revolution.[672] John seems to have invented the character of Mandeville as Swift invented Gulliver, and Defoe Robinson Crusoe. Now that his imposture is discovered, the least we can do is to acknowledge his skill: for five centuries Europe has believed in Mandeville, and the merit is all the greater, seeing that John-with-the-Beard did not content himself with merely making his hero travel to a desert island; that would have been far too simple. No, he unites beforehand a Crusoe and a Gulliver in one; it is Crusoe at Brobdingnag; the knight comes to a land of giants; he does not see the giants, it is true, but he sees their sheep (the primitive sheep of Central Asia); elsewhere the inhabitants feed on serpents and hiss as serpents do; some men have dogs' faces; others raise above their head an enormous foot, which serves them for a parasol. Gulliver was not to behold anything more strange. Still the whole was accepted with enthusiasm by the readers of the Middle Ages; with kindness and goodwill by the critics of our time. The most obvious lies were excused and even justified, and the success of the book was such that there remain about three hundred ma.n.u.script copies of it, whereas of the authentic travels of Marco Polo there exist only seventy-five. "Mandeville" had more than twenty-five editions in the fifteenth century and Marco Polo only five.[673]

Nothing, indeed, is more cleverly persuasive than the manner in which Jean de Bourgogne introduces his hero. He is an honest man, somewhat nave and credulous perhaps, but one who does not lack good reasons to justify if need be his credulity; he has read much, and does not hide the use he makes of others' journals; he reports what he has seen and what others have seen. For his aim is a practical one; he wants to write a guide book, and receives information from all comers. The information sometimes is very peculiar; but Pliny is the authority: who shall be believed in if Pliny is not trusted? After a description of wonders, the knight 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, and if I had not seen them. He felt so sure of his own honesty that he challenged criticism; this disposition was even one of the causes why he had written in French: "And know you that I should have turned this booklet into Latin in order to be more brief: but for the reason that many understand better romance," that is French, "than Latin, I wrote in romance, so that everybody will be able to understand it, and that the lords, knights, and other n.o.blemen, who know little Latin or none, and have been over the sea, perceive and understand whether I speak truth or not. And if I make mistakes in my narrative for want of memory or for any cause, they will be able to check and correct me: for things seen long ago, may be forgotten, and man's memory cannot embrace and keep everything."[674]

And so the sail is spread, and being thus amply supplied with oratorical precautions, our imaginary knight sets out on his grand voyage of discovery through the books of his closet. Having left St. Albans to visit Jerusalem, China, the country of the five thousand islands, he journeys 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 a.s.sures us, omitting many so as not to weary our faith: It would be too long to say all; "y seroit trop longe chose a tot deviser." With fanciful wonders are mingled many real ones, which served to make the rest believed in, and were gathered from well-informed authors; thus Mandeville's immense popularity served at least to vulgarise the knowledge of some curious and true facts. He describes, for example, the artificial hatching of eggs 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 of n.o.bility for the women to have tiny feet, on which account they are bandaged in their infancy, that they may only grow to half their natural size; the magnetic needle which points out the north to mariners; the country of the five thousand islands (Oceania); the roundness of the earth, which is such that the inhabitants of the Antipodes have their feet directly opposite to ours, and yet do not fall off into s.p.a.ce any more than the earth itself falls there, though of much greater weight.

People who start from their own country, and sail always in the same direction, 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 pa.s.sionately fond of travels; Higden and others had, as has been seen, noted this trait of the national character. This account of adventures attributed to one of their compatriots could not fail therefore greatly to please them; they delighted in Mandeville's book; it was speedily translated,[676] soon became one of the cla.s.sics of the English language, and served, at the time of its appearance, to vulgarise in England the use of that simple and easy-going prose of which it was a model in its day, the best that had 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 and most remarkable.[678] We owe several to Chaucer; they pa.s.s unnoticed in the 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 his treatise on the Astrolabe. His prose is laboured and heavy, sometimes obscure; he, whose poetical similes are so brilliant and graceful, comes to write, when he handles prose, such phrases as this: "And, right by ensaumple as the sonne is hid whan the sterres ben cl.u.s.tred (that is to seyn, whan sterres ben covered with cloudes) by a swifte winde that highte Chorus, and that the firmament stant derked by wete ploungy cloudes, and that the sterres nat apperen up-on hevene, so that the night 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 (that is to seyn, chaseth it a-wey, and discovereth the closed day): than shyneth Phebus y-shaken with sodein light, and smyteth with his bemes in mervelinge eyen."[679] Chaucer, the poet, in the same period of his life, perhaps in the same year, had expressed, as we have seen, the same idea 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 obstacle stops him; he needs the blue paths of the air. High-flying birds are bad walkers.

II.

Under a different form, however, prose progressed in England during the course of the fourteenth century. This form is the oratorical.

The England of Chaucer and Langland, that poetical England whose prose took so long to come to shape, was already, as we have seen, the parliamentary England that has continued up to this day. She defended her interests, bargained with the king, listened to the speeches, sometimes very modest ones, that the prince made her, and answered by remonstrances, sometimes very audacious. The affairs of the State being even then the affairs of all, every free man discussed them; public life had developed to an extent with which nothing in Europe could be compared; even bondmen on the day of revolt were capable of a.s.signing themselves a well-determined goal, and working upon a plan. They destroy the Savoy as a means of marking their disapprobation of John of Gaunt and his policy; but do not plunder it, so as to prove they are fighting for an idea: "So that the whole nation should know they did nothing for the love of lucre, death was decreed against any one who should dare to appropriate anything found in the palace. The innumerable gold and silver 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 silk and gold would be torn. And it was done so."[681]

Many eloquent speeches were delivered at this time, vanished words, the memory of which is lost; the most impa.s.sioned, made on heaths or in forest glades, are only known to us by their results: these burning words 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 most celebrated of all, we have a Latin summary; it is the famous English harangue made at Blackheath, by the rebel priest, John Ball, at the time of the taking of London.[682]

Under a quieter form, which might already be called the "parliamentary"

form, but often with astonishing boldness and eloquence, public interests are discussed during this century, but nearly always in French at the palace of Westminster. There, doc.u.ments abound; the Rolls of Parliament, an incomparable treasure, have come down to us, and nothing is easier than to attend, if so inclined, a session in the time of the Plantagenets. Specimens of questions and answers, of Government speeches and speeches of the Opposition, have been preserved. Moreover, some of the buildings where these scenes took place still exist to-day.[683]

First of all, and before the opening of the session, a "general proclamation" was read in the great hall of Westminster, that hall built by William Rufus, the woodwork of which was replaced by Richard II., and that has been lately cleared of its c.u.mbrous additions.[684] This proclamation forbids each and all to come to the place where Parliament sits, "armed with hoquetons, armor, swords, and long knives or other sorts of weapons;" for such serious troubles have been the result of this wearing of arms that business has been impeded, and the members of Parliament have been "effreietz," frightened, by these long knives.

Then, descending to lesser things, the proclamation goes on to forbid the street-boys of London to play at hide-and-seek in the palace, or to perform tricks on the pa.s.sers-by, such as "to twitch off their hoods"

for instance, which the proclamation in parliamentary style terms improper games, "jues nient covenables." But as private liberty should be respected as much as possible, this prohibition is meant only for the duration 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 of the "great" having been delayed on the way by bad weather, bad roads, or other impediments.[686] Another day is then fixed upon for the solemn opening of the business.

All being at last a.s.sembled, the king, the lords spiritual and temporal and the Commons, meet together in the "Painted Chamber." The Chancellor explains 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 good many of them. Sometimes it is a simple, clear, practical discourse, enumerating, without any studied phrases or pompous terms, the points that are to be treated; sometimes it is a flowery and pretentious oration, adorned with witticisms and quotations, and compliments addressed to the king, as is for instance the speech (in French) of the bishop of St. David's, Adam Houghton, Chancellor of England in 1377:

"Lords and Gentlemen, I have orders from my lord the Prince here present, whom G.o.d save," the youthful Richard, heir to the throne, "to expound the reason why this Parliament was summoned. And true it is that the wise suffer and desire to hear fools speak, as is affirmed by St.

Paul in his Epistles, for he saith: _Libenter suffertis insipientes c.u.m sitis ipsi sapientes._ And in as much as you are wise and I am a fool, I understand 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 Scripture saith that every messenger bringing glad tidings, must be always welcome; and I am a messenger that bringeth you good tidings, wherefore I must needs be welcome."

All these pretty things are to convey to them that the king, Edward III., then on the brink of the grave, is not quite so ill, which should be a cause of satisfaction for his subjects. Another cause of joy, for everything seems to be considered as such by the worthy bishop, is this illness itself; "for the Scripture saith: _Quos diligo castigo_, which proves that G.o.d him loves, and that he is blessed of G.o.d." The king is to be a "vessel of grace," _vas electionis_.[687] The Chancellor continues thus at length, heedless of the fact that the return of Alice Perrers to the old king belies his Biblical applications.