A Literary History of the English People Part 57

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 a different atmosphere; the imitation is not so close a one; a greater proportion of a Celtic blood maintains differences; more originality survives; the decline is less apparent. The best poets of English tongue, "Inglis" as they call it, "oure Inglis," Dunbar says, are, in the fifteenth century, Scots. Among them are a king, a monk, a schoolmaster, a minstrel, a bishop.

The king is James I., son of Robert III., of the family of those Stuarts nearly all of whom were destined to the most tragic fate. This one, taken at sea by the English, when only a child, remained nineteen years confined in various castles. Like a knight of romance, and a personage in a miniature, he shortened the hours of his captivity by music, reading, and poetry; the works of Chaucer and Gower filled him with admiration. Then he found a better comfort for his sorrows; this knight of miniature and of romance saw before him one day the maiden so often painted by illuminators, the one who appears amidst the flowers and the dew, Auca.s.sin's Nicolette, the Emily of the Knight's Tale, the one who brings happiness. She appeared to the king, not in a dream but in reality; her name was Jane Beaufort, she was the daughter of the Earl of Somerset, and great grand-daughter of John of Gaunt. In her family, too, there were many tragic destinies; her brother was killed at the battle of St. Albans; her three nephews perished in the Wars of the Roses; her grand-nephew won the battle of Bosworth and became king Henry VII. A mutual love sprang up between the two young people, and when James was able 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 the grave of one of his literary masters, the poet Gower.

His reign lasted thirteen years, and they were thirteen years of struggle: vain endeavours to regulate and centralise a kingdom composed of independent clans, all brave and ready for foreign wars, but quite as ready, too, for civil ones. a.s.sisted by his queen of romance, the knightly poet displayed in this task an uncommon energy, and was, with all his faults, one of the best kings of Scotland. He had many children; one of his daughters became dauphiness of France, and another d.u.c.h.ess of Brittany. Towards the end of 1436, he had so many enemies among the turbulent chieftains that sinister prophecies began to circulate; one of them announced the speedy death of a king; and as he played at chess on Christmas 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 to myself, do you likewise." But the king of love had nothing to fear.

During the night of the 20th of February, 1437, an unwonted noise was suddenly heard in the courtyard of the monastery of Perth where James lodged; it was Robert Graham and his rebel band. Vainly did the king offer resistance, though unarmed; the foe were too numerous, and they stretched him dead, pierced with sixteen sword wounds.

The constant love of the king for Jane Beaufort had been celebrated by himself in an allegorical poem, imitated from Chaucer: "The King's Quhair," a poem all aglow with bright hues and with the freshness of youth.[848] The prince is in bed at night, and, like Chaucer in his poem of the d.u.c.h.ess, unable to sleep, he takes up a book. It is the "Consolation" of Boethius, and the meditations of "that n.o.ble senatoure"

who had also known great reverses, occupied his thoughts while the night hours 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 adding Tysiphone whom he takes for a Muse, because he is less familiar with mythology than Chaucer, tells what befell him, how he parted with his friends, when quite a boy, was imprisoned in a foreign land, and from the 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 kingdom of Venus, and finds her stretched on her couch, her white shoulders covered with "ane huke," a loose dress that Chaucer had not placed upon them. Then he reaches the kingdom of Minerva; and pa.s.sing through dissertations, beds of flowers, and groups of stars, he returns to earth, rea.s.sured as to his fate, with the cert.i.tude of a happiness promised him both by Venus and Minerva. A eulogy on Gower and Chaucer closes the poem, which is written in stanzas of seven lines, since called, 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 in London; he runs extraordinary dangers and has wonderful escapes; he slays; he is slain; he recovers; his body is thrown over the castle wall, and picked up by his old nurse; the daughter of the nurse, nurse herself, revives the corpse with her milk. The language is simple, direct and plain; the interest lies in the facts, and not in the manner in which they are told; and this, to say the truth, is also the case with chap-books.

Blind Harry continues Barbour rather than Chaucer, but Chaucer resumes his rights as an ancestor with Henryson and Dunbar. The former[851] sits with his feet to the fire one winter's night, takes "ane drink" to cheer him, and "Troilus" to while away the time. The little homely scene is described in charming fashion; one seems, while reading, to feel the warmth of the cosy corner, the warmth even of the "drink," for it must have 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 the frail 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, or fables. His "Robene and Makyne" is a "disputoison" between a shepherd and shepherdess. Makyne loves Robin, and tells him so; and he accordingly 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 a lamentable ending; but let us not sorrow overmuch; on these pathless moors people are sure to meet, and since they quarrelled and parted for ever, 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 this Roman turns out to be aesop, "poet laureate;" there is no room for doubt: we are in the Middle Ages. aesop recites his fables in such a new and graceful manner, with such a pleasing mixture of truth and fancy, that he never told them better, not even when he was a Greek slave, and saved his head by his wit.

Henryson takes his time; he observes animals and nature, and departs as much 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 affirmed without forgetting La Fontaine.

The two mice are sisters; the elder, a mouse of importance, established in town, well fed on flour and cheese, remembers, one day, her little sister, and starts off at dusk to visit her. She follows lonely paths at night, creeps through the moss and heather of the interminable Scottish bogs, and at last arrives. The dwelling strikes her as strangely miserable, frail, and dark; a poor little thief like the younger sister does not care much about burning dips. Nevertheless, great is the joy at meeting; the "uplandis mous" produces her choicest stores; the "burges mous" looks on, unable to quite conceal her astonishment. Is it not nice? 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 c.u.m 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 bogs which have by turns charmed and wearied many others besides mice.

They reach the elder sister's. There are delicious provisions, cheese, b.u.t.ter, 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 great mouse runs to her hole, and the little one, not knowing where to hide herself, 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, is unable to answer. The great mouse warms and comforts her: 'tis all over, do not fear;

c.u.m to your meit, this perell is overpast.

But no, it is not all over, for now comes "Gilbert" (for Tybert, the name of the cat in the "Roman de Renart"), "our jolie cat"; another rout ensues. This time, perched on a part.i.tion where Tybert cannot reach her, the field mouse takes leave of her sister, makes her escape, goes back to the country, and finds there her poverty, her peas, her nuts, and her tranquillity.

The mouse of Scotland has been fortunate in her painters; another, and a still 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 ill.u.s.trious house of the Douglas, earls of Angus, the translator of Virgil, and with William Dunbar, a mendicant friar, favourite of James IV., sent by him on missions 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 of Honour," imitated from Chaucer.[852] Dunbar,[853] with never flagging spirit, attempts every style; he composes sentimental allegories and coa.r.s.e tales (very coa.r.s.e indeed), satires, parodies, laments.[854] His fits of melancholy do not last long; he must be ill to be sad; however keen his satires, they are the work of an optimist; they end with laughter and not with tears. He is nearer to Jean des Entommeures than to William Langland.

His princ.i.p.al poems, "The Goldyn Targe," on the targe or shield of Reason exposed to the shafts of Love; "Thrissil and the Rois" (thistle and rose) are close imitations of the Chaucer of the "Parlement of Foules" and of the "Hous of Fame," with the same allegories, the same abstract personages, the same flowers, and the same perfumes. The "Thrissil and the Rois," written about 1503, celebrates the marriage of Margaret, rose of England, daughter of Henry VII., to James IV., thistle of Scotland, the flower with a purple crown: that famous marriage which was 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, to imitate Chaucer, decks his pictures with glaring colours, and "out-Chaucers Chaucer." His flowers are too flowery, his odours too fragrant; by moments it is no longer a delight, but almost a pain. It is not sufficient that his birds should sing, they must sing among perfumes, 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 different degrees, among the poets of England and of Scotland, nearly without exception. The anonymous poems, "The Flower and the Leaf," "The Court of Love," &c.,[856] imitated from Chaucer, exhibit the same symptoms. The only ones who escape are, chiefly in the region of the Scottish border, those unknown singers who derive their inspiration directly from the people, who leave books alone, and who would not be found, like Henryson, sitting by the fireside with "Troilus" on their knees. These singers remodel in their turn ballads that will be remade after them,[857] and which have come down stirring and touching; love-songs, doleful ditties, the ride of the Percy and the Douglas[858] ("Chevy Chase"), that, in spite of his cla.s.sic tastes, Philip Sidney admired in the time of Elizabeth. Though declining in castles, poetry still thrills with youth along the hedges and in the copses; and the best works of poets with a name like Dunbar or Henryson are those in which are found an echo of the songs of the woods and moors. This same echo lends its charm to the music of the "Nut-brown Maid,"[859] that exquisite love-duo, a combination of popular and artistic poetry written by a nameless 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 of the poets most appreciated at that time, Lydgate, Henryson, Dunbar, Stephen Hawes,[860] represent a dying art; they write as architects build, and their literature is a florid one; their poems are in Henry VII.'s style. Their roses are splendid, but too full-blown; they have expended all their strength, all their beauty, all their fragrance; no store of youth is left to them; they have given it all away; and what happens to such roses? They shed their leaves; of this past glory there will soon remain nothing save a stalk without petals.

III.

The end of the feudal world has come, its literature is dying out; but at the same time a double revival is preparing. The revival most difficult to follow, but not the least considerable, originated in the middle and lower cla.s.ses of society. While great families destroy each other, humble ones thrive: only lately has this fact been sufficiently noticed. So long as the historian was only interested in battles and in royal quarrels, the fifteenth century in England was considered by every one, except by that keen observer, Commines, to be the time of the war of 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 the entire century, and as if the whole nation, stunned with horror, had remained aghast and immobile. Curiosity has been felt in our days as to whether this impression was a correct one, and it has been ascertained to be false. Instead of being absorbed in the contemplation of these dreadful struggles, holding its breath at the sight of the slaughter, the nation paid very little attention to them, and regarded these doings in the light of "res inter alios acta."

Feudalism was perishing, as human organisations often perish, from the very fact of its having attained its full development; feudal n.o.bles had so long towered above the people that they were now almost completely severed from them; feudalism had pushed its principle so far that it was about to die, like the over-blown roses of Dunbar. While the n.o.bles and their followers, that crowd of _bravi_ that the statutes against maintenance had vainly tried to suppress, strewed the fields of Wakefield, Towton, and Tewkesbury with their corpses, the real nation, the ma.s.s of the people, stood apart and was engaged in a far different occupation. It strove to enrich itself, and was advancing by degrees towards equality between citizens. A perusal of the innumerable doc.u.ments of that epoch, which have been preserved and which concern middle cla.s.ses, leave a decided impression of peaceful development, of loosening of bondage, of a diffusion of comfort. The time is becoming more remote, when some sat on thrones and others on the ground; it begins to be suspected that one day perhaps there may be chairs for everybody. In the course of an examination bearing on thousands of doc.u.ments, Thorold Rogers found but two allusions to the civil wars.[861] The duration of these wars must not, besides, be exaggerated; by adding one period of hostilities to another it will be found they lasted three years in all.

The boundaries between the cla.s.ses are less strictly guarded; war helps to cross them; soldiers of fortune are enn.o.bled; merchants likewise. The importance of trade goes on increasing; even a king, Edward IV., makes attempts at trading, and does not fear thus to derogate; English ships are now larger, more numerous, and sail farther. The house of the Canynges of Bristol has in its pay eight hundred sailors; its trading navy counts a _Mary Canynge_ and a _Mary and John_, which exceed in size all that has. .h.i.therto been seen. A duke of Bedford is degraded from the peerage because he has no money, and a n.o.bleman without money is tempted to become a dangerous freebooter and live at the expense of others.[862]

For the progress is noticeable only by comparison, and, without speaking of open wars, brigandage, which is dying out, is not yet quite extinct.