Amenities of Literature Part 22

This seems to be a random stricture. The alderman, indeed, has carefully registered the mayors and the sheriffs of London; and the scientific in "high and low prices" perhaps may be grateful that our pristine chronicler has also furnished the prices of wheat, oxen, sheep, and poultry--but we cannot find that he has commemorated the diversified forms these took on the solemn tables of the Guildhall, nor can we meet with the pasteboard pomps of city pageants, one only being recorded, on the return of Henry the Sixth from France.

Our modern critic, composing in the spirit of our day, alludes to "the struggle for public liberty"; but "public liberty" must have been a very ambiguous point with the honest citizen who had been a sad witness to the contests of two murderous families, who had long sought their mutual destruction, and long convulsed the whole land. We may account for the tempered indifference, and "the brief recitals" for which this simple citizen is reproached, who had lived through such changeful and ensanguined scenes, which had left their bleeding memories among the families of his contemporaries.

The faculties of Fabyan were more level with their objects when he had to chronicle the "tempestuous weathering of thunder and lightning," with the ominous fall of a steeple, or "the image of our Lady" dashed down from its roof; or when he describes the two castles in the air, whence issued two armies, black and white, combating in the skies till the white vanished! Such portents lasted much later than the days of Fabyan, for honest Stowe records what had once ushered in St. James's night, when the lightning and thunder coming in at the south window and bursting on the north, the bells of St. Michael were listened to with horror, ringing of themselves, while ugly shapes were dancing on the steeple. Their natural philosophy and their piety were long stationary, yet even then some were critical in their remarks; for when Fabyan recorded "flying dragons and fiery spirits in the air," this was corrected by omitting "the fiery spirits," but agreeing to "the flying dragons." Fabyan, however, has preserved more picturesque and ingenious visions in some legends of saints or apparitions--still delightsome.

These legends formed their "Works of Fiction," and were more affecting than ours, for they were supernatural, and no one doubted their verity.

Our pristine chronicler, as we have seen, has received hard measure from the two eminent critics of the eighteenth century, who have censured as a history that which is none. Chronicles were written when the science of true history had yet no existence; a chronicle then in reality is but a part of history. Every fact dispersed in its insulated state refuses all combination; cause and effect lie remote and obscured from each other; disguised by their ostensible pretexts, the true motives of actions in the great actors of the drama of history cannot be found in the chronological chronicler. The real value of his diligence consists in copiousness and discrimination; qualities rather adverse to each other. FABYAN betrays the infirmities of the early chronicler, not yet practised even in the art of simple detail, without distinction of the importance or the insignificance of the matters he records: his eager pen reckoned the number without knowing to test the weight; to him all facts appeared of equal worth, for all alike had cost him the same toil; and thus he yields an abundance without copiousness. In raising the curiosity which he has not satisfied for us, his mighty tome shrinks into a narrow scope, and his imperfect narratives, brief and dry, offer only the skeletons of history. The mere antiquarian indeed prefers the chronicle to the history; the acquisition of a fact with him is the limit of his knowledge, and he is apt to dream that he possesses the superstructure when he is only at work on the foundations.

The Chronicle of FABYAN attracts our notice for a remarkable incident attending its publication. The Chronicle was finished in 1504, and remained in ma.n.u.script during the author's life, who died in 1512. The first edition did not appear till 1516. The cause which delayed the printing of an important work, for such it was in that day, has not been disclosed; yet perhaps we might have been interested to have learned whether this protracted publication arose out of neglect difficult to comprehend, or from the printer, reluctant to risk the cost, or from any impediment from a higher quarter.

Be this as it may, we possess the writer's genuine work, for the printer, Pynson, was faithful to his author. The rarity of this first edition Bale, on a loose rumour which no other literary historian has sanctioned, ascribes to its suppression by Cardinal Wolsey, who is represented in his fury to have condemned the volume to a public ignition, which no one appears to have witnessed, for its "dangerous exposition of the revenues of the clergy," which is not found in the volume. FABYAN truly was _ter Catholicus_; he was of the old religion, dying in the odour of sanct.i.ty, and was spared the trial of the new. The alderman's voluminous will is now for us at least as curious as anything in his chronicle.[1] We here behold the play of the whole machinery of superst.i.tion, when men imagined that they secured the repose of their souls by feeing priests and bribing saints by countless ma.s.ses. This funereal rite was then called "the month's mind," and which, at least for that short period, prolonged the memory of the departed. For this lugubrious performance were provided ponderous torches for the bearers, tapers for shrines, and huge candlesticks to be kept lighted at the altar. Three trentb.a.l.l.s--that is, thirty ma.s.ses thrice told--were to be chorused by the Grey Friars; six priests were to perform the high ma.s.s, chant the requiem, and recite the _De Profundis_ and the _Dirige_; and for nine years, on his mortuary day, he charges his "tenement in Cornhill" to pay for an _Obite_! But not only friars and priests were to pray or to sing for the repose of the soul of Alderman Fabyan, all comers were invited to kneel around the tomb; and at times children were to be called in, who if they could not read a _De Profundis_ from the Psalter, the innocents were to cry forth a _Pater-Noster_ or an _Ave_!

There was a purveyance of ribs of beef and mutton and ale, "stock-fish, if Lent," and other recommendations for "the comers to the _Dirige_ at night." The Alderman, however, seems to have planned a kind of economy in his "month's mind," for not only was the repose of his soul in question, but also "the souls of all above written"--and these were a bead-roll of all the branches of Fabyan's family.

The Chronicle of FABYAN was not long given to the world when it encountered the doom of a system at its termination, just before the beginnings of a coming one; that fatal period of a change in human affairs and human opinions, usually described as a state of transition.

But in this particular instance, the change occurred preceded by no transitional approach; for within the small circuit of thirty years it seemed as if the events of whole centuries had been more miraculously compressed, than any in those "lives of the saints" whose legendary lore, provided the saints were English, Master FABYAN had loved to perpend. It was Henry the Eighth who turned all the sense of our chronicler into nonsense, all his honest faith into lying absurdities, all his exhortations to maintain "religious houses" into treasonable matters.

Successive editors of the editions of 1533, 43, and 55, surpa.s.sed each other in watchfulness, to rid themselves of the old song. Never was author so mutilated in parts, nor so wholly changed from himself; and when, as it sometimes happened, neither purgation nor castration availed the reforming critics, the author's sides bore their marginal flagellations. The corrections or alterations were, however, dexterously performed, for the texture of the work betrayed no trace of the rents.

The omission of a phrase saved a whole sentence, and the change of an adjective or two set right a whole character. It is true they swept away all his delightful legends, without sparing his woful metres of "the seven joys of the Blessed Virgin," and his appreciation of some favourite relics. They disbanded all the saints, or treated them as they did "the holy virgin Edith," of whom Fabyan has recorded that "many _virtues_ be rehea.r.s.ed," which they delicately reduced to _verses_. His Holiness the Pope is simply "the Bishop of Rome;" and on one memorable occasion--the Papal interdiction of John--this "Bishop" is designated in the margin by the reformer as "that monstrous and wicked Beast." The narrative of Becket cost our compurgators, as it has many others, much shifting, and more omissions. In the tale of the hardy and ambitious Archbishop murdered by knightly a.s.sa.s.sins, Fabyan said, "They _martyred_ the blessed Archbishop;" our corrector of the press simply reads, "They slew the traitorous Bishop." The _omissions_ and the commissions in the Chronicle of FABYAN are often amusing and always instructive; but these could not have been detected but by a severe collation, which has been happily performed. When the antiquary Brand discovered that FABYAN had been "_modernized_" in later editions, his observation would seem to have extended no further than to the style: but the style of FABYAN is simple and clear even to modern readers: modernized truly it was, not however for phrases, but for notions--not for statements, but for omissions--not for words, but for things.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] We are indebted to the zealous research of Sir Henry Ellis for the disinterment of this doc.u.ment as well as for the collations which appear in his edition.

HENRY THE EIGHTH; HIS LITERARY CHARACTER.

Peace and policy had diffused a halcyon calmness over the land, and the people now discerned the approach of another era. Henry the Eighth, who appears with such opposite countenances in the great gallery of history, gave the country more glorious promises of an accomplished sovereign than England had yet witnessed; and however he may appear differently before the calm eye of posterity, the pa.s.sions of his own times secured his popularity even to his latter days. Youthful, with all its vigorous and generous temper, and not inferior in the majesty of his intellect any more than in that of his person--learned in his closet, yet enterprising in action--this sovereign impressed his own commanding character on the nation. Such a monarch gave wings to their genius. Long pent up in their unhappy island, they soon indulged in a visionary dominion in France, and in rapid victories in Scotland; insular England once more aspired to be admitted into the great European family of states; and Henry was the arbiter of Francis of France, and of Charles of Germany. The awakened spirit of the English people unconsciously was preparatory to the day which yet no one dreamed of. The minds of men were opening to wider views; and he who sate on the throne was one who would not be the last man in the kingdom to be mindless of its progress.

This lettered monarch himself professed authorship, and a sceptre was his pen. When he sent forth a volume which all Europe was to read, and was graced by a new t.i.tle which all Europe was to own, who dared to controvert the crowned controversialist, or impugn the validity of that airy t.i.tle? His majesty alone was allowed to confute himself.[1] Trained from his early days in scholastic divinity, for he was designed to be an archbishop, the volume, however aided by others, was the native growth of his own mind. The king's taste for this learning was studiously flattered by the great cardinal, who gently recommended to his restless master a perusal of the nineteen folios of Thomas Aquinas, possibly with the hope of fixing the royal fly in the repose of the cobwebs of the schoolmen. Such, indeed, were his habits of study, that he could interest himself in compiling a national Latin grammar, when the schools succeeded to the dissolved monasteries. The grammar was issued as an act of parliament; no other but the royal grammar was to be thumbed without incurring the peril of a premunire.[2]

It is to be regretted that we are supplied with but few literary anecdotes of this literary monarch. Some we may incidentally glean, and some may be deduced from inference. The age was not yet far enough advanced in civilization to enjoy that inquisitive leisure which leaves its memorials for a distant posterity in the court tattle of a Suetonius, or the secret history of a Procopius. It has, however, been recorded that certain acts of parliament and proclamations were corrected by the royal pen, and particularly the first draught of the act which empowered the king to erect bishoprics was written by his own hand; and he was the active editor of those monarchical pamphlets, as they may be cla.s.sed, on religious topics, which were frequently required during his reign.

This learned monarch was unquestionably the first patron of our vernacular literature; he indulged in a literary intercourse with our earliest writers, and evinced a keen curiosity on any novelty in the infant productions of the English press. On frequent occasions he took a personal interest in the success, and even in the concoction, of literary productions. He fully entered into the n.o.ble designs of Sir Thomas Elyot to create a vernacular style, and critically discussed with him the propriety of the use of new words, "apt for the purpose."

And on one occasion, when Sir Thomas Elyot projected our first Latin dictionary, the king, in the presence of the courtiers, commended the design, and offered the author not only his royal counsel, but a supply of such books as the royal library possessed.

The king was not offended, as were some of the courtiers, with the freedom displayed by Elyot in some of his ethical works. Elyot tells us--"His grace not only took it in the better part, but with princely words, full of majesty, commended my diligence, simplicity, and courage, in that I spared no estate in the rebuking of vice." The king, at the same time that he protected Elyot from his petty critics, rewarded the early efforts of another vernacular author, who had dedicated to him his first work in English prose, by a pension, which enabled the young student, Roger Ascham, to set off on his travels. A remarkable instance of Henry's quick attention to the novelties of our literature appears by his critical conversation with the antiquary, Thynne, who had presented to him his new edition of Chaucer. His Majesty soon discovered the novelty of "The Pilgrim's Tale," a bitter satire on the pride and state of the clergy, which at the time was ascribed to Chaucer. The king pointing it out to the learned editor, observed, in these very words--"William Thynne! I doubt this will not be allowed, for I suspect the bishops will call thee in question for it." The editor submitted, "If your grace be not offended, I hope to be protected by you." The king "bade him go! and fear not!" It is evident that his majesty was "not offended" at a severe satire on the clergy. But even Henry the Eighth could not always change at will his political position--the minister in power may find means to counteract even the absolute king. A great stir was made in Wolsey's parliament; it was even proposed that the works of Chaucer should be wholly suppressed--some good-humoured sprite rose in favour of the only poet in the nation, observing that all the world knew that Dan Chaucer had never written anything more than fables! The authority of Wolsey so far prevailed that "The Pilgrim's Tale" was suppressed, and it seems that the haughty prelate would willingly have suppressed the editor in his own person. THYNNE was an intimate acquaintance of SKELTON, whose caustic rhymes of "Colin Clout" had been concocted at his country-house. THYNNE, in this perilous adventure of publishing "The Pilgrim's Tale," was saved from the talons of the cardinal, for this monarch's royal word was at all times sacred with him.

A literary anecdote of this monarch has been recently disclosed, which at least attests his ardour for information. When Henry wanted time, if not patience, to read a new work, he put copies into the hands of two opposite characters, and from the reports of these rival reviewers the king ventured to deduce his own results. This method of judging a work without meditating on it, was a new royal cut in the road of literature, to which we of late have been accustomed; but it seemed with Henry rather to have increased the vacillations of his opinions, than steadied the firmness of his decisions.

The court of Henry displayed a brilliant circle of literary n.o.blemen, distinguished for their translations, and some by their songs and sonnets. Parker, Lord Morley, was a favourite for his numerous versions, some of which he dedicated to the king; the witty Wyat, who always sustained the anagram of his name, was a familiar companion; nor could Henry be insensible to the elegant effusions of Surrey, unless his political feelings indisposed his admiration. It was at the king's command that Lord Berners translated the "Chronicles of Froissart," and the volume is adorned by the royal arms. Sternhold, the memorable psalm-enditer, was a groom of the chamber, and a personal favourite with his master; and Henry appointed the ill.u.s.trious Leland to search for and to preserve the antiquities of England, and invested him with the honourable t.i.tle of "The King's Antiquary."

Scholars, too, stood around the royal table; and the company at the palace excelled that of any academy, as Erasmus has told us. Learning patronised by a despot became a fashionable accomplishment, and the model for the court was in the royal family themselves. It is from this period that we may date that race of learned ladies which continued through the long reign of our maiden queen. Yet, before the accession of Henry the Eighth, half a century had not elapsed when female literature was at so low an ebb that Sir Thomas More noticed as an extraordinary circ.u.mstance that Jane Sh.o.r.e could read and write. When Erasmus visited the English court, he curiously observed that "The course of human affairs was changed; the monks, famed in time pa.s.sed for learning, are become ignorant, and WOMEN LOVE BOOKS." Erasmus had witnessed at the court of Henry the Eighth the Princess Mary and Elizabeth, both of whom held an epistolary correspondence in Latin; the daughter of Sir Anthony Cook, and Lady Jane Grey, versed in Greek; and the Queen Catherine Parr, his fervent admirer for his paraphrase on the four gospels. Erasmus had frequented the house of the More's, which he describes as a perfect _musarum domicilium_. The venerable Nicholas Udall, a contemporary, has also left us a picture of that day. "It is now a common thing to see young virgins so nouzeld (nursed) and trained in the study of letters, that they willingly set all other vain pastimes at nought--reading and writing, and with most earnest study, both early and late." The pliable n.o.bility of Henry the Eighth easily took the bend of the royal family, and among their daughters, doubtless, there were more learned women than are chronicled in Ballard's "Memoirs." Lady Jane Grey meditating on Plato was not so uncommon an incident as it appears to us in the insulated anecdote. The learning of that day must not be held as the pedantry of a later, for it was laying the foundations of every knowledge in the soil of England.

The king's more elegant tastes diffused themselves among the finer arts at a time when they were yet strangers in this land; his father's travelled taste had received a tincture of these arts when abroad, in Henry the Eighth they burst into existence with a more robust apt.i.tude.

He eagerly invited foreign artists to his court; but the patronage of an English monarch was not yet appreciated by some of the finest geniuses of Italy; we lay yet too far out of their observation and sympathies; and it is recorded of one of the Italian artists, a fiery spirit, who had visited England, that he designated us as _quelle bestie Inglesi_.

Raphael and t.i.tian could not be lured from their studios and their blue skies; but, fortunately, a northern genius, whose name is as immortal as their own, was domiciliated by the liberal monarch, the friend of Erasmus and of More--Hans Holbein.

Among the musicians of Henry we find French, Italians, and Germans; he was himself a musician, and composed several pieces which I believe are still retained in the service of the Royal Chapel.[3] He had a taste for the gorgeous or grotesque amus.e.m.e.nts of the Continent, combining them with a display of the fine arts in their scenical effects. One memorable night of the Epiphany, the court was startled by a new glory, where the king and his companions appeared in a scene which the courtiers had never before witnessed. "It was a mask after the manner of Italy, a thing not seen afore in England," saith the chronicler of Henry's court-days. Once, to amaze a foreign emba.s.sy, and on a sudden to raise up a banqueting-house, the monarch set to work the right magicians; an architect, and a poet, and his master of the revels, were months inventing and labouring. The regal banqueting-house was adorned by the arts of picture and music, of sculpture and architecture; all was full of illusion and reality; the house itself was a pageant to exhibit a pageant. The magnificent prince was himself so pleased, that he anxiously stopped his visitors at the points of sight most favourable to catch the illusion of the perspective. A monarch of such fine tastes and gorgeous fancies would create the artists who are the true inventors.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The ma.n.u.script of Henry the Eighth reposes in the Vatican, witnessed by his own hand in this inscription:--"Anglorum Rex, Henricus Leoni X. 'mitt.i.t hoc opus et fidei testem et amicitiae.'"--I found this inscription in one of the notes of Selden to the "Polyolbion" of Drayton.

[2] The famous Grammar of Lilly was the work of a learned a.s.sociation, in which it appears that both the king and the cardinal had the honour to co-operate. Sir Thomas Elyot has designated Henry "as the chief author."--Preface to "The Castle of Health."

[3] Sir John Hawkins' "History of Music," vol. ii.

BOOKS OF THE PEOPLE.

The people of Europe, who had no other knowledge of languages than their own uncultivated dialects, seem to have possessed what, if we may so dignify it, we would call a fugitive literature of their own. It is obvious that the people could not be ignorant of the important transactions in their own land; transactions in which their fathers had been the spectators or the actors, the sons would perpetuate by their traditions; the names of their heroes had not died with them on the battle-field. Nor would the villain's subjection to the feudal lord spoil the merriment of the land, nor dull the quip of natural facetiousness.

Before the people had national books they had national songs. Even at a period so obscure as the days of Charlemagne there were "_most ancient songs_, in which the acts and wars of the old kings were sung." These songs which, the secretary of Charlemagne has informed us, were sedulously collected by the command of that great monarch, are described by the secretary, according to his cla.s.sical taste, as _barbara et antiquissima carmina_; "barbarous," because they were composed in the rude vernacular language; yet such was their lasting energy that they were, even in the eighth century, held to be "most ancient," so long had they dwelt in the minds, of the people! The enlightened emperor had more largely comprehended their results in the vernacular idiom, on the genius of the nation, than had the more learned and diplomatic secretary. It was an ingenious conjecture, that, possibly, even these ancient songs may in some shape have come down to us in the elder northern and Teutonic romances, and the Danish, the Swedish, the Scottish, and the English popular ballads. The kindling narrative, and the fiery exploits which entranced the imagination of Charlemagne, mutilated or disguised, may have framed the incidents of a romance, or been gathered up in the s.n.a.t.c.hes of old wives' tales, and, finally, may have even lingered in the nursery.

Our miserable populace had poets for themselves, whose looser carols were the joy of the streets or the fields. Unfortunately we only learn that they had such artless effusions, for these songs have perished on the lips of the singers. The monks were too dull or too cunning to chronicle the outpourings of a people whom they despised, and which a.s.suredly would have often girded them to the quick. A humorous satire of this kind has stolen down to us in that exquisite piece of drollery and grotesque invention, "The Land of c.o.kaigne."[1] They had historical ballads which were rehea.r.s.ed to all listeners; and it was from these "old ballads, popular through succeeding times," that William of Malmesbury tells us that "he learned more than from books written expressly for the information of posterity," though he will not answer for their precise truth. They had also political ballads. A memorable one, free as a lampoon, made by one of the adherents of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, in the fugitive day of his victory in 1264, occasioned a statute against "slanderous reports or tales to cause discord betwixt king and people," a spirit which by no means was put down by that enactment.[2] This was a ballad sung to the people, as appears by the opening line,--

Sitteth all stille, and harkeneth to me!

This ballad strikingly contrasts with another of unnerving dejection, after the irreparable defeat of the party, and the death of the Earl of Leicester, which, it is remarkable, is written in French, having been probably addressed solely to that discomfited n.o.bility who would sympathise with the lament.[3]

The people, or the inferior cla.s.ses of society, who despised the courtly French then in vogue, formed such a mult.i.tude, that it was for them that ROBERT of GLOUCESTER wrote his Chronicle, and that ROBERT of BRUNNE translated the Chronicle of Peter Langtoft, and a volume of recreative tales from the French. The people even then were eager readers, or, more properly, auditors; and this further appears in the navete of our rhymer's prologue to this Chronicle. The monk tells us, that this story of England which he now shows in English, is not intended for the learned, but the illiterate; not for the clerk, but the layman;

Not for the lerid, but the lewed;[4]

and he describes the cla.s.s, "they who take solace and mirth when they sit together in fellowship," and deem it "wisdom for to witten" (to know)

The state of the land, and haf it written.

The Hermit of Hampole expressly wrote his theological poems for the people, for those who could understand only English.

At a period when we glean nothing from any literature of the people, we find that it had a positive existence; for two chronicles and a collection of tales and theological poems were furnished for them in their native idiom, by writers who unquestionably sought for celebrity.

The people, too, had what in every age has been their peculiar property,--all the fragmentary wisdom of antiquity in those "Few words to the Wise," so daily useful, or so apt in the contingencies of human life; proverbs and aesopian fables, delightedly transmitted from father to son. The memories of the people were stored with short narratives; for a startling tale was not easily forgotten. They had songs of trades, appropriated to the different avocations of labourers. These were a solace to the solitary task-worker, or threw a cheering impulse when many were employed together. Such HALL aptly describes as

Sung to the wheel, and sung unto the payle.[5]

These songs are found among the people of every country; and these effusions were the true poetry of the heart, which kept alive their social feelings. The people had even the greater works brought down for them to a diminutive size; the lays of minstrelsy were usually fragments of the metrical chronicles, or a disjointed tale from some romance;[6]

such as the popular Fabliaux, which form the amusing collection of Le Grand.

These proverbs and these fables, these songs and these tales, all these were a library without books, till the day arrived when the people had books of their own, open to their comprehension, and responding to their sympathies. That this traditional literature was handed down from generation to generation appears from the circ.u.mstance, that hardly had the printing-press been in use when a mult.i.tude of "the people's books"

spread through Europe their rude instruction or their national humour.