Amenities of Literature Part 7

In a charter, granting certain lands for the church of St. Paul's, which Stowe has translated from the record in the Tower, William denominates himself, "by the grace of G.o.d, _King of Englishmen_" (Rex Anglorum), and addresses it "to all his well-beloved _French and English people_, greeting."--Stowe's "Survey of London," 326, Edit.

1603. Did William on any occasion declare that he was "the Conqueror"

as well as the sovereign of England? When William attempted to learn the Saxon language, it is obvious that he did not desire to remind his new subjects that he ruled as Voltaire sang of his hero,--

------------------qui regna sur la France, Par droit de Conquete et par droit de Naissance.

[4] The final history of these citadels may ill.u.s.trate that verse of Goldsmith which reminds us--

"To fly from PETTY TYRANTS--to THE THRONE!"

In the short s.p.a.ce of seventy years the owners of those castles bearded even majesty itself; these lords, by their undue share of power, were in perpetual revolt; till two royal persons, though opposed to each other, Stephen and Maude, decreed for their mutual interest the demolition of fifteen hundred and fifteen castles. They were razed by commission, or by writs to the sheriffs; and a law was further enacted that "none hereafter, without license, should embattle his house." And thus was broken this aristocracy of castles.

See two dissertations on "Castles," by Sir ROBERT SUTTON, and by AGARD; "Curious Discourses by Eminent Antiquaries," i. 104 and 188.

This number of castles seems incredible; possibly many were "embattled houses." My learned friend, the Rev. Joseph Hunter, an antiquary most versant in ma.n.u.scripts, inclines to think there may be some scriptural error of the ancient scribe, who was likely to add or to leave out a cipher, without much comprehension of the numerals he was transcribing without a thought, like what happened to the eleven thousand virgins of St. Ursula.

[5] Speed, 440.

[6] A curious fact discovered by Mr. Turner in a Cottonian ma.n.u.script has brought this circ.u.mstance to our knowledge. In a grant of land in Cornwall, an Anglo-Saxon king, after mentioning the Saxon name of the place, adds, "which the inhabitants there called, _barbarico nomine_, by the barbarous name of Pendyfig;" which was the British or Welsh name.--"Vindication of the Ancient British Poems," 8.

[7] Camden has noticed this striking circ.u.mstance in his "Britannia."

See also Percy's Preface to Mallett's "Northern Antiquities," x.x.xix.

[8] See his Preface to the prose romance of "La Fleur des Batailles."

[9] Miss Gurney, who has honourably been hailed as "the Elstob of her age," privately printed her own close version of the "Saxon Chronicle" from the printed text, 1810. Happy lady! who, when sickness had made her its prisoner, opened the "Saxon Chronicle;" and she learned that she might teach the learned.

The Rev. Dr. INGRAM, princ.i.p.al of Trinity College, Oxon, has since published his translation, accompanied by the original, a collation of the ma.n.u.scripts, and notes critical and explanatory. 1823. 4to. A volume not less valuable than curious.

THE PAGE, THE BARON, AND THE MINSTREL.

When learning was solely ecclesiastical and scholastical, there were no preceptors for mankind. The monastery and the university were far removed from the sympathies of daily life; all knowledge was out of the reach of the layman. It was then that the energies of men formed a course of practical pursuits, a system of education of their own. The singular inst.i.tution of chivalry rose out of a combination of circ.u.mstances where, rudeness and luxury mingling together, the utmost refinement was found compatible with barbaric grandeur, and holy justice with generous power. In lawless times they invented a single law which included a whole code--the law of knightly honour. _L'Ordenne de Chevalerie_ is the morality of knighthood, and invests the aspirant with every moral and political virtue as every military qualification.[1]

Dest.i.tute of a national education, the higher orders thus found a subst.i.tute in a conventional system of manners. Circ.u.mstances, perhaps originally accidental, became customs sealed with the sign of honour. In this moral chaos order marshalled confusion, as refinement adorned barbarism. A mighty spirit lay as it were in disguise, and it broke out in the forms of imagination, pa.s.sion, and magnificence, seeking their objects or their semblance, and if sometimes mistaken, yet still laying the foundations of social order and national glory in Europe.

A regular course of practical pursuits was a.s.signed to the future n.o.ble "childe" from the day that he left the parental roof for the baronial hall of his patron. In these "nurseries of n.o.bility," as Jonson has well described such an inst.i.tution, in his first charge as varlet or page, the boy of seven years was an attendant at the baron's table, and it was no humiliating office when the youth grew to be the carver and the cupbearer. He played on the viol or danced in the brawls till he was more gravely trained in "the mysteries of woods and rivers," the arts of the chase, and the sciences of the swanery, and the heronry, and the fishery; the springal cheerily sounded a blast of venery, or the falconer with his voice caressed his attentive hawk, which had not obeyed him had he neglected that daily flattery.

At fourteen the varlet became an esquire, vaulting on his fiery steed, and perfecting himself in all n.o.ble exercises, nicely adroit in the science of "courtesie," or the etiquette of the court; and already this "servant of love" was taught to elect _La dame de ses pensees_, and wore her favour and her livery for "the love of honour, or the honour of love," as Sir Philip Sydney in the style of chivalry expressed it.

At the maturity of twenty and one years the late varlet, and now the esquire, stood forth a candidate to blazon his shield by knighthood--the accomplished gentleman of these Gothic days, and right learned too, if he can con his Bible and read his romance. Enchanting mirror of all chivalry! if he invent songs and set them to his own melodies. Yet will the gentle "batchelor" he dreaming on some gallant feat of arms, or some martial achievement, whereby "to win his spurs." On his solemn entrance into the church, laying his sword upon the altar, he resumed it by the oath which for ever bound him to defend the church and the churchmen.

Thus all human affairs then were rounded by the ecclesiastical orbit, out of which no foot dared to stray. All began and all ended as the romances which formed his whole course of instruction--with the devotion which seemed to have been addressed to man as much as to Heaven.

After the termination of the Crusades, the grand incident in the life of the BARON was a pilgrimage to the holy city of Jerusalem; what the penitent of the Cross had failed to conquer, it seemed a consolation to kneel at and to weep over: a custom not obsolete so late as the reigns of our last Henries; and still, though less publicly avowed, the melancholy Jerusalem witnesses the Hebrew and the Christian performing some secret vow, to grieve with a contrition which it seems they do not feel at home.

In these peregrinations a lordly Briton might chance to find some French or Italian knight as rash and as haughty; it was a law in chivalry that a knight should not give way to any man who demanded it as a right, nor decline the single combat with any knight under the sun; a challenge could not therefore be avoided. But a _pas d'armes_ was not always a friendly invitation, for often under the guise of chivalry was concealed the national hostility of the parties.

But when no crusade nor pilgrimage in the East, nor predatory excursion in the West, nor even the blazonry of a tournament, which fed his eyes with a picture of battle, summoned to put on his mail-coat, how was the vacant Lord to wear out his monotonous days in his castle of indolence?

The domestic fool stood beside him, archly sad, or gravely mirthful, as his master willed, with a proverb or a quip; and, with his licensed bauble, was the most bitterly wisest man in the castle. Patron of the costly ma.n.u.script which he could not himself read, the romancer of his household awaited his call; the great then had fabulators or tale-tellers, as royalty has now, by t.i.tle of their office--its readers.

But this Lord was too vigorous for repose, and the tranquillity of chess was too trying for his brain; the chess-board was often broken about the head of some mute dependent, or perchance on one who returned the dagger for the board. There was little peace for his restlessness, when, weary in his seat, his priceless Norway hawk perched above his head,[2] and his idle hounds spread over the floor, ceaselessly reminded him of those wide and frowning forests which were continually encroaching on the tillage of the contemned agriculturist, offering a mimetic war, not only against the bird and the beast, but man himself; for the lairs of the forest concealed the deer he chased, and often the bandit who chased the Lord--the terrible Lord of this realm of wood and water, where, whoever would fowl a bird or strike a buck, might have his eyes torn from their sockets, or on the spot of his offence mount the instant gallows.[3]

There was a disorderly grandeur about the castellated mansion which should have required the ukase of this Sovereign of many leagues, surrounded by many hundreds of his retainers; but rarely the cry of the oppressed was allowed to disturb the Lord, while all within were exact in their appointments, as clock-work movements which were wound up in the government of these immense domestic establishments. Great families had their "household books," and in some the illegible hand of the lordly master himself, when the day arrived that even barons were incited to scriptural attempts, may yet be seen.[4] These n.o.bles, it appears, were more select in their falconer and their _chef de cuisine_ than in their domestic tutor, for such there was among the retainers of the household. This humiliated sage, indeed, in his own person was a model for the young varlets, on whom it was his office to inculcate that patient suppleness and profound reverence for their Lord and their superiors, which seemed to form the single principle of their education.

At this period we find a domestic proverb which evidently came from the b.u.t.tery. As then eight or ten tables were to be daily covered, it is probable the chivalric epicures sometimes found their tastes disappointed by the culinary artists; it would seem that this put them into sudden outbreakings of ill-humour, for the proverb records that "the minstrels are often beaten for the faults of the cooks."

Too much leisure, too many loungers, and the tedium of prolonged banquets, a want of the pleasures of the luxurious sedentary would be as urgent as in ages more intellectual and refined; those pleasures in which we partic.i.p.ate though we are pa.s.sive, receiving the impressions without any exertion of our own--pleasures which make us delighted auditors or spectators. The theatre was not yet raised, but the listlessness of vacuity gave birth to all the variegated artists of revelry. If they had not comedy itself, they abounded with the comic, and without tragedy the tragic often moved their emotions. Nor were they even then without their scenical illusions, marvels which came and vanished, as the Tregetour clapped his hands--enchantments! which though Chaucer opined to be only "natural magic," all the world tremblingly enjoyed as the work of devils; a sensation which we have totally lost in the necromancy of our pantomimes. And thus it was that in the illumed hall of the feudal Lord we discover a whole dramatic company; which, however dissimilar in their professional arts, were all enlisted under the indefinite cla.s.s of MINSTRELS; for in the domestic state of society we are now recalling, the poetic minstrel must be separated from those other minstrels of very different acquirements, with whom, however, he was a.s.sociated.

There were minstrels who held honourable offices in the great households, sometimes chosen for their skill and elocution to perform the dignified service of heralds, and were in the secret confidence of their Lord; these were those favourites of the castle, whose guerdon was sometimes as romantic as any incident in their own romance.

No festival, public or private, but there the minstrel poet was its crowning ornament. They awakened national themes in the presence of a.s.sembled thousands at the installation of an abbot, or the reception of a bishop.[5] Often, in the Gothic hall, they resounded some lofty "Geste," or some old "Breton" lay, or with some gayer Fabliau, indulging the vein of an improvvisatore, altering the old story when wanting a new one. Delightful rhapsodists, or amusing tale-tellers, combining the poetic with the musical character, they displayed the influence of the imagination over a rude and unlettered race--

----They tellen Tales Both of WEEPYING and of GAME.

Chaucer has portrayed the rapture of a minstrel excited by his harp, a portrait evidently after the life.

Somewhat he _lisped_ for his wantonness _To make the English swete upon his tonge_; And in his Harping when that he had songe, _His Eyen twinkled in his Hed aright, As don the Sterres in a frosty night_.

The minstrel more particularly delighted "the Lewed," or the people, when, sitting in their fellowship, the harper stilled their attention by some fragment of a chronicle of their fathers and their father-land. The family harper touched more personal sympathies; the ancestral honours of the baron made even the va.s.sal proud--domestic traditions and local incidents deepened their emotions--the moralising ditty softened their mind with thought, and every county had its legend at which the heart of the native beat. Of this minstrelsy little was written down, but tradition lives through a hundred echoes, and the "reliques of ancient English poetry," and the minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and some other remains, for the greater part have been formed by so many metrical narratives and fugitive effusions.

There were periods in which the minstrels were so highly favoured that they were more amply rewarded than the clergy--a circ.u.mstance which induced Warton to observe with more truth than acuteness, that "in this age, as in more enlightened times, the people loved better to be pleased than to be instructed."[6] Such was their fascination and their pa.s.sion for "Largesse!" that they were reproached with draining the treasury of a prince. It is certain that this thoughtless race have suffered from the evil eye of the monkish chroniclers, who looked on the minstrels as their rivals in sharing the prodigality of the great; yet even their monkish censors relented whenever these revellers appeared. It was a festive day among so many joyless ones when the minstrel band approached the lone monastery. Then the sweet-toned Vielle, or the merry Rebeck, echoed in the hermit-hearts of the slumbering inmates; vaulters came tumbling about, jugglers bewitched their eyes, and the grotesque Mime, who would not be outdone by his tutored ape. Then came the stately minstrel, with his harp borne before him by his smiling page, usually called "The Minstrel's Boy." One of the brotherhood has described the strolling troop, who

Walken fer and wyde, Her, and ther, in every syde, In many a diverse londe.

The easy life of these ambulatory musicians, their ample gratuities, and certain privileges which the minstrels enjoyed both here and among our neighbours, corrupted their manners, and induced the dissipated and the reckless to claim those privileges by a.s.suming their t.i.tle. A disorderly rabble of minstrels crowded every public a.s.sembly, and haunted the private abode. At different periods the minstrels were banished the kingdom, in England and in France; but their return was rarely delayed.

The people could not be made to abandon these versatile dispensers of solace, amid their own monotonous cares.

At different periods minstrels appear to have been persons of great wealth--a circ.u.mstance which we discover by their votive religious acts in the spirit and custom of those days. The Priory of St. Bartholomew in Smithfield, in 1102, was founded by "Rahere," the king's minstrel, who is described as "a pleasant-witted gentleman," such as we may imagine a wealthy minstrel, and moreover "the king's," ever to have been.[7] In St. Mary's Church at Beverley, in Yorkshire, stands a n.o.ble column covered with figures of minstrels, inscribed, "This Pillar made the Minstrels;" and at Paris, a chapel dedicated to St. Julian of the Minstrels, was erected by them, covered with figures of minstrels bearing all the instruments of music used in the middle ages, where the violin or fiddle is minutely sculptured.[8]

If in these ages of romance and romancers the fair s.e.x were rarely approached without the devotion of idolatry, whenever "the course of true love" altered--when the frail spirit loved too late and should not have loved, the punishment became more criminal than the crime; for there was more of selfish revenge and terrific malignity than of justice, when autocratical man became the executioner of his own decree.

The domestic chronicles of these times exhibit such harrowing incidents as those of _La Chatelaine de Vergy_, where suddenly a scene of immolation struck through the devoted household; or that of "La Dame du Fayel,"[9] who was made to eat her lover's heart. And those who had not to punish, but to put to trial, the affections of women who were in their power, had their terrible caprices, a ferocity in their barbarous loves. Year after year the Gothic lord failed to subdue the immortalised patience of Griselda, and such was our "Childe Waters," who put to such trials of pa.s.sion, physical and mental, the maiden almost a mother. In the fourteenth century, one century later than the histories of the "_Chatelaine_" and the "_Dame_," either the female character was sometimes utterly dissolute, or the tyranny of husbands utterly reckless, when we find that it was no uncommon circ.u.mstance that women were strangled by masked a.s.sa.s.sins, or walking by the riverside were plunged into it. This drowning of women gave rise to a popular proverb--"It is nothing! only a woman being drowned." La Fontaine, probably without being aware of this allusion to a practice of the fourteenth century, has preserved the proverbial phrase in his "La Femme noyee," beginning,

Je ne suis pas de ceux qui disent ce n'est rien, C'est une Femme qui se noye![10]

The personages and the manners here imperfectly sketched, const.i.tuted the domestic life of our chivalric society from the twelfth century to the first civil wars of England. In this long interval few could read; even bishops could not always write; and the Gothic baron pleaded the privilege of a layman for not doing the one nor the other.

The intellectual character of the nation can only be traced in the wandering minstrel and the haughty ecclesiastic. The minstrel mingling with all the cla.s.ses of society reflected all their sympathies, and in reality was one of the people themselves; but the ecclesiastic stood apart, too sacred to be touched, while his very language was not that either of the n.o.ble or of the people.

A dense superst.i.tion overshadowed the land from the time of the first crusade to the last. It may be doubtful whether there was a single Christian in all Christendom, for a new sort of idolatry was introduced in shrines, and relics, and ma.s.ses; holy wells, awful exorcisms, saintly vigils, month's minds, pilgrimages afar and penances at home; lamp-lighting before shrines decked with golden images, and hung with votive arms and legs of cripples who recovered from their rheumatic ails. The enthusiasm for the figure of the cross conferred a less pure sanct.i.ty on that memorial of pious tribulation. Everywhere it was placed before them. The crusader wore that sign on his right shoulder, and when his image lay extended on his tomb, the crossed legs were reverently contemplated. They made the sign of the cross by the motion of their hand, in peril or in pleasure, in sorrow and in sin, and expected no happy issue in an adventure without frequently signing themselves with the cross. The cross was placed at the beginning and at the end of their writings and inscriptions, and it opened and closed the alphabet. The mystical virtues of the cross were the incessant theme of the Monachal Orders, and it was kissed in rapture on the venal indulgence expedited by the papal Hierophant. As even in sacred things novelty and fashion will perversely put in their claim, we find the writers and sculptors varying the appearance of the cross; its simple form [Symbol] became inclosed in a circle [Symbol], and again varied by dots [Symbol].[11]

The guardian cross protected a locality; and in England, at the origin of parishes, the cross stood as the hallowed witness which marked the boundaries, and which it had been sacrilege to disturb. It was no unusual practice to place the sign at the head of private letters, however trivial the contents, as we find it in charters and other public doc.u.ments. In one of the Paston letters, the piety of the writer at a much later period could not detail the ordinary occurrences of the week without inserting the sacred letters I.H.S.; and similar invocations are found in others.[12]

The material symbol of Christianity had thus been indiscriminately adopted without conveying with it the virtues of the Gospel. The cross was a myth--the cross was the _Fetish_[13] of an idolatrous Christianity--they bowed before it, they knelt to it, they kissed it, they kissed a palpable and visible deity; never was the Divinity rendered more familiar to the gross understandings of the vulgar; and in these ages of unchristian Christianity, the cross was degraded even to a vulgar mark, which conveniently served for the signature of some unlettered baron.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] St. Palaye, to whom we owe the ideal of chivalry, has truly observed, "Toutes les vertus recommandees par la Chevalerie tournoient au bien public, au profit de l'Etat." It was when the causes of its inst.i.tution ceased, and nothing remained but its forms without its motive, that altered manners could safely ridicule some n.o.ble qualities which, though now displaced, have not always found equal subst.i.tutes. In the advancement of society we may count some losses.

[2] I recollect this trait in Chaucer. The Norway hawk was among the most valuable articles of property, valued at a sum equal to 300 of the present day.--Nicholls, "History of Leicestershire," x.x.xix.