History of English Humour Volume I Part 8

We will finish this sketch of the romancing tendencies of our early literature by a description of a dragon from "Sir Degore:"

"There was a dragon great and grymme, Full of fyre, and also venymme, Wyth a wyde throte, and tuskes grete, Uppon that knygte fast gan he bete, And as a lyon then was hys feete, Hys tayle was long, and full unmeete; Between hys head and hys tayle Was xxii fote withouten fayle; His body was lyke a wyne tonne, He shone ful bryght agaynst the sunne; Hys eyen were bryght as any gla.s.se, Hys scales were hard as any bra.s.se: And thereto he was necked lyke a horse, He bore hys hed up wyth grete force; The breth of hys mouth that did not blow As yt had been a fyre on lowe.

He was to loke on, as I you telle As yt had been a fiende of h.e.l.le."

These romances were often called "Gestes," from the great "Gesta" or exploits they recorded.

The author of "Cursor Mundi," a book of religious legends, says,

"Men lykyn jestis for to here And romans rede in divers manere Of Alexandre the conquerour, Of Julius Caesar the Emperour, &c."

It may be doubted whether such tales as the above were ever regarded as true, but it was not until thought became more active that the falsity of them was fully appreciated, and "jests" gradually acquired their present signification. The word romance has also come to be used not only for a pleasant poetical narrative, but especially for something utterly devoid of truth. "Story" is used in the same sense, but not "novel," for in our present works of fiction there is seldom so much improbability as to be offensive in our day, though it may be so to our successors.

In the above extracts it may have been observed that there is a prominence and importance given to the lower animals which we should not find in writings of the present day. As civilization fell back into barbarism, fables re-appeared, and some indifferent literature of this kind was produced in the fourth century by Aphthonius in Greek, and afterwards by Flavius Avia.n.u.s in Latin. In the Saxon ode on the victory of Athelstan, a very particular account is given of the beasts of prey present at the carnage.

Theodosius, the blind Emperor, is said to have been restored to sight by a serpent, whom he had benefited, coming in while he was asleep, and placing a precious stone upon his eyes. In one of the early romances of Marie, a baron is transformed into a bisclaveret,[39] or wolf, for three days every week, much to his wife's discomfort; in another a falcon changes into a knight, who is finally caught in a bird-trap; in another a lady falls into a trance, and is supposed to be dead, until her rival, seeing a weasel restore another one by placing a vermilion flower in its mouth, she places it in the lady's mouth and thus awakens her. The same element is largely present in the other romances.

Alexander Neckam, who lived in the latter part of the twelfth century, shows how fond our forefathers were of animals, and how they kept them in their houses. The castles were often full of them, some roving about, others necessarily in confinement. Monkeys were in high favour. Some of them were taught to fight as in a tournament, which we are told caused great laughter. In mediaeval times there was a love of all kinds of hybrid animals, and there was a certain amount of belief that all sorts of monsters came from the East or North. Giraldus Cambrensis tells us that there were in Ireland such mixtures as half ox and half man, half dog and half monkey.

All these stories remind us of the fabular period in old Greek history, and bespeak a time, when both taste and knowledge were in their infancy; but when, at the same time, the rays of the ideal were breaking upon the mind, and "men appeared as trees walking."

Allied to a love of fabling was that of allegory, which, as soon as literary activity began to appear in the early church, produced an abundant harvest. This tendency exhibited itself in the first progress of thought in England. Philippe de Than, one of the most ancient Anglo-Norman poets, wrote a work describing the character of each bird and beast, upon which he grounded moral reflections. Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, who died in 1253, was celebrated for a copious dissertation on mystical divinity, and a poem is extant ascribed to him, called the "Castle of Love" by Leland, in which the creation and redemption are represented as an allegory--our Lord being supposed to enter a magnificent castle, the body of the Virgin. The "Gesta Romanorum" strongly exhibits the want of discrimination at this time, for although the dramatis personae are generally Roman Emperors, the deepest Christian mysteries are supposed to be shadowed forth by their actions. Some of the stories are evidently invented to enforce religious teaching. We read of an angel accompanying a hermit on his wanderings, the angel robs or murders all who receive him, but explains afterwards that it is for their good. He gives a golden goblet to a rich man who refuses to entertain them, to comfort him in this world, as he will go to h.e.l.l in the next.

Vincent of Beauvais, a learned Dominican of France, who flourished in the thirteenth century, observes that it was a practice of preachers to rouse their congregation by relating a fable of aesop. In the British Museum there is a collection of two hundred and fifteen stories, romantic, allegorical, and legendary, evidently compiled for the use of monastic preachers. Mystic similitudes were at this time greatly affected in all branches of learning. In the "Romaunt of the Rose," the difficulties of a lover are represented under the form of a man seeking a rose in an inaccessible garden. This flower, alchemists considered to be emblematic of the Philosopher's Stone, while theologians referred it to the white rose of Jericho--a state of grace into which the wicked could not enter.

CHAPTER II.

Anglo-Saxon Humour--Rhyme--Satires against the Church--The Brunellus--Walter Mapes--Goliardi--Piers the Ploughman--Letters of Obscure Men--Erasmus--The Praise of Folly--Skelton--The Ship of Fools--Doctour Doubble Ale--The Sak full of Nuez--Church Ornamentation--Representations of the Devil.

The rude character of the Anglo-Saxon humour may be gathered from our having derived from it the word _fun_. This term which we often apply to romping and boisterous games, refers princ.i.p.ally to the sense of feeling, and always implies some low kind of amus.e.m.e.nt connected with the senses. We also discover among the Anglo-Saxons an unamiable tendency to give nicknames to people from their personal peculiarities.

But if we look for anything better, we can find only a translation of the Latin riddles of Symposius by Aldhelm, Bishop of Shirburn. This prelate, who was a relation of Ina, King of the West Saxons, was in attainments far superior to his age. He was celebrated as a harper, poet, and theologian, and wrote several works, especially one in praise of Virginity. His translations from Symposius were probably intended for the post-prandial delectation of the monks.

Aristophanes seems to have made the first approach to rhyming, for he introduced some repet.i.tions of the same word at the end of lines. He probably thought the device had an absurd effect and used it as a kind of humour. Aulus Gellius blames Isocrates, who lived about 400 B.C., for introducing jingles into his orations, and as he also refers to Lucilius' condemnation of them, he would probably have objected to them in poetry.

Cla.s.sic Latin versification is supposed to have died out with Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers in the sixth century, but an advance was made towards playing with words by the introduction of rhymes in the church hymns. Some trace of them is found in the verses of Hilary in the fourth century, but we find them first regularly adopted in a Latin panegyric written for Clotaire II. in France at the commencement of the seventh. Some suppose that "Leonine verses" were invented shortly afterwards by Pope Leo II. As in the days of Greece and Rome, the development of poetry was accompanied by a considerable activity in the fabrication of metres. This did not limit itself to a distich or alternate rhyme called "tailed" or "interlaced," but included the "horned," "crested," and "squared" verses--the last forming double acrostics. Sometimes half a dozen lines were made to rhyme together.

This movement, pedantic as it was, showed an advance in finding similarities in things dissimilar, a change in the appreciation of the harmony. Previously rhymes were considered ludicrous, as they seem to us now in prose, and even in the French drama. The old Welsh poetry depended merely upon alliteration--as in the words ascribed to the British Queen--

"Ruin seize thee, ruthless king."

And among our old proverbs we have "Many men of many minds." "Fools build houses, for wise men to live in." "First come, first served." The motto of the Duke of Athole runs "Furth fortune and fill the fetters."

The "Exeter Book," presented to his cathedral by Leofric, first Bishop of Exeter in 1046 deserves notice, as indicative of the course of early Anglo-Saxon literature. Here we have first religious meditations and legends of Saints, then proverbial, or as they are called "gnomic"

verses, next allegorical descriptions by means of animals, and finally riddles. The last are very long, and generally consist of emblematic descriptions.

It is a part of the great system of compensation under which we live, that those who are most highly praised are most exposed to the attacks of the envious, and that those who stand on an eminence above others should have their bad as well as their good deeds recorded. And thus we find that the earliest shafts of censure were directed against princes and priests, and the first Norman satires of which we hear were some songs called Sirventois, against Arnould, who was chaplain to Robert Courthose in the time of William Rufus. He was apparently an excellent man, established schools at Caen, and was afterwards promoted to be patriarch of Jerusalem. The next attack of which we have any record was that made by Luc de la Barr against Henry I. The nature of the imputations it contained may be conjectured from the fact, that the king ordered the writer's eyes to be put out. Another satire was directed against Richard, "King of the Romans," who was taken prisoner at Lewes.

It was written to triumph over him, and taunt him with his defeat, and the nearest approach to humour in it is where it speaks of his making a castle of a windmill, which is supposed to refer to his having been captured in such a building. The humour in the satires of this time was almost entirely of a hostile or optical character. We have two metrical ballads of the thirteenth century directed against the Scotch and French, but containing little but animosity. There is also one complaining of heavy taxation in the reign of Edward I., but generally the church was attacked, as the clergy formed a prominent mark in every parish in the country, and were safer game than the king or barons.

Thus, in the Harleian MSS., there is an ancient French poem pretending to eulogise a new conventual order for both men and women, who are to live together in great luxury and be bound to perpetual idleness.

Several monasteries in England are mentioned as affording instances of such a mode of living.

The earliest literary a.s.sault we have on the church in this country was written probably in the thirteenth century--Warton says, soon after the conquest--in a mixture of Saxon and Norman. A monastery, composed of various kinds of gems and delicacies, represents the luxury of the monks--

"Fur in see, bi west Spayngne Is a lond ihote c.o.kaygne: Ther nis lond under heuen-riche Of wel of G.o.dness. .h.i.t iliche.

"Ther is a wel fair abbei, Of white monkes and of grei, Ther beth bowris and halles Al of pasteiis beth the walles Of fleis, of fisse, and rich met, The likfullist that man mai et.

Fluren cakes beth the schingles[40] alle Of cherche, cloister, boure, and halle.

The pinnes[41] beth fat podinges Rich met to princez and kinges.

"An other abbei is ther bi For soth a gret fair nunnerie; Vp a riuer of sweet milke, Whar is gret plente of silk."

He goes on to speak of the monks and nuns as dancing together in a very indecorous manner.

The clergy were often humorous themselves--Nigellus Wireker, a monk of Canterbury, who is supposed to have lived in the time of Richard I., wrote a very amusing attack on his brethren. It is in Latin elegiac verse, and as being directed against ambition and discontent may be compared with the first satire of Horace. But he wrote in a less advanced state of civilisation to that in which the Roman poet lived, and he carries on his discourse by means of conversations of animals.

The work is called the Brunellus--the name of an a.s.s.

The poem is directed against pa.s.sion and avarice--and especially against the monks, who, he says deserve to be called pastors, not _a pascendo_ but _a poscendo_. But he takes so much interest in the animals he introduces, that he seems to lose sight of his moral object. He delights in the speeches of a c.o.c.k and crow, but his main story is that the a.s.s, Brunellus, is dissatisfied, because, having long ears he thinks he ought to have a long tail. He betakes himself to Galienus to consult him, who endeavours to dissuade him from adopting any surgical or medical means, and reminds him that if he has a short tail he has a very large head. He inculcates contentment by a story of two cows, one of which, through impatience when her tail has stuck in the mud, says it is not an _honour_ but an _onus_, and so pulls it off, and becomes a laughing stock to the world. The other cow waits patiently, and makes a long speech containing references to Cato and the Trojan war.

Prescription given by Galienus to the a.s.s Brunellus to make his tail grow:

"Some marble's fat and seven fold furnace shade The offspring of a male and female mule, A little of the milk of goose and kite A punchbowl's racing, and a wolf's alarms; Of dogs and hares alliance take a drachm, And kisses which the lark gives to her hawk."

The a.s.s begs Galienus to bestow upon him his blessing, which he does with mock gravity--

"May Jove to thee a thousand omens give, And to thy tail ten thousand omens more; Mayst thou drink water, and on thistles feed, Be thy bed marble, and thy covering dew.

May hail and snow and rain be ever near, Ice and h.o.a.r frost thy constant comfort be!"

The a.s.s, whose extraordinary performances are narrated, is appointed the "nuntius" of a bishop.

The man who showed at this time the greatest judgment in humour and insight into its nature, was John of Salisbury. His Polycraticus is worthy of a religious character; but he speaks in it of "Court Trifles"

under which he places dice, music and dreams. Many of his observations show a taste and knowledge in advance of his time. "Our age," he says, "has fallen back to fables," and he speaks as though the jesters of the day indulged in very questionable jokes and performances. He notices the force of a jest made by a man who would himself fall under it, as when a pauper laughs at poverty. Also he refers to the effect of accusing a man of the faults to which his virtues may lead, as of telling a liberal man he is a spendthrift. "So Diogenes told Antisthenes, his master, that he had made him a doctor instead of a rich man--a dweller in a tub, instead of in a mansion." Well-timed pleasantries, he says, are of use in oratory, but convivial jesting is dangerous, remarks or personal defects are objectionable, and as Lycurgus ordered, all jokes should be without bitterness.

But Walter Mapes seems to have been the first man of note, who reconciled "divinity and wit." He was born on the borders of Wales about the beginning of the twelvth century, and having studied at the University of Paris became a favourite of Henry II., and was made a Canon of St. Paul's, and Archdeacon of Oxford. It may be worth notice that his name was really a monosyllable, "Map," a man's appellation being not always without influence in determining his character and conduct. From being a man of humour he obtained the credit of being a man of pleasure, but as far as we can collect from the writings, which are with certainty attributed to him, he was strongly imbued with religious feelings. He delights to recount the miracles of saints. Peter of Tarentaise exorcised, he tells us, a devil from one possessed, and the man proved his cure by exclaiming, "Mother of G.o.d, have mercy upon me!" whereupon John the bishop said of Peter. "This is the only bishop--the rest of us are dogs unable to bark." Mapes also reflects the credulity of the age in which he lived, by narrating extraordinary stories of infidels walking about after death, and calling people by name, who always died shortly afterwards. He gives us a collection of Welsh "apparitions."

We must suppose that even at that day there was something peculiarly fanciful in the mind of the man who collected such tales. But, although he commends his favourite saints as being jocund and pleasant men, we are disappointed when we look for his own wit. It is either verbal or sententious, and does not rise higher than, "Few things are impossible to women." "May G.o.d omnipotent grant you not to be deceived by woman omnipotent." "The dog does not gnaw a dry bone, nor the leech stick to an empty vein." His "Mirror of the Church" is full of violent attacks upon the monastic orders, especially the Cistercian, evidently written in serious indignation, although he sometimes indulges in a play upon words. In this he was unlike many writers, who attacked the monks merely to amuse, for which there was a good opening, as the brethren, though in some cases weak, were generally viewed with respect, and tales about them were easily regarded as humorous. There is a story of Walter Mapes having been called to see a Cistercian Abbot, when dangerously ill, and the Archdeacon recommended him to quit his order, and give up avarice and rapacity. The Abbot refused, and even administered to the Archdeacon the rebuke, "Get thee behind me, Satan." Shortly afterwards Mapes was taken ill, and the Abbot going to visit him, strongly recommended him to renounce his light jesting habits, to give up his pluralities, and take refuge in the bosom of the Cistercian order--at the same time producing a gown and cowl, with which he proposed to invest him. Mapes, with characteristic humour called his servants, and told them that, if ever in a fit of sickness he expressed a desire of becoming a monk, they were to consider it a sign that he had lost his senses, and keep him in close confinement.

The character which Mapes obtained for himself, caused a large amount of poetry of a somewhat later date to be attributed to him. It is called "Goliardic," as it gives the views of a cla.s.s of wild ecclesiastical or University men, who spent their time in composing lampoons, and were called Goliards, from their supposed gluttony. In an epigram, one of these men is represented coming to a bishop's palace, and stating that he is "all ready to dine," somewhat in the way of the old Greek parasites. The bishop tells him he does not want such disreputable company, but that as he has come, he may have his food. We may suppose, however, that he and his poorer brethren did not occupy any dignified position at the repast, as one of them complains

"Abbas ire sede sursum, Et prioris juxta ipsum, Ego semper stavi dorsum Inter rascalilia."

All these poems are in Latin rhyme. Two of them are especially attributed to Mapes. One is "on not marrying;" Golias here sets forth a very appalling catalogue of the miseries of matrimony. The husband is a donkey who is spurned by his wife. Her tongue is a sword. He thanks heaven he has escaped from the danger he was once in from the fascinations of a beautiful lady. The other piece is the "Confessions of Golias," which are very frank with regard to various unclerical weaknesses. Some of the stanzas may be translated as follows,

"I purpose in a tavern to die, Place to my dying lips the flowing bowl, May choirs of angels coming from on high Sing, 'G.o.d be gracious to the toper's soul.'[42]

"The race of poets shun both drink and food, Avoid disputes, withdraw from public strife, And to make verses that shall long hold good O'ercome with labour, sacrifice their life.

"Nature allots to each his proper course, In hunger I could never use my ink, The smallest boy then equals me in force, I hate as death the want of food and drink."