Chapter 23

He copies Latin, French, and English models, but especially Chaucer,[834]he adds his "Story of Thebes"[835]to the series of the "Canterbury Tales," he has met, he says, the pilgrims on their homeward journey; the host asked him who he was:

I answerde my name was Lydgate,Monk of Bery, nygh fyfty yere of age.

Admitted into the little community, he contributes to the entertainment by telling a tale of war, of love, and of valorous deeds, in which the Greeks wear knightly armour, are blessed by bishops, and batter town walls with cannon. His "Temple of Glas"[836]is an imitation of the "Hous of Fame"; his "Complaint of the Black Knight" resembles the "Book of the Duchesse"; his "Falle of Princes"[837]is imitated from Boccaccio and from the tale of the Monk in Chaucer. The "litel hevynesse" which the knight noticed in the monk's stories is particularly well imitated, so much so that Lydgate himself stops sometimes withuplifted pen to yawn at his ease in the face of his reader.[838]But his pen goes down again on the paper, and starts off with fresh energy. From it proceeds a "Troy Book, or Historie of the Warres betwixte the Grecians and the Troyans," of thirty thousand lines, where pasteboard warriors hew each other to pieces without suffering much pain or causing us much sorrow[839]; a translation of that same "Pélerinage" of Deguileville, which had inspired Langland; a Guy of Warwick[840]; Lives of Our Lady, of St. Margaret, St. Edmund, St. Alban; a "pageant" for the entry of Queen Margaret into London in 1445; a version of the "Secretum Secretorum," and a multitude of other writings.[841]Nothing but death could stop him; and, his last poem being of 1446, his biographers have unanimously concluded that he must have died in that year.

The rules of his prosody were rather lax. No one will be surprised at it; he could say like Ovid, but for otherreasons: "I had but to write, and it was verses." He is ready for everything; order them, and you will have at once verses to order. These verses are slightly deformed, maybe, and halt somewhat; he does not deny it:

I toke none hede nouther of shorte nor longe.[842]

But let us not blame him; Chaucer, his good master, would, he assures us, have excused his faulty prosody, and what right have we to be more severe than Chaucer?[843]To this there is, of course, nothing to answer, but then if we cannot answer, at least we can leave. We can go and visit the other chief poet of the time, Thomas Hoccleve; he does not live far off, the journey will be a short one; we have but to call at the next door.

This other poet is a public functionary; he is a clerk of the Privy Seal[844]; his duties consist in copying documents;an occupation he finds at length somewhat tiresome.[845]By way of diversion he frequents taverns; women wait on him there, and he kisses them; a wicked deed, he admits; but he goes no further; at least so he assures us, being doubtless held back by a remembrance of officialdom and promotion.[846]At all events this little was even too much, for we soon find him sick unto death, rhyming supplications to the god of health, and to Lord Fournivall, another kind of god, very useful to propitiate, for he was Lord Treasurer. He writes a good many detached pieces in which, thanks to his mania for talking about himself, he makes us acquainted with the nooks and corners of the old city, thus supplying rare and curious information, treasured by the historian. He composes, in order to make himself noticed by the king, a lengthy poem on the Government of Princes, "De Regimine Principum," which is nothing but a compilation taken from three or four previous treatises; he adds a prologue, and in it, following the example of Gower, he abuses all classes of society. He does not fail to begin his confession over again: from which we gather that he is something of a drunkard and of a coward, that he is vain withal and somewhat ill-natured.

He had, however, one merit, and, in spite of his defects, all lovers of literature ought to be grateful to him; the best of his works is not his Government of Princes; it is a drawing. He not only, like Lydgate, loved and mourned Chaucer, but wished to keep the memory of his features,and he caused to be painted on the margin of a manuscript the portrait mentioned above, which agrees so well with the descriptions contained in the writings of the master that there is no doubt as to the likeness.[847]

II.

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, Aucassin's Nicolette, the Emily ofthe 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. Assisted 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 duchess 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 offerresistance, 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 Duchess, unable to sleep, he takes up a book. It is the "Consolation" of Boethius, and the meditations of "that noble 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 fantasyeFell me to mynd, that ay me-thoght the bellSaid 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 floureThat 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 passing through dissertations, beds of flowers, and groups of stars, he returns to earth, reassured as to his fate, with the certitude 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 gloriousOf 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 fairAnd the grene woid rycht neir us byTo walk atour (over) all quhair (everywhere);Thair ma na janglour us espyThat is to lufe contrair;Thairin, Makyne, bath ye and IUnsene 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 Æsop, "poet laureate;" there is no room for doubt: we are in the Middle Ages. Æsop 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 feistMay well suffice unto ane rurall beist.Lat be this hole, and cum in-to my place,I sall to yow schaw be experienceMy Gude-fryday is better nor your Pace (Easter).

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 feistMay well suffice unto ane rurall beist.

Lat be this hole, and cum in-to my place,I sall to yow schaw be experienceMy 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, butter, malt, fish, and dishes without number.

And lordis fair thus couth thay counterfeit,Except ane thing: thay drank the watter cleirInstead 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 thespensercoming 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;

Cum 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 partition 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 illustrious 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 coarse tales (very coarse indeed), satires, parodies, laments.[854]His fits ofmelancholy 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 principal 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 classic 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 thattime, 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 classes 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 itsbreath 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 nobles 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 nobles and their followers, that crowd ofbravithat the statutes against maintenance had vainly tried to suppress, strewed the fields of Wakefield, Towton, and Tewkesbury with their corpses, the real nation, the mass 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 documents of that epoch, which have been preserved and which concern middle classes, 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 documents, 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 classes are less strictly guarded; war helps to cross them; soldiers of fortune are ennobled; merchants likewise. The importance of trade goes on increasing; even a king, Edward IV., makesattempts 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 aMary Canyngeand aMary and John, which exceed in size all that has hitherto been seen. A duke of Bedford is degraded from the peerage because he has no money, and a nobleman 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.

The literature of the time corroborates the testimony of documents exhumed from ancient muniment rooms. It gives an impression of a wealthier nation than formerly, counting more free men, with a more extensive trade. The number of books on courtesy, etiquette, good breeding, good cooking, politeness, with an injunction not to take "always" the whole of the best morsel,[863]is a sign of these improvements.The letters of the Paston family are another.[864]In spite of all the mentions made in these letters of violent and barbarous deeds; though in them we see Margaret Paston and her twelve defenders put to flight by an enemy of the family, and Sir John Paston besieged in his castle of Caister by the duke of Norfolk, a multitude of details give something of a modern character to this collection, the oldest series of private English letters we possess.

In spite of aristocratic alliances, these people think and write like worthy citizens, economical, practical and careful. During her husband's absence, Margaret Paston keeps him informed of all that goes on, she looks after his property, renews leases, collects rents. Reading her letters one seems to see her home as neat and clean as a Dutch house. If a disaster occurs, instead of wasting her time in lamentations, she repairs it to the best of her ability and takes precautions for the future. She loves her husband, and may be believed when, knowing him to be ill, she writes: "I would ye were at home, if it were your ease, and your sore might be as well looked to here as it is where ye be, now liefer than a gown though it were of scarlet."[865]John Paston, shut in the Fleet prison, where he makes the acquaintance of Lord Henry Percy, for prisons were thena place where the best society met, sends Margaret playful verses to amuse her:

My lord Persy and all this house,Recommend them to yow, dogge catte and mowse,And wysshe ye had be here stille,For they sey ye are a good gille.

The old and new times are no longer so far apart; in such a prison, Fielding and Sheridan would not have felt out of place.[866]

Books of advice to travellers, itineraries or guides to foreign parts,[867]vocabularies, dictionaries, and grammars,[868]commercial guides, the "Libelle of Englyshe Polycye,"[869]are also signs of the times. This last document is a characteristic one; it is a sort of consular report in verse, very similar (the verses excepted) to thousands of consular reports with which "Livres Jaunes" and "Blue Books" have since been filled. The author points out for each country the goods to be imported and exported, and the guileful practices to be feared in foreign parts; he insists on the necessity of England's having a strong navy, and exaggerates the maritime power of rival countries, so that Parliament may vote the necessary supplies. Englandshould be the first on the sea, and able to impose "pease by auctorité." She should establish herself more firmly at Calais; only the word Calais would be altered now and replaced by Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, or the Cape. The author enumerates the products of Prussia, Flanders, France, Spain, Portugal, Genoa, &c.; he has even information on the subject of Iceland, and its great cod-fish trade. He wishes for a spirited colonial policy; it is not yet a question of India, but only of Ireland; at any price "the wylde Iryshe" must be conquered.

He dwells at length on the misdeeds of the wicked Malouins, who are stopped by nothing, obey no one, and are protected by the innumerable rocks of their bays, amidst which they alone know the passages. Conclusion:

Kepte (keep) than the see about in specialleWhiche of England is the rounde walle;As thoughe England were lykened to a cité,And the walle enviroun were the see;Keep than the see that is the walle of Englond,And then is Englond kepte by Goddes sonde.

The anxious injunctions scattered in the "Libelle" must not be taken, any more than Parliamentary speeches of later date, as implying that the nation had no confidence in itself. The instinct of nationality, formerly so vague, has grown from year to year since the Conquest: the English are now proud of everything English; they are proud of their navy, in spite of its defects; of their army, in spite of the reverses it suffered; of the wealth of the Commons; they even boast of their robbers. Anything one does should be well done; if they have thieves, these thieves will prove the best in the world. The testimony of Sir John Fortescue, knight, Lord Chief Justice, and Chancellor of England, who must have known about the thieves, is decisive on this point. He writes, in Englishprose, a treatise on absolute and limited monarchy[870]; admiration for his country breaks out on every page. It is the time of the Two Roses, but it matters little with him; like many others in his day, he does not pay while writing much attention to the Roses. England is the best governed country in the world; it has the best laws; the king can do nothing unless his people consent. In this manner a just balance is maintained: "Our Comons be riche, and therfor they gave to their kyng, at sum tymys quinsimes and dismes, and often tymys other grete subsydyes.... This might thay not have done, if they had ben empoveryshyd by their kyng, as the Comons of Fraunce." Fortescue puts forth a theory often confirmed since then: if the Commons rebel sometimes, it is not the pride of wealth that makes them, but tyranny; for, were they poor, revolts would be far more frequent: "If thay be not poer, thay will never aryse, but if their prince so leve Justice, that he gyve hymself al to tyrannye." It is true that the Commons of France do not rebel (Louis XI. then reigned at Plessis-lez-Tours); Fortescue is shocked at that, and remonstrates against their "lacke of harte."

Some people might say that there are a great many thieves in England. They are numerous, Fortescue confesses, there is no doubt as to that; but the country finds in them one more cause to be proud: "It hath ben often seen in Englond that three or four thefes, for povertie hath sett upon seven or eight true men and robbyd them al." The thieves of France are incapable of such admirableboldness. On this account "it is right seld that French men be hangyd for robberye," says Fortescue, who had never, judging by the way he talks, passed by Montfaucon, nor come across poor Villon; "thay have no hertys to do so terryble an acte. There be therfor mo men hangyd in Englonde in a yere for robberye and manslaughter than their be hangid in Fraunce for such cause of crime in seven yers."[871]As a judge, Fortescue hangs the thieves; as an Englishman he admires their performances: the national robber is superior to all others. An engraving inPunchrepresents a London drunkard carried off by two policemen; the street boys make comments: "They couldn't take my Father up like that," says one of them, "it takes six Policemen to run him in!" If this boy ever becomes Chief Justice, he will write, in the same spirit, another treatise like Fortescue's.

Thus is popularised in that century the art of prose; the uses made of it are not unprecedented, but they are far more frequent. This is one more sign that the nation settles and concentrates; does not stand on tiptoe, but sits comfortably. Previous examples are followed; there are schools of prose writers as of poets. Bishop Pecock employs Wyclif's irony to defend what Wyclif had attacked; pilgrimages, friars, the possessions of the clergy, the statues and paintings in churches.[872]His forcible eloquence is embittered by sarcasms; he continues a tradition, dear to the English race, and one which, constantly renewed, willcome down to Swift and to the humourists of the eighteenth century. Boiling over with passion, he does his best to speak coldly and without moving a finger. Wyclif wants everything to be found in the Bible, and forbids pilgrimages, which are not spoken of in it. But then, says Pecock, we are greatly puzzled, for how should we dare to wear breeches, which the Bible does not mention either? How justify the use of clocks to know the hour? And with great seriousness, in a calm voice, he discusses the question: "For though in eeldist daies, and though in Scripture, mensioun is maad of orologis, schewing the houris of the dai bi the schadew maad bi the sunne in a cercle, certis nevere, save in late daies, was eny clok telling the houris of the dai and nyht bi peise and bi stroke; and open it is that noughwhere in holi scripture is expresse mensioun made of eny suche." Where does the Bible say that it should be translated into English?[873]In the same tone of voice Wyclif had pointed out, in the preceding century, the abuses of the Church; in the same tone of voice the author of "Gulliver" will point out, three centuries later, the happy use that might be made of Irish children as butcher's meat.

The thing to be remembered for the moment is that the number of prose-writers increases. They write more abundantly than formerly; they translate old treatises; they unveil the mysteries of hunting, fishing, and heraldry; they compose chronicles; they rid the language of its stiffness. To this contributes Sir Thomas Malory, with his compilation called "Morte d'Arthur," in which he includes the whole cycle of Britain. The work was published by Caxton, the first English printer, who was also a prose-writer.[874]They even write on love; prose nowretaliates upon verse, and trespasses on the domains of poetry.[875]

The diminished importance of the nobles and of the feudal aristocracy, the increased importance of the citizens and of the working class, bring the various elements of the nation nearer to each other, and this fact will have a considerable effect on literature: the day will come when the same author can address the whole audience and write for the whole nation. In a hundred years it will be necessary to take into consideration the judgment of the English people, both "high men" and "low men," on intellectual things; there will stand in the pit a mob whose declared tastes and exigences will cause the most stubborn of the Elizabethan poets to yield. Ben Jonson will be less classic and more English than he would have liked to be; he intended to introduce a chorus into his tragedy of "Sejanus"; the fear of the pit prevented him; he grumbles, but submits.[876]The thrift and the toil of the English peasant and craftsman in the fifteenth century had thusan unexpected influence on literature: they contributed to form an audience for Shakespeare.

IV.

The new times are preparing, in still another manner; the gods are to come down from Olympus and dwell once more among men.

While the ancient literature is dying out, another is growing which is to replace it in France, but which will continue it, transformed and rejuvenated, in England. Rome and Athens will give England a signal, not laws; but this signal is an important one; happy the nations who have heard it; it was the signal for awakening.

In that Italy visited by Chaucer in the fourteenth century, the passion for antiquity goes on increasing; the Latins no longer suffice, the Greeks must be known. Petrarch worshipped a manuscript of Homer, but it was for him a dumb fetish: the fetish has now become a god, and utters oracles that all the world understands. The city of the Greek emperors is still standing, and there letters shine with a last lustre. While the foe is at its gates, it rectifies its grammars, goes back to origins, rejects new words, and revives the ancient language of Demosthenes. Never had the town of Constantine been more Greek than on the eve of its destruction.[877]The fame of its rhetoricians is spread abroad; men come from Italy to hear John Argyropoulos, the Chrysoloras, the famous Chrysococcès, deacon of St. Sophia and chief Saccellary.

But the fatal hour is at hand, the era of the Crusades is over; an irresistible ebb has set in; Christendom draws back in its turn. No longer is it necessary to go to Jerusalem to battle against the infidel; he is found atNicopolis and Kossovo. The illustrious towns of the Greek world fall one after the other, and the exiled grammarians seek shelter with the literate tyrants of Italy, bringing with them their manuscripts. Some, like Theodore Gaza, have been driven from Thessalonica, and teach at Mantua and at Sienna; others left after the fall of Trebizond.

On the throne of the Paleologues sits Constantine XII., Dragassès. Brusa is no longer the capital of the Turks; they have left far behind them the town of the green mosques, of the great platanes and tombs of the caliphs, they have crossed the Bosphorus and are established at Salonica, Sophia, Philippopolis. Adrianople is their capital for the time being; Mahomet II. commands them. Opposite the "Castle of Asia," Anatoli Hissar, he has built on the Bosphorus the "Castle of Europe," Roumel Hissar, with rose-coloured towers; he is master of both shores.

He approaches nearer to the town, and draws up his troops under the wall facing Europe; he has a hundred and thirty cannon; he opens fire on the 11th of April, 1453. On the 28th of May, the Turks take up their positions for the onset; whilst in Byzantium a long procession of priests and monks, carrying the wood of the true cross, miraculous statues and relics of saints, wends its way for the last time. The assault begins at two o'clock in the morning; part of a wall, near the gate of St. Romanus, falls in; the "Cercoporta" gate is taken. The struggle goes on in the heart of the town; the emperor is killed; the basilica erected by Justinian to Divine Wisdom, St. Sophia, which was in the morning filled with a praying multitude, contains now only corpses. The smoke of an immense fire rises under the sky.

All that could flee exiled themselves; the Greeks flocked to Italy. Out of the plundered libraries came anumber of manuscripts, with which Nicholas V. and Bessarion enriched Rome and Venice. The result of the disaster was, for intellectual Europe, a new impulse given to classic studies.

With the glare of the fire was mingled a light as of dawn; its rays were to illuminate Italy and France, and, further towards the North, England also.

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