LYDGATE; THE MONK OF BURY.
Lydgate,the monk of Bury, was also the scholar of Chaucer: our monk had not passed a whole sequestered life in his Benedictine monastery; he had journeyed through France and Italy, and was familiar with the writings of Dante, and Petrarch, and Boccaccio, and of Alain Chartier. The delectable catalogue of his writings, great and small, exceeds two hundred and fifty, and may not yet be complete, for they lie scattered in their manuscript state. A great multitude of writings, the incessant movements of a single mind, will at first convey to us a sense of magnitude; and in this magnitude, if we observe the greatest possible diversity of parts, and, if we may use the term, the flashings of the most changeable contrasts, we must place such a universal talent among the phenomena of literature.
Lydgatecomposed epics, which were the lasting favourites of two whole centuries—so long were classical repetitions of “Troy” and of “Thebes” not found irksome.1In his graver hours he instructed the world by ethical descants, Æsopian fables, and quaint proverbs; fixed their wonder by saintly legends and veracious chronicles; and disported in amorous ditties, and many a merrie tale: translating or inventing, labour or levity, rounded the unconscious day of the versifying monk. We descend from the “Siege of Troy,” a romance of nearly thirty thousand lines, which long graced the oriel window, to the freer vein of humour of “London Lick-penny,” which opens the street scenery of London in the fourteenth century, and “The Prioresse and her Three Wooers,” that exquisitely ludicrous narrative ballad for the people.2
Ritson, whose rabid hostility to the clerical character was part of his constitutional malady, whether it related to “a mendacious prelate” or “a stinking monk,” after having expended twenty pages in the mere enumeration of the titles of Lydgate’s writings, heartlessly hints at the “cart-loads of rubbish of a voluminous poetaster; a prosaic and drivelling monk.” And this is greedily seized on by the hand of the bibliographer. Percy and Ellis, too, mentionDan Lydgatewith contempt. Critics often find it convenient to resemble dogs, by barking one after the other, without any other cause than the first bark of a brother, who had only bayed the moon. It now seemed concluded that the rhyming monk was to be dismissed for ever. A very credible witness, however, at last deposed that “Lydgate has been oftener abused than read.”3And now Mr. Hallam tells us that “Gray, no light authority, speaks more favourably of Lydgate than either Warton or Ellis;” and this nervous writer, with his accustomed correct discernment, has alleged a valid reason why Gray excelled them in this criticism; for “great poets have often the taste to discern, and the candour to acknowledge, those beauties which are latent amidst the tedious dulness of their humbler brethren.”
Warton has, however, afforded three copious chapters on Lydgate, which are half as much as his enthusiasm bestowed on Chaucer. A Gothic monk, composing ancient romances, was a subject too congenial to have been neglected by the historian of our poetry, and he has limned and illuminated the feudal priest with the love of the votary, who deemed, in his “lone-hours,”
Nor rough nor barren are the winding waysOf hoar Antiquity, but strown with flowers.
Nor rough nor barren are the winding ways
Of hoar Antiquity, but strown with flowers.
His miniature is exquisitely touched. “He was not only the poet of his monastery, but of the world in general. If adisguisingwas intended by the company of goldsmiths, amaskbefore his majesty, amay-gamefor the sheriffs and aldermen of London, amummingbefore the lord-mayor, a procession ofpageantsfor the festival of Corpus Christi, or acarolfor the coronation, Lydgate was consulted, and gave the poetry.”4
Mr.Hallamobjects that “the attention fails in the school-boy stories of Thebes and Troy; but it seems probable that Lydgate would have been a better poet in satire upon his own times, or delineation of their manners—themes which would have gratified us much more than the fate of princes.”
This is relatively true—true as regards some of us, but not at all as respects Lydgate, nor the people of his age, nor the king and the princes who commanded themes congenial with their military character, and their simple tastes, romantically charming the readers of two centuries. If our critic, in the exercise of his energetic faculties, lives out of the necromancy of the old Romaunt, afar from Thebes and Troy, Thomas Warton was cradled among the children of fancy, and in his rovings had tasted their wild honey. The only works of Lydgate which attracted his attention were precisely these tedious “Fate of Princes” and “The Troy Book.”
The other modern critics—Ritson, Percy, and Ellis—had but a slight knowledge ofDan5Lydgate. Theyhave generally acted on the pressure of the moment, to get up a hasty court ofPie-poudre—that fugitive tribunal held at fairs—to determine on the case of a culprit even before they could shake the dust off their feet. But time calls for an arrest of hasty judgments, or brings forward some illustrious advocate to reverse the judicial decision, or set forth the misfortunes of the accused. Two, most eminent in genius, stand by the side of the monk of Bury—ColeridgeandGray. Coleridge has left us his protest in favour of Lydgate, for he deeply regrets that in the general collection of our poets, the unpoetic editor “had not substitutedthe whole of Lydgate’s works from the manuscript extant, for the almost worthless Gower.”6Gray alone has taken an enlarged view of the state of our poetry and our language at this period. When that master-spirit abandoned the history of our poetry from his fastidious delicacy or from his learned indolence, because Warton had projected it, English literature sustained an irreparable loss.7In Gray surely we have lost a literary historian such as the world has not yet had; so rare is that genius who happily combines qualities apparently incompatible. In his superior learning, his subtle taste, his deeper thought, and his more vigorous sense, we should have found the elements of a more philosophical criticism, with a more searching and comprehensive intellect, than can be awarded to our old favourite,Thomas Warton. In the neglected quartos ofGraywe discover that the poet had set earnestly to work on the archæology of our poetry; we also find in his works those noble versions of the northern Scalds, and the Welsh bards, which he designed to have introduced into his history; thus to have impressed on us a perfect notion of a national poetry, by poetry itself; a rare good fortunewhich does not enliven the toil of prosaic critics or verbal interpreters. Gray had found the manuscripts of Lydgate at Cambridge, and has made them a vehicle for the most beautiful disquisitions. On a passage in Lydgate, the poet-critic developes a curious occurrence in the history of the poetic art—namely, that proneness to minute circumstances which lengthens the strains of our elder poets, and which the impatience of modern taste rejects as tediousness; yet this will be found to be “the essence of poetry and oratory.” This topic is important; and as I can neither add nor dare to take away from this perfect criticism, I submit to the task of transcribing what I am sure will come to most of my readers in all its freshness and novelty.
Our ancient poet seems to be apologising for telling long stories, which he asserts cannot be told “in wordes few”—
For a storye which is not plainly told,But constreyned underwordes fewFor lack of truth, wher they ben new or olde,Men by reporte cannot the matter shewe;These oakés greaté be not down yheweFirst at a stroke, but by along prócesse;Nor long stories a word may not expresse.Lydgate, in his “Fall of Princes.”
For a storye which is not plainly told,
But constreyned underwordes few
For lack of truth, wher they ben new or olde,
Men by reporte cannot the matter shewe;
These oakés greaté be not down yhewe
First at a stroke, but by along prócesse;
Nor long stories a word may not expresse.
Lydgate, in his “Fall of Princes.”
On this Gray has delivered the following observations:—“These ‘long processes,’ indeed, suited wonderfully with the attention and simple curiosity of the age in whichLydgatelived; many astrokehave he and the best of his contemporaries spent upona sturdy old story, till they had blunted their own edge and that of their readers—at least a modern reader will find it so: but it is a folly to judge of the understanding and patience of those times by our own. They loved, I will not say tediousness, butlengthand a train of circumstances in a narration. The vulgar do so still: it gives an air of reality to facts; it fixes the attention; raises and keeps in suspense their expectation, and supplies the defects of their little and lifeless imagination; and it keeps pace with the slow motion of their own thoughts. Tell them a story as you would tell it to a man of wit; it will appear to them as an object seen in the night by a flash of lightning: butwhen you have placed it in various lights and in various positions, they will come at last to see and feel it as well as others. But we need not confine ourselves to the vulgar, and to understandings beneath our own. Circumstance ever was and ever will be the life and the essence both of oratory and of poetry. It has in some sort the same effect upon every mind that it has upon that of the populace; and I fear thequickness and delicate impatience of these polished timesin which we live are but the forerunners of the decline of all those beautiful arts which depend upon the imagination. Homer, the father ofcircumstance, has occasion for the same apology which I am making for Lydgate and for his predecessors.”8
At the monastery of Bury we might have listened to that Gothic monk’s “goodly tale,” or “notable proverb of Æsopus” for the nonce; or saintly legend, or “merrie balade;” or the story of “Thebes,” which the scholar took up from his master Chaucer: or that from “Bochas,” and Guido Colonna’s “Troy Book:” but too numerous were the volumes to tell, and too voluminous was many a volume. Verbose and diffuse, yet clear and fluent, ran his page; too minutely copious were his descriptions, yet the delineations seemed the more graphical; his verse, too long or too short, halts in his measures till we fall into the minstrel’s “metring,” and lines break forth, beautiful as any in our day. He expands the same image, and loses all likeness in a prolix simile, for his readers were not so impatient as ourselves. These poets suffered or enjoyed a fatal facility of rhyming, lost for us, from the use of polysyllabic words from the French and the Latin accented on the last syllable, a custom continued by the Scots; and these provided them with too ready an abundance of poetic terminations or rhymes, tending to make their poems voluminous. The art of selection is the art of an age less florid and more fastidious, but not always more genial or more inventive. The pruning-hook was not in use when planters were too eager to gather the first fruits from the trees which their own hands had put into the earth.
Alas! apologies only leave irremediable faults as theywere! The tediousness of Dan Lydgate remains as languid, his verse as halting, and “Thebes” and “Troy” as desolate, as we found them!
Let us, however, be reminded, that he who wholly neglects the study of our ancient poets must submit to the loss of knowledge which a philosopher would value; the manners of the age, the modes of feeling, the stream of thought, the virgin fancies, and that position which the human character takes in distant ages—these will imbue his memory with the genius of his country and the eternal truth of authentic nature. No English poet should wholly resign these masses of vernacular poetry to the lone closet of the antiquary; he who loves the gain of labour will excavate these quarries for their marble, for we know they are marble, since many a noble column has been raised from these shapeless and unhewed blocks.
1“The Troy Tale” was composed at the command of the King, Henry the Fifth; as “the Fall of Princes,” from Boccace, was at the desire of Humphrey, the good Duke of Gloucester. He wrote regal poems for kings, while he dispersed wisdom and merriment for their subjects.2While this volume is passing through the press, “A Selection from the Minor Poems of Lydgate” has been edited by Mr. Halliwell. The versatility of Lydgate’s poetical skill is advantageously shown in his comic satire, and his ethics drawn from a deep insight into human nature. The editor suggests a new reading for the title of the ballad of “LondonLick-penny,” more suitable to the misadventures of its hero,—“LondonLack-penny,” for London could not lick a penny from the forlorn hero who had not one to offer to it.Grose, probably taken by the humorous designation, has placed it among his local proverbs.The tale of the “Prioress and her Three Wooers” is one of the happiest fabliaux. Mr. Campbell transcribed “the merrie tale” for his Specimens, when he discovered that a preceding forager had anticipated him in Mr. Jamieson, who has preserved it in his “Popular Ballads,” i. 253.3Turner’s “Hist. of England,” v.4I may point out the raw material which our poetical antiquary has here worked up with such perfect effect in this picturesque enumeration. Appended to Speght’s “Chaucer,” that editor furnished a very curious list of about a hundred works by Lydgate, which were in his own possession. Most of the singular poetical exhibitions here enumerated are mentioned towards the end of that list, and which Warton has happily appropriated, and so turned a dry catalogue into a poetical picture. [A selection of Lydgate’s Poems, 44 in number, were printed by the Percy Society in 1840.]5Dan, as Ritson tells us, is a title given to the individuals of certain religious orders, from the barbarous LatinDomnus, a variation ofDominus, or the FrenchDam, orDom.Danbecame a corruption ofDonforDominus. The title afterwards extended to persons of respectable condition, as vague as our complimentary esquire. It was applied to Chaucer by Spenser, and when obsolete it became jocular; for we have “Dan Cupid.” Prior renewed it with ludicrous gravity when telling a tale which he had from “Dan Pope.” It is still used in an honourable sense by the Spaniards in theirDon.6“Literary Remains,” ii. 130.7The great poet has left two or three most precious fragments; but these have long been buried in those ill-fated quartos, consisting chiefly of notes on Greek and on Plato, which Matthias published with extraordinary pomp; and, so he used to say, as a monument for himself as well as the bard—a monument which, his egregious self-complacency lived to witness, partook more of the properties of a tombstone than the glory of a column.8“Gray’s Works,” by Matthias, ii. p. 60.
1“The Troy Tale” was composed at the command of the King, Henry the Fifth; as “the Fall of Princes,” from Boccace, was at the desire of Humphrey, the good Duke of Gloucester. He wrote regal poems for kings, while he dispersed wisdom and merriment for their subjects.
2While this volume is passing through the press, “A Selection from the Minor Poems of Lydgate” has been edited by Mr. Halliwell. The versatility of Lydgate’s poetical skill is advantageously shown in his comic satire, and his ethics drawn from a deep insight into human nature. The editor suggests a new reading for the title of the ballad of “LondonLick-penny,” more suitable to the misadventures of its hero,—“LondonLack-penny,” for London could not lick a penny from the forlorn hero who had not one to offer to it.Grose, probably taken by the humorous designation, has placed it among his local proverbs.
The tale of the “Prioress and her Three Wooers” is one of the happiest fabliaux. Mr. Campbell transcribed “the merrie tale” for his Specimens, when he discovered that a preceding forager had anticipated him in Mr. Jamieson, who has preserved it in his “Popular Ballads,” i. 253.
3Turner’s “Hist. of England,” v.
4I may point out the raw material which our poetical antiquary has here worked up with such perfect effect in this picturesque enumeration. Appended to Speght’s “Chaucer,” that editor furnished a very curious list of about a hundred works by Lydgate, which were in his own possession. Most of the singular poetical exhibitions here enumerated are mentioned towards the end of that list, and which Warton has happily appropriated, and so turned a dry catalogue into a poetical picture. [A selection of Lydgate’s Poems, 44 in number, were printed by the Percy Society in 1840.]
5Dan, as Ritson tells us, is a title given to the individuals of certain religious orders, from the barbarous LatinDomnus, a variation ofDominus, or the FrenchDam, orDom.Danbecame a corruption ofDonforDominus. The title afterwards extended to persons of respectable condition, as vague as our complimentary esquire. It was applied to Chaucer by Spenser, and when obsolete it became jocular; for we have “Dan Cupid.” Prior renewed it with ludicrous gravity when telling a tale which he had from “Dan Pope.” It is still used in an honourable sense by the Spaniards in theirDon.
6“Literary Remains,” ii. 130.
7The great poet has left two or three most precious fragments; but these have long been buried in those ill-fated quartos, consisting chiefly of notes on Greek and on Plato, which Matthias published with extraordinary pomp; and, so he used to say, as a monument for himself as well as the bard—a monument which, his egregious self-complacency lived to witness, partook more of the properties of a tombstone than the glory of a column.
8“Gray’s Works,” by Matthias, ii. p. 60.
THE INVENTION OF PRINTING
Printingremained, as long as its first artificers could keep it, a secret and occult art; and it is the only one that ceaselessly operates all the miracles which the others had vainly promised.
Who first thought to carve the wooden immoveable letters on blocks?—to stamp the first sheet which ever was imprinted? Or who, second in invention, but first in utility, imagined to cast the metal with fusile types, separate from each other?—to fix this scattered alphabet in a form, and thus by one stroke write a thousand manuscripts, and, with the identical letters, multiply not a single work, but all sorts of works hereafter? Was it fortunate chance, or deliberate meditation, or both in gradual discovery, which produced this invention? In truth, we can neither detect the rude beginnings, nor hardly dare to fix on the beginners. TheOrigines Typographicæare, even at this late hour, provoking a fierce controversy, not only among those who live in the shades of their libraries, but with honest burghers; for the glory of patriotism has connected itself with the invention of an art which came to us like a divine revelation in the history of man. But the place, the mode, and the person—the invention and the inventor—are the subjects of volumes! Votaries of Fust, of Schöffer, of Gutenberg, of Costar! A sullen silence or a deadly feud is your only response. Ye jealous cities of Mentz, of Strasburg, and of Haarlem, each of ye have your armed champion at your gates!1
The mystical eulogist of the art of printing, who declaredthat “the invention came from Heaven,” was not more at a loss to detect the origin than those who have sought for it among the earliest printers.2Learned but angry disputants on the origin of printing, what if the art can boast of no single inventor, and was not the product of a single act? Consider the varieties of its practice, the change of wood to metal, the fixed to the moveable type; view the complexity of its machinery; repeated attempts must often have preceded so many inventions ere they terminated in the great one. From the imperfect and contradictory notices of the early essays—and of the very earliest we may have no record—we must infer that the art, though secret, was progressive, and that many imperfect beginnings were going on at the same time in different places.
Struck by the magnitude and the magnificence of the famous Bible of Fust, some have decided on the invention of the art by one of its most splendid results; this, however, is not in the usual course of human affairs, nor in the nature of things. “The Art of Printing,” observes Dr. Cotton, in his introduction, “was brought almost to perfection in its infancy; so that, like Minerva, it may be said to have sprung to life, mature, vigorous, and armed for war.” But in the article “Moguntia, or Mentz,” this acute researcher states that “after all that has been written with such angry feelings upon the long-contested question of theorigin of the Art of Printing, Mentz appears still to preserve the best-founded claim to the honour of being thebirth-place of the Typographic Art; because,” he adds, “the specimens adduced in favour of Haarlem and Strasburg, even if we should allow their genuineness, are confessedly ofa rude and imperfect execution.” We require no other evidence of the importantfact, that the art, in its early stages, had to pass through many transitions—from the small school-books, or Donatuses, of Costar, to the splendid Bible of Fust. Had the art been borrowed or stolen from a single source, according to the popular tradition, the works would have borne a more fraternal resemblance, and have evinced less inferiority of execution; but if several persons at the same time were working in secrecy, each by his own method, their differences and their inferiority would produce “the rude and imperfect specimens.” Mr. Hallam has suffered his strong emotion on the greatness of the invention to reflect itself back on the humble discoverers themselves; and, unusual with his searching inquiries, calls once more on Dr. Cotton’s Minerva, but with a more celestial panoply. “Thehigh-minded inventorsof this great art tried, atthe very outset, so bold a flight as the printingan entire Bible. It was Minerva leaping on earth, in her divine strength and radiant armour, ready at the moment of her nativity to subdue and destroy her enemies.”3The Bible called the Mazarine Bible, thus distinguished from having been found in the Cardinal’s library, remains still a miracle of typography, not only for its type, but for the quality of the paper and the sparkling blackness of its ink.4The success of the art was established by this Bible; but the goldsmith Fust, who himself was no printer, was no otherwise “high-minded,” than by the usurious prices he speculated on for this innocent imposture of vending what was now a printed book for a manuscript copy!
No refined considerations of the nature and the universal consequences of their discovery seem to have instigated the earliest printers; this is evident by the perpetual jealousy and the mystifying style by which they long attempted to hide that secret monopoly which they had now obtained.
The first notions of printing might have reached Europe from China. Our first block-printing seems imitated from the Chinese, who print with blocks of wood on one side of the paper, as was done in the earliest essaysof printing; and the Chinese seem also to have suggested the use of a thick black ink. European traders might have imported some fugitive leaves; their route has even been indicated, from Tartary, by the way of Russia; and from China and Japan, through the Indies and the Arabian Gulf. The great antiquity of printing in China has been ascertained. Du Halde and the missionary Jesuits assert that this art was practised by the Chinese half a century before the Christian era! At all events, it is evident that they exercised it many centuries before it was attempted in Europe. The history of gunpowder would illustrate the possibility of the same extraordinary invention occurring at distinct periods. Roger Bacon indicated the terrible ingredients a hundred years before the monk Schwartz, about 1330, actually struck out the fiery explosion, and had the glory of its invention. Machines to convey to a distance the thunder and the lightning described by their discoverers were not long after produced. But it would have astonished these inventors to have learnt that guns had been used as early as the year 85A.D., and that the fatal powder had been invented previously by the Chinese. Well might the philosophical Langles be struck by “the singular coincidence of the invention in Europe of the compass, of gunpowder, and of printing, about the same period, within a century.” These three mighty agents in human affairs have been traced to that wary and literary nation, who, though they prohibit all intercourse with “any barbarian eye,” might have suffered these sublime inventions to steal away over “their great wall.”
What has happened to the art of printing also occurred to the sister-art of engraving on copper. Tradition had ascribed the invention as the accidental discovery of the goldsmith Maso Finiguerra. But the Germans insist that they possess engravings before the days of the Italian artist; and it is not doubtful that several of the compatriots of Finiguerra were equally practising the art with himself. Heinecken would arbitrate between the jealous patriots; he concedes that Vasari might ascribe the invention of the art in Italy to Finiguerra, yet that engraving might have been practised in Germany, though unknown in Italy. Buonarotti, the great judge of allart, was sensible that in this sort of invention every artist makes his own discoveries. Alluding to the art of engraving, he says, “It would be sufficient to occasion our astonishment, that the ancients did not discover the art of chalcography, were it not known thatDISCOVERIES OF THIS SORTgenerally occurACCIDENTALLYto the mechanics in the exercise of their calling.”5On this principle we may confidently rest. All the early printers, like the rivals of Finiguerra at home, and his unknown concurrents in Germany, were proceeding with the same art, and might urge their distinct claims.
The natural magic of concave and convex lenses, those miracles of optical science, one of which searches Nature when she eludes the eye, and the other approximates the remotest star—the microscope and the telescope; who were their inventors, and how have those inventions happened? These instruments appeared about the same time. The Germans ascribe the invention of the microscope to a Dutchman, one Drebell; while the Neapolitan Fontana claims the anterior invention; but which Viviani, the scholar of Galileo, asserts, from his own knowledge, was presented to the King of Poland by that father of modern philosophy long anterior to the date fixed on by the Germans. The history of the telescope offers a similar result. Fracastorius may have accidentally combined two lenses; but he neither specified the form nor the quality; and in these consisted the real discovery, which we find in Baptista Porta, and which subsequently was perfected by Galileo. The invention of the art of printing seems a parallel one. It appeared in various quarters about the same time; and in the process of successive attempts, by intimation, by conjecture, and by experiment, each artificer insensibly advanced into a more perfect invention; till some fortunate claimant for the discovery puts aside all preceding essayists, who, not without some claims to the invention, leave their advocates in another generation to dispute about their rights, which are buried in oblivion, or falsified by traditional legends.
Thus it has happened that obscure traditions envelopethe origin of some of the most interesting inventions. Had these ingenious discoveries been as simple and as positive as their historians oppositely maintain, these origins had not admitted of such interminable disputes. We may therefore reasonably suspect that the practitioners in every art which has reached to almost a perfect state, such as that of printing, have silently borrowed from one another; that there has often existed a secret connexion in things, and a reciprocal observation in the intercourse of men alike intent on the same object; that countries have insensibly transferred a portion of their knowledge to their neighbours; that travellers in every era have imparted their novelties, hints however crude, descriptions however imperfect; all such slight notices escape the detection of an historian; nothing can reach him but the excellence of some successful artist. In vain rival concurrents dispute the invention; the patriotic historian of the art clings to his people or his city, to fix the inventor and the invention, and promulgates fairy tales to authenticate the most uncertain evidence.6
The history of printing illustrates this view of its origin. The invention has been long ascribed toGutenberg, yet some have made it doubtful whether this presumed father of the art ever succeeded in printing a book, for we are assured that no colophon has revealed his name. We hear of his attempts and of his disappointments, his bickerings and his lawsuits. He seems to have been a speculative bungler in a new-found art, which he mysteriously hinted was to make a man’s fortune. The goldsmith, Fust, advanced a capital in search of the novel alchymy—the project ends in a lawsuit, the goldsmithgains his cause, and the projector is discharged. Gutenberg lures another simple soul, and the same golden dream vanishes in the dreaming. These copartners, evidently tired of an art which had not yet found an artist, a young man, probably improving on Gutenberg’s blunders, one happy day displayed to the eyes of his master, Fust, a proof pulled from his own press. In rapture, the master confers on this Peter Schœffer a share of his future fortunes; and to bind the apprentice by the safest ties of consanguinity, led the swart youth, glorious with printer’s ink, to the fair hand of his young daughter. The new partnership produced their famed Psalter of 1457; and shortly followed their magnificent Bible.
While these events were occurring,Costar, of Haarlem, was plodding on with the same “noble mystery,” but only printing on one side of a leaf, not having yet discovered that a leaf might be contrived to contain two pages. The partisans of Costar assert that it was proved he substituted moveable for fixed letters, which was a giant’s footstep in this new path. A faithless servant ran off with the secret. The history of printing abounds with such tales. Every step in the progress of the newly-invented art indicates its gradual accessions. The numbering of the pages was not thought of for a considerable time; the leaves were long only distinguished by letters or signatures—a custom still preserved, though apparently superfluous.
There is something attractive for rational curiosity in the earliest beginnings of every art; every slight improvement, even though trivial, has its motive, and supplies some want. On this principle the history of punctuation enters into the history of literature. Caxton had the merit of introducing the Roman pointing as used in Italy; and his successor, Pynson, triumphed by domiciliating the Roman letter. The dash, or perpendicular line, thus, | was the only punctuation they used. It was, however, discovered that “the craft of poynting well used makes the sentence very light.” The more elegant comma supplanted the long uncouth |; the colon was a refinement, “showing that there is more to come.” But the semicolon was a Latin delicacy which the obtuse English typographer resisted. So late as 1580 and 1590 treatiseson orthography do not recognise any such innovator; the Bible of 1592, though printed with appropriate accuracy, is without a semicolon; but in 1633 its full rights are established by Charles Butler’s “English Grammar.” In this chronology of the four points of punctuation it is evident that Shakspeare could never have used the semicolon—a circumstance which the profound George Chalmers mourns over, opining that semicolons would often have saved the poet from his commentators.
Fusthad bound his workmen to secrecy by the solemnity of an oath; but at the siege of Mentz that freemasonry was lost. These early printers dispersed, some were even bribed away. Two Germans set up their press in the monastery of Subiaco, in the vicinity of Naples, whose confraternity consisted of German monks. These very printers finally retreated to Rome for that patronage they had still to seek; and at Rome they improved the art by adopting the Roman character. Not only the invention of the art was progressive, but the art itself was much more so.
We have other narratives of printers romantically spirited away from the parent-presses; one of the most extraordinary is the history of printing set up at Oxford, ten years before the art was practised in Europe, except at Haarlem and Mentz. Henry VI., by advice of the Archbishop of Canterbury, despatched a confidential agent in disguise, under the guidance of Caxton, in his trading journeys to Flanders. The Haarlemites were so jealous of idling strangers who had come on the same insidious design, that foreigners had frequently been imprisoned.
The royal agent never ventured to enter the city, but by heavy bribes in a secret intercourse with the workmen, one dark night he smuggled a printer aboard a vessel, and carried away Frederick Corsellis. That printer, on landing in England, was attended by a guard to Oxford. There he was constantly watched till he had revealed the mysterious craft. The evidence of this unheard-of history hinged on a record at Lambeth-palace authenticating the whole narrative, and on a monument of Corsellis’s art, which any one might inspect at the Bodleian, being a book bearing a date six years prior to any printing by Caxton. The record at Lambeth, however, was neverfound, and never heard of, and the date of the book might have been accidentally or designedly falsified. An x dropped in the date of the impression would account for the singularity of a book printed before our Caxton had acquired the art. The tale long excited a sharp controversy, when Corsellis at Oxford was considered as the first printer in England. The possibility of the existence of this person at Oxford, and even of the book he printed, appears by a lively investigation of Dr. Cotton;7and I have been assured of a circumstance which, if true, would render the story of Corsellis probable; it is that a family of this name may still be found in Oxfordshire. The whole history has, however, by some been considered as supposititious, standing on the single evidence of a Sir Richard Atkyns, a servile lawyer and royalist of no great character in the days of Charles the Second.8Grafting his tale on the accident of the date of this book, he had a covert design—to maintain a theory or a right that printing was “a flower of the crown,” constituting the sovereign the printer of England! all others being his servants. This enormous prevention of the abuses of the press was not deemed too extravagant for those desperate times.
The only certainty in the history of printing, after all the fables of its origin, is its native place. It is a German romance enlivened by some mysterious adventures, wanting only the opening pages, which no one can supply.9Even the most philosophic of bibliographers, Daunou, utters a cry of despair, and moreover, at this late day,seems at a loss to decide on the nature of the influence of the art of printing! “We live too near the epoch of the discovery of printing to judge accurately of its influence, and too far from it to know the circumstances which gave birth to it.” Our sage seems to think that another cycle of at least a thousand years must pass away ere we can decide on the real influence of printing over the destinies of man: this new tree of knowledge bears other fruit than that of its own sweetness, source of good and evil, of sense and of nonsense! whence we pluck the windy fruitage of opinions, crude and changeable!
How has it happened that such a plain story as that of the art of printing should have sunk into a romance? Solely because the monopolisers dreaded discovery. It originated in deception, and could only flourish for their commercial spirit in mysterious obscurity. Among the first artisans of printing every one sought to hide his work, and even to blind the workmen. After their operations, they cautiously unscrewed the four sides of their forms, and threw the scattered type beneath, for, as one craftily observed to his partner, “When the component parts of the press are in pieces, no one will understand what they mean.” One of the early printers of the fifteenth century at Mutina, or Modena, professes his press to have beenin ædibus subterraneis—doubtless, if possible, still further to darken the occult mystery. They delivered themselves in a mystical style when they alluded to their unnamed art, and impressed on the marvelling reader that the volume he held in his hand was the work of some supernatural agency. They announced that the volumes in this newly-found art were “neither drawn, nor written with a pen and ink, as all books before had been.” In the “Recuyel of the Historyes of Troye,” our honest printer, plain Caxton, caught the hyperbolical style of the dark monopolising spirit of the confraternity. I give his words, having first spelt them. “I have practised and learned at my great charge, and dispense to ordain (put in order) this said book in print after the manner and form as ye may here see, and is not written with pen and ink as other books be, to the end thatevery man may have themAT ONCE; for all the books of this story, thus imprinted as ye see, werebegun in one day, and also finished inone day.” A volume of more than seven hundred folio pages, “begun and finished in one day,” was not the less marvellous for being impossible. But for the times was the style! Caxton would keep up the wonder and the mystery of an art which men did not yet comprehend; and because a whole sheet might have been printed in one day, and wasall at oncepulled off, and not line by line, our venerable printer mystified the world. And all this was said at a time when so slow was the process of transcription, that one hundred Bibles could not be procured under the expense of seven thousand days, or of nearly twenty years’ labour. Honest men, too eager in their zeal, particularly when their personal interests are at stake, sometimes strain truth on the tenter-hooks of fiction. The false miracle which our primeval printer professed he had performed we seem to have realized: it is amusing to conceive the wonderment of Caxton, were he now among us, to view the steam working that cylindrical machine which disperses the words of a speaker throughout the whole nation, when the voice which uttered them is still lingering on our ear!
1The city of Haarlem designs to erect a statue ofCostar[since this was written the statue has been placed in the great square]; thus publicly, in the eyes of Europe, to vindicate the priority of this inventor of typography. But a statue is not the final argument which, like the cannon of monarchs (thatultima ratio regum), will carry conviction on the spot it is placed. Mentz has already erected a statue ofGutenberg. I have no doubt that, in the present state of agitation, both these statues will have much to say to one another, as the mystical Pasquin and Marforio of typography.2“Some Observations on the Use and Original of the noble Art and Mystery of Printing,” by F. Burges. Norwich, 1701. This is declared to be the first book printed at Norwich; where it appears that the establishment of a printing-office, so late as in 1701, encountered a stern opposition from its sage citizens. The writer did not know that as far back as 1570 a Dutch printer had exercised the novel art by printing religious books for a community of Dutch emigrants who had taken refuge at Norwich, according to the recent discovery of Dr. Cotton, in his “Typographical Gazetteer”—a volume abounding with the most vigorous researches.3Hallam’s “Introduction to the Literature of Europe,” i. 211.4Twenty copies of this famous Bible exist; one is preserved in our Royal Library.5Ottley’s “Inquiry into the Early History of Engraving.” See also note in “Curiosities of Literature,” vol. i, p. 43.6Dr.Wetter, of Mentz, has lately shown that, contrary to the common opinion, Gutenberg himself printed long withwooden blocks; and that, instead of the invention of moveable types having been the result of long study,it arose out of a “sudden fancy.”How the Doctor has authenticated “the sudden fancy,” I know not, but the apotheosis has passed. In three successive days, in the month of August, 1837, all Mentz congregated to worship the statue, by Thorwaldsen, of their ancient citizen in the square that henceforward bears his name. A chorus of 700 voices resounded the laud of the German printer; the flags in the regatta waved to his honour; and the festival rejoiced the city: and when the figure of Gutenberg was unveiled, the artillery, the music, and the people’s voices, blending together, seemed to echo in the skies.7Dr. Cotton’s curious “Typographical Gazetteer,” art.Oxonia. Of a class of the earliest printed books, having no printer’s name, he observes, “These may have been printed by Corsellis, or any one else.”8Atkyns on the “Original and Growth of Printing.” This quarto pamphlet is highly valued among collectors for Loggan’s beautiful print of Charles the Second, Archbishop Shelden, and General Monk. Dr. Middleton refuted this ridiculous tale of an ideal printer, one Corsellis, in his “Dissertation on the Origin of Printing in England,” first published 1735, and which now may be seen in his works.9The fourth day of the “Bibliographical Decameron” of Dr. Dibdin exhibits an ample view of the pending controversies on the “Origines Typographicæ.” Every bibliographer has his favourite hero. The reader will observe that I have none! And yet possibly my tale may be the truest.
1The city of Haarlem designs to erect a statue ofCostar[since this was written the statue has been placed in the great square]; thus publicly, in the eyes of Europe, to vindicate the priority of this inventor of typography. But a statue is not the final argument which, like the cannon of monarchs (thatultima ratio regum), will carry conviction on the spot it is placed. Mentz has already erected a statue ofGutenberg. I have no doubt that, in the present state of agitation, both these statues will have much to say to one another, as the mystical Pasquin and Marforio of typography.
2“Some Observations on the Use and Original of the noble Art and Mystery of Printing,” by F. Burges. Norwich, 1701. This is declared to be the first book printed at Norwich; where it appears that the establishment of a printing-office, so late as in 1701, encountered a stern opposition from its sage citizens. The writer did not know that as far back as 1570 a Dutch printer had exercised the novel art by printing religious books for a community of Dutch emigrants who had taken refuge at Norwich, according to the recent discovery of Dr. Cotton, in his “Typographical Gazetteer”—a volume abounding with the most vigorous researches.
3Hallam’s “Introduction to the Literature of Europe,” i. 211.
4Twenty copies of this famous Bible exist; one is preserved in our Royal Library.
5Ottley’s “Inquiry into the Early History of Engraving.” See also note in “Curiosities of Literature,” vol. i, p. 43.
6Dr.Wetter, of Mentz, has lately shown that, contrary to the common opinion, Gutenberg himself printed long withwooden blocks; and that, instead of the invention of moveable types having been the result of long study,it arose out of a “sudden fancy.”
How the Doctor has authenticated “the sudden fancy,” I know not, but the apotheosis has passed. In three successive days, in the month of August, 1837, all Mentz congregated to worship the statue, by Thorwaldsen, of their ancient citizen in the square that henceforward bears his name. A chorus of 700 voices resounded the laud of the German printer; the flags in the regatta waved to his honour; and the festival rejoiced the city: and when the figure of Gutenberg was unveiled, the artillery, the music, and the people’s voices, blending together, seemed to echo in the skies.
7Dr. Cotton’s curious “Typographical Gazetteer,” art.Oxonia. Of a class of the earliest printed books, having no printer’s name, he observes, “These may have been printed by Corsellis, or any one else.”
8Atkyns on the “Original and Growth of Printing.” This quarto pamphlet is highly valued among collectors for Loggan’s beautiful print of Charles the Second, Archbishop Shelden, and General Monk. Dr. Middleton refuted this ridiculous tale of an ideal printer, one Corsellis, in his “Dissertation on the Origin of Printing in England,” first published 1735, and which now may be seen in his works.
9The fourth day of the “Bibliographical Decameron” of Dr. Dibdin exhibits an ample view of the pending controversies on the “Origines Typographicæ.” Every bibliographer has his favourite hero. The reader will observe that I have none! And yet possibly my tale may be the truest.
THE FIRST ENGLISH PRINTER.
Theambitious wars of a potent aristocracy inflicted on this country half a century of public misery. Our fields were a soil of blood; and maternal England long mourned for victories she obtained over her own children—lord against lord, brother against brother, and the son against the father. Rival administrations alternately dispossess each other by sanguinary conflict; a new monarch attaints the friends of his predecessor; conspiracy rises against conspiracy—scaffold against scaffold; the king is re-enthroned—the king perishes in the Tower; York is triumphant—and York is annihilated.
Few great families there were who had not immolated their martyrs or their victims; and it frequently occurred that the same family had fallen equally on both sides, for it was a war of the aristocracy with the aristocracy: “Save the commons and kill the captains,” was the general war-cry. The distracted people were perhaps indifferent to the varying fortunes of the parties, accustomed as they were to behold after each battle the heads of lords and knights raised on every bridge and gate.
During this dread interval, all things about us were thrown back into a state of the rudest infancy; the illiterature of the age approached to barbarism; the evidences of history were destroyed; there was such a paucity of readers, that no writers were found to commemorate contemporary events. Indeed, had there been any, who could have ventured to arbitrate between such contradictory accounts, where every party had to tell their own tale? Oblivion, not history, seemed to be the consolation of those miserable times.
It was at such an unhappy era that the new-found art of printing was introduced into England by an English trader, who for thirty years had passed his life in Flanders, conversant with no other languages than were used in those countries.
Our literature was interested in the intellectual characterof our first English printer. A powerful mind might, by the novel and mighty instrument of thought, have created a national taste, or have sown that seed of curiosity without which no knowledge can be reared. Such a genius might have anticipated by a whole century that general passion for sound literature which was afterwards to distinguish our country. But neither the times nor the man were equal to such a glorious advancement.
The first printed book in the English language was not printed in England. It is a translation of Ráoul le Fevre’s “Recuyel of the Historyes of Troye,” famed in its own day as the most romantic history, and in ours, for the honour of bibliography, romantically valued at the cost of a thousand guineas. This first monument of English printing issued from the infant press at Cologne in 1471, where Caxton first became initiated in “the noble mystery and craft” of printing, when printing was yet truly “a mystery,” and Caxton himself did not import the art which was to effect such an intellectual revolution till a year or two afterwards, on his return home. The first printer, it is evident, had no other conception of the machine he was about to give the nation than as an ingenious contrivance, or a cheap substitute for costly manuscripts—possibly he might, in his calculating prudence, even be doubtful of its success!
At the announcement of the first printed book in our vernacular idiom, the mind involuntarily pauses: looking on the humble origin of our bibliography, and on the obscure commencement of the newly-found art of printing itself, we are startled at the vast and complicated results.
The contemporaries of our first printer were not struck by their novel and precious possession, of which they participated in the first fruits in the circulation and multiplication of their volumes. The introduction of the art into England is wholly unnoticed by the chroniclers of the age, so unconscious they were of this new implement of the human mind. We find Fabian, who must have known Caxton personally—both being members of the Mercers’ Company—passing unnoticed his friend; and instead of any account of the printing-press, we have only such things as “a new weathercock placed on the cross of St. Paul’s steeple.” Hall, so copious in curiousmatters, discovered no curiosity to memorialize in the printing-press; Grafton was too heedless; and Holinshed, the most complete of our chroniclers, seems to have had an intention of saying something by his insertion of a single line, noticing the name of “Caxton as the first practiser of the art of printing;” but he was more seriously intent in the same paragraph to give a narrative of “a bloody rain, the red drops falling on the sheets which had been hanged to dry.” The history of printing in England has been vainly sought for among English historians; so little sensible were they to those expansive views and elevated conceptions, which are now too commonplace eulogies to repeat.
By what subdolous practices among the first inventors of this secret art Caxton obtained its mastery, we are not told, except that he learnt the new art “at his own great cost and expense;” and on his final return home, he was accompanied by foreigners who lived in his house, and after his death became his successors. Wynkyn de Worde, Pynson, Machlinia and others, by their names betray their German origin. We have recently discovered that we had even a French printer who printed English books. Francis Regnault (or Reynold, anglicised) was a Frenchman who fell under the displeasure of the Inquisition for printing the Bible in English. He resided in England, and had in hand a number of primers in English and other similar books, which at length excited the jealousy ofthe Company of Booksellers in London—in the reign of Henry the Eighth. To allay this bibliopolic storm, the affrighted French printer, with all his stock in hand, procured Coverdale and Grafton to intercede with Cromwell to grant him a licence to sell what he had already printed, engaging hereafter “to print no more in theEnglish tongueunless he have anEnglishmanthat is learned to be his corrector;” and further, he offers to cancel and reprint any faulty leaf again.1
Caxton did not extend his views beyond those of a mercantile printer and an indifferent translator. As a writer, Caxton had reason to speak with humility of the style of his vernacular versions. His patroness, the Lady Margaret, sister to our Edward the Fourth, and Duchessof Burgundy, after inspecting some quires of his translation of the “Recuyel of the Historyes of Troye,” returned them, finding, as Caxton ingenuously acknowledges, “some defaut in his English which she commanded him to amend.” Tyrwhit sarcastically observes, that the duchess might have been a purist. As we are not told what were these “defauts,” we cannot decide on the good taste or the fastidiousness of the sister of Edward the Fourth. But the duchess was not the only critic whom Caxton had to encounter, for we learn by his preface to his “Boke of Æneydos compiled by Virgil,” now metamorphosed into a barbarous French prose romance, and the French translation translated, that there were “gentlemen who of late have blamed me that in my translations I had over-curious terms which could not be understood by common people. I fain would satisfy every man.” He apologises for his own style by alleging the unsettled state of the English language, of which he tells us that “the language now used varieth far from that which was used and spoken when I was born.” An absence of thirty years from his native land did not improve a diction which originally had been none of the purest. We find in his translations an abundance of pure French words, and it is remarkable that the printer of the third edition of the Troy history, in 1607, altered whole sentences “into plainer English,” alleging, “the translator, William Caxton, being,as it seemeth, no Englishman!”
The “curious” prices now given among the connoisseurs of our earliest typography for their “Caxtons,” as his Gothic works are thus honourably distinguished, have induced some, conforming to traditional prejudice, to appreciate by the same fanciful value “the Caxtonian style.” But though we are not acquainted with the “defauts” which offended the Lady Margaret, nor with the “terms which were not easily understood,” as alleged by “the gentlemen,” nor with “the sentences improperly Englished,” as the later printer declared, we shall not, I suspect, fall short of the mark if we conclude that the style of a writer destitute of a literary education, a prolix genius with a lax verbosity, and almost a foreigner in his native idiom, could not attain to any skill or felicity in the maternal tongue.
As a printer, without erudition, Caxton would naturally accommodate himself to the tastes of his age, and it was therefore a consequence that no great author appears among “the Caxtons.” The most glorious issues of his press were a Chaucer and a Gower, wherein he was simply a printer. The rest of his works are translations of fabulous histories, and those spurious writings of the monkish ages ascribed by ignorant transcribers to some ancient sage. He appears frequently to have been at a loss what book to print, and to have accidentally chosen the work in hand; so he tells us—“Having no work in hand, I sitting in my study, where as lay many diverse paunflettes and bookys, happened that to my hand came a lytel boke in French, which late was translated out of Latin by some noble clerk of France, which book is named Æneydos.” And this was the origin of his puerile romance! He exercised no discrimination in his selection of authors, and the simplicity of our first printer far exceeded his learning. One of his greater works is “The noble History of King Arthur and of certain of his Knights.” Caxton, who had charmed himself and his ignorant readers with his authentic “Æneydos,” hesitated to print “this history,” for there were different opinions that “there was no such Arthur, and that all such books as be made of him be but feigned and fables.” It would be difficult to account for the scepticism of one who always found the marvellous more delectable than the natural, and who had published so many “feigned” histories—as “The veray trew History of the valiant Knight Jason,” or the “Life of Hercules,” and all “The Merveilles of Virgil’s Necromancy,” solemnly vouching for their verity! His sudden scruples were, however, relieved, when “a gentleman” assured our printer that “it was great folly and blindness in the disbelievers of this true history.”
In the early stage of civilization men want knowledge to feel any curiosity; like children, they are only affected through the medium of their imagination. But it is a phenomenon in the history of the human mind, that at a period of refinement we may approximate to one of barbarism. This happens when the ruling passion wholly returns to fiction, and thus terminates in a reckless disregardfor all other studies. Whenever history, severe and lofty, displaying men as they are, is degraded among the revels and the masques of romance; and the slow inductions of reasoning, and the minute discoveries of research, and the nice affinities of analogy, are impatiently rejected, while fiction in her exaggerated style swells every object into a colossal size, and raises every passion into hyperbolical violence; a distaste for knowledge, and a coldness for truth, which must follow, are fatal to the sanity of the intellect. And thus in the day of our refinement we may be reverting to our barbarous infancy.
Caxton, mindful of his commercial interests and the taste of his readers, left the glory of restoring the classical writers of antiquity, which he could not read, to the learned printers of Italy.2The Orator of Cicero, the histories of Herodotus and Polybius, the ethics of Seneca, and the elaborate volumes of St. Austin, were some of the rich fruits of the early typography of the German printers who had conveyed their new art to the Neapolitan monastery of Subiaco. Our English printer, indeed, might have heard of their ill-fortune, when, in a petition to the Pope, they sent forth this cry—“Our house is full of proof-sheets, but we have nothing to eat!” The trivial productions from Caxton’s press, romantic or religious legends, and treatises on hunting and hawking, and the moralities of the game of chess, with Reynard the Fox, were more amusing to the ignorant readers of his country; but the national genius was little advanced by a succession of “merveillous workes;” nor would the crude, unformed tastes of the readers be matured by stimulating their inordinate appetites. The first printing-press in England did not serve to raise the national taste out of its barbarous infancy. Caxton was not a genius to soar beyond his age, but he had the industry to keep pace with it, and with little judgment and less learning he found noimpediment in his selection of authors or his progress in translation.
Our earliest printed works consist of these translations of French translations; and the historian of our poetry considered that this very circumstance, which originated in the general illiteracy of the times, was more favourable to our vernacular literature than would have been the publication of Roman writers in their original language. Had it not been for these French versions, Caxton could not have furnished any of his own. The multiplication of English copies multiplied English readers, and when at length there was a generation of readers, an English press induced many to turn authors who were only qualified to write in their native tongue.
Venerable shade of Caxton! the award of the tribunal of posterity is a severe decision, but an imprescriptible law! Men who appear at certain eras of society, however they be lauded for what they have done, are still liable to be censured for not doing what they ought to have done. Patriarch of the printing-press! who to thy last and dying day withdrew not thy hand from thy work, it is hard that thou shouldst be amenable to a law which thy faculties were not adequate to comprehend; surely thou mayst triumph, thou simple man! amid the echoes of thy “Caxtonians” rejoicing over thy Gothic leaves—but the historian of the human mind is not the historian of typography.