1In Oldys’ “British Librarian” there is an accurate analysis of the work, in which every single article is enumerated.2A similar volume to Arnolde’s may be found in the “Harl. MSS.,” No. 2252.
1In Oldys’ “British Librarian” there is an accurate analysis of the work, in which every single article is enumerated.
2A similar volume to Arnolde’s may be found in the “Harl. MSS.,” No. 2252.
THE FIRST PRINTED CHRONICLE.
Thefirst chronicle in our vernacular prose, designed for the English people, was the earnest labour of one of themselves, a citizen and alderman, and sometime sheriff of London,Robert Fabyan. Here, for the first time, the spectacle of English affairs, accompanied by what he has called “A Concordance of Stories,” which included separate notices of French history contemporaneous with the periods he records, was opened for “the unlettered who understand no Laten.” Our chronicler, in the accustomed mode, fixes the periods of history by dates from Adam or from Brute. He opens with a superfluous abridgment of Geoffry of Monmouth—the “Polychronicon” is one of his favourite sources, but his authorities are multifarious. His French history is a small stream from “La Mere des Chroniques,” and other chronicles of his contemporary Gaguin, a royal historiographer who wandered in the same taste, but who, Fabyan had the sagacity to discover, carefully darkened all matters unpleasant to Frenchmen, but never “leaving anything out of his book that may sound to the advancement of the French nacyon.”
It was a rare occurrence in a layman, and moreover a merchant, to have cultivated the French and the Latin languages. Fabyan was not a learned man, for the age of men of learning had not yet arrived, though it was soon to come. At that early day of our typography, when our native annalists lay scattered in their manuscript seclusion, it was no ordinary delving which struck into the dispersed veins of the dim and dark mine of our history. So little in that day was the critical knowledge of our writers, that Fabyan has “quoted the same work under different appellations,” and some of our historical writers he seems not to have met with in his researches, for the chronicles of Robert of Gloucester and of Peter Langtoft, though but verse, would have contributed some freshness to his own. In seven unequal divisions, the chroniclecloses with the days of the seventh Henry. These seven divisions were probably more fantastical than critical; the number was adopted to cheer the good man with “the seven joys of the Virgin,” which he sings forth in unmetrical metre, evidently participating in the rapturous termination of each of his own “seven joys.”
Our grave chronicler, arrayed in his civic dignities, seems to have provoked the sensitiveness of the poetical critic in Warton, and the caustic wit in Horace Walpole. “No sheriff,” exclaims Walpole, “was ever less qualified to write a history of England. He mentions the deaths of princes and revolutions of government with the same phlegm and brevity as he would speak of the appointment of churchwardens.”
We may suspect that our citizen and chronicler, however he might be familiar with the public acts of royalty, had no precise notions of the principles of their government. We cannot otherwise deem of an historical recorder whose political sagacity, in that famous interview between our Edward the Fourth and Louis the Eleventh, of which Comines has left us a lively scene, could not penetrate further than to the fashion of the French monarch’s dress. He tells us of “the nice and wanton disguised apparel that the King Louys wore upon him at the time of this meeting,I might make a long rehearsal, apparalled more like a minstrel than a prince.” Fabyan shared too in the hearty “John Bullism” of that day in a mortal jealousy of the Gaul, and even of hisSainte Ampoule. Though no man had a greater capacity of faith for miracles and saints on English ground, yet for those of his neighbours he had found authority that it was not necessary for his salvation to believe them, and has ventured to decide on one, that “they must be folys (fools) who believe it.” Had theSainte Ampoule, however, been deposited in Westminster Abbey for our own coronations, instead of the Cathedral at Rheims for a French king, Fabyan had not doubted of the efficacy of every drop of the holy oil.
But the dotage ofFabyandid not particularly attach to him; and though his intellectual comprehension was restricted to the experience of an alderman, he might have been the little Machiavel of his wardmote—for he hasthrown out a shrewd observation, which no doubt we owe to his own sagacity. In noticing the neglect of a mayor in repairing the walls which had been begun by his predecessor, he observes that this generally happens, for “one mayor will not finish that thing which another beginneth, for then they think, be the deed ever so good and profitable, that the honour thereof shall be ascribed to the beginner, and not to the finisher, which lack of charity and desire of vainglory causeth many good acts and deeds to die, and grow out of mind, to the great decay of the commonwealth of the city.” A profound observation, which might be extended to monarchs as well as mayors.
Indulging too often the civic curiosity of “a citizen and alderman,”Fabyanhas been taunted for troubling posterity. “Fabyan,” says Warton, “is equally attentive to the succession of the mayors of London and the monarchs of England. He seems to have thought the dinners at Guildhall and the pageantries of the city companies more interesting transactions than our victories in France and our struggles for public liberty at home.”
This seems to be a random stricture. The alderman, indeed, has carefully registered the mayors and the sheriffs of London; and the scientific in “high and low prices” perhaps may be grateful that our pristine chronicler has also furnished the prices of wheat, oxen, sheep, and poultry—but we cannot find that he has commemorated the diversified forms these took on the solemn tables of the Guildhall, nor can we meet with the pasteboard pomps of city pageants, one only being recorded, on the return of Henry the Sixth from France.
Our modern critic, composing in the spirit of our day, alludes to “the struggle for public liberty”; but “public liberty” must have been a very ambiguous point with the honest citizen who had been a sad witness to the contests of two murderous families, who had long sought their mutual destruction, and long convulsed the whole land. We may account for the tempered indifference, and “the brief recitals” for which this simple citizen is reproached, who had lived through such changeful and ensanguined scenes, which had left their bleeding memories among the families of his contemporaries.
The faculties of Fabyan were more level with theirobjects when he had to chronicle the “tempestuous weathering of thunder and lightning,” with the ominous fall of a steeple, or “the image of our Lady” dashed down from its roof; or when he describes the two castles in the air, whence issued two armies, black and white, combating in the skies till the white vanished! Such portents lasted much later than the days of Fabyan, for honest Stowe records what had once ushered in St. James’s night, when the lightning and thunder coming in at the south window and bursting on the north, the bells of St. Michael were listened to with horror, ringing of themselves, while ugly shapes were dancing on the steeple. Their natural philosophy and their piety were long stationary, yet even then some were critical in their remarks; for when Fabyan recorded “flying dragons and fiery spirits in the air,” this was corrected by omitting “the fiery spirits,” but agreeing to “the flying dragons.” Fabyan, however, has preserved more picturesque and ingenious visions in some legends of saints or apparitions—still delightsome. These legends formed their “Works of Fiction,” and were more affecting than ours, for they were supernatural, and no one doubted their verity.
Our pristine chronicler, as we have seen, has received hard measure from the two eminent critics of the eighteenth century, who have censured as a history that which is none. Chronicles were written when the science of true history had yet no existence; a chronicle then in reality is but a part of history. Every fact dispersed in its insulated state refuses all combination; cause and effect lie remote and obscured from each other; disguised by their ostensible pretexts, the true motives of actions in the great actors of the drama of history cannot be found in the chronological chronicler. The real value of his diligence consists in copiousness and discrimination; qualities rather adverse to each other.Fabyanbetrays the infirmities of the early chronicler, not yet practised even in the art of simple detail, without distinction of the importance or the insignificance of the matters he records: his eager pen reckoned the number without knowing to test the weight; to him all facts appeared of equal worth, for all alike had cost him the same toil; and thus he yields an abundance without copiousness. In raising the curiosity which hehas not satisfied for us, his mighty tome shrinks into a narrow scope, and his imperfect narratives, brief and dry, offer only the skeletons of history. The mere antiquarian indeed prefers the chronicle to the history; the acquisition of a fact with him is the limit of his knowledge, and he is apt to dream that he possesses the superstructure when he is only at work on the foundations.
The Chronicle ofFabyanattracts our notice for a remarkable incident attending its publication. The Chronicle was finished in 1504, and remained in manuscript during the author’s life, who died in 1512. The first edition did not appear till 1516. The cause which delayed the printing of an important work, for such it was in that day, has not been disclosed; yet perhaps we might have been interested to have learned whether this protracted publication arose out of neglect difficult to comprehend, or from the printer, reluctant to risk the cost, or from any impediment from a higher quarter.
Be this as it may, we possess the writer’s genuine work, for the printer, Pynson, was faithful to his author. The rarity of this first edition Bale, on a loose rumour which no other literary historian has sanctioned, ascribes to its suppression by Cardinal Wolsey, who is represented in his fury to have condemned the volume to a public ignition, which no one appears to have witnessed, for its “dangerous exposition of the revenues of the clergy,” which is not found in the volume.Fabyantruly waster Catholicus; he was of the old religion, dying in the odour of sanctity, and was spared the trial of the new. The alderman’s voluminous will is now for us at least as curious as anything in his chronicle.1We here behold the play of the whole machinery of superstition, when men imagined that they secured the repose of their souls by feeing priests and bribing saints by countless masses. This funereal rite was then called “the month’s mind,” and which, at least for that short period, prolonged the memory of the departed. For this lugubrious performance were provided ponderous torches for the bearers, tapers for shrines, and huge candlesticks to be kept lighted at the altar. Threetrentballs—that is, thirty masses thrice told—were to be chorused by the Grey Friars; six priestswereto perform the high mass, chant the requiem, and recite theDe Profundisand theDirige; and for nine years, on his mortuary day, he charges his “tenement in Cornhill” to pay for anObite! But not only friars and priests were to pray or to sing for the repose of the soul of Alderman Fabyan, all comers were invited to kneel around the tomb; and at times children were to be called in, who if they could not read aDe Profundisfrom the Psalter, the innocents were to cry forth aPater-Nosteror anAve! There was a purveyance of ribs of beef and mutton and ale, “stock-fish, if Lent,” and other recommendations for “the comers to theDirigeat night.” The Alderman, however, seems to have planned a kind of economy in his “month’s mind,” for not only was the repose of his soul in question, but also “the souls of all above written”—and these were a bead-roll of all the branches of Fabyan’s family.
The Chronicle ofFabyanwas not long given to the world when it encountered the doom of a system at its termination, just before the beginnings of a coming one; that fatal period of a change in human affairs and human opinions, usually described as a state of transition. But in this particular instance, the change occurred preceded by no transitional approach; for within the small circuit of thirty years it seemed as if the events of whole centuries had been more miraculously compressed, than any in those “lives of the saints” whose legendary lore, provided the saints were English, MasterFabyanhad loved to perpend. It was Henry the Eighth who turned all the sense of our chronicler into nonsense, all his honest faith into lying absurdities, all his exhortations to maintain “religious houses” into treasonable matters.
Successive editors of the editions of 1533, 43, and 55, surpassed each other in watchfulness, to rid themselves of the old song. Never was author so mutilated in parts, nor so wholly changed from himself; and when, as it sometimes happened, neither purgation nor castration availed the reforming critics, the author’s sides bore their marginal flagellations. The corrections or alterations were, however, dexterously performed, for the texture of the work betrayed no trace of the rents. The omissionof a phrase saved a whole sentence, and the change of an adjective or two set right a whole character. It is true they swept away all his delightful legends, without sparing his woful metres of “the seven joys of the Blessed Virgin,” and his appreciation of some favourite relics. They disbanded all the saints, or treated them as they did “the holy virgin Edith,” of whom Fabyan has recorded that “manyvirtuesbe rehearsed,” which they delicately reduced toverses. His Holiness the Pope is simply “the Bishop of Rome;” and on one memorable occasion—the Papal interdiction of John—this “Bishop” is designated in the margin by the reformer as “that monstrous and wicked Beast.” The narrative of Becket cost our compurgators, as it has many others, much shifting, and more omissions. In the tale of the hardy and ambitious Archbishop murdered by knightly assassins, Fabyan said, “Theymartyredthe blessed Archbishop;” our corrector of the press simply reads, “They slew the traitorous Bishop.” Theomissionsand the commissions in the Chronicle ofFabyanare often amusing and always instructive; but these could not have been detected but by a severe collation, which has been happily performed. When the antiquary Brand discovered thatFabyanhad been “modernized” in later editions, his observation would seem to have extended no further than to the style: but the style ofFabyanis simple and clear even to modern readers: modernized truly it was, not however for phrases, but for notions—not for statements, but for omissions—not for words, but for things.
1We are indebted to the zealous research of Sir Henry Ellis for the disinterment of this document as well as for the collations which appear in his edition.
1We are indebted to the zealous research of Sir Henry Ellis for the disinterment of this document as well as for the collations which appear in his edition.
HENRY THE EIGHTH; HIS LITERARY CHARACTER.
Peaceand policy had diffused a halcyon calmness over the land, and the people now discerned the approach of another era. Henry the Eighth, who appears with such opposite countenances in the great gallery of history, gave the country more glorious promises of an accomplished sovereign than England had yet witnessed; and however he may appear differently before the calm eye of posterity, the passions of his own times secured his popularity even to his latter days. Youthful, with all its vigorous and generous temper, and not inferior in the majesty of his intellect any more than in that of his person—learned in his closet, yet enterprising in action—this sovereign impressed his own commanding character on the nation. Such a monarch gave wings to their genius. Long pent up in their unhappy island, they soon indulged in a visionary dominion in France, and in rapid victories in Scotland; insular England once more aspired to be admitted into the great European family of states; and Henry was the arbiter of Francis of France, and of Charles of Germany. The awakened spirit of the English people unconsciously was preparatory to the day which yet no one dreamed of. The minds of men were opening to wider views; and he who sate on the throne was one who would not be the last man in the kingdom to be mindless of its progress.
This lettered monarch himself professed authorship, and a sceptre was his pen. When he sent forth a volume which all Europe was to read, and was graced by a new title which all Europe was to own, who dared to controvert the crowned controversialist, or impugn the validity of that airy title? His majesty alone was allowed to confute himself.1Trained from his early days in scholasticdivinity, for he was designed to be an archbishop, the volume, however aided by others, was the native growth of his own mind. The king’s taste for this learning was studiously flattered by the great cardinal, who gently recommended to his restless master a perusal of the nineteen folios of Thomas Aquinas, possibly with the hope of fixing the royal fly in the repose of the cobwebs of the schoolmen. Such, indeed, were his habits of study, that he could interest himself in compiling a national Latin grammar, when the schools succeeded to the dissolved monasteries. The grammar was issued as an act of parliament; no other but the royal grammar was to be thumbed without incurring the peril of a premunire.2
It is to be regretted that we are supplied with but few literary anecdotes of this literary monarch. Some we may incidentally glean, and some may be deduced from inference. The age was not yet far enough advanced in civilization to enjoy that inquisitive leisure which leaves its memorials for a distant posterity in the court tattle of a Suetonius, or the secret history of a Procopius. It has, however, been recorded that certain acts of parliament and proclamations were corrected by the royal pen, and particularly the first draught of the act which empowered the king to erect bishoprics was written by his own hand; and he was the active editor of those monarchical pamphlets, as they may be classed, on religious topics, which were frequently required during his reign.
This learned monarch was unquestionably the first patron of our vernacular literature; he indulged in a literary intercourse with our earliest writers, and evinced a keen curiosity on any novelty in the infant productions of the English press. On frequent occasions he took a personal interest in the success, and even in the concoction, of literary productions. He fully entered into the noble designs of Sir Thomas Elyot to create a vernacular style,and critically discussed with him the propriety of the use of new words, “apt for the purpose.” And on one occasion, when Sir Thomas Elyot projected our first Latin dictionary, the king, in the presence of the courtiers, commended the design, and offered the author not only his royal counsel, but a supply of such books as the royal library possessed.
The king was not offended, as were some of the courtiers, with the freedom displayed by Elyot in some of his ethical works. Elyot tells us—“His grace not only took it in the better part, but with princely words, full of majesty, commended my diligence, simplicity, and courage, in that I spared no estate in the rebuking of vice.” The king, at the same time that he protected Elyot from his petty critics, rewarded the early efforts of another vernacular author, who had dedicated to him his first work in English prose, by a pension, which enabled the young student, Roger Ascham, to set off on his travels. A remarkable instance of Henry’s quick attention to the novelties of our literature appears by his critical conversation with the antiquary, Thynne, who had presented to him his new edition of Chaucer. His Majesty soon discovered the novelty of “The Pilgrim’s Tale,” a bitter satire on the pride and state of the clergy, which at the time was ascribed to Chaucer. The king pointing it out to the learned editor, observed, in these very words—“William Thynne! I doubt this will not be allowed, for I suspect the bishops will call thee in question for it.” The editor submitted, “If your grace be not offended, I hope to be protected by you.” The king “bade him go! and fear not!” It is evident that his majesty was “not offended” at a severe satire on the clergy. But even Henry the Eighth could not always change at will his political position—the minister in power may find means to counteract even the absolute king. A great stir was made in Wolsey’s parliament; it was even proposed that the works of Chaucer should be wholly suppressed—some good-humoured sprite rose in favour of the only poet in the nation, observing that all the world knew that Dan Chaucer had never written anything more than fables! The authority of Wolsey so far prevailed that “The Pilgrim’s Tale” was suppressed, and it seems that thehaughty prelate would willingly have suppressed the editor in his own person.Thynnewas an intimate acquaintance ofSkelton, whose caustic rhymes of “Colin Clout” had been concocted at his country-house.Thynne, in this perilous adventure of publishing “The Pilgrim’s Tale,” was saved from the talons of the cardinal, for this monarch’s royal word was at all times sacred with him.
A literary anecdote of this monarch has been recently disclosed, which at least attests his ardour for information. When Henry wanted time, if not patience, to read a new work, he put copies into the hands of two opposite characters, and from the reports of these rival reviewers the king ventured to deduce his own results. This method of judging a work without meditating on it, was a new royal cut in the road of literature, to which we of late have been accustomed; but it seemed with Henry rather to have increased the vacillations of his opinions, than steadied the firmness of his decisions.
The court of Henry displayed a brilliant circle of literary noblemen, distinguished for their translations, and some by their songs and sonnets. Parker, Lord Morley, was a favourite for his numerous versions, some of which he dedicated to the king; the witty Wyat, who always sustained the anagram of his name, was a familiar companion; nor could Henry be insensible to the elegant effusions of Surrey, unless his political feelings indisposed his admiration. It was at the king’s command that Lord Berners translated the “Chronicles of Froissart,” and the volume is adorned by the royal arms. Sternhold, the memorable psalm-enditer, was a groom of the chamber, and a personal favourite with his master; and Henry appointed the illustrious Leland to search for and to preserve the antiquities of England, and invested him with the honourable title of “The King’s Antiquary.”
Scholars, too, stood around the royal table; and the company at the palace excelled that of any academy, as Erasmus has told us. Learning patronised by a despot became a fashionable accomplishment, and the model for the court was in the royal family themselves. It is from this period that we may date that race of learned ladies which continued through the long reign of our maidenqueen. Yet, before the accession of Henry the Eighth, half a century had not elapsed when female literature was at so low an ebb that Sir Thomas More noticed as an extraordinary circumstance that Jane Shore could read and write. When Erasmus visited the English court, he curiously observed that “The course of human affairs was changed; the monks, famed in time passed for learning, are become ignorant, andWOMEN LOVE BOOKS.” Erasmus had witnessed at the court of Henry the Eighth the Princess Mary and Elizabeth, both of whom held an epistolary correspondence in Latin; the daughter of Sir Anthony Cook, and Lady Jane Grey, versed in Greek; and the Queen Catherine Parr, his fervent admirer for his paraphrase on the four gospels. Erasmus had frequented the house of the More’s, which he describes as a perfectmusarum domicilium. The venerable Nicholas Udall, a contemporary, has also left us a picture of that day. “It is now a common thing to see young virgins so nouzeld (nursed) and trained in the study of letters, that they willingly set all other vain pastimes at nought—reading and writing, and with most earnest study, both early and late.” The pliable nobility of Henry the Eighth easily took the bend of the royal family, and among their daughters, doubtless, there were more learned women than are chronicled in Ballard’s “Memoirs.” Lady Jane Grey meditating on Plato was not so uncommon an incident as it appears to us in the insulated anecdote. The learning of that day must not be held as the pedantry of a later, for it was laying the foundations of every knowledge in the soil of England.
The king’s more elegant tastes diffused themselves among the finer arts at a time when they were yet strangers in this land; his father’s travelled taste had received a tincture of these arts when abroad, in Henry the Eighth they burst into existence with a more robust aptitude. He eagerly invited foreign artists to his court; but the patronage of an English monarch was not yet appreciated by some of the finest geniuses of Italy; we lay yet too far out of their observation and sympathies; and it is recorded of one of the Italian artists, a fiery spirit, who had visited England, that he designated us asquelle bestie Inglesi. Raphael and Titian could not belured from their studios and their blue skies; but, fortunately, a northern genius, whose name is as immortal as their own, was domiciliated by the liberal monarch, the friend of Erasmus and of More—Hans Holbein.
Among the musicians of Henry we find French, Italians, and Germans; he was himself a musician, and composed several pieces which I believe are still retained in the service of the Royal Chapel.3He had a taste for the gorgeous or grotesque amusements of the Continent, combining them with a display of the fine arts in their scenical effects. One memorable night of the Epiphany, the court was startled by a new glory, where the king and his companions appeared in a scene which the courtiers had never before witnessed. “It was a mask after the manner of Italy, a thing not seen afore in England,” saith the chronicler of Henry’s court-days. Once, to amaze a foreign embassy, and on a sudden to raise up a banqueting-house, the monarch set to work the right magicians; an architect, and a poet, and his master of the revels, were months inventing and labouring. The regal banqueting-house was adorned by the arts of picture and music, of sculpture and architecture; all was full of illusion and reality; the house itself was a pageant to exhibit a pageant. The magnificent prince was himself so pleased, that he anxiously stopped his visitors at the points of sight most favourable to catch the illusion of the perspective. A monarch of such fine tastes and gorgeous fancies would create the artists who are the true inventors.
1The manuscript of Henry the Eighth reposes in the Vatican, witnessed by his own hand in this inscription:—“Anglorum Rex, Henricus Leoni X. ‘mittit hoc opus et fidei testem et amicitiæ.’”—I found this inscription in one of the notes of Selden to the “Polyolbion” of Drayton.2The famous Grammar of Lilly was the work of a learned association, in which it appears that both the king and the cardinal had the honour to co-operate. Sir Thomas Elyot has designated Henry “as the chief author.”—Preface to “The Castle of Health.”3Sir John Hawkins’ “History of Music,” vol. ii.
1The manuscript of Henry the Eighth reposes in the Vatican, witnessed by his own hand in this inscription:—“Anglorum Rex, Henricus Leoni X. ‘mittit hoc opus et fidei testem et amicitiæ.’”—I found this inscription in one of the notes of Selden to the “Polyolbion” of Drayton.
2The famous Grammar of Lilly was the work of a learned association, in which it appears that both the king and the cardinal had the honour to co-operate. Sir Thomas Elyot has designated Henry “as the chief author.”—Preface to “The Castle of Health.”
3Sir John Hawkins’ “History of Music,” vol. ii.
BOOKS OF THE PEOPLE.
Thepeople of Europe, who had no other knowledge of languages than their own uncultivated dialects, seem to have possessed what, if we may so dignify it, we would call a fugitive literature of their own. It is obvious that the people could not be ignorant of the important transactions in their own land; transactions in which their fathers had been the spectators or the actors, the sons would perpetuate by their traditions; the names of their heroes had not died with them on the battle-field. Nor would the villain’s subjection to the feudal lord spoil the merriment of the land, nor dull the quip of natural facetiousness.
Before the people had national books they had national songs. Even at a period so obscure as the days of Charlemagne there were “most ancient songs, in which the acts and wars of the old kings were sung.” These songs which, the secretary of Charlemagne has informed us, were sedulously collected by the command of that great monarch, are described by the secretary, according to his classical taste, asbarbara et antiquissima carmina; “barbarous,” because they were composed in the rude vernacular language; yet such was their lasting energy that they were, even in the eighth century, held to be “most ancient,” so long had they dwelt in the minds, of the people! The enlightened emperor had more largely comprehended their results in the vernacular idiom, on the genius of the nation, than had the more learned and diplomatic secretary. It was an ingenious conjecture, that, possibly, even these ancient songs may in some shape have come down to us in the elder northern and Teutonic romances, and the Danish, the Swedish, the Scottish, and the English popular ballads. The kindling narrative, and the fiery exploits which entranced the imagination of Charlemagne, mutilated or disguised, may have framed the incidents of a romance, or been gathered up in the snatches of old wives’ tales, and, finally, may have even lingered in the nursery.
Our miserable populace had poets for themselves, whose looser carols were the joy of the streets or the fields. Unfortunately we only learn that they had such artless effusions, for these songs have perished on the lips of the singers. The monks were too dull or too cunning to chronicle the outpourings of a people whom they despised, and which assuredly would have often girded them to the quick. A humorous satire of this kind has stolen down to us in that exquisite piece of drollery and grotesque invention, “The Land of Cokaigne.”1They had historical ballads which were rehearsed to all listeners; and it was from these “old ballads, popular through succeeding times,” that William of Malmesbury tells us that “he learned more than from books written expressly for the information of posterity,” though he will not answer for their precise truth. They had also political ballads. A memorable one, free as a lampoon, made by one of the adherents of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, in the fugitive day of his victory in 1264, occasioned a statute against “slanderous reports or tales to cause discord betwixt king and people,” a spirit which by no means was put down by that enactment.2This was a ballad sung to the people, as appears by the opening line,—
Sitteth all stille, and harkeneth to me!
Sitteth all stille, and harkeneth to me!
This ballad strikingly contrasts with another of unnerving dejection, after the irreparable defeat of the party, and the death of the Earl of Leicester, which, it is remarkable, is written in French, having been probably addressed solely to that discomfited nobility who would sympathise with the lament.3
The people, or the inferior classes of society, who despised the courtly French then in vogue, formed such a multitude, that it was for them thatRobertofGloucesterwrote his Chronicle, and thatRobertofBrunnetranslated the Chronicle of Peter Langtoft, and a volume of recreative tales from the French. The people even then were eager readers, or, more properly, auditors; and this further appears in the naïveté of our rhymer’s prologue to this Chronicle. The monk tells us, that this story of England which he now shows in English, is not intended for the learned, but the illiterate; not for the clerk, but the layman;
Not for the lerid, but the lewed;4
Not for the lerid, but the lewed;4
and he describes the class, “they who take solace and mirth when they sit together in fellowship,” and deem it “wisdom for to witten” (to know)
The state of the land, and haf it written.
The state of the land, and haf it written.
The Hermit of Hampole expressly wrote his theological poems for the people, for those who could understand only English.
At a period when we glean nothing from any literature of the people, we find that it had a positive existence; for two chronicles and a collection of tales and theological poems were furnished for them in their native idiom, by writers who unquestionably sought for celebrity. The people, too, had what in every age has been their peculiar property,—all the fragmentary wisdom of antiquity in those “Few words to the Wise,” so daily useful, or so apt in the contingencies of human life; proverbs and Æsopian fables, delightedly transmitted from father to son. The memories of the people were stored with short narratives; for a startling tale was not easily forgotten. They had songs of trades, appropriated to the different avocations of labourers. These were a solace to the solitary task-worker, or threw a cheering impulse when many were employed together. SuchHallaptly describes as
Sung to the wheel, and sung unto the payle.5
Sung to the wheel, and sung unto the payle.5
These songs are found among the people of every country; and these effusions were the true poetry of the heart, which kept alive their social feelings. The people had even the greater works brought down for them to a diminutive size; the lays of minstrelsy were usually fragments of the metrical chronicles, or a disjointed tale from some romance;6such as the popular Fabliaux, which form the amusing collection of Le Grand.
These proverbs and these fables, these songs and these tales, all these were a library without books, till the day arrived when the people had books of their own, open to their comprehension, and responding to their sympathies. That this traditional literature was handed down from generation to generation appears from the circumstance, that hardly had the printing-press been in use when a multitude of “the people’s books” spread through Europe their rude instruction or their national humour. They were even rendered more attractive by the expressive woodcuts which palpably appealed to a sense which required no “cunning” to comprehend. Their piety and their terror were long excited by that variety of Satan and his devils, which were exhibited to their appalled imaginations—the the mouth of hell gaping wide, and the crowd of the damned driven in by the flaming pitchforks. “The Calendar of Shepherds,” originally a translation from the French, was a popular handbook, and rich were its contents—a perpetual almanac, the saints’ days, with the signs of the zodiac, a receptacle of domestic receipts, all the wisdom of proverbs, and all the mysteries of astrology, divinity, politics, and geography, mingled in verse and prose. It was the encyclopædia for the poor man, and even for some of his betters.
The courtly favourites of a former age descended from the oriel window to the cottage-lattice; perpetuated in our “chap-books,” sold on the stalls of fairs, and mixed with the wares of “the chapman,” they became thebooks of the people. “The Gestes” of Guy of Warwick and Sir Bevis of Hampton, and other fabulous heroes of chivalry, have been recognised in their humble disguise of the “Tom Thumb,” and “Tom Hickathrift,” and “Jack the Giant-Killer” of the people.
In France their “bibliothèque bleue,” books now in the shape of pamphlets, deriving their name from the colour of their wrappers, preserves the remains of the fugitive literature of the people; and in Italy to this day several of the old romances of chivalry are cut down to a single paul’s purchase, and delight the humble buyers.7Guerin Meschino, of native origin, still retains his popularity. In Germany some patriotic antiquaries have delighted to collect this household literature of the illiterate. The Germans, who, more than any other nation, seem to have cherished the hallowed feelings of the homestead, have a term to designate this class of literature; they call these volumesVolksbücher, or “the people’s books.”
There existed a more intimate intercourse between the vernacular writers of Germany and our own than appears yet to have been investigated. “The Merry Jests of Howleglas,” most delectable to the people from their grossness and their humour, is of German origin; and it has been recently discovered that “The History of Friar Rush,” which perplexed the researches of Ritson, is a literal prose version of a German poem, printed in 1587.8“Reynard the Fox”—a most amusing Æsopian history—an exquisite satire on the vices of the clergy, the devices of courtiers, and not sparing majesty itself—an intelligible manual of profound Machiavelism, displaying the trickery of circumventing and supplanting, and parrying off opponents by sleights of wit—was translated by Caxton from the Dutch.9
This political fiction has been traced in several languagesto an earlier period than the thirteenth century. The learned Germans hold it to be a complete picture of the feudal manners; and Heineccius, one of the most able jurists, declares that it has often assisted him in clearing up the jurisprudence of Germany, and that for the genius of the writer the volume deserves to be ranked with the classics of antiquity. The writer probably had good reasons for concealing his name, but his intimacy with a Court-life is apparent. He has dexterously described the wiles of Reynard, whose cunning overreached his opponents; his wit, his learning, his humour, and knowledge of mankind, are of no ordinary degree; and this favourite satire contributed, no less than the works of Erasmus, of Rabelais, and of Boccaccio, to pave the way for the Reformation. It was among the earliest productions of the press in Germany and in England, and became so popular here that on the old altar-piece of Canterbury cathedral are several paintings taken from this pungent satire. The modern Italian poet,Casti, seems to have borrowed the plan of his famous political satire “Gl’ Animali Parlanti” from Reynard the Fox.
The Germans have occasionally borrowed from us, as we also from the Italian jest-books, many of our “tales and quick answers;” the facetiæ of Poggius and Domenichi, and others, have been a fertile source of our own.
All tales have wings, whether they come from the east or the north, and they soon become denizens wherever they alight. Thus it has happened that the tale which charmed the wandering Arab in his tent, or cheered the Northern peasant by his winter-fire, alike held on its journey toward England and Scotland. Dr. Leyden was surprised when he first perused the fabliaux of “The Poor Scholar,” “The Three Thieves,” and “The Sexton of Cluni,” to recognise the popular stories which he had often heard in infancy. He was then young in the poetical studies of the antiquary, or he would not have been at a loss to know whether the Scots drew their tales from the French, or the French from their Scottish intercourse; or whether they originated with the Celtic, or the Scandinavian, or sometimes even with the Orientalists.
The genealogy of many a tale, as well as the humoursof native jesters, from the days of Henry the Eighth to those of Joe Miller, who, as somebody has observed, now, too, begins to be ancient, may be traced not only to France, to Spain, and to Italy, but to Greece and Rome, and at length to Persia and to India. Our most familiar stories have afforded instances. The tale of “Whittington and his Cat,” supposed to be indigenous to our country, was first narrated by Arlotto, in his “Novella delle Gatte,” in his “Facetie,” which were printed soon after his death, in 1483; the tale is told of a merchant of Genoa. We must, however, recollect that Arlotto had been a visitor at the Court of England. The other puss, though without her boots, may be seen in Straparola’s “Piacevoli Notti.” The familiar little Hunchback of the “Arabian Nights” has been a universal favourite; it may be found everywhere; in “The Seven Wise Masters,” in the “Gesta Romanorum,” and in Le Grand’s “Fabliaux.” The popular tale of Llywellyn’s greyhound, whose grave we still visit at Bethgelert, Sir William Jones discovered in Persian tradition, and it has given rise to a proverb, “As repentant as the man who killed his greyhound.” In “Les Maximes des Orientaux” of Galland, we find several of our popular tales.
“Bluebeard,” “Red-riding Hood,” and “Cinderella,” are tales told alike in the nurseries of England and France, Germany and Denmark; and the domestic warning to the Lady Bird, the chant of our earliest day, is sung by the nurse of Germany.10All nations seem alike concerned in this copartnership of tale-telling; borrowing, adulterating, clipping, and even receiving back the identical coin which had circulated wherever it was found. Douce, one of whose favourite pursuits was tracing the origin and ramification of tales, to my knowledge could have afforded a large volume of this genealogy of romance; but that volume probably reposes for the regale of the next century, that literary antiquary being deterred by caustic reviewers from the publication of his useful researches.
The people, however, did not advance much in intelligence,even after the discovery of printing, for new works, which should have been designed for popular purposes, were still locked up in a language which none spoke and only the scholar read; and this, notwithstanding a noble example had been set by the Italians to the other nations of Europe. In the early days of our printing, the vernacular productions of the press were thrown out to amuse the children of society, fashioned as their toys. We have an abundance of poetical and prose facetiæ, all of which were solely adapted to the popular taste, and some of the writers of which were eminent persons. Few but have heard of “The Merry Tales of the Madmen of Gotham,” and of “Scogin’s Jests, full of witty mirth and pleasant shifts.” These facetious works are said to be “gathered” by Andrew Borde,11a physician and humorist of a very original cast of mind, and who professedly wrote for “the Commonwealth,” that is, the people, many other works on graver topics, not less seasoned with drolleries. He was the first who composed medical treatises in the vernacular idiom. His “Breviarie of Health” is a medical dictionary, and held to be a “jewel” in his time, as Fuller records. In this alphabetical list of all diseases, his philosophy reaches to the diseases of the mind, whose cure he combines with that of the body, the medicine and the satire often pleasantly illustrating each other. From the “Dietarie of Health”the modern apostles of regimen might expand their own revelations; it contains many curious matters, not only on diet, but on the whole system of domestic economy, even to the building of a house, regulating a family, and choosing a good air to dwell in, &c. Another of his books, “The Introduction of Knowledge,” is a miscellany of great curiosity, describing the languages and manners of different countries; in it are specimens of the Cornish, Welsh, Irish, and Scotch languages, as also of the Turkish and Egyptian, and others, and the value of their coins. The apt yet concise discrimination of the national character of every people is true to the hour we are writing.
The writings of Borde incidentally preserve curious notices of the domestic life and of the customs and arts of that period. Whitaker, in his history of Whalley, has referred to his directions for the construction of great houses, in illustration of our domestic architecture. In all his little books much there is which the antiquary and the philosopher would not willingly pass by.
Andrew Borde was one of those eccentric geniuses who live in their own sphere, moving on principles which do not guide the routine of society. He was a Carthusian friar; his hair-shirt, however, could never mortify his unvarying facetiousness; but if he ever rambled in his wits, he was a wider rambler, even beyond the boundaries of Christendom, “a thousand or two and more myles;” an extraordinary feat in his day. He took his degree at Montpelier, was incorporated at Oxford, and admitted into the College of Physicians in London, and was among the physicians of Henry the Eighth. His facetious genius could not conceal the real learning and the practical knowledge which he derived from personal observation. Borde has received hard measure from our literary historians. This ingenious scholar has been branded by Warton as a mad physician. To close the story of one who was all his days so facetious, we find that this Momus of philosophers died in the Fleet. This was the fate of a great humorist, neither wanting in learning or genius.
It is said that such was his love of “the commonwealth,” that he sometimes addressed them from an open stage, in a sort of gratuitous lecture, as some amateurs of our own days have delighted to deliver; and from whencehas been handed down to us the term of “Merry-Andrew.”
In the limited circles which then divided society, the taste for humour was very low. We had not yet reached to the witty humours of Shakspeare and Jonson. Sir Thomas More’s “Long Story,” in endless stanzas, which Johnson has strangely placed among the specimens of the English language, was held as a tale of “infinite conceit,” assuredly by the great author himself, who seems to have communicated this sort of taste to one of his family. Rastall, the learned printer, brother-in-law of More, and farther, the grave abbreviator of the statutes in English, issued from his press in 1525, “The Widow Edith’s Twelve Merrie Gestys.” She was a tricking widow, renowned for her “lying, weeping, and laughing,” an ancient mumper, who had triumphed over the whole state spiritual, and the temporality: travelling from town to town in the full practice of dupery and wheedling, to the admiration of her numerous victims. The arts of cheatery were long held to be facetious; most of the “Merrie Jests” consist of stultifying fools, or are sharping tricks, practised on the simple children of dupery. There is a stock of this base coinage. This taste for dupery was carried down to a much later period; for the “Merrie conceited jests of George Peele,” and of Tarleton, are chiefly tricks of sharpers.
“The Hye Way to the Spyttel Hous,” or as we should say, “the road to ruin,” exposes the mysteries and craft of the venerable brotherhood of mendicancy and imposture; their ingenious artifices to attract the eye, and their secret orgies concealed by midnight; all that flourishes now in St. Giles’s, flourished then in the Barbican. Not long after we have the first vocabulary of cant language of “The Fraternitye of Vacabondes:” whose honorary titles cannot be yet placed in Burke’s Extinct Peerage.
There were attacks on the fair sex in those days which were parried by their eulogies. We seem to have been early engaged in that battle of the sexes, where the perfections or the imperfections of the female character offered themes for a libel or a panegyric. From the days of Boccaccio, the Italians have usually paid their tribute to “illustrious women,” notwithstanding the free insinuationsof some malicious novelists; that people preceded in the refinement of social life the tramontani. England and France, in their ruder circle of society, contracted a cynicism which appears in a variety of invectives and apologies for the beautiful sex.
One of the most popular attacks of this sort was “The School-house of Women,” a severe satire, published anonymously. One of the heaviest charges is their bitter sarcasm on the new dresses of their friends. The author, one Edward Gosynhyll, charmed, no doubt, by his successful onset, and proud in his victory, threw off the mask; mending his ambidextrous pen for “The Praise of all Women,” called “Mulierum Pean,” he acknowledged himself to be the writer of “The School-house.” Probably he thought he might now do so with impunity, as he was making theamende honorable. Whether this saved the trembling Orpheus from the rage of the Bacchantes, our scanty literary history tells not; but his defence is not considered as the least able among several elicited by his own attack.
“The Wife lapped in Morels’ Skins, or the Taming of a Shrew,” was the favourite tale of the Petruchios of those days, where a haughty dame is softened into a degrading obedience by the brutal command of her mate; a tale which some antiquaries still chuckle over, who have not been so venturous as this hero.12
All these books, written for the people, were at length consumed by the hands of their multitudinous readers; we learn, indeed, in Anthony à Wood’s time, that some had descended to the stalls; but at the present day someof these rare fugitive pieces may be unique. This sort of pamphlet, Burton, the anatomist of melancholy, was delighted to heap together: and the collection formed by such a keen relish of popular humours, he actually bequeathed to the Bodleian Library, where, if they are kept together, they would answer the design of the donor; otherwise, such domestic records of the humours and manners of the age, diffused among the general mass, would bear only the value of their rarity.