1After Godwin had sent to press his biography of Chaucer, a deposition on the poet’s age in the Herald’s College detected the whole erroneous arrangement: as the edifice so ingeniously constructed had fallen on the aërial architect, he alleged truly that the deposition “contradicted the received accounts of all the biographers;” in fact, they had repeated original misstatements. The appendix, therefore, to the history of this modern biographer stands as a perpetual witness against its authenticity;—there are some histories to which an appendix might prove to be as fatal. In this dilemma, our bold sophist was “absurd and uncharitable enough” to add one more conjecture to his “Life of Chaucer,”—that “the poet, from a motive of vanity, had been inducedto state on oaththat he was about forty when, in truth, he was fifty-eight!”—Hippisley’s “Chapters on Early English Literature,” 85.2It has been alleged by more than one writer, that this mysterious affair relates to the election for the mayoralty of John of Northampton, a Wickliffite and a Lancastrian. But Mr. Turner, whose researches are on a more extended scale than any of his predecessors, truly observes that—“There are other periods besides the one usually selected to which the personal evils which Chaucer complains of are applicable.”—“Hist. of England,” v. 296. It is as likely to have occurred when Nicholas Brambre, a confidential partisan of government in the City, appointed to the mayoralty by his party, caught “the Freemen” by ambushes of armed men, and turned the Guildhall into a fortress. At such a time “Free Elections” might have been considered by Chaucer as something “noble and glorious for all the people.”3Dreams.4Better.5Autobiography of an Opium-Eater.—“Tait’s Mag.” August, 1835.6Coleridge’s “Table-Talk.”7So unskilful or so incurious was Warburton in the language of our ancient poets, that in his notes on Pope he quotes the following lines of Chaucer—“Love wol not beconstreinedby maistrie.Whan maistrie cometh, theGodof love anonBetethhis wings, andfarewel, he is gon”—from Urry’s edition, in which they appear thus transformed and corrupted:Love will not beconfinedby maisterie.When maisterie comes, theLordof love anonFluttershis wings, andforthwithis he gone.[An excellent example of the superior vigour of Chaucer may be seen in an original passage of his “Palamon and Arcite,” contrasted with Dryden’s tamer modernization of the same, in “Curiosities of Literature,” vol. ii. p. 107.—Ed.]8This “sagacity” has been much and justly questioned by the more advanced students of medieval literature. Sir Harris Nicolas has produced an excellent edition of the poet; but the best text of the “Canterbury Tales” has been published by Mr. Thos. Wright, from a careful collation of the oldest manuscript.—Ed.
1After Godwin had sent to press his biography of Chaucer, a deposition on the poet’s age in the Herald’s College detected the whole erroneous arrangement: as the edifice so ingeniously constructed had fallen on the aërial architect, he alleged truly that the deposition “contradicted the received accounts of all the biographers;” in fact, they had repeated original misstatements. The appendix, therefore, to the history of this modern biographer stands as a perpetual witness against its authenticity;—there are some histories to which an appendix might prove to be as fatal. In this dilemma, our bold sophist was “absurd and uncharitable enough” to add one more conjecture to his “Life of Chaucer,”—that “the poet, from a motive of vanity, had been inducedto state on oaththat he was about forty when, in truth, he was fifty-eight!”—Hippisley’s “Chapters on Early English Literature,” 85.
2It has been alleged by more than one writer, that this mysterious affair relates to the election for the mayoralty of John of Northampton, a Wickliffite and a Lancastrian. But Mr. Turner, whose researches are on a more extended scale than any of his predecessors, truly observes that—“There are other periods besides the one usually selected to which the personal evils which Chaucer complains of are applicable.”—“Hist. of England,” v. 296. It is as likely to have occurred when Nicholas Brambre, a confidential partisan of government in the City, appointed to the mayoralty by his party, caught “the Freemen” by ambushes of armed men, and turned the Guildhall into a fortress. At such a time “Free Elections” might have been considered by Chaucer as something “noble and glorious for all the people.”
3Dreams.
4Better.
5Autobiography of an Opium-Eater.—“Tait’s Mag.” August, 1835.
6Coleridge’s “Table-Talk.”
7So unskilful or so incurious was Warburton in the language of our ancient poets, that in his notes on Pope he quotes the following lines of Chaucer—
“Love wol not beconstreinedby maistrie.Whan maistrie cometh, theGodof love anonBetethhis wings, andfarewel, he is gon”—
“Love wol not beconstreinedby maistrie.
Whan maistrie cometh, theGodof love anon
Betethhis wings, andfarewel, he is gon”—
from Urry’s edition, in which they appear thus transformed and corrupted:
Love will not beconfinedby maisterie.When maisterie comes, theLordof love anonFluttershis wings, andforthwithis he gone.
Love will not beconfinedby maisterie.
When maisterie comes, theLordof love anon
Fluttershis wings, andforthwithis he gone.
[An excellent example of the superior vigour of Chaucer may be seen in an original passage of his “Palamon and Arcite,” contrasted with Dryden’s tamer modernization of the same, in “Curiosities of Literature,” vol. ii. p. 107.—Ed.]
8This “sagacity” has been much and justly questioned by the more advanced students of medieval literature. Sir Harris Nicolas has produced an excellent edition of the poet; but the best text of the “Canterbury Tales” has been published by Mr. Thos. Wright, from a careful collation of the oldest manuscript.—Ed.
GOWER.
Inthe church of St. Saviour in Southwark may be viewed an ancient monument with its sculptured and Gothic canopy; pictured on its side the three visionary virgins, Charity, Mercy, and Pity, solicit the prayer of the passenger for the soul of the suppliant whose image lies extended on the tomb, with folded hands, and in his damask habit flowing to his feet. His head reposes on three mighty tomes, and is decked with a garland, either of roses which proclaim his knighthood, or the wreath of literature which would more justly distinguish the wearer,—John Gower, the poet.
In the life of this poet, almost the only certain incident seems to be his sepulchral monument: and even this it had been necessary to repair after the malignity of the Iconoclasts; and of the three sculptured volumes which support the poet’s head, a single one only has been opened by the world, for the tomb has perpetuated what the press has not.
The three tomes on the tomb of Gower represent his three great works; but what is remarkable, and shows the unsettled state of our literature, each of these great works is written in a different language, though equally graced with Latin titles. The first, in French, is the “Speculum Meditantis;” the moral reflections relieved by historical examples. The second, in Latin verse, is “Vox Clamantis;” this “Voice” comes not from the desert, for it is that of the clamours of the people; a satire on all ranks, and an exhortation to the youthful monarch to check his own self-indulgence; it includes a chronicle of the insurrection of the populace, or “the clowns,” as they were called in Richard the Second’s reign. The vernacular style, rather than Latin verse, would have more aptly celebrated the feats of Wat Tyler, or Bet and Sim, Gibbe and Hyke, Hudde and Judde, Jack and Tib. The reporter had no doubt been present at the active scene. The swarm rush on to the call of one another, in hexametersand pentameters. The singularity of the subject, which gives no bad picture of the hurry of a disorderly mob, and the felicity of an old translation, induce me to preserve a partial extract from the manuscript. Our own age has witnessed similar scenes.
Watte vocat, cui Thome venit, neque Symme retardat,Betteque, Gibbe simul Hyke venire jubent.Colle furit, quem Gibbe juvat nocumenta parantes,Cum quibus ad dampnum Wille coire vovet.Grigge rapit, dam Dawe strepit, comes est quibus Hobbe,Lorkin et in medio non minor esse putat.Hudde ferit, quos Judde terit, dum Tebbe juvatur,Jacke domos que viros vellit, et ense necat.
Watte vocat, cui Thome venit, neque Symme retardat,
Betteque, Gibbe simul Hyke venire jubent.
Colle furit, quem Gibbe juvat nocumenta parantes,
Cum quibus ad dampnum Wille coire vovet.
Grigge rapit, dam Dawe strepit, comes est quibus Hobbe,
Lorkin et in medio non minor esse putat.
Hudde ferit, quos Judde terit, dum Tebbe juvatur,
Jacke domos que viros vellit, et ense necat.
Tom comes, thereat, when called by Wat, and Simon as forward we find;Bet calls as quick to Gibb, and to Hyck that neither would tarry behinde.Gibbe, a good whelp of that litter, doth help mad Coll more mischief to do,And Will he doth vow, the time is come now, he’ll join with their company too.Davie complains whiles Grigg gets the gains, and Hobb with them doth partake;Lorkin aloud, in the midst of the crowd, conceiveth as deep is his stake.Hudde doth spoil, whom Judde doth foile, and Tebbe lends his helping hand,But Jack, the mad-patch, men and horses doth snatch, and kills all at his command.
Tom comes, thereat, when called by Wat, and Simon as forward we find;
Bet calls as quick to Gibb, and to Hyck that neither would tarry behinde.
Gibbe, a good whelp of that litter, doth help mad Coll more mischief to do,
And Will he doth vow, the time is come now, he’ll join with their company too.
Davie complains whiles Grigg gets the gains, and Hobb with them doth partake;
Lorkin aloud, in the midst of the crowd, conceiveth as deep is his stake.
Hudde doth spoil, whom Judde doth foile, and Tebbe lends his helping hand,
But Jack, the mad-patch, men and horses doth snatch, and kills all at his command.
The third and greater work, and the only printed one of Gower, is the “Confessio Amantis,” an English poem of about thirty thousand lines; a singular miscellany of allegory, of morality, and of tales. It is studded with sententious maxims and proverbs, and richly diversified with narrations, pleasant and tragic; but the affectation of learning, for learning in its crude state always obtrudes itself, even in works of recreation, has compressed the Aristotelian philosophy, to edify and surprise the readers of the poet’s fairy or romantic tales. Robert de Brunne, to illustrate monachal morals, interspersed domestic stories; and amidst the prevalent penury of imagination, that rhyming monk affords the most ancient specimens of English tales in verse: and as Gower’s single printed work is of the same species of composition, a system of ethics illustrated bytales, it has been thought that the monk who rhymed in 1300 was the true predecessor of the poet who flourished at the close of that century, however Gower may have purified the “rime doggrel,” and elevated the puerile tale. The straw-roof must be raised before the cupola. Genius in its genealogy must not blush at its remote ancestor; the noblest knight may often go back to the mill or the forge. If this rude moralising rhymer really be the poetical father of Gower, then is this antiquated monk the inventor of that narrative poetry which Chaucer, Spenser, Dryden, and even some of our contemporaries, have so delightfully diversified. But story-telling has been of all periods.
There is a portion in this volume which concerns the personal history of the poet.
This work was composed at the suggestion of Richard the Second himself, who among other luxuries loved Froissart’s romance and Chaucer’s rhymes, and was even willing to be taught the grave lessons which he could not practise. As Gower one day was rowed in his boat on the Thames, he met his “liege lord” in the royal barge, who commanded the poet to enter, and, in a long unrestrained conversation, desired him “to book some new thing in the way he was used.” Probably the youthful monarch alluded to the “Vox Clamantis,” in which the poet had exhorted his “liege lord” to exercise every kingly virtue, and had without reserve touched on too many imperfections of a court-life. It was to be “a book,” added the young monarch, “in which he himself might often look.” The poet aspired to fix the honour which he had received, and resolved, in his own words,
To write in such a manner-wise,Which may be wisdom to the wise,And play to them that list to play.
To write in such a manner-wise,
Which may be wisdom to the wise,
And play to them that list to play.
In a word, we have here the great Horatian precept by the intuition of our earliest poet.
The political admonitions, and the keen satire on the youthful favourites of the youthful monarch of a luxurious court, and the relaxed morals of the higher ranks, the clergy, and the judges, were all offered with more than the freedom of a poet—they sound the deep tones of the patriot.The sage had solemnly contemplated on the discontents and clamours of the people, and presciently observed the rising of that state-tempest, which in an instant dethroned this magnificent and thoughtless prince.
In the course of the reign of Richard the Second it appears that several alterations were made in the poem. The dedicatory preface was suppressed. Berthelet, the ancient printer of the “Confessio Amantis,” discovered that “the prologue” had disappeared, though the same number of lines were substituted, “cleane contrary both in sentence and in meaning.” Gower has therefore incurred the reproach of a disloyal desertion of his hapless master to court a successful usurper. One critic tells that “he was given to change with the turns of state.” Bishop Nicholson, with dull levity, has a fling at all poets, for he censures Gower for “making too free with his prince—a liberty, it seems, allowed to men of his profession;” while Thomas Hearne, the blind bigot of passive obedience, in editing a monkish life of Richard the Second, would have all Gower condemned to oblivion, because “he had treated the monarch’s memory ill, and spoke with equal freedom of the clergy.” This vacillating conduct of “the moral Gower,” however, need not leave any stain on his memory. We see he had never at any time adulated the youthful monarch; however his tales may have charmed the royal ear, the verse often left behind a wholesome bitterness. Gower had praised Henry of Lancaster at a period when he could not have contemplated the change of dynasty; and when it happened, the poet was of an age far too advanced either to partake of the hopes or the fears that wait on a new reign.
But this tale of Gower’s free and honest satire on courts and courtiers is not yet concluded. The sphere of a poet’s influence is far wider than that of his own age; and however we may now deem of this grave and ancient poet, he still found understanding admirers so late as in the reign of Charles the First. In the curious “Conference” which took place when Charles the First visited the Marquess of Worcester, at Ragland Castle, with his court, there is the following anecdote respecting the poet Gower.
The marquess was a shrewd though whimsical man, and a favourite of the king for his frankness and his love ofthe arts. His lordship entertained the royal guest with extraordinary magnificence. Among his rare curiosities was a sumptuous copy of Gower’s volume.
Charles the First usually visited the marquess after dinner. Once he found his lordship with the book of John Gower lying open, which the king said he had never before seen. “Oh!” exclaimed the marquess; “it is a book of books! and if your majesty had been well versed in it, it would have made you a king of kings.” “Why so, my lord?” “Why, here is set down how Aristotle brought up and instructed Alexander the Great in all the rudiments and principles belonging to a prince.” And under the persons of Aristotle and Alexander, the marquess read the king such a lesson that all the standers-by were amazed at his boldness.
The king asked whether he had his lesson by heart, or spake out of the book? “Sir, if you would read my heart, it may be that you might find it there; or if your majesty pleased to get it by heart, I will lend you my book.” The king accepted the offer.
Some of the new-made lords fretted and bit their thumbs at certain passages in the marquess’s discourse; and some protested that no man was so much for the absolute power of a king as Aristotle. The marquess told the king that he would indeed show him one remarkable passage to that purpose; and turning to the place, read—
A king can kill, a king can save;A king can make a lord a knave;And of a knave, a lord also.
A king can kill, a king can save;
A king can make a lord a knave;
And of a knave, a lord also.
On this several new-made lords slank out of the room, which the king observing, told the marquess, “My lord, at this rate you will drive away all my nobility.”
This amusing anecdote is an evidence that this ethical poet, after two centuries and a half, was not forgotten; his spirit was still vital, his volume still lay open on the library table; it afforded a pungent lesson to the courtiers of Charles the First as it had to those of Richard the Second.
Gowerwas learned, didactic, and dignified. The manuscripts of his works are usually noble and sumptuous copies; more elegantly written and more richly illuminatedthan the works of other poets. His commonplaces and his legendary lore seem to have awed the simplicity of the readers of two centuries, whose taste did not yet feel that failure of the poet who narrated a fable from Ovid with the dull prolixity of a matter-of-fact chronicler. His fictions are rarely imaginative; yet critics, far abler judges of his relative merits than ourselves, since they lived within the sphere of his influence, hailed this grave father of our poesy. Leland, the royal antiquary of Henry the Eighth, expressed his ideas with great elegance and sensibility, when he said of Gower that “his diligent culture of our poesy had extirpated the ordinary herbs; and that the soft violet and the purple narcissus were now growing, where erst was nothing seen but the thistle and the thorn.” There are indeed some graceful flowers in his desert. But all criticism is usually relative to the age, and excellence is always comparative.Gowerstamped with the force of ethical reasoning his smooth rhymes; and this was a near approach to poetry itself. If in the mind ofChaucerwe are more sensible of the impulses of genius—those creative and fugitive touches—his diction is more mixed and unsettled than the tranquil elegance ofGower, who has often many pointed sentences and a surprising neatness of phrase. A modern reader, I think, would find the style of Gower more easily intelligible than the higher efforts of the more inventive poet.
PIERS PLOUGHMAN.
ContemporarywithGowerandChaucerlived the singular author of “The Visions of William concerningPiers Ploughman;” singular in more respects than one, for his subject, his style, and, we may add, for the intrepidity and the force of his genius.
This extraordinary work is ascribed to one whose name is merely traditional, to Robert Langland, a secular priest of Salop; when he wrote, and where he died, are as dubious as his text, the authenticity of which is often uncertain from the variations in all the manuscripts. But the real life of an author, at least for posterity, lies beyond the grave; and no writer is nameless whose volume has descended to us as one of the most memorable in our ancient vernacular literature.
In character, in execution, and in design, “The Visions of William ofPiers Ploughman” are wholly separated from the polished poems ofGowerandChaucer; the work bears no trace of their manner, nor of their refinement, nor of their versification; and it has baffled conjectural criticism to assign the exact period of a composition which appears more ancient than any supposed contemporary writings. Those who would decide of the time in which an author wrote by his style, here are at a loss to conceive that the splendid era of romantic chivalry, the age of Edward the Third and his grandson, which produced the curious learning and the easy rhymes of the “Confessio Amantis,” and the pleasantry and the fine discriminations of character of the “Canterbury Tales,” could have given birth to the antiquated Saxon and rustic pith of this genuine English bard. Either his labour was concluded ere the writings of the court poets had travelled to our obscure country priest in his seclusion in a distant county, or else he disdained their exotic fancies, their Latinisms, their Gallicisms, and their Italianisms, and their trivial rhymes, that in every respect he might remain their astonishing contrast, with no inferiority ofgenius. There was no philosophical criticism in the censure of this poet by Warton, when he condemns him for not having “availed himself of the rising and rapid improvements of the English language,” and censures him for his “affectation of obsolete English.” These rising improvements may never have reached our bard, or if they had he might have disdained them; for the writer of the “Visions concerning Piers Ploughman” was strictly a national poet; and there was no “affectation of obsolete English” in a poet preserving the forms of his native idiom, and avoiding all exotic novelties in the energy of his Anglo-Saxon genius. His uncontaminated mind returned to or continued the Anglo-Saxon alliterative metre and unrhymed verse; he trusted its cadence to the ear, scorning the subjection of rhyme.Webbe, a critic of the age of Elizabeth, considered this poet as “the first who had observed the quantity of our verse without the curiosity of rhyme.”
It is useless to give the skeleton of a desultory and tedious allegorical narrative. The last editor, Dr. Whitaker, imagined that “he for the first time had shown that it was written after a regular and consistent design,” notwithstanding that he himself confesses, that “the conclusion is singularly cold and comfortless andleaves the inquirer, after a long peregrination, still remote from the object of his search”—a conclusion where nothing is concluded! The visionist might have been overtaken by sleep among the bushes of the Malvern Hills for twenty cantos more, without at all deranging anything which he had said, or inconveniencing anything which he might say. In truth, it is a heap of rhapsodies, without any artifice of connexion or involution of plot, or any sustained interest of one actor more than another among the numerous ideal beings who flit along the dreamy scenes.
The true spirit of this imaginative work is more comprehensible than any settled design. That mysterious or mythical personage, “Piers Ploughman,” is the representative of “the Universal Church,” says Dr. Whitaker; or “Christian life,” says Mr. Campbell. What he may be is very doubtful, for we have “True Religion,” a fair lady, who puts in surely a higher claim to represent “the Universal Church,” or “Christian life,” than “thePloughman,” who has to till his half-acre and save his idling companions from “waste” and “wane.” The most important personage is “Mede,” or bribery, who seems to exert an extraordinary influence over the Bench, and the Bar, and the Church, and through every profession which occurred to the poet.
The pearls in these waters lie not on the surface. The visionist had deeper thoughts and more concealed feelings than these rhapsodical phantoms. In a general survey of society, he contemplates on the court and the clergy, glancing through all the diversified ranks of the laity, not sparing the people themselves, as their awful reprover. It was a voice from the wilderness in the language of the people. The children of want and oppression had found their solitary advocate. The prelacy, dissolved in the luxuriousness of papal pomp, and a barbarous aristocracy, with their rapacious dependents, were mindless of the morals or the happiness of those human herds, whose heads were counted, but whose hearts they could never call their own.
We are curious to learn, in this disordered state of the Commonwealth, the political opinions entertained by this sage. They are as mysterious as Piers Ploughman himself.
Passive obedience to the higher powers is inculcated apparently rather for its prudence than its duty. This we infer from his lively parable of “the Cat of a Court,” and “A Route of Ratones and Small Mice.” “Grimalkin, though sometimes apt to play the tyrant when appetite was sharp, would often come laughing and leaping among them. A rat, a whisker of renown, cunningly proposed to adorn the cat with an ornament, like those which great lords use who wear chains and collars about their necks; it should be a tinkling bell, which, if cats would fancy the fashion, would warn us of their approach. We might then in security be all lords ourselves, and not be in this misery of creeping under benches. But not a raton of the whole rout, for the realm of France, or to win all England, would bind the bell round the imperial neck. A mouseling, who did not much like rats, concluded that if they should even kill the cat, then there would come another to crunch us and our kind; for men will not have their meal nibbled by us mice, nor their nights disturbed by theclattering of roystering rats. Better for us to let the cat alone! My old father said a kitten was worse. The cat never hurt me; when he is in good-humour, I like him well,—and by my counsel cat nor kitten shall be grieved. I will suffer and say nothing. The beast who now chastiseth many, may be amended by misfortune. Are the rats to be our governors? I tell ye, we would not rule ourselves!” The poet adds, “What this means, ye men who love mirth interpret for me, for I dare not!”
The parable seems sufficiently obvious. The ratons represent a haughty aristocracy, and “the small mouse” is one of the people themselves, who in his mouse-like wisdom preferred a single sovereign to many lords. But the poet’s own reflection, addressed to “the men of mirth,” seems enigmatic. Is he indulging a secret laugh at the passive obedience of the prudential mouse?
Our author’s indignant spirit, indeed, is vehemently democratic. He dared to write what many trembled to whisper. Genius reflects the suppressed feelings of its age. It was a stirring epoch. The spirit of inquisition had gone forth in the person of Wickliffe; and wherever a Wickliffe appears, as surely will there be a Piers Ploughman. When a great precursor of novel opinions arises, it is the men of genius in seclusion who think and write.
But our country priest, in his contemplative mood, was not less remarkable for his prudence than for his bold freedom, aware that the most corrupt would be the most vindictive. The implacable ecclesiastics, by the dread discipline of the church, would doom the apostle of humanity, but the apostate of his order, to perpetual silence—by the spell of an anathema; and the haughty noble would crush his victim by the iron arm of his own, or of the civil power. The day had not yet arrived when the great were to endure the freedom of reprehension. The sage, the satirist, and the seer, for prophet he proved to be, veiled his head in allegory; he published no other names than those of the virtues and the vices; and to avoid personality, he contented himself with personification.
A voluminous allegory is the rudest and the most insupportable of all poetic fictions; it originates in an early period of society—when its circles are contracted andisolated, and the poet is more conversant with the passions of mankind than with individuals. A genius of the highest order alone could lead us through a single perusal of such a poem, by the charm of vivifying details, which enables us to forget the allegory altogether—the tedious drama of nonentities or abstract beings. In such creative touches the author of Piers Ploughman displays pictures of domestic life, with the minute fidelity of a Flemish painting; so veracious is his simplicity! He is a great satirist, touching with caustic invective or keen irony public abuses and private vices; but in the depth of his emotions, and in the wildness of his imagination, he breaks forth in the solemn tones and with the sombre majesty of Dante.
But this rude native genius was profound as he was sagacious, and his philosophy terminated in prophecy. At the era of the Reformation they were startled by the discovery of an unknown writer, who, two centuries preceding that awful change, had predictedthe fate of the religious houses from the hand of a king. The visionary seer seems to have fallen on the principle which led Erasmus to predict that “those who were in power” would seize on the rich shrines, becauseno other class of menin society could mate with so mighty a body as the monks. Power only could accomplish that great purpose, and hence our Vaticinator fixed on the highest as the most likely; and the deep foresight of an obscure country priest, which required two centuries to be verified, became a great moral and political prediction.
Without, however, depreciating the sagacity of the predictor, there is reason to suspect that the same thought was occurring to some of the great themselves. The Reformation of Henry the Eighth may be dated from the reign of Richard the Second. That mighty transition into a new order of events in our history would then have occurred, for the stag was started, and the hunt was up. It was an accidental and unexpected circumstance which turned aside the impending event, which was to be future and not immediate. Henry Bolingbroke, in the early part of his life, seems to have entertained some free opinions respecting the property of the church. He seemed not unfavourable to Wickliffe’s doctrines, and,when Earl of Derby, once declared that “princes had too little, and religious houses too much.” This unguarded expression, which was not to be forgotten, we are told, occasioned one of the rebellions during his reign. But when Henry Bolingbroke usurped the throne, age and prudence might have come together; the monarch balanced the dread of a turbulent aristocracy, and the uncertain tenure of dominion to be held at their pleasure, against the security of sheltering the throne under the broad alliance of a potent prelacy; a potent prelacy whose doom was fixed, though the hour had not yet struck! The monarch affixed a bloody seal to this political convention by granting a statute which made the offence of heresy capital; a crime which heretofore in law was as unknown as it seemed impossible to designate, and described only in figurative terms, as something very alarming, but which any prudent heretic might easily, if not explain, at least recant. To give it more solemnity, the statute is delivered in Latin, and the punishment of burning was to be inflicted “corum populo, in eminente loco.”1
The “Visions of Piers Ploughman,” when the day which his prescience anticipated arrived, were eagerly received; it is said the work passed through three editions in one year, about 1550, in the reign of the youthful monarch of the Reformation; the readers at that early period of printing would find many passages congenial to the popular sentiments, and our nameless author was placed among the founders of a new era.
The “Visions of Piers Ploughman” will always offer studies for the poetical artist. This volume, and not Gower’s nor Chaucer’s, is a well of English undefiled.Spenseroften beheld these Visions;Milton, in his sublime description of the Lazar House, was surely inspired by a reminiscence of Piers Ploughman. Even Dryden, whom we should not suspect to be much addicted to black-letter reading beyond his Chaucer, must have carefully conned our Piers Ploughman; for he has borrowed one very striking line from our poet, and possibly may have taken others.Byron, though he has thrown out a crudeopinion of Chaucer, has declared that “the Ploughman” excels our ancient poets. And I am inclined to think that we owe to Piers Ploughman an allegorical work of the same wild invention, from that other creative mind, the author of the “Pilgrim’s Progress.” How can we think of the one, without being reminded of the other? Some distant relationship seems to exist between the Ploughman’sDowellandDobet, andDobest, FriarFlatterer,Gracethe Portress of the magnificent Tower ofTruthviewed at a distance, and by its side the dungeon ofCare,Natural Understanding, and his lean and stern wifeStudy, and all the rest of this numerous company, and the shadowy pilgrimage of the “Immortal Dreamer” to “the Celestial City.” Yet I would mistrust my own feeling, when so many able critics, in their various researches after a prototype of that singular production, have hitherto not suggested what seems to me obvious.2
Why our rustic bard selected the character of a ploughman as the personage adapted to convey to us his theological mysteries, we know not precisely to ascertain; but it probably occurred as a companion fitted to the humbler condition of the apostles themselves. Such, however, was the power of the genius of this writer, that his successors were content to look for no one of a higher class to personify their solemn themes. Hence we have “The Crede of Piers Ploughman;” “The Prayer andComplaint of the Ploughman;” “The Ploughman’s Tale,” inserted in Chaucer’s volume; all being equally directed against the vicious clergy of the day.
“The Crede of Piers Ploughman,” if not written by the author of the “Vision,” is at least written by a scholar who fully emulates his master; and Pope was so deeply struck with this little poem, that he has very carefully analysed the whole.
1Barrington’s “Observations on the more ancient Statutes.”2For the general reader I fear that “The Visions of Piers Ploughman” must remain a sealed book. The last edition of Dr.Whitaker, the most magnificent and frightful volume that was ever beheld in the black letter, was edited by one whose delicacy of taste unfitted him for this homely task: the plain freedom of the vigorous language is sometimes castrated, with a faulty paraphrase and a slender glossary; and passages are slurred over with an annihilating &c. Much was expected from this splendid edition; the subscription price was quadrupled, and on its publication every one would rid himself of the mutilated author. The editor has not assisted the reader through his barbarous text interspersed with Saxon characters and abbreviations, and the difficulties of an obscure and elliptical phraseology in a very antiquated language. Should ever a new edition appear, the perusal would be facilitated by printing with the white letter. There is an excellent specimen for an improved text and edition in “Gent. Mag.,” April, 1834. [This improved text of the “Vision” and “Crede” has, since this note was originally written, been published with notes by T. Wright, M.A.; and has been again reprinted recently.]
1Barrington’s “Observations on the more ancient Statutes.”
2For the general reader I fear that “The Visions of Piers Ploughman” must remain a sealed book. The last edition of Dr.Whitaker, the most magnificent and frightful volume that was ever beheld in the black letter, was edited by one whose delicacy of taste unfitted him for this homely task: the plain freedom of the vigorous language is sometimes castrated, with a faulty paraphrase and a slender glossary; and passages are slurred over with an annihilating &c. Much was expected from this splendid edition; the subscription price was quadrupled, and on its publication every one would rid himself of the mutilated author. The editor has not assisted the reader through his barbarous text interspersed with Saxon characters and abbreviations, and the difficulties of an obscure and elliptical phraseology in a very antiquated language. Should ever a new edition appear, the perusal would be facilitated by printing with the white letter. There is an excellent specimen for an improved text and edition in “Gent. Mag.,” April, 1834. [This improved text of the “Vision” and “Crede” has, since this note was originally written, been published with notes by T. Wright, M.A.; and has been again reprinted recently.]
OCCLEVE; THE SCHOLAR OF CHAUCER.
Wartonpassed sentence onOccleveas “a cold genius, and a feeble writer.” A literary antiquary, from a manuscript in his possession, published six poems of Occleve; but that selection was limited to the sole purpose of furnishing the personal history of the author.1Ritson’s sharp snarl pronounced that they were of “peculiar stupidity;” George Ellis refused to give “a specimen;” and Mr. Hallam, with his recollection of the critical brotherhood, has decreed, that “the poetry of Occleve is wretchedly bad, abounding with pedantry, and destitute of grace or spirit.” We could hardly expect to have heard any more of this doomed victim—this ancient man, born in the fourteenth century, standing before us, whose dry bones will ill bear all this shaking and cuffing.
A literary historian, who has read manuscripts with the eagerness which others do the last novelty, more careful than Warton, and more discriminate than Ritson, has, with honest intrepidity, confessed that “Occlevehas not had his just share of reputation. His writings greatly assisted the growth of the popularity of our infant poetry.”2Our historian has furnished from the manuscripts ofOcclevetestimonies of his assertion.
Among the six poems printed, one of considerable length exhibits the habits of a dissipated young gentleman in the fourteenth century.
Occlevefor more than twenty years was a writer in the Privy Seal, where we find quarter days were most irregular; and though briberies constantly flowed in, yetthe golden shower passed over the heads of the clerks, dropping nothing into the hands of these innocents.
Our poet, in his usual passage from his “Chestres Inn by the Strond” to “Westminster Gate,” by land or water—for “in the winter the way was deep,” and “the Strand” was then what its name indicates—often was delayed by
The outward signe of Bacchus and his lure,That at his dore hangeth day by day,Exciteth Folk to taste of his moistúreSo often that they cannot well say Nay!
The outward signe of Bacchus and his lure,
That at his dore hangeth day by day,
Exciteth Folk to taste of his moistúre
So often that they cannot well say Nay!
There was another invitation for this susceptible writer of the Privy Seal.
I dare not tell how that the fresh repaírOf Venus femel, lusty children dear,That so goodlý, so shapely were, and fair,And so pleasánt of port and of manére.
I dare not tell how that the fresh repaír
Of Venus femel, lusty children dear,
That so goodlý, so shapely were, and fair,
And so pleasánt of port and of manére.
There he loitered,
To talk of mirth, and to disport and play.
To talk of mirth, and to disport and play.
He never “pinched” the taverners, the cooks, the boatmen, and all such gentry.
Among this many in mine audience,Methought I was ymade a man for ever—So tickled me that nyce reverénce,That it me made larger of dispence;—For Riot payeth largely ever mo;He stinteth never till his purse be bare.
Among this many in mine audience,
Methought I was ymade a man for ever—
So tickled me that nyce reverénce,
That it me made larger of dispence;—
For Riot payeth largely ever mo;
He stinteth never till his purse be bare.
He is at length seized amid his jollities,
By force of the penniless maladíe,Ne lust3had none to Bacchus House to hie.Fy! lack of coin departeth compaigníe;And hevé purse with Herté liberálQuencheth the thirsty heat of Hertés drie,Where chinchy Herté4hath thereof but small.
By force of the penniless maladíe,
Ne lust3had none to Bacchus House to hie.
Fy! lack of coin departeth compaigníe;
And hevé purse with Herté liberál
Quencheth the thirsty heat of Hertés drie,
Where chinchy Herté4hath thereof but small.
This “mirror of riot and excess” effected a discovery, and it was, that all the mischiefs which he recounts came from the high reports of himself which servants bring to their lord. The Losengour or pleasant flatterer was too lightly believed, and honied words made more harmful the deceitful error. Oh! babbling flattery! he spiritedly exclaims, author of all lyes, that causest all day thy lord tofare amiss. Such is the import of the following uncouth verse:—
Many a servant unto his Lord saithThat all the world speaketh of him, Honoúr,When the contrarie of that is sooth in faith;And lightly leeved is this Losengoúr,5His hony wordés wrapped in Erroúr,Blindly conceived been, the more harm is,O thou,Favele, of lesynges auctoúr,6Causest all day thy Lord to fare amiss.The Combre worldés;7’clept been EnchantoúrsIn Bookes, as I have red——.
Many a servant unto his Lord saith
That all the world speaketh of him, Honoúr,
When the contrarie of that is sooth in faith;
And lightly leeved is this Losengoúr,5
His hony wordés wrapped in Erroúr,
Blindly conceived been, the more harm is,
O thou,Favele, of lesynges auctoúr,6
Causest all day thy Lord to fare amiss.
The Combre worldés;7’clept been Enchantoúrs
In Bookes, as I have red——.
Occlevewas a shrewd observer of his own times. That this rhymer was even a playful painter of society we have a remarkable evidence preserved in the volume of his great master. “The Letter of Cupid,” in the works of Chaucer, was the production of Occleve, and appears to have been overlooked by his modern critics. He had originally entitled it, “A Treatise of the Conversation of Men and Women in the Little Island of Albion.” It is a caustic “polite conversation;” and deemed so execrably good, as to have excited, as our ancient critic Speght tells, “such hatred among the gentlewomen of the Court, that Occleve was forced to recant in that boke of his called ‘Planetas Proprius.’”8The Letter of Cupid is thus dated:—
Written in the lusty month of May,In our Paléis where many a milliónOf lovers true have habitatión,The yere of grace joyfull and jocúnd,A thousand four hundred and secónd.
Written in the lusty month of May,
In our Paléis where many a millión
Of lovers true have habitatión,
The yere of grace joyfull and jocúnd,
A thousand four hundred and secónd.
Imagery and imagination are not required in the school of society. Occleve seems, however, sometimes to have told a tale not amiss, forWilliam Brown, the pastoral bard, inserted entire a long story by old Occleve in his “Shepherd’s Pipe.” To us he remains sufficiently uncouth. The language had not at this period acquired even a syntax, though with all its rudeness it was neither wanting in energy nor copiousness, from that adoption of the French, the Provençal, and the Italian, with which Chaucer had enriched his vein. The present writer seems to have had some notions of the critical art, for he requests the learned tutor of Prince Edward, afterwards Edward the Fourth, to warn him, when,—
Metring amiss;
Metring amiss;
and when
He speaks unsyttingly,9Or not by just peys10my sentence weigh,And not to the order of enditing obey,And my colours set ofté sythe awry.
He speaks unsyttingly,9
Or not by just peys10my sentence weigh,
And not to the order of enditing obey,
And my colours set ofté sythe awry.
We might be curious to learn, with all these notions of the suitable, the weighty, the order of enditing, and the colours often awry, whether these versifiers had really any settled principles of criticism. Occleve is a vernacular writer, bare of ornament. He has told us that he knew little of “Latin nor French,” though often counselled by his immortal master. His enthusiastic love thus exults:—
Thou wer’t acquainted with Chaucer?—Pardie!God save his soul!The first findér of our faire langáge!
Thou wer’t acquainted with Chaucer?—Pardie!
God save his soul!
The first findér of our faire langáge!
There is one little circumstance more which connects the humble name of this versifier with that of Chaucer. His affectionate devotion to the great poet has been recorded by Speght in his edition of Chaucer. “Thomas Occleve, for the love he bare to his master, caused his picture to be truly drawn in his book ‘De Regimine Principis,’ dedicated to Henry the Fifth.” In this manuscript, with “fond idolatry,” he placed the portraiture of his master facing an invocation. From this portrait the head on the poet’s monument was taken, as well as all our prints. It bears a faithful resemblance to the pictureof Chaucer painted on board in the Bodleian Library.11Had Occleve, with his feelings, sent us down some memorial of the poet and the man, we should have conned his verse in better humour; but the history of genius had not yet entered even into the minds of its most zealous votaries.12
1“Poems byThomas Hoccleve,never before printed, selected from a manuscript in the possession of George Mason, with a preface, notes, and glossary,” 1796. The notes are not amiss, and the glossary is valuable; but the verses printed by Mason are his least interesting productions. The poet’s name is here written with an H, as it appeared in the manuscript; but there is no need of a modern editor changing the usual mode, because names were diversely written or spelt even in much later times. The present writer has been called not onlyOccleve, butOccliffe, as we find him in Chaucer’s works.2Turner’s “History of England,” v. 335.3No desire.4Niggardly heart.5A Chaucerian word, which well deserves preservation in the language.6Favell, author of “Lyes.”Favell, the editor of Hoccleve, explains ascajolerie, or flattery, by words given by Carpentier in his supplement to “Du Cange.” Pavel is personified by “Piers Ploughman,” and in Skelton’s “Bouge of Court.”Favelein langue Romane is Flattery—henceFabel, Fabling.—Roquefort’s “Dictionnaire.” The ItalianFavellio, parlerie, babil, caquet—Alberti’s “Grand Dictionnaire”—does not wholly convey the idea of our modernHumbug, which combinesfablingandcaquet.7The encumbrances to the world. In another poem he calls death “that Coimbre-world.” It was a favourite expression with him, taken from Chaucer. See “Warton,” ii. 352, note.8A title which does not appear in the catalogue of his writings by Ritson, in his “Bibliographia Poetica.”9Unfittingly.10Weight; probably from the Frenchpoids.11It is in Royal MS. 17 D. 6. The best is in the Harleian MS. 4866. There is also a very curious full-length preserved in a single leaf of vellum, Sloane MS. 5141; which has been copied in Shaw’s “Dresses and Decorations of the Middle Ages,” vol. i.—Ed.12A single trait, however, has come down to us from that other scholar of Chaucer, whom we are next to follow. Lydgate assures us, from what he heard, that the great poet would not suffer petty criticisms “to perturb his reste.” He did not like to groan over, and “pinch at every blot,” but always “did his best.”—My master Chaucer that founde ful many spot,Hym lyste not gruche, nor pynch at every blot;Nor move himself to perturb his reste;I have perde tolde, but seyd alway his beste.Lydgate’s “Troy.”
1“Poems byThomas Hoccleve,never before printed, selected from a manuscript in the possession of George Mason, with a preface, notes, and glossary,” 1796. The notes are not amiss, and the glossary is valuable; but the verses printed by Mason are his least interesting productions. The poet’s name is here written with an H, as it appeared in the manuscript; but there is no need of a modern editor changing the usual mode, because names were diversely written or spelt even in much later times. The present writer has been called not onlyOccleve, butOccliffe, as we find him in Chaucer’s works.
2Turner’s “History of England,” v. 335.
3No desire.
4Niggardly heart.
5A Chaucerian word, which well deserves preservation in the language.
6Favell, author of “Lyes.”Favell, the editor of Hoccleve, explains ascajolerie, or flattery, by words given by Carpentier in his supplement to “Du Cange.” Pavel is personified by “Piers Ploughman,” and in Skelton’s “Bouge of Court.”Favelein langue Romane is Flattery—henceFabel, Fabling.—Roquefort’s “Dictionnaire.” The ItalianFavellio, parlerie, babil, caquet—Alberti’s “Grand Dictionnaire”—does not wholly convey the idea of our modernHumbug, which combinesfablingandcaquet.
7The encumbrances to the world. In another poem he calls death “that Coimbre-world.” It was a favourite expression with him, taken from Chaucer. See “Warton,” ii. 352, note.
8A title which does not appear in the catalogue of his writings by Ritson, in his “Bibliographia Poetica.”
9Unfittingly.
10Weight; probably from the Frenchpoids.
11It is in Royal MS. 17 D. 6. The best is in the Harleian MS. 4866. There is also a very curious full-length preserved in a single leaf of vellum, Sloane MS. 5141; which has been copied in Shaw’s “Dresses and Decorations of the Middle Ages,” vol. i.—Ed.
12A single trait, however, has come down to us from that other scholar of Chaucer, whom we are next to follow. Lydgate assures us, from what he heard, that the great poet would not suffer petty criticisms “to perturb his reste.” He did not like to groan over, and “pinch at every blot,” but always “did his best.”—
My master Chaucer that founde ful many spot,Hym lyste not gruche, nor pynch at every blot;Nor move himself to perturb his reste;I have perde tolde, but seyd alway his beste.Lydgate’s “Troy.”
My master Chaucer that founde ful many spot,
Hym lyste not gruche, nor pynch at every blot;
Nor move himself to perturb his reste;
I have perde tolde, but seyd alway his beste.
Lydgate’s “Troy.”