William the Norman.

She rode forth clothéd on with chastity:The deep air listened round her as she rode,——the barking curMade her cheek flame; her palfry’s foot-fall shotLight horror thro’ her pulses:One low churl compact of thankless earthPeep’d—but his eyes, before they had their willWere shrivelled into darkness in his head,And she, that knew not, pass’d; and all at onceWith twelve great shocks of sound, the shameless noonWas clash’d and hammered from a hundred towers,One after one: But even then she gainedHer bower; whence re-issuing, robed and crowned,To meet her lord, she took the tax awayAnd built herself an everlasting name.

She rode forth clothéd on with chastity:

The deep air listened round her as she rode,

——the barking cur

Made her cheek flame; her palfry’s foot-fall shot

Light horror thro’ her pulses:

One low churl compact of thankless earth

Peep’d—but his eyes, before they had their will

Were shrivelled into darkness in his head,

And she, that knew not, pass’d; and all at once

With twelve great shocks of sound, the shameless noon

Was clash’d and hammered from a hundred towers,

One after one: But even then she gained

Her bower; whence re-issuing, robed and crowned,

To meet her lord, she took the tax away

And built herself an everlasting name.

Observe—that I call up these modern writers and their language, out of their turn as may seem to you, only that I may plant more distinctly in yourthought the old incidents to which their words relate. It is as if I were speaking to you of some long-gone line of ancestors, and on a sudden should call up some delicate blond child and say—This one is in the line of direct descent; she bears the same old name, she murmurs the same old tunes; and this shimmer of gold in her hair is what shone on the heads of the good Saxon foreparents.

We now come to a date to be remembered, and in the neighborhood of which our first morning’s talk will come to an end. It is the date of the Norman Conquest—1066—that being the year of the Battle of Hastings, when the brave Harold, last of the Saxon kings went down, shot through the eye; and the lithe, clean-faced, smirking William of Normandy “gat him” the throne of England. These new-comers were not far-away cousins of our Saxon and Danish forefathers; only so recently as the reign of Alfred had they taken permanent foothold in that pleasant Norman country.

But they have not brought the Norse speech ofthe old home land with them: they have taken to a Frankish language—we will call it Norman French—which is thenceforth to blend with the Saxonism of Alfred, until two centuries or more later, our own mother English—the English of Chaucer and of Shakespeare—is evolved out of the union. Not only a new tongue, do these conquerors bring with them, but madrigals and ballads and rhyming histories; they have great contempt for the stolid, lazy-going Latin records of the Saxon Chroniclers; they love a song better. In the very face of the armies at Hastings, their great minstrelTailleferhad lifted up his voice to chant the glories of Roland, about which all the histories of the time will tell you.

It was a new civilization (not altogether Christian) out-topping the old. These Normans knew more of war—knew more of courts—knew more of affairs. They loved money and they loved conquest. To love one in those days, was to love the other. King William swept the monasteries clean of those ignorant priests who had dozed there, from the time of Alfred, and put in Norman Monks with nicely clipped hair, who could construe Latin after latestNorman rules. He new parcelled the lands, and gave estates to those who could hold and manage them. It was as if a new, sharp eager man of business had on a sudden come to the handling of some old sleepily conducted counting-room; he cuts off the useless heads; he squares the books; he stops waste; pity or tenderness have no hearing in his shop.

I mentioned not far back an old Saxon Chronicle, which all down the years, from shortly after Beda’s day, had been kept alive—sometimes under the hands of one monastery, sometimes of another; here is what its Saxon Scribe of the eleventh century says of this new-come and conquering Norman King: It is good Saxon history, and in good Saxon style:—

“King William was a very wise man, and very rich, more worshipful and strong than any of his foregangers. He was mild to good men who loved God; and stark beyond all bounds to those who withsaid his will. He had Earls in his bonds who had done against his will; Bishops he set off their bishoprics; Abbots off their abbotries, and thanes in prison. By his cunning he was so thoroughly acquainted with England, that there is not a hide of land of which he did not know, both who had it, and what was its worth. He planted a great preserve for deer, and he laid down laws therewith, that whoever should slay hart or hind should beblinded. He forbade the harts and also the boars to be killed. As greatly did he love the tall deer as if he were their father.… He took from his subjects many marks of gold, and many hundred pounds of silver; andthathe took—some by right, and some by mickle might for very little need. He had fallen into avarice; and greediness he loved withal. Among other things is not to be forgotten the good peace that he made in this land; so that a man who had any confidence in himself might go over his realm, with his bosom full of gold, unhurt. Nor durst any man slay another man had he done ever so great evil to the other.… Brytland (Wales) was in his power, and he therein wrought castles, and completely ruled over that race of men.… Certainly in his time men had great hardship, and very many injuries.… His rich men moaned, and the poor men murmured; but he was so hard that he recked not the hatred of them all. For it was need they should follow the King’s will, if they wished to live, or to have lands or goods. Alas, that any man should be so moody, and should so puff up himself, and think himself above all other men! May Almighty God show mercy to his soul, and grant him forgiveness of his sins.”

There are other contemporary Anglo-Saxon annalists, and there are the rhyming chroniclers of Norman blood, who put a better color upon the qualities of King William; but I think there is no one of them, who even in moments of rhetorical exaltation, thinks of putting William’s sense of justice, or his kindness of heart, before his greed or his self-love.

The late Lord Lytton (Bulwer) gave to this period and to the closing years of Harold one of the most elaborate of his Historic Studies. He availed himself shrewdly of all the most picturesque aspects (and they were very many) in the career of Harold, and found startling historic facts enough to supply to the full his passion for exaggerated melodrama. There are brilliant passages in his book,[12]and a great wealth of archæologic material; he shows us the remnants of old Roman villas—the crude homeliness of Saxon house surroundings—the assemblage of old Palace Councils. Danish battle-axes, and long-bearded Saxon thanes, and fiery-headed Welshmen contrast with the polished and insidious Normans. Nor is there lacking a heavy and much over-weighted quota of love-making and misfortune, and joy and death. Tennyson has taken the samesubject, using the same skeleton of story for his play of Harold. It would seem that he has depended on the romance of Bulwer for his archæology; and indeed the book is dedicated to the younger Lord Lytton (better known in the literary world as “Owen Meredith”). As a working play, it is counted, like all of Tennyson’s—a failure; but there are passages of exceeding beauty.

He pictures the King Harold—the hero that he is—but with a veil of true Saxon gloom lowering over him: he tells the story of his brother Tostig’s jealous wrath,—always in arms against Harold: he tells of the hasty oath, which the king in young days had sworn to William in Normandy, never to claim England’s throne: and this oath hangs like a cloud over the current of Harold’s story. The grief, and noble devotion of poor Edith, the betrothed bride of the king, whom he is compelled by a devilish diplomacy to discard—is woven like a golden thread into the woof of the tale: and Aldwyth, the queen, whom Harold did not and can never love, is set off against Edith—in Tennyson’s own unmatchable way in the last scenes of the tragedy.

We are in the camp at Hastings: the battle waits;a vision of Norman saints, on whose bones Harold had sworn that dreadful oath, comes to him in his trance:—They say—(these wraiths of saints)—

O hapless Harold! king but for an hour!Thou swarest falsely by our blessed bones,We give our voice against thee out of Heaven!And warn him against the fatalarrow.

O hapless Harold! king but for an hour!

Thou swarest falsely by our blessed bones,

We give our voice against thee out of Heaven!

And warn him against the fatalarrow.

And Harold—waking—says—

Away!My battle-axe against your voices!

Away!

My battle-axe against your voices!

And then—remembering that old Edward the Confessor had told him on his deathbed that he should die by an arrow—his hope faints.

The king’s last word—“the arrow,” I shall die:I die for England then, who lived for England.What nobler? Man must die.I cannot fall into a falser world—I have done no man wrong.…

The king’s last word—“the arrow,” I shall die:

I die for England then, who lived for England.

What nobler? Man must die.

I cannot fall into a falser world—

I have done no man wrong.…

Edith (his betrothed) comes in—

Edith!—Edith!Get thou into thy cloister, as the kingWill’d it: … There, the great God of TruthFill all thine hours with peace! A lying DevilHath haunted me—mine oath—my wife—I fainHad made my marriage not a lie; I could not:Thou art my bride! and thou, in after years,Praying perchance for this poor soul of mineIn cold, white cells, beneath an icy moon.This memory to thee!—and this to England,My legacy of war against the Pope,From child to child, from Pope to Pope, from Age to Age,Till the sea wash her level with her shores,Or till the Pope be Christ’s.

Edith!—Edith!

Get thou into thy cloister, as the king

Will’d it: … There, the great God of Truth

Fill all thine hours with peace! A lying Devil

Hath haunted me—mine oath—my wife—I fain

Had made my marriage not a lie; I could not:

Thou art my bride! and thou, in after years,

Praying perchance for this poor soul of mine

In cold, white cells, beneath an icy moon.

This memory to thee!—and this to England,

My legacy of war against the Pope,

From child to child, from Pope to Pope, from Age to Age,

Till the sea wash her level with her shores,

Or till the Pope be Christ’s.

Aldwyth, the queen, glides in, and seeing Edith, says—

Away from him! Away!

Edith says (we can imagine her sweet plaintiveness)—

I will.… I have not spoken to the kingOne word: and one I must. Farewell!

I will.… I have not spoken to the king

One word: and one I must. Farewell!

And she offers to go.

But Harold, beckoning with a grand gesture of authority—

Not yet!Stay! The king commands thee, woman!

Not yet!

Stay! The king commands thee, woman!

And he turns to Aldwyth, from whose kinsmen he had expected aid—

Have thy two brethren sent their forces in?Aldwyth—Nay, I fear not.

Have thy two brethren sent their forces in?

Aldwyth—Nay, I fear not.

And Harold blazes upon her—

Then there’s no force in thee!Thou didst possess thyself of Edward’s earTo part me from the woman that I loved.…Thou hast been false to England and to me!As—in some sort—I have been false to thee.Leave me. No more.—Pardon on both sides.—Go!Aldwyth—Alas, my lord, I loved thee!O Harold! husband! Shall we meet again?Harold—After the battle—after the battle. Go.Aldwyth—I go. (Aside.) That I could stab her standing there!(Exit Aldwyth.)Edith—Alas, my lord, she loved thee.Harold—Never! never!Edith—I saw it in her eyes!Harold—I see it in thine!And not on thee—nor England—fall God’s doom!Edith—Onthee? on me. And thou art England!AlfredWas England. Ethelred was nothing. EnglandIs but her king, as thou art Harold!Harold—Edith,The sign in Heaven—the sudden blast at sea—My fatal oath—the dead saints—the dark dreams—The Pope’s Anathema—the Holy RoodThat bow’d to me at Waltham—Edith, ifI, the last English King of England——Edith—No,First of a line that coming from the people,And chosen by the people——Harold—And fighting forAnd dying for the people——Look, I will bear thy blessing into the battleAnd front the doom of God.

Then there’s no force in thee!

Thou didst possess thyself of Edward’s ear

To part me from the woman that I loved.

…

Thou hast been false to England and to me!

As—in some sort—I have been false to thee.

Leave me. No more.—Pardon on both sides.—Go!

Aldwyth—Alas, my lord, I loved thee!O Harold! husband! Shall we meet again?

Aldwyth—Alas, my lord, I loved thee!

O Harold! husband! Shall we meet again?

Harold—After the battle—after the battle. Go.

Aldwyth—I go. (Aside.) That I could stab her standing there!(Exit Aldwyth.)

Aldwyth—I go. (Aside.) That I could stab her standing there!

(Exit Aldwyth.)

Edith—Alas, my lord, she loved thee.

Harold—Never! never!

Edith—I saw it in her eyes!

Harold—I see it in thine!And not on thee—nor England—fall God’s doom!

Harold—I see it in thine!

And not on thee—nor England—fall God’s doom!

Edith—Onthee? on me. And thou art England!AlfredWas England. Ethelred was nothing. EnglandIs but her king, as thou art Harold!

Edith—Onthee? on me. And thou art England!

Alfred

Was England. Ethelred was nothing. England

Is but her king, as thou art Harold!

Harold—Edith,The sign in Heaven—the sudden blast at sea—My fatal oath—the dead saints—the dark dreams—The Pope’s Anathema—the Holy RoodThat bow’d to me at Waltham—Edith, ifI, the last English King of England——

Harold—Edith,

The sign in Heaven—the sudden blast at sea—

My fatal oath—the dead saints—the dark dreams—

The Pope’s Anathema—the Holy Rood

That bow’d to me at Waltham—Edith, if

I, the last English King of England——

Edith—No,First of a line that coming from the people,And chosen by the people——

Edith—No,

First of a line that coming from the people,

And chosen by the people——

Harold—And fighting forAnd dying for the people——Look, I will bear thy blessing into the battleAnd front the doom of God.

Harold—And fighting for

And dying for the people——

Look, I will bear thy blessing into the battle

And front the doom of God.

And he did affront it bravely; and the arrow did slay him, near to the spot where the Saxon standard flew to the breeze on that fateful day.

The play from which I have quoted may have excess of elaboration and an over-finesse in respect of details: but there are great bold reaches of descriptive power, a nobility of sentiment, and everywhere tender and winning touches, which will be very sure to give to the drama of Tennyson permanence and historic dignity, and keep it always a literary way-mark in the fields we have gone over. The scene of that decisive contest is less than a two hours’ ride away from London (by the Southeastern Railway) at a village called Battle—seven miles from the coast line at Hastings—in the midst of a beautiful rolling country, with scattered copses of ancient wood and a great wealth of wild flowers—(for which the district is remarkable) sparkling over the fields.

The Conqueror built a great abbey there—BattleAbbey—whose ruins are visited by hundreds every year. A large portion of the old religious house, kept in excellent repair, and very charming with its growth of ivy and its embowering shade, is held in private hands—being the occasional residence of the Duke of Cleveland. Amid the ruins the usher will guide one to a crypt of the ancient chapel—whose solid Norman arches date back to the time of the Conqueror, and which is said to mark the very spot on which Harold fell, wounded to the death, on that memorable day of Hastings.

I recur a moment to what was said in our opening talk—as a boy will wisely go back a little way for a better jump forward. I spoke—the reader will remember—of ringing, Celtic war-songs, which seemed to be all of literature that was drifting in the atmosphere, when we began: then there came a gleam of Christian light and of monkish learning thro’ St. Augustine in Southern England; and another gleam through Iona, and Lindisfarne, from Irish sources; then came Cædmon’s Bible singing,—which had echo far down in Milton’s day; next the good old Beda, telling the story of these things; then—a thousand years ago,—the Great Alfred, at once a book-maker and a King. Before him and after him came a dreary welter of Danish wars; the great Canute—tradition says—chirping a song in the middle of them; and last, the slaughterof Hastings, where the Saxon Harold went down, and the conquering Norman came up.

We start to-day with an England that has its office-holding and governing people speaking one language—its moody land-holders and cultivators speaking another—and its irascible Britons in Wales and Cumbria and Cornwall speaking yet another. Conquered people are never in much mood for song-singing or for history-making. So there is little or nothing from English sources for a century or more. Even the old Saxon Chronicle kept by monks (at Peterboro in this time), does not grow into a stately record, and in the twelfth century on the year of the death of King Stephen, dies out altogether.

But there is a Welsh monk—Geoffrey of Monmouth[13]—living just on the borders of Wales, and probably not therefore brought into close connection with this new Norman element—who writes(about one hundred years after the Conquest) a half-earnest and mostly-fabulous British Chronicle. He professes to have received its main points from a Walter—somebody, who had rare old bookish secrets of history, derived from Brittany, in his keeping. You will remember, perhaps, how another and very much later writer—sometimes known as Geoffrey Crayon—once wrote a History of New York, claiming that it was made up from the MSS. of a certain Diedrich Knickerbocker: I think that perhaps the same sense of quiet humor belonged to both these Geoffreys. Certainly Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Chronicle bears about the same relation to British matters of fact which the Knickerbocker story of New York bears to the colonial annals of our great city.

The fables which were told in this old Monmouth Chronicle are more present in men’s minds to-day than the things which were real in it: there was, for instance, the fable about King Lear (who does not know King Lear?): then, there were the greater fables about good King Arthur and his avenging Caliburn (who does not know King Arthur?). These two stories are embalmed now in Literature, and will never perish.

Those Arthur legends had been floating about in ballad or song, but they never had much mention in anything pretending to be history[14]until Geoffrey of Monmouth’s day. There is nothing of them in the Saxon Chronicle: nothing of them in Beda: King Alfred never mentions King Arthur.

But was there ever a King Arthur? Probably: but at what precise date is uncertain: probable, too, that he had his court—as many legends run—one time at Caerleon, “upon Usk,” and again at Camelot.[15]Caerleon is still to be found by the curious traveller, in pleasant Monmouthshire, just upon the borders of Wales, with Tintern Abbey and the grand ruin of Chepstow not far off; and a great amphitheatre among the hills (very likely of Romanorigin) with green turf upon it, and green hillsides hemming it in—is still called King Arthur’s Round Table.

Camelot is not so easy to trace: the name will not be found in the guide-books: but in Somersetshire, in a little parish, called “Queen’s Camel,” are the remains of vast entrenchments, said to have belonged to the tourney ground of Camelot. A little branch of the Yeo River (you will remember this name, if you have ever read Charles Kingsley’s “Westward, Ho”—a book you should read)—a little branch, I say, of the Yeo runs through the parish, and for irrigating purposes is held back by dykes, and then shot, shining, over the green meadows: hence, Tennyson may say truly, as he does in his Idyls of the King—

“They vanished panic-stricken, like a shoalOf darting fish, that on a summer’s mornAdown the crystal dykes atCamelot,Come slipping o’er their shadow, on the sand.”

“They vanished panic-stricken, like a shoal

Of darting fish, that on a summer’s morn

Adown the crystal dykes atCamelot,

Come slipping o’er their shadow, on the sand.”

There are some features of this ancient fable of King Arthur, which are of much older literary date than the times we are now speaking of. Thus “the dusky barge,” that appears on a sudden—coming to carry off the dying King,—

“——whose decks are dense with stately forms,Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream—by theseThree queens with crowns of gold, and from them roseA cry that shivered to the tingling stars——”

“——whose decks are dense with stately forms,

Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream—by these

Three queens with crowns of gold, and from them rose

A cry that shivered to the tingling stars——”

has a very old germ;—Something not unlike this watery bier, to carry a dead hero into the Silences, belongs to the opening of that ancient poem of Beowulf—which all students of early English know and prize—but which did not grow on English soil, and therefore does not belong to our present quest.[16]The brand Excalibur, too, which is thrown into the sea by King Arthur’s friend, and which is caught by an arm clothed in white samite, rising from the mere, and three times brandished, has its prototype in the “old mighty sword” which is put into the hands of Beowulf before he can slay the great sea-dragon of the Scandinavian fable.

Now, these Arthurian stories, put into book byGeoffrey—a Latin book, for all the monks wrote in Latin, though they may have sung songs in English, as good father Aldhelm did—were presently caught up by a romance-writer, named Wace, who was living at Caen, in Normandy, and whose knightly cousins (some say father and titled baron) had come over with William the Conqueror,—the name being long known in Nottinghamshire. This Wace put these Arthur stories into Norman verse—adding somewhat and giving a French air, which made his book sought after and read in royal courts; and fragments of it were chanted by minstrels in castle halls.

Then, this Arthur mine of legends was explored again by another priest and Welshman, who came to have some place at Oxford, where the beginnings of the great university were then a-brew. This writer, Walter Map[17]by name—or Mapes, as he is sometimes called—lived just about the meeting of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when the crusades were in full blast, and when dreams about theHoly Sepulchre hovered round half the house roofs of England. People saw in visions the poor famished pilgrims, fainting with long marches toward the far-away Jerusalem, and shot down by cruel Saracen arrows, within sight of the Holy of Holies. So Walter Map, the priest (they say he was one while chaplain to Henry II.), writing under light of that fierce enthusiasm, puts a religious element into the Arthur stories; and it is from him—in all probability—comes that Legend of the Holy Graal—the cup which caught the sacred blood, and which saintly knights were to seek after, the pure Sir Galahad being the winning seeker.

Nor did the Arthur legends stop here: but another priestly man, Layamon[18]—he, too, living on the borders of Wales, in the foraging ground of Arthur’s knights, not far from the present town of Kidderminster (which we know carpet-wise)—set himself to turning the Legends, with many additions, into short, clanging, alliterative Saxon verses,with occasional rhyme—the first English (or Teutonic) wording of the story; Map’s version being in Latin and French. He copies very much from Wace (Le Brut d’Angleterre), but his book is longer by a half. It has its importance, too—this Layamon version—in the history of the language. Of the why and the how, and of its linguistic relations to the Anglo-Saxon, or the modern tongue, I shall leave discussion in the hands of those more instructed in the history of Early English. We know this Layamon in our present writing, only as a simple-minded, good, plodding, West-of-England priest, who asked God’s blessing on his work, and who put that quaint alliterative jingle in it, which in years after was spent in larger measure over the poem of Piers Plowman, and which, still later, comes to even daintier usage when the great master—Spenser

“——fills with flowers fair Flora’s painted lap.”

Even now we are not through with this story of the Arthurian legends: it does not end with the priest Layamon. After printing was invented, and an easier way of making books was in vogue than the old one of tediously copying them upon parchment—Isay in this new day of printing a certain Sir Thomas Mallory, who lived at the same time with Caxton, the first English printer, did, at the instance, I think, of that printer—put all these legends we speak of into rather stiff, homely English prose—copying, Caxton tells us, from a French original: but no such full French original has been found; and the presumption is that Mallory borrowed (as so many book-makers did and do) up and down, from a world of manuscripts. And he wrought so well that his work had great vogue, and has come to frequent issue in modern times, under the hands of such editors as Southey, Wright, Strachey and Lanier. In the years following Mallory, succeeding writers poached frequently upon the old Arthur preserve—bit by bit[19]—till at last, in our day, Tennyson told his “Idyl of the King”—

“——and all the people cried,Arthur is come again: he cannot die.And those that stood upon the hills behindRepeated—Come again, and thrice as fair.”

“——and all the people cried,

Arthur is come again: he cannot die.

And those that stood upon the hills behind

Repeated—Come again, and thrice as fair.”

We come back now from this chase of Arthur, to the time of the Early Norman Kings: Orderic Vitalis,[20]of Normandy, William of Malmsbury,[21]Matthew Paris,[22]William of Newburgh,[23](whose record has just now been re-edited and printed in England,) and Roger of Hoveden,[24]were chroniclers of this period; but I am afraid these names will hardly be kept in mind. Indeed, it is not worth much struggle to do so, unless one is going into the writing of History on his own account. Exception ought perhaps to be made in favor of Matthew Paris, who was a monk ofSt. Albans, who won his name from studying at Paris (as many live students of that day did), who put a brave and vehement Saxonism of thought into his Latin speech—who had art enough to illustrate his own Chronicle with his pencil, and honesty enough to steer by God’s rule only and not by the King’s. One should remember, too, that this was about the period of the best Provençal balladry (in which Richard Cœur de Lion was proficient);—that strain of mediæval music and love regaling the Crusader knights on their marches toward Judea, and that strain of music and love waking delightful echoes against Norman castle-walls on their return. Again, one should keep note of the year whenMagna Chartawas granted by King John (1215), and remember, furthermore, that within ten years of the same date (1205) Layamon probably put the finishing touches to hisBrut, and the Arthurian stories I was but now speaking of.

Throughout these times—we will say the twelfth century and early in the thirteenth,—England was waxing every day stronger, though it grew strong in a rough and bloody way; the great Norman castles were a-building up and down the land—such as Conway and Rochester and Cardiff and Kenilworth: the older cathedrals, too, such as Durham and Winchester and Canterbury and Ely were then piling column by column and vault by vault toward the grand proportions which amaze us to-day. It was the time of growing trade too: ships from Genoa and Venice lay off the Thames banks, and had brought thither cargoes of silks and glass, jewels, Milanese armor, and spices. Cloth-makers came over from Flanders and made settlements in England.

Perhaps you have read Scott’s story of the “Betrothed.” If so, you will remember his description of just such a Flemish settlement in its earlier chapters, with its Wilkin Flammock and its charming Rose. The scene is laid in the time of Henry II., that sturdy King, who had such woful trouble with his wild sons, Richard and John, and still larger trouble with Thomas à Becket, (known now, as Harold is known, by Tennyson’s tender music) who came to his death at last by the King’s connivance, under the arches of Canterbury Cathedral; and so made that shrine sacred for pilgrims, whether they came from the “Tabard Inn,” or otherwheres.

That story of the “Betrothed” puts in presence winningly, the threefold elements of English population in that day—the Britons, the Saxons, and the Normans. The Britons are pictured by a scene of revel in the great rambling palace of a Welsh King, where the bard Cadwallon sings, and that other bard, Caradoc—both historic characters; and it is upon a legend in the chronicle of the latter, Southey has based his poem of “Madoc.” The Normans are represented, in the same romance, by the men-at-arms, or knights of the Castle ofLa Garde Doloureuse, and the Saxons by the fierce old lady in the religious house of Baldringham, where Eveline the heroine, had such fearful experiences with hobgoblins over night. There may be lapses in the archæology—as where Scott puts a hewn fireplace upon the wall of the dining-room of the Lady Ermengarde—antiquarians being pretty well agreed that chimneys of such class were unknown up to the fourteenth century; but still the atmosphere of twelfth-century life in England is better given than in most of our histories.[25]

In the same connection and with same commendation, may be named those other romances, “The Talisman” and “Ivanhoe,” both relating to epochs in the life of King Richard I. I suppose that of all English people, who have any figure in their minds of Richard Cœur de Lion, his bearing and character, four-fifths will have derived the larger part of their impressions from these two books of Scott. It is a painting by a friendly hand: Scott loved kings; and he loved the trace of Saxonism that was in Richard’s blood; he loved his bravery, as every Englishman always had and should. Is it quite needful that the friendly painter should put in all the bad birth-marks, or the bristling red beard? M. Taine scores him savagely, and would have him abeast: and Thackeray, in his little story of Rebecca and Rowena, uses a good deal of blood in the coloring.

No doubt he was cruel: but those were days of cruelty and of cruel kings. At least he was openly cruel: he carried his big battle-axe in plain sight, and if he met a foe thwacked him on the head with it, and there was an end. But he did not kill men on the sly like his brother King John, nor did he poison men by inches in low dungeons, as did so many of the polite and courteous Louis’ of France.

As people say now—in a good Saxon way—you knew where to find him. He was above-board, and showed those traits of boldness and frankness which almost make one forgive his cruelties. He was a rough burr; and I daresay wiped his beard upon the sleeve of his doublet, besides killing a great many people he should not have killed, at Ascalon. At any rate, we shall not set to work here to gainsay or discredit those charming historic pictures of Scott. We shall keep on going to the pleasant tournament-ground at Ashby-de-la-Zouche every time the fanfare of those trumpets breaks the silence of a leisureday; and so will our children; and so, I think, will our children’s children. We shall keep on listening to Wamba’s jokes, and keep on loving Rebecca, and keep on—not thinking much of the airy Rowena, and keep on throwing our caps in the air whenever the big knight in black armor, who is Richard of England, rides in upon the course—whatever all the Frenchmen in the world may say about him.

This Cœur de Lion appears too in the “Talisman”—one of Scott’s tales of the crusaders: and here we see him set off against other monarchs of Europe; as we find England, also, set off against the other kingdoms. The King came home, you will remember, by the way of Austria, and was caught and caged there many months—for a time none of his people knowing where he was: this is good romance and history too. A tradition, which probably has a little of both, says his prison was discovered by a brother minstrel, who wandered under castle-walls in search of him, and sang staves of old Provençal songs that were favorites of the King’s. Finally Richard responded from the depths of his dungeon. Howsoever this be, he was found, ransomed,and came home—to the great grief of his brother John; all which appears in the story of Ivanhoe, and in the chronicles of the time—based upon the reports of the King’s chaplain, Anselm.

King John—a base fellow every way—has a date made for him by the grant ofMagna Charta,A.D.1215, of which I have already spoken, and of its near coincidence with the writing of theBrutof Layamon. His name and memory also cling to mind in connection with two other events which have their literary associations.

First, this scoundrelly King could only keep power by making away with his little nephew Arthur, and out of this tragedy Shakespeare has woven his play of John—not very much read perhaps, and rarely acted; but in the old, school reader-books of my time there used to be excerpted a passage—a whole scene, in fact—representing the interview between Arthur and his gaoler Hubert, who is to put out the poor boy’s eyes. I quote a fragment:—

Arthur—Must you with irons burn out both mine eyes?Hubert—Young boy, I must.Arthur—And will you?Hubert—And I will.Arthur—Have you the heart? When your head did but ache,I knit my handkerchief about your brows.

Arthur—Must you with irons burn out both mine eyes?

Hubert—Young boy, I must.

Arthur—And will you?

Hubert—And I will.

Arthur—Have you the heart? When your head did but ache,I knit my handkerchief about your brows.

Arthur—Have you the heart? When your head did but ache,

I knit my handkerchief about your brows.

And again, when the ruffians come in with the irons, Hubert says—

“Give me the irons, I say, and bind him here.”Arthur—Alas, what need you be so boisterous rough?I will not struggle; I will stand stone still;For Heaven’s sake, Hubert, let me not be bound.

“Give me the irons, I say, and bind him here.”

Arthur—Alas, what need you be so boisterous rough?I will not struggle; I will stand stone still;For Heaven’s sake, Hubert, let me not be bound.

Arthur—Alas, what need you be so boisterous rough?

I will not struggle; I will stand stone still;

For Heaven’s sake, Hubert, let me not be bound.

I don’t know how young people are made up nowadays; but in the old times this used to touch us and almost set us upon the “weep” and make us rank King John with Beelzebub and—the Schoolmaster.

Second: In King John’s day Normandy was lost to England—the loss growing largely, in fact, out of the cruelty just named, and its ensuing wars. Losing Normandy had a vast influence upon the growing speech of England. Hitherto the cherished mother-land had been across the channel. Sons ofthe well-born had been sent over to learn French on French ground: young ladies of fashion ordered, without doubt, their best cloaks and hats from Rouen: the English ways of talk might do for the churls and low-born: but it was discredited by the more cultivated—above all by those who made pursuit of the gayeties and elegancies of life. The priest fraternity and the universities of course kept largely by Latin; and the old British speech only lived in the mountains and in the rattling war-songs of the Welsh bards. But when Norman nobles and knights found themselves cut off from their old home associations with Normandy, and brought into more intimate relations with the best of the English population, there grew up a new pride in the land and language of their adoption. Hence there comes about a gradual weaning from France. London begins to count for more than Rouen. The Norman knights and barons very likely season their talk with what they may have called English slang; and the better taught of the islanders—the sons of country franklins affected more knowledge of the Norman tongue, and came to know the French romances, which minstrels sang at theirdoors. So it was that slowly, and with results only observable after long lapse of years, the nation and language became compacted into one; and the new English began to be taught in the schools.

Of the transition stage, as it was called, there are narrative poems of record, which were written with a couplet in Norman French, and then a couplet in English. There were medleys, too, of these times, in which the friars mingled the three tongues of Latin, French, and English.[26]Blood mingled as languages mingled; and by the middle of the fourteenth century a man was no longer foreign because he was of Norman descent, and no longer vulgar because he was of Saxon.

To this transition time—in Henry III.’s day (whohad a long reign of fifty-six years—chiefly memorable for its length), there appeared the rhyming Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester;[27]—what we should call a doggerel story of England from fabulous times down, and worthy of mention as the first serious attempt at an English-written history—others noticed already being either merely bald chronicles, or in scholastic Latin, or in French metric form. I give you a little taste of his wooden verse—

——Lyncolne [has] fairest men,Grantebrugge, and Hontyndon most plente ò deep fen,Ely of fairest place, of fairest site Rochester,Even agen Fraunce stonde ye countre ò Chichester,Norwiche agen Denemark, Chestre agen Irelond,Duram agen Norwei, as ich understonde.

——Lyncolne [has] fairest men,

Grantebrugge, and Hontyndon most plente ò deep fen,

Ely of fairest place, of fairest site Rochester,

Even agen Fraunce stonde ye countre ò Chichester,

Norwiche agen Denemark, Chestre agen Irelond,

Duram agen Norwei, as ich understonde.

Yet he tells us some things worth knowing—about every-day matters—about the fish and the fruits and the pastures, and the things he saw with his own eyes. And we learn from these old chroniclershow much better a story a man can make, and how much more worth it is—in telling of the things he has really seen, than of the things he has not seen. Most of these old writing people must needs begin at the beginning—drawling over the ancient fables about the Creation and Siege of Troy, keeping by the conventional untruths, and so—very barren and good for nothing, until they get upon their own days, when they grow rich and meaty and juicy, in spite of themselves, and by reason of their voluble minuteness, and their mention of homely, every-day unimportant things. They cannot tell lies, without fear of detection, on their own ground: and so they get that darlingest quality of all history—the simple truth.

But if a man wanders otherwheres and makes report, he may tell lies, and the lies may amuse and get him fame. Thus it happened with another well-known but somewhat apocryphal writer of this Transition English epoch; I mean Sir John Mandeville, whose book of travels into distant countries had a very great run.

We know little of Mandeville except what he tells us;—that he was born at St. Albans—twenty miles from London, a place famous for its great abbey and its Roman remains—in the year 1300:—that he studied to be a mediciner—then set off (1322) on his travels into Egypt, Tartary, China, and Persia—countries visited by that more famous Venetian traveller, Marco Polo,[28]a half century earlier;—also, at other dates by certain wandering Italian Friars[29]of less fame. From some of these earlier travellers it is now made certain that Sir John pilfered very largely;—so largely, in fact, and so rashly, that there is reason to doubt, not only his stories about having been in the service of a Sultanof Egypt or of the Khan of Kathay—as he avers—but also to doubt if he visited at all the far-away countries which he pretends to describe.

Nay, so deflowered is he of his honors in these latter days, that recent critics[30]are inclined to question his right to the title of Sir John, and to deny wholly his authorship of that English version of the tales of travel, which have been so long and pleasantly associated with his name.

This seems rather hard measure to mete out to the garrulous old voyager; nor does the evidence against his having Englished his ownRomancestories, appear fully conclusive. What we may count for certain about the matter is this:—There does exist a very considerable budget of delightfully extravagant travellers’ tales, bearing the Mandeville name, and written in an English which—with some mending of bygone words—is charming now: and which may be called the first fair and square book of the new English prose;—meaning by that—the first book of length and of popular currency which introduced a full measure—perhaps over-runningmeasure—of those words of Romance or Latin origin, which afterward came to be incorporated in the English of the fifteenth century. The book has no English qualities—beyond its language; and might have been written by a Tartar, who could tell of Munchausen escapes and thank God in good current dialect of Britain.

I give a specimen from the description of his descent into the Valley Perilous—which he found beside the Isle of Mistorak, nigh to the river Phison:

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