Nou ich am in clene liveNe recche ich of childe ne of wive.
Nou ich am in clene live
Ne recche ich of childe ne of wive.
‘But tell me what to do.’ ‘Do!’ quoth the Fox, ‘leap into the bucket, and come down.’ And the Wolf going down met the Fox half-way; Reynard, ‘glad and blithe’ that the Wolf was a true penitent and in clean living, promised to have his soul-knell rung and masses said for him.
The well, it should be said, belonged to a house of friars; Aylmer the ‘master curtler’ who looked after the kitchen-garden came to the well in the morning; and the Wolf was pulled out and beaten and hunted; he found no bliss and no indulgence of blows.
The French story has some points that are not in the English; in the original, the two buckets on the pulley are explained to Isengrim as being God’s balance of good and evil, in which souls are weighed. Also there is a more satisfactory account of the way Reynard came to be entrapped. In the English story the failure of his wit is rather disgraceful; in the French he takes to the bucket because he thinks he sees his wife Hermeline in the bottom of the well; it is a clear starlight night, and as he peers over the rim of the well he sees the figure looking up at him, and when he calls there is a hollow echo which he takes for a voice answering. But there is no such difference of taste and imagination here between the French and the English Reynard as there is between the French and the English chivalrous romances.
TheRoman de Renartis generally, and justly, taken as the ironical counterpart of medieval epic and romance; an irreverent criticism of dignitaries, spiritual and temporal, the great narrative comedy of the Ages of Faith and of Chivalry. The comic short stories usually calledfabliauxare most of them much less intelligent; rhyming versions of ribald jokes, very elementary. But there are great differences among them, and some of them are worth remembering. It is a pity there is no English version of thejongleur, the professional minstrel, who, in the absence of the devils, is put in charge of the souls in Hell, but is drawn by St. Peter to play them away at a game of dice—the result being that he is turned out; since then the Master Devil has given instructions: No Minstrels allowed within.
There are few Englishfabliaux; there is perhaps only one preserved as a separate piece by itself, the story ofDame Sirith. This is far above the ordinary level of such things; it is a shameful practical joke, but there is more in it than this; the character of Dame Sirith, in her machinations to help the distressed lover of his neighbour’s wife, is such as belongs to comedy and to satire, not to the ordinary vulgar ‘merry tale’.
It is hard to find any other separate tale of this class in English; but the stories of the Seven Wise Masters, the Seven Sages of Rome, are many of them impossible to distinguish from the common type of the Frenchfabliaux, though they are often classed among the romances. There are many historical problems connected with the medieval short stories. Although theydo not appear in writing to any large extent before the French rhyming versions, they are known to have been current long before the twelfth century and before the French language was used in literature. There are Latin versions of some of them composed in Germany before thefabliauxhad come into existence; one of them in substance is the same as Hans Andersen’s story of Big Claus and Little Claus, which also is found as one of thefabliaux. Evidently, there are a number of comic stories which have been going about for hundreds (or thousands) of years without any need of a written version. At any time, in any country, it may occur to some one to put one of those stories into literary language. Two of the German-Latin comic poems are in elaborate medieval verse, set to religious tunes, in the form of theSequentia—a fact which is mentioned here only to show that there was nothing popular in these German experiments. They were not likely to found a school of comic story-telling; they were too difficult and exceptional; literary curiosities. The Frenchfabliaux, in the ordinary short couplets and without any literary ornament, were absolutely popular; it needed no learning and not much wit to understand them. So that, as they spread and were circulated, they came often to be hardly distinguishable from the traditional stories which had been going about all the time in spoken, not written, forms. It was one of the great popular successes of medieval French literature; and it was due partly to the French stories themselves, and partly to the example which they set, that comic literature was cultivated in the later Middle Ages. The Frenchstories were translated and adapted by Boccaccio and many others; and when the example had once been given, writers in different languages could find stories of their own without going to thefabliaux.
Does it matter much to any one where these stories came from, and how they passed from oral tradition into medieval (or modern) literary forms? The question is more reasonable than such questions usually are, because most of these stories are trivial, they are not all witty, and many of them are villainous. But the historical facts about them serve to bring out, at any rate, the extraordinary talent of the French for making literary profit out of every kind of material. Any one might have thought of writing out these stories which every one knew; but, with the exception of the few Latin experiments, this was done by nobody till the French took it up.
Further, those ‘merry tales’ come into the whole subject of the relations between folk-lore and literature, which is particularly important (for those who like that sort of inquiry) in the study of the Middle Ages. All the fiction of the Middle Ages, comic or romantic, is full of things which appear in popular tales like those collected by Grimm in Germany or by Campbell of Islay in the West Highlands. So much of medieval poetry is traditional or popular—the ballads especially—that folk-lore has to be studied more carefully than is needful when one is dealing with later times. With regard to short comic tales of the type of thefabliaux, part of the problem is easy enough, if one accepts the opinion that stories likeBig Claus and Little Claus,which are found all over the world, and which can be proved to have been current orally for centuries, are things existing, and travelling, independently of written books, which may at any time be recorded in a written form. The written form may be literary, as when the story is written in Latin verse by an early German scholar, or in French medieval verse by a minstrel or a minstrel’s hack, or in fine Danish prose by Hans Andersen. Or it may be written down by a scientific collector of folk-lore keeping closely to the actual phrasing of the unsophisticated story-teller; as when the plot is found among the Ananzi stories of the negroes in the West Indies. The life of popular stories is mysterious; but it is well known in fact, and there is no difficulty in understanding how the popular story which is perennial in every climate may any day be used for the literary fashion of that day.
It is rather strange that while there is so much folk-lore in medieval literature there should be so few medieval stories which take up exactly the plots of any of the popular traditional tales. And it is a curious coincidence that two of the plots from folk-lore which are used in medieval literature, distinctly, by themselves, keeping to the folk-lore outlines, should also appear in literary forms equally distinct and no less true to their traditional shape among the Tales of Andersen. One is that which has just been mentioned,Big Claus and Little Claus, which comes into English rather late in the Middle Ages as theFriars of Berwick. The other is theTravelling Companion, which in English rhyming romance is calledSir Amadace. There issomething fortunate about those two stories which has gained for them more attention than the rest. They both come into the Elizabethan theatre, where again it is curiously rare to find a folk-lore plot. One is Davenport’sNew Trick to Cheat the Devil; the other, theTravelling Companion, is Peele’sOld Wives’ Tale.
With most of the short stories it is useless to seek for any definite source. To ask for the first author ofBig Claus and Little Clausis no more reasonable than to ask who was the inventor of High Dutch and Low Dutch. But there is a large section of medieval story-telling which is in a different condition, and about which it is not wholly futile to ask questions of pedigree.The Seven Sages of Romeis the best example of this class; it has been remarked already that many things in the book are like thefabliaux; but unlike most of thefabliauxthey have a literary origin which can be traced. The Book of the Seven Wise Masters of Rome (which exists in many different forms, with a variety of contents) is an Oriental collection of stories in a framework; that is to say, there is a plot which leads to the telling of stories, as in theArabian Nights, theDecameron, theCanterbury Tales. TheArabian Nightswere not known in the West till the beginning of the eighteenth century, but the Oriental plan of a group of stories was brought to Europe at least as early as the twelfth century. The plot of theSeven Sagesis that the son of the Emperor of Rome is falsely accused by his stepmother, and defended by the Seven Masters, the Empress and the Masters telling stories against one another. As the object ofthe Masters is to prove that women are not to be trusted, it may be understood that their stories generally agree in their moral with the common disrespectful ‘merry tales’. Among the lady’s stories are some of a different complexion; one of these is best known in England through W. R. Spencer’s ballad of the death of Gelert, the faithful hound who saved the child of his lord, and was hastily and unjustly killed in error. Another is the story of the Master Thief, which is found in the second book of Herodotus—the treasure of Rhampsinitus, king of Egypt.
One of those Oriental fables found among the old French short stories comes into English long afterwards in the form of Parnell’sHermit.
Although thefabliauxare not very largely represented in medieval English rhyme, there is a considerable amount of miscellaneous comic verse. One of the great differences between Middle English and Anglo-Saxon writings (judging from what is extant) is that in Middle English there is far more jesting and nonsense. The best of the comic pieces is one that might be reckoned along with thefabliauxexcept that there is no story in it; the description of theLand of Cockayne, sometimes called the land of Readymade, where the geese fly about roasted—
Yet I do you mo to witThe geese y-roasted on the spitFleeth to that abbey, Got it wotAnd gredeth: Geese all hot, all hot!
Yet I do you mo to wit
The geese y-roasted on the spit
Fleeth to that abbey, Got it wot
And gredeth: Geese all hot, all hot!
The land of Cockayne is a burlesque Paradise ‘far in the sea by West of Spain’.
There beth rivers great and fineOf oil, milk, honey and wine;Water serveth there to no thing,But to sight and to washing.
There beth rivers great and fine
Of oil, milk, honey and wine;
Water serveth there to no thing,
But to sight and to washing.
This piece, andReynard and Isengrim (The Fox and the Wolf), and others, show that fairly early, and before the French language had given way to English as the proper speech for good society, there was some talent in English authors for light verse, narrative or descriptive, for humorous stories, and for satire. The English short couplets of those days—of the time of Henry III and Edward I—are at no disadvantage as compared with the French. Anything can be expressed in that familiar verse which is possible in French—anything, except the finer shades of sentiment, for which as yet the English have no mind, and which must wait for the authors of theConfessio Amantisand theBook of the Duchess Blanche.
But there is one early poem—a hundred, it may be a hundred and fifty, years before Chaucer—in which not the sentiment but something much more characteristic of Chaucer is anticipated in a really wonderful way.The Owl and the Nightingaleis an original poem, written in the language of Dorset at a time when nothing English was considered ‘courteous’. Yet it is hard to see what is wanting to the poem to distinguish it from the literature of polite society in the Augustan ages. What is there provincial in it, except the language? And why should the language be called, except in a technical and literal sense, rustic, when it is used with a perfect command of idiom, with tact and discretion, with the good humour thatcomprehends many different things and motives at once, and the irony which may be a check on effusive romance, but never a hindrance to grace and beauty? Urbanity is the right word, the name one cannot help using, for the temper of this rustic and provincial poem. It is urbane, like Horace or Addison, without any town society to support the author in his criticism of life. The author is like one of the personages in his satire, the Wren, who was bred in the greenwood, but brought up among mankind—in the humanities:
For theih heo were ybred a woldeHeo was ytowen among mankenne,And hire wisdom broughte thenne.
For theih heo were ybred a wolde
Heo was ytowen among mankenne,
And hire wisdom broughte thenne.
The Owl and the Nightingaleis the most miraculous piece of writing, or, if that is too strong a term, the most contrary to all preconceived opinion, among the medieval English books. In the condition of the English language in the reign of Henry III, with so much against it, there was still no reason why there should not be plenty of English romances and a variety of English songs, though they might not be the same sort of romances and songs as were composed in countries like France or Germany, and though they might be wanting in the ‘finer shades’. But all the chances, as far as we can judge, were against the production of humorous impartial essays in verse. Such things are not too common at any time. They were not common even in French polite literature in the thirteenth century. In the century after, Froissart in French, Gower and of course Chaucer in English have the same talent for light familiar rhyming essaysthat is shown by Prior and Swift. The early English poet had discovered for himself a form which generally requires ages of training and study before it can succeed.
His poem is entitled in one of the two MSS.altercatio inter Philomenam et Bubonem: ‘A debate between the Nightingale and the Owl.’ Debates, contentions, had been a favourite literary device for a long time in many languages. It was known in Anglo-Saxon poetry. It was common in France. There were contentions of Summer and Winter, of the Soul and the Body, the Church and the Synagogue, of Fast and Feasting; there were also (especially in the Provençal school) debates between actual men, one poet challenging another. The originality ofThe Owl and the Nightingaleargument is that it is not, like so many of those poetical disputations, simply an arrangement of all the obvious commonplaces for and against one side and the other. It is a true comedy; not only is the writer impartial, but he keeps the debate alive; he shows how the contending speakers feel the strokes, and hide their pain, and do their best to face it out with the adversary. Also, the debate is not a mere got-up thing. It is Art against Philosophy; the Poet meeting the strong though not silent Thinker, who tells him of the Immensities and Infinities. The author agrees with Plato and Wordsworth that the nightingale is ‘a creature of a fiery heart’, and that the song is one of mirth and not lamentation. Yet it is not contrasted absolutely with the voice of the contemplative person. If it were, the debate would come to an end, or would turn into mere railing accusations—of which thereis no want, it may be said, along with the more serious arguments. What makes the dispute worth following, what lifts it far above the ordinary medieval conventions, is that each party shares something of the other’s mind. The Owl wishes to be thought musical; the Nightingale is anxious not to be taken for a mere worldling.
Allegory is often taken to be the proper and characteristic mode of thought in the Middle Ages, and certainly there is no kind of invention which is commoner. The allegorical interpretation of Scripture was the regular, the universal method employed by preachers and commentators. Anglo-Saxon religious writings are full of it. At the Revival of Learning, five hundred years after Ælfric, the end of the Middle Ages is marked by a definite attack upon the allegorical method, an attack carried on by religious reformers and classical scholars, who held that allegory perverted and destroyed the genuine teaching of Scripture, and the proper understanding of Virgil and Ovid.
The book in which this medieval taste is most plainly exhibited is theGesta Romanorum, a collection of stories, in Latin prose, drawn from many different sources, each story having the moral interpretation attached to it, for the use of preachers.
One of the most popular subjects for moral interpretation was natural history. There is a book calledPhysiologus—‘the Natural Philosopher’—which went through all the languages in the same way as the story of Alexander or the book of the Seven Wise Masters. There are fragments of an Anglo-Saxon rendering, in verse—theWhale, and thePanther, favourite examples. The Whale is the Devil; the Whale lying in the sea with his back above water is often mistaken by sailorsfor an island; they land on his back to rest, and the Whale goes down with them to the depths. The common name for these natural histories (versions or adaptations ofPhysiologus) is ‘Bestiary’; there is an EnglishBestiaryof the beginning of the thirteenth century, most of it in the irregular alliterative verse which seems to have been common at that date; some of it is in fairly regular rhyme.
Allegorical interpretation of Scripture, or of stories, or of natural history is not the same thing as allegorical invention. This is sometimes forgotten, but it is clear enough that an allegory such as thePilgrim’s Progresshas a quite different effect on the mind, and requires a different sort of imagination, from the allegorical work which starts from a given text and spins out some sort of moral from it. Any one with a little ingenuity can make an allegorical interpretation of any matter. It is a different thing to invent and carry on an allegorical story. One obvious difference is that in the first case—for example in theBestiary—the two meanings, literal and allegorical, are separate from one another. Each chapter of theBestiaryis in two parts; first comes thenatureof the beast—natura leonis, etc.—the natural history of the lion, the ant, the whale, the panther and so forth; then comes thesignification. In the other kind of allegory, though there is a double meaning, there are not two separate meanings presented one after the other to the mind. The signification is given along with, or through, the scene and the figures. Christian in thePilgrim’s Progressis not something different from the Christian man whom he represents allegorically; Mr. Greatheart,without any interpretation at all, is recognized at once as a courageous guide and champion. So when the Middle Ages are blamed for their allegorical tastes it may be well to distinguish between the frequently mechanical allegory which forces a moral out of any object, and the imaginative allegory which puts fresh pictures before the mind. The one process starts from a definite story or fact, and then destroys the story to get at something inside; the other makes a story and asks you to accept it and keep it along with its allegorical meaning.
Thus allegorical invention, in poetry like Spenser’s, or in imaginative prose like Bunyan’s, may be something not very different from imaginative work with no conscious allegory in it at all. All poetry has something of a representative character in it, and often it matters little for the result whether the composer has any definite symbolical intention or not.BeowulforSamson Agonistesmight be said to ‘stand for’ heroism, just as truly as the Red Cross Knight in Spenser, or Mr. Valiant for Truth in thePilgrim’s Progress. So in studying medieval allegories either in poetry, painting or sculpture, it seems advisable to consider in each case how far the artist has strained his imagination to serve an allegorical meaning, or whether he has not succeeded in being imaginative with no proper allegorical meaning at all.
By far the best known and most influential of medieval allegories is theRomance of the Rose. Both in France and in England it kept its place as a poetical example and authority from the thirteenth century till well on in the sixteenth. It is the work of two authors;the later, Jean Clopinel or Jean de Meung, taking up the work of Guillaume de Lorris about 1270, forty years after the death of the first inventor. The part written by Jean Clopinel is a rambling allegorical satire, notorious for its slander against women. The earlier part, by Guillaume de Lorris, is what really made the fame and spread the influence of theRoman de la Rose, though the second part was not far below it in importance.
Guillaume de Lorris is one of those authors, not very remarkable for original genius, who put together all the favourite ideas and sentiments of their time in one book from which they come to be distributed widely among readers and imitators. His book is an allegory of all the spirit and doctrine of French romantic poetry for the past hundred years; and as the French poets had taken all they could from the lyric poets of Provence, theRoman de la Rosemay be fairly regarded as an abstract of the Provençal lyrical ideas almost as much as of French sentiment. It was begun just at the time when the Provençal poetry was ended in the ruin of the South and of the Southern chivalry, after the Albigensian crusade.
No apology is needed for speaking of this poem in a discourse on English literature. Even if Chaucer had not translated it, theRoman de la Rosewould still be a necessary book for any one who wishes to understand not only Chaucer but the poets of his time and all his successors down to Spenser. The influence of theRoman de la Roseis incalculable. It is acknowledged by the poet whose style is least like Chaucer’s, except for its liveliness, among all the writers in the reign ofEdward III—by the author of the alliterative poem onPurity, who is also generally held to be the author of thePearland ofSir Gawayne, and who speaks with respect of ‘Clopyngel’s clene rose’.
It is thoroughly French in all its qualities—French of the thirteenth century, using ingeniously the ideas and the form best suited to the readers whom it sought to win.
One of the titles of theRoman de la Roseis theArt of Love. The name is taken from a poem of Ovid’s which was a favourite with more than one French poet before Guillaume de Lorris. It appealed to them partly on account of its subject, and partly because it was a didactic poem. It suited the common medieval taste for exposition of doctrine, and theRoman de la Rosewhich follows it and copies its title is a didactic allegory. In every possible way, in its plan, its doctrine, its sentiment, its decoration and machinery, theRoman de la Rosecollects all the things that had been approved by literary tradition and conveys them, with their freshness renewed, to its successors. It concludes one period; it is a summary of the old French romantic and sentimental poetry, a narrative allegory setting forth the ideas that might be extracted from Provençal lyric. Then it became a storehouse from which those ideas were carried down to later poets, among others to Chaucer and the Chaucerian school. Better than anything else, the descriptive work in theRoman de la Rosebrings out its peculiar success as an intermediary between earlier and later poets. The old French romantic authors had been fond of descriptions, particularly descriptions of pictorial subjects used asdecoration, in painting or tapestry, for a magnificent room. TheRoman de la Rose, near the beginning, describes the allegorical figures on the outside wall of the garden, and this long and elaborate passage, of the same kind as many earlier descriptions, became in turn, like everything else in the book, an example for imitation. How closely it is related to such arts as it describes was proved in Ruskin’sFors Clavigera, where along with his notes on theRoman de la Roseare illustrations from Giotto’s allegorical figures in the chapel of the Arena at Padua.
The ‘formal garden’ of the Rose is equally true, inside the wall—
The gardin was by mesuringRight even and squar in compassing.
The gardin was by mesuring
Right even and squar in compassing.
The trees were set even, five fathom or six from one another.
In places saw I wèlles thereIn whiche ther no froggès wereAnd fair in shadwe was every welle;But I ne can the nombre telleOf stremès smale that by deviceMirth had done comè through coundys,Of which the water in renningCan make a noyse ful lyking.
In places saw I wèlles there
In whiche ther no froggès were
And fair in shadwe was every welle;
But I ne can the nombre telle
Of stremès smale that by device
Mirth had done comè through coundys,
Of which the water in renning
Can make a noyse ful lyking.
The dreamer finds Sir Mirth and a company of fair folk and fresh, dancing acarole.
This folk of which I telle you soUpon a carole wenten tho;A lady caroled hem, that highteGladnesse the blisful the lighte;Wel coude she singe and lustily,Non half so wel and semely,And make in song swich refreiningeIt sat her wonder wel to singe.
This folk of which I telle you so
Upon a carole wenten tho;
A lady caroled hem, that highte
Gladnesse the blisful the lighte;
Wel coude she singe and lustily,
Non half so wel and semely,
And make in song swich refreininge
It sat her wonder wel to singe.
The dream, the May morning, the garden, the fair company, the carole all were repeated for three hundred years by poets of every degree, who drew from theRomaunt of the Roseunsparingly, as from a perennial fountain. The writers whom one would expect to be impatient with all things conventional, Chaucer and Sir David Lyndsay, give no sign that the May of the old French poet has lost its charm for them; though each on one occasion, Chaucer in theHous of Fameand Lyndsay in theDreme, with a definite purpose changes the time to winter. With both, the May comes back again, in theLegend of Good Womenand in theMonarchy.
Even Petrarch, the first of the moderns to think contemptuously of the Middle Ages, uses the form of the Dream in hisTrionfi—he lies down and sleeps on the grass at Vaucluse, and the vision follows, of the Triumph of Love.
ThePearl, one of the most beautiful of the English medieval poems, is an allegory which begins in this same way; theVision of Piers Plowmanis another. Neither of these has otherwise much likeness to theRose; it was by Chaucer and his school that the authority of theRosewas established. ThePearlandPiers Plowmanare original works, each differing very considerably from the French style which was adopted by Chaucer and Gower.
ThePearlis written in a lyrical stanza, or rather ingroups of stanzas linked to one another by their refrains; the measure is unlike French verse. The poem itself, which in many details resembles many other things, is altogether quite distinct from anything else, and indescribable except to those who have read it. Its resemblance to theParadisoof Dante is that which is less misleading than any other comparison. In the English poem, the dreamer is instructed as to the things of heaven by his daughter Marjory, the Pearl that he had lost, who appears to him walking by the river of Paradise and shows him the New Jerusalem; like Dante’s Beatrice at the end she is caught away from his side to her place in glory.
But it is not so much in these circumstances that the likeness is to be found—it is in the fervour, the belief, which carries everything with it in the argument, and turns theology into imagination. As with Dante, allegory is a right name, but also an insufficient name for the mode of thought in this poem.
In thePearlthere is one quite distinct and abstract theory which the poem is intended to prove; a point of theology (possibly heretical): that all the souls of the blessed are equal in happiness; each one is queen or king. InSir Gawayne, which is probably by the same author, there is the same kind of definite thought, never lost or confused in the details.Piers Plowman, on the other hand, though there are a number of definite things which the author wishes to enforce, is wholly different in method. The method often seems as if it were nothing at all but random association of ideas. The whole world is in the author’s mind, experience, history, doctrine, the estates and fortunes ofmankind, ‘the mirror of middle-earth’; all the various elements are turned and tossed about, scenes from Bartholomew Fair mixed up with preaching or philosophy. There is the same variety, it may be said, inThe Pilgrim’s Progress. But there is not the same confusion. With Bunyan, whatever the conversation may be, there is always the map of the road quite clear. You know where you are; and if ever the talk is abstract it is the talk of people who eat and drink and wear clothes—real men, as one is accustomed to call them. InPiers Plowmanthere is as much knowledge of life as in Bunyan; but the visible world is seen only from time to time. It is not merely that some part of the book is comic description and some of it serious discourse, but the form of thought shifts in a baffling way from the pictorial to the abstract. It is tedious to be told of a brook named ‘Be buxom of speech’, and a croft called ‘Covet not men’s cattle nor their wives’, when nothing is made of the brook or the croft by way of scenery; the pictorial words add nothing to the moral meaning; if the Ten Commandments are to be turned into allegory, something more is wanted than the mere tacking on to them of a figurative name. The author ofPiers Plowmanis too careless, and uses too often a mechanical form of allegory which is little better than verbiage.
But there is more than enough to make up for that, both in the comic scenes like the Confession of the Seven Deadly Sins, and in the sustained passages of reasoning, like the argument about the righteous heathen and the hopes allowable to Saracens and Jews. The Seven Sins are not abstractions norgrotesque allegories; they are vulgar comic personages such as might have appeared in a comedy or a novel of low life, in London taverns or country inns, figures of tradesmen and commercial travellers, speaking the vulgar tongue, natural, stupid, ordinary people.
Also there is beauty; the poem is not to be dismissed as a long religious argument with comic interludes, though such a description would be true enough, as far as it goes. The author is no great artist, for he lets his meaning overpower him and hurry him, and interrupt his pictures and his story. But he is a poet, for all that, and he proves his gift from the outset of his work ‘in a May morning, on Malvern hilles’; and with all his digressions and seemingly random thought the argument is held together and moves harmoniously in its large spaces. The secret of its construction is revealed in the long triumphant passage which renders afresh the story of the Harrowing of Hell, and in the transition to what follows, down to the end of the poem. The author has worked up to a climax in what may be called his drama of the Harrowing of Hell. This is given fully, and with a sense of its greatness, from the beginning when the voice and the light together break in upon the darkness of Hell and on the ‘Dukes of that dim place’—Attollite portas: ‘be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors’. After the triumph, the dreamer awakes and hears the bells on Easter morning—
That men rongen to the resurrexioun, and right with that I wakedAnd called Kitte my wyf and Kalote my doughter:Ariseth and reverenceth Goddes resurrexioun,And crepeth to the crosse on knees, and kisseth it for a juwel,For Goddes blessid body it bar for owre bote,And it afereth the fende, for suche is the myghteMay no grysly gost glyde there it shadoweth!
That men rongen to the resurrexioun, and right with that I waked
And called Kitte my wyf and Kalote my doughter:
Ariseth and reverenceth Goddes resurrexioun,
And crepeth to the crosse on knees, and kisseth it for a juwel,
For Goddes blessid body it bar for owre bote,
And it afereth the fende, for suche is the myghte
May no grysly gost glyde there it shadoweth!
This is the end of one vision, but it is not the end of the poem. There is another dream.
I fel eftsones aslepe and sodeynly me metteThat Pieres the plowman was paynted al blodyAnd come on with a crosse before the comune peopleAnd righte lyke in alle lymes to oure lorde JhesuAnd thanne called I Conscience to kenne me the sothe:‘Is this Jhesus the juster’ quoth I ‘that Jewes did to death?Or is it Pieres the plowman? Who paynted him so rede?’Quoth Conscience and kneled tho: ‘This aren Pieres armes,His coloures and his cote-armure, ac he that cometh so blodyIs Cryst with his crosse, conqueroure of crystene’.
I fel eftsones aslepe and sodeynly me mette
That Pieres the plowman was paynted al blody
And come on with a crosse before the comune people
And righte lyke in alle lymes to oure lorde Jhesu
And thanne called I Conscience to kenne me the sothe:
‘Is this Jhesus the juster’ quoth I ‘that Jewes did to death?
Or is it Pieres the plowman? Who paynted him so rede?’
Quoth Conscience and kneled tho: ‘This aren Pieres armes,
His coloures and his cote-armure, ac he that cometh so blody
Is Cryst with his crosse, conqueroure of crystene’.
The end is far off; Antichrist is to come; Old Age and Death have their triumph likewise. The poem does not close with a solution of all problems, but with a new beginning; Conscience setting out on a pilgrimage. The poet has not gone wrong in his argument; the world is as bad as ever it was, and it is thus that he ends, after scenes of ruin that make one think of the Twilight of the Gods, and of the courage which the Northern heroes opposed to it.
It is not by accident that the story is shaped in this way. The construction is what the writer wished it to be, and his meaning is expressed with no failure in coherence. His mind is never satisfied; least of all with such conclusions as would make him forget the distresses of human life. He is like Blake saying—
I will not cease from mental fightNor shall my sword sleep in my hand.
I will not cease from mental fight
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand.
The book ofPiers Plowmanis found in many manuscripts which were classified by Mr. Skeat in his edition of the poem as representing three versions, made at different times by the author who twice revised his book, so that there is an earlier and a later revised and expanded version besides the first. This theory of the authorship is not accepted by every one, and attempts have been made to distinguish different hands, and more particularly to separate the authorship of the first from the second version. Those who wish to multiply the authors have to consider, among other things, the tone of thought in the poem; it is hard to believe that there were two authors in the same reign who had the same strong and weak points, the same inconsistencies, wavering between lively imagination and formal allegory, the same indignation and the same tolerance.Piers Plowmanis one of the most impartial of all reformers. He makes heavy charges against many ranks and orders of men, but he always remembers the good that is to be said for them. His remedy for the evils of the world would be to bring the different estates—knights, clergy, labourers and all—to understand their proper duty. His political ideal is the commonwealth as it exists, only with each part working as it was meant to do: the king making the peace, with the knights to help him, the clergy studying and praying, the commons working honestly, and the higher estates also giving work and getting wages. In this respect there is no inconsistency between the earlier and the later text. In the second version he brings in Envy as the philosophical socialist who proves out of Plato and Seneca that all thingsshould be in common. This helps to confirm what is taught in the first version about the functions of the different ranks. If the later versions are due to later hands, they, at any rate, continue and amplify what is taught in the first version, with no inconsistency.
It is one of the common difficulties in studying ancient literature that the things preserved are not always what we would have chosen. In modern literature, criticism and the opinion of the reading public have generally sorted out the books that are best worth considering; few authors are wrongfully neglected, and the well-known authors generally deserve their reputation. But in literature such as that of the thirteenth century, or the fourteenth before the time of Chaucer, not much has been done by the opinion of the time to sift out the good from the bad, and many things appear in the history of literature which are valuable only as curiosities, and some which have no title to be called books at all. TheAyenbite of Inwitis well known by name, and passes for a book; it is really a collection of words in the Kentish dialect, useful for philologists, especially for those who, like the author of the book, only care for one word at a time. TheAyenbite of Inwitwas translated from the French by Dan Michel of Northgate, one of the monks of St. Augustine’s at Canterbury, in 1340; it is extant in his own handwriting; there is no evidence that it was ever read by any one else. The method of the author is to take each French word and give the English for it; if he cannot read the French word, or mistakes it, he puts down the English for what hethinks it means, keeping his eye firmly fixed on the object, and refusing to be distracted by the other words in the sentence. This remarkable thing has been recorded in histories as a specimen of English prose.
TheOrmulumis another famous work which is preserved only in the author’s original handwriting. It is a different thing from theAyenbite; it is scholarly in its own way, and as far as it goes it accomplishes all that the author set out to do. As it is one of the earliest books of the thirteenth century, it is immensely valuable as a document; not only does it exhibit the East Midland language of its time, in precise phonetic spelling (the three G’s of theOrmulumare now famous in philology), but it contains a large amount of the best ordinary medieval religious teaching; and as for literature, its author was the first in English to use an exact metre with unvaried number of syllables; it has been described already. But all those merits do not make theOrmulummuch more than a curiosity in the history of poetry—a very distinct and valuable sign of certain common tastes, certain possibilities of education, but in itself tasteless.
One of the generalities proved by theOrmulumis the use of new metres for didactic work. The Anglo-Saxon verse had been taken not infrequently for didactic purposes—at one time for the paraphrase ofGenesis, at another for the moral emblems of theWhaleand thePanther. But the Anglo-Saxon verse was not very well fitted for school books; it was too heavy in diction. And there was no need for it, with Anglo-Saxon prose established as it was. After the NormanConquest, however, there was a change. Owing to the example of the French, verse was much more commonly used for ordinary educational purposes. There is a great deal of this extant, and the difficulty arises how to value it properly, and distinguish what is a document in the history of general culture, or morality, or religion, from what is a poem as well.
One of the earliest Middle English pieces is a Moral Poem which is found in several manuscripts and evidently was well known and popular. It is in the same metre as theOrmulum, but written with more freedom, and in rhyme. This certainly is valuable as a document. The contents are the ordinary religion and morality, the vanity of human wishes, the wretchedness of the present world, the fearfulness of Hell, the duty of every man to give up all his relations in order to save his soul. This commonplace matter is, however, expressed with great energy in good language and spirited verse; the irregularity of the verse is not helplessness, it is the English freedom which keeps the rhythm, without always regularly observing the exact number of syllables.
Ich am eldrè than ich was, a winter and eke on lorè,Ich weldè morè than ich dyde, my wit oughtè be morè.
Ich am eldrè than ich was, a winter and eke on lorè,
Ich weldè morè than ich dyde, my wit oughtè be morè.
i.e.—
I am older than I was, in winters and also in learning;I wield more than I did [I am stronger than I once was], my wit ought to be more.
I am older than I was, in winters and also in learning;
I wield more than I did [I am stronger than I once was], my wit ought to be more.
The first line, it will be noticed, begins on the strong syllable; the weak syllable is dropped, as it is by Chaucer and Milton when they think fit. With this freedom, the common metre is established as a goodkind of verse for a variety of subjects; and theMoral Ode, as it is generally called, is therefore to be respected in the history of poetry. One vivid thing in it seems to tell where the author came from. In the description of the fire of Hell he says—
Ne mai hit quenchè salt water, ne Avene stream ne Sture.
Ne mai hit quenchè salt water, ne Avene stream ne Sture.
He is thinking of the rivers of Christchurch, and the sea beyond, as Dante in Hell remembers the clear mountain waters running down to the Arno.
Layamon’sBrutshows how difficult it might be for an Englishman in the reign of King John to find the right sort of verse. The matter of theBrutis Geoffrey of Monmouth’s history, originally in Latin prose. This had been translated into French, and of course into rhyme, because nothing but rhyme in French was thought a respectable form. Layamon has the French rhyming version before him, and naturally does not think of turning it into prose. That would be mean, in comparison; once the historical matter has been put into poetical form, it must not be allowed to fall back into any form less honourable than the French. Layamon, however, has no proper verse at command. He knows the old English alliterative verse, but only in the corrupt variety which is found in some of the later Anglo-Saxon pieces, with an increasing taste for rhyme; Layamon, of course, had also in his head the rhymes of the French couplets which he was translating; and the result is a most disagreeable and discordant measure. The matter of Layamon in many places compensates for this; much of it, indeed, is heavy and prosaic, but some of itis otherwise, and the credit of the memorable passages is at least as often due to Layamon as to the original British history. He found the right story of the passing of Arthur, and that makes up for much of his uncomfortable verse and ranks him higher than the mere educational paraphrasers.
TheBestiaryand theProverbs of Alfredare two other works which resemble theBrutmore or less in versification, and are interesting historically. It ought to be said, on behalf of the poorer things in this early time, that without exception they prove a very rich colloquial idiom and vocabulary, which might have been used to good effect, if any one had thought of writing novels, and which is in fact well used in many prose sermons, and, very notably, in the long prose book of theAncren Riwle.
Looking at theAncren Riwleand some other early prose, one is led to think that the French influence, so strong in every way, so distinctly making for advance in civilization, was hurtful to the English, and a bad example, in the literature of teaching, because the French had nothing equal to the English prose. French prose hardly begins till the thirteenth century; the history of Villehardouin is contemporary with theAncren Riwle. But the English prose authors of that time were not beginners; they had the Anglo-Saxon prose to guide them, and they regularly follow the tradition of Ælfric. There is no break in the succession of prose as there is between Anglo-Saxon and Plantagenet verse; Anglo-Saxon prose did not lose its form as the verse did, and Ælfric, who was copied by English preachers in the twelfth century, mighthave taught something of prose style to the French, which they were only beginning to discover in the century after. And there might have been a thirteenth-century school of English prose, worthy of comparison with the Icelandic school of the same time, if the English had not been so distracted and overborne by the French example of didactic rhyme. French rhyme was far beyond any other model for romance; when it is used for historical or scientific exposition it is a poor and childish mode, incomparably weaker than the prose of Ælfric. But the example and the authority of the French didactic rhyme proved too strong, and English prose was neglected; so much so that theAncren Riwle, a prose book written at the beginning of the thirteenth century, is hardly matched even in the time of Chaucer and Wycliffe; hardly before the date of Malory or Lord Berners.
TheAncren Riwle(theRule of Anchoresses) is a book of doctrine and advice, like many others in its substance. What distinguishes it is the freshness and variety of its style. It is not, like so many excellent prose works, a translation. The writer doubtless took his arguments where he found them, in older books, but he thinks them over in his own way, and arranges them; and he always has in mind the one small household of religious ladies for whom he is writing, their actual circumstances and the humours of the parish. His literary and professional formulas do not get in his way; he sees the small restricted life as it might have appeared to a modern essayist, and writes of it in true-bred language, the style in which all honest historians agree. The passageswhich are best worth quoting are those which are oftenest quoted, about the troubles of the nun who keeps a cow; the cow strays, and is pounded; the religious lady loses her temper, her language is furious; then she has to beseech and implore the heyward (parish beadle) and pay the damages after all. Wherefore it is best for nuns to keep a cat only. But no one quotation can do justice to the book, because the subjects are varied, and the style also. Much of it is conventional morality, some of it is elementary religious instruction. There are also many passages where the author uses his imagination, and in his figurative description of the Seven Deadly Sins he makes one think of the ‘characters’ which were so much in fashion in the seventeenth century; there is the same love of conceits, though not carried quite so far as in the later days. The picture of the Miser as the Devil’s own lubberly boy, raking in the ashes till he is half blind, drawing ‘figures of augrim’ in the ashes, would need very little change to turn it into the manner of Samuel Butler, author ofHudibras, in his proseCharacters; so likewise the comparison of the envious and the wrathful man to the Devil’s jugglers, one making grotesque faces, the other playing with knives. Elsewhere the writer uses another sort of imagination and a different style; his description of Christ, in a figure drawn from chivalry, is a fine example of eloquent preaching; how fine it is, may be proved by the imitation of it called theWooing of Our Lord, where the eloquence is pushed to an extreme. The author of theAncren Riwlefelt both the attraction and the danger of pathos; and he escaped the error ofstyle into which his imitator fell; he kept to the limits of good prose. At the same time, there is something to be said in defence of the too poetic prose which is exemplified in theWooing of Our Lord, and in other writings of that date. Some of it is derived from the older alliterative forms, used in theSaints’ Livesof found something Ælfric; and this, with all its faults and excesses, at any rate kept an idea of rhythm which was generally wanting in the alliterative verse of the thirteenth century. It may be a wrong sort of eloquence, but it could not be managed without a sense of rhythm or beauty of words; it is not meagre or stinted, and it is in some ways a relief from the prosaic verse in which English authors copied the regular French couplets, and the plain French diction.
One of the best pieces of prose about this time is a translation from the Latin.Soul’s Wardis a homily, a religious allegory of the defence of Man’s Soul. The original Latin prose belongs to the mystical school of St. Victor in Paris. The narrative part of the English version is as good as can be; the mystical part, in the description of Heaven and the Beatific Vision, is memorable even when compared with the greatest masters, and keeps its own light and virtue even when set alongside of Plotinus or Dante. Here, as in theAncren Riwle, the figures of eloquence, rhythm and alliteration are used temperately, and the phrasing is wise and imaginative; not mere ornament. By one sentence it may be recognized and remembered; where it is told how the souls of the faithful see ‘all the redes and the runes of God, and his dooms that dern be, and deeper than any sea-dingle’.