(IfnntcU Untucrsitg 2:ibrarg Jtljaca, Nebi fork f.f/ WORDSWORTH COLLECTION MADE By CYNTHIA MORGAN ST. JOHN ITHACA, NY. THE GIFT OF VICTOR EMANUEL CLASS OF 19 19 1925 DEVELOPMENT ENGLISH LITERATURE LANGUAGE ALFRED H. WELSH, A.M. MEMBEK OF VICTORIA INSTITUTE, THE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF GREAT BRITAIN VOLUME I All profitable study is a silent disputation — an intellectual gymnastic; and the most improving books are precisely those which most excite the reader. ... To read pas- sively, to learn,— is, in reality, not to learn at all.— Sir William Hamilton THIRD EDITION. CHICAGO S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY 1883 n)o ^ ^ /\ (boloG COPTBIGHT 1882 Bt S. C- GRIGGS AND COMPANY I KNIGHT & LEONARD .ll , TO GOYERNOR CHARLES FOSTER. Dear Sir : — Not the least of our national glories are the literary remains of the best of our public men. At a period when the general literature of the country was the contempt of Europe, our statesmen wrote in the Eng- lish of Addison and Junius. Classic eloquence adorned the Revolutionary council, and the splendid succession of intellect in action mounted to its grandest development in the triumvirate of Calhoun, Clay, and Webster. Nor latterly has that noble lineage failed. Seward and Sumner have illus- trated elegant scholarship in the trustees of power. "Within a few years, historians and poets have represented us in foreign courts, while others — notably the lamented Garfield — have carried the world of ideas into that of catch- words and party habits. In this there is cause to rejoice. It signifies that we are gravitating in the ideal direction ; that art, sentiment, and imagination are dividing favor with trade and government. It means the gradual uplift of the Republic towards the high-water mark of culti- vated mind — catholicity of thought, sensibility, and practice. By culture we become citizens of the universe. The work of the scholar, less liable to be partisan, is more apt to be in the interest of civilization, based not upon class-feeling, but on broad grounds of general justice. Nations are not , tnily great solely because of their numbers, their freedom, their activity. It is in the conjunction of fine culture with sagacity, of high reason with principle, that the ideal of national greatness is to be placed. Only thus can America stand, as she is privileged to do, for the aspirations and future of mankind. The paths proper to the statesman and the artist can rarely coincide, but they may often touch; and because I have pleasure in this tangency of pursuits which promises to organize literature into institutions, tending thus to their refinement and expansion, — I also have pleasure in the inscription of these volumes to your Excellency, who, amid the absorbing cares of business and the arduous realities of office, have never become the slave of material circumstances, nor ever been found wanting in an active sympathy with cosmopolitan aims, displaying on the theati'e of politics the virtues which impart grace and dignity to private character. But the pleasure is peculiar in remembering your early and generous friendship, through which I am now permitted to hope that these pages may contribute, albeit in a limited way, to form judicious readers, intel- ligent writers, or well-furnis"hed speakers; minister to breadth of thought or beneficence of feeling; strengthen faith or enkindle hope; deepen or multiply the sense of truth, beauty, and right, whence all true manliness is fed. Sincerely yours, A. H. W. OOl^TEI^TS OF VOLUME I. Dedication iii Prologue ix List op Authorities xvii CHAPTER I. Formative Period — The People. Britain. Primitive Inhabitants. Celtic Invasion. Roman Conquest; its Effects. Anglo-Saxon Conquest; its Effects. Norman Conquest ; its Effects. Norman Oppression. Moulding of the People and Fusion of the Races 13 Celtic Manners. Druidism. Roman Refinements. Celtic Fancy. Danish Customs. Norman Culture 21 Anglo-Saxon Civilization. Social Life. Legislation and Knowledge, Traditions and Mythology. Cosmogony. Burial Customs. Val- halla. Theology. Philosophy. Savagery. Code. Home-Life. Fundamental Instincts. Results 38 CHAPTER II. Formative Period — The Language. Definition. Origin. Development. Growth. Diversities of Speech. , Dialects. Idioms. Aryan Mother-Tongue. Elements of English. Original Forms. Transition. Native Features of the Language. History in Word-Forms. Superiority of Saxon English. Results . 59 CHAPTER III. Formative Period — The Literature. Politics. Old English Jurisprudence. Parliament. Self-Government. Social Life. Town Life. Lawlessness. Brutality. Architecture. The Jews in England. Amusements, Superstitions 73 VI CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. Religion. The English Church. Roman Encroachments. Monasticism. Mendicant Friars. Vices of the Clergy. Disaffection of the Laity. Redeeming Excellences of the System 83 Learning; its Low Condition. Gradual Revival. Universities. Primitive Oxford. Language 89 Poetry. Saxon Verse-Form. Alliteration. Rhyme. The Saxon Ideal — Beowulf. Tragic Tones of Saxon Poetry. Sombre Imagination of the North 101 Romantic Fiction, Its Origin. Its Themes. Love Courts. Its Form. Its Poets. Layamon. Robert of Gloucester. The "Owl and the Nightingale" 116 Rise of English Prose. History — Legendary Stage. Annalists. The Saxon Chronicle. Theology. Heresy. Rationalism. Ethics. Science. Astrology. Philosophy. Scholasticism. Realism. Nom- inalism. Aquinas. Scotus. The Syllogism. Learned Puerilities . 138 Representative Authors: C^DMON 145 Bede 148 Alfred 15g Roger Bacon Ig3 CHAPTER IV. Initiative Period. Political Forces. Social Life. Chivalry. Misery of the Poor. Revolt. Religion. Exactions of Rome. Dissensions of the Clergy. Disaf- fection of the People lij-j 176 Learning. Its Decay. Language. The King's English. Its Inter- mixtures Poetry. Piers Plowman. Robert Manning. Gower. "Confessio Amantis" -jg^ Prose. History. Philosophy. Science— Astrology. Theology— Tran- substantiation. Ethics — Casuistry I94 Representative Authors: Mandeville Wycliffe . Chaucer , 199 203 232 CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. VU CHAPTER V. Retrogressive Period. Political Strife. Social State. Industries. Savagery. Homes. News. Sports • 238 Religion. Debasement of the Church. Superstitions. Excesses. Oppres- sions 243 Learning. The Press. Language. Emancipation of the Tongue . . 244 Poetry. Occleve. Lydgate. The Ballad. Robin Hood ..... 252 Prose. Paston Letters. Fortescue. Malory. History. Fabyan. Theology — Decadence. Ethics — Vacuity. Science — Empiricism. Philosophy — Dead Sea Fruit . 259 Representative Author: Caxton 264 CHAPTER VI. First Creative Period. Political Struggles. Social Condition. Increase of Comfort and Luxury. Wretchedness and Disorder. Brutal Amusements 272 The Reformation. Indulgences. Dispensations. Relics. The Scrip- tures. Book of Common Prayer. Latimer. Ridley. The Church of England. Superstitions of the People 284 The Renaissance; its Rise and Development. Language. Anomalies. Progress in Simplicity. Organized Completion 296 Poetry. Colin Clout. Skelton. Surrey. Contuiuity of Verse-Form. Rhetorical and Emotive. Early Drama. The Theatre. Mysteries. Moralities. Heywood. Comedy; Udall. Tragedy; Sackville. Ex- ternals of the Stage. Marlowe 321 Prose. Forces. Style. Euphuism. History. Raleigh. Hollinshed, Theology. The Articles. Rationalism and Dogma. The Bible. Ethics. The Dawn in Lord Bacon's "Essays." Rise of Science. Copernicus. Galileo. Philosophy. Emancipation from Scholas- ticism. Bruno 334 Representative Authors: More 340 Sidney 347 Hooker 351 'Raleigh 357 Spenser 373 Shakespeare . 400 VIU CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. CHAPTER VII. Philosophic Period. Political Parties. Cavaliers. Roundheads. Amelioration of Social Life. Relics of Barbarity 404 Religion. Puritan Triumph. Austerity. Influence. Witchcraft . . 409' Poetry. Wither. Carew. Herrick. Suckling. Donne. Herbert. Drummond. Cowley. Change in the Drama. Jonson. Beaumont and Fletcher. Massinger. Ford. Webster. Inequalities of the Drama. Shirley. Closing of the Theatre 437 Prose. Burton. Bishop Hall. Sir Thomas Browne. Jeremy Taylor. Ethics. Secularization of Morals. Science. Astronomy. Kepler, Newton. Napier. Harvey. Rise of Modern Philosophy. Bacon. Descartes. Browne 444 Representative Authors: Jonson 458 Lord Bacon 472 Milton 495 Index 50& PEOLOGUE. A nation's literature is the outcome of its whole life. To consider it apart from the antecedents and environments which form the national genius were to misapprehend its nature and its bearing. Its growth in kind and degree is determined by- four capital agencies, — eace, or hereditary dispositions; sur- roundings, or physical and social conditions ; epoch, or spirit of the age ; person, or reactionary and expressive force. His- torical phenomena are not all to be resolved, as with Draper, into physiological ; nor all to be explained, as with Buckle, by an a priori necessity; nor chiefly to be referred, as with Taine, to the sky, the weather, and the nerves. On the other hand, they are as far removed from an individual spontaneity as from a depressing fatalism. Personal genius remakes the society which evolves it. In so far as it rises above the table-land of national character, it not only expresses but intensifies the national type. Shakespeare and Bacon wrought under the cir- cumstances of their birth, but were also, by their own supremacy, original and independent sources of influence. Yet progress is according to law. In the midst of eternal change is unity. The relations of the constants and the variables have the true marks of development. On a survey of the whole, human wills, how- ever free, are seen to conform, under a general Providence, to a definite end. A history of English Literature requires, therefore, a descrip- tion of English soil and climate, of English thought and English character, as they exist when first the English people come iipon the arena of history, of the growth of that character and that X PKOLOGUE. thought, as they are colored by the foreign infusions of Celt, Roman, Dane, and Norman, or impressed and fostered by the new ideal — Christianity. Nor can any man understand the American mind who fails to appreciate its connection with Eng- lish history, ancient and modern. On English soil were first developed what he most values in his ancestral spirit — the habits, the principles, and the faith, which have tnade this country to be what it is. As we have no American language which is not a graft on the English stock, though there be minor points of difference, — so We have no American literature which does not flow in a common stream of sentiment from English hearths and English altars. What combinations will hereafter manifest themselves in consequence of democratic ten- dencies and a gradual amalgamation with all the other nations of Europe, is an open question; but the distinctive features which have displayed themselves within the present century can hardly be deemed of sufiicient strength to color or disturb the primitive current. So far as a historical work may be intended to be an educa- tional appliance, it obviously should be neither a presentation of chronological details nor a mere discussion of causes. The high and natural destination of the soul is the iull development of its moral and intellectual faculties. Hence knowledge is chiefly^ valuable as a means of mental activity. And since the desire of unity, and the necessity of referring effects to their causes, are the mainspring of energy, the knowledge that a thing is, — that a certain author wrote certain books, that a certain book con- tains a certain passage, that a certain passage contains a certain opinion, — is far less important than the knowledge how or why it is, — how the author, the book, the opinion are related, as consequent and antecedent, to some dominant idea or moral state; how this idea or state is shaped by natural bent and constraining force; how, from this primitive bent and moulding PKOLOGUE. Xi force, we may see in advance, and half predict the character of human events and productions; how beneath literary remains we can unearth the beatings of living hearts centuries ago, as the lifeless wreck of a shell is a clue to the entire and living existence. The one is a knowledge of objects as isolated; the other, of objects as connected. The first gives facts; the second gives power. An individual may possess an ample magazine of th e fo raiaCi^^and still be little better than a barbarian. Accord- ingly I have aimed at the golden mean, — a judicious union of facts and philosophy, of narrative and reflection, of objective description and subjective meditation. Color and form may be desirable to attract the eye, but the interlacing, spiritual force, that blends them into harmony and coherence, is required to make their lesson disciplinary, available, and enduring. Again, it is a law of intelligence that the greater the number of objects to which our consciousness is simultaneously extended, the smaller is the intensity with which it is able to consider each, and therefore the less vivid and distinct will be the information obtained. If the points considered are intermingled, the rays are not brought to a focus, and the mental eye, — following the lines, but nowhere abiding, — instead of a clear and well-defined image, perceives only a shadowy and confused outline. Now, to the ordinary student, it is believed that the treatment of authors in our current text-books presents the fantastic groupings of the kaleidoscope, — a bewildering show. In the whirl and entangle- ment of topics, he sees nothing in an undivided light, and receives no lasting and organic impressions. He reads passively, conceives feebly, and forgets speedily. Therefore each leading author is here discussed under the classified heads of Biogra- phy, Writings, Style, Rank, Character, and Influence. Others are added when rising into special interest and signifi- cance. One thing at a time is the accepted condition for all efficient activity. While the topics are logically related as the XU PEOLOGUE. more or less interdependent parts of a whole, each receives the amplest justice by being made in its turn the central subject of thought. The mind in its work thus becomes more animated and energetic, because its ideas are kindred, all converging to a definite because to a single impression. By such an arrange- ment, moreover, the logical powers are trained, and the student unconsciously acquires a habit of bringing, in writing or speak- ing, his thoughts out of chaos into order. Further, a great man, his career, his example, his ideas, can take no strong and permanent hold of the heart and mind, until these have become an integral part of our established associa- I tions of thoughts, feelings, and desires. But this can only be accomplished by time. The attention must be detained till the subject becomes real, as the face of a friend; fixed, as the sun and stars: then the energies of apprehension, of judgment, of sympathy, are aroused; and images, principles, truths, senti- ments, though the words be forgotten, become fadeless acquisi- tions, assimilated into the very substance of the student's living self. Hence, as the end of liberal education is the cultivation of the student through the awakened exercise of his faculties, the authors studied should be relatively few and representative. Time is wasted and the powers are dissipated by attempting too _^ rnuch-,. Preeminent authors are creative and pictorial, reflecting, with singular fidelity, the peculiarities of their age; and by limiting the discussion to such, the student acquires the most in learning the least. Regarding language as an apparatus for the conveyance of thought, and mindful that whatever force is absorbed by the machine is deducted from the result, I have carefully excluded polemical and conjectural matter from the body of the work, have seldom diverted attention by introduction of foot-notes, and have employed dates but sparingly. ' Biography,' says Lowell, ' from day to day holds dates cheaper and facts dearer,' PROLOGUE. Xlll — not all facts, indeed, but the essential ones, those of psycho- logical purport, which underlie the life and make the individual man. To the same end — economy of mental energy — the early poets, including Chaucer, are presented in a more or less mod- ernized form, with an occasional retention of the antique dialect for its illustrative uses. Neither the artist nor his art, as before stated, can be under- stood and estimated independently of his times. No enlarged or profound conception of intellectual culture is possible with- out completeness of view, — without a well-defined notion of the other elements of society, and of those products designed to convince of truth or to arouse to action, as well as of those whose prime object is to address the imagination or to please the taste. Consequently, each of the periods, into which the work is divided according to what seemed their predominant characteristics, is introduced by a sketch of the features which distinguish it, and of the forces which go to shape it, including Politics, the state of Society, Religioist, Poetey, the Drama, the Novel, the Periodical, History, Theology, Ethics, Sci- ence, Philosophy, No one who aspires now to literary power can afford to be ignorant of the scientific phase of modern thought. The educational value of philosophy is peculiarly apparent in its effects on the culture and discipline of the mind, — to quicken it, to teach it precision, to lead it to inquire into the causes and relations of things, to awaken it to a vigor- ous and varied exertion. Not less salutary in this point of view, and far more so in another, are theology and ethics. Moral cul- ture and religious growth cannot be excluded from any just conception of education. Broadly stated, it is of vast moment to the student to reflect upon the motives and springs of human action, to face the unexplained mystery of thought, to ask himself, What is right, and what wrong ; what am I, and whither going; what my history, and my destiny? XIV PROLOGUE. According to an enlightened science of education, it is diffi- cult to see the utility of a text-book, though critical, that is wholly abstracted from the literature itself. Its criticisms, its general observations, are meaningless and povs^erless vpithout illustrative specimens to verify them. They produce no answer- ing thoughts, no questioning, and thus no valuable activity. The student is expected blindly to yield himself to the direc- tion of another. He forms no independent judgment, is excited to no disputation, is stimulated to no profitable or pleasurable exercise. But instruction is only instruction as it enables us to teach ourselves, and leaves on the mind serviceable images and contemplations. If truth is not expansive, if it is not recast and used to interpret nature and guide the life,. wherein is its value? The materials of discipline and culture are fur- nished, not by statements \ahout literature,, but by the litera- ture itself. To refine the taste, to sharpen thought, to inspire feeling, the student must be brought closely and consciously into contact with personality, — that is, with the writer's pro- ductions. Not only are extracts to be presented, but when practicable and expedient, entire artistic products. These are to be interpreted ^ and in them, as in a mirror, the student should be taught to recognize the genius that constructed them, — his style, his character, the manners, opinions, and civilization of the period. Particular care has been taken to insure an interest in the personal life of an author; for all the rules that have ever been prescribed for controlling the attention find their principal value in this, — that they induce or require an interest in the subject- matter. Hence the value of reported sayings, private journals, correspondence, striking events, gossipy incidents, — the scenery and personages that belong to the period, and which have the effect to charm the mind into a sympathetic attitude toward the author's work. ' As the enveloping English ivy lends a PROLOGUE. XV living charm and attractiveness to many a ruined castle and abbey, which would prove uninviting to the tourist standing in its naked deformity, so a reasonable amplitude of treatment often throws a wonderful fascination over old names and dates, otherwise uninteresting.' It would seem obvious that a history of English Literature should note in a catholic and liberal spirit the practical lessons suggested by its theme. If it warms not the feelings into noble earnestness, elevates not the mind's ideals, nor supplies healthful truths by which to live and to die, it is lamentably defective; and the fault is not in the subject, but in the histo- rian. When Dr. Arnold was planning his history, he said: " My highest ambition ... is to make my history the very reverse of Gibbon in this respect, that whereas the whole spirit of his work, from its low morality, is hostile to religion without speaking directly against it, so my greatest desire would be, in my history, by its high morals and its general tone, to be of use to the cause, without actually bringing it forivard.'' With- out twisting a story into a sermon, I have humbly endeavored to present it as the artist describes nature, — with a light falling upon it from the region of the highest and truest. As to the benefits of this study per se, they cannot be overestimated. He can hardly hope for eminence as a writer, who has not enriched his mind and perfected his style by familiarity with the literary masters and masterpieces; while to have fed on high thoughts and to have companioned with those — ' Whose soul the holy forms Of young imagination hath kept pure,' are, beyond all teaching, the virtue-making powers. Every thinker, the most original, owes his originality to the originality of all. 'Very little of me,' said Goethe, 'would be left, if I could but say what I owe to my predecessors and contemporaries.' Omnipotence creates, man combines. He can be originative, strictly, only in development, in the form of his XVI PROLOGUE. funded thought, in the fusion of his collected materials, as the sculptor in the conception of his statue, or the architect in the design of his edifice. My scope and purposes being such as indicated, I have drawn freely from all the fountains around me, — have wished to absorb all the light anywhere radiating. To the many who have helped me, it is a pleasure to record my obligations in the manner which seems most accordant with the objects and uses to be subserved, — either explicitly in the text, or collectively in the List of Authorities. To some sources, how- ever, I am preeminently indebted, — to the literary histories of Anderson, Bascom, and Taine; to the critical essays of Macaulay, Hazlitt, and Whipple; to the philosophical treatises of Lecky, Buckle, Lewes, and Uberweg. I wish, also, to render acknowl- edgments to personal friends, — to Rev. J. L. Grover for free access to the Columbus Library; to General Joseph Geiger, and his accomplished assistant, Miss Mary Harbaugh, for the liberal privileges of the Ohio State Library; to Professor Alston Ellis, Ph.D., for valuable suggestions; to Rev. Daniel F. Smith, and Mr. James Bishop Bell, of Chicago, the scholarly readers, for their critical and unstinted revision of the proof-sheets; to Rev. F. W. Gunsaulus, and A. E. Clevenger, A.M., for large and important aid in the preparation of a copious index. In conclusion, my supreme anxiety has been to produce not a brilliant but a useful book, and the results are therefore hope- fully commended to a conscientious and catholic criticism, a criticism that shall take high ground, — that shall aim to pro- mote the common weal, — that shall not look through a micro- scope when it should look through a telescope, — that shall illuminate excellences as well as indicate errors, — that shall contemplate the whole before it adjudicates on the parts, — that shall be perceptive, sympathetic, and suggestive. The Author. Columbus, Ohio, July 4, 1882. LIST OF AUTHOEITIES. Adams, J. Q Lectures on Oratory and Rhetoric. Alford, H Queen's English. ____Alger,_ffi.J&rT— Poetry of the East. Anderson, R. B Norse Mythology. Angus, J Hand-Book of English Literature. Bagehot, W English Constitution. Baring-Gould, S Myths of the Middle Ages. ,s Bascom, J Philosophy of English Literature. Bayne, P Essays in Biography and Criticism. Bayne, P Lessons from My Masters. Browne, M Chaucer's England. Buckle, H. T History of Civilization in England. Burnet, G History of his own Time. Cairns, J Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century. Carlyle, T Heroes and Hero-Worship. Carlyle, T Oliver Cromwell. Carpenter, S. H English of the Fourteenth Century. Chambers, R Cyclopaadia of English Literature. / Channing, W. E Complete Works. Cocker, B. F Christianity and Greek Philosophy. Clarke, C. C Riches of Chaucer. Collet, S Relics of Literature. Collier, J. P History of English Dramatic Poetry. Cook, Joseph Conscience. Cooke, G. W Ralph Waldo Emerson. Cox, G. W Mythology of the Aryan Nations. Craik, G. L History of English Literature. De Mille, J Elements of Rhetoric. D'Israeli, I Amenities of Literature. D'Israeli, I Curiosities of Literature. Dorner, J. A History of Protestant Theology. Drake, N Shakespeare and His Times. Draper, J. W Intellectual Development of Europe. Eccleston, J English Antiquities. Ellis, G Early English Metrical Romances. Emerson, R. W English Traits. Emerson, R. W Representative Men. Farrar, F. W Chapters on Language. Farrar, F. W Language and Languages. Farrar, F. W Witness of History to Christ. Fanriel, C. C History of Proven9al Poetry. X Fields, J. T Yesterdays with Authors. Fiske, J Myths and Myth-makers. Fowler, W. E Grammar of the English Language. Freeman, E. A History of Norman Conquest. Freeman, E. A Old English History. Proude, J. A , History of England. xvii xvni LIST OF AUTHOKITIES. Proude, J. A Short Studies on Great Subjects. Geike, C The English Reformation. Giles, J. A Ancient Britons. Gilfillan, G Modern Literature and Literary Men. Gilliland, T Dramatic Mirror. Gladstone, W. E Gleanings of Past Years. Gladstone, W. E Juventus Mundi. Godwin, P Out of the Past. Goodman, W Social History of Great Britain. Gould, E. S Good English. Green, J. R A Short History of the English People. Guizot, F. P. G History of Civilization in Europe. Guizot, F. P. G History of the English Revolution. Hamilton, Sir W Discussions on Philosophy and Literature. Hallam, H Constitutional History of England. Hallam, H Europe during the Middle Ages. Hallam, H Literature of Europe. Haven, J History of Ancient and Modern Philosophy. Hazlitt, W Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth. Hazlitt, W. C ...Early Literature of Great Britain. Hudson, P History of Journalism in the United States. Hume, D History of England. Hunt, L Selections from English Poets. Hurst, J. P History of Rationalism. Hutton, R. H Essays, Theological and Literary. Irvrng, W Oliver Goldsmith. Jameson, A Legends of the Monastic Orders. Johnson, S Lives of Eminent English Poets. Joufiroy. T. S Introduction to Ethics. King, T. S Christianity and Humanity. Knight, C Popular History of England. Labarte, J Arts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Lange, P. A History of Materialism. ■- Lanier, S ^_Science^of_English_yerAej^ Latham, R. G English Language. Lecky, W. E. H England in the Eighteenth Century. Lecky, W. E. H History of European Morals. Lecky, W. E. H Rationalism in Europe. Leland, J View of Deistical Writers. Lewes, G. H Biographical History of Philosophy. Lewis, J History of English Translations of the Bible. Lodge, E Illustrations of British History. Longfellow, H . W. .^ ^ .^ ^ ^^^Poets and Poetry of^ Eur ope. LoNveTTTJT R Among My Books. Lowell, J. R My Study Windows. Lubbock, Sir J Origin of Civilization. Lytton, Lord Last of the Barons. Macaulay, T. B Essays. Macaulay, T. B History of England. Mackintosh, Sir J Progress of Ethical Philosophy. Marsh, G. P. Origin and History of the English Language Martineau, H History of England. Martineau, J Essays, Philosophical and Theological. Mathews, W Literary Style. M'Cosh, J Christianity and Positivism. M'Cosh, J Intuitions of the Mind. Mill, J. S System of Logic. Mills, C History of Chivalry. LIST OF AUTHORITIES. Morell, J. D Speculative Philosophy of Europe. Morley, H First Sketch of English Literature. Morris, G. S British Thought and Thinkers. Mosheim, J. L Ecclesiastical History. Miiller, P. M Chips from a German Workshop. Miiller, F. M Science of Language. Weal, D History of the Puritans. ISTeele, H Lectures on English Poetry. ____ Niebiihr, B. G History of Rome. Oliphant, T. L. K Old and Middle English. Palgrave, Sir F History of the Anglo-Saxons. Palgrave, Sir F Rise of the English Commonwealth. Parker, T Complete Works. Percy, T Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. JPhelpSj Austin . . jj^.,^^ , Men and Books. Philp, R. K Progress in Great Britain. Porter, N Books and Reading. Porter, N The Human Intellect. Pre&cett-.-W^ H ^s---^^- Bi ographical and Critical Miscellanies. Ranke, L History of the Popes. J?eed, H Lectures on English History. Reed, H Lectures on English Literature. Ruskin, J Modern Painters. Russell. A. P Library Notes. Schaff, P History of the Christian Church. Schuyler, A Outlines of Logic. Shairp, J. C Poetic Interpretation of Nature. Shairp, J. C Aspects of Poetry. Sismondi, J. C. L. S. de Literature of the South of Europe. Shepherd, Henry E History of the English Language. Smollet, T History of England. Spencer, H Illustrations of Universal Progress. Stael, Madame de Influence of Literature. Stanhope, P. H Reign of Queen Anne. Stedman, E. C Victorian Poets. Stephen, L English Thought in the Eighteenth Century. Stubbs, W Constitutional History of England. Symonds, J. A Sketches and Studies in Southern Europe. Symonds, J. A The Renaissance in Italy. Taine, H. A Notes on England. Taine, H. A History of English Literature. Thorns, W. J Prose Romances. Thomson, E — Educational Essays. Thorpe, B Northern Mythology. Tocqueville, A. de Democracy in America. Tooke, J. H Diversions of Purley. Trench, R. C English, Past and Present. Trench, R. C On the Study of Words. Turner, S History of the Anglo-Saxons. Turner, T. H . . Domestic Architecture in England. Tylor, E. B. , Primitive Culture. Ub^rweg, F History of Philosophy. Vaughan, R Revolutions in English History. W^arton, T History of English Poetry. Whewell, W History of the Inductive Sciences. Whewell, W Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences. XX LIST OF AUTHOKITIES. Whewell, W Elements of Morality. Whipple, E. P Character and Characteristic Men. Whipple, E. P Literature of the Age of Elizabeth. W^hite, J History of England. Whitney, W. D Language and the Study of Language. Whitney, W. D Life and Growth of Language. Wright, T England in the Middle Ages. DEYELOPMET^T OP ENGLISH LITERATURE AID LANGUAGE. FORMATIVE PERIOD. CHAPTER I. FORMING OF THE PEOPLE. The harvest gathered in the fields of the Past is to be brouglat home for the use of the Present.— Z>r. Arnold. History does not stand outside of nature, but in her very heart, so that the historian only grasps a people's character with true precision when he keeps in full view its geographical position, and the influences which its surroundings have wrought upon it. — Bitter. Geographical. — We see, by reference to the map, that Eng- land — the land from which our language and many of our insti- tutions are derived — is the largest of three countries comprising the island of Great Britain. ^ The remaining two are Wales and Scotland. These three, with Ireland, constitute the United King- dom' and this, with its foreign possessions, the JBritish Empire. England, consisting chiefly of low plains and gentle hills, occupies the central and southern portion of the island; and Wales, mountainous and marshy, the western. Scotland is the northern division, storm-beaten by a hostile ocean; mountainous and sterile in the north, but abounding in fertile plains in the south. Britain is separated from France by the English Channel, from Ireland by the Irish Sea, and from Germany by the North Sea, notorious for its wrecks. 1 Great Britain, because there is another land also called Britain, — the northwestern corner of Gaul; but this last is now commonly called Brittany. The two names, however, are really the same, and both are called in Latin Britannia. 2 PORMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. Its entire extent is about ninety thousand square miles, or nearly twice the area of the State of New York. It is divided into counties, or sJdres, of which England has forty, Wales twelve, Scotland thirty-three. Its climate is moist with the vapors that rise forever from the great sea-girdle, and its sky sombre with the clouds that are fed by ceaseless exhalations,' — conditions which, however conducive to splendor of verdure, are less nurturing to refined and nimble thought than to sluggish and melancholy temperament; for man, forced to accommodate himself to circumstances, contracts habits and aptitudes corresponding to them. No European country should have a deeper interest for Eng- lish or American readers; none is so rich in learning and science, in wise men and useful arts; but nothing in its early existence indicated the greatness it was destined to attain. We are to think of it in those dim old days as, intellectually and physically, an island in a northern sea — the joyless abode of rain and surge, forest and bog, wild beast and sinewy savage, which, as it strug- gled from chaos into order, from morning into prime, should become the residence of civilized energy and Christian sentiment, of smiling love and sweet poetic dreams. Britons. — When we learn that the same grammatical princi- ples, the same laws of structure, dominate throug-hout the lan- guages of Europe, and that, even when their apparent differences are most obvious, it may yet be proved that there is a complete identity in their main roots, there can be no shadow of doubt that they were once identical, and that the many peoples who use them, once, long before the beginning of recorded annals, dwelt together in the same pastoral tents. Somewhere in the quadrilateral which extends from the Indus to the Euphrates, and from the Oxus to the Persian Gulf, amid scenery ' grandiose yet severe,' lived this mother-race, unknown even to tradition, but revealed by linguistic science, — parent of the speculative subtlety of Germany, of the imperial energy of England, of the vivid intelligence of France, of the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome. Its most ancient name with which we are acquainted is Aryas, derived from the root ar, to plough, and which therefore implies originally an agricultural as distinguished from a rude and nomadic people. Just when it began to wander away from its cradle-land is un- PRIMITIVE BRITONS. 3 known; but gradually, perhaps by the natural growth of popula- tion, perhaps by the restless spirit of enterprise, the old home was abandoned; and it often happened that a wandering band parted asunder into two or more others in the course of its wanderings, who forgot, as they separated, the rock whence they were hewn and the hole of the pit whence they were digged. In most cases they entered upon territory already inhabited by other races, but these were commonly either destroyed or driven from the select parts into out-of-the-way corners. First of all, in quest of new fortunes, came the Celts, pressing their way into Germany, Italy,_ Spain, Gaul (now France), and thence into Britain. The area over which Celtic names are found diffused shows the original extent of their dominion. These pre- English Celts, ever waning and dying, survive chiefly in the mod- ern Highlanders, Irish^ and Welsh.^ Their history, as Britons, finds its earliest solid footing in the narrative of a Roman soldier. Early historians, indeed, who could look into the far and shadowy past with an unquestioning confidence, marshalled kings and dynasties in complete chronology and exact succession. They made British antiquity run parallel with ' old hushed Egypt,' with the prophets and judges of Israel. We are gravely told of one British king who flourished in the time of Saul, of another who Avas contemporary with Solomon; that King Lear had grown old in government when Romulus and Remus were suckled; that the Britons were sprung from Trojan ancestry, and took their name from Brutus, who, an exile and troubled wanderer, was directed by the oracle of Diana to come to Albion,^ — 'That pale, that white -faced shore, Whose foot spurns back the ocean's roaring tides.' Standing before the altar of the goddess, with vessel of wine and blood of white hart, he had repeated nine times, — ' Goddess of woods, tremendous in the cliase To mountain boars, and all the savage race ! Wide o'er the ethereal walks extends thy sway. And o'er the infernal mansions void of day! Look upon us on earth ! unfold our fate. And say what region is our destined seat I Where shall we next thy lasting temples raise? And choirs of angels celebrate thy praise ? ' 1 Meaning ' Men of the West.' ^ Meaning ' Strangers.' 3 The island, not yet Britain, was ruled over by Albion, a giant, and son of Neptune, who gave it his name. Presuming, says one account, to oppose the progress of Hercules in his western march, he was slain. •4 POKMATIVB PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. In deep sleep, in vision of the night, he was answered, — ' Brutus ! there lies beyond the Gallic bounds An Island which the western sea surrounds, By giants once possessed; now few remain To bar thy entrance, or obstruct thy reign. To reach that happy shore thy sails employ ; There fate decrees to raise a second Troy, And found an empire in thy royal line, Which time shall ne'er destroy, nor bounds confine.' We call these stories legendary; once — as late as the seven- teenth century — they were accredited history. Certainly, the faith which received them as such seems to us better than the vicious scepticism which would beggar us of the accumulated inheritance of ages by destroying belief in the evidence. They may, and doubtless do, contain germs of truth — left on the shifting sands as wave after wave of forgotten generations broke on the shores of eternity. Many a mighty empire, it is true,, has faded forever out of the memory of man; but much that was once thought irretrievably lost has been reclaimed; and, hereafter, historical science may bring to light from the dark oblivion of these pre-historic Britons more than is now dreamed of in our philosophy. Fables of a line of kings before the Romans, have left one legend that has become to all a wondrous reality — the story of King Lear, transmuted by the alchemy of genius into perhaps the most impressive and awful tragedy in the range of dramatic literature. Roman Conquest. — Meanwhile, our first authentic informa- tion in regard to them is given by Julius Caesar, who, fifty-five years before Christ, led his brass-mailed legions into Britain from Gaul. If the attack was fierce, the resistance was heroic, and marks the rising pulse in that flood ' Of British freedom which, to the open sea Of the world's praise, from dark antiquity Hath flowed.' While the Roman standard-bearer leaped into the waves, and bade his hesitating comrades follow, the Britons dashed into the surf to strike the invader before his foot polluted their soil. The invasion added nothing to the Roman power or pride. At the end of his campaigns, Caesar had viewed the island rather than possessed it; and when he gave thanks at Rome to the 1 EOMAIsr INVADERS. 5 gods, it may be questioned whether it was for a conquest or an escape. Under his successors, however, about the year 85, when the Republic had become the Empire, the central and southern por- tion of the country became a Roman province, and was subject to Roman rule nearly four hundred years. Slow, feeble and imperfect victory, as in the evening of a well-fought day, when the veteran's arm is less strong and his passions less violent. Effects. — During this time much was done to improve the condition of the natives. The Roman coins, laws, language, were introduced. Governed with justice, they became less estranged. Schools were established. The conquered were grouped to- gether in cities guarded by massive walls, and linked together by a net-work of magnificent roads, which ran straight from town to town. The modern railways of England often follow the line of these Roman roads. Agriculture and the useful arts prospered. Many came from Italy, and built temples, palaces, public baths, and other splendid structures, living in great luxury and delight. Their beautiful floors, composed of differently colored brick, and arranged in elegant patterns, are occasionally unearthed — for cornfields and meadows now cover this Roman splendor, and new cities have risen upon the ruins of the old. But Roman civilization was arrested and modified by the calamities of the fifth century. In the anarchy and bloodshed of barbarian invasion, the Romanized Britons, who had thus far preserved their national identity, went down; albeit, in their fall, they were as forest leaves strewn by autumnal winds — leaving behind them a fertilizing power in the soil, whence other trees should bud and bloom in the light of other summers, and gather strength to battle with the inclemencies of other winters. The imperial armies brought with them the Christian faith; and Britain, about to undergo a new yoke, had received the principle that was destined to save her from complete desolation. Even in the savage North, where Roman arms had failed to penetrate, Christ had conquered souls. Anglo-Saxon Conquest. — In the north and west, sheltered by their mountain fastnesses, were the Celtic Picts and Silures, whom no severity could reduce to subjection and no resistance 6 FOKMATIYE PEEIOD — THE PEOPLE. restrain from plunder. For two centuries they had been the terror of the civilized Britons, as wild animals harass and perse- cute the tame of their own species. Side by side with them, and often driving them back upon their own territory, were the IScots, a Celtic tribe originally from Ireland, whence they crossed in so great a number in their little flat-bottomed boats as finally to give their own name to the dis- trict they invaded. In 368 we find their united hordes pursuing their depredations as far as London, and repelled with great diffi- culty by Theodosius, a Roman general. Soon thereafter the Empire began falling in pieces, and at length its legions were wholly withdrawn from Britain for the defense of Italy against the Goths. The heart of the Britons was faint. They had been so long defended by their Roman masters that when left alone they were incapable of defending themselves. Piteously, but vainly, they entreated once more for protection, exclaiming, ' The barbarians drive us to the sea, and the sea drives us back to the barbarians.' In their extremity they applied, with the usual promises of land and pay, to the Germanic tribes of the Jutes, who, driven by the pressure of want or of foes from the sunless woods and foggy clime of their native Jutland, had already spread their ravages along the eastern shores of Britain, and whose pirate-boats were not improbably cruising off the coast at the moment, — 'Then, sad relief, from the bleak coast that hears The German Ocean roar, deep-blooming, strong. And yellow-haired, the blue-eyed Saxon' came.' They came to stay — to settle a people and to found a state. The fame of their adventure attracted others, till, their numbers swelling, they treacherously turned their arms against the nation they came to protect, and established themselves on the fruitful plains of Kent. From the sand-flats of Holstein and the morasses of Friesland swarmed the SaxonS in successive bands, and settled, with sword and battle-axe, to the south, west and east, founding the kingdoms of Sussex, IVessex and JEssex. From the wild waste of Sleswick, swept by the blast of the North, wan and ominous, poured the Angles in a series of 1 A generic name by which they and their neighbors were known to the Eonians, though conveniently applied in particular to a southern tribe. 1 SAXON SETTLERS. 7 descents, and slowly, over deserted walls and polluted shrines, penetrated into the interior, effecting the settlements of North- umberland, Anglia and Mercia. They seem to have been the most numerous and energetic of the invaders, since they occupied larger districts, and in the end gave their name to the land and its people. It was now that Britain began to be called Angle- land, subsequently contracted into England, meaning the ' land of the Angles,' or 'English.' After nearly two hundred years of bitter warfare the island was given over to the dominion of the pagan conquerors, who meantime grouped themselves into the several petty kingdoms indicated, which were collectively known as the Heptarchy. Their history is like a history of 'kites and crows.' Freed from the common pressure of war against the Britons, they turned their energies to combats with one another. Little by little, as the tide of supremacy rolled backward and forward, one predominated over the others, till eventually they were all made subject to Wessex in the year 827, and for the first time there was something like national unity, with the promise of national development. Effects. — The conquest, stubbornly resisted and hardly won, was a sheer dispossession of the conquered. Priests were slain at the altar, churches fired, peasants driven by the flames to fling themselves on rings of pitiless steel. Some, the wealthier, fled in panic across the Channel, and took refuge with their kindred in Brittany, Others, who would still be free, retired to Wales, which became the secure retreat of Christianity. The rest, who were not cut down, were enslaved. These are they who, attached to the soil, will rise gradually with the rise of industry, and spread by amalgamation through all ranks of society. In the ascendency of the Saxon, who caused his own language, customs, and laws to become paramount, was laid the sure foundation of the future nation — the one German state that rose on the wreck of Rome. It is in this sanguinary and ineffectual struggle that romance places the fair Rowena, of fatal charms, with her golden wine- cup; the enchanter Merlin, who instructs Vortigern, king of the Britons, how to find the two sleeping dragons that hinder the building of his tower; the famous Arthur, with his Knights of the Round Table: 8 FOKMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. 'The fellowship of the table round, So famous in those days, Whereat a hundred noble knights, And thirty sat always.' Danish Conquest. — But Saxon Britain was also to be brouffht to the brink of that servitude or extermination which her arms had brought upon the Celt. About the end of the eighth century, the roving Northmen/ pouring redundant from their bleak and barren regions, began to hover off the English coast, growing in numbers and hardihood as they crept southward to the Thames. For two hundred years the raven — dark and dreaded emblem of the Dane — was the terror and scourge of Saxon homes. After a long series of disasters, aggravated by internal feuds, Danish kings occupied the throne from 1016 till 1042, when the Saxon line was restored in the person of Edward the Confessor. Effects. — The same wild panic, as the light black skiffs strike inland along the river reaches or moor around the river islets; the same sights of horror — reddened horizons, slaughtered men, and children tossed on spikes or sold in the market-place. Christian priests were again slain at the altar. Coveting their treasures of gold and silver, but despising their more valuable ones of knowledge, they made use of books in setting fire to the monasteries. Letters and religion disappeared before these Northmen as before the Northmen of old. The arts of peace were forgotten. Light was all but quenched in a chaotic and muddy ignorance. To an England that had forgotten its origins was brought back the barbaric England of its pirate forefathers. When it is considered that the invaders were nearly half as many as the invaded, we are prepared to believe that their influence in language, in physical type, in manners, was far g-reater than is usually conceded. Norman Conquest. — When the great comet of 1060 waved over England, the enervated Saxon looked up and beheld what seemed to him a portent that should, as Milton describes it, ' shake from its horrid hair Pestilence and war.' In the ninth century, the Northmen — these same daring and 1 The terms Northmen, Norsemen., or Scandinavians, are general designations of the inhabitants of Scandinavia (Norway, Sweden and Denmark), who at about this period were called, without distinction, Danes. NOEMAN OPPRESSOES. 9 rapacious warriors — penetrated into France, and in 913 had settled in the northern part, where, blending with the French and adopting their language, they rapidly grew up into great prosperity and power. Their name was softened into Normans, and their settlement was called Normandy, meaning the ' Land of the North-man.' In 1066, polished and transformed by the infusion of foreign blood, the Normans, in their well-knit coats of mail, with sword and lance, invaded and subdued England in the single battle of Hastings, under Duke William, who is therefore known as 'William the Conqueror. Oppression. — The Norman was in a hostile country; and, to maintain himself, became an oppressor. He appropriated the soil, levied taxes, built for himself castles, with their parapets and loop-holes, their outer and inner courts — of which, within a century, there were eleven hundred and fifteen. William, as his power grew, went from a show of justice to ferocity. Wherever his resentment was provoked — wherever submission to his exac- tions was refused — were the red lights of his burnings. Men ate human flesh under the pressure of consuming famine; the perish- ing sold themselves into slavery to obtain food; corpses rotted in the highways because none were left to bury them. The invaders — sixty thousand — are an armed colony. The Saxon is made a body slave on his own estate. For an offence against the forest laws he will lose his eyes. At eight o'clock he is warned by the ringing of the curfew bell to cover up his fire and retire. ' What savage unsocial nights,' says Lamb, 'must our ancestors have spent, wintering in caves and unilluminated fastnesses ! They must have lain about and grumbled at one another in the dark. What repartees could have passed when you must have felt about for a smile, and handled your neighbor's cheek to be sure that he understood it? ' Villages are swept away to make hunting grounds for Norman monarchs. A Norman abbot digs up the bones of his predecessors, and throws them without the gates. In a word, England, in forced and sullen repose, was under a galling yoke, and to all outward appearances was French. Effects. — (1.) Introduction of Feudalism, — the distribution of land among military captains, to hold by the sword what the sword had won. In twenty years from the coronation of 10 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. William, almost the whole of English soil had been divided, on condition of fealty and assistance, among his followers, while the peasantry were bound as serfs. The meanest Norman rose to wealth and power. Here is the ordinance of the great feudal principle of serv^ice : 'We command that all earls, barons, knights, sergeants and freemen be always pro- vided with horses and arms as they ought, and that they be always ready to perform to us- their whole service, in manner as they owe it to us of right for their fees and tenements, and as we have appointed to them by the common council of our whole kingdom, and as we have granted to them in fee with right of inheritance.' Of the native proprietors many perished, others were impov- erished, and some retained their estates as vassals of Norman lords. To cast off the chains of feudality will be the labor of six centuries. (2.) Introduction of Chivalry,' or Knighthood, a military institution which was prompted by an enthusiastic benevolence and combined with religious ceremonies, the avowed purpose of which was to protect the weak and defend the right. It appears to have had its origin in the military distinction by which certain feudal tenants were bound to serve on horseback, equipped with the coat of mail. He who thus fought, and had been invested with helmet, shield and spear in a solemn manner, wanted noth- ing more to render him a knight. From the advantages of the mounted above the ordinary combatant, probably arose that far- famed valor and keen thirst for renown which ultimately became the essential qualities of a knightly character. (3.) Introduction of French speech. This became the lan- guage of the court and polite literature. As late as the middle of the fourteenth century it was said: 'Children in scole, agenst the usage and manir of all other nations, beeth compelled for to leve hire (their) owne langage, and for to construe hir (their) lessons and hir thynges in Frenche, and so they haveth sethe Normans came first into England.' They made such a point of this that nobles sent their sons to France to preserve them from barbarisms. Students of the universities were obliged to converse either in French or Latin. 'Gentilmen children beeth taught to speke Frensche from the tyme they bith rokked in hire cradell . . . and uplondish men will likne himself to gentylmen, and fondeth with great besynesse for to speke Frensche to be told of.' ' From the French cheval, a horse. NOKMAN INFLUENCE. 11 (4.) Introduction of French poetry. Of course, the Norman, who despised the Saxon, loved none but French ideas and verses. (5.) Expulsion of the English language from literature and culture. No longer or scarcely written, ceasing to be studied in schools or to be spoken in higher life, English became the badge of inferiority and dependence. Thus ox, calf, sheep, pig, deer, are Anglo-Saxon names; while heef, veal, mutton, pork, and venison are Norman-French: because it was the business of the former part of the population to tend these animals while living, but of the latter to eat them when prepared for the feast. The distinction is noticed in his sprightly way by Walter Scott: '"Why, how call you those grunting brutes running about on their four legs?" demanded Wamba. " Swine, fool, swine," said the herd ; " every fool knows that." "And swine is good Saxon," said the Jester; "but how call you the sow when she is flayed and drawn and quartered, and hung by the heels like a traitor? " "Pork," answered the swineherd. "I am very glad every fool knows that too," said Wamba; "and pork, I think, is good Norman French ; and so when the brute lives, and is in charge of a Saxon slave, she goes by her Saxon name ; but becomes a Norman, and is called pork, when she is carried to the castle hall to feast among the nobles. What dost thou think of this doctrine, friend Gurth, ha?" "It is but too true doctrine, friend Wamba, however it got into thy fool's pate." "Nay, I can tell you more," said Wamba, in the same tone. "There is old Alder- man Ox continues to hold his Saxon epithet while he is under the charge of serfs and barbarians such as thou; but becomes beef, a fiery French gallant, when he arrives before the worshipful jaws that are destined to consume him. Mynheer Calf, too, becomes Monsieur de Veau in the like manner. He is Saxon when he requires tend- ance, and takes a Norman name when he becomes matter of enjoyment." ' Thus does language, as we shall have further occasion to observe, bear the marks and footprints of revolutions, — the ark that rides above the water-floods which sweep away other memo- rials of vanished ages. (6.) Finally, the establishment of a foreign king, a foreign prelacy, a foreign nobility, the degradation of the conquered, and the division of power and riches among the conquerors. But the absence of internal wars, due to the firm government of foreign kings, will afford time for a varied progress. The stern disci- pline of these two hundred years will give administrative order and judicial reform. Fusion. — But the great masses always form the race in the end, and generally the genius and the language. If the spirit be not broken, tyranny is but a passing storm which purifies while it devastates. The people remember their native rank and their 12 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. original independence. At the end of the twelfth century there were Saxon families who had bound themselves by a perpetual vow to wear long beards from father to son in memory of the old national custom. These subjects, trodden and vilified, had the characteristic doggedness, and their predominance was sure. A long time is required to convert a mutual hatred into har- mony and peace. Two and a half centuries were needed. Among the various agencies that worked upon the hearts and habits of Norman and Saxon may be reckoned that of the clergy. Never altogether partisan, they constantly became less so. When Anselm came over from his Norman convent to be Archbishop of Canterbury, he told his countrymen plainly that a churchman acknowledged no distinction, of race. Ambitious and luxurious as some were, others were humble and self-denying, and stood between the conqueror and the people, a healing influence to mitigate oppression. The wars of the Normans made them more dependent on the Saxons, and common victories served to produce a community of interest and feeling. The Crusades, too, by the predominant sentiment which they inspired, doubtless helped to appease the old animosities. The gradual chang-e in the relation of the two races, as well as an important influence in accelerating that change, is shown by the marriage of Henry the First to a Saxon princess, which soon led to the restoration of the Saxon dynasty in the person of Henry the Second. 'At present,' says an author in the time of this monarch, 'as the English and Normans dwell together, and have constantly intermarried, the two nations are so completely mingled together, that, at least as regards freemen, one can scarcely distinguish who is Norman and who Eng-lish.' The loss of Normandy snapped the threads of French connec- tions, and the Normans, by the necessities of their isolation, began to regard England as their home, and the English as their countrymen. Add to these causes the softening influence of time, and we are prepared for that final fusion of the Normans with the mass by which the nation became one again. English, though shunned by cultivation and rank, remained unshaken as the popular tongue. The Norman, too, must learn CELTIC MANIiTERS. ' 13 it, in order to direct his tenants. His Saxon wife speaks it, his children are accustomed to the sound of it. Slowly, by com- promise and the necessity of being understood, it prevails, — English still in root and sap, though saturated with the vocabu- lary of Norman-French. But truly to understand the chemistry of the English nation, we must penetrate its soul, learn somewhat of its faculties and feelings, study the man invisible — the under-world of events and forms — distinguish the separate moulds in which the entering elements were cast. Celtic. — To estimate the advantages of law and order, we must have stood with the stately blue-eyed Briton in his circular hut of timber and reeds, surmounted by a conical roof which served at once to admit daylight and to allow smoke to escape through a hole in the top; have seen a horseman ride in, con- verse with the inmates, then kick the sides of his steed and make his exit without having alighted; have sat in circle with the guests, each with his block of wood and piec6 of meat; have seen the whole family lie down to savage dreams around the central fire-place, while the wolf's long howl broke the silence of forest depth or wild fowls screamed across the wilderness of shallow waters; have wandered through their track-ways, careful to hasten home before the setting of the sun should cut us off from our village (a collection of huts amid fens and woods fortified with ramparts and ditches) to become the captive of an enemy or the prey of ravenous beast. There is no property but arms and cattle. War is the favorite occupation. Bronze swords, spears, axes, and chariots with scythes projecting from the axle of the wheels, are the weapons. Every tribe has its own chief or chiefs, who call the common people together and confer with them upon all matters concern- ing the general welfare. The cran-tara, a stick burnt at the end and dipped in blood, carried by a dumb messenger from hamlet to hamlet, summons the warriors. A brave people, and energetic. Says Tacitus: ' The Britons willingly furnish recruits to our armies ; they pay the taxes without mur- muring, and they perform with zeal their duties toward the government, provided they 14 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. have not to complain of oppression. Wlien they are offended, their resentment is prompt and violent; they may be conquered, but not tamed; they may be led to obedience, but not to servitude.' Would you know their savagery? Imagine them — as old Celtic story tells — mixing the brains of their slain enemies with lime, and playing with the hard balls they made of them. Such a brainstone is said to have gone through the skull of an Irish chief, who lived afterwards seven years with two brains in his head, always sitting very still, lest in shaking himself he should die. Yet they esteem it infamous for a chieftain to close the door of his house at all, 'lest the stranger should come and behold his contracting soul.' Their dead are buried in mounds. Here vases are discovered, containing their bones and ashes, together with their swords and hatchets, arrow-heads of flint and bronze, and beads of glass and amber, — -for they believe, after the manner of savages, that things which are useful or pleasing to the living are needed, for pleasure or use, in the shadowy realm: 'Secure beneath his ancient hill The British warrior slumbers still; There lie in order, still the same. The bones which reared his stately frame; Still at his side his spear, his bow. As placed two thousand years ago.' The priests of their religion are the Druids, who are so care- ful lest their secret doctrines be revealed to the uninitiated that they teach their disciples in hidden caves and forest recesses. They are the arbiters of disputes, and the judges of crime. Whoever refuses to submit to their decree is banished from human intercourse. The young resort to them for instruction. They teach the eternal transmigration of souls. They will not worship their gods under roofs. At noon and night, within a circular area, of enormous stones and of vast circumference,' they make their appeals with sacrifices — captives and criminals, or the innocent and fair. When the priest has ripped open the 1 One of these — Stonehenge — may yet be seen standing in mysterious and awful silence on Salisbury Plain. So massive are the pieces, that it was fabled to have been built by giants or magic art: Not less than that huge pile (from some abyss Of mortal power unquestionably sprung,) Whose hoary Diadem of pendant rocks Confines the shrill-voiced whirlwind, round and round Eddying within its vast circumference. On Sarum's naked ^^XaSw.— Wordsworth. I ROMAN REFINEMENTS. 15 body of a human being or lighted the fires around a living mass, we may hear the shriek of mad excitement as the ' congregation ' dance and shout. Nor is their teaching confined to their worship. Says Caesar: 'The Drnids discuss many things concerning the stars and their revolutions, the magnitude of the globe and its various divisions, the nature of the universe, energy and power of the immortal gods.' There are bards, also, with power and privilege, who sing the praises of British heroes to the crowd. A wheel striking on strings is the instrument of these our ancestral lyrists. Among the three things which will secure a man from hunger and naked- ness is the blessing of a bard. His curse brings fatalities upon man and beast. Four hundred years cannot but have made a vast difference between the fierce savages who rushed into the sea on that old September day, and those who were citizens of the stately Roman towns or tillers of the fertile districts that lay around them. Tacitus is said to have expressed surprise at the facility and eagerness with which the Britons adopted the customs, the arts, and the garb of their conquerors. Under the Roman Emjoire there were British kings, of whom one of the few famous was Cunobelin — the Cymbeline of the drama. Government became more centralized. A milder worship and a more merciful law were the lot of the people. The Romans improved the agriculture of the country, and bestowed upon the cultivators 'the crooked plough ' with ' an eight-foot beam,' of which Virgil speaks. In the middle of the fourth century, warehouses were built in Rome for the reception of corn from Britain. An export of six hundred large barks in one season assumes the existence of a large rural population. The tin and lead mines were worked with jealous care for Roman use; and the presence of cinders at this day is the visible proof of the mining and smelting of iron. The refinement thus introduced among the Celtic Britons was not uncommunicated to the barbarous tribes whose occupation speedily followed the retirement of the imperial armies. Traces of the Roman modes of thought are indelibly stamped upon much that relates to common life. In January survives the 'Two-faced Janus'; July embalms the memory of the mighty Julius; March is the month of Mars, the god of war; and August 16 FOKMATIVE PEEIOD — THE PEOPLE. claims an annual reverence for the crafty Augustus. Our May- day is the festival of Flora. Our marriage ceremonies are all Roman,— the veil, the ring, the wedding gifts, the groomsmen and bridesmaids, the bride-cake. Our funeral imagery is Roman, — the cypress, the flowers strewn upon the graves, the black for mourning. The girl who says, when her ears tingle, a distant one is talking of her, recalls the Roman belief in some influence of a mesmeric nature which produced the same effect. 'A screech-owl at midnight,' says Addison, ' has alarmed a family more than a band of robbers.' It was ever an omen of evil. No Roman superstition was more intense. Men all on fire, walking up and down the streets, seemed to Casca a prodigy less dire than 'the bird of night ' that sat 'Even at noonday, upon the market-place, Hooting and shrieking.' But there are latent qualities here which would ornament any age. With the skin of a beast slung across his loins, the exposed parts of his body painted with sundry figures, a chain of iron about his neck as a symbol of wealth, and another about his waist, his hair hanging in curling locks and covering his shoul- ders, — Caractacus had stood captive in the imperial presence of Claudius, and said: 'Had my moderation in prosperity been equal to the greatness of my birth and estate, or the success of my late attempts been equal to the resolution of my mind, I might have come to this city rather as a friend to be entertained, than as a capti^-e to be gazed upon. But what cloud soever hath darkened my present lot, yet have the Heavens and Nature given me that in birth and mind which none can vanquish or deprive me of. I well see that you make other men's miseries the subject and matter of your triumphs, and in this my calamity, as in a still water, you now contemplate your own glory. Yet know that I am, and was, a prince, furnished witli strength of men and habiliments of war ; and what marvel is it if all be lost, seeing experience teacheth that the events of war are variable, and the success of policies guided by uncertain fates? As it is with me, who thought that the deep- waters, like a wall enclosing our land, and it so situated by the gods as might have been a sufflcient privilege and defense against foreign invasions: but now I perceive that the desire of your sovereignty admits no limitation; and if you Romans must command all, then all must obey. For mine own part, while I was able I made resistance ; and unwilling I was to submit my neck to a servile yoke; so far the law of Nature alloweth every man, that he may defend himself being assailed, and to withstand force by force. Had I at first yielded, thy glory and my ruin had not been so renowned. Fortune hath now done her worst; we have nothing left us but our lives, which if thou take from us, our miseries end, and if thou spare us, we are but the objects of thy clemency.' In many-colored robe, with a golden zone about her. Queen Boadicea exhorted the Britons on the eve of battle: 'My friends and companions of equal fortunes ! —There needeth no excuse of this my present authority or place in regard of my sex, seeing it is not unknown to you all that the 1 CELTIC FANCY. 17 wonted manner of our nation hath been to war under the conduct of women. My blood and birth might challenge some preeminence, as sprung from the roots of most royal descents; but my breath, received from the same air, my body sustained by the same soil, and my glory clouded with imposed ignominies, I disdain all superiority, and, as a fellow in bondage, bear the yoke of oppression with as heavy weight and pressure, if not more ! . . . You that have known the freedom of life, will with me confess that liberty, though in a poor estate, is better than bondage with fetters of gold. . . . Have the Heavens made us the ends of the world, and not assigned the end of our wrongs? Or hath Nature, among all our free works, created us Britous only for bondage? Why, what are the Romans? Are they more than men, or immortal? Their slain carcasses sacrificed by us, and their putrefied blood corrupting our air, doth tell us they are no gods. Our persons are more tall, our bodies more strong, and our joints better knit than theirs ! But you will say— they are our conquerors. Indeed, overcome we are, but by ourselves, by our own factions, still giving way to their intrusions. . . . See we not the army of Plautius crouched together like fowls in a storm? If we but consider the number of their forces and the motives of the war, we shall resolve to vanquish or die. It is better worth to fall in honour of liberty, than be exposed again to the outrages of the Romans. This is my resolution, who am but a woman; you who are men may, if you please, live and be slaves.' Love of bright color is a Celtic passion. Dioclorus told how the Gauls wore bracelets and costly finger-rings, gold corselets, dyed tunics flowered with various hues, striped cloaks fastened with a brooch and divided into many parti-colored squares, a taste still represented by the Highland plaid. This joy in the beautiful will display itself, in poetry, in an outpouring of imagery and grace of expression, as in the Cymric' battle-ode of Aneurin: ' Have yc seen the tusky boar, Or the bull with sullen roar. On surrounding foes advancing ? So Garadawg bore his lance. As the flame's devouring force. As the whirlwind in its course, As the thunder's iiery stroke, Glancing on the shivered oak; Did the sword of Vedel's mow The crimson harvest of the foe.' This fancy, active and bold, is not content to conceive. It must draw and paint, vividly, in detail, as in this glimpse of a Gaelic " banquet: 'As the king's people were afterwards at the assembly they saw a couple approaching them, — a woman and a man; larger than the summit of a rock or a mountain was each member of their members ; sharper than a shaving-knife the edge of Iheir shins ; their heels and hams in front of them. Should a sackful of apples be thrown on their heads, not one of them would fall to the ground, but would stick on the points of the long bristly hair which grew out of their heads ; blacker than the coal or darker than the smoke was each of their members ; whiter than snow their eyes. A lock of the lower beard was carried round the back of the head, and a lock of the upper beard descended so as to cover the knees; the woman had whiskers, but the man was without whiskers.' 1 Ancient Welsh. 2 Ancient Irish. 18 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. But the true artist, with an eye to see, has also a heart to feel. A bard and a prince, who has seen his sons fall in battle, wonder- ing why he should still be left, sings of his youngest and last dead: ' Let the wave break noisily ; let it cover the shore when the joined lancers are in battle. O, Gwenn, woe to him who is too old, since he has lost you I Let the wave break noisily; let it cover the plain when the lancers join with a shock. . . . Gwenn has been slain at the ford of Morlas. Here is the bier made for him by his fierce-conquered enemy after he had been surrounded on all sides by the army of the Lloegrians ; here is the tomb of Gwenn, the son of the old Llywarch. Sweetly a bird sang on a pear tree above the head of Gwenn, before they covered him with turf; that broke the heart of the old Llywarch.'' This vivacity, this tenderness, this sweet melancholy, will pass, to a certain degree, into English thought. Danish.. — The Danes were preeminently a sea-faring and piratical people — vultures who swept the seas in quest of prey. Their sea-kings, ' who had never slept under the smoky rafters of a roof, who had never drained the ale-horn by an inhabited hearth,' are renowned in the stories of the North. With no terri- tory but the waves, no dwelling but their two-sailed ships, they laughed at the storm, and sang: 'The blast of the tempest aids our oars; the bellowing of heaven, the howling of the thunder, hurts us not; the hurricane is our servant, and drives us whither we wish to go.' In his last hour, the sea-king looks gladly to his immortal feasts 'in the seats of Balder's father,' where 'we shall drink ale continually from the large hollowed skulls.' Listen to their table-talk, and from it infer the rest. A youth takes his seat beside the Danish jarl, and is reproached with ' seldom having provided the Avolves with hot meat, with never havinff seen for the whole autumn a raven croaking: over the carnage.' But he pacifies her by singing: 'I have marched with my bloody sword, and the raven has followed me. Furiously Ave fought, the fire passed over the dwellings of men; we have sent to sleep in blood those who kept the gates.' Here is their code of honor: 'A brave man should attack two, stand firm against three, give ground a little to four, and only retreat from five.' No wonder they were irresistible. Add to this the deeper incitement of an immortality in Valhalla, where they should forever hew each other in bloodless conflict. When Saxon independence was given up to a Danish king, their character was greatly changed from what it had been during their first invasions. They had embraced the Christian faith, were KOEMAK CULTUEE. 19 centralized, had lost much of their predatory and ferocious spirit. Long settled in England, they gradually became assimilated to the natives, whose laws and language were not radically different from their own. From these sea-wolves, who lived on the pillage of the world, the English will imbibe their maritime enterprise. Gorman. — The Normans, as we have seen, were a Scandina- vian tribe with a changed nature, — Christianized, at least in the mediaeval sense, and civilized. The peculiar quality of their genius was its suppleness. They intermarried with the French, borrowed the French language, adopted French customs, imitated French thought; and, in a hundred and fifty years after their settlement, were so far cultured as to consider their kinsmen, the Saxons, unlettered and rude. Transferred to England, they become English. To these they were superior: 1. In refinement of manners. * The Saxons,' says an old writer, ' vied with each other in their drinking feats, and wasted their income by day and night in feasting, whilst they lived in wretched hovels ; the French and Normans, on the other hand, living inexpensively in their fine large houses, were, besides, refined in their food and studiously careful in their dress.' 2. In taste, — the art of pleasing the eye, and expressing a thought by an outward representation. The Norman archi- tecture, including the circular arch and the rose window with its elegant mouldings, made its appearance. ' You might see amongst them ( the Saxons ) churches in every village, and monasteries in the cities, towering on high, and built in a style unknown before.' They were to become the most skil- ful builders in Europe. 3. In weapons and warlike enterprise. They used the bow, fought on horseback, and were thus prepared for a more nimble and aggressive movement. 4. In intellectual culture. Five hundred and sixty -seven schools were established between the Conquest and the death of King John (1216). In poetry they were relatively cultivated. Another point of excellence was the intelligence of their clergy. The illiteracy of the Saxon was the excuse for banishing him from all valuable ecclesiastical dignities. The Norman bishops and abbots, who gradually supplanted him, were for the most 20 FOEMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. part of loftier minds than the mailed warriors who elevated them to wealth and authority. Such were the points of superiority at which the Norman was prepared to contribute new impulses to the national character. In many respects, he was the reverse of the Saxon. In the movement of his intellect, he was prompt and spirited rather than profound. Like the Parisian, he was polite, elegant, grace- ful, talkative, dainty, superficial. Beauty pleased rather than exalted him. Nature was pretty rather than grand — never mystical. Love was a pastime rather than a devotion. Woman impressed him less by any spiritual transcendence than by a 'vastly becoming smile,' a 'sweet and perfumed breath,' a form 'white as new-fallen snow on a branch.' To show skill and courage for the meed of glory, to win the applause of the ladies, to display magnificence of dress and armor, — such was his desire and study. Here is a picture of the fancies and splendors in which he delights and loses himself. A king, wishing to console his afflicted daughter, proposes to take her to the chase in the following style: 'To-morrow ye shall in hunting fare; And ride, my daughter, in a chair; It shall be covered with velvet red, And clothes of fine gold all about your head. With damask white and azure blue. Well diapered with lilies new. Your pommels shall be ended with gold. Your chains enameled many a fold, Your mantle of rich degree, Purple pall and ermine free. . . . Ye shall have revel, dance, and song; Little children, great and small. Shall sing as does the nightingale ... A hundred knights, truly told. Shall play with bowls in alleys cold, Your disease to dri\^e away. . . . . Forty torches burning bright At your bridge to bring you light. Into your chamber they shall you bring With much mirth and more liking. Your blankets shall be of fustian, Your sheets shall be of cloth of Rennes. Your head sheet shall be of pery pight, With diamonds set and rubies bright. ; When you are laid in bed so soft, A cage of gold shall hang aloft, With long paper fair burning, And cloves that be sweet- smelling. ENGLISH AND ARYAN. 21 Frankincense and olibanum, That when ye sleep the taste may come; And if yc; no rest can take, All night minstrels for you shall wake.' What will come of this gallantry, splendor, and pride, when the brilliant flower is engrafted on the homely Saxon stock ? Anglo-Saxon. — Starting from the same Aryan homestead, with the same stock of ideas, with the same manners and cus- toms, the Teuton takes his westward course, and settles chiefly in Germany, — 'She of the Danube and the Northern Sea.' After centuries of separation, these two kindred meet in mist- enveloped Britain, But climate, soil, and time have changed their characters and speech. They have forgotten their mutual relationship, and meet like the lion whelps of a common lair — as foes. The Teutonic stream, — that, too, diverged. Into the mud and slime of Holland, into the forests and fens of Denmark, up into the snow-capped mountains of Sweden and Norway, across the surging main into volcanic Iceland, it branched. Dan- ish, Norse, and Saxon, with superficial distinctions — as of Hea- then and Christian, or the like — are at bottom one, Teutonic or Germanic. Inland, in the south, away from the sea, was the great division of the High.- Germans ; near the sea, by the mouths of the Rhine and Elbe, that of the Low-GermanS, in whom we have the deeper interest. To these latter belonged the Jutes, Angles,' and Saxons, whose language, closely resem- bling modern Dutch, is the plantlet of English. These tribes, known abroad as Saxons,^ early spoken of by themselves as Angles or English, have in the more careful historic use of the present been designated as Anglo-Saxons. The orders of society were the bond and the free. Men became serfs, or slaves, either by capture in battle or by the sen- tence of outraged law. Over them their master had the power of life and death. He was responsible for them as for his cattle. Rank was revered, and the freemen were divided into earls and ceorls, or Earls and Churls. 1 So called from a short crooked sword, called a seax, carried by the warriors under their loose garments. Thus, Hengist, the Jute, invited to a banquet, instructed his com- panions to conceal their short swords beneath Iheir garments. At a given B\gn&\—N)nied €ure Seaxes, 'Draw your swords!'— the weapons were plunged into the hearts of their British entertainers. 22 PORMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. The basis of society was the possession of land. The free land-holder was 'the free-necked man,' whose long hair floated over a neck that had never bent to a lord. He was 'the weap- oned man,' who alone bore spear and sword. A nation of farm- ers, as they had been in the Sunny East, as they are to-day. He might not be a tiller of the soil, but he must acquire it if he would be esteemed. The landless one could hope for no dis- tinction. The social form was determined by the blood-bond. Accord- ing to kinship, men were grouped into companies of ten, called a tithing. Every ten tithings was called a hundred; and several hundreds, a shire. Each kinsman was his kinsman's keeper. Every crime was held to have been committed by all who were related to the doer of it, and against all who were related to the sufferer. From this sense of the value of the family tie sprung the rudiments of English justice. So strong is it, that his kins- folk are the sole judges of the accused, for by their oath of his innocence or guilt he stands or falls. In their British home these judge^s will be a fixed number — the germ of the jury system. Other methods of appeal there are, — the duel and the ordeal. The first pleases the savage nature. Besides, is not the issue in the hand of God, and will not he award the victory to the just? This practice will be revived in Normandy, introduced by the Conqueror into England, appealed to in 1G31, and abolished only in 1817. The second inspires confidence; for fire and water are deities, and surely the gods will not harm the innocent or screen the guilty? Therefore, be ready to lift masses of red-hot iron in your hands, or to pass through flame. They hate cities. Then, as now, they must have independence and free air. Their villages are knots of farms. ' They live apart,' says Tacitus, ' each by himself, as woodside, plain, or fresh spring attracts him.' Each settlement must be isolated from its fellows. Each is jealously begirt by a belt of forest or fen, which parts it from neighboring communities, — a ring of common ground which none may take for his own, but which serves as the Golgotha where traitors and deserters meet their doom. This, it is said, is the special dwelling-place of the nix and the will-o'-the-wisp. Let none cross this death-line except he blow his horn; else he will be taken for a foe, and any man may lawfully slay him. I LEGISLATION" AND KNOWLEDGE. 23 Around some moot-hill or sacred tree the whole community meet to administer justice and to legislate. Here the field is passed from seller to buyer by the delivery of a turf cut from its soil. Here the aggrieved may present his grievance. The ' elder men' state the 'customs,' and the evil-doer is sentenced to make pecuniary reparation. ' Eye for eye,' life for life, or for each fair damages, — is the yet unwritten code. The body and its members have each their legal price. Only treason, desertion, and poison involve capital punishment, and sentence is pronounced by the priest. Here, too, the king of the tribe — chosen from among the ablest of its chiefs — and the Witan, the Wise Men, who limit his jurisdiction, convene to settle questions of peace and war, or to transact other important affairs. The warriors, met in arms, express their approval by rattling their armor, their dissent by murmurs. Later, this assembly will be known as the Parliament of a great empire. Among the nobility, there is one who is the king's chosen confidant, the ' knower of secrets,' the ' counsellor.' In after times he will be known as the Prime Minister. Knowledge was transmitted less by writing than by oral tradi- tion, and almost wholly in the form of verse. There was a per- petual order of men, like the rhapsodists of ancient Greece and the bards of the Celtic tribes, who were at once poets and histo- rians; whose exclusive employment it was to learn and repeat; wandering minstrels they were, travelling about from land to land, chanting to the people the fortunes of the latest battle or the exploits of their ancestors, a delightful link of union, loved and revered. The honors bestowed upon them were natural to an age in which reading and writing were mysteries. On arms, trinkets, amulets, and utensils, sometimes on the bark of trees, and on wooden tablets, for the purpose of memorials or of epistolary cor- respondence, were engraven certain wonderful characters called runes. By their potent spells, some runes, it was believed, could lull the tempest, stop the vessel in her course, divert the arrow in its flight, arrest the career of witches through the air, cause love or hatred, raise the dead, and extort from them the secrets of the spirit-world. Thus says the heroine of a Northern romance: 'Like a Virgin of the Sliield I roved o'er the sea, My arm was victorious, my valor was free; By prowess, by rnnic enchantment and song, I raised up the weak, and I beat down the strong.' 24 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. Would we know the soul of a people, let us seek it in their religion, the unseen spiritual fountain whence flow all their out- ward acts. In the beginning, we are told, were two worlds, — Niflheim, the frozen, and Muspel the burning. From the falling snow-flakes, quickened by the Unknown who sent the heated blast, was born Ymer the giant: 'When Ymer lived Was t'and, nor sea, Nor cooling wave ; No eijrtli was found Nor heaven aljove; One chaos all, And nowhere grass.' Fallen asleep, from his arm-pits spring the frost-giants. A cow, born also of melting snow, feeds him with four milk-rivers. Whilst licking his perspiration from the rocks, there came at evening out of the stones a man's hair, the second day a man's head, and the third all the man was there. His name was Bure. His grandsons, Odin, Vile, and Ve, kill the giant Ymer. Dragging his body to the abyss of space, they form of it the visible universe; from his flesh, the land; from his bones, the mountains; from his hair, the forests; from his teeth and jaws, the stones and pebbles; from his blood, the ocean, in the midst of which they fix the earth; from his skull, the vaulted sky, raised and supported by a dwarf under each corner, — Austre, Westre, Nordre, and Sudre, from his brains, scattered in the air, the melancholy clouds; from his hair, trees and plants; from his eyebrows, a wall of defense against the giants. The flying sparks and red-hot flakes cast out of Muspel they placed in the heavens, and said: 'Let there be light.' Far in the North sits a giant, 'the corpse swallower,' clad with eagles' plumes. When he spreads his wings for flight, the winds, which yet no mortal can discern, fan fire into flame, or lash the waves into foam. As the sons of Bor, 'powerful and fair,' were walking along the sea-beach, they found two trees, stately and graceful, and from them created the first human pair, man and woman, — Ask and Embla: ' Odin gave spirit, Hoener gave mind, Loder ga^■e blood And lovely hue.' Nobler conception is this, than the Greek and Hebrew of clod or I COSMOGONY. 25 stone. Diviner symbol is this of the trees, Ash and Elm, which, as they grow heavenward, show an unconscious attraction to that which is heavenly. From the mould of Ymer are bred, as worms, the dwarfs, who by command of the gods receive human form and sense. Among the rocks, in the wild mountain-gorges they dwell. When we hear the echo from wood or hill or dale, there stands a dwarf who repeats our words. They had charge of the gold and precious minerals. With their aprons on, they hammered and smelted, and — 'Kock crystals from sand and hard flint they made, Which, tinged with the rosebud's dye, They cast into rubies and carbuncles red, And hid them in cracks hard by.' In the summer's sun, when the mist hangs over the sea, may be seen, sitting on the surface of the water, the mermaid, comb- ing her long golden hair with golden comb, or driving her snow- white cattle to the strands. No household prospers without its domestic spirit. Oft the favored maid finds in the morning that her kitchen is swept and the water brought. The buried treasure has its sleepless dragon, and the rivulet its water-sprite. The Swede delights to tell of the hoy of the stream, who haunts the glassy brooks that steal through meadows green, and sits on the silver waves at moonlight, playing his harp to the elves who dance on the flowery margin. We retain in the days of the week a compendium of the old English creed. A son and a daughter, lovely and graceful, are appointed by the Powers to journey round heaven each day with chariot and steeds, 'to count years for men,' each ever pursued by a ravenous wolf. The girl is Sol, the Sun, with meteor eyes and burning plumes; the boy is Maane, the Moon, with white fire laden. The festival-days consecrated to them were hence known as Sun's-daeg and Moon's-daeg, whence our Sunday and Monday. Reversing the mythology of the Greeks and Romans, the Teutons worshipped the sun as a female and the moon as a male deity, from an odd notion that if the latter were addressed as a goddess their wives would be their masters. The memory of Tyr, the dark, dread, daring, and intrepid one, is embalmed in Tuesday ; his grandmother was an ugly giantess with nine hun- dred heads. Wodin, or Odin, survives in 'Wednesday. He does 26 PORMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. not create the world, but arranges and governs it. He is the all- pervading spirit, the infinite wanderer. Two wolves lie at his feet; and on his shoulders sit two gifted ravens, which fly, on his behests, to the uttermost regions. He wakes the soul to thought, gives science and lore, inspires the song of the bard and the in- cantation of the sorcerer, blunts the point of the javelin, renders his warriors invisible; with a hero's heart and voice, tells the brave how by valor a man may become a god; explains to mortals their destiny here, — makes existence articulate and melodious. Incarnated as a seer and magician unknown thousands of years ago, he led the Teutonic throng into Scandinavia, across seas and rivers in a wonderful ship built by dwarfs, so marvellously constructed that, when they wished to land, it could be taken to pieces, rolled up, and put in the pocket. Our Thursday is Thor's day, son of Odin. He is a spring-god, subduing the frost- giants. The thunder is his wrath. The gathering of the black clouds is the drawing down of his angry brows. The bursting fire- bolt is the all-rending hammer flung from his hand. The peal, — that is the roll of his chariot over the mountain-tops. In his mansion are five hundred and forty halls. Freyja, the Venus of the North, in whom are beauty, grace, gentleness, the longings, joys, and tears of love, is incarnated in Friday. Sa?ter, an obscure water-deity, represented as standing upon a fish, with a bucket in his hand, is commemorated in Saturday. But beyond all the gods who are known and named, there is the feeling, the instinct, the presentiment of One who is unseen and imperishable, the everlasting Adamant lower than which the confused wreck of revolutionary things cannot fall: ^ 'Then comes another Yet more mighty, But, H'mi dare I not Venture to name; Pew look further forward Than to the time When Odin goes To meet the wolf.' Is not the last and highest consecration of all true religion an altar to 'The Unknown God?' All things exist in antagonism. No sooner are the giants cre- ated than the contest for empire begins. When Ymer is killed, the crimson flood drowns all save one, who with his wife escapes BUEIAL CUSTOMS. 27 in a chest, and so continues the hated race. Huge, shaggy, demoniac beings. Jotunheim is their home, distant, dark, chaotic. Long fight the gods against them, — the Fenriswolf, whose jaws they rend asunder; the great serpent, whom they drown in the sea; the evil Loke, whom they bind to the rocks, beneath a viper whose venom drops unceasingly on his face. That which is born must die. Hel-gate stands ever ajar to receive the child with rosy cheeks, as him of the hoary locks and faltering step. When a great man dies, — his body, with his sword in his hand, his helmet on his head, his shield by his side, and his horse under him, is burned. The ashes are collected in an earthen vessel, which is then surrounded with huge stones; and over this is heaped the memorial mound. Brynhild, an untamed maiden in an epic of these Northern races, sets her love upon Sigurd; but, seeing him married, she causes his death, laughs once, puts on her golden corselet, pierces herself, and makes this last request: ' Let in the plain be raised a pile so spacious, that for us all like room may be ; let them burn the Hun (Sigurd) on the one side of me, on the other side my household slaves, with collars splendid, two at our heads and two hawks; let also lie between us both the keen- edged sword; . . . also five female thralls, eight male slaves of gentle birth fostered with me.' Is it not a beautiful thought that the dead in the mounds are in a state of consciousness ? Out of the depths seems to come the half-dumb stifled voice of the long-buried generations of our fathers, the echo in some sort of our own painful, fruitlessly inquiring wonder: 'Now, children, lay us in two lofty graves Down by the sea shore, near the deep-blue waves: Their sounds shall to our souls be music sweet, Singing our dirge as on the strand they beat. When round the hills the pale moonlight is thrown, And Midnight dews fall on the Bauta- stone, We'll sit, O Thorsten, in our rounded graves And speak together o'er the gentle waves.' When the daughter weeps for the death of her father, she allows no tear to fall on his corpse, lest his peace be troubled: 'Whenever thou grievest. My coffin is within As livid blood; Whenever thou rejoicest. My coffin is within Filled with fragrant roses.' 28 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. Even the gods must perish. Have we not seen that the germ of decay was in them from the beginning? They and their enemies, met in a world-embracing struggle, mutually destroy each other. Sun and stars, rock-built earth and crystal vault, sink into the bottomless, many-sounding- sea. But the end is also the beginning. There comes a new day, and a new heaven without rent or seam, — that is, the regenera- tion. There is no loss of souls, no more than of drops when the ocean yields its vapor to the touch of the summer's sun. Thought and affection are immortal. Death is but a vanishing from one realm into another — a triumph-hour of entrance through an arch of shadow into eternal day. Therefore, fall gloriously in battle, and you shall be at once transported to Valhal, the airy hall of Odin, upborne by spears, roofed with shields, and adorned with coats of mail. Fighting and feasting, which have been your fierce joys on earth, shall be lavished upon you in this supernal abode. Every day you shall have combats in the listed field, — the rush of steeds, the flash of swords, the shining of lances, and all the maddening din of conflict; helmets and bucklers riven, horses and riders overthrown, ghastly wounds exchanged: but at the setting of the sun you shall meet unscathed, victors and van- quished, around the festive board, to partake of the ample ban- quet and quaff full horns of beer and fragrant mead. Ragnar Lodbrok, shipwrecked on the English coast, is taken prisoner. Refusing to speak, he is thrown into a dungeon full of serpents, there to remain until he tells his name. The reptiles are power- less. The spectators say he must be a brave man indeed whom neither arms nor vipers can hurt. King ^lla, hearing this, orders his enchanted garment to be stripped off, and soon the serpents cling to him on all sides. Then Ragnar says, ' How the young cubs would roar if they knew what the old boar suffers!' But his eye is fixed upon Valhal's ' wide-flung door,' and he glories that no sigh shall disgrace his exit: 'Cease my strain! I hear a voice From realms where martial souls rejoice; I hear the maids' of slaughter call, Who bid me hence to Odin's hall; High- seated in their blest abodes, I soon shall quaflf the drink of gods. 1 The Valkyries, Odin's maids, who are sent out to choose the fallen heroes and to sway the combat. ' J THEOLOGY, 29 The hours of life have glided by — I fall I but laughing will I die ! The hours of life have glided by — . I fall ! but laughing will I die I ' For the virtuous who do not die in fight a more peaceful but less glorious Elysium is provided, — a resplendent golden palace, sur- rounded by verdant meads and shady groves and fields of sponta- neous fertility. After all, amid the raging of this warlike mood, it is virtue, on the whole, which is to be rewarded — vice which is to be punished. Far from the Sun, ever downward and northward, is the cave of the giantess Hel, — Naastrand, the strand of corpses. Here are the palace Anguish, the table Famine, the waiters Slowness and Delay, the threshold Precipice, the bed Care. Of serpents wattled together the cave is built, their heads turning inward and filling it with thick venom-streams, through which perjurers, mur- derers, and adulterers have to wade: 'But all the horrors You cannot know, That HeFs condemned endure; Sweet sins there Bitterly are punished, False pleasures Reap true pain.' All life is figured as a tree. Ygdrasil, the Ash of existence, has its roots deep down in the kingdom of Hel, or Death; its trunk, towering heaven-high, spreads its branches over the uni- verse. 'Stately, with white dust strewn: thence come the dews that wet the dales; it stands ever green over Urd's fountain.' Under its root that stretches into the frozen North is Mimer's well of wisdom. On its topmost bough sits an eagle; at its low- ermost base is the serpent Nidhug, with his reptile brood, that pierce it with their fangs and devour its substance. At its foot, in the Death-kingdom, sit three Norns, Fates, who water its roots from the Sacred Well, and weave, for mortals and immortals, the web of destiny. What similitude so true, so beautiful, so great ? Here is philosophy without abstractions or syllogisms; meta- physics that overleaps all categories; history woven of giant- dreams; poetry whose pictures are streams that flow together. What ideas are at the bottom of this chaos of untamed imagin- ings? The world is a warfare. In the sad inclement. North, 30 PORMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. amid pathless forests, bridgeless rivers, treacherous seas, inhos- pitable shores, the strife of frost and fire, man, as it were face to face with a beast of prey, feels profoundly that life is a battle, and, in the raging of his own moods, sees reflected the conflict of chaotic forces. Thor's far-sounding hammer, Jove's falling thun- derbolt, Indra's lightning-spear, warring against the demons of the storm, till the light triumphs and the tempest rolls away, but ever returns to renew the combat, — what are they but types of the state of man, cast out of the troubled deep upon the mists of the unknown? When the g'ods were unable to bind the Fenriswolf with steel or weight of mountains, because the one he snapped and the other he spurned with his heel, they put round his foot a limp band softer than silk or gossamer, and this held him: the more he struggled the stiffer it drew. So soft, so omnipotent is the ring of Fate. Balder, the good, the beautiful, the gentle, dies. All nature is searched for a remedy; but he is dead. His mother sends Hermod to seek or see him, who rides nine days and nights througli a labyrinth of gloom. Arrived at the bridge with its golden roof, he is answered: 'Yes, Balder did pass here, but the Kingdom of the Dead is down yonder, far in the North.' Speeds the messenger on, leaps Hel-gate, sees Balder, and speaks with him; but Balder cannot be delivered: Fate is inexorable. The Valkyries are choosers of the fallen. Belief in Destiny is a fundamental point for this wild Teutonic soul. Perhaps it is so for all instinctive and heroic races, as for all earnest men, — a Mahomet, a Luther, a Napoleon, a Carlyle, an Emerson. The Greek, the Turk, the Arab, the Persian, accept the inevitable. 'On two days it stands not to run from thy grave, The appointed and the unappointed day; On tile tirst, neither balm nor physicians can save, — Nor thee, on the second, the Universe slay." Who can write the order of the variable winds? On every mortal who enters the hall of the firmament fall snow-storms of illusions, though the gods still sit on their thrones; and he may see, what all great thinkers have seen: 'We are such stufE as dreams are made of.' In heart-to-heart communion with Nature, these old Northmen seem to have seen what meditation has taught all men in all ao-es J PHILOSOPHY. 31 that this world is only an appearance, a 7nirage, a shadow hung by the primal Reality on the bosom of the void Infinite. Thor, with two chosen friends, undertakes an expedition to Giant-land. Wandering- at nightfall in a trackless forest, they espy a house, whose door is the whole breadth of one end. Here they lodge; one large hall, altogether empty. Suddenly, at dead of night, loud noises are heard. Thor grasps his hammer, and stands at the door, prepared for fight, while his terrified companions take refuge in a little closet. In the morning it turns out that the noise was merely the snoring of the giant Skrymer, who lay peace- ably sleeping near by; that the house was only his mitten, thrown carelessly aside; that the door was its virist, and the closet its thumb. Skrymer now joins the party in travel. Thor, however, suspicious of his ways, resolves to put an end to him as he slumbers beneath a large oak. Raising his hammer, he strikes a thunderbolt blow down into the giant's face, who wakes, r-ubs his face, and murmurs: ' Did a leaf fall?' Thor replies that they are just going to sleep, and goes to lie down under another oak. Again he strikes, as soon as Skrymer again sleeps, a more terrible blow than before; but the giant only asks: 'Did an acorn fall? How is it with you, Thor ? ' Thor, going hastily away, says that he has prematurely waked up. His third stroke, delivered with both hands, seems to dint deep into the giant's skull; but he simply checks his snore, strokes his chin, and inquires: 'Are there sparrows roosting in this tree ? Was it moss they dropped ? It seems to me time to arise and dress.' At Utgard-castle, their journey's end, they are invited to share in the games going on. To Thor, they hand a drinking-horn, explaining that it is a common feat to drain it at one draught, — none so wretched as not to exhaust it at the third. Long and fiercely, three times over, with increasing anger, he drinks; then finding that he has made hardly any impression, gives it back to the cup-bearer. 'Poor, weak child!' they say: 'Can you lift this gray cat? Our young men think it nothing but play.' Thor, with his whole god- like strength, can at the utmost bend the creature's back and lift one foot. 'Just as we expected,' say the Utgard people. ' The cat is large, but you. are little.' 'Little as you call me,' says Thor, 'I challenge any one to wrestle with me, for now I am angry.' ' Why here is a toothless old woman who will wrestle you!' Heartily 32 FOKMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. ashamed, Thor seizes her — and is worsted. On their departure, the host escorts them politely a little way, and says to Thor: ' Be not so mortified; you have been deceived. That race you wit- nessed was a race with Thought. That horn had one end in the Ocean : you did diminish it, as you will see when you come to the shore; this is the ebb. But who can drink the fathomless? And the cat, — ah! we were terror-stricken when we saw one paw off the floor; for that is the Midgard-serpent, which, tail in mouth, girds and keeps up the created world. As for the hag, — why, she was Time; and who, of men or gods, can prevail over her? Then, too, look at these three glens, — by the timely inter- position of a mountain, your strokes made these! Adieu, and a word of advice, — better come no more to Jotunheim ! ' Grim humor this, overlying a sublime, uncomplaining melancholy, — mirth resting upon sadness, as the rainbow upon the tempest. To .this day it runs in the blood. Therefore, the one thing needful, the everlasting duty, is to be brave. The right use of Fate is to bring our conduct up to the loftiness of nature. Let a man have not less the flow of the river, the expansion of the oak, the steadfastness of the hills. Heroism is the highest good. Over you, at each moment, hangs a threatening sword, which may in the next prove fatal. Life in itself has no value, and its ideal termination, to be kept con- stantly in view, is to fall heroically in fight. The Choosers will lead you to the Hall of Odin, only the base and slavish being thrust elsewhither: 'The coward thinks to live forever. If he avoid the weapon's reacli; But Age, which overtakes at last. Twines his gray hair with pain and shame.' Hold to your purpose with the tug of gravitation, believing that you can shun no danger that is appointed nor incur one that is not. Thus did these old Northmen. Silent and indomitable, — 'In the prow with head uplifted Stood the chief like wrathful Thor; Through his locks the snow-flakes drifted, Bleached their hue from gold to hoar; Mid the crash of mast and rafter Norsemen leaped through death with laughter, Up through Valhal's wide-flung door.' SAVAGERY. 33. Old kings, about to die, had their bodies laid in a ship, the ship sent forth with sails set, and a slow fire burning it; that they might be buried at once in the sky and in the sea! Wild and bloody was this valor of the Northmen. True, but they were ferocious — bloody-minded. Murder was their trade, and hence their pleasure. ' Lord, deliver us from the fury of the Jutes,' says an ancient litany. The ceremonials of religion assumed a cruel and sanguinary character. Prisoners taken in battle were sacrificed by the victors, sometimes subjects by their kings, and even children by their parents. Bodies white and huge, stomachs ravenous. Six meals a day barely sufficed. The heroes of Valhal gorge themselves upon the flesh of a boar which is cooked every morning, but becomes whole again every night. Lovers of gambling and strong drink. Seated on their stools, by the light of the torch, they listened to battle-songs and heroic legends as they drank their ale, while 'the lordly hall' thundered, and the ale was spilled.' In Paradise, the elect drink from a river of ale! 'Disputes,' says Tacitus, 'as will be the case with people in liquor, frequently arise, and are seldom confined to opprobrious epithets. The quarrel generally ends in a scene of blood.' Here are the germs of nineteenth-century vices. Li- trepid in war, in peace they lie by the fireside, sluggish and dirty, eating and drinking. Established in England, they have brought with them their customs, sentiments, and habits. They are still gluttonous, un- tamed, butcherly. To dance among naked swords is their recre- ation. To drink is their necessity. Later on, they quarrel about the amount each shall drink from the common cup, and the Archbishop puts pegs in the vessel, that each thirsty soul shall take no more than his just proportion. Every man is obliged to appear ready-armed, to repel preda- tory bands. A hundred years measure the reign of fourteen kings, seven of whom are slain and six deposed. King Ella's ribs are divided from his spine, his lungs drawn out, and salt thrown into his wounds. Attendants who are preparing a royal banquet are seized, their heads and limbs severed, placed in ves- sels of wine, mead, ale, and cider, with a message to the king: ' If you go to your farm, you will find there plenty of salt meat, but you will do well to carry more with you.' 3 34 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. They have made one remove from barbarism. Once murder was expiated, as all other crimes, by blows (from five to a thou- sand), the gift of a female to the offended party, or a fine of gold; now, by money-fines only. Here, by implication, in the Saxon Code of laws, is the social status of the sixth century. Mark with what minutiae it seeks to repress the irruptive tendencies of a restive and disordered society: 'These are the Laws King Ethelbert established in Agustine's day: 2. If the king his people to him call, and any one to them harm does, two fines shall be paid, and to the king 50 shillings. 8. If in the king's town any one a man slay, 50 shillings shall be paid. 13. If any one in an earl's town a man kills, 12 shillings shall be paid. 19. If a highway robbery be committed, 6 shillings shall be paid. 35. If bones bare become, 3 shillings shall be paid. 36. If bones bitten are, 4 shillings shall be paid. 39. If an ear be cut off, 12 shillings shall be paid. 44. If an eye be gouged out, 50 shillings shall be paid. 55. For every nail, 1 shilling. 57. If a man beat another with the fist on the nose, 3 shillings. 64. If a thigh be broken, 12 shillings shall be paid ; if he halt become, then shall be summoned friends who arbitrate. 65, If a rib broken be, 3 shillings shall be paid. 68. If a foot be cut off, 50 shillings shall compensate. 69. If the large toe be cut off, 10 shillings shall compensate. 70. For every other toe, half the sum as has been said for the fingers. 81. If any one take a maiden by force, he shall pay the owner 50 shillings; and afterwards buy her according to the owner's will.' Formerly, too, they slew themselves, dying as they had lived — in blood. Now, in the eleventh century, an earl, about to die of dis- ease but unable wholly to repress the ferocious instinct, exclaims: ' What a shame for me not to have been permitted to die in so many battles, and to end thus by a cow's death. At least put on my breast-plate, gird on my sword, set my helmet on my head, my shield in my left hand, my battle-axe in my right, so that a stout warrior like myself may die as a warrior.' But in this human animal — let it not be forgotten — abide noble dispositions, which will wax nobler as he climbs the heights of purer vision. In manners, severe; in inclinations, grave; valorous and liberty-loving. If he is cruel, he refuses to be shackled. In his own home, he is his own master. No Feudal- ism yet — only a voluntary subordination to a leader. Required to associate himself with a superior, he chooses him as a friend, and follows him to the death. 'He is infamous as long as he lives, who returns from the field of battle without his chief.' Amid the savagery of barbarian life, he feels no sentiment stronger than friendship. An exile, waking from his dream of the long ago, says: HOME-LIFE. 35 ' In blithe habits full oft we, too, agreed that naught else should divide us except death alone ; at length this is changed, and, as if it had never been, is now our friendship. To endure enmities man orders me to dwell in the bowers of the forest, under the oak tree in this earthly cave. Cold is this earth-dwelling; I am quite wearied out. Dim are the dells, high up are the mountains, a bitter city of twigs, with briars overgrown, a joyless abode. . . . My friends are in the earth ; those loved in life,— the tomb holds them. The grave is guarding, while I above alone am going. Under the oak-tree, beyond this earth-cave, — there I must sit the long summer day.' He is over-brave. He places his happiness in battle and his beauty in death. The coward is drowned in the mud under a hurdle, or is immolated. The true home-life, out of which are the issues of national life, is foreshadowed by the respect with which woman is treated. She inherits property and bequeaths it; associates with the men at their feasts, and is respected. The law surrounds her with guarantees, and accords her protection. The freeman who presses the finger of a freewoman, is liable to a fine of six hundred pence; of twelve hundred, if he touches the arm. 'Almost alone among the barbarians,' says Tacitus, 'they are content with one wife'; then, perhaps with a bitter thought of Rome, 'No one in Germany laughs at vice, nor do they call it the fashion to corrupt and be corrupted.' A chivalric sense of delicacy, indeed, we may not expect. She attends to the indoor and outdoor work, while her husband dozes in a half stupor by the fire. His companion in war, she is his drudge in peace. As little may we look for the iiner instincts of the womanly nature. Brynhild compels her suitors to contend with her in the games of spear-throwing, leaping, and stone-hurling, under penalty of death in case of defeat, Atle's wife kills her children, and one day, on his return from the carnage, gives him their hearts to eat, served in honey, and laughs as she tells him on what he has fed. Devotion there is, stronger than life or death, and grief too deep for tears. With a fierce kind of joy, the maid expires on the grave of her lover. Balder's wife accompanies him to the Death-kingdom; and while he sends his ring to Odin, she sends as final remembrance her thimble to Freyja. Loke's wife stands by his side, and receives the venom-drops, as they fall, in a cup which she empties as often as it is filled. The Celt is gay, emotional, easily elevated and as easily depressed. He knows not how to plod, would leap to results, has a passion for color and form. The Teuton is steady, is not 36 FOKMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. dazzled by show, looks more to the inner fact of things. It inspires the one to be addressed in the words of Napoleon, — ' Soldiers, from the summits of yonder Pyramids, forty ages behold you;" it nerves the other to be told in the sev^ere phrase of Nelson, — 'England expects every man to do his duty.' . What sentiment is to the one, interest is to the other. If, again, the Teuton has less of brilliancy than the Norman, he has more of patient strength. If he is less passionate, he is more reflective. If he is less voluble, he has the deep conviction and the indomitable will that have preserved his continuity through all revolutionary changes, and made him the most irre- sistible force in European politics. If he is less the artist of the beautiful, he is more inclined to the serious and sublime. Did ever any people form so tragic a conception of life, get so free and direct a glance into the deeps of thought, or banish so com- pletely from its dreams the sweetness of enjoyment and the soft- ness of pleasure? Here is the shadow, of which the Christian ideal is the substance. Do but consider the singular adaptation of this soil for the reception of the new faith. Back in the days of heathendom we may find the first suggestion of the spirit which led to the Reformation of an after age — the revolt against the sensuous worship of Rome — when Tacitus says of the old Germanic tribes that they do not consider it consistent with the grandeur of celestial beings to confine the gods within walls, or to liken them to the form of any human countenance. They consecrate woods and groves, and they apply the names of deities to the abstrac- tion which they see only with the spiritual eye. This feeling of a mysterious infinity, of the dark Beyond, this sincerity of per- sonal and original sentiment, predisposes the mind to Christian- ity; it makes the supreme distinction between races, as between great souls and little souls. Gregory had seen slaves in the market at Rome, and their faces were beautiful. He was told they were heathen boys from the Isle of Britain. Sorry to think that forms so fair should have no light within, he asked what was the name of their nation. '■Angles,'' he was told. '^ Angles!'' said Gregory; 'they have the faces of Angels, and they ought to be made fellow-heirs of the Angels in Heaven. But of what prov- ' The Celt is the spiritual progenitor of the Frenchman. FUNDAMENTAL INSTINCTS. 37 ince are they?' ^Deira,'' said the merchant. ^De ira!'' said Gregory; 'then they must be delivered from the wrath' — in Latin de ira — 'of God.' 'And what is the name of their king?' '^lla.' '^llal then Alleluia shall be sung in his land.' Pres- ently Roman missionaries bearing a silver cross with an image of Christ came in procession chanting a litany. In the council of the king, the High-Priest of Odin declared that the old gods were powerless: ' For there is no man in thy land, O King, who hath served all our gods more truly than I, yet there be many who are richer and greater, and to whom thou showest more favor; whereas, if our gods were good for anything, they would rather forewarn me who have been so zealous to serve them. Wherefore let us hearken to what these men say, and learn what their law is ; and if we find it to be better than our own, let us serve their God and worship Him.' This is the profit-and-loss estimate — not yet extinct among us — of things divine, contracting the horizon of life within the narrow circle of material interests. But in that assembly of wise men was another, of finer mould, whose eyes, lifted from the dust, could see the stars. Then a chief rose and said: ' You remember, it may be, O King, that which sometimes happens in winter when you are seated at table with your earls and thanes. Your fire is lighted, and your hall warmed, and without is rain, snow, and storm. Then comes a swallow flying across the hall; he enters by one door and leaves by another. The brief moment while he is within is pleasant to him : he feels not rain nor cheerless winter weather; but the moment is brief, — the bird flies away in the twinkling of an eye, and ho passes from winter to winter. Such, me- thinks, is the life of man on earth, compared with the uncertain time beyond. It appears for a while; but what is the time which comes after — the time which was before? We know not. If then, this new doctrine may teach us somewhat of greater certainty — whence man cometh and whither he goeth — it were well that we should regard it.' > Henceforth the war-gods are blotted out, the passions which created them wane; manly and moral instincts increase; new ideas take root; and a literature begins whose inspiration and soul, even to the latest generation, while it images the mingled and many-colored web of mortal experience, are essentially the God-idea — this longing after an Infinite which sense cannot touch, but reverence alone can feel — this wonder and sorrow concerning life and death which are the inheritance of the Saxon soul from the days of its first sea-kings, • 'In this year (597),' says the Chronicle, 'Gregorius the Pope sent into Britain Augus- tinus with very many monks who gospelled God's word to the English folk.' That is, they 'preached' or 'tau;^ht,' the Oospet—thn good sjyell or tale, the good tieivs of what God had done for others and would do for them. Though the Christian faith had not failed among the Britons of Wales, the British priests were not likely to trv to convert their mortal enemies, the Anglo-Saxons, nor were the latter likely to listen to them. The Scots (Irish) helped much in the good work after- wards, but had nothing to do with it in the beginning. 38 POKMATIVE PERIOD — THE PEOPLE. Results. — The English people, it is thus seen, is a composite nation, uniting in its children the elements which, separately, in the intellectual development of Europei have shown themselves most efficient in all great and worthy achievements. But of this British, Roman, Saxon, Danish, Norman blood, in fulfilment of the decrees of an overruling Providence, is formed the English nation — a nation that has preserved its free spirit under foreign domination and domestic oppression — a nation that has upheld, with ever increasing strength, the j)rinciple that power is derived from the governed for the general good — a nation that in litera- ture and life has furnished the moral pioneers and teachers of the world. Its body, its substance, is Saxon, which receives first the Celt, with his bold imagination and self-sacrificing zeal; then the Dane, with his tacit rage and adventurous maritime spirit; then the Norman, with his flexible genius, his trickery, his subtlety, his drawing-room polish, and his keen sense of enjoyment. Herein consists its true greatness, which comes of no transfusion, — its energetic sense of truth, its assertion of the right of individual liberty, its resolute habit of looking to the end, its deep power of love and its grand power of will. We may therefore expect from this blending of diverse parts a many-sided intellectual progress and a wide variety of individual character, — the multifariousness of Shakespeare, the austerity of Milton, the materialism of Spencer, the transcendentalism of Emerson, the grace of Addison, the solidity of Johnson, the oddity of Swift, the sadness and madness of Byron. 4! CHAPTER II. FORMING OP THE LANGUAGE. Words are the sounds of the hea-rt— Chinese Proverb. Words are the only thiags that live ioie\ev.—Hazlitt. Definition. — Speech is the utterance of sounds which usage has made the representatives of ideas. When, in any community, the same sounds are customarily associated with the same ideas, the expression of these sounds by the speaker renders his ideas intelligible to the hearer. Man possesses in the organs of utterance — though he seldom thinks of it, or forgets the blessing because it is given — a mu- sical instrument which is at once a harp, an organ, and a flute; an instrument on which Nature gives him the mastery of a fin- ished performer. IIoiQ its notes are struck, so as to express in coordination the many-colored world without and the shadow- world within, is the mystery of language. This, however, is the observed phenomenon: a person having a thought, and wishing to awaken a corresponding thought in the mind of another, emits, at stated intervals, a portion of his breath, modified by certain movements of the vocal organs; these movements are transmitted to the atmosphere, and thence to the ear of the lis- •tener, producing there vibrations identical with the original; then, through the agency of instinct, memory, and invention, the two have the same thought, A result reached without any con- scious effort, and therefore seemingly simple and commonplace, yet seen, on reflection, to be truly wonderful. Short as is the reach of its pulse, vanishing as are its undulations, by that fluid air, articulated into living words, man graves on the rock or prints in the book the records of his outward history and his inner soul, in symbols more enduring than Babylonian palace or Egyptian pyramid. Origin. — Whether man was the special creation of God or was developed from inarticulate creatures, it would seem evident 39 40 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LA]SrGUAGE. that speech, in its inception, like the bark of a dog, is a natural product, and hence originates in the instinct divinely implanted, directly, or indirectly, in man's nature to communicate thought/ The Providence that provided soil, fuel, minerals, and vegetables, to meet his physical needs, and religion to meet his spiritual demands, would, it is reasonable to expect, furnish at the outset suitable means of communication. We must suppose, however, that what is known to be true in other directions of his development will be found to be true in this, — an imperfect beginning and a gradual ascent. Clothing began with leaves and bark, with skins of wild animals and the like; shelter was first a hole in the ground, or the hollow of a tree; tools were first of bone, wood, or stone: but in time the sheltering cave became a nest of interwoven branches, this, in many ages, a log hut, and this, by improvement in shape, mate- rial, and size, after centuries of toil, a stately palace; in long ages of cultivation, dress-making and tool-making became arts, each giving us forms of elegance and beauty. When first the infant is moved to express itself to others, it does so by motions or natural cries, then by simple words of one syllable — very few in number, for its ideas are few — progressing slowly in its powers of utterance, yet increasing its vocabulary as intelligence expands. So, by analogy, was it with man. His beginning was less a song or a poem than a cry or gesture. His first words, like those of the child, were probably monosyllables, and, like those of the child or savage, referred mainly to his bodily wants and to sur- rounding objects which impressed him strongly. The origin of speech — so mysterious is the power — excited some speculation even among the rude primeval races. The Esthonians tell that the Aged One, as they call the Deity, placed on the fire a kettle of water, from the hissing and bubbling of which the various nations learned their languages; that is, by imitating these vague sounds, they modulated them into intelligi- ble utterances. The Australians explain the gift of speech by saying that people had eaten an old woman, named Wururi, who 1 Man is not less divine, nor his speecli less God-given, on the supposition that he has been evolved from lower organisms; for still an adequate Cause — a Supreme Intelli- gence — must have impressed such attributes upon primordial matter as to make such evolution possible. ORIGIN AND GROWTH, 41 went about at night quenching fires with a damp stick. Wururi is supposed to mean the damp night-wind, and the languages learned from devouring her are the guttural, or wind-like, repro- duction of natural sounds made by the material objects around them. There is the beautiful legend that Wannemunume, the god of song, descended into a sacred wood, and there played and sang. The birds learned the prelude of the song; the listening trees, their rustle; the streams, their ripple and roar; and the winds, their shrill tones and desolate moans: but the fish remained dumb, because, though they protruded their heads, as far as the eyes, out of the water, their ears continued under water, and they could only imitate the motion of the god's mouth. Man alone grasped it all, and so his song pierces down into the depths of the heart and up into the home of the gods. Development. — Two principles have been especially active in the growth of speech: 1. Onomatopoeia, or soiind-imitatio?i. — Thus the cry of a cat to children of different nationalities is e-yoio' the watch is tick- ticJc. Thus, also, the interjection ah or ach gives the root aka (Sanskrit), acam (Anglo-Saxon), and thence our ache- whence also anxious, anguish, and agony. The root mur in murmur, implying the rush of water-drops, gives myriad. The Australian, imitating the noise it makes, calls the frog Jcong-Jcung. The North American Indian, repeating the hooting of the bird, calls the owl kos-lcos-Jcoo-oo, a verbal sign which immediately suggests to all who have heard it, the thing signified. Several tribes on the coast of New Guinea give names to their children in imitation of the first sound the child utters. Familiar instances of invent- ing names by imitating natural sounds, are v)hip-poor-wiU, pee- toee, hoh-ivhite, buzz, xohiz, hiss, snap, snarl, bang, roar. There is the story of the Englishman who, wanting to know the nature of the meat on his plate at a Chinese entertainment, turned to the native servant behind him, and, pointing to the dish, inquired, 'Quack, quack?'' The Chinaman replied, 'Boin-woio.'' Thus the two were mutually intelligible, though they understood not a word of each other's language. 2. Metaphor, or the use of words in 7iew applications. — When a strange object is seen, men are not satisfied till they have heard its name. If it has none, as would happen in the 42 FOEMATIVE PERIOD — THE LAISTGUAGE. first settlement of a country, they proceed to give it one; and in doing so, the prevailing tendency, as has been observed from the earliest times, is to use the name of some knoion object nearly resembling the one to be named. To combine and reapply old names is easier than to invent new ones; and, wherever this is done, the result is a metcqyJior. Thus the French, on the first introduction of the potato, called it, 'the apple of the earth.' Captain Erskine relates that in the Fiji Islands, man, dressed and prepared for food, is known as 'long pig'; human flesh and pork being the two staple articles of food, and the natural pig being the shorter. The New Zealanders called their first horses ' large dogs'; and the Highlanders styled their first donkey a 'large hare.' The Kaffirs called the parasol 'a cloud,' transferring to the new object a naine belonging to one which resembled it somewhat in figure and effect. Among the Malays, the sun is mata-ari, literally, 'the eye of day'; the ankle is mata-Jcaki, 'the eye of the foot'; and the key is 'child of the lock.' These transfers, it is seen, are made between one material substance and another; but frequently they are made between matter and spirit. Man's earliest words, like the child's, related, not to his soul, but to his body and material objects. As he advanced to consider and explain thinking, feeling, and willing, his own yearnings and passions, he could neither understand them himself nor make them intelligible to others, except by reference to things which he could see, hear, taste, smell, or touch, — that is, by the use of old terms in a new sense. The ideal, the spiritual, the mental, is, of itself, dim, shadowy, and unseen, and is incapable of heing known at all but by a material image that shall make it in some sort visible, as a diagram illus- trates a truth in geometry. Thus our 'soul' — German seele — is derived from the same root as the word 'sea.' The word 'reason' is supposed to be connected with the Greek rheo., 'I flow.' 'Consider,' from the Latin considerare, means 'to fix the eyes on the stars'; 'deliberate,' from deliherare, 'to weigh.' The Greek for the soul of man means 'wind,' and the Hebrew 'breath.' Some of the metaphors in use among savages are highly picturesque. The Malays signify affront by 'charcoal on the face'; malice by 'rust of the heart'; impudence by 'face of board'; sincerity by 'white heart.' Scarcely less ingenious are OEIGI]^ AND GKOWTH. 43 the metaphors in Chinese. Capricious is expressed by 'three mornings, four evenings ' ; cunning speech by ' convenient hind- teeth' persuasive speech by 'convenient front-teeth'; disagree- ment by 'you east, I west.' Now, when the same word is applied successively to different objects, the effect is similar to adding so many new words to the language, making it more copious and rich. Mark the various ways in which the shining of the sun is here represented: ' And all his splendor floods the towered walls.' ' Sow'd the earth with orient jjearl.'' 'With rosy fingers unbarred the gates of light.'' 'Each purple peak, each flinty spire, Was bathed i)i floods of living fire.' 'A dazzling deluge reigns.' 'The western ^vaves of ebbing day Roird o'er the glen their level way.' 'The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes. And his burning plumes outspread.'' Thus language, in its entirety, is not given, but grows with the growth of thought and experience. New ideas spring up which require new forms of expression. New inventions in art or new discoveries in science recjuire new terms. When moral and spiritual forces are especially active, the language of a people is required to utter new truths, and so is extended and multiplied, as the channel of a river is deepened and widened by increasing- the volume of the waters which flow through it. It is to be observed, further, that while an articulate word, addressed to thee«r,is the sign of an idea, a written word, merely exhibiting the same thing to the eye, is but the sign of this sign — an artificial dress. Language, therefore, in its proper nature, consists not of strokes made by the pen, nor of marks made in any other way, but of sounds uttered by the voice and the organs of articulation, being to man somewhat as neighing is to a horse or squealing to a pig. Many languages have existed that never were written, and those that in time have come to be written, first existed in an unwritten state. Diversities. — The following is a sjoecimen of the English tongue, as spoken and written in London, in the year 1300: Ac heo and hi beoth ifuled mid sunnen, and so ich habbe iseid to thilke But she they both are filled with sins, I have said that levedy ncho day; answereth, men, nis it nought so? lady each an&wer, is not 44 POEMATIVE PERIOD — THE LANGUAGE. Three hundred years later, our Shakespeare wrote: 'Romans, Country-men and Louers, heare mee for my cause, and be silent, that you may heare. Beleeue nice for mine Honor, and have respect to mine Honor, that you may beleeue. Censure mee in your Wisedom, and awake your Senses, that you may the better Judge. If there be any in tliis Assembly, any deere Friend of Coisars, to him I say that Brutus' love to Ccesar was no less than his.' From these illustrations, the student will see, as other exam- ples may have suggested, that our language had not always its present form; and this is only a particular instance of the changes that are always going on, everywhere. Thus the lan- guage of a peojDle in one age may become unintelligible to their descendants in another: or, if a people have parted company, one portion going forth to new seats, while the other remained in the old; or, if both have travelled on, separating continually from one another, either section may cease to be understood by the other, and their once common speech, by the gradual unfolding of differences, may be separated into two. Thus the Celts in Britain were, in time, unable to communicate with the Celts in Gaul; and the Britons in Wales could no longer converse with the Britons in Cornwall, from whom they were separated by the intrusion of a hostile tribe, like a wedge, between them. Thus the Russian, and German, and Icelandic, and Greek, and Latin, and Persian, and French, and English, were all produced from one language, spoken by the common ancestors of these nations, when they were living together as an undivided family; and the multitude of human languages — certainly not fewer than seven hundred and fifty in number — sprang, if not from one, from two or three original tongues. The causes of this divergence are: 1. Difference of occtipation. — The vocabulary of a farmer must differ from that of a mariner, for his subjects of thought are different. When the Aryans distributed themselves over the poetic hills of Italy and Greece, they became, in the former, a nation of warriors — wars engrossing their thoughts for seven hundred years; in the latter, a nation of warriors, statesmen, orators, historians, poets, critics, painters, sculptors, architects, philosophers; and this difference was evermore at work to make two the languages that once were one. Language, in the former, became copious in terms expressive of things political^ in the latter, it became universal, like the ideas for which it stood. 2. Difference of progress in the sciences and the arts. — New DIVEESITIES OP SPEECH. 45 facts or new ideas require new words. Wherever any science is progressive, there must be a corresponding progress in its forms of expression. Any considerable change in society — in its gov- ernment, religion, or habits — demands the invention of words which in a former period were not required. 3. Difference of geographical j^osition. — When a people with a common tongue is divided into separate tribes by emigration, or by any of the causes which break up large nations into smaller fragments, their speeches become distinct, as differences of char- acter are developed, or in the degree in which communication between them is interrupted, (a.) One branch comes into con- tact with new races or objects which the other does not en- counter, and so upon the old stock engrafts numerous words which the other does not. {h.) In one branch a word will perish, or be thrust out of general use, but live on in the other. For example, the words snag, hluff\ slick, and others, would now be lost to the English tongue, were it not for the American branch of the English-speaking race, (c.) Words will gradually acquire a different meaning in one branch from what they have in an- other. Thus, in Northumberland, they 'shear' their wheat/ here, we 'shear' our sheep, [d.) The pronunciation and spelling of the same word will, in one, be different from what it is in the other. Thus the Germans and the English, using the very same word, pronounce and spell it, — the former, 'fowl'; the latter, 'vogel.' (e.) The language of one section may remain station- ary, because their ideas remain so; while that of the other is kept in motion, because their understanding is ever advancing, and their knowledge is ever increasing. 4. Difference of climate. — Influences of climate and soil ac- count, in large measure, for the harsh and guttural sounds mut- tered by those who live in moist or cold mountainous regions, and the soft and liquid tones of those who live in fertile plains under a more genial sky. Thus Byron: 'I love the language, that soft bastard Latin, Which melts like kisses from a female mouth. And sounds as if it should be writ on satin, With syllables that breathe of the sioeet South. And gentle liquids gliding all so pat in. That not a single accent seems uncouth. Like our harsh, northern, ivhistUng, grunting, guttural. Which we're obliged to hiss, and spit and sputter all.' 46 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LANGUAGE. Physical circumstances reach far in their effects, not alone upon the organs of speech, but upon the character as well. It is not too much to assert that the profound differences which are mani- fest between the German races on the one side, heavy, bent on fighting, prone to drunkenness and gluttony, and the Greek and Latin races on the other, ready, flexible, inquisitive, artistic, loving conversations and tales of adventure, — arise chiefly from the difference between the countries in which they are settled. Religion, to the Greek, is an epic; to the Teuton, a tragedy. Dialects. — Whenever a homogeneous people is divided into separate and unconnected tribes by emigration or local causes, the speeches of the different members of the race become, there- fore, more or less distinct; and each, in this changed condition, is called a dialect: in other words, a dialect is a branch of a parent language, with such alterations as time or revolution may have introduced among descendants of the same people, living in separate or remote situations. Dialects, then, are those forms of speech which have a certain character of their own by which they are distinguished from one another, yet a common character by which they are allied to one another and hence to some mother tongue, just as indigo and sky-blue are different shades of the same color. Their common character will be shown : first, by their similar grammatical forms, such as the endings of nouns, verbs, and the like; second, by their having many of the most common and most necessary words essentially the same. Thus, when the Teutons settled in the western prov- inces of the Roman Empire, there arose a new state of things, which was neither Roman nor Teutonic, but a combination of both. Being much fewer in number, the conquerors adopted the religion, and a great deal of the laws and maimers, and espe- cially the language of the conquered. At this time, the com- mon language of Spain, Italy, and Gaul, was Latin — not quite the same as the earlier Latin of Cicero, and, no doubt, more or less different in different localities. As the Germans had to learn this Latin in order to get on with the people, many German words crept into it, and it naturally became still more unlike what it had been. At last, men began to understand that quite new languages had really grown up. Thus, from the mixture of the Teutonic settlers with the Roman inhab- H DIALECTS. 47 itants, there slowly arose the modern nations of Spain, Italy, and France, and from the mixture of their languages, there gradually sprung the modern Sjyanish, Italian, and French, — each, when considered with reference to the Latin, called a dia- lect y' but viewed by itself, as distinct from either of the others, a language. These newly formed languages, derived by more or less direct processes from one and the same ancient tongue — the Roman Latin — are known as the Romance tongues. Their homogeneity is clearly traceable in the following versions of the first verse, first chapter, of 8t. John: Latin.— In principio {beginning) erat (was) Verbum (Word), et (a7id} Verbum erat apiid (with) Deiim {God), ct Dens erat Verbum. Italian. — Nel principio la Parola era, c la Parola era appo Iddio, e la Parola era Dio. i'Y^ncA.— Au commencement etait la Parole, et la Parole etait avec Dieu, ctcette Parole etait Dieu. Spanish.— En el principio era el Verbo, y el Verbo estaba con Dios, y el Verbo era Dios. Again, any of these, as split up into different local forms or provincial idioms, may be regarded as composed of an aggregate of dialects proper; for every language is marked by certain pecu- liarities in different quarters of the same country. Thus two hundred years ago, a man in London would say, 'I would eat more cheese, if I had it.' One in the Northern counties would have said, 'Ay sud eat mare cheese, gin ay had it.' The West- ern man said, 'Chud eat more cheese, and chad it.' The rustic Westmorelander, to the question, 'How far is it?' replies, 'Why, like it garly nigh like to four miles like.' The conjugation of the Southern slave is, 'I was done gone, you was done gone, he was done gone.' We are not, however, to think of a dialect as a vulgar form of the classical or literary speech, and its modes of expression as violations of grammar, but rather as one of the forms in which language, passing through its successive phases, once existed. Here and there its departures from what we have been used to, may be set down to the ignorance or stupidity of the speaker. But much oftener its words, its singular combinations, which appear to us as barbarisms, were once reputable, employed by all, and happen to have found an abiding place in certain districts which have not kept abreast with the advances which the lan- guage has made. Thus, in parts of England, for 'we sing,' 'ye sing,' 'they sing,' they yet use the plurals 'we singen,' 'ye 48 FOEMATIVE PEEIOD — THE LANGUAGE. singen,' 'they singen,' — a mode of declension which arose in the time of Chaucer, and was constantly employed by Spenser. We are told, indeed, that this form of the plural is still retained in parts of Maryland. It is not very uncommon, in the country, to hear one say, 'I'm afeard,'' or 'I'll ax him,' or 'the price riz yes- terday,' or 'I'll tell ye'/ and we are apt to esteem such phrases violations of the primary rules of grammar, but they are the forms which the words once regularly and grammatically assumed. An old Dative, tham, from tha, is still in use among our lower orders; as, 'Look at thein boys.' Ourn for ours, and hern for hers, which are not infrequent among us, were freely employed by Wycliffe, who wrote standard English. We are not therefore to conclude that these forms are good English now: for in writing or speaking we are bound to conform to present use and custom, just as in buying or selling we are to use the form of money that is circulating, not that which was current in the Revolution, or which has long been withdrawn from circulation. Idioms. — Nations, like individuals, have \h^\v peculiar ideas; and, since the sign must correspond to the thing signified, these peculiar ideas become the genius of their language. The idioms^ of a given tongue are the modes of expression in harmony with its genius. For example: Arma virumque cano, Trojae qui primus ab oris Italiam, fato Arms man-and, (I)-sing {of)-Troy zvho first from coasts {to)-Italy {hy)-fate profugus, Laviniaque venit litora. — Virgil. {an)-€Xile Lamnian-and came shores. Such an arrangement, though natural to Latin, is quite foreign to English : I sing of arms, and the man who first from the coasts of Troy, by fate an exile, came to Italy and the Lamnian shores. That order and diction are idiomatic which are used habitually, — in conversation or familiar letters. Thus, when Dr. Johnson said of the Rehearsal, 'It has not wit enough to keep it sweet,' he was idiomatic; but when, after a moment's reflection, he expressed it, ' It has not sufficient virtue to preserve it from putrefaction,' he was wwidiomatic. When he wrote, 'I bore the diminution of my riches without any outrages of sorrow or pusillanimity of dejec- tion,' he used a style in which no one quarrels, makes love, or 1 From the Greek, meaning 'propter or peculiar. IDIOMS. AEYAN MOTHER-TONGUE. 49 thinks. The native idiom is forcibly distinguished from the for- eign in the following: Idiomatic— Then Apollyon straddled quite over the whole breadth of the way, and said, I am void of fear in this matter : prepare thyself to die ; for I swear by my infernal Den that thou Shalt go no further: here will I spill thy soiil.—Pilgt'im's Progress. Unidiomatic. — Unquestionably, benignity and commiseration shall continge all the diuternity of my vitality, and I will eternalize my habitude in the metropolis of nature.— Psalm xxiii, 6 (a modern version). It is remarked by De Quincey, that 'the pure idiom of our mother-tongue survives only amongst our women and children; not, heaven knows, amongst our women who write books.' 'Would you desire at this day,' he continues, 'to read our noble language in its native beauty, picturesque form, idiomatic pro- priety, racy in its phraseology, delicate yet sinewy in its compo- sition, — steal the mail-bags, and break open all the letters in female handwriting.' It need not be a matter of surprise, therefore, that those writers who are most idiomatic — as Bunyan, Shakespeare, Longfellow — are the most popular. They are understood with least effort. Indo-European. — On noticing how closely our word house resembles the German haus, or the English thou hast the German du hast, the reader might suspect, without other evidence than this likeness in words and in grammar, that the two languages are brothers and sisters. By extending this comparison to a large number of languages, scholars have shown that nearly all the languages in Europe, with a part of those in Asia, are related by having descended from a common parent, namely a language spoken somewhere between the Indus and the Euphrates. These kindred tongues are therefore called the Indo-European,^ or the Aryan^ family. This family is subdivided into several groups, each group consisting of those languages which most resemble one another: 1. Celtic, preserved to us chiefly in two dialects, — the 'Welsh, whose oldest literature extends back to the sixth century; and the Irish, with a literature dating from the fifth. 2. Latin, containing the dialects sprung from it, or the Mo- rnance (modified Roman) languages, — Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. Its oldest literary records date from 300 B.C. ' Referring to the territorial position and the geographical connection of the races which speak the languages it represents. 2 The historic name applied to the people originally speaking this mother-tongue. 50 PORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LANGUAGE. 3. Greeh, represented by the modern Greek, or Romaic, which is descended from it. Its earliest records are the poems of Homer, 1000 B.C. 4. Persimi, containing Ancient and Modern Persian. Its earliest extant writing is the Avesta, or the Bible of Zoroaster^ claiming an antiquity of seven thousand years. 5. Indian, containing the SansJcrit,' which is the oldest of all the Indo-European languages, and the modern dialect of India. Among the earliest extant works in this language are the Vedas, or the Bible of the Hindoos, written in Sanskrit, probably five thousand years ago. 6. Slavonic,"^ containing the Russian (its most important rep- resentative), Polish, and Bohemian. 7. Teutonic, or Germanic, containing: (1.) The Moeso - Gothic, the language of the Goths (a nation of Teutons), in Moesia. The oldest German dialect in existence. Extinct as a spoken language, but preserved to us by one Ulfilas, a bishop of the Goths, who translated the Scriptures into Gothic for the benefit of his countrymen, about the close of the fourth century. Only parts of this translation remain, of which the most famous is the Silver Rook, so called from its being transmitted to us in letters of silver and gold. (2.) The High German, at first only spoken in the highlands of Central and Southern Germany. It may be represented by the modern literary German, the language into which Luther trans- lated the Bible. (3.) The Lov) German, spoken originally along the low-lying shores of the German Ocean and the Baltic Sea. From this region our Saxon fathers came, and hence the Low German in- cludes our present English. It may now be represented by the language of Holland, or Low Dutch, to which English bears the strongest likeness, as appears in the following: In den beginne was het woord, en bet woord was bij God, en bet woord was God.— »S<. John i, 1. (4.) The Scandinavian, represented by the Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian; but best by the Icelandic, from which come its earliest literary memorials. 1 Meaning classical or literary, in distinction from the language used by tbe common people. 2 Tbe Slavs were the third stream of Aryan emigrants into Europe. ELEMENTS OF ENGLISH. 5l The accompanying Linguistic Tree may be assumed to repre- sent the Aryan mother-tongue in process of ramification, while it may furnish a general conception of the Aryan migrations. One main fact will be apparent — 'Westward the course of empire takes its way.' £j]lglisll. — This is the language used by the people of Eng- land, and by all who speak like them elsewhere; for example, in the United States. Historical Elements. — Its ingredients are derived from sources as varied as the English blood. Of these, as the reader will understand from the historical sketch, the most important are: 1. Celtic, the oldest of our philological benefactors. — It does not appear, however, to have at all modified the syntax or affected the articulation of the language, but to have remained a foreign unassimilated accretion. It contributes to the vocabulary a large number of geographical names, as Thcunes, Kent; and some mis- cellaneous words, as basket, button, mo}:), pail, rail, bard, etc. Between the Anglo-Saxons and the Celts, and hence between 52 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LANGUAGE. their respective tongues, there was, as we have seen, a reciprocal repulsion. 2. Latin. — From this we have borrowed more or less freely for many centuries. To the Roman conquest we are indebted com- paratively little. A few civil and military terms were adopted by the Saxon invaders. Of these, some are lost, and others are changed. Thus, strata, denoting a paved road, is changed to street; vallum, a rampart, is retained in vKtll; castra, a fortified camp, reappears in Gloucester, once written Glevae castra; colo- nia, a colony, is changed to coin, as in Lincoln {Lindi colonia). The Christian missionaries of the sixth century made Latin the official language of the Church, and, to some extent, the medium of religious, moral and intellectual instruction; and thus intro- duced a considerable number of Latin words, chiefly ecclesiastical. Examples are, episcopus, bishop; monachus, monk; epistola^ epistle; which were written, hisceop, munuc, pistel. But the great majority of Latinisms have arisen in three epochs,-^ the thirteenth century, which followed an age devoted to classical studies; the sixteenth, which witnessed a new revival of admiration for antiquity; and the eighteenth, when Johnson, who loved to coin in the Roman mint, was the dictator of prose style. 3. Danish. — The Danes have bequeathed us few words and relatively unimportant; such as fellow, fro, gait, ill, etc., includ- ing some local names extending over the grounds of their settle- ments. 4. Norman- French. — This was spoken in Northern France — Normandy; and, as the student should now be aware, was com- posed of three elements, — the Celtic,' the Latin, the Teutonic* It was the dominant speech in England between two and three hundred years, the vernacular finding its refuge in the cottages of the rustic and illiterate. By the gradual coalescence of the two races, its influence was very great, both by introducing many new words and by changing the spelling and sound of old ones. 5. Greek. — To this source we are indebted for scientific terms^ slightly for terms in common use; as, botany, physics, ethicSy music, didactic, melancholy (literally, black-bile). ' The Celts settled in this region were known, it will be remembered, as Gauls. ' The Franks and Danes. EARLY ENGLISH. 53 6. Anglo-Saxon. — This is not so much an element, evidently, as it is the mother tongue, or the stock, — the stream to which the rest have been tributary. It is estimated that the percentage of Anglo-Saxon in modern English, exclusive of scientific and provincial terms, is about five-eighths; in the vocabulary of con- versation, four-fifths. The following table may be of interest, as showing approximately, the relative proportion of Anglo-Saxon in the departments of general literature: Bible, 93 Prayer-Book, - - - - 87 Poetry, - 88 Fiction, ----- 87 Essay, ------- 78 Oratory, 76 History, 72 Newspaper, - - - . 72 Rhetoric, ------ 69 Original English (449 — 1066). — This, as we have learned, was Anglo-Saxon. From what has been said, it is evi- dent that this form of English, or Old English, as it is sometimes called, resulted from the blending together of the several kindred dialects spoken by the Germanic tribes who invaded Britain be- tween the middle of the fifth and the middle of the sixth centuries. We have used the word 'kindred' to indicate that while there was a difference of dialect among the invaders, they all used sub- stantially the same language. From the specimens already given, the reader need not be told that the language first brought from Northern Germany to Eng- land was so different from ours that we should not understand it if we heard it spoken; nor can we learn to read it without very nearly as much study as is required to learn French or German. Its alphabet consisted of twenty-four characters, only two of which, as Anglo-Saxon books are now printed, are familiar to the eye. These represent the two sounds of th as heard in thine and thin. As compared with our present English, the Anglo-Saxon is called an inflectional tongue; that is, it indicated the relations of words by a correspondence of forms, the form being varied according to the number, person, case, mood, tense, gender, degree of comparison, and other conditions; whereas, such rela- tions are now indicated by position, auxiliaries and particles, the words themselves remaining for the most part unvaried. Thus the Latin 'bib-ere' was translated by 'drinc-a^i,' but novy^ by to drink. We now say 'I love' and 'We love,' without any 54 POEMATIVE PERIOD — THE LANGUAGE. change in the form of the word love; but the Anglo-Saxons used, for the first, lufige, and for the second lufiath. To say 'I shall help,' and 'We shall help,' the same form of the verb serves us equally well; but they thought different forms were necessary, — sceal helpan^ and sculon helpan : whence we see that our pres- ent auxiliary verbs, used as mere indications of time, were once inflected and used as principal verbs, — for example, I sliall to help and we sliall to help. In the sentences, '■They loere gOOd hunters,' and '■They had the appearance of good hunters,' the one form 'good hunters' expresses equally well both relations; but the Anglo-Saxons would have expressed it, 'hunt-an god-e,' and 'hunt-ena god-ra,' varying the form both of the adjective and the noun. This variation of form, therefore, to suit the offices which a word may have to perform in the sentence, is what we are to understand by inflection. The accidence and arrangement of English then, as distinguished from i.ts analytic character now, are well illustrated in the following passage from King Alfred, in whose time the language, as a synthetic tongue, reached its best estate : 'Fela spella Mm saedon tha Many tidings (to) him said the Beormas sehther ge of hym Beormas either {i.e. both) of their agenum lande, ge of theem lande the own lande, and of them lands that ymb hy utan waeron : ac he around them about were : but he nyste hwast thaes sothes waer, wist-not what (of) the sooth (truth) was, for thsem he hit sylf ne ge seah.' for that he itself not "y-saw. Transition Bnglish. — After a while men began to think that so many terminations were useless, that they were too cum- bersome, involving a waste of time and energy in writing and speaking; for man is either a very lazy or a very practical animal, and dislikes to say do not, can not, and shall not, when he can more easil}'- and quickly say donH, can''t, and shanH. I have been loved is not quite so laborious as 'Ic wecs fulfremedlice gelufod.' So, as a matter of economy, to save breath and secure a freer utterance, sentential structure became less periodic, most of the inflections were dropped; while short auxiliaries, or help- words, were used instead. This result, though natural, was very much accelerated by the Norman Conquest; for by that event the language was driven from literature and polite society, being there displaced by French and Latin. No longer fixed in books, and living only on the lips of the ignorant, it was broken up into 1 TRANSITIOISr ENGLISH. 55 numerous diverging dialects, of which the chief were the North- ern, Midland, and Southern; nor did it again receive literary cul- ture till the beginning of the thirteenth century, from which date it steadily advanced, till, in the form of the East Midland dialect, it acquired complete and final ascendency in the hands of Chaucer and Wycliffe — the first the forerunner of English Litera- ture, the second, of the Reformation. This, then, was a period of confusion, alike perplexing to those who used the language and to those who wish to trace its vicissitudes, — a period in which the old was passing, through a state of ruin, into the new. The two languages, native and stranger, hitherto repellent, began slowly to melt into a har- monious whole; and the former, with a distinct and recognizable existence, though gorged with unorganized material, was fitting for a vigorous and prolific growth. The process of disorganization and decay may be exhibited to the eye by the following extract from the Saxon Chronicle, the second column showing what the text would be if written in purer Saxon: 'Hi swenctew the wrecce men of Hi swencon tha wreccan menn of the land mid castel-weorces. tham lande mid castel-weorcum. Tha the castles waren n\aked Tha tha castel woeron gemacod tha fylden hi mid yvele men. Tha tha fyldon hi mid yfelon manum. Tha namen hi tha men the hi wenden. namon hi tha menn tha hi wendon thset ani God hefden hathe be thajt aenig God hsefdon batwa be nigh^es and be dceies.' nihte & be daege. It may be of interest to watch, in -early versions of the LorcVs Prayer, that series of mutations by which Anglo-Saxon was passing gradually into modern English: A.D. 700. Thu ure Fader, the eart on heofenum. Si thin noman gehalgod, Cume thin rike. Si thin Willa on eorthan twa on heofenum ; Syle us todag orne daagwanlican hlaf, And forgif us ure gylter, Swa we fogifath tham the with us agylthat; And ne laed thu na us on kostnunge; Ac alys us fronn yfele. Si bit swa. A.D. 890, Feeder ure thu the eart on hoefenum, Si thin nama gehalgod; To becume thin rice. Gewurthe thin willa on eorthan swa swa on heofenum, TJme dseghwamlican hlaf syle us to dseg; And forgyf us ure gyltas, swa swa we forgif oth urum gyltendum; 56 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LANGUAGE. And ne gelaedde thu us on costnunge, Ac alys us of yfele. Sothlice. A.D. 1120. Ure Fader in Heven rich, Thy name be halyed ever lich. Thou bring us thy michel bliese, Als bit in heven y doe ; Evear in yearth been it alsoe. That holy brede that lasteth ay, Thou send us this ilke day. Forgive us all that we have done ■ As we forgive ech other one. Nc let us fall into no founding, Ne sheld us frym the foule thing. A.D. 1250. Fadir ur that es in hevene, Halud be thy nam to nevene: Thou do us thy rich rike: Thi will on erd be wrought elk, Als it es wrought in heven ay: Ur ilk day brede give us to day: Forgive thou all us dettes urs Als we forgive all ur detturs: And ledde us na in na fanding, But sculd us fra ivel thing. A.D. 1250. Ure fadir that hart in hevene, {East Midland.) Halged be thi name with giftis sevene ; Samin cume thi kingdom, Thi wille in herthe als in hevene be don; Ure bred that lastes ai Gyve it hus this hilke dai, And ure misdedis thu forgyve hus, Als we forgyve tham that misdon hus, And leod us intol na fandinge, Bot frels us fra alio ivele thinge. Amen. Native Features of English. — 1. Its grammar is almost exclusively Anglo-Saxon. 2. Anglo-Saxon is eminently the or- gan of practical action — the language of business, of the street, market, and farm. 3. The specific terms of the English tongue are Anglo-Saxon, while the generic terms are foreign — Latin, Greek, or French. Thus, we are Romans when we speak, in a general way, of moving ; but Teutons when we run, loalk, leap, stagger, sliiy, ride, slide, glide. 4. The Saxon gives us names for the greater part of natural objects; as, siai, moon, stars, rain, snow, hill, dale. 5. Those words expressive of strongest feelings are Saxon; as, home, hearth, fireside, life, death, man and wife, father and mother, brother and sister, love and hate, hope and fear, gladness and sorrow. 6. A large proportion of the language of ifivective, humor, satire, and colloquial pleas- antry, is Saxon. 7. In short, to the Saxon belongs the vocabu- THE HISTORY IN WORDS. 57 lary of common life, including our colloquialisms, idiomatic phrases, and the language of conversation. Thus we see that the essential element in English is native. Between its past and present there is only the difference that exists between the sap- ling and the tre^ or between the boy and the man. Anglo-Norman History in English. — Supposing all other records to have perished, we could still trace the reciprocal relations of the Saxon and Norman occupants of England in their contributions to the language which they have jointly bequeathed us. Thus we should conclude that the Norman was the ruling race from the noticeable fact that nearly all the words of state descend to us from them, — sovereign, throne, crown, scejytre, realm, royalty, prince, chancellor, treasurer. Norman aristocracy transmits us duke, baron, peer, esquire, count, palace, castle, hall, mansion. 'Common articles of dress are Saxon, — shirt, shoes, hat, breeches, cloak ; but other articles, subject to changes of fashion, are of Norman origin, — govm, coat, boots, mantle, cap, bonnet, etc. Room and kitchen are Saxon; chambers, parlors, galleries, pantries, and laundries are Norman. The Saxon's stool, bench, bed, and board — often probably it was no more — are less luxurious than the table, chair, and couch of his Norman lord. The boor whose sturdy arms turned the soil, opened wide his eyes at the Norman carpet and curtain. While luxury, chivalry, adornment, are Norman, the instruments used in cul- tivating the earth, as well as its main products, are Saxon, — plough, share, rake, scythe, harroio, sickle, spade, unheal, rye, oats, grass, hay, flax. Thus are words, when we remove the veil which custom and familiarity have thrown over them, seen to be illustrative of national life. As the earth has its strata and deposits from which the geologist is able to arrive at a knowledge of the successive physical changes through which a region has passed, so language has its alluvium and drift from which the linguist may disinter, in fossil form, the social condition, the imaginations and feel- ings, of a period — a period far more remote than any here suggested. Superiority of Saxon English.— The special reasons assignable for this are: 58 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LANGUAGE. 1. Early association. — A child's vocabulary is almost wholly Saxon. He calls a thing 7iice or nasty, not pleasant or disagree- able. Words acquired later in life are less familiar — less organi- cally connected with his ideas, and hence less rapidly suggestive. 2. Brevity. — The fewer the words, the m5re effective the idea, — as, to point to the door is more expressive than to say, 'Leave the room.' On the same principle, the fewer the syllables, the stronger the impression produced, — less time and effort are required to read the sign and perceive the thing signified. Hence the shortness of Saxon words becomes a cause of their greater force. One qualification must be made. When great power or intensity is to be suggested, an expansive and sonorous word, allowing the consciousness a longer time to dwell on the quality predicated, may be an advantage. A devout and poetic soul gazing, in stilly night, into stellar spaces, — what verb will ex- press its emotion? See, look, think? — only the Latin contem- plate. The noise going to and returning from hill to hill, — what word will describe it? Sound, hoom, roar, echo, are all too tame; only reverberate tells the whole. Hence the value of the Latin element in contributing to copiousness and strength of expression. It is a pleasing study to observe how, in all the best writers, the long and short are harmoniously combined, as in these lines from Macbeth: 'Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood Clean from my hand? No! this, my hand, will rather The multitudinous seas incarnadine. Making the green one red.' 3. Definiteness. — ' Well-being arises from well-doing,' is Saxon. 'Felicity attends virtue,' is Latin. How inferior is the second, because less definite than the first. The more concrete the terms, the brighter the picture, as loagon and cart are more vivid than vehicle. Therefore, though many words of Latin origin are equally simple and clear, those of Saxon origin are, as a whole, more so, and should be preferred. This is the current maxim of com- position, most happily enforced in the following lines: 'Think not that strength lies in the big, round word, Or that the brief and plain must needs be weak. To whom can this be true who once has heard The cry for help, the tongue that all men speak, When want, or fear, or woe, is in the throat. i SUMMAEY. 59 So that each word gasped out is like a shriek Pressed from the sore heart, or a strange, wild note, Sung by some fay or flend? There is a strength, Which dies if stretched too far, or spun too fine, "Which has more height than breadth, more depth than length. Let but this force of thought and speech be mine. And he that will, may take the sleek, fat phrase, Which glows, but burns not, though it beam and shine, Light, but no heat, — a flash, but not a blaze.'* HesultS. — So does the English language combine, to an ex- tent unequalled by any other living tongue, the classic (Latin) and the Teutonic, — the euphony, sonorousness, and harmony of the first; the strength, tenderness, and simplicity of the second; a happy medium between French and German, — more grave than the former, less harsh and cumbersome than the latter, grammatically simpler than either. From its composite char- acter come that wealth and compass, that rich and varied music, which have made English Literature the crovi^n and glory of the works of man. It has an abode, far and wide, in the islands of the earth; gives greeting on the shores of the Pacific, as of the Atlantic. Fixed in multitudes of standard works and endeared to the increasing millions who read and speak it, the natural growth of population, the love of conquest and colonization which has distinguished the Saxon race since they traversed the German Ocean in their frail barks, will help to extend and per- petuate its empire. 1 Dr. J. A. Alexander. CHAPTER III. FORMING OF THE LITERATURE. Wherever possible, let us not be told about this man or that. Let us hear the man him- self speak, let us see him act, and let us be left to form our own opinions about him. — Froude. My friend, the times which are gone are a book with seven seals ; and what you call the spirit of past ages is but the spirit of this or that worthy gentleman in whose mind those ages are reflected.— (rOfi^Ae. The view of human manners, in all their variety of appearances, is both profitable and agreeable; and if the aspect in some periods seem horrid and deformed, we may thence learn to cherish with the greater anxiety that science and civility, which has so close a con- nection with virtue and humanity, and which as it is a sovereign antidote against super- stition, is also the most effectual remedy against vice and disorder of every kind. — Hume. Politics. — From the primitive stock — Angles and Saxons, reinforced by the Danish ravagers, buried, re-elevated, and modi- fied, by the Conquest — were to spring the nation and its history. In pursuance of Germanic custom, there was an early division of the kingdom, as we have seen, into counties, and of these into hundreds, the latter partition supposed to contain a hundred free families. Each had its tribunal; the Court of the Hundred — held by an alderman, next in authority to the king — being the lower. In course of time, the County Court became the real arbiter of important suits, the first contenting itself with pun- ishing petty offences and keeping up a local police. Chiefly to this the English freeman looked for the maintenance of his civil rights. The hundreds were further distributed into decennaries, or tithings, known as 'ten men's tale.' In one of these, every freeman above the age of twelve was required to be enrolled. The members were a perpetual bail for each other; so that if one of the ten committed any fault, the nine were indirectly responsible. From earliest English times there had prevailed the usage of compurgation, under which the accused could be acquitted by the oath of his friends, who pledged their knowl- edge, or at least their belief, of his innocence. The following passage in the laws of Alfred refers to this practice: 60 OLD ENGLISH JURISPEUDENCE. 61 ' If any one accuse a king's thane of homicide, if he dare to purge himself, let him do it along with twelve king's thanes.' ' If any one accuse a thane of less rank than a king's thane, let him purge himself along with eleven of his equals, and one king's thane.' Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence proceeded, as here, upon the maxim that the best guarantee of every man's obedience to the govern- ment was to be sought in the confidence of his neighbors. This privilege, the manifest fountain of unblushing perjury, was abol- ished by Henry II; though it long afterwards was preserved, by exemption, in London and in boroughs. There was left, how- ever, the favorite mode of defence, — the ordeal, or 'judgment of God.' Innocence could be proved by the power of holding hot iron in the hand, or by sinking when flung into the water, for swimming was a proof of guilt.. When these were annulled in 1216, the combat remained, but no longer applicable unless an injured prosecutor came forward to demand it. This was of Norman origin. The nobleman fought on horseback ; the plebeian on foot, with his club and target. The vanquished party forfeited his claim and paid a fine. It was the function of the court to see that the formalities of the combat, the ordeal, or the compurgatfon, were duly regarded, and to observe whether the party succeeded or succumbed, — a function which required neither a knowledge of positive law nor the dictates of natural sagacity. The seed of our present form of Trial by Jury may be dis- covered in a law of Ethelred II, binding the sheriff and twelve principal thanes to swear that they would neither acquit any criminal nor convict any innocent person. In 1176, precise enact- ment established the jury system, still rude and imperfect, as the usual mode of trial: 'The justices, who represented the king's person, were to make inquiry by the oaths of twelve knights, or other lawful men, of each hundred, together with the four men from each township, of all murders, robberies, and thefts, and of all who had harboured such offenders, since the king's (Henry II) accession to the throne.' The jurors were essentially witnesses distinguished from other witnesses only by customs which imposed upon them the obli- gation of an oath and' regulated their number. For fifty years yet their duties were to present offenders for trial by ordeal or combat. Under Edward I, witnesses acquainted with the par- ticular fact in question were added to the general jury; and later these became simply 'witnesses,' without judicial power. 62 FOKMATIVE PEKIOD — THE LITERATURE. while the first ceased to be witnesses and became only judges of the testimony given. It was the abolition of the ordeal sys- tem in 1216 which led the way to the establishment of what is called a 'petty jury' for the final trial of the prisoner. Cen- turies were to pass, however, before the complete separation of the functions of juryman and witness should be effected. The 'Meeting of Wise Men' no longer retained, under Alfred, its character of a national gathering, as when the Saxons pre- served in simplicity their Germanic institutions. Then all free- men, whether owners of land or not, composed part of it. Grad- ually, by the non-attendance or indifference of the people, only the great proprietors were left; and, without the formal exclu- sion of any class of its members, it shrunk up into an aristo- cratic assembly. After the Conquest, in the reign of John, the national council was a gathering, at the king's bidding, of all who held their lands directly from the crown, both clerical and lay. It was like the ' Meeting of the Wise Men,' only more people sat in it, and they were the king's feudal vassals. Those who were entitled to be present, could only be present themselves — could not send repre- sentatives. At the county courts, groups of men sent from the various parts of the shire represented, in the transaction of busi- ness, the whole free folk of the shire. Slowly and tentatively this principle was applied to the constitution of the Great Coun- cil. Henry III and his barons alike ordered the choice of 'dis- creet knights' from every county, 'to meet on the common business of the realm.' In 1246, the word parliament was first used as the name of the council. The extension of electoral rights to the freeholders at large is seen in the king's writ of 1264, sent to the higher clergy, earls, and barons; to the sheriffs, cities, and boroughs throughout England, commanding the former three to come in person, the latter to send representatives. It was long, however, before the chosen deputies were admitted to a share in deliberative power. In 1295, Edward gathered at Westminster an assembly that was in evei^ sense a national Par- liament. It straightway fulfilled the sole duty of a Parliament in those days, — voted the king a supply. Two years later the one thing still wanting was gained, — a solemn acknowledgment by the king that it alone had power to tax the nation. The idea of GEKMINATION OF MODERN GOVERNMENT, 63 representation has risen. 'It is a most just law,' says Edward, *that what concerns all should be approved of by all, and that common dangers should be met by measures provided in common.' In Edward's reign, the barons began to hold their deliberations privately. The knights from the shires and the deputies from the towns formed a second chamber. From this time, therefore, dates the origin of the House of Lords and the House of Com- mons. The rights of self-government, of free speech in free meeting, of equal justice by one's peers, were brought safely across the ages of Norman tyranny by the traders and shopkeepers, who alone, unnoticed and despised by prelate and noble, had preserved the full tradition of Teutonic liberty. Henry I, promising to govern the English according to their own wishes, with wisdom and moderation, granted them a first charter, which, though of short duration, was the first limitation imposed on the despotism of the Conquest. A hundred years later, the barons extorted from King John the glorious and powerful Magna Charta, — ever after the basis of the English freedom, the corner-stone of the noble edifice of the Constitution. Life, liberty, and property were protected. No man could henceforth be detained in prison without trial. No man would have to buy justice. These words, honestly interpreted, convey an ample security for the two main rights of civil society: 'No freeman shall be seized, or imprisoned, or dispossessed, or outlawed, or in any way- brought to ruin: we will not go against any man nor send against him, save by legal judg- ment of his peers or by the law of the land. To no man will we sell, to no man will we deny or delay, justice or right.' At the end of the thirteenth century, the charters were so firmly established that no monarch would venture to disturb them. Small and obscure are the beginnings of great political institu- tions, and unforeseen are the tremendous results of the actor's deeds, who, as he casts the seed into the soil, little dreams of the mighty and perpetual germination it will disclose in after days. Society. — By Alfred's day, it was assumed that no man could exist without dependence upon a superior. The ravages and long insecurity of the Danish wars drove the freeholder to seek pro- tection from the thane. His freehold was surrendered to be received back as a fief, laden with service to its lord. Gradually 64 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. 1 the 'lordless' man became a sort of outlaw; the free churl, who had held his land straight from the Maker of it, sank into the villain,' and with his personal freedom went his share in the gov- ernment. The bulk of the workmen are serfs. In a dialogue of the tenth century, written for popular instruction, the ploughman says: 'I labor much. I go out at daybreak, urging the oxen ta the field, and I yoke them to the plough. I am bound to plough everyday a full acic or more.' The herdsman says: 'When the ploughman separates the oxen, I lead them to the meadows, and all night I stand watching over them on account of thieves; and again in the morning I take them to the plough, well-fed and watered.' And the shepherd: 'In the first part of the morning I drive my sheep to their pasture, and stand over them in heat and cold with my dogs, lest the wolves destroy them. I lead them back to their folds, and milk them twice a day; and I move their folds, and make cheese and butter, and am faithful to my lord.' The military oppression of the Normans levelled all degrees of tenants and servants into a modified slavery. The English lord was pushed from his place by the Norman baron, and sank into the position from which he had thrust the churl. The peasant — the producer — had no alternative but to abide from the cradle to the grave in one spot, and was held to be only fulfilling his natural destiny when he toiled without hope for the privileged consumer. ' Why should villains eat beef or any dainty food?' asks one of the Norman minstrels. The social organization of every rural part of England rested on the manorial system, — a division of the land, for purposes of cultivation and internal order, into a number of large estates. The lord of the manor, instead of cultivating the estate through his own bailiff, at length found it more convenient and profitable to distribute it among tenants at a given rent, payable either in money or in produce. This habit of leasing afforded an oppor- tunity by which the aspiring among the tenantry could rise ta a position of apparent equality with their older masters. The growing use of the words ' farm ' and ' farmer ' from the twelfth century mark the initial steps of a peasant revolution. The 1 A peasant, one of the lowest class of feudal tenants; a bondman, and later a vile, wicked person. One of the many words which men have dragged downwards with them- Belves, and made more or less partakers of their own fall. SOCIAL ORGANIZATION — TOWNS. 65 tenants were subject to many exactions. The lord's bull and boar were free, under the conditions of tenure, to range at night through their standing corn and grass; and their sheep, — for they were permitted to acquire and hold property upon suffer- ance, — were always to be folded on their master's land. That the land was indifferently farmed we may well believe, when we learn that the highest rent was seven pence an acre, and the lowest a farthing. The rise of the farmer class was soon fol- lowed by that of the free laborer. Influences, indeed, had long been quietly freeing the peasantry from their local bondage. Prior to the Conquest, pure slavery was gradually disappearing before the efforts of the Church. Subsequently she urged eman- cipation, as a mark of piety, on all estates but her own. The fugitive bondsman found freedom in chartered towns, where a residence of one year and a day conferred franchise. The pomp of chivalry and the cost of incessant campaigns drained the royal and baronial purse; and the sale of freedom to the serf, or of exemption from services to the villain, afforded an easy and tempting mode of replenishment. Thus, by a solemn deed in 1302, for forty marks, 'Robert Crul and Matilda his wife, with all his offspring begotten and to be begotten, together with all his goods holden and to be holden,' was rendered 'forever free and quit from all yoke of servitude.' In the silent growth and elevation of the people, the boroughs led the way. The English town was originally a piece of the general country, where people, either for purposes of trade or protection, happened to cluster more closely than elsewhere. It was organized and governed in the same way as the manors around it, — justice was administered, its customary services ex- acted, its annual rent collected, by the officer of the king, noble, or ecclesiastic, to whose estate it belonged. Its inhabitants were bound to reap their lord's corn crops, to grind at his mill, to redeem their strayed cattle from his pound. Its dues paid and services rendered, however, property and person alike were se- cured against arbitrary seizure. The townsman's rights were rigidly defined by custom, and by custom were constantly widen- ing. By disuse or forgetfulness, services would disappear, while privileges and immunities were being for the most part purchased by hard bargaining. At Leicester, for instance, one of the chief 5 66 POEM ATI VE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. '■ aims of its burgesses was to regain their old English practice of compurgation, for which had been substituted the foreign trial by duel. Says a charter of the time: ' It chanced that two kinsmen . . . waged a duel about a certain piece of land, con- cerning which a dispute had arisen between them; and they fought from the first to the ninth liour, each conquering by turns. Then one of them llceing from the otlier till he came to a certain little pit, as he stood on the brink of the pit, and was about to fall therein, his kinsman said to him, " Take care of the pit, turn back lest thou shouldest fall into it." Thereat so much clamor and noise was made by the by-standers and those who were sitting around, tliat tlie Earl heard these clamors as far off as the castle, and he inquired of some how it was there was such a clamor, and answer was made to him that two kinsmen were fighting about a certain piece of ground, and that one had fled till he reached a certain little pit, and that, as he stood over the pit and was about to fall into it, the other warned him. Then the townsmen, being moved with pity, made a covenant with the Earl that they should give him three pence yearly for each house in the High Street that had a gable, on condition that he should grant to them that the twenty-four jurors who were in Leicester from ancient times should from that time forward discuss and decide all pleas they might have among themselves.' At the close of the thirteenth century, all the more important towns had secured freedom of trade, of justice, and of govern- ment. Their liberties and charters served as models and in- centives to the smaller communities struggling into existence. While the tendency at first seems to have been agricultural, at the Conquest it had become mercantile, and the controlling class was the merchant guild. Wealth and industry developed into dangerous rivalry a second class, composed of escaped serfs, of traders without lands, of the artisans and the poor. Without share in the right and regulation of trade, their struggles for power and privilege began in the reign of the first Henry, and their turbulent election of a London mayor in 1261 marks their final victory. In the tenth century, a man wished for two things, — not to be slain, and to have a good leather coat. The state of w-arfare still contends against the state of order. The right of aggrieved persons to interfere with the sober course of the law is acknowl- edged even by Alfred: , 'We also command that the man who knows his foe to be home-sitting, fight not before he demand justice of him. If he have such power that he can beset his foe and besiege him within, let him keep him within for seven days, and attack him not if he will remain within.' There are so many pagan Danes and other disreputable per- sons scattered up and down the land, that society must protect itself in a summary fashion: ' If a stranger or foreigner shall wander from the highway, and then neither call out nor sound a horn, he is to be taken for a thief and killed, or redeemed by fine.' LAWLESSNESS AND BRUTALITY. 67 When Henry II, succeeding the Norman kmg, ascended the throne in 1154, he found his kingdom a prey to horrible anarchy. The royal domains were surrounded on all sides by menacing fortresses garrisoned by resolute soldiers who recognized no authority but that of their chiefs. Within three years, eleven hundred of these castles, the haunts of robbers, were razed to the ground, while the peasants and townspeople applauded the work of destruction. He may be truly said to have initiated 'the rule of law.' Ten years after his accession the principle of pecuniary compensation for crime had, for the most part, been superseded by criminal laws, administered with stern severity. Yet outrage continues to be the constant theme of legislation. In the reign of the first Edward, every man was bound to hold himself in readiness, duly armed, for the king's service or the hue and cry which pursued the felon. An act for the suppression of crimes directs that, — 'For the greater security of the people, walled towns shall keep their gates shut from sun-set to sun-rise; and none shall lodge all night in their suburbs, unless his host shall answer for him. All towns shall be kept as in times past, with a watch all night at each gate, with a number of men.' Another, after reciting the commission of robberies, murders, and riots, in the city of London, enjoins: ' That none be found in the streets, either with spear or buckler, after the curfew-bell rings out, except they be great lords, or other persons of note ; also, that no tavern, either for wine or ale, be kept open after that hour on forfeiture of forty pence.' Once, during this reign, a band of lesser nobles disguise their way into a great merchant fair; fire every booth, rob and slaugh- ter the merchants, and carry the booty off to ships lying in wait. Molten streams of silver and gold, says the tale of horror, flowed down the gutters to the sea. Lawless companies of club-men maintain themselves by general violence, aid the country nobles in their feuds, wrest money and goods from the tradesmen. Under a show of courtesy the bloodthirsty instinct breaks out. Richard of the Lion-heart has a lion's appetite. LTnder the walls of Acre he wants some pork. There being none to be had, a young Saracen is killed, cooked, salted, and served him. He eats it with a relish, and desires to see the head of the pig. The cook produces it trembling, the king laughs, and says the army, having provisions so convenient, has ' nothing to fear from famine. The town taken, he has thirty of the most noble prisoners beheaded, 68 POEMATIVE PEKIOD — THE LITERATURE. bids his cook boil the heads and serve one to each of the ambas- sadors who came to sue for their pardon. Thereupon the sixty thousand prisoners are led into the plain for execution. Theodore, who founded the English Church, denied Christian burial to the kidnapper, and prohibited the sale of children by their parents after the age of seven. The murder of a slave, though no crime in the eye of the State, became a sin for which penance was due to the Church. Manumission became frequent in wills, as a boon to the souls of the dead. Usually the slave was set free before the altar; sometimes at the spot where four roads met, and there bidden go whither he would. In the more solemn form, his master took him by the hand in full shire meeting, showed him the open road and door, and gave him the lance and sword of the freeman. A hundred years after the prohibition, in the ninth century, of the slave-traffic from English ports, men and women are said to have been bought in all parts of England and carried to Ireland for sale. 'You might,' savs a chronicler, 'have seen with sorrow long files of young people of both sexes and of the greatest beauty bound with ropes and daily exposed for sale. . . . They sold in this manner as slaves their own children.' Not till the reign of Henry II was it finally sup- pressed in its last stronghold, the port of Bristol. A law of 1285, relating to highways, directs: ' That those ways shall be enlarged where bushes, woods, or dykes be, where men may lurk, so that there be neither dyke, tree, nor bush within two hundred feet on each side of those roads, great trees excepted.' A provision which illustrates at once the social and physical con- dition of the country at the time. The roads are narrow — from four to eight feet — and of difficult passage. A bishop, journey- ing to London, is obliged to rest his beasts of burden on alternate days of travel. Returning, he accomplishes the first day only five miles. Travellers ride on horseback, and convey their culin- ary wares or merchandise in pack-saddles. The dead, the invalid, ladies of rank, are carried in a horse-litter, borne by horses and mules, sometimes by men. Carts are the carriages of the nobil- ity, distinguished from the common description by ornament. Even that of King John is springless, — the body rests upon the axletree, the wheels are cut from solid pieces of circular wood, covered ornamentally, and bound round with a thick wooden ARCHITECTUKE — THE CAPITALIST. 69 tire. For obvious reasons, a solitary journey in these early days will be a matter of grave anxiety. Friends setting out from the same place, or strangers becoming acquainted upon the road, join in parties for mutual protection and cheer through the senii- desert. The houses of the people in the thirteenth century were gen- erally of one story, consisting of a hall and a bed-chamber. The first was kitchen, dining-room, reception-room, as well as sleeping apartment for strangers and visitors indiscriminately; the second was the resort of the female portion of the household. The door opened outward, and was left open, — a sign of hospitality, which even in turbulent times was almost boundless between those who had established friendly relations. The roof, covered with oval tiles, exhibited two ornamental points. Dwellings of the opulent sometimes had upper floors, reached by an external staircase. The upper part was considered the place of greatest security, as it could be entered only by one door, which was approached by a, flight of steps, and hence was more readily defended. The hall was generally the whole height of the house. Adjacent to it was the stable, in which the servants, if any, were well con- tent to lodge. Palaces and manor-houses had essentially the same arrangement, — a private room for the lord, and the great hall which was the usual living apartment for the whole family, and in which retainers and guests, often to the number of three or four hundred, were kennelled, the floor being strewn with dry rushes in winter, and with hay or straw in summer. Already the Jew was a capitalist, — the only one in Europe. He had followed William from Normandy. Without citizenship, absolutely at the king's mercy, he was the engine of finance; and, as such, compelled the kingly regard. Castle and cathe- dral alike owed their existence to his loans. His wealth — wrung from him by torture when mild entreaty failed — filled the royal exchequer at the outbreak of war or revolt. The 'Jews' Houses' were almost the first of stone, which superseded the mere hovels of the English burghers. John, having wrested from them a sum equal to a year's revenue, might suffer none to plunder them save himself. Hated by the people, persecuted at last by the law, forbidden to appear in the street without the colored tablet which distinguished the race, their long agony 70 FOKMATIVE PEKIOD — THE LITERATURE. ended in their expulsion from the realm by Edward. Of the sixteen thousand who preferred exile to apostasy, many were wrecked, others robbed and flung overboard. From that time till their restoration by Cromwell, no Jew touched English soil. Under the worst of rulers it is 'Merry England.' Of indoor amusements, the most attractive to high and low is gambling. So universal was the passion in the twelfth century, that in the Crusades the kings of France and England made the most stringent regulations to restrict it. No man in the army was to play for money, except the knights and the clergy; nor were the latter to lose more than twenty shillings in one day. The lower orders who should be found playing without the permis- sion and supervision of their masters, were to be whipped; and, if mariners, were to be plunged into the sea on three successive mornings. Love of hardy sports, so characteristic of the Eng- lish, is not of modern growth. It was one of the most impor- tant parts of popular education seven centuries ago. Wrestling was the national pastime. The sturdy yeoman wrestled for prizes, — a ram or a bull, a ring or a pipe of wine. Foot-ball was the favorite game. In the Easter holidays they had river tournaments. In the summer, the youths exercised themselves in leaping, archery, stone-throwing, slinging javelins, and fight- ing with bucklers. The sword-dance of the Saxons, descending to their successors, held an honored place among popular sports. The acrobat went about to market and fair, circling knives and balls adroitly through his hands, and the 'musical girls' danced before knight and peasant as the daughter of Herodias before Herod, A very ancient and popular game was that of throwing a peculiar stick at cocks. It was practised especially by school- boys. Three origins of it have been given: first, that in the Danish wars, the Saxons failed to surprise a certain city in con- sequence of the crowing of cocks, and had therefore a great hatred of that bird; second, that the cocks were special repre- sentatives of Frenchmen, with whom the English were constantly at war; third, that they were connected with Peter's denial of Christ. Two diversions of the Middle Ages, however, were a pride and ornament, the theme of song, the object of law, ^nd the business of life, — hunting and hawking. A knight seldom PLEASURES — SUPERSTITIONS. 71 stirred from his house without a falcon ' on his wrist or a grey- hound at his feet. Into these pastimes the clergy rushed with an irrepressible eagerness. To the country revel came the taborer, the bagpiper, and the minstrel — a privileged wanderer. Music, with its immemorial talismanic power to charm, seems always to have ranked as a favorite accomplishment. The com- plaint of a Scotch abbot in 1160 suggests rather amusingly the innovations it was making in the devotional customs of the Church : ' Since all types and figures are now ceased, why so many organs and cymbals in our churches? Why, I say, that terrible blowing of bellows which rather imitates noise of thunder than the sweet harmony of voice?' Again: ' One restrains his breath, another breaks his breath, and a third unaccountably dilates his voice. Sometimes (I blush to say it) they fall and quiver like the neighing of horses ; at other times they look like persons in the agonies of death; their eyes roll; their shoulders are moved upwards and downwards; and their fingers dance to every note.' Intellectually, the real character of these times is to be judged by their multitude of superstitions. On the Continent, in particu- lar, credulity was habitual and universal. The west of Britain was believed to be inhabited by the souls of the dead. In a lake in Munster, Ireland, there were two islands. Into the first, death could never enter; but age, disease, and weariness wrought upon the inhabitants till they grew tired of their immortality, and learned to look upon the second as a haven of repose; they launched their barks upon its dark waters, touched its shore, and were at rest. The three companions of St. Colman were a cock, which announced the hour of devotion; a mouse, which bit the ear of the drowsy saint till he rose; and a fly, which, if in the course of his studies his thoughts wandered, or he was called away, alighted on the line where he had left off, and kept the place. In the Church of St. Sabina at Rome was long shown a ponderous stone which the devil had flung at St, Dominic, vainly hoping to crush a head that was shielded by the guardian angel. The Gospel of St. John suspended around the neck, a rosary, a relic of Christ or of a saint, — any of the thousand talis- mans distributed among the faithful, would baffle the utmost efforts of diabolical malice. The more terrible phenomena of nature, unmoved by exorcisms and sprinklings, were invariably > A bird of great destructive power, trained to the pursuit of other birds. 72 PORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE, attributed to the intervention of spirits. Such phenomena were by the clergy frequently identified with acts of rebellion against themselves. In the tenth century, the opinion everywhere pre- vailed that the end of the world was approaching. Many charters begin with these words: 'As the world is now drawing to its close.' An army was so terrified by a solar eclipse, which it conceived to announce this consummation, as to disperse hastily on all sides. More than once the apparition of a comet filled Europe with terror. In the shadows of the universal ignorance, nothing was too absurd for belief and practice. In France, ani- mals were accused of high crimes and misdemeanors, tried, and acquitted or convicted, with all the solemnity of law. The wild were referred to ecclesiastical tribunals; the domestic to the civil. In 1120, a French bishop pronounced an injunction against the caterpillars and field-mice for the ravages they made on the crops. If after three days' notice the condemned did not 'wither off the face of the earth,' they were solemnly anathematized. If, instead, they became perversely more numerous and destructive, the lawyers ascribed it, not to any injustice of the sentence nor to the inefficiency of the court, but to the machinations of Satan. From the thirteenth century to the sixteenth, there are not a few records of proceedings in criminal courts against hogs for devouring children. About the twelfth century, the brood of superstitions, which had once consisted for the most part in wild legends of fairies, mermaids, giants, dragons, conflicts in which the Devil took a prominent part but was always defeated, or illustrations of the boundless efficacy of some charm or relic, — began to assume a darker hue, and the ages of religious terrorism commenced. Never was the sense of Satanic power and presence more pro- found and universal. In Christian art, the aspect of Christ became less eno-aa-insr; that of Satan more formidable: the Good Shepherd disappeared, the miracles of mercy declined, and were replaced by the details of the Passion and the horrors of the Last Judgment. Now it was that the modern conception of a witch — namely, a woman in compact with Satan, who could exercise the miraculous gift at pleasure, and who at night was transported through the air to the Sabbath, where she paid her homage to the Evil One — first appeared. Owing in part to its ENGLISH CHURCH. 73 insular position, in part to the intense political life which from the earliest period animated its people, there was formed in England a self-reliant type of character which was essentially distinct from that common in Europe, averse to the more depress- ing aspect of religion, and less subject to its morbid fears. In consecjuence, the darker superstitions which prevailed on the Continent, and which were to act so tragically on the imagina- tions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, had not here arisen. Nevertheless, as will presently appear in our sketch of historical method, there existed a condition of thought so far removed from that of the present day as to be scarcely conceivable. It will show itself in literature as a controlling love of the marvel- lous; in religion, as the intellectual basis of witchcraft. Religion. — When the island was yet without political unity, a Greek monk, sent from Rome, organized an episcopate, divided the land into parishes representing the different provinces of its disunited state, linked them all to Canterbury as ecclesiastical centre, and thus founded the Church of England. In venera- tion of the source of light, Anglo-Saxons began pilgrimages to the 'Eternal City,' in the hope that, dying there, a more ready acceptance would be accorded them by the saints in Heaven. In gratitude they established a tax, called St. Peter's penny, for the relief of pilgrims and the education of the clergy. The claims of the Roman See, based as here upon filial regard, were to become a tremendous peril alike to monarch and to subject. As Rome was the queen of cities, so, as the chief seat of Christianity, her Church was naturally held to be the first of Churches, and her bishop first of bishops — the Pope.' When the capital was transferred to Constantinople, and the Vandals had dissolved the framework of Roman society, he gradually became the chief man in Italy, indeed in the whole West. But wealth is dangerous to simplicity, and power to moderation. From being a father and a counsellor merely, forgetting humility, he became a schemer and a ruler. Love of souls was gradually supplanted by love of empire. The evil was possible to the sys- tem. Each country in Christendom was mapped out into an all- embracing territorial organization, in which the priest was under 1 Meaning father, -papa, Greek TraTra;. 74 PORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. the bishop, he under the archbishop, and the archbishop in turn responsible to the pope, who thus held in his hand the converging reins of ecclesiastical control. While the prelates, each within his respective sphere, were encroaching little by little upon the laity, the Church of Rome was forming and maturing her plans to enthrall both the national churches and the temjjoral govern- ments. A prime condition of conquest is a replete exchequer. Covetousness was characteristic. Gifts by the rich on assuming the cowl, by some before entering upon military expeditions, bequests by many in the terrors of dissolution; the commutation for money of penance imposed upon repentant offenders, — were a few of the various sources of her revenue. No atonement, she taught, could be so acceptable to Heaven as liberal donations to its earthly delegates. The rich widow was surrounded by a swarm of clerical sycophants who addressed her in terms of endearment and, under the guise of piety, lay in wait for a legacy. A special place, it was said, was reserved in purgatory for those who had been slow in paying their tithes. A man who in a contested election for the popedom had supported the wrong candidate, was placed after death in boiling water. The bereft widow, in the first dark hour of anguish, was told that he who was dearer to her than all the world besides, was now writhing in the flames that encircled him, and could be relieved only by a pecuniary present. Masterly adaptation of means to ends. The end of the twelfth century saw the Church at the zenith of terri- torial possession. She enjoyed nearly one-half of England, and a still greater portion in some countries of the Continent. To her John solemnly resigned his crown, and humbly received it as a fief. But landed acquisitions scarcely contributed so much to her greatness as ecclesiastical jurisdiction and immunity. Her spiritual court, claiming a loftier origin than the civil, acquired absolute exemption from secular authority, and ended by usurp- ing almost the whole administration of justice. Kings were expected to obtain its sanction as a security to their thrones, and to hold those thrones by compliance with its demands. It could try citizens, but ecclesiastics were amenable to it only. The mainspring of her machinery was excommunication and interdict. The former was equivalent to outlawry. The victim was shunned, as one infected with the leprosy, by his servants, his friends, his CHURCH OF ROME — MONASTICISM. 75 family. Two attendants only remained with an excommunicated king of France, and these threw all the meats that passed his table into the fire. By the latter — inflicted perhaps to revenge a wounded pride — a county or a kingdom was under suspension of religious offices; churches were closed, bells silent, and the dead unburied. She also derived material support from the mul- titudinous monks, who, in return for extensive favors, vied with each other in magnifying the papal supremacy. The thirteenth century was the noonday of her predominance. Rome was once more the Niobe of nations; and kings, as of old, paid her homage. Vast sums from England flowed into her treasury, carried by pilgrims; by suitors with appeals in all manner of disputes; by prelates going thither for consecration and for the confirmation of their elections; by applicants for church preferment, which was almost exclusively at the Pope's disposal, and must be bought; by Italian priests who, pasturing on the richest bene- fices, drew an annual sum far exceeding the royal revenue. In 1300, Boniface VIII, straining to a higher pitch the despotic pretensions of former pontiffs, is said to have appeared at a festival dressed in imperial habits, with two swords borne before him, emblems of his temporal as well as spiritual sovereignty over the earth. As the Church rose in splendor, she sank in vice. All her institutions had been noble in their first years, but success had ruined them. The monastic movement, inspired by a strong religious motive, tended to soften every sentiment of pride, to repress all worldly desires, to make preeminent the practice of charity, to give humility a foremost place in the hierarchy of virtues. Every monastery was a focus which radiated benevo- lence. By the monk, savage nobles were overawed, the poor pro- tected, wayfarers comforted. Legend tells how St. Christopher planted himself, with his little boat, by a bridgeless stream, to ferry over travellers. Not without reward, for once, embarking on a very stormy and dangerous night, at the voice of distress, he received Christ. When hideous leprosy extended its ravages over Europe, while the minds of men were filled with terror by its contagion and supposed supernatural character, monks flocked in multitudes to serve in the hospitals. Sometimes, the legends say, the leper was in a moment transfigured, and he who came in mercy to the 76 FOEMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. most loathsome of mortals, found himself in the presence of his" Lord. As organized later by St. Benedict, the monastery was the asylmn of peaceful industry, the refuge of the flying peasant, the retreat of the timid, the abode of the princely, the portal to knowledge and dignity for the inquisitive and ambitious, a field of civilizing activity to the ardent and philanthropic, the symbol of moral power in an age of turbulence and war, the fountain whence issued far and wide a constant stream of missionaries, — often the nucleus of a city, where had been gigantic forests and inhos- pitable marshes. In the tenth century, when the English Church, inundated by the Danes, had fallen into worldliness and ignorance, Dunstan the reformer saw in vision a tree of wondrous height stretching its branches over Britain, its boughs laden with count- less cowls. In the revival of a stricter monasticism, he fancied, lay the remedy for Church abuses. The clergy were displaced by monks, bound by vows to a life of celibacy and religious exercise. Freed ere long by the popes from the control of the bishops, they speedily became ascendant in the Church, and so continued till the Reformation. Parish endowments were trans- ferred to monasteries, of which Dunstan himself established forty- eight, setting an example widely followed in every quarter of the land. Pious, learned, and energetic as were the prelates of Will- iam's appointment, they were not English. In language, manner, and sympathy, they were thus severed from the lower priesthood and the people; and the whole influence of the Church was for the moment paralyzed. In the twelfth century a new spirit of devotion woke the slumber of the religious houses, and changed the aspect of town and country. Everywhere men banded them- selves together for prayer, hermits flocked to the woods, noble and churl welcomed the austere Cistercians, a reformed offshoot of the Benedictine order. Their rule was one of the most severe mortification and self-denial. Their lives were spent in labor and prayer, and their one frugal daily meal was eaten in silence. They humbly asked for grants of land in the most solitary places, where they could meditate in retirement, amidst desolate moors and the wild gorges of inaccessible mountains. A hundred years later, when the administration of forms had become the sole occupation of the clergy, came the Friars, — Dominicans and Franciscans, to win back the public esteem and reanimate a waning religion. THE MENDICANT FRIARS. 7T They called the wind their brother, the water their sister, and poverty their bride. Incapable by the principle of their foundation of possessing estates, they subsisted on alms and pious remunera- tions. ' You need no little mountains to lift your heads to heaven,' was the scornful reply of Francis to a request for pil- lows. Only the sick went shod. An Oxford Friar found a pair of shoes one morning, and wore them. At night he dreamed that robbers leaped on him, with shouts of 'Kill, kill ! ' 'I am a Friar,' shrieked the terror-stricken brother. 'You lie,' was the instant answer, 'for you go shod.' In disproof he lifted up his foot, saw the shoe, and in an agony of repentance flung the pair out of the window. Says a contemporary: 'The Lord added, not so much a new order, as renewed the old, raised the fallen, and revived religion, now almost dead, in the evening of the world, hastening to its end, in the near time of the Son of Perdition. . . . They have no monasteries or churches, no fields, or vines, or beasts, or houses, or lands, or even where they may lay their head. They wear no furs or linen, only woolen gowns with a hood; no head-coverings, or cloaks, or mantles, or any other garments have they. If any one invite them, they eat and drink what is set before them. If any one, in charity, give them anything, they keep nothing of it to the morrow.' Self-sacrificing love, for Christ, was the sum of their lives, food and shelter their reward. The recluse of the cloister was ex- changed for the preacher. As the older orders had chosen the country, the Friars chose the town. In frocks of serge and girdles of rope, they wandered bare-foot on errands of salvation, fixed themselves in haunts where fever and pestilence festered, in huts of mud and timber mean as the huts around them. To the burgher and artisan, who had heard the mass-priest in an unknown tongue, spelling out what instruction they might from gorgeous ritual and graven wall, their preaching, fluent and famil- iar, was a wonder and a delight. Not deviating from the current faith, they professed rather to teach it in greater purity, while they imputed supineness and debasement to the secular clergy. They addressed the crowd in the public streets, with fervid appeal, rough wit, or telling anecdote, and administered the communion on a portable altar, carrying the multitude by their enthusiasm and novelty. Disinterested sincerity is at all times attractive to the popular heart, and, when associated with the hopes and fears of life, is irresistible. These Methodists started a revolution. There will be another such five hundred years hence. Had they been as faithful to their mission as the Wesleys to theirs, it had 78 FOKMATIVE PEEIOD — THE LITEEATURE. been well. Seeing their power to move the masses, the pontiffs accumulated privileges upon them. The bishops were ordered to secure them a hearty reception. They were exempted from epis- copal supervision; were permitted to preach or hear confessions without leave of the ordinary, to accept legacies, to inter any who desired it in their enclosure. The door was thus open to wealth, and wealth brought ruin. Even so early as 1243, Matthew Paris writes of them: 'It is only twenty-four years since they built their first houses in England, and now they raise buildings like palaces, and show their boundless wealth by making them daily more sumptuous, with great rooms and lofty ceilings, impudently transgressing the vows of poverty wliich are the very basis of their order. If a great or rich man is like to die, they take care to crowd in, to the injury and slight of the clergy, that they may hunt up money, extort confessions, and make secret wills, always seeking the good of their order, as their one end. They have got it believed that no one can hope to be saved if he do not follow the Dominicans or Franciscans. They are restless in trying to get privileges; to get the ear of kings and princes, to be chamberlains, treasurers, bridesmen, and match-makers, and agents of papal extortions. In their preaching, they either flatter or abuse without bounds, or reveal confessions, or gabble nonsense.' So had it ever been, — so, under a similar constitution, must it ever be. Vast societies living in enforced celibacy, exercising an unbounded influence, and possessing enormous riches, inevit- ably become hot-beds of corruption, when the zeal that created them expires. Monk, friar, clergy, pope, and Church reached ultimately one level. 'You are a worthy man, though you be a priest,' says a female speaker in a poem of the times. A bishop of the thirteenth century, while consecrating a church, was ad- dressed by the devil, who stood behind the altar in a pontifical vestment: 'Cease from consecrating the church; for it pertaineth to my jurisdiction, since it is built from the fruits of usuries and robberies.' To give money to the priests was the chief article of the moral code, the surest means of atoning for crime and gaining Paradise. The ecclesiastical courts were perennial foun- tains, feeding the ecclesiastical coffers. Instituted to visit with temporal penalties the breach of the moral law, they were imple- ments of mischief, a public scandal and oppression, when saints had ceased to wield them. So corrupt were both priests and monks, that an English bishop had to forbid those of his diocese from ' haunting taverns, gambling, or drinking, and from rioting or debauchery.' The common degeneracy was the normal result of the profound corruption at the centre of the Church — the See of Rome. Says Dante, addressing the popes: DISAFFECTION OF THE LAITY. 79 'Of gold and silver ye have made your god; DifEering wherein from an idolater But that he worships one, a hundred ye?' Four of them, of his own day, he locates in hell, and makes the last say: ' Under my head are dragged The rest, my predecessors in the guilt Of simony.i Stretched at their lengtli they lie.' To the ambition of the Papacy a spirit of resistance, especially in England, had not been wanting. William the Conqueror, asserting the royal supremacy, had sternly refused to do fealty for his throne, and exacted homage from bishops as from barons. While the effect of his policy had been to weld the English Church more firmly with Rome — a dependence from which it had hitherto been preserved by its insular position — he had vigorously maintained the subjection of the ecclesiastical to the civil. Henry II, vindicating the authority of the state, had re- quired that every priest degraded for his misdeeds should be given up to the civil tribunals. Edward I had compelled the clergy to pay taxes and forbidden bequests to any religious bodies without the king's license. Pillaged by the pope upon every slight pretence, without law and without redress, chafed by the immunities of the mendicant orders, the clergy came to regard their once paternal monarch as an arbitrary oppressor. The venality and avarice of pope, clergy, and mendicants, were sapping the ancient reverence of the people for each. Among the laity, a spirit of inveterate hatred had grown up, not only towards the papal tyranny, but the whole ecclesiastical system. It was complained that English money was pouring into Rome; that the best livings were given by the Roman See to non-resi- dent strangers; that the clergy, being judged only by the clergy, abandoned themselves to their vices, and abused their state of immunity. In the first years of the reign of Henry III, a hundred murders were committed by priests then alive. Walter Map, a bright man of the world, with a high purpose in his life, had personified the prevalent corruption under the assumed name of a gluttonous dignitary, — Bishop Golias,^ who confesses the levity of his mind, its lustful desires; recalls the tavern he has never scorned, nor will till the angels sing his requiem; images ^Buying or selling ecclesiastical preferment. "From gula, the gullet. 80 PORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. the heavens opening upon him as he lies intoxicated, too weak to hold the wine cup he has put to his lips, so dying in his shame: 'What I set before me is to die in a tavern; let there be wine put to my mouth when I am dying, that the choirs of the angels when they come may say, "The grace of God be on this bibber ! " ' Golias' poetry became a fashion, and the earnest man of genius had plenty of co-laborers. We must think of these things if we would understand the deep union that subsists between literature and religion, if we would comprehend the signs of the times and the voices of the future, or interpret the countless crowd of quaint and often beautiful legends which, while they witness to the activity of the time, reveal, better than decrees of councils, what was real- ized in the imagination or enshrined in the heart. We must think of them, too, if we would understand that grand awakening of reason and conscience which is the Refor- mation. Every great change has its root in the soul, long pre- paring, far back in the national soil. Already have we had premonitory throes of the moral earthquake. We shall see the storm gather and pass, once and again, without breaking. The discontent will spread. The welling spring, despite the efforts to repress it, will bubble and leap, till its surplus overflows, bursting asunder its constraint. While men of low birth and low estate are stealing by night along the lanes and alleys of London, carrying some dear treasure of books at the peril of their lives, the finger that crawls around the dial plate will touch the hour, and the mighty fabric of iniquity will be shivered into ruins. But amid the sins and failings of the Church, let us not for- get the priceless blessings she bestowed upon mankind. The inundations of barbarian invasion left her a virgin soil, and made her for a long period the chief and indeed the sole centre of civilization, — the one mighty witness for light in an age of dark- ness, for order in an age of lawlessness, for personal holiness in an epoch of licentious rage. She suppressed the bloody and imbruting games of the amphi- theatre, discouraged the enslavement of prisoners, redeemed cap- tives from servitude, established slowly the international prin- ciple that no Christian prisoners should be reduced to slavery; REDEEMIKG EXCELLENCES. 81 created a new warrior ideal, — the ideal knight of the Crusades and chivalry, wedding the Christian virtues of humility and ten- derness with the natural graces of courtesy and strength, rarely or never perfectly realized, yet the type and model of warlike excellence to which many generations aspired. She imparted a moral dignity to the servile class, by intro- ducing into the ideal type of morals the servile virtues of humil- ity, obedience, gentleness, patience, resignation; and by associ- ating poverty and labor with the monastic life so profoundly revered. When men, awed and attracted by reports of the sanctity and miracles of some illustrious saint, made pilgrimages to behold him, and found him in peasant's garb, with a scythe on his shoulder, sharing and superintending the work of the farm, or sitting in a small attic mending lamps, they could hardly fail to return with an increased sense of the dignity of toil. By inclining the moral type to the servile position, she gave an unexampled impetus to the movement of enfranchisement. The multitude of slaves who embraced the new faith was one of the reproaches of the Pagans. The first and grandest edifice of Byzantine architecture in Italy was dedicated by Justinian to the memory of a martyred slave. Manumission, though not pro- claimed a matter of duty or necessity, was always regarded as one of the most acceptable expiations of sin. Clergy and laity freed their slaves as an act of piety. It became customary to do so on occasions of national or personal thanksgiving, on recovery from sickness, on the birth of a child, at the hour of death, in testamentary bequests. In the thirteenth century, when there were no slaves to emancipate in France, caged pigeons were released on ecclesiastical festivals, in memory of the ancient charity, and that prisoners might still be freed in the name of Christ. None of her achievements are more truly great than those she effected in the sphere of charity. For the first time in history, she inspired thousands to devote their entire lives, through sacri- fice and danger, to the single object of assuaging the sufferings of humanity. Uniting the idea of supreme goodness with that of active and constant benevolence, she covered the globe with institutions of mercy unknown to pagan Rome and Greece. Through disastrous eclipse and wintry night, we may trace the 6 82 FOEMATIVE PEKIOD — THE LITERATURE. subduing influence of her spell, blending strangely with everj excess of violence and every outburst of superstition. Of an Irish chieftain — the most ferocious that ever defied the English power — it is related, amid a legion of horrible crimes, that, 'sit- ting at meat, before he put one morsel into his mouth, he would slice a portion above the daily alms, and send it to some beggar at the gate, saying it was meet to serve Christ first.' The monastic bodies that everywhere arose, were an invalu- able counterpoise to military violence; pioneers in most forms of peaceful labor; green spots in a wilderness of rapine and tumult, . where the feeble and persecuted could find refuge. As secure repositories for books, when libraries were almost unknown, they bridged the chaos of the Middle Ages, and linked the two periods of ancient and modern civilization. The Church peopled the imagination with forms of tender beauty and gentle pathos, which — more than any dogmatic teach- ing — softened and transformed the character, till it learned to realize the sanctity of weakness and the majesty of compassion. The lowliness and sorrow of her Founder, the grace of His person, the agonies of Gethsemane or of Calvary, the gentleness of the Virgin Mother, are the pictures which, for eighteen hundred years, have inspired the hearts of men with an impassioned love, formed the governing ideals of the rudest and most ignorant, furnished the highest patterns of virtue and the strongest incentives to its practice. Here, in the character and example of the crucified Nazarene, Christianity finds an enduring principle of regenera- tion, by which, though shrouded by disastrous eclipse or dimmed by passing mist, her light is never quenched, — by which, when luxury, ambition, worldliness and vice have wounded her well- nigh to death, she has renewed her strength like the eagle, has run and not been weary, has walked and not been faint. So has her mightiest apology, from age to age, been lives of holiness and fidelity; and never, though she seemed to be dying, has she lacked such. Side by side with those who lived and schemed in ecclesiastical politics as their chosen element, were men to whom worldly honors were indifferent, — to whose meekness and self- denial, more than to diadem, tiara, sword, or logic, she owes her empire over the human heart. Liearning. — From the age of Augustus, Latin and Greek LOW STATES OF LEARISTING. 83 learning which we call ancient or classical, sensibly declined, first by organic decay; and its downfall, begun by disease, was acceler- ated by violence. Libraries were destroyed, schools closed, and intellectual energy of a secular kind almost ceased, in the irrup- tion of the Northern barbarians, who gloried in their original rudeness, and viewed with disdain arts that had neither preserved their cultivators from degeneracy nor raised them from servitude. A collateral cause of this prostration was the neglect, by the Christian Church, of Pagan literature. For the most part, the study of the Latin classics was positively discouraged. The writers, it was believed, were burning in hell. When a monk, under the discipline of silence, desired to ask for Virgil, Horace, or other Gentile author, he was wont to signify his wish by scratching his ear like a dog, to which animal it was thought the Pagans might properly be compared. The human intellect, sinking deeper every age into stupidity and superstition, reached its lowest point of depression about the middle of the eleventh century. On the survey of society, no circumstance is so prominent as the depth of ignorance in which it was immersed. It was rare for a layman, of whatever rank, to know how to sign his name. Contracts were made verbally. The royal charters, instead of the names of the kings, sometimes exhibit their mark — the cross. In England, Alfred declares that he could not recollect a single priest who, at his accession, under- stood the common prayers, or could render a Latin sentence into English. The darkness which reigned far and wide was rendered un- avoidable, among other causes, by the scarcity of books, which — as they were in manuscript form, and written or copied with cost, labor, and delay — could be procured only at an immense price. In 855, a French abbot sent two of his monks to the Pope, to beg a copy of Cicero's De Oratore, of Quintilian's Insti- tutes, and some others; 'for, although we have part of these books, yet there is no whole or complete copy of them in all France.' In Spain at the beginning of the tenth century one and the same copy of the Bible often served different monas- teries. In 1299, the bishop of Winchester, borrowing a copy of the Bible with marginal notes, gives a solemn bond for due return of the loan. K book donated to a religious house was 84 POKMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. believed to merit eternal salvation, and was offered on the altar with great ceremony. Sometimes a book was given to a private party, with the reservation, 'Pray for my soul.' When a book was bought, persons of consequence and character were assem- bled to make formal record that they were present on the occa- sion. It was common to lend money on the deposit of a book. In the universities were chests for the reception of books so deposited. Bede records that Benedict sold a volume to his sovereign Alfred for eight hides of land — about eight hundred acres. Moreover, when Latin ceased to be a living tongue, the whole treasury of knowledge was locked up from the eyes of the peo- ple. In this linguistic corpse were sealed the Scriptures, the liturgy, and the teachings of the Christian Fathers, and there they were tenaciously held. Through this venerable medium, as a learned language, the Church of Rome stood in an attitude strictly European, enabled to maintain a general international relation. Its prevalence was the condition of her unity, and therefore of her power. Thus, intent upon her own emoluments and temporalities, by guarding from the unlearned vulgar this key to erudition, she was yet the sole hope for literature. Learn- ing was confined almost wholly to the ecclesiastical order. Manu- scripts found secure repositories in the abbeys, which floated through the storms of war and conquest, like the Ark upon the waves of the flood; in the midst of violence remaining inviolate, through the awful reverence which surrounded them. The mon- astery became the one sphere of intellectual labor. Here with no craving for human fame, Avere composed the sermons and de- fences of mediteval faith, and the voluminous Lives of Saints — heroic patterns of excellence which each Christian Avithin his own limits was endeavoring to realize. Here the monkish scholar, his- hopes fixed upon the pardon of his sins and the rewards of the unseen life, pursued his studies in a spirit which has now almost faded from the world. In the deep calm and chilly barrenness of the Scriptorium — what the printing-ofiice is to us — might be seen the sombre figures of the tonsured workmen, whose task it was, seated at the rude desks or tables, to copy and adorn, letter by letter, point by point, the precious manuscripts that filled the wooden chests ranged around the naked stone walls. With pen- GKADUAL EENEWAL — UNIVERSITIES. 85 cil of hair, pen of reed or quill, and ink of many-hued splendors, the artist laid on colors and produced designs which for richness and beauty command our admiration; on papyrus or parchment, writing the headings in bright red; forming the initial letter of a chapter with a brilliant tracery, in scarlet and gold and blue lace-work, of intermingled flowers and birds; tracing in black the thick perpendicular strokes of the text-hand; then when the book is finished — which may be the work of years if the decorar- tions are minute and profuse, painting the title in scarlet, with the name of the copyist in colors at the foot of the last page, and a marginal embroidery of angelic and human figures, birds, beasts and fishes, flowers, shells and leaves. But as in the natural world every night brightens into a new morning, so in the spiritual the sun of science, having reached its nadir of decline, begins its reascension to the zenith, throwing out many premonitory gleams of light ere the dawn reddens into the lustre of day. The leading circumstances in the gradual renewal of European thought are the study of civil law, presaging progress in the sci- ence of government; the development of modern languages, with its taste for poetry and its swarm of lay poets; the cultivation, in the twelfth century, of Latin classics, quotations from which, how- ever, during the Dark Ages, were hardly to be called unusual; the partial restoration of Greek literature — mathematical, physi- cal, and metaphysical, which, with the exception of scattered instances where some ' petty patristic treatise' or later commenta- tor on Aristotle was rendered into Latin, had been almost entirely forgotten within the pale of the Romish Church, but now in the eleventh century, imported across the Pyrenees into France from the Arab conquerors of Spain, glimmered with pulsation of — 'That earlier dawn Whose glimpses are again withdrawn, As if the morn had waked, and then Shut close her lids of light again.' Lastly, as the special mark of that new fervor of study which sprang up in the West from its contact with the more civilized East, — the institution of universities. From an early period, in England as well as elsewhere, there were schools, though in general confined to the cathedrals and monasteries, and designed exclusively for religious purposes. 86 FOEMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. Nor is it to be presumed that the laity, though excluded, as a rule, from the benefits of a liberal training, were left wholly with- out the means of obtaining some elementary instruction. Canter- bury, Yarrow, and York commemorate the golden age of Old English scholarship. Alcuin was called from the last to the court of Charlemagne, to assist him in the educational reform of France. In a letter to his patron he enumerates, in the fantastic rhetoric of the period, the branches in which he instructed his pupils at Paris: 'To some I administer the honey of the sacred writings ; others I try to inebriate with the wine of the ancient classics. I begin the nourishment of some with the apples of grammatical subtlety. I strive to illuminate many by the arrangement of the stars, as from the painted roof of a lofty palace.' That is, Grcmunar, Greek and Latin, Astronomy and Theology. Here is a specimen of the literary conversations of the palace school: 'What is writing? — The guardian of History. What is speech? — The interpreter of the soul. What is it that gives birth to speech? — The tongue. What is the tongue? — The whip of the air. What is air? — The preserver of life. What is life? — A joy for the happy, a pain for the miserable, the expectation of death. What is death? — An inevi- table event, an uncertain voyage, a subject of tears for the living, the confirmation of testaments, the robber of men. . . . What is heaven? — Amoving sphere, an immense vault. What is light? — The torch of all things. What is the day? — A call to labor. What is the sun?— The splendor of the universe, the beauty of the firmament, the grace of nature, the glory of the day, the distributor of the hours. . . . What is friendship? — The similarity of souls. . . . 'As you are a youth of good disposition, and endowed with natural capacity, I will put to you several other unusual questions: endeavor to solve them. — I will do my best; if I make mistakes, you must correct them. I shall do as you desire. Some one who is unknown to me has conversed with me, having no tongue and no voice ; he was not before, he will not be hereafter, and I neither heard nor knew him. What means this? — Perhaps a dream moved you, master? Exactly so, my son. Still another one. I have seen the dead engender the living, and the dead consumed by the breath of the living. — Fire was born from the rubbing of branches, and it consumed the branches.' Such are the giants of a generation — glimmering lights that, hardly breaking the leaden cloud of ignorance, owe much of their distinction to the surrounding gloom. The studies pursued at York, the same writer informs us, comprehended, besides gram- mar, rhetoric, and poetry, — 'The harmony of the sky, the labor of the sun and moon, the five zones, the seven wandering planets ; the laws, risings, and settings of the stars, and the aerial motions of the sea; earthquakes; the nature of man, cattle, birds, and wild beasts, with their various kinds and forms; and the sacred Scriptures.' In short, a long established division of literary and scientific knowledge was the Trimum, embracing Grammar, Rhetoric, and PKIMITIVE OXFOED. 87 Logic; and Quadrivium, embracing Music, Arithmetic, Geom- etry, and Astronomy; all of which were referred to theology, and that in the narrowest manner. To be perfect in the three former was a rare accomplishment; and scarcely any one mastered the latter four. John of SaHsbury, writing in the twelfth century, when the simplicity of this arrangement had been outgrown, says: ' The Trivium and the Quadrivium were so much admired by our ancestors in former ages, that they imagined they comprehended all wisdom and learning, and were suffi- cient for the solution of all questions and the removing of all difficulties; for whoever understood the Trivium could explain all manner of books without a teacher; but he who was farther advanced, and was master also of Quadrivium, could answer all ques- tions and unfold all the secrets of nature.' But in the twelfth century, the older educational foundations burst into the larger, freer life of the universities, whose demo- cratic spirit threatened feudalism, and whose intellectual spirit threatened the Church, though to outer seeming they were eccle- siastical bodies. None of these grew so early into fame as that of Paris, unrivalled for theological discussion. Here the rational- ism of Abelard, the knight-errant of philosophy, drew down the menaces of councils and the thunders of Rome. Said the Coun- cil of Sens in 1140: 'He makes void the whole Christian faith by attempting to comprehend the nature of God through human reason. He ascends up into Heaven; ho goes down into hell. Nothing can elude him, either in the height above or in the nethermost depths. His branches spread over the whole earth. He boasts that he has disciples in Rome itself, even in the College of Cardinals. He draws the whole earth after him. It is time, therefore, to silence him by apostolic authority.' So great was the influx of his disciples, that the boundaries of the city were enlarged. When he retired to solitude the wilder- ness became a town. Twenty cardinals and fifty bishops had been among his hearers. At the opening of the thirteenth century, Oxford was second only to Paris in the multitude of its students and the celebrity of its disputations. Thirty thousand scholars, thinking more of success in polemics than of the truths involved, swelled the stir and turbulence of its life. Yet be not deceived. Thousands of pupils poorly lodged, clustering around teachers as poor as themselves, — drinking, quarrelling, begging; retainers fighting out the feuds of their young lords in the streets; roisterer and reveller roaming with torches through the dark and filthy lanes, defying bailiffs and cutting down citizens; a tavern row spread- 88 FOKMATIVE PEEIOD — THE LITERATURE, ing into a general broil, bells clanging to arms, — this is the seething, surging Oxford of medieval history. Upon the vision of these young and valiant minds flashed, as they thought, the temple of truth, and they rushed at it headlong, as knightly warriors with battle-axe might storm a castle. Lianguag^e. — The principal literature was in Latin, and, after the Conquest, in French. The former — the only language in which the scholar might hope to address, not merely the few among a single people, but the whole Republic of Letters — was used in books habitually, as the common language of the edu- cated throughout Europe. In it were written, in particular, most works on subjects of theology, science, and history; in the latter, those intended rather to amuse than to instruct, and ad- dressed, not to students, but to the idlers of the court and the gentry, by whom they were seldom read, but only heard as they were recited or chanted. In the thirteenth century, French ac- quired that widely diffused currency as a generally known and hence convenient common medium which it has ever since main- tained. A Venetian annalist of the time composed his chronicle in it, because, to use his own words: 'The French tongue is cur- rent throughout the world, and is more delectable to read and hear than any other.' Dante's teacher employed it, and thus apologized for using it instead of Italian: ' If any shall ask why this book is ^Yritten in Romance, according to the patois of France, I being born Italian, I will say it is for divers reasons. The one is that I am now in France; the other is that French is the most delightsome of tongues, and par- taketh most of the common nature of all other languages.' Its frequent use by English writers is to be ascribed, not wholly to the predominance of Norman influence, but, in a considerable degree, to the fact that, for the time, it occupied much the same position as had hitherto been awarded to the Latin as the com- mon dialect of learned Europe. Of the vernacular, many of the most important terms, ethical and mental, had become obsolete. Of foreign words in it, there were yet relatively few. The whole number of Romance deri- vatives found in the printed works of authors of the thirteenth century scarcely exceeds one thousand, or one-eighth of the total vocabulary of that era. What would the myriad-minded Shake- speare, with his vast requirement of fifteen thousand, have done POETRY OLDER THAK PROSE. 89 in this age, with its pittance of eight thousand words ? The fol- lowing extract is from the Proclamation of Henry III, addressed in 1258 to the people of Huntingdon, copies being sent to all the shires of England and Ireland. Prepositions, it will be observed, are doing the work of the lost inflections; and the sense is made to depend upon the sequence of the words alone: ' Henry, thurg Godes fultume 'Henry, through God's grace King on Englene-loande . . . king in England . . . send igretinge to all hise sends greeting to all his halde ilaerde and ilaewede. subjects, learned and unlearned. Thaet witen ye wel alle, thaet we This know ye well all, that we willen and unnen thaet thaet lire raedes- will and grant, that what our council- men alle other, the moare dael of heom, lors all or the more deal of them, thaet heoth ichosen thurg us. . . . And that are chosen by us. . . . And this wes idon aet foren ure isworene redes- this was done before our sworn council- men. And al on tho ilche worden is lors. And all in the same words is isend in to aeurihce othre schire over all sent into every other shire over all thaere kuneriche on Englene-loande and ek the kingdom In England and eke intel Irelande.' into Ireland.' The popular speech was forcing its way to the throne. Poetry. — In early periods, feeling and fancy, with nations as with children, are strongest. Emotion seeks utterance before logic; and the natural expression of emotion is a chant, a song. There is a real kinship between the waves of excited feeling and the rhythmical cadence of words which utter it. Early literature, therefore, is almost exclusively one of poetry. Language, too, then picturesque and bold, lives chiefly on the tongue and in the ear; and poetry, by its rhythm, uniting with the charm of music, allows an oral transfer which prose does not. Rhythm — the recurrence of sounds and silences at regular intervals of time, the essential principle of poetry — is the oldest and widest artistic instinct in man; for man is the emotive part of nature, and the movement of nature, it is the grand distinction of modern science to have shown, is rhythmic. Light and heat go in undulations; the seasons, the sun-spots, come and go in correspondencies; the variable stars brighten and pale at rhythmic intervals; the ocean- tides and trade-winds flow by rhythmic rule; planet, satellite, and comet revolve and return in proportionate periods. The mystic Hindoo's doctrine of the primal diffusion of matter in space, the aggregation of atoms into worlds, the revolution of these worlds, their necessary absorption into Brahma, their necessary rediffu- sion, again to be aggregated, and again to be absorbed, — ever 90 FOEMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. contracting, ever expanding, — what is this but the rhythmic beating of the heart of the Eternal — a divine shuttle that weaves a definite pattern into the chaotic fabric of things ? After two thousand years or more, we are beginning to see dimly into Pythagoras' fanciful dream of ' the music of the spheres ' ; Plato's dictum, 'Time itself is the moving image of Eternity'; and the Orphic saying of the seer, 'The father of metre is rhythm, and the father of rhythm is God.' During the antique and mediaeval periods, music, though in process of differentiation, has no confirmed separate existence from poetry; and both are at first united in closest bonds with the dance. The poet is then a wandering minstrel — Gleeman^ the Saxons called him. His training from early childhood was to store his memory with the poetic legends of his land; and when later he wove into rude verse the story of his own day, it went nameless into the common stock of the craft. When the shadows had fallen, and the festive hall was filled, while the beer-horn passed merrily from mouth to mouth, the Gleeman with his ' wood of joy' roused or soothed the fiery passions of the warriors as he related the deeds of the heroic dead or sung the praises of their posterity, chanting to his harp, now -one adventure, now another, as the guests or their lord might call for this or that favorite inci- dent. No festival was complete without him and his harp. He travelled far and wide, songster, poet, and historian, everywhere received with consideration. By the winter fire or beneath the summer trees, flushed brows grew a darker red, or the war-shout faded into gentler tones, as war or love varied the theme of his wild rough melody. Proudly says one of them, who had dwelt with the high-born of many lands: 'Thns North and South, where'er they roam. The sons of song still find a home. Speak unreproved their wants, and raise Their grateful lay of thanks and praise; For still the chief who seeks to grace By fairest fame his pride of place, Withholds not from the sacred Bard His well-earned praise and high reward; But free of hand and large of soul. Where'er extends his wide control. Unnumbered gifts his princely love proclaim, ; Unnumbered voices raise to heaven his princely name.' SAXOK VERSE-FORM. 91 As to form, Saxon poetry illustrates the overpowering passion of the English ear for 3-rhythm, or the recurrence of the rhythmic accent at that interval of time represented by three units of any sort, — no matter among how many sounds this amount of time may be distributed. The prevailing type is an alternation of feet, or 'bars,' of the form ^ h j^ h 1 with bars of the form ^ i' j* I j the musical sign jT — called an ' eighth-note ' — representing a sound whose duration is that of an ordinary syllable, and the sign I lonff. ' -called a 'quarter-note' — representing a sound twice as The type may be varied from bar to bar, to prevent the movement from growing monotonous, thus yielding the effect of an 'air with variations.' In the rhythm of hurrying rush and martial din, Byrhtnoth defies the invading pirates in The Battle of Maldon : + — I- Brim - man - na bod --'/- beod eft ±=:t; on - gean ; :9fc= f_*_^_ se - ge thin ^— ^ nm -^_.. leod-um micl - e ^ lath spell, -V thset her for - cuth eorl mid his de 9- the ;li gealg an e - thel thys - ne, ^th el - rsed - es eard, eald »- ^j folc m — f_^ « — p- and -in- fold feal Ian sceol - on 'Brimmana boda, abeod eft ongean; sege thinum leodnm micle lathre spell, thset her stent unforcuth eorl mid his werode, the wile gealgian ethel thysne, -(Ethelrsedes eard, ealdres mines, folc and foldan : f eallan sceolon hsethene set hilde. Too heanlic me thynceth. Herald of pirates, be herald once more; bear to thy people a bitterer message,— that here stands dauntless an earl with his warriors, who will keep us this country, land of my lord. Prince ^thelred, folk and field: perish shall the heathen in battle. Too base, me thinketh. 92 FOEMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITEEATURE. thset ge mid urum sceattum to scipe gangon unbefohtene, iiu ge thus feor liider on urne eard inn becomon ; ne sceole ge swa softe sine gegangan, us sceal ord and ecg ser geseman grimm guthplega, ser we gafol syllon.' that ye with gold should to ship get unfought, now ye thus far hither to be in our land have come ; never shall ye so soft go hence with your treasure: us shall point and blade persuade — grim game of war — ere we pay for peace. Each line, it is seen, consists of four bars; each bar, of a number of syllables which mark off determinate periods of time for the ear. The first note in a bar, as every musician understands, is to be given with a slight increase of intensity — stress or accent. The same form appears in the Anglo-Saxon epic of Beowulf: ^ f f ■ r f ■& ^ p P 1 ^ 1 u Tha waes on heal - le heard ecg to - gen, There was in hall (the) falch - ion brand - isJied, t P P l> 1 P 1 \^ Sweord o - fer setl - um, sid rand man - ig Swords - ver be?ich - es, buck ler m.an - y 1 l> P P ^' P ^ ^ i \^ haf en hand - a faest helm ne ge - mund - e (was) hov en, hand -in fast. helmet not mind - ed. Again, in the mournful melody of The Wa?iderer : -8- 1 r p l^ U U P ^' i> ^ Oft him an - ha - ga a - re ge - bid - efti, Oft the Solitary (for) nier - cy pray - eth. C C f ^ ^' b 1 P ^ V \> Met - od es milts - e, theah the he mod - cea - rig (for) God s compassion, though he. mood - careful. t u l^ 1 u 1 ^ 1 U geond lag - n lad - e long e sceold - e over (the) water - ways long (time) should f u t r c U f r •» hre - ran mid hond - um hrim - calc - e sse. stir with (his) hands rime - cold (the) sea. Old English verse has one peculiarity to establish and fortify its rhythm. This is alliteration. The first three bars or feet begin, in most lines, with the same consonant-color; less frequently with the same vowel-color; sometimes the two middle bars begin alike, ALLITERATION — RHYME. 93 or the first and third. The dominant type is illustrated by the following passage from The Phmnix, — the third line excepted, which presents the second: 'Ne i^'orestes Fncest, ne Ji^yres blcest, ne Effigies Hryre, ne i/rymes dryre, ne Ayunnan haetu, ne *Sincald, ne Warm Weder, ne Tfinter scur, PFihte ge TTirdan, ac se T^ong seomath.' Inasmuch as the alliterative letter is the initial letter of an impor- tant word, — moreover, of an_important sound of that word, — the rhythmic beat, by this coincidence of pronunciative, logical, and rhythmic accent, is rendered strong and commanding. Anon we may hear the sharp ringing blows of the hammer upon the anvil: 'FlaM. mah i^liteth The strong dart flitteth, i^lan man hwiteth, The spear man whetteth, jBurg sorg 5iteth, The town sorrow biteth, JSald aid thwiteth, The bold age quelleth, Wrsec-faec TFriteth, Wreck suspicion worketh, TFrath ath smiteth.' Wrath the city smiteth.' This fondness for alliteration lives imperishably in a thousand proverbs, saws, and sayings; as, 'if/any tnen, «2any minds,' 'T'ime and i^ide wait for no man.' As suggested by these extracts, another feature of Saxon verse, though occurring much less freely, is rhyme, at once a color and an artifice to mark agreeably for the ear each rhythmic group of bars, — a marble statue on the highway instead of a mile-stone. In brief resounding metre, with the measured stroke of a passing bell, a converted warrior, passing into the shadows of the Night, reviews in quick luminous vision the pride and glory of his morning and noon: 3: -8- P 1 r Wic fer wong um r 1 r c Wen - nan gong um t ! 9 Lis se mid long - um Leo - ma ge - tong - um. 1 From the Exeter Book, comprising the main body of the first English poetry. 94 FOKMATIVE PEEIOD — THE LITEKATUKE. Me lifes onlah Se this leoht onwrah, And thaet torlite geteoh Tillice onwrah. Glied was ic gliwiim, Gleiiged hiwum, Blissa bleoum Blostma hiwum. . . Ilorsce mec hcredon, Hildo gcncredon, Fiegre feredon, Feondon biworedon. . . Scealcas wicron scearpe Scyl woes hearpe. Hulde hlyiiede, Hleothor dynede, Swegl-rad swinsade Swithe, ne minsade. . . Nil min hrether is hreoh Heoh-sithum sceoh, Nyd bisgum iieah; Gewited nihtes intteah Se ser In daege was dyre. . . Wid sith onginncth, Sar ne sinneth, Sorgum cinnith, BL-ed his blinnith, Blisse linnath, Li stum linneth, Lustum ne cinneth. Dreamas swa her gedresath, Dryht scyre gehreosath; . . . Thonne lichoma ligeth, Linna wyrm friteth, Ac him wen ne gewigeth, And tha wist gehygeth; Oththset bcath tha ban an. . , He raised me to life Who displayed this light, And this bright possession Bountifully disclosed. Glad was I in glee, Adorned with [fair] colors, With the hues of bliss And the tints of blossoms. . . Warriors obeyed me, Delivered me in battle. Fairly supported me. Protected me from enemies. . . My servants were sagacious. There was skill in their harping. It resounded loud. The strain reechoed, Melody was heard Powerfully, nor did it cease. . . But now my breast is stormy Shaken by the season of woe. Need is nigh; And night's approach torments him Who before in the day was dear. . . A wide journey beginneth. Affliction ceaseth not; He exclaimeth in sorrows. His joy hath ceased. His bliss hath declined. He is fallen from his delights; He exclaimeth not in happiness. Thus glories here are prostrated. And the lordly lot brought low; . . . Then the corpse lieth. Worm fretteth the limbs. And the worm departeth not. And there chooseth its repast. Until there be bone only left.' . . . In style, it is seen to be elliptical and inverted, abrupt, ex- clamatory, and glowing, the more vigorous by the absence of the usual particles, — a concrete of quick, passionate images, like a succession of lightning-flashes. Alfred thus renders a sentence ' After this exposition of Anglo-Saxon verse-form, the following statements may appear to the reader not a little surprising: 'In none (of the Anglo-Saxon poems) is found the slightest trace of temporal rhythm.'— Z»r. Guest. 'The number of unaccented syllables is indifferent.'— 5zy«e(!. 'It was not written in rime nor were its syllables counted.'— ^«;. Stopford Brooke. ' We do not see any marks of studied alliteration in the old Saxon poetry.' — Tyrwhitt. 'There is no rhyme, and no counting of syllables.' — Morley. 'Their poets . . . arranged their vernacular verses without any distinct rules''; and again, 'They used it [alliteration] without special rules.' — Copple. 'Nor is there any rhyming, for rhyme was an adornment unknown in English poetry until after the Norman Conquest.'— iSAaiw. 'No work in which rhyme or metre was used, can be traced in our literature until after the Norman Conquest.'— CoZ/ier. THE SAXOJST IDEAL. 95 of prose — ' So doth the moon with his pale light, that the bright stars he obscures in the heavens' — into verse: 'With pale light Bright stars Moon lessencth.' •Or again: 'Then went over the sea-waves, So that the sailors Hurried by the wind, The land saw, The ship with foamy neck, The shore-clitis shining, Most like a sea-fowl; Mountains steep. Till about one hour And broad sea-noses. Of the second day Then was the sea sailing The curved prow Of the Earl at an end.' Had passed onward. From the life we have traced, we can infer the kind of poetry most in harmony with Old English sentiments. Its poetry will be the revelation of its soul, — the embodiment of its ideals; and human ideals, in the young generations of the world as in the old, are determined by the point of view at which men stand, being little or great, serene or stormy, sincere or hollow, as is the life of the artist, whether that artist be one or a community, one age or many ages. Every 23eople has its Hercules or Samson — its ideal of brute force, of vast bodily strength or cunning, who strangles serpents, rends lions, and slaughters hostile hosts. A type perceptibly higher is the valiant one whose might, prowess, and indomitable Avill exorcise his native land of giant-fiends or dragons, — a heroic Captain, peradventure, true-hearted, just, and noble. Such is the central figure of our nameless English epic, — Deovmlf, imported from the Continental homestead and revised by an unknown Christian bard: Christian, for none other could have spoken of Cain; none other would have called the people heathens; none other would have said: 'When sorrow on him came and pain befell. He left the joy of men and chose God's light. ^ Beowulf is a hero, a knight-errant before the days of chivalry, who, with his sword hard in his hand, has rowed 'amidst the fierce waves and coldest of storms, and the rage of the winter hurtled over the waves of the deep ' ; whom the many-colored foes, sea monsters, drew to the bottom of the sea, and held fast in their gripe, but he reached 'the wretches with his point and with his war-bill.' Across the path of the swans (the sea) he comes 96 POKMATIVE PEKIOD — THE LITEKATURE. to succor the Danish King Hrothgar, in whose hall, where the banquet, the song, and the dance were wont to go on, is much sorrow; for Grendel, 'a mighty haunter of the marshes,' has entered during the night, seized thirty of the sleeping warriors, and returned with their carcasses to his fen-dwelling. For twelve winters' tide, the fiend has devoured men, till the best of houses stand empty. Beowulf, the valiant, offers to grapple with the dreadful ogre, asking only that if death takes him, they will mark his burial place, and send to his chief the war-shroud that guards his breast. When the mists have risen and all is still, Grendel enters in hope of dainty glut, seizes a sleeping warrior, bites his bone-casings, drinks the blood from the veins, and swallows him with 'continual tearings.' But the hero seizes him in turn, and, when he would fain return to his haunt, holds him: 'These warders strong waxed wrathful, fiercer grew. The hall resounded; wonder much there was That it so well withstood the warring beasts, — That fell not to the earth this fair laud-house. And then arose strange sound; upon the Danes Dire terror stood, of all who heard the whoop. The horrid lay of God's denier. The song that sang defeat and pain bewailed — Hell's captive's lay — for in his grasp too firm Did he, of men the strongest, hold his prey.' In his efforts to get away, the monster's sinews spring asunder, the bone-casings burst; and leaving on the ground his hand, arm, and shoulder, he flees to his joyless home, 'sick unto death,' for 'the number of his days was gone by.' Then are great rejoic- ings in the palace. But there remains the ' sea-wolf of the abyss, the mighty sea-woman,' his mother, who comes by night, and amidst drawn swords tears and devours the king's chosen friend. Again Beowulf offers himself, seeks the ogress in her dread abode, where strange dragons and serpents swim, and one by night may behold the marvel of fire upon the flood, while ever and anon the horn sings a wild terrible dirge. He plunges into the surge, descends, passes monsters who tear his coat of mail, to the 'hateful man-slayer.' She seizes the champion in her horrid clutches, and bears him off to her den, where a pale gleam shines brightly and shows them face to face. With his 'beam of war' he smites on her head till 'the ring-mail' sings BEOWULF THE VALIANT. 97 'aloud a greedy war-song'; but the weapon will not 'bite.' She overthrows him, but he rescues himself, espies 'an old gigantic sword, doughty of edge, ready for use, the work of giants.' 'Fierce and savage, despairing of life,' he strikes furiously, so that it grapples 'hard with her about the neck,' breaks 'the bone- rings,' passes through the doomed body, which sinks, and all is silent: ' The sword was bloody, the man rejoiced in his deed; the beam shone, light stood within, even as from heaven mildly shines the lamp of the firmament.' Another triumph, and renewed joy. Afterwards he is himself ruler. When he had reigned fifty years, a dragon, who had been robbed of his treasure which he had guarded three hun- dred years, came from the hill and burned men and houses with 'waves of fire.' Ordering for himself a variegated shield, all of iron, he goes to battle with 'the foul, insidious stranger,' in a cavern 'under the earth, nigh to the sea wave,' full within of embossed ornaments and wires; 'too proud to seek the wide flier with a troop, with a large company'; yet sadly, as if with a presentiment that the end is near: ' Firm rose the stone-wrought vanlt, a living stream Burst from the barrow, red with ceaseless flame That torrent glowed ; nor lived there soul of man Might tempt the dread abyss, nor feel its rage. So watched the fire-drake o'er his hoard; — and now Deep from his laboring breast the indignant Goth Gave utterance to the war-cry. Loud and clear Beneath the hoar stone rung the deafening sound. And strife uprose: the watcher of the gold Had marked the voice of man. First from his lair. Shaking firm earth, and vomiting, as he strode, A foul and fiery blast, the monster came. Yet stood beneath the barrow's lofty side The Goth's unshaken champion, and opposed To that infuriate foe his full-orbed shield. Then the good war-king bared his trenchant blade: Tried was its edge of old, the stranger's dread. And keen to work the foul aggressor's woe. Th2 kingly Goth Reared high his hand, and smote the grisly foe; But the dark steel upon the unyielding mail Fell impotent, nor served its master's need Now at his utmost peril. Nor less that stroke To maddening mood the barrow's warder roused: Outburst the flame of strife, and blaze of war Beamed horribly; still no triumph won the Goth, Still failed his keen brand in the unequal fray . . 98 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. Again they met — again with freshened strength Forth from his breast the unconqiiered monster poured That pestilent breath. Encompassed by its flames, Sad jeopardy and new the chieftain held.' With the assistance of a trusty comrade, he carves the worm in twain. Burning and faint with mortal wounds, he forgets him- self in death, thinking only that his valor profits others; and says, grandly, the man breathing manifest beneath the hero: ' I have held this people fifty years; there was not any king of my neighbors, who dared to greet me with warriors, to oppress me with terror. ... I held my own well, I sought not treacherous malice, nor swore unjustly many oaths; on account of all this, I, sick with mortal wounds, may have joy. . . . Now do thou go immediately to behold the hoard under the hoary stone, my dear Wiglaf. . . . Now, I have purchased with my death a hoard of treasures ; it will be yet of advantage at the need of the people. . . , I give thanks . . . that I might before my dying day obtain such for my people . . . longer may I not here be." He dies, killed by the dragon's flame-breath, and is solemnly buried under a great barrow rising high above the deep blue 'And round about the mound rode his hearth-sharers, who sang that he was of kings, of men, the mildest, kindest, to his people sweetest, and the readiest in search of praise.' There — ' No sound of harp shall the warrior awake ; but the dusky raven ready o'er the fallen shall sjjcak many things, — to the eagle shall tell how he fared at his food while with the wolf he spoiled the slain.' Here, under the light of poetry, through the mist of real events, transformed into legendary marvels, we see the actual life of Scandinavian English, — its pride, its melancholy, its re- liance upon strength of arm, its practical spirit of adventure, its fatalism — 'What is to be goes ever as it must' — tinged with the energetic sense that ' the Must-Be often helps an undoomed man when he is brave.' Thought is too impassioned for the details of comparison, — a characteristic of all Anglo-Saxon verse. In the six thousand and odd lines there are only five similes. Compare the Celtic fancy, with its love of ornament, as displayed in an average stanza on a Cymric chief who fell before the advancing Saxon: 'Both shoulders covered with his painted shield The hero there, swift as the war-horse, rushed. Noise in the mount of slaughter, noise and fire; The darting lances were as gleams of sun. There the glad raven fed. The foe must fly TRAGIC TONE OF SAXON" POETRY. 99 While he so swept them as when in his course An eagle strikes the morning dews aside, And like a whelming billow struck their front. Brave men, so say the bards, are dumb to slaves. Spears wasted men, and ere the swan-white steeds Trod the still grave that hushed the master voice, His blood washed all his arms. Such was Buddvan, Son of Bleedvan the Bold.' A vehement phrase, without connectives, without order, with no ornament but three words beginning alike, an exclamation, a cry, a glowing image, — such is the style of the Saxon poets. Joy and fury neglect art. When passion bellows, ideas are crowded and clashed. See it all in the battle-song of The Fight at Finsburg : 'The army goes forth: the birds sing, the cricket chirps, the war-weapons sound, the lance clangs against the shield. Now shineth the moon, wandering under the sky. Now arise deeds of woe, which the enmity of this people prepares to do. . . . Then in the court came the tumult of war-carnage. . . . The raven whirled about, dark and sombre, like a willow leaf. There was a sparkling of blades, as if all Finsburg were on iire. Never have I heard of a more worthy battle in war.' From the introduction of Christianity, the predominant tone of Saxon poetry is religious. But its voice, if less savage, is otherwise unchanged. Still its soul is tragic; its tones passion- ate and lightning-like. It is the old heart in transition, — yet a strong barbarous heart. If it essays a Bible narrative, as in the tragedy of Judith, we may see the pagan flesh and blood in the tumult, murder, vengeance, and combat of the verses. Holo- f ernes gives a feast: 'All his fierce chiefs, bold mail-clad warriors, went at the feast to sit, eager to drink wine. There were often carried the deep bowls behind the benches; so likewise ves- sels and orcas full to those sitting at supper. . . . Then was Holofernes rejoiced with wine; in the halls of his guests he laughed and shouted, he roared and dinned. Afar off might the stern one be heard to storm and clamor. . . . So was the wicked one — the lord and his men — drunk with wine, . . . till that they swimming lay ... as they were death-slain.' The night having arrived he falls drunk on his bed. The moment is come for Judith, 'the maid of the Creator, the holy woman,' to deliver Israel: 'She took the heathen man fast by his hair; she drew him by his limbs toward her disgracefully; and the mischief-full, odious man, at her pleasure laid, so as the wretch she might the easiest well command. She with the twisted locks struck the hateful enemy, meditating hate, with the red sword, till she had half cut off his neck; so that he lay in a swoon, drunk and mortally wounded. He was not then dead, — not entirely lifeless; earnest then she struck another time the heathen hound— she the woman 100 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. illustrious in strength — till that his head rolled forth upon the floor. CofEerless lay the foul one; downward turned his spirit under the abyss, and there was plunged below with sulphur fastened; forever afterward wounded by worms. In torments bound — hard imprisoned — he burns in hell. After his course he need not hope that he may escape from that mansion of worms, with darkness overwhelmed; but there he shall remain ever and ever — without end — henceforth void of the joys of hope, in that cavern home.' Judith, returning to the city with the head of this wicked one, is met by the people, and the warrior instinct swells into flame, as she exhorts them to battle: ' Men under helms (went out) from the holy city at the dawn itself. They dinned shields; men roared loudly. At this rejoiced the lank wolf in the wood, and the wan raven, the fowl greedy of slaughter, both from the west, that the sons of men for them should have thought to prepare their fill on corpses. And to them flew in their paths the active devourer, the eagle, hoary in his feathers. The willowed kite, with his horned beak, sang the song of Hilda. The noble warriors proceeded, they in mail, to the battle, furnished with shields, with swelling banners.' Men of any high mental power must be serious, whether in ancient or modern days. Only consider the reflective mood, the intense seriousness of this Saxon poetry. The Ilydriotaphia of Browne and the Thanatopsis of Bryant are here in the bud. There is no passing by on the other side; but down to its utter- most depth, to its most appalling detail, it strives, like the Greek, to sound the secrets of sorrow. If any hope, relief, or triumph may hereafter seem possible, — well; but if not, still hopeless, reliefless, eternal, the sorrow shall be met face to face. This Northern imagination, which compared life to the flight of a bird, — in at one door and out at another, whence it came and whither it went being equally unknown to the lookers-on, now contemplates the stern agony of the ' breathless darkness ' in a poem called The Grave, sad and grand like the life of man. 'For thee was a house built ere thou wert born; for thee a mould shapen ere thou of thy mother caniest. Its height is not determined, nor is its depth measured; nor is- it closed up (however long it may be), until I thee bring where thou shalt remain ; until I shall measure thee and the sod of the earth. Thy house is not highly built; it is un- high and low. When thou art in it, the heel-ways are low, the side-ways unhigh. The roof is built thy breast full nigh; so thou shalt in earth dwell full cold, dim, and dark. Doorless is that house, and dark is it within. There thou art fast detained, and Death holds the key. Loathly is that earth-house, and grim to dwell in. There thou shalt dwell, and worms shall share thee. Thus thou art laid, and leavest thy friends. Thou hast no friend that will come to thee, who will ever inquire how that house liketh thee, who shall ever open for thee the door, and seek thee, for soon thou becomest loathly and hateful to look upon.' To this people, which has forgotten the halls of Valhalla, to which danger is a delight, which loves gloomy pictures, the SOMBRE IMAGINATION OF THE NORTH. 101 shadowy is a fascination, as to the Hindoo, the Egyptian and the Greek. The SouVs Complaint of the Body suggests the under- world rivers and the wandering hapless ghosts of Greek and Roman mythology: 'Befits it well that man should, deeply weigh His soul's last journey; how he then may fare When death comes on him, and breaks short in twain The bond that held his flesh and spirit linked: Long is it thence ere at the hands of Heaven The spirit shall reap joy or punishment, E'en as she did in this her earthly frame. For ere the seventh night of death hath past, Ghastly and shrieking shall that spirit come, — The soul to find its body. Restless thus (Unless high Heaven first work the end of all things) A hundred years thrice told the shade shall roam.' So Virgil represents the souls of the unburied haunting the banks of the Styx, sad and tombless, vainly entreating in pa- thetic suppliance the dread Charon to ferry them over: 'There stood the first and prayed him hard to waft their bodies o'er, With hands stretched out for utter love of that far-lying shore; But that grim sailor now takes these, now those, from out the band, While all the others far away he thrusteth from the sand.' . . . For— 'Those borne across the wave Are buried: none may ever cross the awful roaring road Until their bones are laid at rest within their last abode. An hundred years they stray about and wander round the shore, Then they at last have grace to gain the pools desired so sore.' All who know what pathos there is in the memory of faces that have vanished, of joys that have faded, of days gone by, — holy as spots of earth where angel'feet have stepped, will appre- ciate the rare poetical power of the mutilated poem of The Unin : 'Wondrous is this wall-stone, the fates have broken it — have burst the burgh- place. Perishes the work of giants; fallen are the roofs, the towers tottering — the hoar gate-towers despoiled — rime on the lime — Arm on lime; shattered are the battle- ments, riven, fallen under the Eotnish race ; the earth-grave has its powerful work- men; decayed, departed, the hard of gripe are fallen and passed away to a hundred generations of people. . . . Bright were the burgh-dwellings, many its princely halls, high its steepled splendor; there was martial sound great, many a mead-hall full of human joys, until obdurate fate changed it all; they perished in wide slaughter. . . . There many a chief of old, joyous and gold-bright, splendidly decorated, proud, and with wine elate, in warlike decorations shone ; looked on treasures, on silver, on curious gems, on luxury, on wealth, on precious stone, on this bright burgh of a broad realm.' Among the unknown poets, there is one, Caedmon, whose vigor and grandeur will presently be the subject of special con- sideration. Meanwhile, that which is sown is not quickened 102 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. except it die. The decay of an old literature is the antecedent condition for a new mode of intellectual life. This old poetic genius of sublimity and fury, waning before the Conquest, dis- appears after it, to emerge once more when the wounds have closed and the saps have mingled. Till then, the current that flows shallow and fantastic above ground is of French origin. What was this new literature, by which a broader spreading and a more generous vine should spring from the regenerated root of the old stock? Romantic fiction. Its origin. — The child personifies the stone that hurts him, and his first impulse is to resent the injury as if he imagined it to be endowed with consciousness and to be acting with design. The childhood of superstition personifies each individual exist- ence, — the plant and the rock. The childhood of philosophy per- sonifies the universe. The barbarian is fascinated by the incom- prehensible. Unable to assign, for a natural phenomenon, a cause within nature, he has recourse to a living personality enshrined in it. To every grotto he gives a genius; to every tree, river, spring, a divinity. Out of the darkness he cannot tell what alarm- ing spectre may emerge. Everywhere he is a believer in sor- cery, witchcraft, enchantments. In an advanced stage of develop- ment, he conceives a number of personal beings distinct from the material creation, which preside over the different provinces of nature, — the sea, the air, the winds, the streams, the heavens, and assume the guardianship of individuals, tribes, and nations. Re- membering this tendency for personification which marks the early life of man, his necessity of referring effects to their causes, and his interpretation of things according to outward appear- ances, we shall better understand how the Hours, the Dawn, and the Night, with her black mantle bespangled with stars, came to receive their forms; how the clouds were sacred cattle driven to their milking, or sheep of the golden fleece; how the fall of the dew was the shedding of divine tears, and the fatal sun-shafts the arrows of Apollo shot from his golden bow; how the west, where the sun and stars go down, was the portal of descent to hell, and the morning twilight a reflection from the Elysian Fields; how the eruptions of the volcano were due to the throes of the agonized giant, vainly struggling to rise; how earthquakes, famine, hail, snow, and tempests were the work of supernatural MYTH-MAKING — IDEALIZATION. 103 fiends; how the traditions of every land are replete with the ex- ploits of gods, magicians, and devils. Further, under the opera- tion of this principle, a similarity of imagery will exist wherever there exists a resemblance in the objects calling it forth; and a multitude of the symbols thus brought into circulation will be found recurring, like the primitive roots of a language, in almost every country, as common property inherited by descent. Thus, a mound of earth becomes the sepulchre of a favorite hero; a pile of enormous stones, the labor of a giant; a single one, the stupendous instrument of daily exercise to a fabled king; the figure of a rock, proof of some deity's wrath or presence, — the foot-print of Hercules or the weeping Niobe : every one, of Aryan blood, knows that the moon is inhabited by a man with a bundle of sticks on his back, exiled thither many centuries, and so far away that he is beyond the reach of death; from the remotest period, the rod has been employed in divination; in Bohemia, in Scotland, in Switzerland, in Iceland, in North America, is the story of some Rip Van Winkle who slumbers while years or ages glide by like a watch in the night; and of that great mystery of human life which is an enigma never solved, and ever originating speculation, is born the myth of the Wandering Jew. Consider, again, how incidents change by distance, and we by age. How a thing grows in memory when love or hate is there to idealize it ! The philosophic Agis had to console his desponding coun- trymen with a remark which every man's experience has made familiar, — that 'the fading virtues of later times were a cause of grief to his father, who in turn had listened to the same regrets from his own venerable sire,' Washington, whose picture even now transcends the fact, would be a myth, had there been no books. In the days of Alfred, golden bracelets hung untouched in the open road. In the native vigor of the youthful world, a thousand years are given to the life of man. The national hero, through the lengthened vista, acquires a gigantic stature. The body of Orestes when found measured seven cubits, and the san- dals of Perseus two. How prismatic must be the imagination, when the national mind, as here, is yet in the fresh young radi- ance of hope and wonder, as of the young child's thoughts in the wild lion-hearts of men. Time is a camera ohscura, through which a man, if great while living, becomes ten-fold greater when 104 FOEMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. dead. Henceforward he exists to society by some shining trait of beauty or utility which he had; and, borrowing his propor- tions from the one fine feature, we finish the portrait symmetri- cally. That feature is the small real star that gleams out of the dark vortex of the ages through the madness of rioting fancy and the whirlwind-chaos of images, expanding, according to the glass it shines through, into wondrous thousand-fold form and color. Such is the foundation of fiction in general; originating as a whole from no single point as to country or to time, but in part springing from common organic causes, and in part travelling from region to region, on airy wing scattering the seeds of its wild flowers imperceptibly over the world, from the gorgeous East to the virgin West and the frozen North. Its radical types, much as the root-words of speech, are amplified and compounded to meet the demands of new occasions, transferred from one sub- ject to another, and embellished according to the taste, temper, and resources of the artist. Thus, the Macedonian conqueror and his contemporaries are accoutred in the garb of feudal- ism, and his wars transformed into chivalrous adventures. The Naiads of Greece differ only in name from the Nixen of Ger- many, and the Norwegian Thor is brother to Olympian Jove. The Persian Goblet of the Sun reappears as the horn of the Celtic Bran, producing whatever liquor is called for; or as the Saint Graal, of the Round Table, — for which is reserved the 'Seat Per- ilous,' — the miraculous cup, the giver of sumptuous banquets, the healer of maladies, to the pure the interpreter of the will of Heaven. The magic ship of Odin, which could be folded like a handkerchief, becomes, under the play of Homeric fancy, self- directing and prophetic: 'So Shalt thou instant reach the realm assigned, In wondrous ships, self-moved, instinct with mind: No helm secures their course, no pilot guides; Like men intelligent, they plough the tides. Conscious of every coast and every bay That lies beneath the sun's alluring ray.' The story of Jack and Jill is a venerable one in Icelandic my- thology, and Jack and the Beanstalk has found eager listeners in Africa, as in every quarter of Europe. All the machinery of the Iliad is reproduced in the legend of Charlemagne, and if in his case myth were not controlled and rectified by history, he would MIDDLE-AGE FICTION". 105 be for us, under his adventitious ornaments, as unreal as Aga- memnon, Thus the popular literature of the Middle Ages, indi- genous and imported, fostered by a like credulity, vision, and mystery, was invested with the same tissue of marvels, — person- ified and supernatural agents, heroes, elves, fairies, dwarfs, giants, enchanters, spells, charms, and amulets. Written in the Romance dialects — principally in French and Italian — tales of dimly re- membered kings, of marvellous agency and gallant daring, are hence designated as Romances; and differ from the similar productions of antiquity chiefly in a change of names and places, with an admixture of the refinement and pageantry of feudal religion and manners. Its themes. — During a long period, saintly legends, in which self-torture was the chief measure of excellence, formed the guiding ideals of Christendom; and the first romances were little more than legends of devotion, containing the pilgrimage of an old warrior. As chivalry grew in splendor and fascination, mar- tial exploits were added to his youth, his religious shaded into the heroic character, and the penitent was lost in the knight-errant. Penance, which was the governing image of the one, gradually became the remote sequel of the other, till it was almost an estab- lished rule of romance for the knight to end his days in a hermit- age. By the reactionary influence of worship, valor was conse- crated, and a Christian soul gave tone and coloring to the whole body of romantic fiction. Thus the Holy Graal, in the midst of the bright animal life of the Arthur legends, became a type of the mystery of Godliness. Whatever impure man sat in the Seat Perilous the earth swallowed. When men became sinful, it, visi- ble only to pure eyes, disappeared; and in the quest for it, only the spotless Sir Galahad succeeded. A general homage to the fair, independent of personal attach- ment, forms a distinguishing and most important element of medieval romance. This also, in its best development, was the offspring of the Christian dispensation. True, as we have seen, its rudiments already existed in the deference paid to the female sex by the Teutons, who believed some divine quality to be inher- ent in their women. Thus Tacitus relates that Velleda, a German prophetess, held frequent conferences with the Roman generals; and on some occasions, on account of the sacredness of her person, 106 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. was placed at a great distance on a high tower, whence, as an oracle, she conveyed her answers by a chosen messenger. But that rapturous adoration of woman which produced the spirit of gallantry was the inevitable result of the new ideal introduced by Christianity, which, over the qualities of strength, courage, self- reliance, and patriotism, enthroned the gentler virtues of meek- ness, patience, humility, faith, and love. This was no other than change from a type essentially masculine to one which was essen- tially feminine. The Virgin Mary was exalted by the Church to a central figure of devotion, and in her elevation, woman, from being associated with ideas of degradation and of sensuality, rose into a new sphere, and became the object of a reverential regard unknown to the proudest civilizations of the past. Love was idealized. The moral charm of female excellence was felt. Into a harsh and benighted age were infused a conception of gentle- ness and of purity, a sense of delicacy and elegance, around which clustered all that was best in Europe. Chivalry took systematic shape as the adventurous service of God and womankind. The Crusades were its first outgrowth in action, and love-poetry its first symmetrical expression in art. Valor was exerted to protect the innocent from violence, to succor the distressed, to release captive beauty from embattled walls. The knight, fond dreamer whom the dream forever fled, turned him to far lands and con- flicts, to merit and win the favor of his fair adored, whose point of honor it was to be chaste and inaccessible.' But loving chivalry for its nobleness, let us not be blind to its folly and excess. To a bitter winter's day it gave the tint of amethyst. Over the darkness it threw a cheering light. Its incentives, exalted and sublime as they were, too often in this unripe civilization made its possessors implacable and infuriate. The feudal hero did less than he imagined. His profession of courtesy and courage was not infrequently the brilliant disguise that concealed tyranny and rapine. A reduction and softening- down of a rough and lawless period, it often rose to fanaticism or ' This respectful enthusiasm for woman forms one of the most remarkable facts in the intellectual development of Europe. Warton derives it from Teutonic manners; Hallam, from the secular institutions of Rome and the gay idleness of the nobility. A profounder philosophy must have shown them that more influential than any of these causes, or all combined, were the prominence given by Christianity to the female virtues, woman's conspicuous position in the conversion of the Empire by reason of the better adaptation of her genius to piety, the elevation of the Virgin, and the consequent change from an ideal type especially masculine to one especially feminine. LOVE-COURTS OF CHIVALRY. 107 sunk into gross impurity. From the middle of the twelfth until the end of the fourteenth century, it had its Courts of Love, which, sanctioning much that the courts of law forbade, instituted obligations antagonistic to the duties of domestic life. Here love- verses were sung, love-causes were heard, and judgments rendered with formal citations of precedents. They had a code, said to have been established by the king of^ove, and found by a Breton cavalier and lover in Arthur's court, tied to the foot of a falcon. Its first rule was that marriage does not excuse from love, and the ladies' courts enacted that love and marriage are things wholly asunder. Thus, A seeks from a lady permission to love, and is told that she already has a lover, B, but willingly will take A when B is lost. She marries B, and immediately, in fulfilment of promise, A claims his right to be her lover. She wishes to withdraw, but is sued, and the court decides for the plaintiff, saying : 'We do not venture to contradict the decision of the Countess of Champagne, who, ■fay a solemn judgment, has pronounced that true love cannot exist between those who are married to each other.' ' The central figures of romance were Arthur^ and the Knights of the Round Table, Charlemagne and his Peers, the heroes ^ of the Crusades, and the Anglo-Danish Cycle, the most famous of which were, Havelock, King Horn, and Guy of Warwick.^ A series of fictions destined to operate powerfully on the general body of our old poetry, was a Latin compilation entitled Gesta Rornanoriim, or Deeds of the Romans, whose stories, saintly, chivalrous, or allegorical, of home-growth or transplanted from the East, were often used by the clergy to rouse the indif- ference and relieve the languor of their rude and simple hearers. It is a characteristic expression of the manners and sentiments of the time. Thus, — 'Chap. iX77/.— The garden of Vespasian's daughter. All her lovers are obliged to enter this garden before they can obtain her love, but none returns alive. The garden is haunted by a lion, and has only one entrance which divides into so many windings 1 The Love-Courts, so far from being a jest or idle amusement, as Morley under- stands them, were one of the moral and social phenomena of the time, springing from the prolonged barbarity of the feudal marriage-tie. The lady-love, almost always of high rank, frequently an heiress in her own right, was sure to be disposed of for pru- dential or political reasons before she had any choice in the matter; and the sufferings to which women were exposed as wives, explain to a certain extent the adoration which they exacted and obtained as the ladies of the chevaliers. 2 See Tennyson's Idyls of the King, in which these characters are splendidly por- trayed. 3 Richard Ca?ur de Lion, for example, one of the most celebrated. *See Sir Walter Scott. 108 FOKMATIVE PEKIOD — THE LITERATURE. that it never can be found again. At length, she furnishes a knight with a ball or clue of thread, and teaches him how to foil the lion. Having achieved this adventure, he marries the lady.' '■Chap. LXVI.—A knight offers to recover a lady's inheritance, which had been seized by a tyrant, on condition, that if he is slain, she shall always keep his bloody armour hanging in her chamber. He regains her property, although he dies in the attempt; and as often as she was afterwards sued for in marriage, before she gave an answer, she returned to her chamber, and contemplating with tears her deliverer's bloody armour, resolutely rejected every solicitation.' '■Chap. C/X— [Best illustrated by a like story of the Boy, in Boccaccio's Decameron.'] A king had an only son. As soon as he was born, the physicians declared that if he was allowed to see the sun or any fire before he arrived at the age of twelve years, he would be blind. The king commanded an apartment to be hewed within a rock, into which no light could enter; and here he shut up the boy, totally in the dark, yet with proper attendants, for twelve years. At the end of which time, he brought him abroad from his gloomy chamber, and placed in his view men, women, gold, precious stones, rich garments, chariots of exquisite workmanship drawn by horses with golden bridles, heaps of purple tapestry, armed knights on horseback, oxen and sheep. These were all distinctly pointed out to the youth : but being most pleased with the women, he desired to know by what name they were called. An esquire of the king jocosely told him that they were devils who catch men. Being brought to the king, he was asked which he liked best of all the fine things he had seen. He replied, "The devils who catch men." ' ' Chap. CXX. — King Darius's legacy to his three sons. To the eldest he bequeaths all his paternal inheritance : to the second, all that he had acquired by conquest: and to the third, a ring and necklace, both of gold, and a rich cloth. All the three last gifts were endued with magical virtues. Whoever wore the ring on his finger, gained the love or favor of all whom he desired to please. Whoever hung the necklace over his breast, obtained all his heart could desire. Whoever sate down on the cloth, could be instantly transported to any part of the world which he chose.' Not unlike the lighter stories of the Gesta were the fabliaux, short familiar pictures of society, keyed to minor occasions, usually satirical, and levelling their wit most frequently at the ladies. Its form. — The versification of Latin, it is well known, was based upon syllabic quantity, which acknowledged among verse- sounds but two possible time-values — the long and the short, of which the former was strictly to the latter as two to one. The ratio, moreover, was fixed, so that a long syllable was always long, and a short one always short. The bar or foot was signal- ized by the rhythmic accent; as — 'Arma virumque can6, Trojae qui primus ab oris:' but this was scarcely the accentuation of prose or familiar utter- ance, — a difference which every one may see illustrated in Shakespeare, if first the passage be supposed to conform to the typic scheme. Thus — 'This my mean task Would be as heavy to me as odious; but The mistress which I serve quickens what's dead.' FORM OF THE ROMANCE POETRY. 109 Of course, it would be absurd to read, in the manner of cur- rent discourse: 'This my mean task would be as heavy to me as odious; but the mistress which I serve quickens what's dead.' The distinction of 'longs' and 'shorts,' never attended to by the uninstructed, required study to attain it, even while Latin re- mained a living tongue. Just as the people corrupted and muti- lated the classic speech founding a new upon the ruins of the old, — so, under the shadow of this cultured poesy, which moved with the regularity of changeless fate, there sprang up, away in the provinces and among the ignorant everywhere, an humble growth of popular song which knew nothing of artificial quanti- ties and arbitrary caesuras, but was simply — and often rudely — rhymed and accented more nearly after the style of actual speech; and when the foreign graces of Roman letters perished with the Empire, this lowly, indigenous poetry escaped by its insignificance, and began to increase. Related to the former, as a dialect to its parent, it imitated the ancient syllabic arrange- ment. Thus the spirited trochaic (-'-') and iambic { ^ ~ ) measures were common in the rhyming chants of the early Church. The Song of Aldhelm shows us an Anglo-Saxon poet, at the beginning of the eighth century, versifying Latin words in the metre of the Raven : '6nce upon a midnight dreary Lector caste cdtholice While I pondered weak and weary.' Atque obses dthletlce. 'Lector caste cathollce Usque diram Dornoniam Atque obses athletice Per carentum Cornubiam Tuis pulsatus precibus Florulentls cespitibus Obnixe flagitantibus Et fsecundis graminibus.' This, then, was the poetic form which began, in the eleventh century, to give expression to the romantic sentiments, the war- like genius of France, — a form in which the quantity of the verse-sounds was variable, the same word or syllable doing the duty of a 'long' or a 'short,' according to its position among neighboring sounds; a form, too, in which the bar or root was more especially signalized to the ear, as at present, by the stress of current utterance, coinciding with the rhythmic accent, and having its origin in the logical preeminence of the root-syllable over the other sounds in a word; — a form whose beat, revealing no FOEMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. the peculiar genius of those who adopted it, was less the pulse of march-time than the free and airy swing of a waltz. Themes were, indeed, supplied from all quarters; but the romance-setting which was common to them all, and which won the heart and imagination of Europe, was French. It was this that constituted for the French literature and language, at the height of the Middle Age, a clear predominance. Its j)oets. — Of this literature there were two divisions, corre- sponding to the two dialects of France, — the Langue D^ Oc and the Langue D'' Oyl, so named from the words for yes, which were oc in the South and oyl in the North. The first, or Provengal, is irrecoverably dead; the second, or Norman, is unalterably estab- lished as the French tongue. The poets of the former were called Troubadours ,• of the latter, Trouveres, which are evi- dently dialectic forms of the same word, meaning inventors. From the middle of the twelfth century, the troubadours were numerous as the gay insects of spring, till the close of the thir- teenth, when they came to an end, — a lisping, brilliant, short- lived school of song. Their poetry was chiefly lyric, and its chief inspiration was love. Each selects the fair object of his melo- dious homage, flings himself, body and soul, into love's thrall, exults or wails, mopes and dreams, sighs, faints, and falls, rises and sings, while the April air, the nightingale, and the dewy dawn dilate his joy by accord or intensify his agony by contrast: 'Such is now my glad elation, All things change their seeming; All with flowers, white, blue, carnation. Hoary frosts are teeming; Storm and flood but make occasion For my happy scheming; Welcome is my song's oblation, Praise outruns my dreaming. Oh, ayl this heart of mine Owns a rapture so divine. Winter doth in blossoms shine. Snow with verdure gleaming! When my love was from me riven, Steadfast faith upbore me ; She for whom I so have striven Seems to hover o'er me; All the joys that she hath given Memory can restore me ; All the days I saw her, even Gladden evermore me. Ah, yes I I love in bliss; All my being tends to this; Yea, although her sight I miss, And in France deplore me. Yet if like a swallow flying I might come unto thee. Come by night where thou art lying, Verily I'd sue thee. Dear and happy lady, crying, I must die or woo thee. Though my soul dissolve in sighing And my fears nndo me. Evermore thy grace of yore I with folded hands adore. On thy glorious colors pore. Till despair goes through me.' ROMANCE POETS. Ill This style early extended itself to the Northern dialect. Abelard, poet and philosopher, was the first of recorded name who taught the banks of the Seine to resound a tale of love. Says the gifted and noble Eloise, of whom he sung: 'You composed many verses in amorous measure, so sweet both in their language and in their melody, that your name was incessantly in the mouths of all; and even the most illiterate could not be forgetful of you. This it was chiefly that made women admire you; and, as most of these songs were on me and my love, they made me known in many countries, and caused many women to envy me. Every tongue spoke of your Eloise ; every street, every house, resounded with my name.' The poetry of the North, however, was mostly epic, with his- torical and romantic themes; written for the luxurious few, ambitious and astir with action; expressing and circulating the chivalrous sentiments of life, of love, and of loyalty. The trouveres — minstrel-poets — were the idealizing spirits of the knight, who in hours of leisure and festivity rehearsed his ex- ploits, in transfigured and poetic form, to his flattered and de- lighted senses, holding before him a magic mirror in which he saw with what nobleness and enchantment he was invested. No wonder that they were caressed and richly rewarded, — first in France, where they were native; then in England, where they were transplanted. Such, then, was the literature at this time domiciled across the Channel, — a literature into which were gathered the delicate fancies of the Celtic poems, the grand ruins of the German epics, the marvellous splendors of the conquered East, with the whole medley of imaginary creatures; — a poetry of mailed knights and radiant ladies, of polite and witty love, of vague reveries and elegant visions; — a poetry whose facile ideas, expounded and repeated ad infinitxmx, flow through interminable and insipid rhymes with the careless grace of a clear and purling brook. Bent on pleasure, brilliant but shallow, it will die, — die for lack of depth and perspective. Society itself must purge or perish when it becomes operatic. But first it will become the leaven which throws into fermentation the now torpid elements of the Anglo-Saxon character, secretly and silently training and cos- tuming the dramatis personm for a new and nobler entry upon the literary stage. Form will inherit its refinement, its grace, its music; thought, its piquancy, order, and transparency. Its heaped-up tales, incoherent and mutilated, which in the weak 112 POEMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. hands of the trouveres lie like rubbish or rough-hewn stones, Chaucer and, above all, Spenser will build into a monument. Meanwhile, ideas are imported. The Normans, incapable of great poetry, continue to copy, arrange, and develop, with their eyes glued to a series of exaggerated and colored images. Even the English become rhymesters in French. Several write the first half of the verse in English and the second in French, — as if French influence were at once moulding and oppressing them! A few employ the vernacular, garnish sermons or histories with rhymes, and call them poems. All are imitative and mediocre, repeating what they imitate, with fewer merits and greater faults. Translations, copies, imitations, — there is little or noth- ing else. First of the new singers is Ijayamon, a monk, who in 1205 translates into verse and amplifies the Unit, a subject sup- plied him from a four-fold source, — the supposed original Celtic poem, which is lost; the Latin chronicle of Geoffrey; the dull- rhymed rhapsody of Gaimar; and the duller paraphrase of Wace, Through its more than thirty-two thousand lines the babble goes on, in irregular verse, sometimes rhymed, oftener alliterative, mixing both systems, and employing either at convenience; in general adhering, by its rhythm and short quick phrases, to the fashion of the ancient Saxons, without their fire; never rising to interest but by virtue of the theme, as in the account of Arthur's nativity: 'The time cO the wes icoren, that he scolde beoii riche king, tha wes Arthur iboren. heo giuen hi that thridde, Sone swa he com an eorthe, that he scolde longe libben. allien hine inengen. heo gifcn him that kine-bern heo bigolen that child custen swithe gode, mid galdere swithe stronge; that he wes mete-custi heo gene him mihte of alle quikemonnen; to beon bezst aire cnihten. this the alue him gef, heo geiien him an other thing, and al swa that child ithseh.' ' Or, again, where Arthur, dying of fifteen ' dreadful wounds,' into the least of which ' one might thrust two gloves,' is transported after death in a boat, by fairy elves, to Avalon, the abode of their queen: ' The time came that was chosen, then was Arthur born. So soon as he came on earth, elves took him ; they enchanted the child with magic most strong, they gave him might to be the best of all knights; they gave him another thing, that he should be a rich king; they gave him the third, that he should live long; they gave to him the prince virtues most good, so that he was most generous of all nien alive. This the elves gave him, and thus the child thrived. THE NEW SINGERS. 113 'Arthur was wounded wondrously much. There came to him a lad, who was of his kindred; he was Cador's son the earl of Cornwall; . . . Arthur looked on him, where he lay on the ground, and said these words, with sorrowful heart: "Constantine, thou art welcome ; thou wert Cador's son. I give thee here my kingdom, and defend thou my Britons ever in thy life, and maintain them all the laws that have stood in my days, and all the good laws that in Uther's days stood. And I will fare to Avalun, to the fairest of all maidens, to Argante the queen, an elf most fair, and she shall make my wounds all sound; make me all whole with healing draughts. And afterwards I will come to my kingdom, and dwell with the Britons with mickle joy." Even with the words there approached from the sea that was a short boat, floating with the waves; and two women therein, wondrously formed; and they took Arthur anon, and bare him quickly, and laid him softly down, and forth they gan depart. Then was it accomplished that Merlin whilom said, that mickle care should be of Arthur's departure. The Britons believe yet that he is alive, and dwelleth in Avalun with the fairest of all elves; and the Britons ever yet expect when Arthur shall return. Was never the man born, of ever any lady chosen, that knoweth of the sooth, to say more of Arthur. But whilom was a sage hight Merlin; he said with words,— his sayings were sooth,— that an Arthur should yet come to help the English (Britons).' Another poem, of later date, 1250, with no merit but that of just design and regular versification, is the Ormulum, by Orm, also a monk. Its plan is to explain to the people the spiritual import of the daily Service. A religious hand-book, simple and rustic, it marks the rise of English religious literature. The ideal monk is to be 'a very pure man, and altogether without property, except that he shall be found in simple meat and clothes.' He will have ' a hard and stiff and rough and heavy life to lead. All his heart and desire ought to be aye toward Heaven, and his Master well to serve.' This, as we have seen, was the popular religion. In pardonable vanity the author says: 'Thiss hoc iss nemmnedd Orrmulum Forrthi thatt Orrm itt wrohhte.' Another poem — for we must call it such, if phrases ending with the same sound are poetry — is the chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, written in Alexandrines ' about the year 1300, and deserving notice chiefly as the most ancient professed history in the English language. Beginning with the siege of Troy, it ends with the death of Henry III, 1272. It conveys some information of value upon the social and physical condition of England in the thirteenth century, as the following lines suggest: 'From South to North he ys long eigte hondred myle: And foure hondred myle brod from Est to West to wende, A mydde tho lond as yt he, and nogt as by the on ende. Plente me may in Engelond of alle gode y se, 1 Verees of twelve syllables, or six iambic feet. The Alexandrine, as the designation of a particular metre, took its name from its employment in the popular and widely cir- culated poems on Alexander the Great. 114 POKMATIVE PEEIOD — THE LITERATUKE. Bute folc yt for gulte other yeres the worse be. For Engelond ys full ynow of fruyt and of tren, Of wodes and of parkas, that ioye yt ys to sen. Of foules and of bestes of wylde and tame al so, Of salt fysch and eche fresch, and sayre ryneres ther to. Of Welles swete and colde ynow, of lesen and of mede. [pastures Of seluer and of gold, of tyn and of lede. Of stel, of yrn and of bras, of god corn gret won. Of whyte and of wolle god, betere ne may be non. Wateres he hath eke gode y now, ac at be fore alle other thre [but Out of the lond in to the see, amies as thei be. Ware by the schippes mowe come fro the se and wende. And brynge on lond god y now, a boute in eche ende.' But shall we look upon a desert of stumps, and exclaim, '0 my soul, what beauty ! ' What is here in these metrical Lives of Saints, rhymed dissertations and chronicles, which are so well prolonged and so void of pleasure ? What but poverty of intel- lect and taste? Wholly destitute of poetical merit, unable to develop a continuous idea, they disregard historical truth without securing the graces of fable by the sacrifice. They are, it is true, of interest to the lover of antiquities, and of importance to the linguist, as are fossil remains to the geologist. They exhibit the physiology of the English speech in its transition or larva and chrysalis states. Thus the JBrut, though rendered from the French, contains fewer than fifty Norman words. A remarkable peculiarity of its grammar is the use of the pronoun his as a sign of the possessive case, as when in more modern English it was not unusual to write e/b/in his book. The Orinulum differs from the Anglo-Saxon models in wanting alliteration, and from the Norman-French in wanting rhyme. It contains a few words from the ecclesiastical Latin, but scarcely a trace of Norman influ- ence. It has a peculiar device of spelling, consistent and uni- form, — the doubling of the consonant after every short vowel, — to indicate what, at a period of great confusion, the author deemed the standard pronunciation. Its immediate purpose, perhaps, was to guide the half-Normanized priests when the verses were read aloud for the good or pleasure of the people. On adherence to its orthography by readers and copyists, it lays great stress: 'And whase willen shall this booke And whoso shall wish this book Eft other sithe writen. After other time to write. Him bidde ice that he't write right Him bid I that he it write right, Swa sum this booke him teacheth.' So as this book him teacheth. POVERTY OF INTELLECT AND TASTE. 115 In Robert's Chronicle of England, the infusion of Norman words is still not more than four or five per cent, while it repre- sents the language in a decidedly more advanced stage. He distinctly states the prevalence of French in his own day: 'Vor bote a man couthe French, me tolth of him well lute For unless a man know French, one talketh of him little; Ac lowe men holdeth to Englyss, and to her kunde speche zute But low men hold to iSnglish, and to their natural speech yet.'' Let us omit The Lay of Havelok the Dane, an orphan who marries an English princess; King Horn, who, thrown into a boat when a lad, is wrecked upon the coast of England, and, becoming a knight, reconquers the kingdom of his father; 8ir Guy, who rescues enchanted knights, cuts down a giant, chal- lenges and kills the Sultan in his tent; Alexander, the great hero of the heathen world, whose forgotten glory, after the downfall of the Empire, was revived on the Levantine shores of the Mediterranean, and then in Western Europe; — all which are of the thirteenth century, and restored or adapted from the French; all which, while they serve to illustrate the continuity of the English tongue, the growth of the French romantic man- ner of story-telling as the years grow nearer to 1300, and the demand of the Middle Age for glare and startling events, are utterly without power in delineating character or unity of con- ception in plan and execution. In the midst of the story-tellers are satirists who, writing mostly in French or Latin, censure political abuses and Church corruptions, sometimes in a tone of mournful seriousness, as if the degradation to which the profession was reduced by the depravity of the higher clergy was deeply felt; sometimes with more force than respect or elegance. Thus an English poem of the Land of Cockaigne, — from coquina, a kitchen, — a form of satire current in many parts of Europe: 'List, for now my tale begins, There the Pope for my ofEence, How to rid me of my sins, Bade me straight in penance, thence. Once I journey'd far from home. Wandering onward to attain To the gate of holy Rome. The wondrous land that hight Cockaigne.' ' We are told of a region free from trouble, where the rivers run with oil, milk, wine, and honey; wherein the white and grey monks have an abbey of which the walls are built of pasties, which are paved with cakes, and have puddings for pinnacles. 116 POEMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. Roasted geese fly about crying, 'Geese all hot'! This is the tri- umph of gluttony. Here, also, like prophecies of the perfect bloom, are some bright lyrics, — religious, amatory, pastoral, warlike. The chival- ric adoration of the sovereign Lady, the real deity of mediaeval society, breathes in this pleasing hymn, which bears witness to its origin: 'Blessed beo thu, lavedi, Al min hope is uppon the, Fill of hovene blisse ; Bi day and bi nicht . . . Sweet flar of parais, Bricht and scene quen of storre, Moder of milternisse ... So me liht and lere. I-blessed beo thn, Lavedi, In this false fikele world, So fair and so briht; So me led and steore.' What could be farther from the Saxon sentiment ? A poem of some interest as the earliest imaginative piece of native inven- tion after the Conquest is The Owl and the Nightingale, m octosyllabic rhyme, composed in the reign of Henry HI. It is a dispute between the two birds as to which has the finer voice. After much reciprocal abuse, the question of superiority is re- ferred to the author. Love of nature is deep and national. To the Frenchman it is a light gladsomeness, soon gone, suggesting only a pleasing couplet as it passes, — ' Now is winter gone, the hawthorn blos- soms, the rose expands, the birds do voice their vows in melody.' To the Englishman, all sad and moral, the circling seasons sug- gest a spiritual lesson, — chiefly 'vanit}^ of vanities.' So is the following, of the reign of Edward I, truly English in spirit: 'Wynter wakeneth al my care, Nou this leves waxeth bare, Ofte y sike ant mourne sare. When hit cometh in my thoht Of this worldes joie, hou hit goth al to noht. Now hit is, and now hit nys. Also hit nere y-wys. That moni mon seith soth his ys, Al goth bote Godes wille, Alle we shule deyc, thath us like ylle. Al that gren me graueth grene, Nou hit faleweth al by-dene; Jhesu, help that hit be sene, And shild us from helle, - For y not whider y shal, ne hou longe her duelle.' Yeomen and harpers throw off some spirited products; but their songs, first ignored, then transformed, reach us only in a late KISE OF ENGLISH PROSE. 117 edition, as Bobin Hood, Chevy GJtase, and the Nut-Brown Maid. Enough. The Saxon stock, stripped of its buds by the Nor- man axe, grows, though feebly. An occasional shoot displays genuine England to the light, as a vast rock crops up here and there from beneath the soil. Prose. — When the preservation of literary compositions by writing has given opportunity for their patient study, the next step is possible, — the use of prose; and histories, rude and meagre, serving rather to fix a date than to illuminate it, are its principal products. Nature makes men poets, — art makes them philoso- phers and critics. English prose looks fondly back to Alfred, in his translations of Bede, for its true parentage. As Whitby, in the person of C^dmon, is the cradle of English poetry, so Winchester is that of English prose. Failing soon after, it is revived in ^Ifric, who, turning into English the first seven books and part of Job, becomes the first large translator of the Bible; repressed by the Danes, and again by the Normans, it dies in the death of the Saxon Chronicle, nor lives again in any extended form till the reign of Edward III. There may be mentioned a curious work in the vernacular, belonging to the latter part of the twelfth century, — the Ancren Biwle, that is, the Anchoresses' Bide, a code of monastic precepts ■ for the guidance of a small nunnery, or rather religious society of ladies : 'Ye ne schiilen eten vleschs ne seim buten Ine muchele secnesse; other hwoso is euer feble eteth potage blitheliche; and wiinietb on to Intel drunch. . . . Ye, mine leoue sustren, ne schulen babben no best, bute kat one. . . . Nexst flesbe ne schal men werien no linene cloth, bute yif hit beo of herde and of greate heordcn. Stamin habbe hwose wule ; and hwose wille mei beon buten. Ye schulen liggen in on heater, and i-gurd. . . . Ower schone beon greate and warme. Ine sumer ye habbeth leane norto gon and sitten barnot. . . . Ye ne schulen senden lettres, ne underuon lettres, ne writen, buten leane. Ye schulen beon i-dodded four sithen ithe yere, norto lihten ower heaued; and ase ofte i-leten blod; and oftere yif neod is; and hwoso mei beon ther withuten, ich hit mei wel i-tholien.' i • Ye shall not eat flesh nor lard but in much sickness; or whoso is ever feeble may eat potage blithely; and accustom yourselves to little drink. . . . Ye, my dear sisters, shall have but one cat. . . . Next the flesh ye shall wear no linen cloth, but if it be of hard and of coarse canvas. Whoso will may have a shirt of woolen and linen, and whoso will may be without. Ye shall lie in a garment and girt. . . . Let your shoes be large and warm. In summer ye are permitted to go and sit bare-foot. ... Ye shall not send letters, nor receive letters, nor write without leave. Ye shall be cropped four times in the year, to lighten your head; and as often bled, oftener if need be; but whoso may dispense with this, well. I 118 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. Again: ' The slowe lith and slepeth ithe deofles berme, ase his deore deorling; and te deouel leieth his tutel adun to his earen, and tuteleth him al thet he euer wule. . . . The giure glutun is thes fondes manciple. Uor he stiljeth euer ithe celere, other ithe kuchene. His heorte is ithe disches; his thouht is al ithe neppe; his lif ithe tunne; his soule ithe crocke.'' i . . . History. — Between the beginning and the end of history- are legendary traditions, credulous chronicles, barren annals, the glitter and clatter of kings and warriors, luxuriant, tangled, and fanciful narratives. When, as in the Middle Ages, credulity and looseness of thought are universal, it is impossible for men to engage in a philosophic study of the past, or even to record with accuracy what is taking place around them. So great is the general aptitude for the marvellous, that even the ablest writers are compelled to believe the most childish absurdities. Thus, it was well known that the city of Naples was founded on eggs; also, that the order of St. Michael was instituted in person by the archangel, who was himself the first knight. The Tartars, it was taught, proceeded from Tartarus, which some theologians said was an inferior kind of hell, but others declared to be hell itself. Hence, as the Turks were identical with the Tartars, it was only a proper and natural consequence that, since the Cross had fallen into Turkish hands, all Christian children had ten teeth less than formerly. Here is a story which Anselm, the Archbishop of Can- terbury, one of the greatest and most vigorous minds in the "twelfth century, tells of a certain St. Kieran. The saint, with thirty of his companions, has been executed in a wood by order of a Pagan prince, and their bodies are left lying there for the wolves and the wild birds. Note the fact, as the grave and good Anselm has really ascertained it: ' But now a miracle, such as was once heard of before in the Church in the person of the holy Denis, was again wrought by Divine Providence to preserve the bodies of these saints from profanation. The trunk of Kieran rose from the ground, and selecting first 1 The sluggard lieth and sleepeth in the devil's bosom, as his dear darling; and the devil applieth his mouth to his ears, and tells him whatever he will. [For, this is certainly the case with everyone who is not occupied in anythins good: the devil assiduously talks, and the idle lovingly receive his lessons. He that isldle and careless is the devil's bosom-sleeper: but he shall on Doomsday be fearfully startled with the dreadful sound of the angels' trumpets, and shall awaken in terrible amazement in hell. "Arise, ye dead, who lie in o;raves: arise, and come to the Saviour's judgment."] . . . The greedy glutton is the devil's purvej^or; for he always haunts the cellar or the kitchen. His heart is in the dishes ; all his thought is of the table-cloth ; his life is in the tun, his soul in the pitcher. [He cometh into the presence of his lord besmutted and besmeared, with a dish m one hand and a bowl in the other. He talks much incoherently, and staggereih like a drunken man who seemeth about to fall, looks at his great belly, and the devil laughs so that he bursteth.] HISTORICAL METHOD — LEGENDARY STAGE. 119 Ms own head, and carrying it to a stream, and there carefully washing it, and afterwards performing the same sacred office for each of his companions, giving each body its own head, he dug graves for them and buried them, and last of all buried himself.' With the appetite for the fabulous and superhuman is coupled — as if the heart were searching for its dead kindred — the love of antiquity. Hence history, in its first efforts, usually begins at a very remote period, and traces events in an unbroken series, even from the moment when Adam passed the gates of Paradise. Add to this, that the historians were essentially theological, — priests, who lived remote from public affairs, considered the civil transactions as entirely subordinate to the ecclesiastical, were strongly infected with the love of wonder, and conceived it their business to enforce belief rather than to encourage inquiry. Thus Matthew Paris, the most eminent historian of the thirteenth century, to explain why the Mahometans abominate pork, informs us that Mahomet, having on one occasion gorged himself with food and drink till he was in an insensible condition, fell asleep on a dunghill, and in this disgraceful state was attacked and suffocated by a litter of pigs; for which reason his followers have ever since refused to partake of their flesh. This celebrated writer tells us further, to account for the origin of the Mahom- etan sect, that Mahomet was originally a cardinal, and became a heretic only because he failed in his design of being elected pope. Perhaps the most reliable standard of the knowledge and opinions of these Ages of Faith is Geoffrey's History of the ■ Tritons (1147). This "Welsh monk ascertains that after the capture of Troy, Ascanius fled from the city, and begat a son, who became father to Brutus; that Brutus, having extirpated the race of giants, founded London, settled the affairs of the island, and called it, after himself, by the name of Britain. A long line of kings is then led from oblivion into day, most of whom are famous for their abilities, and some for the prodigies which occur in their time. Thus during the reign of Rivallo ' it rained blood three days together, and there fell vast swarms of flies.' When Morvidus, 'a most cruel tyrant,' was on the throne, — 'There came from the coasts of the Irish sea, a most cruel monster, that was contin- ually devouring the people upon the sea-coasts. As soon as he heard of it, he ventured to go and encounter it alone ; when he had in vain spent all his darts upon it, the monster rushed upon him, and with open jaws swallowed him up like a small fish.' 120 PORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. The dauntless Arthur kills a giant from the shores of Spain, against whom armies were able to do nothing, — 'For whether they attacked him by sea or land, he either overturned their ships with va8t rocks, or killed them with several sorts of darts, besides many of them that he took and devoured half alive.' Pausing, in the historical account, to relate the prophecy of Mer- lin, he tells us how, by the prophet's advice, a pond was drained, at whose bottom were two hollow stones, and in them two drag- ons asleep, which hindered the building of Vortigern's tower; then, — 'As Vortigern, king of the Britons, was sitting upon the bank of the drained pond, the two dragons, one of which was white, the other red, came forth, and, approaching one another, began a terrible fight, and cast forth fire with their breath. But the white dragon had the advantage, and made the other fly to the end of the lake. And he, for grief at his flight, renewed the assault upon his pursuer, and forced him to retire. After this battle of the dragons, the king commanded Ambrose Merlin to tell him what it portended. Upon which he, bursting into tears, delivered what his prophetical spirit suggested to him, as follows : "Woe to the red dragon, for his banishment hasteneth on. His lurking holes shall be seized by the white -dragon, which signifies the Saxons whom you invited over; but the red denotes the British nation, which shall be oppressed by the white. Therefore shall its mountains be levelled as the valleys, and the rivers of the valleys shall run with blood. The exercise of religion shall be destroyed, and churches be laid open to ruin." ■■ The history is brought down to the close of the seventh century, when the Britons, sunk in barbarism and no longer worthy of their name, were known only as 'Welshmen': 'But as for the kings that have succeeded among them in Wales, since that time, I leave the history of them to Caradoc of Lancarvan, my contemporary; as I do also the kings of the Saxons to William of Malmesbury, and Henry of Huntington. But I advise them to be silent concerning the kings of the Britons, since they have not that book written in the British tongue, which Walter, archdeacon of Oxford, brought out of Brittany, and which being a true history, published in honour of those princes, I have thus taken care to translate.' It is here that we first read of Gorboduc, whose story will be the theme of the earliest English tragedy ; of Lear and his daughters; and, above all, of King Arthur as the recognized hero of national story. A hundred years after its first publication, this book was generally adopted by writers on English history; and, for its repudiation in the sixteenth century, Vergil was considered as a man almost deprived of reason. A book thus stamped with every mark of approbation is surely no bad measure of the ages in which it was accredited and admired. Mere annalists abounded, who set down minutely, in chrono- AN]!fALISTS — THE SAXON CHRONICLE. 121 logical order, what their eyes have seen and their ears have heard, till the reader is overpowered with weariness; only the dross of history; facts, in particles, in mass, without the abstract truth which interpenetrates them, and lies latent among them, like gold in the ore; dreams, portents, warnings, and the whole progeny of superstition. Here is the style of the chronicler in the tenth century: ' 538. When he had reigned four years, the sun was eclipsed from the first hour of the day to the third. 540. Again, two years after, the sun was eclipsed for half an hour after the third hour, so that the stars were everywhere visible in the sliy. 661. After three years, Kenwalk again fought a battle near the town of Pontes- bury, and took prisoner Wulfhere, son of Penda, at Ashdown, when he had defeated his army. 671. After one year more, there was a great pestilence among the birds, so that there was an intolerable stench by sea and land, arising from the carcasses of birds, tooth small and great. 674. After one year, Wulfhere, son of Penda, and Kenwalk fought a battle among themselves in a place called Bedwin. 677. After three years a comet was seen. 729. At the end of one year a comet appeared, and the holy bishop Egbert died. 733. Two years after these things, king Ethelbald received under his dominion the royal vill which is called Somerton. The same year the sun was eclipsed. 734. After the lapse of one year, the moon appeared as if stained with spots of Mood, and by the same omen Tatwine and Bede departed this life.' That monument of English prose which is at once most vener- able and most valuable is the Saxon Chronicle, compiled from the monastic annals by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 891, and carried forward in the monasteries by various hands until the accession of Henry II, in the year 1154. Of value as a sta- tistic epitome of English history during that long period, its chief value, perhaps, consists in the bird's-eye view which it gives of linguistic changes from year to year, from century to century, until, as the last records are by contemporary writers, old English almost melts into modern. At distant intervals, when inspired by the transitory, the sombre, and the mysterious, it rises to a pathos like this on William the Conqueror: ' Sharp death, that passes neither by rich men nor poor, seized him also. Alas, how false and how uncertain is this world's weal ! He, that was before a rich king and lord of many lands, had not then of all his land more than a space of seven feet; and he, that was whilom enshrouded in gold and gems, lay there covered with mould.' But, in general, it is vapid, empty, and uncritical, noting in the same lifeless tone the important and the trivial, without the slightest tinge of dramatic color or of discrimination. Blood gushes out of the earth in Berkshire near the birthplace of 122 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. Alfred. In Peterborough, under a Norman abbot, horns are heard at dead of night, and spectral huntsmen are seen to ride through the woods. The following extracts are fair specimens: '449. In this year Martian and Valentinian succeeded to the empire and reigned seven winters. And in their days Hengest and Horsa, invited by Wyrtgeorn, king of the Britons, sought Britain, on the shore which is named Ypwines fleot; first in support of the Britons, but afterwards they fought against them. 463. In this year Hengest and ^sc fought against the Welsh and toolt countless booty; and the Welsh fled from the Angles as fire. 509. In this year St. Benedict the abbot, father of all monks, went to heaven. 661. In this year was the great destruction of birds. 792. Here Offa, king of Mercia, commanded that King Ethelbert should be beheaded ; and Osred, who had been king of the Northumbrians, returning home after his exile, was apprehended and slain on the 18th day before the Calends of October. His body is depos- ited at Tinemouth. Ethelred this year, on the 3d day before the Calends of October, took unto himself a new wife whose name was Elffeda. 793. In this year dire forwarnings came over the land of the Northumbrians, and miserably terrified the people : there were excessive whirlwinds and lightnings, and fiery dragons were seen flying in the air. A great famine soon followed these tokens; and a little after that, in the same year, on the 6th of the Ides of January, the havoc of heathen men miserably destroyed God's church at Lindisfarne, through rapine and slaughter. And Sicga died on the 8th of the Cal. of March.' Centuries will pass before history, which thus begins in ro- mance and babble, will end in essay; before this enfeebled intel- lect will be able to rise from particular facts to discover the laws by which those facts are governed, exhibiting by judicious selec- tion, rejection, and arrangement, the orderly progress of society and the nature of man. Theology.- — It was a favorite saying among the ancients, that death is 'a law and not a punishment.' It was a root- doctrine of the early Christians that disobedience — the fruit of the forbidden tree — 'brought death into the world and all our woe.' The first represented man as pure and innocent till his will has sinned; the second, as under sentence of condemnation at the moment of birth. Plutarch had said that no funeral sacrifices were offered for infants, ' because it is irreligious to lament for those pure souls who have passed into a better life and a happier dwelling-place.' 'Be assured,' writes a saint of the sixth century, 'that not only men who have obtained the use of their reason, but children who have begun to live in their mother's womb and have there died, or who, just born, have passed away without the sacrament of holy baptism administered in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, must be punished by eternal tor- THEOLOGY — HERESY. 123 ture.' The opinion so graphically expressed by a theologian who said 'he doubted not that there were infants less than a span long crawling about the floor of hell,' was held with great confi- dence in the early Church. Some, indeed, imagined that a spe- cial place was assigned to them, where there was neither suffering nor enjoyment. This was emphatically denied by St. Augustine, who declared that they descended into 'everlasting fire.' Accord- ing to a popular legend, the redbreast was commissioned by the Deity to carry a drop of water to them to relieve their con- suming thirst, and its breast was singed in piercing the flames. Belief in a personal devil, as we have seen, was profound and universal. Sometimes he is encountered as a grotesque and hideous animal, sometimes as a' black man, sometimes as a fair woman, sometimes as a priest haranguing in the pulpit, some- times as an angel of light. He hovers forever about the Chris- tian; but the sign of the cross, a few drops of holy water, or the name of Mary, can put him to immediate and ignominious flight. Doubt was branded as a sin. To cherish prejudice was better than to analyze it. Those who diverged from the orthodox belief were doomed. Avenues of inquiry were painted with images of appalling suffering and malicious demons. An age which be- lieves that a man is intensely guilty who holds certain opinions, and will cause the damnation of his fellows if he propagates them, has no moral difficulty in concluding that the heretic should be damned. A law of the Saxons condemned to death any one who ate meat in Lent, unless the priest was satisfied that it was a matter of absolute necessity. Gregory of Tours, recording 'the virtues of saints and the disasters of nations,' draws the moral of the history thus: 'Arius,! the impious founder of tlie impious sect, Iiis entrails having fallen out, passed into the flames of hell; but Hilary, the blessed defender of the undivided Trinity, though exiled on that account, found his country in Paradise. King Clovis, who confessed the Trinity, and by its assistance crushed the heretics, extended his dominions through all Gaul. Alaric, who denied the Trinity, was deprived of his king- dom and his subjects, and, what was far worse, was punished in the future world." At the close of the twelfth century, among the measures devised to suppress heresy, the principal was the Inquisition. The func- tion of the civil government was to execute its sentence. Placed in the hands of Dominicans and Franciscans, it was centralized I 'I am persecuted,' Arius plaintively said, 'because I have taught that the Son had a beginning and the Father had not.' 124 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. by the appointment of an Inquisitor-General at Rome, with whom all branches of the tribunal — wherever the new corpora- tion was admitted — were to be in constant communication. Its bloody success might seem to fulfil the portent of Dominic's nativity. Legend relates that his mother, in the season of child- birth, dreamed that a dog was about to issue from her womb, bearing a lighted torch that would kindle the whole world. We shall see its officers branding the disbeliever with hot irons, wrenching fingers asunder, shattering bones, — doing it all in the name of the Teacher who had said, ' By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, that ye love one another,' — yet doing it perhaps in devotion to the truth as, in their human frailty, they conceive it. The pagan philosopher fixed his eye upon virtue; the Chris- tian, upon sin. The former sought to awaken the sentiment of admiration; the latter, that of remorse. The one, powerless to restrain vice, was fitted to dignify man ; the other, to regen- erate him. Those who are insensible to the nobleness of virtue, may be so convulsed by the fear of judgment as to renew the tenor of their lives. The pagans asserted the immateriality of the soul, because they believed that the body must perish forever. The Fathers, with the exception of Augustine, maintained that the soul was simply a second body. The material view derived strength from the firm belief in punishment by fire. This was the central fact of religion. Its ghastly imagery left nature stricken and forlorn. The agitations of craters were ascribed to the great press of lost souls. In the hush of evening, when the peasant boy asked why the sinking sun, as it dipped beneath the horizon, kindled with such a glorious red, he was answered, in the words of an old Saxon catechism, ' because it is then looking into hell.' The pen of the poet, the pencil of the artist, the visions of the monk, sustained the maddening terror with appalling vividness and minuteness. Through the vast of hell rolled a seething stream of sulphur, to feed and intensify the waves of fire. In the centre was Satan, bound by red-hot chains, on a burning gridiron. But his hands are free, and he seizes the damned, crushes them like grapes against his teeth, then sucks them down the fiery cavern of his throat. Hideous beings, of dreadful aspect and fantastic eatio2S"alism:. 125 form, with hooks of red-hot iron, plunge the lost alternately into lire and ice. Some of the souls are hung up by their tongues, others are sawn asunder between flaming iron posts, others gnawed by serpents, others with hammer and anvil are welded into a mass, others boiled and then strained through a cloth. A narrow bridge spans the abyss, and from this the shrieking souls are plunged into the mounting flames below. But in every age there are some who stand upon the heights, above the ideal of their generation, and forecast the realized conceptions of the distant future. One of the most rationalistic minds of the fourth century was Pelagius, a British prelate. His persecutors were wont to say, ' Speak not to Pelagius, or he will convert you.' His principal tenets may be thus epitomized: 1. Adam was created mortal, and would have died whether he had sinned or not. 2. Adam's transgression affected only himself, not his pos- terity. 3. Mankind neither perish through Adam, nor are raised from the dead through Christ. 4. The law, as well as the Gospel, leads men to heaven. 5. Divine grace is conditioned on human worthiness. 6. Infants are in the same state as Adam before his fall. He would not, however, venture to deny the necessity of infant baptism. Severely pressed on this point by his opponents, he replied that baptism was necessary to wash away the guilt of . the child's pettishness ! ^ One striking example of a bold free spirit in the tenth century was the famed Erigena. Alone in the middle ages, he maintained the figurative interpretation of hell-fire. In 1277, propositions like the following were professed by philosophers at Paris: God is not triune and one, for trinity is incompatible with simplicity; the world and humanity are eter- nal; the resurrection of the body must not be admitted by philosophers; the soul, when separated from the body, cannot suffer by fire; theological discourses are based on fables; a man who has in himself moral and intellectual virtues, has all that is necessary to happiness. 1 It is gratifying to know that St. Angustine, in answering this argument, declared distinctly that the crying of a baby is not sinful, and therefore does not deserve eternal damnation. 126 POEMATIVE PEKIOD — THE LITEKATURE. It may be needless to add explicitly — what the theology of the past so plainly suggests in the changed atmosphere of the present — that every age creates its image of God; and the image, conforming to the conceptions of its creator, is the measure of its civilization. This child shall one day grov7 up to manhood, and sing lofty psalms with noble human voice. Sthlcs. — A nation or an age may be without moral science, but never without moral distinctions. The languages and litera- ture of the world indicate that at all times, among all peoples, the idea of right and wrong has been recognized and applied. We shall find ethical notions, ethical life, powerfully operative, in mediaeval England, but no ethical system. When society is semi- barbarous, the inculcation of morality devolves avowedly and ex- clusively upon the priests. Motives of action require to be mate- rialized. Theology is the groundwork of morality. The moral faculty, too weak of itself to be a guide of conduct, must be reenforced by the rewards and punishments of religion, — the hope of Heaven and the fear of Hell. The propensity to evil, in conse- quence of original sin, is itself sin. The foundation of the moral law is the Divine will. Thus ScotuS asserted that the good is good, not by its own inherent nature, but because God commands it. But there appear from time to time men who, rising above surrounding circumstances, anticipate the moral standard of a later age, and inculcate principles before their appropriate civil- ization has dawned. Thus Abelard, emphasizing the subjective aspect of conscience, represents that moral good and evil reside not in the act but in the intention. It is only the consenting to evil which is sin. The pure hate sin from love of virtue, not from a slavish fear of pain inflicted. The good is good, not because God commands it; but He commands it because it is good. God is the absolutely highest good, and that, through virtue, should be the aim of human endeavor. The civilizations of the future may esti- mate their relative excellence by their nearness to this eminence of thought ! Science. — Before the Conquest, in the popular series of &olo- inon and Saturn, it was asked, as a question that engaged Eng- lish curiosity, 'What is the substance of which Adam, the first man, was made?' and the answer was: EMBRYONIC SCIENCE — ASTROLOGY. 127 ' I tell thee of eight pounds by weight.' ' Tell me what they are called.'—' I tell thee the first was a pound of earth, of which his flesh was made ; the second was a pound of fire, whence his hlood came, red and hot; the third was a pound of wind, and thence his breathing was given to him; the fourth was a pound of welkin, thence was his unsteadi- ness of mood given him; the fifth was a pound of grace, whence was given him his growth; the sixth was a pound of blossoms, whence was given him the variety of his eyes; and seventh was a pound of dew, whence he got his sweat; the eighth was a pound of salt, and thence were his tears salt.' From this we may infer and estimate the rest. The same ques- tion and answer will be found in The Maisters of Oxford^s C atechism, written in fifteenth-century English ! What are the condition and hope of science, when inquisitive children, who delight in riddles and enigmas, reduce it to a religious cate- chism ? The overwhelming importance attached to theology diverted to it all those intellects which in another condition of society would have been employed in the investigations of sci- ence. Everything was done to cultivate habits the opposite of scientific, — fear and faith. Innovation of every kind was re- garded as a crime. Superior knowledge, shown in speculation, was called heresy; shown in the study of mathematics or of nature, it was called magic, — a proof that such pursuits were rare. In the thirteenth century, few students of geometry pro- ceeded farther than the fifth proposition of the first book of Euclid, — the famous asses' bridge. What must be the state of the natural sciences, when the science of demonstration, which is their foundation, is neglected ? Indeed, the name of the mathematics was given chiefly to astrology. Mathematicians were defined to be 'those who, from the position of the stars, the aspect of the firmament, and the motions of the planets, discover things that are to come.' It was universally believed that the whole destiny of man is determined by the star that presides over his nativity. Many could not, as they imagined, safely appear in public, or eat, or bathe, unless they had first carefully consulted the almanac, to ascertain the place and appearance of their particular planet. Comets and meteors foreshadowed the fate of empires; and the signs of the zodiac served only to predict the career of individuals and the develop- ment of communities. But as these constant observations, and the construction of instruments required for making them, led to astronomy; so alchemy, which aimed to transmute all metals into gold, or find the elixir of life, led to chemistry. An alchem- 128 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. ist records that in a secret chamber of the Tower of London, performed in the royal presence the experiment of transmuting some crystal into diamond, of which Edward I, he says, caused some little pillars to be made for the tabernacle of God. The healing art, from being practised only by women, who employed charms and spells with their herbs and decoctions, gradually became the province of priests, who trusted to relics, holy water, and other superstitions. Medicine had in the thirteenth century been taken in a great measure out of the hands of the clergy, though it was still in the main a mixture of superstition and quackery. The distinction between the physician and the apothe- cary was understood, and surgery also began to be followed as a separate branch. With Edward the Confessor, about the middle of the eleventh century, began the extraordinary usage of touching, to cure the disease called the 'King's Evil,' — a usage that continued for nearly seven hundred years. When Malcolm and Macduff have fled to England, it is in the palace of Edward the Confessor that Malcolm inquires of an English doctor, — 'Comes the king forth, I pray you?' and the answer is, — 'Ay, sir: there are a crew of wretched souls That stay his cure : their malady convinces The great assay of art; but at his touch, Such sanctity hath heaven given his hand, They presently amend.' When Macduff asks, — 'What's the disease he means?' Malcolm answers, — ' 'Tis called the evil: A most miraculous work in this good king; Which often, since my here-remain in England, I have seen him do. How he solicits heaven. Himself best knows : but strangely-visited people. All swoln and ulcerous, pitiful to the eye. The mere despair of surgery, he cures; Hanging a golden stamp about their necks. Put on with holy prayers : and 'tis spoken To the succeeding royalty he leaves The healing benediction.' ... All which proves, if anything, that in the treatment of disease faith is more potent than physic. The supposed influence of the stars, with a crowd of super- stitions, naturally followed from the geocentric theory of the 1 he I SCIENTIFIC CONCEPTIOKS. 129 universe. When it is believed, as in the Middle Ages, that the earth is the great central object of the whole created world, around which the sun and moon alike revolve, and the stars are but inconsiderable lights destined to garnish its firmament, — man becomes the centre of all things, and every startling phe- nomenon has some bearing upon his acts; the eclipse, the comet, the meteor, the tempest, are all intended for him. The existence of the antipodes, or persons inhabiting the op- posite side of the globe, and consequently having the soles of their feet directly opposed to ours, was disproved by quoting St. Paul, — that all men are made to live upon the ^ face of the earth,' from which it clearly follows that they do not live upon more faces than one, or upon the back. If we examine a little farther, we are told that the earth is fixed firmly upon its founda- tions, from which we may at least infer that it is not suspended in the air. In the sixteenth century, for asserting that the earth moves, Copernicus will be censured, and Galileo will be impris- oned. It was taught as a firmly established principle that water has no gravity in or on water, since it is in propria loco, in its own place; — that air has no gravity on water, since it is above water, which is its proper place; — that earth in water tends downward, since its place is below water; — that water rises in a pump or syphon, because nature abhors a vacuum. Peter Lombard quotes our Anglo-Saxon Bede that the waters above the firmament are the solid crystalline heavens in which the stars are fixed, 'for crystal, which is so hard and transparent, is made of water'; and mentions also the opinion of St. Augus- tine, that the waters above the heavens are in a state of vapor, in minute drops: ' If, then, water can, as we see in clouds, be so minutely divided that it may be thus supported as vapor on air, which is naturally lighter than water; why may we not believe that it floats above that lighter celestial element in still minuter drops and still lighter vapors? But in whatever manner the waters are there, we do not doubt that they are there.' Philosophy. — The long and barren period which intervened between Proclus of the fifth century, in whom the speculative activity of ancient Greece disappeared, and Bacon of the six- teenth, in whom it was reformed and fertilized, was character- ized, as a whole, by indistinctness of ideas, bias to authority, and 9 130 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. impatience of dissent. Poverty of thought disposed men to lean upon an intellectual superior, — Plato, Aristotle, or the Fathers; to read nature through books; to talk of what great geniuses had said; to study the opinions of others as the only mode of form- ing their own; to criticise, to interpret, to imitate, to dispute. The subtlety which found in certain accredited writings all the truth it desired, forbade others to find, there or elsewhere, any other truths. The slave became a tyrant. The Christian Fathers made philosophy the handmaid of reli- gion. The whole philosophic effort was to mediate between the dogmas of faith and the demands of reason, with church doctrine as the criterion or standard. The method was three-fold: 1. That of the Fathers, built on Scripture, modified by the prin- ciples of the Grecian schools. 2. Conjointly with Scripture, the use of the Fathers themselves. 3. The application of the Aris- totelian dialectics.' Philosophy thus subservient to the Christian articles of belief was called Scliolasticisin, a name derived from the cloister schools opened by Charlemagne for the pursuit of speculative studies, which in those days were prosecuted only by the clergy, they alone having leisure or inclination for such work. The teachers of the seven liberal arts, as afterwards all who occupied themselves with the sciences, and especially with philosophy, following the tradition and example of the schools, were called Scliolastics. Scholasticism, therefore, may be de- fined as the reproduction of ancient philosophy tinder the con- trol of ecclesiastical doctrine, with an accommodation, in cases of discrepancy between them, of the former to the latter. Its leading representatives till the fourteenth century are Erigena, with whom it begins, born and educated in Ireland; Roscelin and Abelard, of France; Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas, of Italy; Anselm, of Normandy; Alexander Hales, 'the Irrefraga- ble,' and Duns Scotus, 'the Subtle Doctor,' of England. The views of Erigena, (800-877) are decidedly Platonic. God, the creating and uncreated being, alone has essential subsistence. He is the essence of all thing-s, the beginning and the end of all. Among created natures are some which themselves create, — ■ Ideas, or the archetypes of things, the first causes of individual existences. These are contained in the Divine Wisdom, or Word 1 That branch of logic which teaches the rules and modes of reasoning. ean \ SCHOLASTICISM — REALISM — NOMINALISM. 131 — the Son; and the influence of the Holy Ghost, or Divine Love, causes them to develop into the forms of the eternal world. More than a thousand years before, Plato had said: 'Now, Idea is, as regards God, a mental operation by liim (the notions of God, eter- nal and perfect in themselves) ; as regards us, the first things perceptible by mind; as regards Matter, a standard; but as regards the world, perceptible by sense, a pattern; but as considered with reference to itself, an existence.' The creation from nothing is out of God's own essence — an un- folding. Our life is His life in us. As the substance of all things in shape and time, He descends to us, not alone in the act of incar- nation, but in all created existence. As out of Him all things are evolved, so into Him all things will ultimately return, — a concep- tion not in harmony with the doctrinal system of the Church. True philosophy and true religion are one. But true religion is not identical with dogmatism. On the contrary, in case of a collision between authority and reason, let reason be given the preference. Plato taught Realism, the doctrine that universals — species, genera, or types — have a real existence apart from individual objects. Aristotle, on the contrary, taught Nominalism, the doctrine that only individuals exist in reality, — that abstract ideas are nothing but abstractions, general names, not general things. Of the Scholastic Nominalists, Roscelin, a little before 1100, was the first distinguished advocate. It was soon evident that he was in antagonism with the dogma of the Trinity. If, said his opponents, only individuals really exist, then the three persons of the Trinity are three individuals, or three Gods, — that, or else they have no existence. He admits the fatal heresy, is summoned before a Council, and there forced publicly to recant; escapes to England, and perishes in exile; but the seed sown fructifies, and Nominalism afterwards becomes the reigning doctrine. Roscelin was opposed by Anselm (1033-1109). His motto was. Credo, ut intelligam. Knowledge must rest on faith, and submission to the Church must be unconditional. Goodness, truth, virtue, etc., possess real existence, independent of individ- ual beings, not merely immanent in them. On this realistic basis he founds a proof of the divine existence, with which his fame is chiefly connected. The argument is an attempt to prove the ex- istence of God from the very idea which we have of Him — the 132 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. sumrmmi honuni, or greatest object that can be conceived. This conception exists in the intellect of all who have the idea of God, — in the intellect of the atheist as well. But the greatest cannot be in the mind only, for then something still greater would be conceivable which should exist not only in the mind but in exter- nal reality. Hence the greatest must exist at the same time, both subjectively and objectively. God, therefore, is not merely con- ceived by us, — He also really exists. One of Roscelin's pupils was the youthful Abelard (1079- 1142), whose unfortunate love-relations, more than his eloquence or subtlety, rendered his name immortal. Posterity feels interested in him because Eloise loved him; and when the gates of the con- vent close forever on her, the warm interest in him disappears. His position in dialectics, while intermediate between untenable ex- tremes, is not far removed from strict Nominalism. His chief distinction is regular and systematic application of dialectics to theology. Without being the first to rationalize dogmatics, he went farther in a way which had already been opened up, and may thus be said to have given to Scholasticism its peculiar and permanent form. Asserting the supremacy of reason, he repre- sents the insurgent spirit of those times. Writes St. Bernard to the pope: Transgreditiir fines quos posuertcnt patres nostri — 'he goes beyond the limits set by our ancestors!' — an offense in all ages, in all nations. The revolutionist further 'transgresses' by the composition of Sic et JVon, in which he sets forth the contra- dictory statements of the Fathers, designed, as he distinctly in- forms us, to train the mind to vigorous and healthy doubt, in ful- filment of the injunction, 'Seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.' Doubt begins. Disputation waxes stronger. In every city of. Europe, logic plays around every sub- ject, the most profound and sacred, like lambent flame. The struggle thus begun has not yet ended. Abelard's pupil — Peter Lombard, who died in 1164 — pre- pared a manual of theology called The Booh of Sentences, which became, and for centuries continued, the basis of theological in- struction and a guide for the dialectical treatment of theological problems. Thomas Aquinas (1325-1274) brought Scholasticism to its highest stage of development, by the utmost accommodation of SCHOLASTICS — THE SYLLOGISM. 133 the Aristotelian doctrines to those of ecclesiastical orthodoxy. With him, as with Aristotle, knowledge — and preeminently knowledge of God — is the supreme end of life. The Divine existence is demonstrable only a posteriori, namely, from the contemplation of the world as the work of God. The order of the world presupposes an Orderer. There must be a First Mover or a First Cause, since the chain of effects and causes cannot be infinite. God exists as a pure, immaterial form. Before His creative flat, time was not. The soul of man is immortal, because it is immaterial. It is immaterial because it thinks the universal; whereas, if it were a form inseparable from matter, like the soul of a brute, it could think only the individual. Pure form can neither destroy itself, nor, through the destruction of a material substratum, be destroyed. Yet the human soul does not exist before the body. Nor is its knowledge the mere recollection of ideas beheld in a preexistent state, as Plato assumed. While the earlier scholastics had known only the Logic of Aristotle, Alexander Hales (died 1245) first used his entire philosophy, including the metaphysics, as the auxiliary of Chris- tian theology. A distinguished opponent of Thomas Ac|uinas and his system was Duns ScotUS, who in 1308 died at Cologne, whither he had been sent to take part in a debate. His strength, like that of Kant, lay in the acute and negative criticism of others rather than in the establishment of his own position. Trained in mathematical studies, he knew what was meant by proving, and could therefore recognize in most of the pretended proofs their invalidity. Without denying the truth of the theorems them- selves, he rejects much of the reasoning employed to prove the being of God and the immortality of the soul, and bases the evidence on our moral nature. Revelation alone renders them certain. Arguments should be viewed with distrust. The do- main of reason he would further contract; that of faith, still more extend. The world is but a mean, by the right use of which the only end of its existence — the salvation of man- kind — is attained. This is practical, — at least in desire, as of one whose eyes are fixed on sin, black death, and the Judgment, not daring to embark on the great journey with unsafe guides. The heavy instrument supplied to these disputants by Aris- 134 FORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. totle was the Syllogism, which, as every student of logic under- stands, contains: 1. Three terras, the extremes and the middle; or the major term (P) — predicate of the conclusion, the minor term i^B) — subject of the conclusion, and the middle term (Jf) — medium of comparison. 2. Three 2yi'opositions, the premises and the conclusion; or the major premise in which M and P are compared, the minor premise in which /S' and M are comjDared, and the conclusion in which the relation of S and P is inferred, — the proposition to be proved. Thus, symbolized: All M is P, All S is M, .-.All Sis P. ( No P is M, ] All S is M, No S is P. All M is P, Some M is S, .•. Some S is P. Or, concretely: Every responsible agent is a free agent, Man is a responsible agent, .•. Man is a free agent. Plato, Aristotle, the Apostles, and the Fathers, gave the prem- ises; ingenuity piled up cathedrals of conclusion. What more agreeable exercise to speculative minds than tracing the conse- quences of assumed principles? It is deductive, like geometry, self -satisfying and inexhaustible. As there could be no genuine progress, so there was no tendency to come to an end. A cease- less grinding of the air in metaphysic mills: LEARNED PUERILITIES. 135 ' They stand Locked up together hand in hand; Every one leads as he is led, The same bare path they tread, And dance like fairies a fantastic round. But neither change their motion nor their ground.' What does the reader think of the pregnant announcement that 'an individual man is Peter, because his humanity is combined with Fetreity"i — oi the division of matter into firstly first, secondly first, and thirdly first? — of the chimerical questions, whether identity, similitude, and equality are real relations in God? whether, the place and body being retained, God can cause the body to have no position? whether the divine essence engendered the Son, or was engendered by the Father? why the three persons together are not greater than one alone? if God can know more things than He is aware of ? whether Christ at the first instant of conception had the use of free judgment ? whether He was slain by Himself or by another? whether the dove in which the Holy Spirit appeared was a real animal ? whether two glorified bodies can occupy one and the same place at the same time ? whether in the state of innocence all children were masculine? — of the puerile puzzles whether a person in the purchase of a whole cloak also buys the cowl ? whether, when a hog is carried to market with a rope tied about its neck and held at the other end by a man, the hog is really carried to market by the man or by the rope ? What truth could issue thence ? What wonder that Scholas- ticism is a vast cemetery of departed reputation ? Yet under- neath this word-quibbling are the deepest problems of Ontology; and the human hearts which throb to them are, as we shall see, prophetic of the English soul: 'A great delight is granted When in the spirit of the ages planted. We mark how, ere our time, a sage has thought. And then, how far his work, and grandly, we have brought.' Resume. — Gradually the past is explaining the present. Through anarchy, conflict, and constraint, the Witan and Great Council are transformed into the English Parliament, which con- tinues to this day the same in all essential points. The House of Commons, archetype of representative assemblies, holds its first sittings. French connections are sundered; Wales is annexed 136 PORMATIVE PERIOD — THE LITERATURE. forever to the English crown; Ireland is conquered, though not subdued; and the famous heroes, Wallace and Bruce, wrest from Edward I the liberties of Scotland. The mass of the agricultural population is rising from the position of mere slaves to that of tenant-farmers; and the ad- vance of society, as well as the natural increase of population, is freeing the laborer from local bondage. The government of the English towns passes from the hands of an oligarchy to those of the rising middle classes. The space of about a thousand years, extending from the fall of the Western Empire, in the middle of the fifth century, to that of the Eastern, in the middle of the fifteenth, comprises two nearly equal periods, — the gradual decline and the gradual re- vival of letters. Convents, meanwhile, are the asylum of knowl- edge, and secure the thread which connects us with the literature of classic Greece and Rome. With few exceptions, the writers are priestly or monastic. The Conquest, breaking the mental stagnation, introduces England into a free communion with the intellectual and artistic life of the Continent, and subjects it to the two ruling mediaeval impulses, — Feudalism and the Church, the one producing the adventurous hero, the other the mystical monk; both working together for the amelioration of mankind, both running to excess, and degenerating by the violence of their own streng-th. Under the first, slavery is modified into serfdom; under the second, learning is preserved, and a sense of the unity of Christendom maintained; under both, springs up the idea of chivalry, mould- ing generous instincts into gallant institutions. From the fifth to the thirteenth century, the Church elabo- rates the most splendid organization which the world has ever seen. During the last three centuries of the period, her destiny achieved, faith and reason begin to be sundered, and violence is used for the repression of inquiry. The spiritual power, grown corrupt by growing ambitious, is resisted by the temporal. Kings war with popes, and popes struggle to put their feet upon the necks of kings. Religion, from a ceremonial, is being con- verted into a reality. Hermit and friar carry spiritual life home to the heart of the nation. First English poems are of war and religion, — never of love. KESUME. 137 The greatest are Beovmlf, an epic imported from the Continent, and re-written in parts by a Christian Englishman; and Casd- mon's Paraphrase of the Bible, written about 670, and for us the beginning of English poetry. Of scattered pieces after Cailk. — In the immense range of his intellectual power, he stood in Oxford without a rival. Like Bacon, Scotus, and Occam, an audacious partisan; unlike them, a dexterous politician. The organizer of a religious order, the founder of our later English prose; first of the great Reformers and last of the great Scholas- tics. The grandeur of his position is marked, as well by the reluctance to adopt extreme measures against him, as by the admission of a contemporary and opponent, who acknowledged him to be 'the greatest theologian of the day, second to none as a philosopher, and incomparable as a schoolman.' To be the first, amidst a host of prejudices and errors, to strike out into a new and untried way, indicates a genius above the common order. Character. — Devout, benevolent, austere; a man of sterling sense, of amazing industry, of ardent zeal, with the stout-heart- edness that dared be singular for God and the right. Altogether a brave and admirable spirit, open to the divine significance of life; seeing through the show of things, believing in the truth of things, and striking with the poets, in a troublous period, the first blow of demolition against an ancient thing grown false, preparatory afar off to a new thing. Influence. — To Wycliffe is due the establishment of a sacred dialect, which, with slight variation, as will appear below in his version of the first chapter of the Gospel of St. 3fark, has con- tinued to be the language of devotion to the present day: '1. The bigymiynge of the gospel of Jhesu Crist, the sone of God. 2. As it is writun in Ysaie, the prophete, Lo! I send myn angel bifore thi face, that schal make thi weye redy before thee. 3. The voyce of oon cryinge in desert, Make ye redy the weye of the Lord, make ye his pathis rihtful. PRECURSOR OF THE REFORMATIOJSr. 203 4. John was in desert baptisynge, and prechinge the baptysm of penannce, into remiscioun of synnes. 5. And alle men of Jerusalem wenten out to him and al the cuntree of Judee ; and weren baptisid of him in the flood of Jordan, knowlechinge her synnes. 6. And John was clothid with heeris of camelis, and a girdil of skyn abowte his leendis; and he oet locusts, and bony of the wode, and prechide, seyinge: 7. A strengere than I schal come aftir me, of whom I knelinge am not worthi for to vndo, or vnbynde, the thwong of his schoon. 8. I have baptisid you in water: forsothe he shall baptise you in the Holy Goost.' . . . He and his school introduced or popularized many Latin and Romance terms; and thus enriched literary diction by enriching- that of familiar currency, from which the Shakespeares draw .their stock of living and breathing words. He accomplished a work which no ecclesiastical censure could set aside. The period was eminently favorable to a successful revolt through a general spirit of disaffection to the pope. Men of rank became his adherents. The learned of Oxford were his apostles. Wandering scholars carried his writing into Bohemia, and disseminated his principles. Lollardism spread through every class of society, a floating mass of religious and social dis- content. The grave nor persecution could extinguish the new forces of thought and feeling which were breaking through the crust of feudalism. His Bible was proscribed; his votaries, as will presently ajjpear, were imprisoned and burned; but the seed had been dropped, and was rooted in the soil. Thirty years hence the vultures of the law will ungrave him, and consuming to ashes what little they can find, will cast it into the brook that runs hard by, thinking thus to make away both with his bones and his doctrines; but — 'As thou these ashes, little brook, wilt bear Into the Avon — Avon to the tide Of Severn — Severn to the narrow seas — Into main ocean they — this deed accurst An emblem yields to friends and enemies. How the bold teacher's doctrine, sanctified By truth, shall spread throughout the world dispersed.' When the 'simple preachers' have slumbered a century and a half, their day of triumph will be at hand. The age, though strongly disposed, is not yet ripe for revolution. Reforms or- dained to be permanent are of slow growth. 204 IN"ITIATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. CHAUCER. Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath Preluded those melodious bursts that fill The spacious times of great Elizabeth With sounds that echo still.— Te7inyson. Biography. — Born in London, 1328, — 'the city of London, that is to me so dear and sweet in which I was forth-grown'; studied at Cambridge, then at Oxford; acquired all branches of scholastic and elegant literature, Latin, Italian, English, and French; was page in the royal household; served in the army, was taken prisoner in France; again at the court of Edward III, the most splendid in Europe, surrounded by the wit, beauty, and gallantry of chivalry; marries the queen's maid of honor, wonder- ing that Heaven had fashioned such a being, — 'And in so little space Made such a body, and such face; So great beauty and such features More than be in other creatures!' thus brother-in-law of the heir apparent to the throne, Duke of Lancaster, strengthening their political bond by a family alliance; an ambassador in open or secret missions to Florence, Genoa, Flanders; takes part in pomps of France and Milan; converses with Petrarch, perhaps with Boccaccio and Froissart; is high up and low down, — now a placeholder, now disgraced, now the ad- mired of the Court, now an exile dreading to see the face of a stranger, now incarcerated in the Tower, and again basking in the sunshine of kingly favor; at one time occupied with cere- monies and processions, at another secluded in his lovely retreat at Woodstock; finally, weary of the hurry and turmoil of the varied and brilliant world, retiring to the country quiet of Don- nington Castle; then, bowed beneath the weight of years, dying in Palace-yard on the 25th of October, 1400, — his earthly friend- ship dissolved, — himself the only withered leaf upon a stately branch. He was the first buried in what is now famous as the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. What an education was that, with its splendor, varieties, con- trasts ! What a stage for the mind and eyes of an artist ! Appearance. — Of middle stature, late in life inclining to THE DAWN OF ART — CHAUCER. 205 corpulency, — a point upon which the Tabard host takes occasion to jest with him: 'Now ware you, sirs, and let this man liave place; He in the waist is shaped as well as I; This were a poppet in armes to embrace.' Of full face, indicative of health and serenity; of fair complexion, verging towards paleness; of dusky yellow hair, short and thin, with small round-trimmed beard; of aquiline nose, of expansive marble-like forehead, and drooping eyes, — a peculiarity likewise noticed by the host: '"What man art thou," quoth he, "That lookest as thou wouldest find a hare? Forever on the ground 1 see thee stare.'" ' His ordinary dress consisted of a loose frock of camlet, reaching to the knee, with wide sleeves fastened at the wrist; a dark hood, with tippet, or tail, which indoors hung down his back, and outdoors was twisted round his head; bright-red stockings, and black, horned shoes. Diction. — As to the ancient accentuation, we are much in the dark. Certainly it was not in all respects like that of our own day. It is slightly different even in Shakespeare and his contemporaries from what it now is. For example, aspect, which in their time was always accented on the last syllable, is now accented on the first. A short composition is now called an essay, but a century ago it was called an essay. Thus Pope, — 'And write next winter more essays on man.' At an earlier period, this change was much more active. There was no recognised standard of accidence, and the modes of spell- ing, as of emphasis, were extremely irregular. It will render the approach to Chaucer's poetry easier, to remember: 1. That the Romance canons of verse, which were adopted as the laws of poetical composition, tended to throw the stress of voice upon the final syllable, contrary to the Saxon articulation, which inclined to emphasize the initial syllable. Hence the pro- nunciation would oscillate between the two systems. Thus Chau- cer has Idngage in one line, langage in another, as the verse may require. 2. The ed at the end of verbs, and the es, when it is the plural or possessive termination of a noun, should generally be sounded as distinct syllables. 206 INITIATIVE PEKIOD — REPKESENTATIVE AUTHOES. 3. The presence of their Anglo-Saxon root is often denoted by an n at the end of words; as, 'Thou shalt ben quit' (be), Hoithouten doubt' (without), 'I shall you tellen'' (tell). 4. Not infrequently two negatives are used; as, 'I w'ill nat go' (will not), 'I ti'sixn nat sure' (am not), 'I ne owe hem not a word ' (do not owe). 5. Forms of the personal pronouns are exhibited in the follow- inff declension: Sing. 1st person. 2d person. 3d person. Nom. I, Ic thou he she hit, it Gen. min, mi thin, thi his hire, hir his Ace. me the, thee him hir, hire hit, it Plural. Nom. we ye the, they Gen. our, oure youre, your here Ace. us you hem. 6. Final e (with us totally inoperative upon the syllabication) is usually pronounced, — silent before h or a vowel; as Aprille, siooote. Chaucer's position, so far as we know, has no parallel in liter- ary history. His poems are not in a foreign language — hardly in our own. They present to the eye terms that are familiar, and terms that are uncouth. The use of a glossary is wearisome; the intermingling of sunshine and shadow, in which the reader is un- certain how long the clearness will continue, and how soon the obscurity will recur, is vexatious. He is the star of a misty morn- ing. Versification. — Chaucer composed several pieces in octosyl- labic metre — iambic tetrameter; but by far the most considera- ble part of his poetry was written in our present heroic measure — iambic pentameter in rhymed couplets or stanzas. In prac- tice, spondees ( - - ), trochees (-'_'), and anapeests ( >-- w - ) are often introduced. To vary the position of the accents pre- vents monotony; to reduce their nioyiher, as from five to four, quickens the movement of the line. A line may be catalectic — wanting a syllable; or hypercatalectic — lengthened by a syllable or even two, which gives a lifting billowy rhythm. By a little attention to the law of the verse, the difficulties of pronunciation will greatly diminish, and the air of archaism will rather enhance the effect. Thus of the death of Arcite: THE DAWJST OF ART — CHAUCER. 207 'And with that \v6rd his spech« fails gan; For fro his fee'te up too his bre'st was come The cold of deth that hadde him 6vern6me [overtaken And yet more6ver in his amies twoo The \'ital stre'ngth is lost, and al agoo. Cnly the intellect, withouten more, That dwelled in his herte sik and sore, Gan fayle when the herte fe'lte de'th.' The poet himself seems anxious that transcribers and reciters should not violate his metre. Thus, gracefully bidding adieu to a finished poem, he adds: 'And for there is so grate dyversite In English and in writynge of our tonge, So preye I God that non miswrite thee Ne thee ?nismetre for defaute of tonge.' His stanza — called rhyme royal, from the circumstance of its being used by a royal follower — was formed from the Italian octave rhyme by the omission of the fifth line. It thus consists of seven lines, three on each side of a middle one, which is the last of a quatrain of alternate rhymes, and first of a quatrain of couplets. Thus : '"Nay, God forbede a lover shulde chaungel" The turtel seyde, and wex for shame al reed: "Thoogh that hys lady evermore be strannge, Yet let hym serve hir ever, tyl he be deed. Forsoth, I preyse noght the gooses reed; For though she deyed, I wolde noon other make; I wol ben Mrs til that the deth me take." ' It remained a favorite with English poets down to the reign of Elizabeth. In rhythmic history, Langland terminates the ancient period; and Chaucer begins the modern. The first presents the Anglo- Saxon type ^ \j\j\j ■> ^^^ with the accent at the second time- unit of the bar instead of the first. Thus: 1 I I' 1 • • I • • In a som er se - son whan soft was the son ne m A 5 I I I I \ ; V I shop - e me in shroud-es as I a shep e wer - e The second presents the same, with the last two of the eighth- notes joined together into a quarter-note; as if in music we should write T \^ , where the slur ""^ unites two sounds in one \ 208 INITIATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. precisely equivalent to i* . Hence for the predominant form ^ I* r T , we have the predominant form 'B: f f . Thus: -8- y 1^ 1^ -8- 1^ I b 1 • 1 r If 1 ; • Whil-om as old e sto ries tell en us A b 1 A r 1 1 ^ 1 A P 1 1 J A • 1 There was a due that hight e The se US "Writings. — Like all the rest, Chaucer begins as a copyist, and, turning with greatest sympathy to those in whom the romantic element is strongest, translates the Momaimt of the Hose, an allegorical love poem, built up by the troubadours into colossal proportions, one of the most famous in the fashionable literature of the time. Under the figure of a rose in a delicious garden, it portrays the trials of a lover, who in the attainment of his desire, has to traverse vast ditches, scale lofty walls, and force the gates of castles. These -enchanted fortresses are inhabited by visible divinities, some of whom assist and some oppose. The garden itself is enclosed with embattled masonry, whereon are the emblematic Hatred, Avarice, Envy, Sorrow, Old Age, and Hypocrisy. Within are the smiling dancers, and, by way of con- trast, Danger, who starts suddenly from an ambuscade, and sad Travail, who forever mingles with the merry company. All this, as usual, is seen in a dream, a dream of May, with its mantling green and gladsome melody of birds: 'That it was May me thonghten tho, {then It is five year or more ago, That it was May thus dreamed me In time of love and jollity. . . . And then becometh the ground so proud That it woll have a newe shrowd, And make so quaint his robe and fair That it had hews an hundred pair, Of grass and floures Ind and Pers, [Indian, Persian And many hewes full diverse. . . . The birdes, that han left their song While they had suffered cold full strong In weathers gril, and dark to sight, ' [dreary Been in May for the sunne bright So glad, that they shew in singing That in their heart is such liking. That they mote singen and been light. . . . Then younge folk intenden aye THE DAWN OF AET — CHAUCER. 209 For to been gay and amorous. The time is then so savourous. Hard is his heart that loveth nought In May, when all this mirth is wrought. When he may on these branches hear The smale birdes singen clear Their blissful swete song pitous.' Under the influence of the prevalent taste for novelty and splendor, he writes the House of Fame, known to modern read- ers chiefly through Pope's paraphrase, bearing the statelier title of the 'Temple of Fame,' Chaucer is transported in a dream to the Temple of Venus, which is of glass, in a wide waste of sand, and on whose walls are figured in gold all the legends of Virgil and Ovid. Dante's eagle, glittering like a carbuncle, looks on him from the sun: 'That faste by the sonne, as hye As kenne myght I -(vith myn eye, / Me thought I sawgh an egle sore, But that hit semede moche more Then I had any egle seyne. . . . Hit was of golde and shone so bryght, That never sawgh man such a syght.' Suddenly the eagle descends with lightning wing, and, bearing him aloft in his talons above the stars, drops him at last before the House of Fame, built of polished beryl, and standing on a rock of almost inaccessible ice. All the southern side is covered with the names of famous men — perpetually melting away! The northern side is alike graven, but the names, here shaded, remain. All around, on the turrets, are the minstrels, with Orpheus, Arion, and the renowned harpers. Behind them are myriad musicians, then charmers, magicians, and prophets. He enters, and at the upper end of the hall, paved and roofed with gold, and embossed with gems, sees Fame seated on a throne of carbuncle, a 'gret and noble quene,' amidst an infinite number of heralds, robed nobles, and crowned heads. From her throne to the gate stretches a row of pillars, on which stand the great his- torians and poets. The palace rings with the sounds of instru- ments, and the celestial melody of Calliope and her seven sisters, in eternal praise of the goddess. People of every nation and condition crowd the hall to present their claims. Some ask fame for their good works, and are denied good or bad fame. Others who merit well, are trumpeted by Slander. A few obtain their just reward. Some, who have done nobly, desire their good works 210 INITIATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. to be hidden, and their request is granted. Others make request and their deeds are trumpeted through clarion of gold. Chaucer! himself refuses to be a petitioner. Enough that he best knows what he has suffered, and what thought. He is then carried by the eagle to the House of Rumor, sixty miles long and perpetually whirling. Made of twigs like a cage, it admits every sound. Its doors, more numerous than forest leaves, stand ever ajar. Thence issue tidings of every description, like fountains and rivers from the sea, flying first to Fame, who gives them name and duration. Would you know how the waves of air perambulate the oceans of space — how the lightest word speeds unerringly to its destina- tion, and mayhap in the Hereafter will vibrate still in the speak- er's ear — how the atmosphere we breathe may be the ever-living witness of the sentiments we have uttered? Listen: 'Sound is naught but air tiiafs broken, And every speeche that is spoken, Whe'er loud or low, foul or fair. In his substance is but air: For as flame is but lighted smoke. Right so is sound but air that's broke. . . . Now, henceforth, I will thee teach However, speeche, voice or sown. Through his multiplicion. Though it were piped of a mouse, Must needs come to Fame's House. I prove it thus; taketh heed now By experience, for if that thou Throw in a water now a stone. Well wot'st thou it will make anon A little roundel as a circle. Par venture as broad as a covercle. And right anon thou shalt see well That circle cause another wheel. And that the third, and so forth, brother. Every circle causing other. Much broader than himselfen was : Eight so of air, my leve brother. Ever each air another stirreth More and more, and speech upbeareth. Till it be at the House of Fame.' The occupants of this house — chiefly sailors, pilgrims, and par- doners — are continually employed in hearing or telling news, inventing and circulating reports and lies. In one corner, the poet sees a throng of eager listeners around a narrator of love- stories. The uproar about this shadow of himself wakes him from his dream. Grand suggestiveness here, true strokes of the Gothic imagi- THE DAWJST OF ART — CHAUCER. 211 nation. Pass away the highest things ! There are no eternal corner-stones. All things that have been in this place of hope, all that are or will be in it, earth's wonder and her pride, have to vanish, — rising only to melt in air and be no more ! Amid all this exuberancy, love is the sovereign passion. As we have seen, it has the force of law. It is inscribed in a code, combined with religion, confounding morality with pleasure, dis- playing the fatal excess and pedantry of the age. From his sojourn beneath Italian skies, Chaucer returns with his Northern brain powerfully stimulated, and, with close attention to his origi- nals, writes the story of Tro'ilus and Creseide, in which the well- loved visions wear a more tangible form, and mingle in a more consecutive history, than in the hazy distance of allegory. It is a tale of Troy told in the Middle Ages. A Trojan seer, warned by Apollo that Troy must fall, deserts to the Greeks, leaving be- hind him in the beleaguered city his beautiful daughter Creseide, overwhelmed with grief at her father's treachery. Troi'lus, valor- ous brother of Hector, sees her in the temple, clad in mourning, and loves: 'And when that he in chaumber was allon, He down upon his beddes feet him sette, And thought ay on hire so, withouten lette {ceasing That as he satt and wolce, his spirit mette {fancied That he hire saugh, and temple, and al the wyse [manner Right of hire loke, and gan it new avise/ [consider Like Dante, he is reticent, would languish and die in silence but for Pandarus, her uncle, who persuades him to disclose the name of his love and promises to forward his suit. Tro'ilus is born anew — an invincible knight, yet gentle, generous, and sincere; his cruelty, his levity, his haughty carriage, all gone; of so gentle manner, — 'That each him loved that looked in his face.' Pandarus seeks his niece, with the comforting adieu, — ' Give me this labour and this business, And of my speed be thine all the sweetness.' He prevails upon her to pity his friend, takes his leave 'glad and well begone.' As she sits alone in troubled meditation, a shout in the street proclaims the victorious advance of Troilus, who, omnipotent in hope, has put the Greeks to flight, and comes a conquering hero. She sees his triumph, marks his modest demeanor, — 212 INITIATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 'And let it In her heart so softly sink That to herself she said, " Ho 1 give me drink." ' She blushes, drops her head, thinks of his prowess, his estate, his fame, — above all, of his distress; almost decides that she will love, then thinks of the woes of love: 'For love is yet the moste stormy life Right of himself that ever was begun, For ever some mistrust or nice strife [foolish There is in love some cloud over the sun; Thereto we wretched women nothing conne, [can do When us is woe, but weep, and sit, and think: Our wreak is this, our owne woe to drink.' [revenge Troilus, in wasting suspense, asks his friend, just returned, ' Shall I weep or sing ? ' Assured of her friendly regard, he fears his heart will leap forth, ' it spreadeth so for joy ': 'But, Lord, how shall I doen? how shall I liven? When shall I next my own dear heart ysee? How shall this longe time away be driven Till that thou be again at her from me? Thou may'st answer, "Abide, abide " ; but he That hangeth by the neck, the soth to sain, In great disease abideth for the pain.' [discomfort In answer, Pandarus recommends him to write a letter, and fur- thermore, to ride, as it were accidentally, by her house, when he will take care that she shall be at the window engaged in conver- sation with himself, — the subject the man whom he desires to serve. When the letter is brought, she is ashamed to open it, and consents only when told the poor knight is about to die. When asked how she likes it, 'all rosy hued then waxeth she'; refuses, however, to answer it, but yields at length to the impor- tunities of her uncle, and writes that she will feel for him the affection of a sister: 'She thanked him of all that he well meant Towardes her, but holden him in hand She woulde not, ne maken herself bond In love, but as his sister him to please. She would aye fain to do his heart an ease.' When the messenger arrives, Tro'ilus trembles, pales, doubts his happiness. All night long he ponders how he may best merit her favor. Slowly, after many heart-aches, and much stratagem on the part of Pandarus, he obtains her delicate confession: 'And as the new abashed nightingale. That stinteth first, when she beginneth sing. When that she heareth any herdes tale, [shepherd's call THE DAWN OF ART — CHAUCER. 213 Or in the hedges any wight stirring; And after, siker doth her voice out ring;— [inore boldly Right so Creseid', when that her dread stent, \ceased Opened her heart, and told him her intent.' Of their delight, judge 'ye that have been at the feast of such gladness ! ' They exchange rings, and part, vowing eternal con- stancy. As to him, — 'In alle nedes for the townes war He was, and aye the first in amies dight, [clad And certainly, but if that bookes err. Save Hector most idread of any wight; And this encrease of hardiness and might Come him of love his lady's thank to win, {reward That altered his spirit so within.' All day long she sings: 'Whom should I thanken but you, god of love, Of all this blisse, in which to bathe I ginne? And thanked be ye, lorde, for that I love. This is the right life that I am inne. To flemen all maner vice and sinue: [banish This doth me so to vertue for to entende That dale by daie I in my will amende. And who that saieth that for to love is vice, , . . He either is envious, or right nice. Or is unmightle for his shrudnesse To loven. ... But I with all mine herte and all my might, As I have saied, woll love unto my last. My owne dere herte, and all mine owne knight. In whiche mine herte growen is so fast. And his in me, that it shall ever last.' *But all too little, welaway ! lasteth such joy.' A truce between the two armies is struck. Her father Calchas reclaims her. Told that she is to be exchanged for a prisoner, she swoons, and Troi- lus, thinking her dead, cries: 'O cruel Jove! and thou Fortune adverse! This all and some is, falsely have ye slain Creseid', and sith ye may do me no worse. Fie on your might and workes so diverse ! Thus cowardly ye shall me never win; There shall no death me from my lady twin.' [separate Love sports with death when it makes the whole of life. With his sword unsheathed, he calls upon the loved and lost to receive his spirit: 'But as God would, of swoon she then abraid, [aivaked And gan to sigh, and "TroilusI" she cried; And he answered; "Lady mine, Creseid'! Liven ye yet?" and let his sword down glide. "Yea, hearte mine! that thanked be Cupid," 214 INITIATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. (Quod she) and therewithal she sore sight, [sighed And he began to glad her as he might; Took her in armes two, and kiss'd her oft. And her to glad he did all his intent, For which her ghost, that flickered aye aloft, Into her woful heart again it went; But at the last, as that her even glent . [glanced Aside, anon she "gan his sword espy As it lay bare, and 'gan for fear to cry. And asked him why he had it out draw? And Troilus anon the cause her told. And how himself therewith he would have slaw; [slain For which Creseid' upon him 'gan behold. And 'gan him in her armes fast to fold, And said; "O mercy, God I lo which a deed! Alas ! how nigh we weren bothe dead I " ' Separated at last, he despairs, hears the ' bird of night ' shriek, arranges for his sepulture, bequeaths to his lady the ashes of his heart in a golden urn; is exhorted to calm himself, bidden remem- ber that he is a knight, that others — the wisest and best — have been separated from their lovers, and are so every day, even for- ever ; goes reluctantly with Pandarus to a royal banquet, to forget his sorrow, but amid the revelry of beauty, wit, and wealth, sees and hears only the absent : 'On her was ever all that his heart thought, Now this now that so fast imagining That gladden, iwis, can him no feasting.' Alone he murmurs: 'Who seeth you now, my right lodestar? Who sitteth now or stant in your presence? Who can coniforten now your heartes war. Now I am gone? whom give ye audience? Who speaketh for me now in my absence? Alas I no wight, and that is all my care. For well wote I, as ill as I ye fare. ... O lovesome lady bright I How have ye fared since that ye were there? Welcome iwis, mine owne lady dear! . . . Every thing came him to remembrance As he rode forth by places of the town In which he whilome had all his pleasance; Lo! yonder saw I mine own lady dance. And in that temple with her eyen clear Me captive caught first my right lady dear: And yonder have I heard full lustily My dear heart Creseid' laugh, and yonder play Saw I her ones eke full blissfully. And yonder ones to me "gan she say, "Now, goode sweet! loveth me well I pray"; THE DAWN OF ART — CHAUCER. 215 And yond so goodly 'gan she me behold That to the death my heart is to her hold: And at the corner in the yonder house Heard I mine alderlevest lady dear [sweetest So womanly with voice melodious Singen so well, so goodly and so clear. That in my soule yet me think'th I hear The blissful sound, and in that yonder place My lady first me took unto her grace.' She — with what words and what tears! — has prayed that body and soul might sink into the bottomless pit ere she prove false to Troilus, and has pledged that in ten days she will come back. But Fortune seems truest when she will beguile : 'From Troilus she 'gan her brighte face Away to writhe, and took of "him no heed. And cast him clean out of his lady's grace And on her wheel she set up Diomed.' Creseide through sheer weakness yields to the pleading of Dio- mede. In vain Troilus appeals to her in the tenderest of letters, and bewails his woe in endless rhymes. He accepts the inevitable then, in a last piteous reproach: 'O lady mine, Creseid'! Where is your faith, and where is your behest? Where is your love? where is your truth?' There is nothing left. Light and life are stricken from the world : 'And certainly, withouten more speech. From hennes forth, as farforth as I may, Mine owne death in armes will I seech, I ne recke not how soone be the day; But truely, Creseide, sweete May! Whom I have aye with all my might iserved, That ye thus done I have it not deserved.' Courting death, he throws himself upon the Greeks, thousands of whom perish; seeks Diomede everywhere, wounds him, but is himself slain by the spear of the invincible Achilles. Borne up to the seventh sphere, he looks compassionately down upon this little spot of earth, and esteems it vanity. Wherefore, — ' O young and f reshe f olkes, he or she ! In which that love up groweth with your age, Kepaireth home from worldly vanity. And of your hearts up casteth the visage To thilke God that after his image You made, and thinketh all n'is but a fair. This world that passeth soon, as flow'res fair.' There is improvement here. The worldly view tempers the sentimental element. Chaucer, still in sympathy with the de- 216 IKITIATIVE PERIOD — REPRESEiq"TATIVE AUTHORS. mand of the age for excessive sensation, is growing into man- hood, and winning liberty. His joy in the poetry of others gives way to his desire to render it purer, simpler, more beautiful, and more true. As knowledge and learning increase, these fantastic beings, these exquisite refinements, which make the evening hours of the lord flow sweetly, give way to real manners and living characters. The popular excursion of the day is the pilgrimage, and the most famous is that to the shrine of the martyred Becket' at Canterbury. Persons of every condition meet in the month of April and travel together, starting from a London Inn. Social distinctions are for the time disregarded, partly from the religious sense, of which the occasion is suggestive, that all men are equal before God; but chiefly from the common disposition of chance companions to put off restraint, and relieve, by friendly inter- change, the tediousness of solitary and dangerous travel. The occasion is not too solemn for mirth, even coarse and vigorous; for since the Devil is thwarted by the object of the mission, it is not at all necessary to maintain any strictness by the wayside. Chaucer seizes upon this custom as the frame in which to set his immortal pictures of life — the Canterbury Tales. Bound for the tomb of the illustrious saint, he joins at the 'Tabard' a troop of pilgrims, twenty-nine in number. They set out in early morning, accompanied by the merry host, who is the presiding spirit of the party. To beguile the plodding ride through the miry highways, it is agreed that each shall tell at least one story on the journey and another on the return, — 'For trewely comfort ne mirthe is none To riden by the way domb as the stone/ All the great classes of English humanity are represented, — a knight, a lawyer, a doctor, an Oxford student, a miller, a prioress, a monk, carpenters, farmers, — all in hearty human fellowship. The stories related are as various as the characters of the narra- tors, and comprehend the whole range of middle-age poetry, — chivalric, vulgar, grave, gay, pathetic, humorous, moral, and licentious. The knight, bronzed by the Syrian sun, leads us among arms, palaces, temples, tournaments, and glittering barbaric kings. 1 The Saxon archbishop, murdered, it will be remembered, by the minions of Henry II. THE DAWN OF ART — CHAUCER. 217 Palamon and Arcite, the heroes of the story, are lovers of the fair Emily, and in a forest solitude fight in deadly combat: 'The brighte swordes wenten to and fro So hideously that with the leastc stroke It seemed that it woulde fell an oak.' But the king, whose delight is the chase, accidentally discovers them, — 'And at a start, he was betwixt them two, And pulled out a sword and cried,— " Ho ! " ' He orders that fifty weeks hence each shall bring a hundred knights to contest his claim — Emily to wed the victor: 'Who looketh lightly now but Palamon? Who spriugeth up for joye but Arcite? Who could it tell, or who could it indite. The joye that it maked in the place When Theseus hath done so fair a grace?' He prepares at fabulous expense a magnificent theatre, a mile in circuit, walled with stone, graduated sixty paces high, adorned with altars and oratories of alabaster, gold, and coral. "Wrought on the wall of the temple of Venus, ' full piteous to behold,' are — 'The broken sleepes, and the sikes cold [sighs The sacred teares, and the waimentings, llamentations The fiery strokes of the desirings, That Loves servants in this life enduren, The oathes that their covenants assuren.' Within the fane of mighty Mars, — 'First on the wall was painted a forest. In which there wonneth neither man nor beast, [dwelleth With knotty gnarry barren trees old Of stubbes sharp and hidous to behold. In which there ran a rumble and a swough, [swooning noise As though a storm should bursten every bough; And downward from a hill under a bent [declivity There stood the Tempi' of Mars Armipotent, Wrought all of burned steel, of which th' entree [burnished Was long and strait, and ghastly for to see; And thereout came a rage and such a vise [rush That it made all the gates for to rise. The northern light in at the doore shone. For window on the wall ne was there none Through which men mighten any light discern: The door was all of adamant elern, Tclenchcd overthwart and endelong With iron tough, and for to make it strong, Every pillar the temple to sustain Was tonne-great, of iron bright and sheen.' [shining 218 INITIATIVE PEEIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. Within the gloomy sanctuary, — 'There saw I first the dark imagining Of Felony, and all the compassing; The cruel ire, red as any glede, [burning coal The pickpurse, and eke the pale drede [fear The smiler with the knife under the cloak; The shepen burning with the black smoke; The treason of the murdering in the bed; The open war, with woundes all bebled; Conteke with bloody knife and sharp menace: All full of chirking was that sorry place. [hateful sound The slayer of himself yet saw I there, His heartens blood hath hathed all his hair; The nail ydriven in the shode on height; [hair on the head The colde death, with mouth gaping upright.' Here, — ' The statue of Mars upon a carte stood Armed, and looked grim as he were wood, . . . [mad A wolf there stood before him at his feet With eyen red, and of a man he eat.' Now the train of combatants who come to joust in the tilting field: ' There mayst thou see coming with Palamon Licurge himself, the greate King of Thrace ; Black was his beard, and manly was his face The circles of his eyen in his head They gloweden betwixen yellow and red. And like a griffon looked he about. With combed haires on his browes stout; His limbes great, his brawnes hard and strong. His shoulders broad, his amies round and long; And as the guise was in his countree. Full high upon a car of gold stood he. With foure white bulles in the trace. . . . A hundred lordes had he in his rout Armed full well, with heartes stern and stout. With Arcita, in stories as men find. The great Emetrius the King of Ind, Upon a steede bay, trapped in steel. Covered with cloth of gold diapred wele. Came riding like the god of Amies, Mars; His coat armour was of a cloth of Tars, [a silk Couched with pearles white, and round, and great; [trimmed His saddle was of burnt gold new ybeat; [beaten, A mantelet upon his shoulders hanging Bret-ful of rubies red, as fire sparkling; [brimfull His crispe hair like ringes was yrun. And that was yellow, and glittered as the sun; . . . His voice was as a trumpe thundering; Upon his head he wear'd of laurel green, A garland fresh and lusty for to seen; [pleasant Upon his hand he bare for his deduit An eagle tame, as any lily white: A hundred lordes had he with him there, All armed, save their heads, in all their gear. ... THE DAWN OF ART — CHAUCEE. 219 Atout this king there ran on every part Full many a tame lion and leopart.' Such is the gorgeous imagery, contrasted and varied, by which Chaucer belongs to the romantic age and school. He belongs to it as well by his amorous discussions, his broad jokes, his indeli- cate particulars. Alisoun, one of the pilgrims, a wife of Bath, has buried five husbands — saw the fifth at the burial of the fourth ! — ' And Jankin oure clerk was on of tho : As helpe me God, whan that I saw him go Aftir the here, me thought he had a paire Of legges and of feet, so clene and faire That all my herte I yave unto his hold. He was, I trow, a twenty winter old. And I was fourty, if I shal say soth . . . As helpe me God, I was a lusty on. And faire, and riche, and yonge, and well begon.' She subdues her husband by the continuity of her tempest: ' And whan that I had getten unto me By maistrie all the soverainetee. And that he sayd, min owen trewe wif. Do as the list, the terme of all thy lif, Kepe thin honour, and kepe eke min estat; After that day we never had debat.' In acquiring the art of taming her husbands, she has learned the art of arguing, and can pile up reasons beyond a Lapland winter, to justify her practice : 'God bad us for to wex and multiplie; That gentil text can I wel understond; Eke wel I wot, he sayd, that min husbond Shuld leve fader and moder, and take to me; But of no noumbre mention made he. Of bigamie or of octogamie; Why shuld men than speke of it vilanie? Lo here the wise king Dan Solomon, I trow he hadde wives mo than on, . . . Which a gift of God had he for alle his wives? . . . Blessed be God that I have wedded five. Welcome the sixthe whan that ever he shall.' The religious mendicant is a jolly hypocrite, 'a wanton and a merry': 'Full well beloved and familier was he With franklins over all, in his countree, And eke with worthy women of the town. . . . Full sweetely heard he confession, And pleasant was his absolution. He was an easy man to give pennance There as he wist to have a good pittance; . . . Therefore instead of weeping and prayers. Men must give silver to the poore friars. . . . 220 INITIATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. His tippet was ay farced full of knives And pins for to given faire wives: And certainly lie had a merry note ; Well could he sing and playen on a rote. . . . And over all, there as profit should arise, Courteous he was, and lowly of service: There n'as no man no where so virtuous; [was not He was the beste beggar in all his house. .... For though a widow hadde but a shoe, (So pleasant was his "//i Principio ") Yet would he have a farthing ere he went.' Wallet in hand, — 'In every hous he gan to pore and prie. And begged mele and chese, or elles corn. . . . "Yeve us a bushel whete, or malt, or reye, A Goddes kichel, or a trippe of chese. Or elles what you list, we may not chese; A Goddes halfpeny, or a masse peny; Or yeve us of your braun, if ye have any, A dagon of your blanket, leve dame, Our suster dere, (lo here I write your name)." . . . And whan that he was out at dore anon, He planed away the names everich on.' In the course of his tour, he finds one of his most liberal clients ill, in bed, who has given half his fortune, and still suffers; assures him that he has said 'many a precious orison' for his salvation, then inquires for the dame, who enters: 'This frere ariseth up ful curtisly, And hire embraceth in his armes narwe, And kisseth hire swete and chirketh as a sparwe.' Then: 'Thanked be God that you yaf soule and lif. Yet saw I not this day so faire a wif In all the chirche, God so save me.' Or again, the summoner, rallied by the friar, retorts in good humor: 'This Frere bosteth that he knoweth helle, And, God it wot, that is but litel wonder, Freres and fendes ben but litel asonder. For parde, ye han often time herd telle How that a Frere ravished was to helle In spirit ones by a visioun, And as an angel lad him up and doun, To shewen him the peines that ther were ... And cr than half a furlong way of space. Right so as bees out swarmen of an hive, Out of the devils . . . ther gonnen to drive, A twenty thousand Freres on a route, And thurghout hell they swarmed al aboute, And com agen, as fast as they may gon.' If such characters and sentiments show that Chaucer, like every writer, bears on his forehead the traces of his origin, there I THE DAWJSr OF ART — CHAUCER. 221 are others which carry him beyond it, and give him affinity with the latest and highest. There is the Oxford clerk, silent or sententious, poor, learned, and thin by dint of hard study, riding on a horse lean as a rake: 'He rather have at his bed's head Twenty bookes clothed in blacli or red Of Aristotle and his philosophy, Than robes rich or fiddle or psaltry: But all be that he was a philosopher Yet hadde he but little gold in coffer, But all that he might of his friendes hent, [catch On bookes and on learning he it spent, . . . Of study took he moste cure and heed; Not a word spoke he more than was need ... Sounding in moral virtue was his speech, And gladly would he learn and gladly teach.' Or the young squire : 'With lockes curl'd as they were laid in press; Of twenty years of age he was I guess. . . . Embroider'd was he, as it were a mead All full of freshe floweres white and red: Singing he was or floyting all the day; [whistling He was as fresh as is the month of May: Short was his gown, with sleeves long and wide ; Well could he sit on horse, and faire ride: He coulde songes make, and well endite, Joust and eke dance, and well pourtray and write : So hot he loved, that by nightertale [night-time He slept no more than doth the nightingale: Courteous he was, lowly and serviceable, And carv'd before his father at the table.' And his father the knight, brave but gentle: 'That from the time that he first began To riden out, he loved chivalry, Truth and honour, freedom and courtesy, Pull worthy was he in his lordes war, . . . And ever honour'd for his worthiness. . . . And though that he was worthy he was wise, And of his porte as meek as is a maid. He never yet no villainy ne said In all his life unto no manner wight: He was a very perfect gentle knight.' When Arcite, jflushed with the victory that awards him Emily, is mortally hurt by a plunge of his steed, he calls to his bed-side the maiden and his rival 'that was his cousin dear,' bequeaths to her the service of his disrobed spirit, and asks her to forget not Palamon if ' ever ye shall be a wife,' — all his resentment gone, only his idolatry left, which surges over him in one supreme con- sciousness ere the silence and eternity of the grave: 222 I]SriTIATIVE PEKIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 'Alas the woel alas the paines strong, That I for you have suffered, and. so long! Alas the death! alas mine Emily! Alas departing of our company! Alas mine hearte's queen! alas my wife! Mine hearte's lady, cnder of my life! What is tills world? — what asken men to have? Now with his love, now in his colde grave — Alone,— withouten any company. Farewell my sweet,— Farewell mine Emily! And softe take me in your amies tway For love of God, and hearkeneth what I say.' Were ever the sighs and sobbings of a broken and ebbing spirit more pathetically related? Against the chattering wife of Bath, who stuns her listeners, is the demure prioress — 'Madame Eglan- tine,' simple and pleasing, with nice and pretty ways, showing, as we have seen, signs of exquisite taste. As to her conscience, — 'She was so charitable and so piteous, She woulde weep if that she saw a mouse Caught in a trap, if it were dead or bled. Of smalle houndes had she that she fed With roasted flesh, and milk, and wastel bread, But sore wept she if one of them were dead. Or if men smote it with a yarde smart : And all was conscience and tender heart,' As befits her, she tells the touching story of a Christian child, *the ruby bright,' murdered in a Jewry, whose heart is so filled with divine grace that it breaks out continually in singing, 'to schoolward and homeward,' O Alma Redemptoris ! Dying from the dreadful gash in his throat, he sings it still by the miracle of mercy; and dead, — 'In a tomb of marble stones clear Enclosen they his little body sweet; There he is now God lene us for to meet.' \wjkerey grant A like and stronger contrast is Griselda,' who softens the tyranny of her lord by patient submission and unconquerable affection. Her whole conduct is a fervid hymn in praise of forbearance. Smitten on the one cheek, she turns the other. Loving her hus- band, it is natural to her, in the true spirit of charity, to 'suffer all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things.' Altogether too passive, you will say. The objection is antici- pated: 'This story is said, not for that wives should Follow Griselda as in humility. For it were importable though they would; 1 Clerk's Tale. THE DAW]S^ OF ART — CHAUCER. 223 m But for that every wight in his degree Should be constant in adversity As was Griselda, therefore Petrarch writeth This story, which with high style he enditeth. For since a woman was so patient Unto a mortal man, well more we ought Receiven all in gree that God us sent. . . . [kindness Let us then live in virtuous sufEerance.' There is need of a striking antithesis, in an age of brutality, when the only choice for woman lay between the violence of vitupera- tion and the persuasion of meekness. Never to h& forgotten is the secular priest, brother to the plowman: 'There was a poore Parson of a town, But rich he was of holy thought and work; His parishens devoutly would he teach; Benign he was, and wonder diligent. And in adversity full patient. . . . Wide was his parish, and houses far asunder, But he ne left naught for no rain nor thunder. In sickness and in mischief, to visit The farthest in his parish much and lite [little Upon his feet, and in his hand a staff: This noble 'nsample to his sheep he yaf, [gave That first he wrought, and afterward he taught, Out of the gospel he the wordes caught. And this figure he added yet thereto, That if gold ruste what should iron do? . . . He was a shepherd and no mercenary.' There is yet something good in Nazareth. Not all the ecclesias- tics are venal and voluptuous. This one preaches a long and earnest sermon on the text: 'Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, ^nd walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls.' The genius that in large measure is shaped by the books it has read and the times it has lived in, is itself a distinct element of growth. What could be more broad and catholic than these Tales, open alike to Briton and to man, shedding long beams of promise on the horizon ? Periods. — Chaucer was nourished on the French Romance poetry, which in his early life formed the chief reading of the ■court circles. After the date of his first visit to Italy, impressed with the ineffaceable charm of that land of loveliness and kind- ling life, his foreign models were less French than Italian. Here he imitated the lively Boccaccio rather than Dante, who was too severe, or Petrarch, who was too sentimental. From his favorite, 224 INITIATIVE PERIOD — EEPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. he freely translated his two longest, and, in a sense, two greatest poems, — Tro'ilus and Creseide and the Knight'' s Tale. But while his riper genius is guided by the poets of Italy, he is still influ- enced by those of France, — the troubadours and trouveres. The comic stories in the Canterbury Tales are mostly based on the fabliaux. His indirect debt to the Italian stars, however, in all that concerns the elegant handling of material, and in the fusion of the romantic with the classic spirit, is more important. It is in the immortal group of pilgrims that he breaks away from the literary traditions and restricted tastes of ranks and classes, and becomes characteristically English, distinctly national. Even here extraneous influences may be detected, but original genius gives itself freely to the native force of its theme, and we have, for the most part, the pleasing conditions of daily life. The -pre,- dominant influence, therefore, till 1372, is French ; thence till 1384, Italian; from 1384 till 1400, English. This poetic develop- ment may be represented by the correspondent table of works: ' Romaunt of the Rose, Complaint to Pity, Book of the Duchess, The Dream, ^ The Court of Love, >• (attributed).^ The Flower and the Leaf, ) The Former Age, The Assembly of Fowls, Second period. • • • ^ The House of Fame, Troilus and Creseide, Knight's Tale. r Legend of Good Women, I Canterbury Tales [the tnajority), Third period i Astrolabie (j^i'ose), Testament of Love (attributed), , Various Ballads. Style. — Refined, precise, perspicuous, employing figures less for ornament than lucidity; flexible and graceful, varying in subtle response to the subject and the mood; the living voice, as ' The genuineness of many works which till recently have passed as Chaucer's, has heen questioned by the most advanced school of criticism. The dust of the controversy has not yet settled. First period. THE DAWN OF ART — CHAUCEK. 225 it were, of nature, carrying a tone as original and divine as the music of her purling brooks; sometimes tedious from too great minuteness, as in other writers from too frequent digression; if somewhat artificial and disjointed in the earlier workmanship, simple and well-ordered in the later. Do but consider, for in- stance, the 'linked sweetness' of the love-passages in Tro'ilus, or the grand harmony of his tragic description, as of the temple of Mars, — 'First on the wal was peynted a forest, In which ther dwelleth neither man ne best. With knotty knarry bareyne trees olde Of stubbes scharpe and hidous to byholde In which ther ran a swymbel in a swough.' Or the divine liquidness of diction and fluidity of movement in this stanza of the child-martyr: 'My throte is cut unto my nekke-bone, Saide this child, and as by way of kinde I shoulde have deyd, yea, longe time agone; But Jesu Christ, as ye in bookes finde, ' Will that His glory last and be in minde, And for the worship of His mother dere Yet may I sing Alma loud and clere.' Compare Wordsworth's modernization of the first three lines: 'My throat is cut unto the bone, I trow. Said this young child, and by the law of kind I should have died, yea, many hours ago.' The flower must fade, though gathered by the most skilful hand, when severed from its root that lies imbedded in the soil. Rank. — First modeller of the heroic couplet, first of the modern versifiers, whose melody and ease few, if any, have sur- passed; whose variety and power of diction not ten of his suc- cessors have been able to rival; to Occleve, his pupil, — 'The flrste fynder of our faire langage.' The first artist of expression, — that is, the first to command or guide his impressions, to deliberate, sift, test, reject, and alter. Inventive, though a disciple; original, though a translator; and — like Shakespeare — a borrower, but lending to all that he borrows the gentle luxuriance of his own fancy, extracting from the old romances their sublime extravagances without their frivolous descriptions, re-creating the rude materials of the trouvhres into 15 226 IlflTIATIVE PERIOD — REPRESEIfTATIVE AUTHORS. forms of elegance, retaining the gayety and critical coolness of the French without its wearisome idleness, and tempering the joyous carelessness of the Italian with the English seriousness. Our first painter of Nature, who, haunting her solitudes, caught the glow of her skies and earth in his landscape. Without the gift to see the hidden wealth of meaning in the springing herb- age, dew-drops, and rivulets glad, in the sighings among the reeds and the silent openings of the flowers, no great poet is possible. Chaucer has it conspicuously. His grass, soft as velvet, which he is never done praising, is ' so small," so thick, so fresh of hue ! ' The colors of petal and leaf, ' white, blue, yellow, and red,' he counts. The note of every song-bird he knows and loves. His scenery has the freshness of a perennial spring. Across five centuries its leaves are green, and its breezes fan our cheeks. The May-time is his favorite season. Before Burns or Wordsworth, he has loved and sung the daisy, the eye-of-day, and how tenderly ! 'Then in my bed there daweth me no day That I n'am up and walking in the mead. To see this flower against the sunne spread, When it upriseth early in the morrow; That blissful sight softeneth all my sorrow.' With the simple, pure delight of a child, he kneels to greet it when it first unfolds: 'And down on knees anon right I me set. And as I could this freshe flow'r I grette. Kneeling always till it unclosed was Upon the small, and soft, and sweete gras.' The first clear-eyed and catholic observer of man, who, catch- ing the living manners as they rise, fixes them in pictures that show the life of a hundred years as vivid and familiar as the figures in the streets of our cities. Think of the portraits of the knight, the squire, the prioress, the wife, the clerk, the parson, the monk, — ' And, for to fasten his hood under his chin, He had of gold y wrought a curious pin; A love -knot in the greater end there was: His head was bald, and shone as any glass. And eke his face, as it had been anoint; He was a lord full fat and in good point: His eyen steep, and rolling in his head. That steamed as a furnace of a lead.' THE DAWN OF ART — CHAUCER. 227 Of the friar, — The lawyer, — The franklin, 'Somewhat he lisped for his wantonness To make his English sweet upon his tongue; And in his harping, when that he had sung, His eyen twinkled in his head, aright As do the starves in a frosty night/ 'No where so busy a man as he there n'as, And yet he seemed busier than he was.' 'To liven in delight was ever his won. For he was Epicurus' owen sou, ... It snowed in his house of meat and drink Of alle dainties that men could of think. After the sundry seasons of the year. So changed he his meat and his soupere. . . His table dormant in his hall alway Stood ready cover'd all the longe day.' ' [was not [custom The doctor of physic, — The miller, — The reeve, — 'In all this world ne was there none him like To speak of physic and of surgery, For he was grounded in astronomy. He kept his patient a full great deal In houres by his magic naturel: Well could he fortunen the ascendant Of his images for his patient. . . . Of his diet measurable was he. For it was of no superfluity. But of great nourishing, and digestible. His study was but little on the Bible. For gold in physic is a cordial. Therefore he loved gold in special.' 'He was short shouldered, broad, a thicke gnarre, Ther n'as no door that he n'oldc heave off bar. Or break it at a running with his head; His beard as any sow or fox was red. And thereto broad as though it were a spade. Upon the cop right of his nose he had A wert, and thereon stood a tuft of hairs Red as the bristles of a sowes ears: His nose-thirles blacke were and wide: A sword and buckler bare he by his side: His mouth as wide was as a furnace: He was a jangler and a Goliardeis, And that was most of sin and harlotries: Well could he stealen corn and tollen thrice.' 'His beard was shorn as nigh as ever he can: His hair was by his eares round yshorn: His top was docked like a priest beforne: Full longe were his legges and full lean, Ylike a staff; there was no calf yseen.' [make fortunate [knot [top [nostrils [reveller . 228 IKITIATIVE PEEIOD — REPEESENTATIVE AUTHOES. The summoner, — 'With scalled browes black and pilled beard; Of his visage children were sore afeard. . . . Well lov'd he garlicli, onions, and leeks, And for to drink strong wine as red as blood; Then would he speak and cry as he were wood.' [mad The pardoner, — 'That straight was comen from the court of Rome; Full loud he sang "Come hither love to me." . . . His wallet lay before him in his lap Bret-full of pardon come from Rome all hot.' [brirnfuU Face, costume, disposition, habits, antecedents, — all are here, each character distinct and to this day typical; each maintained, moreover, by its subsequent actions; each speech approjoriate to the speaker, and all strung together by incidents so natural, by conversations so life-like, — a veritable troop of pilgrims filing- leisurely on, talking and trying to amuse themselves by what they have heard in the hall or by the wayside! This is dramatic composition, not in its full and precise form, but in its rudiments. The pictorial power of dealing in a living way with men and their actions is Chaucer's point of contact with Shakespeare: Like all who excel in the delineation of character, a master of humor and pathos. To take an additional example; the pardon- er, describing himself preaching, says: 'Then pain I me to stretchen forth my neck, And east and ivest upon the people I becl:. As doth a dove sitting upon a barn." Or, to view the full length of a monk in one line, — 'Fat as a whale, and walked as a swan.' As with Shakespeare, again, it is difficult to decide in which style Chaucer is greater, — the humorous or the pathetic. When Griselda is informed by her husband that she must return to her father to make room for her successor, she says: 'I never held me lady ne maistress, But humble servant to your worthiness, I And ever shall, while that my life may dure, Aboven every worldly creature. . . . And of your newe wife God of his grace So grant you weal and prosperity; For I wol gladly yielden her my place. In which that I was blissful wont to be: For, sith it liketh you my lord quod she. That whilome weren all my heartes rest, That I shall gon, I wol go where you list. . . . THE DAWN OF ART — CHAUCER. 229 goode God! how gentle and how kind Ye seemed by your speech and your visage The day that maked was our marriage!' Find, who will, a finer burst of natural feeling than is expressed in the closing verses. When Troilus is bereft of Creseide by her departure for the Grecian camp, the universe is absorbed in the one idea of his love: 'And every night, as was his wont to do, He stood, tlie bright moon shining to behold, And all his sorrow to the moon he told, And said— "Surely when thon art horned new, 1 shall be glad — i/ all the tvorld be true.'"'' Ah me, match it who can ! Yet Chaucer is not one of the great classics whose imagina- tions revel equally in regions of mirth, beauty, and grandeur. He wants their high seriousness, which detecting the divine sig- nificance of things, breathes the aspiration for something purer and lovelier, more thrilling and powerful, than real life affords, and with its prophetic vision helps faith to lay hold on the future life. He loves the fresh green of the panting spring, but has little sympathy with the sear and yellow of the mystical autumn. His love of nature is a simple, unreflective, childlike love: 'He listeneth to the lark. Whose song comes with the sunshine through the dark Of painted glass, in leaden lattice bound. He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound. Then writeth in a book like any clerk.'' Nature is not to him, as it is to the highest, a symbol translucent with the light of the moral and spiritual world. He lacks the faculty of true naturalistic interpretation. He has never heard — 'The voice mysterious, which whoso hears Must think on what will be, and what has been.' Character. — A man of letters and of action, trained in books, war, courts, business, travel. A poet and a logician, a^ student and an observer, a linguist and a politician, a courtier of opulent tastes and a philosopher who surveyed mankind in their widest sphere. He was a hard worker. By his own confession, reading was his chief delight. The eagle that carries him into the empyrean, says: 'Thou goest home to thine house anone. And allso dumb as a stone Thou sittest at another book Till fully dazed is thy look.' 230 INITIATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. Happy among books, he was happy among men. Scorning only hypocrisy, he loved many-colored life, — its weakness and its strength, its delicacy and its force, its laughter and its tears. Modest, glad, and tender. Never were lovers more genuine, un- tainted and adoring, than his. Troilus and Creseide speak with hearts of primeval innocence. He had indeed said, perhaps in a momentary scepticism or irritation, of the courtly class whose stability seemed to lie in perpetual change: ' What miin ymay the wind restrain, Or holden a snake by the tail? Who may a slipper eel restrain That it will void withouten fail? Or who can driven so a nail To make sure newfangleness, [inconstancy Save women, that can gie their sail [guidi To row their boat with doubleness?' Yet for woman he had a true and chivalrous regard. It was with the avowed purpose of rendering homage to the beauty of pure womanhood that he wrote the legend — 'Of goode women, maidenes, and wives. That weren true in loving all their lives.' His emblem of womanly truth and purity was the daisy, with its head of gold and crown of white. And how he loves it! 'So glad am I, when that I have presence Of it, to doon it alle reverence As she that is of alle floures flour, Fulfilled of all virtue and honour, And ever alike fair and fresh of hue. And I love it, and ever alike new. And ever shall, till that mine herte die.' I know of nothing like it, — this man of the world, of ceremonies and cavalcades, conversant with high and low, with gallant knights and bedizened ladies, far-travelled, tempest-tossed, and time-worn, turning from the gorgeous imagery that filled his vision to find 'revel and solace' in the open-air world, and dwelling with the glad, sweet abandon of a child, on the springing flowers, the green fields, the budding woods, the singing of the little birds: 'So loud they sang, that all the woodes rung Like as it should shiver in pieces small; And as methought that the Nightingale With so great might her voice out-wrest, Right as her heart for love would burst.' Or the beauty of the morning. Were never sun-risings so exhila- rating as his: THE DAWN OF ART — CHAUCER. 231 'The busy larke, messager of day Saluteth in lier song the morwe gray; And fyry Phebus riseth up so bright That al the orient laugheth of the light, And with his stremes dryeth in the greves The silver dropes hongying on the leeves.' Sensitive to every change of feeling in himself axid others, his sympathies were as large as the nature of man. Bred among aristocrats, he thought that good desires and 'gentil dedes' were the only aristocracy. Brave in misfortune. Troubled he was, but no trouble could extort from him a fretful note. He easily shirks the burden, and sings to his empty purse: 'To you my purse, and to none other wight, Complain I, for ye be my lady dear; I am sorry now that ye be so light, For certes ye now make me heavy cheer: Me were as lief be laid upon a bier. For which unto your mercy thus I cry. Be heavy again, or elles must I die. Now vouchsafen this day ere it be night That I of you the blissful sound may hear. Or see your colour like the sunne bright, That of yellowness ne had never peer; Ye be my life, ye be my heartes steer; [helm Queen of comfort and of good company. Be heavy again, or elles must I die. Now purse, that art to me my lives light. And saviour, as down in this world here. Out of this towne help me by your might, Sithen that you will not be my tresor. For I am shave as nigh as any frere. But I prayen unto your courtesy Be heavy again, or elles must I die.' The flying shadow of grief touches him, but does not rest there. Less sportive, he would have been less vulgar. Some of his pages are stained, but the blemishes are not of evil intent, and are rather to be imputed to the age. Our minds are tinged with the color of custom. Refinement preserves public decency, want of it permits the grossest violations. Having fixed upon his personage, Chaucer, as he himself pleads, had to adjust the tale to the teller. However, — 'Who list not to hear, Turn over the leaf, and choose another tale ! ' His sympathies are with virtue. For subjects obscene and dis- gustful, as such, he has no taste. It is not the filth he enjoys, but 232 INITIATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. the fun. Of two unnatural selections by the 'moral Gower,' he cries: 'Of all such cursed stones I say, Fy!' He is a moralist, but a happy and humorous one; of an ethical temper, too indolent to make a reformer in the sense in which the fiery Langland or the stern Wycliffe was one. He was pro- gressive without being revolutionary. Influence. — He rescued the native tongue from Babylonish confusion, and established a literary diction, banishing from Anglo-Saxon the superannuated and uncouth, and softening its churlish nature by the intermixture of words of Romance fancy. He created, or introduced a new versification; exemplified the principle of syllabical regularity, which is now the law and the practice of our poetry; and by the superior correctness, grace, elevation, and harmony of his style, became the first model to succeeding writers. He delineated English society with a pictorial force that makes us familiar with the domestic habits and modes of thinking of a most interesting and important period. He is an unfailing fount of joy and strength, to revive the relish of simple pleasures, to bring back the freshness that warmed the springtime of our being, to refine youthful love, to make us esteem better the gentle and noble, and to feel more kindly towards the rude and base. Our market-places will be grass-grown, the hum of our industry will be stilled, but the ages will carry, as on the odoriferous wings of gentle gales, the sweet strains of — ' That noble Chaucer, in those former times, Who first enriched our English with his rhymes, And was the first of ours that ever broke Into tlie Muse's treasures, and first spoke In mighty numbers; delving in the mine Of perfect knowledge.' BETROGEESSIYE PERIOD. CHAPTER V. FEATURES. A brilliant sun enlivens the face of nature with an unusual lustre; the sudden appearance of cloudless skies, and the unexpected warmth of a tepid atmosphere, after the gloom and inclemencies of a tedious winter, fill our hearts with the visionary pros- pects of a speedy summer; and we fondly anticipate a long continuance of gentle gales and vernal serenity. But winter returns with redoubled horrors ; the clouds condense more formidably than before ; and those tender buds, and early blossoms, which were called forth by the transient gleam of a temporary sunshine, are nipped by frost and torn by tempests. — Warton. Politics. — After two and a half centuries of majestic rule, the dominion of the Plantagenets' proper passed away forever; and the House of Lancaster, in the person of Henry IV, was raised to the throne by a Parliamentary revolution. He bought the support of the Church by the promise of religious persecu- tion, and that of the nobles by a renewal of the fatal French war. Henry V continued and almost realized the dream of an English empire in France, and his widow, contracting a second marriage with Owen Tudor, descendant of the Welsh princes, became the ancestress of another proud line of English sov- ereigns. The career of Henry YI was one of disaster in almost every variety, — factional strife at home, and calamity abroad. The Hundred Years' War ended, happily for mankind, with the expulsion of the English from French soil. Revolts of the popu- lace were followed by a long and deadly struggle for supremacy between the parties of the red rose and the white, headed by two branches of the Plantagenet dynasty, — the Lancastrians and the Yorkists. After the violent crimes and excesses of Edward lY and Richard HI, of the House of York — the one a despot and a sensualist, the other a usurper and a monster — when the illus- >The heads of the line were Geoffrey of Anjou and Maud, daughter of Henry I of England. The name is derived from Planta Genista, Latin for the shrub which was worn as an emblem of humility by the first Earl of Anjou when a pilgrim of Holy Land. From this his successors took their crest and their surname. 234 EETEOGEESSIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. trious barons were exterminated, or reduced to a shadow of their former greatness, the rival claims of the warring lines were united in the House of Tudor. While the administration swerved continually into an irregu- lar course, the restraint of Parliament grew more effectual, and notions of legal right acquired more precision, till the time of Henry VI, when the progress of constitutional liberty was ar- rested by the Wars of the Roses. To the restriction of suffrage succeeded the corruption of elections.' The baronage wrecked, the Crown towered into solitary greatness, and by its overpower- ing influence practically usurped the legislative functions of the two Houses. The interests of self-preservation led the church- man, the squire, and the burgess to lay freedom at the foot of the throne. Without a standing army, however, it is impossible to oppress, beyond a certain point, an armed people. Governors could safely be tyrants within the precinct of the court, but any general and long-continued despotism was prevented by the awe in which they stood of the temper and strength of the governed. From the accession of Henry VH is to be dated a new era, which, if less distinguished by the spirit of freedom, is more prosperous in the diffusion of opulence and the preservation of order. Society. — Brutal as was the strife of the Roses, its effects were limited, in fact, to the great lords and their feudal retainers. The trading and industrial classes appear, for the most part, to have stood wholly aloof. It was of this period that Comines, an accomplished observer of his age, -wrote: 'In my opinion, of all the countries in Europe where I was ever acquainted, the gov- ernment is nowhere so well managed, the people nowhere less obnoxious to violence and oppression, nor their houses less liable to the desolations of war, than in England, for there the calamities fall only upon their authors.' Elsewhere: 'England hag this peculiar grace, that neither the country, nor the people, nor the houses are wasted, destroyed, or demolished ; but tlie calamities and misfortunes of the war fall only upon the soldiers, and especially the nobility.' 2 Orders were frequently issued, previous to a battle, to slay the > The complaint of the men of Kent in Cade's revolt, 1450, alleges: 'The peddle of the shire are not allowed to have their free election in the choosing of knights for the snire, but letters have been sent from divers estates to the great rulers of all the coun- try, the which enforceth their tenants and other people by force to choose other persons than the common will is.' 2 The actual warfare in England from 1455 to 1485 included an aggregate space of about two years. 6& & SOCIAL STATE — INDUSTEIES — SAVAGERY. 235 nobles and spare the commoners. The civil war was the death- struggle of feudalism. The consequent depression of the aristoc- racy was the elevation of the people. The words 7'ent and wages, in familiar use, indicate the relations of class to class. The rude fidelity of vassalage was exchanged for the hard bargaining of tenancy. There were no factories. Every manufacture — cloth-making the most important — was carried on, in its several branches, at the homes of the workmen. The natural resources of the country were Very imperfectly operated. A Venetian traveller, speaking of the general aspect of the country in the time of Henry VII, says: 'England is all diversified by pleasant undvilating hills and beautiful valleys, nothing being to be seen but agreeable woods, or extensive meadows, or lands in cultivation/ But he adds: 'Agriculture is not practised in this island beyond what is required for the consump- tion of the people; because, were they to plough and sow all the land that was capable of cultivation, they might sell a quantity of grain to the surrounding countries.' Capital seems to have been more advantageously applied to tlie growth of sheep. By a statute of 1495, every laborer from mid March to mid September is to be at his work before five o'clock in the morning, nor leave it till between seven and eight in the evening, with a half hour for breakfast and an hour for dinner. Modern labor would not appear, in comparison, to be overtasked. It was still a military community, with an excess of vigor and readiness to fight. The iron helmet hung upon the wall of the castle; and the long bows were at hand for the deadly flight of the arrow, or the practice of archery on Sundays and festival days. Parliaments, early in the century, were like armed camps. That of 1426 was called the ' Club Parliament,' from the circum- stance that, when arms were prohibited, the retainers of the barons appeared with clubs on their shoulders. When clubs were forbidden, stones and balls of lead were concealed in the clothing. Later there is the story of a street-scuffle between two noblemen, in which several retainers were killed. A statute of restraint was enacted against Oxford scholars who hunted with dogs in parks and forests, threatened the lives of keepers, and liberated clerks convicted of felony. The harvest of highway robbery was abundant. 'If God,' said a French general, 'had 236 EETROGRESSIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. been a captain now-a-days, he would have turned marauder.' Says- Fortescue, Chancellor under Henry VI: 'It is cowardise and lack of hartes and corage that kepeth the Frenchmen from rysyng, and not povertye; which corage no Frenche man hath like to the English man. It hath been often seen in England that iij or iv thefes, for povertie, hath sett upon vij or viij true men, and robbyd them al. But it hath not ben seen in Fraunce, that vij or viij thefes have ben hardy to robbe iij or iv true men. Wherefor it is right seld that Frenchmen be hangyd for robberye, for that they have no hertys to do so terryble an acte. There be therfor mo men hangid in Bnglond, in a yere, for robberye and manslaughter, than ther be hangid in Fraunce for such cause of crime in vij yers.' It was natural that the discharged retainer of a decayed house should rather incline to take a purse than wield a spade. Ballad story relates how King Edward IV on a hunt meets a bold tanner, and inquires the 'readyest waye to Drayton Basset, — ' To Drayton Basset woldst thou goe. Fro the place where thou dost stand? The next payre of gallowes thou comest unto, Turne in upon thy right hand.' Violence and cruelty went hand in hand. In the reign of Henry IV, it was made felony to cut out any person's tongue, or put out his eyes, — crimes which, the act says, were very frequent. The Earl of Rutland carrying on a pole the severed head of his broth- er-in-law, presented it to this monarch in testimony of his loyalty. Two princes were smothered in the tower. Men were beheaded without appeal to law or justice. The gory head of a Lollard was welcomed into London, with psalms of thanksgiving, by a procession of abbots and bishops, who went out to meet it. The head of a Royalist, crowned in mockery with a diadem of paper, was impaled on the walls of York. Now that the battle-axe and sword had destroyed the petty royalty of the feudal baron, the lords quitted their sombre cas- tles — strong fortresses, but dreary abodes — and flocked into others uniting convenience and beauty with some power of de- fence. Vaulted roofs and turrets, the decorated gable and the spacious window, superseded in most instances the protecting parapet and the frowning embrasure. The distinguishing feature of the domestic arrangement was still the great hall with its central fire. In towns the upper stories projected over the lower, so that in narrow streets the opposite fronts were only a few feet apart. A Paston letter gives a curious insight into the construc- tion of the ordinary manor-house: SOCIAL STATE — HOUSES — NEWS — SPOETS. 237 'Patrick and his fellowship are sore afraid that ye would enter again upon them; and they have made great ordinance within the house ; and it is told me they have made bars to bar the doors crosswise ; and they have made wickets in every quarter of the house to shoot out at, both with bows and with hand-guns; and the holes that be made for hand-guns they be scarce knee-high from the plancher (floor) ; and of such holes be made five; there can no man shoot out at them with no hand-bows.' Sleeping apartments were small. Mrs. Paston is puzzled to know how she can put her husband's writing-board and his coffer beside the bed, so that he may have space to sit. Beds were rarely used except by the most wealthy. It is poetry and history combined that presents the affecting spectacle of a care-worn and sleepless king asking, — 'Why, rather, Sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs. Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee. And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber; Than in the perfumed chambers of the great, Under the canopies of costly state. And luird with sounds of sweetest melody?'* Common utensils were transmitted in wills from generation to generation, — tongs, bellows, pans, pewter dishes, 'a great earth- en pot that was my mother's.' From the scarcity of books, reading could be no common acquirement. From the dearness of parchment and the slowness of scribes, manuscripts were things purchasable only by princely munificence. News travelled slowly, borne for the most part, by traders and pilgrims. The result of the great battle of Towton was six days in reaching London. Posts — horsemen placed twenty miles apart — were now first used on the road from Lon- don to Scotland. No modern net-work of wires and rails broke the narrow circle of local influence in which men usually abode from childhood to age. Amid monotonous cares and the endless inconvenience of climate, while kings are dethroned and princes assassinated, the spirit of enjoyment abides, reflected in the perilous combats of the lists, the masks and disguisings of the palace, the antique pageantry of Christmas, the merriments of Easter and May-day. Wrestlers contended before the mayor and aldermen, as their fathers had done; and the archers went out, as of old, into Fins- bury Fields. Vaulters came tumbling about, jugglers bewitched the eye, and the ambulatory minstrel with his harp borne before him by his smiling page, who — 1 Shakespeare's Henry IV. 238 RETROGRESSIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 'Walken fcr and wyde, Her and ther, in every syde. In many a diverse londc' From the days of Henry III, the burning crests of the marching watch' had sent up their triumphant fires. The twilight hours of June and July witnessed the simple hospitalities of primitive London: 'On the vigils of festival days, and on the same festival days after the sun setting, there were usually made bonfires m the streets, every man bestowing wood and labor toward them; the wealthier sort also, before their doors near to the said bonfire, would set out tables on the vigils, furnished with sweet bread and good drink, and on the fes- tival days with meats and drinks jjlentifully, whereunto they would invite their neighbors and passengers also to sit and be merry with them in great familiarity, praising God for the benefits bestowed on them.' Most beautiful of all — in its original simplicity so associated with the love of nature — was the custom of rising at dawn in the month of May,^ and going forth, rich and poor, with one im- pulse, to the woods for boughs of hawthorn and laurel to deck the doorways of the street, as a joyful welcoming, amid feasting and dancing, of the sweet spring-time. Spontaneous and uncon- scious acknowledgment of the beauty of the Universe, as by men reared in the pathless forests, knowing Nature as a house- hold friend that has entwined itself with their first affections; a thing of the nerves and animal spirits, yet impossible, alas ! to our present analytic and jaded civilization. We, all utilitarian and jDrosaic, mourn in vain the loss of that direct and unreflecting pleasure which the untutored imagination felt in habitual con- verse with earth and sky, talking to the wayside flowers of its love, and to the fading clouds of its ambition; or that earlier fresh- ness of eye, which, in the first pencillings of dawn that struck some lonely peak or fell into some sequestered dell, saw the Fairies retiring from their moonlight dances into the green knolls where they made their homes. Religion. — It may be doubtful whether the belief in fairies] had passed away. At least they lurked in the by-corners of our] poets, and existed elsewhere under a new character, degraded by the church into imps of darkness, to inspire no doubt a horror of relapse into heathenish rites. Superstition was wide and dense, and riveted with theology. Christianity in its struggle with the barbarian world had been profoundly modified. The tendency to 1 The men of the watch were the voluntary police of the city. 2 May began twelve days later than now, and ended in the midst of June. THE CHURCH — HER DEBASEMENT. 239 a material, sensuous faith was fatally strengthened, first by the infusion of the pagan element, then by the debasement and avarice of the clergy. To the idols of Paganism succeeded shrines, relics, masses, holy wells, awful exorcisms, saintly vigils, festivals, images of miraculous power, pilgrimages afar and pen- ances at home. At Canterbury were skulls, chins, teeth, hands, fingers, arms, feet, shoes, legs, hair, rags, splinters from the crown of thorns, etcmtera, to be adored and kissed by the innu- merable pilgrims — for money. Each shrine had certificates written by the Virgin or by angels, to support the lucrative impostures. Winking statues were rife ; bleeding wafers were exhibited; boys wrapped in gold foil were introduced as heavenly visions. Says a contemporary: 'The ignorant masses worship the images of stone, or of wood, or marble, or brass, or painted on the walls of churches, — not as statues or mere figures, but as if they were living, and trust more in them than in either Christ or the saints. Hence they ofEer them gold, silver, rings, and jewels of all kinds, and that the more may be wheedled into doing so, those who drive this trade hang medals from the neck or arms of the image, to sell, and gather the gifts they receive into heaps in conspicuous places, putting labels on them by which the names of the donors may be procjaimed. By all this a great part of the world is put past itself about these images, and led to make often distant pilgrimages, that they may visit some little figure and leave their gifts to it; and all piety, charity and duty is neglected to do this, in the belief that they have given and repented enough if they have put gold into the bag at the shrine.' Charms and amulets were a sure guarantee against every form of disaster. The mystical virtues of the cross were the incessant theme of the monk. No happy issue of an adventure could be expected without its frequent sign. In peril or in pleasure, in sorrow and in sin, they diagrammed it by the motion of their hands. It stood as the hallowed witness which marked the boundaries between parishes. It stood at the beginning and at the end of private letters, as of public documents. It became the mark which served as the convenient signature of some unlettered baron. They knelt to it, kissed it — kissed it as a palpable and visible deity. Waxen images were potent to pro- cure health and weal. An anxious wife writes to her husband, sick in London: 'My mother vowed another image of wax of the weight of you, to our Lady of Walsing- ham; and she sent four nobles to the four orders of friars at Norwich to pray for you; and I have vowed to go on pilgrimage to Walsingham and St. Leonards.' In the last human trial, these vain ceremonials were efficacious to comfort and to cheer. Testaments provided for requiems to be 240 BETKOGEESSIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. said, in rich vestments especially furnished for the purpose; newly-painted images of 'our Lady' to be set up, with tapers ever burning; the chimes in the steeple to be repaired; the priest to have a yearly reward, or a residence, and at each meal to repeat the name of the testator, that they who hear may say, 'God have mercy on his soul'; a Latin sentence to be written 'on the fore part of the iron about my grave,' and therewith 'the pardon which I purchased ' ; ten pounds ' to a priest for to go to Rome, and I will that the said priest go to the stations and say masses as is according to a pilgrim.' Henry VII engaged two thousand masses, at sixpence (!) each, to be said for the repose of his soul. It was universally taught that innumerable evil spirits were ranging over the world, seeking the present misery and future ruin of mankind, — fallen spirits that retained the angelic capaci- ties, and directed against men the energies of superhuman malice. The brave yeomen, who fronted danger in the field, quailed before the gentle Maid as a sorceress. A proclamation was issued to the soldiery to reassure them against the incantations of the girl. The Duke of Bedford wrote to the king: 'All things here prospered for you till the time of the siege of Orleans, undertaken of whose advice God only knows. Since the death of my cousin of Salisbury, whom God absolve, who fell by the hand of God, as it seemeth, your people, who were assembled in great number at this siege, have received a terrible check. This has been caused in part, as we trow, by the confidence our enemies have in a disciple and limb of the Devil, called Pucelle, that used false enchantments and sorcery. The which stroke and discomfiture has not only lessened the number of your people here, but also sunk the courage of the remain- der in a wonderful manner, and encouraged your enemies to assemble themselves forthwith in great numbers.' The shrivelled arm of Richard III was attributed to witchcraft. A duchess, convicted of practicing magic against the king's life, was compelled to do penance in the streets, while two of her ser- vants were executed. Satan with his feudatories and vassals — cast out from Olympus and Asgard, outlawed by the new dynasty — lurked in forest and mountain, and issuing forth only after night- fall, raised the desolating tempest, sent the pestilential blast, and kept body and soul together by an illicit traffic between this world and the other. The fancy that once lay warm about the heart, now sends a chill among the roots of the hair. So flourished, outwardly, the empire of Rome, while ideas became the occasions of superstition, and forms of ritualism dis- THE CHURCH — HER EXCESSES. 241 placed a living consciousness. Religious discourses, without judgment or spirit, were a motley mixture of gross fiction and extravagant invention. Practical religion was a very simple affair. The one thing needful for a sinner, however scandalous his moral life, was to confess regularly, to receive the sacrament, to be absolved. If sick, or ill at ease, he might be recommended to some wonder-working image, which would bow when it was pleased, and avert its head if the present was unsatisfactory. For every mass — usually bought by the dozen — so many years were struck off from the penal period. The rulers of the Church, who once tamed the fiery Northern warriors by the magic of their sanctity, were sunk into luxurious indolence and vice. The popes, who once lived to remind men of the eternal laws which they ought to obey, were, almost without exception, worldly, intriguing, and immoral. Several were murderers, most were plunderers, one was poisoned by his successor, another was elect- ed by menaces and bribes, the last died by the poison he had mingled for others who stood in the way of his greed and ambi- tion. Prelates, cardinals, and abbots were occupied chiefly in maintaining their splendor. The friars and the secular clergy who were to live for others, not for themselves, turned their spiritual powers to account to obtain from the laity the means for their self-indulgence. The monks, who once lived in an enchanted atmosphere of piety and beneficence, were so many herds of lazy, illiterate, and licentious Epicureans, dividing their hours between the chapel, the tavern, and the brothel, — all scheming or dreaming on the eve of the judgment day! The priesthood, amenable only to spiritual judges, extend the privi- leges of their order till clerk was construed to mean any one who could write his name or read a sentence. A robber or an assassin had only to show that he could do either, and he was allowed what was called the 'benefit of clergy.' Now consider that such men owned a third or a half of the land in every country of Europe, while they confined their views in life to opulence, idleness, and feasting. At the installation of the Archbishop of York, brother of the King-Maker, there were present 3,500 persons, who consumed, 104 oxen and 6 wild bulls, 1,000 sheep, 304 calves, as many hogs, 2,000 swine, 500 stags, bucks, and does, 204 kids, 22,802 wild or tame fowls, 300 quar- 16 242 RETROGRESSIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. ters of corn, 300 tuns of ale, 100 of wine, a pipe of hippocras, 12 porpoises and seals. The Commons declared that with the rev- enues of the English Church the king would be able to maintain 15 earls, 1,500 knights, 6,200 squires, and 100 hospitals; each earl receiving annually 300 marks, each knight 100 marks, and the produce of four ploughed lands; each squire 40 marks, and the produce of two ploughed lands. Was not a reformation of some sort an overwhelming neces- sity? So felt the people, who, if unable to comprehend an argu- ment, were anxious for a correction of abuses. So felt the higher natures who led them, believing in justice, in righteousness, above all in truth, and caring not to live unless they lived nobly. So felt the Church — which repressed them, by entreaty, by re- monstrance, by bribery, by force. The king and the peers allied themselves with the ecclesiastics. In 1400 the Statute of Here- tics was passed; and William Santre, a priest, became the first English martyr. A tailor, who denied transubstantiation — ac- cused of having said that, if it were true, there were twenty thousand gods in every cornfield in England — was next commit- ted to the flames. A nobleman, hung on the gallows with a fire blazing at his feet, suffered the double penalty for heresy and treason. Lollardism was crushed by the weight of the establish- ment above, but its principles, infecting all classes, from the low- est to the highest, were working a silent revolution. The soft spring green withered away, but its roots were quick in the soil. The clergy did not dream that the storm would gather again. For a moment they were startled by a statute of Henry VII *for the more sure and likely reformation of priests, clerks, and religious men'; but again the cloud disappeared, and again they forgot the warning. At this moment the Church, ever richer and more glittering, dazzled the eyes to the decay of its substance, like some majestic iceberg drifting southward out of the frozen North, seemingly stable as the eternal rocks, while down in the far deeps the base is dissolving and the centre of gravity is changing. Ijearning. — Intellectual life disappeared with religious lib- erty. Learning declined, especially at Oxford. Her scholars became travelling mendicants, whose academical credentials were at times turned into ridicule and mockery by the insolence of LEARIflNG — THE PRINTING PRESS. 243 rank and wealth. The monasteries were no longer seats of cult- ure. Twenty years after Chaucer's death, an Italian traveller said: 'I found in them men given up to sensuality in abundance, but very few lovers of learning, and those of a barbarous sort, skilled more in quibbles and sophisms than in literature.' Knowledge was a stagnant morass or an impenetrable jungle. Literary production was nearly at an end. Puerile chroniclers, scribblers of prosaic commonplaces, translators from the worn- out field of French romance, give some distention to a period that would else collajjse. An occasional gleam of genius faintly illuminates a date, like the last flicker of the dying day, or the pulse of the early dawn, — 'As if the morn had waked, and then Shut close her lids of light again.' In the nobler elements of national life, a dreary one-hundred years, whose chief consolation is, that the downward touches the upward movement; that everywhere in the common soil — the unconsidered people, sustained by the surviving Saxon charac- ter — lay the forces of which fruit should come. The popular cast of authorship shows the stir of a new interest among the masses. With a paucity of writers, in no former age were so many books transcribed. It is proof of an increased demand, that the process of copying was transferred from the monastic to the secular class. And it was this transfer that led to the intro- duction of printing. At first a secret and occult art. The monopolizers dreaded discovery, and the workmen were bound to secrecy by the solemnity of an oath. After their opera- tions, the four sides of their forms were cautiously unscrewed, and the scattered type thrown beneath, for 'when the component parts of the press are in pieces, no one will understand what they mean.' In a mystical style, they impressed upon the wondering reader that the volume he held was of supernatural origin, an- nouncing merely that it was 'neither drawn, nor written with a pen and ink, as all books before had been.' But the freemasonry was lost, the printers were dispersed; and at Cologne a plain English trader — Caxton — was initiated into the 'noble mystery and craft.' Very proud of the marvellous freight with which he returns after an absence of five-and-thirty years; very eager in 244 RETEOGRESSIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. his zeal when he remembers the tedious, weary method of the Scriptorium, hardly equal to the production of a hundred Bibles in seven thousand days; almost professing, in his first printed work, to have performed a miracle: 'I have practiced and learned, at my great charge, to put in order this said book in print after the manner and form as ye may here see ; and is not written with pen and ink as other boolvs be, to the end that every man may have them at once : for all the books of this story, thus imprinted as ye see, were begun in one day, and also finished in one day.'' Not unwilUng to keep up the wonder and mystery of the new implement which men did not yet comprehend.' In 1453, the Crescent advanced upon the city of Constantine, the Greek Empire fell, Greek scholars were driven westward, Greek literature and art were forced into Italy; and Plato lived again, to join the ranks of the reformers. His mild and divine wisdom was at war with the sensuality that had become the scan- dal of the Church of Rome. ' Beware of the Greek,' ran the cler- ical proverb, 'lest you be made a heretic' Italy that already, in the preceding age, had ajjpropriated whatever Latin letters con- tained of strength or splendor to arouse the thought and fancy, became the school of Christendom. Thither repaired the men of taste or genius who desired to share the newly-discovered privileges of antiquity; and, quickened by the magnetic touch, returned with a generous ambition to vie with the noble ancients. Thence the stream of civilization was to flow as from its fount. With a fluctuating movement, the life current extended through- out Western Europe, England being among the latest to feel it. When gleams of the revival had long struggled with the scholas- tic cloud, the Greek language began to be taught at Oxford, and about 1490 they began to read the classics. Thence was to come every science and every elegance. Language. — The emancipation of the national tongue was now confirmed by another monarch. Henry V, in a missive to the craft of brewers, declared: 'The English tongue hath in modern days begun to be honorably enlarged and adorned; and for the better understanding of the people, the common idiom should be exercised in writing.' 1 Who iirst taught to carve the letters on wooden blocks— who imagined to cast the metal with fusil types distinct one from the other,— //laY is, for Europe, a German romance with the opening pages forever wanting. Faust, Schoffer, Gutenberg, Costar, have their jealous votaries. The origin of some of the most interesting inventions is lost in obscure traditions. Perhaps the Chinese, who had practiced the art ot block-printing for nearlytwo thousand years, suffered it to steal away over their 'great wall.' But the same extraordi- nary invention may occnr at distinct periods. Friar Bacon indicated the ingredients of gunpowder a hundred years before the monk Schwartz, about 1330, actually struck out the fiery explosion. POETRY — OCCLEVE AKD LYDGATE. 245 We further learn that now 'the Lords and the Commons began to have their proceedings noted down in the mother-tongue.' Both this prince and his father left their wills in the native speech. Religious diction, always in a more advanced stage of culture than was the secular, made, in the hands of Pecock, considerable progress in vocabulary, and more especially in logical struc- ture. In Fortescue and the Nut-hrown Maid, there is not only a diminution of obsolete English, but a modern cast of phrase and arrangement which denotes the commencement of a new era. There was little occasion for decided improvement until new conditions of society should create a necessity for it. Poetry. — In the mutability of taste, the ancient romances were turned from verse into prose. They had pleased as pictures of manners still existing, but the correspondence was fading, while there was yet no antiquarian interest to preserve their hold on the public mind that had outgrown them. Indeed, after this literature — prose or metrical — had entranced for three centuries the few who read and the many who listened, its enchantment was on the wane: another taste — where taste existed — was now on the ascendant. Nevertheless, it was the impoverished romance, imitated the hundredth time, compiled, abridged, even modernized, that chiefly occupied the dull rhymesters of the fifteenth century. After the heavy platitudes of Gower came the didactic puerili- ties of Occleve, a lawyer, who says truly that Chaucer, whom he strove to copy, would willingly have taught him, ' hut I was dull, and learned little or nothing.'' When a man's only merit is a fond idolatry of his master, let him be forgotten. Then Liydgate, a monk, a long-winded and third-rate poet, who manufactures verses to order, for the king and his subjects; paraphrases or translates, as others have done with more grace and power. The Fall of Princes, The Destruction of Troy, and The Siege of Thebes. Here and there is a sublime truth, strongly expressed, as in the remarkable lines: 'God hath a thousande handes to chastyse, A thousande dartes of pimicion, A thousande bowes made in dyuers wyse, A thousande arrowblastes bent in his dongeon.' \castle 246 KETROGEESSIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. Or a descriptive gem, with much of the brilliancy of the Italian: 'Tyll at the last amonge the bowes glade Of aduenture I caught a plesaunt shade; Ful smothe and playn and lusty for to sene And soft as veluet was the yonge grene: Where fro my hors I did alieht as fast, And on a bowe aloft his reyne cast. So faynte and mate of werynesse I was, [fatigued That I me layde adowne upon the gras, Upon a bryncke, shortly for to tell, Besyde the ryuer of a cristall welle; And the water, as I reherse can, Like quicke sillier in his streams ran Of whych the grauell and the bryght stone As any golde agayne the sonne shone.' Or a golden couplet, suggestive of the coloring and melody of later times: 'Serpentes and adders, scaled syluer-bright, Were ouer Rome sene flyeng all the nyght.' There is an accent of originality in The Dance of J}eath, whose mocking and grotesque figures dance on their tomb to the sound of a fiddle played by a grinning skeleton; or a free vein of humor in The Lack-penyiy^ which opens the street scenery of London : 'To London once my stepps I bent, Where trouth in no wyse should be fayiit. To Westmynster-ward I forthwith went. To a man of law to make complaynt; 1 sayd, "for Mary's love, that holy saint! Pity the poore that wold proceede " ; But for lack of mony I cold not spede. Then unto London I dyd me hye. Of all the land it beareth the pryse. "Hot pescodes," one began to crye, "Strabery rype, and cherryes in the ryse"; One bad me come nere and by some spyce, Peper and safEorne gan me bede, \began to offer me But for lack of mony I myght not spede. Then to the Chepe I began me drawne, Where mutch people I saw for to stand; One ofred me velvet, sylke, and lawne. An other he taketh me by the hande, "Here is Parys thread, the fynest in the land"; I never was used to such thyngs indede, And wanting mony, I might not spede. Then went I forth by London stone, Throughout all Canwyke streete; Drapers mutch cloth me offred anone; Then comes me one, cryed "Hot shepes feete " One cryde "makerell," "ryshes," "grene.'" an other [rushes gan greete; [cry POETRY — BALLAD-SIKGERS — NUT BROWN MAID. 247 On bad me by a bood to cover my head, But for want of mony I myght not be sped. Tben I hyed me into Est-Cbepe; One cryes rybbs of befe, and many a pye: Pewter pottes tbey clattered on a beape; Tbere was harpe, pype, and mynstralsye. "Yea, by cock; nay, by cock!" some began crye; Some songe of Jenken and Julyan for tbere mede ; But for lack of mony I might not spede. . . . The taverner tooke me by the sieve, "Sir," saytb he, "wyll you our wyne assay?" I answered, "That can not mutch me greve: A peny can do no more harm than it may; " I drank a pynt, and for it did paye. Yet some a hungerd from thence I yede, [went And wantying money, I cold not spede.' As for the rest, — tedious, languid, halting, desolate. There are others. You may find them by the dozen in Warton or Ritson, a crowd of worthless and forgotten versifiers. We look patiently for something to exalt, to instruct, or to please; find at last in the royal James, of Scotland, — 'Be not ouir proude in thy prosperitie, For as it cummis, sa will it pass away.' and in Dunbar, — 'What is this life but ane straucht way to deid, Whilk has a time to pass and nana to dwell?' then we yawn, and go away, oppressed with the surfeit of dreams and abstractions, used up and barren. As the romances declined, the lyric which sung of the outlaw and the forest, the joys and woes of love, and later of the wild border life, gradually took form. The ballad-singers outlived the troubadours, but their songs, long stored in the memories of the people, reach us only in a late edition of the fifteenth century. After the gloom of the castle and the conventionalism of the court, it is refreshing to find ourselves in the open air, under a blue sky, surrounded by persons vpho have human hearts in their bosoms. Listen. They are engaged in a battle of the sexes, in which attacks on the fair are parried by their eulogies. One of the heaviest charges is the imputed fickleness of woman, — 'How that it is A labour spent in vayne. To love them wele.' As between libel and panegyric, you are requested to render a verdict in accordance with the evidence: 248 EETROGRESSIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. '■Now I begyn So that ye me answere; Wherefore, all ye that present be, I pray you, gyve an ere.' In order to try the maid's affection, the lover tells her that he is condemned to a shameful death, and must withdraw as an outlaw: ' Wherefore, adue, my owne hart true ! None other rede I can; For I must to the grene wode go. Alone, a banyshed man,' She. 'O Lord what is thys worldys blysse. That changeth as the mone I My somers day in lusty May Is derked before the none. I here you say. Farewell; Nay, nay. We depart nat so sone. Why say ye so? wheder wyll ye go? Alas I what have ye done? All my welfare to sorrowe and care Sholde chaunge, yf ye were gone ; For, in my mynde, of all mankynde I love but you alone. He. I can beleve, it shall you greve, And somewhat you dystrayne ; But aftyrwarde, your paynes harde Within a day or twayne Shall soon aslake ; and ye shall take Comfort to you agayne. Why sholde ye ought? for, to make thought, Your labour were in vayne. And thus I do; and pray you to As hartely, as I can; For I must to the grene wode go, Alone, a banyshed man. She. Now, syth that ye have shewed to me The secret of your mynde, I shall be playne to you agayne, Lyke as ye shall me fynde. Syth it so, that ye wyll go, I wolle not leve behynde: Shall never be sayed, the Not-browne Mayd Was to her love unkynde: Make you redy, for so am I, Allthough it were anone ; For, in my mynde, of all mankynde I love but you alone. He. I counceyle you, remember howe, It is no maydens lawe, Nothynge to dout, but to renne out To wode with an outlawe: For ye must there in your hand here A bowe, redy to drawe ; And, as a thefe, thus must you lyve Ever In drede and awe; Whereby to you grete harm myght growe; Yet had I lever than, That I had to the grene wode go. Alone, a banyshed man. She. I thinke nat nay, but as ye say, It is no maydens lore : But love may make me for your sake. As I have sayed before To come on fote, to hunt, and shote To gete us mete in store; For so that I j'our company May have, I ask no more; From which to part, it maketh my hart As colde as any stone: For, in my mynde, of all mankynde I love but you alone. He. Yet take good hede; for ever I drede That ye coude nat sustayne The thornie wayes, the depe valleies, The snowe, the frost, the rayne. The cold, the bete: for dry or wete, We must lodge on the playne; And, us above, none other rofe But a brake bush, or twayne: Which soon sholde greve you, I beleve; And ye wolde gladly than That I had to the grene wode go. Alone, a banyshed man.' He urges that she will have no wine or ale, no shelter but the trees, no society but their enemies, finally that another already POETEY — EOBIN" HOOD. 24Q awaits him in the forest whom he loves better; still her constancy is unshaken, and in noble admiration he confesses: 'Myne owne dere love, I se the prove That ye be kynde, and true: Of mayde, and wyfe, in all my lyfe, The best that ever I knewe. . . . Be nat dismayed: whatsoever I sayd To you, whan I began ; I wyll nat to the grene wode go, I am no banyshed man.' She. He. 'These tydings be more gladd to me Ye shall not nede further to drede; Than to be made a quene, I wyll not dysparage Yf 1 were sure they sholde endure: You (God defend I) syth ye descend But it is often sene, Of so grete a lynage. Whan men wyll breke promyse, they speke Now undyrstande ; to Westmarlande, The wordes on the splene. Which is myne herytage. Ye shape some wyle me to begyle, I wyll you brynge, and with a rynge And stele from me, I wene: By way of maryage Than were the case worse than it was, I wyll you take, and lady make. And I more wo-begone: As shortely as I can: For, in my mynde, of all mankynde Thus have you now an erlys son I love but you alone. And not a banyshed man.' Wherefore pay your tribute to the beautiful, notwithstanding the free insinuations of the cynic, for, — Here may ye se, that women be In love, meke, kynde, and stable: Late never man reprove them then. Or call them variable ; But, rather, pray God, that we may To them be comfortable.' We all need something to idealize. Science, literature, art, music, all work that way, this for one, that for another. In the popular ideal, you will discover the national character. Here it is Robin Hood, living in the green forest free and bold, ready to draw his bow in the sheriff's face; generous, compassionate, giving to the poor the spoils of the rich; religious, after the fashion, — 'A good maner then had Robyn In land where that he were, Every daye ere he wolde dine Three masses wolde he hear;' chivalrous withal, for the worship of the Virgin softens the tem- per of the outlaw, — 'Eobyn loved our dere lady; For doute of dedely synne, Would he never do company harme That ony woman was ynne.' 250 EETEOGRESSIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. Before all, fearless and valiant, and joyously so, the champion of the commons against oppression, civil and ecclesiastical. 'It is he,' says an old historian, 'whom the common people love so dearly to celebrate in games and comedies, and whose history sung by fiddlers, interests them more than any other.' Robin dreams, ' in the greenwood where he lay,' that two yeomen are thrashing him, and he wants to go and find them, repulsing Little John, who offers to lead the way: "^'Ah! John, by me thou settest noe store, And that I farley finde; How oflft send I my men befEore, And tarry my selfe behinde?"'' He goes alone, and meets the brave Guy of Gisborne: '"Good morrow, good fellow,"' said Robin so fair, "Good morrow, good fellow," quoth he, "Methinks by the bow thou bearest In thy hand, A good archer thou sliouldst be." "I am wandering from my way," quoth the yeoman, "And of my morning tide." "I'll lead thee thro' the wood," said Robin, "Good fellow, I'll be thy guide." "I seek an outlaw," the stranger said, "Men call him Robin Hood, Rather I'd meet with that proud outlaw Than forty pound so good." "Now come with me, thou lusty yeoman. And Robin thou soon shall see; But first, let us some pastime find. Under the greenwood tree." "Now tell me thy name, good fellow," quoth he, "Under the leaves of lime." "Nay, by my faith," quoth bold Robin, "Till thou hast told me thine." "I dwell by dale and down," quoth he, "And Robin to take I'm sworn. And when I'm called by my right name, I'm Guy of good Gisborne." "My dwelling is in this wood," says Robin, "By thee I set right nought; I am Robin Hood of Barnesdale, Whom thou so long hast sought." He that to neither were kith or kin Might have seen a full fair sight. To see how together these yeomen went, With blades both brown and bright. To see how these yeomen together they fought, Two hours of a summer's day; Yet neither Sir Guy nor Robin Hood Them settled to fly away.' POETRY — THE POPULAR IDEAL. 251 These redoubtable archers fight very amicably, jovially, hating- only traitors and tyrants. Bold Robin is the representative of a class who revel in fighting as a pastime. An honest exchange of blows, whoever is worsted, always prepares the way for fellowship and respect: '"I pass not for length," bold Arthur reply'd, "My staff is of oke so free; Eight foot and a half, it will knock down a calf, And I hope it will knock down thee." Then Robin could no longer forbear. He gave him such a knock. Quickly and soon the blood came down Before it was ten a clock. Then Arthur he soon recovered himself And gave him such a knock on the crown. That from every side of bold Robin Hood's head The blood came trickling down. Then Robin raged like a wild boar. As soon as he saw his own blood: Then Bland was in hast, he laid on so fast. As though he had been cleaving of wood. And about and about and about they went, Like two wild bores in a chase. Striving to aim each other to maim. Leg, arm, or any other place. And knock for knock they lustily dealt. Which held for two hours and more. Till all the wood rang at every bang. They plyed their work so sore. "Hold thy hand, hold thy hand," said Robin Hood, "And let thy quarrel fall; For here wc may thrash our bones all to mesh, And get no coyn at all. And in the forest of merry Sherwood, Hereafter thou shall be free." " God a mercy for nought, my freedom I bought, I may thank my staff, and not thee." ' When the bandit and his antagonists have fought to the defeat of one or the satisfaction of all, they embrace, or shake hands, then dance together on the green grass: 'Then Robin took them both by the hands, And danc'd round about the oke tree, "For three merry men, and three merry men. And three merry men we be."' Will the discontent of such men be overlooked? They conquer and maintain liberty by their native roughness. Upon the haugh- tiest prince they impose a restraint stronger than any which mere 252 RETROGRESSIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. laws can impose. He may overstep the constitutional line; but they will exercise the like privilege whenever his encroachments are so serious as to excite alarm. Prose. — No expansion of prose is possible, until the realities of life, political, social, and ecclesiastical, can be safely discussed. Thought was restrained in too many ways to allow much range of exercise beyond the unsubstantial realm of poetry. Hence the prose writers of the period are not numerous, and, with few ex- ceptions, are unimportant. It is worthy of remark, however, that they exhibit three new kinds of composition, — epistolary, politi- cal, and Eesthetic. The Paston Letters, written chiefly by persons of rank and condition, contain many curious specimens of correspondence belonging to this and the preceding century. They are unique, and give an interesting picture of social life. In one, for exam- ple, we have a glimpse of the state of the Norfolk coast: 'On Saturday last past, Dravall, half-brother to Warren Harman, was taken with enemies walking by the sea-side; and they have him forth with them, and they took two pilgrims, a man and a woman. . . . God give grace that the sea may be better kept than it is now, or else it shall be a perilous dwelling by the seacoast." One of the remarkable features of the age was the incessant liti- gation. Agnes Paston writes to one of her sons: 'I greet yon well, and advise yon to think once of the day of your fathers counsel to learn the law, for he said many times that whosoever should dwell at Paston should have need to con to defend himself.' One of the Pastons is reproved for his extravagance in dress and servants: 'It is the guise of your countrymen to spend all the goods they have on men and livery gowns, and horse and harness, and so bear it out for a while, and at the last they are but beggars.' It would appear that in what least concerns others, others most assiduously, then as now, intermeddled, — 'The queen came into this town on Tuesday last past, afternoon, and abode here till it was Thursday afternoon; and she sent after my cousin Elizabeth Clere, to come to her; and she durst not disobey her commandment, and came to her. And when she came in the queen's presence, the queen made right much of her, and desired her to have an hus- band, the which ye shall know of hereafter. But as for that he is never nearer than he was before.' It seems to have been dangerous to write freely; and an opinion upon passing events or the characters of men was usually supple- mented by some such sentence as, — PROSE — FORTESCUE — MALORY. 253 ' After this is read aud understood, I pray you burn or break it, for I am loth to write anything of any lord.' The profuse liberality of parliament in voting supplies to Edward IV is rebuked, — 'The king goeth so near us in this country, both to poor and rich, that I wot not how we shall live, unless the world amend.' The first to weigh and explain the constitution of his country was Fortescue, who wrote, in exile, a discourse of real and last- ing value on The Difference hetioeen an Absolute and a Limited Monarchy, in which the state of France under a despot is con- trasted with that of England. He says to the young prince whom he is instructing: 'The same Commons be so impoverished and distroyed, that they may unnethi lyve. Thay drink water, thay eate apples, with bred right brown made of rye. They eate no fleshe, brit if it be selden, a litill larde, or of the entrails or beds of bests sclayne for the nobles and merchants of the land. They weryn no wollyn, but if it be a pore cote under their uttermost garment, made of grete canvass, and cal it a frok. Their hosyn be of like canvas, and passen not iheir knee, wherfor they be gartrid and their thyghs bare. Their wifs and children gone bare fote. . . . For sum of them, that was wonte to pay to his lord for his tenement which he hyrith by the year a scute- payth now to the kyng, over that scute, fyve skuts. Wher thrugh they be artyd 3 l)y necessity so to watch, labour and grub in the ground for their sustenance, that their nature is much wasted, aud the kynd of them brought to nowght. Thay gone crokyd and ar feeble, not able to light nor to defend the realm; nor they have wepon, nor monye to buy them wepon withal. . . . This is the frute first of hyre Jus regale. . . . But blessed be God, this land ys rulid under a better lawe, and therfor the people therof be not in such penurye, nor therby hurt in their persons, but they be wealthie and have all things necessarie to the suste- nance of nature. Wherefore they be myghty and able to resyste the adversaries of the realms that do or will do them wrong. Loo, this is the frut of Jus politicum et regale, under which we lyve.' In the decline of romantic literature, one last and famous effort was made, about 1470, by Sir Thomas Malory, in that tessellated compilement of Morte cV Arthur, whose mottled pieces, struck from the vast quarry of the Round Table, are squared together by no unskilful hand. Its style, always animated and flowing, mounts occasionally into the region of eloquence: 'Oh! ye mighty and pompous lords, winning in the glories transitory of this unstable life, as in reigning over great realms and mighty great countries, fortified with strong castles and towers, edified with many a rich city; yea also, ye fierce and mighty knights, so valiant in adventurous deeds of arms, behold! behold! see how this mighty conqueror. King Arthur, whom in his human life all the world dreaded, yea also the noble Queen Gucnever, which sometime sat in her chair adorned with gold, pearls, and precious stones, now lie full low in obscure foss, or pit, covered with clods of earth and clay! Behold also this mighty champion. Sir Lancelot, peerless of all knighthood; see now how he lieth grovelling upon the cold mould; now being so feeble and faint, that sometime was so terrible: how, and in what manner, ought ye to be so desirous of worldly honour > Scarcely. SAbout three shillings and fourpence. ^ Compelled. 254 RETROGRESSIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. so dangerous? Therefore, me thinketh this present book is right necessary often to be read; for in all ye tiud the most gracious, knightly, and virtuous war, of the most noble knights of the world, whereby they got praising continually; also me seemeth, by the oft reading thereof, ye shall greatly desire to accustom yourself in following of those gra- cious knightly deeds; that is to say, to dread God and to love righteousness, faithfully and courageously to serve your sovereign prince; and, the more that God hath given you the triumphal honour, the meeker ought ye to be, ever fearing the unstableness of this deceitful world.' History. — The science of true history had yet no existence. All facts appeared of equal worth, for all alike cost the same toil; and, still dispersed in their insulated state, still refused combination. But the day had now arrived, in the progress of society, when chronicles were written by laymen. The first in our vernacular prose was the labor of a citizen and alderman, and sometime sheriff of London, — Robert Fabyan; and was designed for 'the unlettered who understand no Latin.' In the accustomed mode, he fixes the historic periods by dates from Adam or from Brut, and composing in the spirit of the day, mentions the revolutions of government with the same brevity as he speaks of the price of wheat and poultry; passes unnoticed his friend Caxton, to speak of 'a new weathercock placed on the cross of St. Paul's steeple'; tells us that of the French monarch's dress 'Z might make a long rehearsaP ; finds the level of his faculties in recording 'flying dragons in the air,' or describing the two castles in space, whence issued two armies black and white, combating in the skies till the white vanished. Of Cabot's voyage of discovery, under the patronage of Henry VII, he says curiously: 'There were brought King Henry three men, taken in the new found island: they were clothed in beast's skins, and did eat raw flesh, and spake such speecb as that no man could understand them; and in their demeanor were like brute beasts; whom the King kept a time after. Of the which about two years after, I saw two, apparelled after the manner of Englishmen, in Westminster palace, which at that time I could not discern from Englishmen, till I was learned what they were. But as for speech I heard none of them utter one word.' Superstition has always attached to numbers. Seven, or the heptad, is very powerful for good or for evil, and belongs espe- cially to sacred things. The good man's chronicle opens with an invocation for help, is in seven unequal divisions, and ends with seven cheering epilogues in unmetrical metre, entitled The Seven Joys of the Virgin. Theology. — All knowledge was claimed as a part of theol- ogy, and all questions were decided by scholastic rules. What- I SCHOLASTIC THEOLOGY. 255 ever was old, was divine ; whatever was new, was suspected. Never had the schools of divinity made a more miserable figure. Teachers and students loaded their memories with unintelligible distinctions and unmeaning sounds, that they might discourse and dispute, with the semblance of method, upon matters which they did not understand. They still discussed whether God could have taken any form but that of man, — as, for in- stance, that of a woman, of the devil, of an ass, of a cucumber, of a flint. If of a cucumber, how could He have preached, wrought miracles, or been crucified? Whether Christ could be called a man while on the cross; whether the pope shared both natures with Christ; whether the Father could in any case hate the Son; whether the pope was greater than Peter, and a thou- sand other niceties more subtle. There now remained few of those who proved and illustrated doctrine by the positive dec- larations of Scripture; but upon them as upon the pedants, the mechanical manner of arguing and replying imposes its servitude. The moment they begin to reflect, Aristotle and the army of the ancients, flanked by the definition and the syllogism, enter their brains, and construct monstrous, sleep-inspiring books. Hear the worthy Pecock, on v^hose unconscious shoulders had fallen the mantle of Wycliffe. Thirteen propositions are to be demon- strated in the approved style: ' An argument if he be fnl and foormal, which is clepid a sillogisme, is mad of twey proposiciouns dryuing out of hem and bi strengthe of hem the thridde proposicioun. Of the whiche thre proposiciouns the i.j. first ben clepid premissis, and the iij. folewing out of hem is clepid the conclusioun of hem. And the ftrste of tho ij. premissis is clepid the first premisse, and the i.j. of hem is clepid the ij. premisse. And ech such argument is of this kinde, that if the bothe premissis ben trcwe, the conclusioun concUulid out and bi hem is alsotrewe; and but if euereither of tho premissis be trewe, the conclusioun is not trewe. Ensample her of is this. "Ech man is at Rome, the Pope is a man, eke the Pope is at Eorae." Lo here ben sett forth ij. proposiciouns, which ben these, "Ech man is at Eoine; " and "The Pope is a man; " and those ben the ij. premyssis in this argument, and thei dryuen out the iij. proposicioun, which is this, "The Pope is at Rome," and it is the conclusioun of the ij. premissis. Wherefore certis if eny man can be sikir for eny tyme that these ij. premyssis be trewe, he may be sikir that the conclusion is trewe; though alle the aungelis in heuen wolden seie and holde that thilk conclusioun were not trewe. And this is a general reule, in euery good and formal and fnl argument, that if his premissis be knowe for trewe, the conclusioun oughte to be avowid for trewe, what euer creature wole seie the contrarie. But as for now thus miche in this wise ther of here talkid, that y be the better vndirstonde in al what y schal argue thorugh this present book, y wole come doun into the xiij. conclusiouns, of whiche the firste is this: It longith not to Holi Scripture, neither it is his office into which God hath him ordeyned, neither it is his part forto grovnde eny gouernaunce or deede or seruice of God, or eny lawe of God, or eny trouthe 256 KETROGRESSIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 1 which mannis resoun bi nature may fyndo, leerne, and knowe. That this conclusioun is trewe, y proue thus; Whateuer thing is ordeyned, &c.' Enough. You are spared the dreary length, the wanderW mazes, of the remainder. With all this display of logical tools, he was unable to see in what direction he was marching; for while he assailed the heretical opinions of the Lollards, he ad- mitted that general councils were not infallible, that the Bible was the true rule of faith, that religious dogmas were to be sup- ported by argument, not by the bare decree of authority. His well-meant defence of the Church was, in reality, a formidable attack upon its foundations. His Repressor was burnt, he was degraded, compelled to recant, and confined for the rest of his life in a conventual prison. As long as visible images form the channels of religious devo- tion, the true history of theology, or at least of its emotional and realizing parts, may be found in the history of art. The steady tendency of European art in the fifteenth century was to give an ever-increasing preeminence to the Father, to dilate upon the vengeance of the Day of Judgment, to present to the contempla- tion of the faithful, in new and horrible conceptions, the suffer- ings of the martyrs on earth or of the lost in hell. £ith.ics. — As in the dearth of genius, there were no philoso- phers, so there were no philosophic expositions of duty, and hence no definite ethical system distinct from theological teach- ing. Moral culture was, of course, the main function of the clergy, from the state of whose discipline at this time we may fairly estimate the fidelity and efficiency of their instruction. The ideal of life and character was yet ecclesiastical. It was too early for a purely moral faith, appealing to a disinterested sense of virtue and perception of excellence, to be efficacious. Rites and ceremonies, an elaborate creed and a copious legen- dary, were the appointed means for developing the emotional side of human nature and securing a rectitude of conduct. The formation of a moral philosophy is usually the first step in the decadence of dogmatic religions. Science. — Those who turned their attention to mathematics or physics, still pursued the bewildering dreams of astrology and alchemy. An Act of 1456, for example, in favor of three DKEAMS OF SCIENCE — FAILURE OF PHILOSOPHY. 257 alchemists, describes the object of these 'famous men' to be 'a certain most precious medicine, called by some the mother and queen of medicines; by some the inestimable glory; by others the quintessence; by others the philosopher's stone; by others the elixir of life; which cures all curable diseases with ease, pro- longs human life in perfect health and vigor of faculty to its utmost term, heals all healable wounds, is a most sovereign anti- dote against all poisons, and is capable of preserving to us, and our kingdom, other great advantages, such as the transmutation of other metals into real and fine gold and silver.' The art of medicine appears to have made little or no prog- ress. It was still, to some extent, in the hands of the clergy. The priests, because they were able to read the Greek and Roman authors on medicine, had, all through the dark ages, been the principal physicians. They became intimate with the barbers by frequently employing them to shave their heads, according to the uniform of the clerical order. The barbers were also employed to shave the heads of patients, when washes were prescribed to cool the fevered brain, or blisters were applied to draw the peccant humors from the surface. Found expert and handy with edged tools, the priests taught them to bleed, and to perform such minor operations as they were competent to direct, as well as to make salves and poultices, and dress wounds and sores. Edward IV, in 1461, granted a charter of incorporation and privilege to barber-surgeons; nor, though the distinct nature of the two became gradually more apparent, was the tonsorial art severed completely from the surgical till nearly three centu- ries had elapsed. ' Would heart of man e'er think it, but you'll be silent.' Philosophy. — The race of great Schoolmen had died out, and the schools only repeated and maintained, with ever-increas- ing emptiness, what their founders had taught. The whole science of dialectic was degraded into an elaborate and ingenious word-quibbling. Like religion, it had no other substance but one of words. Syllogisms were sold like fish, by the string, and descended, like silver shoe-buckles, from generation to genera- tion. Scholasticism was self-extinguished in a period of bar- barity into whose darkness the light of the Renaissance was destined soon to shine with regenerating effect. What had the 17 258 RETROGRESSIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. ^ laborers accomplished ? — If from heart or brain they educed no great original creed, they produced a ferment of intellectual activity such as Europe had never seen. Through the long, terrible night which threatened the extinction of scholarship they kept alive the spirit of culture in the whirlwind of energy. Disputation, if it adds no single idea to the human mind, is better than indolence. In action, rather than in cognition, lie life and acquirement. The highest value of truth is less in the possession than in the pursuit of it. Could you ever establish a theory of the universe, that were entire and final, man were then spiritually defunct. The one justifying service of metaphysics, in whosesoever hands, is subjective, — the upward aspirations it may kindle, and the habits of close, patient, vigorous thought if' may form. As for its efforts to lift the veil from the mystery of being, they are the labor of the struggling and baffled Sisyphus, who rolls up the heavy stone which no sooner reaches a certain point than down it rolls to the bottom, and all the labor is to begin again. There is scarcely anything which modern philos- ophers have proudly brought forward as their own that may not be found in some one or other of the mighty tomes of the hooded Scholastics. Why not ? Were they not the posterity of Plato and Aristotle, out of whom come all things yet debated among men of reflection ? 'In countless upward-striving waves The moon-drawn tide-wave strives: In thousand far- transplanted grafts The parent fruit survives.' Resume. — The throb of hope and glory which pulsed at the outset, died into inaction or despair. Disputed successions, cruel factions, family feuds, convulsed the land, till the political crisis was terminated by Henry VII, who, as the authority of the potent aristocracy declined, established that despotic regality which remained as the inheritance of the dynasty of the Tudors. Commerce widened, material life went on, darkly, without the diviner elements of national progress. The intellect, unable tO' proceed in the path of creative literature, fell back into lethargy. Inquiry was repressed; originality was replaced by submission; the reformation was trodden out; in the clash of arms the voice of genius sank to feebleness or was hushed to silence; and the reactionary influence of vice, ignorance, and superstition, was in OUR FIRST PRINTER. 259 the ascendant. The Church shrivelled into a self-seeking secular priesthood; practical religion was reduced to the accomplishment of ceremonies; and mankind, slothful and crouching, resigned their conscience and their conduct into the hands of the clergy, and they into the hands of the pope. The century, however, was not lost. It was an age of accu- mulation and preparation, as indeed it was in every country of Europe. The commoners maintained their liberties, without going beyond, and waited for a better day. The Reformation, like a forest conflagration, smouldered. America was added to the map; and while thought was startled by the sudden rarity of a New World, with its fresh hopes and romantic realms, the Renaissance was restoring an old one, with its eternal promoters of freedom and beauty. In that twilight time was dawning the great Invention that should give to Letters and Science the pre- cision and durability of the printed page. Nor was the press to be more fatal to the dominion of the priestly bigot than the bullet to the sway of the mailed knight. In the upheaval of the old feudal order, an arrogant nobility was sinking to a level more consistent with national unity. Separate centres of in- trigue were breaking up, society was pulverizing afresh; poetry, like the ballad, was returning to the human interests of the present, and the night of medigevalism was drawing to a close amid the chaos which precedes the resurrection morn. CAXTON O Albion! still thy gratitude confess To Caxton, founder of the British Press: Since first thy mountains rose, or rivers flow'd, Who on thy isles so rich a boon bestow'd?— i/'Creery. Biography. — A native of Kent, born in 1412; apprenticed at an early day to a London silk dealer: after his master's death he lived — perhaps as consul or agent for the English merchants — in Holland and Flanders; while there, was appointed, by his sovereign, envoy to the court of Burgundy to negotiate a treaty of commerce; entered the service of an English princess as copy- 260 EETROGEESSIVE PERIOD — REPEESENTATIVE AUTHOR. ist; threw aside the tedious process of the pen for the newly- discovered art, and became a printer, because — 'My pen is worn, my hand weary and not steadfast, mine eyes dimmed with over- much looking on the white paper, and my courage not so prone and ready to labor a» it hath been, and that age creepeth on me daily and feebleth all the body, and also because I have promised to divers gentlemen and to my friends to address to them as hastily as I might the said book.' Absent more than thirty years, he returned to England with the precious freight of the printing-press; and at an age when other men seek ease and retirement, plunged with characteristic energy into his new occupation, until his decease in 1492. Writings. — Sixty-five works, edited or translated, are as- signed to the pen and the press of Caxton: in French, two; in Latin, seven; the remainder in English. He published all the native poetry of any moment then in existence, — the poems of Chaucer, Lydgate, and Gower; two chronicles, revising both, and continuing one up to his own time; a version of the ^neid, or a tract of Cicero, as the stray first-fruits of classic antiquity; and, with an eye to business, manuals for ecclesiastics, sermons or Golden Legends, — Tales of Troy, or Morte d'' Arthur, for the baron and the knight, — ^sop's Fables and Reynard the Fox, for the populace. His Game of Chess, a translation from the French, 'fynysshid the last day of Marche, 1474,' is assumed to be the first book printed on English ground; and a second edition, the first illus- trated with wood-cuts. As the aged Saxon expired dictating the last words of the Gospel of St. John, — 'In the hour of death, The last dear service of his parting breath,' — SO did the old printer carry forward his last labor, on a volume of sacred lore, to the setting sun of a life that bore its burden of four-score. He dipped, 'half desperate,' into that vast and sin- gular mythology which for fourteen centuries grew and shadowed over the religious mind of Christendom as its form of hero-wor- ship, always simple, often childish, but always good, and there- fore suited to the taste and information which it measured and to which it was addressed. In this manner was the unquiet world once charmed to rest, saintly emulation, and remembrance of God: 'Francis, servant and friend of Almighty God, was born in the city of Assyse, and was made a merchant unto the twenty-fifth year of his age, and wasted his time by living OUR FIEST PRINTER. 261 vainly, whom our Lord corrected by the scourge of sickness, and suddenly changed him into another man, so that he began to shine by the spirit of prophecy. On a time as this holy man was in prayer, the devil called him thrice by his own name. And when the holy man had answered him, he said: "None in this world is so great a sinner, but if he convert him, our Lord would pardon him; but who that sleeth himself with hard penance, shall never find mercy." And anon, this holy man knew by revelation the fallacy and deceit of the fiend, how he would have withdrawn him fro to do well. And when the devil saw that he might not prevail against him, he tempted him by grievous temptation of the flesh. And when this holy servant of God felt that, he despoiled his clothes, and beat himself right hard with an hard cord, saying: "Thus, brother ass, it behoveth thee to remain and to be beaten." And when the temptation departed not, he went out and plunged himself in the snow, all naked, and made seven great balls of snow, and purposed to have taken them into his body, and said: "This greatest is thy wife; and these four, two ben thy daughters, and two thy sons; and the other twain, that one thy chambrere, and that other thy varlet or yeman; haste and clothe them; for they all die for cold. And if thy business that thou hast about them, grieve ye sore, then serve our Lord perfectly." And anon, the devil departed from him all confused; and St. Francis returned again unto his cell glorifying God. ... He was ennobled in his life by many miracles: and the very death, which is to all men horrible and hateful, he admonished them to praise it. And also he warned and admonished death to come to him, and said: "Death, my sister, wel- come be you." And when he came at the last hour, he slept in our Lord; of whom a friar saw the soul, in manner of a star, like to the moon iu quantity, and the sun in clear- ness.' Style. — His diction, never the purest, could scarcely have been improved by absence. A man destitute of a literary educa- tion could hardly attain to any felicity or skill in an idiom to which he vpas almost a foreigner. Plain and verbose, his manner is that of one who with no brilliancy of talent, tries faithfully to make himself understood. It is full of Gallicisms, however, in vocabulary and phrase. We learn by the preface to his ^neicl that there were 'gentlemen who of late have blamed me, that in my translations I had over-curious terms which could not be understood by common people.' Critics, no doubt, were abun- dant, when as yet there was no generally recognized standard; and he himself had neither the judgment nor the force to har- monize the heterogeneous elements. It is curious to see in his own words the unsettled state of the language, the affectation of some and the pedantry of others. 'Some honest and great clerks,' he tells us, 'have been with me, and desired me to write the most curious terms I could find.' Others, again, 'desired me to use old a-nd homely terms in my translations.' But 'I took an old book and read therein, and certainly the English was so rude and broad I could not well understand it.' 'Fain would I please every man,' is his helpless but good-natured comment. Of the rapid flux of even common speech: 'Our language now used varieth far from that which was used and spoken when I was 262 EETEOGRESSIVE PEEIOD — REPEE8ENTATIVE AUTHOR. born.' Not only so, but the tongue of each shire had marked peculiarities: 'In my days happened that certain marchauntes were in a shippe in Tamyse for to haue fiayled over the see into Zclandc, and fra lacke of vvynde thei taryed at Porland, and went to lande for to refreshe them. And one of theym, named ShefEclde, a mercer, came into an hows and axyed for mete, and specyally he axyed after eggys; and the good wyf answerde that she eoude spelce no Frenshe, and the marchaunt was angry, for he also conde spelce no Frenshe, but wolde have had eggys, and she understood hym not. And then, at laste, another sayd hat he would have eyren. Then the good wyf sayd that she understood hym wel. Loo, what sholde a man in thcyse days now wryte, egges or eyren! Certaynly, it is hard to playso every man, because of diversite and chaunge of Kank. — That he was a man of some eminence is shown by his royal connections in service. To the historian of the human mind, he appears as an indifferent translator, and a printer with- out erudition. That he should have been acquainted with French and German was inevitable from his continental residence. That he was unacquainted with classic Latin is evident from a refer- ence to Skelton, whom he mentions as ' one that had read Virgil, Ovid, Tully, and all the other noble poets and orators to me un- knoion.'' With the industry to keep pace with his age, he had not the genius to create a national taste by his novel and mighty instrument of thought. At a loss what author to select, his choice might seem to have been frequently accidental. With simple-hearted enthusiasm, he says of his version of Virgil: ' Having no work in hand, I sitting in my study where as lay many divers pamphlets and books, happened that to my hand came a little book in French, which late was translated out of Latin by some noble clerk of France — which book is named "Eney- dos," and made in Latin by the noble poet and great clerk Vergyl— in which book I had great pleasure by reason of the fairc and honest termes and wordes in French which I never saw to-fore-like, none so pleasant nor so well ordered, which book as me seemed should be much requisite for noble men to see, as well for the eloquence as the histo- ries; and when I had advised me to this said book I deliberated and concluded to trans, late it into English, and forthwith took a pen and ink and wrote a leaf or twain." His simplicity far exceeded his learning. He solemnly vouched for the verity of Jason and the Golden Fleece, The Life of Ilercides, and all 'the Merveilles of Virgil's Necro- mancy'! For a moment, 'the noble history of King Arthur' puzzled him, because — 'Dyuers men holde opynyon, that there was no suche Arthur, and that alle suche bookes as been maad of hym, ben but fayned and fables, by cause that somme cronycles make of him no mencyon ne remembre hym noo thynge ne of his knyghtes.' But his sudden scruples were relieved when assured — 'That in hym that shold say or thynke that there was neuer suche a kyng callyd Arthur, myght wel be aretted grete folye and blyndeness. . . Fyrst ye may see his i OUR FIRST PRINTER. 263 sepulture in the monasterye of Glastyngburge. . . At Wynchester the rounde table, in other places Launcelottes swerde and many other thynges.' Character. — Our central impression of him is that of an honest business man, resolved to get a living from his trade. His 'red pole' at the disused Scriptorium, where monks once distributed alms to the poor, modestly invited all who desired, to come and buy his wares or give orders for printing. Ran his advertisement: 'If it please any man, spiritual or temporal, to buy any pyes of two or three com- memorations of Salisbury all emprynted after the form of the present letter, which be well and truly correct, let him come to Westminster into the Almonry at the red pole and he shall have them good chepe.' Styling himself 'simple William Caxton,' he united great mod- esty of character to indefatigable industry. Over four thousand printed pages are of his own rendering. He speaks as a devout man, careful of happiness as of fabrics, who, while he constructs a book, studies the art of constructing human blessedness. His introduction to 3Iorte d'' Arthur concludes: 'And for to passe the tyme this book shal be plesaunte to rede in, but for to giue fayth and byleue that al is trewe that is conteyned herin, ye be at your lyberte, but al is wryton for our doctryne, and for to beware that we falle not to vyce ne synne, but to excercyse and folowe vertu, by whyche we may come and atteyne to good fame and renomme in thys lyf, and after this shorte and transytorye lyf to come vnto euerlastyng blysse in henen, the whyche he graunt vs that reygneth in heuen the blessyd Trynyte. Amen.' It is not the exceptional things in life which are the noblest, — not the high lift nor the sudden spring of rare and exceptional persons, but the faithful every-day march of men. Influence. — The press unfolded its vast resources tardily. In all Europe, between 1470 and 1500, ten thousand books were printed, and of them a majority in Italy; only a hundred and forty-one in England, In the next fifty years, but seven works had been printed in Scotland, and among them not a single clas- sic. A triumph, if we consider that formerly a hundred Bibles could not be procured under an expense of twenty years' labor; but an inglorious advancement, if we consider the stupendous results since attained. Very slowly was this new appliance for the dissemination of knowledge to change the condition of soci- ety, but thenceforth we can never speak of that condition loith- out regard to the printing-press. No refined consideration, no expansive views of his art, seem to have inspired our primeval 264 RETKOGRESSIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHOR, printer; but of what momentous consequences was he the initial agent! Unconsciously, he came to form a new intellectual era, to scatter the messengers of reform, to render Bibles and other books the common property of the great and the mean, to create a democracy and make a grave for tyrants; to subordinate oral and scenic to written instruction, and thus to deprive the pulpit of that supremacy which was founded on the condition of a non- reading public; to make possible a direct communication between the government and the governed, without priestly mediation, which was the first step in the separation of Church and State. Patriarch of the English press ! stranger to the powers that slumber in thy craft, insensible to those elevated conceptions that guide the world's helm, yet thy honest toil for the day and honest hope for the morrow shall accrue to the advantage of mankind continually, for ever. Lad — apprentice — mercer — retainer — hoary learner — venerable printer — thou, simple man, by the accident of time and the grace of fortune, shalt live in immortal memory! rmST CREATIVE PERIOD. CHAPTER VL FEATURES, Under whatever point of view we consider this era, we find its political, ecclesias- tical, and literary events more numerous, varied, and important than in any of the preceding ages. — Gidzot. To observe the connection between the successive stages of a progressive move- ment of the human spirit, and to recognize that the forces at work are still active, is the true philosophy of history.— Symonds. Politics. — The sombre and sinister wisdom of Italian policy — a policy of refined stratagem — of ruthless but secret violence — achieved in this age the tranquillity of a settled state and the establishment of a civilized but imperious despotism. The title of Henry VIH was undisputed — the first such in a hundred years — his temper hot, his spirit high, and his will supreme. Every public officer was his crouching menial. Wolsey, his minister, devoted his learning and abilities to the personal pleasure of the master who might destroy him by a breath. Under the adminis- tration of Cromwell, an organized reign of terror held the nation panic-stricken at Henry's feet. Judges and juries were coerced. Parliament was degraded into the mere engine of absolutism. His faithful Commons, hesitating to pass the bill for the dissolu- tion of the monasteries, were summoned into his presence, ' I hear,' said the magnificent despot, 'that my bill will not pass; but I will have it pass, or I will have some of your heads.' It passed! The imagination of his subjects — to whom his reign, on the whole, was decidedly beneficial — was overawed. To them he was something high above the laws which govern ordinary men. In the midst of his barbarous cruelties he appeared the avenging minister of heaven, who, in renouncing the papacy, had burst asunder the prison-gates of Rome. The counsellors of Edward VI, with less of the sanguinary 265 266 FIRST CKEATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. spirit of his father, were as unscrupulous in bending the rules of law and justice to their purpose in cases of treason. They were a designing oligarchy, from whom no measure conducive to liberty and justice could be expected to spring. They had not, however, the sinews to wield the iron sceptre of Henry, and the increased weight of the Commons appears in the repeal of for- mer statutes that had terrified and exasperated the people; in the rejection of bills sent down from the Upper House; in the anxiety of the court, by the creation of new boroughs,' to obtain favorable elections. The reign of Mary is memorable as a period of bloody perse- cution. Popery was restored, Protestants were imprisoned and burned for no other crime than their religion; stretches of pre- rogative in matters temporal were more violent and alarming; torture was more frequent than in all former ages combined, and a commission issued in 1557 has the appearance of a preliminary step to the Inquisition. A proclamation, after denouncing the importation of books filled with heresy and treason, declared that whoever should be found to have such books in his possession, should be considered a rebel and executed according to martial law. Yet not even she could preserve the absolute dominion of her father Henry. While in his reign the Lower House only once rejected a measure recommended by the Crown, in hers the first two Parliaments were dissolved on this account, and the third, refusing to pass several of her favorite bills, was far from obsequious. Still less was the English spirit, which had con- trolled princes in the fulness of their pride, broken. The reproach of servility under usurped powers belongs less to the people than to their natural leaders — the compliant nobility. The reign of each of the Tudors was disturbed by formidable discontents. Each had the discretion never to carry oppression to a fatal point. The tone and temper of Elizabeth's administration were dis- played in a vigilant execution of severe statutes, especially upon the Romanists, and in occasional stretches of power beyond the law, while the superior wisdom of her counsellors led them generally to shun the more violent measures of the late reigns. To high assumptions of prerogative, the resistance of Parliament ' Twenty-two were created or restored in this short reign. POLITICS — SOCIETY. 267 became insensibly more vigorous. If, in the House of Commons, many were creatures of the Royal Council, grasping at prefer- ment, others with inflexible aim recurred in every session to an important guarantee of civil liberty, — the right to inquire into public grievances and obtain redress. Now it was, perhaps for the first time, that the Commons asserted the privilege of deter- mining contested elections. The finger of this sovereign was ever on the public pulse, and she knew exactly when she could resist and when she mvist retreat. The same jealousy of the aristocracy turned the genius of the maiden queen to a new source of influence, unknown to her ancestors, — the people, a people divided by creeds and dogmas, but made compliant and coherent by the firmness and the in- dulgence of the wisest policy. While she ruled them with a potent hand, she courted their eyes and hearts. She it was who, studying their wants and wishes, first gave the people a theatre 'for the recreation of our loving subjects as for our solace and pleasure.' She subdued by yielding. Her sex and graciousness inspired a reign of love, and her energies contributed to make it one of enterprise and emulation — a new era of adventure and glory. Elizabeth, living in the hearts of her people, survived in their memories. Her birthday was long observed as a festival day. Every sign of the growing prosperity told in her favor, and her worst acts failed to dim the lustre of the national ideal. Society.' — The monarchy established peace, and with peace came the useful arts and domestic comfort. The development of manufactures was gradually absorbing the unemployed. Under Elizabeth commerce began that rapid career which has made Englishmen the carriers of the world. The burst of national vigor found new outlets in the marts of the Mediterranean and Baltic. In 1553 was founded a company to trade with Russia. In 1578 Drake circumnavigated the globe. In 1600 the East India Company was founded. Henry VIII at the beginning of his reign had but .one ship of war. Elizabeth sent out one hundred and fifty against the Armada. Agriculture was so improved that the produce of an acre was doubled. Dwellings of brick and stone were superseding the straw-thatched cottages, plastered with coarsest clay and often on fire. With open admiration, 268 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. Harrison notes, 1580, three important changes in the farm-houses of his time: ' One is the multitude of chimnles lately erected, whereas in their yoong daies were not above two or three, if so manie, in most uplandishe townes of the realme. . . . The second is the great amendment of lodging, although not generall, for our fathers, (yea and we ourselves also) have lien full oft upon straw pallets, on rough mats covered onlie with a sheet, under coverlets made of dogswain, or hopharlots, and a good round log under their heads, instead of a bolster or pillow. If it were so that the good man of the house had within seven years after his marriage purchased a matteres or flockebed, and thereto a sacke of chaffe to rest his head upon, he thought himselfe to be as well lodged as the lord of the t.owne. . . . Pillowes (said they) were thought meet onelie for women in childbed. . . . The third thing is the exchange of vessell, as of treene platters into pewter, and wodden spoons into silver or tin; for so common was all sorts of treene stuff in olden time, that a man should hardlie find four peeces of pewter (of which one was peradventure a salt) in a good farmers house.' Looking-glasses imported from France began to displace the small mirrors of polished steel. Carpets were used rather for covering tables than floors, which latter were generally strewn with rushes. Forks were as yet unheard of, but knives — first made in England in 1563 — and spoons were ornamented with some care. Gloomy walls and serried battlements disappeared from the palaces of the noblesse, half Gothic, half Italian, cov- ered with picturesque gables, fretted fronts, gilded turrets, and adorned with terraces and vast staircases, with gardens, foun- tains, vases, and statues. The prodigal use of glass was a marked feature — one whose sanitary value can hardly be overestimated. 'You shall have,' grumbles one, 'your houses so full of glass that we can not tell where to come to be out of the sun or the cold.' The master no longer rode at the head of his servants, but sat apart in his 'coach.' The first carriage, 1564, caused much aston- ishment; some calling it 'a great sea-shell from China,' others 'a temple in which cannibals worshipped the devil.' Gentlemen placed their glory less in the conquests of the battle-axe and sword than in the elegance and singularity of their dress. ' Do not,' says a bitter Puritan, ' both men and women, for the most part, every one, in general, go attired in silks, velvets, damasks, satins, and what not, which are attire only for the nobility and gentry, and not for the others at any hand?' They wore hats 'perking up like the spear or shaft of a temple,' or hats 'flat and broad on the crown like the battlements of a house'; hats of silk, velvet, and of 'fine hair, which they call beaver, fetched from beyond the seas, from whence a great sort of other vani- ties do come besides'; cloaks of sable, ornamented shirts; coats SOCIAL STATE. 269, diversified with oxen and goats; velvet shoes, covered vs^ith rosettes and ribbons; boots with falling tops, hung with lace, and embroidered with figures of birds, animals, flowers of silver and gold. When Elizabeth died, three thousand dresses were found in her wardrobe. Feasts were carnivals of splendor. En- tertainments were like fairy scenes. Sober thrift was forgotten in the universal expanse. Gallants gambled a fortune at a sit- ting, then sailed for the New World, in quest of a fresh one. Dreams of El Dorados lured the imagination of the meanest seaman. The advance of corporal well-beirig disclosed itself in the manners and tastes of all ranks — at the base as well as on the summit. The growth of the humanities is seen in the establishment of hospitals or retreats for the infirm and needy,, and houses of correction for the vagrant and vicious. Not modern England yet. Herds of deer strayed in vast and trackless forests. Fens forty or fifty miles in length reeked with miasm and fever. The population — barely five millions — was perpetually thinned by pestilence and want, whose tri- umphs were numbered by the death-crier in the streets or the knell for the passing soul. The peasants shivered in their mud-built hovels, where chimneys still were rare. For the poor there was no physician; for the dying — till the monasteries were suppressed — the monk and his crucifix. For a hundred years, agrarian changes had been leading to the mergence of smaller holdings and the introduction of sheep-farming on an enormous scale. Merchants, too, were investing heavily in land,, and these 'farming gentlemen' were under little restraint in the eviction of the smaller tenants. The farmers, according to More, were 'got rid of either by fraud or force, or tired out with repeated wrongs into parting with their property.' He adds: 'In this way it comes to pass that these poor wretches, men, women, husbands,, orphans, widows, parents with little children, householders greater in number than in. wealth (for arable farming requires many hands, while one shepherd and herdsman will suffice for a pasture farm), all these emigrate from their native fields without knowing where to go.' Homeless wanderers, they joined the army of beggars, maraud- ers, vagabonds, — a vast mass of disorder on which every rebellion might count for support. The poor man, if unemployed, prefer- ring to be idle, might be demanded for service by any master of 270 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. his vocation, and compelled to work. If caught begging once, and neither aged nor infirm, he was whipped at the cart's tail. For a second offence, his ear was slit, or bored through with a hot iron. For a third, — proved thereby to be useless to himself and hurtful to others, — he suffered death as a felon. This law, enacted in 1536, and subsisting for sixty years, expressed the English conviction that it is better for a man not to live at all than to live a profitless and worthless life, — so reaching, per- haps, the heart of the whole matter. Rogue, mendicant, thief, were practically synonymous terms, embracing, — 'All persons calling themselves scholars, going about begging; all seafaring men pretending losses of their ships and goods on the sea; all idle persons going about either begging, or using any subtle craft or unlawful games and plays, or feigning to have knowledge m physiognomy, palmistry, or other like crafty science, or pretending that they can tell destinies, fortunes, or such other fastastical imaginations, all fencers, bear-wards, common players and minstrels; all jugglers.' Travelling required strong nerves. Some one petitions that 'parties of horse be stationed all along the avenues of the city of London, so that if a coach or wagon wanted a convoy, two or three or more may be detached.' Sometimes, says More, you might see a score of thieves hung on the same gibbet. In the county of Somerset alone, we find the magistrates capturing a hundred at a stroke, hanging fifty at once, and impatient to swing the rest. On the byways, as on all the highways, stand the gallows. Beneath the idea of order is the idea of the scaf- fold. Savage energy remains. The living are cut down, disem- bowelled, quartered. ' When his heart was cut out, he uttered a deep groan.' London witnesses the fearful spectacle of a living human being — a poisoner — boiled to death, 'to the terrible ex- ample of all others.' Judge of the moral tone by the utter absence of personal feeling. With business-like brevity, as if the thing were perfectly natural, Cromwell ticks off human lives: 'Item, the Abbot of Reading to be sent down to be tried and executed at Reading.' 'Item, when Master Fisher shall go to his execution, and the other.' Honor, beauty, youth, and genius went quietly to the block, as if bloodshed were an accepted system. With the utmost equanim- ity, as if no murder could be extraordinary, Holinshed relates: 'The five and twentith daie of Maie (1535) was in saint Paules church at London examined nineteen men and six women born in Holland, whose opinions were (heretical). Fourteene of them were condemned, a man and a woman of them were burned in Smith- field, the other twelve were sent to other townes, there to be burnt. On the nineteenth SOCIAL STATE, 271 of June were three moonkes of the Charterhouse hanged, drawne, and quartered at Tiburne, and their heads and quarters set up about London, for denieng the king to be supreme head of the church. Also the one and twentith of the same moneth, and for the same cause, doctor John Fisher, bishop of Rochester, was beheaded for denieng of the supremacie, and his head set iipon London bridge, but his bodie buried within Barking churchyard. The pope had elected him a cardinall, and sent his hat as far as Calais, but his head was off before his hat was on: so that they met not. On the sixth of Julie was Sir Thomas Moore beheaded for the like crime, that is to wit, for denieng the king to be supreme head.' In such a state, man can be happy — like swine. He is still a primitive animal, too heavy for refined sensations, too vehement for restraint; a hive of violent and uncurbed instincts, seeking only expansion, and, to that end, ready to appeal at once to arms. Says a correspondent: ' On Thursday laste, as my Lorde Rytche was rydynge in the streates, there was one Wyndam that stode in a dore, and shotte a dagge at him, thynkynge to have slayne him. . . . The same daye, also, as Sir John Conway was goynge in the streetes, Mr. Lodovyke Grevell came sodenly upon him, and stroke him on the hedd with a sworde. ... I am forced to trouble your Honors with thes tryflynge matters, for I know no greater.' His enjoyment, if lacking decency, is heartfelt — the overflowing of a coarse animation. Bear and bull baitings are the delight of all classes, a ' charming entertainment ' even to the queen. Cock- fighting and throwing at cocks are regularly introduced into the public schools. They feast copiously, furnishing their tables as if to revictual Noah's ark. They drink without ceasing, as when they crossed the sea in leather boats; as now in Germany, where to drink is to drink for ever. Their holidays, with which tradition had filled the year, are the incarnation of natural life. Stubbes, whose mind is burdened with the pitiless doctrines of Calvin, says, with morose impatience: 'First, all the wilde heades of the parishe, conventying together, chuse them a ground capitaine of mischeef, whan they innoble with the title of myrLorde of Misserule, and hym they crown with great solemnitie, and adopt for their kyng. This kyng anoynted, chuseth for the twentie, fourtie, three score or a hundred lustie guttes like to hymself to waite uppon his lordely maiestie. . . . Then have they their hobbie horses, dragons, and other antiques together with their baudie pipers and thundering drommers, to strike up the devilles daunce withall : then marche these heathen companie towardes the churche and churche-yarde, their pipers pipyng, their drommers thonderyng, their stumppes dauncyng, their belles rynglyng, their hankerchefes swyngyng about their heades like madmen, their hobbie horses and other monsters skirmishyng amongest the throng; and in this sorte they goe to the churche (though the minister bee at praier or preachyng), dauncyng and swingyng their hankercheefes over their heads, in the churche, like devilles incarnate, with such a confused noise, that no man can heare his owne voice. Then the foolishe people they looke, they stare, they laugh, they fleere, and mount upon formes and pewes, to see these goodly pageauntes, solemnized in this sort. Then after this, aboute the churche they goe againe and againe, and so forthe into the churche-yarde, where they have commonly their sommer haules, their bowers, arbors and banquettyng 272 FIEST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. houses set up, wherein they feaste, banquet, and daunce all that dale, and preadventure- all that night too. And thus these terrestriall furies spend the Sabhoath dale.' And, — 'Against Male, every parishe, towne and village assemble themselves together, bothe men, women, and children, olde and yong, even all indifferently; they goe to the woodes where they spende all the night in pleasant pastymes, and in the mornyng they returne, bringing with them birch, bowes, and branches of trees, to deck their assemblies with- all. But their cheefest icwell they bringe from thence is their Male poole, which they bring home with great veneration, as thus : They have twenty or fourtie yoke of oxen, every ox havyng a sweete nosegaie of flowers tyed on the tippe of his homes, and these oxen drawe home this Male poole (this stinkyng idoll rather), . . . and thus beyng reared up, they strawe the grounde aboute, binde greene boughes about it, sett np sommer haules, bowers, and arbours hard by it; and then fall they to banquet and feast^ to leape and dance aboute it, as the heathen people did at the dedication of their idolles.' What literature will this life create? You will see it all there, reflected in the drama, reproduced on the stage, — free and liberal living, a masquerade of splendor, vice raging without shame, a prodigality of carnage, — a young world, natural, un- shackled, and tragic. The Reformation. — Society is not possible without reli- gion, and neither society nor religion can be founded only on the pursuit of pleasure and of power. Recall the secular irritations whose momentum had long been gathering for the impending outbreak. Imagine, if you can, the secret anger which the cus- tom of sanctuary alone must have excited. Says the Venetian ambassador at the English court in 1502: 'The clergy are they who have the siipreme sway over the country, both in peace- and war. Among other things, they have provided that a number of sacred places in the kingdom should serve for the refuge and escape of all delinquents; and no one, were he a traitor to the crown, or had he practised against the king's own person, can be taken, out of these by force. And a villain of this kind, who, for some great excess that he has committed, has been obliged to take refuge in one of these sacred places, often goes out of it to brawl in the public streets, and then, returning to it, escapes with impunity for- every fresh offence he may have been guilty of. This is no detriment to the purses of the priests, nor to the other perpetual sanctuaries ; but every church is a sanctuary for forty days; and if a thief or murderer, who has taken refuge in one, cannot leave it in safety^ during those forty days, he gives notice that he wishes to leave England. In which case,, being stripped to the shirt by the chief magistrate of the place, and a crucifix placed in his hand, he is conducted along the road to the sea, where, if he finds a passage, he may go with a " God speed you." But if he should not find one, he walks into the sea up tO' the throat, and three times asks for a passage; and this is repeated till a ship appears, which comes for him, and so he departs in safety. It is not unamusing to hear how the- women and children lament over the misfortune of these exiles, asking "how they can live so destitute out of England"; adding, moreover, that "they had better have died than go out of the world," as- if England were the whole world.' Visible acts and invisible thoughts were environed and held down by an ecclesiastical code, which, only a vehicle for extor- THE EEFORMATION". 273 tion, changed the police into an inquisition. 'Heresy,' 'witch- craft,' ' impatient words,' ' absence from church,' an offence imputed or suspected, resulted in heavy fines, imprisonment, ab- juration, public penance, and the menace or sentence of the torture and the stake. A Northman, a follower of Luther, an artist, grouped and portrayed the infamy and glory of his age, — Christ bleeding in the last throes of a dying life, angels full of anguish catching in their vessels the holy blood, the stars veiling their face, a heretic bound to a tree and torn with the iron-pointed lash of the executioner, another praying with clasped hands while an auger is screwed into his eye, men and women hurled at the lance's point from the crest of a hill into the abyss below. On the other hand, an atrocious crime, the mortal sin of a priest, could be expiated by an indifferent pen- ance or the payment of a few shillings. But the crimes of the clergy were exceeded by their licentiousness. These are the most moderate lines in a satire of 1528: . 'What are the bishops divines? . . . To forge excommnnications, For tythes and decimations Is their continual exercise. . . . Rather than to malie a sermon. To follow the chase of wild deer. Passing the time with jolly cheer. Among them all is common To play at the cards and dice; Some of them are nothing nice Both at hazard and momchance; They drink in golden bowls The blood of poor simple souls Perishing for lack of sustenance. Their hungry cures they never teach, Nor will suffer none other to preach.'i In Latimer's opinion, only one bishop in all England was faithful: ' I would ask a strange question. Who is the most diligent bishop and prelate in all England, that passeth all the rest in doing of his otHce? I can tell, for I know him who it is; I know him well. But now I think I see yon listening and hearkening that I should name him. There is one that passeth all the others, and is the most diligent prelate and preacher in all England. And will ye know who it is? I will tell you. It is the devil. Therefore, ye unpreaching prelates, learn of the devil to be diligent in your office. If ye will not learn of God, for shame learn of the devil.' It was the frightful depravity of Rome that startled Luther into revolt. He went there an eager pilgrim, trudging penniless and barefoot across the Alps, as to the city of the saints, and 1 Roy's Burying of the Mass. 18 274 FIEST CEEATIVE PEEIOD — FEATUEES. the palace of the Pope, fragrant with the odors of Paradise. ' Blessed Rome,' he cried as he entered the gate, — ' Blessed Rome sanctified with the blood of martyrs ! ' 'Adieu ! ' he cried as he fled, ' let all who would lead a holy life depart from Rome. Every thing is permitted in Rome except to be an honest man.' Romanism was turned into a carnival of vice in which all that is high and pure in man is smothered by corruption, and a circus of ostentation where the kingdom of heaven is bought and sold. In 1517 a new cathedraP was in progress, that should dwarf the proudest monuments of art. Agents were sent about Europe with sacks of indulgences and dispensations — letters of credit on heaven. Archbishops were promised half the spoil for their support. Streets were hung with flags to receive them, bells were rung to welcome them; nuns and monks walked in procession before and after, while the vender himself sat in a chariot, with the Papal Bull on a velvet cushion in front. The sale-rooms were the churches. Amid the blazing candles of the altar, the agent explained the efficacy of his medicines, de- claring all sins blotted out ' as soon as the money chinks in the box.' Acolytes walked through the crowds, clinking the plates, and crying, ' Buy, buy ! ' Now consider the national temper and inclinations, which long before the great outburst were muttering ominously. The words of the consecration, the most sacred of the old worship, Hoc est corptLS, were travestied into a nickname for jugglery — hocus pocus. Priests were hooted or knocked down in their walks. Women refused the sacrament from their hands. An apparitor, sent by the church to secure her dues, was driven out with insults: 'Go thy way, thou stynkyng knave; ye are but knaves and brybours, every ch one of you.' Another's head was broken. A waiter fell in trouble for saying that ' the sight of a priest did make him sick,' also, 'that he would go sixty miles to indict' one. In one diocese a woman was summoned and tried for turning her face from the cross; several for not saying their prayers in church, remaining seated ' dumb as beasts ' ; three for passing a night together reading a book of the Scriptures; a thresher for asserting, as he pointed to his work, that he was going to make God come out of his straw. Latimer announced 1 St. Peter's, designed by Angelo. THE KEFOKMATION. 275 one day that he would preach in a certain place. On the morrow, proceeding to his appointment, he found the doors closed, and waited more than an hour for the key. At last a man came, and said: ' Syr, thys ys a busye day with us; we cannot heare you: it is Robyn Hoodes Daye.' Straws on the stream. The thought- ful and the learned had come to smile at the extent of human credulity, Erasmus visits the shrine at Walsingham. An at- tendant, like a modern guide, shows him the wonders: 'The joint of a man's finger is exhibited to us, the largest of three. I kiss it; and I then ask, "Whose relics were these?" He says, "St. Peter's." "The apos- tle?" He said, "Yes." Then, observing the size of the joint, which might have been that of a giant, I remarked, " Peter must have been a man of very large size." At this one of my companions burst into a laugh, which I certainly took ill, for if he had been quiet the attendant would have shown us all the relics.' His attention is called to the milk of the Virgin, 'what looked like ground chalk mixed with white of egg,^ and he inquires as civilly as he may by what proofs he is assured of its genuineness: 'The canon, as if possessed by a fury, looking aghast upon us, and apparently horrified at the blasphemou.s inquiry, replied, " What need to ask such questions, when you have the authenticated inscription?" ' The contagion spreads, reaches even men in office. When the enormities of the English monks are read in Parliament, there is nothing but the cry of 'Down with them!' Henry permits the 'free and liberal use ' of the Scriptures. Never were they so eagerly and artlessly scrutinized. Every impression made a fur- row. Girls took them to church, and studied them ostentatiously during matins. Grave judges, charging the jury, prefaced their charges by a text. Every reader became an expounder, and the nation abounded with disputants. They reasoned about the sacred volume in taverns and alehouses. In vain the king, irri- tated at the universal distraction of opinion, orders them not to rely too much on their own ideas, and restricts the privilege to the nobility and gentry. In the solitude of the fields, in con- cealment, under their smoky lights, by their fires of turf, they spell out the Bible, discuss it, ponder it. One hides it in a hollow tree, another commits a chapter to memory, so as to be able to revolve it even in the presence of his accusers. They see a companion or relative bound amid the smoke, encourage him, cry out to him that his cause is just, hear his last appeals to God, and meditate on them darkly, passionately. Twice had the storm gathered and passed. Twice had the 276 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. mind of Europe risen in vain against the domination of Rome; first in France, then in England and Bohemia. But now the in- vention of printing, vv'hich supplied her assailants with unwonted weapons, the study of the classics, the vices of the Roman clergy, — these things conspired to achieve in the sixteenth century what was impossible in the fourteenth or fifteenth. More powerful still, because more general: for five centuries the energies of the human spirit had been accumulating. Never had it greater activity, never so imperious a desire to advance. On the con- trary, the Church, which governed the intellect and the heart, had fallen into a state of imbecility and remained stationary. Insurrection was the result. The forward impulse — ethical and intellectual — resisted by the moral inertness, but accumulated to excess, burst out, and produced the Reformation. The change was essentially moral. Its mainspring was the awakened con- science — not the revolutionary desire to experimentalize abstract truth, but the indignation of righteousness, the fundamental anxiety to seize upon truth and justice. It is the genius of the Germanic peoples — the idea of duty blooming afresh amid the mighty upgrowth of all human ideas, the sombre Semitic con- ception of the vast and solitary Being, whose commands, whose vengeance, whose promises and threats, fill, occupy, and direct their thoughts. They ask, with Luther, ' What is righteousness, and how shall I obtain it?' Troubled and anxious, their light failing, themselves groping, they cry from the ab^'ss: 'Almighty and most merciful Father; we have erred, and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own heart. We have oflEended against Thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us. But Thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miser- able offenders. Spare Thou them, O God, which confess their faults. Restore Thou them that are penitent; According to Thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesus our Lord. And grant, O- most merciful Father, for His sake; That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life.' 'Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that Thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent; Create and make in us new and con- trite hearts, that we worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretched- ness, may obtain of Thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness.'' It is this conscience that made believers strong against all the revulsions of nature and all the trembling of the flesh. Many went to the stake cheerfully, and all bravely, deeming the 'cross ^Book of Common Prayer, 1548 ; subsequently, at different periods, undergoing several changes. THE KEFORMATION. 277 of persecution' an 'inestimable jewel.' 'No one will be crowned,' said one of them, ' but they who fight like men, and he who en- dures to the end shall be saved.' Latimer at eighty, refusing to retract, after two years of prison and waiting, was burned. His companion, ready to be chained to the post, said aloud: 'O heavenly Father, I give thee most hearty thanks, for that thou hast called me to be a professor of thee, even unto death! ' Lati- mer in his turn, when they brought the lighted fagots, uttered the thrilling words: 'Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man: we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.' A youth, an apprentice to a silk-weaver, doomed to die if he does not recant, is exhorted by his parents to stand firm: 'Then William said to his mother, "For my little pain which I shall sufiEer, which is hut a short braid, Christ hath promised me, mother (said he), a crown of joy: may you not be glad of that, mother?"' With that his mother kneeled down on her knees, saying, "I pray God strengthen thee, my son, to the end; yea, I think thee as well- bestowed as any child that ever I bare." . . . Then William Hunter plucked up his gown, and stepped over the parlour groundsel, and went forward cheerfully; the sheriff's servant taking him by one arm, and I his brother by another. And thus going in the way, he met with his father according to his dream, and he spake to his son weeping, and saying, " God be with thee, son William"; and William said, "God be with you, good father, and be of good comfort; for I hope we shall meet again, when we shall be merry." His father said, "I hope so, William" ; and so departed. So William went to the place where the stake stood, even according to his dream, where all things were very unready. Then William took a wet broom-faggot, and kneeled down thereon and read the fifty-first Psalm, till he came to these words, "The sacrifice of God is a contrite spirit; a contrite and a broken heart, O God, thou wilt not despise." . . . Then said the sheriff, "Here is a letter from the queen. If thou wilt recant thou shalt live; if not thou shalt be burned." "No," quoth William, "I will not recant, God willing." Then William rose and went to the stake, and stood upright to it. Then came one Richard Ponde, a bailiff, and made fast the chain about William. Then said master Brown, "Here is not wood enough to burn a leg of him." Then said William, " Good people ! pray for me, and make speed and des- patch quickly; and pray for me while you see me alive, good people ! and I will pray for you likewise." "How?" quoth master Brown, "pray for thee! I will pray no more for thee than I will pray for a dog." . . . Then was there a gentleman which said, "I pray God have mercy upon his soul." The people said, "Amen, Amen." Immediately was Are made. Then William cast his psalter right into his brother's hand, who said, "Will- iam! think on the holy passion of Christ, and be not afraid of death." And William answered, "I am not afraid." Then lift he up his hands to heaven, and said, "Lord, Lord, Lord, receive my spirit"; and, casting down his head again into the smothering smoke, he yielded up his life for the truth, sealing it with his blood to the praise of God.'i The same sentiment, alas, made them tyrants after it had made them martyrs. While the Reformation was' demanding freedom of thought for itself, it was violating that right towards others. Both Reformers and Papists held it right to inflict coercion and 1 Fox's Book of Martyrs. 278 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. death upon those who denied what they regarded as the essential faith. The first never doubted that truth was on their side, the second were no less confident; and both required with equal ardor the princes of their party to wield the temporal sword against the other. The innovators were not emancipated from the corrupt principles of the age, and there is no little warrant for the taunt that they were against burning only when they were in fear of it themselves. Calvin burned Servetus for heresy. Speaking to the Earl of Somerset, he expressly says of the Papists and Dissenters, 'They ought to be repressed by the avenging sword which the Lord has put into your hands.' Cran- mer caused a woman to be burned for some opinion about the Incarnation. In the reign of Henry VIII, the story of martyr- doms convulsed the Catholic world; in that of Mary, nearly three hundred Protestants let themselves be burned rather than abjure; in that of Elizabeth, a hundred and sixty Catholics were put to death. We shall do well, however, to bear in mind the temper of the men with whom the Reformers had to deal. They remembered that when their teaching began to spread in the Netherlands, an edict was issued, under which fifty thousand of them, first and last, were deliberately murdered. About the year 1520, when Luther publicly burned at Witten- berg the bull of Leo X, containing his condemnation, the move- ment definitely began which was to raise the whole of Europe and change the spiritual history of mankind. Slowly, with mis- trust, from self-interest, Henry VIII laid the axe to the tree. In 1534, Parliament enacted that the king — ' shall be taken, accepted, and reputed the only supreme Head in earth of the Church of England, and shall have and enjoy annexed and united to the Imperial Crown of this realm as well the title and style thereof as all the honors, jurisdictions, authorities, immunities, profits, and commodities to the said dignity belonging, with full power to visit, repress, redress, reform, and amend all such errors, heresies, abuses, contempts, and enormities, which by any manner of spiritual authority or jurisdiction might or may lawfully be reformed.' Denial was treason, and treason death. A second blow was struck, and the monasteries were lopped off, their relics cast out, their shrines levelled, their estates appropriated by the court and nobility, the monks sent wandering into the world, and the bish- ops looked helplessly on while their dominion was trodden under foot. Henry VIII, by brute force, wrought out only a purified Catholicism differing in theory from the Roman Catholic faith on THE REFORMATION". 279 the point of supremacy and on that point alone. Above the roar of controversy, he told the people, in six articles,' how to vporship and what to believe. Assailed with equal fury by those who were zealous for either the new or the old, he burned as heretics such as avowed the tenets of Luther, and hanged as traitors such as owned the authority of the Pope. His system, too hazardous to maintain, died with him. Under the Regency of his infant son, the Six Articles were repealed; the prohibitions of Lollardy were removed ; the churches were emptied of pictures and images; priests, descending from their stone altars to wooden tables, were once more equals, and married like the rest; the Book of Common Prayer was restored, to knock at the door of every soul with its imposing supplications; old customs were broken. Cranmer, who had been slowly drifting, set the exam- ple. 'This year,' says a contemporary, 'the Archbishop of Can- terbury did eat meat openly in Lent in the hall of Lambeth, the like of which was never seen since England was a Christian coun- try.' Mary undid all that had been done by her father and brother. Not only were the old doctrines and ceremonies restored; the supremacy was resigned to the Pope. But the new worship became popular through the triumph of its martyrs, and became national on the accession of Elizabeth — national by the con- straint of internal sentiment and the pressure of foreign hostility. England is henceforth Protestant; her faith, a part of the Consti- tution, an alliance of the worldly and religious enemies of popery, a union of the court and the cloister, of the State and the Church; linked to the throne by the two Acts of headship and uniformity; in its doctrinal structure, tolerant; in its political structure, per- secuting. For a government whose organic principle is synthetic and monarchical will not patiently submit to dissension whose tendency is analytic and republican. To this day, the Established Church bears the visible imprint of her origin. Like her imperial parent, she has her chief magis- trate; she retains episcopacy, without declaring it to be essential; she copies the daily chant of the monk, though translating it into the vulgar tongue and inviting the multitude to join its voice to that of the minister; without asking for the intercession of the 1 Transubstantiation, celibacy, vows, mass, confession, withholding the cup from the laity. 280 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. saints, she has her festival-days for her great benefactors; dis- carding a crowd of pantomimic gestures, she marks the sprinkled infant with the sign of the cross; condemning the idolatrous adoration of the bread and wine, she requires them to be re- ceived in a meekly kneeling posture; rejecting many rich vest- ments, she yet keeps the robe of white; without the gloomy monotony of the middle-age litany, the organ-led music now thunders forth glory to God, now whispers to the broken in spirit; — in short, a flourishing branch, shooting forth in the open air, amid satin doublets and stage attitudes, amid youthful blus- ter and fashionable prodigality; friendly to the beautiful, which it does not proscribe, and to fancy, which it does not attempt to fetter. Only by a very slow process- does the human mind emerge from a system of error. The excesses of vice had been repressed without attacking its source. Many persons, with a severer ideal, thought that the interests of pure religion required a reform far more searching and extensive. They would have a service without shred or fragment of Rome. One protests: 'I can't consent to wear the surplice, it is against my conscience; I trust by the help of God, I shall never put on that sleeve, which is a mark of the beast.' And another: 'God by Isaiah commandeth not to pollute ourselves with the garments of the image.' As they could not be convinced, they were persecuted — imprisoned, fined, pilloried, their noses slit, their ears cut ofE. From being a sect, they consequently became a faction. To hatred of the authorized church was added hatred of the royal authority. So, underneath the established Protestantism is propagated an interdicted Protestantism, — Puritaiiism, whose intermingled sentiments, each embittering the other, will pro- duce the English Revolution. If now we inquire what were the ultimate results of the Reformation, it can hardly escape observation: 1. That it banished, or nearly so, religion from politics, and secularized government. 2. That, leaving the mind subject to the variable influence of political institutions, it yet procured, by disarming the spir- itual power, a great increase of liberty — a liberty which re- dounded to the advantage of morality and of science. THE REFORMATION — EFFECTS. 281 3. That rejecting much of the polity and ritual of the mystical Babylon, it rendered possible that steady movement by which theology has since been gravitating towards the moral faculty. 4. That it introduced religion into the midst of the laity, which till then had been the exclusive domain of the ecclesi- astical order. 5. That, begetting a war of tracts and disputations, whether conqueror or conquered, it effected an immense progress in mental activity. 6. That, by arousing Rome to impose upon herself an in- stant counter-reform, it gave an improved tone to all ecclesi- astical grades. Inestimable as are these blessings, it were idle to denv that the Reformation aggravated, for a time, unavoidably, some of the evils it was intended to correct. It was the culminating fact in a train of circumstances that had diffused through Christendom an intense and vivid sense of Satanic agency. "When the mind, without power of sound judgment, is fallen upon times in which tendencies and passions rage with tem- pestuous violence, it turns readily to the miraculous as the solution of all phenomena, and phantoms are transfigured into realities through the mists of hope and fear. Men, supersti- tious and terror-stricken, listen then with wide ears and fan- tastic foreshadowings, momentarily expecting the thunderbolts of God, and feeling upon them the claw of the devil. Cran- mer, in one of his articles of visitation, directs his clergy to seek for 'any that use charms, sorcery, enchantments, witch- craft, soothsaying, or any like craft invented hy the Devil.'' Under Henry VIII, there were a few executions for supposed dealings with the Evil One; but the law on the subject in the following reign was repealed, nor again renewed till the acces- sion of Elizabeth, when other laws were made, and executed with severity. A preacher before the queen, adverting to the increase of witches, expressed a hope that the penalties might be rigidly enforced: 'May it please your grace to understand that witches and sorcerers within these few years are marvellously increased within your grace's realm. Your grace's subjects pine away even unto the death; their color fadeth, their flesh rotteth, their speech is be- numbed, their senses are bereft; ... I pray God they never practice further than upon the subject.' 282 FIKST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. ■ It must have made the teeth chatter with fright to hear the min- isters assert: 'That they have had in their parish at one instant, XVII or XVIII witches; mean- ing such as could worlie miracles supernaturallie; . . . that instructed by the devil they make ointments of the bowels and members of children, whereby they ride in the aire, and accomplish all their desires. When a child is not baptized, or defended by the sign of the cross, then the witches catch them from their mothers sides in the night . . . kill them ... or after buriall steale them out of their graves, and seeth them in a caldron, untill their iiesh be made potable. ... It is an infallible rule, that everie fort- night, or at the least everie moneth, each witch must kill one child at the least for hir part.' With signal success, the witch-finders pricked their victims all over to discover the insensible spot, threw them into the water to ascertain whether they would sink or swim, or deprived them of sleep during successive nights to compel confession. Under a milder judiciary than on the Continent, witches who had not destroyed others by their incantations, were, for the first convic- tion, punished only by the pillory and imprisonment, while those condemned to die, perished by the gallows instead of the stake. The cast of thought engendered by the Reformation is strikingly typified in Luther. Oppressed by a keen sense of unworthiness, distracted by intellectual doubt, Satan was the dominating con- ception of his life, the efficient cause in every critical event, in every mental perturbation. In the seclusion of his monastery at Wittenberg, he constantly heard the Devil making a noise in the cloisters, even cracking nuts on his bed-post. A stain on the wall of his chamber still marks the place where he flung an ink- bottle at the Devil. He became so accustomed to the presence that, awakened on one occasion by the sound, he perceived it ta be only the Devil, and accordingly went to sleep. 'Oh, what horrible spectres and figures I used to see ! ' None of the infirm- ities to which he was liable were natural; but his ear-ache was peculiarly diabolical. Physicians who attempted to explain dis- ease by natural causes, were ignorant men, who did not know all the power of Satan. Indeed suicides, commonly supposed to have destroyed themselves, had in reality been seized and strangled by the Devil. In strict accordance with the spirit of his age, he emphatically proclaimed the duty of burning the witches. 'I would have no compassion on these witches,' he exclaimed. 'I would burn them all ! ' The immense majority of the accused were women — a fact explained not by their nervous sensibility THE REFORMATION — EFFECTS. 283 and their consequent liability to religious epidemics, but by their inherent wickedness. As long as celibacy was esteemed the highest of virtues, divines exhausted all the resources of their eloquence in describing the iniquity of the fair. By a natural process, all the 'phenomena of love' came to be regarded as most especially under the influence of the Devil. The tragedy of Macbeth faithfully reflects the popular superstition touching the powers of darkness. The air is lurid and thick with things weird and fantastic. Three witches meet in dark communion — kinless — nameless — and fitly consult: ^ First W. When shall we three meet again In thunder, lightning, or in rain? Second W. 'When the hurlyburly's done. When the battle's lost and won. That will he ere set of sun. Where the place? Upon the heath; Third W. First W. Second W. Third W. There to meet with Macbeth.' With wild utterance, all, of the moral confusion and murkiness of their demon's heart, they vanish: 'Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air.' Meeting again on the blasted heath, they recount to each other their exploits: '■First W. Where hast thou been, sister? Second W. Killing swine. Third W. Sister, where thou? First W. A sailor's wife had chestnuts in her lap. And mounch'd, and mounch'd, and mounch'd: — "Give me," quoth I: "Aroint thee, witch!" the rump-fed ronyon cries. Her husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' the Tiger: But in a sieve I'll thither sail. And, like a rat without a tail, I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do. Second W. I'll give thee a wind. First W. Thou art kind. Third W. And I another. First W. I myself have all the other. And the very ports they blow, All the quarters that they know I' the shipman's card. I'll drain him dry as hay: Sleep shall neither night nor day Hang upon his pent-house lid; He shall live a man forbid: Weary sev'n-nights, nine times nine, Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine: Though his bark cannot be lost, 284 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. Yet it shall be tempest-tost. Look what I have. — Second W. Show me, show me.— First W. Here I have a pilot's thumb, Wreck'd as homeward he did come.' Distant and complex objects are rendered distorted and porten- tous in the morning mists which the rising sun has not yet dis- pelled. The Renaissance. — In the moral, as in the physical world, every night brightens into a new day. Ages of sloth are suc- ceeded by periods of energy. First the seed in the soil, then the harvest — in endless recurrence. Nature may sleep, but she will wake again — forever. It is with man as with the planet, — change is identified with existence, never by leaps, ever by steps; revolu- tionary, periodic; pulsating to the rhythmic law of the universe, that swings to and fro through the immeasurable agitations, like the shuttle of a loom, and weaves a definite and comprehensible pattern into the otherwise chaotic fabric of things. What the Reformation exhibits in the sphere of religion and politics, the Revival of Letters displays in the sphere of culture, art, and science, — the recovered energy and freedom of humanity. Both are effects or phases, each by reaction a stimulant and a cause; the first ethical, the second intellectual; the one Christian, the other classical — in contrasted language, pagan; either, the acme of a gradual and instinctive process of becoming ^ neither, as we have seen, without many anticipations and foreshadowings. The Henaisscmce, however, is commonly understood to be the renova- tion of the intellect only — that outburst of human intelligence which, abroad in the fifteenth century and at home in the six- teenth, marks an epoch in human growth. What was it in its elements and its origin? — An expansion of natural existence, and a zeal for the civilizations of Greece and Rome, that till the fulness of time had lain essentially inoperative on the Dead-Sea shore of the middle-age. It was the resuscitation of the taste, the eloquence, and the song of antiquity; of the gods and heroes of Olympus, of the eternal art and thought of Athens. It was, after a long- oblivion, the reappearance, with others high and luminous, of the 'divine Plato,' who alone among books is enti- tled to Omar's fanatical compliment to the Koran, — ' Burn the libraries, for their value is in this volume.' All who went before THE RENAISSAITCE. 285 were his teachers; all Avho came after were his debtors. Every thinker of grand proportions is his.^ Whoever has given a spiritual expression to truth, has voiced him. Whoever has had vision of the realities of being, has stood in his hallowed light — the Elizabethans not less. But for the magnitude of his proper genius, Shakespeare would be the most eminent of Platonists. Would you understand the lofty insight, the celestial ardor of the Fairy Queen — first great ideal poem in the English tongue, you must reascend to the serene solitudes of Plato, and watch the lightnings of his imagination playing in the illimitable. His sen- tences are the corner-stone of speculative schools, the fountain- head of literatures, the culture of nations. 'To his doctrines we may hardly allude — the acutest German, the fondest disciple, is at fault.' What renders him immortally noble, and irresistibly attractive to the noble, is his moral aim, his sympathy with truth — truth arrayed in the unsullied white of heaven. The admirable earnest is the central sun: 'I, therefore, Callicles, am persuaded by these accounts, and consider how I may- exhibit my soul before the judge In a healthy condition. Wherefore disregarding the honors that most men value, and looking to the truth, I shall endeavor in reality to live as virtuously as I can; and, when I die, to die so. And I invite all other men, to the utmost of my power.' Upon this dogma let the pillared firmament rest: 'Let us declare the cause which led the Supreme Ordainer to produce and com- pose the universe. He was good; and he who is good has no kind of envy. Exempt from envy, he wished that all things should be as much as possible like himself. Whosoever, taught by wise men, shall admit this as the prime cause of the origin and foundation of the world, will be in the truth.' And human faith cleave to this, and by it interpret the world: 'All things are for the sake of the good, and it is the cause of everything beautiful.' Impute no ill to the eternal Radiance, however dark the prob- lem of human destiny: 'That which is good is beneficial ; is the cause of good. And, therefore, that which is good is not the cause of all which is and happens, but only of that which is as it should be. . . The good things we ascribe to God, whilst we must seek elsewhere, and not in him, the causes of evil things.' Towards this superlative perfection, the holy, the beautiful, the true, let reason lift itself: 'Marvellous beauty! eternal, uncreated, imperishable beauty, free from increase and diminution. . . beauty which has nothing sensible, nothing corporeal, as hands or face: which does not reside in any being different from itself, in the earth, or the 'Aristotle was his pupil, and the critic of his system. 286 FIRST CEEATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. heavens, or in any other thing, but which exists eternally and absolutely in itself, and by itself; beauty of which every other beauty partalcea, without their birth or destruction bringing to it the least increase or diminution.'' Alas ! when we would rise, we feel the weight of clay. Our life is double: ' The Deity himself formed the divine, and he delivered over to his celestial off- spring the task of forming the mortal. These subordinate deities, copying the example of their parent, and receiving from his hands the immortal principle of the human soul, fashioned subsequently to this the mortal body, which they consigned to the soul as a vehicle, and in which they placed another kind of soul, mortal, the seat of violent and fatal affections.' All the longing, all the vanity,, all the doubt, the sorrow, the travail, of the world, this man felt; and said — what we are only now beginning to discover — that the soul had two motive pow- ers. Two winged steeds, he calls them, one princely, the other plebeian; and a charioteer Reason, who endeavors to guide them to the realized vision of the ideal: ' Now the winged horses, and the charioteer of the gods are all of them noble, and of noble breed, while ours are mixed; and we have a charioteer who drives them in a pair, and one of them is noble and of noble origin, and the other is ignoble and of ignoble origin; and, as might be expected, there is a great deal of trouble in managing them. . . , The wing is intended to soar aloft and carry that which gravitates downwards into the upper region, which is the dwelling of the gods ; and this is that element of the body which is most akin to the divine. Now the divine is beauty, wisdom, and good- ness and the like; and by these the wing of tlie soul is nourished, and grows apace; but when fed upon evil and foulness, and the like, wastes and falls away. Zeus, the mighty lord holding the reins of a winged chariot, leads the way in heaven, ordering all and caring for all; and there follows him the heavenly array of gods and demigods, divided into eleven bands; for only Hestia is left at home in the house of heaven; but the rest of the twelve greater deities march in their appointed order. And they see in the interior of heaven many blessed sights; and there are ways to and fro, along which the happy gods are passing, each one fulfilling his own work; and any one may follow who pleases, for jealousy has no place in the heavenly choir. This is within the heaven. But when they go to feast and festival, then they move right up the steep ascent, and mount the top of the dome of heaven. Now the chariots of the gods, self-balanced, upward glide in obedience to the rein; but the others have a difficulty, for the steed who has evil in him, if he has not been properly trained by the charioteer, gravitates and inclines and sinks towards the earth : and this is the hour of agony and extremes! conflict of the soul. . . . That which follows God best and is likest to him lifts the head of the charioteer into the outer world and is carried round in the revolution, troubled indeed by the steeds, and beholding true being, but hardly; another rises and falls, and sees, and again fails to see by reason of the unruliness of the steeds. The rest of the souls are also longing after the upper world and they all follow, but not being strong enough they sink into the gulf as they are carried round, plunging, treading on one another, striving to be first; and there is confusion and the extremity of effort, and many of them are lamed or have their wings broken by the ill driving of the chariot- eers; and all of them after a fruitless toil go away without being initiated into the mysteries of being, and are nursed with the food of opinion. The reason of their great desire to behold the plain of truth is that the food which is suited to the highest part of the soul comes out of that meadow; and the wing on which the soul soars is nourished mtk this.'' i THE RENAISSANCE. 287 No wonder Platonism is immortal — immortal because its vitality is not that of one or another blood but of human nature. But the recovered consciousness of Europe — signalized and quickened by the admiration for the antique — was especially marked by a general efflorescence of the beautiful. Among the Greeks, the central conception of art was the glory of the human body. As their mythology passed gradually into the realm of poetry, statues that once were objects of earnest prayer came to be viewed with the glance of the artist or the critic. Reverence was displaced by allegory and imagination; worship of the object, by the worship of form. It was Greece, arisen from the tomb, that in this unique era of human intelligence bequeathed those almost passionate models which have been the wonder and the delight of all succeeding ages. Man, long en- veloped in a cowl, awoke to beauty. Painting and sculpture, from being a frigid reproduction of entranced eyes and sunken chests, became instinct with strong and happy life. The atten- uated Christ was transformed into 'a crucified Jupiter,' the pale Virgin into a lovely girl, the dried-up saint into a ready athlete. Similar was the transition in architecture. The Gothic style, whose sombre and solemn images had awed barbarian energies to rest, was supplanted by the classic, more gorgeous, gay, and fair, fashioned from the temples of antiquity, and aspiring to an ex- cellence purely Eesthetic. With the erection of St. Peter's, the age of cathedrals was passed. Luxurious Italy, as previously observed, led the way. The fourteenth century was her period of high and original invention — the age of the sombre Dante, the passionate Petrarch, and the joyous Boccaccio. The fifteenth was the age of rapturous devo- tion to classic antiquity, when the merchant bartered his rich freights for a few worm-eaten folios, and the gift of manuscripts healed the dissensions of rival states; an age as remarkable for the dispersion of learning as the other had been for the concen- tration of talent. The sixteenth was the exhilarating Augustan age of the Italian muse, when she had regained her freedom in the court of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and was pouring forth in spontaneous plenty everything brilliant, or fragrant, or nourish- ing; the age of the mighty Angelo — of the social Ariosto, Avhose stanzas were sung in the streets and fields — of the solitary Tasso, 288 FIKST CEEATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. whose tTerusalem, broken up into ballads and sung by the gondo- liers in Venice, made the air vocal on a tranquil summer evening. It was also, as well as the preceding, an age of adolescence, when men were, and dared to be, themselves for good or for evil. There was no limit to the development of personality. In the midst of all the forms of loveliness was an unbridled laxity in literature and morals. 'We must enjoy,' sang Lorenzo: 'there is no cer- tainty of to-morrow.' Fair Florence, in Carnival, rung to the thoughtless refrain of 'Naught ye know about to-morrow': 'Midas treads a wearier measure: All he touches turns to gold: If there be no taste of pleasure, What's the use of wealth untold? . . . Listen well to what we're saying; Of to-morrow have no care I Young and old together playing Boys and girls be blithe as air 1 Every sorry thought forswear! Keep perpetual holiday. — Youths and maids, enjoy to-day; Naught ye know about to-morrow.' ' Some people,' said Pulci, glancing towards the dark Beyond, ' think they will there discover fig-peckers, plucked ortolans, ex- cellent wine, good beds, and therefore they follow the monks, walking behind them. As for us, dear friend, we shall go into the black valley, where we shall hear no more alleluias.' Side by side with the infatuation for harmony and grace, flourished the passion for pleasure and voluptuousness; and the reproach even of indecency lies heavily, in all the nakedness of detail, upon most of the Italian novelists. To the poets, love furnishes the animating impulse; and amid the clouds of amorous incense we rarely discern, with a few honorable exceptions, an ennobling sentiment or a moral purpose. A mistress frowns, and the Flor- entine lover cries: 'Fire, fire! Ho, water! for my heart's afire! Ho, neighbors! help me, or by God I die! See, with his standard, that great lord, Desire ! He sets my heart aflame: in vain I cry. Too late, alasl The flames mount high and higher. Alack, good friends ! I faint, I fail, I die. Ho! water, neighbors mine! no more delay! My heart's a cinder if you do but stay.' He is not elevated, — inflated only and conventional. He desires^ to give play to his imagination, and to please his facile fair onej THE RBKAISSANCE. 289 with the fluency of his vows. You may see it in the levity of his love declarations: 'Wherefore, O lady, break the ice at length; Make, thou, too, trial of love's fruits and flowers: When in thine arms thou feelst thy lover's strength, Thou wilt repent of all these wasted hours: Husbands, they know not love, its breadth and length, Seeing their hearts are not on fire like ours: Things longed for give most pleasure ; this I tell thee ; If still thou doubtest let the proof compel thee.' You may see it, best of all, in his fifteenth century code: 'Honor, pure love, and perfect gentleness. Weighed in the scales of equity refined. Are but one thing: beauty is naught or less, Placed in a dame of proud and scornful mind. . . . I ask no pardon if I follow Love ; Since every gentle heart is thrall thereof. Let him rebuke me whose hard heart of stone Ne'er felt of Love the summer in his vein! I pray to Love that who hath never known Love's power may ne'er be blessed with Love's great gain; But he who serves our lord with might and main May dwell forever in the fire of Love ! ' Three paganisms are thus imported from the South to con- tribute to the taste of the North, — Greek, Latin and Italian, the last circulating fresh sap through the other two. Between the ancient world and the modern stands the genius of Italy as in- terpreter. England, when most strenuous in severing her spirit- ual relations, cultivates most closely her intellectual. The new knowledge came like a fertilizing flood upon the 'island of the silver sea.' Dean Colet from his Greek studies at Florence re- turned with the key to unlock the New Testament, and to dis- cover a rational and practical religion in the Gospels themselves. 'I have given up my whole soul to Greek learning',' says the young Erasmus, with chivalrous enthusiasm; 'and as soon as I get any money, I shall buy Greek books, and then I shall buy some clothes.' Formerly Italian scholars had been employed to compose the public orations, but now he could write: 'I have found in Oxford so much polish and learning that now I hardly care about going to Italy at all, save for the sake of having been there. "When I listen to my friend Colet, it seems like listening to Plato himself.' Colet, beginning the work of educational reform, established a public school, in which the scholastic logic was displaced, the steady diffusion of the classics enjoined, and 19 290 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. the old methods abolished. The spirit of the founder might be seen in the image of the child Jesus over the gate, with the words graven beneath it, 'Hear ye Him.' 'Lift up your little white hands for me,' he wrote, 'which prayeth for you to God.' Vain was the cry of alarm. 'No wonder,' wrote More to the dean, 'your school raises a storm, for it is like the wooden horse in which armed Greeks were hidden for the ruin of barbarous Troy.' The example bred a crowd of imitators. More grammar schools were founded in the later years of Henry than in three hundred years before. Higher education passed from death to life. Of Cambridge, Erasmus, invited there as a teacher of Greek, says: ' Scarcely thirty years ago nothing was taught here but the Parva Logicalia of Alexander, antiquated exercises from Aristotle, and the Quoestiones of Scotus. As time went on better studies were added — mathematics, a new, or at any rate a reno- vated, Aristotle, and a knowledge of Greek literature. W^hat has been the result? The university is now so flourishing that it can compete with the best university of the age.' At Oxford, the fierceness of the opposition evinces the strength of the revival. The contest took the form of hostile division into Greeks and Trojans — the former the advocates of the New Learn- ing, the latter its opponents. But even here the battle was soon over. 'The students,' said an eye-witness, 'rush to the Greek letters; they endure watching, fasting, toil, and hunger, in the pursuit of them.' The movement, however, suddenly received a temporary check. The impulse given by the reformers was pri- marily incidental, for to them the Greek Testament was the armory from which they drew their weapons of defence and of assault; while the immediate effects of the Reformation, both by revolutionizing the ecclesiastical system and by withdrawing aca- demic abilities into the abyss of controversy, were depressing. Latimer calculated that the number of students at the two uni- versities was fewer -by ten thousand after the alienation of abbey and church lands had left no mercenary attractions in the sacred offices. Religion lost some of its charms when the golden pros- pect was gone. About the same time (1550), an observer says curiously : 'Formerly there were in houses belonging to the University of Cambridge, two hundred students of divinity, many very well learned, which be now all clean gone home; and many young toward scholars, and old fatherly doctors, not one of them left. One hundred also, of another sort, that, having rich friends, or being beneflced men, did live of themselves in hotels and inns, be either gone away or else fain to THE EENAISSANCE. 291 creep into colleges and put poor men from bare livings. These both be all gone, and a small number of poor, godly, diligent students, now remaining only in colleges, be not able to tarry and continue their studies for lack of exhibition and help.' Of the poorer and more diligent students he adds the interesting picture : 'There be divers there which rise daily about four or five of the clock in the morn- ing, and from five till six of the clock use common prayer, with an exhortation of God's word in a common chapel; and from six until ten of the clock use ever either private study or common lectures. At ten of the clock they go to dinner, whereas they be content with a penny piece of beef among four, having a few pottage made of the broth of the same beef, with salt and oatmeal, and nothing else. After this slender diet, they be either teaching or learning until five of the clock in the evening; whenas they have a supper not much better than their dinner. Immediately after which they go either to reasoning in problems, or to some other study, until it be nine or ten of the clock; and then, being without fires, are fain to walk or run up and down half an hour, to get a heat on their feet when they go to bed.' In the adverse reign of Mary, Trinity College was endowed, more especially for the cultivation of classical scholarship. Its founder states in a letter: 'My Lord Cardinal's Grace has had the overseeing of my statutes. He. much likes well that I have therein ordered the Latin tongue to be read to my scholars. But he advises me to order the Greek to be more taught there than I have provided. This purpose I well like; but I fear the times will not bear it now. I remember when I was a young scholar at Eton, the Greek tongue was growing apace ; the study of which is now alate much decayed.' The languishing culture revived towards the close of Elizabeth's reign, when the ' times ' were far more propitious. Insensibly, through the shocks and convulsions of opinion, the influences of the Renaissance had been enriching the soil for the harvest. When the first fanaticisms of misguided zealots had subsided, the interest in letters recovered and spread with unwonted vigor. The tone of the universities wholly changed. Scholars like Hooker could now be found in the ranks of the priesthood — against whom it had been a common note in the official visita- tions, 'He knows a few Latin words, but no sentences.' The Court was distinguished for its elegance. Maids of honor were readers of Plato. The Queen could quote Pindar and Homer in the original, and read every morning a portion of Demosthenes. It was preeminently the age of learned ladies. Says Harrison: 'Truly it is a rare thing with us now to hear of a courtier which hath but his own language. And to say how many gentlewomen and ladies there are that, besides sound knowledge of the Greek and Latin tongues, are thereto no less skilful in Spanish, Italian, and French, or in some one of them, it resteth not in me.' The abundance of printers and of printed books is evidence that the world of readers and writers had widened much beyond the 292 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. circle of courtiers and of prelates. Yet the light that shone remarkably upon the heights, was by no means generally dis- persed. Many of the rank were illiterate, the majority of the middle-class were uneducated, while the lower orders were in comparative darkness. As late as Edward VI there were peers of Parliament unable to read. It is a question whether Shake- speare's father, an alderman of Stratford, could write his name. The educative theory was based upon the principle that varieties of inapplicable knowledge might be good where accessible, but were not essential. Two things were indispensable, — ability to labor and skill in arms. Every boy between seven and seventeen was required to be provided with a long-bow and two arrows; and every Englishman older, to provide himself with a bow and four arrows. It was the spirit of this law which Ascham, the schoolmaster of the period, is enforcing when he says of his own tutor : 'This worshipful man hath ever loved, and used to have many children brought up in learning in his house, amonges whom I myself was one, for whom at term times he would bring down from London both bow and shafts. And when they should play he would go with them himself into the field, see them shoot, and he that shot the fairest should have the best bow and shafts, and he that shot ill-favoredly should be mocked of his fellows till he shot better. Would to God all England had used or would use to lay the foundation of youth after the example of this worshipful man in bringing up children in the Book and the Bow ; by which two things the whole commonwealth both in peace and war is chiefly valid and defended withal.' Latimer, preaching before the king in 1549, draws the portrait of a yeoman: ' In my time my poor father was as diligent to teach me to shoot as to learn me any other thing ; and so, I think, other men did their children. He taught me how to draw, how to lay my body in my bow, and not to draw with strength of arms, as other nations do, but with strength of the body. I had my bows bought me according to my age and strength; as I increased in them, so my bows were made bigger and bigger; for men shall never shoot well except they be brought up in it. It is a goodly art, a wholesome kind of exercise, and much commended in physic' But what is more to our present purpose is, that the true sig- nificance of the Renaissance consists, not in any accidental emi- gration of Greek scholars and importation of ancient manuscripts from Constantinople, nor chiefly in the passion for classical lore, but in that general ferment which produced, on the whole, marked effects upon all classes, — in that new life by which every province of human intelligence and action was refreshed. A far higher development, indeed, than the Grreek or Latin mania, sprang from the nearer and more seductive paganism of Italy, LANGUAGE. 293 partly through travel, partly through her poetry and romance. A land of tropical gardens and splendid skies, of public pageants and secret tragedies, of brilliant fancies and gorgeous contrasts, she fascinated the Northern imagination with a strange wild glamour. 'An Italianate Englishman,' ran the Italian proverb, 'is an incarnate devil.' Our ancestral youth who repair to her for polish and inspiration or in quest of fanciful adventure, are warned of her alluring charms: 'And being now in Italy, that great limbique of working braines, he must be very circumspect in his carriage, for she is able to turne a Saint into a devil, and deprave the best natures, if one will abandon himselfe, and become a prey to dissolute courses and wantonesse.' Ascham writes with the alarm and severity of a rigorist: ' These bee the inchantementes of Circes, brought out of Italie to marre mens maners in England; much, by example of ill life, but more by preceptes of fonde hookes, of late translated out of Italian into English, sold in every shop in London. . . . There bee moe of these ungratious bookes set out in Printe wythin these fewe monethes, than have been sene in England many score yeares before. . . . Than they have in more reverence the triumphes of Petrarche : than the Genesis of Moses; They make more account of Tullies offices, than S. Paulas epistles: of a tale in Bocace than a storie of the Bible.' If the breath of the South was tainted, it was spirit-stirring; and the healthier constitution which inhaled it, purged off much of its mischief, while it assimilated the beneficial. The contem- plative vein of the Briton was quickened by the brilliancy of the Italian. That which in the first became a superb corporeality, became in the second a vehement and unconventional spirituality. The debt of English to Italian literature consists, — in material of production — the impulse towards creation — a keener sense of the tragic — a livelier sense of the beautiful — a more copious diction — and a more finished style. Language. — Of the monstrous anomalies of the current or colloquial speech, the following note from the Duchess of Norfolk to Cromwell is a curious instance: 'My ffary gode lord — her I sand you in tokyn hofl the neweyer a glasse hofE Setyl set in Sellfer gyld I pra you tak hit (in) wort An hy wer habel het showlde be hater I woll hit war wort a m crone.' So unsettled was our orthography still, that writers, each in his peculiar mode of spelling, did not write the same words uni- formly. Elizabeth, the royal mistress of eight languages, wrote sovereign seven different ways, while the name of Villers, in the 294 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. deeds of that family, has fourteen different forms. Shakespeare is found in the manuscripts of the period spelled in any manner that may express the sound or the semblance of it. Many of the learned engaged in the ambitious reform of teaching the nation how to spell and pronounce. But the pronunciation was so dis- cordant in different shires, that the orthoepists are quite irrecon- cilable with each other or with themselves. Some may amuse. One would turn the language into a music-book. He says: ' In true orthographie, both the eye, the voice, and the eare must consent perfectly, without any let, doubt, or maze.' Another affords a quaint definition of orthoepy combined with orthography : ' Orthographie, conteyning the due order and reason howe to write or painte thimage of manners voice, moste like to the life or nature.' While Shakespeare sarcastically describes the whole race of philologists: 'Now he is turned orthographer, his words are a very fantastical banquet; just so many strange dishes.' The English Bible had been the strong breakwater against the tides of novelty and the vicissitudes of time; and Tyndale's New Tes- tament, executed in the traditional sacred dialect of Wycliffe, did more to fashion and fix our tongue than any other native work from Chaucer to Shakespeare. The Lord's Prayer illus- trates well its force and purity of expression: 'Our Father, which arte in heven, halowed be thy name. Let thy liingdom come. Thy wyll be fulfilled, as well in erth as hit ys in heven. Geve vs this daye oure dayly breade, and forgeve vs oure treaspasses, even as we forgeve them, which treaspas vs. Leede vs not into temptacion, but delyvre vs from yvell. Amen.' In 1575, standard English had so progressed in simplicity and power, that Sidney could say, to his honor: 'English is void of those cumbersome differences of , cases, genders, moods, and tenses, which I think was a piece of the Tower of Babylon's curse, that a man should be put to schoole to learn his mother tongue; but for the uttering sweetly and properly the conceit of the minde, which is the ende of speech, that it hath equally with any other tongue in the world.' Travel and commerce, enlarging with the rapid progress of geographical discovery, made numerous and important accessions to the vocabulary. New wares were introduced, new stores of natural knowledge flowed in from regions hitherto unknown. For a single instance of the many terms which thus rose above the horizon, seldom more grateful if less material, potato^ now 1 From the Indian batata. LANGUAGE — ORGANIZED COMPLETION". 295 made its first appearance in Europe, imported from America. Of this esculent tuber, a voyager makes the following mention: ' Openark are a kinde of roots of round, forme, some farre greater, which are found in moist and marish grounds, growing many together, one by another in ropes, as though they were fastened by a string. Being boiled or sodden, they are very good meat.' A more prolific origin of new words than the taste for sea rov- ing was the intense thirst after religious discussion. The Refor- mation enriched our theological dialect by the translation of many moral and religious works from the Latin; and the very general study of theology rendered this dialect more familiar than that of any other branch of letters, Latin, moreover, was the great link between our Reformers and those of the Conti- nent, and the new ideas taking root, brought in shoals of new terms. Finally, the versions of classical authors, after the brief reaction against classical learning, were an inexhaustible mine of linguistic wealth; and the 'far-journeyed gentlemen' re- turned not only in love with foreign fashions, but equally fond 'to powder their talk with over-sea language.' The influx of foreign neologisms alarmed the purists, who always deem that English corrupt which recedes from its Saxon character. Says Wilson in 1550: ' Some seke so farre for outlandishe Englislie, that thei forgette altogether their mothers' language, . . . He that commeth lately out of France, will talke Frenche- English, and never blush at the matter. The unlearned or foolishe phantasticall that the simple cannot but wonder at their talke and thinke surely thei speake by some rev- elacion. I know them that thinke Rhetorique to stand whollie upon darke woordes, and he that can catche an ynke home terme by the taile, hym thei coumpt to be a fine Eng- lishman and a good Rhetorician.' Notwithstanding, in 1583 Mulcaster wrote: 'The English tung cannot prove fairer than it is at this day.' Querulous critic and rash soothsayer ! The one did not reflect that an expansion of thought compels an expansion of its garniture, and could not know that even Chaucer's 'well of English undefiled' was a well in which were deposited many waters; while the other could not foresee the luxuriant productiveness, the powerful stimulus, of the next thirty years. A single example may suggest something of that variety and affluence by which the speech, once so rude and impotent, was being made ready for the enlarged and diver- sified conceptions of the great masters: loratJi and ire^ came over with Hengist; the Danes brought anger; the French supplied 1 From Saxon yrre. 296 PIEST CEEATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. rage and ftiry^' the Latin indignation^ the Greek cholev, and we now, it may be added, confer this sense on passion. As a final illustration of the state of English orthography in its pro- cess of evolution, we extract the following from the address of Brutus to the people in the drama of Julius Cmsar, written in or before 1601, and printed in 1623: ' I have done no more to Cmsar than you shall do to Brutus. The Question of his death, is inrolPd in the Capitol: his Glory not extenuated, wherein he was worthy; nor his ofiEences enforc'd, for which he suffered death. Heere comes his Body, mourned by Marke Antony, who though he had no hand in his death, shall receiue the benefit of his dying, a place in the Commonwealth, as which of you shall not. With this I depart, that as I slewe my best Louer for the good of Rome, I haue the same Dagger for my selfe, when it shall please my Country to need my death. All. Liue Brutus, liue. Hue. 1. Bring him with Triumph home vnto his house. 2. Giue him a Statue with his Ancestors. 3. Let him be Casar. 4. Ccesars better parts Shall be Crown'd in Brutus. 1. Wee'l bring him to his House, with Showts and Clamors. Bru. My Country-men. 2. Peace, silence, Brutus speakes 1. Peace ho. Bru. Good Countrymen, let me depart alone. And (for my sake) stay heere with Antony: Do grace to Ciiesars Corpes, and grace his Speech Tending to Caesars Glories, which Marke Antony (By our permission) is allow'd to make. 1 do intreat you not a man depart, Saue I alone, till Antony have spoke.' Here our survey is approximately complete. We have arrived at the stage where new capabilities are no longer imperiously demanded by the advancement of culture. The nursling has become a child, the child a man, — still, with proper training, to acquire additional flexibility and strength, yet to remain substan- tially the same. The closing century that witnessed the vast and varied revelation of man's moral nature, witnessed also the end of that organic action by which the English language was devel- oped from its elements and constitutionally fixed, unfettered and many-voiced. Your daughter, O Thor and Odin, has indeed lost the likeness of her mother, but, — 'Not from one metal alone the perfectest mirror is shapen, Not from one color is built the rainbow's aerial bridge: Instruments blending together yield the divinest of music, Out of myriad of flowers sweetest of honey is drawn.'' J W. W. Story. POETRY — REALISM. 297 Poetry. — Do but consider the life of man, that we are as a shadow and our days as a post, then think whether it were good to disinter the lifeless versifiers who fill up the spaces around and between the noticeable elevations of this age, with scarce a soul to a hundred, and of interest to poetical antiquarians only. Chaucer, it has been seen, left nothing to resemble him. Gower is a feeble spring, obstructed by scholastic rubbish. Occleve and Lydgate are as dead sea-moss on a barren shore. The Scotch poets, with more energy, are yet nebula, which no telescope could resolve into individual stars. Where they mean to be serious, they are tedious; and where lofty, pedantic. Their com- positions, with scattering remembrances of beauty or occasional throbs of true vitality, have the same vices of unreality and allegory which were the fashion of the day. Verse that makes us foreigners is no poetry. One writer alone, in its early years, displays, like a feudal premonition, the two great destined features of the sixteenth century, — hatred of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, which is the Reformation ; and the realism of the senses, which is the Re- naissance. His rhyme, — 'Tattered and jagged, Rudely rain-beaten. Rusty, moth-eaten,' full of English and popular instincts, is a sort of literary mud with which he bespatters those who retain the privileges of saints: 'Thus I, Colin Clout, How wearily they wrangle! As I go about. Doctor Daupatus And wondering as I walk, And Bachelor Bacheleratus, I hear the people talk: Drunken as a mouse Men say for silver and gold At the ale-house. Mitres are bought and sold: Taketh his pillion and his cap A straw for Goddys curse. At the good ale-tap What are they the worse? For lack of good wine. What care the clergy though Gill sweat, As wise as Robin Swine, " Or Jack of the Noke? Under a notary's sign. The poor people they yoke Was made a divine; With sumners and citacions. As wise as Waltham's calf. And excommunications. Must preach in Goddys half; About churches and markets In the pulpit solemnly; The bi.shop on his carpets More meet in a pillory; At home soft doth sit. For by St. Hilary This is a fearful fit. He can nothing smatter To hear the people jangle. Of logic nor school matter.' 298 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. With almost brutal coarseness alternate gleams of the sprightly- fancy. Called upon to praise the ladies of the court, he can give a portrait of the outside, clear, pretty, and full of detail. He compares one to — 'The fragrant camomile, The pretty strawberry, The ruddy rosary, The columbine, the nepte, The sovereign rosemary The gillyflower well set, The proper violet.' And adds: 'Your color Star of the morrow grey, Is like the daisy flower The blossom of the spring. After an April shower, The freshest flower of May.' By his hilarity and freedom only, does Skelton exhibit the new- spirit. Rooted in the soil, he grovels there, with no aspiring instinct towards diviner air. A brighter light in this rising dawn gives clearer promise of refulgent day. For Il0"Ward, Earl of Surrey, it was reserved to mark a transformation of the intellect, — to introduce a new and manly style, and to teach the English muse accents she had never tried before. Says Puttenham: 'In the latter end of the same king (Henry the eight) reigne, sprong up a new company of courtly makers, of whom Sir Thomas Wyat th' elder and Henry Barle of Surrey were the two chieftaines, who having travailed into Italie, and there tasted the sweete and stately measures and stile of the Italian Poesie, as novices newly crept out of the schooles of Dante, Arioste, and Petrarch, they greatly pollished our rude and homely maner of vulgar Poesie, from that it had bene before, and for that cause may justly be sayd the first reformers of our English meetre and stile.' The life of Surrey was a chivalric romance. An earl, a relative of the king, a satellite of the Court, brilliant in arms, magnificent, sumptuous, ambitious, four times imprisoned, then beheaded at twenty-seven; like Dante and Petrarch, a plaintive and platonic lover. More than all, his mystical love for the fair Geraldine, like Dante's for Beatrice and Petrarch's for Laura, invests his memory with a peculiar charm. She too is a child, seen only to be idealized; one of nature's sweet creatures that, like chastened colors, have always a holy reference beyond themselves; whose image, entering the poet-soul, is straightway enthroned in a region sublime, to shine as a light, a consolation, a hope, in a dark and troubled world. With the polish and disposition of his Italian model, he says of this being of the heart and mind: POETRY — THE SONNET. 299 'I could rehearse, if that I would, The whole effect of Nature's plaint. When she had lost the perfect mould. The like to whom she could not paint: With wringing hands, how she did cry. And what she said, I know it, I. I know she swore with raging mind, Her kingdom only set apart, There was no loss by law of kind That could have gone so near her heart; And this was chiefly all her pain; She could not make the like again.' The sad and sombre tint, seldom lacking in this race, is here, even in youth. Alone, a prisoner in Windsor, banishing the less by remembrance of a greater grief, he recalls with pathetic modulation, the joys and faces of the vanished days: 'With each sweet place returns a taste full sour. The large green courts, where we were wont to hove, [hover With eyes cast up into the maiden's tower. And easy sighs such as folk draw in love. The stately seats, the ladies bright of hue. The dances short, long tales of great delight; With words and looks, that tigers could but rue; When each of us did plead the other's right, ... The secret groves, which oft me made resound Of pleasant plaint, and of our ladies' praise; Recording oft what grace each one had found. What hope of speed, what dread of long delays, . . . The secret thoughts imparted with such trust; The wanton talk, the divers change of play; The friendship sworn, each promise kept so just. Wherewith we passed the winter night away. And with this thought the blood forsakes the face; The tears berain my cheeks of deadly hue: The which, as soon as sobbing sighs, alas! Upsupped have, thus I my plaint renew: "O place of bliss, Yenewer of my woes! Give me account, where is my noble fere, [companion Whom in thy walls thou dost each night enclose. To other lief, but unto me most dear." [dear Echo, alas I that doth my sorrow rue Returns thereat a hollow sound of plaint.' Observe the new-born art. It is calculating and selective, con- trasted and ornamented, eloquent and forceful; critical, exact, musical, and balanced; uniting symmetry of phrase to symme- try of idea, and delight of the ear to delight of the mind. But the chief point in which the pupil imitates his master is in the use of the sonnet. This 'diamond of literature,' as practiced by Petrarch, is composed of fourteen lines, divided 1 300 PIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. into two quatrains and two tercets, the quatrains repeating one pair of rhymes and the tercets another. Thus: 'The wrinkled sire with hair like winter snow Leaves the beloved spot where he hath passed his years, Leaves wife and children, dumb with bitter tears. To see their father's tottering steps and slow, Dragging his aged limbs with weary woe. In these last days of life he nothing fears, But with stout heart his fainting spirit cheers, And spent and wayworn forward still doth goe ; Then comes to Rome, following his heart's desire. To gaze upon the portraiture of Him Whom yet he hopes in heaven above to see: Thus I, alas I my seeking spirit tire, Lady, to find in other features dim The longed for, loved, true lineaments of thee.' Surrey does not adhere to the strict Italian rule, and his most famous performance consists of three regular quatrains con- cluded with a couplet. Thus: 'The soote season, that bud and blome forth brings, ■ [siueet With grene hath clad the hill, and eke the vale* The nightingale with fethers new she sings : The turtle to her mate hath told her tale: Somer is come, for every spray now springs: The hart hath hong his old hed on the pale ; The buck in brake his winter coate he flings: The fishes flete with new repaired scale: [svAm The adder all her slough away she flings; The swift swalow pursneth the flies smale; The busy bee her hony now she mings: [mingles Winter is worne, that was the flowers bale. And thus I se among these pleasant things Eche care decayes; and yet my sorrow springs.' Besides the sonnet, Surrey borrows for English versification that decasyllable iambic rhythm — bkmk verse — in which our greatest poetical triumphs have been achieved. Almost verse for verse he translates parts of the ^neid into unrhymed pentameter. Thus, of the introduction of the wooden horse into Troy: 'We cleft the walles, and closures of the towne, ■Wherto all helpe, and underset the feht With sliding rolles, and bound his neck with ropes. This fatall gin thus overclambe our walles, Stuft with armd men: about the which there ran Children and maides, that holly carolles sang. . . . Fowr times it stopt in thentrie of our gate, Fowr times the harnesse clattered in the womb.' Surely no ignioble effort to break the bondage of rhyme. Let it' not be forgotten, however: — PGETEY — CONTINUITY OF VEKSE-FOEM. 301 1. That English verse was mainly blank for the first five hun- dred years of its existence. 2. That the typic scheme of our old 'heroic measure' v^as (1) (2) _ ■3" f f f I f r, in which (1) alternated with (2) in lines of two :§: y ^ U 1 1 U' ^ ^ ^ ^ or four bars. 3. That the modern 'heroic' differs from the ancient in hav- ing for its prevalent bar ^ * i*, with five bars to the line. 4. That Surrey merely disused rhyme in a rhythm which was established by Chaucer a hundred and fifty years gone by; as: J • 1 ' Whan that A- prill - e with his shour - es swoot-e i 1 r 1 • * The droghte of March hath • perc ed to the root-e Farther on, thirty years distant, beyond this budding spring which was nipped untimely, is the phenomenal Sidney, whose writings will exhibit the luxuriance and the irregularity of the prevailing manners and the public taste. Higher up, in that empyrean where the moral and sensuous are united, is the pla- tonic Spenser, at once a pagan and a Christian, who will gather and arrange, with inimitable art, the loveliest flowers of both civilizations. About this excej)tional bloom is an abundance of verse, beyond the drama, most of which is a dismal travesty upon the name of poetry. Undoubtedly, these poetasters, badly as they wrote, did not write in vain. By their very failures they helped to develop the powers of the language, and by patient labor on its sterile spots enriched the soil for such as should be born into the inheritance of 'fresh fields and pastures new.' It would be pleasant "to be grateful to them for their poems, — ver- bose, generally stale, dull to the verge of stupidity. The titles set one yawning; as, Five hundred Points of good Husbandry ; A Dialogue contayning in effect the number of al the Proverbs in the English tongue, com2^act in a matter concerning two marriages; The whole Books of Psahnes collected into English metre by T. Sternhold, T. Hopkins, and others, conferred vnth the Ebrue, with apt Notes to sing them withall. You will meet now and then, we dare say, with a brilliant picture, or a genuine 302 FIEST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. love-cry, or a profound truth, as in the two noble stanzas of Sternhold: 'The Lord descended from above And bowed the heavens high, And underneath his feet he cast The darkness of the sky; On cherubs and on cherubims Full royally he rode, And on the wings of all the winds Came flying all abrode.' Or the elaborate sonnet of the amiable Daniel to the object of his baffled affection: 'Restore thy tresses to the golden ore; Yield Cytherea's son those arcs of love ; Bequeath the heavens the stars that I adore; And to the orient do thy pearls remove. Yield thy hand's pride unto the ivory white; To Arabian odors give thy breathing sweet; Restore thy blush unto Aurora bright; To Thetis give the honor of thy feet. Let Venus have thy graces, her resigned; And thy sweet voice give back unto the spheres; But yet restore thy fierce and cruel mind To Hyrcan tigers and to ruthless bears; Yield to the marble thy hard heart again; So Shalt thou cease to plague and I to pain.' The grand dictum of Stoicism: 'He that of such a height hath set his mind. And reared the dwelling of the thoughts so strong; As neither fear nor hope can shake the frame Of his resolved powers: nor all the wind Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong His settled peace, or to disturb the same; What a fair seat hath he from whence he may The boundless wastes and weals of man survey!' And the famous sentiment: ^Unless above himself he can Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!'' Or Drayton's graceful compliment to Isabella's hand: 'She laid her fingers on his manly cheek, The god's pure sceptres and the darts of love, That with their touch might make a tiger meek, Or might great Atlas from his seat remove, So white, so soft, so delicate, so sleek As she had worn a lily for a glove.' And his description of the virgin morning of the infant year, when brooks sing carols and glees, and birds in silvery warblings tell their panting joy: i POETRY — RHETOEICAL AND EMOTIVE. 303 'When Phoebus lifts his head out of the water's wave, No sooner doth the earth her flowery bosom brave, At such time as the year brings on the pleasant spring, But Hunt's up to the morn the feathered sy Ivans sing; And, in the lower grove as on the rising knowl, Upon the highest spray of every mounting pole These quiristers are perched, with many a speckled breast. Then from her burnished gate the goodly glittering East Gilds every mountain top, which late the humorous night Bespangled had with pearl, to please the morning's sight; On which the mirthful quires, with their clear open throats, Unto the joyful morn so strain their warbling notes That hill and valleys ring, and even the echoing air Seems all composed of sounds about them every where.' But we shall no longer pause, if we know our opulence, and have learned to distinguish diamond from flint-sand, or gold from iron- glance; for be it clearly and constantly remembered, worthy art, that makes of all men a commonwealth, that is always new and incapable of growing old, must have that intensity of moral feel- ing or power of imagination by which noble emotions are excited, — Veneration, Love, Admiration, Joy, or their opposites — Hatred, Scorn, Horror, Grief. There were simple ballad- writers who could have given these scholars a lesson in rhetoric. For hear a lover deceived and repentant 'of the true love which he bare her': 'Where I sought heaven there found I hap; From danger unto death. Much like the mouse that treads the trap In hope to find her food. And bites the bread that stops her breath,— So in like case I stood.' And another, 'accusing his love for her unfaithfulness,' and pro- posing 'to live in liberty': 'But I am like the beaten fowl That from the net escaped. And thou art like the ravening owl That all the night hath waked.' Shall we make an old lava stream white-hot by covering it with hoar-frost ? With these futile efforts to kindle one's self with a painted flame, compare the wild vigor and fierce sincerity of the Scotch Twa Corhies : 'As I was walking all alone I heard twa corbies making a moan. The one unto the other did say Where shall we gang dine to-day? In beyond that old turf dyke I wot there lies a new-slain knight; 304 FIEST CEEATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. And naebody kens that he lies there But his hawk and his hound and his lady fair. His hound is to the hunting gone, His hawk to fetch the wild fowl home, His lady has ta'n another mate, So we may make our dinner sweet. O'er his white bones as they lie bare The wind shall blow forevermair.' But the chief excellence of poetry, as well as its most abun- dant and popular development, was dramatic. The most original product and expression of the English Renaissance is the drama. No form of art receives and preserves, like it, the exact imprint of the age and of the nation. None expresses so much, and that , so deeply. None has expanded, in all its details, by gradations | more insensible. None teaches more clearly that genius can not dispense with experience, — that the favored generation, and the great artists in it, flourish largely on a soil fertilized by the tenta- tive efforts of generations which precede. Here, as in Greece and elsewhere, the drama began in religion. At a time when sermons were not intelligible if preached, and when none but I the clergy could read the stories of the Christian faith, it was introduced by the Church, to instruct the illiterate in saintly or Scriptural history — the only history then known — and to extend her influence by engrossing the sources of popular recreation. Priests were the writers or inventors, and frequently the actors, of the plays, usually written in mixed prose and verse. As mys- terious subjects were chosen — the lives and marvels of the saints, the Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Creation, Fall, or Con- quests of Hell — these performances acquired the general name of Mysteries. The 'theatre' was the cathedral, a scaffold in the open air, or a movable stage on wheels, drawn from street to street, or from town to town. As the cart stopped at given points, the actors threw open the doors, and proceeded to per- form the scenes allotted them. A graduated platform in three divisions, represented Heaven, Earth, and Hell. Above, the Deity and His angels, passive when not actually mingling in the action; in the centre moved the human world, the actors stand- ing motionless at one side when they had nothing to say or do; and the yawning throat of an immeasurable dragon, emitting smoke and flames when required, showed the entrance to the bottomless pit, into which, through the expanded jaws, the POETRY — EARLY DRAMA — EARLY THEATRE. 305 damned were dragged with shrieks of agony by demons. Trap- doors and like mechanical contrivances were not unknown. Closed structures were palaces, cottages, temples, according to the necessities of the piece, their destination being occasionally shown by written placards. A superb paradise was the glory of the manager. Silk hangings, flowers, and fruit-bearing trees adorned this favored spot. The costumes were as rich and im- posing as the vestry or the purse could compass. Horned devils in skins of beasts, with tails and cloven hoofs, formed an excep- tion to the usual inaccuracy of theatrical attire. These were the buffoons; and the poor yokels who shed tears at the torturous crucifixion, or were appalled at the flaming wings of the infernal monster, would listen with shouts of laughter to the reciprocal abuse voided by Satan and his minions, whose very names in solitude would have paralyzed them. The customary encomium was, 'To-day the mystery was very fine and devout, and the devils played most pleasantly.' The people were in the child- hood of society, satisfied that they were good Christians, and so were innocently insensible to the blasphemy or indecency of their exhibitions. It accorded with the debased ideas of the times to make such entries as: 'paid for a pair of gloves for God;' 'paid for gilding God's coat;' ' dy vers necessaries for the trimmynge of the Father of Heaven; ' 'payed to the players for rehearsal — to God, iis. viiic?. ; to Pilate his wife, iis.; for keeping fyer at hell's mouth, iiic?.' The coarse humor which kept the audience awake, was not without a certain power of characterization. Thus Noah and his wife, in the Deluge, are close copies of contemporary life. Mrs. Noah, a shrew and a vixen, refuses to leave her gossips, swears she will not go into the Ark ; scolds Noah, and is flogged ; then wishes herself a widow, hopes all wives the same good luck, and thinks she but echoes their feelings in doing so; while Noah takes occasion to inform all husbands that their proper course is to break their wives after his fashion — with a stick not thicker than the thumb. At this point, the water is nearly up to her neck, and she is partly coaxed, partly forced, into the Ark by one of her sons. A change of intellectual condition is marked by the deca- dence of the Mysteries after the fourteenth century. In the fifteenth, a new class of dramatic performances arose, in which 20 306 PIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. the personages were not concrete beings, but their shadowy reflections, the virtues and vices, — Pride, Gluttony, Temperance Faith, and the like. To relieve their gravity, under which the audience were liable to yawn and sleep, the Devil was retained and a more natural buffoon was introduced in the Vice, who acted the part of broad, rampant jester. These two were the darlings of the multitude. Full of pranks and swaggering fun, a part of Vice's ordinary business was to treat the Devil with ribald familiarity, to crack saucy jokes upon him, to bestride him and beat him till he roared, and in the end to be carried off to Hell on his back. Characteristic examples are The Castle of Perseverance and Every Man. The latter is opened in a monologue by the Messenger, who announces the subject. Then God appears, who, after some general complaints on the moral depravity of the human race, calls for Death, and orders him to bring before His tribunal Every-Man. Neither Fellowship nor Kindred nor Goods nor Riches will or can avail. Succes- sively implored, they successively forsake the suppliant. Utterly disconsolate, Every-Man seeks Good-Deeds, and she, after up- braiding him with his long neglect of her, conducts him to her sister Knowledge, who in turn leads him to the ' holy man Con- fession.' Confession appoints him penance, which he inflicts upon himself, and then withdraws from the stage to receive the sacraments of the priest. On his return he waxes faint; and, as Strength, Beauty, Discretion and Five -Wits desert him, he expires, abandoned by all but Good-Deeds, who attends him to the last. An angel then descends to sing his requiem; and the epilogue is spoken by a Doctor, who, after recapitulation, deliv- ers the moral: 'This memorlall men may have in mynde, Ye herers, take, if of worth old and yonge, And forsake Pryde, for he deceyveth you in thende, And remembre Beaute, Five Witts, Strength and Discretion, They all at last do Every Man forsake; Save his Good Deeds there dothe he take; But beware, for and they be small, Before God he hath no help at all.' This drama came from the Romanists to recall the auditors back to the shaken creed of their fathers. As the earlier plays were professedly religious or theological, so the later were semi-relig- ious or ethical, and hence were styled Moralities. POETRY — HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE DRAMA. 307 A further secularization of the drama occurred when, taking a more adventurous course, it accommodated itself to the fash- ions and factions of the day, not yet venturing into a wide field, but peeping, as it were, from a corner. It was nothing more than a farce in a single act, satirical and comic, sustained in dialogue by three or four professional characters of the times, and acted in the intervals of a banquet. From this last circum- stance, it was called the Interlude. Thus Douglas, the Scotch bard: 'Grete was the preis the feast royal to sene; At ease they eat, with interludes between.' HeyWOOd, jester of Henry VIII, was their most noted author. His Four P''s is a curious illustration of the wit, manners, and opinions of the period. It turns upon a dispute between a Palmer, a Pardoner, a Poticary, and a Pedlar, as to who can practice the greatest frauds on credulity and ignorance. The contest ends in a wager who shall tell the greatest lie, when the Palmer says he never saw a woman out of temper. Thereupon the others declare him 'a liar of the first magnitude.' Hey- wood's zeal for the Roman Catholic cause does not seem to have prevented him from lashing with the utmost freedom and sever- ity the abuses of popery. The Pardoner says: 'I say yet again, my pardons are such, That if there were a thousand souls on a heap, I would bring them all to heaven as good sheep, ... With small cost without any pain, These pardons bring them to heaven plain: Give me but a penny or two-pence. And as soon as the soul departeth hence, In half an hour, or three quarters at the most, The soul is in heaven with the Holy Ghost.' Like a regular graduate in the game of imposture, he recounts the virtues of his relics, to which he and the rest hood-wink their understandings: 'Lo, here be pardons, half a dozen. For ghostly riches they have no cousin, And moreover, to me they bring Sufficient succour for my living. . . . Friends, here shall ye see, even anon. Of All-Hallows, the blessed jaw-bone. Mark well this, this relic here is a whipper; My friends unfeigned, here's a slipper Of one of the seven sleepers, be sure. Here is an eye-tooth of the great Turk; Whose eyes be once set on this piece of work, 308 FIEST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. May happily lose part of his eye -sight, But not all till he be blind outright. Kiss it hardly, with good devotion. Pot. This kiss shall bring us much promotion: Foghl by St. Saviour, I never kissed a worse. . . . For, by All-Hallows, yet methinketh That All-Hallows' breath stinketh. Palm. Ye judge All-Hallows' breath unknown; If any breath stink, it is your own. Pot. I know my own breath from All-Hallows, Or else it were time to kiss the gallows. Pard. Nay, sirs here may ye see The great toe of the Trinity: Who to this toe any money voweth. And once may roll it in his mouth. All his life after I undertake He shall never be vex'd with the tooth-ache. Pot. 1 pray you turn that relic about; Either the Trinity had the gout, Or else, because it is tliree toes in one, God made it as much as three toes alone. . . . Pard. Good friends, I have yet here in this glass, Which on the drink at the wedding was Of Adam and Eve undoubtedly: If ye honour this relic devoutly, Although ye thirst no whit the less. Yet shall ye drink the more, doubtless. After which drinking, ye shall be as meet To stand on your head as on your feet.' The stage was becoming a living power. Mary hastened a proc- lamation against the interludes of the reformers, while Elizabeth, on her accession, as suddenly suppressed those of the papists. Such were the steps by which the national genius was con- ducted to the verge of tragedy and comedy. As the Morality had superseded the Mystery, and the Interlude that, the older retaining its hold till the younger gained strength to assert its rights; so now, in the march of intellect, they were all to give way before the drama proper, which portrays the character and actions of man, to the exclusion or subordination of the super- natural. The first play which bears the distinctive marks of a legitimate Comedy, is commonly considered to be Ralph Eoister JDoister, by Nicholas XJdall (1551). The plot, without involu- tion, progresses through five acts in rhyme more racy than ele- gant. Ralph is a vain, blustering, amorous hair-brain : 'So fervent hot wooing, and so far from wiving, I trow, never was any creature living.' His baffled pursuit of a gay and rich widow forms the action of the piece. A group of domestics, that might have formed a POETRY — FIRST COMEDY — FIRST TRAGEDY. 309 study for Shakespeare in his happiest vein, opens up the domes- tic scenery of the metropolis, warm with reality. Its scholastic authorship, as well as its merry-making, is shown in a proposal of marriage sent by the conceited fop to the widow, which is read to her with its sense reversed by changing the true punctuation: 'Now by these presents I do you advertise That I am minded to marry you in no wise. For your goods and substance I could be content To take you as ye are. If ye mind to be my wife, Ye shall be assured for the time of my life I will keep ye right well from good raiment and fare; Ye shall not be kept but in sorrow and care. Ye shall in no wise live at your own liberty; But when ye are merry, I will be all sad; When ye seek your heart's ease I will be unkind; At no time in me shall ye much gentleness find.' The tragic muse was not far behind. The first English heroic tale divided into acts and scenes, and clothed in the formalities of a regular Tragedy, was Gorhodiic, by Thomas Sackville (1562). Gorboduc, king of Britain about five hundred years before Christ, divides his kingdom between his two sons, Ferrex and Porrex. A quarrel between the princes results in civil war, and Ferrex is slain by his brother. The mother revenges his death by murdering Porrex in his sleep. The people, exasperated at the unnatural deed, rise in rebellion, and kill both her and the king. The nobility collect an army and destroy the rebels, but immediately fall to destroying one another. The lineal succes- sion to the Crown is lost; and the country, without a head, is wasted by slaughter and famine. Like Roister Doister, Gor- boduc is cast in the mould of classical antiquity; but instead of individual nature and real passion, it deals only in vague and labored declamations which never entered any head but the author's. Nothing is intricate, nothing unravelled, and little pathetic. It has the form of dialogue without the spirit. Sin- gularly frigid and unimaginative, it is not without justness, weight, and fertility of thought. Its diction is transparent. It is celebrated, moreover, as being our first tragedy in blank verse. But the measure, though the embryon of Shakespeare's, conveys no notion of that elasticity and variety which it was destined shortly to attain. The following are the most animated lines in the whole play: 310 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 'O mother, thou to murder thus thy child! Even Jove with justice must with lightning ilames From heaven send down some strange revenge on thee. Ah, noble prince, how oft have I beheld Thee mounted on thy fierce and trampling steed, Shining in armor bright before the tilt. And with thy mistress' sleeve tied on thy helm. And charge thy staff — to please thy lady's eye — That bowed the headpiece of thy friendly foe ! ' In these exact lines, stealing on 'with care but with fear, we fail! to discover the potent spirit who planned the Mirror for Magis-* trates,^ and, resigning- that noble scheme to inferior hands, left as its model the Inductioti. Tragical, like Gorboduc, in idea and plot, it has the vigor of creative imagination. It is the congenial offspring of a gloomy genius in a night of storm, which may be thought to receive a ghastly complexion from the lurid flames that wrap the victims of persecution. Amid the shadows of the darkening day, across the faded fields swept by the wintry wind, the poet, as he pursues his lonely way, marks the gray grass, the blasted flowers, the bare boughs, the wan clouds, and sees in them the type of the state of man; but suddenly as he redoubles his pace, — 'In black all clad there fell before my face A piteous wight. . . . Her body small, forwithered and forspent, As is the stalk with summer's drouth opprest; Her wealked face with woful tears besprent, Her colour pale, and as it seemd her best. In woe and plaint reposed was her rest; And, as the stone that drops of water wears, So dented were her cheeks with fall of tears.' Sorrow guides him into the region of death, there to hear from the dead the stories of their woes. Here, among other dreadful and hideous shapes, is Old Age: 'Crooked-backed he was, tooth-shaken, and blear-eyed. Went on three feet, and sometime crept on four; With old lame bones, that rattled by his side ; His scalp all piled, and he with eld forelore; [bald His withered fist still knocking at death's door ; Fumbling and drivelling as he draws his breath; For brief, the shape and messenger of Death.' It is the recurrence of the deep poetic instinct, the feeling of misery and mortality, the sad sense of limitless darkness, the sombre conception of the world, which this race has manifested from its origin, which it will preserve to its end. ^ A series of poetic narratives of the disasters of men eminent in English story. POETRY — THE NEW DEAMA AND THEATRE. 311 Thenceforward the drama makes rapid progress, passing from youth to a splendid maturity with enormous strides, and extend- ing in a single generation over all the provinces of history, imagi- nation, and fancy, with that breadth of anticipation and intoxica- tion of heart which the ardent soul may experience, when from being a child it has become a man and feels a new-glowing joy shoot through nerve and vein. Expanding with the growing taste, it quits the Palace, the Inns, the Universities, where it is compressed, and creates in 1576 a public theatre and a national audience. Before the end of the century, eleven theatres and nearly two hundred dramas attest the absorbing passion. Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish, are ransacked 'to. furnish the play- house of London.' Listen to the groans of the Puritan: 'The daily abnse of stage plays is such an offense to the godly, and so great a hin- drance to the Gospel, as the Papists do exceedingly rejoice at the blemish thereof, and not ^vithout cause; for every day in the week the player's bills are set up in sundry places of the city; . ^ . so that, when the bells toll to the lecturer, the trumpets sound to the stages. Whereat the \^-icked faction of Rome laugheth for joy, while the godly weep for sorrow. . . . It is a woful sight to see two hundred proud players jet in their silks, while five hundred poor people starve in the streets. . . . Woe is me I the play-houses are pestered when the churches are naked. At the one, it is not possible to get a place; at the other, void seats are plenty.' Some of the theatres are used as cock-pits, some for bull-baiting and bear-baiting, all are poor and squalid. On the banks of the Thames rises the principal one, the Globe, a hexagonal tower, surrounded by a muddy ditch, surmounted by a red flag, and roofed by the sky, retaining in its form and arrangements traces of the old model — the inn-yard. Into the pit, the sun shines and the rain falls without let or hindrance; but their bodies are inured to exposure, and they don't trouble themselves about it. The poor are there, as well as the rich; for they have sixpenny, twopenny, and even penny seats. With the actors, on the rush- strewn stage, which is covered with thatch, are the elegant and the dainty, who pay a shilling for admittance. For an extra shilling, they can have a stool. If stools or benches are lacking, they stretch themselves on the floor. They smoke, drink, swear, insult the pit, who pay them back in kind, and fling apples at them in the bargain. Over them, in a lofty gallery are the musi- cians. Below, in the circle of the pit, while they wait for the piece, cards are shuffled, oaths resound, ale-pots clatter, blows are exchanged. When the beer takes effect, there is a receptacle 312 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. for general use. When the fumes rise, they cry, 'Burn the juni- per ! ' They are amusing themselves after their fashion. At one o'clock — Sundays included — the flag is hoisted, to announce the hour of the performance. When the trumpet sounds, a figure in a long black velvet cloak comes forward to recite the prologue. Then the play begins, the players in masks and wigs, and attired in the richest dress of the day. If the house are not suited, they hiss, whistle, crow, yell, perhaps fall upon the actors and turn the theatre upside down. The appointments are barbarous, but imaginations are fervid and supply what is wanting. Wooden imitations of animals, towers, forests, etc., are the scenery. A bed suggests a bed-room. A rough table, with drinking vessels, replaces a dingy throne and turns a palace into a tavern. A young man, just shaven, stands for a queen. A scroll in big letters, hung out in view of the spectators, informs them that they are in London, Athens, or Paris. Three combatants on a side determine the fate of an empire. Says Sir Philip Sidney: 'You shall have Asia of the one side, and Africke of the other, and so many other under-ldngdoms, that the Plaier when hee comes in must ever begin with telling where hee is, or else the tale will not be conceived. Now shall you have three Ladies walks i to gather flowers, and then wee must beleeve the stage to be a garden. By and by wee heare newes of shipwracke in the same place, then wee are to blame if we accept it not for a rocke ; . . . while in the meane time two armies flie in, represented with foure swordes and bucklers, and then what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field?' The actors — at first strolling companies under the patronage of some nobleman, as security against the laws which brand all strollers as vagabonds and rogues — are neglected or despised by those whom they entertain. Their social position is not far above that of the jester who shakes his cap and bells at the tables of the great. Nearly all are writers. Most are born of the people, yet educated. The majority are accomplished in the classics. The manager gives them work, advances them money, and receives their manuscripts or their wardrobes. For a play he allows them seven or eight' pounds. Their trade of author scarcely brings bread. Rarely, like Shakespeare, they contrive, by a judicious investment of early gains to acquire a third and more fruitful source of income, — a theatre-share. Generally, they are wild Bohemians, improvident, poor, full of excess, and die untimely by exhaustion or violence. Such are the externals. We have seen what the interior must I POETRY — MARLOWE. ^ 313 be; for the drama is but the moral, social, and physical expres- sion of the age in which it lives; and the poets who establish it carry in themselves the intensified sentiments and passions of those around them. They will reproduce the entire man, — his finest aspirations and his savagest appetites, the low and the lofty, the ideal and the sensual. So does Marlowe, the true founder of the dramatic school, the mightiest of Shakespeare's pioneers. Born in 1564, son of a shoemaker, he was the proudest and fiercest of aristocrats. At seventeen he was in Cambridge. Studied theology, and became a sceptic. Returning to London, he turned actor, broke his leg in a scene of debauchery, and turned author. Rebellious in manners, he was rebellious in creed; declared Moses a juggler; was accused of saying that 'yf he wer to write a new religion, he wolde undertake both a more excellent and a more admirable methode'; was prosecuted for avowed infidelity, and, if time had not failed, would probably have been brought to the stake. In love with a harlot, he tried to stab his rival; his hand was turned, and the blade entered his own eye and brain, and he died, at thirty, cursing and blasphem- ing. A Puritan ballad, in which he is called Wor77iall, draws the moral : 'Take warning, ye that plays do make, And ye that them do act. Desist in time, for Wormall's sake. And think upon his fact.' His first play, Tamhurlaine the Great, is characteristic, — a pic- ture of boundless ambition and murderous rage. The hero is a shepherd, who aspires to the throne of Persia, scornful of re- straint, and ready to put men to the sword or to rail at the gods. He says, giant-like: 'For in a field, whose superficies Is covered with a liquid purple veil. And sprinkled with the brains of slaughtered men My royal chair of state shall be advanc'd; And he that means to place himself therein. Must armed wade up to the chin in blood, . . . And I would strive to swim through pools of blood. Or make a bridge of murder'd carcasses, Whose arches should be fram'd with bones of Turks, Ere I would lose the title of a king.' Seated in a chariot, drawn by captive kings, he berates them for their slowness: 314 FIKST CKEATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 'Hallo! ye pampered jades of Asia! What, can ye draw but twenty miles a day? And adds, with purest splendor, as with swaggering fustian: ' The horse that guide the golden eye of heaven. And blow the morning from their nostrils. Making their fiery gait above the clouds. Are not so honored in their governor As you, ye slaves, in mighty Tamburlaine.' All the ferocities of the middle-age are in the Jew of Malta. If there is less bombast than in Tamburlaine, there is even more horror. Barabbas, the Jew, robbed by the Christians, has been maddened with hate till he is no longer human. He says to hi& servant : 'Hast thou no trade? then listen to my words. And I will teach thee that shall stick by thee: First, be thou void of these afEections, Compassion, love, vain hope, and heartless fear; Be moved at nothing, see thou pity none, But to thyself smile when the Christians moan. . . . I walk abroad a-nights. And kill sick people groaning under walls: Sometimes I go about and poison wells. . . . Being young, I studied physic, and began To practice first upon the Italian; ' There I enriched the priests with burials, And always kept the sexton's arms in ure With digging graves and ringing dead men's knells. ... I fill'd the jails with bankrouts in a year, And vi'ith young orphans planted hospitals.' By forged letters he causes his daughter's lovers to slay each other. She leaves him, and he poisons her. A friar comes to convert him, and he strangles him, joking with his cut-throat slave, who rejoices in the neatness of the job: 'Pull amain, 'Tis neatly done sir; here's no print at all: So, let him lean upon his staflf; excellent! He stands as if he were begging of bacon.' A true painting, conceived with an intensity and executed with a sweep of imagination unknown before. So in Edioard II, all is impetuous, excessive, and abrupt. Furies and hatreds clash; helplessness and misery wait for their hour alike in the fortalices of strength and the high places of pleasure. He who has seen and felt with volcanic energy the heights and depths of imagina- tion and license can paint, more powerfully than Shakespeare in Michard II, the heart-breaking distress of a dying king: POETRY — MARLOWE. 315 ^Edward. Weep'st thou already? List awhile to me, And then thy heart, were it as Gurney's is, Or as Matrevis, hewn from the Caucasus, Yet will it melt ere I have done my tale. This dungeon where they keep me, is the sink Wherein the filth of all the castle falls. Lightborn. Oh villains! Edivard. And here in mire and puddle have I stood This ten days' space ; and lest that I should sleep. One plays continually upon a drum. They give me bread and water, being a king; So that, for want of sleep and sustenance. My mind's distemper'd, and my body's numb'd; And whether I have limbs or no, I know not. Oh! would my blood drop out from every vein. As doth this water from my tatter'd robes! Tell Isabel, the Queen, I look'd not thus. When for her sake I ran at tilt in France, And there unhors'd the Duke of Cleremont. What are we but sports of every pressure of the air ? What is Hfe but a crushing- fatality ? A wreck upon the shore of time. At most, a brief day of joy or victory, then the silence and gloom of the Illimitable. Mortimer, broug'ht to the block, says, with the mournful heroism of the old sea-kings: 'Base Fortune, now I see, that in thy wheel There is a point, to which when men aspire. They tumble headlong down : that point I touched. And, seeing there was no place to mount up higher. Why should I grieve at my declining fall? — Farewell, fair queen; weep not for Mortimer, That scorns the world, and, as a traveller. Goes to discover countries yet unknown.' So in Faustus, which best reflects the g'enius and experience of Marlowe, the overshadowing thoug'ht is — 'Ay, we must die an everlasting death . . . What will be, shall be; divinity, adieu!' Therefore enjoy, at any cost, though you be swallowed up on the morrow; nor say to the passing moment, 'Stay, thou art so fair,' but seek forever the intoxicating whirl. Faustus, glutted with 'learning's golden gifts,' swells with desire for the magi- cian's power: 'Emperors and kings Are but obeyed in their several provinces; But his dominion that exceeds in this, Stretches as far as doth the mind of man. A sound magician is a mighty god. . . . How I am glutted with conceit of this ! . . . I'll have them fly to India for gold. Ransack the ocean for orient pearl. . . . 316 FIKST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. I'll have them read me strange philosophy, And tell the secrets of all foreign kings; I'll have them wall all Germany with brass, And make swift Rhine circle fair Wittenberg.' To satisfy these vast desires, he summons, by his mystic art, Mephistophilis from Hell: '■Faust. And what are you that live with Lucifer? Meph. Unhappy spirits that fell with Lucifer, Conspired against our God with Lucifer, And are forever damned with Lucifer. Faust. How comes it then that thou art out of hell? Meph. Why this is hell, nor am I out of it; Think'st thou that I, that saw the face of God And tasted the eternal joys of heaven. Am not tormented with ten thousand hells In being deprived of everlasting bliss? O Faustus, leave these frivolous demands Which strike a terror to my fainting soul. Faust. What: Is great Mephistophilis so passionate For being deprived of the joys of heaven? Learn then of Faustus manly fortitude, And scorn those joys thou never shalt possess.' Boldly, to obtain four-and-twenty years of power, he sends an] offer of his soul to Lucifer: 'Had I as many souls as there be stars I'd give them all for Mephistophilis. By him I'll be great emperor of the world. And make a bridge through the moving air. . . . Why should'st thou not? Is not thy soul thy own?' At midnight the answer comes, and the bond is signed with blood. Pangs of conscience come. Good and evil angels plead, and he cries: 'O Christ, my Saviour, my Saviour, Help thou to save distressed Faustus' soul I' Too late, says the demon. Plunge into the rushing of time, into the rolling of accident, and deaden thought in the feast of the senses: 'Oh, might I see hell, and return again, How happy were I then ! ' He is conducted invisible over the whole world, around the whole circle of sensual pleasure and earthly glory, hurried and devoured by desires and conceptions that burn within him like a furnace with bickering flames. Ever and anon, in the midst of his transports, he starts, falters, and struggles with the toils of Destiny: POETRY — MARLOWE. 317 'I will renounce this magic and repent. . . . My heart's so hardened I cannot repent; Scarce can I name salvation, faith, or heaven, But fearful echoes thunder in mine ears, "Faustus thou art damned!" the swords, and knives, Poison, guns, halters, and envenom'd steel, Are laid before me, to despatch myself. Had not sweet pleasure conquer' d deep despair. Have not I made blind Homer sing to me Of Alexander's love and CEnon's death? And hath not he, that built the walls of Thebes With ravishing sound of his melodious harp. Made music with my Mephistophilis? Why should I die, then, or basely despair? I am resolved; Faustus shall ne'er repent. Come Mephistophilis, let lis dispute again. And argue of divine astrology.' The term expires, and the forfeit is exacted. Faustus has run the round of his brilliant dream, and stands on the brink of the Bottomless, Never was such an accumulation of horrors and anguish. Mephistophilis gives him a dagger. An old man enters, and with loving words warns him: 'Oh, stay, good Faustus, stay thy desperate steps 1 I see an angel hover o'er thy head, And with a vial full of precious grace Offers to pour the same into thy soul: Then call for mercy, and avoid despair.' He would weep, but the devil draws in his tears; he would raise his hands, but he cannot. The lovely Helen is conjured up, between two Cupids, to prevent his relapse, and the wildfire kindles in his heart: 'Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships. And burnt the topless tow'rs of Ilium? Sweet Helen, make me immortal ivith a kiss. Her lips suck forth my soul! See where it flies. Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again. Here will I dwell, for Heav'n is in these lips. And all is dross that is not Helena. I will be Paris, and for love of thee. Instead of Troy shall Wittenberg be sack'd; And I will combat with weak Menelaus, And wear thy colours on my plumed crest; Yea I will wound Achilles in the heel. And then return to Helen for a kiss. Oh.' thou art fairer than the evening air. Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.' The clock strikes eleven. He implores the mountains and hills to fall upon him, would rush headlong into the gaping earth, but it will not harbor him: 318 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. 'Oh, Faustus! Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, And then thou must be damn'd perpetually! Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven. That time may cease, and midnight never come ! . . . The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, The devil will come, and Faustus must be damn'd. Oh, I'll leap up to my God I — Who pulls me down? — See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament! One drop would save my soul, half a drop: ah, my Christ, Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ! Yet will I call on him.' The clock strikes the half hour: 'Ah, half the hour is past! 'twill all be past anon. . . . Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years, A hundred thousand, and at last be saved.' The clock strikes twelve: 'It strikes! it strikes: Now body turn to air, Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell. Oh soul! be changed into small water-drops, And fall into the ocean: ne'er be found.' This tormented soul, who reels from desire to enjoyment, from the diabolical to the divine, is not the philosophic type of Goethe's Faust, the ferment of whose spirit impels him towards the 'far-away,' though both are equally lost in the end; but I find nothing in that tragedy equal, in power of delineation, to this closing scene of terror, despair, and remorse. If ever there was poet born, Marlowe was one. His poetry is irregular, but the irregularity is that of the extreme flight of virgin nature, the inequality of the young, eager, bounding blood. His Faustus was his twin-spirit, the expression of the social life of the period, — restless, self-asserting, hot-headed, and omnivorous. Extremes meet, at such times, in such men. With capacity for Titanic conceptions, they render gentlest beauty into sweetest music. Capable of enamored hate and soundless sensuality, they are also capable of the most delicate tenderness and the purest dreams. Thus Marlowe could leave his powerful verse, his images of fury, and say to his lady-love, in strains like the breath of the morning which has. swept over flowery meads: ' Come live with me and be my love. And we will all the pleasures prove^ That hill and valley, grove and field. And all the craggy mountains yield. There will we sit upon the rocks. I POETRY — THE NATIONAL DRAMA, 319 And see the shepherds feed their flocks By shallow rivers, to whose falls Melodious birds sing niadrigals. There will I make thee beds of roses, With a thousand fragrant posies; A cap of flowers and a kirtle Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle; A gowu made of the finest wool Which from our pretty lambs we pull; Slippers lin'd choicely for the cold. With buckles of the purest gold; A belt of straw, and ivy buds, With coral clasps and amber studs. The shepherd swains shall dance and sing For thy delight each May morning ; And if these pleasures may thee move. Then live icith me and be my love.' What are the marked characteristics of this drama, now ad- vanced to the point from which Shakespeare will rise to the supreme heights of poetry? — Tamburlaine, the first play in blank verse which was publicly acted, drove the rhymed couplet from the stage, and fixed forever the metre of English tragedy as blank. Not only did the author popularize the measure, but he perfected it: he created a new metre by the melody, variety, and force which he infused into the iambic; not a fixed, unalterable type, in which the verse moves to the common and despotic beat of time, but a Proteus, whose varying pauses, speed, and group- ing of syllables make one measure represent a thousand. It flows impetuous and many-colored, like the spirit which feels it — not studies it — and revels in a stream of images. Consider the didactic dignity of the following: 'Our souls whose faculties can comprehend The wondrous architecture of the world, And measure every wandering planet's course. Still climbing after knowledge infinite. And always moving as the restless spheres, Will us to wear ourselves, and never rest Until we reach the ripest fruit cf all. That perfect bliss and sole felicity. The sweet fruition of an earthly crown.' Or the variable modulations of these lines — in particular, the daring but successful license of the first and third: 'Bags of fiery opals, sapphires, amethysts, Jacinths, hard topaz, grass-green emeralds. Beauteous rubies, sparkling diamonds. And seld seen costly stones of so great price. As one of them, indifferently rated. May serve, in peril of calamity. To ransom great kings from captivity.' 320 FIRST CKEATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. Or the changeful temper, the 'plastic stress' of these: 'Mortimer! who talks of Mortimer, Who wounds me with the name of Mortimer, That bloody man? Good father, on thy lap Lay I this head laden with mickle care. O, might I never ope these eyes again, Never again lift up this drooping head, O, never more lift up this dying heart!' Single lines, struck in the heat of glowing passion or fancy, seem to leave a track of fire: 'Tyrants swim safest in a crimson flood.' 'Adders and serpents, let me breathe awhile!' 'And blow the morning from their nostrils.' 'See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament.' ■Thence flew Love's arrow with the golden head.' 'I know he is not dead; I know proud death Durst not behold such sacred majesty.' Not inaptly has a living poet described Marlowe as singing — 'With mouth of gold, and morning in his eyes.' For this is his contribution to the heroic style, — that he found it insipidly regular, and left it various, sometimes redundant, some- times deficient, enriched with unexj)ected emphases and changes in the beat. Shakespeare will only refine it from wordiness, and use it with more than Marlowe's versatility and power. Our first tragedy and comedy observed the classical or dramatic unities: Unity of Action, which required that the action repre- sented should be one, complete, and important' Unity of Time, which required that the incidents of the play should naturally occur within one day; Unity of Place, which required that the entire action should naturally occur in the same locality. The Greek drama, relying thus upon form or proportion, owed its charm to a certain union and regularity of feeling. In its sphere, it spoke, felt, and acted according to nature — that is, nature under the given circumstances; but it was limited by the physi- cal conditions of time and space, as well as bound to a certain dignity and attitude of expression, selection and grouping of figures, as in a statue. But this was too formal and stately to suit the tastes and wants of an age or people distinguished by its novelty, strangeness, and contrast. The whole framework of society — customs, manners, aspirations, religion — had changed. PKOSE — FOECES — STYLE. S21. Hence a sudden revolution in the dramatic art. Our poets, who felt the excitement of the new life, disdained paths previously- made, scorned the thraldom of Greece, the servility of Rome. They had to address no scholastic critics, but the people. As one of them said, — 'They would have good plays, and not produce Such musty fopperies of antiquity ; Which do not suit the humorous age's back With clothes in fashion.' To win a mutable attention required a multiform shape. At once they clung to the human nature before them, — its appe- tites, passions, frailties, hopes, imaginations, heights of ecstasy and depths of depravity. The theatre, mingling the comic with the tragic, was to be a mirror of enchantment, — Gothic in the scope of its design and the boldness of its execution. While Italy and France were adhering to the contracted antique model, two nations — England and Spain — were thus spontaneously creating a national drama accordant with their own sympathies and experiences — a movable reflection of themselves. Prose. — The poetry of the period, as the overflow of natural enthusiasm, has a decided ascendancy in quantity and quality; but the powerful vitality which impels it and makes it great, begins also the era of prose. The insatiable desire of the mind to beget its own image gives the primary impulse. The reforma- tion of religion, the revival of antiquity, the influx of Italian letters, traditions of the past, speculations of the future, inven- tion, travel, and discovery, give the materials. Philology begins, notably with Cheke and Mulcaster; artistic theory and criticism, with Sidney, Wilson, Ascham, and Puttenham, who explore the rules of style; narratives of adventure and observation, with Hakluyt'; history, with Holinshed, More, and Raleigh; the essay, with Lord Bacon; rational theology, with Hooker; romantic or fanciful fiction, with Lily. In physics, medicine, and law, curi- osity is rife. Editions and revisals of the Scriptures increased. The roar and dash of opinions creates and multiplies pamphlet- eers, Anglican and Puritan, sectarian and secular, — Skelton a virulent one, Roy a merciless one. Fish a seditious one, Greene an incessant one, Nash a brilliant one. Men's brains are busy, their ' The Principal Navigations, Voyages, and Discoveries made by the English Nation. 21 322 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. spirits stirring, their hearts full. With the new resources of thought and language, comes a new sense of literary beauty a new-born pleasure in delicacy and grandeur of phrase, in the choice of words and the structure of sentences. We see it first] in Lily's Euphues,^ the story of a young Athenian who, afterl spending some time in Italy, visits England in 1579. Its form is Italian, and its style a skilful elaboration of the Italian taste for alliteration, verbal antithesis, far-fetched allusion. To ladies and lords, it was a novel enchantment to read: 'There is no privilege that needeth a pardon, neither is there any remission to be asked, where a commission is granted. I speake this, Gentlemen, not to excuse the o/fence which was taken, but to offer a c^efence where I was mistaken. A clears con- science is a sure card, truth hath the prerogative to speake with ^lainnesse, and the modesty to heare with patience. It was reported of some, and beleueed of many, that in the education of Ephoebus, where mention is made of Uniuersities, that Oxford was to much either defaced or Aefamed. I know not what the enuious have picked out by malice, or the curious by wit, or the guilty by their own galled consciences; but this I say, that I was as farre from thinking ill as I find them from iudging well. But if I should goe about to make amends, I were then faulty in somewhat amisse, and should shew my selfe like Apelles Prentice, who coueting to mend the nose marred the neck; and not vnlike the foolish Dier, who neuer thought his cloth Slack vntil it was fiurned. If any fault be committed, impute it to Euphues who knew you not, not to Lylie who hates you not.' Once more in Athens, Euphues writes: 'Gentlemen, Euphues is musing in the bottom of the mountain Silixedra, Philau- tus is married in the Isle of England: two friends parted, the one living in the delights of his new wife, the other in contemplation of his old griefs.' The new fashion, universally admired, ran into extravagance without elegance, overloaded, strained, and motley. StauUlurst in the dedication of a history of Ireland writes, quaintly and ludicrously: 'My verie good Lord, there have beene diuerse of late, that with no small toile, and great commendation, haue throughlie imploied themselues in culling and packing togither the scrapings and fragments of the historie of Ireland. Among which crue, my fast friend, and inward companion, maister Edmund Campion did so learnedhe bequite himselfe, in the penning of certeine breefe notes, concerning that countrie, as certes it was greatlie to be lamented, that either his theame had not beene shorter, or else his leasure had not beene longer. For if Alexander were so rauisht with Homer his historie, that notwithstanding Thersites were a crabbed and a rugged dwarfe, being in outward feature so deformed, and inward conditions so crooked, as he seemed to stand to no better steed, than to lead apes in hell/ There was just time for Gosson to have read Euphues before he wrote in The School of Abuse: 'The title of my book doth promise much, the volume you see is very little: and sithens I cannot bear out my folly by authority, like an emperor, I will crave ' Prom the Greek, meaning ivell -grown, symmetrical, hence clever, witty. It was really on the culmination of the growing influence of Italian conceits and quibbles. PROSE — RISE OF HISTORY. 323 pardon for my phrensy by submission, as your worship's to command. The school which I build is narrow, and at the first blush appeareth but a dog-hole; yet small clouds carry water; slender threads sew sure stitches; little hairs have their shadows; blunt stones whet knives; from hard rocks flow soft springs; the whole world is drawn in a map, Homer's "Iliad" in a nutshell, a king's picture in a penny.' Comparisons mount one above another, sense disappears, atti- tudes are visible. But out of this youthful wantonness will spring complete art. Tinsel and pedantry will pass, beauty and merit will remain. Prose, born of thought rather than of feeling, does not reach literary excellence till the imagination is regu- lated, and the gaze is fixed, not to admire, but to understand. History. — A whole class of industrious antiquaries collected the annals of the by-gone world, and embodied them in English shape, supplying materials for the historical dramatist and the future historian. Daniel gave to the chronicle a purer literary form, while Raleigh's History of the World showed the widen- ing of historic interest beyond national bounds. If there was no rhyming, there was little accuracy, and no attempt at a minute tracing of cause and effect; that was to come. The compilers, following the beaten path, usually began at the Creation and continued to the date of publication. Credulity still darkened the field, and, surveying it complacently, they gathered con- tentedly, with both hands, seldom doubting the truth of what from childhood they had been taught to believe. Thus Holin- slied, the most complete of our chroniclers, thinks it probable that Britain was peopled before the Deluge, and supposes these primitive Britons to have been drowned in the flood. He can vouch for the arrival of Ulysses, inclines to the derivation of Albion from a huge giant of that name, and relates the story of Brute, the great-grandson of ^neas, with unquestioning con- fidence. He inserts a one-line notice of ' Caxton as the first practicer of the art of printing,' but is more intent in the same paragraph to speak of ' a bloody rain, the red drops falling on the sheets which had been hanged to dry.' It was reserved for Raleigh, in his unfinished but ambitious work, to strike into a virgin vein, and make the ordinary events of history assume a new face by the noble speculations which he builds on them, often profound, oftener eloquent. Theology. — A new era of creed-formations set in. The Articles of the Anglican Church, now in number thirty-nine, 324 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. were originally forty-two, drawn up under the supervision of Cranmer as the bonds of Christian union, the conditions of Christian fellowship. It is asserted, in this confession of faith 1. That there is an infinite Spirit, and 'in the unity of this Godhead there be three persons of one substance, power, and eternity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.' 2. That the fall of Adam ' brought death into the world and all our woe.' 3. That, by Adam's transgression, we are shapen in iniquity, and conceived in sin. 4. That Christ, of the same substance with the Father, died for our original guilt and our actual sins. 5. That none can emerge from this state of pollution, and be saved, but by Christ, 6. That every person born into the world 'deserveth God's wrath and damnation.' 7. That 'predestination to life is the everlasting purpose of God ... to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind.' The English Reformers can scarcely be said to have arrived at any definite conclusions. Luther and Calvin framed the specula- tive doctrines for Protestant Europe. Both declared the utter depravity of human nature, and ' eternal fire ' the punishment of the lost. Calvin was an uncompromising predestinarian, who taught that the Fall with all its consequences was predetermined ages before the Creation; that the fate of each individual was thus irrevocably decided before he was called into existence; that out of the ruined race a few are selected for eternal bliss; that the rest are pre-ordained to 'most grievous torments in soul and body without intermission in hell-fire for ever.' Luther was only less explicit, hardly aware, perhaps, of the extreme to which his acrimonious zeal logically carried him. The mild and sagacious Erasmus had written a defence of free-will, to which Luther replies: 'The human will is like a beast of burden. If God mounts it, it wishes and goes as God wills; if Satan mounts it, it wishes and goes as Satan wills. Nor can it choose the rider it would prefer, or betake itself to him, but it is the riders who contend for its pos- session.' Again : 'This is the acme of faith, to believe that He is merciful who saves so few and who condemns so many ; that He is just who at His own pleasure has made us necessarily doomed to damnation.' PKOSE — RATIONALISM AND DOGMA. 325 Thus the two great founders of Protestantism designed, it would appear, to construct a religious system which should be as dis- tinct and exclusive as that which they assailed, but which should represent more faithfully the teachings of the first four cen- turies. The Puritans, simple and rigorous, preferred the grim and pitiless features of the Calvinistic system, whose spirit, how- ever, has long been yielding to conciliation and charity. The Anglicans, practical, prudent, and more worldly, favored rather the less gloomy and more conservative system of Luther. Both found common ground in the idea of the inexorable Judge, the alarm of conscience, the impotence and inherited poison of na- ture, the necessity of grace, the rejection of rites and ceremonies. A period of passion and conflict throws men naturally upon dog- matic systems, nor is the mind easily extricated from old theo- logical modes of thought. A century was required to develop fully the germ of rationalism that had been cast abroad. Still, the intellect was moving onward, the tenor of life was changing, and at the close of the century the disposition was perceptible to interpret the articles of special creeds, not by the precept and example of tradition, but by the light of reason and of con- science. A remarkable evidence of the transition is found in Jewel's Apology,^ and, a generation later, in Hooker's Eccle- siastical Polity^ — the two most important theological works which appeared in England during the reign of Elizabeth. Both wrote with the avowed object of defending the Established Church, but their methods are entirely different. The first incul- cates the importance of faith, collects the decisions of antiquity, and regards the mei j assertions of the Fathers, when uncontra- dicted by Scripture, as proofs positive. The second insists upon the exercise of reason, and lays little stress upon the ancients, evidently considering that his readers would be slightly impressed by their unsupported opinions. He says : 'For men to be tied, and led by authority, as it were with a kind of captivity of judg- ment, and, though there be reason to the contrary, not to listen unto it, but to follow, like beasts, the first in the herd, they know not nor care not whither: this were brutish. Again, that authority of men should prevail with men, either against or above Reason, is no part of our belief. Companies of learned men, be they never so great and rever- end, are to yield unto Reason.' 'Written in 1561 or 1562. This, the Bible, and Fox'sMartyrs were ordered 'to be fixed in all parish churches, to be read by the people.' 326 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. When this could be said, the English intellect had made immense progress. With the revolution in Church, preaching changed its object and character. It became more earnest, popular, and moral. The Age of Doctrines was to follow. In the pulpit, it was not yet sought to exhibit dialectics, but to recall men — sailors, sol- diers, workmen, servants — to their duties. At least, this is what we see in the sermons of Latimer (1472-1555), a genuine Eng- lishman, serious, courageous, and solid, sprung from the heart and sinews of the nation. He never speaks for the sake of speaking. With him, practice is before all; theology — the metaphysics of religion — secondary. To reprove the rich, who oppress the poor by enclosures, he details the needs of the peasant: 'A plough land must have sheep; yea, they must have sheep to dung their ground for bearing of corn; for if they have no sheep to help to fat the ground, they shall have but bare corn and thin. They must have swine for their food, to make their veneries or bacon of: their bacon is their venison, for they shall now have hangum tuumii they get any other venison; so that bacon is their necessary meat to feed on, which they may not lack. They must have other cattle: as horses to draw their plough, and for car- riage of things to the markets; and kine for their milk and cheese, which they must live upon and pay their rents. These cattle must have pasture, which pasture if tlicy lack, the rest must needs fail them: and pasture they cannot have, if the land be taken in, and enclosed from them.' Only the wish to convince, to denounce vice, and to do justice. No grand words, no show of style, no exaltation. Generally, it may be observed, the preachers of the earlier part of the six- teenth century were accustomed to take a wide range, to bring together into a miscellaneous assortment topics from every region of heaven and earth. Not more fastidious as to manner. Their style, like that of most contemporary prose, is simpler in construction, more familiar and homely, t'han that which came into fashion in the later years of the Elizabethan period. Their kind of writing, however, though indirectly interesting and his' torically valuable, can hardly be regarded as partaking the char acter of literary composition. But that which penetrated the imagination and language of England more than any word, lay or ecclesiastic, was the Bible itself, wherein the simple folk, without other books and open to new emotions, pricked by the reproaches of conscience and the presentiment of the dark future, looked suddenly with awe and trembling upon the face of the eternal King, read or heard the i PROSE — THE BIBLE — ETHICS. 327 tables of his law, the archives of his vengeance, and with the whole attention of eyes and heart filled themselves with his prom- ises and threats. Condemned, hunted, in concealment, Tyndale translated from the Greek, in the reign of Henry VIII, the New Testament and a portion of the Old. It was this Book which, revised by Coverdale, and edited in 1539, as CroniioelVs J3ible, again in 1540, as Cranmer^s £ible, was set up in every English parish church by the very sovereign who had caused the trans- lator to be strangled and burned. It was not only a discovery of salvation to the troubled conscience, but the revelation of a new literature — the only literature practically accessible to all, and comprising at once legends and annals, war-song and psalm, phi- losophy and vision. Imagine the effect upon minds essentially unoccupied by any history, romance, or poetry, and anxiously alive to the grandeurs and terrors which pass before their eyes as they gather in crowds Sunday after Sunday, day after day, to hear its marvellous accent: 'Many well-disposed people used much to resort to the hearing thereof, especially when they could get any that had an audible voice to read to them. . . . One John Porter used sometimes to be occupied in that goodly exercise, to the edifying of him- self as well as others. This Porter was a fresh young man and of a big stature; and great multitudes would resort thither to hear him, because he could read well and had an audible voice.' The Koran alone can boast an equal share of reverence, spread far and wide; and as a mere literary monument, the English Bible is the noblest example of the English tongue. Of its 6,000 words, only 250 are not in common use, and nearly all of these last are readily understood. Ethics. — Occam, the Nominalist, had taught that moral dis- tinctions originate in the arbitrary appointment of God; that 'no act is evil but as prohibited by Him, or which cannot be made good by His command.' Catholics, who appealed to tradition, Protestants, who appealed only to Scripture, — confirmed the pernicious error. On none of these principles could there be a scietice of morality. That was possible only when men, seeking for just ideas of right and wrong, should begin to interrogate their moral sense more than the books of theologians, and make this faculty the supreme arbi- ter, moulding theology into conformity with its dictates. The moral was still subordinate to the dogmatic side of religion. It 328 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. needed the profound sagacity of Hooker to give anything like currency to the following principle, in which the rationaHstic tendency to a philosophy of morals is first decidedly manifest: 'Those precepts which learned men have committed to writing, transcribing them from the common reason and common feelings of human nature, are to be accounted not less divine than those contained in the tables given to Moses; nor was it God's intention to supersede by a law graven on stone that which is written with His own finger on the table of the heart.' Two years later, in 1596, appeared IjOrd Bacon's Essays, which, if they offered nothing new to the English heart, revealed much to the English consciousness, and formed an emphatic agency in the history of English practical ethics. In general, estimated by the standard of the present, moral perceptions were clouded, and moral sympathies were neither expansive nor acute. Add to this the reflexive influence of religious belief — in particular, the doctrine of exclusive salva- tion, and we have an adequate explanation of the burnings, tortures, imprisonments, animosities and wars which for so many centuries marked the conflicts of theological bodies. As long as it was believed that those who rejected certain opinions were excluded from eternal felicity, so long would scepticism be branded a sin, and credulity a virtue. As long as the Church, by a favorite image of the Fathers, was regarded as a solitary Ark floating on a boundless sea of ruin, the heretic, as an offender against the Almighty, was to be reclaimed or pun- ished, and heresy was to be corrected or stifled — by persuasion if possible, by violence if necessary. While some of the perse- cutions, even some of the most atrocious, sprang from purely selfish motives, I doubt not that they were mainly due to the sincere conviction that the cause of truth (as apprehended) required the sacrifice of its foes. Men had yet to learn that mere acts of the understanding are neither right nor wrong; and that unbelief, whether good or bad, must receive its charac- ter from the dispositions or motives which produce or pervade it. Science. — 'In Wonder,' says Coleridge, 'all Philosophy be- gan; in Wonder it ends: and Admiration fills up the interspace.' Better, it is suggested, — and Investigation fills up the inter- space. In the first wonder and the last, the poet and the philos- opher are akin; but the emotion tends to different results. The former wonders at the beauty in the face of Nature, but seeks J PROSE — RISE OF SCIENCE. 329 no explanation, — reads its inner meaning, and tries to utter it. The latter wonders at what he sees, but scrutinizes appearances to find the laws which regulate them. The two processes — im- ao"inative intuition and painful analysis — are distinct, not to be combined in one intellectual act, nor scarcely to coexist in one mind. The latter does not assert itself till objects pass from the poetic flush of emotion into the colder region of rational insight. Therefore, beyond a few exceptional and isolated facts, there was as yet no English science. But at the close of the sixteenth century the daylight of scientific speculation and experiment had already arisen on the Continent. Memorably, after twenty years' study of the heavens from the window of his garret, CopernicuS the Pole founded modern astronomy. He came to the conclu- sion, as had Aristarchus in the third century before Christ, that the sun is immovable, while the earth and planets revolve around it. Afraid of public opinion, he refused to publish. Bruno the Italian espoused his theory with ardor, propagated it, as well as the plurality of worlds, with haughty defiance, — and was burned by the Inquisition. The fact survived, soon to effect an impor- tant revolution in our conceptions. As long as the globe was believed to be the centra,! object of the universe, and the stars but inconsiderable lights to garnish its firmament, it Avas as- signed a similar position in the moral scheme; and every phe- nomenon, human and divine, terrestrial and celestial, was sup- posed to have some bearing upon the acts and history of man. But when this ' goodly ball ' was seen to be only a moving point in infinite space — a mere infinitesimal fraction in creation, human egotism was succeeded by a depressing sense of insignificance, and the way was open for the gradual substitution of the idea of law for that of supernatural intervention. Every priest in the Cathedral of Pisa, every woman and child at Christmas, saw the great lamps which hung from the ceiling, some by a longer, some by a shorter chain, — saw them swing in the wind that came in with the crowd, as the Christmas-doors, storied all over with mediaeval fictions, opened wide; but only Galileo, a student not yet twenty, saw that the motion of the swinging lamps was uniform, and proportional to the length of the chain — each a great clock whereof he alone had the dial. For five hundred years these lamps, swinging slowly to and fro, 330 FIKST CKEATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. had been virtually proclaiming the law of gravitation, but Gali- leo was the first who heard it. This was the great principle of the Pendulum. So does genius find general laws in facts which, have been familiar to everybody since the world was. In England, meanwhile, much of the progress abroad probably remained unknown. Various mathematical works were produced in the vernacular in the first half of the century, by William Record, a physician. Says a contemporary: ' He was the first who wrote on arithmetic in English ; the first who wrote on geome- try in English; the first who introduced algebra into England; the first who wrote oa astronomy and the doctrine of the sphere in English; and finally the first Englishinaa who adopted the system of Copernicus.' He styled the first the Ground of Arts; the second, Pathway to Knowledge; the third, Whetstone of Wit; the fourth, the Castle of Knowledge. In 1599, Thomas Hill published The School of Skill, which is described as ' an account of the heavens and the surface of the earth, replete with those notions on astrology and physics which are not very common in the works of Record.'' The author refers to the scheme of Pythagoras and Copernicus,, by which, as he expresses it, ' they took the earth from the middle of the world, and placed it in a peculiar orb.' He adds: 'But overpassing such reasons, lest by the newness of the arguments they may offend or trouble young students in the art, we therefore (by true knowledge of the wise) do attribute the middle seat of the world to the earth, and appoint it the centre of the whole.' Gilbert's book On Magnetism (1600) marks the origin of the modern science of electricity. Medicine was practiced and taught on the revised principles of the ancients. Henry VIII incorporated the College of Physicians in 1518. From the time of Edward the Confessor, the power of kings to touch for the King's Evil seems never to have been doubted, and to have been. extensively exercised. The Breviary of Health, by Andrew Borde (1547), is a curious suggestion of the state of medical science. It has a prologue addressed to physicians, beginning: 'Egregious doctors, and masters of the eximions and arcane science of physick, of your urbanity exasperate not yourselves against me for making this little volume.' The 'volume' treats not only of bodily disease, but of mental, as in 'the 174 Chapter,' which 'doth shewe of an infirmitie named Hereos': '■Hereos is the Greke worde. In Latin, it is named .Amor. In English it is named Love-sick, and women may haue this fickleness as well as men. Young persons be much troubled with this impediment.' A PROSE — REVIVAL OF PHILOSOPHY. 331 The following is the remedy prescribed: 'First I do advertize every person not to set to ttie heart what another doth set to the hc'le. Let no man set his love so far, but that he may withdraw it be time ; and muse not, but use mirth and mery company and be wyse, and not foolish.' Philosophy. — So far as it concerns the history of philoso- phy, the Renaissance meant the revival of Platonism and the insurgence against scholastic antiquity. Never had monarch been so nearly universal and absolute as Aristotle. For two thousand years he had dictated to the nations what to believe. Amid all the commotions of Empire and the war of words, he had kept his throne and state, unshaken and undisturbed. His autocratical edict was placed by the side of the Gospel. His ten categories, which pretend to classify every object of human apprehension, were held as another Revelation. Universities were his sentinels. Parliaments issued decrees banishing those who maintained theses against him. His name was a synonym for reason. To contradict him was to contradict the Church, whose integrity was based on the immovable conformity of all human opinions. In vain did Galileo try to convince the learned of Pisa that bodies of unequal weight, dropped from the same height, would reach the ground in equal times. They saw the weights fall from the top of the tower, saw them strike the ground simultaneously; but they would not believe, for Aristotle had said that a ten-pound weight would fall ten times as fast as a one-pound weight. A student, having detected spots in the sun, communicated his discovery to a worthy priest, who replied: 'My son, I have read Aristotle many times, and I assure you there is nothing of the kind mentioned by him. Go rest in peace ; and be certain that the spots which you have seen are in your eyes, and not in the sun.* But early in the sixteenth century revolt had broken forth, in Italy, in Spain, in France, in Germany, even in England. In 1535, a royal commission abolished from the two universities the works of the famous Duns Scotus. Said the report, in a tone of triumph: 'We have set Dunce in Bocardo,' and have utterly banished him from Oxford forever, with all his blind glosses.' In 1583, Bruno, a lionized foreigner, a knight-errant of truth, opened under the patronage of Elizabeth, a public disputation, in which he combated the Aristotelians with stirring eloquence. ' A figure of syllogism terminating in a negative conclusion, and implying therefore anmhMation. 332 PIEST CREATIVE PERIOD — FEATURES. He styled the wise conclave of his opponents 'a constellation of pedants, whose ignorance, presumption, and rustic rudeness would have exhausted the patience of Job.' To all the reform- ers, however various their doctrines, one spirit seems to have been common, — unhesivating opposition to the dominant author- ity. Each ii his own way, the new generation were emancipat- ing themselves from the dogmas of the ancient dictator. Scho- lasticism, majestic in its decay, was fast losing its hold upon the mind of the age. As yet, however, there was nothing better to accept in its stead. Being the whole philosophy, mental and physical, then taught, its abolition from the academical course was tantamount to the ejection of philosophical studies entirely. So it happens that all departments — physics, metaphysics, and ethics — were alike barren. Materials were at hand, indeed, for the most successful research; but there was need of an instructor, an organizer, who should reduce to form and method the discord- ant elements, and cut, as it were, a new channel in which the philosophic spirit of the world should flow. Resume. — The feudal system, worn out and vicious, unable to give to a general society either security or progress, disap- pears; and European society passes from the dominion of spirit- ual to that of temporal governments, in which the essential fact is centralization of power. A new and remarkable species of politicians appears — the first generation of professional states- men, all laymen, all cultured, all men of peace, who direct the politics of England dexterously, resolutely, gloriously. The nobles cease to be military chieftains, the priests cease to pos- sess a monopoly of learning. Chivalry, no longer a controlling institution, has been refined of its grossness, and retaining only its beauty, gives color and flavor to society, and tinctures strongly poetic sentiment. Literature proper still belongs almost exclu- sively to the upper classes, but these are being greatly increased by additions of rich citizens, who are growing up to be the body of the nation. Vestiges of slavery still exist, yeomen lead a coarse and brutish life, vagrancy and crime are inadequately suppressed by severe laws unequally administered. Language reaches its full stature, strong, flexible, and copious; adequate to the needs of philosophic thought and of deep and varied feel- ing. The aroused spirit of travel and adventure brings races KESUME. 333 face to face, widens the sphere of human interest, and by its revelations gives life and richness to the imagination. The Reformation, connected on the one side w^ith scholarship, un- locks the sealed treasures of the Bible, and opens the path for modern biblical criticism; connected on the other with intoler- ance of mere authority, it leads to what has been termed ra- tionalism — the attempt to define the laws which underlie the religious consciousness ; connected with politics, it is linked historically with the approaching Revolution. The veil woven by human hands across the brightness of Christianity is rent asunder, and a new meaning is given to the words : ' God is a spirit; and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth,' The Renaissance achieves the discovery of the world and of man,r — the first, the exploration of the globe and the exploration of the heavens; the second, the restoration of Pagan antiquity — man in his temporal . relations, and the reno- vation of faith — man in his spiritual relations. Printing renders indestructible all knowledge, and disseminates all thought. Sci- ence, rescued from the hands of alchemy and astrology, takes her incipient steps. Philosophy, sundered from Scholasticism and Aristotle, awaits the principle of order — the law and the lawgiver. Prose, waking larger and richer from its sleep, passes from the elegant simplicity of More to the formal rhetoric of Ascham, and thence from the extravagance of Lily and the Eiiphidsts to the decorated eloquence of Raleigh and Sidney, gaining, by the close of the period, much in copiousness, in sonorousness, in splendor. Poetry, in Skelton an instrument of reform, revives as an art in Surrey, who gives a sweeter move- ment, to English verse, and extends its 'lyrical range.' In the poems of Spenser are reflected the roseate hues, the higher elements, of the English Renaissance; while its higher and lower alike are reflected in the drama, which is both indigenous and national. In it is directly imaged the whole of English life — character, class, condition, in all their varieties; and the poets who establish it carry in themselves the sentiments which it displays, — happy and abundant feeling, free and full desire, the overflowing of nature, the worship of beauty and of vigor, the energy of pride, the despair of destiny, the insurrection of reason, the turbulence of passion, the brutality of evil lusts, and the 334 riEST CKEATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. divine innocence of love, all the luxuriance and irregularity of I men who feel the sudden advance of corporal vv^ell-being, and are I scarcely recovered from barbarism. A constellation of kindred J spirits, with unequal success but with the same unconcerned pro- j fusion, express the new art, closing around Shakespeare, who' expresses it fully, towering above his fellows 'in shape and ge ture proudly eminent,' — all impelled by the same causes in their whirling and eccentric career; for the productive forces which culminate in the reign of Elizabeth, ripen some of their distinctive fruits in the times immediately subsequent. The last portion of the sixteenth century, with the earlier of the seventeenth, consti- tutes the great era of our literary history, and the first of its stages of consecutive progress, in which the warmth of soul, the love of truth, the passion for freedom, and the sense of humaii dignity, are the promise of eternal development. Consider the mass of knowledge we have since acquired — knowledge infinitely curious and infinitely useful, consider how much of this kind was acquired in the ten centuries which preceded — then you may estimate the expansive force generated in this notable epoch of human growth. MORE. Like Cato Arm, like Aristides just, Like rigid Cincinnatus nobly poor, — A dauntless soul erect, who smiled on death. — Thomson. Biography. — Born in London, in 1489, of noble parentage; at fifteen, a page in the household of Cardinal Morton, who said of him: 'Whoever may live to see it, this boy now waiting at table will turn out a marvellous man'; at seventeen, a law-student in Oxford University; championed the 'Greeks' against the 'Tro- jans'; practised his profession; lectured on divinity; entered Parliament at twenty-two ; became Speaker of the Commons; defeated the royal demand for a heavy subsidy; withdrew from public life under the royal displeasure; rose into repute at the bar, wrote and published; was forced back into the political cur- rent by the accession of Henry VIII; was soon in the king's MORE. 335 iavor as counsellor and diplomatist; succeeded Wolsey as Chan- cellor in 1529, the first layman appointed to that office; refused, as a zealous Catholic, to acknowledge the validity of Henry's marriage with iVnne Boleyn, or his headship of the English Church, and the neck that oft had been familiarly encircled by the royal arm was in 1535 cleft by the headsman's axe. A strik- ing illustration of the truth of Wolsey's words to Cromwell, — 'How wretched Is that poor man who hangs on princes' favors ! ' Writings. — He wrote numerous theological tracts, but of local or passing interest, and all inflamed by a passion which be- trayed him — otherwise clear-headed — into violent expression and confusion of thought. Much of his fame as a writer rests upon his Life of Richard III, of doubtful historical value, but of great philological importance, as the best English secular prose which had yet been written. More is better known by his Latin work, Utopia, — a vision of the kingdom of 'Nowhere,' the leading design of which, under the veil of fanciful fiction, is to correct abuses and suggest reforms. A sailor who has voy- aged into new and unknown worlds, gives him an account. of an imaginary republic risen, as by enchantment, in the form of a crescent, out of the bosom of the watery waste. In its laws and institutions, in its moral and physical aspects, it realizes the author's ideal of a perfect society, and shows thus, by contrast, the defective one in which he lives. The principal city of the Utopians — 'Is compassed about with a high and thick stone wall, full of tunnels and bulwarks. A dry ditch, but deep, goeth about three sides. On the fourth side the river serveth for a ditch. The streets be twenty feet broad. On the back side of the houses, through the whole length of the street, lay large gardens. The houses are curiously builded after a gorgeous and gallant sort, with three stories, one over the other, the outside being of hard plaster, or else of brick, and the inner side well strengthened with timber- work. . . . They keep the wind out of their windows with glass, for it is there much used, and also with fine linen cloth dipped in oil, for by this means more light cometh in and the wind is better kept out.' In Utopia are no taverns, no fashions ever changing, few laws and no lawyers. All learn agriculture; and each, in addition, a trade. They labor six hours a day, and sleep eight. War is a brutal thing, hunting a degrading thing: 'What pleasure, they ask, can one find in seeing dogs run after a hare? It ought rather to stir pity, when a weak, harmless, and timid hare is devoured by a strong, fierce, and cruel dog. Therefore, all this business of hunting is, among the Utopians, turned 336 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. over to their butchers; and they look on hunting as one of the basest parts of a butcher's work.' Wisdom is preferred to riches, the formation of character to the accumulation of property. Virtue is nobility. Integrity is the marble statue which survives the sacking of cities and the down- fall of empires: ' The Utopians wonder how any man should be so much taken with the glaring, doubt- ful lustre of a jewel or stone, that can look up to a star, or to the sun itself: or how any should value himself because his cloth is made of finer thread; for, how fine soever that thread may be, it was once no better than the fleece of a sheep, and that sheep was a sheep still for all its wearing it. They wonder much to hear that gold, which in itself is so useless a thing, should be everywhere so much esteemed, that even man, for whom it was made, and by whom it has its value, should yet be thought of less value than it is,' so that a man of lead, who has no more sense than a log of wood, and is as bad as he is foolish, should have many wise and good men serving him, only because he had a great heap of that metal.' To this day tolerance is far from being a general virtue. Perse- cution has indeed given up its halter and fagot, but it secretly blasts what it cannot openly destroy. In ' Nowhere,' however, it is lawful for every man to be of what faith he will. Each may propagate his creed by argument — never by violence or insult. Religion rests simply on nature and reason, finds its centre rather in the family than in the congregation, holds asceticism to be thanklessness, and bases its unity on the moral and spiritual cohesion of motives. If Utopia contains impracticable dreams of political organization, it also anticipates the views and improve- ments of the latest and wisest legislation. While in England half the population are unable to read, in 'Nowhere' every child is well taught. The aim of the laws is the comprehensive wel- fai'e of the labor-class as the true basis of a well-ordered common- wealth. Is it not true to-day that the civilized world, with its palaces, libraries, academies of science, and galleries of art, rests on the solid shoulders of farmers and mechanics? All the im- provements in our criminal system are the Utopian conceptions of More, who insists, centrally, that the proper end of punish- ment is reformation, and that the most effective means of sup- pressing crime is prevention: 'If you allow your people to be badly taught, their morals to be corrupted from child- hood, and then when they are men punish them for the very crimes to which they have been trained in childhood — what is this but first to make thieves, and then to punish them ? • Style. — Easy and flowing, without pedantry and without vul- garisms; rivalling in purity his great antagonist, Tyndale; so MORE. 337 graphic in description that many of the learned received the Utopia as a true history, and thought it expedient to send mis- sionaries to that island for the conversion of so wise a people to Christianity; so buoyant in tone, that in the grave and sullen pages of polemics, it jests, smiles, rails, or drifts into ludicrous ribaldry; for, on questions of religious reform, More was a mad- man, and sarcasm was at any moment liable to pass into scurril- ity. Thus, of one Richard Mayfield, a monk and a priest, he says: 'His holy life well declares his heresies, when, heing both a priest and a monk, he went about two wives, one in Brabant, another in England. What he meant I cannot make you sure, whether he would be sure of the one if t'other should happen to refuse him; or that he would have them both, the one here, the other there ; or else both in one place, the one because he was priest, the other because he was monk.' Of a famous invective against the clergy, who, though only 'a four hundredth part of the nation, held half the revenues,' he writes : 'And now we have this gosling with his " Supplication of Beggars." He maketh his hill in the name of the beggars. The bill is couched as full of lies as the beggar swarm- eth full of lice: He looked upon literature without humor, as a banquet without sauce; and, even in combating heresy, conceived it better 'to tell his mind merrily than more solemnly to preach.' Rank. — A scholar, a lawyer, a theologian, a wit, a politician without ambition, a lord-chancellor who entered and resigned his office poor, a sage whose wisdom lay concealed in his philosoph- ical pleasantry, a theorist and a seer, — 'Who could forerun his age and race, and let His feet millenniums hence be set In midst of knowledge dreamed not yet ' ; a martyr who laid his head upon the block, to seal his conscience with his blood; the most illustrious figure — save Wolsey — in the reign of Henry VIII; an author who missed the full immortality of his genius by the infelicity of his subjects, but whose massive folio remains a monument of our language in its pristine vigor; memorable as the first in prose to gauge the means of striking the attention, to study the art of arrangement and effect; hence, in the order of time, the first of our great English prose writers. The following letter to his children — in itself an admirable pict- ure — shows an intellect grown capable of self-criticism, possessed of ideas and expressing them by superior reflection: 23 338 FIEST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHOKS. 1 'The merchant of Bristow brought unto me your letters, the next day after he had received them of you; with the which I was exceedingly delighted. For there can come nothing, yea, though it were never so rude, never so meanly polished, from this your shop, but it procureth me more delight than any others' works, be they never so eloquent: your writing doth so stir up my affection towards you. But, excluding this your letters may also very well please me for their own worth, being full of fine vfit and of a pure Latin phrase: therefore none of them all but joyed me exceedingly. Yet, to tell you ingenuously what I think, my son John's letter pleased me best; both because it was longer than the other, as also for that he seemeth to have taken more pains than the rest. For he not only painteth out the matter decently, and speaketh elegantly; but he playeth also pleasantly with me, and returneth my jests upon me again, very wittily. Hereafter I expect every day letters from every one of you: neither will I accept of such excuses as you complain of; that you have no leisure, or that the carrier went away sud- denly, or that you have no matter to write : John is not wont to allege any such thing. And how can you want matter of writing unto me, who am delighted to hear either of your studies or of your play; whom you may even then please exceedingly, when, having nothing to write of, you write as largely as you can of that nothing, than which nothing is more easy for you to do. But this I admonish you to do; that, whether you write of serious matters or of trifles, you write with diligence and consideration, premeditating of it before. Neither will it be amiss, if you first indite it in English; for then it may more easily be translated into Latin, whilst the mind, free from inventing, is attentive to find apt and eloquent words. And, although I put this to your choice, whether you will do so or no, yet I enjoin you, by all means, that you diligently examine what you have written before you write it over fair again ; first considering attentively the whole sentence, and after examine every part thereof; by which means you may easily find out if any solecisms have escaped you; which being put out, and your letter written fair, yet then let it not also trouble you to examine it over again ; for sometimes the same faults creep in at the second writing, which you before had blotted out. By this your diligence you will procure, that those your trifles will seem serious matters. For, as nothing is so pleasing but may be made unsavory by prating garrulity, so nothing is by nature so unpleasant, that by industry may not be made full of grace and pleasantness. Farewell, my sweetest children.' Ch.aracter. — Of keen irregular features, gray restless eye, tumbled brown hair, careless gait and dress, — the outer pictures the inner man, cheerful, witty even to recklessness, kindly, half- sadly humorous, throwing the veil of laughter and of tears over the tender reverence of the soul. He married his first wife out of pure benevolence, thinking how much it would grieve her to see her younger sister, whom he loved the better, preferred before her. As his wife, it was his delight to train her in his own taste for letters and for music. Among his children, he was a loving companion and a wise teacher, luring them to the deeper studies by relics and curiosities gathered in his cabinet. Fond of their pets and their games as they themselves. He would take scholars and statesmen into his garden to see his girls' rabbits or watch the gambols of their favorite monkey. ' I have given you kisses enough,' he wrote them, 'but stripes hardly ever.' In con- versation and writing, humor was his constitutional temper. At the most solemn moments of his life, he was facetious. In the he i J MORE. 339 Tower, denied pen and ink, he writes to his daughter Margaret, and tells her, 'This letter is written with a coal'; but that, to express his love, a peck of coals would not suffice. Climbing the crazy timbers where he was to die, he said gaily to the lieu- tenant, 'I pray you see me safe up; and for my coming down, let me shift for myself.' When life and death were within a second of each other, he bade the executioner to stay his hand till he had removed his beard, observing, 'Pity that should be cut, which has never committed treason.' His fatalistic maxim was: 'If evils come not, then our fears are vain; And if tliey do, fear but augments ttie pain.' His character presents many opposite and, unhappily, some in- consistent qualities. Beneath his sunny nature lay a stern inflexibility of resolve. When he took office, it was with the open stipulation, 'first to look to God, and after God to the king.' He laughed at the superstition and asceticism of the day, yet every Friday scourg-ed his body with whips of knotted cords, and by way of further penance wore his hair-shirt next to his lacerated skin. Once an opponent of abuses in the Church, when the Reformation was sprung, he went violently back to the extreme of maintaining the whole fabric of idolatry. Playful and affectionate in his own household, his abuses of power are a cloud on his memory. Free-thinker, as the bigots termed him, he appeals to miraculous relics as the evidences of his faith. In allusion to a napkin sent to King Abgarus, on which Jesus impressed the image of his own face, he says: 'And it hath been by lilre miracle in the thin corruptible cloth kept and preserved these 1500 years fresh and well preserved, to the inward comforts, spiritual rejoicing, and great increase of fervor, in the hearts of good Christian people.' Theoretically opposed to sanguinary laws, he spared no pains to carry the most sanguinary into execution. He wished to have it engraved on his tombstone that he was 'Fioribus, Homicidis, Hoereticisque molestus'' — the scourge of Thieves, Murderers, and Heretics — the last beina: the greatest malefactors of the three. Influence. — Viewed in active as in meditative life, in public as in private relations, the character, the events, and the works of this distinguished man will be alwa3^s interesting and always instnictive. Under his free and copious vein, the vernacular 340 FIEST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. idiom enlarged the compass of its expression. To him belongs the merit of having struck out, in advance of his age, and. as it afterward appeared, in advance of himself, a new path in litera- ture, — that of political romances, wherein his successors — among' them, Swift — were to be indebted largely to his reasoning and inventive talents. His antagonism to the Reformation could at most prove a transient evil, hardly appreciable, if so much as a retarding force. But the comprehensive dreams of the Uto^na have haunted every nobler soul. Excellence is perpetual, and all of it exists in vision before it exists in fact. The Utopia has long afforded to conservatives a term of reproach applicable to all reformatory schemes and innovations. There is a large class of persons with whom the idea of making the world better and happier is ever regarded with distrust or contempt. He who entertains it is an unpractical dreamer. His project is straight- way pronounced to be Utopian. Of which the moral, to the wise, is: Look kindly upon the 'vagaries' of the 'dreamer' and the 'fanatic'; reflect that what was folly to our ancestors, is wisdom to us, and that another generation may successfully practice what we now reject as impossible or regard with an incredulous smile. The idealizing power of the race — I would have it engraved upon the living tablets of every human mem- ory — is the most potent force of its development. A family of equals, — a community without want, without ignorance, without crime, — a church of righteousness, — a state where the intuitions of conscience have been codified into statutes, — are all possible, just as possible as cultivated America, jewelled all over with cities and fair towns, factories and schools, which no one would have dared to prophesy some hundred years ago. A steam- engine is only an opinion dressed in iron. A republic is but an idea worked out into men. The difference between a savage and an Angelo was once a power of progress. Desire only points to the reserve of power that one day shall satisfy it. THE JEWEL OF THE COURT. 341 SIDNEY. Warbler of poetic prose.— Cowper. Biography. — Of high birth, born in Kent, in 1554; at thir- teen entered Oxford, where he won distinction as a scholar; at eighteen, without a degree, though trained in polite literature, began a tour of travel embracing France, Germany, and Italy; was in Paris during the massacre of St. Bartholomew; read Plato and Aristotle; studied Astronomy and Geometry at Venice; pon- dered over the Greek tragedies and the Italian sonnets; returned to England in his twenty-first year, a polished and accomplished man; instantly became a favorite of the Queen and the Court, where he shone as one of the most brilliant; at twenty-two, an ambassador for the promotion of a Protestant league among the princes of the Continent ; at twenty-nine, married, and was knighted; two years later, was a candidate for the throne of Poland, but yielded to the remonstrance of Elizabeth, who feared to lose 'the jewel of her times'; shortly after, a cavalry officer fighting in the cause of the Netherlands; mortally wounded in battle, he died on the 17th of October, 1586, lamented abroad, honored at home with a public funeral in the cathedral of St. Paul's, while the whole nation went into mourning for their hero. Writings. — Far from the glittering whirl of the Court, in the shelter of the forest oaks, Sidney wrote for his own and his sister's amusement the Arcadia, a romance of love and chivalry, narrated in prose mixed with verse, in imitation of Italian mod- els, with pastoral episodes, in the manner of the Spanish. Two princes, cousins, in quest of adventure, attached to each other in chivalrous fashion, are wrecked on the coast of Sparta, wander providentially and mysteriously into the kingdom of Arcadia, fall in love with the king's two daughters, and, after passing through many severe trials, marry them, and are happy. You will find in it profusion of startling events and tragical or fan- tastic images, — shipwrecks, deliverances, surprises, abductions, pirates, wicked fairies, dancing shepherds, disguised princes, songs, allegories, sensuous beauties, tournaments of wit. It is less a monument than a relic, not more an image of the time than of the man, who had said: 'It is a trifle; my young head 342 FIEST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. must be delivered.' In works of courtly taste and impassioned youth, look for excessive sentiment. A lover sends a letter to his love, and says to the ink: 'Therefore mourne boldly, my inke; for while shee lookes upon you, your black- nesse will shine : cry out boldly my lamentation ; for while shee reades you, your cries will be musicke.'' Two young princesses have retired: ' They impoverished their clothes to enrich tKeir bed, which for that night might well scornc the shrine of Venus; and there cherishing one another with deare, thongh chaste embracements; with sweet, though cold kisses; it might seeme that love was come to play him there without dart, or that wearie of his owne fires, he was there to refreshe himselfe between their sweet breathing lippes.' It is, in part, the knightly desire of effect; in part, the exagger- ation of inventive fire, confusing the story by endless digressions, and marring now and then idea, as well as expression, by un- natural refinements. Hence, the Arcadia is above the prose- level by its poetic genius, absorbing reveries, and tumultuous thoughts. So, it was long, and may still remain, the haunt of poets. Stately periods, luxuriant imagery, graceful fancies, natu- ral freshness, piercing through the outward crust of affectation, withstanding the revolutions of times and tastes. For example: 'In the time that the morning did strew roses and violets in the heavenly iloore against the coming of the sun, the nightingales (striving one with the other which could in most dainty varieties recount their wronge-caused sorrow) made them put off their sleep.' Or the scenery of Arcadia: ' There were hillis which garnished their proud heights \vith stately trees ; humble val- leys, whose base estate seemed comforted with the refreshing of silver rivers; meadows, enamelled with all sorts of eye-pleasing flowers; thickets, which being lined with most pleasant shade, were witnessed so to, by the cheerful disposition of many well-tuned birds; leach pasture stored with sheep, feeding with sober security; while the pretty lambs, with bleating oratory, craved the dam's comfort; here a shepherd's boy piping, as though he should never be old; there a young shepherdess knitting, and withal singing; and it seemed that her voice comforted her hands to work, and her hands kept time to her voice-music' Growing Puritanism disparaged poetry, calling the poets of the age 'caterpillars of the commonwealth.' Sidney, therefore, as a knight battling for his lady, wrote, in heroic and splendid style, The Defence of Poesy. The conception is noble, the argument profound, the tone vehement and commanding. No art or sci- ence, he reasons, produces such invigorating moral effects; and it possesses this excellence by its superior creative power to dress and embellish nature. He says: 'Now, therein, of all sciences — I speak still of human, and according to the human conceit — is our poet the monarch. For he doth not only shew the way, but giveth so SID]S^EY. 343 sweet a prospect into the way, as will entice any man to enter into it. Nay, he doth, as if your journey should lie through a fair vineyard, at the very first give you a cluster of grapes; that, full of that taste, you may long to pass further. He beginneth not with obscure definitions; which must blur the margin with interpretations, and load the mem- ory with doubtfulness; but he cometh to you with words set with delightful proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared for, the well -enchanting skill of music; and with a tale, forsooth, he cometh unto you, with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney-corner; and pretending no more, doth intend the winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue; even as the child is often brought to take most whole- some things, by hiding them in such other as have a pleasant taste. So is it in men, — most of whom are childish in the best things, till they be cradled in their graves. Glad they will be to hear the tales of Hercules, Achilles, Cyrus, ^neas; and hearing them, must needs hear the right description of wisdom, valour, and justice; which, if they had been barely — that is to say, philosophically — set out, they would swear they be brought to school again.' It was natural that a spirit so ardent and aspiring should feel and paint the sentiment in which all dreams converge — love. More beautiful than anything in the world were the eyes, love- lier still the soul, of Stella (star) who inspired his adoration: 'Stella, sovereign of my joy, . . . Stella, star of heavenly fire, Stella, load-star of desire, Stella, in whose shining eyes Are the lights of Cupid's skies. . . . Stella, whose voice when it speaks Senses all asunder breaks; Stella, whose voice when it singeth, Angels to acquaintance bringeth.' To her, he, as Astrophel (lover of the star), addressed one hun- dred and eight sonnets, besides a number of songs; and in addi- tion to these, wrote sixteen others, chiefly amatory. Some are artificial and cold ; others, artless and warm : some forced and painful ; others, simple and sweet. There is nothing conven- tional here — only the troubled heart, and the adored image of the absent, seen through worshipful tears: 'When I was forced from Stella ever dear — Stella, food of my thoughts, heart of my heart — Stella, whose eyes make all my tempests clear — By Stella's laws of duty to depart; Alas, I found that she with me did smart; I saw that tears did in her eyes appear; I saw that sighs her sweetest lips did part, And her sad words my sadded sense did hear. For me, I wept to see pearls scattered so; I sighed her sighs, and wailed for her woe; Yet swam in joy, such love in her was seen. Thus, while th' effect most bitter was to me. And nothing than the cause more sweet could be, I had been vexed, if vexed I had not been.' 344 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. And nothing' gallant or far-fetched in this, — only real and noble feeling, told in changeful melody: 'Stella, think not that I by verse seek fame, Who seek, who hope, who love, who live but thee; Thine eyes my pride, thy lips my history: If thou praise not, all other praise is shame. Nor so ambitious am I, as to frame A nest for my young praise in laurel tree : In truth, I swear I wish not there should be Graved in my epitaph a Poet's name. Nor, if I would, could I just title make. That any laud thereof to me should grow, Without my plumes from others' wings I take: For nothing from my wit or will doth flow, Since all my words thy beauty doth endite, And love doth hold my hand, and makes me write.' What more genuine, free, and graceful than this invocation to exhausted nature's ' sweet restorer ' ? ' Come, Sleep ! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace. The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe. The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, Th' indifferent judge between the high and low; With shield of proof shield me from out the press Of those fierce darts Despair at me doth throw: make in me those civil wars to cease; 1 will good tribute pay, if thou do so. Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed, A chamber deaf to noise and blind to light, A rosy garland and a weary head: And if these things, as being thine in right, Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me, Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see.' But there is a divine love which continues the earthly; a death- less beauty, a heavenly brightness, which fails not, and is the soul's sovereign beatitude: 'Leave me, O Love, which readiest but to dust; And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things; Grow rich in that which never taketh rust; Whatever fades but fading pleasure brings. Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might To that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be ; Which breaks the clouds, and opens forth the light, That doth both shine, and give us sight to see. O take fast hold; let that light be thy guide In this small course which birth draws out to death. And think how ill becometh him to slide. Who seeketh heaven, and comes of heavenly breath. Then farewell, world; thy uttermost I see: Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me ! ' Style. — Always flexible and harmonious, usually decorated and luminous, but ever liable to youth's unripeness and inequal- SIDNEY. 345 ity; commonly easy and vigorous; occasionally running into trivial conceits and remote comparisons; now, stately or ani- mated; now cramped or irksome; here direct, here overloaded, as of , a nimble wit that must regard an object under all its forms, delighting in endless excursions, and perhaps somewhat too studious of display. The demand for what is fine in diction may easily degenerate into admiration of what is superfine. Sid- ney's style is not a little affected by the prevalent taste for Euphuism, in the use of which, however, he is almost always labored and unnatural. The following passage exhibits the arti- fice to uncommon advantage: 'The messenger made speed and found Argalus at a castle of his own, sitting in a parlor with his fair Parthenia, he reading in a book the stories of Hercules, she sitting by him as to hear him read; but while his eyes looked on the book, she looked in his eyes, sometimes staying him with some pretty question, not so much to be resolved of her doubt, as to give him occasion to look upon her. A happy couple! he joying in her, she joying in herself, but in herself, because she joyed in him; both increased their riches by giving to each other, each making one life double because they made a double life one. Where desire never wanted satisfaction, nor satisfaction ever bred satiety; he ruling because she would obey, or rather because she would obey, she therein ruling.' Rank. — Less potent and comprehensive than other spirits of his age, but more beautiful and engaging than any; a combina- tion of the scholar, the poet, and the knight-errant; a courtier petted and praised; a patriot who failed in ambition, though educated a statesman, because too fine an ornament of the nation to be spared for its defence; a lover who failed in love, marrying the woman he respected, and losing the one he adored; a soldier, a gentleman, and a gifted writer, whose vigor, variety, and idiom in prose mark a decided advance. Largely conspicuous in life, his merits are apt to be lost on the modern reader in consequence of their bedizened dress; for, though his thoughts were noble and his feelings genuine, his fancy was artificial, and tended incessantly to lift his rhetoric on stilts. He will always main- tain, however, a high place as an aesthetic critic, nor an incon- siderable one as a sonneteer. Into what final mould his powers would have run, to what heights they might have attained, had they not been cut off so prematurely, is matter for speculation. Character. — So rare a union of attractions is difficult of defi- nition. 'He hath had,' was the simple testimonial of a friend, 'as great love in this life, and as many tears for his death, as ever any had.' His conception of chivalry — 'high-erected 346 FIKST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. thoughts seated in a heart of courtesy' — is the fitting descrip. tion of his own manliness, and the charm that made him the idol of court and camp. Scholarly, aspiring, brilliant, ingenuous brave, and gentle. With a keen sense of pleasure and a thirst for adventure, he possessed a gravity beyond his years. Like most men of high sensibility, he inclined to melancholy and soli- tude. His chief fault — which was the impassioned energy of the age — was an impetuosity of temper, a trait which appears in the following letter addressed to his father's secretary, and contain- ing what proved to be a groundless accusation: 'Mr. Molyneux — Few words are best. My letters to my father have come to the eyes of some. Neither can I condemn any but you for it. If it be so, you have played the very knave with me ; and so I will make you know, if I have good proof of it. But that for so much as is past. For that is to come, I assure you before God, that if ever I know you do so much as read any letter I write to my father, without his commandment, or my consent, I will thrust my dagger into you. And trust to it, for I speak it in earnest. In the meantime, farewell." The closing sceries of his life display the crowning qualities of his character, — magnanimity and seriousness. On the field of carnage, mortally wounded, and perishing of thirst, a cup of water is brought to him; but as it touches his fevered lips he sees by his side a soldier still more desperately hurt, who is looking at the water with anguish in his face; and he says, 'Give it to this man; his necessity is yet greater than mine.' In his last moments, his chaplain — 'proved to him out of the Scriptures, that though his understanding and senses should fail, yet that faith which he had now could not fail; he did, with a cheerful and smiling countenance put forth his hand and slapped me softly on the cheeks. Not long after, he lifted up his eyes and hands, uttering these words, "I would not change my joy for the empire of the world." . . . Having made a comparison of God's grace now in him, his former virtues seemed to be nothing; for he wholly condemned his former life. "All things in it," he said, "have been vain, vain, vain." ' Influence. — A work so extensively perused as was the Arcadia must have contributed not a little to liberalize and dignify English speech, and to create, among writers, a bold and imaginative use of words. From him, as from a fountain, the most vigorous shoots of the period drew something of their verd- ure and their strength. Shakespeare was his attentive reader, copied his diction, transferred his ideas — above all, his fine con- ceptions of female character. Thus, in poetic prose of Sidney: 'More sweet than a gentle south-west wind, which comes creeping over flowery fields and shadowed waters in the extreme heat of summer.' ^p^B i HOOKER. 347 Said Shakespeare, after him: 'Oh! it came o'er my ear like the sweet south, That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odor.' And Coleridge: And Byron: 'And sweeter than the gentle south-west wind, O'er willowy meads and shadowed waters creepina And Ceres' golden fields.' 'Breathing all gently o'er his cheek and mouth. As o'er a bed of violets the sweet south.' Nor is this all. The moral charm of his character wroug^ht bless- edly in life; and the noble feeling, the lofty aspiration, that lives in and exhales from the record of his heart and brain, is a part of the breath of human-kind, to nourish pastoral delight, pure friendship, and magnanimous thought. HOOKER. There is no learning that this man hath not searched into. . . . His books will get reverence from age. — Pope Clement. Biography. — Born near Exeter, in 1553, of parents respect- able, but neither noble nor rich, and abler to rejoice in his early piety than to appreciate his early intelligence. They designed him for a tailor, but to his humble schoolmaster he appeared 'to be blessed with an inward divine light,' and therefore at the age of fourteen, through the kindness of Bishop Jewel, was sent to Oxford, where he rose to eminence and preferment. After four- teen years of exhaustive study, he entered holy orders, was made deacon and priest, and married a scolding wife, whom he had allowed to be chosen for him by an ignorant low-minded match- maker. In 1585, he was appointed Master of the Temple; but the situation neither accorded with his temper nor with his literary pursuits, and he petitioned his superior to remove him to 'some quiet parsonage.' The following is the appeal: 'My Lord,— When I lost the freedom of my cell, which was my college, yet I found some degree of it in my quiet country parsonage. But I am ^Veary of the noise and oppo- sitions of this place; and, indeed, God and nature did not intend me for contentions, but for study and quietness. And, my lord, my particular contests here with Mr. Travers have 348 PIEST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. proved the more unpleasant to me, because I believe him to be a good man; and that belief hath occasioned me to examine mine own conscience concerning his opinions. And to satisfy that I have consulted the holy Scripture, and other laws, both human and divine whether the conscience of him and others of his judgment ought to be so far complied with by us as to alter our frame of church-government, our manner of God's worship, our praising and praying to Him, and our established ceremonies, as often as their tender con- sciences shall require us. And in this examination I have not only satisfied myself, but have begun a treatise in which I intend the satisfaction of others, by a demonstration of the reasonableness of our laws of ecclesiastical polity. But, my lord, I shall never be able to finish what 1 have begun, unless I be removed into some quiet parsonage, where I may see God's blessings spring out of my mother-earth, and eat my own bread in peace and privacy ; a place where I may, without disturbance, meditate my approaching mortality, and that great account which all flesh must give at the last day to the God of all spirits.' First appointed to a parish in Wiltshire, he was in the following year presented to a rectory in Kent, where the remainder of his life was spent in meditation and the faithful discharge of his duties. Never strong, he died in November, 1600, of pulmonic disease induced by a heavy cold. "Writings. — Against the non-conforming Puritans, Hooker, in The Laios of Ecclesiastical Polity, undertook to investigate and define the right of the Church to claim obedience from its members, and the duty of the members to render obedience to the Church. His opponents insisted that a definite scheme of church polity was revealed in the Bible, thus reducing the con- troversy to a mere anarchy of opinions about the meaning of certain texts. With that aching for order and that demand for fundamental ideas Avhich characterize a tranquil spirit and a great mind, he founded his argument on general conceptions, and urged that the laws of nature, reason, and society, equally with those of Scripture, are of divine institution. Both are equally worthy of respect. It is the province of the 'natural light' to distinguish between what is variable and what is invariable in these laws, between what is eternal and what is temporary in Revelation itself. Hence the divinely constituted reason of man does not exceed its rights in establishing certain uniformities and ceremonials on which Scripture may be doubtful or silent. The English Church system may be conformable to the will of God, though not enjoined by any clear text of his revealed Word. What was transitory or what was partial in the book may be subtracted without injury to its immortal excellence; for its foundations are laid deep in the eternal verities which are the basis of all duties and all rights, political as well as religious. HOOKER. 349 Its central idea is law, as apprehended by reason, which in its essential nature is one with the self-conscious infinite reason at the heart of things. ' May we,' he indignantly asks, ' cause our faith without Reason to appear reasonable in the eyes of men?' And of this uncreated Law which sustains the fabric of the universe, and weds obligation to ecstasy, he says in language touched by a consecrating radiance: 'Wherefore, that here we may briefly end: of law there can be no less acknowl- edged, than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world: all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power; both angels and men and creatures of what condition soever, though each in diiierent sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and their joy.' Style. — Methodical, correct, ample, massive, and grand; idio- matic without vulgarity, and learned without pedantry. The Latin order of arrangement was with Hooker, as with all the translators of the period, a favorite construction. For example: 'Brought already we are even to that estate'; 'able we are not to deny, but that we have deserved the hatred of the heathen.' Often it is used with powerful effect, giving to the capital images the emphatic positions; as, 'Dangerous it were for the feeble brain of man to wade far into the doings of the Most High.' Some of his periods are cumbrous and intricate, but in general they roll melodiously on, with the serene might of the soul that inspires and moves them, rich in imagery and noble in diction. Rank. — By universal consent, one of the great in English letters. A learned divine without fanaticism. A persuasive logician, from the chain of whose reasoning it is hard to detach a link, without a fracture. A philosopher whose breadth and power of mind are shown not only in the conception and appli- cation of one majestic principle, but in the exhibition of many principles harmoniously related. None before him had his grasp and largeness; few after him have been so comprehensive. As he was one of the loftiest of thinkers, so he was one of the most practical. The idea that shone in the heaven of contemplation, radiated in a thousand directions on the earth. Worthy to be regarded not only as one of the fathers of the English Church, but as one of the chief founders of English prose. It was said by a contemporary Romanist that he had never read an English 350 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS, book whose writer deserved the name of author till he read the first four books of ' a poor obscure English priest ' on Laws and Church Polity; a judgment which points at least to the fact that the ' obscure priest ' is the original of what deserves to be called English literature, in its theological and philosophical domain, Cliaracter. — Grave, mild, modest, and devout ; in youth ardently studious, and in manhood conspicuous equally for learn- ing and for eloquence. As a schoolboy he was remarkable for his continual questioning, but his inquisitive intellect was accompa- nied with docility of disposition, and the happy teacher spared no efforts to advance the little wonder. His body was feeble, his soul capacious. He suffered much, yet was without fretful or morbid quality, resolved, like Socrates, to make a noble use of racking pains and sordid annoyances. It was in this enlightened and tolerant spirit that he bore the perpetual cross of union with a female of vulgar manners, of unprepossessing face, of snappish and tyrannizing temper. A London hostess, on the occasion of his appointment to preach a sermon at Paul's Cross, had oppor- tunely cured him of a cold. He was easily persuaded that his constitutional delicacy required a perpetual nurse. Her benevo- lence not stopping here, she offered to provide such a one; and he, in an excess of gratitude, promised to marry her choice. On his next arrival, the artful woman presented her daughter, and the guileless Hooker, the thinker and scholar, the man of inno- cent wisdom, who would have a nurse-wife, got a shrew. She preferred the more natural office of vixen. When visited, about a year afterwards, by two of his former pupils, he was found tending a flock of sheep, with a copy of Horace in his hand. In the house, they received no entertainment but his conversation, which Mrs. Hooker interrupted by calling him sharply to come and rock the cradle; for she would have it understood that her husband was her servant, and that his friends were unwelcome guests. Cranmer, in taking leave, said: ' Good tutor, I am sorry that your lot is fallen in no better ground as to your parson- age ; and more sorry that your wife proves not a more comfortable companion after you have wearied yourself in your restless studies.' To which Hooker made the characteristic answer: 'My dear George, if saints have usually a double share in the miseries of this life, I, that am none, ought not to repine at what my wise Creator hath appointed for me, but labor — as indeed I do daily — to submit mine to His will, and possess my soul in patience and peace.' RALEIGH. 351 His intelligence was essentially moral; and, by the alchemy of his rare spirit, all knowledge and experience were transmuted into celestialized reason. Influence. — To Hooker belongs the merit of first fully de- veloping the English language as a vehicle of refined and philosophic thought. His work is monumental. It is still referred to as a great authority upon the whole range of moral and political principles. The beauty of his daily life was an agency to create new beauty everj^where. We can believe that it left its impress even upon his wife. A man of noble piety is in a community like a flower that fills the whole house with its fragrance; and the children born there a hundred years later are better born than elsewhere, because that man spread the sweet- ness of his character there, and uplifted the vulgar when they knew it not. Above all. Hooker introduced into polemics a new spirit and method — philosophical rather than theological. Against the dogmatism of creed he set the authority of reason, to which he gave so large a place that never, even to this day, has it made a similar advance. It is not difficult to see the immense impor- tance of this change, — a change of which, indeed, he is the representative and reactionary rather than the initial and efficient cause. As long as an opinion was defended by the dogmatic method, whoever assailed it incurred the imputation of heresy, and it was easy to justify his persecution; but when it was chiefly defended by human reason, which leads the ablest minds to the most opposite conclusions, the element of uncertainty entered, and punishment was felt to be wrong when it was seen that the persecuted might be right. RALEIGH. A great but ill-regulated mmA.— Hume. Biography. — Born in Devonshire, in 1553, the younger son ■of a family richer in ancient lineage than in patrimony; entered Oxford, but quit it shortly for active life, with no resource but 352 FIKST CREATIVE PEEIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. his enterprise and his sword; at seventeen a valorous leader in the Protestant cause of France, subsequently in the Netherlands then in Ireland.; from the art of war, turned to the art of naviga- tion, which had led Columbus to discovery and Pizarro to con- quest; planned an expedition to North America; planted colonies in the wilds to which the royal maiden had eagerly given the name of Virginia, but failed, the colonists returning with tobacco and potatoes instead of diamonds and gold; rose to a favorite of the Queen, was knighted, was her chief adviser in the Spanish invasion of the Armada, was active in its destruction and ser- viceable in Parliament ; a courtier commanding the Queen's guard, riding abroad with her in his suit of solid silver, or at- tending the Court in dress gorgeous with jewels, from the huge diamond which buttoned his feather to his shoes powdered with pearls; intrigued with a maid of honor, and lost the favor which had been the pride of his ambition; married the maid, and was imprisoned with his wife in the Tower; counterfeited the most romantic despair at the Queen's displeasure, and obtained his freedom, but was banished the presence; thought to dazzle her imagination, and went in quest of the El Dorado, fabled to be in the interior of South America, where the sands glistened, the rocks shone, and the houses were roofed, with the precious metal; returned, and wrote: ' Of the little remaining fortune I had, I have wasted in effect all herein. I have undergone many constructions, been accompanied with many sorrows, with labor, hunger, heat, sickness, and peril. From myself I have deserved no thanks; for I am returned a beggar, and withered.' Restored to the favor of his mistress-sovereign by the brilliancy of his maritime enterprise, he was discountenanced by James I, whose mind had been poisoned by a malignant rival; was tried on a charge of treason, condemned, but reprieved, and instead of being executed was committed to the Tower, where he was con- fined for twelve years, during six of which his wife was permitted to bear him company; tempted the cupidity of the king by the vision of a gold-mine and a new empire in Guiana; offered to equip a fleet for the adventure, and was released but not par- doned; burned a Spanish town, got nothing of value, was forced to return a baffled dreamer, under the imputations of falsehood and treachery ; and to satisfy the implacable Spaniards, was EALEIGH. 353 executed, in 1618, on the old sentence, which had been suspended over his head like the pointed sword. "Writings. — His prison-hours were made memorable by the composition in his cell of the History of the World. He begins with the Creator and the creation ; discusses fate, fore-knowl- edge, and free-will, the site of Paradise, the travels of Cain; the several floods, whose dates are pretty certain; Noah's Ark, which is proved, with prodigious labor, Jiot to have rested on Ararat; descends, through sacred story, to the annals of Assyria, Persia, Greece, and Rome; closing with the fall of the Macedonian Em- pire, B.C. 170; and infusing into his voluminous scroll of four thousand years the foolish and the wise sayings of Pagan and Christian philosophers and poets, dissertations on the origin of law and government, digressions on slavery, on idolatry, on art, all the fables that were believed by the learned and the unlearned alike, all that his own eyes had observed in the old and the new worlds, and whatever the peculiar studies of each individual in his cultured circle could afford. Whoever can have patience to wade through the first half of the book, will find, when he reaches the second, that his pains are not unrewarded. In its versatile pages are eloquent and stirring passages, embodying the grave and grand idea of death as the issue throughout — oblivion, dust, and endless darkness. Thus: 'We have left Rome flourishing in the middle of the field, having rooted up or cut down all that kept it from the eyes and admiration of the world. But, after some con- tinuance, it shall begin to lose the beauty it had ; the storms of ambition shall beat her great boughs and branches one against another ; her leaves shall fall off, her limbs wither, and a rabble of barbarous nations enter the field and cut her down.' Again: 'If we seek a reason of the succession and continuance of this boundless ambition in mortal men, we may add to that which hath been already said, that the kings and princes of the world have always laid before them the actions but not the ends of those great ones which preceded them. They are always transported with the glory of the one, but they never mind the misery of the other, till they find the experience in themselves. They neglect the advice of God, while they enjoy life or hope it; but they follow the counsel of death upon his first approach. It is he that puts into man all the wisdom of the world, without speaking a word, which God, with all the words of His law, promises, or threats, doth not infuse. Death, which hateth and destroyeth man, is believed; God, which hath made him and loves him, is always deferred. ... It is Death alone that can suddenly make man to know himself. He tells the proud and insolent that they are but abjects, and humbles them at the instant, makes them cry, complain, and repent, yea, even to hate their forepast happiness. He takes the account of the rich, and proves him a beggar, a naked beggar, which hath interest in nothing but the gravel that fills his mouth. He holds a glass before the eyes of the most beautiful, and makes them see therein their deformity and rottenness, and they acknowledge it.' 23 354 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. This was his great literary work; but his miscellaneous writJ ings are so various that they have been classed under the heads of poetical, epistolary, military, maritime, geographical, political philosophical, and historical. It was one of his intentions to write an English epic; but his busy life allowed him leisure only for some scattered and fragmentary efforts. These, however, are affluent of grace and tenderness, depth of sentiment and strength of imagination. Thus: 'Passions are likened best to floods and streams; The sliallow murmur, but the deep are dumb; So, when ailections yield discourse, it seems The bottom is but shallow whence they come. They that are rich in words, in words discover That they are poor in that which makes a lover.' Or his reply to Marlowe's Passionate Shepherd: 'If all the world and love were young. And truth in every shepherd's tongue, These pretty pleasures might me move To live with thee and be thy love. But time drives ilocks from field to fold, When rivers rage and rocks grow cold; And Philomel becometh dumb; The rest complains of cares to come. The flowers do fade, and wanton fields To wayward winter reckoning yields: A honey tongue, a heart of gall. Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall. Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy bed of roses, Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies, Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten, — In folly ripe, in reason rotten. Thy belt of straw and ivy buds. Thy coral clasps and amber studs, — All those in me no means can move To come to thee and be thy love. But could youth last, and love still breed; Had joys no date, nor age no need; Then those delights my mind might move To live with thee and be thy love.' Or the justness of moral perception in the couplet, profoundly true: 'Of death and judgment, heaven and hell. Who oft doth think, must needs die well.' And the noble pathos of the SouFs Errand: ' Go, Soul, the body's guest. Go, since I needs must die. Upon a thankless errand: And give the world the lie. . Pear not to touch the best; Tell zeal it wants devotion; The truth shall be thy warrant: Tell love it is but lust; RALEIGH. 355 Tell time It is but motion; Tell fortune of her blindness; Tell flesh it is but dust; . . . Tell nature of decay; Tell age it daily wasteth; Tell friendship of unkindness; Tell honour how it alters; Tell justice of delay: Tell beauty how she blasteth; And if they will reply, Tell favour how it falters. . . . Then give them all the lie.' Style. — Easy, vigorous, elevated, as a whole; seldom low, never affected; often ornate, with an antique richness of imagery; showing, when most careful, the artificial structure of Sidney and Hooker. In poetry, simple, sweet, melodious and strong. Spenser called him 'the summer's nightingale.' Kank. — In that brilliant constellation of the great which adorned his period, one of the most distinguished of those who added eminence in letters to eminence in action. Conspicuous in an era prodigal of genius, as a soldier, a statesman, a navigator, and a writer, a valorous knight, and the most splendid of adven- turers. An orator whom the Queen, we are told, 'took for a kind of oracle.' An experimentalist in natural phenomena, seek- ing the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life. In political economy, he anticipated the modern doctrine of Free Trade; in metaphysics, Stewart's fundamental laws of human belief. He is the pioneer in the department of dignified historical writing, and, could he have tamed the wild fire of his erratic dreams, would have won a foremost place among the famous poets of his day. Character. — A genius versatile as ambitious. What strikes us most forcibly is his restless and capacious intellect, — his various efficiency, and his prompt aptitude for whatever absorbed him at the moment; his superabundant physical and mental vitality, which displays itself equally in literature and in action. Haughty in prosperity, base in humiliation. With vision of the moral heights, he could creep in crooked politics, or intrigue in dark labyrinths, and was an adept in the arts of bribery and of flattery. It was thus, when a prisoner for his love-treason, that he gallantly raved of the Queen, aged sixty: 'I was wont to behold her riding like Alexander, hunting like Diana, walking like Venus; the gentle wind blowing her fair hair about her pure cheeks like a nymph; sometime sitting in the shade like a goddess, sometime singing like an angel.' His principal defect, even when his ends were patriotic and noble, was unscrupulousness as to the means. But we will re- 356 FIKST CKEATIVE PEKIOD — EEPEESENTATIVE AUTHOES. member that, with boundless desires, he was thrown from the first upon his own resources. He was in a sense to be the archi- tect of his own destinies, and was in a measure to be the creature of circumstances. It was his fate to make headway through subtle and plotting factions. , A courtier holding 'the glass of fashion,' a daring child of fortune, he was also a recluse thinker, equally renowned for his contemplative and his active powers. It was in misfortune, after all, that his noble self was asserted, — never more grandly than when, the night before he was beheaded, he wrote: 'Even such is time, that takes in trust Our youth, our joys, our all we have. And pays us but with earth and dust; Who, in the dark and silent grave, When we have wandered all our ways, Shuts up the story of our days; But from this earth, this grave, this dust, My God shall raise me up, I trust!' His wits were, on all occasions, equal to his reputation. 'Traitor, monster, viper, spider of hell!' cried the Attorney-General, 'I want words to express thy viperous treasons.' — 'True,' said Raleigh quietly, 'for you have spoken the same thing half a dozen times over already.' Dauntless in life, reflection had taught him how to die. On the scaffold, after vindicating his conduct in a manly speech to the spectators, he desired to see the axe. When the headsman hesitated, he said: 'I pray thee, let me see it; dost thou think that I am afraid of it?' — As he ran his fingers over its keen edge, he smilingly remarked: 'This is a sharp medicine, but it will cure all diseases.' When he had extended himself for the stroke, he was requested to turn his head. 'So the heart be right,' he replied, 'it is no matter which way the head lieth.' When he had forgiven the executioner and had prayed, the signal was made, which not being followed im- mediately by the stroke, he said: 'Why dost thou not strike? Strike, man ! ' Influence. — He contributed to that passion for adventure and discovery which gaye at this period an unusual impetus to the mind of man. His exploring captains discovered a virgin soil — Virginia. His attempts at colonization were indeed fruit- less in their ostensible aim, but were instrumental to others more successful and permanent; just as this man plays with the light- RALEIGH. 357 ning and brings nothing to psiss, while his son after him flashes intelligence through the air. Through the gratitude of later times, less for what he did than for what he strove to do, Raleigh — the capital of North Carolina — preserves his romantic name. He formed the famous Mermaid Club — oldest of its kind — where Shakespeare brought to the feast of wit the brightness of his fancy, and Jonson his sarcastic humor. He projected an office of universal agency, and thus forecast that useful information which we now recognize by the term of advertisement. He joyed to pay the homage of his protection to Spenser, and the severe Milton carefully collected his maxims and his counsels. And so this restless spirit, who seemed, in his ceaseless occupa- tions, to have lived only for his own age and his own pleasure, was the true servant of posterity, who hail him as also one of the founders of literature. Had his life been devoted to letters in- stead of a variety of pursuits, his success would have been brill- iant and lasting; his writings, no longer now a living force, would have been a perennial power. A universal genius is not likely to reach eminent and enduring excellence in anything. The beams of a thousand suns will not fire the softest piece of timber when radiating freely. Unity of effort — a gathering of the soul's energies — a limitation of the field of exertion — is essential to glorious achievement. This shifting, various career suggests a second truth for the education of character, — that inattention to the outer world promotes attention to the inner; that the circum- stance which sunders the mind from external things, impels it inward, from the life of sensation to the life of reflection. It was through the Traitor's Gate that our hero passed to a tranquillity and thoughtfulness impossible outside. Within the sombre walls of the Tower shone the celestial light. "When the body is im- prisoned, the soul may be most free. 'Then like a bird, it sits and sings, Then whets and claps its silver wings, And till prepared for longer flight, Waves in its plumes the various light.' 358 FIEST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. SPENSER. Who, like a copious river, pour'd his song O'er all the mazes of enchanted ground. — Tliomson. We must not fear to assert, with the best judges of this and former ages, that Spen- ser is still the third name in the poetical literature of our country, and that he has uot been surpassed, except by Dante, in any other.— Hallam. Biography. — Born in London in 1552; his parents poor but of ancient fame; educated at Cambridge, where he imbued himself with the noblest philosophies; quit the university to live as a tutor in the North, where in obscure poverty he passed through a deep and unfortunate passion; driven again southward by the scorn of the fair 'Rosalind'; wanted to dream, and sought, with ceaseless importunity, the patronage of wealth, that he might live in the free indulgence of his tastes; was sent as an envoy to France; was a guest of the chivalrous Sidney, in the castle where the Arcadia was produced; gained the favor of the Queen, but obtained only inferior employment; went to Ireland as a private secretary; there remained, with appointments more honorable than lucrative, on a grant of forfeited estate, in a lonely castle, from which the view embraced a beautiful lake, an amphitheatre of mountains, and three thousand acres of barren solitude; received a visit from Raleigh, who — "Gan to cast great liking to my lore, And great disliking to mij luckless lot, That banished had myself, like wight forlorn. Into that waste where I was quite forgot \' was created poet laureate, and decreed a pension of fifty pounds; visited England at intervals to publish poems, or to find a situa- tion in his native home, still the persistent court-suitor moving round the interminable circle of 'hope deferred': tells us how on a summer's day, — 'I, whose sullen care. Through discontent of my long fruitless stay _ In princes' court, and expectation vain Of idle hopes which still do fly away, Like empty shadows, did afflict my brain. Walked forth, to ease my pain. Along the shore of silver- streaming Thames'; banished, as he said, to his undesired and savage locality as often as he sued to leave it, whence a rebellion expelled him, after his SPENSER. 359 house and youngest child had been burned by the insurgents; died three months later, in 1599, in obscure lodgings, of misery and a broken heart; buried, close by Chaucer, in Westminster Abbey. Poets held his pall, and cast their elegies into his grave. Appearance. — Face long and somewhat spare, beard closely shaven, moustache full and arching, nose of the Grecian type, forehead well-formed, hair short and curling, eyebrows heavy, eyelids drooping, eyes thoughtful and dreamy, lips full enough to denote feeling, firm enough to prevent its riotous overflow. To the commonplace gossips, he was only ' a little man who wore short hair, little bands, and little cuffs.' "Writings. — As on an inexhaustible, many- winding stream, whose end is never reached, Spenser floated, many a summer's day, adown the gently-flowing vision of the Fairy Queen. To please the Court, the scene is laid in contemporary England, and includes all the leading personages of the day under the veil of knights and their squires and lady-loves: ». 'Of Faery Land yet if he more inquire, By certain signs, here set in sundry places. He may it find; . . . And thou, O fairest princess under sky. In this fair mirror mayst behold thy face And thine own realms in land of Faery.' To please posterity, to suit this wider and higher application of his plan, the characters double their parts, and appear as the impersonations of moral attributes. He says: 'I have undertaken to represent all the moral virtues, assigning to every virtue a knight to he the patron and defender of the same ; in whose actions and feats of arms the operations of that virtue whereof he is the protector are to be expressed, and the vices and unruly appetites that oppose themselves against the same, to be beaten down and overcome.' To each of the twelve virtues, each embodied in a representative patron, was to be devoted a book of twelve cantos; this, if well received, to be followed by the exposition of twelve others, the guardians of public faith. In the dedication to Raleigh, he tells us that 'the general end of the book is to fashion a gentleman ... in virtuous and gentle discipline.' And in the person of the Fairy herself, he informs us: 'I mean glory in my general intention, but in my particular, I conceive the most excellent and 360 PIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. glorious person of our sovereign, the queen.'' In the legendary Arthur, the sun of the whole knightly company, man was to be seen perfected, in his longing and progress toward the Fairy Queen, the divine excellence which is the true end of human effort. Thus the poem may be characterized, in its intent, as a dream of idealism, a poem of the human soul struggling towards the perfect love, which is God, and towards the perfect beauty, which consists not in harmony of color and form, but in the deathless idea which shines through them. Its true scene is not material but mental space, the world of picture and illusion, in which the actual is idealized and the ideal is real. In this enchanted region two worlds are harmonized — the beauty of energy and the beauty of happiness. Christian chivalry and pagan Olympus, mediaeval romance and classical mythology; the second imaginary, the first shadowy, both poetic; each^ in some sort, a mutilated copy or suggestion of invisible forces and ideas — the heaven of Plato. At this elevation, fancy loses itself, invention overflows, apparitions abound, phrases are expanded into periods, obrjects are traced with lingering, infinite detail. A wounded giant falls — 'As an aged tree, High growing on the top of rocky clift, Whose heart-strings with keen steel nigh hewen be. The mighty trunk half rent with ragged rift. Doth roll adown the rocks, and fall with fearful drift. J Or as a castle, reared high and round, ' By subtile engines and malicious slight I Is undermined from the lowest ground, And her foundation forced, and feebled quite. At last down falls; and, with her heaped height, Her hasty ruin does more heavy make. And yields itself unto the victor's might.' All this, because the dream is pleasant, and the dreamer loves to see the living and changing figures rise and display themselves incessantly. Now consider the vastness of the design, which, when completed, was to comprise not less than a hundred thou- sand verses. What result? Only six books completed, — alle- gories of Holiness, Temperance, Chastity, Friendship, Justice, and Courtesy, which, however, form one of the longest poems in existence; no movement of the whole; like a train whose large- orbed wheels spin pleasantly without progress; fancy strays, the thread is lost in an ecstasy of adornment; features blend, posi- tions and exploits reappear, imagery fails, and the first book sur- SPENSER. 361 passes all the others in consistency and splendor; in fact, six separate poems, in which the action diverges, then converges, becomes confused, then starts again; each combining the imagin- ings of antiquity and the maddle age, fair, terrible, and fantastic; a series of airy shapes that waver and are gone; a phantasmago- ria, one part allegory and nine parts beauty; while in, under, and over all is a sublime spirituality, the heaven without rent or seam, where no ache or sorrow of spirit can enter, the extreme verge where the realm of mind and the realm of sense unite, — the everlasting Ought and Possible of human life. The reader will perceive the impossibility of giving the plot in full, if plot it may be called, — 'That shape has none, Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb.' The true use of these magical pages is as of a noble gallery of art, which, without stopping long enough to cloy his perceptions, one visits to forget himself, for solace and delight, to wonder, to admire, to dream, to be happy, and by that experience, to refine and sweeten his tastes, — 'Lifting himself out of the lowly dust On golden plumes up to the purest sky.' Was never invention more prodigal and brilliant, — on earth a pil- grim, its home on the celestial mountains. Here, in a description of the House of Morpheus, is a suggestion of its endless grace, dreaming pleasure, and picturesque play: "■A little loivly hermitage it was , Bown in a dale, hard by a foresVs side. Far from resort of peojjle that did pass In travel to and fro: a little wide There was a holy chapel edified, ■• Wherein the hermit duly wont to say His holy things each morn and eventide; ; Thereby a crystal stream did gently play Which from a sacred fountain welled forth alway. I Arrived there the little house they fill, , Nor look for entertainment where none was. Rest is their feast, and all things at their will. The noblest mind the best contentment has. With fair discourse the evening so they pass. For that old man of pleasing words had store. And well could file his tongue as smooth as glass: He told of saints and hopes, and evermore He streiu'd an Ave Mary, after and before. And drooping night thus creepeth on them fast; ; And the sad humour, loading their eye-lids, 362 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. As messenger of Morpheus, on them cast Sweet slumbering dew; the which to sleep them bids; Unto their lodgings then his guests he rids; Where, when all drown'd in deadly sleep he finds, He to his study goes, and there araids' His magic boolvs and arts of sundry kinds. He seeks out mighty charms to trouble sleepy minds. . . . And forth he calFd out of deep darkness dread Legions of sprites, the which, like little flies. Fluttering about his ever damned head. Await whereto their service he applies, To aid his friends, or fray his enemies; Of those he chose out two, the falsest two And fittest for to forge true seeming lies; The one of them he gave a message to, The other by himself staid other work to do. He maketh speedy way through spersed air. And through the world of waters wide and deep, To Morpheus' house doth hastily repair. Amid the bowels of the earth full steep. And low, where dawning day doth never peep. His dwelling is; there Tethys his wet bed Both ever wash, and Cynthia still doth steep In silver dew his ever-drooping head. While sad night over him her mantle black doth spread. Whose double gates he flndeth locked fast; The one fair fram'd of burnished ivory. The other all with silver overcast; And wakeful dogs before them far do lie. Watching to banish Care their enemy. Who oft is wont to trouble gentle Sleep; By them the sprite doth pass in quietly And imto Morpheus comes, whom drowned deep In drowsy fit he finds; of nothing he takes keep. A?id more to lull him in his slumber soft, A trickling stream, from high rock tumbling down. And ever drizzling rain upon the loft, Mix'd with a murmuring wind, much like the soun Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swoun : No other noise, nor pieople's troublous cries. As still are wont to annoy the icalled town. Might there be heard; but careless Quiet lies. Wrapt in eternal silence, far from ene?nies.' In the paradise of devices, you are unconscious of the sentiment, and when reminded of it, prefer to forget it. You may be told that Archimago, a hypocritical magician (Hypocrisy) lures, be- cause he cannot be detected, Una (Truth) and the Red-cross Knight (Holiness) into his abode; that, while they are asleep, he sends to Morpheus (the god Sleep) for a false dream to pro- duce discord between them; but you are disenchanted, and choose rather the condition of reverie, the gentle sway of the SPENSEK. 363 measure that floats you lullingly from scene to scene. The de- Hght of the eyes is, for once, finer than the instruction of the understanding. The images, in their ideal life, are more potent as poeti-y, living beings and actions, than as symbols investing a theology. With this ever-flowing fertility of inspiration, there is no per- plexity, no haze. Every object is defined, complete, separate. If it moves a thousand leagues from the actual, so do we, and are not the less interested, because it is not flesh and blood. It is something better, something beyond the importunate trifles which we gravely call realities, something of that to-morrow, always coming and never come, where thought and fancy are free. We take pleasure in its brilliancy or its bravery, without regard to whether it be substantial. We are upborne by associ- ation, and grow credulous and happy by contagion. When Sir Guyon is led by the tempter Mammon in the subterranean realm, through caverns, unknown abysses, across wonderful gardens, by glittering palaces, trees laden with golden fruits, we follow, see behind us the ugly Fiend, with monstrous gait, ready to devour us on the least show of covetousness, and enter the infernal edi- fice, where hideous figures are outlined in the darksome depths,, and the shining metal lights up the shadowy horror: 'That house's form within was rude and strong, Like a huge cave hewn out of rocky clift, From lohose rough vault the ragged branches hung, Enibost with massy gold of glorious gift. And with rich metal loaded every rift. That heavy ruin they did seem to threat; And over them Arachne high did lift Her cunning web, and spread her subtle net. Enwrapped in foul smoke, and clouds more black than jet. Both roof and floor, and walls were cAl of gold. But overgroivn with dust and old decay And hid in darkness, that none could behold T'hue thereof; for view of cheerful day. Did never in that house itself display. But a faint shadoiv of uncertain light; Such as a lamp, ivhose life does fade away; Or as the moon, clothed with cloudy night. Does show to him that walks in fear and sad affright. In all that room was nothing to be seen. But huge great iron chests and coffers strong, All barr'd with double bands, that none could ween Them to enforce by violence or wrong: On every side they placed were along; 364 PIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. But all the ground with skulls was scattered, And dead men's bones, which round about were flung, "Whose lives (it seemed) whilome there -were shed. And their vile carcasses now left unburied.' The train of scenery never ends. Guyon (Temperance) after the ! test of gold, is tried by that of pleasure. Side by side with the' gloomy vaults and the swarming fiends are the happy gardens: 'And in the midst of all a fountain stood Of richest substance that on earth might be, So pure and shiny that the crystal flood Through every channel running one might see; Most goodly it with curious imagery Was overwrought, and shapes of naked boys, Of which some seemed with lively jollity To fly about, playing their wanton toys. Whilst others did themselves embay in liquid joya. And over all, of purest gold was spread A trail of ivy in his native hue; For the rich metal was so colored That he who did not well avised it view Would surely deem it to be ivy true ; Low his lascivious arms adown did creep That themselves dipping in the silver dew Their fleecy flowers they tenderly did steep, Which drops of crystal seemed for wantonness to weep. Infinite streams continually did well Out of this fountain, sweet and fair to see. The which into an ample laver fell. And shortly grew to so great quantity That like a little lake it seemed to be Whose depth exceeded not three cubits' height. That through the waves one might the bottom see All paved beneath with jasper shining bright. That seemed the fountain in that sea did sail upright. . . Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound, Of all that mote delight a dainty ear. Such as at once might not on living ground. Save in this paradise, be heard elsewhere: Eight hard it was for wight which did it hear To read what manner music that mote be ; For all that pleasing is to living ear Was there consorted in one harmony: Birds, voices, instruments, winds, waters, all agree. The joyous birds, shrouded in cheerful shade. Their notes unto the voice attempered sweet; The angelical, soft, trembling voices made To the instruments divine respondence mete; The silver-sounding instruments did meet With the base murmur of the water's fall; The water's fall with difference discreet, Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call ; The gentle, warbling wind low answered to all.' SPENSEE. 365 Never was poetry more luxuriant and pictorial. Never was more of that subtler spirit of the art, which painting can not express — thoughts beyond the visible proof of the canvas. This man was a colorist and an architect, equally of the graceful and the terrible. Had he not been himself, he would have been a Rubens or a Raphael. Pride, in the throne chamber of her palace, built over human carcasses, is thus described: 'So proud she shone in her princely state, Looliing to heaven, for earth she did disdain, And sitting high, for lowly she did hate: Lo! underneath her scornful feet was lain A dreadful Dragon with an hideous train; And in her hand she held a mirror bright. Wherein her face she often viewed fain.' Her chariot is driven by Satan, with a team of beasts ridden by the Mortal Sins, one of whom is Gluttony: 'His belly was upblown with luxury, And eke with fatness swollen were his eyne. And like a crane his neck was long and fine, Wherewith he swallowed up excessive feast. For want whereof poor people oft did pine.' And another Envy, than which nothing could be finei;: 'Malicious Envy rode Upon a ravenous wolf, and still did chaw Between his cankred teeth a venomous toad, That all the poison ran about his jaw. All in a kirtle of discolored say He clothed was ypainted full of eyes. And in his bosom secretly there lay An hateful snake, the which his tail upties In many folds, and mortal sting implies.' Who has ever approached the horror and the truth of the follow- ing description of the Captain of the Lusts? Note the various images which set forth the wasting away of body and soul, the coldness of the heart, consumed by unholy fire, the kindling of dire impatience, and the implanting of thorny ineradicable griefs: 'As pale and wan as ashes was his look; His body lean and meagre as a rake; And skin all withered like a dried rook; Thereto as cold and dreary as a snake; That seemed to tremble evermore, and quake: All in a canvas thin he was bedight. And girded with a belt of twisted brake: Upon his head he wore an helmet light Made of a dead man's skull.' 366 FIEST CEEATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. He is mounted upon a tiger, and in his hand is a drawn bow: 'And many arrows under his right side, Headed with flint, and feathers bloody-dyed.' Beyond the wondrous fairy tale, far within it, often escaping the dazzled eye, is an inner life, steadily beaming there. Everything is referred to it, and, though still apprehensible, — 'Suffers a sea-change Into something rich and strange.' He is divine who instinctively, in Bacon's phrase, subordinates *the shows of things to the desires of the mind.' Here as in Plato, a sense of the presence of the Deity, as the vital principle in all things, great or small, runs in a solemn undercurrent be- neath the stream of visions. If a nymph is beautiful, it is because she has been touched with this heavenly light, with these angels' tints: ' Her face so fair, as flesh it seemed not. But heavenly portrait of bright angels' hue, Clear as the sky, withouten blame or blot. Through goodly mixture of complexion's dew^ And in her cheeks the vermeil red did show Like roses in a bed of lilies shed. The which ambrosial odors from them throw. And gazers' sense with double pleasure fed. Able to heal the sick and to revive the dead. In her fair eyes two living lamps did flame. Kindled above at th' Heavenly Maker's light. And darted flrie beams out of the same. So passing persant, and so wondrous bright. That quite bereav'd the rash beholder's sight: In them the blinded god his lustful lire To kindle oft assayed, but had no might; For with dread majesty and awful ire, She broke his wanton darts, and quenched base desire. Her ivory forehead, full of bounty brave. Like a broad table did itself dispread. For Love his lofty triumphs to engrave. And write the battles of his great godhead: All good and honour might therein be read; For there their dwelling was. And, when she spake. Sweet words, like dropping honey, she did shed; And 'twixt the pearls and rubies softly brake A silver sound, that heavenly music seemed to make.' As Dante was drawn up from heaven to heaven by the eyes of Beatrice, through which he could look into the far Infinite, so was Spenser lifted away from the earthly by those of that ^ J SPEIS"SER. 367 unique, imperishable Beauty which, above all created^ forms, a noble woman reveals. In holy rapture of Una, he exclaims, — Again: 'O happy earth, Whereon thy innocent feet do ever tread.' 'As bright as doth the morning star appear Out of the East, with flaming locks bedight, To tell that dawning day is drawing near, And to the world does bring long- wished light: So fair and fresh that Lady showM herself in sight' In wilderness and wasteful desert, she seeks her knight, who has been beguiled from her by the subtle art of the enchanter: 'One day nigh weary of the irksome way. From her unhasty beast she did alight, And on the grass her dainty limbs did lay . In secret shadow far from all men's sight: Prom her fair head her fillet she undight And laid her stole aside: her angeVs face As the great eye of heaven shined bright. And made a sunshine in the shady place ; Did never mortal eye behold such heavenly grace. It fortuned out of the thickest wood A ramping lion rushed suddenly, Hunting full greedy after savage blood: Soon as the royal virgin he did spy. With gaping mouth at her ran greedily. To have at once devour'd her tender corse; But to the prey when as he drew more nigh, His bloody rage assuaged with remorse. And with the sight amaz'd, forgot his furious force. Instead thereof he kiss'd her weary feet, And lick'd her lily hand with fawning tongue; As he her wronged innocence did meet. O how can beauty master the most strong. And simple truth subdue avenging wrong!' The loftiest, deepest, most angelic element in this genius is reverence for woman — which is only a worship of the supernal charm and attraction rendered visible in her. All the wealth of his respect and tenderness is poured out at the feet of his heroines. In his adoration, he lifts them up to heights where no mortal fleck is visible. In this exalted mood he sings of his bride, in the Epithalamion, his marriage-song: 'Behold, whiles she before the altar stands, Hearing the holy priest that to her speaks, And blesseth her with his two happy hands, How the red roses flush up in her cheeks. And the pure snow with goodly vermeil stain Like crimson dyed in grain: 368 FIEST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. That even the angels, which continually About the sacred altar do remain, Forget their service and about her fly, Oft peeping in her face, that seems more fair The more they on it stare. But her sad eyes, still fastened on the ground, Are governed with goodly modesty, That suffers not one look to glance awry. Which may let in a little thought unsound. Why blush ye, Love, to give to me your hand, The pledge of all our band? Sing, ye sweet angels, Allelujah sing, That all the woods may answer, and your echoes ring!' Spenser made many miscellaneous attempts in sonnets, pastorals^ elegies, and hymns, all fairy-like or mystic, all stamped with th& ruling idea, and all striving to express it, — moral sublimity and sensuous seduction. Versification. — Spenser came to the Fairy Queen with his head full of Ariosto and the romantic poets of Italy. His exqui- site ear had felt the melody of their heroic metre — the ottava rima, to which he added a grace of his own, the Alexandrine. The order of rhymes, it will be observed, is: 1, 3; 2, 4, 5, 7; 6, 8, 9. This gave to his stanza a fuller cadence, 'the long, majestic inarch,' well suited to the sober sublimity of his genius. Style. — Luxuriant and spacious, yet simple and clear; seldom rivalled in the charm of its diffusion, the orient flush of its diction, and the music of its recurrent chimes. Many passages, it may be needless to observe, are beautifully harmonious, combining a subtle perfection of phrase with a happy coalescence of meaning and melody. The last, indeed, is often an essential part of the sentiment; and, with 'many a bout of linked sweetness long drawn out,' lures the thought along its pleasant paths. The modulation is made spirited and energetic by the variety of pauses. There is no slumberous monotony in -these lines: "■But he my lion, and my noble lord. How does he find in cruel heart to hate Her that him lov'd, and ever most ador'd As the God of my life? Why hath he me abhorr'd?' Nor any languor in this: 'Come hither, come hither, oh, come hastily!' Spenser's language, of one substance with the splendor of his fancy, would seem to have been chosen rather for its richness J SPENSER. 369 tone than for its intensity of meaning. Like all masters of speech, he is fond of toying with it a little. Sometimes his alliteration is tempted to excess; as, — 'Eftsoones her shallow ship away did slide, More swift than swallow shears the liquid sky.' Generally, however, the initial assonances are scattered at adroit intervals, rarely obtrusive, but responsive to the idea. For in- stance : 'In woods, in waves, in wars, she wonts to dwell; And will be found with peril and with pain.' Or,- Or,- 'A world of waters. Horrible, hideous, roaring with hoarse cry.' 'All the day, before the sunny rays. He used to slug or sleep, in slothful shade.' Rank. — There had been much poetry, and not a little poet- ical power, since Chaucer; but the Fairy Queen was the first production that might challenge comparison with the Canter- bury Tales. It was received with a burst of general welcome. The 'new poet' became almost the recognized title of its author. It portrayed, indeed, the wonder and mystery of the new life, the incongruous life of the Renaissance, moulding into harmoni- ous form its warring ideals and contrasted impulses. All the past, with its imagery, its illusion, its glory, — and the present, with its rough romantic beauties and gorgeous pageantry, — de- scended upon the Fairy of Spenser, and, in the mellow light of his imagination, lost the passion of conflict, the grossness of lust, and the tarnish of physical contact. His invention was extraordinary, and its mode unique. Shape after shape, scene after scene, monstrous and anomalous, or im- possible and beautiful, rose from the unfathomable depths, to embody some shade of emotion or an idea; while, in the midst of the rising and commingling visions, he was unperturbed and serene, never hurrying, rarely if ever passionate. Next to Dante among the Italians, next to Virgil among the ancients, Milton surpasses him in the severity of his greatness, Shake- speare in the sweep and condensation of his power. Daring elevations, when they occur, indicate the strength of his genius rather than the habit of his mind. He lacked executive effi- ciency, — the coordinating, centralizing quality of the highest 34 370 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. order of imagination. But grandeur, intensity, and reflection aside, he is the most purely poetical of our writers. In the union of musical expression, fanciful conception of thought, and the exquisite sense of beauty, he excels them all. Eminent in wis- dom, like every other greatest poet, he is also the finest dreamer that ever lived, and, as such, is the inheritance of all future gen- erations. He repels none but the anti-poetical. His 'better parts' w^ill ever interest the lovers of the beautiful, unchange- able amid the changes of taste, as long as riches are sought in the regions of the unknown. Character. — Magnificently imaginative. Captivated with beauty; above all, with beauty of soul, which is the source of all outward charms, — 'For of the soul the body form doth take; For soul is form, and doth the body make." The true glory of all material things is in the immortal idea which irradiates them; and they are lovable only as they are rendered thus nobly luminous: 'For that same goodly hue of white and red, With which the cheeks are sprinkled, shall decay; And those sweet rosy leaves, so fairly spread Upon the lips, shall fade and fall away To that they were, even to corrupted clay: That golden wire, those sparkling eyes so bright. Shall turn to dust and lose their goodly light. But that fair lamp, from whose celestial ray That light proceeds, which kindleth lover's flre. Shall never be extinguished nor decay; But, when the vital spirits do expire. Upon her native planet shall retire; For it is heavenly born, and cannot die. Being a parcel of the purest sky.' The seen is but the semblance; the unseen is the reality, ever fairer as you, ascend the graduated scale. Ineffably fair is the spirit's dim but still enraptured vision of the absolute Beauty — God, who, in the objects of sense, — 'Daily doth display And shew Himself in th' image of His grace. As in a looking-glass through which He may Be seen of all His creatures vile and base. That are unable else to see His face.' — ^ This is eminently Platonic. The bent of his mind was ever thus toward a supermundane sphere, in whose untrammelled ether it SPENSER. 371 might expatiate freely, joyously. To this sublime summit he carried everything, and thus subtleized everything at a touch. Where most men see only the perishable form and color of the thing, he saw the joy of it, the soul of eternal youth that is in it. Yet, with a purity like that of driven snow, he had no lack of warmth. He is, of all our poets, the most truly sensuous; but so chaste and ardent, that when he painted sentiment and passion, or material loveliness, he could not but make them 'of glorious feature.' Such a one does not wait to get into the next stage of exist- ence to begin to enter it. He sees that the Infinite Life is the world of essence; that it is the meaning which glows through all matter; that out of it flows all g'oodness, all truth, all enduring happiness on this side of the grave: 'And is there care in Heaven? and is there love In heavenly spirits to these creatures base, That may compassion of their evils move? There is: else much more wretched were the case Of men than beasts: but O, the exceeding grace Of highest God, that loves His creatures so. And all His works with mercy doth embrace, That blessed angels He sends to and fro. To serve to wicked man, to serve His wcked foe I How oft do they their silver bowers leave. To come to succor us that succor want! How oft do they with golden pinions cleave The fleeting skies like flying pursuivant. Against foul fiends to aid us militant! They for us fight, they watch and duly ward, And their bright squadrons round about us plant; And all for love and nothing for reward; O, why should heavenly God to men have such regard?' Thus it is that, while he himself was outwardly vexed with dis- content, fretted with neglect, his poetry breathes the very soul of contentment and cheer. It is not the gladness of mirth, but the deep satisfaction of the seer; for to such as have gained the point of changeless being, beyond the changing and phenome- nal, — 'Their joy, their comfort, their desire, their gain. Is fixed all on that which now they see; All other sights but fained shadows be.' Sensitive, tender, grateful, devout, learned, wise, and introspect- ive, with 'the vision and the faculty divine,' his own words are applicable to him: 372 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 'The noble heart that harbors virtuous thought And is with child of glorious-great intent, Can never rest until it forth have brought The eternal brood of glory excellent.' Influence. — He threw into English verse the soul of har- mony, and made it more expansive, more richly descriptive, than it ever was before. More than any other, by his ideal method of treatment, and the splendor of his fancy, he contributed to the transformation of style and language. One so largely and so ardently admired, must have had many imitators. Browne and the two Fletchers were his professed disciples. Cowley said that he became ' irrevocably a poet ' by reading him when a boy. Gray was accustomed to open him when he would frame — 'Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.' Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and Keats show traces of him. Thomson wrote the most delightful of his own poems in his stanza. Dryden claimed him for a master. Milton called him ' our sage and serious poet, whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scottis or Aquinas.'' How so? Because he revealed, in lowly aspect, the ideal point of view; gave to souls a consciousness of their wings; sowed in them the seeds of a noble discontent with prosaic views of life; fastened the atten- tion upon necessary uncreated natures — Ideas, into whose divine atmosphere no man can be lifted, without becoming, in some degree, himself divine. This is the inestimable value of such a character, — that he forms a standing protest against the tyranny of commonplace, against the limitary tone of English thought, enslaved to the five mechanic powers. He and his culture are needed to withstand the encroachments of artificial manners, to counteract the materializing tendencies of physical science, to sway and purify the energies that are too much confined to gain and pleasure and show. The end of a moral being is, not food or raiment or estate, but soul-expansion; and the parent of all noblest improvement is love — the outflow of desire toward the true, beautiful, and good, which exists in thought, action, or per- son, not our own. Whoever acts admirably upon the imagina- tion, administers to this effect. Whoever gives the world a pic- torial air, contributes to our emancipation. Whoever makes us more intensely and comprehensively imaginative, exalts us into the possession of incorruptible goods. In vain will philosophy THE THOUSAND-SOULED. 373^ and fashion and utilitarianism oppose such a one. They fare as servants; he is sought after, and entertained as an angel. The ages esteem visions more than bread. Centuries hence, men will be touched — the more powerfully, the more they are advanced — by this artist and his art. His is the ceaseless fertility of the great Mother, the universal Love which was the prayer of his life, of which all loves are but the frail and fleeting blossoms: 'So all the world by thee at first was made, And dayly yet thou doest the same repayre ; Ne ought on earth that merry is and glad, Ke ought on earth that lovely is and fayre. But thou the same for pleasure didst prepayre : Thou art the root of all that joyous is: Great God of men and women, queene of th' ayre. Mother of laughter, and welspring of blisse, O graunt that of my love at last I may not misse I ' SHAKESPEARE. Mellifluous Shakespeare. — Heywood. The thousand- souled.— Co?«ridg'e. His thoughts, passions, feelings, strains of fancy, all are of this day as they were of his own ; and his genius may be contemporary with the mind of every generation for a thousand years to come. — Prof. Wilson. Biograpliy. — Born in Stratford, in 1564; removed from school at an early age by the reverses of his father, once a prosperous tradesman and official, now on the verge of ruin; applied himself, in a desultory manner, to business; to keep up the reputation of his little town, took part in scrapes and frolics; at eighteen, mar- ried a farmer's daughter, Anne Hathaway, aged twenty-six, to whom he was to bequeath only his 'second, best bed with furni- ture'; quit home for London, fell into theatrical society, and became an actor and a playwright, serving an apprenticeship in the revision of dramas ; six years later, was applauded by the gifted and the noble; added to the trades of player and author those of manager and director of a theatre; acquired shares in the Blackfriars and the Globe; invested in land, farmed tithes, bought the finest house in Stratford, where his wife and three children continued to live; finally retired to his native village, 374 FIEST CREATIVE PEEIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 1 like a country gentleman and a landlord with a good rent-roll- wrote for the stage, took an active interest in the public welfare made an occasional visit to the metropolis, lent money, managed his fortune, lived like a cheerful shop-keeper, and, without the care or the time to collect and publish his works, died on the anniversary of his birth-day, April 23, 1616. Meanwhile, he had projected himself into all the varieties of human character ; had mingled with men of vigorous limbs strong appetites, impetuous passions, and keen intellect ; had felt the fascinations of the stormy and irregular Marlowe; in the company of fashionable young nobles, had fed his senses on examples of Italian pleasures and elegances; had tasted misery, felt the thorn of care and discredit; had seen himself under- valued, named, along with Burbage and Greene, as one of 'His Majesty's poor players ' ; had said in the bitterness of humilia- tion: 'Alas, 'tis true I have gone here and there, And made myself a motley to the view, Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear.' And again: 'When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state. And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possessed. Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising. Happily I think on thee,— and then my state (Like to the lark at break of day arising , From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate; For thy sweet love remembred, such wealth brings, That then I scorn to change my state with kings.' One of his daughters married a physician, the other a wine mer-" chant. The second could not write her name. His only son, Hamnet, died when eleven years of age. So few are the recorded incidents in the outward career of the best head in the universe. Like Plato, he drew up the ladder after him; and the new age has sought in vain for a history of his house-and- street life. His biography, like Plato's, is internal; and the psychologist sheds the light of which the antiquary despairs, which it most imports us to have. i SHAKESPEARE. 375 Writings. — The poems of Shakespeare are Venus and Ado- nis, Zucrece, The Passionate Pilgrim, and Sonnets. His plays, to several of which his title is disputed, are in number thirty- seven, and, according to the sources ) from which the dramatist drew his materials, may be grouped < IS, — 1. historical. DRAMAS. sources. Henry VI, Part I, Tragedy, Denied; attributed to Marlowe. Henry VI, Part 11, " Older play. Henry VI, Part III, " Older play. ElCHARD II, ti Holinshed's Chronicles. KiCHARD III, " More's History. King John, " Older play. Henky IV, Part I, " Older play. Henry IV, Part II, " Older play. Henry V, " Older play. Henry VIII, " Chronicles of Hall and Holinshed. 2. /Semi-historical. Titus Andronictjs, Tragedy, Perhaps by Marlowe. Hamlet, " Saxo's Chronicle of Scandinavia. King Lear, " Holinshed. Macbeth, " Holinshed's Scotland. Julius C^sar, " Plutarch's Lives. Antony and Cleopatra, " Plutarch's Lives. CORIOLANUS, " Plutarch's Lives. Cymbeline, Comedy (?) S. Pactional Holinshed and Boccaccio. Love's Labor Lost, Comedy, Italian play. Comedy of Errors, " Plautus. Two Gentlemen of Verona, " An old romance. Midsummer's Night's Dream, " Chaucer. Merchant of Venice, " Gesta Romanorum. Romeo and Juliet, Tragedy, Boccaccio. Much Ado About Nothing, Comedy. Italian romance. Twelfth Night, " Italian romance. As You Like It, " Lodge's Romance, Taming op the Shrew, " Older play. Pericles, " Gower. Merry Wives of Windsor, " Measure for Measure, " Old tale. All's Well that Ends Well, " Boccaccio. TiMON of Athens, TVagedy, Plutarch and others. Othello, u Old tale. Troilus and Cressida, Comedy, Chaucer. Winter's Tale, " Greene. Tempest, " Italian romance. In these performances, he exhausts all human experience, and imagines more; searches the heart, lays bare its strength and 376 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. weakness, its excesses and its rages; divines the secret impulses of humanity; depicts all manners and conditions, high and low such as the world will always find; shines, like the sun, on the evil and the good; runs without effort the round of human ideas records his convictions on the questions that knock at the gate of every brain, on life, love, trial, death, immortality, freedom, fate, — the ends of existence and the means. In so vast afield, we must select. Nor, amid so many portraitures, in so great variety of moods, in such profusion of sentiments, can the critic choose more than fragments, entreating the reader to divine the rest. The importance of this wisdom and this beauty sinks form, chronology, analytic completeness, out of notice. Nowhere is the wonderful range of power more visible than in the varied types of female characters. Some are but babblers, — each the representative of a species; vulgar minds that forget and spare nothing, ignorant that conversation is but a selection, that every story is subject to the laws of dramatic poetry, — festinat ad eventum. Thus Mrs. Quickly reminds Falstaff of his promise of marriage: 'Thou didst swear to me upon a parcel-gilt goblet, sitting in my Dolphin-chamber, at the round table, by a sea- coal fire, upon Wednesday in Whitsun week, when the prince broke thy head for liking his father to a singing-man of Windsor, thou didst swear to me then, as I was washing thy wound, to marry me and make me my lady thy wife. Canst thou deny it? Did not goodwife Keech, the butcher's wife, come in then and call me gossip Quickly? coming in to borrow a mess of vinegar; telling us she had a good dish of prawns; whereby thou didst desire to eat some.'' She is held in thraldom to the order and circumstances in which her perceptions were originally acquired. Better still is the example of the nurse in Romeo and Juliet, a never-ending gossip, smelling of the kitchen, impudent, immoral, but faithful and affectionate like a dog. The involuntary associations of her thoughts are imperative. She would advance, but repeats her steps; or, struck with an image, wanders from the point. She brings Juliet news of her lover: "■ Nurse. I am aweary, give me leave awhile: Fie, how my bones ache! what a jaunt have I had! Jul. I would thou hadst my bones and I thy news. Nay, come, I pray thee, speak; good, good nurse, speak. Nurse. Jesu, what haste? can you not stay awhile? Do you not see that I am out of breath? Jul. How art thou out of breath when thou hast breath To say to me that thou art out of breath? > Henry I\\ Part II. SHAKESPEARE. 377 The excuse that thou dost make in this delay Is longer than the tale thou dost excuse. Is thy news good or bad? answer to that; Say either, and I'll stay the circumstance: Let me be satisfied, is"t good or bad? Nurse. Well, you have made a simple choice ; you know not how to choose a man: Romeo! no, not he; though his face be better than any man's, yet his leg excels all men's; and for a hand, and a foot, and a body, though they be not to be talked on, yet they are past compare : he is not the flower of courtesy, but, I'll warrant him, as gentle as a lamb. Go thy ways, wench : serve God. What, have you dined at home? Jul. No, no: but all this did I know before. What says he of our marriage? what of that? Nurse. Lord, how my head aches 1 what a. head have II It beats as it would fall in twenty pieces. My back o' t'other side,— O, my back, my back! Beshrew your heart for sending me about. To catch my death with jaunting up and down! Jul. I'faith, I am sorry that thou art not well. Sweet, sweet, sweet nurse, tell me, what says my love? Nurse. Your love says, like an honest gentleman, and a courteous, and a kind, and a handsome, and, I warrant, a virtuous, — Where is your mother? Jul. Where is my mother I why, she is within; Where should she be? How oddly thou repliest! "Your love says, like an honest gentleman. Where is your mother?" ' But his heroines are of finer mould. They are the possible of the female mind, seen, for the first time, as in a dream, yet — unlike Spenser's — warm breathing realities. They are all charming or fascinating, Rosalind, sprightly but modest, coquettish and voluble, like a warbling and pretty bird, her tongue running 'With wanton heed and giddy cunning.' When Orlando promises to love her 'for ever and a day,' she says, with pretended cruelty: 'Say a day without the ever, no, no, Orlando, men are April when they woo, Decem- ber when they wed; maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives: I will be more jealous of thee than a Barbary cock -pigeon over his hen; more clamorous than a parrot against rain; more new-fangled than an ape: more giddy in my desires than a monkey; I will weep for nothing, like Diana in the fountain, and I will do that when you are disposed to be merry; I will laugh like a hyen, and that when you are inclined to sleep.' 'But will my Rosalind do so?' — 'By my life, she will do as I do.' Or, 'What would you say to me now, an I were your very, very Rosalind ? ' Miranda, whose soul shines upon Ferdinand through her innocent eyes, and he asks in a rapture of wonder: 'I do beseech you (Chiefly that I might set it in my prayers) What is your name?'' ' Tempest. 378 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. Imogen, the most artless of all, — 'So tender of rebukes that words are strokes, And strokes death to her.' Accused of inconstancy by her husband, and discarded, she dis- guises herself in order to be near him; finds, as she thinks, his dead body, and refuses to quit the spot till — 'With wild-wood leaves and weeds, I ha' strew"d his grave. And on it said a century of prayers.'" Jachimo, dared by her husband to make trial of her fidelity, hides in her chamber in order to bring away pretended proofs against it. He notes the furniture, removes her bracelet, soliloquizing: '■Fresh lily. And whiter than the sheets! that I might touch I But kiss; one kiss! . . . ' Tls her breathhig thai. Perfumes the chamber thus: —the flame o' the taper Bows towards her; and would under-peep her lids. To see the enclosed lights, now canopied Under those windows, white and azure, lac'd With blue of heaven's own tint.'' Desdemona, guileless victim of a foul conspiracy, — . 'A maiden never bold: % Of spirit so still and quiet that her motion Blushed at itself.'^ Cleopatra, voluptuous, ostentatious, haughty, dazzling, child of air and fire: 'The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, Burnt on the water; the poop was beaten gold. Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that The winds were love-sick. "^ What a picture! — 'Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety. Other women cloy The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry Where most she satisfies.' Cordelia, whose hallowed tears are — 'The holy water from her heavenly eyes.'* When her father, aged, irritable, half insane, asks her how she loves him, she cannot protest, is ashamed to parade her tender- ness, as her sisters have done, in order to buy a dowry by it; is disinherited, expelled; afterwards, when she finds him forsaken 1 Cymbellne. » Othello. ^ Antony and Cleopatra. •» Lear. SHAKESPEAEE. 379 and mad, goes on her knees before him, caresses him, weeps over him, prays for him : 'O you kind gods, Cure this great breach in his abused nature! The untuned and jarring senses. O, wind up Of this child-changed father! . . . O my dear father! Restoration, hang Thy medicine on my lips; and let this kiss Repair those violent harms that my two sisters » Have in thy reverence made I . . . Was this a face To be opposed against the warring winds? . . . Mine enemy's dog, Though he had bit me, should have stood that night Against my fire. . . . How does my royal lord? How fares your majesty?' Ophelia, sincere and constant, feeling deeply but saying little, and that quietly; delighted when she discovers that her love is reciprocated, yet chary of her words; separated from her lover, yet bearing her cruel fortune patiently; singing herself to rest, when reason is dethroned. What can be more beautiful than the words of the Queen on throwing flowers into her grave ? — 'Sweets to the sweet, farewell. 'i A true Northener. Juliet, deep though easily moved, constant though ecstatic, pure though impulsive, uniting sweetness and dignity of manners with passionate violence. When Romeo first sees her, in the. midst of elegance and splendor, he inquires: 'What lady's that which doth enrich the hand Of yonder knight? . . . she doth teach the torches to burn bright, Her beauty hangs upon the cheek of nighl. Like a rich jewel in an .^thiop's ear.' She is overcome by the pressure at her heart, and apologizes thus for her maiden boldness: ' O gentle Romeo, If thou dost love pronounce it faithfully; Or if thou think I am too quickly won I'll frown and be perverse, and say thee nay, So thou wilt woo: but else not for the world. In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond; And therefore thou may'st think my 'havior light; But trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true Than those that have more cunning to be strange. 1 should have been more strange, I must confess. But that thou over-heard'st, ere I was ware. My true love's passion; therefore, pardon me, And not impute this yielding to light love. Which the dark night hath so discovered.' 1 Hamlet. 380 FIEST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. Of the same sort — heart fluttering ever between pleasure, hope and fear — is the soliloquy after marriage: 'Come, Romeo! come, thou day in night; For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night Whiter than new snow on a raven's back. . . . Come, gentle night; come, loving, black-brow'd night, Give me my Romeo: and when he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars. And he will make the face of heaven so fine. That all the world shall be in love with night, And pay no worship to the garish sun.' This is the true Southerner. Lady Macbeth, finally, than whom nothing could be more fearful and appalling; ambitious, com- manding, inexorable, never to be diverted from a wicked pur- pose, when once formed. One obstacle stands between her family and a throne — Duncan; and on hearing of his fatal entrance under her battlements, she exclaims: ' Come, you spirits That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here: And fill me, from the crown to th' toe, top-full Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood. Stop up the access and passage to remorse. That no compunctious visitings of nature Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between The effect and it. Come to my woman's breasts. And take my milk for gall, you murthering ministers, Whenever in your sightless substances You wait on nature's mischief. Come, thick night! And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell. That my keen knife see not the wound it makes. Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark. To cry, hold, hold ! ' If you seek the passions of an animal and the imagination of a man of wit, you will find them exemplified in Falstaff, profane, dissolute, corpulent, voluble, and jolly; a jester, a drunkard, and a glutton, who sleeps among tavern jugs, and wakes to brag, lie, and steal. Yet he does not offend you, he delights you. He is himself openly, without malice or hypocrisy. He says to the prince, who berates him: 'Dost thou hear, Hal? thou knowest in the state of innocency Adam fell; and what should poor Jack Falstaff do in the days of villainy? Thou seest I have more flesh than another man, and therefore more frailty. '• He is an Epicurean systematically, and, though a coward, pulls out his bottle on the field of battle to show his contempt for glory and danger. He is never at a loss, and devises a shift on 1 Henry IV, Part I. SHAKESPEAEE. 381 every occasion, at a moment's warning, with monumental impu- dence. Arrested for an old debt by Mrs. Quickly, he persuades her to pawn her plate to lend him ten pounds more. Insults, oaths, and boastings flow from him naturally, unceasingly, in geometrical progression. He pretends to have encountered two robbers, — has fought them alone; and presently, as the imagina- tion of his own valor increases with the narrative, the number is four, then eleven, then fourteen. He is always good-natured, unconquerably self-possessed. Exposed or insulted, he laughs, retorts in coarse words, but owes no grudge. ' Gallants, lads, boys, hearts of gold.' 'What, shall we be merry?' A frank, embossed rascal, without thought of being just or unjust. If his vices gratify himself, they amuse others, without infecting them. Here he is, ernbodied and palpable: '■ Fal. Bardolph, am I not fallen away ■\ilely since this last action? do I not bate? do I not dwindle? Why, my skin hangs about me like an old lady's loose gown; I am with- ered like an old apple -John. Well, I'll repent, and that suddenly, while I am in some liking; I shall be out of heart shortly, and then I shall have no strength to repent. An I have not forgotten what the inside of a church is made of, I am a peppercorn, a brewer's horse: the inside of a church I Company, villanous company, hath been the spoil of me. Bard. Sir John, you are so fretful, you cannot live long. Fal. Why, there is it: come sing me a bawdy song; make me merry. I was as vir- tuously given as a gentleman need to be ; virtuous enough; swore little; diced not above seven times a week; went to a bawdy-house not above once in a quarter — of an hour; paid money that I borrowed, three or four times; lived well and in good compass: and now I live out of all order, out of all compass. Bard. Why, you are so fat. Sir John, that you must needs be out of all compass, out of all reasonable compass. Sir John. Fal. Do thon amend thy face, and I'll amend my life : thou art our admiral, thou bearesi the lantern in the poop, but 'tis in the nose of thee ; thou art the Knight of the Burning Lamp. Bard. Why, Sir John, my face does you no harm. Fal. No, I'll be sworn; I make as good use of it as many a man doth of Death's- head or a memento mori: I never see thy face but I think upon hell-flre and Dives that lived in purple: for there he is in his robes, burning, burning. If thou wert any way given to virtue, I would swear by thy face ; my oath should be "By this Are, that's God's angel:" but thou art altogether given over; and wert indeed, but for the light in thy face, the son of utter darkness. When thou rannest up Gad's-hill in the night to catch my horse, if I did not think thou hadst been an ignis fatuus or a ball of wildfire, there's no purchase in money. O, thou art a perpetual triumph, an everlasting bonfire-light ! Thou hast saved me a thousand marks in links and torches, walking with thee in the night betwixt tavern and tavern. . . . Bard. 'Sblood, I would my face were in your belly I Fal. God-a-mercy ! so should I be sure to be heart-burned.' An acute head and a calloused heart, with a deliberate and absorbing preference of evil, constitute the perfect villain. lago is a demon in human form; a trooper and a hypocrite, with the philosophy of a cynic, the maxims of a detective, and the spirit 382 PIEST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. of an assassin, 'O my reputation, my reputation! ' cries the dis- graced Cassio. 'As I am an honest man,' says lago, 'I thought you had received some bodily wound; there is more sense in that than in reputation.' ' 'What wouldst thou write of me, if thou shouldst praise me ? ' says Desdemona : 'O gentle lady, do not put me to't; For I am nothing, if not critical.' She insists, and bids him draw the portrait of a perfect womaa He does it characteristically: '■lago. She that was ever fair and never proud, Had tongue at will and yet was never loud. Never lack'd gold and yet went never gay, Fled from her wish and yet said "Now I may," She that being anger'd, her revenge being nigh. Bade her wrong stay and her displeasure fly. She that in wisdom never was so frail To change the cod's head for the salmon's tail, She that could think and ne'er disclose her mind, See suitors following and not look behind. She was a wight, if ever such wight were, — Bes. To do what? lago. To suckle fools and chronicle small beer.'' To this impotent and sinister conclusion, all optimism is reduced. He speaks only in sarcasms. He is an inveterate misanthrope, and has a rancorous delight in the worst side of everything. His coolness, dexterity, and profound dissimulation appear admirably where he first enters upon the execution of his design to set Othello and Desdemona at fatal issue: '■lago. My noble lord. Othello. What dost thou say, lago? lago. Did Michael Cassio, when you woo'd my lady. Know of your love? Othello. He did, from first to last. Why dost thou ask? Jago. But for a satisfaction of my thought. No further harm. Othello. Why of thy thought, lago? lago. I did not think he had been acquainted with her. Othello. O yes, and went between us very oft. lago. Indeed? Othello. Indeed! ay, indeed. Discern'st thou ought in that? Is he not honest? lago. Honest, my lord? Othello. Ay, honest? lago. My lord, for aught I know. Othello. What dost thou think? lago. Think, my lord? Othello. Think, my lord? By heaven, he echoes me, As If there was sorne monster In his thought Too hideous to be shown.' 1 Othello. SHAKESPEAKE. , 383 Like Mephistopheles, he can justify himself by cogent reasoning. When he gives the advice which is to be the ruin of the innocent and trusting, he likens the atrocious crime to virtue: 'And what's he then that says I play the villain? When this advice is free I give and honest, Probal to thinking and indeed the course To win the Moor again? For 'tis most easy The inclining Desdemona to subdue In any honest suit: she's framed as fruitful As the free elements. And then for her To win the Moor, — were't to renounce his baptism. All seals and symbols of redeemed sin,— His soul is so enfetter'd to her love. That she may make, unmake, do what she list, Even as her appetite shall play the god With his weak function. How am I then a villain?' His ease arises from the torture he inflicts; his joy, from the success of his treacherous plots. When Othello swoons for grief, he rubs his hands for bliss: ' Work on, my medicine, work ! Thus credulous fools are caught.' When Othello recovers, he inquires, with diabolical but natural indifference: 'How is it, General? Have you not hurt your head ? ' In Lear, passion, unrestrained and terrible, rises into colossal proportions. The poor old king, to whom patience is unknown, is the subject of prolonged and vast agony. His daughters, who turn against his age and weakness, are the one rooted idea in the desert of his mind; and their incredible treacheries gradually, through transports of fury and convulsions of misery ever deep- ening and growing, drive him mad. Nothing can exceed the awful beauty of the meeting between him and Cordelia, when, through her tender care, he revives and recollects her: '■Cor. How does my royal lord? How fares your majesty I Lear. You do m6 wrong, to take me out of the grave: Thou art a soul in bliss; but I am bound Upon a wheel of Are, that mine own tears Do scald like molten lead. Cor. Sir, do you know me? Lear. You are a spirit I know: when did you die? Cor. Still, still far wide ! Physician. He's scarce awake; let him alone awhile. Lear. Where have I been? Where am I? Fair daylight? I am mightily abused. I should even die with pity. To see another thus. I know not what to say. I will not swear these are my hands: — let's see; I feel this pin prick. Would I were assur'd Of my condition. Cor. O, look upon me, sir. 384 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. And hold your hands in benediction o'er me: . . . No, sir, you must not kneel. Lear. Pray do not mock me: I am a very foolish fond old man, Fourscore and upward; Not an hour more, nor less: and to deal plainly, I fear I am not in my perfect mind. Methinks I should know you, and know this man; Yet I am doubtful ; for I am mainly ignorant What place this is; and all the skill I have Remembers not these garments; nor I know not Where I did lodge last night: do not laugh at me; For, as I am a man, I think this lady To be my child Cordelia. Cor. And so I am, I am ! ' Lear, who thought himself omnipotent, finds himself helpless; and, once pleased with false professions of love, now clings to that which is tranquil because of its depth and fulness. Thus they console each other when, after the triumph of their ene- mies, they are led to prison: '■Cor. We are not the first. Who, with best meaning, have incurred the worst. For thee, oppressed king, am I cast down; Myself could else out-frown false fortune's frown. — Shall we not see these daughters, and these sisters? Lear. No, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison: We too alone will sing like birds i' the cage: When thou dost ask my blessing, I'll kneel down. And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live. And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too — Who loses, and who wins; who's in, who's out; — And take upon us the mystery of things, As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out, In a wall'd prison, packs, and sects of great ones. That ebb and flow by the moon.' The history of Macbeth is the story of a moral poisoning. Frank, sociable, and generous, though tainted from the first by base and ambitious thoughts, he is urged on to his ruin by the prophetic warnings of the witches, by golden opportunity, and the instigations of his wife. He has physical but lacks moral courage. The suggestion of a possible crown haunts him. He struggles, but he is a lion in the toils. He feels the resistless traction of fate, sees himself on the verge of an abyss, and his brain is filled with phantoms : 'Why do I yield to that suggestion Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair And make my seated heart knock at my ribs, SHAKESPEAKE. 385 Against the use of nature? Present fears Are less than horrible imaginings: My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, Shakes so my single state of man that function Is smothered in surmise, and nothing is But what is not.' To act, he must be sudden and desperate. When the deed is done, he is horrified, shudders to think of it, starts at every sound, is disturbed by a supposed word from the sleepers in an adjoining room: 'One cried, "God bless us I" and "Amen," the other; As they had seen me with these hangman's hands. Listening their fear, I could not say "Amen," When they did say, "God bless us I". . . But wherefore could I not pronounce "Amen"? I had most need of blessing, and "Amen" Stuck in my throat.' Having murdered one, he must murder others, in order to pre- serve the fruits of his crime: 'I am in blood Steep'd in so far that, should I wade no more. Returning were as tedious as go o'er.' He has Banquo murdered, and thereafter is in continual deadly terror of the ghost that ' will not down ' : 'Prithee, see there I Beholdl look! lol how say you? Why, what care I? If thou canst nod, speak too. If charnel-houses and our graves must send Those that we bury back, our monuments Shall be the maws of kites. . . . The times have been That, when the brains were out, the man would die, And there an end; but now they rise again, With twenty mortal murders on their crowns, And push us from our stools: . . . Avaunt ! and quit my sight ! let the earth hide thee ! Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold; Thou hast no speculation in those eyes Which thou dost glare with ! ' A habit of slaughter, mechanical smiles, and a fixed belief in destiny are all that remain: 'Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing.' Yet we sympathize with him in that fine close of thoughtful melancholy: 25 386 FIRST CEEATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 'My way of life Is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf; And that which should accompany old age, As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have ; but in their stead. Curses not loud but deep, mouth-honor, breath Which the poor heart would fain deny, but dare not.' Hamlet is a metaphysician and a psychologist; a soul of sensi- bility, hope, refinement, and thought, with every kind of culture except the culture of active life, forced from its natural bias by extreme misfortune. He has seen only the beauty of humanity, and at once sees all its vileness in his mother : 'O that this too, too solid flesh would melt. Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! Or that the Everlasting had not flx'd His canon "gainst self- slaughter I O God! O Godl How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fie on't: ah fle ' "tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed ; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. That it should come to this ! But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two: So excellent a king, ... so loving to my mother, That he might not beteem the winds of heaven Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth! . . . And yet, within a month, — Let me not think on"t, — Frailty, thy name is woman! — A little month, or ere those shoes were old With which she follow'd my poor father's body, . . . Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears Had left the flushing in her galled eyes, She married.' Then appears the ghost in the night, to inform him of the fratri- cide, and enjoin him to avenge the crime: 'Hold, hold, my heart. And you my sinews, grow not instant old. But bear me stiffly up! Remember thee! Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat In this distracted globe. Remember thee! Yea, from the table of my memory I'll wipe away all trivial fond records, All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, . . . And thy commandment all alone shall live.' Henceforth he is a sceptic. His distress is transferred to the general account. The universe is tinged with the color of his own ideas. Sadness clings to him like a malady: 'I have of late — but wherefore I know not — lost all my mirth, foregone all custom of exercises, and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors. What I SHAKESPEARE. 387 a piece of work is man ! how noble in reason ! liow infinite in faculties '. in form and moving how express and admirable ! in action how lilce an angel ! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world 1 the paragon of animals 1 And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me: no, nor woman neither." He doubts everything, doubts immortality, even doubts Ophelia, asks her, 'Are you honest?' Doubts himself, says to her: 'We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us.' To a hopeless phi- losophy, the world is a dull blank, and man a grinning skull. In this mood, the unconscious Hamlet stumbles on the destined grave of Ophelia, and pauses to muse on death and decay. He comments on the skulls which the grave-digger throws up. This may be the 'pate of a politician, one that would circumvent God'; or of a courtier, 'which could say, "Good morrow, sweet lord!"' This may be a lawyer's: 'Where be his quiddities now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? why does he suffer this rude knave now to knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action of battery?' Here is another. It is Yorick's: 'A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times ; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is 1 my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen? I{02V get you to my ladi/s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favor she must come; make her laugh at that.'' The base affinities of the body are irresistibly attractive to his curiosity. Did Alexander look like this ? Even so. The high- est are but animate clay, and return to basest uses. ' Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till he find it stopping a hung-hole ? ' This surplus of imagination disqualifies Hamlet for action. He is forever analyzing his own emotions and motives, and does nothing because he sees two ways of doing it. He is continually diverted from his purpose by his scruples. He spares his uncle because he finds him praying, and waits for some more fatal opportunity, 'that has no relish of salvation in it.' He is conscious of his defect, reproves himself for it, tries to reason himself out of it: 'How all occasions do inform against me. And spur my dull revenge ! What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? . . . I do not know Why yet I live to say, this thing's to do; . . . O, from this time forth, My thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth.' 388 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. He only alternates between enthusiasm and inactivity. His tri- umphs in words are rocket-bursts of momentary splendor. Of deliberate energy he is not capable. If he plunges a sword into a breast, he does it in a fit of excitement, on a sudden impulse from without. So his strength, in the moment of its final extinc- tion, leaps up to accomplish the punishment of the malefactor. It was thus that he had killed Polonius, his brooding bitterness leaving him without remorse: 'King. Now Hamlet, where's Polonius? Hamlet. At supper. King. At supper! where? Hamlet. Not where he eats, but where he is eaten; a certain convocation of politic worms are e'en at him.' Hamlet is an enigma, never wholly explicable and forever sug- gestive. The real is one great field of Shakespeare's power; the fan- tastical is another, — the supernatural world, the world of appari- tions. We have elsewhere seen a variety of this life in the witches of Macbeth. Never were so exquisitely imagined, sus- tained, or expressed, the nimble genii, the bodiless sylphs, the dreamy population of the moonlit forests. Prospero's enchanted isle is full of — 'Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twanging instruments Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices. That if I then had waked after long sleep. Would make me sleep again; and then in dreaming. The clouds methought would open, and show riches Ready to drop upon me: when I wak'd I cried to dream again.' ' Ariel, delicate as an abstraction of the dawn and vesper sun lights, flies around shipwrecked men to console them, spreads glowing visions before lovers, and executes his mission with the swiftness of thouarht: 'Where the bee sucks, there suck I: In a cowslip's bell I lie. . . . Merrily, merrily shall I live now Under the blossom that hangs on the bough. I drink the air before me, and return Or e'er your pulse twice beat.'^ i When Titania, Queen of the Fairies, contends with Oberon, her husband, for the retention of her favorite page, of whom he 1 Tempest. ^Ibid. SHAKESPEARE. 389 seeks to deprive her, the frightened elves hide in the acorn cups. Oberon comes off second best, and, by way of retaliation, drops upon Titania's sleeping eyes the juice of a magic flovper, which changes her heart: 'What thou seest when thou dost wake Do it for thy true love take; Love and languish for his sake: Be it ounce, or cat, or bear, Pard, or boar with bristled hair, In th}' eye that shall appear When thou wak'st, it is thy dear; Wake, when some vile thing is near.' ' The result is, that she finds herself enamored of Bottom, a stupid fellow with an ass's head: 'Out of this wood do not desire to go: Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no. . . . I'll give thee fairies to attend on thee; And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep. And sing, while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep, And I will purge thy mortal grossness so, That thou shalt like an airy spirit go.' She calls her fairy attendants: 'Be kind and courteous to this gentleman. Hop in his walks, and gambol in his eyes; Feed him with apricocks and dewberries, With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries: The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees. And for night tapers crop their waxen thighs. And light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes. To have my love to bed, and to arise; And pluck the wings from painted butterflies. To fan the moon-beams from his sleeping eyes.' . , . Then: 'Come, sit thee down upon this flowery bed, While I thy amiable cheeks do coy And stick musk-roses in thy sleek smooth head. And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy.'' To all this divine tenderness, her love makes characteristic reply: ^Bot. Where's Peas-blossom? Peas. Ready. Bof. Scratch my head, Peas-blossom. Where's Monsieur Cobweb? Cob. Ready. Bof. Monsieur Cobweb, good monsieur, get up your weapons in your hand, and kill me a red-hipped humble-bee on the top of a thistle ; and, good monsieur, bring me the honey-bag. Do not fret yourself too much icith the action, monsieur ; and, good mon- sieur, have a care the honey-bag break not; I ivould be loth to have you overflown tuith a honey-bag, signlor. Where's Monsieur Mustard-seed ? Must. Ready. Bot. Give me your fist. Monsieur Mustard-seed. Pray you, leave your courtesy, good monsieur. Must. What's your will? ' Midsimimer Night's Dreajn. 890 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. Bot. Nothing, good monsieur, but to help Cavaliero Cobweb to scratch. I must the barber's, monsieur; for inethinks I am marvellous hairy about the face; and I am such a tender ass, if my hair do but tickle me I must scratch. Tit. What, wilt thou hear some music, my sweet love? Bot. I have a reasonable ear in music: let us have the tongs and the bones. Tit. Or say, sweet love, what thou desirest to eat. Bot. Truly a peck of provender. I could munch your good dry oats. Methinks I have a great desire to a bottle of hay. Good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow. Tit. I have a venturous fairy, that shall seek The squirrel's hoard, and fetch thee new nuts. Bot. I had rather have a handful or two of dried peas .• — but, I pray you, let none of your people stir me ; I have an exposition of sleep come upon me. Tit. Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms. Fairies, begone, and be all ways away. So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle Gently entwist; — the female ivy so Enrings the barky fingers of the elm. O, how I love thee ! How I dote on thee ! ' Was ever such extent of action? such diverse creation? such mastery of situation and form ? It is this poet's prerogative to have thought more finely and more extensively than all other poets combined. Not the least of the emblazonries upon his shield is his teeming fertility of fine ideas and sentiments, universally intelligible, and applicable to the circumstances of every human being. For instance, as merest suggestions of the golden bead-roll that might be gath- ered from his works: ''Tis the mind that, makes the body rich.' 'How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!' 'Death lies on her, like an untimely frost Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.' ' Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny.' 'Violent delights have violent ends. And in their triumph die.' 'Our doubts are traitors. And make us lose the good we oft might win. By fearing to attempt.' 'Good name, in man and woman, dear my lord, Is the immediate jewel of their souls.' 'For aught that ever I could read. Could ever hear by talc or history, The course of true love never did run smooth." 'The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our virtues.' 'Never durst poet touch a pen to write Until his ink were temper'd with love's sighs; ^ 3t to ■ SHAKESPEARE. 391 O, then his lines would ravage savage ears, And plant in tyrants mild humility.' ' 'Tis better to be lowly born, And range with humble livers in content, Than to be perk'd up in glistering grief, And wear a golden sorrow.' 'There's not the smallest orb which thou behold' st, But in his motion like an angel sings. Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins; Such harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it." 'The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temple, the great globe itself. Yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve ; And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind.' 'Ay, but to die, and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice; To be imprisoned in the viewless winds. And blown with restless violence about The pendent world; or to be worse than worst Of those, that lawless and incertain thoughts Imagine howling ! — 'tis too horrible ! ' Perhaps there is a mood in the life of every thoughtful person when he feels, and in a sense truly, that human existence is a little tract of feverish vigils, islanded by a shoreless ocean of oblivion : 'We are such stuff As dreams are made of, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.' Still, in his higher, serener altitudes, he will bid us do our dream duties: ' To thine own self be true ; And it must follow as the night the day. Thou canst not then be false to any man.' And still he believes in the immortal essence of the dreamer; and will say with Hamlet, of the ghost, though his teeth chatter: 'I do not set my life at a pin\s fee; And for my soul, what can it do to that. Being a thing immortal as itself?' When, too, a man has tried wearily but vainly to adjust the infinite part of him to the finite, or, in learning to prescribe a narrower boundary for the things he expected to obtain, has felt 392 FIKST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. stealing upon him an unwelcome conviction of the vanity of human hopes, he may think, — 'There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough-hew them how we will.' ' Or this? — 'That we would do, We should do when we would; for this would changes, And hath abatements, and delays as many As there are tongues, are hands, are instruments.' But, with a truer insight, he will confess this to be but a frag- ment, a partial account, of our complex nature: 'Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie. Which we ascribe to heaven; the fated sky Gives us free scope, only doth backward push Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.'^ Lately Tyndall, of the advanced materialists, declared at Bir- mingham that 'the robber, the ravisher, and the murderer offend because they can not help offending.' But three hundred years before, at Stratford-on-Avon, a far greater than Tyndall pro- claimed in words that will never die: 'This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune,— often the surfeit of our own behavior, — we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as if ive ivere villains by necessity ; fools by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance ; drunkards, liars, and adulter- ers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence ; and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion of abominable man, to lay his goatish dispo- sition to the charge of a star! . . . Tut, I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my birth.' ' Lord Bacon wished that a science of the human passions might be elaborated. He could have found it in Shakespeare. The parts are there, needing only to be combined into a consistent whole. Underlying and penetrating them is the Moral Law. They disclose a constantly recurring emphasis, a pervading agency, of the two grand factors in moral being, — the motive 1 Hamlet. M. Taine, intent upon the confirmation of a theory, would have Shake- speare define man as a 'nervous machine' led at random by determinate and complex circumstances. But the eminent Frenchman, more brilliant than profound, has, in the passages he cites, not only generalized from inadequate data, but has failed to discrimi- nate between dramatic and philosophical or theological significance. It is when we have divested ourselves of our proper humanity that life becomes a walking shadow — an automaton. Did M. Taine note this?— 'Refrain to-night. And that shall lend a kind of easiness To the next abstinence: the next more easy; For use almost can change the stamp of nature. And either curb the devil, or throw him out, With wondrous potency.' "^AlVs Well that Ends Well. ' ^King Lear. SHAKESPEARE. 393 force and the perceptive faculty, — Free -Will and Conscience. Let us hear a few of the observations vs^hich this anatomist of the heart, by the simple exposition of human conduct, has made in the sphere of the latter. For example, of the monitory function of conscience, the collision and struggle of opposite impulses: ' Conscience is a thousand swords.' » Or,- '■First Murd. How dost thou feel thyself now? Second Murd. 'Faith, some certain dregs of conscience are yet within me. First Murd. Remember our reward, when the deed is done. Second Murd. 'Zounds, he dies: I had forgot the reward. First Murd. Where is thy conscience now? Second Murd. In the Duke of Gloucester's purse. First Murd. So when he opens his purse to give us our reward, thy conscience flies out. Second Murd. 'Tis no matter. Let it go; there's few or none will entertain it. First Murd. How if it come to thee again ? Second Murd. I'll not meddle with it: it is a dangerous thing: it makes a man a cow- ard: a man cannot steal, but it accuseth him; a man cannot swear, but it check him; . . . 'tis a blushing shamefaced spirit that mutinies in a man's bosom; it fills one full of obstacles: it made me once restore a purse of gold that by chance I found; it beggars any man that keeps it: it is turned out of all towns and cities for a dangerous thing. . . . First Murd. 'Zounds, it is even now at my elbow, persuading me not to kill the duke.' 2 Or,- 'Macb. If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well It were done quickly: if the assassination Could trammel up the consequence, and catch With his surcease success; that but this blow Might be the be-all and the end-all here, But here, upon this bank and shoal of time. We'd jump the life to come. But in these cases We still have judgment here; that we but teach Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return To plague the inventor: . . . This Duncan Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been So clear in his great office, that his virtues Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against The deep damnation of his taking-ofE; And pity, like a naked new-born babe. Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, horse Upon the sightless couriers of the air. Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye That tears shall drown the wind. I have no spur To prick the sides of ray intent, but only Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself.'' More powerful still, — ' Since Cassius first did whet me against Caesar, I have not slept. Between the acting of a dreadful thing ^ Richard III. "^ Ibid. ^ Macbeth. 394 FIEST CEEATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream: The genius and the mortal instruments Are then in council ; and the state of man, Like to a little kingdom, suffers then The nature of an insurrection.' ' The timidity of guilt, its mental and physical effects, — the soul accusing itself: 'Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.'" 'How is't with me when every noise appals me?'^ 'Guiltiness will speak, though tongues were out of use?'* 'Methought I heard a voice cry, '■'Sleep no more/ Macbeth does murder sleep;" . . . Still it cried, '■'■Sleep no more/"' to all the house: " Glamis hath murdered sleep, and therefore Cawdor Shall sleep no more; Macbeth shall sleep no more."' And so Lady Macbeth, at whose heart, when royalty crowns ber and royal robes enfold her, gnaws the undying worm: '■Naughts had — aWs spent Where our desire is had without content. 'Tis safer to be that which we destroy Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy.' The boldness of innocence: 'What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted? Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just. And he but naked, though locked up in steel. Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.'^ Its peaceful, cheering, commanding effect: ' I feel within me A peace above all earthly dignities — A still and quiet conscience.' « To sum up all: 'Mark but my fall, and that that ruin'd me. Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition: By that sin fell the angels; how can man, then, The image of his Maker, hope to win by it? Love thyself last; cherish those hearts that hate thee; Corruption wins not more than honesty. Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace. To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not: Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's. Thy God's and truth's.'' What altitudes did this man not reach? What depths did not his plummet sound? What domain of consciousness did he not extend ? ^CcEsar. ■' Henry ir. ^ Macbeth. * Ibid. ^ Henry VI. ^ Henry VIII. ''Ibid. SHAKESPEARE. 395 Originality. — A few years ago the most eminent living writer' of Holland said to a congress of authors and publishers at Brussels : ' For nearly forty years I have lived principally by robbery and theft.' He justified his practice by the example of Virgil, Dante, Tasso, Milton, Voltaire, Schiller, and others. Every man is receptive. The greatest are the most indebted. Chaucer's opulence has fed many pensioners, but he was himself a huge borrower, using Gower and the Italians like stone- quarries. Shakespeare, like every master, is at once heir and dispenser. He has no credit of design. His materials, as the table shows, were already prepared. He absorbed all the light anywhere radiating. He borrowed not only the plot, but often and extensively the very terms. Read Plutarch's Lives for the originals of Julms Caesar. Out of 6,043 lines in Henry VI, 1,771 were written by some antecedent author; 3,373 b}- Shakespeare on the foundation laid by his predecessors ; and only 1,899 by himself alone ! ^ Ready-made plots, solitary thoughts, fortunate expressions were at hand, but he organized, enriched, and vivi- fied them. Of little value where he found them, they were priceless where he left them. 'Thought,' says Emerson, 'is the property of him who can entertain it ; and of him who can adequately place it.' Versification. — He had no system, no mannerism, but the true secret of blank verse — the adaptation of words and rhythms to the sense contained in them. Thought runs before expression and moulds it to its own peculiar uses. Hence the defective and redundant lines, and other rhythmic variations, as the various distribution of the time-values within a bar, by which Shakespeare out of the bare type of blank verse has brought such marvellous and subtle music. Style. — His versification is powerful, sweet and varied, natu- rally and enduringly musical. It was the sweetness of his utter- ance that gave to his first readers their chief delight. To them, he was the 'honey-tongued.' His diction is appropriate to the persons who use it, and to the idea or sentiment it conveys. The dominant feature of his style is impassioned luxuriance. It is the translation of abstract thoughts into visible images, — ' Van Lennep. ^ Malone's computation. 396 FIRST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 1 thoughts that come of themselves, thrown out from the furnace of invention by the seething, whirling energies of passion, crowd- ed and contorted; images that unfold like a series of paintings involuntarily, in mingled contrasts, copious, jumbled, flaming. Thus Hamlet to the queen's question, 'What have I done?' answers as if his brain were on fire: 'Such an act That bhirs the grace and blush of modesty, Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose From the fair forehead of an innocent love. And sets a blister there, makes marriage-vows As false as dicers' oaths: O, such a deed As from the body of contraction plucks The very soul, and sweet religion makes A rhapsody of words; heaven's face doth glow: Yea, this solidity and compound mass, With tristful visage, as against the doom. Is thought- sick at the act.' Whatever the situation, he is exuberant because he is buried and absorbed in it. All objects shrink and expand to serve him, are transfigured by his rapture. Thus, — upon the night. Or,- And,- 'The morning steals Melting the darkness.' 'How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bankl' 'The strong based promontory Have I made shake, and by the spurs plucked up The pine and cedar.' To the excited soul, metaphor is a necessity. It thinks of no rules, and requires none. It studies not to be just or clear, but attains life. It seizes ideas and figures without a consciousness of its movements, and hurls them with an energy like to the supernatural. Its condensation and confusion abide no criticism, and heed none. As the result of inspiration, they mark the suddenness and the breaks of the inner and divine afflatus. Rank. — To excel in pathos, in wit, or in humor; in sub- limity, as Milton; in intensity, as Chaucer; or in remoteness, as Spenser, — would form a great poet; but to unite all, as Shake- speare has done, is — ' To get the start of the majestic ivorld. And bear the palm alone!'' Others have equalled or surpassed him in some particular excel- lence, but no man ever had at once such strength and variety of SHAKESPEAKE. 397 imagination. He has grasped all the diversities of rank, sex, and age. His imperial muse has swept the poles of existence — the human and the superhuman. His characters are legion; but — whether sage or idiot, king or beggar, queen or nurse, hero or clown, plotting villain or sportive fairy — all are distinct, all speak and act with equal truth, all are inspired by the artist's animation. No other ever saw the world of nature and of mind from so many points of view. He is all that he imaginatively sees. Thus his figures acquire a relief and color which create illusion. They are so consistent and vital that we seem to know them, not by description, but by intercourse. If we seek to refer this preeminence to the possession of any peculiar quality, we think it may be found in the superior power of grouping men in natural classes by an insight of general laws. His penetrative genius discerns the common attributes of indi- viduals; his dramatic genius gathers them up into one concep- tion, and embodies that in a type; his poetic genius lifts it into an ideal region, where, under circumstances more propitious, it may find a free and full development. Each character is thus the ideal head of a family. Each is rooted in humanity. Each is an impassioned representative. Each, therefore, is a species individualized. You will find many that resemble it, but none identical with it. In actual existence, there is no Falstaff, though there be multitudes like him. Vital generalization is thus the secret of Shakespeare's transcendent superiority over all other writers. His personages are of no locality, no sect. They belong to all regions, and to all ages. This is the essential prin- ciple of highest literature, — that it is addressed to man as man, not to men as they are parted into trades and professions. Its audience-chamber is the globe. Its touches of nature make the whole world kin. We are not, however, to think of Shakespeare as having achieved his work by the power of his single genius. He was fortunately horn. The tide of thoughts and events was at its flood. Contemporary ideas and necessities forced him on. He stood, like every greatest man, where all hands pointed in the direction in which he should go. Generations pioneered his road. Noble conceptions and a noble school of execution awaited him. Filled with the power of that spirit which prevailed widely 398 FIEST CREATIVE PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 1 around him and formed his environment, he carried them to the summit of excellence. The topstone of Bunker Hill Monument is highest only because it rests on every block underneath; the lowest and smallest helps to hold it there. Character. — Norman by the father, Saxon by the mother, Shakespeare had the English duality. He combined the Oriental soaring of the first with the grip and exactitude of the second. Imperfectly educated, he had as much culture as he wanted, and of whatever kind he wanted. All the classicism then attainable he got cheap — ready-made. Like Goethe, he set little store bv useless learning. Yet who can reckon all that he knew of man and of history? Such minds have no need to be taught; they are full, and overflow, by the revelations of their seer's madness. A nature affectionate and kind,' witty in conversation, brill- iantly gay; extreme in joy and pain; so exquisitely sensitive, that, like a perfect harp, it vibrated at the slightest touch; with an imagination so broad, that it grasped all the complexity of human lot, its laughter and its tears; so copious, that he never erased what he had written; so glowing, that it set at defiance the Unities which imprisoned it, and produced in their stead a fantastic pageant, — a medley of forms, colors, and sentiments; with sympathies so embracing-, so urgent, that he became trans- fused into all that he conceived, and gave to a multitude of diverse individualities each a separate soul. Without doubt, in his youth, he was not a pattern of pro- priety. His Venvs and Adonis is little else than a debauch. As a dramatist he is certainly neither a professed religionist, nor a pronounced reformer. He copies at random the high and the low. He holds the mirror up to all that is — the whole reality. While the lower half of the far-spread glass is therefore blotched, we believe that the upper half is his ultimate and essential self. With advancing years, he evidently dwells more upon the great characters of his tragedies, and gives increased light to moral issues. More and more, as he grows older, he tightens the strands in the colossal harp of his nature and strikes the reso- nant wires with a firmer plectrum. Deeper and deeper sink the pangs of affection misplaced, the memory of hours misspent. Conscience is ill at ease with the world. Thus again and 1 'My darling Shakespeare,' ' Sweet swan of Avon.'— Ben Jonson. SHAKESPEAEE. 399 again he alludes to the infamy of his marriage. If the fact, without the form, exists before — 'All sanctimonious ceremonies may With full and holy rite be ministered, No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall To make this contract grow; but barren hate, Sour-eyed disdain and discord, shall bestrew The union of your bed with weeds so loathly That you shall hate it both; therefore take heed As Hymen's lamps shall light you.' Joy alternates with sadness, transports with melancholies: ' That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold. Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. In me thou see'st the twilight of such day. As after sun-set fadeth in the west, Which by and by black night doth take away, Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire, That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, As the death-bed whereon it must expire, Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by. This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong. To love that well which thou must leave ere long." Here are the last notes struck within the hearing of this world: 'I commend my soul into the hands of God, my Creator, hoping and assuredly be- lieving, through the only merits of Jesus Christ, my Savior' to be made partaker of life everlasting.' i lufLuence. — Upon universal sympathy, upon historical in- quiry, upon linguistic development, he has left a potent and enduring impress. His works and the Bible, both models of Teutonic simplicity, are the great conservators of English speech. He infused into the early drama a spirit of high art; gave it order, symmetry, elevation; informed it with true airy wit and rich but subtle humor; made it an opulent and unfailing fount of entertainment and instruction. He has revealed, in fresh, familiar, significant, and precise details, the complete condition of civilization: and thus to attain nature truthfully in the balance of motives and the issues of action, is in the most vital of all ways to be moral; to be a prop- agator, though by indirection, of the morality that governs and illuminates the world; else is nature immoral and in fellowship with impurity. 1 Shakespeare's will. 400 FIRST CEEATIVE PEEIOD — REPKESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 1 Consider the mental activity of which he is the occasion; how far, and for how many, he has enlarged the circle of study and reflection; the fund of maxims, observations, and sentiments that relate to whatever is interesting, important, or lofty in human life, and whose infinite variety age cannot wither nor cus- tom stale. Art, science, history, politics, physics, philosophy, shall tax him for illustration while the tide of human feelings and passions shall continue its course. Shakespeare is like a great primeval forest, whence timber shall be cut and used as long as winds blow and leaves are green. PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD. CHAPTER VII. FEATURES. Man is explicable by nothing less than all bis history, — Emerson. Politics. — European civilization had merged in two essential facts, — free inquiry and centralization of power; the first pre- vailing in religious society, the second in civil. Before these two could be reconciled, a struggle between them was inevitable. On the one hand, royalty declared itself superior to the laws; on the other, the spirit of liberty was passing from the public mind to the state. When, in 1603, James, the Sixth of Scotland and the First of England, ascended the throne, the decisive hour was fast approaching when either the king must become absolute, or the parliament preponderant. He alternately enraged and alarmed them by his monstrous claims, and excited their scorn by his concessions; kept discontent alive by his fondness for worthless and tyrannical favorites; provoked derision by his cowardice, his pedantry, his ungainly person, and his uncouth manners. The dignity of government was weakened, loyalty was cooled, and revolution was fostered. Under his son and successor Charles I, the struggle went on. He inherited his father's the- ories, with a stronger disposition to carry them into effect. He imposed and collected illegal taxes, made forced loans; was art- ful, capricious, and winding; entered into compacts which he had no intention of observing; was perfidious from habit and on principle. The commons put on a sterner front. Parliament after parliament was dissolved, each more intractable than the former. Then he attempted to rule without one, and for eleven years — an interval utterly without precedent — the Houses were not convoked. Yielding at length to the pressure of necessity, he summoned them in 1640, but quickly dismissed them when they would have considered the grievances of the nation. The 26 401 402 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. opposition grew fiercer. In November of the same year, without money, without credit, without authority even in his own camp he yielded again; and then met the ever-memorable body known as the Long Parliament. Again he broke faith with his council with his people; and in August, 1642, the sword was drawn. Charles, driven to Scotland and by the Scots surrendered to his English subjects, expiated his crimes with his blood. The soul of the revolutionary party was Cromwell, whose warrior saints devotedly attached to their leader, were bent on the establish- ment of a free and pious commonwealth. Having destroyed the king, they vanquished in turn the Parliament, which, having out- lived its usefulness, and forgetting it was the creature of the army, exasperated the latter by its dictation. . The victorious chief became king in everything but name. The government, though in form a republic, was in truth a military despotism; but the despot was wise and magnanimous, and the glory of Eng- land, grown dim in the two preceding reigns, shone again, with a brighter lustre than ever. Cromwell's death, in 1658, brought the rule of Puritanism to an end. The master had been a tem- porary necessity. His system, acknowledged by all to be neces- sary, was acceptable to none. The soldiers, against whom, while united, plots and risings of malcontents were ineffectual, now released from the control of that mighty spirit, separated into factions. Weary of strife, and terrified at the prospect of re- newed civil warfare, the country sought again the shelter of the monarchy, and invited the return of its exiled prince. Charles H was proclaimed, and the Restoration was accomplished. From 1641 dates the corporate existence of the two great parties which have ever since contended for the direction of public affairs. The royalists, comprising the nobles, the gentry, and the prelacy, were called Cavaliers, from their gallant bear- ing and equestrian skill. The opposition, comprising a few of the peers, the bulk of citizens and yeomen, and the Nonconform- ists, were called Roundheads, from the Puritan fashion of wear- ing closely cropped hair. The names were afterwards changed to Tory and Whig, and these, still later, to Conservative and Liberal^ but the principles have remained essentially the same. The watchword of the first is Order; that of the second, Progress. CHANGES IN SOCIETY AND MANNERS. 403 Society. — In the midst of light, the thick darkness of the middle-age rested on Ireland. Only the heavy hand of a single despot could deliver her from the local despotism of a hundred masters. Cromw^ell's conquest v^^as a series of aw^ful massacres. *I am persuaded,' he says, 'that this is a righteous judgement of God upon these barbarous wretches who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood, and that it will tend to pre- vent the effusion of blood for the future.' She was, as ever since, undisguisedly governed as a dependency won by the sword. Scotland, joined to her neighbor on the most honorable terms, preserved her dignity in retaining her constitution and laws. Her people, however, had always been singularly turbulent. They had butchered their first James in his bed-chamber; had rebelled repeatedly against the second; had slain the third on the field of battle; had broken the heart of the fifth by their disobedience ; had imprisoned Mary, and led her son captive. The border was a chaos of violence; and along the line between the Highlands and Lowlands raged an incessant predatory war. England had long been steadily advancing. Men had become accustomed to peaceful pursuits, and irritation did not now so readily as in former ages take the form of rebellion. From the rising of the northern earls against Elizabeth, to the memorable reckoning against Charles I, seventy years had elapsed without intestine hostilities. The national wealth had greatly multiplied, and civilization had greatly increased. Still, we shall not forget the difference between the rude and thoughtless boy and the refined and accomplished man. Masters habitually beat their servants, teachers their pupils, and hus- bands their wives. The offender in the pillory was happy to escape with life from the shower of brickbats and paving stones. If tied to the cart's tail, the officer was implored to make him howl. Pleasure parties were arranged for the purpose of seeing wretched women whipped. Fights, in which gladiators hacked each other to pieces, were the delight of multitudes. At the Restoration, the glorious leaders of the Puritan faith were cut down alive from the gallows, and qi^artered amidst insults; while others — Cromwell among them — were dug up, and exposed on the gibbet. 404 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. The police were in constant collision with ruffians who wore rapiers and daggers. At night bands of dissolute youth domi- neered over the streets, which were buried in profound darkness. It was these pests of London that suggested to Milton the lines: 'And in luxurious cities, when the noise Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers, And injury and outrage, and when night Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine.' In the outcast quarters of the city, even the warrant of the Chief Justice could not be executed without a company of musketeers. Sanguinary encounters with robbers were frequent. Mounted highwaymen infested all the great approaches to the metropolis. With the decline of enthusiasm and respect, courtly manners degenerated into a base sensuality. An arch of triumph under James I often represented obscenities. On one occasion, the king and his royal brother of Denmark were carried to bed drunk. Hear a description of the entertainment — the masque of the Queen of Sheba: 'The ladies abandon their sobriety, and are seen to roll about in intoxication. . . . The lady who did play the Queen's part . . . did carry most precious gifts to both their Majesties; but, forgetting the steppes arising to the canopy, overset her caskets into Ms Danish Majesties lap, and fell at his feet, tho rather 1 think it was in his face. Much was the hurry and confusion; clothes and napkins were at hand, to make all clean. His- Majesty then got up and would dance with the Queen of Sheba; but he fell down and humbled himself before her, and was carried to an inner chamber and laid on a bed of state ; which was not a little defiled with the presents of the Queen which had been bestowed on his garments; such as wine, cream, jelly, beverage, cakes, spices, and other good matters. The entertainment and show went forward, and most of the presenters went backward, or fell down ; wine did so occupy their upper chambers. Now did appear, in rich dress, Hope, Faith, and Chanty: Hope did assay to speak, but wine ren- dered her endeavors so feeble that she withdrew, and lioped the king would excuse her brevity; Faith . . . left the court in a staggering condition. . . . They were both sick and spewing in the lower hall. Next came Victory, who ... by a strange medley of versification . . . and after much lamentable utterance, was led away like a silly captive, and laid to sleep in tho outer steps of the ante-chamber. As for Peace, she most rudely made war with her olive branch, and laid on the pates of those who did oppose her coming.' Farther on jve shall see how, underneath the disorderly bubbles at the surface, Puritanism was raising the national morality. Religion. — The Reformation was incomplete. It had been made in accordance with the interests of its leaders, — the king and the prelates, who divided between themselves the riches and power of which they had despoiled the popes. By a large body of Protestants the alliance was regarded as a scheme for serving PUEITAN TEIUMPH. 405 two masters. It had closed reform, while the greater part of the abuses which induced them to desire it were continued. They denounced its pretensions, complained of its tyranny. They had not thrown off one yoke in order to receive another. They were not afraid to dissent from those who had themselves dis- sented. To no purpose were they fined, imprisoned, pilloried, mutilated; their ministers dismissed, tracked by spies, prosecuted by usurping and rapacious courts. They flourished in spite of the efforts to destroy them, because they lived honestly, sustained by the powerful ideas of God and conscience. Private life was transformed. Enthusiasm spread. From individual manners, the movement extended to public institutions. When the Long Parliament assembled, they were able to resort to arms. Every week the Commons occupied a day in deliberating on the prog- ress of religion. The external and natural man was abolished. Eecreations and ornaments were abandoned. To wear love-locks, to starch a ruff, to read the Fairy Queen, were sins. Law was changed into a guardian of morals: 'Though the discipline of the church was at an end, there was nevertheless an un- common spirit of devotion among people in the parliament quarters ; the Lord's day was observed with remarkable strictness, the churches being crowded with numerous and attentive hearers three or four times in the day; the officers of the peace patrolled the streets, and shut up all publick houses; there was no travelling on the road, or walking in the fields, except in cases of absolute necessity. Religious exercises were set up in private families, as reading the Scriptures, family prayer, repeating sermons, and singing of psalms, which was so universal that you might walk through the city of London on the evening of the Lord's day, without seeing an idle person, or hearing anything but the voice of prayer or praise from churches and private houses.' All the outlets of instinctive nature were closed. In 1644 it was ordained : ' That no person shall travel, or carry a burden, or do any worldly labour, upon pen- alty of 10s. for the traveller and 5s. for every burden. That no person shall on the Lord's day use, or be present at, any wrestling, shooting, fowling, ringing of bells for pleasure, markets, wakes, church-ales, dancing, games or sports whatsoever, upon penalty of 5s. to every one above fourteen years of age. And if children are found offending in the prem- ises, their parents or guardians to forfeit 12d. for every offense. If the several fines above mentioned cannot be levied, the offending party shall be set in the stocks for the space of three hours.' One ordinance directed that all the May-poles in England should be cut down. Later they attacked the stage. Theatres were to be dismantled, the spectators fined, the actors whipped at the cart's-tail. They persecuted pleasure, the more surely to punish crime. In the army there was a like theory and a like practice. Cromwell's Ironsides were organized upon the principle that a 406 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATUEES. perfect Christian makes a perfect soldier. A quartermaster convicted of blasphemy, was condemned to have his tongue bored with a red-hot iron, his sword broken over his head, and himself to be dismissed. During the expedition in Ireland, soldiers passed their leisure hours in reading the Bible, in singing psalms, in religious controversy. Into the primeval forests of America, exiles, from conscience, they carried the same fixed determination, the same fervent faith, the same stoical spirit. A rigid morality was raised into a civil law, and the Bible was the basis of the state. It was enacted in New Hampshire: ' That if any person shall in the night time break and enter any dwelling-house in this State, with intent to kill, rob, steal, or to do or perpetrate any felony, the person so offending being thereof convicted shall suffer death.' Again: ' That no person shall travel on the Lord's day between sun-rising and sun-setting, unless from necessity, or to attend public worship, visit the sick, or do some office of charity, on penalty of a sum not exceeding six dollars, nor less than one.' And: 'If any person shall openly deny the being of a God, or shall wilfully blaspheme the name of God, Jesus Christ, or the Holy Ghost, or shall curse or reproach the word of God, ... he shall be punished by fine not exceeding fifty pounds, and may be bound to good behavior for a term not exceeding one year.' In Maryland the law declared: 'That if any person shall hereafter, within this province, wittingly, maliciously, and advisedly, by writing or speaking blaspheme or curse God, or deny our Saviour, Jesus Christ, to be the Son of God, or shall deny the Holy Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, or the Godhead of any of the three persons, or the unity of the Godhead, or shall utter any profane words concerning the Holy Trinity, or any of the persons thereof, and shall thereof be convicted by verdict, he shall, for the first offence, be bored through the tongue, and fined £30 to be levied of his body. And for the second offence, the offender shall be stigmatized by burning in the forehead with the letter B, and fined £40. And that for the third offense, the offender shall suffer death without the benefit of clergy.' In Massachusetts, a man was publicly whipped for singing a profane song. A girl, who gave some roasted chestnuts to a boy, adding ironically that they would put him into Paradise, was sentenced to ask pardon three times in church, and to be imprisoned three days. So does personal asceticism develop into public tyranny. Such were the 'Precisians' or 'Puritans' — Protestant dissent- ers, precise and combative minds, who, with the fundamental honesty of the race, demanded of the Anglicans a more search- ing and extensive reform, resolved to do all and to bear all rather PUKITAN INFLUENCE. 407 than be false to their convictions, firm in suffering as scrupulous in belief, and, amid all the fluctuations of fortune, leavening the temper of the times with a new conception of life and of man. If this ideal was, in the end, warped and overwrought, think of its genesis, Puritanism was the product of war. Hence the rigor of its precepts, its social austerity, its unbending creed. The general intoxication forced it into total abstinence. Only thus could it withstand laxity and license. To become belliger- ent was to become severe. Each party — Royalists and Episcopalians in alliance against the Puritans — was in turn oppressed by the other. The latter, in the day of its power, was as intolerant as had been the former. We hate with a will, when we can hate at once God's enemies and our own. How will it be when power is restored to the sup- porters of the throne and Established Church, embittered, not instructed, by misfortune, and fretting under restraints like a checked and flooded stream ? If now it be asked what was the worth and meaning of this heroic sternness, the answer is, — it accomplished much, and we walk smoothly over its results. It enthroned purity on the domestic hearth, labor in the workshop, probity in the counting- house, truth in the tribunal; developed the science of emigration, fertilized the desert, practised the virtues it exacted; above all, it saved the national liberty, against the predominating Church, who, seeking to realize in England the same position as Roman- ism had occupied in Europe, flung herself on every occasion into the arms of the Court, and taught that no tyranny however gross, no violation of the constitution however flagrant, could justify resistance.' Little culture, indeed; no philosophy, no sentiment of harmonious beauty; but solid and convincing reasoners, ener- getic men of action. We can excuse the fanaticism of those who, when the battle-instinct is yet strong, are so intent on the essence of things, against others intent on semblances and forms divorced from reality. Not unmixed good, certainly. The sun flings out impurities, gets balefully incrusted with spots. Ideals can never be com- pletely embodied here. Not to reiterate what has already been ' 'Eternal damTiation is prepared for all impenitent rebels in hell with Satan, the first founder of rebellion.' 408 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. noticed, one effect of Puritanism was to inflame, by its gloomy tenets, the zeal against witches. In the short space of the Com- monwealth, more of these unfortunates perished than in the whole period before and after. In Suffolk sixty were hung in a single year, — a barbarity to which Butler alludes in HucUbras : 'Hath not this present parliament A leger to the devil sent Fully empowered to treat about Finding revolted witches out? And has not he within a year Hanged three-score of them in one shire?' The superstition grew into a panic. In Scotland, controlled by a system of religious terrorism, it obtained an absolute ascendancy. In solemn synod, every minister was enjoined to appoint two of the elders of his parish as 'a subtle and privy inquisition,' who should question all parishioners upon oath as to their knowledge of witches. If the witch — commonly a half-doting woman — was obdurate, the first method of extorting confession was to 'wake her.' Across her face was bound an iron hoop with four prongs, which were thrust into her mouth. It was fastened behind to the wall, in such a manner that the victim was unable to lie down; and in this position she was sometimes kept for sev- eral days, carefully prevented from closing her eyes for a moment in sleep. To discover the insensible mark, which was the sure sign of guilt, long pins were thrust into her body. If this was ineffectual, other and worse tortures were in reserve — a kind of thumb-screw, or a frame in which the lower limbs were inserted, then broken by wedges driven in by a hammer. The seeds of the superstition were carried to New England by the Pilgrim Fathers. It flourished with frightful vigor in Massachusetts. Cotton Mather proclaimed it, and created a commission. Those who ventured to oppose the prosecutions were denounced as Sadducees and infidels. Multitudes were imprisoned, others fled, twenty-seven were executed. An old man of eighty was pressed to death. The clergy of Boston drew up an address of thanks to the commissioners, and expressed the hope that their zeal would never be relaxed. Yet this was orthodoxy once, attested by an amount of evi- dence so varied and so ample as to preclude the possibility of doubt ! You who would stifle the voice of reason, you who deem d DEVELOPMENT — POETRY. 409 another a heretic because his views are different from your own, you who would stigmatize the professors of other creeds as idol- atrous, — consider the lesson of history. What is truth? Has it any absolute criterion ? Your opinions are imagined to be con- clusive and final; but have not the finalities of yesterday yielded to the larger generalizations of to-day ? What assurance that, in the onward march of the collective soul, your doctrines shall not wane and vanish like the scattered dreams of your ancestors ? Your faith assumes to be perfect; but what is perfection? The realized anticipations of the present. But is humanity tottering into the grave, or yet crawling out of the cradle ? Who shall set a limit to the giant's unchained strength ? Is not man forever defining himself? Does he not mould himself incessantly in thoughts, sentiments, acts? And, as incessantly progressing by these determinations, does he not successively burst his environ- ments as he assumes them, only to pass into new ones, from which he will again escape in his unflagging and indefinite ascent? Through the ages to be, as through the ages gone, it shall be asked, 'Brethren, what of the night f while to each and to all the same answer shall be returned, 'Lo, the morning Cometh.' Poetry. — We have seen its ardent youth and its early man- hood; not preoccupied, as we are, with theories; happy in con- templating lovely objects, dreaming of nothing else, and wishing only that they might be the loveliest possible; not that things were more beautiful then, but that men, in the vernal freshness of the senses, found them so. Now prettiness takes the place of the beautiful. To the impassioned succeeds the agreeable. It is no more the overflow of images, compelling relief in words, but the sentiment of gallantry, turning a delicate compliment and a graceful phrase. The literary exhaustion is manifested in verses like these of Wither : 'Shall I, wasting in despair, Die because a woman's fair? Or make pale my cheeks with care 'Cause another's rosy are? Be she fairer than the day Or the flowery meads in May, If she thinks not well of me. What care I how fair she be? . . . Great, or good, or kind or fair, I will ne'er the more despair: 410 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. If she love me (this believe), I will die ere she shall grieve. If she slight me when 1 woo, I can scorn and let her go; For if she be not for me. What care I for whom she be?' But if like the rest, he is a reader and a versifier rather than a seer, he keeps close to the best he knows, pure enough to have delight in nature, reverent enough to give praise: 'Now the glories of the year May be viewed at the best, And the earth doth now appear In her fairest garments dress'd: Sweetly smelling plants and flowers Do perfume the garden bowers; Hill and valley, wood and field. Mixed with pleasure profits yield.' Withal, he has the dominating bent, — the serious thought of the long sad sleep beyond the dark gulf into which we plunge, un- certain of the issue: 'As this my carnal robe grows old, Soil'd, rent, and worn by length of years, Let me on that by faith lay hold Which man in life immortal wears: So sanctify my days behind. So let my manners be refined. That when my soul and flesh must part, There lurk no terrors in my heart.' These are the words of a Puritan. We must expect even less substance in wits of the court, cavaliers of fashion, — Carew, Herrick, and Suckling. If the first is destitute of noble ideas, he gives us smooth and flexible verse, mere perfume and dainty form, with hardly a gem amid the rubbish-heap of trivialities: 'He that loves a rosy cheek. Or a coral lip admires. Or from star-like eyes doth seek Fuel to maintain his fires, As old Time makes these decay, So his flames must waste away. But a smooth and steadfast mind. Gentle thoughts and calm desires. Hearts, with love combined. Kindle never-dying fires; Where these are not, I despise Lovely cheeks or lips or eyes.' No fire in the second, but light; no passion, but sensuous reverie, with a radical indelicacy of fancy and a garrulous egotism. Let POETRY — HERRICK — SUCKLING. 411 US hear the exquisite who wrote twelve hundred little poems in Arcadian repose, while public riot was drowning the voices of some and driving others to madness: 'Some ask'd me where the Rubies grew: And nothing did I saj-, But with my finger pointed to The lips of Julia. Some ask'd how Pearls did grow, and where; Then spoke I to my girl, To part her lips, and shew me there The quarrelets of Pearl.' Again: 'Cherry-ripe, ripe, ripe, I cry, Full and fair ones; come and buy; If so be you ask me where They do grow? I answer, there Where my Julia's lips do smile; — There's the land, or cherry-isle. Whose plantations fully show All the year where cherries grow.' It is not the inner character of things which moves him, but the sense of bodily loveliness, which is perilously acute, nor easily restrained within bounds by artistic tact. Where is the mount- ing melody of Burns or Shelley ? Even at his prayers, his spirit is mundane: 'When the house doth sigh and weep. And the world is drown'd in sleep, Yet mine eyes the watch do keep, Sweet Spirit, comfort me! When the artless doctor sees No one hope, but of his fees. And his skill runs on the lees. Sweet Spirit, comfort mel When his potion and his pill, Has, or none, or little skill. Meet for nothing but to kill, Sweet Spirit, comfort mel' The third, handsome, rich, and prodigal, was a Royalist gentle- man, and as such, wishing to try his hand at imagination and style, was able to write in liquid numbers a love-song that was in sympathy with the age: 'Why so pale and wan, fond lover? Prithee, why so pale? Will, when looking well can't move her, Looking ill prevail? Prithee, why so pale? Why so dull and mute, young sinner? Prithee, why so mute? 41,2 PHILOSOPHIC PEEIOD — FEATUEES. Will, when speaking well can't win, Saying nothing do't? Prithee, why so mute? Quit, quit, for shame, this will not move: This cannot take her. If of herself she will not love. Nothing can make her: The devil take her : ' He has none of the penetrating faculty which opens the invisible door of obscure, endless depths, leads us to the centre, and leaves us to gather what more we may of the treasure of pure gold. He has only fancy, which stays at externals. Thus : ' Her feet beneath her petticoat Like little mice stole in and out, As if they feared the light,' >■ Again: 'Her lips were red, and one was thin, Compared with that was next her chin, Some bee had stung it newly.' ^ The real bright being of the lip is there in an instant, but it is all outside; no expression, no mind. Now hear imagination speak: 'Lamp of life, thy lips are burning Through the veil that seems to hide them, As the radiant lines of morning Through thin clouds, ere they divide them.'s There is no levity here. He who sees into the heart of things sees too far, too darkly, too solemnly, too earnestly, to smile. A second mark of decadence is the affectation of poets, their involved obscurity of style, their ingenious absurdities, their conceits. They desire to display their skill and wit in yoking together heterogeneous ideas, in justifying the unnatural, in con- verting life into a puzzle and a dream. They are characterized by the philosophizing spirit, the activity of the intellect rather than that of the emotions. The prevalent taste is to trace re- semblances that are fantastic, to strain after novelty and surprise. Thus Donne, earliest of the school, says of a sea-voyage: 'There note they the ship's sicknesses,— the mast Shaked with an ague, and the hold and waist With a salt dropsy clogged.' When a flea bites him and his mistress, he says: 'This flea is you and I, and this Our marriage bed and marriage temple is. Though Parents grudge, and you, w'are met, ^Ballad upon a Wedding. ^Ibid. ^ Shelley. POETRY — DONNE — HERBERT. 413 And cloyster'd in the living walls of jet. Though use make you apt to kill me, Let not to that selfe-murder added be, And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.' We find little to admire, and nothing to love. We see that far- fetched similes, extravagant metaphors, are not here occasional blemishes, but the substance. He should have given us simjole images, simply expressed; for he loved and suffered much: but fashion was stronger than nature. Much in this manner, though never in so light a humor, is the poetry of Herbert, whose quaint- ness is vitally connected with essential beauty and sweetness of soul. Let him live in these tender and beautiful lines: 'Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright. The bridal of the earth and sky; The dews shall weep thy fall to-night, For thou must die.' And in these, than which no profounder were uttered in the Elizabethan age: 'More servants wait on Man Than he'll take notice of; in every path He treads down that which doth befriend him. When sickness makes him pale and wan O mighty Love I Man is one world, and hath Another to attend him.' To the same class of verse — concoctions of novel and remote analogies, belongs The Purple Island of Fletcher, five cantos of allegorical anatomy and one of psychology, a languid sing-song of laborious riddles. Other instances of the change, equally frigid if less extravagant, are Wotton's Character of a Happy Life, Bacon's Life of Man, Brook's Treatise of Religion, which are noticed only as indications that the sentiment of truth was encroaching upon the sentiment of beauty, that the imaginary figures of art were giving way to the precise formulas of logic. Apart from the crowd of sedulous imitators, is one who, preserving something of the energy and thrill of the original inspiration, refuses to be perverted; a Scot, — Drummond of Hawthornden, — whose private happiness was suddenly ruined, and whose public hopes were slowly wasted; a brooding, silent, tragic soul, altogether too serious to be artificial, with the funda- mental Saxon idea of man and of existence: 'This world a hunting is. The prey poor man, the Nimrod fierce is death; His speedy greyhounds are 414 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. Lust, sickness, envy, care, Strife that ne'er falls amiss. With all those ills which haunt us while we breathe. Now if by chance we fly Of these the eager chase. Old age with stealing pace Casts up his nets, and there we panting die.' There are moments when the greatest must feel and speak thus, troubled by the infinite obscurity that embraces our short, glimmer- ing life, which seems then but a madness, a sorrow, a phantom: behind, a submerged continent; before, oblivion and dust: 'If crost with all mishaps be my poor life. If one short day I never spend in mirth. If my sprite with itself holds lasting strife. If sorrow's death is but a new sorrow's birth; If this vain world be but a sable stage Where slave-born man plays to the scotRng stars; If youth be toss'd with love, with weakness age. If knowledge serve to hold our thoughts in wars; If time can close the hundred months of fame. And make what long since past like that to be; If virtue only be an idle name, If I, when I was born, was born to die ; Why seek I to prolong these loathsome days? The fairest rose in shortest time decays.' At the end of one intellectual epoch, and at the beginning of another, appeared one of the most illustrious of these brain-poets, Abraliam Cowley, a marvel of precocity, widely known at fifteen, and, like Reynolds the painter, accidentally determined to a particular direction: 'How this love of poetry came to be produced in me so early is a hard question. I believe I can tell the particular little chance which filled my head first with such chimes of verse as have never since left ringing there ; for I remember when I began to read, and to take some pleasure in it, there was wont to lie in my mother's parlor (I know not by what accident, for she herself never in her life read any book but of devotion) . . . Spenser's works; this volume I happened to fall upon, and was infinitely delighted with the stories of the knights, monsters, giants, and brave houses which I found everywhere there (though my understanding had very little to do with all this), and by degrees, with the tinkling of the rhymes and the dance of the numbers, I had read him all over before • I was twelve years old, and was thus made a poet almost immediately.' He read much, learned much, wrote much; but while he is always either ingenious or profound, he is usually wearisome. Always on the watch for novelty, he is seldom natural, never pathetic, if ever sublime. His best performances are his translations from Anacreon, which are but the literature of pleasure — the idle joys of the banquet and the wine circle. Still, it is refreshing to see the beholder, once a partaker, abandoned to the fresh impulses I POETRY — CHANGE IN THE DRAMA. 415 of an eager delight, quite forgetful of the skeleton that stands there to scare him from his roses and his cups: 'The thirsty earth soaks up the rain, And drinks, and gapes for drink again, The plants suclv in the earth, and are With constant drinking fresh and fair. The sea itself, which one would think Should have but little need of drink. Drinks ten thousand rivers up. So fill'd that they overflow the cup. The busy sun (and one would guess By its drunken fiery face no less) Drinks up the sea, and when he's done. The moon and stars drink up the sun. They drink and dance by their own light. They drink and revel all the night. Nothing in nature's sober found, But an eternal health goes round. Fill up the bowl then, fill it high. Fill all the glasses there, for why Should every creature drink but I, Why, man of morals, tell me why?' It is the waste of power in these men, not the want of it; the abuse of talent, not the absence of it, which we lament. To this they owe their poetical effacement with posterity. He who pays court to temporary prejudices, must content himself with 'a deciduous laurel, of which the verdure in its spring may be bright and gay, but which time will continually steal from his brows.' The Puritan conception of life was not one to nourish the eloquence of a 'divine madness'; yet, Puritanism, in its higher attributes, in its moral elevation, was to have its monument, the work of a mighty and superb mind, — Milton, the prince of scholars, the impassioned devotee of virtue, a poetic seer of the antique type, with a strong affinity for the genius of Greece and of Rome, and able to estimate all the Renaissance could tell or teach. The Muses had taken sanctuary in the theatres. England, indeed, was not to produce another Hamlet. Such heights could not be maintained. As the unknown was explored, the romantic ideal was fading. Puritanism was hardening and nar- rowing, while it was ennobling, life. Imagination was losing its buoyancy and bloom. The natural was giving place to the arti- ficial. But the infection that tainted lyric and didactic poetry, affected in a less degree the drama, which even in its decay was 416 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. I still magnificent, and, with an altered tone and manner, retained much of the warmth, mellowness, and reality of painting. Only at intervals does the chorus equal the solo of their matchless leader. The great elements in their natures are imperfectly har- monized. All grope amid qualified successes. All are noble in parts but without any general effect of nobleness. Jonson, the foremost, is but partial. He paints, not the whole of human nature, but a feature. His characters are not men and women as they are, but as they may be when ma.stered by a special bias or humor. However, to be tenacious of what is grand and lofty is more praiseworthy than to delight in what is low and disagreeable. None refuse wholly the color of the low world around them. Beaumont and Fletcher are ' studiously indecent.' The object is to excite, at any cost, the passions of an audience craving crudi- ties and horrors. Their young men are the ' bloods ' of the Stuart Court. The older and graver are foul. If they paint a bad woman, she is monstrous; if a good one, she is unreal, as if the one ex- treme were to compensate or atone for the other. We are willing to accept this transcendental conception of goodness as a redeem- ing merit; for that stature appears in everything which we pro- foundly revere and love, and only by a certain infinitude which belongs to it are we drawn into perpetual aspiration. These two writers were fellow-laborers, brothers in heart as well as brothers in work; the first, slow, solid, and painstaking; the second, rapid, volatile, and inventive. The first is the smoother, sweeter; the second, the more fertile and forceful. Both agree in impurity, the one deliberately impure, the other heedlessly so. Of the fifty-two plays in the collection that bears their names jointly, there is scarcely one that has not marks of blight — haste, extrav- agance, or grossness. If we seek for a burst of passion, a beauti- ful sentiment, a brilliant dialogue, or a vivid picture, we shall find it. Amid tavern-rackets, the clash of swords, and the howl of slaughter, they cut life into scenes of shame and terror, yet carry before the footlights touching and poetical figures that would seem to place them on the open borders of the infinite. Thus Philaster, speaking of Bellario, whom he has taken for a page, but who is no other than a maiden that has disguised her- self in order to be near him, says: POETKT — BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 417 'I found him sitting by a fountain-side, Of wliich he borrowed some to quench his thirst, And paid the nymph again as much in tears. A garland lay him by, made by himself. Of many several flowers, bred in the bay, Stuck in that mystic order, that the rareness Delighted one: But ever when he turned His tender eyes upon them, he would weep, As if he meant to make them grow again. Seeing such pretty helpless innocence Dwell in his face, I asked him all his story. He told me that his parents gentle died, Leaving him to the mercy of the fields, Which gave him roots; and of the crystal springs. Which did not stop their courses; and the sun. Which still, he thanked him, yielded him light. Then took he up his garland, and did shew What every flower, as country people hold. Did signify; and how all ordered thus. Expressed his grief; and to my thoughts did read The prettiest lecture of his country art That could be wished; so that methought I could Have studied it.' ' When she is detected, an explanation is demanded, and she re- counts her hopeless attachment: 'My father oft would speak Your worth and virtue; and, as I did grow More and more apprehensive, I did thirst To see the man so praised; but yet all this Was but a maiden longing, to be lost As soon as found; till, sitting in my window. Printing my thoughts in lawn, I saw a god, I thought, — but it was you, — enter our gates. My blood flew out, and back again as fast As I had puffed it forth and sucked it in Like breath. Then was I called away in haste To entertain you. Never was a man. Heaved from a sheep-cote to a sceptre raised, So high in thoughts as I; you left a kiss Upon these lips then, which I mean to keep From you forever. I did hear you talk, Far above singing! After you were gone, I grew acquainted with my heart, and searched What stirred it so. Alas I I found it love; Yet far from lust; for could I but have lived In presence of you, I had had my end. For this I did delude my noble father With a feigned pilgrimage, and dressed myself In habit of a boy: and for I knew My birth no match for you, I was passed hope Of having you. And, understanding well That when I made discovery of my sex, I could not stay with you, I made a vow, ^Philaster; or. Love Lies Bleeding. 27 418 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATUEES. By all the most religious things a maid Could call together, never to be known. Whilst there was hope to hide me from men's eyes. For other than I seemed, that I might ever Abide with you.' ' Here are feminine innocence with feminine power, ethereal soft- ness with martyr heroism. Few have equalled, fewer have ex- celled, this superior fineness of perception. Again, what could be more angelic than the modesty of Amoret, the faithful shep- herdess ? — 'Fairer far Than the chaste blushing mom, or that fair star That guides the wand'ring seaman thro' the deep.' 2 She is transported by her tenderness, as her lover by his violence. Persuaded that she is unchaste,he strikes her to the ground with his sword, and casts her into a well, but the god lets fall into the wound 'a drop from his watery locks,' and, recovering, she goes in search of her Perigot — 'Speak if thou be here, . . . Thy Amoret, thy dear. Calls on thy loved name. . . . 'Tis thy friend, Thy Amoret; come hither to give end To these consumings. Look up, gentle boy, I have forgot those pains and dear annoy I sufEer'd for thy sake, and am content To be thy love again. Why hast thou rent Those curled locks, where I have often hung Ribbons, and damask roses, and have flung Waters distill'd to make thee fresh and gay. Sweeter than nosegays on a bridal day? Why dost thou cross thine arms, and hang thy face Down to thy bosom, letting fall apace. From those two little Heav'ns, upon the ground, Show'rs of more price, more orient, and more round. Than those that hang upon the moon's pale brow? Cease these complainings, shepherd ! I am now The same I ever was, as kind and free. And can forgive before you ask of me: Indeed, I can and will.' At last the shepherd, after he has wounded her, and a nymph has cured her, is disabused, and throws himself on his knees before her. In spite of all he has done, she is unchanged: ' I am thy love ! Thy Amoret, for ever more thy love ! Strike once more on my naked breast, I'll prove As constant still. Oh, cou'dst thou love me yet, How soon could I my former griefs forget!' 1 Philaster: or. Love Lies Bleeding. "^ The Faithful Shepherdess, by Fletcher alone, who survived his friend ten years. The joint productions of the two are usually estimated at fifteen. POETRY — BEAUMONT AHJ-D FLETCHER. 419 Now hear the resounding talk of Memnon: 'I know no court but martial, Ko oily language but the shock of arms, No dalliance but with death, no lofty measures But weary and sad marches, cold and hunger, 'Lamms at midnight Valor's self would shake at; Yet, I ne'er shrunk. Balls of consuming wildfire. That licked men up like lightning have I laughed at, And tossed "em back again, like children's trifles. Upon the edge of my enemies' swords I have marched like whirlwinds. Fury at this hand waiting. Death at my right. Fortune my forlorn hope: When I have grappled with Destruction, And tugged with pale-faced Ruin, Night and Mischief, Frighted to see a new day break in blood.' i These contrasts are characteristic, — timidity, grace, devotion, patience; boldness, fury, contempt for consequences, concern only for the wild, reckless whim of the moment. Sometimes the heroic spirit appears, not as a mere flash, but as a character. When the Egyptians, to propitiate the mighty Caesar, bring him Pompey's head, he says nobly, grandly, of his mortal enemy: 'Egyptians, dare ye think your highest pyramids. Built to out-dure the sun, as you suppose. Where your unworthy kings lie raked in ashes, Are monuments fit for him? No, brood of Nilus, Nothing can cover his high fame but heaven. No pyramids set off his memories. But the eternal substance of his greatness; To which I leave him.'^ Scattered all over these dramas are exquisite lyrics, luxuriant descriptions, which show the poet greater than the dramatist. He who would have left the hoof-prints of unclean beasts in Paradise, could sing, in the rebound from sportive excess: 'Hence, all you vain delights. As short as are the nights Wherein you spend your folly! There's naught in this life sweet, If man were wise to see't. But only melancholy; • O sweetest melancholy! Welcome, folded arms and fixed eyes, A sigh that piercing mortifies, A look that's fasten'd to the ground, A tongue chain'd up without a sound! Fountain heads and pathless groves. Places which pale passion loves! Moonlight walks, when all the fowls Are warmly hous'd, save bats and owls! ' The Mad Lover. 2 The False One. 420 PHILOSOPHIC PEEIOD — FEATURES. A midniglit bell, a parting groan, These are the sounds we feed upon; Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley; Nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy.' He who sold his birthright with posterity for the loathsome pot- tage of contemporary praise, could, in his diviner moods, regale the soul with medicinal sweets. For example, how charming are the aspects of his landscape, of the dewy verdant grove, where on a summer night, after their custom, the young men and girls go to gather flowers and plight their troth* ' Thro' yon same bending plain That flings his arm down to the main. And thro' these thick woods, have I run. Whose bottom never kiss'd the sun Since the lusty spring began. . . . For to that holy wood is consecrate A virtuous well, about whose flow'ry banks The nimble-footed fairies dance their rounds. By the pale moon- shine, dipping oftentimes Their stolen children, so to make them free From dying flesh, and dull mortality. By this fair fount hath many a shepherd sworn And given away his freedom, many a troth Been plight, which neither Envy nor old Time Could ever break, with many a chaste kiss given In hope of coming happiness: by this Fresh fountain many a blushing maid Hath crowned the head of her long-loved shepherd With gaudy flowers, whilst he happy sung Lays of his love and dear captivity. See the dew-drops, how they kiss Ev'ry little flower that is; Hanging on their velvet heads Like a rope of crystal beads. See the heavy clouds low falling And bright Hesperus down calling The dead Night from underground.' In Massinger there is the same deplorable evil — licentious inci- dent. But we remember that decorum was then unknown, and that his vital sympathies were for justice and virtue. He sang, like the nightingale, darkling. His life was spent in conflict and distress. Hence nowhere is he so great as when he describes the struggles of the brave through trial to victory, the unmerited sufferings of the pure, and the righteous terrors of conscience. If ever his placid spirit rises to ecstasy, the ecstasy is moral. Passages like the following are the best of him, ethically and poetically: POETRY — MASSIIfGER — FORD. 421 'Look on the poor With gentle eyes, for in such habits, often. Angels desire an alms.' 'By these blessed feet That pace the paths^f equity, and tread boldly On the stiff neck of tyrannous oppression, By these tears by which I bathe them, I conjure you With pity to look on me.' 'Happy are those That knowing in their births, they are subject to Uncertain changes, are still prepared and armed For either fortune.' 'When good men pursue The path marked out by virtue, the blest saints With joy look on it, and seraphic angels Clap their celestial wings iii heavenly plaudits.' 'As you have A soul moulded from heaven, and do desire To have it made a star there, make the means Of your ascent to that celestial height Virtue mingled with brave action: they draw near The nature and the essence of the gods Who imitate their goodness.' i More intense, though less genial, is the sombre and retiring Ford, the poet not merely of the heart but of the broken heart, — the heart worn, tortured, and torn. His tragedies surprise, stun, per- plex, by the overpowering force of a passion which suggests kinship to insanity. The noblest is The Broken Heart. Penthea, whose soul is pledged to Orgilus, permits herself, from duty or submission, to be led to other nuptials, and finds the source of life dried up. Only the marriage of the heart is, in her eyes, genuine ; the other is moral infidelity. In the depths of her despair, she says, not bitterly, but sadly: 'My glass of life, sweet princess, hath few minutes Remaining to run down; the sands are spent: For by an inward messenger, I feel The summons of departure short and certain. . . . Glories of human greatness are but pleasing dreams. And shadows soon decaying: on the stage Of my mortality my youth hath acted Some scenes of vanity, drawn out at length; But varied pleasures sweetened in the mixture, But tragical in issue. ... How weary I am of a lingering life. Who count the best a misery. . . . That remedy must be a winding-sheet, a fold of lead. And some untrod-on corner in the earth.' 1 Only eighteen of his thirty-seven plays are extant. The best known are TheVirgin Martyr, The Fatal Doivry, The Duke of Milan, A Neiv Way to Pay Old Debts. The last has yet occasional representation, and contains the famous character of Sir Giles Over- reach, m PHILOSOPHIC PEKIOD — FEATURES. In the end she becomes mad, sinking continually under the incur- able grief, the fatal thought: 'Sure, if we were all sirens, we Bhould sing pitifully, And 'twere a comely music, when in parts One sung another's knell; the turtle sighs When he hath lost his mate; and yet some say He must be dead first: 'tis a fine deceit To pass away in a dream! indeed, I've slept With mine eyes open, a great while. No falsehood Equals a broken faith; there's not a hair Sticks on my head, but, like a leaden plummet. It sinks me to the grave: I must creep thither; The journey is not long.' Calantha, after enduring the most crushing calamities, concealed under a show of mirth, breaks under the terrible tension, and dies — without a tear: 'Death shall not separate us. Oh, my lords, I but deceived your eyes with antic gesture. When one news strait came huddling on another Of death, and death, and death: still I danced forward; But it struck home and here, and in an instant. Be such mere women, who with shrieks and outcries Can vow a present end to all their sorrows, Yet live to court new pleasures, and outlive them: They are the silent griefs which cut the heart-strings: Let me die smiling.' There is the same sad strain in his few songs, though subdued; as: ' Crowns may flourish and decay. Beauties shine, but fade away. Youth may revel, yet it must Lie down in a bed of dust.' ' And: 'Fly hence, shadows, that do keep Watchful sorrows, charmed in sleep! Though the eyes be overtaken, Yet the heart doth ever waken Thoughts chained up in busy snares Of continual woes and cares: Love and griefs are so exprest. As they rather sigh than rest. Fly hence, shadows, that do keep Watchful sorrows, charmed in sleep.' " Of all these later dramatists, the most Shakespearean is Webster, an artist of agony. But one has seen farther into the dark, woful, and diabolical. He calls one of his heroines The White Devil, 1 TTie Broken Heart. 2 The Lover's Melancholy, POETRY — WEBSTER. ^3 Vittoria Corombona, an Italian. Her mate is a duke, an adulter- ous lover, another devil, to v^^hom she says: 'To pass away the time, I'll tell your grace A dream I had last night. . . . Methought I walk'd about the mid of night, Into a church-yard, where a goodly yew-tree Spread her large root in ground. Under that yew. As I sat sadly leaning on a grave Checquer'd with cross-sticks, there came stealing in Your duchess and my husband; one of them A pick-axe bore, th' other a rusty spade. And in rough terms they 'gan to challenge me About this yew. . . . They told me my intent was to root up That well-known yew, and plant i' th' stead of it A wither'd black-thorn: and for that they vow'd To bury me alive. My husband straight With pick-axe 'gan to dig; and your fell duchess With shovel, like a fury, voided out The earth, and scattered bones ; Lord, how, methought, I trembled, and yet for all this terror I could not pray. . . . When to my rescue there arose, methought A whirlwind, tvhich let fall a massy arm, Prom that strong plant ; And both were struck dead by that sacred yeiv. In that base shallow grave luhich ivas their due.'' The import is clear, and her brother says, aside: '■Excellent devil! she hath taught him in a dream To make away his duchess and her husband.'' Her husband is strangled, his wife is poisoned, and she, accused of both crimes, is brought before the tribunal. She defies her judges : 'To the point. Find me guilty, sever head from body, We'll part good friends: I scorn to hold my life At yours, or any man's entreaty, sir. . . . These are but feigned shadows of my evils; Terrify babes, my lord, with painted devils; I am past such needless palsy. For your names Of whore and murderess, they proceed from you, As if a man should spit against the wind; The filth returns in's face.' More insulting at the dagger's point: 'Yes, I shall welcome death As princes do some great ambassadors; I'll meet thy weapon half way. . . . 'Twas a manly blow; The next thou giv'st, murder some sucking infant; And then thou wilt be famous.' Another is the Duchess of Malfi, who has secretly married her" 424 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. 1 steward. Her enraged brother determines to destroy her hus- band and children, resolves to kill her, but will first torture her. He comes to her in the dark, pretends to be reconciled, speaks affectionately, offers her his hand, but gives her a dead man's then suddenly exhibits a group of waxen figures, covered with wounds to represent her slaughtered family. Then appears a company of madmen, who leap and howl; at last, with execu- tioners and a coffin, a grave-digger, whose taunting talk is of the ckarnel-house. Sensibility dies. Asked of what she is thinking, she replies, with fixed gaze: 'Of nothing: When I muse thus, I sleep. ... Dost thou think we shall know one another In the other world? . . . Oh, that it were possible we might But hold some two days' conference with the dead! From them I should learn somewhat, I am sure, I never shall know here. I'll tell thee a miracle; I am not mad yet. . . . The heaven o'er my head seems made of molten brass. The earth of flaming sulphur, yet I am not mad.' Told that she is to be strangled, she replies, with brave, quiet dignity: 'I pray thee look thou giv'st my little boy Some syrup for his cold; and let the girl Say her prayers ere she sleep. . . . Pull, and pull strongly, for your able strength Must pull down heaven upon me. Yet stay, heaven gales are not so highly arched As 'princes'' palaces; they that enter there Must go upon their knees. . . . Go, tell my brothers when I am laid out; They then may feed in quiet.' After this, her servant, the duke and his confidant, the cardinal and his mistress, are poisoned or assassinated. To the dying, in the midst of this butchery, what is the state of humanity? A troubled dream, a nightmare, a clashing destiny, and, at the end of all, a void: 'We are only like dead walls or vaulted graves. That, ruin'd, yield no echo. Fare you well. . . . O, this gloomy world I ' In what a shadow, or deep pit of darkness, Doth womanish and fearful mankind live! . . In all our quest of greatness. Like wanton boys, whose pastime is their care. We follow after bubbles blown in the air. Pleasure of life, what is"t? only the good hours POETRY — INEQUALITIES OF THE DRAMA. 425 Of an ague; merely a preparative to rest, To endure vexation. ... Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust.' To little of the dramatic talent, as we pass on. to its lower grades, are we able to accord a distinct notice. The writers have merit, might have left a rich legacy to all generations, but wrote too much, which is perhaps the fault of all ages and of every author. They have the diversity of human life, but no central principle of order. Their scenes are more effective as detached than as connected. All degrade their fine metal by the inter- mixture of baser. All afford veins or lumps of the precious ore in the duller substance of their work. Here are specimens: 'Man is a torch borne in the wind; a dream But of a shadow.'' i 'Now, all ye peaceful regents of the night. Silently gliding exhalations, Languishing ivinds, and murmuring falls of waters. Sadness of heart, and ominous secureness. Enchantments, dead sleeps, all the friends of rest That ever wrought upon the life of man, Extend your utmost strengths ; and this charmed hour Fix like the centre.' ^ 'From his bright helm and shield did burn a most unwearied fire, Like rich Autumnns' golden lamj), whose brightness men admire, Past all the other host of stars, when with his cheerful face, Fresh washed in lofty ocean waves, he doth the sky enchase.'^ 'Patience, my lord! why, 't is the soul of peace; Of all the virtues, "t is nearest kin to heaven; It makes men look like gods. TTie best of men Thai e'er wore earth about him icas a sufferer, A soft, meek, x>atient, humble, tranquil spirit ; The first true gentleman that ever breathed.' * 'He that in the sun is neither beam nor moat, He that's not mad after a petticoat. He for whom poor men's curses dig no grave. He that is neither lord's nor lawyer's slave. He that makes This his sea and That his shore, He that In's coffin is richer than before. He that counts Youth his sword and Age his staff, He whose right hand carves his own epitaph. He that upon his death-bed is a swan. And dead no crow, — he is a Happy Man.'^ Of all the roses grafted on her cheeks. Of all the graces dancing in her eyes. Of all the music set upon her tongue, 'Chapman: a wise, manly, but irregular genius, greater as a translator of Homer than as a dramatist. 2 ibid. ^ jijid ; Homer. ■•Decker: a hopeful, cheerful, humane spirit, who turned vexations and miseries into commodities. ^ Ibid. m PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. Of all that was past woman's excellence, lu her white bosom; look, a painted boar Circumscribes all ! ' ' ' Love I hang love ! It is the abject outcast of the world. Hate all things; hate the world, thyself, all men; Hate knowledge; strive not to be overwise; It drew destruction into Paradise; Hate honor, virtue, they are bates That entice men's hopes to sadder fates.' ^ 'As having clasped a rose Within my palm, the rose being ta'en away. My hand retains a little breath of sweet, So may man's trunk, his spirit slipp'd away. Hold still a faint perfume of his sweet guest.'' 'Black spirits and white; red spirits and gray; Mingle, mingle, mingle, you that mingle may. Titty, Tiffin, keep it stiff in; Firedrake, Puckey, make it lucky; Lizard, Robin, you must bob in: Round, around, around, about, about; All ill come running in; all good keep outl 1st Witch. Here's the blood of a bat. Hecate. Put in that; oh, put in that. Sd Witch. Here's libbard's bane. Hecate. Put it in again. 1st Witch. The juice of a toad, the oil of adder. ^d Witch. Those will make the younker madder. All. Round, around, around, about, about; All ill come running in; all good keep out!'* 'Now I go, now I fly Malkin, my sweet spirit, and I. Oh, what dainty pleasure 'tis To ride in the air. When the moon shines fair. And sing and dance, and toy and kiss! Over woods, high rocks, and mountains, Over seas, our mistress' fountains. Over steep towers and turrets. We fly by night, 'mongst troops of spirits. No ring of bells to our ears sounds; No howls of wolves, no yelp of hounds; No not the noise of waters' breach. Or cannon's roar our height can reach.'* 'Simple and low is our condition. For here with us is no ambition: We with the sun our flocks unfold, Whose rising makes their fleeces gold; Our music from the birds we borrow, They bidding us, we them, good-morrow. 1 Decker. ^Marston; properly a satirist, bitter, misanthropic, cankered. *Ibid. * Middleton; a sagacious cynic, best known by his play of The Witch. *Ibid. PROSE — CHAOS AND OVERFLOW. 427 Our habits are but coarse and plain, Yet they defend from wind and rain: As warm too, in an equal eye, As those bestained in scarlet dye. The shepherd, with his homespun lass, As many merry hours doth pass, As courtiers with their costly girls. Though richly dressed in gold and pearls.'* In Shirley, last of the great race, the fire and passion of the grand old era passes away. Imagination is driven from its last asylum. The sword is drawn, and the theatres are closed. Dram- atists are stigmatized, actors are arrested; and when, after the lapse of a few years, they return to their old haunts, it is as roisterers under a foreign yoke. Prose. — The drooping flower of poesy was succeeded by a blossom of prose, produced by the same inner growth, and, at its highest point, tinged with the like ideal colors. A half dozen writers will exhibit the expansion. We omit, at present, those who offer only the material of knowledge, the substance of wisdom merely, — annalists, antiquaries, scientists, pamphleteers, whether poets, dramatists, divines, or politicians; and pass to those who bring us merit of execution, as well as the residuary element of thought-value. Of £aCOIl we shall elsewhere treat. Fulness of thought and splendor of workmanship raise him into the realm of pure literature. Less originative and luminous, though of the same band of scholars and dreamers, is Robert Burton, an ecclesiastic, a recluse, an eccentric, spasmodically gay, as a rule sad. To amuse and relieve himself, after thirty years' reading, he wrote the A?iatomy of Melancholy, an enor- mous medley of ideas, musical, medical, poetical, mathematical, philosophical; every page garnished with Latin, Greek, or French, from rare and unknown authors. It is the only book that ever took Dr. Johnson out of bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise. Here is a faint suggestion of his style — a glimpse into its jumble of observation, erudition, anecdote, instruction, and amusement : 'Boccace hath a pleasant tale to this purpose, which he borrowed from the Greeks, and whicti Beroaldus hath turned into Latin, Bebelius into verse, of Cymon and Iphige- nia. This Cymon was a fool, a proper man of person, and the governor of Cyprus' son, but a very ass; insomuch that his father being ashamed of him, sent him to a farm- " Thomas Heywood; graceful and gentle, one of the most prolific writers the world has ever seen. 428 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. house he had in the country, to be brought up; where by chance, as his manner was walking alone, he espied a gallant young gentlewoman named Iphigenia, a burgomas- ter's daughter of Cyprus, with her maid, by a brook side, in a little thicket, fast asleen in her smock, where she had newly bathed herself. When Cymon saw her he stood lean- ing on his staff, gaping on her immovable, and in a maze : at last he fell so far in love with the glorious object, that he began to rouse himself up; to bethink what he was- would needs follow her to the city, and for her sake began to be civil, to learn to sing and dance, to play on instruments, and got all those gentleman-like qualities and com- pliments, in a short space, which his friends were most glad of. In brief, he became from an idiot and a clown, to be one of the most complete gentlemen in Cyprus; did many valorous exploits, and all for the love of Mistress Iphigenia. In a word, I may say thus much of them all, let them be never so clownish, rude and horrid, Grobians and sluts, if once they be in love, they will be most neat and spruce; for. Omnibus rebus, et nitidis nitoribus antevenit amor ; they will follow the fashion, begin to trick up, and to have a good opinion of themselves ; venustatum enim mater Ven us ; a ship is not so long a-rigging, as a young gentlewoman a-trimming up herself against her sweetheart comes. A painter's shop, a flowery meadow, is not so gracious an aspect in Nature's store-house as a young maid, nubilis puella, a Novitsa or Venetian bride, that looks for an husband; or a young man that is her suitor; composed looks, composed gait, clothes, gestures,- actions, all composed; all the graces, elegancies, in the world, are in her face. Their best robes, ribbons, chains, jewels, lawns, linens, laces, spangles, must come on; praeter quum res patitur student elegantiae, they are beyond all measure coy, nice, and too curious on a sudden. 'Tis all their study, all their business, how to wear their clothes neat, to be polite and terse, and to set out themselves. No sooner doth a young man see his sweet- heart coming, but he smugs up himself, pulls up his cloak, now fallen about his shoul- ders, ties his garters, points, sets his band, cuffs, slicks his hair, twires his beard, etc' The Meditations of Bishop Hall, the ' English Seneca,' are alike rich in imagery and sententious in expression. Passages like the following reveal the poetic temperament: 'Here is a tree overlaid with blossoms: it is not possible that all these should pros- per; one of them must needs rob the other of moisture and growth. I do not love to see an infancy over-hopeful; in these pregnant beginnings one faculty starves another, and at last leaves the mind sapless and barren; as, therefore, we are wont to pull off some of the too frequent blossoms, that the rest may thrive, so it is good wisdom to moderate the early excess of the parts, or progress of over-forward childhood. Neither is it other- wise in our Christian profession; a sudden and lavish ostentation of grace may fill the eye with wonder, and the mouth with talk, but will not at the last fill the lap with fruit.' Again : 'What a strange melancholic life doth this creature lead; to hide her head all the day long in an ivy bush, and at night, when all other birds are at rest, to fly abroad, and vent her harsh notes. I know not why the ancients made sacred this bird to wisdom, except it be for her safe closeness and singular perspicuity; that when other domestical and airy creatures are blind, she only hath inward light to discern the least objects for her own advantage. Surely thus much wit they have taught us in her: that he is the wisest man that would have least to do with the multitude ; that no life is so safe as the obscure; that retiredness, if it have less comfort, yet has less danger and vexation; lastly, that he is truly wise who sees by a light of his own, when the rest of the world sit in an ignorant and confused darkness, unable to apprehend any truth save by the helps of an outward illumination.' A like irradiating power of fancy, with a less sustained dig- nity, may be seen in Dr. Fuller, facetious without irreverence, and witty without bitterness. A few of his aphorisms may PROSE — THE DREAMER OF NORWICH. 429 suggest that strong and weighty, yet gentle and beautiful style which was his habit: 'Learning hath gained most by those books by which the printers have lost.' 'Moderation is the silken string running through the pearl-chain of all virtues.' 'Anger is one of the sinews of the soul : he that wants it hath a maimed mind.' 'Tombs are the clothes of the dead. A grave is but a plain suit, and a rich monu- ment is one embroidered.' 'They that marry ancient people, merely in expectation to bury them, hang them- selves in hope that one will come and cut the halter.' 'Heat gotten by degrees, with motion and exercise, is more natural, and stays longer by one, than what is gotten all at once by coming to the fire. Goods acquired by industry prove commonly more lasting than lands by descent.' 'It is dangerous to gather flowers that grow on the banks of the pit of hell, for fear of falling in; yea, they which play with the devil's rattles will be brought by degrees to wield his sword; and from making of sport, they come to doing of mischief.' 'Generally, nature hangs out a sign of simplicity in the face of a fool, and there is enough in his countenance for a hue and cry to take him on suspicion; or else it is stamped in the figure of his body ; their heads sometimes so little, that there is no room for wit; sometimes so long, that there is no wit for so much room.' While the clash of arms is drawing men of letters from contem- plation into the war of pens, Sir ThomaS BrOWne, a physician and an idealist, is plunging into the abysses of meditative reverie. Unlike most of his profession, his delight is in the preternatural and visionary; he penetrates the internal structure of things, sees in the universe more than a dry catalogue, divines in every fact a mysterious soul, looks as from an eminence beyond visible phe- nomena, trembling with a kind of veneration before the dim vistas of the unknown, stirred to an eloquent sadness by the decay of nature and the dust of forgotten tombs, moved with an eloquent pity for the plumed and disorderly procession swallowed up in the fatal, all-devouring pit: 'Circles and right lines limit and close all bodies, and the mortal right-lined circle must conclude and shut up all. There is no antidote against the opium of time, which temporally considereth all things. Our fathers find their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us now we may be buried in our survivors. Gravestones tell truth scarce * forty years. Generations pass while some trees stand, and old families last not three oaks. . . . Who can but pity the founder of the Pyramids? Herostratus lives that burnt the temple of Diana; he is almost lost that built it: time hath spared the epitaph of Adrian's horse ; confounded that of himself. In vain we compute our felicities by the advantage of our good names, since bad have equal durations; and Thersites is like to live as long as Agamemnon. Who knows whether the best of men be known; or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot than any that stand remembered in the known account of time. Without the favour of the everlasting register, the first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methuselah's long life had been his only chronicle. Oblivion is not to be hired: the greatest part must be content to be as though they PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. ^ had not been; to be found in the register of God, not in the record of man. Twentr- ' seven names make up the first story before the Flood ; and the recorded names ever since contain not one living century. The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the equinox? . . . Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with memory a great part even of our living beings; we slightly remember our felicities, and the smart- est strokes of affliction leave but short smart upon us. Sense endureth no extremities and sorrows destroy us or themselves. To weep into stones are fables. Afflictions induce callosities; miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which, notwithstand- ing, is no unhappy stupidity. . . . The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise; Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsams. . . . Man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnising nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery in the infancy of his nature.' • Those whose minds are intent, constantly or mainly, on mere pleasure and gain, on the petty interests of appetite, will here find little to their satisfaction. But the meditations that lead us into the inner chambers of life and death are, if we be rightly attuned, more precious than the positive facts that put money into a man's pocket or actual knowledge into his head. We are more than sentiment — we are rational, we are ethical. The scale of our affinities is indicated by the intellect which seeks to tran- scend the finite in space and time and truth, by the conscience which owns the infinite in duty and stays itself on the infinite in love. A noble melancholy is the source of every generous pas- sion and of every philosophical discovery." Whatever depth there may be in our tenderness, whatever reverence in our voice, flows into us from the two eternities. Another who rises above the din of strife into the region of spiritualities, is Jeremy Taylor,' an Anglican and a Royalist, upright, zealous, tolerant, a sensitive and creative genius, less profound than Browne, but as opulent in resources, warmer, richer, more gorgeous in style. His soul was made for the sub- lime, the beautiful, and the picturesque. Never was such wealth and sweetness of imagery, or readier perception of analogies in things familiar and fair. He sees the skylark build her nest on * Hydriotaphia, or Urn Burial ; 'a Discourse on the Sepulchral Urns lately found in Norfolk.' ^Melancholy is the genuine inspiration of true genius: whoever is not conscious m this affection of the mind must not aspire to any great celebrity as an author. Madam deStael. Happy is the country where the authors are melancholy, the merchants satisfied, the rich gloomy. Ibid. 3 Son of a poor surgeon-barber, entered college at fourteen as a sizar, won his way, married a natural daughter of Charles I, was wrecked in the storm of the Civil War, twice imprisoned, and after the Restoration loaded with honors. PROSE — ^THE SHAKESPEARE OF DIVIIfES. 431 the ground, sees her rise amid the early perfumes of the fields, soaring highest of all the feathered tribe, or breasting the tem- pest in her upward flight, and compelled to return panting; then he thinks of the good man's spirit, struggling to ascend towards the throne of mercy: 'For so I have seen a lark rising from his bed of grass, and soaring upwards, singing as he rises, and hopes to get to heaven, and climb above the clouds; but the poor bird was beaten back with the loud sighings of an eastern wind, and his motion made irregu- lar and inconstant, descending more at every breath of the tempest, than it could recover by the libration and frequent weighing of his wings; till the little creature was forced to sit down and pant, and stay till the storm was over; and then it made a prosperous flight, and did rise and sing, as if it had learned music and motion from an angel as he passed sometimes through the air, about his ministries here below. So is the prayer of a good man.' Or his full imagination traces in sensible colors the progress of sin: 'I have seen the little purls of a stream sweat through the bottom of a bank, and intenerate the stubborn pavement, till it hath made it fit for the impression of a child's foot; and it was despised, like the descending pearls of a misty morning, till it had opened its way and made a stream large enough to carry away the ruins of the under- mined strand, and to invade the neighboring gardens: but then the despised drops were grown into an artificial river, and an intolerable mischief. So are the first entrances of sin stopped with the antidotes of a hearty prayer, and checked into sobriety by the eye of a reverend man, or the counsels of a single sermon : but when such beginnings are neglected, and our religion hath not in it so much philosophy as to think anything evil as long as we can endure it, they grow up to ulcers and pestilential evils ; they destroy the soul by their abode, who at their first entry might have been killed with the pressure of a little finger.' With like fertility and continuity, he describes the growth of reason : 'We must not think that the life of a man begins when he can feed himself or walk alone, when he can fight or beget his like, for so he is contemporary with a camel or a cow; but he is first a man when he comes to a certain steady use of reason, according to his proportion : and when that is, all the world of men cannot tell precisely. Some are called at age at fourteen, some at one and twenty, some never; but all men late enough; for the life of a man comes upon him slowly and insensibly. But, as when the sun approaches towards the gates of the morning, he first opens a little eye of heaven, and sends away the spirits of darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calls up the lark to matins, and by and by gilds the fringes of a cloud, and peeps over the eastern hills, thrusting out his golden horns like those which decked the brow of Moses, when he was forced to wear a veil, because himself had seen the face of God; and still, while a man tells the story, the sun gets up higher, till he shews a fair face and full light, and then he shines one whole day, under a cloud often, and sometimes weeping great and little showers, and sets quickly; so is a man's reason and his life.' We see that he is a philanthropist, who is not content to have religion a ritual or a dream; with whom the business of life is not to gather gold or get station, but to be a man ; not to pass an ephemeral being in a whirl of fashion, but to be a woman; a godly man, who does not spoil the poetic depth of holiness by 432 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. reducing its speech to a technical use; a counsellor, who does his work only with thought that it be good, whose marriage — let us hope — was the noble poem, the interior relation, the rudimentary heaven, which he would have it be: ' They that enter into the state of marriage cast a die of the greatest contingency and yet of the greatest interest in the world, next to the last throw for eternity. Life or death, felicity or a lasting sorrow, are in the power of marriage. A woman, indeed, ven- tures most, for she hath no sanctuary to retire to from an evil husband; she must dwell upon her sorrow, and hatch the eggs which her own folly or infelicity hath produced; and she is more under it, because her tormentor hath a warrant of prerogative, and the woman may complain to God, as subjects do of tyrant princes ; but otherwise she hath no appeal in the causes of unkindness. And though the man can run from many hours of his sad- ness, yet he must return to it again; and when he sits among his neighbors, he remem- bers the objection that lies in his bosom, and he sighs deeply. The boys and the pedlers, and the fruiterers, shall tell of this man when he is carried to his grave, that he lived and died a poor wretched person. The stags in the Greek epigram, whose knees were clogged with frozen snow upon the mountains, came down to the brooks of the valleys, hoping to thaw their joints with the waters of the stream ; but there the frost overtook them, and bound them fast in ice, till the young herdsmen took them in their stronger snare. It is the unhappy chance of many men, finding many inconveniences upon the mountains of single life, they descend into the valleys of marriage to refresh their troubles; and there they enter into fetters, and are bound to sorrow by the chords of a man's or woman's peevishness. . . . Man and wife are equally concerned to avoid all offences of each other in the begin- ning of their conversation ; every little thing can blast an infant blossom ; and the breath of the south can shake the little rings of the vine, when first they begin to curl like the the locks of a new weaned boy: but when by age and consolidation they stiffen into the hardness of a stem, and have by the warm embraces of the sun and the kisses of heaven, brought forth their clusters, they can endure the storms of the north, and the loud noises of a tempest, and yet never be broken: so are the early unions of an unfixed marriage.' It is not a cold rigorist who speaks, but a saviour, who feels the sore travail of the world, and esteems nothing greater than by word or deed to minister comfort to a weary or troubled soul: 'This is glory to thy voice, and employment fit for the brightest angel. But so have I seen the sun kiss the frozen earth, which was bound up with the images of death, and the colder breath of the north; and then the waters break from their inclosures, and melt with joy, and run in useful channels; and the flies do rise again from their little graves in walls, and dance awhile in the air, to tell that there is joy within, and that the great mother of creatures will open the stock of her new refreshment, become useful to man- kind, and sing praises to her Redeemer. So is the heart of a sorrowful man under the discourses of a wise comforter.' He has, like Browne, the stamp of the national spirit, the North- ern gloom which, in the days of the Edda, was soothed by the roaring of the sea and the hollow blast of the barren heath. For what is the end and sum of mortal designs ? A dark night and an ill guide, 'a boisterous sea and a broken cable,' — a rock, and a wreck, while they who weep loudest have yet to enter into the storm. All, fair as the morning, brave as the noon, are the hen- PROSE — A NEW CULTURE. 433 tage of worms. Go where you may, you tread upon the bones of a dead man. 'Where is the dust that has not been alive?" 'Nature calls us to meditate of death, by those things which are the instruments of acting it; and God by all the variety of His providence, makes us see death everywhere in all variety of circumstances, and dressed up for all the fancies and the expectation of every single person. Nature has given us one harvest every year, but death hath two; and the spring and the autumn send throngs of men and women to charnel-houses: and all the summer long, men are recovering from their evils of the spring, till the dog-days come, and then the Sirian star makes the summer deadly; and the fruits of the autumn are laid up for all the year's provision, and the man that gathers them eats and surfeits, and dies and needs them not, and himself is laid up for eternity; and he that escapes till winter, only stays for another opportunity, which the distempers of that quarter minister to him with great variety. Thus death reigns in all the portions of our time. The autumn with its fruits provides disorders for us, and the winter's cold turns them into sharp diseases, and the spring brings flowers to strew our hearse, and the summer gives green turf and brambles to bind upon our graves.' The style of all these writers, by its copiousness and pomp, by its redundancies and irregularities, links them to the age of Elizabeth. It has the Elizabethan ardor and the Elizabethan faults. If now we turn to Cowley, we shall see, in startling contrast, the powerful and erratic breeze slacken to a smooth and placid equability: 'The first riiinister of state has not so much business in public as a wise man has in private; if the one have little leisure to be alone, the other has less leisure to be in com- pany ; the one has but part of the affairs of one nation, the other all the works of God and Nature under his consideration. There is no saying shocks me so much as that which I hear very often, that a man does not know how to pass his time.' Of Oliver Cromwell: 'What can be more extraordinary than that a person of mean birth, no fortune, no eminent qualities of body, which have sometimes, or of mind, which have often, raised men to the highest dignities, should have the courage to attempt, and the happiness to succeed in, so improbable a design as the destruction of one of the most ancient and most solidly founded monarchies upon the earth? that he should have the power or bold- ness to put his prince and master to an open and infamous death; to banish that numer- ous and strongly allied family: to do all this under the name and wages of a parliament; to trample upon them, too, as he pleased, and spurn them out of door',? when he grew weary of them; to raise up a new and unheard-of monster out of their ashes; to stifle that in the very infancy, and set up himself above all things that ever were called sover- eign in England ; to oppress all his enemies by arms, and all his friends afterwards by artifice; to serve all parties patiently for a while, and to command them victoriously at last; to overrun each corner of the three nations, and overcome with equal facility both the riches of the south and the poverty of the north; to be feared and courted by all for- eign princes, and adopted a brother to the gods of the earth ; to call together parliaments with a word of his pen, and scatter them again with the breath of his mouth; to be hum- bly and daily petitioned, that he would please to be hired, at the rate of two millions a year, to be the master of those who had hired him before to be their servant; to have the estates and lives of three kingdoms as much at his disposal as was the little inheritance of his father, and to be as noble and liberal in the spending of them; and lastly — for there is no end of all the particulars of his glory — to bequeath all this with one word to i Young's MgM Thoughts. 28 434 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATUEES. his posterity; to die with peace at home, and triumph abroad; to be buried among kings and with more than regal solemnity; and to leave a name behind him. not to be extin- guished but with the whole world; which, as it is now too little for his praises, so might have been, too, for his conquests, if the short line of his human life could have been stretched out to the extent of his immortal designs.' This is the mark of a new culture, a new society: it is the model which Temple and Addison will adopt and improve. History. — The contribution to this department in the first quarter of the century, most valuable as authority and most mas- terly in execution, is Bacon's Reign of Henry VII. In the collection of materials, the period was exceedingly active. Vol- umes of Antiquities, Memoirs, Memorials, Travels, contempo- rary narratives and retrospective treatises, most of which from the literary point of view are worthless, attest the great amount of industry subsidiary to true history. Always liable in all its forms to be partisan, the historical literature of the seventeenth century, as a whole, is violently so. The historian speaks less with the air of a judge than with the gesticulations of an attor- ney. Indeed, the grave and judicial, ancient or modern, are not altogether unbiased by their sympathies and antipathies. They are prone — let the reader or student remember — to write in the interest of some political party, some social caste, some favorite hero, some Idol of the Tribe, the Den, the Forum, or the Theatre. There are, also, unmistakable signs that historians were shifting their ground. Thus Selden, the chief of scholars, offended many of the Royalists by his History of Tithes, wherein he denied their divine right. Baker compiled a Chronicle 'with such care and diligence,' he assures us, ' that if all other chroni- cles were lost, this only would be sufficient to inform posterity of all passages worthy to be known.' Bacon analyzes motives, weighs actions, examines and describes the laws and events affecting trade and agriculture, with an evident purpose to enable the reader to glean the lessons which may hereafter be turned to useful account. We observe an increasing respect for the human intellect, an indisposition to believe in things strange, merely be- cause they have been believed, and an inclination to take the side of the people, rather than that of the rulers. Theology. — The persecutions of Galileo, and his recantation, suffice to show that Religion was still considered the arbiter of Science. In England, though creeds did not at once come into I J PROSE — THE AGE OF CREEDS. 435 conflict with the general culture, the temper of the nation was intensely theological. ' There is a great abundance of theologians in England,' says a contemporary; 'all point their studies in that direction.' It was a period of distrust and dissension, — of the strife of conservative and radical reform. As the struggle pro- gressed, fanaticism gained ground, faith became more stubborn, divinity more sinister, action and intelligence more restrictive. But — Milton aside — the Episcopalians were not only more tal- ented and scholarly than their opponents, but also more liberal. If, by their alliance with the crown, they were oppressive in poli- tics, they were tolerant in doctrine, more friendly, perhaps, to the large ideas of the Renaissance. What it is chiefly important to observe, is, that the rage of controversy reacted upon the spirit of insubordination that was abroad, and tended to the rapid increase of heresy. In 1647, Boyle writes from London: 'There are few days pass here that may not justly be accused of the brewing or broaching of some new opinion. Nay, some are so studiously changing in that particu- lar, they esteem an opinion as a diurnal, after a day or two scarce worth the keeping. If any man have lost his religion, let him repair to London, and I'll warrant him he shall find it. I had almost said too,— if any man has a religion, let him but come hither now, and he shall go near to lose it,' Each sect proclaimed its contempt of tradition and the efficiency of reason. Hales, the ' ever-memorable,' declared that he would quit the Church of England to-morrow if she insisted on the damnation of dissenters. He advised men to trust to themselves alone in religious matters. Of the authority of the Fathers and of Councils, he said briefly, 'It is none.' Universality is no con- clusive test. It 'is such a proof of truth as truth itself is ashamed of. The most singular and strongest part of human authority is properly in the wisest and most virtuous, and these, I trow, are not the most universal.' ChiUingWOrth, a militant and Royal- ist, of strong and subtle intellect, asserted the insecurity of any basis for belief but that of private judgment. No man is bound to believe the points at issue between the Catholics and Protestants if he finds them repugnant to reason. ' God requires only that we believe the conclusion as much as the premises deserve.' Nothing can be more detrimental to religion than to force it. 'For my part, I am certain that God hath given us our reason to discern between truth and falsehood; and he that makes not this use of it, but believes things he knows not why, I say it is by 436 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. chance that he believes the truth, and not by choice; and I can not but fear that God will not accept of this sacrifice of fools.' The great principle of religious toleration is clearly implied in this, if it is not clearly expressed in what follows: 'This deifying our own interpretations and tyrannous enforcing them upon others; this restraining of the word of God from that latitude and generality, and the understand- ings of men from that liberty wherein Christ and His apostles left them, is and hath been the only foundation of all the schisms of the Church and that which makes them im- mortal.' But the first famous plea for tolerance, on a solid and compre- hensive basis, was Taylor's Liberty of Prophesying. That free- dom of conscience which the Puritan founded on the personal communion of each soul with God, is here founded on the weak- ness of authority and the infirmity of reason. The Apostle's Creed comprises all that can be absolutely proven, and therefore all that is fundamental. All errors beyond do not affect salva- tion, and hence ought not to be punished. The magistrate, how- ever, must see to the safety of the commonwealth, and put down, if necessary, those religions whose principles destroy government, as well as 'those religions — if there be any such — which teach ill life.' Among Puritans, the Independents allowed the greater lati- tude. Milton deemed persecution, in defense of truth, inexcusa- ble: 'For truth is strong next to the Almighty. She needs no policies or stratagems or licensings to make her victorious. These are the shifts and the defences that error uses against her power.' The Presbyterians desired to tolerate only those who accepted the ' fundamentals ' of Christianity, and drew up a list which formed as elaborate and exclusive a test as the Anglican articles which they rejected. They tried in 1648 to induce Parliament to enact that any one who advocated views contrary to the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, should be punished with death, and all who taught Popish, Arminian,' Baptist, or Quaker doc- trines, should be imprisoned for life. Catholicism, indeed, was by all sectaries ruthlessly proscribed; but the nation, it is evident, was advancing towards religious liberty. It must not be forgotten that this great process — yet far from being completed in any country — was begun by the union of the spirit of Christianity 1 A scheme of Arminius, a Dutch theologian, who died in 1608. It arose by way of reaction against the predestinarianism of Calvin. PROSE — SECULARIZATION^ OF MORALS. 437 with the spirit of scepticism. He who has learned to doubt has learned to tolerate. They who have recognized the fallibility of their own opinions, cease to dream that guilt can be associated with an honest conclusion. Ethics. — When dogmatism declines, we may be sure that men are interrogating their moral sense more than the books of theologians, and that they will soon proceed to make that sense a supreme arbiter. While the period offers nothing that can be reckoned a treatise, much less a system, of moral philosophy, indications are not wanting that conditions were rapidly maturing for the examination, analysis, and classification of moral feelings on a rationalistic basis. BaCOn, without attempting a scheme, calls attention to the insufficient treatment of Ethics, and sug- gests the double line of investigation — theory and practice : 'The main and primitive division of moral knowledge seemeth to be into the exem- plar or platform of good, and the regimen or cultnre of the mind: the one describing the nature of good; the other presenting rules how to subdue, apply, and accommodate the will of man thereunto.' The 'platform' seems to consist in seeking the good of the whole — or the greatest good of the greatest number. He contributes several passages, moreover, to the rising issues touching the rights of belligerents. We also meet with allusions, reflections, precepts, counsels, in Feltham's Resolves, Berkin's Cases of Con- science, Selden's TaMe Talk, and Browne's Christian Morals. The aim of these writers is not to inquire into the principles of action, but rather to enforce the duties of practical religion. We quote briefly from the last: 'Live by old ethicks and the classical rules of honesty. . . . Think not that morality is ambulatory; . . . that virtues, which are under the everlasting seal of right reason, may be stamped by opinion. And therefore though vicious times Invert the opinions of things, and set up new ethics against virtue, yet hold thou unto old morality; and rather than follow a multitude to do evil, stand like Pompey's pillar conspicuous by thyself, and single in integrity. And since the worst of times afford imitable examples of virtue ; since no deluge of vice is like to be so general but more than eight will escape; eye well those heroes who have held their heads above water, who have touched pitch and not been defiled, and in the common contagion have remained uncorrupted.' And: 'Live happy in the Elysium of a virtuously composed mind, and let intellectual con- tents exceed the delights wherein mere pleasurists place their paradise. Bear not too slack reins upon pleasure, nor let complexion or contagion betray thee unto the exor- bitancy of delight. Make pleasure thy recreation or intermissive relaxation, not thy Diana, life and profession. . . . Our hard entrance into the world, our miserable going out of it, our sicknesses, disturbances, and sad rencounters in it, do clamorously tell us We come not into the world to run a race of delight.' 1 438 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. Again : ' Lastly, if length of days be thy portion, make it not thy expectation. Eeckon not upon long life ; think every day the last, and live always beyond thy account. He that so often surviveth his expectation lives many lives, and will scarce complain of the short- ness of his days. Time past is gone like a shadow; make time to come present. Ap- proximate thy latter times by present apprehensions of them; be like a neighbour unto the grave, and think there is but little to come. And since there is something of us that will still live on, join both lives together, and live in one but for the other. He who thug ordereth the purposes of this life will never be far from the next.' That moral instruction has been secularized, constitutes an im- portant advance towards the exploration of the nature and foun- dation of morals. Science. — As poetry languished, science rose, a second crea- tion which continued the first. What one had represented, the other proceeded to observe, to analyze, and to classify. On the Continent, the discoveries of Galileo established the Copernican theory of the universe. Summoned before the Inquisition, he "was forced to kneel in the sackcloth of a penitent, and swear with his hands upon the gospels, that ' it was not true that the earth moved round the sun, and that he would never again in words or writing spread this damnable heresy.' 'And yet,' he immediately whispered to a friend, 'it does move.' In 1609, he had constructed his telescope, and, applying it to the heavens, had excited the strongest interest by revealing the inequalities of the moon's surface, the moon-like phases of Venus, the satellites of Jupiter, and the ring of Saturn. Space was thus seen to be very different from what the ancients had imagined. Men were led to suspect that it contained a mechanism more various and more vast than had ever been conjectured. Kepler took up the notion of a physical connection among celestial bodies, and arrived at three laws the most magnificent which the whole ex- panse of human knowledge can show: that the planets move round the sun in ellipses^' that they describe equal areas about their centres in equal times; that the squares of their periodic times are proportional to the cubes of their distances. Why they so moved, or how their motions were maintained, he also - endeavored to explain. It was assumed that a current of fluid matter circulated round the sun, and carried them with it, like a boat in a stream, or straws in a whirlpool. The true explana- tion was to be the glory and merit of Newton. The theory of vortices, — put forward more distinctly and elaborately by PROSE — THE EXPANSION" OF SCIENCE. 439 Descartes, — though it is now known to have no scientific value, has a mental value of the highest order: for (1) it reminds us again that the complete disclosure of a new truth by the principal discoverer is preceded by guesses, trials, and glimpses; and (2) it introduced the conception of natural law into what had long been the special realm of superstition. In England, the intellectual impulse was in the same direction. Weeds and the grain often thrive and flourish together, but if Bacon set aside with scorn the astronomical system of Coper- nicus, he was the first to impress upon mankind at large, the power and importance of physical research. 'Through all those ages,' he says, 'wherein men of genius or learning principally or even moderately flourished, the smallest part of human industry has been spent on natural philosophy, though this ought to be esteemed as the great mother of the sciences; for all the rest, if torn from the root, may perhaps be polished and formed for use, but can receive little increase.' Many were undecided, Milton among others: 'What if seventh to these The planet earth, though steadfast she seem. Insensibly three different motions move?' And: 'What if the sun Be centre to the world; and other stars. By his attractive virtue and their own Incited, dance about him various rounds?' His leaning, however, seems to have been for the new: 'Or she from west her silent course advance With inoffensive pace, that spinning sleeps On her soft axle, while she paces even, And bears thee soft with the smooth air along?' Many were knocking at the door which another and a later was to force open. In 1638 a book appeared with the title. The Dis- covery of a New World / two years afterward, a Discourse concerning a JVew Planet. The art of numerical calculation made inestimable progress by means of Napier's invention of Logarithms, without which the sciences in which the most splen- did triumphs have been achieved, could never have been carried to the height they have reached. The circulation of the blood had been partially anticipated. Harvey completed the doctrine, demonstrated and announced it. It encountered as much popu- lar as professional odium; but like the heliocentric doctrine, — 440 PHILOSOPHIC PEKIOD — FEATURES. 'Untamed its pride, unctiecked its course, From foes and wounds it gathers force.' This was the beginning of a revolution in medicine. In the fer- ment of the Civil War, some speculative persons formed them- selves into a club, which they called the Invisible College, and met once a week, sometimes in London, sometimes in Oxford according to the changes of fortune and residence of members. ' Our business,' says one of them, ' precluding affairs of state and questions of theology, was to consider philosophical subjects, and whatever related thereto, — physic, anatomy, geometry, astron- omy, navigation, statics, magnetism, chemistry, mechanics, and natural experiments, with the state of these studies as then culti- vated at home or abroad.' A witness to the resistless tendencies of the age, is the cele- brated work of Sir Thomas Browne — Inquiries itito Vulgar and Common Errors. His enumeration of errors to be dispelled exemplifies the notions which prevailed: 'That crystal is nothing else but ice strongly congealed; that a diamond is softened or broken by the blood of a goat; that a pot full of ashes will contain as much water as it would without them; that bays preserve from the mischief of lightning and thunder; that an elephant hath no joints; that a wolf, first seeing a man, begets a dumbness in him; that moles are blind; that the flesh of peacocks corrupteth not; that storks will only live in republics and free states; that the chicken is made out of the yolk of the egg; that men weigh heavier dead than alive ; that the forbidden fruit was an apple ; that there was no rainbow before the Flood; that John the Evangelist should not die.' 'Many others there are,' he adds, 'which we resign unto divinity, and perhaps deserve not controversy.' We are here informed that one main cause of error is 'adherence unto authority'; that another is 'neglect of inquiry'; that a third is 'credulity.' All which is confirmatory of that vast social and intellectual move- ment which we have seen sweep away the institutions that vainly attempted to arrest it, and which was steadily introducing a new series of conceptions into every province of speculative and prac- tical life. Philosophy. — The sterile empire of scholasticism was at an end. The sound of great names had lost its omnipotent charm. Speculators felt the need of a law and a law-giver to methodize the discordant elements, but pursued no determinate course, while pretenders struggled for the vacant throne. At this junc- ture a leader appeared — Francis Bacon, who set aside the traditions of the past, separated philosophy from theology, and m PROSE — RISE OF MODERN" PHILOSOPHY. 441 a large and noble temper called the attention of mankind to the power and importance of experimental research. While his own researches lay chiefly in the domain of physical science, yet the spirit of his method — slow and patient investigation — was one which applied equally to the whole realm of knowledge. More clearly than any other, he saw where the error of the ancients lay, — in making the largest generalizations first, without the aid or warrant of rigorous inductive methods, and applying them deductively without verification. But the revolt from this waste of intelligence, as well as his ignorance of mathematical knowl- edge, blinded him to the real value of deduction as an instrument of discovery.' His influence, however, especially on the develop- ment of science, was decisive, if not immediate. His fundamental maxim — excellent though not without its dangers — suited the English positive, practical genius, — that philosophy should begin in observation and end in art: ' In the same manner as we are cautioned by religion to show our faith by our works, we may freely apply the principle to philosophy, and judge of it by its works, account- ing that to be futile which is unproductive, and still more, if instead of grapes and olives it yield but the thistles and thorns of dispute and contention?' What is that world? What is man? What is the origin of knowledge? What are its limits? How can it be increased? From what principles must we start? What methods are we to employ? What rule shall we deduce for the conduct of life? To answer these questions is the dark problem of metaphysics, to which Bacon, from the bent of his genius, was no way addicted. On the continent a Frenchman, Descartes, gave an answer which, while it has ceased to be satisfactory, formed the starting-point of much English speculation, though he himself made no distin- guished disciples among English thinkers. Turning the mental vision inward, as Bacon turned it outward, he watched the opera- tions of the soul, as an object in a microscope. Resolved to believe nothing but upon evidence so convincing that he could not by any effort refuse his assent, he found, as he inspected his beliefs, that he could plausibly enough doubt everything but his own existence. Here at last was the everlasting rock, and ' Mechanics, astronomy, optics, acoustics. Involve a deductive element. Each sup- poses the law to be so and so, that is, devises an hypothesis, and inquires what conse- quences will follow, always with the design of trying such results by facts, and adopting the hypothesis only when it can stand the test. Prom a principle thus established a multitude of truths are deduced by the mere application of geometry and algebra. 442 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — FEATURES. I this was revealed in his own Consciousness. Hence his famous Gogito, ergo sum, — / think, therefore I am. Consciousness, said he) is the basis of certitude. Interrogate it, and its clear replies will be science; for all clear ideas are true. Down in the depths of self, he tells you, is the distinct immutable idea of the Infinite Perfection — the mark of the workman impressed upon his work; therefore, God exists. This fact established, the veracity of our faculties is guaranteed; for an Infinite and Perfect Being would not so constitute His creatures that they should be always and essentially deceived. His method of ascent to the basis of truth was inductive ; thenceforth, from that irreversible Cer- tainty, it was deductive. He was greatest in that in which Bacon was least, — mathematics. The latter argued from effects to causes; the former deduced effects from causes — explaining the phenomena of sense by those of intuition. The one used ex- periment to verify an a priori conception; the other, to forni conceptions. Against the prosaic, earthy temper of the next period, when Philosophy shall turn her face earthward, the mind be plotted out into real estate, and grandeur become a thing unknown, let us hold in remembrance the sublime words of Sir TllOniaS Browne on the true dignity and destiny of man as the highest sublunary object of our theoretical and moral interest. This poet-philosopher shall give us the last accents of the great Elizabethan age: 'For the world, I count it not an inn but an hospital, and a place, not to live but to die in. The world that I regard is myself; it is the microcosm of my own frame that! cast mine eye on ; for the other, I use it but like my globe, and turn it round sometimes for my recreation. . . . The earth is a point not only in respect of the heavens above us, but of that heavenly and celestial part within us; that mass of flesh that circumscribes me limits not my mind; that surface that tells the heavens it hath an end cannot per- suade me I have any: . . . whilst I study to find how I am a microcosm or little world, I find myself something more than the great. There is surely a piece of divinity in us, something that was before the elements and owes no homage unto the sun. Nature tells me I am the image of God, as well as Scripture; he that understands not thus much, hath not his introduction or first lesson, and is yet to begin the alphabet of man.' Resume. — The opinions and feelings that had been growing up in the bosom of private families now manifested themselves in Parliamentary debates, then overturned the throne, and insti- tuted the Commonwealth. Against the loyal enthusiasm of Eng- lish gentry, and the fierce licentiousness of Royalist reprobates, were arrayed the valor, the policy, and the public spirit of the tne a J KESUME. 443 Puritans, with their severe countenance, precise garb, petty scru- ples, and affected accent. Out of the struggle sprang into organized existence two great parties, — standing the one for political tradition, the other for political progress; the one for religious conformity, the other for religious liberty. In the drama, the noonday of Shakespeare was followed by the afternoon flush of Jonson, the delineator of humors, and a semi-classic in taste; of Beaumont and Fletcher, luxuriating in irregularity of form, and heralding the sensual excess that ended in the violent extinction of the art; of Massinger, Ford, and the rest of that bright throng, whose final and almost solitary succes- sor was Shirley. Having reached the limit of its expansion, the poetic bloom withered. The serious temper, the blast of strife, the ascetic gloom, accelerated the decay which natural causes began. The agreeable replaced the forceful; and the pretty, the beautiful. Donne founded the fantastic or metaphysical school, marked by the love of quaint phrases, strange analogies, and ambitious efforts at antithesis. Poets lost the romantic fervor without gaining the classic grace. Yet in this exhausted soil, the old sap, lost to the eye, sent up one more of its most vigorous prod- ucts. Prose was unexampled in vigor and amount; most of it — in particular during the Civil War — political and theological, inspired by the rage of sects and factions, meant for the ravenous appetites of the moment, and therefore ephemeral. A few nota- ble books — like the Ai'eopagitica of Milton, those of Taylor, the Spenser of theology, of Bacon, the diviner in science, and of Browne, the dreamer of Norwich — glow with the colored lights and the heart of fire which give to the productions of genius enduring life. Style was copious, even to redundancy; ornate, even to intemperance; not seldom pedantic, with blemishes of vulgarity and tediously prolonged periods. We do not look for grace in Leviathans, nor for urbanity in mastodons. The scholastic dynasty, which had survived revolutions, em- pires, religions, and languages, was fallen. Into the ensuing- anarchy Bacon introduced the principle of order, and furnished to liberated thought a chart and compass. His preeminent ser- vice was his classification of the Idola, and his constant injunction to correct theory by confronting it with facts. In him, and in 444 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — ^^REPRESEifTATIVE AUTHORS. Descartes of France, modern philosophy may be said to originate inasmuch as they were the first to make the doctrine of method a principal object of consideration. Literary eras have no arbitrary or precise bounds. They are discriminated by centres and directions, by a certain set of influ- ences affecting the public mind and character during a more or less definite time, to be succeeded by a new set producing a new phase of the nation's literature. The characteristic tendencies which stretch across them are denoted by persons scattered through them, as the mountain trend is determined by its isolated peaks. The poetic conception of the world, as distinguished from the mechanical, may be taken as the dominant mark of the so- called Elizabethan Age, first clearly defined in Spenser, rising to its zenith in Shakespeare, and passing away in Milton — last of the famed race who slaked the thirst of their souls at the springs of imagination and faith. JONSON Then Jonson came, instructed from the school. To please in method, and invent by rule; His studious patience and laborious art By regular approach essay'd the henrt.— Samuel Johnson. Many were the wit-combats betwixt Shakspeare and Ben Jonson, which two I be- held like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war. Master Jonson, like the former, was built far higher in learning; solid but slow in his performances. Shak- speare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and invention.— Fuller. Biography. — Born in Westminster, in 1574, a few days after the death of his father, who was a clergyman ; attracted the attention of Camden, who sent him to school, where he made extraordinary progress; entered Cambridge at sixteen, but was, shortly recalled by his step-father, a bricklayer, who set him to the trowel; ran away, enlisted, fought in the Netherlands, killed a man in single combat in the view of both armies; returned to England at the age of nineteen, with a roistering reputation and an empty purse; turned to the stage for a livelihood, and failed; quarrelled with a fellow-performer, and slew him in a duel, was JONSON-. 445 arrested for murder, imprisoned, almost brought to the gallows ; was released, and immediately married a woman as poor as himself — a wife whom he afterwards described as 'a shrew yet honest'; was forced again to the stage both as an actor and a writer, be- ginning his dramatic career by doing job-work for the managers; sprang into fame in his twenty-second year, proclaimed himself a reformer of the drama, assumed an imperious attitude, railed at his rivals, and made bitter enemies, against whom he struggled without intermission to the end; excited the king's anger by an irreverent allusion to the Scotch, was in danger of mutilation, but was set at liberty without a trial; amid feasting and rejoicing, his mother showed him a poison which she had intended to put into his drink, to save him from the disgraceful punishment, and 'to show that she was not a coward,' says Jonson, 'she had re- solved to drink first '; received the appointment of Poet Laureate, with a pension of a hundred marks, which was subsequently ad- vanced to a hundred pounds by Charles I. His latter days were dark and painful. For twelve years he battled with want and disease. His pockets had holes, and his money failed. Still obliged to write in order to live, he wrote when his pen had lost its vigor and lacked the charm of novelty. Scurvy increased, paralysis came, and dropsy. In the epilogue to the New Inn (1630), he appeals to the audience: 'If you expect more than you had to-night, The maker is sicli and sad. . . . All that his faint and falt'ring tongne doth crave. Is, that you not impute it to his brain, That's yet unhurt, altho' set round with pain It cannot long hold out.' Deprived of Court patronage, he was forced to beg, first from the Lord Treasurer, then from the Earl of Newcastle. Shattered, drivelling, and suffering, he died in August, 1637, — alone, served by an old woman; and was buried, in an upright posture, in the Poet's Corner of the Abbey. A workman, hired for eighteen pence by the charity of a passer-by, carved into the simple stone over his grave the laconic inscription: ' O Eabe Ben Jonson ! ' Appearance. — Big and coarsely framed, of wide and long face, early marred by scurvy, square jaw, enormous cheeks, thick lips, with a 'mountain belly' and an 'ungracious gate'; a pon- 446 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. I derous athlete, of free and boisterous habits, built up out of beef and Canary wine, for action and for endurance. His life and manners were in harmony with his person. Writings. — We perceive at once the introduction of a new model, — art subjected strictly to the laws of classical compo- sition. The understanding of the artist is solid, strong, pene- trating, assertive; his mind, extensively furnished from expe- rience and from books; his memory, retentive and exact, crowded with technical details and learned reminiscences. It is not for him to imitate, but to be imitated. He has a doctrine, which he expounds with Latin regularity. He will be loyal to culture, and therefore observes the unities. His plot shall be a diagram, the incidents rapid and natural; and you may see the dramatic effect, perceptible to every reader, rise to a climax by a continuous and uniform ascent. You have seen greater spontaneity, finer sym- pathy, finer fancy, a more genial spirit of enjoyment, but never such preoccupation of rule and method; above all, such power of working out an idea to a painful and oppressive issue, such per- sistency of thirst to unmask folly and punish vice. A character, . with him, is but an incorporated idea, — a leading feature, conceit, or passion, produced on the stage in a man's dress, — which masters the whole nature, and which the personages combine to illustrate. At twenty-two, having exulted in his own exploits on the field, he writes Every Man in his Humour, to clothe in flesh and blood a colossal coward and braggart, — Bobadil, who swears 'by the body of Cassar,' or 'by the foot of Pharaoh,' or, more terrifically still, 'by my valor ! ' His proposal for the pacification of Europe is famous: 'I will tell you, sir, by the way of private, and under seal, I am a gentleman, and live here obscure, and to myself; but were I known to her majesty and the lords (ob- serve me), I would undertake, upon this poor head and life, for the public benefit of the state, not only to spare the entire lives of her subjects in general, but to save the one- half, nay, three-parts, of her yearly charge in holding war, and against what enemy soever. And how would I do it, think you ! . . . Why, thus, sir. I would select nineteen more, to myself, throughout the land; gentlemen they should be of good spirit, strong' and able constitution; I would choose them by an instinct, a character that I have: and I would teach these nineteen the special rules, — as your punto, your reverso, your stoc- cata, your imbroccato, your passado, your montanto,— till they could all play very near, or altogether, as well as myself. This done, say the enemy were forty thousand strong, we twenty would come into the field the tenth of March, or thereabouts; and we would challenge twenty of the enemy; they could not in their honour refuse us; well, we would kill them; challenge twenty more, kill them; twenty more, kill them; twenty more, kill them too; and thus would we kill every man his twenty a day, that's twenty score; A joifsoif. 447 twenty score, that's two hundred; two hundred a day, five days a thousand; forty thou- sand; forty times five, five times forty, two hundred days Icills them all up by computa- tion. And this will I venture my poor gentleman-like carcass to perform, provided there be no treason practiced upon us, by fair and discreet manhood; that is, civilly by the sword.' It is affectation and bluster grown to egregious excess. So in the Alchemist, Sir Epicure Mammon, in public and alone, expa- tiates continually in gigantic fancies of luxury and sensuality. Hear him unfold the vision of splendors and debauchery into which he will plunge when, by the possession of the philosopher's stone, he has learned to make gold: 'I assure you He that has once the flower of the Sun, The perfect ruby, which we call elixir, . . . Can confer honour, love, respect, long life; Give safety, valour, yea, and victory. To whom he will. In eight and twenty days I'll make an old man of fourscore a child. . . . I will have all my beds blown up, not stuff 'd: Down is too hard. My mists I'll have of perfume, vapored 'bout the room To lose ourselves in; and my baths, like pits, To fall into: from whence we will come forth, And roll us dry in gossamer and roses.— Is it arriv'd at ruby? — And my flatterers Shall be the pure and gravest of divines. ' And they shall fan me with ten ostrich tails Apiece, made in a plume to gather wind. We will be brave, Puffe, now we have the med'cine My meat shall all come in, in Indian shells. Dishes of agate, set in gold, and studded With emeralds, sapphires, hyacinths, and rubies. The tongues of carps, dormice, and camel's heels, Boil'd in the spirit of sol, and dissolved pearl, Apicius' diet 'gainst the epilepsy: And I will eat these broths with spoons of amber. Headed with diamond and carbuncle. My foot-boy shall eat pheasants, calver'd salmons. Knots, godwits, lampreys: I myself will have The beards of barbels serv'd, instead of salads; Oil'd mushrooms; and the swelling, unctuous paps Of a fat pregnant sow, newly cut off, Drest with an exquisite and poignant sauce. For which Pll say unto my cook, " Tliere's gold ; Go forth, and be a knight.''' . . . My shirts I'll have of taffeta-sarsnet, soft and light As cobwebs; and for all my other raiment. It shall be such as might provoke the Persian, Were he to leach the world riot anew. My gloves of fishes' and birds' skins, perfum'd With gums of Paradise and eastern air.' 448 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. Or the dominant trait assumes the form of a mental eccentricity bordering on madness, as in The Siletit Woman. Morose is an old citizen who has a horror of noise, but loves to talk. He dis- charges his servant whose shoes creaked. The new one wears slippers soled with wool, and speaks only in a whisper through a tube; but even the whisper is finally forbidden, and he is made to reply by signs. Further, Morose is rich; and has a nephew witty but penniless, who, in revenge for all his treatment, finds him a supposed silent woman, the beautiful Epicene. Morose enchanted by her brief replies and nearly inaudible voice, marries her, with a view to disinherit his nephew who has laughed at his infirmity. The ceremony is no sooner over than she turns out a very shrew: 'Why, did you think you had married a statue? or a motion only? one of the French puppets, with the eyes turn'd with a wire? or some innocent out of the hospital, that would stand with her hands thus, and a playse mouth, and look upon you?' She directs the valets to speak louder; opens wide the doors to her friends, who arrive in troops and overwhelm hira all at once with congratulations, questions, and counsels. Here comes one with a band of music, who play suddenly, to their utmost volume. Now a procession of menials, with clattering dishes, a whole tav- ern. Amid the shouts of revelry, the din of trumpet and drum, Morose flees to the top of the house, puts ' a whole nest of night- caps ' on his head and stuffs his ears. In vain. The racket increases. The house is turned into a thunder factory. 'Rogues, hell-hounds, Stentors ! . . . They have rent my roof, walls, and all my windows asunder with their brazen throats ! ' Goaded to desperation, he casts himself on the guests with his long sword,' looking like a maniac; chases the musicians, breaks their instru- ments, and disperses the gathering amid indescribable uproar. Afterwards, he is pronounced mad, and they discuss his alleged insanity before him. They jingle in his ear most barbarous words, consider the books which he must read aloud for his cure, assure him that his wife talks in her sleep, and snores dreadfully. 'O, redeem me, fate; redeem me, fate,' he cries in his extremity. 'For how many causes may a man be divorced?' he asks of his nephew, who replies, like a clever rascal, 'Allow me but five hundred during life, uncle, and you are free.' Morose accepts the proposition eagerly, joyfully; and his nephew then shows him that Epicene is no woman — only a boy in disguise. JONSON. 449 In sensual Venice, queen city of vices and of arts, he finds a magnificent cheat, and hounds him to a merited retribution in Volpone. Never was such ignoble lust of gold, such shameless artistry in guile, such debasement to evil and the visibly vile. The fearful picture is flashed upon us at the outset, when Vol- pone says: 'Good morning to the day, and next, my gold: Open the shrine, that I may see my saint 1' Then: 'Hail the world's soul, and minel . . . O thou son of God, But brighter than thy father, let me kiss. With adoration, thee, and every relic Of sacred treasure in this blessed room 1 ' Childless and without relations, he has many flatterers who hope to be his heir; and he plays the invalid to encourage their gifts. First Voltore arrives, bearing a huge piece of precious plate. Volpone has cast himself on the bed and buried himself in wraps, coughing as if at the point of death: 'I thank you, signior Voltore, Where is the plate? mine eyes are bad. . . . Your love Hath taste in this, and shall not be unanswered. . . . I cannot now last long. ... I feel me going,— Uh, uh, uh, uh ; ' He is exhausted, his eyes close; and Voltore inquires of his para- site, Mosca: 'Am I inscribed his heir for certain?' — 'Are you? I do beseech you, sir, you will vouchsafe To write me i' your family. All my hopes Depend upon your worship. I am lost Except the rising sun do shine on me. Vol. It shall both shine and warm you, Mosca. M. Sir, I am a man, that hath not done your love All the worst offices: here I wear your keys, See all your coffers and your caskets lockt. Keep the poor inventory of your jewels. Your plate and moneys; am your steward, sir. Husband your goods here. Vol. But am I sole heir? M. Without a partner, sir, conflrm'd this morning: The wax is warm yet, and the ink scarce dry Upon the parchment. Vol. Happy, happy me I By what good chance, sweet Mosca? M. Your desert, sir; I know no second cause.' 29 450 PHILOSOPHIC PEKIOD — REPEESEN^TATIVE AUTHORS, The second is a deaf old miser, Corbaccio, hobbling on the verffe of the grave, yet trusting to survive Volpone, whom he is joyed to find more ill than himself: 'C. How does your patron? ... M. His mouth Is ever gaping, and his eyelids hang. C. Good. M. A freezing numbness stiffens all his joints. And makes the color of his flesh like lead. G. 'Tis good. M. His pulse beats slow, and dull. C. Good symptoms still. M. And from his brain— C. I conceive you, good. M. Flows a cold sweat, with a continual rheum, Forth the resolved corners of his eyes. O. Is't possible? Yet I am better, ha! How does he with the swimming of his head M. O, sir, 'tis past the scotomy, he now Hath lost his feeling, and hath left to snort: You hardly can perceive him, that he breathes. C. Excellent, excellent, sure I shall outlast him: This makes me young again, a score of years.' He is reminded that Voltore has been here, to forestall him, leaving a splendid token of regard; but: 'See, Mosca, look. Here, I have brought a bag of bright cecchines. Will quite weigh down his plate. . . . M. Now, would I counsel you, make home with speed. There, frame a will ; whereto you shall inscribe My master your sole heir. . . . C. This plot Did 1 think on before. . . . M. And you so certain to survive him. C. I. M. Being so lusty a man. C. 'Tis true.' When he is gone, Corvino, a merchant, appears, with an orient pearl and a superb diamond. 'Am I his heir?' — 'Sir, I am sworn, I may not shew the will Till he be dead: but here has been Corbaccio, Here has been Voltore, here were others too, I cannot number 'em, they were so many. All gaping here for legacies; but I, Taking the vantage of his naming you, Signior Corvino, Signior Corvino, took Paper, and pen, and ink, and there I ask'd him. Whom he would have his heir? Corvino. Who Should be executor? Corvino. And, To any question he was silent to, I still interpreted the nods he made JONSON-. 451 (Through weakness) for consent: and sent home th' others, Nothing bequeath'd them, but to cry and curse. Cor. O my dear Mosca ! ' Presently he departs; and Volpone, springing up, cries in rap- tures : 'My divine Mosca! Thou hast to-day outgone thyself. . . . Prepare Me music, dances, banquets, all delights; The Turk is not more sensual in his pleasures, Than will Volpone.' He is accused, before the tribunal, of imposture and rape; and the would-be heirs defend him with an incredible energy of lying and open villainy. Then he writes a will in Mosca's favor, has his death reported, conceals himself, and enjoys the looks of those who have just saved him, now stupefied with disappoint- ment. Now is Mosca's moment. He has the will, and demands of Volpone half his fortune. Their dispute exposes the common rascality. The arch villain has outwitted himself, and all are sent to the pillory. The best testimony to his imagination is The Sad Shepherd, an unfinished pastoral drama, more poetical than dramatic, with nothing low in the comic and nothing inflated in the serious. It were not easy to surpass the charm of the opening lines: 'Here she was wont to go I and here I and here I Just where those daisies, pinks and violets grow: The world may find the Spring by following her; For other print her airy steps ne'er left: Her treading would not bend a blade of grass. Or shake the downy blow-ball from his stalk! But like the soft west-wind she shot along. And where she went the ilowers took thickest root, As she had sowed them with her odorous foot ! ' And where should we look for a more masterly delineation of that sorceress of evil, the witch ? — 'Within a gloomy dimble she doth dwell, Down in a pit, o'ergrown with brakes and briars Close by the ruins of a shaken abbey. Torn with an earthquake down unto the ground, 'Mongst graves and grots, near an old charnel-house, . . . Where the sad mandrake grows, Whose groans are dreadful ; and dead-numbing night-shade, The stupefying hemlock, adder's tongue, And martagan; the shrieks of luckless owls We hear, and croaking night-croivs in the air! Green-bellied snakes, blue fire-drakes in the sky. And giddy flitter-mice with leather wings ! The scaly beetles, with their habergeons, 452 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. That make a humming murmur as they fly! There in the stocks of trees, white fairies do dwell. And span-long elves that dance about a pool, With each a little changeling in their arms! The airy spirits play with falling stars, And mount the spheres of fire to kiss the moon! While she sits reading by the glow-worm's light. Or rotten wood o'er which the worm hath crept. The baneful schedule of her nocent charms.' Jonson's fame rests chiefly on his comedies, which constitute by far the largest part of his work. His tragedies are men-of- war, stately and heavy. Sejaniis is distinguished by sustained depth of knowledge and gravity of expression. But more than once, in this and in Cataline, nature forces its way through pedantry and erudition. Cataline's imprecation is fine: 'It is decreed! Nor shall thy fate, O Rome! Resist my vow. Though hills were set on hills. And seas met seas, to guard thee, I would through: I'd plough up rocks, steep as the Alps, in dust. And lave the Tyrrhene waters into clouds, But I would reach thy head, thy head, proud city!' The description of the morning on which the conspirators meet, is powerful and dramatic: 'It is, methinks, a morning full of fate! She riseth slowly, as her sullen car Had all the weights of sleep and death hung at it. She is not rosy -fingered, but swoll'n hlackl Her face is like a water turned to blood. And her sick head is bound about with clouds As if she threatened night ere noon of day!' The following is vivid and impressive: 'The rugged Charon fainted, And asked a navy rather than a boat. To ferry over the sad world that came. The maws and dens of beasts could not receive The bodies that those souls were frighted from; And e'en the graves were fill'd with men yet living, Whose flight and fear had mix'd them with the dead.' Jonson should have written an epic. Style. — Massive, erudite, concise, compact, equipoised, rotund; in a word, classic. As literal as Shakespeare's is figurative; as studied as Shakespeare's is intuitive and unrestrained. His adver- saries asserted that every line cost him a cup of sack. In prose, terse, sharp, swift, biting. In versification, peculiarly smooth and flowing; for this literary leviathan, it strangely appears, has emi- nently the merits of elegance and grace. What, for example, JONSoif. 453 could be more lightsome and airy, more artistic, than the procla- mation of the Graces, when Venus has lost her son Cupid ? — 'Beauties, have you seen this toy, And his breath a flame entire, Called Love, a little boy. That, being shot like lightning in. Almost naked, wanton, blind. Wounds the heart, but not the skin. Cruel now, and then as kind? If he be amongst ye, say; At his sight the sun hath turned; He is Venus' runaway. Neptune in the waters burned; Hell hath felt a greater heat; She that will but now discover Jove himself forsook his seat; Where the winged wag doth hover, From the centre to the sky Shall to-night receive a kiss. Are his trophies reared high. How or where herself would wish; But who brings him to his mother Wings he hath, which though ye clip. Shall have that kiss, and another. He will leap from lip to lip. Over liver, lights, and heart, He hath marks about him plenty; But not stay in any part; You shall know him among twenty. And if chance his arrow misses. All his body is a fire. He will shoot himself in kisses.' !Railk. — In the cluster of poets who sing the meditative, aspiring, and romantic life of the period, Jonson is a soloist; next to Shakespeare, a leader, — a leader by profundity of knowledge and vigor of conception, by the dash of the torrent and the force of the flood. Above all, has he the art of development, the habit of Latin regularity. For the first time, a plot is a symmetrical whole, advancing by consecutive deductions; having a beginning, middle, and end, its subordinate actions well ordered, and its leading truth which they combine to elucidate and establish. He is persuaded that he ought to observe the severity and accuracy of the ancients; not, in the same play, — 'Make a child new-swaddled, to proceed Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed. Past threescore years; or with three rusty swords, And help of some few foot and half- foot words, Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars.' But in this full attainment of form, he fails in completeness of Hfe. He is too much of a theorist, too little of a seer. Given a peculiarity, he can work it out with logical exactness and real- istic intensity. That is, he delineates absorbing singularities rather than persons. He thus inverts the true process of char- acterization, which conceives the 'humour' as an offshoot of the individual. He is English merely, where Shakespeare is cosmo- politan. He is too ponderous and argumentative. His plots, admirable of their kind, are external contrivances of the under- standing rather than interior organisms of the imaginative 454 PHILOSOPHIC PEEIOD — KEPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. insight. Depth of passion and winning tenderness are wanting, The energy which should be vital too often becomes mechanical. His point of view is usually or always that of the satirist: ' My strict hand Was made to seize on vice, and witli a gripe Squeeze out tlie humour of such spongy natures, As lick up every idle vanity.' And thus, even in the lower levels of comedy, where he is most at home, the critic frequently, consciously or unconsciously, mars the artist. Neither he nor the reader forgets himself. The pro- cess is seen, the intention is felt. Calculation strips him of that delicate and easy-flowing imitation which begets hallucination. Still, if unable to construct characters, variety of learning, clearness of mind, and energy of soul, suffice to depict English manners and to render vice visible and odious. But he is loftier from another side. We have seen how charming, how elegant and refined, this same war-elephant may be when he enters the domain of pure poetry; as in the polished songs and other lyrical pieces sprinkled over his dramas, in the beautiful dream of the Shepherd, or the courtly Masques, which display the whole mag- nificence of the English Renaissance. His inequality — great excellences offset by great defects — is in strong contrast with the unebbing fulness and amplitude of the creative Shake- speare. Nevertheless, in his field, in his genus of the drama, he stands on the summit of his hill. Character. — The most obvious qualities of his intellectual nature are weight and force; of his spiritual nature, earnestness and courage. In the classics, accurate and thorough; and on every subject, athirst. He is said to have carried books in his pocket while working at his trade, in order, during leisure mo- ments, to refresh his memory upon favorite passages in the Latin and Greek poets. In method, he was careful and precise: 'For a man to write well, there are required three necessaries: — to read the authors; observe the best speakers; and much exercise of his own style. In style consider what ought to be written, and after what manner; he must first think, and excogitate his matter; then choose his words, and examine the weight of either. Then take care in placing and ranking both matter and words, that the composition be comely; and to do this with diligence and often. Ko matter how slow the style be at first, so it be labored and accurate ; seek the best, and be not glad of the forward conceits, or first words that offer themselves to us, but judge of what we invent, and order what we approve.' JONSON". 455 He had moral loftiness. 'Of all styles,' he said, 'he most loved to be named Honest.' To this add resolute self-assertion. The stage was to be improved and exalted. He vpould guide, not follow, the popular taste. Judge of his energy and purpose: 'With an armed, and. resolved hand, ril strip the ragged follies of the time Naked as at their birth, . . . And with a whip of steel, Print wounding lashes in their iron ribs. I fear no mood stampt in a private brow, When I am pleas'd t' unmask a public vice. I fear no strumpet's drugs, nor ruffian's stab, Should I detect their hateful luxuries.' He writes correspondently, — as if with his fist. Conscience and vigor, aided by an intrepid self-confidence, commanded esteem, even veneration; his hard- won position strengthened his natural pride; and consciousness of power, with a severe sense of duty, rendered him censorious, magisterial. He thought Donne, ' for not keeping of accent, deserved hanging'; and Decker was a rogue. He could instruct even Shakespeare. At the Mermaid, he was self -constituted autocrat. His hearers were schoolboys. While other dramatists said to the audience, ' Please to applaud this,' Ben said, 'Now you fools, we shall see if you have sense enough to applaud this ! " Egotistical, overbearing, of sour aspect, he was frank, social, generous, even prodigal. To the last he retained the riotous, defiant color of the brilliant dramatic world through which he fought his way. Like the rest, he lived freely, liberally, and saw the ins and the outs of lust. Drink, always a luxury, became his necessity. He was a frequent visitor of the Apollo, a club in the Old Devil Tavern; wrote rules for it,—Zeges Conviviales; and penned a welcome over the door to all who approved the 'true Phabian liquor.' In a general view, he presents a singular antithesis, — a rugged, gross, and combative aspect, which is the ordinary one, and a fanciful, serene aspect, which is exceptional and separate, occu- pying, so to speak, a secluded corner in the general largeness. It might seem surprising that the burly giant could become so gracefully petit as he appears in previous quotations, and, pre- eminently in the following lightly tripping strophe: 'Have you seen but a bright lily grow Before rude hands have touched it? 1 Whipple. 456 PHILOSOPHIC PEEIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. Have you marked but the fall o' the snow Before the soil hath smutched it? Have you felt the wool of beaver? Or swan's down ever? Or have smelt o' the bud o' the briar? Or the nard in the fire? Or have tasted the bag of the bee? O so white, — O so soft,— so sweet is she!' Influence. — It is believed that his social position was supe- rior to Shakespeare's. With royalty he was familiar. Elizabeth and James admired and employed him. His society was courted by the time-worn and the youthful; and by an inner circle of devotees he was venerated. In his declining days, he was the acknowledged chief of his art, and during the Restoration his reputation as a critic was still second to none. In his own age, his power was similar to that of his massive namesake, Samuel Johnson, in the succeeding century. Swift was to find sugges- tions in his Tale of the Tub. Milton was to go to his masques and odes for some of the elegancies of his own dignified muse. Dryden was to think, erroneously, 'He did a little too much Romanize our tongue.' For reasons given, his readers 'are now, unhappily and unworthily, relatively few; but, as his good parts are enduring and imperishable, no fame is more secure. To every soul that is taxed, to every youth that resolves to be eminent, he brings the assurance that manly resistance sub- dues the opposition of the world; the resolution to surmount an obstacle reduces it one half; before a fearless step, foes will slink away; around perseverance the Graces collect, and at its bidding the laurel comes. LORD BACON. Who is there that upon hearing the name of Lord Bacon does not instantly recognize everything of genius the most profound, everything of literature the most extensive, everything of discovery the most penetrating, everything of observation of human life the most distinguishing and refined? — Burke. Biography. — Born in London, in 1561 ; his father. Sir Nich- olas, one of Elizabeth's most sagacious statesmen; his mother, the learned daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke; received his early education under his mother's eye, mixed freely with the wise ise J LORD BACON", 457 and great who were visitors at his home; at thirteen, entered Cambridge University, where his deepest impressions became an inveterate scorn for Aristotle and his followers; left before he was sixteen, without taking a degree, and was sent to France as an attache of the English ambassador, to learn the arts of state- craft; designed to stay some years abroad, and was studying assiduously when his father's sudden death recalled him, making- it incumbent 'to think how to live, instead of living only to think'; applied for office, but his abilities were too splendid, and a jealous uncle 'suppressed' him; took to law, and soon rose to eminence; at twenty-four, obtained a seat in the Commons; was appointed by the queen her counsel extraordinary, but, owing to the secret opposition of his kinsman, was not immediately raised to any office of emolument; loved but lost a rich young widow, and at forty-five married a fair young bride; steadily advanced in fortune after the accession of James, till he reached the jDOst to which he had long aspired — Lord High Chancellor; was accused of accepting bribes in his official capacity, was rudely stripped of all his dignities, sentenced to the Tower during the king's pleasure, and heavily fined; was restored to liberty within forty-eight hours, with a remission of his fine, but permitted to pass the remainder of his days in penury, obscurity, and disgrace, hunted by creditors and vexed by domestic disquiet; died after five years of dishonor, in consequence of a cold induced by an open-air experiment, on a snowy day, to ascertain whether flesh might not be preserved in snow as well as in salt; consoled, in his last hours, by the reflection that 'the experiment succeeded excellently well.' Intellectual Scheme. — With a just scorn for the trifles which were occupying the followers of Aristotle, Bacon early conceived the dream of converting knowledge from a speculative waste into 'a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate.' It was the supreme effort of his life to embody this grand conception in the Instauratio Magna — the renewal of Science — the Restoration, to man, of the empire of nature. The vast plan, for which many lives would not have suf- ficed, consisted, in its final form, of six divisions: 1. A survey of the sciences, a summary of all the possessions of the human mind, comprehending 'not only the things already 458 PHILOSOPHIC PEEIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHOKS. invented and known, but also those omitted and wanted.' Here occurs the famous but inadequate distribution of learning into History, which uses the memory; Poetry, which employs the imagination; and Philosophy, which requires the reason. Here in particular, occurs the short but beautiful paragraph which exhausts everything yet offered on the subject of the heau ideal: 'Therefore because the acts or wants of true history have not that magnitude which satisfieth the mind of man, poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical; because true history propoundeth the successes and issues of actions, not so agreeable to the merits of virtue and vice, therefore poesy feigns them more just in retribution, and more according to revealed Providence; because true history representeth actions and events more ordinary and less interchanged, therefore poesy inducth them with more rareness, and more unexpected and alternative variations. . . . And therefore it was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind by submitting the show of things to the desires of the mind.' 2. Precepts for the interpretation of nature; 'the science of a better and more perfect use of reason in the investigation of things, and of the true aids of the understanding'; 'a kind of logic, . . . differing from the common logic ... in three respects, — the end, the order of demonstrating, and the grounds of inquiry.' This, which is but a fragment of what he had prom- ised, is known as the Novimi Organxim, the most admirable of his books, and the chief foundation of his fame. Its first por- tion enumerates the causes of error, the illusions to which man is subject: Idols of the Tribe, to which all by common infirmity are liable; Idols of the Pen, such as are peculiar to individuals; Idols of the Forum, such as arise from the current usage of "words; Idols of the Theatre, springing from Partisanship, Fashion,, and Authority. Its second portion describes and exemplifies the rules for con- ducting investigations. 3. An extensive collection of facts and observations, — the Natnral History of any desired class of phenomena, — an im- mense chart of nature, furnishing the raw material for the appli- cation of the new method. But, in fact, an outline of the field to be explored, rather than an exploration; a sketch of what he would do: as, for instance, a complete account of comets, of me- teors, of winds, of rain, hail, snow; the facts to be accurately related and distinctly arranged; their authenticity diligently ex- LORD BACON". 459 amined; those that rest on doubtful evidence, to be noted as uncertain, with the grounds of the judgment so formed. 4. A scale of the intellect — a ladder of the understanding — illustrations of the mind's gradual ascent from phenomena to principles, — ' not such examples as we subjoin to the several rules of our method, but types and models, which place before our eyes the entire process of the mind in the discovery of truth, selecting various and remarkable instances.' Only a few intro- ductory pages, however, are contributed. 5. Specimens of the perfect system which he hoped to erect, — provisional anticipations of the whole, 'hereafter to be veri- fied,' — a sort of scaffolding, to be of use only till the building is finished, — 'the payment of interest till the principal could be raised.' 6. Science in practice — the new philosophy — the magnificent birth. 'To this all the rest are subservient, — to lay down that philosophy which shall flow from the just, pure, and strict inquiry hitherto proposed.' But, 'to perfect this is beyond both our abilities and our hopes; yet we shall lay the foundations of it, and recommend the superstructure to posterity.'' 'Such,' in the language of Hallam, 'was the temple which Bacon saw in vision before him: the stately front and decorated pediments, in all their breadth of light and harmony of proportion; while long vistas of receding columns and glimpses of internal splendor revealed a glory that it was not permitted him to comprehend.' The world we move in, is not the world we think. Only the latter sets aside disturbances, defects, and limitations. There, at least, the seamless heaven is attainable. To the consummation which flees before him as the shadow of his achievement, he gives 'local habitation' in the iVeto Atlantis, a philosophical romance, in which, with a poet's boldness and a seer's precision, he describes, with almost literal exactness, modern arts, acade- mies, observatories, air-balloons, submarine vessels, discovery of remedies, preservation of food, transmutation of species, and whatever prodigies cannot be proved to lie beyond the mighty magic of time. Here is a college worthy of the name, Solo- mon's House, 'the end of whose foundation is the knowledge of causes and the secret motions of things, and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire to the effecting of all things possible.' 460 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHOES. His Motive. — The intense conviction that knowledge, in its existing state, was barren of practical results, — a waste wilder- ness in which successive generations had been moving without advancing. He would propose as the end of thought, fruit — the discovery of useful truth — victory over nature, not victory in controversy. He would lead men out of a sterile desert, with its deceitful mirage, into a fertile country, with its ample pastures and abiding cities: 'Is there any such happiness as for a man's mind to be raised above the confusion of things, where he may have the prospect of the order of nature and error of man? But is this a view of delight only and not of discovery? of contentment and not of beneiit? Shall he not as well discern the riches of nature's warehouse as the beauty of her shop? Is truth ever barren? Shall he not be able thereby to produce worthy efEects, and to endow the life of man with infinite commodities?' His Method. — A different point of arrival requires a differ- ent path of travel. To change the goal is to transform the method. 'It would be an unsound fancy, and self -contradictory, to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means which have never yet been tried.' The syllogists had fashioned nature according to preconceived ideas, starting from axioms not accurately obtained, and caring more for an opinion than for a truth. But: ' Syllogism consists of propositions, propositions of words, and words are the signs of notions; therefore, if our notions, the basis of all, are confused, and over-hastily taken from things, nothing that is built upon them can be firm; whence our only hope rests upon genuine Induction.^ Not, however, the perfect induction which would reason that what we can prove of a, h, c, and d separately, we may properly state as true of g, the whole; nor exactly the partial induction which would argue that what is believed true of three of the species, is to be believed as true likewise of the fourth, and hence of the genus : but a graduated system of helps, by the use of which an ordinary mind, when started on the right road, might proceed, through successive stages of generality, with unerring and mechanical certainty, to the vision of fruitfid principles. Thus, for every general effect, as heat, we must seek a general condition, so that in producing the condition we may produce the effect. If we find by long and continued experience that the second uniformly succeeds the first, we may conclude, with a high degree of probability, that the connection between them is neces- sary. But, says Bacon, there is a shorter way to the result. LOED BACOlSr. 461 From the copious Natural History which I contemplate, make out as complete and accurate an account of the facts connected with the subject of inquiry, as possible; select, compare, and scrutinize these according to the rules stated in the second book of my Organum, and by the same rules conduct your experi- ments, if experiments are admissible: that is, you are to construct the table of causes from which the effect is absent, the table where it is present, and the table where it is shown in various degrees; then, 'hy Jit rejections and exclusions,'' extract the con- dition sought. Light, for example, is denied to be the cause or form of heat, because light is found to be present in the instance of the moon's rays, while heat is absent. Thus philosophy resembles a compass, with whose aid the novice can draw a better circle or line than the expert can pro- duce without it. Its Spirit. — A curious piece of machinery, you will say, very subtle, very elaborate, very ingenious. You will suspect, also, that nothing has been accomplished by it; that it has solved no problems. True, but its merit lies in the general advice which developed it, in the wise and eminently scientific spirit which pervades it. To pluck a few illustrations from his string of aphorisms: 'Man. the minister and interpreter of Nature, can act and understand in as far as he has, either in fact or in thought, observed the order of Nature; more he can neither know nor do.' 'The real cause and root of almost all the evils in science is this: that, falsely mag- and extolling the poivers of the mind, we seek not its real helps.' 'The human understanding is like an unequal mirror to the rays of things, which, mixing its own nature with the nature of things, distorts and perverts them.'' 'The understanding, when left to itself, takes the first of these ways; for the mind delights in springing up to the most general axioms, that it may find rest; but after a short stay there, it disdains experience, and these mischiefs are at length increased by logic, for the ostentation of disputes.' For the first time. Science is sundered from Metaphysics and Theology, and Physics is constituted 'the mother of all the sciences.' This is eminently J^?os^^^we, and hence entirely modern. Nothing could be more thoroughly opposed to antiquity: ' The opinion which men entertain of antiquity is a very idle thing, and almost incon- gruous to the word; for the old age and length of days of the world should in reality be accounted antiquity, and ought to be attributed to our own times, not to the youth of the world which it enjoyed among the ancients; for that age, though with respect to us it be ancient and greater, yet with regard to the world it was new and less.' 462 PHILOSOPHIC PEKIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. Whence can arise the sterility of the physical systems hitherto in vogue ? — ' It is not, certainly, from any thing in nature itself; for the steadiness and regularity of the laws by which it is governed, clearly mark them out as objects of precise and certain knowledge.' Nor from the want of talent, but from ' the perverseness and in- sufficiency of the methods which have been pursued': ' Men have sought to make a world from their own conceptions, and to draw from their own minds all the materials which they employed; but if, instead of doing so, they had consulted experience and observation, they would have ha,d facts/ But: 'As things are at present conducted, a sudden transition is made from sensible objects and particular facts to general propositions, luhich are accounted principles, and round which, as round so many fixed poles, disputation and argument continually revolve.' Quite the reverse is the way that promises success: 'It requires that we should generalize slowly, going from particular things to those that are but one step more general ; from those to those of still greater extent, and so on to such as are universal. By such means we may hope to arrive at principles, not vague and obscure, but luminous and well-defined, such as Nature herself will not refuse to acknowledge.' Its Novelty. — It is already apparent that Bacon understood his method to be original, though he admits that Plato had used a method somewhat akin to his own: 'The induction which is to be available for the discovery and demonstration of sci- ences and art must analyse nature by proper rejections and exclusions; and then, after a sufficient number of negatives, come to a conclusion on the affirmative instances, which has not yet been done, or even attempted, save only by Plato.' Induction, as such, had been defined by Aristotle, though he seems to have regarded it as less important than the syllogism. Roger Bacon had insisted on experience as the truest guide. At this very moment, it was being employed on the Continent, nota- bly by Galileo, in whose dialogues the Aristotelian disputant fre- quently appeals to observation and experiment. It was latent in the tendencies of the age, — as the steam-engine was latent in the tendencies of the age of Watt. But (1) no one till now had coordinated into a compact body of doctrine all the elements of the Inductive Method, nor (2) had any one even attempted that part in which the author took most pride, — the process of exclu- sion or rejection.' 'Mr. Macanlay is correct when he says: 'The inductive method has been practised ever since th by the most i ever since the beginning of the world by every human being. It is constantly practised )st ignorant clown.' He is egregiously i^icorrect wnen he adds that 'everybody LORD BACOJSr. 463 Its utility. — Nothing can be more certain than that the inductive sciences have not followed it. No great physicist has used it. No important discovery has been effected by it. It has no present intrinsic value. It has long been superseded by a better. It can be made applicable only when the phenomena of the universe have been tabulated and arranged: 'It comes, therefore, to this, that my Organum, even if it were completed, would not ■vvithont the Natural History much advance the Instauration of the Sciences, whereas the Natural History without the Organum would advance it not a little.' The true scientific procedure, moreover, is by hypothesis, followed up and tested by verification. Kepler tried twenty guesses on the orbit of Mars, and the last fitted the facts. But the Organum does not admit hypotheses as guides to investigation.' It was indirectly, however, of inestimable service, — by its gen- eral spirit, by its systematization of the new mode of thinking, by the power and eloquence with which it was expounded and enforced. If its details, on which was laid the greatest stress, have not been useful, it was still the basis of the more perfect structure which successors have erected. Induction had been adopted from accident or from taste; it was henceforth to be applied and defended on principle. Essays. — Bacon's philosophical writings have operated on mankind through a school of intermediate agents'. To the multi- tude he is best known by the Essays, in which he talks to plain men in language intelligible to all, on subjects in which every- body is interested. Never was observation at once more recon- dite, better matured, and more carefully sifted; attractive for the fulness of imagination that draws so many stately pictures, and for the wise reflection that suggests so many wholesome truths. Here are a few sample thoughts for memory and for use — texts for sermons and dissertations, if you will: is constantly performing the process described in the second book of the Novum Orga- num.'' Here(l) the brilliant essayist confounds simple incautious induction with cautious methodical induction, between which there is as much difference as between instinct and science. (2) In experimental philosophy, to which the rules of the Organum espe- cially referred, there was a notorious want of inductive reasoning. (.3) Not only had Bacon's peculiar system of rules never been applied before, — they have never been applied since. Macaulay has had followers, but his argument receives its force solely from a misconception of the Baconian method. Draper (InteUectual Development of Europe) is guilty of like confusion when he asserts that the Baconian principles were understood eighteen hundred years before; and of lamentable ignorance when he adds that 'they were carried into practice.' Its inaccuracies and partisanship have abated greatly our early enthusiasm for this still valuable work. ' Very surprising, after this, is the declaration of Taine: 'After more than two cen- turies, it is still to him that we go to discover the theory of what we are attempting and doing.' The mistake arises from confounding induction with the Baconian method of induction. 464 PHILOSOPHIC PEKIOD — REPRESEN'TATIVE AUTHOES, Of beauty, — ' Virtue is lilje a rich stone — best plain set.' Of happiness, — 'They are happy men whose natures sort with their vocations.' Of youth and age, — ' A man that is young in years may be old in hours, if he have lost no time.' Of nature in men, — 'A man's nature runs either to herbs or weeds; therefore, let him seasonably water ' the one, and destroy the other.' Of riches, — ' A great estate left to an heir, is as a lure to all the birds of prey round about to seize on him, if he be not the better slablished in years and judgment.' Of friendship, — ' There is no man that imparteth his joys to his friend, but he joyeth the more; and no man that imparteth his griefs to his friend, but he grieveth the less.' Of love,— ' There was never proud man thought so absurdly well of himself as the lover doth of the person loved; and therefore it was well said, " That it is impossible to love and to be wise.'' ' Of envy, — ' He that cannot possibly mend his own case, will do what he can to impair another's.' Of marriage, — ' He that hath wife and children hath given liostages to fortune ; for they are impedi- ments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.' And, — 'Grave natures, led by custom, and therefore constant, are commonly loving hus- bands.' Again, — ' It is one of the best bonds, both of chastity and obedience, in the wife, if she thinks her husband wise, which she will never do if she find him jealous.' Of gardens, — ' God Almighty first planted a garden,— and, indeed, it is the purest of human pleas- ures; it is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man; without which buildings and palaces are but gross handy works; and a man shall ever see, that, when ages grow to civility and elegancy, men come to build stately, sooner tlian to garden finely; as if gar- dening were the greater perfection.' It is by their inexhaustible aliment and illustrative enrichment, that the JEssays belong most to literature. Few books are more quoted, few are more generally read. ' These, of all my works, says Bacon, 'have been most current; for that, as it seems, they come home to ineix's busmesse and bosomes' He justly foretold that they would ' live as long as books last.' Their brief, pithy say ings have passed into popular mottoes and household words, like— ] LORD BACON. 465 'Jewels, five words long, That on the stretched, forefinger of all time Sparkle forever.' Style. — Clear and strong-, elaborate and full of color, replete with images that serve only to concentrate meditation; now in an apothegmatic sentence: 'A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, when there is no love.' Now in the majesty of a grand period: 'For as water, whether it be the dew of Heaven or the springs of the earth, easily scatters and loses itself in the ground, except it be collected into some receptacle, where it may by union and consort comfort and sustain itself (and for that cause, the industry of man has devised aqueducts, cisterns, and pools, and likewise beautified them with various ornaments of magnificence and state, as well as for use and necessity) ; so this excellent liquor of knowledge, whether it descend from divine inspiration or spring from human sense, would soon perish and vanish into oblivion, if it were not preserved in books, traditions, conferences, and especially in places appointed for such matters, as universities, colleges, and schools, where it may have both a fixed habitation, and means and opportunity of Increasing and collecting itself." Now in the symmetry of concise and well-balanced antithesis: 'Crafty men contemn studies; simple men admire them; and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use: that is a wisdom without them, and won by obser^'a- tion. Bead not to contradict, nor to believe, but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. And therefore if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, have a present wit ; and If he read little, have much cunning to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise, poets witty, the mathematics subtle, natural philosophy deep, morals grave, logic and rhetoric able to contend.' A passage to be chewed and digested. Always grave, often metaphorical, his style grew richer and softer with increasing years. Not long before his death, he wrote: 'Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament, adversity is the blessiijg of the NeAv, which carrieth the greater benediction and the clearer evidences of God's favour. Yet, even in the Old Testament, if you listen to David's harp, you shall hear as many hearse-like airs as carols; and the pencil of the Holy Ghost hath laboured more in de- scribing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon. Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes. We see in needleworks and embroideries it is more pleasing to have a lively work upon a sad and solemn ground, than to have a dark and melancholy work upon a lightsome ground. Judge therefore of the pleasures of the heart by the pleasures of the eye. Certainly virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when they are Incensed or crushed; for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best discover virtue.' Shakespeare, with far greater variety, contains no more vigorous or expressive condensations. Bacon feared that the modern languages would ' at one time or another play the bankrupt with books.' Dreading to trust the 30 466 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHOES. mutability of English, he composed the Instauratio in Latin which fifteen centuries had fixed sacred from innovations- and into the same tongue his vernacular compositions were translated by himself and friends — Jonson, Hobbes, and Herbert. Bank. — The principal figure in English prose; the most com- prehensive, cultivated, and originative thinker of the age; the master spirit of the long-agitated antagonism to ancient and scholastic thought; the first great exponent of the increasing tendency to positivism; the first to systematize the inductive process, to teach its extensive use, to give it a clear appreciation; and thus the great leader in the reformation of modern science. Not strictly a scientist — rather a scientific philosopher — an expounder of the scientific spirit and method — a surveyor who broadly mapped the road — the philosopher more of human than of general nature. He belongs to the realm of imagination, of eloquence, of history, of jurisprudence, of ethics, of metaphysics — the investigation of the powers and operations of the human mind. His writings have the gravity of prose, with the fervor and vividness of poetry; in this, unlike those of the materialistic succession, such as Spencer and Mill; but resembling those of Plato, who was loftier, and of Burke, who was less profound. Commanding as is his merit, he has perhaps been overrated. The time was ripe. He had better eyes than his fellow-men, and found what others were seeking. More judicial than they, he gave expression to ideas already in the air. The epoch-making genius gathers up in a harmonious vibration a thousand buzzing and swelling voices. He did not thoroughly understand the older philosophy which he attacked, nor accurately anticipate the methods of the new. In banishing deduction, he failed to see that it makes up with induction the double enginery of thought., His circle of observation was external. But within that, are ideas which experience can never furnish — ideas necessary, abso- lute, eternal; truths which it were madness to deny, folly to attempt to prove, and without which reason could not advance a step, — as, matter has uniform and fixed laws; qualities imply d substance. Without an assumption of the first, the simplest pro- cess of induction is impossible. He who doubts the second, can make no pretension to the knowledge of spiritual and material essence. Ignorant of geometry, he had no prevision of the LORD BACON-. 467 important part that mathematics was to perform in the interpre- tation of nature. Galileo revived that science, excelled in it, first applied it, and fortified with new proofs the system of Coperni- cus, which Bacon rejected with positive disdain: 'In the system of Copernicus there are many and grave clifflcnlties ; for the threefold motion with which he encumbers the earth is a serious inconvenience, and the separa- tion of the sun from the planets, with which he has so many affections in common, is likewise a harsh step; and the introduction of so many immovable bodies iu nature, as when he makes the sun and stars immovable, the bodies which are peculiarly lucid and radiant, and his making tlie moon adhere to the earth in a sort of epicycle, aud some other things w-hich he assumes, are proceedings which mark a man who thinks nothing of introducing fictions of any kind into nature, provided his calculations turn out well.' He did not use skilfully his own system. His conjectures in physics, though often acute, are often chimerical, owing to his defective acquaintance with natural phenomena. He saw, from the mountain-top, the Promised Land, pointed it out, but did not enter there. In any special department, he has latterly been ex- celled by many. There have been thousands of better astrono- mers, chemists, physicians. But in wide-ranging intellect, in the union bf speculative power with practical utility, he has been equalled by none. Character. — As a boy, he was delicate in health, indifferent to the sports of youth, quick and curious in mind, with that sweet sobriety of manner which led the queen to call him ' my young Lord Keeper.' Still in his 'teens,' he saw, in dim vision, a philosophic revolution. He solicited employment only that he might have leisure to become a ' pioneer in the deep mines of truth; not being born under Sol, that loveth honor, nor under Jupiter that loveth business, but being wholly carried away by the contemplative planet.' At the moment of his greatest eleva- tion, hesaid: 'The depth of three long vacations I would reserve in some measure free from business of estate, and for studies, arts, and sciences, to which of my own nature I am most in- cHned.' His point of view was so exalted that he saw the eddying, dashing stream of human events as a motionless silvery thread in the plain; so profound that his reflections shine like the far-off stars seen from the bottom of the deep sunken shaft; his circle so spacious, that it took in all the domains of science, — the errors of the past, the signs of the present, the hopes of the future. Like the archangel glancing from heaven to earth, — 468 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD'— REPRESEKTATIVE AUTHORS. 'Round he surveyed — and well might, where he stood • So high above the circling canopy Of night's extended shade — from eastern point Of Libra, to the fleecy star which bears Andromeda far off Atlantic seas Beyond the horizon.' What he was as a writer, he was as an orator, Ben Jonson wit- nessed his eloquence: ' There happened in my time one noble speaker who was full of gravity in his speak- ing. His language, where he could spare or pass by a jest, was nobly censorious. No man ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness less idleness, in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of his own graces. His hearers could not cough or look aside from him without loss. He com- manded where he spoke, and had his judges angry and pleased at his devotion. No man had their affections more in his power. The fear of every man that heard him was lest he should make an end.' Like Shakespeare and the rest, he grasped objects, not frac- tionally, but organized and complete. Like them, he speaks in the style of an oracle. He will not dispute, though he moves against a vast mass of prejudices. He condenses the details into a maxim, and hands us the result, with the words, 'Francis of Verulani thought thus.'' He has the strong common sense which marks the English mind. He will not catch at clouds. He must stand on a fact, — a palpable and resisting fact. His motto is, experiment, again and again experiment. The end of knowledge is empire over matter. Plato and Seneca would extinguish cupidity; Bacon would secure property. They would teach us to endure pain; he would assuage it. They would form the mind to a high degree of wisdom and virtue; he would minister to the comforts of the body, without neglecting moral and religious instruction. He lacks the upright bias, — insight into transcendental truths. He was a thinker living amid the turmoil of a fresh and stir- ring life, yet with the genius of counsel rather than of action. Scorning the least prudential care of his fortune, he was often in pecuniary distress. On one occasion he was arrested in the street for a debt, and lodged in a spunging-house. His heart, he declared, was not set on exterior things. His purpose was noble. 'I am not hunting for fame. I have no desire to found a sect.' ' Enough for me, — the consciousness of well-deserving, and those real and effectual results with which fortune itself cannot interfere.' But mortal greatness is not without mortal infirmity. He who LOKD BACON". 469 -was to teach us how to philosophize, was himself fascinated by magical sympathies, surmised why witches eat human flesh; as- serted: 'It is constantly received and avouched, that the anoint- ing of the weapon that inaketh the toound will heal the wound itself;' presented Prince Henry, as 'the first-fruits of his philoso- phy, a sympathizing stone, made of several mixtures, to know the heart of man,' whose ' operative gravity, magnetic and magi- cal, would show, by the hand which held it, whether the heart was warm and affectionate.' He dictated the laws and economy of Nature, and was himself enamored of state and magnificence. He took a feminine delight in the brilliancy of his robes, loved to be gazed on in the streets, and to be wondered at in the cabi- net. He championed the cause of intellectual freedom, and was himself a servile intriguer for place. A devoted worshipper of truth, he had the double temper of a lawyer and a politician, — duplicity. As utility was his watchword, he assiduously courted the favor of all who were likely to be o£ use to him; and might prop the fortunes of a friend, — till he was in danger of shaking his own. Loved, trusted, and befriended by Essex, he bore a principal part in sending that nobleman to the scaffold. In his judicial capacity, pledged to discharge his functions impartially, he accepted bribes from plaintiff and defendant. His illicit gains were stated at a hundred thousand pounds. After he had tried in vain to avert the sudden and terrible reverse, he wrote to the Peers: 'Upon advised consideration of the charges, descending into my own conscience, and calling my memory to account so far as I am able, I do plainly and ingenuously confess that I am guilty of corruption, and do renouiace all defence.' 'My lords,' said he to the deputies who came to inquire whether the con- fession was really subscribed by himself, 'it is my act, my hand, my heart. I beseech your lordships to be merciful to a broken reed.' He had none of the fire of sentiment or passion, — none of the kindling impulses which give intensity to character. To impulse he was serenely, coldly superior. Let us hope that his wife was equally unimpassioned, — a pure intelligence, craving no love, for it is doubtful if she received any. He desired to marry Lady Hatton, not for her disposition, which was that of an eccentric termagant, but for her money. Though indifferent or selfish in 470 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. personal relations, he had the mellow spirit of humanity, without which, he tells us, 'men are but a better kind of vermin.' His benevolence embraced all races and all ages. This philanthropy which distinguishes between individuals and mankind, and which we believe, after all, to have formed the essential feeling of his soul, is expressed in the description of one of the fathers of Solomon's House: ^His countenance was as the countenance of one who pitties men.'' As he preserved a calm neutrality, though living in an age of controversy, his creed, if he held any, may not be told. Theology is relegated to the province of faith. ' If I proceed to treat of it,' he said, ' I shall step out of the bark into the ship of the Church. Neither will the stars of philosophy, which have hitherto so nobly shone on us, any longer give us their light.' But speculation is profitless, and scepticism is powerless, before these vital, grand, imperial words: 'I had rather believe all the fables in the legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind.' He cultivated letters to the last moment of his life. We could fancy him awaiting the signal for his departure, w^ithout boldness and without fear, with that sublime reliance on the future which makes the hour of evening tranquil. He contemplated the end with the composure that becomes the scholar: 'I have often thought upon death, and I find it the least of all evils. All that which is past is as a dream; and he that hopes or depends upon time coming, dreams waking. So much of our life as we have discovered is already dead; and all those hours which we share, even from the breasts of our mothers, until we return to our grandmother the earth, are part of our dying days, whereof even this is one, and those that succeed are of the same nature, for we die daily; and, as others have given place to us, so we must, in the end, give way to others.' Then, as if sensibly passing to the last rest: 'Mine eyes begin to discharge their watch, and compound with this fleshly weakness for a time of perpetual rest; and I shall presently be as happy for a few hours, as I had died the first hour I was born.' Not without emotion do we read: 'First, I bequeath my soul and body into the hands of God by the blessed oblai of my Saviour; the one at the time of my dissolution, the other at the time of my reg rection. For my burial, I desire it may be in St. Michael's Church, near St. Albani^'^ there was my mother buried. . . . For my name and memory, I leave it to men's charita- ble speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next ages.' Influence. — He confirmed and accelerated the new move ment by a thorough and large apprehension of its bent and value alue. a A LORD BACON. 471 At home, his authority, within forty years, was the subject of complaint. Abroad, treatises were written on his method, and academies were formed which expressly recognised hira as their master. In France it was said: 'However numerous and impor- tant be the discoveries reserved for posterity, it will always be just to say of him, that he laid the foundation of their success, so that the glory of this great man, so far from diminishing with the progress of time, is destined to receive perpetual increase.' He had taken all knowledge for his province, and all realms were to be affected: 'One may doubt, not to say object, whether it is natural philosophy alone that we speak of perfecting by our method, or other sciences as well — logic, ethics, politics. But we certainly intend what has been said as applicable to all; and as the common logic which governs by syllogisms pertains not only to natural but to all sciences, so also our own, which proceeds by induction, embraces all.' Hence his influence, though indirect, due to the practical or positive spirit of his method, has perhaps been more powerful on mental and moral than on physical science; for the dominant principle of modern psychology is, that experience, exterior and interior, is the only origin of knowledge. 'The philosophy of Locke,' says Degerando, 'ought to have been called the philoso- phy of Bacon.' Not without justice, may he be looked upon as the inspiration of that empirical school which numbers among its adherents such names as Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Hartley, Mill, Condillac, and others of less note. We have elsewhere indicated some of the 'fruits' of the new philosophy. We have also explained that in illuminating the physical field, it has darkened the intellectual and moral. It has furnished a lamp to guide our feet through the outer world, but none to light our way to the inward. It has fastened upon ethics an earthy utilitarian temper, taking no account of the motives that drop from the skies. We have remarked, too, those profound reflections which, be- sides forming a treasure of ethical and political wisdom, have stimulated the thought and suggested the inquiries of after times. If to-day a scientist wishes to express compactly his scorn of dogmatism, of custom, it is to the Organum that he goes for an aphorism. Volumes have been written in the expan- sion of its statements. The ideas of the Essays have become 472 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. domesticated, and have been continually reproduced, to enrich and enlarge the individual and collective mind. Finally, mournfully, my lord, you whose glorious day-dream is hourly accomplishing around us, whose inductive spell has proved more puissant than the ineantations of Merlin, — you have left to all the children of men, from your own checkered life of magnificence and of shame, this retributive, warning in- duction, albeit not contemplated in your scheme: When man departs from the divine means of reaching the divine end, he suffers harm and loss. MILTON. Three poets in three distant ages born, Greece, Italy, and England did adorn; The first in loftiness of thought surpassed; The next in majesty, in both the last: The force of nature could no further go, — To make a third, she joined the other two. — Dryden. Biography. — Born in London, in 1608, son of a Puritan scrivener; inherited from his father literary tastes and a love of music, from his mother a gentle nature and weak eyes; was instructed first by private tuition, sent to school at twelve, and at sixteen entered Cambridge; took the usual degrees, and returned home, to spend five soft flowing years among the woods of Hor- ton; read the classics and wrote; travelled on the Continent; formed the acquaintance of Grotius at Paris, and of Galileo at Florence; fed his imagination on Italian scenery, art, and letters; received some distinction, and was excluded from others by his liberal utterances on religion; was about to start for Sicily and Greece, but, hearing of the pending rupture between the king and parliament, hastened back to England, too conscientious to pass his life in foreign amusements while his countrymen were contending for their rights; while waiting for a call to service, conducted a private school; taught many years and at various times; threw himself into the raging sea of controversy, against the Royalists and the Established Church; at thirty-five, within a month after meeting her, married Mary Powel, who, four weeks A MILTON". 473 afterwards, repelled by spare diet and austere manners, returned to her parents; wrote to her, but got no answer; sent, and his messenger was ill-treated; determined to repudiate her for disobe- dience, published essays on Divorce, held himself absolved from the bond; paid court to another lady of great accomplishments, but suddenly, seeing his wife on her knees imploring forgiveness, received her back, and lived with her until her death ; in later life married twice, the last time to a woman thirty years his junior; meanwhile, had become Latin secretary to Cromwell; carried on the wordy strife with puritanical savageness, and lost his sight willingly in the war of pamphlets; survived the funeral of the Republic and the proscription of his doctrines, his books burned by the hangman, himself constrained to hide, at length impris- oned, then released; living in expectancy of assassination, losing three-fourths of his fortune by confiscations, bankruptcy, and the great fire; neither loved nor respected by his daughters, who- had bitterly complained of his exactions, and the second of whom on being told that he was to be married, had said that his marriage would be no news — the best would be his death; seeking solace, yet a little, in meditation and in poverty; and, after so many miseries, expiring in 1674, calm as the setting sun, tried at once by pain, danger, poverty, obloquy, and blindness, — prepared by culture for a book of universal knowledge, and, by suffering, for a Christian epic. Writings. — During a long, sultry midday of twenty years — 1640 to 1660 — Milton gave himself to the championship of ideas — ideas that were to emancipate the press — ideas that plucked at thrones — ideas that were to raise up commonwealths. At the outset, as one created for strife, he wrote against Episcopacy with incomparable eloquence and concentrated rancor: 'All mouths began to be opened against the bishops. ... I saw that a way was open- ing for the establishment of real liberty: that the foundation was laying for the deliver- ance of man from the yoke of slavery and superstition ; . . . and as I had from my youth studied the distinction between religious and civil rights, ... I determined to relinquish the other pursuits in which I was engaged, and to transfer the whole force of my talents and my industry to this one important object.' ' Then, in conjunction with others, hurled himself upon the prince with inexpiable hatred ; and, when bishops and king had been made to suffer for their long despotism, justified the regicide: ^Second Defence. 474 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS, 'For what king's majesty sitting upon an exalted throne, ever shone so brightly as that of the people of England then did, when, shaking off that old superstition, which had prevailed a long time, they gave judgment upon the king himself, or rather upon an enemy who had been their king, caught as it were in a net by his own laws (who alone of all mortals challenged to himself impunity by a divine right), and scrupled not to inflict the same punishment upon him, being guilty, which he would have inflicted upon any other?'' With like energy, armed with logic and spurred by conviction he attacked all prevailing systems of education: 'Language is but the instrument conveying to us things useful to be known. And though a linguist should pride himself to have all the tongues that Babel cleft the world into, yet, if he have not studied the solid things in them, as well as the words and lexi- cons, he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned man as any yeoman or trades- man competently wise in his mother dialect only. Hence appear the many mistakes which have made learning generally so unpleasing and so unsuccessful: first, we do- amiss to spend seven or eight years merely in scraping together so much miserable Latin and Greek as might be learned otherwise easily and delightfully in one year.'^ The pupil shall not begin vpith results, but reach them by- experience. He is not expected to construct a telescope — no more shall he be required to construct a poem or essay w^ithout resources either of reflection or of knovpledge. The seed must be sow^n, and the soil fertilized, before the flower and the fruit can be gathered: 'And that which casts our proficiency therein so much behind, is our time lost partly in a preposterous exaction, forcing the empty wits of children to compose themes, verses, and orations, which are the acts of ripest judgment, and the final work of a head filled, by long reading and observing, with elegant maxims and copious invention. These are not matters to be wrung from poor striplings, like blood out of the nose, or the plucking of untimely fruit.' ^ Having demonstrated what we should not do, — 'I shall detain you now no longer, . . . but straight conduct you to a hillside, where I will point you out the right path of a virtuous and noble education; laborious, indeed, at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospect and melodious sounds on every side, that the harp of Orpheus was not more charming.' * Above the roar of revolution, his voice was heard thundering against the tyranny of tradition and custom. In sentences that are like the blasts of a trumpet calling men to freedom, he pro- tested against the oppression of printers and the restriction of printing; and as one who foresees the future and reveals the truth, exulted in that era of deliverance when every man should be encouraged to think, however divergently, and to bring his thoughts to the light: ' Defence. . 2 Tractate of Education. We commend these views to those refiners of method in education who, pavilioned in the glittering pride of our superficial accomplishments, seem to arrogate all excellence to the present, and to fancy that all anterior is but a dull and useless blank. ^ Ibid. * Ibid. J MILTON. 475 'Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing licrself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks : methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam; purging and unsealing her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of the heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their envious gabble would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms.' > He never wearies of railing at the pedantic theologians, who answer an argument by a citation from the Fathers; nor of mock- ing and jeering at the corpulent prelates, persecutors of free dis- cussion, whose gaudy Church is a political machine to uphold the Crown : 'What greater debasement can there be to royal dignity, whose towering and stead- fast height rests upon the unmovable foundations of justice, and heroic virtue, than to chain it in a dependence of subsisting, or ruining, to the painted battlements and gaudy rottenness, of prelatery, which want but one puff of the king's to blow them down like a pasteboard house built of court cards? ' 2 It is the power of superabundant force which courses in athletic limbs. Irony is too refined and feeble. Invectives are blows that ease ferocity, and knock an adversary down: 'The table of communion, now become a table of separation, stands like an exalted platform upon the brow of the quire, fortified with bulwark and barricado, to keep off the profane touch of the laics, whilst the obscene and surfeited priest scruples not to paw and mammock the sacramental bread as familiarly as his tavern biscuit.' ^ Then with a vengeful fury that would have delighted Calvin: 'They shall be thrown eternally into the darkest and deepest gulf of hell, where, under the despiteful control, the trample, and spurn of all the other damned, that in the anguish of their torture shall have no other ease than to exercise a raving and bestial tyranny over them as their slaves and negroes, they shall remain in that plight forever the basest, the lowermost, the most dejected, most underfoot, and down-trodden vassals of perdition.' * Enthusiasm may break out in a moment into a resplendent hymn. His reasoning always ends with a poem — a song of triumph whose richness and exaltation, as in the following, carry the splendor of the Renaissance into the earnestness of the Ref- ormation: '0 Thou the ever-begotten Light and perfect Image of the Father, . . . Who is there that cannot trace thee now in thy beamy walk through the midst of thy sanctuary, amidst those golden candlesticks, which have long suffered a dimness amongst us through the violence of those that had seized them, and were more taken with the men- tion of their gold than of their starry light? . . . Come therefore, O thou that hast the seven stars in thy right hand, appoint thy chosen priests according to their orders and courses of old, to minister before thee, and duly to press and pour out the consecrated oil into thy holy and ever-burning lamps. Thou hast sent out the spirit of prayer upon thy servants over all the land to this effect, and stirred up their vows as the sound of many waters about thy throne. . . . O perfect and accomplish thy glorious acts! . . . ^Areopagitica. ^ Of Reformation in England. ^ Ibid. * Ibid. 476 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. Come forth out of thy royal chambers, O Prince of all the kings of the oarthl put on the visible robes of thy imperial majesty, take up that unlimited sceptre which thy Almighty Father hath bequeathed thee ; for now the voice of thy bride calls thee, and all creatures sigh to be renewed.' ' Do not take these for the whole, which is ponderous and dull heavy with scholasticism, and marred by the grossness of the times. They are but fine isolated morsels which show the all- powerful passion, the majestic imagination of the man, whose dominant need and faculty lead him to noble conceptions, and have preordained him a poet. In childhood he had written verses; and a,t Cambridge his poetic genius opened in the Hymn on the Nativity, any stanza of which was sufficient to show that a new and great light was rising: 'It was the winter wild, While the heaven- born child All meanly wrapped in the rude manger lies; Nature, in awe, to him Had doffed her gaudy trim. With her great Master so to sympathise: It was no season then for her To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour.' Also: 'No war, or battle's sound. Was heard the world around: The idle spear and shield were high up hung; The hooked chariot stood Unstained with hostile blood; The trumpet spake not to the armed throng: ■ And kings sat still with awful eye. As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.' Or again: 'But peaceful was the night Wherein the Prince of Light His reign of peace upon the earth began: The winds, with wonder whist. Smoothly the waters kissed. Whispering new joys to the mild ocean, Who now hath quite forgot to rave. While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave.' At Horton, ere yet his eye was dimmed, while the soul was fresh, and responsive to the sweet scenes of rural life, he wrote the happiest and richest of his productions. The heart of the scholar, transported from the pale cloister to the flowery mead, is open to the careless beauty and laughing plenty around him; ^Animadvertions on the Remonstrants' Defence. MILTON". 477 and the sensuous imagination bodies forth its serene content in a succession of images unsurpassed for their charm: 'Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee, And singing, startle the dull night. Jest and youthful Jollity, Quips and Cranks, and wanton Wiles, Nods and Becks and wreathed Smiles, Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, And love to live in dimple sleek; Sport that wrinkled Care derides. And Laughter holding both his sides. Come and trip it, as you go. On the light fantastic toe ; And in thy right hand lead with thee The mountain-nymph, sweet Liberty; And, if I give thee honor due. Mirth, admit me of thy crew. To live with her, and live with thee. In nureproved pleasures free ; To hear the lark begin his flight, From his jvatch-tower in the skies. Till the dappled dawn doth rise; Then to come in spite of sorrow. And at my ivindow bid good-morrow. Through the sweet-briar, or the vine. Or the twisted eglantine; While the cock with lively din. Scatters the rear of darkness thin. And to the stack or the barn-door Stoutly struts his dames before: . . . While the ploughman near at hand. Whistles o'er the furroived land. And the milkmaid singeth blithe. And the mower ivhets his scythe. And every shepherd tells his tale. Under the hawthorn in the dale.' ' This is the mirthful aspect of Nature, with the fadeless scent of the hawthorn hedge. But the pensive is nobler. Milton pre- fers it, and summons Melancholy : 'Come, pensive nun, devout and pure. Sober, stedfast, and demure. All in a robe of darkest grain. Flowing with majestic train, And sable stole of Cypress lawn Over thy decent shoulders drawn. Come, but keep thy wonted state. With even step and musing gait And looks commercing with the skies. Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes."^ With her he wanders among the primeval trees, — ' Where the rude axe, ivith heaved stroke. Was never heard the nymphs to daunt. Or fright them from their hallowed haunt. Or in the retirement of study. 'Where glowing embers through the room Teach light to counterfeit a gloom; Far from all resort of mirth. Save the cricket on the hearth.' Or under the ' high embowered roof,' amid antique pillars, — 'And storied ivindows richly dight, Casting a diin religious light.' While the growth of Puritan sentiment was chilling the taste for such entertainment, Milton, conceiving sublimity, on an altar 1 L' Allegro. ^ n Penseroso. 478 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. of flowers, composed the Comus^' a masque — a lyric poem in the form of a play, an amusement for the palace; with others an exhibition of costumes and fairy tales; with him, a divine eulogy of innocence and purity. A noble lady, separated from her twp brothers, strays — 'Through the perplexed paths of this drear wood, The nodding horrour of whose shady brows Threats the forlorn and wandering passenger.' There Comus, son of an enchantress, amid the clamors of men transformed into beasts, holds his wild revels: 'Now the top of heaven doth hold; And the gilded car of day His glowing axle doth allay In the steep Atlantic stream; And the slope Sun his upward beam Shoots against the dusky pole: Pacing toward the other goal Of his chamber in the East. Meanwhile, welcome joy, and feast, Midnight shout, and revelry, Tipsy dance, and jollity, Braid your locks with rosy twine. Dropping odours, dropping wine. . . . Come, knit hands, and beat the ground. In a light fantastic round.' She is troubled by the turbulent joy which she hears afar in the darkness. A thousand fantasies startle her, but her strength is in the heavenly guardians who watch over the good: 'O welcome, pure-eyed Faith, white-handed Hope, Thou hov'ring angel girt with golden wings. And thou, unblemish'd form of Chastity 1 I see ye visibly, and now believe That He, the Supreme Good, to whom all things ill Are but as slavish officers of vengeance. Would send a glist'ring guardian, if need were, To keep my life and honour unassail'd.' She calls her brothers, in strains that steal upon the air like rich distilled perfumes, and reach the dissolute god, who approaches, changed by a magic dust into a gentle shepherd: 'Can any mortal mixture of earth's mould Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment? Sure something holy lodges in that breast. And with these raptures moves the vocal air To testify his hidden residence. How sweetly did they float upon the wings Of silence through the empty-vaulted night. At every fall smoothing the raven down Of Darkness till it smiled I I have oft heard MILTON". 479 My mother Circe with the Syrens three, Amidst the flowery-kirtled Naiades, Culling their potent herbs, and baleful drugs; Who, as they sung, would take the prison'd soul And lap it in Elysium; Scylla wept. And chid her barking waves into attention, And fell Charybdis murmur'd soft applause: Yet they in pleasing slumber lull'd the sense. And in sweet madness robb'd it of itself; But such a sacred, and home-felt delight. Such sober certainty of waking bliss 1 never heard till now. I'll speak to her. And she shall be my queen.' Under pretence of leading her out of the forest, he beguiles her to his palace, and seats her, with 'nerves all chained up,' before a sumptuous table. She scorns his offer, and confounds the tempter by the energy of her indignation. Suddenly her broth- ers enter, led by the attendant Spirit; cast themselves upon him with drawn swords, and he flees. To deliver their enchanted sister, they invoke a river nymph, who sits — 'Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave. In twisted braids of lilies knitting The loose train of her amber- dropping hair.' Sprinkled by the naiad, the lady leaves the 'venomed seat,' which held her spell-bound. Joy reigns. What stronger breast- plate than a heart untainted ? Therefore, — 'Love Virtue; she alone is free. She can teach ye how to climb Higher than the sphery chime ; Or, if Virtue feeble were, Heaven itself would stoop to her.' To the protracted storm succeeded a sombre, reactionary even- ing; and when the blind old warrior turned again to the dreams of his youth, lightness and grace were gone. Theology, disap- pointment, and conflict had subdued the lyric flight, and fitted him for a metaphysical theme — exploits of the Deity, battles of the supernatural, the history of salvation. It had been among his early hopes to construct something which the world would not willingly let die. Before entering upon his travels, he had written to a friend: 'I am meditating, by the help of heaven, an immortality of fame, but my Pegasus has not yet feathers enough to soar aloft in the fields of air'; and after his return, he said to another: 'Some day I shall address a work to posterity which will perpetuate my name, at least in the land in which I 480 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHOES. was born.' In old age, his choice had settled upon Paradise Lost whose composition occupied from 1G58 to 1665, though the vast design had long been shaping itself. It opens with an invocation to the Muse to sing — 'Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world, and all our woe. With loss of Eden, till one greater man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat.' And a petition to the Spirit for inspiration: 'What in me is dark, Illumine; what is low, raise and support; That to the height of this great argument I may assert eternal Providence, And justify the loays of God to men.'' Out of ' solid and liquid fire ' is framed a world of horror and suf- fering, vast and vague: 'A dungeon horrible on all sides round. As one great furnace ilamed; yet from those flames No light, but rather darkness visible Served only to discover sights of woe, Regions of sorrow, doleful shades.' There wallows the colossal Satan, with the rebel angels, hurlea from the ethereal heights into that livid lake: 'With head uplift above the wave, and eyes That sparkling blazed, his other parts besides Prone on the flood, extended long and large. Lay floating many a rood.' But ' by permission of all-ruling Heaven,' — 'Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool His mighty stature ; on each hand the flames, Driv'n backward, slope their pointing spires, and, roll'd In billows, leave i' th' midst a horrid vale.' Fiercer than the flames is the defiant spirit they enwrap — the proud but ruined seraph, who, preferring independence to ser- vility, welcomes defeat and torment as a glory and a joy: 'Is this the region, this the soil, the clime. Said then the lost Arch-Angel, this the seat That we must change for heav'n, this mournful gloom For that celestial light? Be it so, since he Who now is Sovran can dispose and iDid What shall be right: farthest from him is best. Whom reason hath equall'd, force hath made supreme Above his equals. Farewell happy fields, Where joy forever dwells! Hail horrors, hail Infernal world I and thou profoundest Hell MiLTOJsr. 481 Receive thy new possessor; one who brings A mind, not to be changed by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n. What matter where, if I be still the same. And what I should be, all but less than He Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least We shall be free ; th' Almighty hath not built Here for His envy, will not drive us hence : Here we may reign secure, and in my choice To reign is worth ambition, though in hell ; Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.' He gathers his crew, who lay entranced thick as autumnal leaves, and addresses them: ' He, above the rest In shape and gesture proudly eminent. Stood like a tower. . . . His face Deep scars of thunder had intrench" d, and care Sat on his faded cheek; but under brows Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride Waiting revenge. . . . Attention held them mute. Thrice he essay'd, and thrice, in spite of scorn, Tears, such as angels weep, burst forth.' At last his words find utterance, and he comforts them with the hope of universal empire. A council of peers is held in Pande- monium, — 'A thousand demi-gods on golden seats ' ; And their dauntless king, — 'High on a throne of royal state, which far Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand Show'rs on her kings barbaric pearl and gold.' It is resolved to go in search of a new kingdom and a new crea- ture, of which there had been an ancient prophecy or report, and to inflict upon them infinite misery in compensation for the loss of infinite bliss. But, — ' Whom shall we find Sufficient? who shall 'tempt with wand'ring feet The dark unbottom'd infinite abyss. And through the palpable obscure find out His uncouth way, or spread his aery flight, Upborne with indefatigable wings Over the vast abrupt, ere he arrive The happy isle?' Each reads in the other's countenance his own dismay. The awful suspense is only broken by their matchless chief, who 31 482 PHILOSOPHIC PEKIOD — EEPEESENTATIVE AUTHOES. Night.' of the offers himself for the general safety, and undertakes the alone, though — 'Long is the way And hard that out of Hell leads up to light; Our prison strong; this huge convex of fire, Outrageous to devour, immures us round Ninefold, and gates of burning adamant Barr'd over us prohibit all egress,' Then the plunge 'into the void profound of unessential Arrived at Hell-bounds, mark the horror and grandeur situation : 'Thrice threefold the gates; three folds were brass, Three iron, three of adamantine rock, Impenetrable, impaled with circling Are, Yet unconsumed. Before the gates there sat On either side a formidable shape ; The one seemed woman to the waist, and fair. But ended foul in many a scaly fold. Voluminous and vast, a serpent arm'd With mortal sting: about her middle round A cry of Hell-hounds never ceasing, bark'd With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung A hideous peal: yet, when they list, would creep. If aught disturb'd their noise, into her womb. And kennel there, yet there still bark'd and howl'd Within unseen. . . . The other shape. If shape it might be call'd that shape had none Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb, Or substance might be callM that shadow seemed. For each seem'd either; black it stood as Night, Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell, And shook a dreadful dart. What seem'd his head The likeness of a kingly crown had on. Satan was now at hand, and from his seat, The monster moving onward, came as fast With horrid strides, Hell trembled as he strode, Th' undaunted Fiend what this might be admired — Admired, not feared.' Satan, unterrified, and burning like a comet, advances. But the snaky sorceress, rushing between the combatants, takes from her side the fatal key, and unlocks the gates, whose 'furnace-mouth' would admit 'a bannered host with extended wings.' On the frontiers of Chaos, the flying Fiend weighs his spread wings, and descries — 'This pendent world, in bigness as a star Of smallest magnitude close by the moon.' In prospect of Eden, he falls into painful doubts: 'Me miserable! which way shall I fly Infinite wrath, and infinite despair? Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell, MILTOIS". 483 And in the lowest deep a lower deep Still threat'ning to devour me opens wide. To which the Hell 1 siifEer seems a Heav'n.' There is no repentance, no pardon, but by submission; and that, disdain forbids: 'So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear. Farewell remorse: all good to me is lost: Evil be thou my good; by thee at least Divided empire with Heav'n's King I hold.' He reaches the wall, overleaps it, sees Adam and Eve, hears them converse as they repose on the velvet green, amid sporting kids and ramping lions under trees of ambrosial fruitage: 'Sight hateful! sight tormenting: thus these two, Imparadised in one another's arms, The happier Eden, shall enjoy their fill Of bliss on bliss; while I to Hell am thrust. Where neither joy nor love, but fierce desire. Among our other torments not the least. Still unfulfill'd with pain of longing, pines. Yet let me not forget what I have gained From their own mouths; all is not theirs, it seems; One fatal tree there stands, of Knowledge call'd. Forbidden them to taste: Knovi'ledge forbidden?' He is arrested, by a night-watch, while tempting Eve in a dream, and brought into the presence of Gabriel, but escapes; returns, however, in a rising mist at midnight: 'Cautious of day. Since Uriel, regent of the sun, descry'd His entrance, and forewarned the Cherubim That kept their watch.' Entering into the form of a serpent, he spies Eve apart, veiled in a cloud of fragrance : 'So thick the roses blushing round About her glow'd, oft stooping to support Each flow'r of slender stalk, whose head, though gay Carnation, purple, azure, or speck'd with gold, Hung drooping unsustained.' He knows she is a woman, and therefore must first use all his arts to lure the eye, approaching, — 'Not with indented wave, Prone on the ground, as since, but on his rear, Circular base of rising folds, that tower'd Fold above fold a surging maze, his head Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes; With burnish'd neck of verdant gold, erect Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass Floated redundant.' 484 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — EEPRESENTATIVE AUTHOES. She hears the sound of rustling leaves, but heeds not, because she is used to it. Bolder now, he presents himself: 'But as in gaze admiring, oft he bow"d His turret crest and sleek enamel'd necli, Fawning, and licli'd the ground whereon she trod, His gentle dumb expression turn'd at length The eye of Eve to mark his play.' Having her attention, the next point is to excite the ruling passion — curiosity, which he does by the most delicate of com- pliments. Amazed to hear a brute articulate, she wants to know what it can mean, and he explains: 'Empress of this fair world, resplendent Eve, Easy to me it is to tell thee all What thou command'st; and right thou should' st be obey'd. I was at first as other beasts that graze The trodden herb, of abject thoughts and low, As was my food: nor aught but food discern"d. Or sex, and apprehended nothing high: Till on a day roving the field, I chanced A goodly tree far distant to behold, Loaden with fruit of fairest colours mix'd. Ruddy and gold. ... To pluck and eat my fill I spared not; for such pleasure till that hour At feed or fountain never had I found.' With many wiles and arguments he overcomes her scruples, and induces her to eat. She says: 'In the day we eat Of this fair fruit, our doom is, we shall die. How dies the serpent? he hath eaten and lives. And knows, and speaks, and reasons, and discerns, Irrational till then." True and conclusive: 'So saying, her rash hand, in evil hour. Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she eat! Earth felt the wound ; and Nature from her seat Sighing, through all her works gave signs of woe, That all was lost.' Satan, triumphant, arrives at Pandemonium, and exultingly re- lates his success. He awaits their shout of applause, but hears instead, on all sides, only a dismal hiss: 'He wondered, but not long Had leisure, wond'ring at himself now more: His visage drawn he felt to sharp and spare. His arms clung to his ribs, his legs intwining Each other, till supplanted down he' fell A monstrous serpent on his belly prone, Reluctant, but in vain ; a greater Pow'r MILTON". 485 Now ruled him, punish"d in the shape he sinn'd According to his doom. He would have spoke, But hiss for hiss return'd with forked tongue To forked tongue.' Solaced by the promise of redemption, the fallen pair are led forth from Paradise, casting- back one fond lingering look upon their happy seat, — 'Waved over by that flaming brand, the gate With dreadful faces throng'd and fiery arms. Some natural tears they dropt, but wiped them soon.' Style. — The difficulties of his prose — the heaviness of its logic, the clumsiness of its discussions, the involution of its sen- tences — have almost sealed it to common readers; but if it lacks simplicity and perspicuity, it has what is nobler — breadth of eloquence, wealth of imagery, sublimity of diction. His poetical manner, with more of richness and inversion, is essentially the same — ample, measured, and organ-like; not im- pulsive and abrupt, but solid and reg'ular, as of one who writes from a superb self-command. All lang-uages, ancient and mod- ern, contributed something of splendor, of energy, of music; but no exotic is so largely and conspicuously helpful as the stately Latin, as none is so valuable for the purposes of harmony. Many of his grandest lines consist chiefly of this element, as, — '■The palpable obscure.' ^Ruin upon ruin, rout on rout. Confusion WOT se confounded.' 'Deep on his front engraven ' Deliberation sat, and public care.' "■Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds.' "■Thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers.' His fondness for Latinisms is perceptible in every such arrange- ment as — "■Him the Almighty power Hurled headlong, flaming down the ethereal heights,' and in that strictly periodic structure, of which finer examples can nowhere be found than those already given. A few of his epithets, taken at random, will suggest his ruling characteristics, — 'hideous ruin and combustion'; 'wasteful deep'; 'gentle gales, fanning their odoriferous wings'; 'gay-enamelled colors'; 'pon- derous shield, ethereal temper, massy, large, and round.' His rhythm beats with no intermittent pulse. He is unerr- 486 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. ingly harmonious. To specify but two or three of the modes by which from the iambic blank he obtains the most felicitous effects: 1. By the interchange of feet, — Trochee '■High on a throne of royal state.' Anapaest 'Created \mgest that sivim the ocean stream.' Spondee 'The force of those dire arms.'' 2. By a perpetual change of the cmsural pause, — 'At once, as far as angel's ken he views The dismal situation, waste and wild; A dungeon horrible, on all sides round, As one great furnace flamed, yet from those flames No light, but rather darkness visible, Served only to discover sights of woe. Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace And rest can never dwell, hope never comes That comes to all, but torture without end Still urges, and a fiery deluge fed With ever- burning sulphur unconsnmed.' 3. By an unequalled skill in the management of sound. How expressive of harshness, — 'On a sudden open fly, With impetuous recoil and jarring sound, The infernal doors, and on their hinges grate Harsh thunder.' How expressive of peace, — 'Heaven opened wide Her ever-during gates, harmonious sound, On golden hinges turning.' Or of the uproar of contending hosts, — 'Arms on armor clashing bray'd Horrible discord, and the madding wheels Of brazen chariots raged.' Or of the virgin charms of Eden, — 'Airs, vernal airs. Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune The trembling leaves, while universal Pan, Knit with the graces and the hours in dance, Led on the eternal spring.' His natural movement is majestic, as of a full deep stream; but not, as we have seen, without its phases. In his master- pieces, we may see, in the order of their execution, what might be expected a priori, — the intellectual gaining upon the sensual qualities of art: the youthful freshness of Comus, passages of MILTOK. 487 which might have been written by Fletcher or Shakespeare; the grave full-toned harmonies of Paradise Lost; the rugged eccen- tricities and harsh inversions of Paradise Regained; and the cold, uncompromising severity of Samson Agonistes. Rank. — As a poet, he was little regarded by his contempora- ries. ' The old blind poet,' says Waller, ' hath published a tedious poem on the Fall of Man. If its length be not considered as a merit, it hath no other.' To be neglected by them was the pen- alty paid for surpassing them. The fame of a great man needs time to give it due perspective. He was esteemed and feared, however, as a learned and powerful disputant. His prose writ- ings, in his own day, seem to have been read with avidity; but the interests which inspired them were accidental, while in argu- ment they have the rambling course of indignation, and their cloth of gold is disfigured with the mud of invective. The poet of revealed religion under its Puritanic type. Para- dise Lost is the epic of a fallen cause, the embodiment of Puritan England — its grand ambitions, its colossal energies, its strenuous struggles, its broken hope, its proud and sombre horizon. It has the distinguishing merit and signal defect of the Puritan temper, — the equable realization of a great purpose, and the painful want of a large, genial humanity. The last of the Elizabethans; holding his place on the borders of the Renaissance, which was setting, and of the Doctrinal Age, which was rising; between the epoch of natural belief, of un- biased fancy, and the epoch of severe religion, of narrow opin- ions; displaying, under limitations, the old creativeness in new subjects; concentrating the literary past and future; and when his proper era had passed by, looming in solitary greatness at a moment when imagination was extinct and taste was depraved. By the purity of his sentiments and the sustained fulness of his style, he holds affinity with Spenser, who calmly dreams; by his theme and majesty, with Dante, who is fervid and rapt; by his profundity'- and learning, with Bacon, who is more comprehen- sive; by his inspiration, with Shakespeare, who is freer and more varied: but in sublimity he excels them all, even Homer. The first two books of Paradise Lost are continued instances of the sublime. Its height is what distinguishes the entire" poem from every 488 PHILOSOPHIC PEEIOD — REPKESENTATIVE AUTHORS. other. Its central figure, the ruined arch-angel, is the most tremendous conception iia the compass of poetry; no longer the petty mischief-maker, the horned enchanter, of the raiddle-affe but a giant and a hero, whose eyes are like eclipsed suns, whose cheeks are thunder-scarred, whose wings are as two black forests' armed with a shield whose circumference is the orb of the moon with a spear in comparison with which the tallest pine were but a wand; doubly armed by pride, fury, and despair; brave and faith- ful to his troops, touched with pity for his innocent victims pleading necessity for his design, actuated less by pure malice than by ambition and resentment. Burns resolved to buy a pocket-copy of Milton, and study that noble (?) character, Satan; not that his interest fastened upon the evil, but upon the miraculous manifestation of energy, — the vehe- ment will, the spiritual might, which could overpower racking pains, and, in the midst of desolation, cry: ' Hail, horrors ! hail Infernal world! and thou, profoundest hell, Receive thy new possessor I' ■ But stoical self -repression limits the imagination. If he vfus the loftiest of great poets, none ever had less of that dramatic sensibility which creates and differentiates souls, endowing each with its appropriate act and word. He can neither forget nor conceal himself. The most affecting passages in his great epic are personal allusions, as when he reverts to the scenes M'hich exist no longer to him: 'Thus with the year Seasons return, but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of ev'n or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose. Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; But cloud instead, and ever-during dark Surrounds me.' His individuality is always present. Adam and Eve are often difficult to be separated. They pay each other philosophical compliments, and converse in dissertations. She is too serious. If you are mortal, you will sooner love the laughing Rosalind, with her bird-like petulance and volubility: 'O coz, coz, coz, my pretty little coz, that thou didst know how many fathoms deep I am in love.' • 'Why, how now, Orlando, where have you been all this while? You a lover?'* 1.4s You Like It. ^Ibid. I MILTOJS^. 489 Or to one who has seen her lover in this autumn glade: 'What said he? how looked he? Wherein went he? Did he ask for me? Where remains he? How parted he with thee? and when shalt thou see him again? ... Do you not know that I am a woman? When I think, I must speak. Sweet, say on.'i Eve is Milton's ideal. With her he would have been happy. There would have been no friction. He would administer the scientific draughts required, and she would reply becomingly, gratefully, as he wished: 'My . . . Disposer, what thou bidst, Unargued, I obey; so God ordains; God is thy law, thou mine; to know no more Is woman's happiest knowledge and her praise. With thee conversing I forget all time ; All seasons and their change, all please alike.' As for Adam, no mortal woman could love him, however she might admire him, — least of all Mary Powel. Milton could not divorce himself from dialectics. His Jeho- vah is too much of an advocate. He expounds and enforces theology like an Oxford divine. The highest art is only in- directly didactic. The most exquisite can produce no illusion when it is employed to represent the transcendent and absolute. Spiritual agents cannot be poetically expressed with metaphysical accuracy. They must be clothed in material forms, — must have a sphere and mode of agency not wholly superhuman.^ Cliaracter. — He was born for great ideas and great service. At ten he had a learned tutor, and at twelve he worked until midnight, John the Baptist is himself when in Paradise Me' gained he is made to say: 'While I was yet a child, no childish play To me was pleasing; all my mind was set Serious to learn and know, and thence to do, What might be public good; myself I thought Born to that end, born to promote all truth. All righteous things.' No man ever conceived a loftier ideal, or a firmer resolve to un- fold it. Amid the licentious gallantries of the South he per- fected himself by study, without soiling himself by contagion: 1 As You Like It. ^M. Taine demands of the poet what is altogether impossible,— that God and Mes- siah should act and feel in conformity with their essential natures. To reconcile the spiritual properties of supernatural beings with the human modes of existence which it is necessary to ascribe to them, is a difficulty too great for the human mind to overcome. The infinite cannot be made to enter finite limits without jar and collision. It may be justly insisted, of course, that the Deity shall not be bound to a precise formula. 490 PHILOSOPHIC PEKIOD — EEPRESENTATIVE AUTHOKS. ' I call the Deity to witness that in all those places in which vice meets with 8o little discouragement, and is practised with so little shame, I never once deviated from the paths of integrity and virtue, and perpetually reflected that, though my conduct might escape the notice of men, it could not elude the inspection of God.' The idea of a purer existence than any he saw around him, regu- lated all his toil: ' He who would aspire to write well in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem; . . . not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men or famous cities unless he have in himself the experience and the practice of all that which is praiseworthy.' Not art, but life, was the end of his effort, — to identify himself and others with all select and holy images. Comus is but a hymn to chastity. Two noble passages attest the conviction which fired him, the purpose which no temptation could shake, and which gives such authority to his strain: 'Virtue could see to do what Virtue would By her own radiant light, though sun and moon Were in the flat sea sunk.' And: 'This I hold firm;— Virtue may be assail'd, but never hurt, — Surpris'd by unjust force, but not enthrall'd; Yea, even that, which mischief meant most harm, Shall in the happy trial prove most glory; But evil on itself shall back recoil, And mix no more with goodness: when at last Gathered like scum, and settled to itself. It shall he in eternal restless change. Self -fed, and self -consumed; if this fail. The pillared frmatnent is rottenness. And earth''s base built on stubble.' The mind thus consecrated to moral beauty, is stamped with the superscription of the Most High. Like the Puritans, his eye was fixed continually on an Almighty Judge. This was the light that irradiated his darkness, and, early and late, on all sides round, — 'As one great furnace flamed.' This was the idea, strengthened by vast knowledge and sohtary meditation, that absorbed all the rest of his being, and made him the sublimest of men. Hence the poems that rise like tem- ples, and the rhythms that flow like organ chants. Hence the contempt of external circumstances, the purpose that will not bend to opposition nor yield to seduction, the courage to per- form a perilous duty and to combat for what is true or sacred. Hence the calm, conscious energy which no subject, howsoever MILTON. 491 vast or terrific, can repel or intimidate, which no emotion or accident can transform or disturb, which no suffering can render sullen or fretful. Hence the larger conception of perpetual growth, the consequent reverence for human nature, hatred of the institutions which fetter the mind, devotion to freedom — above all, freedom of speech, of conscience and worship. Par- ents and friends had destined him for the ministry, but, — 'Coming to some maturity of years, and perceiving what tyranny had invaded the cliurch, that he who would talje orders must subscribe slave, and take an oath withal, which unless he took with a conscience that would retch, he must either straight perj ure, or split his faith; 1 thought it better to prefer a blameless silence before the sacred office of speaking, bought and begun with servitude and forswearing/ Hence, too, — from the endurance of the God-idea, from the fixed determination to live nobly and act grandly, — he preserved his moral ardor intact from the withering and polluting influences of politics, which generally extinguish sentiment and imagination in a sordid and calculating selfishness. Can we expect humor here? — Only at distant intervals, and then with strange slips into the grotesque, as in the heavy witti- cisms of the devils on the effect of their artillery. Thus Satan seeing the confusion of the angels, calls to his mates: 'O Friends, why come not on these victors proud? Ere while they fierce were coming: and when we To entertain them fair \*lth open front And breast (what could we more?) propounded terms Of composition, straight they changed their minds. Flew oif, and into strange vagaries fell. As they would dance ; yet for a dance they seem'd Somewhat extravagant and wald.' And Belial answers: 'Leader, the terms we sent were terms of weight, Of hard contents, and full of force urged home. Such as we might perceive amused them all. And stumbled many; who receives them right, Had need from head to foot well understand.' Naturally, his habits of living were austere. He was an early riser, and abstemious in diet. The lyrist, he thought, might indulge in wine, and in a freer life; but he who would write an epic to the nations, must eat beans and drink water. His amuse- ments consisted in gardening, in exercise with the sword, and in playing on the organ. Music, he insisted, should form part of a generous education. His ear for it was acute; and his voice, it is said, was sweet and harmonious. In youth, handsome to a 492 PHILOSOPHIC PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHOES. proverb, he was called the lady of his college. The simplicity of his later years accorded with his inner greatness. He listened every morning to a chapter from the Hebrew Bible; and, after meditating in silence on what he had heard, studied till mid-day then, after an hour's exercise, he attuned himself to majesty and purity of thought with music, and resumed his studies till six. The most devout man of his time, he frequented no place of worship. He was perhaps too dissatisfied with the clashing sys- tems of the age to attach himself to any sect. Finding his ideal in none, he prayed to God alone : 'Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer Before all temples^ the upright heart, and pure.'' '• ine I Tn 1 The discovery, in 1823, of his Treatise on Christian Doctrine excited considerable amazement by its heterodox opinions. In this he avers himself an anti-Trinitarian, and teaches that the Son is distinct from the Father, inferior to Him, created by Him, and afterwards employed by Him to carry on the creative work. He is opposed, as were most of the ancient philosophers, to the doc- trine of creation out of nothing; and maintains that, since there can be no act without a passive material on which the act was exerted, the world was formed out of a preexistent substance. To the question. What and whence is this primary substance? he answers: It proceeded from God, 'an efflux of the Deity.' ^ He differs from the majority, again, in the rejection of infant bap- tism, and in the assertion that under the Gospel no time is ap- pointed for public worship, but that the observance of the first day of the week rests wholly on expediency and general consent. On two other points he satisfies himself with the prevalent no- tions, — original sin, and redemption through Christ. In the order of Providence, the hio-hest and greatest must have more or less sympathy with their age. Hence his controversial asperity. Gentlemen now are expected to dispute with an elegant dignity. In those days, they sought to devour each other, or, failing in this, to cover each other with filth. Some of his offend- ers deserved no mercy. Salmasius, a hired pedant, disgorges 1 Paradise Lost: Invocation. 2 Those who represent, with Macanlay, that Milton asserts the eternit}' of matter, are in error, as is evident from the following passage, than which nothing could be more ex- plicit: 'That matter, I say, should have existed from all eternity, is inconceivable. Ifi on the contrary, it did not exist from all eternity, it is difficult to understand from whence it derives its origin. There remains, therefore, but one solution of the difficulty, for which, moreover, we have the authority of Scripture, namely, that all things are of God. I MILTON. 493 upon him a torrent of calumny, and he replies with a dictionary of epithets — rogue, wretch, idiot, ass : 'You who know so many tongues, who read so many books, who write so much about them, you are yet but an ass.' Again : '0 most drivelling of asses, you come ridden by a woman, with the curled heads of bishops whom you had wounded.' And again: 'Doubt not that you are reserved for the same end as Judas, and that, driven by despair rather than repentance, self-disgusted, you must one day hang yourself, and like your rival burst asunder in your belly.' Such passages every admirer of Milton must lament. When interests of infinite moment are at stake, the deeply moved soul will speak strongly. The general strain of his prose, however, must exalt him, notwithstanding its occasional violence; but in the more congenial sphere of poetry, he ever appears in the serene strength, the sedate patience, which was proper to him. To the manners and spirit of his age, as well as to his severe sanctitude, is due his conception of female excellence and the relative position of the sexes: 'Not equal, as their sex not equal seem'd: For contemplation he and valour form'd. For softness slie and sweet attractive grace; He for God only, she for God in him. His fair large front and eye sublime declared Absolute rule; and hyacinthine locks Round from his parted forelock manly hung Clust'ring, but not beneath his shoulders broad: She, as a veil down to the slender waist, Her unadorned golden tresses wore Disheveird, but in wanton ringlets waved As the vine curls her tendrils; which imply'd Subjection, but required with gentle sway, And by her yielded, by him best received; Yielded with coy submission, modest pride. And sweet reluctant amorous delay.' ^ Milton's heart lived in a sublime solitude. Disappointed of a companionship there, he regarded the actual woman with some- thing of condescension, and, incapable of those attentions which make companionship sweet, probably exacted a studious respect. As for sensibility and tenderness, it was essential to his perfect- ness that the nature should be quiet. A great mind is master of its enthusiasm, — the less perturbed, the closer its resemblance to ^Paradise Lost, IV: Adam and Eve. 494 PHILOSOPHIC PEEIOD — EEPKESENTATIVE AUTHORS. the Divine. Its emotion, though more intense and enduring than that of other men, is calmer, and therefore less observed. We have seen vs^hat susceptibility breathes in Milton's early poetry, not light or gay, indeed, but always healthful and bright. And later, in his essay on Education, he says: 'In those vernal seasons of the year when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against Nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth.' When old, tried, and sightless, he could turn from the stormy scenery of the infernal regions, and luxuriate in the loveliness of Paradise, the innocent joy of its inhabitants. There is no mistaking the fine sense of beauty and the pure deep affection of these exquisite lines, which the gentle Eve addresses to her lover in the 'shady bowers' of Eden: 'Neither breath of Morn, when she ascends With charm of earliest birds; nor rising Sun On this delightful land; nor herb, fruit, flower, Glist'ring with dew; nor fragrance after showers; Nor grateful evening mild; nor silent Night With this her solemn bird, nor walk by Moon, Or glitt'ring star-light, without thee is sweet.' An Independent in politics and religion, a hero, a martyr, a recluse, a dweller in an ideal city, standing alone and aloof above his times, and, when eyes of flesh were sightless, wandering the more 'where the Muses haunt,' — truly — 'Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart.' Influence. — Such men are sent as soldiers of humanity. They use the sacred fire, divinely kindled within them, not to amuse men or to build up a reputation, but to awaken kindred greatness in other souls. What service Milton has rendered to mankind by his love of freedom and the high, brave morals he taught ! On account of the learning necessary to their full com- prehension, his works will never be popular in the sense in which those of Shakespeare are so, or Bunyan, or Burns, or even Pope and Cowper; but, like the Orgaman, they move the intellects which move the world. As culture spreads and approaches their spiritual heights, the more they will reveal their efficacy to purify, invigorate, and delight; the more will man aspire to emu- late the zeal, the fortitude, the virtue, the toil, the heroism, of their author. It is a Chinese maxim, that 'a sag^e is the instructor of a hun- MILTON". 495 dred ages.' Talk much with such a one, and you acquire his quality, — the habit of looking at things as he. From him pro- ceeds mental and moral force, will he or not. He is of those who make a period, as well as mark it; who, without ceasing to help us as a cause, help us also as an effect; who reach so high, that age and comparison cannot rob them of power to inspire; who turn, by their moral alchemy, 'The common dust Of servile opportunity to gold, Filling the soul with sentiments august. The beautiful, the brave, the holy, and the just.' INDEX. Abelard, fame and influence, 87 ; and Arminius, theology of, 436. Eloise, 111; on ethical .good, 126; Arnold, Dr. Thomas, quoted, 1. heresies, 132. Art, sovereignty of, 145. ^Ifric, translates Bible, 117. Arthur, legends of, 7, 105, 107; the Albion, ancient name of Britain, 3. death of, 113; a romance favorite. Alchemy, 128, 189, 256. 120 ; in Fairy Queen, 360. Alchemist, quoted and criticised, 447. Aryas, Aryan, the mother-race, 2; Alcuin, quoted, 86; allusion to, 148. influence on language, 44, 49. Alexander, 115. Ascham, Roger, quoted, 292, 293; as Alfred, laws of, 61, 66; position in critic, 321. English prose, 117; biography and Asculanus, martyrdom of, 189. criticism, 148-156. Ask, myth of, 24. Alliteration, 92, 180. Asser, quoted, 153, 156. Anatomy of Melancholy, quoted and Astrology, 127, 189, 256. criticised, 427. As You Like It, quoted and criti- Ancren Riivle, quoted, 117. cised, 377. Aneurin, battle ode of, 17. Atheism, foolishness of, 470. Angelo, Michael, 287. Augustine, St. , on total depravity, 125. Angles, coming of, 6. Anglia, settlecl, 7. Bacon, Sir Francis, quoted, 157; in- Anglo-Norman history in word- stitutes the essay form of composi- forms, 57. tion, 321; contributions of, to the Anglo-Saxon language. See Lan- science of ethics, 328; biography guage. and criticism, 456^72. Anglo-Saxons, origin, 21; orders of, Bacon, Roger, biography and criti- 21; basis of society, 22; character- cism, 156-163. istics, 22, 33 ; government, 23 ; fam- Baker's Chronicle, 434. ily tie, 22; culture, 23; supersti- Balder, the Good, 30. tions, 23; theology, 24; burial cus- Ballad, early, 247. toms, 27 ; nomenclature for days of Battle of Maldon, 91. the week, 25 ; popular philosophy, Beaumont and Fletcher, literary co- 30 ; savagery, 33 ; laws of, 34 ; com- partnership, 416; quoted and criti- pared with Celts, 35 ; with the Nor- cised, 416. mans, 36; persistent sentiments. Beauty, vivid sense of. in the Re- 36; language of, 58. naissance, 287; true source of, 366, Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, 370. influence of, 1 2 ; quoted, 1 1 8 ; on the Becket, Thomas a, pilgrimages to the being of God, 131. shrine of, 216. Antipodes, popular notions of, 129, Bede, Alfred's translations of, 117; 191. biography and criticism, 145-8. Antony and CleopcUra, quoted, 378. Bedford, Duke of, quoted, 240. Apology, 325. Beowulf, quoted and criticised, 95; Aquinas, Thomas, perfects scholasti- allusion to, 137. cism, 132. Berenger, on transubstantiation, 190. Arcadia, quoted and criticised. 841. Berkin's Cases of Conscience, 487. Ariosto, 287. Bernard, St., quoted, 132. Aristotle, philosophy of, 381 ; opposed Bible, influence upon English thought by Bruno, 831. and language, 326; translated by 33 4 Y! 498 IKDEX. ^Ifric, 117; by WyclifEe, 200; by Tyndale, 327; revised by Cover- dale, 327. Bishop Oolias, 79. Boadicea, the vFarrior-queen, 15. Boccaccio, relation to the Renais- sance, 174; allusion to, 287. Boethius' Consolations of Philosophy, translated by Alfred, 150. Book of Common Prayer, quoted, 276. Book of Sentences, 133. Books, "manuscript form of early, and their costliness, 83, 173, 237. Borde, Andrew, quoted, 330. Boyle, quoted, 435. Breviary of Health, quoted, 330. Britain, geography of, 1 ; area, 2 ; climate, 2; political divisions, 2; C.TBsar's invasion of, 4 ; Roman con- quest of, 4 ; Anglo-Saxon conquest, 5 ; introduction of Christianity into, 5; Danish conquest, 8; Norman conquest, 8; Celtic period of, 13; Danish period, 18; Norman period, 19; Anglo-Saxon, 21. Britons, prehistoric, 2; heroism, 4; enervation under Roman rule, 6; apply to the Jutes for aid, 6 ; dis- possessed by the Teutons, 7. See Celts. Broken Heart, quoted and criticised, 421. Browne, Sir Thomas, allusion to the Hydriotaphia of, 100 ; quoted and criticised, 429 ; in relation to ethics, 437; to science, 440; on the dig- nity and destiny of man, 442. Bruno, influence and martyrdom of, 329. Brut, quoted and criticised, 118. Brutus, legendary founder of Brit- ain, 3. Bryant, Thatmtopsis, 100. Brynhild, 27, 35. Burbage, an actor, 374. Burke, Edmund, quoted, 145, 456. Burton, Robert, quoted and criti- cised, 427. Butler, Samuel, quoted, 408. Byron, quoted, 347. Caadraon, 101 ; biography and criti- cism, 139-145. Csesar, Julius, invades Britain, 4; quoted, 15. Calvin, John, on predestination, 324. Cambridge University, 174. Canterbury Tales, quoted and criti- cised, 216. Caractacus, 16. Carew, Thomas, quoted and criti- cised, 410. Cases of Conscience, 437. Castle of Knowledge, 330. Castle of Perseverafice, 306. Cataline, quoted and criticised, 452. Cavaliers, the, 402. Caxton, William, 243 ; biography and criticism, 259-264. Celts, migrations of, into Europe, 3; as Britons, 3; environment, 13; customs, 14; religion, 14; acquired refinement, 15; latent quahties of art, 16; influence on English na- tionality, 18, 138 ; on English lan- guage, 51. Chapman, quoted, 425. Character of a Happy Life, 413. Charlemagne, as legendary hero, 104. Charles I, 401. Charles II, 402. Charon, quoted, 158. Charon, the Stygian ferryman, 101, 452. Chaucer, quoted, 166, 175; in what sense the father of English poetry, 187; biography and criticism, 204- 232. Cheke, 321. Chevy Chase, old ballad, 117. Chillingworth, 435. Chinese proverb, 39; royalty, 196; printing, 244 (note) ; maxim, 494. Chivalry, introduction of, 10; influ- ence, 106, 167. Christ, power of, as the ideal of humanity, 82 ; Decker's characteri- zation of, 425. Christian Ilorals, 437. Christianity, introduction of, into England', 36; influence on Saxon poetry, 99. See Church. Chroniclers, early, their method, 137. Church of Rome, organizes the Eng- lish Church, 73; commanding position in the Middle-age, 73; monasticism, 75; the mendicant Friars, 76; moral deterioration, 78; resistance to, in England, 79; redeeming excellences, 80; condi- tion in the fourteenth century, 171; popular feeling against, 172; agen- cy in the abolition of slavery, 173; state of, in the fifteenth century, 238; persecutions, 242. INDEX. 499 Cistercians, the, 76. Clergy, the. See Church. Chmate and language, 45. Club Parliament, the, 335. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, quoted, 328, 347, 378. Colet, Dean, 289. Combat, trial by, 61. Comines, quoted, 234. Composition, superiority of Saxon words in, 58 ; importance of meth- od in, 388. Compurgation, custom of, 60. Comus, quoted and criticised, 478. Confessio Amantis, 182. Conscience, 393, Conversation, the law of, 376. Copernicus, 329. Court of the Hundred, 60; of the County, 60. Courts of Love, the, 107. Council of Sens, 87. Coverdale, revises New Testament, 327. Cranmer, as reformer, 279 : Bible of, 327; quoted, 350. Creation, process of the Divine, 131, 492. Creeds, the age of, 485. Cromwell, Oliver, 402; quoted, 403; characterized, 433. Cromwell, Thomas, quoted, 270; Bible, 327. Crusades, influence of, 13. Culture, end of, 392. Custom, influence of, 157. Cymbeline, or Cunobelin, 15. Cymheline, quoted, 378. Daisy, the, 226, 230. Dance of DeatJi, 246, Daniel, Samuel, quoted, 302; chron- icler, 323. Danish Conquest, 8; Caesar quoted concerning, 15; influence, 18, 53. Dante, quoted, 79, 198. Dark Ages, the, 185. Death, universal sense of, 100, 413, 414; popular explanation of the origin of, 122; reflections on, 28, 146, 391, 482, 433, 470. Decker, Thomas, quoted, 435. Defense of Poesy, quoted and criti- cised, 342. Degerando, quoted, 471. Deluge, 305. Descartes, philosophy of, 441. Destiny, Teutonic belief in, 80, 98. Destruction of Troy, 345. Devil, the, 123. See Satan, and Witchcraft. Dialects, 46. Diodorus, concerning the Gauls, 17. D'Israeli, Isaac, quoted, 139. Donne, Dr. John, quoted and criti- cised, 413. Dooms of Alfred, 154. Douglas, Gawin, quoted, 307. Drama, product of the English Re- naissance, 304 ; origin and growth, 304; the Mysteries, 304; the Mo- ralities, 305; the Interlude, 307; first English comedy, 308; first English tragedy, 309; ascendancy of, 311 ; the theatre, 311 ; the Uni- ties, 330 ; how affected by Puritan- ism, 415. Drake, explorer, 367. Draper, Dr. John W., quoted, 463 {note). Drayton, Michael, quoted, 303. Druids, the, 14. Drummond, of Hawthornden, quoted, 413. Drunkenness, 107. Dryden, John, quoted, 473. Duchess of Malfi, quoted and criti- cised, 433. Dunbar, William, quoted, 347. Duty, the idea of fundamental to the Germanic race, 86, 376. Dwarfs, the, 25. Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, Bede's, 146; Alfred's translation, 149. Ecclesiastical Polity, 825. Edda, the, 143, 432. Eden, the garden of, 196. Edward, the Confessor, 8, 128, 330. Edward I, jury under, 61. Edward II, weakness of, 165 ; brutal- ity, 168. Edward II, quoted and criticised, 314 Edward III, order of, 189. Edward IV, violence, 233; charter, 257. Edward VI, counsellors of, 265. El Dorado, 353. Elizabeth, Queen, administration of, 366. Embla, myth of, 34. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, quoted, 403. England, geography of, 1, 8; etymol- ogy of name, 7; political and 500 INDEX. social development of, in the Formative Period, 60 ; in the four- teenth century, 164; in the fif- teenth, 233; in the sixteenth, 265; in the seventeenth, 401. See Brit- ain. English language, effect of Conquest upon, 11; persistency of, 12; ele- ments, 51; basis, 53; originally inflected, 53; transition, 54; pro- gress of, illustrated, 55; organic features, 56 ; history in word-forms of, 57; superiority of Saxon, 57; general view of, 59; state of, in thirteenth century, 88; in the fourteenth, 175; in the fifteenth, 244; in the sixteenth, 293-296. Envy, Spenser's portrait of, 365. Epithalamion, quoted and criticised, 367. Erasmus, quoted, 275, 289, 290, 324. Erigena, on hell-fire, 125 ; a Platon- ist, 130. Essex, settled, 6. Ethics, condition of, in theological ages, 126, 191, 256, 327; funda- mental distinctions of, 126; basis of, according to Scotus, 126; ac- cording to Abelard, 126; accord- ing to Occam, 191 ; true basis of, 327; gradual severance from the- ology, 437; method of, suggested by Bacon, 437. Eucharist, the, 191. Euphuism, 345. Every Man, 306. Every llan in Ms Humour, quoted and criticised, 446. Evil, popular genesis of, 191. Evolution of language, 40. Exclusive Salvation, efllect of belief in, 828. Fabliaux, the, 108. Fabyan, Robert, quoted, 254. Fairy Queen, quoted and criticised, 285. Faithful Shepherdess, quoted and criticised, 418. Fall of Princes, 245. False One, quoted and criticised, 419. Fame, transitoriness of, 209. Famous History of Frver Bacoii, 161. Fancy, the Celtic,' 17. " Fate, right use of, 32. Fathers, the Christian, and philoso- phy, 130 ; evanescence of, 332. Faustus, quoted and criticised, 315. Feltham's Besolves, 437. Feudalism, introduction and charac- ter of, 9, 10 ; evanescence of, 332. Fiction, romantic, origin of, 102. Fight at Finsburg, war-song, 99 Fletcher, Giles, 413. Fletcher, John. See Beaumont. Florent, quoted and criticised, 185. Ford, John, quoted and character- ized, 421. Formative Period, the general view of, 192. Fortescue, 236, 245, 253. Four P's, quoted and criticised, 307. Fox's Book of Martyrs, quoted, 277. France, genesis of modern, 46. Free agency, 392. Freeman, Edward A., quoted, 148. French language, supersedes Eng- lish, 10; formation of, 46, 47; influence, 52; predominance, 88; dialects, 110; decline of, in Eng- land, 175. French poetry, introduction of, into England, 11; predominance, 102; illustrated, 110; dechne, 186. Friar, the, 76; Chaucer's portrait of, 230, 227. Froissart, 174, 182. Froude, James Anthony, quoted, 60, 164. Fuller, Doctor, 428, 444. Future, the, a vision of, 340. Galileo, 329, 438. Games and Gambling in Early Eng- land, 70. Genius and Talent, 147, 329. Geoffrey of Monmouth, 119. Germans, origin of, 21; character- ized, 46 ; language of, 50. Qesta Momatiorum, discussed and quoted, 107. Gibbon, Edward, quoted, 150. Gilbert, on magnetism, 330. Gleeman, Saxon minstrel, 90. God, the existence of, 131, 138, 441; essence of, 878 ; Plato's conception of, 285. Goethe, quoted, 60 ; Faust of, 318. Gorhodiw, characterized and quoted, 30. Gosson, Stephen, quoted, 322. Gower, Thomas, quoted and criti- cised, 182, 190. Graal, the Holy, 105. Grave, the, 100, 137. I INDEX. 501 Greek language, 50. Ploly Graal, the, 105. Greek learning, 284. Holy Sepulchre, the church of, 195. Greek literature, 244. Homer, quoted, 156; translated by Greeks, characterized, 44, 46. Chapman, 425. Greene, Robert, 321, 374. Hooker, Richard, quoted, 325 ; influ- Gregory, 36, 37. 151. ence on ethics. 328 ; biography and Ground of Arts, 330. criticism, 347-351. Guizot, quoted, 265. Howard, Earl of Surrey, 298. House of Fame, quoted and criti- Hakluyt, Richard, 821. cised, 209. Hales, Dr. Alexander, 133, 435. Houses, in the Middle Ages, 69, 166, Hall, Bishop, quoted, 428. 236. Hallam, Henry, quoted, 358, 459. Hudiiras, quoted, 408. EamM, 379, 386. Hume, David, quoted, 60, 351. ^ Happiness, Decker's conception of, Hundred, court of, 60. 425. Hundred Years' War, 288. Harrison, quoted, 268, 291. HydnotapMa, 100. Harvey, 439. Hastings, battle of, 9. Ideal, the, law of, 95; power and Havelock, 107. necessity of, 840, 872. HeU, 29, 83, 124, 141, 475 ; Milton's, Idealization, 161. 480. II Henseroso, quoted and criticised, Hell-gates, 482. 477. Henry I, and Saxon dynasty, 12; Imagination, character of Northern, charter granted by, 68. 100; activity of, in the infancy of Henry II, reign of, 67; and priests. races, 102. 79. Imposture in the Roman Church, Henry II, quoted, 876. 238. Henry III, murders under, 79; pro- Indo-European races, 49 ; languages. clamation of, in yernaeular, 89. 49-51. Henry IV, inaugurates Lancastrian Induction, the, quoted and criticised. rule, 233. 810. Henry IV, quoted, 380. Influence, immortality of, 156, 203. Henry V, his dream of empire in Inquiries into Vulgar Errors, quoted, Prance, 233; quoted on progress 440. of language, 244. Instauratio Magna, 457. Henry VI, career of, 233. Interlude, the, 307. Henry VII, marks a new era, 234. Ireland, geography of, 1, 2; subju- Henry VIII, tyranny of, 265 ; agency gation of, 164; barbarism, 403. of, in the Reforrnation, 278; and Irish, the ancient, 3, 14. medical science, 830. Italian language, 46, 47; literature, Heptarchy, formation of, 7. 287. Herbert, George, quoted and criti- cised, 413. James, of Scotland, quoted, 247. Heresy, 123, 127, 438. .James I, of England, 401. Hero, the, of the Middle Ages, 95, Jewel, Bishop, 325. 249. Jew of Malta, quoted and criticised, Herrick, Robert, quoted and criti- 314. cised, 410. Jews, as capitalists, 69; their expul- Heywood, Thomas, quoted and criti- sion, 70. cised, 307; quoted, 878. John of Salisbury, quoted, 87. Highways in thirteenth century, 69. Johnson, Dr. Samuel, quoted, 48, Hill, Thomas, 380. 444. History, method of, in the ages of Jonson, Ben, 398, 416; biography faith, 118, 187, 254, 823; true con- and criticism, 444-456. ception of, 188; partisan character Judith, quoted, 99. of, 434. Jury, trial by, 61. Holinshed, 270, 321, 323. jutes, coming of, 6. 502 INDEX. Kent, settled, 6. Kepler, laws of, 438, King Horn, 107, 115. King Lear, 120. King Lear, 378, 383. King's Evil, 128. Kora7i, the, 327. Labor and Capital, 169. Lachpenny, quoted, 246. L' Allegro, quoted and criticised, 477. Land of Cockaigne, 115. Langland, William, quoted and criti- cised, 177. Language, fossil history in, 11; mys- tery of, 39; origin, 40; legends concerning, 40, 41 ; principles of development, 41; diversities, 43; dialects, 46 ; idioms, 48 ; classifica- tion, 49. Langue D'Oc, 110. La-ngue D'Oyl, 110. Latimer, Bishop, quoted, 271, 273, 275, 277, 292, 326. Latin race, 46; language, 47, 52, 100, 137, 175; versification of, 108. See Learning and Renaissance. Layamon, quoted, 112. Lawyer, the, popular hatred of, in fourteenth century, 178 ; Chaucer's portrait of, 220, 227. Learning, state of, during Formative Period, 82; in the fourteenth cen- tury, 173; in the fifteenth, 242; in the sixteenth, 284. Legends, 40, 41 ; formation of, 105. Liberty of Prophesying, 436. Life, Saxon conception of, 29, 37; a dream, 385, 391 ; true mode of estimating, 431, 469; on the con- duct of, 437. Life of Richard III, 335. Lily, John, quoted, 321. Literature, how affected during For- mative Period, 193; and life, 272; eras of, how discriminated, 444. Lollards, 172. See Religion. Lombard, Peter, 129, 137. Long Parliament, the, 402. Lord's Prayer, versions of, in succes- sive centuries, 55, 56, 175, 244. Love, idealized by the worship of the Virgin, 106; in romance poetry, 105, 110, 181; woes of, 212; power of, 213; apostrophe to, 344; Bacon concerning, 464; Jonson, 453. Love-Courts, the, 182. Luther, Martin, 272, 273, 324. Lydgate, John, quoted and criticised 245. ' ' Macaulay, Thomas B., 462 (note) 492 {note). '' Macbeth, quoted, 380: and criticised 384. Mad Lover, quoted and criticised 419. Magna Charta, 63. Maid of Orleans, 290. Maisters of Oxford's Catechism, 127. Malory, Sir Thomas, quoted and criticised, 253. Mammon, palace of, 363. Man, creation of, in Norse mythology, Mandeville, Sir John, biography and criticism, 194-199. Manning, Robert, quoted and criti- cised, 180. Map, Walter, 79. Marlowe, Christopher, quoted and criticised, 313. Marriage, in the age of chivalry, 107 ; song of, 367; reflections on, 399, 429, 432, 464. Marston, John, quoted, 426. Mary, Bloody, 266. Maryland, statute of, 406. Mass, ceremonial of the, 240. Massinger, Philip, quoted and criti- cised, 420. Mathematics in thirteenth century, 127. Matter and spirit, unity of, 492. May-day, 237, 272. Medicine, theory and practice of, 128, 189, 257. Meditations, quoted, 428. Melancholy, the inspiration of genius, 430. Mercia, settled, 7. Merlin, legend of, 7 ; prophecy of, 120. Metaphor, discussed and illustrated, 41; the language of excitement, 396. Metre, in Chaucer, 206. Middleton, Thomas, quoted, 426. Midland dialect, 54. Midsummer NighVs Dream, quoted and criticised, 389. Milton, John, 141, 199, 372, 404, 415, 436 ; biography and criticism, 472- 495. Mirror for Magistrates, 310. Monasteries, the, 76, 174, 241. See Religion. INDEX. 503 Monasticism, some beautiful aspects of, 75, 84. Monks, 75, 226, 241. See Church. Months, names of, 15. Moralities, the, 306. Morals. See Ethics. More, Sir Thomas, 269, 270, 290, 321 ; biography and criticism, 334-40. Moi-te d' Arthur, quoted, 253. Malcaster, quoted, 295, 321. Mundinus, 190. Muspel, 24. Mysteries, the, 304. Mythology, Norse, 30. Myths, radical similarity of, 103. Napier, 439. Nash, Thomas, 321. Nature, love of, 116, 238; in Chau- cer, 21)8, 226, 229, 230. New Atlantis, 459. New Hampshire, statute of, 406. Newton, Sir Isaac, 438. Niflheim, 24. Nominalism, 131, 188. Normans, invade Britain, 8; effects of invasion, 9; culture and influ- ence of, 19 ; language of, 52. Northmen, the, 8, 33. Northumberland, settled, 7. Nut-brown Maid, 117, 245. Occam, 188, 191, 327. Occleve, Thomas, 245. Odin, 24, 25, 104. Onomatopoeia, 41. Opus Majiis, 157. Original English, 53. Originality, 395. Orm, 113. Ormulum, quoted, 114, 137. Orosius' Universal Historij, 149. Orpheus and his harp, legend of, 151. Othello, quoted, 378; and criticised, 382. Owl and Nightingale, 116, 137. Oxford, university of, 87, 174, 242, 289. Paganism and Christianity, 124. Palamon and Arcite, quoted and criticised, 217. Paradise, the Norse, 28, 83. Paradise Lost, quoted and criticised, 480. Paradise Regained, 487. Paraphrase, by Ca3dmon, 140. Paris, Matthew, 78, 119. Paris, influence of university of, 87. Parliament, rise and development of, 62, 165, 234, 265, 401. Parson, Chaucer's portrait of the, 223. Pascal, quoted, 158. Passionate Pilgrim, 375. Passionate Shepherd, quoted, 318. Paston Letters, 252. Pathway of Knowledge, 330. Pecock, Reynold, 245, 255. Pelagius, theological tenets of, 125. Perfection, the desire of, 191. Persecution, 242, 328. Persian language, 50 ; mythology, 104. Personification, 102. Petrarch, concerning the Church, 171; debt of the Renaissance to, 174; quoted, 330. Philaster, quoted and criticised, 416. Philosophy, characterization of, from Proclus to Bacon, 129; the Scho- lastic, 130 ; Realistic and Nominal- istic schools of, 131 ; state of, in the fourteenth century, 188; in the fifteenth, 257; in the sixteenth, 331 ; in the seventeenth, 440. Phoenix, quoted, 93. Plivsician, Chaucer's portrait of the. 227. Picts, the, 5. Piers the Ploughman, 172. Piety, essential to character, 154. Plantagenet, 233. Plato, his doctrine of Ideas, 131; spirit and influence of his philoso- phy, 284. Plowman's Creed, 180. Poetry, earliest form of literature, 89; Saxon, 91; religious tone of, in England, 99; romantic, 108; characterization of, in fourteenth century, 176; low state of English, in fifteenth century, 245: revival of, 298; sentimentalism of, 409. Politics. See England. Prayer, power of, 431. Predestination, defined, 324. Presbyterians, 436. Printing, origin of, 244 {note). Prose, order of production, 117; parentage of English, 117; general view of, in the fourteenth century, 187; in the fifteenth, 252; in the sixteenth, 321; in the seventeenth, 427. See History, Theology, Eth- ics, Science, Philosophy. Proverbs, of Alfred, 152. Pulci, quoted, 288. 504 INDEX. Puritans, and the theatre, 311; reli- gious bias of, 825; origin and character, 404; emigration of, to America, 406; intolerance, 407; superstition, 408; poet of, 415. Purple Island, 413. Puttenham, George, 298, 321. Quadrivium, the, 87. Raleigh, Sir Walter, 158, 323; biog- raphy and criticism, 351-356. Raven, the, quoted, 109. Realism. 131, 188. Record, William, 330. Reformation, premonitions of, 36, 80, 172, 242; accomplishment of, 272; beneficent results of, 280; evU effects, 281. Religion, the sentiment of, funda- mental to the English mind, 36; influence of, upon poetry and lit- erature, 80, 99; necessity of, 272; the Puritan, 404. See Church. Renaissance, the, nature and charac- teristics of, 284; in Italy, 287; in England, 289; results of, .333. See Learning. Resolves, 437. Restoration, the, 402. R6sum6, 135, 192, 258. 322, 442. Retribution, 394, 472. Rhythm, universal, 87; in Chaucer, 207. Richard II, 165. Richard III, 233, 240. Ridley, martyrdom of, 277. Rip Van Winkle, 195. Ritson, Joseph, 247. Ritter, quoted, 1. Robert of Gloucester, 113, 115. Robin Hood, 117, 249. Romance, nations and languages, 46; fiction, 102, 105; poetry, 108; poets, 110; prose, 245, 253. Romans, conquest of Britain by, and its influence, 4, 5, 15. Romaunt of the Rose, quoted and criticised, 208. Romeo and Juliet, quoted, 376, 379. Roscelin, 131. Roundheads, the, 402. Rowena, legend of, 7. Runes, the, 23. Ruin, the, 101. Sackville, Thomas, quoted and criti- cised, 309. Sad Shepherd, quoted and criticised 451. ' Samso7i Agonistes, characterized, 487. Santre, William, first EngHsh mar- tyr, 242. Satan, 72, 240, 488. See Witchcraft. Satirists, Anglo-Saxon, 115. Saxon laws, 34; Chronicle, 117,121; poetry, 91. Scandinavian people, 8 {note); lan- guage, 50. Scepticism, services of, 351. Scholasticism, 130, 257, 332. Schoolmen, 130, 257. School of Abuse, quoted and criti- cised, 322. School of Skill, 330. Science, inception of, 126; astrology and alchemy the principal part of, 189; also, 256; dawn of, on the Continent, 329 ; in England, 439. Scotland, geography of, 1, 2; politi- cal and social condition, 164, 403. Scott, Walter, quoted, 11, Scotts, the, 6. Scotus, Duns, on moral good, 136; on reason and faith, 133, 191. Scriptorium, the, 84. Selden's Table Talk, 434, 487. Seven Deadly Sins, the, 170. Seven Joys of the Virgin, 254. Seven Sleepers, legend of, 195. Shakespeare, William, quoted, 44, 108, 128, 237, 283, 294, 296, 347, 488; biography and criticism, 373- 400. Shirley, James, 427. Sidnev, Sir Philip, on the merits of English, 294; position of, 301; on the. equipments of the theatre, 312; biography and criticism, 341-347. Siege of Thebes, 245. Sigurd, 27. Silent Woman, quoted and criticised, 448. Silures, the, 5. Sixteenth Century, expansive force of, 334. Skelton, John, quoted and criticised, 297. Skrymer, Norse giant, 31. Slavery, and the Saxons, 63; and the Normans, 64; in Ireland, 68; and the Church, 81. Sleep, invocation to, 344; the god of, and his dwelling, 361.- Society, English, aspects of, from the ninth to the thirteenth century, INDEX. 505 63; in the fourteenth, 165; in the Transition English, 54. fifteenth, 234; in the sixteenth, Transubstantiation, 190. 267; in the seventeenth, 403. Treatise of Religion, 413. Socrates, quoted, 157. Trevdsa, quoted, 176. Solomon and Satum,quoted, 126. Trinity College, 291. Song of Aldhelm, quoted, 109. Trivium, the, 86. Sonnet, the, 299. Trdilus and Creseide, quoted and Soul, the, purgatory of, 100 ; immor- criticised, 211. tality of, 133; Plato's figure of, Troubadours, the, 110. 286. Trouveres, the, 110. SouVs Complaint, quoted, 101. Trumpet of Death, 183. SouVs Errand, quoted, 354. Truth, no absolute criterion of, 409; Southern dialect, 54. sure to triumph, 430. Speech, Chancers definition of, 210. Tudor dynasty, 233. Spenser, Edmund, biography and Tyndale, William, 294, 327. criticism, 358-373. Twa Corhies, quoted and character-., Stael, Madame de, quoted, 430 {note). ized, 335. Stanihurst, quoted, 322. Sternhold, quoted, 302. Udall, Nicholas, 308. Stonehenge, 14. Unities, the dramatic, 329. Story, W. W., quoted, 296. University, of Cambridge, 174. 290; Stubbes, quoted, 271. of Oxford, 87. 174, 242, 244. 289, Suckling, Sir John, quoted and criti- 290; of Paris, 87. cised, 411. Utilitarianism, dangers of, 469, 471. Superstitions, 71, 122. 127. Utopia, 335. Surgery, in the fourteenth century. 190. Valhalla, Norse paradise, 28, 38. Sm-rev, Earl of, quoted and criti- Valkyries, the, 28 {note). cised, 298. Van Lennep, quoted, 395. Sussex settled, 6. Velleda, German prophetess, 105. Syllogism, defined and illustrated. Venus and Adonis, 375. 134. VergU, 120. Symonds, J. A., quoted, 265. Virgil, quoted, 101. Virgin Mary, worship of, and its in- Tahle-Talk, 437. fluence, 1U6. Tacitus, quoted, 13, 33, 105. Virtue, 126, 397, 479, 490. Taine, H. A., 463 {7iote), 489 (note). Volpone, quoted and criticised, 449. Tamburlaine the Great, quoted and Vortigern, King of the Britons, 7. criticised, 313, 314, 319. Tasso, 287. Wales, geography of, 1, 2; a refuge Taylor, Jeremy, quoted and criti- for Christianity, 7; literature of. cised. 430. 17; language, 49; annexation of. Tempest, the, quoted, 377, 388. 135; princes of, 233. Tennyson, Alfred, quoted, 204. Waller, Edmund, quoted, 487. Teutons, the, a generic race, 21, 46; War of the Roses, 233. language of, 50. Warton, Thomas, quoted, 233. Thanatopsis, the, 100. Webster, John, quoted and criticised. Theatre, the early, 311. 422. Theodore, founds'the English Church, Week, nomenclature of days of, 25. 68. Wessex settled, 6; supremacy of, 7. Theodosius, Roman general, 6. Whetstone of Wit, 330. Thomson, James, quoted, 334, 358. Whig, the, 402. Thor, Norse god, 26, 31. Whipple, Edwin P., quoted, 455. Thought, English, limitary tone of, White Devil, quoted and criticised. 372. 422. Tolerance, a late virtue, 336. Wife of Bath, quoted and criticised. Tory, the, 402. 219. Town, rise of the English, 65. William the Conqueror, 9, 79. 506 IlfDEX. Wilson, Arthur, quoted, 295. Witan, the, 23, 62. Witch, Sabbath of the, 283; method of trying the, 408. Witchcraft, 240, 281, 408. Wither, George, quoted and criti- cised, 409. Wodin. See Odin. Woman, position of, among the Sax- ons, 35; in romance poetry, 105- how affected by Christianity, 106 (and note); types of, 219, 223; in Shakespeare, ^76; Milton's ideal of, 498. Wordsworth, William, quoted, 14 325 Wotton, Rev. William, 413. ' Wycliffe, John, 172, 190; biography and criticism, 199-203. DEVELOPMENT ENGLISH LITERATURE LANGUAGE ALFRED H. WELSH, A.M. MEMBER OF VICTORIA INSTITUTE, THE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF GREAT BRITAIN VOLUME II Books are a real world, both pure and good. Round which, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood. Our pastime and our happiness may grow.— Wordsworth THIRD EDITION. CHICAGO S. C. GRIG.GS AND COMPANY 1883 Do COPTRIGHT 1882 Bt S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY I KKIGHT R LEONARD .~^ CO^TEISTTS OF VOLUME 11. CHAPTER I. First Transition Period. Politics. Constitutional Reform. Society — Laxity, Violence. Rude- ness of Living. Religion. Intolerance. Incredulity. Sects . . 10 Poetry. Society Verse. Extravagance. The Epic. Satire Drama. Coarseness. Lewdness. Etherege. Wycherley. Congreve. Van- brugh. Farquhar. Tragedy. Dryden. Otvi^ay 23 Prose. Base and Finish. Temple. The Preachers. Walton. Evelyn. Pepys. Baxter. History. Clarendon. Burnet. Theology. Scep- ticism and Denial. Deism. Ethics. Hobbes. Utilitarianism. Science. Newton. Physics. Philosophy. Materialism. Locke . 43 Representative Authors: BUNYAN 54 Dryden 69 CHAPTER II. Critical Period — First Phase. Political Armistice. Social Depravity. Religion. Loss of Enthusiasm 73 Poetry. PoHsh. Drama. Artifice 74 Prose. The Periodical. The Novel. Theology. Polemics. Science. The Royal Society 76 Representative Authors : Steele .80 Addison 88 De Foe 94 Swift . , . 107 Pope 135 ill iv CONTENTS OF VOLUME II. CHAPTER 'III. Critical Period — Second Phase. Politics, Whig Supremacy. Social Corruption. Religion. Fashion- able Infidelity. Dead Orthodoxy. Rise of Methodism. Wesley. Whitefield 133 Poetry. Method and Form. Thomson. Young. Akenside. Gray. The Drama. Gay. Garrick 136 Prose. Magazines and Reviews. The Novel. Richardson. Fielding. History. Hume. Theology. Deistical Writers. Bolingbroke. Middleton. Hume. The Apologists. Butler. The Seer. Law. Science. Ethics. The Intuitional and Utilitarian Schools. Phi- losophy. Realism. Materialism. Idealism 146 Representative Authors : Richardson 151 Fielding 157 Hume 171 Johnson 178 CHAPTER IV. Second Transition Period. Polities. Faction. Strife. Society. Gradual Emergence. Religion. Growth of Charity and Fervor 181 Poetry. Nature. The Drama. Sheridan 182 Prose. The Newspaper The Purified Novel. History. Gibbon. Theology. Sleep of Deism. Natural Theology. Paley. Science. Physiology. Hunter. Geology. Hutton. Ethics. Philosophy. Political Science. Adam Smith. Orators — The Galaxy . . .195 Representative Authors : Gibbon 203 Goldsmith 221 Burns 241 COWPER ... 356 CHAPTER V. Second Creative Period. Politics. Rise of Democracy. Reform. Industrial Progress. The Humanities. Cisatlantic Society. Religion. The Letter and the Spirit 369 CONTENTS OF VOLUME II. V Poetry. The New Impulse. Literary Forgeries of Macpherson and Chatterton. Crabbe. Campbell. Moore. Coleridge. Keats. Shelley. The Drama. Knowles 294 Prose. The Periodical. Essayists. Jeffrey. Sidney Smith. De Quin- cey. Irving. The Novel. Cooper. History. Arnold. Grote. Macaulay. HaUam. Preseott. Theology. Deism Changes Its Attack. Paine. Owen. Rationalism. Ethics. Science. LyeU. Development. Philosophy. Hamilton 321 Kepresentative Authors : Scott 330 Wordsworth 338 Byron 355 CHAPTER VI. Diffusive Period. Politics. The Victories of Peace. Society. The Onward Battle. Religion. Expansion. Diffusion 365 Poetry. Modern Aspects. Hunt. Hood. Landor. The Brownings. Lytton. Arnold. Swinburne. Dana. Percival. Halleck. Willis. Poe. Bryant. Holmes. Lowell. Whittier. The Drama. Its Dechne 399 Prose. Increase of the Periodical. Sway of the Essay. Criticism. Arnold. Froude. Ruskin. "^Tiipple. Thoreau. The Novel. Bulwer. Thackeray. Mrs. Stowe. History. Froude. Buckle. Lecky. Bancroft. Motley. Draper. Theology. Scepticism. Mill. Lecky. Emerson. Earnest Unbelief. Tolerant Faith. Ethics. Prevalence of Utilitarianism. Science — Experimental. Evolution. Darwin. Tyndall. Bain. Huxley. Philosophy — Empirical . . 438 Representative Authors : Dickens 454 Carlyle 470 George Eliot 487 Tennyson 501 Hawthorne 518 Longfellow 523 Emerson 542 Epilogue 544 Index 560 DETELOPMEI^T OP ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. FIRST TRANSITION PERIOD. CHAPTER I. - FEATURES. The fact that 'constitutions are not made, but grow,' i is simply a fragment of the much larger fact, that under all its aspects and through all its ramifications, Society is a growth and not a manufacture.— i^erfteri Spencer. Politics. — To the love of liberty succeeded the rage of fac- tion. Ministry after ministry failed — the legal, the corrupt, and the national. The king aimed only to emancipate himself from control, and to gratify his private tastes. Ignorant of affairs and averse to toil, without faith in human virtue, believing that every person vvras to be bought, promising everything to every- body, and addicted beyond measure to sensual indulgence, — he brought the state by maladministration to the brink of ruin. Retribution vv^as speedy. The defeated Roundheads, passing below the surface, began to reappear; and renouncing their republican- ism as impracticable, took up the watchword of constitutional reform. After fifteen years of dissolute revels, Charles was succeeded by his brother James II, who wished to achieve, at the same time, a triumph for pure monarchy and for Romanism. Again, as at the outbreak of the Civil War, there was a political struggle and a religious struggle, and both were directed against the govern- ment. The reaction which had prostrated the Whigs was fol- > Mackintosh. FIRST TRANSITION" PERIOD — FEATURES. 1 lowed by one far more violent in the opposite direction; and the revolution of eighty-eight, which enthroned "William of Orange brought the grand conflict of the seventeenth century to a final issue — not in the establishment of a wild democracy, but in the transfer of executive supremacy from the Crown to the House of Commons. The ministers, who were chosen henceforth from the majority of its members, became its natural leaders, capable of being easily set aside and replaced whenever the balance of power shifted from one side of the House to the other.' Society. — In the eternal whirl of change, heads were made giddy. Laxity of principle in statesmen became too common to be scandalous. Austerity, too, necessarily produced revulsion. Profligacy became a test of loyalty, and a qualification for office. Devotion and honesty were swept away, and a deep general taint spread through every province of letters. In court circles, it was the fashion to swear, to relate obscene stories, to get drunk, to gamble, to deride Scripture and the preachers. Two nobles, nearly nude, run through the streets after midnight. Another, in open day, stark-naked, harangues a mob from an open window. Another writes poems for the haunts of vice. A duke, blind and eighty, goes to a gambling-house with an attendant to tell him the cards. Charles quarrels with his mistress in public, she call- ing him an idiot, he calling her a jade. Men and women appear alike depraved. Lords and ladies in festivities smear one an- other's faces with candle-grease and soot, ' till most of us were like devils.' A duchess disguises herself as an orange-girl, and cries her wares in the street. Another loses in one night twenty- five thousand pounds at play. Says a contemporary: ' Here I first understood by their talk the meaning of company that lately were called Bailers; Harris telling how it was by a meeting of some young blades, where he was among them, and my Lady Bennet and her ladies, and their dancing naked, and all the roguish things in the world.' All this without an attempt to throw even the thinnest veil over the evil everywhere rampant. The regular and decent exterior maintained easily at Versailles, was here troublesome. ■ 1 Thus terminated in England the contest which even now is raging in Germany. Within a few days of the present writing, Emperor William has asserted his right to dic- tate the policy of the Prussian government, without regard to the Ministry or the Parlia- ment. A crisis is imminent. Perhaps the time has come for Germany to strike the blow that shall free her from military absolutism. Wise is the ruler who is in sympathy witii the prevailing tendency, which, over all Europe, is liberal. The tyrant may disturb or retard, but the industrial organization, in its general course, is beyond his control. SOCIETY — LAXITY — VIOLEKCE. 3 They have, moreover, the violent instincts of barbarians. The republicans were tried with a shamelessness of cruelty. By the side of one was stationed a hangman, in a black dress, with a rope in his hand. While one was being quartered, another was brought up and asked if the work pleased him. Hearts, still beating, were torn out and shown to the people. A speaker in the Commons gives oifence to the court, is waylaid by a gang of bullies, and his nose slit to the bone. Bunyan has satirized the mode of conducting state trials — mere forms preliminary to hanging and drawing. Hategood is counsel for the prisoner: ^Judge. Thou runagate, heretic, and traitor, hast thou heard what these honest gentlemen have witnessed against thee? Faithful. May I speak a few words in my own defence? Judge. Sirrah, Sirrah I thou deservest to live no longer, but to be slain immediately upon the place; yet, that all men may see our gentleness to thee, let us hear what thou, vile runagate, hast to say/ After the rising of Monmouth, gentlemen were admonished to be careful of their ways, by hanging to their park gate the corpse of a rebel. Dynasties of gentry, known by the dreaded names of Hectors, Scourers, JSIohawhs, were the terror of peaceable citi- zens. The moral condition at large is fearfully expressed in the fact that in guide-books of the period gibbets and gallov^s are referred to as road-marJcs. For example: 'By the gallows and three \vind-mills enter the suburbs of York.' 'Leaving the forementioned suburbs (Durham), a small ascent, passing between the gallows and CrokehilL' 'You pass through Hare street . . . with a gallows to the left.' 'You pass by Peu-menis Hall, . . . and ascend a small hill with a gibbet on the right.' 'At the end of the city (Wells) you cross a brook, and pass by the gallows.' 'At 2-3, lea\'ing the acute way on the right to Towling, Ewel, etc., just at the gallows, or place of execution of malefactors, convicted at Southwark. At 8-5 you pass by a gal- lows on the left.' . . . ' A small rill with a bridge over it called Felbridge, separating it from Surrey, whence by the gallows you are conveyed to East Grinsted.' 'Leaving Pctersboroiigh you pass the gallows on the left.' 'You leave Frampton, Wilberton, and Sherbeck, all on the right, and by a gibbet on the left, over a stone bridge.' 'Leaving Nottingham you ascend an hill, and pass by a galloivs." 'From Bristol . . . you go up a steep ascent, leaving the gallows on your right.' 'You cross the River Saint, leaving the gallows on your left.' i We must not, however, exaggerate the extent of this reaction. Its more violent forms appear to have been confined to the capi- 1 Ogilby's Itinerarium Anglim. 4 FIRST TRANSITION PERIOD — FEATURES. tal and the Court. When the frenzy of the Restoration had passed, it was seen that the best portions of the Puritan spirit were never extinguished. The mass of Enghshmen, satisfied with getting back their May-poles and mince pies, were essen- tially unchanged. Perhaps nothing shows the social state more strikingly than the provisions for locomotion. Often the highway was but a narrow track rising above the quagmire, and that not infre- quently blocked up by carriers, neither of whom would yield. In the dusk, it was hardly distinguishable from the open heath and fen on either side. Wheeled carriages were in some districts generally pulled by oxen. On main roads, heavy articles were commonly conveyed, at enormous expense, by stage-wagons, in the straw of which nestled a crowd of passengers who could not afford to travel by coach; on by-roads, by long trains of pack horses. The rich travelled in their own carriages, with from four to six horses. Nor could even six always save the vehicle from being imbedded. Towards the close of the century, 'Fly- ing Coaches' were established — a great and daring innovation. Moving at the rate of thirty to fifty miles a day, many thought it a tempting of Providence to go in them. This spirited under- taking was vehemently applauded — and as vehemently decried. About 1676, a few railways, made of timber, began to appear in the northern coal districts. Wagons were the cars, and horses the engines. But however a journey might be performed, trav- ellers, unless numerous and well-armed, were liable to be stopped and plundered by marauders, many of whom had the manners and appearance of aristocrats. Innumerable inns — for which, since the days of famous Tabard, England had been renowned — gave the wanderer a cheering welcome from the fatigues of travel and the dangers of darkness. Houses were not numbered. Shops were distinguished by pictorial signs, for the direction of the common people who were unable to read. The streets of the metropolis are thus described: 'The particular style of building in old London was for one story to project over another, with heavy beams and cornices, the streets being paved with pebble stones, and no path for foot passengers but what was common for carriages, scarce a lamp to be seen, and except a few principal streets, they were in general very narrow, and those encumbered with heavy projecting signs, and barber's poles. London must have had a. SOCIETY — MODE OF LIFE. 5 very gloomy appearance when neighbors in a narrow street might shalse hands from the opposite garrets. No wonder the plague was so dreadful in 1665 1 ' i After the great fire, which desolated almost a square mile of the city, the streets were widened, and the architecture was improved. Steps were taken to turn its nocturnal shades into noonday. On moonless nights, lanterns glimmered feebly before one house in ten, from six o'clock till twelve. While the inge- nious projector was extolled by some as the greatest of benefac- tors, by others he was furiously attacked. The most fashionable localities bore what would now be considered a squalid appear- ance. The finest houses in Bath, a celebrated watering-place, would seem to have resembled the lowest of rag-shops. Visitors slept in rooms hardly as good as the garrets which in the next century were occupied by footmen. We may easily imagine what must have been the homes of the rural population. Hospitality displayed itself in immoderate eating and drinking. The guest had failed in justice to the occasion unless he had gone under the table. Receptions were no solemn ceremonies. King Charles kept open house daily and all day long, for London society, the extreme Whigs excepted. All who had been prop- erly introduced might go to see him dine, sup, dance. Rural gentry derived their chief pleasures from field sports and coarse sensuality. Their taste in decoration seldom rose above the litter of a farm-yard; and their opinions were imbibed from current tradition. The yeomanry, a manly and true-hearted race, were an important element of the nation. Not less than a hun- dred and sixty thousand proprietors, comprising, with their fami- lies, more than a seventh of the inhabitants, derived their subsist- ence from small freehold estates. Four-fifths of the peasants were employed in agriculture. Their ordinary wages without board did not exceed four shillings per week, about one-third what they now are. Their chief food was rye, barley, or oats. No journal pleaded their cause. Only in rude rhymes did their distress find utterance. When authors lay it down as a rule that virtue is only a pre- tence, the standard of female excellence will be low. At an ear- her period, ladies of rank had studied the masterpieces of Greece and Rome; now they were unable to write an English sentence without errors of orthography and grammar. To libertines, 1 Smith's Antiquities of London. 6 FIKST TKANSITIOiq" PEEIOD — FEATUEES. moral and intellectual attainments were far less attractive than ignorance and frivolity. The post-office might have moved the admiration of Spenser and his contemporaries, but it was a very imperfect institution. Under the Commonwealth, posts were established for the convey- ance of letters loeeMy to all parts of the Kingdom. The baffs were carried on horseback, day and . night, at the rate of about five miles per hour. In the reign of Charles, a penny-post was set up in the capital for the delivery of letters and parcels from four to eight times a day; but the improvement was strenuously resisted by the long-headed and knowing ones, who denounced it as an insidious 'Popish contrivance.' No part of the mail was more important than the Newsletters^ — weekly epistles of infor- mation and gossip, gathered in the coffee-rooms, and anxiously awaited by the rustic magistrate or the man of fortune in the country. Already, in 1662, a new style of chronicle had ap- peared, — the Newspaper. The Civil War was fruitful in bitter and malicious sheets, — Scotch Doves, Parliament Kites, Secret Olds, the Weekly Discoverer, quickly rivalled by the Weekly Discoverer Sti^ipped Naked. They multiplied greatly in the succeeding reigns, growing less political and more varied. In 1665 appeared the London Gazette, a bi-weekly of meagre con- tents. None was published oftener, and the largest contained less than is now comprised in a single column of a large daily. It had long ago been discovered that the press was dangerous to monopolists and tyrants; and in the arbitrary days of Charles II it was assumed that printing was not a free trade, but always to remain under regulation, — wholly at the disposal of the sover- eign. But from 1649, when restrictions on its freedom were removed, the progress of the press as a reflector of public opin- ion has been steady and sure. Yet the words of Dr. Johnson are as true at this day as at any former period: 'The danger of unbounded liberty, and the danger of bounding it, have produced a problem in the science of government, which human under- standing seems unable to solve.' Religion. — The old ecclesiastical polity and the old Hturgy were revived. Episcopal ordination became the indispensable condition of preferment. Two thousand ministers, rather than conform, resigned their cures in a single day, though they and and ■ J RELIGION — INTOLERANCE. 7 their families had all but to starve. Then came a series of odious statutes against non-conformists. It was criminal to attend a dissenting place of worship. A magistrate might convict with- out a jury; and for a third offence might pass sentence of trans- - portation beyond the sea. If the offender returned before the expiration of his term of exile, he was liable to be executed. A test was imposed on the ejected divines; and all who refused to take it were prohibited from coming within five miles of any borough, or of any town where they had been wont to preach. In twelve years, twelve thousand Quakers — one of the smallest of the separatist bodies — had found their way to the jails. Many of the expelled clergy preached in fields and private houses, till they were seized and cast into prison, where a great number per- ished. In Scotland, the prisons were soon filled to overflowing, and when they could hold no more, the victims were transported. The savage mountaineers were let loose upon the people, and spared neither age nor sex. Children were torn from their par- ents, and threatened to be shot. Adults were banished by whole- sale, some of the men first losing their ears, and the women being branded on the hand or cheek. The government, in its arbitrary attempt to enforce a religious system, had not profited by the disastrous experiments of preceding reigns. The tide of intolerance, however, was slowly ebbing. In the struggle against Romanism, Churchmen and Non-conformists rallied together, and made common cause against the common enemy. The danger over, the union of the two abruptly ceased, it is true; but active persecution was no longer possible, and in 1689 the Toleration Act established forever complete freedom of worship. A large part of the people remained Puritan in life, though they threw aside many of the outer characteristics of that belief. Purged by oppression, purified by patience, Puritanism ended by winning the public esteem. Gradually it approached the world, and the world it. After all, its essential ideal was what the race demanded. Prosperity had developed pride, and power corrup- tion; but in the moment of its defeat, its real victory began. Its fruits compelled admiration. Cromwell's fifty thousand vet- erans, suddenly disbanded and without resources, brought not a single recruit to the vagabonds and bandits. 'The Royalists 8 FIRST TRANSITION PERIOD — FEATURES. 1 themselves confessed that, in every department of honest indus- try, the discarded warriors prospered beyond other men that none was charged with any theft or robbery, that none was heard to ask an alms, and that if a baker, a mason, or a wao-^oner attracted notice by his diligence and sobriety, he was in all prob- ability one of Oliver's old soldiers." The return of the Stuarts was followed, among the gayer classes, by an outburst of the most derisive incredulity. From mocking the solemn gait and the nasal twang of the Puritans they naturally proceeded to ridicule their doctrines. The higher intellectual influences were tending strongly in the same direc- tion among the learned. Hobbes had created in his disciples an indisposition to believe in incorporeal substances, and a similar feeling was produced by the philosophy of Bacon, which had then acquired an immense popularity. From the endless controver- sies, the social and religious anarchy, of the period; from the cynicism of writers, and the frivolity of courtiers, a new genera- tion was drinking in the spirit of scepticism, of doubt, of free inquiry. 'Four or five in the House of Commons,' said Montes- quieu, 'go to mass or to the parliamentary sermon. ... If any one speaks of religion, everybody begins to laugh. A man hap- pening to say, "I believe this like an article of faith," everybody burst out laughing.' A sceptical movement shows an alteration in the character of the age, of the same nature as that which now causes the educated majority to regard with indifference disputes which, little more than a century ago, would have inflamed a kingdom. Scepticism and toleration are related as the antecedent and consequent of progress. A profound change was soon effected in the notion of witchcraft. In 1664, two witches were hung, under a sentence of Sir Mathew Hale, who justified it by the affirmations of Scrip- ture and 'the wisdom of all nations' — irresistible reasoning. Three were executed in 1682. But, while in 1660 the belief was common, in 1688 the sense of its improbability was equally gen- eral. In Scotland it passed away much more slowly, and, to the last, found its most ardent supporters among the Presbyterian clergy. In 1664, nine women were burned together, and trials were frequent until the close of the century. 1 Macaulay. I EELIGION — POSITION OF ECCLESIASTICS. 9 Revolutions had changed completely the position of ecclesias- tics. Once they formed the majority of the Upper House, and rivalled in their imperial pomp the greatest of the barons; now they were regarded, on the whole, as a plebeian class. The fact that a man could read, no longer raised a presumption that he was in orders. Laymen had risen who were able to negotiate treaties, and to administer justice. Prelates had ceased to be necessary, or even desirable, in the conduct of civil affairs; and the priestly office, in losing its worldly motives, lost its attraction for the illustrious. Many divines — especially during the domi- nation of the Puritans — attached themselves to households in the relation of menial servants. A cook was considered the most suitable helpmate for a parson. Not one benefice in fifty enabled him to bring up a family comfortably. Often he fed swine or loaded dung-carts to obtain daily bread. Nor, at the Restora- tion, did the dissenters fare better. Says Baxter, who was one of them: 'Many hundreds of these, with their wives and children, had neither bouse nor bread. . . . Their congregations had enough to do, besides a small maintenance, to help them out of prison, or to maintain them there. Though they were as frugal as possible, they could hardly live ; some lived on little more than brown bread and water, many had but little more than eight or ten pounds a year to maintain a family, so a piece of flesh has not come to one of their tables in six weeks' time, their allowance could scarce afford them bread and cheese. One went to plow six days and preached on the Lord's day. Another was forced to cut tobacco for a livelihood.' When at length the Church was reinstated, she had suffered a still further loss of her ancient influence. It was observed, with sorrow, that she 'recovered much of her temporal possessions, but not her spiritual rule.' Her cause was never again to be identi- fied with political reaction. The London clergy were always spoken of as a class apart; and it was chiefly they who upheld the fame of their profession for learning and eloquence. In Scotland, on the contrary, the clergy were supreme. Their very names were sacred. To speak disrespectfully of them was a grievous offence; to differ from them was heresy; to pass them without saluting them was a crime. Their instructions were direct from heaven. When they died, candles were mysteriously extinguished, or stars miraculously appeared in the firmament. Fancy with what rapture each precious word was received ! Yet a zealous pastor would discourse for two hours; a vigorous one, five or six. On great occasions, several would be present, in 10 TIRST TEANSITION" PERIOD — FEATURES. order that, when one was exhausted, he might be succeeded by another. In 1670, from one pulpit in Edinburgh, thirty sermons were delivered weekly. When sacrament was administered, on Wednesday they fasted, with prayers and preaching for more than eight hours; on Saturday, they listened to two or three sermons; on Sunday, to so many that the congregation remained together more than twelve hours; on Monday, to three or four additional ones by way of thanksgiving. Still the people never wearied. Has history any parallel to such eagerness and such endurance ? Meanwhile, dissent had multiplied sects, and the Revolution established them, — Anabaptists, Quakers, Enthusiasts, Seekers, Arians, Socinians, Anti-Trinitarians, Deists, — the list is inter- minable. No danger henceforward that Protestantism would be only a new edition of Catholicism. Divisions are at once the symptoms and the agents of progress. Uniformity of opinion is the airy good of emperors and popes, whose arguments are edicts, inquisitions, and flames. Poetry. — It is true, in general, of nations as of individuals, that as the reflective faculties develop, the imaginative are en- feebled. Memory, judgment, wit, supply their place. The mind, disciplined, retraces its steps. Criticism succeeds invention. But criticism is a science, and, like every other, is constantly tending towards perfection. It was now in a very imperfect state. The age of inspired intuition had passed; the age of agreeable imita- tion had not arrived; and the ascendancy was left to an inferior school of poetry — a school without the powers of the earlier and without the correctness of a later — a school which, blending bombasts and conceits, yet expressed a phase in the revolution of taste that was to issue in the neatness and finish of well- ordered periods, in the truth of sentiment and the harmony of versification. Its absorbing care was not for the foundation, but for the outer shape. The prevailing immorality infected it. Gal- lantry held the chief rank. The literature and manners of polite France led the fashion. We have seen the change foreshadowed. We see it in the occasional rhymes of the palace and the college; in the lewd and lawless Earl of Rochester, who wrote a satire against Mankind, then an epistle on Nothing, and songs number- less, whose titles cannot be copied. Two or three are still to be WRITERS OF FASHION". 11 foimd in the expurgated books of extracts. A stanza or two will be a sufficient revelation of him : 'When, wearied with a world of woe, To thy safe bosom I retire. Where love and peace and honour flow, May I contented there expire.' And: 'My dear mistress has a heart Soft as those kind looks she gave me; When, with love's resistless art. And her eyes, she did enslave me; But her constancy's so weak, She's so wild and apt to wander, That my jealous heart would break Should we live one day asunder.' An adept in compliments and salutations. So are the others. Sedley, a charming talker, sings thus to Chloris: 'My passion with your beauty grew. And Cupid at my heart, Still as his mother favoured you. Threw a new flaming dart.' And: 'An hundred thousand oaths your fears Perhaps would not remove. And if I gazed a thousand years, I could no deeper love.' Dorset, at sea, on the eve of battle, addresses a song to the ladies: 'To all you Ladies now at land We men at sea indite; But first would have you understand How hard it is to write; The Muses now, and Neptune too. We must implore to write to you.' Then for the sake of speaking: 'While you, regardless of our woe. Sit careless at a play, — Perhaps permit some happier man To kiss your hand or flirt your fan.' And in the conventional language of the drawing-room: 'Our tears we'll send a speedier way. The tide shall waft them twice a day.' There is courtesy here, but a lack of enthusiasm; elegance, but no weight; smoothness, but no depth. It is correct, or nearly so, but external and cold. It is the style, also, of WaUer, a fashion- able wit, in the front rank of worldlings and courtiers. His verses resemble the little events or little sentiments from which they spring : 12 FIRST TRANSITION" PERIOD — FEATURES. 'Go, lovely rose! Tell her that wastes her time and me, That now she knows When I resemble her to thee, How sweet and fair she seems to be. . . , Then die! that she The common fate of all things rare May read in thee. How small a part of time they share That are so wondrous sweet and fair.' Most of his verses are addressed to a lady whom he had long wooed. When she had ceased to be beautiful, she asked him if he would write others for her, and he replied, as one accustomed to murmur, with a soft voice, commonplaces which he could not be said to think: 'Yes, madam, when you are as young and as handsome as you were formerly.' A purely mechanical versifier, he survives mainly on the credit of a single couplet: 'The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed. Lets in new light through chinks that Time hath made.' Unlike the amorous poets around him, Denliain has left not one copy of their vapid effusions. In the midst of insincerity, he is sincere, preoccupied by moral motives. His best poem, Cooper's mil, is a description of natural scenery, blended with the grave reflections which the scene suggests, and which are fundamental to the English mind: 'My eye, descending from the hill, surveys Where Thames among the wanton valleys strays; Thames, the most loved of all the Ocean's sons By his old sire, to his embraces runs, Hasting to pay his tribute to the sea. Like mortal life to meet eternity. . . . could I Jloiv like thee, and make thy stream My great example, as it is my theme ! Though deep, yet clear ; though gentle, yet not dull; Strong without rage; without o"erJlowing,full. . . . But his proud head the airy mountain hides Among the clouds; his shoulders and his sides A shady mantle clothes; his curled brows Frown on the gentle stream, which calmly flows. While winds and storms his lofty forehead beat. The common fate of all that's high or great,' The reputation of the piece rests almost entirely upon the famous quatrain in italics. As for the rest, there is little adornment, less ardency, nothing to warm, or melt, or fascinate. It is argument in stately and regular verse, but, as such, is no ordinary perform- i POETRY — STUDIED STYLE. 13 ance, and is nearly the first instance of manly and rhythmical couplets. It remains for Dryden to give to the critical spirit vigorous form, and for Pope to add to it perfection of artifice. Mean- while, out of season, in penury, pain, and blindness, Milton pro- duces, as we have seen, the greatest of modern epics, himself a benighted traveller on a dreary road. Near him, in sympathy with him, a kind of satellite, is another Puritan, Marvell, very unequal, but often melodious, graceful, and impressive. Thus after a badinage of courtesy and compliment to his ' coy mis- tres,' he adds: 'But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity. Thy beauty shall no more be found; Nor in thy marble vault shall sound My echoing song.' Unhappily, in common with the Cowleyan sect of writers, he is eminently afflicted with the gift of ingenuity: 'Maria such and so doth hush The world, and through the evening rush. No new-born comet such a train Draws through the sky, nor star new slain. For straight those giddy rockets fail Which from the putrid earth exhale, But by her flames in heaven tried Nature is wholly vitrified.' This is a play of the intellectual fancy, in which an extravagant use of words aims to effect the results that livinar feeling: had heretofore produced. The stamp of the age — critical rather than emotional — is visible in his natural description, where he is most animated: 'Reform the errors of the spring: Make that the tulips may have share Of sweetness, seeing they are fair; And roses of their thorns disarm: But most procure That violets may a longer age endure. But oh, young beauty of the woods, VS'^hom nature courts with fruits and flowers. Gather the flowers, but spare the buds; Lest Flora, nngry at thy crime To kill her infants in their prime, Should quickly make the example yours; And, ere we see, Nip in the blossom all our hopes in thee.' 14 FIRST TRANSITION PERIOD — FEATURES, And, in the Garden : 'Fair Quiet, have I found thee here. And Innocence, thy sister dear? Mistaken long, I sought you then In busy companies of men. Your sacred plants, if here below, Only among the plants will grow; Society is all but rude To this delightful solitude. No white nor red was ever seen So amorous as this lovely green.' This way of treating Nature suits the time, — merely to picture what the eye sees and the ear hears, to produce the forms and colors of things, the movements and the sounds which pervade them. It is the calm, unexcited manner of an inventory. For contrast, take an instance from Keats, when once more, across the next century, it is given to see into the life of things, and seeing, to make us share his insight: 'Upon a tranced summer night Those green-robed senators of mighty woods. Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars, Dream, and so dream all night without a stir. Save from one gradual solitary gust Which comes ui)on the silence, and dies off. As if the ebbing air had but one wave.' No eye can see deeply into the meaning of Nature, nor hence interpret her truly, unless it has also looked deeply into the moral heart, and sadly, sweetly, into the mystery of human life and human history. Butler's Hudihras exhibits, in buffoonery, the style which Donne and Cowley practiced in its more serious form. Sir Hudi- bras is a Presbyterian knight who, with his squire, goes forth to redress all wrongs, and correct all abuses. He is beaten, set in stocks, pelted with rotten eggs, a ridiculous object from first to last, but serenely unconscious that he is laughed at. The author desires to make sport for a winning side, and the Puritans are caricatured, the terrible saints, — 'Who built their faith upon The holy text of pike and gun. Decide all controversies by Infallible artillery. And prove their doctrine orthodox By apostolic blows and knocks.' We can imagine that the general hatred secured a hearing. No poem in fact rose at once to greater reputation. But fashions DKAMA — PREEMINENCE OF COMEDY. 1^ change; what yesterday was apt may be out of date to-morrow. HucUhras at present attracts few readers. There is in it no action, no nature; much triviality, much filth. It is pitiless, splenetic, exaggerated, discursive. Besides, wit, continued long, fatigues. Incessant surprises become wearisome. Enough re- mains, however, to render it notable. It is a very hoard of robust English and sententious dicta, many of which are like coins effaced and smoothed by currency. Here are some of the less familiar: 'He could raise scruples dark and nice, And after solve 'em in a trice.' 'For most men carry things so even Between tliis world and hell and heaven, Without the least offense to either They freely deal in all together.' 'He that runs may fight again, Which he can never do tliat's slain.' 'Fools are known by looking wise. As men tell woodcocks by their eyes.' Drama. — When the Restoration reopened the theatres, they were invested with the externals of French polish — movable decorations, music, lights, comfort. Pepys writes in liis diary, January, 1661: 'To the theatre, where was acted Beggar's Bush, it being very well done, and here, the first time that ever I saw women come upon the stage.' In the reaction from Puritan proscrip- tion, they were thronged. The public, we have seen, was trans- formed. The animal, broken loose, abandons itself to excess, and the stage imitates the orgie. Comedy, dropping its serious and tender tones, wallows in vulgarity and lewdness. The new char- acters, gross and vicious, are in the taste of the day. Dryden, who still mingles the tragic and humorous, adopts the fashion of society, though not heartily. One of his gallants says: 'I am none of those unreasonable lovers that propose to themselves the loving to eternity. A month is commonly my stint.' Another: 'We love to get our mistresses, and purr over them, as cats do over mice, and let them get a little away; and all the pleasure is to pat them back again.' And a third: 'Is not love love without a priest and altars? The temples are inanimate, and know not What vows are made in them; the priest stands ready For his hire, and cares not what hearts he couples.' 16 FIEST TRANSITION" PERIOD — FEATURES. iEtherege is the first to depict manners only — the careless pleas- ures of the human mass. He defines a gentleman to be one who ' ought to dress well, dance well, fence well, have a talent for love- letters, a pleasant voice in a room, to be always very amorous sufficiently discreet, but not too constant.' But the hero of the libertine outburst is Wyclierley. His best play is the Country Wife. Is it possible that king and nobles, beaux and belles, the elite of London, could come and listen to such scenes ? What may we extract, that is not at war with beauty and delicacy? Horner, who has returned from France with the cavaliers, is a vile rogue, to whom a lady says: 'Drink, thou representative of a husband. Damn a husband.' Another avows: 'Our virtue is like the statesman's religion, the quaker's word, the gamester's oath, the great man's honour; but to cheat those that trust us.^ To a third he declares: 'I cannot be your husband, dearest, since you are married.' And she replies: ' O, would you make me believe that? Don't I see every day at London here, women leave their first husbands, and go and live with other men as their wives ? pish, pshaw ! ' Viola, in Plain Dealer, makes an appointment to meet a friend, but unexpectedly meets her hus- band, who comes in from a journey; kisses him, and says, aside: 'Ha ! my husband returned ! and have I been throwing away so many kind kisses on my husband, and wronged my lover already?' She sends him off on an improvised errand, and when he is gone, she cries exultingly: 'Go, husband, and come up, friend: just the buckets in the well; the absence of one brings the other. But I hope, like them too, they will not meet in the way, jostle, and clash together.' She had already tired of another, defied him, declaring herself to be married. To his question, 'Did you love him too?' she had answered: 'Most passionately; nay, love him now, though I have married him.' She refused to surrender the diamonds he had given her, and justified the deception she had practised: "Twas his money: I had a real passion for that. Yet I loved not that so well, as for it to take him; for as soon as I had his money I hastened his departure like a wife, who, when she has made the most of a dying husband's breath, pulls away his pillow.' If this is the Zenith, judge of the Nadir ! Need we analyze these dramas — recount their plots? Their chief merit is the liveliness of their dialogue, and their only originality DRAMA — CONGREVE. 17 is their profligacy. Nothing to raise, console, or purify. In the ten selected by Mr. Hunt from the three hundred and eight Maxirns and Reflections, written by Wycherley in old age, we find but two which seem to us to be in any degree novel, just, and wise : '■The silence of a wise man is more wrong to mankind than the slanderer's speech.' 'Our hopes, though they never happen, yet are some kind of happiness; as trees, whilst they are still growing, please in the prospect, though they bear no fruit.' Congreve is perhaps less natural, but more scholarly, more highly bred, more brilliant, more urbane. Yet French authors are his masters, and experience supplies the colors of his portraits, which display both the innate baseness of primitive instincts, and the refined corruption of worldly habits. In JLove for Love, Miss Prue is left in the room with a dolt of a sailor, who wants to make love: 'Come, mistress, will you please to sit down ? for an you stand astern a that'n, we shall never grapple together. Come, I'll haul a chair; there, an you please to sit Fll sit by you. Prue. You need not sit so near one; if you have anything to say I can hear you farther off; I an't deaf. Ben. Why, that's true, as you say; nor I an't dumb; I can be heard as far as another; I'll heave off to please you. . . . Prue. I don't know what to say to you, nor I don't care to speak with you at all. . . . Ben. Mayhap you may be shamefaced ? some maidens, tho'f they love a man well enough, yet they don't care to tell'n so to's face: if that's the case, why silence gives consent. Prue. But I am sure it is not so, for I'll speak sooner than you should believe that; and I'll speak truth, though one should always tell a lie to a man ; and I don't care, let my father do what he will; I"m too big to be whipped, so I'll tell you plainly I don't like you, nor love you at all, nor never will, that's more: so there's your answer for you; and don't trouble me no more, you ugly thing ! Ben. Flesh! who arc you? You heard t'other handsome young woman speak civilly to me of her own accord: whatever you think of yourself, gad I don't think you are any mcire to compare to her than a can of small beer to a bowl of punch. Prue. Well, and there's a handsome gentleman, and a fine gentleman, and a sweet gentleman, that was here, that loves me, and I love him; and if he sees you speak to me any more he'll thrash your jacket for you, he will, you great sea-calf I Ben. What, do you mean that fair-weather spark that was here just now? will he thrash my jacket ? — lefn — let'n. But an he comes near me, mayhap I may giv'n a salt eel for's supper, for all that. What does father mean to leave me alone with such a dirty dowdy? Sea-calf! I an't calf enough to lick your chalked face, you cheese-curd you.' The sweet and handsome man is Tattle, who instructs her, and finds her an apt scholar: 'You must let me speak, miss, you must not speak first; I must ask you questions, and you must answer. Pme. What, is it like the catechism ? Come then, ask me. Tattle. D'ye think you can love me? Prue. Yes. 2 18 FIKST TRANSITION PERIOD — FEATURES. Tattle. Pooh I pox! you must not say yes already; I shan't care a farthing for you then in a twinkling. Prue. What must I say then? Tattle. Why, you must say no, or you believe not, or you can't tell. Prue. Why, must I tell a lie then? Tattle. Yes, if you'd be well-bred; all well-bred persons lie; besides, you are a woman, you must never speak what you think: your words must contradict your thoughts ; but your actions may contradict your words. So, when I ask you, if you can love me, you must say no, but you must love me too. If I tell you you are handsome you must deny it and say I flatter you. But you must think yourself more charming than I speak you : and like me for the beauty which I say you have, as much as if I had it myself. If I ask you to kiss me you must be angry, but you must not refuse me. Prue. O Lord, I swear this is pure ! I like it better than our old-fashioned country way of speaking one's mind; and must not you lie too? Tattle. Hum! Yes; but you must believe I speak truth. Prue. O Gemini ! well, I always had a great mind to tell lies; but they frighted me and said it was a sin. Tattle. Well, my pretty creature; will you make me happy by giving me a kiss? Prue. No, indeed; I'm angry at you. [Runs and kisses him. Tattle. Hold, hold, that's pretty well; but you should not have given it me, but have suffered me to have taken it. Prue. Well, we'll do't again. Tattle. With all my heart. Now then my little angel ! [Kisses her. Prue. Pish ! Tattle. That's right — again, my charmer! [Kisses again. Prue. O fy ! nay, now I can't abide you. Tattle. Admirable ! that was as well as if you had been born and bred in Covent- garden.' These are the natural instincts of the town. If we would see them transformed into systematic vices, we must look to the Way of the World, the mirror of fine artificial society. The heroes are accomplished scoundrels, the heroines are unchecked gossips, who, in their most amiable aspects, veil the animal under genteel airs. Fainall, who has been lavish of his morals, is asked how he is 'affected' towards his wife, and answers: 'Why, faith, I'm thinking of it. Let me see; I am married already, so that's over: my wife has played the jade with me; well, that's over too. I never loved her, or if 1 had, why that would have been over too by this time: jealous of her 1 cannot be, for I am certain; so there's an end of jealousy: weary of her I am, and shall be; no, there's no end of that; no, no, that were too much to hope.' She, whose youth has not rusted in her possession, hates him; complains to Mirabell, a trained expert, who appeases her, and gives her advice: 'You should have just so much disgust for your husband, as may be suflicient to make you relish your lover.' Lady Wishfort, expecting- Sir Rowland, speaks in the style of high life: 'But art thou sure Sir Rowland will not fail to come? or will he not fail when he does come? Will he be importunate. Foible, and push? For if he should not be impor- DKAMA — CONGREVE. 1^ tunate, I shall never break decorums: I shall die with confusion, if I am forced to advance. Oh no, I can never advance I I shall swoon if he should expect advances. No, I hope Sir Rowland is better bred than to put a lady to the necessity of breaking her forms. I won't be too coy, neither. I won't give him despair— but a little disdain is not amiss; a little scorn is alluring.' Foible. A little scorn becomes your ladyship. Lady Wish. Yes, but tenderness become me best; a sort of dyingness; you see that picture has a sort of a — ha. Foible! a swimmingness in the eye; yes, I'll look so; my niece afEects it; but she wants features. Is Sir Rowland handsome? Let my toilet be removed; I'll dress above. I'll receive Sir Rowland here. Is he handsome? Don't answer me. I won't know; I'll be surprised, I'll be taken by surprise.' But the perfect model of the brilliant world is Mrs. Millamant, haughty and wanton, witty and scornful, with nothing to hope or to fear, superior to all circumstances, caprice her only law: 'Mrs. Fainall. You were dressed before I came abroad. Mrs. Millamant. Ay, that's true. O but then I had; Mincing, what had I? why was I so long? Mincing. O mem, your laship stayed to peruse a packet of letters. Mrs. Mil. O ay, letters; I had letters; I am persecuted with letters; I hate letters. Nobody knows how to write letters, and yet one has 'em, one does not know why. They serve one to pin up one's hair.' Lovers are her creatures, and conquests give her no surprise: 'Beauty the lover's gift I Lord, what is a lover, that it can give? Why, one makes lovers as fast as one pleases, and they live as long as one pleases, and they die as soon as one pleases, and then, if one pleases, one makes more.' Her airs give way at last to tenderness (?), and she enters into matrimony, on conditions: 'I'll never marry, unless I am first made sure of my will and pleasure. . . . My dear liberty, shall I leave thee I my faithful solitude, my darling contemplation, must I bid you then adieu? Ay-h adieu; my morning thoughts, agreeable wakings, indolent slum- bers, all ye douceurs, ye sommeils du matin, adieu?; I can't do 't, 'tis more than impos- sible; positively, Mirabell, I'll lie abed in a morning as long as I please. Mir. Then I'll get up in a morning as early as I please. Mil. Ah! idle creature, get up when you will; and d'ye hear, I won't be called names after I'm married; positively I won't be called names. Mir. Names 1 Mil. Ay, as wife, spouse, my dear, joy, jewel, love, sweetheart, and the rest of that nauseous cant, in which men and their wives are so fulsomely familiar; I shall never bear that; good Mirabell, don't let us be familiar or fond, nor kiss before folks, like my lady Fadler, and Sir Francis; nor go to Hyde-park together the first Sunday in a new chariot, to provoke eyes and whispers, and then never to be seen together again; as if we were proud of one another the first week, and ashamed of one another ever after. Let us never visit together, nor go to a play together; but let us be very strange and well- bred: let us be as strange as if we had been married a great while; and as well-bred as if we were not married at all.' These demands are reasonable — in fact, trifling, compared with . others: 'To write and receive letters without interrogatories. . . . Come to dinner when I please; dine in my dressing room . . . without giving a reason; ... to be sole empress 20 FIRST TRANSITIOiq" PERIOD — FEATURES. Ipavo ■ of my tea-table, which you must never presume to approach without first asking leave And lastly, wherever I am, you shall always knock at the door before you come in These articles subscribed, if I continue to endure you a little longer, I may by degrees dwindle into a wife.' This is the carnival of fashion — its finery, its chatter, its charm- ing- repartee, its foolish affectation, the drapery of the world. You are amused, but what thought do you carry away? Yet sensible and striking passages are not wanting, some of which have become proverbial, and whose origin is unknown to many who quote them: 'Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.' 'Heaven has no rage, like love to hatred turn"d. Nor hell a fury, like a woman scorned.' 'For blessings ever wait on virtuous deeds; And though a late, a sure reward succeeds.' 'If there's delight in love, 'tis when I see That heart, which others bleed for, bleed for me.' 'Reason, the power To guess at right and wrong, the twinkling lamp Of wandering life, that winks and wakes by turns. Fooling the follower, betwixt shade and shining.' Vanbrugh is cheerful, confident, robust, easy, natural, various, and, of course, plain-spoken — an impudent dog. Sottishness is still resjDectable, rakes still scour the streets, ladies are still 'carried off swooning with love from ante-chambers.' Squire Sullen, in Provoked Wife, gets drunk, rolls about the room, like a sick passenger in a storm, howls out, 'Damn morality! and damn the watch ! and let the constable be married !' Sir John Brute declares there is but one thing he loathes on earth beyond his wife, — 'that's fighting.' She would please him, but is taunt- ingly told that is not her talent. She reflects: 'Perhaps a good part of what I suffer from my husband may be a judgment upon me for my cruelty to my lover. Lord, with what pleasure could I indulge that thought, were there but a possibility of finding arguments to make it good ! And how do I know but there may ? Let me see. What opposes ? My matrimonial vow. Why, what did I vow ? I think I promised to be true to my husband. Well; and he promised to be kind to me. But he han't kept his word. Why, then, I am absolved from mine.' The argument proceeds, but we have to stop. Listen to Lord Toppington in Relapse. He is a newly-created pillar of state: 'My life, madam, is a perpetual stream of pleasure, that glides through such a variety of entertainments, I believe the wisest of our ancestors never had the least conception of any of 'em. I rise, madam, about ten a-clack. I don't rise sooner, because it is the worst thing in the world for the complexion ; nat that I pretend to be a beau ; but a man DRAMA — VANBRUGH. 21 must endeavor to looke wholesome, lest he make so nauseous a figure in the side-bax, the ladies should be compelled to turn their eyes upon the play. So at ten a-clack, I say, I rise. Naw, if I And it a good day, I resalve to take a turn in the park, and see the fine women; so huddle on my clothes, and get dressed by one. If it be nasty weather, I take a tarn in the chocolate-hause: where as you walk, madam, you have the prettiest pros- pectin the world; you have looking-glasses all round you.' He is to be married to a country heiress, 'a plump partridge,' who has never seen him. His brother, simulating him, arrives instead. Miss Hoyden is overjoyed: 'Nurse. Oh, but you must have a care of being too fond; for men now-a-days hate a woman that loves "em. Hoyd. Love him I why do you think I love him, nurse? ecod I would not care if he were hanged, so I were but once married to him I No; that which pleases me, is to think what work Til make when I get to London; for when I am a wife and a lady both, nurse, ecod I'll flaunt it with the best of "em." The true lord comes in at the critical moment, as they think, the imposture is discovered, and her father apologizes: 'My lord, I'm struck dumb, I can only beg pardon by signs; but if a sacrifice will appease you, you shall have it. Here, pursue this Tartar, bring him back. Awa3% I say ! A dog! Dons, I'll cut ofE his ears and his tail, I'll draw out all his teeth, pull his skin over his head — and — and what shall I do more?' Toppington marries her, learns that he has married his brother's ■wife, but covers his aching heart 'with a serene countenance: 'Now, for my part, I think the wisest thing a man can do with an aching heart is to put on a serene countenance; for a philosophical air is the most becoming thing in tlie world to the face of a person of quality. I will therefore bear my disgrace like a great man, and let the people see I am above an affront. [Aloud] Dear Tain, since things are thus fallen aut, prithee give me leave to wish thee jay; I do it de bon caur, strike me dumb: You have married a woman beautiful in her person, charming in her airs, prudent in her canduct, canstant in her inclinations, and of a nice marality, split my windpipe I ' Farquhar is an artist in stage effect, an Irishman, with the Irish sportiveness, and an agreeable diversity. His best comedy is the Beaicx' Stratagem. Boniface is still a favorite, one of the extinct race of landlords. The London coach suddenly appears: 'Chamberlain! maid! Cherry! daughter Cherry ! all asleep? all dead?' — 'Here, here! why d'ye bawl so, father? d'ye think we have no ears?' She deserves to have none, he thinks, but she redeems herself by a cheering welcome to the guests who are shown to their chambers. Thereupon enter Aimwell and Archer, gentlemen of broken fortunes, travelling, the one as master, the other as servant: 'Bon. This way, this way gentlemen! Aim. [To Archer.} Set down the things; go to the stable, and see my horses well rubbed. Arch. I shall, sir. Aim. You're my landlord, I suppose ? 22 FIRST TRANSITION" PERIOD — FEATURES. Bon. Yes, sir, I'm old Will Boniface, pretty well known upon this road, as the saying is. Aim. O Mr. Boniface, your servant! M Bon. Osir! What will your honour please to drink, as the saying is ? W Aim. I have heard your town of Litchfield much famed for ale ; 1 think I'll taste that Bon. Sir, I have now in my cellar ten tun of the best ale in Staffordshire; 'tis smooth as oil, sweet as milk, clear as amber, and strong as brandy; and will be just fourteen year old the fifth day of next March, old style. Aim. You're very exact, I find, in the age of your ale. Bon. As punctual, sir, as I am in the age of my children. I'll show you such ale! Here, tapster, broach number 1706, as the saying is. Sir, you shall taste my Anno Domini. I have lived in Litchfield, man and boy, above cight-and-fifty years, and, I believe, have not consumed eight-and-flfty ounces of meat. Aim. At a meal, you mean, if one may guess your sense by your bulk. Bon. Not in my life, sir; I have fed purely upon ale, I have eat my ale, drunk my ale, and I always sleep upon ale. Enter Tapster with a bottle and glass, and exit. Now, sir, you shall see! [Pours out a glass.] Your worship's health! Ha! deli- cious, delicious ! fancy it Burgundy, only fancy it, and 'tis worth ten shillings a quart. Aim. [Drinks.] 'Tis confounded strong! Bon. Strong! it must be so, or how should we be so that drink it ? Ai?n. And have you lived so long upon this ale, landlord ? Bon. Eight-and-flfty years, upon my credit, sir; but it killed my wife, poor woman, as the saying is. Aim. How came that to pass ? Bon. I don't know how, sir; she would not let the ale take its natural course, sir; she was for qualifying it every now and then with a dram, as the saying is; ... the fourth carried her off. But she's happy, and I'm contented, as the saying is.' One or two higher spirits reach the passions of the other age, — Dryden in tragedy; and by his side a younger contemporary, Otway, in whose Venice Preserved we encounter the sombre imagination of Webster, Ford, and Shakespeare. Jaffier, a youth of merit and promise, but the sport of chance, rescues from a watery grave a senator's daughter, a genuine woman, who from that hour loves him; three years have passed since their vows were plighted; she is his wife, against the wishes of her proud sire ; misfortune comes ; he has just now left the presence of the offended aristocrat with his curse and his heart is heavy between love and ruin: 'O Belvidera! Oh! she is my wife — And we will bear our wayward fate together. But ne'er know comfort more.' She who has been his dependent and ornament in happier hours, proves his stay and solace in calamity: 'My lord, my love, my refuge! Happy my eyes when they behold thy face ! My heavy heart will leave its doleful beating At sight of tbee, and bound with sprightly joys. Oh, smile as when our loves were in their spring, And cheer my fainting soul ! DRAMA — TRAGEDY. 23 Jaf- As when our loves Were in their spring! Has, then, my fortune changed thee? Art thou not, Belvidera, still the same. Kind, good, and tender, as my arms first found thee? If thou art altered, where shall I have harbour? Where ease my loaded heart? Oh! where complain? Bel. Does this appear like change, or love decaying, When thus 1 throw myself into thy bosom. With all the resolution of strong truth? I joy more in thee Than did thy mother, when she hugged thee first, And blessed the gods for all her travail past. Jaf. Can there in woman be such glorious faith? Sure, all ill stories of thy sex are false ! 0/i, woman, lovely ivoman! Nature made thee To temper man; we had been brutes without you! Angels are painted fair, to look like you: These are but rare notes. For the most part, he moves, like the rest, in the murky waters of the great current. Like them, he is obscene; and from all, we have found it difficult to extract, with- out revolting decorum, something to suggest the new rhetoric, the sentiments and maxims of polite society, and the abyss from which that society and our literature have since ascended. Even here there were tokens of a more serious and orderly life, signs of a reaction in literary feelings and moral habits. A great reformer arose to accelerate the revolution, Jeremy Collier, a heroic Anglican, who threw down the gauntlet to the champions of the stage, and was victorious. Prose. — The Restoration may be taken as the era of the formation of our present style. Imagination was tempered, transports diminished, judgment corrected itself, artifice began. Among the most agreeable specimens of the new refinement in form are the conversations of the drama. They foreshadow the Spectator. The easy and flowing manner of Cowley is continued by the polished Temple, a man of the world, a lover of elegance, who, if he assuages grief, must do it with dignity and facility: 'If you look about you, aud consider the lives of others as well as your own; if you think how few are born with honor, and how many die without name or children ; how little beauty we see, and how few friends we hear of; how many diseases, and how much poverty there is in the world ; you will fall down upon your knees, and instead of repin- ing at one affliction, vnW admire so many blessings which you have received from the hand of God.' Observe how the following sentence glides along: 'I have indeed heard of wondrous pretensions and visions of men possessed with notions of the strange advancement of learning and science, on foot in this age, and the 24 FIRST TRANSITION PERIOD — FEATURES. 1 progress they are like to make in tiie next; as the universal medicine, which will cer- tainly cure all that have it; the philosopher's stone, which will be found out by men that care not for riches; the transfusion of young blood into old men's veins, which will make them as gamesome as the lambs from which 'tis to be derived; a universal language which may serve all men's turn when they have forgot their own; the knowledge of one another's thoughts without the grievous trouble of speaking; the art of flying, till a man happens to fall down and break his neck; double-bottomed ships, whereof none can ever be cast away besides the first that was made; the admirable virtues of that noble and necessary juice called spittle, which will come to be sold, and very cheap, in the apothe- caries' shops; discoveries of new vv^orlds in the planets, and voyages between this and that in the moon to be made as frequently as between York and London.' Smoothness was the distinguishing quality of the man, as it is of his manner, which sometimes relaxes into prolixity or remissness. Dryden has sounder taste, as well as more vigor. The rest are inferior in point of ornament, but, for the most part, have the same fundamental character — ratiocination. Hobbes is surpris- ingly dry, idiomatic, concise, strong. The most celebrated ser- mons are instruments of edification rather than models of elegance. Barrow is geometrical, revises and re-revises, then revises again, dividing and subdividing, having only one desire — to explain and fully prove what he has to say. Tillotson has no rapture, no vehemence, no warmth. He wishes to convince, nothing more- South, an apostate Puritan, is colloquial, energetic; more popular than these, because he is more anecdotic, abrupt, pointed, — - vulgar, having the plain-dealing and coarseness which belong to the stage, and which his insincerity permits. ■These sermons, once so famous, are now hardly read at all. They are outlived, in a far humbler sphere, by the little work of a London linen-draper, Izaak "Walton, whose Complete Angler has what they have not, — the touch of nature which makes the whole world kin. Its natural description, as also its lively dia- logue, has seldom been surpassed. A single extract can hardly suggest its abundance of quaint but wise thoughts, its redolence of wild flowers and sweet country air: 'Well, scholar, having now taught yon to paint your rod, and we having still a mile to Tottenham High Cross, I will, as we walk towards it in the cool shade of this honey- suckle-hedge, mention to yon some of the thoughts and joys that have possessed my soul since we two met together. And these thoughts shall be told you, that you also may join with me in thankfulness to the Giver of every good and perfect gift for our happi- ness. . . . We have been freed from these and all those many other miseries that threaten human nature: let us therefore rejoice and be thankful. Kay, which is a far greater mercy, we are free from the unsupportable burden of an accusing, tormenting conscience — a misery that none can bear: and therefore let us praise Him for His pre- venting grace, and say. Every misery that I miss is a new mercy. Nay, let me tell yon, there may be many that have forty times our estates, that would give the greatest part PROSE — TRANSFORMATION^ OF STYLE. 25 of it to be healthful and cheerful like us, who, with the expense of a little money, have eat and drunk, and laughed, and angled, and sung, and slept securely; and rose next day, and cast away care, and sung, and laughed, and angled again, which are blessings rich men cannot purchase with all their money. Let me tell you, scholar, I have a rich neigh- bour that is always so busy that he has no leisure to laugh; ihe whole business of his life is to get money, and more mouey, that he may still get more and more money; he is still drudging on, and says that Solomon says, " The hand of the diligent maketh rich '' ; and it is true indeed: but he considers not that it is not in the power of riches to make a man happy: for it was wisely said by a man of great observation, "that there be as many mis- eries beyond riches as on this side of them." And yet God deliver us from pinching poverty, and grant that, having a competency, we may be content and thankful! Let us not repine, or so much as think the gifts of God unequally dealt, if we see another abound with riclies, when, as God knows, the cares that are the keys that keep those riches hang often so heavily at the rich man's girdle, that they clog him with weary days and restless nights, even when others sleep (juietly. We see but tlie outside of the rich man's happiness; few consider him to be like the silkworm, that, when she seems to play, is at the very same time spinning her own bowels, and consuming herself; and this many rich men do, loading themselves with corroding, to keep what they have probably unconscionably got. Let us therefore be thankful for health and competence, and, above all, for a quiet conscience. Let me tell you, scholar, that Diogenes walked one day, with his friend, to see a country fair, where he saw ribbons, and looking-glasses, and nut-crackers, and fiddles, and hobby-horses, and many other gimcracks; and having observed them, and all the other flnnimbruns that make a complete country fair, he said to his friend: "Lord, liow many things are there in this world of which Diogenes hath no need I " ' Evelyn, an amiable cavalier, begins the class of gossiping me- moirs, so useful in giving color to history. He vrrites a Diary, with the tone of an educated and reflecting observer. Here is a picture of the court of Charles II: 'I can never forget the inexpressible luxury and profaneness, gaming, and all disso- luteness, and as it were total forgetfulness of God — it being Sunday evening — which this day se'ennight I was witness of,— the king sitting and toying with his concubines, Ports- mouth, Cleveland, and Mazarin, etc.; a French boy singing love-songs in that glorious gallery, whilst about twenty of the great courtiers and other dissolute persons were at basset round a large table, a bank of at least £2000 in gold before them, upon which two gentlemen who were with me made reflections with astopishmeut. Six days after, all was in the dust.' And a sketch of the Great Fire: '2d /Se^^— This fatal night, about ten, began the deplorable fire near Fish Street, London. Sd Sept.— I had public prayers at home. The fire continuing after dinner, I took a coach with my wife and son, and went to the Bankside in Southwark, where we beheld tliat dismal spectacle, the whole city in dreadful flames near the water side; all the houses from the bridge, all Thames street, and upwards towards Cheapside, were now consumed ; and so returned exceedingly astonished wliat would become of the rest. . . . The conflagration was so universal and the people so astonished, that from the begin- ning, feeling I know not what despondency or fate, they hardly stirred to quench it, so that there was nothing heard nor seen but crying out and lamentation, running about like distracted creatures, without at all attempting even to save their goods, such a strange consternation there was upon them, and as it burned in breadth and length, the churches, public halls, exchange, hospital, monuments and ornaments, leaping after a prodigious manner from house to house, and street to street, at great distances one from the other. For the heat, with a long set of fair and warm weather, had even ignited the 26 FIKST TKANSITION" PERIOD — FEATURES. I air, and prepared the materials to conceive the fire which devoured after an incredible manner, houses, furniture, and everything. Here wc saw the Thames covered with goods floating, all tlic barges and boats ladened with what some had time and courase to save, as, on the other side, the carrying out to the fields, which for many miles were strewn with movables of all sorts, and tents erecting to shelter botti people and what goods they could get away. 0, the miserable and calamitous spectacle! such as haulv the world has not seen since the foundation of it, nor can be out-done till the universal conflagration thereof. All the sky was of a fiery aspect, like the top of a burnincr oven and the light seen above forty miles round about for many nights. God grant that mine eyes may never again heboid the like; who ever saw above 10,000 houses all in one flame? The noise and crackling and thunder of the impetuous flames; the shrieldn^of women and children, the hurry of people, the fall of towers, houses and churches, was like a hideous storm, and the air all about so hot and inflamed that at the last one was not able to approach it, so that they were forced to stand still and let it burn on, which they did for near ten miles in length and one in breadth. The clouds of smoke also were dismal, and reached upon computation near fifty miles in length. . . . London was, but is no more.' Readers who take an interest in the progress of civilization, will be more grateful to the garrulous old Pepys for his journal, than to professed historians for the military involutions and political intrigues that fill some of their pages. His memoranda, recorded solely for his own eye, include almost every phase of public and social life. Thus: '■Aug. 19.— . . . Home to dinner, where ray wife had on her new petticoat that she bought yesterday, which indeed is a very fine cloth and a fine lace; but that being of a light colour, and the lace all silver, it makes no great show.' ^Nov. 29.— Lord's Day. — This morning I put on my best black cloth suit, trimmed with scarlet ribbons, very neat, with my cloak lined with velvet, and a new beaver, which altogether is very noble, with my black knit silk cannons > I bought a month ago." ^Dec. 21.— To Shoe Lane to see a cockflghi at a new pit there, a spot \ never was at in my life; but. Lord! to see the strange variety of people, from parliament men, to the poorest 'prentices, bakers, brewers, butchers, draymen and what not, and all these fellows one with another cursing and betting. I soon had enough of it.' Mr. Pepys at divine service: '■May 26, 1667.— '^y wife and I to church, where several strangers of good condit came to our pew. After dinner, I by water alone to Westminster to the parish char? and there did entertain myself with my persi)ective glass up and down the church, by which I had the great pleasure of seeing and ga^.ing at a great many very fine women; and what with that, and sleeping, I i)assed away the time till sermon was done. . . . ''Aug 18.— ... I walked towards Whitehall, but, being wearied, turned into St. Dun- stan's Church, whore I heard an able sermon of the minister of the place; and stood by a pretty modest maid, whom I did labour to take by the hand; but she would not, but got further and further from me; and, at last, I could perceive her to take pins out of her pocket to prick me if I should touch her again— which, seeing, I did forbear, and was glad I did spy her design. And then I fell to gaze upon another pretty maid, in a pew close to me, and she on me ; and 1 did go about to take her by the hand, which she suf- fered a little and then withdrew. So the sermon ended.' Tries to admire Iludihras : '■Nov. 28.— To Paul's Church-yard, and there looked upon the second part of Btdibras, which I buy not, but borrow to read, to see if it be as good as the first, which the world ' Ornamental tops to silk stockings. i PROSE — HISTORICAL METHOD. 27 cried so mightily- up, though it hath not a good liking in me, though I had tried by twice or three times reading to bring myself to thinii it witty.' At the theatre: • October 5.— To King's house; and there, going in, met with Knipp, and she took us up into the tireing- rooms: and to the wonian's shift, where Nell was dressing herself, and was all unready, and is very pretty, prettier tlian I thought. And into the scene- room, and there sat down, and she gave us fruit: and liere I read the questions to Knipp, while she answered me through all her part of Flora Figarys, which was acted to-day. But, Lord! to see how they're both painted would make a man mad, and did make me loath them; and what base company of men comes among them, and how lewdly they talk!' Makes a great speech at the Bar of the House: 'March 5, 1668.— AW my fellow-officers, and all the world that was within hearing, did cougratulate me, and cry up my speech as the best thing they ever heard. . . . My Lord Barkeley did cry me up for what they had heard of it; and others, Parliament- men there, about the King, did say that they never heard such a speech in their lives dehvered in that manner. . . . Everybody that saw me almost came to mc, as Joseph Williamson and others, witli such eulogies as cannot be expressed. From thence I went to Westminster Hall, where I met Mr. G. Montagu, who came to me and kissed me, and told me that he had often heretofore kissed my hands, but now he would kiss my lips; protesting that 1 was another Cicero, and said, all tlie world said the same of me.' This, it is true, is not literature, if we insist on finish, imagery, or sentiment; but we may accept it on other ground. How far above price were so minute and living a picture of the age of Bade, or of earlier and later ages that appear only in the haze of general descriptions, dates, numbers, and results ! Baxter, an eminent dissenter, a great sufferer, yet a volumi- nous writer, and an indefatigable pastor, is the author of a well- known manual of devotion, — The Sainfs Everlasting Rest. It is hke the Puritan — fervent, masculine, solid, direct, unadorned, unpolished. Rarely has a book, in its day, aided so many souls to rise in spiritual flights, or to keep the heights which they were competent to gain. However, Milton and Bunyan excepted — the glory of Puritanism is not in its literary remains, but in its moral results. Only once, in this period, does it attain eloquence, and beauty, and then by accident, in The Pilgrini's Progress, the work of an inspired tinker, a birth of passionate feeling in a time of self-conscious art. History. — Turning to the historical field, we find several industrious collectors of materials, the most prominent of whom are Dugdale, Rymer, and Wood. Fuller's well-known Worthies contains sketches of about eighteen hundred individuals. Of compositions original, systematic, and dispassionate, there is a 28 FIRST TRANSITIOJSr PERIOD — FEATURES. complete dearth. The most deserving are Clarendon's Gnat Rebellion, Burnet's Oimi Times, and his Reformation. The first, a Royalist, is a professed apologist of one side. His style often prolix, is on the whole manly; with sometimes a majesty and beauty hitherto unknown. The chief merit of the second is liveliness and perspicuity. His style, though careless and familiar, partakes fairly of the improvements of his time. The advancing spirit of scepticism was purging history of its falsehoods. We have traced its progress from poetic narration; and ere long we shall see it pass into philosophical interpreta- tion, look beneath the surface of events for the springs of action, search under facts for principles, becoming more humane and democratic as it becomes more critical and just. It is important to understand well the significance of this tendency: for if the historical method advances, it is because general knowledge advances; if the way of contemplating the past is different, it is because the way of contemplating the present is different. Each is a phase of the same vast movement. Theology. — The spirit which Bacon carried into philosophy, Cromwell into politics, and Chillingworth into theology, now culminated in open revolt. Belief in a God, coupled with dis- belief in a written revelation, became frequent. Lord Her- bert, brother of the saintly poet, may be considered the founder of the English school of deists. All religions are by him reduced to one, which is sufficient, he maintains, for all the wants of man- kind. This universal system consists of five articles: 1. That there is one supreme God. 2. That He is to be worshipped. 3. That piety and virtue are the principal part of His wor- ship. 4. That man should repent of sin, and that if he does so, God will pardon it. 5. That there are rewards for the good, and punishments for the evil, partly in this life, and partly in the next. In that political and religious reaction which followed the Cromwellian period. Deism arose in its extreme forms, frequently allied with the democratic, sometimes with the revolutionary, ten- dencies of the nation. Hobbes, however, the greatest living PKOSE — ENGLISH DEISM. 29 anti-Christian writer, was a servile advocate of royalty and of the right of the state to coerce individual opinions: 'Thought is free, but when it comes to confession of faith, the private reason must submit to the public, that is to say, to God's lieutenant.' He acknowledges the being of God, but denies that we know any more of Him than that He exists: 'By the visible things of this world and their admirable order, a man may conceive there is a cause of them, which men call God, and yet not have an idea or image of Him in his mind. And they that make little inquiry into the natural causes of things are inclined to feign several kinds of powers invisible, and to stand in awe of their own imaginations. And this fear of things invisible is the natural seed of that which every one in himself calleth religion: He also denies free-will; asserts the materiality of the soul, and teaches that the belief in a future state is merely 'a belief ground- ed on other men's saying that they knew it supernaturally, or that they knew those, that knew them, that knew others, that knew it supernaturally.' He cuts with remorseless knife at the very heart of the general faith. 'To say God hath spoken to man in a dream, is no more than to say man dreamed that God hath spoken to him.' 'To say one hath seen a vision or heard a voice, is to say he hath dreamed between sleeping and waking.' These statements, one and all, are but applications of his meta- physical theory, which, in connection with its results, will be con- sidered in its proper place. The common ferment bred an astonishing irruption of deists, — Shaftesbury, Toland, Tindal, Mandeville, Bolingbroke ; but, from Hobbes downward. Deism s-rew more and more materialistic and sensual. As might be expected, its career was transient. Fifty years after the Revolution, it was drowned in forgetfulness. For the system which it j^roposed to abolish, it could offer, in its highest type, no substitute but lofty and dissolving speculation, impotent — at least in that stage of civilization — to supply mo- tives and means for right conduct. Free-thinkers roused antagonists: leaders of experimental sci- ence, as Boyle and Newton; illustrious scholars, as Bentley and Clarke; popular wits, as Addison and Swift; profound philoso- phers, as Cudworth and Locke. Apologies, refutations, exposi- tions abounded and multiplied. The character of theological literature, however, had changed. In all this discussion, quota- tions are comparatively rare. Christians no longer combated by 30 PIKST TRANSITION PERIOD — FEATURES. ^ authority, but by argument. An incessant reference to proof had indisposed the public to receive the traditions that had once enslaved their fathers. It is observable, too, that the progress of Arminianism, as opposed to Calvinism, w^as changing the face of the English Church. This was displayed among those who, about the epoch of the Restoration, were commonly known as Latitu- dinarians, distinguished from High Churchmen by their strong aversion to every compromise with Popery, — and from most Puri- tans as well, by their opposition to dogma, by their insistence upon rightness of life rather than correctness of opinion, by their advocacy of tolerance and comprehension as the basis of Chris- tian unity. The questions most freely discussed or illustrated by divines were ' The Bible the only rule of faith,' and ' Salvation by God's free mercy through Christ.' In Scotland, the stronghold of Presbyterianism, induction was unknown, bigotry was undiminished, secular interests were neg- lected, preaching was harsh and gloomy. The misery of man^ the anger of the Deity, the power and presence of Satan, the agonies of hell, were still the constant themes of the pulpit. The preacher delighted to freeze the blood of his hearers with hideous imagery. ' Boiling oil, burning brimstone, scalding lead,' says one. 'A river of fire and brimstone broader than the earth,' says another. 'Tongue, lungs, and liver, bones and all, shall boil and fry in a torturing fire,' says a third. There is no end of such language: 'Oh ! the screeches and yels that will be in hell.' 'While wormas are sporting with thy bones, the devils shall make pastime of thy jDaines.' 'There are two thousand of you here to-day, but I am sure fourscore of you will not be saved.' ' In the absence of scientific knowledge, and of that rationalistic spirit which was liberalizing and enlightening thought elsewhere, all phenomena were referred to the arbitrary will of a passionate and sanguinary God. As long as this continued, as long as re- ligious feelings were chiefly associated with the abnormal and capricious, attention would chiefly concentrate upon disasters, and devotion would be chiefly connected with storm and pesti- lence, famine and death. These, regarded as penal inflictions, would give a congenial hue to all parts of belief, whose central ideas would be misery, cruelty, and terror. But when habits of 1 In consequence three persons are said to have dispatched themselves in despair, ir. m i PROSE — ENGLISH MATERIALISM. 31 investigation acquire the ascendancy, calamities are seen to be the result of general laws, terrorism diminishes, attention is di- rected chiefly to the evidences of superintending care, the Divine presence is associated with order, and theology wears a more beneficent aspect. This, on the whole, is precisely the change that had been going on in England from the early part of the century. The fact suggests, what must be obvious to every care- ful student of ideas, — that all theology is progressive: Christi- anity lives because it is developed. Every age must produce its own doctrines, adapted to its peculiar condition and wants. Those of the present can be retraced to the successive points of time when, one after the other, they reached a definite form. Patristic — Scholastic — Reformative — modern Evangelical — this is the line of advance and the order of growth. The gems alone are unmodified, the eternal verities, the same to-day, yesterday, and forever. Etllics. — Two classes of tendencies, two complexions or styles of mind, contend for empire in the individual and society, — the one holding of animal force, the other of genius; the one of the understanding, the other of the soul; the one deficient in sympa- thy, the other warm and expansive; the one all buzz and din, the other all infinitude and paradise; the one hating ideas and cling- ing to a corporeal civilization, the other looking abroad into uni- versality and suggesting the presence of the invisible gods; the one insisting on sensuous facts as the solid finality, the other on Thought and Will as the primal reality, from which as an un- sounded centre flow sensuous facts perpetually outward, and of ■which they are but a manifold symbol. These are the 3faterial- ists and the Idealists of the world. The former think more of the beast than of the seraph in man. The only interests they appre- ciate are such as are palpable, and can be touched, measured, and weighed. If they survey the rules of conduct, or seek to discover the principles which underlie them, they make much of a good stomach, of strong limbs, of the five senses, and reach the conclu- sion that the universal motive of every act is the desire of pleas- ure. In their analysis of moral phenomena, unable to ascend higher than their own level, they stop at self-love. This is pre- cisely what now took place at the birth of moral science. Nor, under the conditions, is it at all surprising. It was natural that 32 PIKST TKANSITION PERIOD — FEATURES. in the hands of a logician and a positivist, driven into exile by rebellion, into weariness and disgust by sectarian violence at- tached to a fallen government, and yearning for repose, ethical philosophy should assume a form pleasing to a generation devoted equally to monarchy and to vice; that, vs^ritten in the midst of an overthrown society and a religious excess, for an audience whose passions and tastes had been sternly repressed, and who mingled duty and fanaticism in a common reproach, it should wipe out noble sentiment and reduce human nature to its merely animal aspect. Such a theorist was ThomaS Hobbesj' and such the base tone which saturates his system. He has daily observed — as who has not? — that we continually perform acts, because we see that they will issue in pleasure; on the other hand, that we refuse to perform, because we see that they will issue in pain. Preoccu- pied with favorite ideas, the sight of revolutionary excess confirms him in his principles and attachments. He accordingly declares that a desire to obtain pleasure and to avoid pain is the only pos- sible motive to action. None seek or wish for anything but that which is pleasurable: 'I conceive that when a man deliberates whether he shall do a thing or not do it, he does nothing else but consider whether it be better for himself to do it or not to do it.' With him, as with the courtiers around him, 'the greatest good is the preservation of life and limb; the greatest evil is death.' In what, then, does all the good or evil of objects consist? Solely in their property of producing'happiness or the opposite. 'Good and evil are names that signify our appetites and aversions.' To determine the quality of an act, you have simply to acquaint yourself w^ith its fitness or unfitness to produce pleasure. Calcu- late well, therefore, and you are moral; calculate ill, and you are immoral. All passions are thus resolved into one — love of self. What is reverence f ' The conception we have concerning another that he hath the power to do unto us both good and hurt, but not the will to do us hurt.' What is love P A conception of the utility of the person loved. Why are friendships good? 'Be- cause they are useful; friends serve for defence and otherwise.' nety-two. PROSE — UTILITARIANISM. 33 Why do we pity f ' Because we imagine that a similar misfor- tune may befall ourselves.' What is charity? The expectation o? favors reciprocated. 'No man giveth but with the expectation of good to himself.' Or it is a manifestation of the gratified sense of power: 'There can be no greater argument to a man, of his own power, than to find himself able not only to accomplish his own desires, but also to assist other men in theirs; and this is that conception wherein consisteth charity.'' Parental affection is a specific instance of this, but, — 'The affection wherewith men often bestow their benefits on strangers, is not to be called charity, but either contract, whereby they seek to purchase friendship; or fear, which maketh them to purchase peace.' Why do we weep? From a sense of weakness: 'Men are apt to weep that prosecute revenge, when the revenge is suddenly stopped or frustrated by the repentance of their adversary ; and such are the tears of recon- ciliation.'' Wisdom is desirable; but money, being more serviceable, is worth more. 'Not he who is wise is rich, as the Stoics say; but he who is rich is wise.' Whence the purifying emotions which art inspires ? 'Music, painting, poetry, are agreeable as imitations which recall the past, because if the past was good, it is agreeable in its imitation as a good thing; but if it was bad, it is agreeable in its imitation as being past.' To sum up, nothing is in itself either good or evil, but only as it affects us. Our duties are simply to avoid the disagreeable, and seek the agreeable. Virtue is a judicious, and vice an injudi- cious, pursuit of self-interest. As we cannot be affected other- wise than we are by the agreeable and disagreeable, our volitions or desires are determined by motives external to us, and we are consequently creatures of mechanism. There is no liberty but hberty from physical constraint, as that of a chained prisoner set free. It consists in the power, not of forming resolves, but of doing what we will. The true destiny of man is pleasure. He is by nature inclined and instructed to do whatever will promote this end. The better to secure it, he enters into a civil compact, in which he merges some private rights in the public organiza- tion. His law of action, however, is still the greatest degree of personal enjoyment; and might makes right. Does human conduct, profoundly analyzed, confirm this view ? Self-love is undoubtedly a spring of activity — the main one, if 3 34 FIRST TRANSITION- PERIOD — FEATURES. you will, but is there no other ? The principle of interest exists— has a right to exist; but are there not other principles quite as real? Is intelligence fortuitous and forced? Is man a mere nervous machine, whose wheels go blindly, carried away by im- pulse and weight, internally responsive to external shocks? Does not entire life, private and public, turn on personal freedom ? Is it not involved in esteem and contempt, in admiration and indig- nation, in punishment and reward? Is it not implicitly admitted by every system that contains a rule or a counsel? "When Hobbes advises us to sacrifice the agreeable to the useful, does he not assume that we are free to adopt or reject advice? Fon- tenelle seeing a man led to punishment, remarked, ' There is a man who has calculated badly.' True, but if he had been more adroit and escaped punishment, would his conduct have been laudable ? Is the honest only the useful ? Is the genius of cal- culation the highest wisdom ? Must a poor calculator be inca- pable of virtue ? When you have acted contrary to an enlight- ened self-interest, you may lament your feebleness and your failure, but do you feel remorse ? Is the love of beauty nothing but desire ? Is there no deeper meaning than this in the view or worship of that subdued fairness of countenance, in sweet child or cultured woman, whose holy reference beyond itself glorifies our visions of heaven; in the prospect of the peaceful hills, with their undulations of forests, rearing themselves aslant their slopes, and waves of greensward, dim with early dew, or smooth in evening warmth of barred sunshine; in the walk by silent, scented paths, beside the pacing brooks that ripple and eddy and murmur in infinite seclusion? Is the mute adoration of a mother, over the cradle of her sleeping innocent, only a foresight of the ser- vice which that babe, at some future day, may render? What would you think of a lover whose devotion lay resting on the single feeling that a marriage would conduce to his own com- forts? or of a professed patriot who served his country for hire? or of a son who should say, ' Father, on whom my fortunes de- pend, teach me to do what pleases thee, that I, pleasing thee in all things, may obtain the portion which thou hast promised to obedience ? ' Enough. Reason and experience attest that human nature has grander parts and a grander destiny. They tell us that PROSE — UTILITARIANISM. 35 merit and demerit, duty and right, originate in an absolute good something good, not from the benefit it brings to one or to all, but from the eternal nature of things; that our obligation is to seek and to do the best which we know; and if happiness come, life will be sweet; if it do not come, life will be bitter — yet to be borne in lowliness of heart and nobleness of purpose. Few writers have been so uniformly depreciated. ' Hobbism,' ere he died, became a synonym for irreligion and immorality; and he has been vilified unsparingly in death. The prejudice has sprung, partly from ignorance, partly from a true sense of his dangerous errors. He is commonly supposed to have been an atheist. On the contrary, he was a theist, though of a modi- fied type. Admitting the existence of spirit, he denied it to be immaterial. Asked what position the Deity occupied in his phi- losophy, he answered: 'I believe Him to be a most pure, simple, invisible spirit corporeal. By corporeal I mean a substance that has magnitude, and so mean all learned men, divines and others, though perhaps there be some common people so rude as to call nothing body but what they can see and feel.' You may call Him incorporeal, if you wish, but, — '■Incorporeal shall pass for a middle nature between i7ifinitely subtle and nothing, and be less subtle than infinitely subtle, and yet more subtle than a thought.' i After all that you have heard, you may be startled to hear him, not merely profess belief in human immortality, but argue its location — that, too, from Scripture: 'Of the world to come, St. Peter speaks (2 Pet. Hi, IS). Nevertheless we according to His promise look for neiv heavens and a new earth. This is that world wherein Christ coining down from heaven in the clouds, with great power and glory, shall send His angels, and shall gather together His elect from the uttermost parts of the earth, and thenceforth reign over them, under His Father, everlastingly.' ^ Undoubtedly the speculations of Hobbes, in their tendency and effect, were harmful. It was the perception of their results, that caused Parliament to condemn his two great works — De (Jive and Leviathan. It was this, also, that raised up strong, high-minded foes, like the Platonic Cudworth, to found the intui- tive school of ethics, and to assert with the whole force of con- viction and learning, above motives of a personal and selfish ' The reader will perceive that this must have been, from his theory of creation, sub- stantially the view of Milton. ^This sounds oddly in one whom we have seen assail the very theory of Revelation: 'To say he speaks by supernatural inspiration, is to say he finds an ardent desire to speak, or some strong opinion of himself.' 36 FIRST TRANSITION PERIOD — FEATURES. ^ nature, one which is wholly impersonal, disinterested and moral. Let us be liberal enough, however, to acknowledge merit in an adversary. He is original, profound, clear, precise, and weighty. The germs of future systems of thought are in him — metaphys- ical, philological, political, ethical. In nothing does he deserve greater credit than in having set an example of close observation in speculative inquiries. The very lucidity and boldness with which he exhibits the system of selfishness, make it possible to expose and refute it. We shall see that system reappear in the next century under different forms, all resolvable, however refined or ingenious, into sensual elements. It will be reproduced, in every important era of history, as long as there is a class of thinkers who regard the earth as a stable and its fruit as fodder; who measure all utilities by inches, and denote all profit and loss by dollars and cents. These are they who complacently call themselves 'practical,' worthy of much esteem, indeed, and emi- nently serviceable, yet least calculated of any, by their habits of mind, to distinguish truth from error, nor altogether friendly to progress by the low views which they are accustomed to take of humanity. The useful, according to them, consists in knowing that we have an animal nature, and in making this our chief care. They place the glory of individuals, as of nations, in the world around us, not in the world within us; in the circumstances of fortune, not in the attributes of the soul. Engrossed with the roar of railways, the click of telegraphs, the sounds of the crowded mart, they think they govern the world because they float on the surface, never dreaming that what they imagine to be under their direction is a mighty force that in its movement sweeps them onward. Science. — This suddenly became the fashion of the day. Poets and courtiers, wits and fops, crowded to the meetings of the Invisible College, to wdiich, in token of his sympathy, Charles II gave the title of 'The Royal Society.' Almost every ensuing year saw some improvement — some expansion of the circle of knowledge. The Greenwich Observatory was founded. A fresh impulse was given to microscopical research. The careful obser- vation of nature and facts marked an era in the healing art. First light was thrown on the structure of the brain. Boyle, the most eminent of Bacon's early disciples, first directed attention PKOSE — EXPANSION OF SCIENCE. 37 to chemistry as the science of the atomic constituents of bodies. The discussion of abstract questions of government began. Hobbes declared (1) that all power originated in the people; and (2) that all power was for the common weal. Locke added (1) that the power thus lodged in the ruler could be taken away; (2) that the ruler is responsible to his subjects for the trust reposed in him; and (3) that legislative assemblies, as the voice of the people, are supreme. All names in purely physical science are lost in the lustre of one. Kepler had reduced planetary motion to a rule. He and others had sought to reduce it to a cause, and some had stood on the verge of success. Newton crossed the barrier, and estab- lished the doctrine of Universal Gravitation — that every particle of matter attracts every other particle by one common law of action. To pursue the interminable vista of new facts which it pointed out, was to be the employment of the succeeding cen- tury. Born in 1642, so tiny that his mother said 'she could put him into a quart mug,' at twenty-two he discovered the Binomial Theorem; at twenty -three, the Method of Fluxions; at twenty- four, the law of planetary motion around the sun; then turning his attention to Light and Color, laid the foundation of Optics; and in 1687, having resumed his calculations, announced in his famous Principia the mutual attraction of celestial bodies. His boyish fondness for constructing little mechanical toys — clocks and mills, carts and dials — as well as the facility with which he mastered Geometry, was the early prelude of his eminence. He possessed in a very high degree the elements of the mathematical talent, — fertility of invention, distinctness of intuition, deliberate concentration, and a strong- tendency to generalization. He lived in the trains of thought relating to his character. Complimented on his genius, he replied with modesty that if he had made any discoveries, it was owing to patient attention — his ability with- out fatigue to connect inference with inference in one long series towards a determinate end. ' I keep the subject of my inquiry constantly before me, and wait till the first dawning opens gradu- ally, by little and little, into a full and clear light.' ' The higher 'Descartes arrogated nothing to the force of his intellect. What he had accom- plished more than other men, he attributed to the superiority of his method. ' Gennis,' says Helvetins, • is nothing but a continued attention.' The great Mrs. Siddons attrib- uted her unrivalled success to the more intense study which she bestowed upon her parts. A habit of abstraction has been manifested almost akin to disease by some of 38 FIRST TRANSITION PERIOD — FEATURES. we ascend, the wider our field of vision, the deeper will be our humility. This chief of scientists said, at the close of life: 'I know not what the world may think of my labors; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.' Only false science is lofty in spirit. Only it ignores the sphere and limits to which it is confined. Newton did not forget that the discovery of law is no adequate solution of the problem of causes. While he reduced the heavens to the dominion of gravi- tation, gravitation itself remained an insoluble problem. He could track the course of the comet, and measure the velocity of light, yet was he powerless to explain the existence of the minutest insect or the growth of the humblest plant. Through all his labors he looked reverently up to the great First Cause. Thus ends his PrinciiAa: 'We know God only by His properties and attributes, by the wise and admirable structure of things around us, and by their final causes ; we admire Him on account of His perfections; we venerate and worship Him on account of His government.' Kepler, too, had thus opened his sublime views: 'I beseech iny reader that, not unmindful of the divine goodness bestowed on man, he do with me celebrate and praise the wisdom and greatness of the Creator which I open to him.' In old age and darkness Galileo wrote: 'Alas! your dear friend and servant has become totally and irreparably blind. These heavens, this earth, this universe, which by wonderful observation I had enlarged a thousand times beyond the belief of past ages, are henceforth shrunk into the narrow space I myself occupy. So it pleases God, it shall therefore please me also.' The piety of Boyle is shown by his literary remains, — Style of Scripture, Seraphic Love, the Christian Virtxioso, in which he affirms that 'a man addicted to natural philosophy is rather assisted than indisposed thereby to be a good Christian.' In the present day, when the study of the laws of matter has assumed an extraordinary development, it is gratifying to know that the mountain minds which mark the great steps of scientific progress, and which now throw their lengthening shadows over us, bowed their honored heads before the Jehovah of the Bible. Philosophy. — Hobbes' ethics were the result of his psy- the greatest thinkers. Archimedes was so absorbed in meditation that he was first aware of the storming of Syracuse by his own death-wound. Plato reports that Socrates, in a military expedition, was seen by the Athenian army to stand for a whole day and a night, until the breaking of the second morning, motionless, with a fixed gaze. PKOSE — ENTHRONEMENT OF MATTER. 39 chology. Good and evil can be nothing else than expressions for pleasure and pain, if ideas are nothing- else than sensations. He says, in general : ' Concerning the thoughts of man, . . . thej &ve every one a.representation or apiKar- anceoi some quality or other accident of a body without us, which is commonly called an object. Which object worlceth on the eyes, ears, and other parts of a man's body ; and by diversity of working, produceth diversity of appearances. The original of them all is that which we call Sense, for there is no conception in a man's mind which hath not at first, totally or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense. The rest are derived from that original.' To be specific, thought is an internal movement caused by an ex.ternal shock: 'All the qualities called sensible are. in the object that causeth them, but so many several motions of the matter by which it presseth on our organs diversely. Neither in •us thai are pressed, are they anything else but divers motions ; for motion produceth nothing but motion.' The gradual ceasing of the initial impulse is imagination, which he reduces to the power of forming images: 'When a body is once in motion it moveth, unless something hinder it, eternally; and whatsoever hindereth it, can not in an instant, but in time and by degrees, quite extinguish it; and as we see in the water, though the wind cease, the waves give not over rolling for a long time after: so also it happeneth in that motion which is made in the internal parts of man; then, when he sees, dreams, etc' The cause of this diminution is the impulse of some succeeding and stronger motion, by which the former is obscured, as the stars fade when the sun rises. If you wish to denote, not the decay itself, but the character of it, as something old and ^pas?, you will call it memory. If now you would know how one thought suggests another in a continuous and uninterrupted chain, the explanation is: 'All fancies (i.e. images) are motions within us, relicts of those made in sense; and those motions that immediately succeed one another in the sense continue also together after the sense; insomuch as the former coming again to take place and be predominant, the latter followeth by coherence of the matter moved, in such manner as water upon a plain table is drawn which v/ay any one part of it is guided by the finger.' Could anything be more candid, clear, and distinct ? Sensations, and their traces, form the elements of all knowledge; the various commixtures of these form the intellectual faculties. What we perceive or think, forms part of the material universe. Hatter is the only reality. Hobbes, applying the empirical method of Bacon to the inves- tigation of mental and moral phenomena, is thus the precursor of modern Materialism. One of the names that mark an era in the 40 FIRST TRAKSITIO]Sr PERIOD — FEATURES. advancement of knowledge, by creating fresh resources for the development of coming ages, is that of John Locke, an Oxford scholar, so profoundly contemptuous of the University' studies that he regretted in after-life the waste of so much time on such profitless pursuits, so deeply convinced of the vicious method of college education that he went to the other extreme of thinking self-education the best; devoted himself to medicine, then to poli- tics; incurred the displeasure of the Court by his liberal opinions and fled to Holland, where he finished his celebrated Essay on the Human Understanding ; returned to London, after the Rev- olution, to find security and welcome; wrote much, did much, to strengthen the government; was appointed to a responsible and lucrative office, but failed in health; passed his remaining years in peaceful retirement at the house of his friend Lady Masham, daughter of Cudworth, where he expired in 1704, aged seventy- two, having created, by his ideas on speculative method, civil rule, value of money, and liberty of the press, a new vein of thought for philosophic delvers and political economists. As a man, upright, amiable, and accomplished; as an author, his fame and influence are European; as a thinker, of a practical cast and cautious habit, forbidding himself lofty questions and inclined to forbid them to us. Like Hobbes, he pronounced Psychology to be a science of observation; like him, he resolved to explore the field of intellect as Bacon had explored the field of nature. What is his philosophy? Its object is to ascertain the origin, certainty, limits, and uses of our knowledge. Its leading doctrine appears to be, that the ultimate source of this knowledge is experience, which, however, is of two kinds, — sensation and reflection. The first presents no great difficulty. Of the second he says: 'The other fountain from which experience fiirnisheth the understanding with ideas, is the perception of the operations of our oiun minds ivithin us; as it is employed about the ideas it has got; which operations, when the soul comes to reflect on and con- sider, do furnish the understanding with another set of ideas, which could not be had from things without; and such are perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the different actings of our own minds, which we, being con- scious of, and observing in ourselves, do from these receive into our understandings ideas as distinct as we do from bodies affecting our senses. This source of ideas every 'man has ivholly in himself, and though it be not sense, as having nothing to do ivith exter- nal objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called internal sense. But ' Then, as now, attached to the past. To this day, its students are drilled in the phi- losophy of Aristotle. PROSE — LOCKIAN PHILOSOPHY. 41 as I call the other sensation so I call this reflection, the ideas it affords being such only as the mind gets by reflecting on its own operations within itself.' No ideas are allowed to be in the mind except those which can be shown to spring from one or other of these inlets: 'When the understanding is once stored with these simple ideas, it has the power to repeat, compare, and unite them, even to an almost infinite variety, and so can make at pleasure new complex ideas. But it is not in the power of the most exalted wit, or enlarged understanding, by any quickness or variety of thought, to invent or frame one new simple idea in the mind not taken in by the ways aforementioned.' The thing perceived is the idea: 'It is evident that the mind knows not things immediately, but by the intervention of the ideas it has of them. Our knowledge, therefore, is real only so far as there Is a couformity between our ideas and the reality of things.' What assurance have we of such conformity? — The assumption that God would not constitute us with faculties fitted only to deceive: 'Our ideas are not Actions of our fancies, but the natural and regular productions of things without us really operating upon us; and so carry with them all the conformity which is intended, or which our state requires, for they represent things to us under those appearances, which they are fitted to produce in us.' Whence this idea of God? As a philosopher, he argues that it is not innate, and holds that its absence is a strong presumption against innate ideas generally; as a theologian, he argues that we can prove the existence of God as conclusively as we can prove that the angles of a triangle are together equal to tvsro right angles. The proof upon which he chiefly insists is derived from causation, — that for every effect there must be an efficient cause. The causal idea he derives from experience. This would be satisfactory, if by origin or source were meant, not creation (the sense in which Locke seems to employ either term), but occasion. It is allowed that, apart from experience, the mind can have no ideas; still it is not experience which creates or pro- duces our necessary ideas, it is merely the occasion of their development. Thus, without the perception of body, there could be no idea of space; but, while the former is chronologically first, the latter is its logical condition, and involves it, since we cannot conceive of body except as in space. Without the observation of an effect, there could be no idea of cause; but, the former being presented, the latter — already potentially in the mind — is ready to spring up. He acknowledges intuition,' but over- ' 'Sometimes the mind perceives the agreement or disagreement of two ideas imme- diately by themselves without the intervention of any other, and this 1 think we may call intuitive knowledge.' 42 FIRST TRANSITION PERIOD — FEATURES. looks its rules or laws — the primitive cognitions and beliefs included in the exercises with which the mind starts. He ac- knowledges necessary truth, but it does not form a part of his general theory, and sceptics have shown that he cannot reach it in consistency with his system. On the whole, it will be clear to the most careless observer that Locke, as a theorist, has a rational side; it will be equally clear that he has a strong sensational side. The latter is conspicuous in his account of moral distinctions, and leaves little behind but ruins. Like Hobbes, he declares that 'good and evil are nothing- but pleasure and pain, or that which occasions or procures pleas- ure or pain to us.' The obligations to morality are the Divine rewards and punishments, legal and social penalties ; that is, a more or less far-sighted love of pleasure, and an aversion to misery. That the beauty of excellence alone should incite us, is the delusion of pagans: 'Tf a Christian, who has the view of happiness and misery in another life, be aslced why a man must keep his word, he will give this as a reason, because God, who has the power of eternal life and death, requires it of us. But if an Hobbist be asked why, he will answer, because the public requires it, and the Leviathan will punish you if you do not. And if one of the old heathen philosophers had been asked, he would have answered, because it was dishonest, below the dignity of man, and opposite to virtue, the highest perfection of human nature, to do otherwise.' J In opposition to the intuitive moralists who affirm a native power of distinguishing between the higher and lower parts of our nature, he insists at great length on the argument derived from uncivilized life, — that the moral standard is variable in different races and ages. This only recalls tlie distinction already made between innate ideas independent of experience and innate fac- ulties evolved by experience. The difference between a savage and Angelo is not one of mere acquisition; it is the difference between the acorn and the oak, — the one is in the other as the flower in the bud, or as the grain contains the ear that is to wave in the next summer's sun, requiring only favorable con- ditions for the full expansion of its inherent energy.'' 'Mr. Lewis, in defending Locke's originality against the critics who assert that he only borrowed and popularized the ideas of Hobbes, says that Locke never alludes to Hobbes but twice — then distantly — and adds, like a warm admirer of his client: 'His second allusion is simply this: "A Hobbist would probably say." We cannot at present lay our hands on the passage, but it refers to some moral question. '—i/js/or?/ of Philoso- phy. The ' passage,' had he found it, could hardly have been serviceable to Mr. Lewis as an advocate. It must appear evident from single references and from doctrinal points of resemblance, that, so far from having never read the writings of Hobbes, Locke was familiar with them. ■■^ Professor Sedgwick, in criticism of Locke"s notion of the soul being originally a sheet of white paper, says: 'Naked man comes from his mother's womb, endowed f like M [owed ■ RESUME. 43 Nevertheless, Locke speaks of the 'eternal and unalterable nature of right and wrong,' and declares that 'morality is capa- able of demonstration as well as mathematics.' This vacillation which makes moral truth alternately uncertain and demonstrable, is but another instance of his general inconsistency. His style, again, is lacking in precision. In every page we miss the trans- lucent simplicity of Hobbes and the French psychologists. There has been almost endless controversy about his meaning. From him will be drawn the Utilitarianism of Mandeville, who will make virtue a sham; the Idealism of Berkeley; the Scepticism of Hume; the Materialism of Condillac and his school, who, though not accurately representing the doctrines of their master, repre- sent the general tendency of his teaching. He learned as he wrote, and, we are disposed to add, has left passages involving the conclusions of all schools. His Essay too often suggests what Pope has said of the Bible, and Hamilton has reiterated of Consciousness:' 'This is the book where each his dogma seeks. This is the book where each his dogma finds.' Kesume. — English hereditary forces, — moral instinct and practical aptitude, — now worked out their proper results. The revolution, long in accomplishment, was finally completed, by the abolition of feudal tenures and the institution of Habeas Cor- pus under Charles II, by the establishment of the Constitution, the act of toleration, and the emancipation of the press, under William III. Literature still sought in the sunshine of royal and aristocratic favor, where it had chiefly sprung and flourished, the warmth and shelter which popular appreciation was not yet sufficiently ex- tended to give. Its spirit therefore was in the main courtly. In its polite forms, it reflected forcibly the social and political char- acteristics of the Restoration. Manners were gross and trivial. It stooped to be the pander of every low desire. Tragedy, moulded on the tastes of Paris, went out in declamation. The dignity of blank gave way to the sensual effect of rhyme. Com- with limbs and senses indeed well fitted to the material world, yet powerless from want of use; and as for knowledge, his soul is one unvaried blank; yet has this blank been already touched by a celestial hand, and when plunged in the colors which surround it, it takes not his tinge from accident but design, and comes forth covered with a glorious pattern.' ' Of such as resort thither in confirmation of preconceived opinions. The original of this couplet is in the Latin confession of a Calvinist divine. 44 FIKST TRANSITION" PERIOD — FEATURES. edy sank into a repertory of viciousness. As the readiest fashion of serving the appetitive life it fed, it clothed its garbage of vul- garity in prose. Striving to assume the sprightly refinement of the French stage, it acquired new corruption. The abasement of the drama consisted, not merely in licentious expression, but in licentious intrigue. The sentimental enshrinement of occasional virtue served only to show how fearfully and shamelesslv men had fallen into vice. Artificial and frigid images replaced sentiment and beauty. The elegant loved but the varnish of truth — compliments and salutations, tender words and insipidities. Poets wrote like men of the world, — with ease, wit, and spirit, but without noble ardor or moral depth. The lyric, chiefly amatory, was cultivated, though not a favorite. Satire was conspicuous. The Hudibras presents the best embodiment, perhaps, of the true spirit of the cavalier, — witty, sensual, disconnected, bitter, exaggerated, and radically false. The literature of a theological and practical cast was largely Puritan. Amid the classical coldness and the social excess, two minds possessed the imaginative faculty in an eminent degree, — Milton, who lingered from the preceding age, and Bunyan, the hero and martyr of this. As constructive power failed, style improved, becoming more strictly idiomatic, polished, and fluent. Theory and observation sprang forward with emulous energy. Boyle disengaged chem- istry from astrology, and Newton shed lustre upon the age by his brilliant discoveries in astronomy. The Royal Society afforded convenient and ornamental shelter to the gathered fruits of science, and gave an impulse to progress by the spirit it excited and diffused. The bent which philosophy received from Bacon, though in itself excellent, was physical. In Hobbes it became declared materialism. He denied the spontaneity of mind, relaxed the obligations of morality, reduced religion to an affair of state, and resolved right into the assertion of selfishness. The dissenting tendency was represented by Cudworth. Locke was peculiarly influential in his view of the origin of knowledge. The mind, according to him, is a sheet of white paper; the soul a blank sensorium. Its characters, its ideas, its materials, are traceable BUNYAN. 45 directly or indirectly to the senses, — sensible objects, or the states which sensible objects produce. On the whole, a rocking, revolutionary age, an age of actions and reactions. The waves rushed forward, broke, and rolled back; but the great tide moved steadily on. That movement, in general, was from faith to scepticism, from enthusiasm to cyni- cism, from the imagination to the understanding. To the creators succeeded the critics. To the impassioned and intuitive minds succeeded the plodding thinkers and the clear logicians. In polite letters, Dryden is chief of the transition, the central nexus between a period of creativeness and a period of preeminent art. BIT NY AN. Ingenious dreamer, in whose well-told tale Sweet fiction and sweet truth alike prevail; Whose humorous vein, strong sense, and simple style, May teach the gayest, make the gravest smile. — Coivper. 'I have been vile myself, but have obtained mercy.' Biography. — Born near Bedford, in 1628, the son of a despised tinker; sent to a free school for the poor, where he learned to read and write; but, idle and vicious, lost in youth what he had learned in childhood; was bred to his father's trade; enlisted, while yet a boy, in the army of the Parliament; and at nineteen with the advice of friends, married a girl of his own rank, both so poor that they had not a spoon or a dish between them. This was the turning point. She was a pious wife, and had brought to her husband, as her only portion, two volumes bequeathed by a dying parent, — The Practice of Piety, and The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven. Over these she helped him to recover the art of reading, enticed him to remain at home; persuaded him to attend the Baptist church, of which she was a member ; and brought him by words of affection to reflect upon his evil ways. Over wild heath and through haunted bog he wandered in the usual gypsy life of his occupation, alone with his own thoughts; now sunk into monomania by the sense of his unregenerate con- dition and the fear of hell, now ravished with the trances of joy. 46 FIRST TRANSITIOIsr PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. then plunging again into 'sin.' Gradually, not without many spiritual conflicts, he was transformed. He was appointed dea- con, and presently, after solemn prayer and fasting, began to preach : ' Though of myself, of all the saints the most unworthy, yet I, but with great fear and trembling at the sigbt of my own weakness, did set upon the work, and did accord- ing to my gift, and the proportion of my faith, preach that blessed Gospel that God had showed me in the holy Word of truth; which, when the country understood, they came in to hear the Word by hundreds, and that from all parts, though upon sundry and divers accoimts.' In connection with his ministerial labors, he began to write, and in 1658 published his second work, — A Few Sighs from Hell. Two years later, being a dissenter, he was arrested, and committed to prison. He went cheerfully: ' Verily, as I was going forth of the doors, I had much ado to forbear saying to them, that I carried the peace of God along with me, but I held my peace, and blessed be the Lord, went away to prison, with God's comfort in my poor soul.' Here he passed the time in making tagged laces for the support of his indigent family, in musing and writing on heavenly themes. With a library of only two books, — the Bible and the Book of Martyrs, — it was the period of his brilliant authorship. Toward the end of his confinement, rigor was relaxed. He was allowed to visit his family, and often preached to a congregation under the silent stars. Released in 1672, he went forth again to pro- claim the Gospel publicly, extending his ministrations over the whole region between Bedford and London, with occasional visits to the metropolis itself. He died, of a fever caused by exposure, in 1688, with these last words to the friends around his bedside: 'Weep not for me, but for yourselves. I go to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will, no doubt, through the mediation of His blessed Son, receive me, though a sinner, where I hope we ere long shall meet to sing the new song, and remain everlast- ingly happy, world without end. Amen.' "Writings. — We close our eyes to draw a face from memory. In sleep, illusions are perfect. Poesy quenched the vision of Homer and of Milton before she lifted the veil from their glori- ous spirits. It was in a dungeon, shut out from the external world, that Bunyan had his immortal dream. There he wrote the first and greatest part of his Pilgrim'' s Progress, — a record of his experience; a record of the soul's struggles, battle-agonies, and victories, in its stages from conversion to glory. Christian, dwelling in the City of Destruction, against which a voice from BUNYAN. 47 Heaven has proclaimed vengeance, flees to escape the consuming fire. Evangelist finds him in distress, and shows him the right road — through yonder wicket-gate, over a wide plain, across a desolate swamp: 'Now he had run far from his own door, but his wife and children perceiving it, began to cry after him to return; but the man put his fingers in his ears, and ran on, crying, "Lifel life! eternal life!" " His neighbors jeer and threaten. Some follow, in order to dis- suade him. One, Pliable, becomes his companion, but sinks in the Slough of Despond, and leaves him. He struggles bravely on, but is met by a treacherous man, Worldly Wiseman, who turns him aside: 'He bid me with speed get rid of my burden, and I told him it was ease I sought. And, said I, I am therefore going to yonder gate, to receive further direction how I may get to the place of deliverance. So he said that he would show me a better way, and shorter, not so attended with difficulties as the way, sir, that you set me iu; which way, said he, will direct you to a gentleman's house that has skill to take off these burdens; so I believed him, and turned out of that way into this, if haply 1 might be soon eased of my burden. But when I came to this place, and beheld things as they are, I stopped for fear, as 1 said, of danger: but I now know not what to do.' Re-directed and admonished by Evangelist, whom he again meets, he reaches the Strait Gate, where Interpreter points out the Celestial City and instructs him by a series of visible shows, 'the resemblance of which will stick by me as long as I live'; especially three, — the fire against the wall (the omnipotence of grace), the man in the iron cage (the hopeless excess of sin), and the trembling sleeper rising from his dream (the vision of the Day of Judgment). He passes before a cross, and his burden falls. Slowly, painfully, he climbs the steep Hill of Difficulty, and arrives at a great castle where Watchful, the guardian, gives him in charge to his daughters. Piety and Prudence, who warn and arm him against the foes that imperil his descent into the Valley of Humiliation. He finds his way barred by a demon, Apollyon, whom, after a long fight, he puts to flight: 'In this combat no man can imagine, unless he had seen and heard, as I did, what yelling and hideous roaring Apollyon made all the time of the fight: he spake like a dragon: and on the other side, what sighs and groans burst from Christian's heart. I never saw him all the while give so much as one pleasant look till he perceived he had wounded Apollyon with his two-edged sword: then, indeed, he did smile, and look up- ward: but it was the dreadfullest sight that ever I saw.' Farther on the valley deepens, the shades thicken, ever and anon sulphurous flames reveal the hideous forms of dragons, chains 48 FIRST TRANSITION" PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS, rattle, fiends howl, and unseen monsters rush to and fro: it is the Valley of the Shadow of Death. He enters with drawn sword- 'I saw then jn my dream, so far as this Valley reached, there was on the right hand a very deep ditch: that ditch it is, into which the blind have led the blind in all ages and have both there miserably perished. Again, behold, on the left hand, there was a verv dangerous quag, into which, if even a good man falls, he finds no bottom for his foot to stand on. . . . The pathway was here also exceeding narrow, and therefore good Christian was the more put to it; for, when he sought, in the dark, to shun the ditch on the one hand he was ready to tip over into the mire on the other: also when he sought to escape the mire without great carefulness he would be ready to fall into the ditch. Thus he went on and I heard him here sigh bitterly; for, besides the danger mentioned above, the pathway was here so dark, that ofttimes, when he lifted up his foot to set forward, he knew not where, or upon what, he should set it next. About the midst of the Valley, I perceived the mouth of hell to be, and it stood also hard by the way-side: Now, thought Christian, what shall I do ? And ever and anon the flame and smoke would come out in such abundance, with sparks and hideous noises, . . . that he was forced to put up his sword, and betake himself to another weapon, called All-prayer: so he cried in my hearing, O Lord, 1 beseech thee deliver my soul I Thus he went on a great while, yet still the flames would be reaching towards him: also he heard doleful voices, and rushings to and fro, so that sometimes he thought he should be torn to pieces, or trodden down like mire m the streets. This frightful sight was seen, and these dreadful noises were heard, by him for several miles together.' Ahead, — 'The way was all along set so full of snares, traps, gins, and nets here, and so full of pits, pitfalls, deep holes, and shelvings down there, that had it been dark, as it was when he came the first part of the way, had he had a thousand souls, they had in reason been cast away.' And at the end ' lay blood, bones, ashes, and mangled bodies of men, even of pilgrims that had gone this way formerly.' He passes it, continues straight on till the towers of a distant town appear; and soon he is in the midst of the buyers and sellers, the loungers and jugglers, of Vanity Fair. He walks by with low- ered eyes, not wishing to take part in the festivities and deceits. The people beat him, imprison him, condemn him as a traitor, and burn his companion Faithful. Escaped from them, he ad- vances by the little hill of the silver mine, through a meadow of lilies, along the bank of a pleasant river which is bordered on either side by fruit trees. Thinking to have easier going, he takes a by-path, and falls into the hands of Giant Despair, the keeper of Doubting Castle, the court-yard of which is paved with skulls of pilgrims. The giant beats him, leaves him in a poison- ous dungeon without food, finally gives him daggers and cords and advises him to suicide. But Christian suddenly remembers a key in his bosom, called Promise, which will open any lock m the castle. Once more at liberty, he and Hopeful (who joined him I BUNYAN. 49 at Vanity Fair) come at last to the Delectable Mountains, from the summit of which they are shown, through a perspective g'lass, the desired haven. Thence the way lies through the fogs and briers of the Enchanted Ground, with here and there a bed of ease under an arbor of green. Beyond is the land of Beulah, where flowers bloom perpetually, where the songs of birds never cease, and where the sun never sets: ' Here they were within sight of the city they were going to ; also here met them some of the inhabitants thereof: for in this land the shining-ones commonly walked, because it was upon the borders of Heaven. . . . Here tliey heard voices from out of the city, loud voices, saying, "Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold thy salvation comethi "... Now, as they walked in this land, they had more rejoicing than in parts more remote from the kingdom to which they were bound; and, drawing nearer to the city yet, they had a more perfect view thereof: it was built of pearls and precious stones; also the streets thereof were paved with gold: so that, by reason of the natural glory of the city, and the reflection of the sun-beams upon it. Christian with desire fell sick. Hopeful also had a fit or two of the same disease : wherefore here they lay by it a while crying out, because of their pangs, "If you see my Beloved, tell him that I am sick of love." ' But between them and the golden pavements a bridgeless river rolls its cold, black waters: 'At the sight, therefore, of this river, the pilgrims were much stunned ; but the men that went with them said. You must go through, or you cannot come at the gate. . . . The pilgrims then (especially Christian) began to despond in their minds, and looked this way and that; but no way could be found by them by which they might escape the river. . . . Then they addressed themselves to the waters, and entering. Christian began to sink, and crying out to his good friend Hopeful, he said, I sink in deep waters ; the bil- lows go over my head, all the waters go over me. Then said the other. Be of good cheer, my brother; I feel the bottom, and it is good. Then said Christian, Ah! my friend, the sorrow of death hath compassed me about; I shall not see the land that flows with milk and honey. And with that a great darkness and horror fell upon Christian, so that he could not see before him. Also here in a great measure he lost his senses, so that he could neither remember nor orderly talk of any of those sweet refreshments that he had met with in the way of his pilgrimage.' Faith sustains them, and they touch the farther shore, divested of their mortal garments: 'They therefore went up here with much agility and speed, though the foundation upon which the city was framed was higher than the clouds; they, therefore, went up through the region of the air, sweetly talking as they went, being comforted, because they had got safely over the river, and had such glorious companions to attend them. The talk they had with the shining ones was about the glory of the place ; who told them that the beauty and the glory of it was inexpressible. There, said they, is "Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, the innumerable company of angels, and the spirits of just men made perfect." You are going now, said they, to the Paradise of God, wherein you shall see the tree of life, and eat of the never-fading fruits thereof; and, when you come there, you shall have white robes given you, and your walk and talk shall be every day with the King, even all the days of eternity. . . . There came also out at this time to meet them several of the King's trumpeters, clothed in white and shining raiment, who, 4 * 50 FIRST TRANSITION PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. with melodious and loud noises, made even the heavens to echo with their sound. These trumpeters saluted Christian and his fellow with ten thousand welcomes from the world, and this they did with shouting and sound of trumpet. This done, they compassed them round about on every side; some went before some behind, and some on the right hand, some on the left (as it were to guard them through the upper regions), continually sounding as they went with melodious noise ia notes on high ; so that the very sight was to them that could behold it, as if Heaven itself was come down to meet them. . . . Now were these two men, as it were, in Heaven, be- fore they came at it; being swallowed up with the sight of angels, and with hearing their melodious notes. Here also they had the city itself in view, and thought they heard all the bells therein to ring, to welcome them thereto. But above all, the warm and joyful thoughts that they had about their own dwelling there with such company, and that for ever and ever: Oh I by what tongue or pen can their glorious joy be expressed! . . . Now I saw in my dream that these two men went in at the gate; and lo, as they entered, they were transfigured; and they had raiment put on that shone like gold. There were also that met them with harps and crowns, and gave to them the harps to praise withal, and the crowns in token of honour. Then I heard in my dream, that all the bells in the city rang again for joy, and that it was said unto them, "Enter ye into the joy of your Lord." I also heard the men themselves, that they sang with a loud voice, saying, "Blessing, honour, and glory, and power, be to Him that sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb for ever and ever."' Now, just as the gates were opened to let in the men, I looked in after them, and behold, the city shone like the sun; the streets also were paved with gold, and in them walked many men with crowns on their heads, palms in their hands, and golden harps to sing praises withal. There were also of them that had wings, and they answered one another without intermission, saying, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord."' And, after that, they shut up the gates; which, when 1 had seen, I wished myself among them.' i Style. — Simple, ingenuous, idiomatic. Ninety-three per cent of his vocabulary, it is estimated, is Saxon. Revealing, in its diction, an intimate acquaintance v^ith Scripture, and, in its imagery, the fulness of supernatural impressions; often pictur- esque and poetical, and everywhere, like a nursery tale, level to the meanest capacity. The following is representative: 'Prayer is a sincere, sensible, and an affectionate pouring out of the soul to God. the heat, strength, life, vigor, and affection^ that is in right prayer 1 . . . Alas I the great- est part of men make no conscience at all of the duty; and as for them that do, it is to be feared that many of them are very great strangers to a sincere, sensible, and affectionate pouring out of their hearts or souls to God; but even content themselves with a little lip- labor and bodily exercise, mumbling over a few imaginary praj'ers. When the affections are indeed engaged in prayer, then the whole man is engaged; and that in such sort, that the soul will spend itself to nothing, as it were, rather than it will go without that good desired, even communion and solace with Christ.' This is rarely beautiful: 'The doctrine of the Gospel is like the dew and the small rain that distilleth upon the tender grass, wherewith it doth flourish, and is kept green.— Z)eM<. xxxii, t. Chris- ' Parts I and II relate the celestial pilgrimage of Christian's wife and children. Part ///opens: 'After the two former dreams, ... I dreamed another dream, and, behold, there ap- peared unto me a great multitude of people, in several distinct companies and bands, travelling from the city of Destruction, the town of Carnal-policy, the village of Morality, and from the rest of the cities, towns, villages, and hamleis, that belong to the Valley or Destruction.' BUNYAN. 51 tians are like the several flowers in a garden, that have upon each of them the dew of heaven, which being shaken with the wind, they let fall their dew at each other's roots, whereby they arc jointly nourished, and become nourishers of one another. For Chris- tians to commune savourly of God's matters one with another, it is as if they opened to each other's nostrils boxes of perfume.' Bank. — In popular celebrity, the greatest name among the theological writers of the age. He has written the noblest example of allegory in English prose, as Spenser had done in English verse. Other allegories please the understanding or amuse the fancy; his alone touches the heart. Dr. Johnson, who hated to read a book through, wished this one longer; and thous- ands have loved it who were too simple to discern the significance of the fable. The secret of this unique success is twofold, — the subject and the execution. Few have been so lucid; fewer still have had such power of representation. His abstractions are life-like. His personifications are men. His imaginary objects are as clear and complete as ordinary perceptions. What he describes he has seen vividly, and has the dramatic faculty of making others see. We go no further. Although, if we apply the test of general attractioyi, the Pilgrini's Progress carries off the palm from the Fairy Queen and quite as decidedly from Paradise Lost, yet between the power which produced them and the power which produced it, there is a great distinction, not unlike that which exists between Mohin Hood and Hamlet. Invention Bunyan undoubtedly has in a high degree; but his adaptation of Scrip- tural incident and language has caused him to appear more crea- tive than he really is. We do not insist upon the inconsistencies which it requires no careful scrutiny to detect, — notably those passages in which the disguise is altogether dropped, and figura- tive history is interrupted by religious disquisitions. Character. — A visionary and an artist, poor in ideas, but full of images; ignorant, impassioned, inspired. His distinguish- ing quality was an ingenious, vivid, and shaping imagination, besieged and absorbed by the terrors of eternal fire. In youth, — 'Amid a round of vain delights he lived, And took his fill of pleasure; never thought That life had higher objects, nobler aims, Than just to eat, and drink, and pass away The precious hours in revelry and mirth.' 52 FIRST TRANSITION PERIOD— REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. He was so profane that the profane were shocked. A wicked woman heard him, and protested: ' She was made to tremble to hear me ; and told me farther that I was the ungodliest fellow for swearing that she ever heard in all her life; and that I, by thus doing, was enough to spoil all the youth in the whole town.' In the strong terms of pious excitement, he says: ' When it pleased the Lord to begin to instruct my soul, He found me one of the black sinners of the world. He found me making a sport of oaths, and also of lies; and many a soul-poisoning meal did I make out of divers lusts, as drinking, dancing, playing— pleasure with the wicked ones of the world.' When only a child — but nine or ten years old — he had fearful dreams: 'For often, after I had spent this atid the other day in sin, I have in my bed been greatly afflicted, while asleep, with the apprehensions of devils and wicked spirits, who still, as 1 then thought, labored to draw me away with them, of which I could never be rid.' In a Sunday pastime, he had thrown his ball, and was about to begin again, when he heard a voice, ' Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven, or have thy sins and go to hell?' One of the favorite sports was bell-ringing. When he liad given it up, he would go into the belfry to watch the ringers: ' But quickly after, I began to think, "How if one of the bells should fall?" Then I chose to stand under a main beam, that lay overthwart the steeple, from side to side, thinking here I might stand sure; but then I thought again, should the bell fall with a swing, it might first hit the wall, and then rebounding upon me, might kill me for all this beam. This made me stand in the steeple-door; and now, thought I, I am safe enough, for if a bell should then fall, I can slip out behind these thick walls, and so be preserved notwithstanding. So after this I would yet go to see them ring, but would not go any farther than the steeple-door: but then it came into my head, "How if the steeple itself should fall?" And this thought (it may, for aught I know, when I stood and looked on) did continually so shake my mind that I durst not stand at the steeple-door any longer, but was forced to flee, for fear the steeple should fall upon my head.' Once he saw the heavens on fire. Again, in the midst of a ban- quet, the earth opened, and tossed up figures of men in bloody flames, falling back with shrieks and execrations, whilst inter- mingled devils laughed; and just as he was himself sinking, one in shining raiment plucked him from the circling flame. From the City of Destruction, through the Slough of Despond and the Valley of the Shadow, he presses to the fruitful and happy region of Beulah. 'About this time, the state and happiness of these poor people at Bedford was thus, in a dream or vision, represented to me. I saw as if they were set on the sunny side of some high mountain, there refreshing themselves with the pleasant beams of the sun, while I was shivering and shrinking in the cold, afflicted with frost, snow, and dark clouds. Methought also, betwixt me and them, I saw a wall that did compass about this BUN Y AN. 53 mountain; now through this wall my soul did greatly desire to pass, concluding that if I could I wonld go even into the very midst of them, and there also comfort myself with the heat of their sun. About this wall I thought myself to go again and again, still prying, as I went, to see if I could find some way or passage, by which I might enter therein; but none could I find for some time. At the last, 1 saw, as it were, a narrow gap, like a doorway, in the wall, through which I attempted to pass; but the passage being very strait and narrow, I made many efforts to get iu, but all in vain, even until I was well nigh quite beat out, by striving to get in; at last, with strong striving, methought I at first did get in my head, and after that, by a sidling striving, my shoulders, and my whole body; then I was exceeding glad, and went and sat down in the midst of them, and so was comforted with the light and heat of their sun.' We see now how this man could write the Pilgrim'' s Progress; how he should be so solicitous to win souls ; what would be his pulpit themes, — death, judgment, eternity, the mission and suf- ferings of Christ; why, though with trembling, he should preach with power. There could be nothing of modern languor in his exhortations. His heart was in them; he was possessed by them. Hell yawned before him; and the burden of his thought was to snatch from destruction the perishing sinners that slumbered, as he had slept, on its brink. Wrath and salvation are thus the essential facts, — all else is but shadowy and dim. This convic- tion levels inequalities, renders the inflamed brain eloquent and effective. Charles II is said to have asked Dr. Owen how a man of his erudition could 'sit to hear a tinker prate.' 'May it please your Majesty,' was the reply, ' could I possess that tinker's abili- ties, I would gladly give in exchange all my learning.' Influence. — He was universally esteemed for the beauty of his character and the liberality of his views, while the fame of his sufferings and the power of his discourse drew multitudes to hear him preach. In London, let but a day's notice be given, and the house would not contain the half. Says an eye-witness: 'I have seen, by my computation, about twelve hundred persons to hear him at a morning lecture, on a working day in dark working time. I also computed about three thousand that came to hear him at a town's end meeting house; so that half were fain to go back again for want of room; and there himself was fain at a back door to be pulled almost over people to get up stairs to the pulpit.' But he has a larger audience now. It is by the Pilgrim that he affects the minds and hearts of survivors, more and more widely as generations pass away. The historian will value it as an effect, — a record, in part, of contemporary institutions and ideas, and an expression of the new imaginative force that had been given to common English life by the study of the Bible. 54 FIRST TRANSITIOJSr PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. The people will treasure it for its artless story of Christian expe- rience, — for its perpetual narrative of their personal recollections More than a hundred thousand copies circulated in England and America during his life. Since his death, it has been rendered into every language of Europe, and into more other languages than any book save the Scriptures. The Religious Tract Society alone printed it in thirty different tongues. Seven times, at least it has been turned into verse. A hundred and fifty years ago, by some alterations and omissions, it was adapted to the creed of the Roman Church. Did never monarch sit upon a throne so royal ; was never political em'pire so vast and so enduring. Wherever thought finds expression or there are hearts to be impressed, this tinker of Bedford will shape character and destiny when the chiselled lines of the granite have crumbled, and the headstone shall claim kindred with the dust it commemorates. '■He, being dead, yet speaketli.'' DRYDEN, The only qualities I can find in Dryden, that are essentially poetical, are a certain ardour and impetuosity of mind witli an excellent ear. . . . There is not a single image from nature in the whole of his worlds. — Wordsworth. Biography. — Born in the county of Northampton, in 1631, of good family; studied in Westminster School, and afterwards spent seven years at Cambridge; became secretary to a near relative, a member of the Upper House; turned Royalist, married an earl's daugliter, and enjoyed the king's patronage; succeeded Davenant as Poet Laureate, and Howell as Historiographer, with a yearly salary of two hundred pounds; declared himself a Catho- lic, lost his appointment at the Revolution, and for twelve years, burdened with a family, earned his bread by his pen; long afflict- ed with gout, then with erysipelas, insulted by publishers whose hireling he was, and persecuted by enemies; died in 1700, of a neglected inflammation in the foot, and was interred in Westmin- ster Abbey, between the tombs of Chaucer and of Cowley. "Writings. — Dryden began in fustian and enormity. The DKYDEN. 55 subject was Lord Hastings, who died of small-pox at the age of nineteen: 'His body was an orb, his sublime soul Did move on virtue's and on learning's pole.' The pustules are compared to 'rose-buds thick in the lily skin about'; and, — 'Each little pimple had a tear in it To wail the fault its rising did commit.' But he has not yet done his worst: 'No comet need foretell his change drew on Whose corpse might seem a constellation.' Such excesses announce a literary revolution. Greedy of glory and pressed for money, he pandered to the tastes of a debauched and frivolous audience — the world of courtiers and the idle, who wanted startling scenes, infamous events, forced sentiments, splendid decorations. 'I confess,' he says, 'my chief endeavors are to delight the age in which I live. If the humour of this be for low comedy, small accidents, and raillery, I will force my genius to obey it.' Accordingly, as he writes by calculation, he is only capable' of discussions. Of the appropriate excellence of the drama — the power of exhibiting real human beings, he is utterly destitute. His comedies are as false to nature as they are' offensive to morality. His tragedies, without depth of feel- ing or consistency of plot, strive towards superhuman ideals, and attain to bombast. The Conquest of Grenada (1672) owes its celebrity to its ex- travagance. The Spanish Friar (1082) is less exaggerated, but rarely impresses sympathy, and never commands tears. Sebas- tian (1690), though rejecting more of the French alloy, is yet grandiose — more noisy than significant. Lacking the art of dramatic truth, he sought a substitute for illusion sometimes in wit, more frequently in disguises, intrigues, surprising disclosures, smooth versification, and declamatory magnificence. Courtly nerves could best be stirred by shocks, profanity, obscenities, and barbarities — by heroines who were courtesans, indecent, violent, reckless; and by heroes who were drunken savages, or monstrous chimeras, resembling nothing in heaven above or in the earth beneath. But though bad as wholes, his plays — nearly thirty in number — contain passages which only the great masters have surpassed, 56 FIRST TRANSITION PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. and which no subsequent writer for the stage has equalled. Even in rhyme, which so often forced him to a platitude, and which he so reluctantly abandoned, he is not seldom the genuine poet a musician and a painter. For example: 'No; like his better Fortune I'll appear, With open arms, loose veil, and flowing hair. Just Jlying forward from her rolling sphere."'- And this happy comparison, which is surely an 'image from nature ' : 'As callow birds. Whose mother's killed in seeking of the prey, Cry in their nest and think her long away. And, at each leaf that stirs, each blast of wind, Gape for the food which they must never find." 2 Or the following, which is vigorous and striking: 'Her rage was love, and its tempestuons flame, Like lightning, showed the heaven from whence it came.'' M And these verses, which read like maxims, expressed in the finest manner of the new school. They show a reasoner, accustomed to discriminate his ideas: 'When I consider life, 'tis all a cheat; Yet, fooled with hope, men favour the deceit, Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay. To-morrow's falser than the former day; Lies worse; and while it says, "We shall be blest With some new joys," cuts off what we possessed. Strange cozenage! None would live past years again, Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain; And from the dregs of life think to receive What the first sprightly running could not give. I'm tired of waiting for this chemic gold. Which fools us young, and beggars us when old. 'Tis not for nothing that we life pursue; It pays our hopes with something still that's new.'* But Dryden, as he himself tells us, — 'Grew weary of his long-loved mistress Rhyme; Passion's too fierce to be in fetters bound. And Nature flies him like enchanted ground.' No experiment could be more decisive; for, though he was the best writer of the heroic couplet in our language, yet the plays which, from their first appearance, have been considered finest, ' Conquest of Granada. ^Indian Emperor. Wordsworth himself never wrote anything more tenderly pa- thetic. ^Maiden Queen. *Aurungzebe. DKYDEN". 57 are in blank. Here his diction gets wings. The following alone would vindicate his claim as a poet: ' Something like That voice, methinks I should have somewhere heard; But floods of woe have hurried it far ofl Beyond my ken of soul.' i What image could be more delicately exquisite than this? — 'I feel death rising higher still and higher, Within my bosom; every breath I fetch Shuts up my life within a shorter compass, And, like the vanishing sound of bells, groivs less And less each pulse, till it be lost in air."^ And this: 'A change so swift what heart did ever feel! It rushed upon me like a mighty stream, And bore me in a moment far from shore, I've loved away myself; in one short hour Already am I gone an age of passion. Was it his youth, his valour, or success? These might, perhaps, be found in other men. 'Twas that respect, that awful homage paid me; That fearful love which trembled in his eyes. And with a silent earthquake shook his soul. But when he spoke, what tender words he said! So softly that like flakes of feathered snow. They melted as they fell."^ The following is nobly wrought: 'Berenice. Now death draws near; a strange perplexity Creeps coldly on me, like a fear to die; Courage uncertain dangers may abate. But who can bear the approach of certain fate ? St. Catherine. The wisest and the best some fear may show, And wish to stay, though they resolve to go. Berenice. As some faint pilgrim, standing on the shore. First views the torrent he would venture o'er, And then his inn upon the farther ground. Loath to wade through, and loather to go round: Then dipping in his staff, does trial make How deep it is, and, sighing, pulls it back: Sometimes, resolved to fetch his leap; and then Runs to the bank, but stops short again. ' So 1 at once Both heavenly faith and human fear obey; And feel before me in an unknown way. For this hlest voyage I with joy prepare, Yet am ashamed to be a stranger there.'* Perhaps the best of his dramatic pieces is the tragedy of All For Love — the only one, he informs us, written to please him- self. It is in this that he recovers most of the old naturalness and energy. In the preface he says: ^Sebastian. ^Rival Ladies. ^Spanish Friar. *Royal Martyr. 58 FIRST TRANSITION" PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 'In my style I have professed to imitate the divine Shal^espeare ; which tliati might perform more freely, I have disincumbered myself from rhyme. . . . Yet, I hope, I may affirm, and without vanity, that, by imitating him, I have excelled myself thronghont the play; and particularly, that I prefer the scene betwixt Antony and Ventidiiis in the first act, to anything which I have written in this kind.' Accordingly, it is not difficult to find parts that are Shake- spearean. For instance: ' Gone so soon 1 Is Death no more ? He used him carelessly, With a familiar kindness; ere he knocked, Ran to the door and took him in his arms, As who should say, "You're welcome at all hours, A friend need give no warning." ' These words of Antony are at once noble and natural: ' For I am now so sunk from what I was. Thou find'st me at my lowest water-mark. The rivers that ran in and raised my fortunes Are all dried up, or take another course: What I have left Is from my native spring; I've a heart still that swells in scorn of Fate, And lifts me to my banks.' Seeing him cast down, the veteran Ventidius, who loves his general, weeps: '■Vent. Look, emperor; this is no common dew-; I have not wept this forty years; but now My mother comes afresh into my eyes; I cannot help her softness. Ant. By heaven, he weeps 1 poor, good old man, he weeps! The big round drops course one another down The furrows of his cheeks. Stop them, Ventidius, Or I shall blush to death; they set my shame, That caused them, full before me. Vent. I'll do my best. Ant. Sure there's contagion in the tears of friends; See, I have caught it too. Believe me, 'tis not For my own griefs, but thine.' Octavia, come to reclaim her husband, brings Antony a pardon, and is accused of basely begging it. She answers in a style worthy of a lofty soul: ' Poorly and basely I eould never beg. Nor could my brother grant. . . . My hard fortune Subjects me still to your unkind mistakes. But the conditions I have brought are such. You need not blush to take: I love your honour, Because 'tis mine; it never shall be said, Octavia's husband was her brother's slave. Sir, you are free; free, even from her you loath: For though my brother bargains for your love. Makes me the price and cement of your peace, DRYDEN. 59 I have a soul like yours; I cannot take Your love as alms, nor beg what I deserve. I'll tell my brother we are reconciled; He shall draw back his troops, and you shall march To rule the east: I may be dropl at Athens; No matter where. I never will complain, But only keep the barren name of wife, And rid you of the trouble.' The drama was not Dryden's true domain. He was too much of a dialectician and a schoolmaster. His muse was happier in the exercise of the critical faculty, — in methodical discussion, well-delivered retort, eloquence and satire. It is therefore as a satirist and a pleader that he is best known. He gives his own receipt for the first: 'How easy it is to call rogue and villain, and that wittily! but how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave, without using any of those opprobrious terms! . . . This is the mystery of that noble trade. . . . Neither is it true that this fineness of raillery is offensive : a witty man is tickled while he is hurt in this manner, and a fool feels it not. . . . There is a vast difference between the slovenly butchering of a man and the fineness of a stroke that separates the head from the body, and leaves it standing in its place.' When he entered into the strife of political parties, he wrote Absalom and Achitophel against the Whigs. Under these names he describes the pliant and popular Duke of Monmouth, eldest-born of Charles II, and the treacherous Earl of Shaftes- bury, who stirs up the son against the father. The latter, ' the false Achitophel' is the hero of the poem: 'A name to all succeeding ages curst: For close designs and crooked counsels fit, Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit, Eestless, unfixed in principle and place. In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace: A fiery soul, which, working out its way. Fretted the pigmy body to decay, And o'er-informed the tenement of clay. . . . In friendship false, implacable in hate; Resolved to ruin or to rule the state.' Never was portrait of pen sharper than this of the Duke of Buckingham : 'A man so various that he seemed to be Not one, but all mankind's epitome: Stiff in opinions, always m the wrong. Was everything by starts and nothing long; But, in the course of one revolving moon. Was chemist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon; Then all for women, painting, rhyming, drinking, Besides ten thousand freaks that died in thinking. Blest madman, who could every hour employ 60 FIRST TRANSITION PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. With something new to wish or to enjoy! Railing and praising were his usual themes, And both, to shew his judgment, in extremes: So over-violent, or over-civil. That every man with him was god or devil. In squandering wealth was his peculiar art; Nothing went unrewarded but desert: Beggared by fools, whom still he found too late. He had his jest, and they had his estate.' Poignancy atones for its severity, while discretion renders it more cutting. If he falls into virulent ribaldry, it is less the fault of the man than of the age, which spared no invective how- ever libellous, and no allusion however coarse. His coarsest satire is levelled against attacks which were themselves brutal ; as in the case of Shadwell, who is represented, in Mac Flecknoe, as heir to the throne of stupidity. Flecknoe,' the king of non- sense, deliberating on the choice of a worthy successor, cries: "Tis resolved, for Nature pleads that he Should only rule who most resembles me. Shadwell alone my perfect image bears. Mature in dulness from his tender years; Shadwell alone of all my sons is he Who stands confirmed in full stupidity. The rest to some faint meaning make pretence, . But Shadwell never deviates into sense. Some beams of wit on other souls may fall, Strike through and make a lucid interval; But Shadweirs genuine night admits no ray; His rising fogs prevail upon the day. Besides, his goodly fabric fills the eye. And seems designed for thoughtless majesty.' When he became a convert to Romanism, he wrote The Hind and the Panther in defence of his new creed. Written in the hey-day of exultation, in the interest of what he dreamed to be the winning side, his argumentative talents nowhere appear to so great advantage. The first lines, descriptive of the Romish Church, are among the most musical in the compass of poetry: 'A milk-white hind, immortal and unchanged. Fed on the lawns, and in the forest ranged; Without unspotted, innocent within. She feared no danger, for she knew no sin.' All the heretical sects, as beasts of prey, worry her. The English Church is — 'The Panther, sure the noblest, next the hind. And fairest creature of the spotted kind; Oh, could her inborn stains be washed away, She were too good to be a beast of prey ! ' »A scribbler who died in 1678. Mac, the Celtic for son. \ 1 DKYDEN". 61 Then he introduces the bloody Bear, an Independent; the quak- ing Hare, for the Quakers; then the bristled Baptist Boar. The reader can imagine the bitterness which envenoms the controversy. Having no personal philosophy to develop, Dryden was soon reduced to the clothing of foreign ideas. He translated Persius, Ovid, Juvenal, Lucretius, Virgil, and Homer; but he could not — perhaps no one can — reproduce their spirit. The dawn of credu- lous thought can scarcely reappear in the harsh light of a learned and manly age. His version of the ^neid was long considered his highest glory. The nation seemed interested in the event. One gave him the different editions, another supplied him with notes, Addison furnished him with the arguments of the several books, great lords vied with one another in offering him hospital- ity, and, notwithstanding the inherent difficulties of the subject, he produced, says Pope, 'the most noble and spirited translation that I know in any language.' He also modernized several tales of the long-neglected Chaucer. But, as he worked under con- tract, haste availed only to dilute, and the childlike simplicity of the original is smothered in verbiage. Th.us: 'The busy larke, messager of day, Saluteth in her song the morwe gray; And fyry Phebus riseth up so bright That al the orient laugheth of the light.' How artless, yet how expressive ! Now compare the moderniza- tion, which loses at once the freshness of idea and the felicity of phrase : 'The morning lark, the messenger of day. Saluted in her song the morning gray; And soon the sun arose with beams so bright That all the horizon laughed to see the joyous sight.' ' He is too reflective and stringent for the delicacies of his master; too cold and solid for his self-abandoning tenderness and his graceful gossip. Though he never wrote extensively in prose, his prefaces and dedications, which, to increase their value, usher in each of his poems and plays, have made him famous as a critic. Most of his criticism relates tp the drama, with which he was very conversant. To afford a glimpse of his exact and simple manner, as well as of the spirit which he carried into art, we briefly quote from the earliest statement of his critical system. It will be seen that he ^Fables, consisting of stories from Chaucer and Boccaccio. 62 FIKST TEANSITION PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. was more excellent in theory than he has proved in practice where he alternately ventures and restrains himself, pushed in one direction by his English bias and drawn in the other by his French rules: 'The beauties of the French poesy are the beauties of a statue, but not of a man because not animated with the soul of poesy, which is imitation of humour and passions. ... He who will look upon their plays which have been written till these last ten years or thereabouts, will find it an hard matter to pick out two or three passable humours amongst them. Corneille himself, their arch-poet, what has he produced except the Liar f and you know how it was cried up in France; but when it came upon the English stage, though well translated, . . . the most favourable to it would not put it in compe- tition with many of Fletcher's or Ben Jonson's. . . . Their verses are to me the coldest I have ever read, . . . their speeches being so many declamations. When the French stage came to be reformed by Cardinal Richelieu, those long harangues were introduced, to comply with the gravity of a churchman. Look upon the Cinna and the Pompey; they are not so properly to be called plays as long discourses of reasons of state; and Polyeucte, in matters of religion is as solemn as the long stops upon our organs. Since that time it is grown into a custom, and their actors speak by the hour-glass, like our parsons. ... I deny not but this may suit well enough with the French; for as we, who are a more sullen people, come to be diverted at our plays, so they, who are of an airy and gay temper, come thither to make themselves more serious.' ' He who began in empty mouthing, and who had gradually acquired the energy of satire, ended by acquiring the rapture of the lyric. Amidst the infirmities of age and the greatest sadness,. he wrote the brilliant ode of Alexander''s Feast, in honor of St. Cecilia's day. The hero is on his throne, his valiant captains before him, the lovely Thais by his side. Timotheus, placed on high, sings: 'Of Bacchus ever fair, and ever young. The jolly god in triumph comes; Sound the trumpets, beat the drums; Flushed with a purple grace He shows his honest face: Now give the hautboys breath; he comes, he comes. Bacchus, ever fair and young, Drinking joys did first ordain; Bacchus' blessings are a treasure, Drinking is the soldier's pleasure; Rich the treasure. Sweet the pleasure, ' Sweet is pleasure after pain.' Moved by the stirring sounds, the monarch fights his battles over, madness rises, he defies heaven and earth. A sad air depresses him, then a tender one dissolves him in sighs, and he sinks upon the breast of the fair. Now strike the golden lyre again: 'A louder yet, and yet a louder strain. Break his bands of sleep asunder, ^An Essay of Dramatic Poesy. DRYDEIf. 63 And rouse him, like a rattling peal of thunder. Hark, hark, the horrid sound Has raised up his head. As awaked from the dead. And, amazed, he stares around. "Revenge, revenge!" Timotheus cries; "See the Furies arise; See the snakes that they rear. How they hiss in their hair, And the sparkles that flash from their eyes! Behold a ghastly band. Each a torch in his hand! Those are Grecian ghosts, that in battle were slain. And unburied remain Inglorious on the plain: Give the vengeance due To the valiant crew. Behold how they toss their torches on high. How they point to the Persian abodes, And glittering temples of their hostile gods." The princes applaud with a furious joy; And the king seized a flambeau with zeal to destroy; Thais led the way. To light him to his prey. And, like another Helen, fired another Troy.' So did the bard realize the saying of his own Sebastian, — 'A setting sun Should leave a track of glory in the skies.' Style. — Harmonious, rapid, and vehement, pointed and con- densed, with — 'The varying verse, the full-resounding line. The long majestic march, and energy divine.' Symmetrical and precise, as of one who studied rather than felt; yet uneven, as of one who was negligent of parts because confi- dent that the good would overbalance the bad. In prose, airy and animated, easy without being feeble, and careless without being harsh ; having that conversational elasticity which comes of familiarity with the drawing-room — companionship with men and women of the world. Rank. — Though few eminent writers are so little read, few names are more familiar. By the suffrages of his own and suc- ceeding generations, his place is first in the second class of English poets. Perhaps his fame would have suffered little, if he had written not one of his twenty-eight dramas. He could not produce correct representations of human nature, for his was an examining rather than a believing frame of mind; and he 64 FIRST TRANSITION PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHOKS. wrought literature more as one apprenticed to the business than as one under the control of inspiration: he attained, however the excellences that lie on the lower grade of the satirical, didactic and polemic. Not to be numbered with those who have sounded the depths of soul, he is incomparable as a reasoner in verse. Pope, his imitator and admirer, has outshone him in neatness, in brilliancy, and finish, but has not approached him in flexible vigor, in fervor, or in sweep and variety of versification. 'His faults,' says Cowper, ' are numberless, and so are his beauties. His faults are those of a great man, and his beauties are such (at least sometimes) as Pope with all his touching and retouching could never equal.' Making a trade of his genius, he wrote too much; as a whole, heavy and tedious, never quite equal to his talent. Says Voltaire of him, 'An author who would have had a glory without a blemish, if he had only written the tenth part of his works.' If he could not depict artless and delicate sentiments or arouse subtle sympathies, he had, beyond most, the gift of the right word, and this in common with the few great masters, — that the winged seeds of his thought embed themselves in the memory, and germinate there. Few have minted so many phrases that are still a part of our daily currency. For example: ' None but the brave deserves the fair.' 'Men are but children of a larger growth.' 'When wild in woods the noble savage ran.' 'Love either finds equality or makes it.' 'Passions in men oppressed are doubly strong.' 'Pew know the use of life before 'tis past.' 'Time gives himself and is not valued.' 'That's empire, that which I can give away.' 'The greatest argument for love is love.' 'Why, love does all that's noble here below.' ' 'That bad thing, gold, buys all good things.' 'Trust in noble natures obliges them the more.' 'Death in itself is nothing; but we fear To be we know not what, we know not where.' 'The cause of love can never be assigned, 'Tis in no face, but in the lover's mind.' 'The secret pleasure of the generous act Is the great mind's great bribe.' DETDEN". 65 He was the literary lion of his day ; and no rustic, of any taste for letters, thought his round of sight-seeing complete without a visit to Will's coffee-house, where in a snug arm-chair, carefully placed in winter by the fireside and in summer on the balcony, sat 'glorious John,' pipe in hand, expounding the law on disputed points in literature and in politics. Happy was the young poet or university student who could boast to his admiring friends that he had got in a word, or extracted a pinch of snuff from the great man's box. He forms the connecting link between the prose writers of the days of James I and those of Queen Anne. He gave a hand to the age before and to that which followed, — the age of solitary imagination and invention, and the age of reasoning and conver- sation. Pope saw him, Addison drank with him; he visited Milton, and was intimate with those who could tell him of Jonson from personal recollection. Character. — His manner of life was that of a solid and judi- cious mind which thinks not of amusing and exciting itself, but of learning, reflecting, and judging. He had no taste for field sports, and felt more pleasure in argument than in landscape, in the rhythm of the epigram than in the melodies of birds. Though he watched the conflict of parties keenly, he did not, as did Milton, mix personally in the turmoil. Without being reserved, he was diffident, and neither would nor could in the circles of fashion cut the brilliant figure which Pope, his great disciple, made. He rose early, spent the morning in writing or reading, dined with his family, and in the afternoon repaired to Will's coffee-house, that common resort of wits, pamphleteers, poets, and critics. Says Congreve, who knew him familiarly: 'He was of a nature exceedingly humane and compassionate, ready to forgive injuries, and capable of a sincere reconciliation with those who had offended him. His friendship, where he professed, went beyond his professions. He was of a very easy, of very pleasing access: but somewhat slow, and, as it were, diffident, in his advances to others; he had that in nature which abhorred intrusion into any society whatever. He was therefore less known, and consequently his character became more liable to misapprehensions and misrepresentations.' Yet he was conscious of his own value, and 'probably did not offer his conversation because he expected it to be solicited.' His confidence in himself amounted almost to reverence. Of Alexan- der's Feast, he said that an ode of equal merit had never been 5 66 FIEST TEAJS'SITION PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. produced and never would be. This feeling of easy superiority made him the mark for much jealous vituperation. Of their lam- poons and libels, he says: 'I am vindictive enough to have repelled force by force, if I could imagine that any of them had ever reached me.' He was reproached with boasting of his intimacy with the great. Of himself : 'My conversation is slow and dull, my humour saturnine and reserved: In short, I am none of those who endeavour to break jests in company or make repartees.' Notwithstanding, he was a rapid composer. He says : 'Thoughts, such as they are, come crowding in so fast upon me, that my only diffi- culty is to chuse or to reject, to run them into verses, or to give them the other harmony of prose: I have so long studied and practiced both, that they are grown into a habit, and become familiar to me." Less fluent, he would have been less slovenly. Fond of splendor, he was indifferent to neatness. Faults of affectation, time in a measure corrected; but faults of negligence, never. To the last, rather than wait for the fittest word, he seized the readiest. His reading was extensive, and his memory tenacious. Under- standing was preponderant. He delighted to talk of liberty and necessity, destiny, and chance. On the other hand, he was deficient in lofty or intense sensi- bility. He was a stranger to the transports of the heart. Hence, though he could describe character in the abstract, he could not embody it in the drama. His genius matured slowly. At thirty-two he had given little, if aught, to warrant an augury of his greatness. But he grew steadily. His imagination quickened as he increased in years, and his intellect was pliable at seventy. Old age yielded, on the whole, the best of him. As every innovator must have, he had many enemies. 'More libels,' he says, 'have been written against me than almost any man now living.' Later: 'What Virgil wrote in the vigour of his age, in plenty and at ease, I have undertaken to translate in my declining years; struggling with wants, oppressed with sickness, curbed in my genius, liable to be misconstrued in all 1 write; and my judges, if they are not very equitable, already prejudiced against me, by the lying character which has been given them of my morals.' He would have been less open to attack, had he been less ser- vile to the false taste and corrupt morals of his age. As a writer for the stage, he deliberately adopted the mercantile maxim that 'He who lives to please, must please to live.' i DRYDEN. 67 His dedications are nauseous panegyrics. In one, he says to the Duchess of Monmouth: 'To receive the blessings and prayers of mankind, you need only be seen together. We are ready to conclude, that you are a pair of angels, sent below to make virtue amia- ble in your persons, or to sit to poets, when they would pleasantly instruct the age by drawing goodness in the most perfect and alluring shape of nature. . . . No part of Europe can afford a parallel to your noble Lord in masculine beauty, and in goodliness of shape.' The rest was good, and the land was pleasant. Elsewhere to her 'noble lord,' he says, doubtless with the vision of a purse of gold before him: 'You have all the advantages of mind and body, and an illustrious birth, conspiring to render you an extraordinary person. The Achilles and the Rinaldo are present in you, even above their originals; you only want a Homer or a Tasso to make you equal to them. Youth, beauty, and courage (all which you possess in the height of their perfec- tion) are the most desirable gifts of Heaven.' His works afford too many examples not only of abject adulation but of dissolute licentiousness. He studied filth as he studied everything, not as a pleasure but as a trade. He committed his offences with his eyes wide open. He sinned ag-ainst his better knowledge. For the depravity that deliberately makes merchan- dise of corruption, there is no excuse. The single consolation is, that the offender shall nobly confess his error, and testify his repentance. Of one who had coarsely reproved him, in the pre- face to the Fables he says: 'I shall say the less of Mr. Collier, because in many things he has taxed me justly; and 1 have pleaded guilty to all thoughts and expressions of mine which can be truly argued of obscenity, profaneness, or immorality, and retract them. If he be my enemy, let him triumph; if he be my friend, as I have given him no personal occasion to be otherwise, he will be glad of my repentance.' Elsewhere: 'My thoughtless youth was winged with vain desires. My manhood, long misled by wandering fires. Followed false lights; and when their glimpse was gone. My pride struck out new sparkles of her own. Such was I, such by nature still I am; Be Thine the glory, and be mine the shame I' Conscious that he had been untrue to his finer possibilities, in the end he says: 'I have been myself too much of a libertine in most of my poems, which I should be well contented, if I had time, either to purge or to see them fairly burned.' He was sceptical, yet superstitious. Like many others, he was a believer in astrology. In a letter to his sons he says: 68 FIRST TRANSITIOK PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 'Towards the latter end of this month, September, Charles will begin to recover his perfect health, according to his nativity, which, casting it myself, I am sure is true and all things hitherto have happened accordingly to the very time that I predicted them.' His fundamental weakness was ethical. He had no unattain- able standard of perfection to uplift him. He lacked the central fire of fixed principles and high resolves. Without the firmness and coherence of the moral nature, intellectual powers are as weathercocks. It should be remembered, however, that no man can wholly escape the current of his time. Influence. — Whoever imprints, apparently, a new character on an age, is himself a creature of that age. Formed first by circumstances, he reacts upon them, paying with interest what society has given. So was it with Bacon, who, if born eariier, might have been a Dominican quibbler; and with Luther, who, had he anticipated, would have been lost. The first, standing on an eminence, caught and reflected the light before it was visible to the many far beneath. There would have been a Reformation, though probably later, without the assistance of the second. 'The sun illuminates the hills while it is still below the horizon; and truth is discovered by the highest minds a little before it becomes manifest to the multitude.' Under these limitations, Dryden may be set down as the founder of a new school of poetry — a school derived chiefly from the ancient Roman, critical rather than creative, classic rather than romantic. The style peculiar to it had already been culti- vated. French taste encouraged it. He, as the first autocrat in English letters, improved it, gave it authority. Pope and John- son, in the direct line of descent, were to carry it to perfection. He taught us to think naturally and to express forcibly. He refined our metre, and enriched our language. With a true insight into the conditions under Avhich the maker may extend the domain of speech, he says: ' T will not excuse, but justify myself for one pretended crime for which I am liable to be charged by false critics, not only in this translation, hut in many of my original poems,— that I Latinize too much. It is true that when I find an English word signifi- cant and sounding, I neither borrow from the Latin or any other language; but when I want at home I must seek abroad. If sounding words are not of our growth and manu- facture, who shall hinder me to import them from a foreign country? I carry not out the treasure of the nation which is never to return; but what I bring from Italy I spend in England: here it remains, and here it circulates; for if the coin be good, it will pass from one hand to another. I trade both with the living and the dead. . . . We have enough in England to supply our necessity; but if we will have things of magnificence DKYDEN". 69 and splendor, we must get them by commerce. . . . Therefore, if I find a word in a classic author, I propose it to be naturalized by using it myself, and if the public approve of it the bill passes. But every man cannot distinguish betwixt pedantry and poetry; every man, therefore is not fit to innovate.' More than any other, he helped to free English prose from the cloister of pedantry, and to give it the conversational suppleness of the modern vporld. Finally, he has left no single work which is universally read and approved. That he has not, while he might have done so, points a most instructive lesson to men of intellect. Without devotion to something nobler and more abiding than the present, no great or sound literature is possible. Without an unap- proachable mirage of excellence, forever receding and forever pursued, no man reaches his full or conceivable stature. A self- reliant independence is the Adam and Eve in the Paradise of duties. CRITICAL PERIOD: FIRST PHASE. CHAPTER 11. FEATURES. The literary importance of the eighteenth century iies mainly in its having wroaght out a revolution begun in the seventeenth. — Matthew Arnold. Politics. — Tory and Whig had laid aside the sword, and though party spirit ran high, were conducting the competition for power by a parley of words and measures; the first the conserva- tive, the second the progressive element; one the steadying, the other the propelling force, — both principles essential to the advance of nations. France had been humbled, Spain had been all but torn from the house of Bourbon in the War of the Spanish Succession, England and Scotland had been united ; and, leaving their coun- try at the height of its material prosperity, the Whigs retired in 1710, to resume their ascendancy in 1715, and to continue it with- out intermission till the accession of George III. Society. — Authors basked in the sunshine of royal patron- age. Literary merit found easy admittance into the most distin- guished society and to the highest honors of the state. Servility, however, was less marked than formerly, and the period may be regarded as a transition from the early system of patronage, when books had but few readers, to the later one of professional independence, when the public became the patron. The Revolution of 1688 had indeed secured to the nation liberty of conscience and the right of property, but public inter- ests were endangered by the low standard of political honor. In politics, "w^eapons were freely employed which we should now regard as in the highest degree dishonorable. The secrecy of the mails was habitually violated. Walpole, writing in 1725, con- fesses, without scruple, to opening the letters of a political rival. SOCIAL FEATURES. 71 The rich purchased their seats in Parliament, and Parliament sold its votes to the ministry. General intelligence was scarcely more than a prophecy. The first daily paper appeared in the reign of Anne. In 1710, the papers, instead of merely communicating news as heretofore, began cautiously to take part in the discussion of political topics. In the Restoration, the more excellent parts of human nature had disappeared, leaving but the animal ; and there still existed a wretched state of public tastes and morals. Steele, who aimed at reform, said that his play of The Lying Lover was 'damned for its piety.' The style of speaking and writing on common topics was vitiated by slang and profanity. Literary and scien- tific attainments were despised as pedantic and vulgar by the fashionable of both sexes. Scandal was almost the sole topic of conversation among the ladies. Three learned words would drive them out of doors for a mouthful of fresh air. Judge of their occupations : 'Young man,' said the vpife of Marlborough to Lord Melcombe, 'you come from Italy. They tell me of a new inven- tion there called caricature drawing. Can you find me somebody that will make me a caricature of Lady Masham, describing her covered with running sores and ulcers, that I may send it to the Queen to give her a right idea of her new favorite ? Bull-baiting was a popular amusement. In Queen Anne's time, it was performed in London regularly twice a week. Cock- fighting was the favorite game of the schoolboys, the teachers taking the runaway cocks as their perquisites. Gambling was the bane of the nobility, and among the ladies the passion was quite as strong as among men. Fashionable hours were becoming steadily later. 'The land- marks of our fathers,' wrote Steele in 1710, 'are removed, and planted farther up in the day. ... In my own memory, the dinner hour has crept by degrees from twelve o'clock to three. Where it will fix nobody knows.' Coffee-houses were conspic- uous centres of news, politics, and fashion. Their number in 1708, fifty years after the first had been established in the metrop- olis, was estimated at three thousand. Drunkenness and extrav- agance went hand in hand among the gentry. Officers of state sat up whole nights drinking, then hastened in the morning, without sleep, to their official business. Addison, the foremost 72 CRITICAL PERIOD — FEATURES. moralist of his day, was not entirely free from this vice. 'Come Robert,' said Walpole, the minister, to his son, 'you shall drink twice while I drink once; for I will not permit the son in his sober senses to be witness of the intoxication of his father.' In 1724, the passion had spread among all classes with the violence of an epidemic. Retailers of gin hung out painted boards, announcing that their customers could be made drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence, and that cellars strewn with straw would be furnished, without cost, into which they might be dragged when they had become insensible. Punishments were brutal. In 1726, a murderess was burned alive. Prisoners were still slowly pressed to death by weights of stone or iron, or cut down, when half hung, and disembowelled. Riots were frequent, and robberies were numerous and bold. Addison's ' Sir Roger,' when he goes to the theatre, arms his servants with cudgels. In 1712, a club of young men of the higher classes were accustomed nightly to sally out drunk into the streets, to hunt the passers-by. One of their favorite amuse- ments, called ' tipping the lion,' was to squeeze the nose of their victim flat upon his face, and to bore out his eyes with their fingers. Among them were 'the sweaters,' who encircled their prisoner, and pricked him with swords till he sank exhausted; and ' dancing masters,' who made men caper by thrusting swords into their legs. Kelig^ion. — The belief in witchcraft was still smouldering, but no longer received the sanction of the law. In 1712, the death of a suspected witch, who had been thrown into the water to see whether she would sink or swim, and who perished during the trial, was pronounced murder. While the town rectors and the great church dignitaries were second to none in Europe in genius and learning, and occupied conspicuous social positions, the rural clergy were cringing, obse- quious, and impoverished. While a high conception of duty was not unknown among them, as a whole they were unlettered and coarse, languid in zeal, but using their limited influence chiefly for good. It was a season of conflict between the High Church party and the Dissenters, who sought to reconstruct and rationalize the the- ology of the Church. There was also a large amount of formal RELIGION — POETEY, 73 scepticism abroad, directed against Christianity itself. But this was not the direction which the highest intellects usually took. The task which occupied them was to lighten the weight of dogma within the Church, to infuse a higher tone into the social and domestic spheres, to make men moderate in pleasure, charitable to the poor, dutiful in the relations of life, and to establish the truth of Christianity upon the basis of evidence — evidence differ- ing in no essential respect from that required in ordinary history or science. But religious enthusiasm was dying out — I mean that earnest realization which searches the heart and moulds the character of man. The discussion of Christian evidences is generally the sign of defective Christian life. Traces of devotional activity, how- ever, still existed. In 1696 was formed the Society for the Pro- motion of Christian Knowledge; and in 1701, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. Charity schools were established and multiplied rapidly under Anne. 'I have always looked on the institution of charity schools,' writes Addi- son, 'which of late years has so universally prevailed through the whole nation, as the glory of the age we live in.' Societies were organized to combat the corruption that had been general since the Restoration, dividing themselves into several distinct groups, and beconiing a kind of voluntary police to enforce the laws against blasphemers, drunkards, and Sabbath-breakers. The separation of theology from politics was proceeding rap- idly, and the laymen were becoming increasingly prominent in the state. A high-church writer, in 1712, complains of the efforts that were being made to 'thrust the churchmen out of their places of power in the government.' Poetry. — When a heartless cynicism is fashionable, when brilliancy is preferred to sobriety, when morality tends to a sys- tem of abstract rules, when sermons become diagrams, theorems, and corollaries, — what will be the character of poetry? Evi- dently, it must express the temper of the age, or it will perish still-born. It will satisfy the intellect, but starve the emotional nature. The poet will become an artist of form. Instead of strong passions, elevated motives, and sublime aspirations, he will give us critical accuracy of thought, elegance of phrase, symmetry of parts, and measured harmonies of sound. 74 CEITICAL PEEIOD — FEATURES. Pope was its representative product, and he expresses the peculiarities of his time with singular sharpness and fidelity. IDrama. — The drama of the Restoration had been so outrage- ously immoral that the intellect of the country became ashamed of the stage, and turned its strength to cultivate other branches of literature. Jeremy Collier, Steele, and Addison had shamed it into something like decency, though ladies of respectability and position still hesitated to appear at the first representation of a new comedy. In style, the dramatic literature, like the general poetry of the period, was polished and artificial. Addison's tragedy of Cato was too cold and classical to touch the passions. The prevailing taste called for faithful and witty delineations of manners, slight and coarse comedies, gaudy spectacles of rope dancers and ballets. ' I never heard of any plays,' said Parson Adams in a novel of that day, 'fit for a Christian to read, but Cato and the Conscious Lovers, and I must own in the latter there are some things almost solemn enough for a sermon.' Periodical Miscellany. — Internal repose and national wealth occasioned the rise of that middle class of respectable persons, literary idlers, who have leisure to read and money to buy books, but who wish to be entertained, not roused to think, to be gently moved, not deeply excited. This condition devel- oped a new and peculiar kind of literature consisting of essays on the social phenomena of the time, and scraps of public and politi- cal intelligence to conciliate the ordinary readers of news. The pioneer in this department was De Foe, who in 1704 began a tri-weekly journal called The Review, published on post nights,— Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. It was reserved for Steele and Addison, however, to make the Miscellany a true agent of social improvement. Their object was to popularize and diffuse knowledge, to adapt every question to the capacity of the idlest reader, to characterize men and women humorously, taking minutes of their dress, air, looks, words,, thoughts, desires, actions, and thus to hold the mirror up to nature, showing the very age and body of the time. Sermons veiled in pleasantry were preached on every conceivable text, from the brevity of life to the extravagance of female toilets. The end was moral health — the means was sugar-coated pills. I FICTION — SCEPTICISM. 75 There is evidence that the virtue, decorum, and tone of the patient was much improved. Light, graceful, and fastidious, as they were required to be, these papers never really probe anything to the bottom, never seek first principles, never contemplate the great darkness of what we are, whence we are, and whither we tend, but aim only to discover moral maxims and motives suitable and sufficient to guide the practical conduct of life, and to enforce those plain duties to God and man which are a pressing anxiety with all strong natures. Perhaps that is better. Metaphysical specula- tion is empyrean rarity or summer's dust. Devils may dispute of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate. The Novel. — Legends of saints had amused the middle ages, and the romances of chivalry had been popular in the seventeenth century; but a new social form was now developing, in which people desired to see themselves and to talk of themselves. The world of legend and of romantic grandeur had grown dim and unreal, and a fiction was wanted that, continuing the task of the Miscellany, should be domestic and practical, telling the story of common life only. This defines the English Novel, as the word is now understood. Its precursor was De Foe, who in 1719 led the way with his famous Robinson Crusoe, a novel of inci- dent, the never-ceasing delight of children. Theology. — Scepticism had shown itself in the seventeenth century, and divines had felt the necessity of justifying their faith. Polemic thought, when it did not assume the form of con- troversy between rival sects of Christians, was a conflict between Christianity and Deism, a doctrine which admits the existence of a Deity and the religious convictions of the moral consciousness, but denies the specific revelation which Christianity affirms. It was sought to prove, on the one hand, that natural religion was sufficient; on the other, that revealed religion was little more than this, accredited by historic proofs and sanctioned by a rational system of rewards and punishments. Christianity not Mysterious, The Gospel a Repuhlication of the Religion of Nature, indicate the tenor of attack. Reasonableness of Christi- anity, Evidences of Christianity, indicate the tenor of defence. The results were an immeasurable overbalance of good. 76 CRITICAL PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. Science. — The national intellect had been turned to the study of physical science with an intensity hitherto unknown. It is to be observed, however, that infidels were not then permitted to consider scientists their natural allies. Newton had devoted himself to the interpretation of unfulfilled prophecy, Boyle, the father of chemistry, had established a course of lectures for the defence of Christianity. Nearly all the early members of the Royal Society were ardent believers in revelation. When Collins a Deist, ascribed the decay of witchcraft to freethinking, Bentley, a devout scientist, retorted that it was due, not to freethinkers but to the Royal Society and to the scientific conception of the universe which that society had sjDread. Resume. — In politics, an age of material eminence; in litera- ture, an age of formal correctness. Philosophy leaned to materi- alism. The public temper was adventurous, uncertain, unbeliev- ing. Pope was the characteristic product of its poetry; Addison, of its general prose, — the artist of manners; Swift, of its satire, — scorning, hating, and hated. Without pathos or 'fine frenzy,' style was neat, clear, epigrammatic. The relative position of prose was never higher than at this date. The reign of Queen Anne (1702-1714) was long regarded as the Augustan Age of English Literature, on account of its supposed resemblance in intellectual wealth to the reign of the Emperor Augustus. It is now accorded a secondary praise, though con- ceded to be unrivalled perhaps within its own region, — that of clear thinking and accurate expression, — art that is neither in- spired by enthusiastic genius nor employed on majestic themes. STEELE, I In speculation, he was a man of piety and lionor; in practice, he was much of the rake, and a little of the swindler. — Macaulay. Biography. — Born in Dublin, in 1675, but of English parent- age. Sent to Charter-House School, London, where he found Addison. Between these two was formed an intimacy the most memorable in literature. After studying at Oxford, enlisted in the Guards as a private, and was in consequence disinherited. J STEELE. 77 Promoted to the rank of captain, he plunged into the vices and follies of the day, dicing himself into a sponging-house or drink- ing himself into a fever. Wrote, became a popular man of the town, and was employed by the Whig government to write The Gazette. Started a periodical miscellany, lost his apppointment by the retirement of his party from office, but continued his char- acter of essayist. Obtained a seat in Parliament, lost it, was knighted by George I, and received a place in the royal house- hold. Always in trouble by his reckless behavior, his pecuniary difficulties increasing, he retired, by the indulgence of the mort- gagee, to a seat in Wales left him by his second wife, and there died in 1729. Writings. — His principles were better than his conduct. Punished by conscience, he made an effort to reform himself, and wrote The Christian Hero, which contains some noble sentiments, but exercised little influence on the author. The Funeral, The Tender Husband, and The Conscious Lovers are dramas, all of which were successful. The last is the best, which is far from good, though it brought the author a large sum. These were the first comedies written expressly with a view, not to imitate manners, but to reform them. The charac- ters act less from individual motives than from general rules, and lack the grace of sincerity. The Tatler (1709), suggested by his employment as gazetteer; a tri-weekly sheet devoted in part to foreign intelligence and in part to the manners of the age. The Spectator (1711), a daily, and, like the Tatler, a news organ, a censor of manners, a teacher of public taste, and an exponent of English feeling; suspended in 1712, and resumed in 1714. The Guardian, also a daily, begun in 1712. Of the first, there were two hundred and seventy-one papers; of the second, six hundred and thirty-five; of the third, one hundred and seventy-five. In these enterprises, Steele was very largely assisted by Addison, who furnished for the Tatler one-sixth, for the Spectator about three-sevenths, and for the Guardian one-third, of the whole quantity of matter. A passage or two will suggest the spirit and manner of these famous papers. From the Tatler : 'The first sense of sorrow I ever knew was upon the death of my father, at which time 1 was not quite five years of age ; but was rather amazed at what all the house 78 CRITICAL PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. meant, than possessed with a real understanding why nobody was willing to play with me. I remember I went into the room where his body lay, and my mother sat weeping alone by it. I had my battledoor in my hand, and fell a-beating the coffln, and calling "Papa," for I know not how I had some slight idea that he was locked up there. My mother catched me in her arms, and transported beyond all patience of the silent grief she was before in, she almost smothered me in her imbrace, and told me, in a flood of tears, papa could not hear me, and would play with me no more, for they were going to put him under ground, whence he could never come to me again. She was a very beautiful woman, of a noble spirit, and there was a dignity in her grief amidst all the wildness of her transport, which methought struck me with an instinct of sorrow which, before I was sensible what it was to grieve, seized my very soul, and has made pity the weakness of my heart ever since. The mind in infancy is, methinks, like the body in embryo, and receives impressions so forcible that they are as hard to be removed by reason as any mark with which a child is born to be taken away by any future application.' From the SjMCtator : 'M. St. Evremond has concluded one of his essays with affirming that the last sighs of a handsome woman are not so much for the loss of her life as of her beauty. Perhaps this raillery is pursued too far, yet it is turned upon a very obvious remark, that woman's strongest passion is for her own beauty, and that she values it as her favorite distinc- tion. From hence it is that all arts which pretend to improve or preserve it meet with so general a reception among the sex. To say nothing of many false helps and contra- band wares of beauty which are daily vended in this great mart, there is not a maiden gentlewoman of a good family in any country of South Britain who has not heard of the virtues of May-dew, oris unfurnished with some receipt or other in favor of her com- plexion ; and I have known a physician of learning and sense, after eight years' study in the University, and a course of travels in most countries in Europe, owe the first raising of his fortunes to a cosmetic wash. This has given me occasion to consider how so universal a disposition in woman- kind, whicli springs from a laudable motive, the desire of pleasing, and proceeds upon an opinion not altogether groundless, that nature may be helped by art, may be turned to their advantage. And, methinks, it would be an acceptable service to take them out of the hands of quacks and pretenders, and to prevent their imposing on themselves, by discovering to them the true art arid secret of preserving beauty. In order to do this, before I touch upon it directly, it will be necessary to lay down a few preliminary maxims, viz : That no woman can be handsome by the force of features alone, any more than she can be witty only by the help of speech. That pride destroys all symmetry and grace, and affectation is a more terrible enemy to fine faces than the small-pox. That no woman is capable of being beautiful, who is not incapable of being false. And, that what would be odious in a friend, is deformity in a mistress. From these few principles thus laid down, it will be easy to prove that the true art of assisting beauty consists in embellishing the whole person by the proper ornaments of virtue and commendable qualities. By this help alone it is that those who are the favorite works of nature, or, as Mr. Dryden expresses it, the porcelain clay of human- kind, become animated, and are in a capacity of exerting their charms, and those who seem to have been neglected by her, like models wrought in haste, are capable in a great measure of finishing what she has left imperfect. It is, methinks, a low and degrading idea of that sex which was created to refine the joys, and soften the cares of humanity, to consider them merely as objects of sight. This is abridging them of the natural extent of their power, to put them on a level with the pictures at Kneller's. How much nobler is the contemplation of beauty, heightened by virtue, and commanding our esteem and love, while it draws our observation! How faint and spiritless are the charms of a coquette, when compared with the loveliness of Sophronia's Innocence, piety, good humor, and truth; virtues which add anew softness 1 ath 1 STEELE. 79 to her sex, and even beautify her beauty ! That agreeableness which mast otherwise have appeared no longer in the modest virgin is now preserved in the tender mother, the prudent friend, and the faithful wife. Colours artfully spread upon canvas may enter- tain the eye, but not affect the heart; and she who takes no care to add to the natural "'races of her person any excelling qualities, may be allowed to amuse as a picture, but not to triumph as a beauty.' Estimate the civilization of an individual or a people by the pre- vailing tone of feeling and opinion with regard to womanhood. Style. — Like the man himself, — easy, familiar, vivacious, and humane, mingling good sense and earnestness with merriment and burlesque. Hank. — He excelled as a satirist, a humorist, and a story- teller, who must, like the poet, be born. He had a knowledge of the world, and a dramatic skill by which the serials profited largely. Some of his papers equal anything Addison ever wrote. Occupying a more elevated plane than many of his contempora- ries, he is paled in his powers by the overshadowing presence of his illustrious friend. His writings have been compared to those light wines which, though deficient in body and flavor, are yet a pleasant small drink, if not kept too long or carried too far. Character. — So good-natured that it was impossible to hate him, and difficult to be seriously angry with him; so rollicking and improvident that it was impossible to respect him; of sweet temper, of noble aspiration, but of strong passions and of weak principles; inculcating what was right and doing what was wrong; spending his life in resolving and re-resolving, then dying without carrying into effect his resolution. An irregular thinker, as well an irregular liver. Influence. — His aim in projecting the Tatler does not ap- pear to have been higher than to publish a paper containing the foreign news, notices of theatrical representations, the literary gossip of the clubs, remarks on current topics of fashion, compli- ments to beauties, satires on noted sharpers, and criticisms on popular preachers. He did much to ennoble the prevalent con- ceptions of female character. While his purpose (more or less vaguely realized) was reformatory and corrective, his service was chiefly indirect, in calling to the support and development of his enterprises Addison, to whom it was reserved to make the peri- odical a true revolutionary power in literature and society. 80 CRITICAL PEEIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. What shall we expect of a man who forever gathers the pleas- ures that lie on the border-land of evil, tearfully casts them away, then recklessly gathers them again ? ADDISON. He lived in abundance, activity, and honors, wisely and usefully.— Taine. Biography. — The son of an English dean, born at Milston, in 1672. Learned his rudiments in the schools of his father's neighborhood, and was then sent to Charter-House, London. Entered Oxford at the age of fifteen, where he was distinguished by the delicacy of his feelings, by the shyness of his manners, by the assiduity with which he often prolonged his studies far into the night, by his knowledge of the Latin poets, and by his skill in Latin versification. Leaving the University in the summer of 1699, he travelled long in the two most polished countries in the world, — France and Italy, to prepare himself for the diplomatic service of the Crown, and to perfect his tastes by contact with the elegance and refinements of life and art. His pension stopped by the death of William III, he was obliged to return to England, hard pressed by pecuniary difficulties. But his poem on Blen- heim quickly placed him in the first rank of the Whigs, and again started him on a brilliant and prosperous career. Became a member of Parliament, but lacked the ready resource, 'the small change,' as he himself expressed it, of an effective parlia- mentary orator. Married Lady Warwick in 1716, a beautiful, imperious woman, with more pride of rank than sincerity of char- acter, whom he is said to have first known by becoming tutor to her son. She probably took him on terms like those on which a Turkish princess is espoused, to whom the Sultan is reported to say: 'Daughter, I give thee this man for thy slave.' The mar- riage neither found nor made them equal, and he was glad to escape from the chilling splendor of Holland House to the more congenial society of the club-room, where he could enjoy a laugh, a smoke, and a bottle of claret. Rose to his highest elevation in 1717, being made Secretary of State, — an elevation due to his popularity, his stainless probity, and his literary fame. Unequal ADDISOJST. 81 to the duties of his place by reason of his diffidence and fastidi- ousness, he was forced to resign, and retired to literary occupa- tions, with a pension of fifteen hundred pounds. In the office, says Pope, he could not issue an order without losing his time in quest of fine expressions. Many years seemed to be before him, and he meditated many works — a tragedy on the death of Socra- tes, a translation of the Psalms, and a treatise on the evidences of Christianity — but the fatal complaint of asthma, aggravated by dropsy, terminated his life on the 17th of June, 1719. He was buried in the Abbey at dead of night, an eminent Tory lead- ing the procession by torchlight round the shrine of Saint Edward and the graves of the Plantagenets, to the chapel of Henry VII. Writings. — Address to Dryden (1694), his first attempt in English verse. The Campaign, or Victory of Blenheim, whose chief merit consists in the praise of those qualities which make a general truly great, — energy, sagacity, serene firmness, and mili- tary science, a manly rejection of the traditional custom of cele- brating, in heroes, strength of muscle and skill in fence. Cato (1713), a tragedy, and the noblest production of his genius; a classic play, observing the unities strictly and avoiding all admix- ture of comedy; applauded by both political parties, — the Whigs cheering the frequent allusions to liberty, as a satire on the Tories; and the Tories echoing the cheer, to show that the satire was unfelt. During a whole month, it was performed to overflowing houses; but its representation was too far removed from any state probable or possible in human life to sustain itself when unsup- ported by the emulation of factious praise. Exciting neither joy nor sorrow, it is replete with noble sentiments in noble language, such as the reader must wish to impress upon his memory, as in the following lines from Cato's soliloquy: 'The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years; But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth. Unhurt amid the war of elements, The wreck of matter, and the crash of worlds.' His Hymns are songs of adoration and prayer, fervent, tender, and calm. The serene rapture of his soul's Sabbath shines in these star-like verses: 'Soon as the evening shades prevail. The moon takes up the wondrous tale, . 6 82 CRITICAL PERIOD — REPRESEKTATIVE AUTHORS. And, nightly to the list'ning earth, Repeats the story of her birth : While all the stars that round her burn. And all the planets in their turn. Confirm the tidings as they roll. And spread the truth from pole to pole. What though, in solemn silence, all Move round the dark terrestrial ball? What though no real voice, nor sound, Amid their radiant orbs be found? In Reason's ear they all rejoice, And utter forth a glorious voice; Forever singing as they shine, "The hand that made us is divine."' £Jssaj/s, being contributions to the Spectator chiefly, and in part to the Tatler, the Guardian, and the Freeholder (1715), a polit- ical journal. Their aim was primarily to instruct; secondarily, to please. For the literary lounger, there were comic sketches of society, exposures of social follies, in letters or allegories; for the novel-reader, stories, portraits of character woven into interesting narratives; for the sage and serious, essays on the Immortality of the Soul, Pleasures of the Imagination, critical papers on Paradise Lost, etc. All subjects were discussed on which party spirit had produced no diversities of sentiment, the object being to render instruction pleasing, to widen the circle of readers, and to accomplish a social regeneration without inflicting a wound. Addison is the Spectator. For the first time, duty was taught without pretension or effort, and pleasure was made subservient to reason. Take his dissection of a beau's brain as an instance of his mode: 'The pineal gland, which many of our modern philosophers suppose to be the seat of the soul, smelt very strong of essence and orange- flower water, and was encompassed with a kind of horny substance, cut into a thousand little faces or mirrors, which were imperceptible to the naked eye, insomuch that the soul, if there had been any here, must have been always taken up in contemplating her own beauties. We observed a large antrum or cavity in the sinciput, that was filled with ribbons, lace, and embroidery. . . . There was a large cavity on each side of the head, which I must not omit. That on the right side was filled with fictions, flatteries, and falsehoods, vows, promises, and protestations: that on the left, with oaths and imprecations. There issued out a duct from each of these cells, which ran into the root of the tongue, where both joined together, and passed forward in one common duct to the tip of it. We dis- covered several little roads or canals running from the ear into the brain, and took par- ticular care to trace them out through their several passages. One of them extended itself to a bundle of sonnets and little musical instruments. Others ended in several bladders which were filled either with wind or froth. But the large canal entered into a great cavity of the skull, from whence there went another canal into the tongue. This great cavity was filled with a kind of spongy substance, which the French anatomists call gallimatias, and the English nonsense. . . . We did not find anything very remarkable in the eye, saving only, that the ADDISON". 83 amatorii, or, as we may translate it into English, the ogling muscles, were very much worn and decayed with use; whereas, on the contrary, the elevator, or the muscle which turns the eye towards heaven, did not appear to have heen used at all.' Or his instructions on the manipulation of a fan : 'The ladies who carry fans under me are drawn up twice a day in my great hall, where they are instructed in the use of their arms, and exercised by the following words of command: Handle your fans. Unfurl your fans. Discharge your fans. Ground your fans. Recover your fans, Flutter your fans. When my female regiment is drawn up in array, with every one her weapon in her hand, upon my giving the word to Handle their fans, each of them shakes her fan at me with a smile, then gives her right-hand woman a tap upon the shoulder, then presses her lips witli the extremity of her fan, then lets her arms fall in easy motion, and stands in readiness to receive the next word of command. All this is done with a close fan, and is generally learned in the first week. The next motion is that of unfurling the fan, in which are comprehended several little flirts and vibrations, as also gradual and deliberate openings, with many voluntary fallings asunder in the fan itself, that are seldom learned under a month's practice. This part of the exercise pleases the spectators more than any other, as it discovers, on a sudden, an infinite number of cupids, garlands, altars, birds, beasts, rainbows, and the like agreeable figures, that display themselves to view, whilst every one in the regiment holds a picture in her hand. Upon my giving the word to Discharge their fans, they give one general crack that may be heard at a considerable distance when the wind sits fair. This is one of the most difficult parts of the exercise, but I have several ladies with me, who at their first entrance could not give a pop loud enough to be heard at the farther end of the room, who can now discharge a fan in such a manner, that it shall make a report like a pocket- pistol. I have likewise taken care (in order to hinder young women from letting off their fans in wrong places, or on unsuitable occasions) to show upon what subject the crack of a fan may come in properly: I have likewise invented a fan, with which a girl of sixteen, by the help of a little wind, which is enclosed about one of the largest sticks, can make as loud a crack as a woman of fifty with an ordinary fan. When the fans are thus discharged, the word of command, in course, is to Ground their fans. This teaches a lady to quit lier fan gracefully when she throws it aside in order to take up a pack of cards, adjust a curl of hair, replace a falling pin, or apply herself to any other matter of importance. This part of the exercise, as it only consists in tossing a fan with an air upon a long table (which stands by for that purpose), may be learned in two days' time as well as in a twelvemonth. When my female regiment is thus disarmed, I generally let them walk about the room for some time; when, on a sudden (like ladies that look upon their watches after a long visit), they all of them hasten to their arms, catch them up in a hurry, and place themselves in their proper stations upon my calling out. Recover your fans. This part ■ of the exercise is not difficult, provided a woman applies her thoughts to it. The fluttering of the fan is the last, and indeed the master-piece of the whole exercise ; but if a lady does not mis-spend her time, she may make herself mistress of it in three months. I generally lay aside the dog-days and the hot time of the summer for the teaching this part of the exercise; for as soon as ever I pronounce. Flutter yonr fans, the place is filled with so many zephyrs and gentle breezes as are very refreshing in that season of the year, though they might be dangerous to ladies of a tender constitution in any other. There is an infinite variety of motions to be made use of in the flutter of a fan. There is the angry flutter, the modest flutter, the timorous flutter, the confused flutter, the merry flutter, and the amorous flutter. Not to be tedious, there is scarce any motion in the mind which does not produce a suitable agitation in the fan ; insomuch, that if I only see the fan of a disciplined lady, I know very well whether she laughs, frowns, or blushes.' This gaiety is grave. Addison, who could rail so charmingly, 84 CRITICAL PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. was penetrated by the presence of the Invisible. He often chose for his promenade gloomy Westminster Abbey, with its many reminders of final dissolution and the dark future: 'I entertained myself with the digging of a grave; and saw in every shovelful of it that was thrown up, the fragment of a bone or skull, intermixt with a kind of fresh mouldering earth, that some time or other had a place in the composition of an human body. When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me- when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow. When I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I con- sider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together.' He had the grand imagination of the Northern races, which can be satisfied only with the sight of what is beyond. The noble Visio7i of Mirza is an epitome of his poetry and his prose: ' On the fifth day of the moon, which, according to the custom of my forefathers, I always keep holy, after having washed myself and ofEered up my morning devotions, I ascended the high hills of Bagdat, in order to pass the rest of the day in meditation and prayer. As I was here airing myself on the tops of the mountains, I fell into a profound contemplation on the vanity of human life; and passing from one thought to another, "Surely," said I, "man is but a shadow, and life is a dream." Whilst I was thus musing, I cast my eyes towards the summit of a rock that was not far from me, where I discovered one in the habit of a shepherd, with a little musical instrument in his hand. As I looked upon him, he applied it to his lips, and began to play upon it. The sound of it was exceedingly sweet, and wrought into a variety of tunes that were inexpressibly melodious, and altogether different from anything I had ever heard. They put me in mind of those heavenly airs that are played to the departed souls of good men upon their first arrival in paradise, to wear out the impressions of the last agonies, and qualify them for the pleasures of that happy place. My heart melted away in secret raptures. I had been often told that the rock before me was the haunt of a genius, and that several had been entertained with music who had passed by it, but never heard that the musician had before made himself visible. When he had raised my thoughts by those transporting airs which he played, to taste the pleasures of his conversation, as I looked upon him like one astonished, he beckoned to me, and by the waving of his hand, directed me to approach the place where he sat. . . . He then led me to the highest pinnacle of the rock, and placing me on the top of it, "Cast thine eyes eastward," said he, "and tell me what thou seest." "I see," said I, "a huge valley, and a prodigious tide of water rolling through it." "The valley that thou seest," said he, " is the vale of misery, and the tide of water that thou seest, is part of the great tide of eternity." "What is the reason," said I, "that the tide I see rises out of a thick mist atone end, and again loses itself in a thick mist at the other?" "What thou seest," said he, " is that portion of eternity which is called Time, measured out by the sun, and reaching from the beginning of the world to its consummation. Examine now," said he, " this sea that is bounded with darkness at both ends, and tell me what thou dis- coverest in it." "I see a bridge," said I, "standing in the midst of the tide." "The bridge thou seest," said he, "is Human Life: consider it attentively " Upon a more leisurely survey of it, I found it consisted of threescore and ten entire arclies, with several broken arches, which, added to those that were entire, made up the number to ADDISON". 85 about a hundred. As I was counting the arches, the genius told me that this bridge con- sisted at first of a thousand arches, but that a great flood swept away the rest, and left the bridge in the ruinous condition I now beheld it. " But tell me further," said he, " what thou discoverest on it." "I see multitudes of people passing over it," said I, "and a black cloud hanging on each end of it." As I looked more attentively, I saw several of the passengers dropping through the bridge into the great tide that flowed beneath it; and upon further examination, perceived there were innumerable trap-doors that lay concealed in the bridge, which the passengers no sooner trod upon but they fell through them into the tide and immediately disappeared. These hidden pitfalls were set very thick at the entrance of the bridge, so that throngs of people no sooner broke through the cloud, but many of them fell into them. They grew thinner toward the middle, but multiplied and lay closer together towards the ends of the arches that were entire. There were indeed some persons, but their number was very small, that continued a kind of hobbling march on the broken arches, but fell through one after another, being quite tired and spent with so long a walk. . . . My heart was filled with a deep melan- choly to see several dropping unexpectedly in the midst of mirth and jollity, and catching at everything that stood by them to save themselves. Some were looking up towards the heavens in a thoughtful posture, and, in the midst of a speculation, stumbled and fell out of sight. Multitudes were very busy in the pursuit of bubbles that glittered in their eyes and danced before them; but often when they thought themselves within the reach of them, their footing failed, and down they sank. . . . I here fetched a deep sigh. "Alas," said I, "man was made in vain! — how is he given away to misery and mortality! — tortured in life, and swallowed up in death!" The genius being moved with compassion towards me, bade me quit so uncomfortable a prospect. "Look no more," said he, "on man in the first stage of his existence, in his setting out for eternity, but cast thine eye on that thick mist into which the tide bears the several generations of mortals that fall into it." I directed my sight as I was ordered, and, — whether or no the good genius strengthened it with any supernatural force, or dissipated part of the mist that was before too thick for the eye to penetrate, — I saw the valley opening at the former end, and spreading forth into an immense ocean, that had a huge rock of adamant running through the midst of it, and dividing it into two equal parts. The cloud still rested on one half of it, insomuch that I could discover nothing in it, but the other appeared to me a vast ocean planted with innumerable islands that were covered with fruits and flowers, and interwoven with a thousand little shining seas that ran among them. I could see persons dressed in glorious habits, with garlands upon their heads, passing among the trees, lying down by the sides of foun- tains, or resting on beds of flowers, and could hear a confused harmony of singing-birds, falling waters, human voices, and musical instruments. Gladness grew in me upon the discovery of so delightful a scene. I wished for the wings of an eagle that I might fly away to those happy seats, but the genius told me there was no passage to them except through the Gates of Death that I saw opening every moment upon the bridge. "The islands," said he, "that lie so fresh and green before thee, and with which the Avhole face of the ocean appears spotted as far as thou canst see, are more in number than the sands on the sea-shore; there are myriads of islands behind those which thou here dis- coverest, reaching further than thine eye, or even thine imagination, can extend itself. These are the mansions of good men after death, who, according to the degree and kinds of virtue in which they excelled, are distributed among these several islands, which abound with pleasures of different kinds and degrees, suitable to the relishes and per- fections of those who are settled in them. Every island is a paradise accommodated to its respective inhabitants. Are not these, Mirza! habitations worth contending for? Does life appear miserable, that gives thee opportunities of earning such a reward ? Is death to be feared, that will convey thee to so happy an existence ? Think not man was made in vain, who has such an eternity preserved for him." I gazed with inexpressible pleasure on these happy islands. At length, said I: " Shew me now, I beseech thee, the secrets that be hid under those dark clouds which cover the ocean on the other side of the rock of adamant." The genius making me no answer, I turned about to address myself to him a second time, but I found that he had left me. I then turned again to the 86 OEITICAL PEEIOD — EEPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. vision which I had been so long contemplating, hut instead of the rolling tide, the arched bridge, and the happy islands, I saw nothing but the long hollow valley of Bagdat, with oxen, sheep, and camels grazing upon the sides of it.' Style. — Luminous, graceful, vivid, elegant, familiar, and even never blazing into unexpected splendor; the exact words, the clear contrasts, the harmonious periods, of classical refinement and finish, happy inventions threaded by the most amiable irony. His poems — Cato and the Hymns excepted — regular and frigid, like the rule-and-compass poetry of Pope. Rank. — A public favorite, an unrivalled satirist. The most charming of talkers, an unsullied statesman, a model of pure and elegant English, a consummate j^ainter of human nature, and the greatest of English essayists, occupying a place in English litera- ture only second to that of its great masters. A polished shaft in the temple of thought, whose workmanship is more striking than the weight supported. Character. — Without taint of perfidy, of cowardice, of cru- elty, of ingratitude, or of envy; satirical without abuse, temper- ing ridicule with a tender compassion for all that is frail, and a profound reverence for all that is sublime. The greatest and most salutary reform of public morals and tastes ever effected by any satirist, he accomplished without a personal lampoon. Himself a Whig, he was described by the bitterest Tories as a gentleman of wit and virtue, in whose friendship many persons of both parties were happy, and whose name ought not to be mixed up with factious squabbles. In the heat of controversy, no outrage could provoke him to a retaliation unworthy of a Christian and a gentleman. With a boundless power of abusing men, he never used it. His modesty amounted to bashfulness. He once rose in debate, in the House of Commons, but could not conquer his diffidence, and ever after remained silent. As an Oxford student, he was gentle and medi- tative, loving solitary walks under the elms that fringe the banks of the Cherwell. Is it not prophetic — a commentary in itself — that he loved the quietness of nature? May we not hence expect the music of long cadenced and tranquil phrases, the measured harmonies of noble images, and the grave sweetness of mor sentiments? He stood fast by the altar of worship. God was his loving ADDISON. 87 friend, who had tenderly watched over his cradle, who had pre- served his youth, and richly blessed his manhood. His favorite psalm was that which represents the Deity under the endearing image of a Shepherd. On his death-bed, he called himself to a strict account, sent for Gay, and asked pardon for an injury which it was not even suspected that he had committed; sent for young Warwick, to whom he had been tutor, and whom he had vainly endeavored to reclaim from an irregular life ; told him, when he desired to hear his last injunction, 'I have sent for you that you may see how a Christian can die.' Influence. — Seen best in the purpose which inspired his papers. 'The great and only end of these speculations,' says Addison, in a number of the Spectator, 'is to banish vice and ignorance out of the territories of Great Britain.' He was a suc- cessful reformer. He made morality fashionable, and it remained in fashion. The Puritans had divorced elegance from virtue — he reconciled them; genius was still thought to have some natural connection with profligacy — he divorced them ; pleasure was subservient to passion — he made it subservient to reason: 'It was said of Socrates that he hrought Philosophy down from heaven to inhabit among men; and I shall be ambitions to have it said of me, that I have brought Philoso- phy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables, and in coffee-houses.' His essays are, directly or indirectly, moral — rules of propriety, precepts on when to speak, when to be silent, how to refuse, how to comply ; reprimands to thoughtless women, raillery against fashionable young men, a portrait of an honest man, attacks against the conceit of rank, epigrams on the frivolity of etiquette, advice to families, consolations to the sorrowing, reflections on God, the future life. A good and happy man, he scattered freely the blessings of a kind and generous nature. His satire, always directed against every form of social offence, was of that genial kind which, wooing the reader along a sunny path, awakens attention to his faults without friction or irritation. He was the first to make of prose a fine art, and elegant culture has ever since found constant expression in prose. Human immortality is of three kinds: objective in God — the immortality of conscious existence; subjective in the minds of 88 CRITICAL PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. men — the immortality of fame; subjective in the life of the world — the immortality of energy, energy that expends itself in good works, and, by the natural transmission of force, lives to perish never. These three were the inheritance of Addison, and are possible to few; the last is the privilege of all. No particles of him will ever be lost. Ever since he died there has been a growth of the Christ-like. The seeds he dropped took root in the soul of man, have grown apace, flowering every spring, fruit- ing every autumn, spreading in the vex-y air the odor of the bloom and the flavor of the fruit. No good thing is lost. Forty-four years after his death, the Council of Constance ordered the bones of Wycliffe to be dug up and burned. The vultures of the law took what little they could find, burned it, and cast the ashes into the Swift, a little brook running hard by, and thought they had made away with both his bones and his doctrines. How does it turn out? The historian says: 'The brook took them into the Avon, the Avon into the Severn, the Severn into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean; and thus the ashes of Wycliffe are the emblems of his doctrine, which is now dispersed all the world over.' ' You and I may not have much intellectual power, our thought may never fill the world's soul; but, if we have stimulated a gen- erous wish or a noble aspiration, if we have ever furnished a medium in which handsome things may be projected and per- formed, — if we have added one leaf to the tree of humanity, one blossom to its wealth of bloom, or aught to its harvest of fruit, we may rely upon the eternal law that neither things present nor things to come can deprive these outgoing particles of their im- mortality. More fitting and enduring epitaph than this Addison could not have: 'He lived wisely and usefully.' 1 See Vol. I, p. 203. THE REALIST. 89 DE FOE. His imagination was that of a man of business, not of an artist, crammed, and as it were jammed down with facts. He tells them as they come to him, without arrange- ment or style, like a conversation. . . .'Never was such a sense of the real before or since.- Tame. Biography. — Born in 1661, the son of a London butcher named Foe. Disliking the family name, he added a prefix to suit his own taste. Studied five years, at a Dissenters' academy, for the Presbyterian ministry. Joined the Monmouth insurrection, and escaped hanging or transportation. Became a hosier, and failed. Became a merchant-adventurer, visiting Spain and Port- ugal, and absconded from his creditors in 1693. Subsequently paid their entire claims, when legally relieved of the obligation to do so. Became an accountant under William III, but lost his appointment in 1699 by suppression of the Glass Duty. Beca,me a tile-maker, and lost three thousand pounds in the undertaking. Explains in 1705, 'How, with a numerous family and no help but his own industry, he had forced his way with undiscouraged dili- gence through a sea of misfortunes.' Writes a pamphlet against the High Church party, is misunderstood, fined, pilloried, his ears cut off, imprisoned two years, — charity preventing his wife and six children from dying of hunger during his imprisonment. Caricatured, robbed, and slandered, he withdrew from politics, and at fifty-five, poor and burdened, turned to fiction. Wrote in prose, in verse, on all subjects, in all two hundred and fifty-four works! and, struck down with apoplexy, died in 1731, penniless, insolvent, immortal. Appearance. — Under order of arrest on the charge of sedi- tion, he was described by the Gazette of January, 1702, as 'a middle-sized spare man, about forty years old, of a brown com- plexion, and dark brown hair, though he wears a wig, having a hook nose, a sharp chin, grey eyes, and a large mole near his mouth.' Writings. — True-born Englishman (1701), a poetical satire on the foreigners, and a defence of King William and the Dutch. Its sale was almost unexampled; eighty thousand pirated copies were sold on the streets. Tuneless and homely, it shows the 90 CKITICAL PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. ability of its author to reason forcibly in rhyme. The openinff lines are characteristic: 'Wherever God erects a house of prayer. The devil always builds a chapel there; And 'twill be found upon examination, The latter has the largest congregation.' The Shortest Way loith the Dissenters (1703), a work wherein he, 'himself a Dissenter,' ironically recommends the stake and the gallows. Neither Whig nor Tory could understand De Foe's irony; it was too subtle or obscure, and the work was voted a libel on the nation. The author was condemned to pay a fine, was set in the pillory, and imprisoned. Confined in Newgate, he commenced the JReviev}, designed to treat of news, foreign and domestic; of politics, English and European; of trade, particular and universal. Realizing that the age, naturally averse to any- thing serious, would not read unless it could be diverted, he skil- fully instituted a Scandal Club, which discussed questions in divinity, morals, war, trade, poetry, love, marriage, drunkenness, and gaming. Thus it is easy to see that the Revieio pointed the way to the Tatler. Robinson Crusoe, a novel of adventure. Perhaps the most widely diffused and the most eagerly read of English produc- tions. As long as there are boys and girls, it will continue to find devoted readers. ' Nobody,' observed Johnson, ' ever laid it down without wishing it were longer.' •Journal of the Great Plague in London, a description of sights, incidents, and persons, as observed by an assumed shop- keeper. Dr. Mead, a famous physician, appealed to it for medical purposes, and it has more than once passed for a genuine history. The Memoirs of a Cavalier, so plausible, so natural, so real, that Lord Chatham was deceived into recommending it as the most authentic account of the Civil "War. True Relation of the Apparition of 3frs. Veal, a narrative of facts seemingly as true and indubitable as any that ever passed before our eyes. It was prefixed to a religious book O71 Death, and not only sold the whole edition of an otherwise unsalable work, but excited extensive inquiries into the alleged facts. One of his works has the curious title of : Mars stript of his armor; a lashing caricature of the habits and manners of all kinds of DE FOE. 91 military men, loritten on purpose to delight quiet tradespeople, and cure their daughters of their passion for red-coats. Judge, from two or three examples, of his wonderful gift of 'forging the handwriting of nature,' and how near are we to the present anti-romantic reading of observers and moralists. We quote from the Journal: 'As I went along Houudsditch one morning about eight o'clock, there was a great noise. ... A watchman, it seems, had been employed to keep his post at the door of a house which was infected, or said to be infected, and was shut up. He Iiad been there all night, for two nights togetlier, as he told his story, and the day watchman had been there one day, and was now come to relieve him. All this while no noise had been heard in the house, no light had been seen, they called for nothing, had sent him no errands, which used to be the chief business of the watchman ; neither had they given him any disturb- ance, as he said, from Monday afternoon, when he heard a great crying and screaming in the house, which, as he supposed, was occasioned by some of the family dying just at that time. It seems, the night before, the dead-cart, as it was called, had been stopped there, and a servant-maid had been brought down to the door dead, and the buriers, or bearers, as they were called, put her into the cart, wrapped only in a green rug, and carried her away. The watchman had knocked at the door, it seems, when he heard that noise and crying, as above, and nobody answered a great while; but at last one looked out and said, with an angry, quick tone, and yet a kind of crying voice, or a voice of one that was crying, "What d'ye want, that you make such a knocking?" He answered, "I am the watchman. How do you do? What is the matter?" The person answered, "What is that to you? Stoi^ the dead-cart.'"' ' Again: 'Much about the same time I walked out into the fields towards Bow, for I had a great mind to see how things were managed in the river and among the ships. . . . Here I saw a poor man walking on the bank, or sea-wall, as they call it, by himself. I walked awhile also about, seeing the houses all shut up; at last I fell into some talk, at a distance, with this poor man. First I asked him how people did thereabouts. "Alas! sir," says he, " almost desolate ; all dead or sick. Here are very few families in this part, or in that village,'" — pointing at Poplar, — " where half of them are dead already, and the rest sick." Then he, pointing to one house: "There they are all dead," said he, "and the house stands open; nobody dares go into it. A poor thief," says he, "ventured in to steal something, but he paid dear for his theft, for he was carried to the churchyard too, last night." Then he pointed to several other houses. "There," says he, "they are all dead— the man and his wife and five children. There," says he, " They are shut up ; you see a watchman at the door; and so of other houses." "Why," says I, " what do you here all alone?" "Why," says he, "I am a poor desolate man: it hath pleased God I am not yet visited, though my family is, and one of my children dead." "How do you mean then," said I, "that you are not visited?" "Why," says he, " that is my house," — point- ing to a very little low-boarded house, — "and there my poor wife and two children live," said he, "if they may be said to live; for my wife and one of the children are visited, but I do not come at them." And with that word I saw the tears run very plentifully down his face; and so they did down mine too, I assure you. "But," said I, "why do you not come at them? How can you abandon your own flesh and blood?" "O, sir," says he, "the Lord forbid. I do not abandon them; I work for them as much as I am able; and blessed be the Lord, I keep them from want." And with that I observed he lifted up his eyes to heaven with a countenance that presently told me I had happened on a man that was no hypocrite, but a serious, religious, good man: and his ejaculation was an expression of thankfulness, that, in such a condition as he 92 CRITICAL PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. was in, he should be able to say his family did not want. "Well," says I, "honest man that is a great mercy, as things go now with the poor. But how do you live then, and how are you kept from the dreadful calamity that is now upon us all?" "Why, sir,"say8 he, "I am a waterman and there is my boat," says he; "and the boat serves me for a house ; I work in it in the day, and I sleep in it in the night ; and what I get I lay it down upon that stone," says he, shewing me a broad stone on the other side of the street a good way from his house; "and then," says he, "I halloo and call to them till I make them hear, and they come and fetch it." . . . "Do you see there," says he, "five ships lie at anchor?"— pointing down the river a good way below the town,—" and do you see," says he, " eight or ten ships lie at the chain there, and at anchor yonder?"— pointing above the town. "All those ships have families on board, of their merchants and owners, and such like, who have locked them- selves up, and live on board, close shut in, for fear of the infection; and I tend on them to fetch things for them, carry letters, and do what is absolutely necessary, that they may not be obliged to come on shore ; and every night I fasten my boat on board one of the ship's boats, and there I sleep by myself; and blessed be God, I am preserved hither- to." . . . "Hark thee, friend," said I, "come hither, for I believe thou art in health, that I may venture thee; " so I pulled out my hand, which was in my pocket before. "Here," says I, "go and call thy Rachel once more, and give her a little comfort from me; God will never forsake a family that trust in Him as thou dost": so I gave him four other shillings, and bid him go lay them on the stone, and call his wife. I have not words to express the poor man's thankfulness, neither could he express it himself, but by tears running down his face. He called his wife, and told her God had moved the heart of a stranger, upon hearing their condition, to give them all that money; and a great deal more such as that he said to her. The woman, too, made signs of the like thankfulness, as well to Heaven as to me, and joyfully picked it up; and I parted with no money all that year that I thought better bestowed.' Crusoe, cast alone on a desert island, is terrified by the discovery of a human footmark: 'It happened one day about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly sur- prised with the print of a man's naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen in the sand: I stood like one thunderstruck, or as if I had seen an apparition: I listened, I looked around me, I could hear nothing, nor see anything; I went up to a rising ground to look farther: I went up the shore, and down the shore, but it was all one, I could see no other impression but that one : I went to it again to see if there were any more, and to observe if it might not be my fancy; but there was no room for that, for there was exactly the very print of a foot, toes, heel, and every part of a foot. How it came thither I knew not, nor could in the least imagine. But after innumerable fluttering thoughts, like a man perfectly confused, and out of myself, I came home to my fortification, not feeling, as we say, the ground I went on, but terrified to the last degree, looking behind me at every two or three steps, mistaking every bush and tree, and fancying every stump at a distance to be a man; nor is it possible to describe how many various shapes an affrighted imagination represented things to me in; bow many wild ideas were formed every moment in my fancy, and what strange, unaccountable whimsies came into my thoughts by the way. When I came to my castle, for so I think I called it ever after this, I fled into it like one pursued; whether I went over by the ladder, at first contrived, or went in at the hole in the rock, which I called a door, I cannot remember; for never frighted hare fled to cover, or fox to earth, with more terror of mind than I to this retreat.' Perhaps the devil left it: ' I considered that the devil might have found out abundance of other ways to have terrified me, . . . that, as I lived quite on the other side of the island, he would never have been so simple to leave a mark in a place where it was ten thousand to one whether DE FOE. 93 I should ever see it or not, and in the sand too, which the first surge of the sea upon a high wind would liave defaced entirely. All this seemed inconsistent with the thing itself, and with all notions we usually entertain of the subtlety of the devil.' Style. — Pure, simple, clear, vigorous, colloquial, idiomatic. Kauk. — Unrivalled in the invention and relation of incidents. 'Never was such a sense of the real before or since.' The grand secret of his art — if that may be called art which is nature itself — consists in an astonishing minuteness of details and an unequalled power of giving reality to the incidents which he relates. He deceives not the eye, but the mind, and that literally, as we have noticed. The preface to an old edition of Rohinson Crusoe says: 'The story is told ... to the instruction of others by this example, and to justify and honor the wisdom of Providence. The editor believes the thing to be a just history of facts; neither is there any appearance of fiction in it.' He sat in his closet, travelled round the world in idea, saw ■with the distinctness of natural vision, then narrated so plausibly as to deceive the most intelligent. His fields of power were: national convulsions, by war, by pestilence, or by tempest; magic, ghost-seeing, witchcraft, and the occult sciences; thieves, rogues, vagabonds, swindlers, buc-, cancers, and pirates. The courage, the wonderful and romantic adventures, and the hairbreadth escapes of pirates seem to have had for him an infinite charm. Cliaracter. — A poet, a novelist, and a polemic ; born a writer, as other men are born generals and statesmen. Without the idea of beauty, he is good and religious, too good and relig- ious to forget the distinctions between virtue and vice. Though his subjects are low, his aims are moral. In this respect, he is entitled to a much higher praise than is generally awarded him. His heroes and incidents are made the frequent occasion of incul- cating the fundamental truths of religion, the being of God, the superintendency of Providence, the certainty of Heaven and Hell, the one to reward, the other to punish. Crusoe is De Foe,— honest, open, confidential, laying his inmost thoughts and feelings before us; patient and invincible in difficulty, in disappointment, in toil; sanguine, combating, conquering. Of his habits, little can now be told more than he confessed : 'God, I thank Thee I am not a drunkard, or a swearer, or a busybody, or idle, or revengeful; and though this be true, and I challenge all the world to prove the contrary,- 94 CRITICAL PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS, I must own I see small satisfaction in the negatives of the common virtues; for I have not been guilty of any of these vices, nor of many more, I have nothing to infer from thence but, Te Deum laudamus.' Influence. — His moral teaching, as indicated above, is gener- ally unexceptionable. Good and evil are carefully discriminated. Knowing life better than the soul, the course of the world better than the motives of men, his best drawn characters are less instructive and salutary than greater delicacy and profounder insight would have rendered them. His writings, though they did not save him from want, gained him a renown that will descend the stream of time to the remotest generation of men. SWIFT. The most unhappy man on eanh..— Archbishop King. Biography. — Born in Dublin, in 1667, but of English parent- age. Instructed by his nurse, at three he could spell, and at five could read any chapter in the Bible. Passed eight years in the school of Kilkenny, and at fifteen, poorly supported by the charity of an uncle, entered Dublin University. Odd, awkward, proud, and friendless, irregular and desultoi-y as a student, he incurred in two years no less than seventy penalties, meditated An Account of the Kinydom of Absurdities, to show his disgust for the routine of scholastic training, and provoked the pitying smiles of the professors for his feeble brain. Failed to take his degree, on account of 'dulness and insufficiency' in logic. Pre- sented himself for examination a second time, without having condescended to read logic. Refused to answer the questions propounded, desired to know what he was to learn from 'those books,' and was asked how he could expect to reason well with- out rules; retorted that he did reason without them, and that, so far as he had observed, rules taught men to wrangle rather than to reason. Obtained his degree at last by special favor, a term used in that university to denote want of merit. At twenty one, left without subsistence, he was received into the house of Sir William Temple as secretary, at twenty pounds SWIFT. 95 a year and his board; dined at the second table, and smothered his rebellion. Studied eight hours a day to correct his former idleness, and ran up and down a hill every two hours to correct a o-iddiness he had contracted in Ireland. Wrote bad verses to flatter his master, hoped he was a poet, and perpetually hated Dryden, who said of them, 'Cousin. Swift, you will never be a poet.' Ambitious of preferment, sick of hopes deferred, and galled by his servitude, he attempted independence, and took orders in the Irish church in 1694, at a hundred pounds a year, in a distant, secluded, and half civilized place. Found it a lower deep, to which the hell he had suffered seemed a heaven; was forced to accept Temple's cordial invitation to return, from which time the two appear to have lived in mutual confidence and esteem. Upon Temple's deaith (1698), who had left him a legacy and his manuscripts, he edited the works of his patron, dedicated them to William III, to remind him of promised advancement, got nothing, and accepted the post of secretary to a nobleman; was circumvented, then promised the rich Deanery of Derry, saw it bestowed on somebody else, and fell back on the post of pre- bendary.' Constrained to reside in a country which he detested, and longing for the promotion that would enable him to return to England, near the centre of literary and political activity, he launched into politics, advocated Whig principles, received fine promises from party leaders, and was neglected. In 1710, lured by false hopes till his patience was exhausted, and insulted with- out redress, he abandoned the Whigs, who were now to be driven from office, joined the Tories, levelled at his former friends the blasting lightning of his satire, was feared as a powerful and unscrupulous pamphleteer, became the familiar associate and adviser of the rich and titled, stretched out his hands for an English bishopric, and received, — what he professed to regard as an honorable exile, — only the Deanery of St. Patrick's, Dublin; for though favored by the ministers of state, by the Queen and High Church dignitaries, whose party he had espoused, he was 1 In the county of Meath, northwest of Dublin. While here, he appointed the read- ing of prayers on Wednesdays and Fridays. On the first Wednesday, after the bell had ceased rinffing for some time, finding that the congregation consisted only of himself and his clerk, Roger, he began: 'Dearlv beloved Roger, the Scripture moveth you and me in sundry places,' etc. ; and then proceeded regularly through the whole service. 96 CEITICAL PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 1 disliked as an uncertain friend and a doubtful Christian, He had been the author of a religious lampoon ( Tale of a Tub) that was fatal to his eminence in the church. To Ireland he repaired in bitterness of spirit. There he was exiled by the return of the Whigs to power under George I; and there he was confined, con- trary to his expectations, by their continued supremacy under George II. Isolated, even pelted by the populace in the streets stung by the designations of renegade, traitor, and atheist, con- scious of superiority and soured by the feeling of his own impo- tence, he vented his pent-up rage in torturing, crushing satires against theologians, statesmen, courtiers, society. In 1724, by delivering Ireland from a fraudulent and oppressive measure, from being an object of hatred he became an object of idolatry; and the popularity he thus acquired, he was diligent to keep, by continuing attention to the public, and by various modes of beneficence. But power almost despotic could not reconcile him to himself or his environment, and in 1728 he writes: 'I find myself disposed every year, or rather every month, to be more angry and revengefnl; and my rage is so ignoble that it descends even to resent the folly and base- ness of the enslaved people among vi^hom I live.' Sometimes wished to visit England, but the fire was burning low, and he seems to have had a presentiment that he never would. Tells Pope he hopes once more to see him; 'but if not,' he says, 'we must part as all human beings have parted.' Subject to giddiness from his youth, the attacks grew more frequent with advancing age. He desisted from study. Deaf- ness came on, making conversation difficult. Having vowed never to wear spectacles, he was unable to read. Memory left him, reason deserted him,' and he became first a maniac, then an idiot. After a year of total silence, his house- keeper, on the 30th of November, told him that the usual bonfires and illuminations were preparing to celebrate his birthday. An interval of reason flashed its light across his midnight sky, and he answered, 'It is all folly; they had better let it alone.' Sunk again into a silent idiocy, he expired in the ensuing October, 1744. When his will was opened, it was found that he had left 1 1 remember as I and others were taking with Swift an evening walk, about a mile out of Dublin, he stopped short; we passed on; but perceiving he did not follow us, I went back and found him fixed as a statue ; and earnestly gazing upwards at a noble tree, which, in its upper branches, was much withered and decayed. Pointing at it, he said, 'I shall be like that tree; I shall die at the top.'— Z*?'. Young. I SWIFT. 97 his fortune to build an asylum for idiots and madmen. His morning rose in clouds, and his evening went down in eclipse. Loves. — Never was genius more fatal in its influence, nor friendship more blighting, nor unprosperous love more widely famed. While a student in the university, he formed an attach- ment to Jane Warying, sister of his college companion, and poetically termed 'Varina.' In a letter of April, 1696, Swift complains of her formality and coldness, tells her that he has resolved to die as he has lived — all hers. She signifies, at last, her desire to consummate their union; but the vision that had made the morning and the evening varied enchantments, was passing. A second letter of May, 1700, is written in the altered tone of one who is anxious to escape from a connection which he regrets ever to have formed. Time had perhaps estranged him by its unequal development of their characters, and the superior charms of another had begun to weave their spell around the lover's heart. In Temple's family, he met a very pretty, dark-eyed, modest young girl of fifteen, a waiting-maid, — Esther Johnson. Seven- teen years her senior, he became her instructor; found pleasure in cultivating her talents; became her companion and friend, though he could little have thought how closely and tragically their fortunes and their fame were hereafter to be united. She loved and reverenced him only; and he immortalized her as 'Stella,' or 'Star that dwelt apart.' To reconcile himself to an obscure retirement, he invited her with her friend Mrs. Dingley to reside in Ireland. They lived in the parsonage when he was away, and when he returned, removed to a lodging, or to the house of a near clergyman. From London, during the period of his political struggles (1710-1713), he wrote to her twice a day, a journal of his daily life, familiarly, playfully, and endearingly; records, for her gratification, his slightest actions; tells where he goes, where he dines, whom he meets, what he spends. His letters are his last occupation at night, and his first in the morning: 'I can not go to bed withont a word to them (Stella and Mrs. Dingley) ; I can not put out my candle till I bid them good night.' He had met in London yet another girl, eighteen, beautiful, rich, lively, graceful, and fond of books, a merchant's daughter, — 7 98 CRITICAL PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. Esther Vanhomrigh. Twenty-six years her senior, he offered to direct her in her choice of studies. She esteemed him, thanked him, then loved him, unacquainted with the peculiar situation in which he stood related to another. 'Vanessa' — for so he had poetically named her — avowed her passion, and received in return, first raillery, then the cold proffer of everlasting friend- ship. Thinking to possess her love without returning it, he had encouraged her feelings, to disappoint her just expectations. With an irrepressible devotion, she followed him to Dublin hoping, waiting, remonstrating, entreating, — so impassioned, so unhappy, so agonized, when all her offerings had failed, that her letters of love and complaint are sadder than wails above the dead: 'If you continue to treat me as you do, you will not be made uneasy by me long. . . . I am sure I could have borne the rack much better than those killing, killing words of you. The reason I write to you is because I cannot tell it to you, should I see you. For when I begin to complain, then you are angry; and there is something in your looks so awful that it strikes me dumb. Oh, that you may have so much regard for me left, that this complaint may touch your soul with pity ! I say as little as ever I can. Did you but know what I thought, I am sure it would move you to forgive me, and believe that I , cannot help telling you this and live.' ' Discovering the gulf he had incautiously approached, he sought to alleviate the perils he could no longer avert, tried to turn her mind to other objects and interests, but in vain. She refused to mingle in society, rejected two advantageous offers of marriage, and in 1717 withdrew to a country retreat, to nurse in seclusion her melancholy and hopeless attachment. Here she received occasional visits from Swift, each of which she com- memorated by planting with her own hand a laurel in the garden where they met. Meanwhile, the familiar power of pleasing, which Stella had long possessed, suffered a partial eclipse. The altered tone of his London letters betrayed a divided affection, and Vanessa's arrival in Dublin — whose name he had all but suppressed — developed the cause, while it increased the apprehensions of Stella. Sensibility to his late indifference, and jealousy neither unreasonable nor dishonorable, were preying upon her health. The bloom and beauty of youth had faded away in the midst of hopes and wishes unfulfilled, while she was bitterly conscious that her reputation was clouded by her mysterious connection » Letter of Vanessa, Dublin, 1714. SWIFT. 99 with Swift, though her conduct was irreproachable. She had an undoubted claim, however, over the affections of his heart, and he married her at last from a sense of duty, in 1716, secretly, in the garden of the Deanery, with the understanding that she should be his wife only in name. On his public days, she regulated the table, but appeared at it as a mere guest, Their relations con- tinued as before, and they lived on opposite banks of the Liffey. Tardy, poor, and feeble reparation ! Immediately after the cere- mony, he was gloomy and agitated. Delany, his biographer, called upon Archbishop King, to mention his apprehensions; met Swift rushing by with a countenance of distraction, found the Archbishop in tears, and inquired the reason: 'Sir,' said the pre- late, 'you have just met the most unhappy man upon earth; but on the subject of his wretchedness you must never ask a question.' The tragedy deepens as it draws to a close. Without explain- ing his conduct, he continued his visits to Vanessa — with more reserve, let us hope, and with increased anxiety to direct her passion into other channels. Eight years she had cherished that passion in solitude. By the death of her younger sister in 1720, whose failing health she had nursed, yet another sorrow was added. Her affection for Swift redoubled its energy. Driven almost to madness by suspense and suspicion, she wrote at last to Stella to ascertain the nature of her connection with the Dean, and was informed, in reply, of the marriage. Stella gave the letter to Swift for explanation. In a rage he carried it to the unhappy Vanessa. His countenance, as he entered the room, struck terror into her soul, and she could scarcely invite him to a seat. Without a word, he flung a letter on the table before her, and instantly left. Opening the packet, she found only her own communication to Stella,— the death-warrant to her hopes and to her life. She languished a few weeks and died, in 1723, a victim to the cruelty and duplicity of him on whom she had lavished in vain life's warmest and purest affections, who had suffered her to pine and sink in hopeless affliction, because at first he would not, and afterwards dared not, avow his double dealing, and his incapa- bility of accepting the heart she offered. Judge of the rare gift and the costly sacrifice, from the Ode to Spring, in which she alludes to her unhappy attachment. Never was harp tuned more touchingly to the pathetic eloquence of woe: 100 CRITICAL PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 'Hail, blushing goddess! beauteous Spring! Who in thy jocund train dost bring Loves and graces — smiling hours — Balmy breezes — fragrant flowers; Come with tints of roseate hue, Nature's faded charms renew ! Yet why should I thy presence hail ? To me no more the breathing gale Comes fraught with sweets, no more the rose With such transcendent beauty blows, As when Cadenus' blest the scene. And shared with me those joys serene. When unperceived, the lambent fire Of friendship kindled new desire; Still listening to his tuneful tongue. The truths which angels might have sung. Divine imprest their gentle sway. And sweetly stole my soul away. My guide, instructor, lover, friend, Dear names, in one idea blend; Oh! still conjoined, your incense rise. And waft sweet odours to the skies ! ' Swift made a tour of two months in the south of Ireland, a prey to remorse; returned to Dublin, and received Stella's for- giveness. Poor Stella, married when on her part all but life had faded away, was twelve years dying. Living desolately on, in hope that he would in time own and receive her, she sank into the grave in 1728, without any public recognition of the tie. It is said that Swift never mentioned her name without a sigh. That he felt distress and contrition, there is no doubt. His misan- thropy increased, and his malady grew more malignant. Perhaps, in the case of Vanessa, dreading her grief, and watching for a favorable moment, he had delayed a disagreeable discovery till too late. Aware that insanity lurked in his frame, he may have felt, in the case of Stella, that he had no right to marry. But no plea could efface the blot on his character, that, without any in- tention of marrying either, he attached to himself two of the loveliest women of his time, encouraged their friendship for his own content, and tortured them by hopes deferred, till the grave closed upon their piteous accents, as despair upon their hearts. Appearance. — Tall, strong, and well made; of dark com- plexion, blue eyes, black and bushy eyebrows, hooked nose, and features sour and severe, seldom softened by any appearance of gaiety. 1 ^ Cadenns^ = Decanus— the Dean. I SWIFT. 101 Writings.— Tafe of a Tub' (1704); a powerful satire, whose object was to ridicule tlie Romanists and Presbyterians, with the view of defending and exalting- the Church of England. A father had three sons, — Peter (Church of Rome), Martin (Church of England), and Jack (Presbyterians, or Protestant Dissenters). Upon his deathbed he bequeathed to each of the lads a coat (Christianity), warning them to wear it plain. 'Sons, because I have purchased no estate nor was born to any, I have long consid- ered of some good legacies to leave you, and at last, with much care, I have provided each of you with a good coat. With good wearing the coats will last you as long as you live, and will grow in the same proportion as your bodies, lengthening and widening of them- selves, so as to be always fit.' They were expressly forbidden to add to or diminish from their coats one thread. After a time, however, they came to a town, adopted its manners, fell in love with some stylish ladies, and, to gain their favors, began to live as gallants. Embarrassed by the extreme simplicity of their clothes, they longed for a more fashionable attire. An adroit interpretation of the will (Bible) admitted shoulder-knots. Silver fringe was soon in fashion: 'Upon which the brothers consulting their father's will, to their great astonishment found these words: "Item, I charge and command my said three sons to wear no sort of silver fringe upon or about their said coats," etc' Peter, however, who was a skilful critic, had found in a certain author, which he said should be nameless, — 'That the same word, which in the vi'ill is called fringe, does also signify a broom- stick; and doubtless ought to have the same interpretation in this paragraph. This an- other of the brothers disliked, because of that epithet silver, which could not, he humbly conceived, in propriety of speech be reasonably applied to a broomstick; but it was replied upon him that this epithet was understood in a mythological and allegorical sense. However, he objected again, why their father should forbid them to wear a broomstick on their coats, a caution that seemed unnatural and impertinent; upon which he was taken up short, as one who spoke irreverently of a mystery, which doubtless was very useful and significant, but ought not to be over-curiously pried into, or nicely reasoned upon.' By similar evasions, gold lace, embroidery, and flame-colored satin linings were added to their coats. The will was at length locked up, and utterly disregarded. Peter, claiming the suprem- acy, styled himself My Lord Peter, and discarded from the house his brothers, who reopened the will and began to understand it. To return to primitive simplicity, Martin tore off ten dozen yards ' Explained by Swift to mean, that, as sailors throw out a tub to a whale to keep him amused and prevent him from running foul of their ship, so in this treatise, his object is to divert the freethinkers of the day (who draw their arguments from the Leviathan of Hobbesj from injuring the state by their wild theories in politics and religion. 102 CRITICAL PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. ew em- m of fringe and a huge quantity of gold lace, but kept a few broideries, which could not be got away without damaging the cloth; Jack, in his enthusiasm, stripped away everything, reduced himself, in the operation, to tatters, and, envious of Martin joined the JEolists, or inspired worshippers of the wind: 'First it is generally affirmed or confirmed that learning puffeth men up; and sec- ondly they proved it by the following syllogism: words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo learning is nothing but wind. . . . This, when blown up to its perfection, ought not to be covetously hoarded up, stifled, or hid under a bushel, but freely communicated to mankind. Upon these reasons, and others of equal weight, the wise ^olists affirm the gift of belching to be the noblest act of a rational creature, At certaiii seasons of the year, you might behold the priests among them in vast numbers, . . . linked together in a circular chain, with every man a pair of bellows applied to his neighbor ... by which they blew each other to the shape and size of a tun; and for that reason, with great propriety of speech, did usually call their bodies their vessels.' The work, though admired, was widely condemned. To a later edition was prefixed an apology, in which the author declared that his meaning had been misconceived. Perhaps so. A very peculiar person, like Swift, might so write without any ill inten- tion. But what shall we say of the S2nrituaUty of him who treats with pompous merriment and witty buffoonery questions that rest with the weight of worlds on the human spirit? Vol- taire praised it, recommended his disciples to read it; by many it was thought to be a covert attack upon Christianity. What church or creed does it not profane? Even the High Church, which he seems to defend, is a political cloak: ' Is not religion a cloak ; honesty a pair of shoes worn out in the dirt ; self-love a sur- tout; vanity a shirt; and conscience a pair of breeches? . . . If certain ermines and furs be placed in a certain position, we style them a judge ; and so an apt conjunction of lawn and black satin, we entitle a bishop.' After such ribaldries, what reason had he to be astonished that a Christian princess declined to place him upon a clerical throne? Brajner Letters (1724). A series of letters against an Eng- lish patent for supplying the Irish market with copper coinage; inserted in a Dublin newspaper, and signed 31. B. Brapier. Small change was wanted in Ireland. The English ministers, without consulting the Irish government, granted a patent to coin one hundred and eight thousand pounds of copper money. Swift considered the metal base, and, by stirring appeals to the pride and patriotism of the people, roused them against the measure. The English government bowed to the storm, and withdrew the coin. These letters are distinguished by artful and trenchant argument, vast passion and pride, bitter and terrible SWIFT. 103 rancor. Gulliver's Travels (1726), a satire of man; the most original, most carefully finished, and most characteristic of his works; a production entirely unique in English literature. It is the journal of a voyager, who, like De Foe in Crusoe, describes in cool, sensible, and simple faith the events and sights which he has seen. In his first voyage, he is carried to the empire of the Pygmies, where the people are but six inches high, and surrounding objects correspondingly diminutive; in his second, he is carried to the empire of Giants, where the people are sixty feet high or upwards, and other existences proportionately vast; in his third, he is taken to several fantastic countries, of which one, a flying island, is inhabited by philosophers and mathemati- cians, another by wretches who, without intellects or affections, are doomed to a bodily immortality; in his fourth, he is carried to a region whose people are hardly distinguishable from brutes: 'At last I beheld several animals in a field, and one or two of the same kind sitting in trees. Their shape was very singular and deformed. . . . They climbed high trees as nimbly as a squirrel, for they had strong extended claws before and behind, terminating in a sharp point, and hooked. . . . Upon the whole, 1 never beheld in all my travels so disagreeable an animal, or one against which I naturally conceived so great an antipathy.' How ridiculous are human interests and passions when mir- rored in the littleness of the Pigmy world ! How vain are our desires, how insignificant our pursuits, when tried by the standard of a mightier race ! What is a lawyer but a hired liar, who per- verts the truth if he is an advocate, and sells it if he is a judge ? What is a legislator but a compound of idleness and vice ? What is a noble but a diseased rake and rascal ? What is sentiment but folly and weakness ? What are science, art, and religion, but cloaks which veil the ugliness of human nature ? Brutes that tear each other with their talons, that howl, and grin, and chatter, and wallow in the mud, — these are the final abstract of man — of his instincts, of his ambitions, of his hopes. Nay, they are better, for our species 'is the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl on the face of the earth.' This book is the expression of Swift, — the assembly of all his talent and all his passion; so picturesque, so romantic, so melancholy, so mocking and fiendish at last, yet so coolly and simply told, that criticism was for a time lost in wonder. A Modest Proposal (1731); a scheme to prevent the children of the Irish poor from becoming a burden to their parents or 104 CRITICAL PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 1 country, and to make them beneficial to the public. The scheme is, that the children should be sold and eaten as food ! 'I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London that a young healthy child, well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious, nourishin" and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked or boiled.' He enters gravely into calculation: 'A child will make two dishes at an cn!ertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day. ... I believe no gentle- man would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which as I have said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat.' This hideous treatise, so shudderingly calm, seems fit to have been the expiring cry of his genius and his despair. Thoughts on Various Subjects, of which the following are characteristic and suggestive specimens, models of form and nuggets of wisdom : 'We have just religion enough to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.' 'When a true genius appeareth in the world, you may know him by this infallible sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.' ' The reason why so few marriages are happy, is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.' 'No wise man ever wished to be younger.' 'A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.' 'Complaint is the largest tribute Heaven receives, and the sincerest part of our devotion.' ' The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping ofiE our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.' 'The common fluency of speech in many men and most women is owing to a scarcity of matter and scarcity of words : for whoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt, in speaking, to hesitate upon the choice of both; whereas com- mon speakers have only one set of ideas, and one set of words to clothe them in, and these are already at the mouth. So people come faster out of a church when it is almost empty, than when a crowd is at the door.' Style. — Simple, plain, pure, rugged, vigorous, Saxon. With- out ornament, it is rich in the variety of its words and phrases. Always understanding himself, he was always understood by others. He illustrates admirably an important principle of com- position, — that, when a man has stamped upon his mind all the parts and joints of his subject, and is confident of his cause, he has only to resist the temptation to write finely, in order to write effectively. Rank. — In originality and strength he has no superior, and in irony no equal. He had the genius of insult, as Shakespeare SWIFT. 105 of poetry. Unscrupulous sarcasm and vituperation, crushing logic, knowledge of men and life, vehement expression, made him the most formidable pamphleteer that ever lived. He was defi- cient in refinement of taste and loftiness of imagination, and lacked the nobility of nature to become a true poet, philosopher, or reformer. The grandeurs of the human spirit escaped him. Palpable and familiar objects, common words, common things, were the sources of his inspiration. Several peculiarities con- tributed to produce his effect, — skilful minuteness of narrative; power to give to fiction the air of truth; the habit of expressing sentiments, the most absurd or atrocious, as sober commonplaces; of relating the most ludicrous and extravagant fancies with an invincible gravity. As a man, he is the most tragic figure in our literature.. Character. — Haughty and magisterial, with an overwhelming sense of superiority, seeming to consider himself exempt from the necessity of ceremony, and entitled to the homage of all, without distinction of sex, rank, or fame. While a simple jour- nalist, he demanded an apology of the prime minister, received it, and wrote: 'I have taken Mr. Harley into favor again.' Warned the Secretary of State never to appear cold to him, for he wouldn't be treated like a school-boy. Invited to dine with the Earl of Burlington, he said to the mistress of the house: 'Lady Burlington, I hear you can sing; sing me a song.' The lady resented his freedom, and he said she should sing or he would make her. 'Why, madam, I suppose you take me for one of your poor English hedge-parsons ; sing when I bid you ! ' Unable to control her vexation, she burst into tears and retired. Meeting her afterward, he inquired : 'Pray, madam, are you as proud and ill-natured now as when I saw you last ? ' Writing to the Duchess of Queensbury, he says: 'I am glad you know your duty; for it has been a known and established rule about twenty years in England, that the first advances have been constantly made me by all the ladies who aspired to my acquaintance, and the greater their quality, the greater were their advances.' Tells Stella, with a vengeful joy: 'I generally am acquainted with about thirty in the drawing-room, and am so proud that I make all the lords come up to me. One passes half an hour pleasantly enough.' Possibly he expected this to be received as his peculiar mode 106 CRITICAL PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. of jocularity. Pope, one o£ his few friends, has preserved us a specimen of his humor: "Tis so odd, that there's no describing it but by facts. I'll tell you one that first comes into my head. One evening Gay and I went to see him; you know how intimately we were all acquainted. On our coming in, "Heyday, gentlemen" (says the Doctor) " what's the meaning of this visit? How came you to leave the great lords that you are so fond of, to come hither to see a poor Dean I " " Because we would rather see you than any of them." "Ay, anyone that did not know you so well as I do might believe you. But since you are come, I must get some supper for you, I suppose." "No, Doctor, we have supped already." "Supped already? that's impossible! why, 'tis not eight o'clock yet. That's very strange ; but if you had not supped, I must have got something for you. Let me see, what should I have had? A couple of lobsters; ay, that would have doue very well: two shillings — tarts, a shilling: but you will drink a glass of wine with me, though you supped so much before your usual time only to spare my pocket?" "No, we had rather talk with you than drink with you." " But if you had supped with me, as in all reason you ought to have done, you must then have drank with me. A bottle of wine, two shillings — two and two is four, and one is five; just two and sixpence apiece. There, Pope, there's half a crown for you, and there's another for you, sir: for I won't save anything by you, I am determined." This was all said and done with his usual seriousness on such occasions; and in spite of everything we could say to the contrary, he actually obliged us to take the money.' He was minutely critical and exacting. Once when he dined alone with the Earl of Orrery, he said of a waiter in the room: ' That man has, since we sat to the table, committed fifteen faults.' He was constitutionally incapable of religion — incapable from a vulgar temperament. Joy is wanting, save the joy of tearing. The idea of the beautiful seldom or never enters. He delights in images that repel a refined taste. But, though coarse, he is never licentious; his grossness is repulsive, not seductive. He spent his days in discontent, in a rebellion of wounded pride and unsatisfied desire. All suffering seems color- less beside the deep, long agony of his soul. Influence. — He agitated kingdoms, stirred the laughter and rage of millions, and left to posterity memorials ( Gulliver and Tale of a Tub) that will perish only with the English language. His satire will furnish food for profitable reflection ; his romance will continue to amuse, doing the good that mere pleasure can do; but anything beyond? Did he give any impulse to holi- ness? Did he feel the burden of souls? Do his writings breathe a wish or prayer for personal perfection ? In his philosophy of life were two fundamental evils, either of which must, at the outset, prove fatal to the highest order of influence, — a vulgar materialism, and a bitter misanthropy. He never rose above the THE POET OF ART. 107 mercenary practical — his views were always directed to what was immediately beneficial, which is the characteristic of savages; man, to him, was a knave and a fool. Perhaps, therefore, his chief service to us, as his chief legacy to the race, is indirect, — the warning spectacle of his powerful and mournful genius, with its tempest of hopes and hatreds. It is a theme on which the lightest heart might moralize. Over his grave, as in the sigh of the wailing wind, we hear the words: Knoioledge uninspired by universal love, unleavened by religious depth and earnestness, serves only to i7iflate loith an insolent self-sufficiency and to dry up loith a sensual pride; knowledge whose paramount or final end is to gratify curiosity, to flatter vanity, to push for precedence, to minister to ambition, is vanity and vexation of spirit. POPE. He was the poet of personality aud of polished Wie.—Hazlitt. Biograpliy. — Born in London, in 1688, the memorable year of the Revolution. His father was a linen-merchant, who, with a moderate fortune, retired in a few years to a small estate in Windsor Forest. He learned very early to read, and by copying from printed books, taught himself to write. Both parents were Papists, For such trivial elements of a schoolboy's learning as he possessed at all, he was therefore indebted to private tuition. At eight, he was instructed by the family priest in the rudiments of Greek and Latin. Was next sent to a Romanist seminary, where he lampooned his teacher, was whipped, and removed by his indignant parents. From the scene of his disgrace, he passed under the tuition of several other masters in rapid succession, but with little profit. Scarcely twelve, he resolved to direct himself, formed a plan of study, and executed it with little other incite- ment than the desire of excellence. His father, though unable to guide him, proposed subjects, obliged him to correct his per- formances by frequent revisals, and, when satisfied, would say, 'These are good rhymes.' His early passion was to be a poet; and he used to say that he could not remember the time when he began to make verses. 108 CRITICAL PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. 'Why did I write? What sin to me unknown Dipp'd me in inli, my parents' or my own? As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame, I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came. 1 left no calling for this idle trade, No duty broke, no father disobey 'd: The muse but served to ease some friend, not wife, To help me through this long disease, my life." At this tender age he wrote a tragedy, which he persuaded his schoolmates to act, and an Ode on Solitude. From thirteen to fifteen, he composed an epic of four thousand verses. His time was now wholly spent in reading and writing. He studied books of poetry and criticism, English, French, Greek, and Latin authors, with such assiduity that he nearly died. Of all English poets, his favorite was Dryden, whom he held in such veneration that he persuaded some friends to take him to a coffee-house which Dry- den frequented, to delight himself with a glimpse of his model and master. Who can bound the possibilities of one that so early feels the power of harmony and the zeal of genius, and who does not regret that the master died before he learned the value of the homage paid him by his admiring pupil? His life as an author is computed from the age of sixteen. For choice words and exquisite arrangement, his poetry already surpassed Dryden's. At seventeen he was asked to correct the poems of a reputable author of sixty-nine, and corrected them so well that the author was mortified and offended. Wits, courtiers, statesmen, and the brilliant of fashion caressed and honored him. His known devotion to letters and his promise of future excel- lence had from earliest boyhood won the flattering attentions of the most accomplished men of the world. In 1715, he persuaded his parents to remove to Chiswick, where two years later his father died suddenly, in the seventy-fifth year of his age. The poet, with his now aged mother, shortly removed to Twickenham, a spot to which his residence afterwards procured such classic celebrity. His grounds (five acres in all) he taste- fully embellished with those designs of vine, shrub, and tree, which his verses mention. For convenient admission to a garden across the highway, he cut a subterraneous passage, adorned it with fossil forms, and called it a grotto, into whose silence and retreat care and passion might not enter. ' Vanity produced a grotto where necessity enforced a passage.' Here, in poetic ease, POPE. 109 he continued to live in the smiles of fortune and to bask in the favors of the great. His domestic relations were always the hap- piest — one placid scene of parental obedience and of gentle filial authority. In spirit and inclination, his parents, we imagine, would have subscribed themselves, 'Yours dutifully.' However petulant and acrimonious his disposition as displayed to others, to them he never intermitted the piety of a respectful tenderness. Aware that his mother lived upon his presence or by his image, he long denied himself all excursions that could not be accom- plished within a week; and to the same cause must be ascribed the fact that he never went abroad, — not to Italy, not to Ireland, not even to France. His life was always one of leisure, and, but for his strange mixture of discordant parts, must have been like a dream of pleasure, — a condition more conducive to effemi- nacy than to strength, more favorable to elegance of thought than to grandeur. 'A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.' Pope's increasing pride and irritability, his supercilious contempt of struggling authors, raised around him a swarm of enemies ani- mated by envy or revenge. His later years were agitated by the asperities of personal dispute and the loss of genial compan- ionships. In 1732, he was deprived of Atterbury and Gay, two of his dearest friends. From Addison he had been estranged. Swift, sunk in idiocy, he had virtually lost forever. In 1733 occurred the death of his mother, then ninety-three years old. She had for some time been in her dotage, unable to recognize any face but • that of her son. Three days after, writing to a painter, with the view of having her portrait taken before the coffin was closed, he says: 'I thank God her death was as easy as her life was innocent; and as it cost her not a groan nor even a sigh, there is yet upon her countenance such an expression of tranquillity that it would afford the finest image of a saint expired that ever painting drew. Adieu, may you die as happily.' It is a pleasing reflection that the parents who idolized him, who had fondly watched his spark of genius fanned into flame, lived to see him the idol of the nation. He now complains bit- terly that, if he would have friends in the future, he must seek them amongst strangers and another generation. Henceforward he was chiefly engaged in satires, — his satire doubtless rendered 110 CRITICAL PERIOD — REPRESENTATIVE AUTHORS. more intense by his sense of desolation, — and was entangled in feudg of various complexions with people of various pretensions. In 1742 he became sensible that his vital powers were rapidly de- clining. His complaint was a dropsy of the chest, and he knew it to be incurable. With a behavior admirably philosophical, he discontinued original composition, and employed himself in revis- ing and burnishing those former works on which he must rely for his reputation with future ages, A few days before his death, he was delirious, and afterwards mentioned the fact as a sufficient humiliation of human vanity. In his closing hours he complained of inability to think; saw things as through a curtain, in false colors, and inquired at one time what arm it was that came out from the wall. He dined in company two days before he died; and a few mornings before, during a fit of delirium, he was found very early in his library, writing on the immortality of the soul. Asked whether a priest should not be called, he answered, ' I do not think it essential, but it will be very right and I thank you for putting me in mind of it.' In the morning, after the last sacraments had been given, he said, 'There is nothing that is meritorious but virtue and friend- ship; and indeed friendship itself is only a part of virtue.' He died on a summer's evening, in the month of flowers, in 1744; so quietly that the attendants could not distinguish the exact moment of his dissolution. Appearance. — A dwarf, four feet high, hunch-backed, thin, and sickly; so crooked that he was called the 'Interrogation Point'; so weak that he had constantly to wear stays, scarcely able to hold himself erect till they were laced; so sensitive to cold that he had to be wrapped in flannels, furs, and linen, and had his feet encased in three pairs of stockings; so little that he required a high chair at the table; so bald, after the middle of life, that, when he had no company, he dined in a velvet cap. He could neither dress nor undress without help. His vital functions were so much disordered that his life was 'a long disease.' He had a large, fine eye, and a long, handsome nose. His voice, when a child, was so sweet that he was fondly styled 'The little Night- ingale.' He was fastidious in his dress, and elegant in his man- ners. We are willing to believe that his bodily defects were advantageous to him as a writer. 'Whosoever,' says Bacon, POPE. Ill