Cornell University Library PR 85.C69 A history of English literature in a ser 3 1924 013 353 705 The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013353705 HISTOEY ENGLISH LITERATURE, IN i. SESiES o; BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. BY WILLIAM FRANCIS CpLLIER, LL.D., TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN ; AUTHOR 0? " SCHOOL HISTORY OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE," "THB GREAT EVENTS OF HISTORY," ETC. LONDON: T. NELSON AND SONS, PATEENOSTER ROW; KDISBDKOH ; AND NEW YORK. PF? CQ:f\ PREFACE. This History of English Literature is essentially bio- graphical, for true criticism cannot separate the author from his book. Leaving entirely out of sight what is no light matter in a work written for the young, — the living interest thus given to a subject for which some have little love, — so much do the colour and the flavour of that wonderful Mind-fruit, called a Book, depend upon the atmosphere in which it has ripened, and the soil whence its sweet or sour juices have been drawn, that these important influences cannot be overlooked in tracing, however slightly, the growth of a Literature. It has, accordingly, been my principal object to shew how the books, which we prize among the brightest of our national glories, have grown out of human lives — rooted oftener, perhaps, in sorrow than in joy; and how the scenery and the society, amid which an author played out his fleeting part, have left indelible hues upon the pages that he wrote. Instead of trying to, compress the History of our IV PEEFACE. Books into the framework formed by the accession of our Sovereigns, I have adopted a purely literary division. Selecting such great landmarks as the Birth of Chaucer, and the Introduction of Printing, I find that Ten Eras, each possessing a very distinct character, will embrace every name of note, from the oldest Celtic bards to Tennyson and Carlyle. The Pre-English Era takes a rapid view of British books and book-makers before the birth of Chaucer, about whose day the true English Literature began to exist. In the nine remaining Eras an entire chapter is devoted to each greatest name, writers of less mark being grouped together in a closing section. Short illustrative specimens, intended mainly to form the basis of lessons on variety of style, are appended to all the leading lives. Since names that cannot be passed over grow very thick towards the end, the closing chapters of the last two Eras have been arranged upon a plan which prevents confusion, and, by the use of Supplement- ary Lists, admits the mention of many authors who must otherwise have been left out. The method of the entire book aims at enabling a student to perceive at a glance the relative importance of certain authors, so that his reading may be either confined to the lives of our great Classics, or extended through the full range of our Literature, without much risk of confusion or mistake as to proportionate great- ness. PEEFACE. And here, in passing, I may say that only those who have tried it can estimate the difficulty of striking a balance in the case of certain names, when space and plan will admit of no choice but between a chapter and a paragraph. With great regret, and not without some misgivings, was I forced to assign to a secondary place Defoe, Adam Smith (in spite of Buckle's praise). Lamb, Wilson, De Quincey, Chalmers, Kingsley, Hugh Miller, and many others. The same difficulty met me in the formation of the Supplementary Lists, which, however, will serve to give what, I hope, is a tolerably accurate idea of those third-class writers, or rather first-class writers of the third degree, who adorn the present century. In the opening chapter of the various Eras I have ventured to add to the simple history of our Literature what I believe to be a novelty in a book of this kind. Eecognising the value of such pictures to the student of national history, I have attempted to reproduce, with some vividness, scenes of vanished author-life, and to trace the chief steps by which a green leaf has become a printed volume. For, to know something of the dress our books have worn at various times, and the stuff of which the older ones were made j to see the minstrel singing in the Castle hall, and the monk at work in the still Scriptorium ; to peep at Caxton in the Almonry, and watch the curtain rise on Shakspere at the Globe ; to trace the lights and shadows flung upon English books from vl PREFACE. Cavalier satins and the more sober-coloured garments of their opponents ; to see courtly poison withering Dryden's wreath of bay, and men like Johnson starving their way to fame : these are surely things of no slight interest and value to the earnest student of English Literature. And to such this book is offered. W. F. C. October S, 186L CONTENTS. THE FSE-EirOLISH EKA. ChKp. Pugs 1. First Steps in Book-making 9 IL Celtic Writers 16 Chap. I'nfiq III. Anglo-Saxon Writers 18 IV. Anglo-Norman Writers 28 f ntST E£A OF EiraUSH LIXESATUEE. FROM THIS BIRTH OF CH ADDER ABOUT 1328 A.D. TO THB INTKODUOTIOH OF PRIKTIHa BI CAXTOH IN 1474 A.D. I. The Minstrel and tlie Monk 86 I V. John Gower II. Sir John de Mandeviile 44 I VL King James I. of Scotland III. John de WycUfFe 46 I VII. Other Writers of the First Era... IV. Geoffrey Chaucer 63 | SECONS EUA. FROM THE INTRODUOTIOir OF PRINTINO IN 1474 A.D. TO THB ACOESSIOK OF ELIZABETH IN 1668 A.D. L The Old Printers of Westmin- ster 71 II. Sir Thomas More 78 III. WUUamTyndale 84 IV. Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury 87 V. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey... ilO VL Other Writers of the Second Era.. 94 TBISD ESA. FROM THE A00ES31ON OF ELIZABETH IN 1668 A.D. TO THE SHtlTTINO OF THE THEATRES IN 1648 A.D. 1. ThePlaysandPlayersofOldEng- iand 101 IL Roger Ascham 108 IIL George Buchanan 112 IV. Sir Philip Sidney 116 V. Edmund Spenser 120 VL Richard Hooker. 129 VII. Thomas SackviUe, Lord Buckhurat 132 VIIL Our EngUsh Bible. 136 IX. WlUlara Shakspere 140 X. Sir Walter Baleigh 160 XL Francis Bacon, Viscount St. Al- bans 156 XIL Benjamin Jonson 162 XIIL Other Writers of the Third Era... 166 FOUETH ESA. FKOM THE SHUTTING OF THE THEATRES IN 1646 A.D. TO THE DEATH OF MILTON IN 1674 A.D. I. Puritans and Cavaliers— their in- fluence upon English Literature 176 IL Thomas Fuller 181 tlL Jeremy Taylor 185 IV. Edward Hyde, Earl of Claren- don 190 V. John Milton 194 VL OtherWrltersofthe Fourth Era.. 212 VIU CONTENTS. FIFTH ERA. FROM THE DEATH OF MILTON IN 1674 A.D. TO THE FIKST PDBIIOATION OF THE TATLER IN 1709 A.D. Chap. Page L The Court of Charles II 219 II. Samuel Butler. 223 III. John Bunyau 227 IV. Kichard Baxter 232 Chop. Pag« V. John Dryden 236 VI. John Locke 243 VII. Other Writers of the Fifth Era... 246 SIXTH EBA. FKOM THE FIKST PCBLIOATION OF THE TATLEB IN 1709 A.D. TO TEE PHBLIOATIOH OF PAMEIA IN 1740 A.D. I. NewBpapers and Serials 253 IL Joseph Addison 260 IIL Sir Isaac Newton 266 IV. Sir Kichard Steele 269 V. Alexander Pope 274 VI. Jonathan Swift 282 VII. OtherWritersofthe Sixth Era... 289 SEVENTH ERA. FKOM THE PUBLICATION OF PAMELA IB 1740 A.D. TO THE DEATH OF JOHNSON IN 1784 A.D. L Literary Life in the Eighteenth Century 294 II. James Thomson 301 III. Samuel Bicliardson 806 JV. Henry Fielding 311 V. ToWaa Smoilett 316 VL Thomas Gray 321 VIL David Hume 325 VIII. William Robertson 329 IX. Oliver Goldsmith 334 X. Samuel Johnson 343 XI. Other Writers of the Seventh Era 391 EIGHTH ERA. VBOM THE DEATH OF JOHNSON IN 1784 A.D. TO THE DEATH OF SCOTT IN 1832 A.D. I. Some Notes on Poetry and Criti- cism 358 IL Edward Gibbon 363 IIL Robert Burns 369 IV. Edmund Burlce 375 V. William Cowper 379 VL George Gordon, Lord Byron 386 Vn. George Crabbe 393 YIIL Sir Walter Scott 399 IX. OtherWritersofthe Eighth Era... 414 KDf TH ERA. FKOM THE DEATH OP SCOTT IN 1832 A.D. TO THE PRESENT TIME. I. Printing by Steam 434 IL Samuel Taylor Coleridge 441 IIL Robert Southey 447 IV. William Wordsworth 468 V. Thomas Babington, Lord Mac- aulay 461 VL Sheridan Knowles 468 VII. Alfl:ed Tennyson 472 AniL Charles Dickens 480 IX. William Makepeace Thackeray... 487 X. Thomas Carlyle 494 XL Other Writers of the Ninth Era... 600 Appendix on American Literature 528 HISTORY ENGLISH LITERATURE THE PRE-ENGLISH ERA. CHAPTEE I. riEST STEPS nsr book-mazhtg. The first book. The tree and the book. Cairns and altars. Knotted cords. Leather books. Tlie papyrus. An ancient book-room. Picture-writing. Reign of Acamapicb. Cortez has come. Hieroglyphics. Sesostris on his throne. Phonetics. Conclusion, When in the depth of some Asiatic forest, shadowy with the green fans and sword-blades of the pahn tribe, and the giant fronds of the purple-streaked banana, a sinewy savage stood, one day long ago, etching with a thorn on some thick-fleshed leaf, torn from the luxuriant shrubwood around him, rude images of the beasts he hunted or the arrows he shot, — the first step was taken towards the making of a book. Countless have been the onward steps since then ; but the old fact that the tree is the parent of the book still survives in many well-known words, which ever point us back to the green and per- fumed woodland where sprang the earliest ancestor of those wondrous and innumerable compounds of author's brain, printer's 10 CAIRNS, GROVES, AND CORDS. ink, and linen rag, now answering to the term book. For example, take the Latin liber, and tlie English book and leaf. Who does not know that liber means originally the inner bark of a tree ? Book is merely a disguised form of the word beech, into which it easily changes when we tone down k to ch soft ; and what could our Saxon forefathers have found, in the thick forests of their native Germany, better fitted for their rude in- scribings than the smooth and silvery bark of that lovely tree 1 The word leaf tells its own tale. The trim squares of paper, sewed or glued together, which we call by that common name, find their earliest types in those green tablets we have spoken of, pulled fresh and sappy from the forest bough, and marked with the point of a little thorn ; which, perhaps, by also pinning the pretty sheets together, may have done the double work of pen and bind- ing-needle. But fading leaves were too perishable to do more than suggest the notion of a book Some more durable material was needed to keep alive the memory of those events — ^battles, huntings, changes of encampment, death of chiefs — which chequered the simple hfe of the early world. Groves were planted, altars raised, cairns heaped up, — each to tell some tale of joy or grief; but a day soon came when the descendants of the men who had raised these memorials wondered what the decaying trees, and the grey, moss- covered heaps of stones could mean — for the story had perished when the fathers of the tribe were gathered to their rest. In some nations the earliest records were knotted cords. Strings of different colours, with knots of various sizes and variously arranged, contained the national history of the Peruvians, The Chinese and some negro tribes made use of similar cords. But it was not in man, endowed by his Creator with the glori- ous facidties of reason and of speech, to remain contented with these imperfect means of keeping alive the memory of great events. The old book of green leaves was soon exchanged for a book of tough bark, and this for tablets of thiu wood. Kecords, which men were very anxious to preserve, came to be engraven on slabs of rock or cut into plates of metal. The skins of various animals, PAECHMENT AND PAPYRUS. 11 tanned into a smooth leather, afforded to the ancients a durable substance for their documents and books. Out of this class of writing materials came the parchment and the veUum, which have not yet been superseded in the lawyer's office, for no paper has been made to equal them in lasting power. Parch- ment takes its name from the old city of Pergamos in Asia Minor, whose king, when the hterary jealousy of the Egyptians stopped the supply of papyrus, caused his subjects to write on sheep-skins, hence called Pergamefoa or parchment. VeUum, a finer material, is prepared calf-skin. Besides these, a common form of the book in Greek and Roman days consisted in tablets of wood, ivory, or metal, coated thinly with wax, on which the writer scratched the symbols of his thoughts with a bronze or iron bodkin, (ypa(j>lov or stilus.) A cut reed, dipped in gum-water which was coloured with powdered charcoal or the soot of resin, represented long ago the pen and ink of modem days. With such appliances, Egyptian, Greek, and Eoman scholars penned their early works on roUs of parchment or of papyrus, the famous rush-skin, which has given us a name for that common but very beautiful material on which we write our letters and print our books. In swampy places by the Nile, where the retreating flood had left pools, a yard or so deep, to stagnate under the copper sky, there grew in old times vast forests of tall reeds, whose triangular stems, some six or eight feet high, bore tufted plumes of hair-like fibres. Wading in these shallows, where the ibis stalked, and the mailed crocodile crashed through the canes to plunge like a log in the deep current beyond, day after day bands of dark and linen-robed Egyptians came to hew down the leafless woods with knife or axe, and bear their heavy sheaves to the dry and sandy bank. It was the famous papT/rus they cut, whose skin vied with parchment, as the writing material of the ancients. The several wrappings of the papyrus stalk being stripped off, the lengths were cemented either with the muddy water of the Nile, or more pro- bably with the sugary juices of the plant itself. As skin after skin peeled away, the more delicate tissues, of which the finest paper was made, were found wrapping the heart of the stem. Pressing 12 ANCIENT BOOK-EOOMS. and drying completed the simple process of making this much- used paper. It was then ready to receive the semi-hquid, gummy soot, with which the Xenophons and the VirgUs of old Greece and Rome traced their flowing histories or sparkling poems. Such were the chief materials of which ancient books were made, — the hard and stiff substances being formed into angular tablets, which opened either like the leaves of a European book or like the folding compartments of a screen, — ^the soft and pliable, such as leather or linen, being roUed on ornamented, smoothly- rounded sticks, as we roll up our maps and waU-diagrams. In- stead, of showing, Kke our modem libraries, trim rows of books standing shoulder to shoulder with the evenness of well-drilled soldiers on parade — the juniors gleaming with magenta and gold, the seniors hoary in ancient vellum or sombre with dingy calf — the book-room of a Plato or a Seneca would have displayed a few circular cases, resembling our common bandbox, and filled with papyrus or parchment rolls, which, standing on end, displayed the bright yellow, polished vermilion, or deep jet of their smoothly- cut edges. Let us now see what the men, who wrought out the wonders of ancient history, cut or painted on their granite slabs, their cloths of cotton or Unen, their sheep-skins, or their shps of bark. Drawing and painting were, undoubtedly, the earliest methods of conveying ideas in books. And still, pictures and sketches aid many of our books and serials to convey a clearer meaning; else why do we love to read the Illustrated News, or turn the first thing ia the Cornhill to the drawings of MiUais and of Doyle] The various gradations by which the first rude sketch changed into that wonderful invention^-a word formed of alphabetic symbols — cannot here be traced. Take two specimens of the phases which the growing art assumed, A piece of cotton cloth is before us, brilliant with crimson and yellow and pale blue, and oblong like our modem page. It is a picture-writing of old Mexico, relating the reign and conquests of King AcamapicL Down the left border runs a broad stripe of blue, divided into thirteen parts by liues resembling the rounds of a MEXICAN PICTUEE-WEITING. 13 ladder. This represents a reign of thirteen years. In each com- partment a symbol expresses the story of the year. A flower, denoting calamity, is found in two of them. But the chief story is told by the coloured forms of the centre, where we have the sovereign painted twice, as a stem-looking head, capped with a serpent crest, with a dwarfish, white-robed body, and, separate from the shoulder, a hand grasping a couple of arrows. Before this grim warrior at the top of the scroU lie a shield and a bundle of spears. Face and feet are painted a duU yellow. Before his second effigy we have four smaller heads, with closed eyes and an ominous, bloody mark upon lip and chin, denoting the capture and beheading of four hostile chiefs. The four sacked and plundered cities are depicted by roofs falling from ruined walls ; and beside each stands a symbol representing some botanical or geographical feature by which its site is characterized. Pictures of different species of tree distinguish two of the cities ; the third stands evidently by a lake, for a pan of water is drawn close to it, united by a line to mark close connection. By some such suggestive painting upon cotton cloth or aloe leaves did the frightened Mexicans, who dwelt on the coast of the great Gulf, convey to the inland towns the terrible news that Cortez and his Spaniards had appeared. They painted the great ships, the pale, bearded men, the cannon breathing flames and smoke and hurUng distant trees in spUnters to the earth ; and no sadder picture was ever unroUed in the splendid palace of Monte- zuma than the cotton cloth emblazoned with terrible meanings, which had been borne, with galloping of swiftest mules, up, up the rocky terraces of the plateau from the blue edge of the tepid sea. The link, which connects such picture-writing with that use of alphabetic symbols so familiar to us that we do not realize its wonder, lies in the hieroglyphic writing of the Egyptians. Figures of natural objects abound in that system too, but they have now got a deeper meaning — the power of expressing abstractions, or qualities considered alone. Thus the queen bee represents royalty; the buU, strength; an ostrich feather, from the evenness of its filaments, truth 14: EGYPTIAN HIEEOGLYPHICS. or justice. The figures are often, especially in later writings, re- duced to their principal parts, or even to lines, the latter being the first step toward the formation of an alphabet. For instance, a combat is represented by two arms, one bearing a shield, the other a pike ; Upper and Lower Egypt are denoted by single stems topped with a blossom or a plume, representing respectively the lotus and the papyrus. The colouring of the hieroglyphics is not in imitation of nature, as is the case with the earlier picture-writing, but follows a conventional system seldom departed from. The upper part of a canopy in blue stood for the heavens ; a thick waving line of the same, or a greenish hue, represented the sea. The sun is red with a yellow rim. Men's flesh is red; women's, yellow. Parts of the body are painted deep red ; wooden instruments are pale orange or buff; bronze utensils, green. The effect of a hiero- glyphic writing as it strikes the eye is very brilliant, the primary colours — red, yellow, and blue — being the prevailing hues. A hieroglyphic painting taken from the wall of an excavated temple in Nubia is before us. It represents the introduction of ambassadors to the great Sesostris, whose figure, seated on a throne, fills all the left side of the record. He bears as sceptre a red wand with yellow top ; his white robe is embroidered with blue and gold ; a square blue cap, rimmed with gold and adorned with a symbolic bird, covers his head ; his arms, his face, and lower legs are bare, and painted of a deep red. Two coloured ovals above his head express by figures and signs the names of the king. Four or five upright columns of hieroglyphic symbols tell the story of the ambassadors ; and, crossing two of these from the right, there comes a red arm to announce the introduction to the royal presence. To attempt a description of the symbols here woidd be absurd. No fewer than twenty-three figures of birds with spread or folded wings are there. The sign for water is fre- quently repeated. Figures of men kneel and sit and stand. There are fish, and arms and legs and eyes, crowns and flowers, a crocodile and a horse, — all in red, or blue, or yellow, or green. No other colour appears in the painting, except the grey used to shade the great figure of the king. ORIGIN OP OUR ALPHABET. 15 Then by slow, yet very sure degrees, the hieroglyphic system altered until certain signs became phonetic ; that is, expressive of sounds, not things. The Phoenicians, who had much to do with early Egypt, in adopting the art of writing probably abandoned the pictorial part of the hieroglyphic system, and retaining only the phonetics, formed out of these the first pure alphabet ; and so from Phoenicia through Greece and Eome we, in aH likelihood, got the ground-work of those twenty-six letters of which our thirty-eight thousand words are made. Much of this opening chapter deals with coimtries far from Britain, and an age anterior, in the Old World at least, to the birth of British literature. But it is not a rash conjecture, that, among the ancestors of those blue-limbed Celts who dashed so bravely into the surf near Sandwich on that old September day, to meet the brass-mailed Jegions of Caesar, there were some untutored attempts at picture-writing on such materials as the country could supply. For savage man must, in every age and clime, travel on to civilization by much the same pathway. And, in any case, it is well, when beginning to record the great victories of the British pen, to trace a few of those faltering steps which were taken, as the world grew from morning into prime, towards the produc- tion of that grand triumph of human thought and skill we call a modern book. 16 REMAINS OF CELTIC LITEKATUEE. CHAPTER II. CIllTIC WBITEES. OilEln of the Ballad. The "Annals." " Triads." IriBh manuscripts. Poems of Ossian. Latin -writera. " The Psalter of Cashel." Welsh bards. Gildaa. Among every people the earliest form of literature is the Ballad. The History and the Poetry of a nation are, in their infant forms, identical When the old Greeks taught, in their mythology, that Memory was the mother of the Muses, they embodied in a striking personification the fact that the rude language, in which men emerging from savagery used to chant the story of their deeds to their children, was couched in rough metre, in order that the ring of the lines might help the memory to retain the tale. Oldest of aU British literature, or, indeed, of aU literature in modern Europe, of which any specimens remain, are some scraps of Irish verse, found in the Annalists and ascribed to the fifth century. The Psalter of Gashel, the oldest existing manuscript of the Irish literature, is a collection of metrical legends, sung by the bards, which was compiled towards the end of the ninth century, by a man who seems to have held the offices of Bishop of Cashel and King of Munster. More important, however, as giving in careful prose a calm account of early Irish history, are the Annals of Tigemach and of the Four Masters of Ulster. The very scanty remains of the Scottish Gaelic are of much later date than the earliest Irish ballads. The poems of Ossian — ■ Fingal and Temora — which were published in 1762 and 1763 by James Macpherson, as translations from Gaelic manuscripts as old as the fourth century, are now generally looked on as literary forgeries, executed by their clever but not very scrupulous editor. The ancient manuscripts, from which he professed to have trans- lated these graphic pictures of old Celtic Hfe, have never been produced. A narrative in verse, called the Albania Buan, is thought to have been composed in the eleventh century. LATIN AUTHOES AMONG THE CELTS. 17 In Wales, which was the stronghold of Druidism, the profession of the bard was held in high honour. The poems of Taliesin, Merlin, and other bards of the sixth century, still remain. The Welsh Triads, some of which are ascribed to writers of the thir- teenth century, are sets of historical events and moral proverbs, arranged in groups of three. Both in these and in the ballads of the bards, one of the leading heroes is the great Prince Arthur, whose prowess against the Saxons was so noted in those dim days. Besides those who wrote and sang in their native Celtic tongue, there were also among the ancient British people a few Latin authors. Three may be named. First on the long and brilliant roll of British historians stands GUdas, born at Alcluyd (Dum- barton) about the beginning of the sixth century. He is known to us as the author of a History of the Britons, and an Epistle to hia countrymen, both in Latin, and both containing fiery assaults upon the Saxon invaders. Nennius, thought to have been a monk of Bangor, is said also to have written a History of the Britons. The Latin poems of St. Columbanus, an Irish missionary to the Gauls, are spoken of by Moore as " shining out in this twilight period of Latin literature with no ordinary distinction." 18 SAXON GLEEMBN AND THEIR SONGS. CHAPTER III. AITGIO-SAXON WEITEES. The Saxon gleeman. Saxon verse. The Epic BeowuH CaedmoQ. His "Paraphrase."' King Alfred. Alfric tlie Grammarian. The ** Saxon Chronicle.*' Aldhelm. Bede. Alcuin. Erigena. Dunstan. Decay. The Gleeman or Minstrel of the Anglo-Saxons was a most impor- tant person. When the evening shadows feU, and the " mead- bench " was fiUed, his scene of triumph came. His touch on the "wood of joy" had power alike to rouse the fiery passions of the warriors or soothe their ruffled moods. He related the deeds of dead heroes, or sung the praise of their living descendants ; stung the coward with his sweet-voiced scorn, or exulted in his proudest tones over the beaten foe. From earliest days his training was directed to the storing of his memory with the poetic legends of his country; and when, grown more skilful, he learned to string into rude . verses the story of his own day, it went, without his name to mark it, into the common stock of his craft. Hence the Anglo-Saxon poetry is anonymous. The structure of the verse in which these gleemen sang is thus described by Wright: — "The poetry of the Anglo-Saxons was neither modulated according to foot-measure, lite that of the Greeks and Romans, nor written with rhymes, Uke that of many modern languages. Its chief and universal characteristic was a very regular alliteration, so arranged that iu every couplet there should be two principal words in the first line beginning with the same letter, which letter must also be the initial of the first word, on which the stress of the voice falls in the second line. ' The only approach to a metrical system yet discovered is, that two risings and two fallings of the voice seem necessary to each perfect line. Two distinct measures are met with, a shorter and a longer, both commonly mixed together in the same poemj the former being used for the ordinary narrative, and the latter adopted when the CAEDMON, TUE MONK OF WHITBY. 1 9 poet sought after greater dignity. In tlie manuscripts tte Saxon poetry is always written continuously, like prose ; but tte division of tlie lines is generally marked by a point." The chief Anglo-Saxon poems that have come down to us are the Eomance of Beowulf, and Caedmon's Paraphrase. Beowulf is a nameless poem of more than 6000 lines, thought to be much older than the manuscript of it which we possess. Its hero, BEOWtixr, is a Danish soldier, who, passing through many dangers by land and sea, slays a monster, Grendel, but is himself slain in an attack upon a huge dragon. It is a striking picture of dim old Gothic days, much heightened in its effect by the minuteness of the descriptive lines. As we read, the gleaming of mail flashes in our eyes, and we hear the clanging march of the warriors, as the " bright ring-iron sings in its trappings." Meta- phors are common in the language of Beowulf, and some are of noble simplicity, such as, " They lay aloft, put to sleep with swords;" but in aU this long poem there are only five similes. This scarcity of similes is a characteristic of aJl Anglo-Saxon verse. Caedmon, the author of the Paraphrase, was originally a cow- herd near Whitby in Northumbria. Bede teUs the story of his inspiration. It was the custom in those days for each to sing in turn, as the harp was pushed round the haU at supper. This Caedmon could never do; and when he saw his turn coming, he used to slip out of the room, blushing for his want of skiU and eager to hide his shame. One night, having left the hall, he lay down to sleep in the stable; and as he slept, he dreamed that a stranger came to him, and said, " Caedmon, sing me something." " I know nothing to sing," said the poor herd, " and so I had to slink away out of the hall." "Nay," said the stranger, "but thou hast something to sing." "What must I sing?" "Sing the Creation," replied the stranger; upon which words of sweet music began to flow from the Hps that had been sealed so long. Caedmon awoke, knew the words he had been reciting, and felt a new-bom power in his breast. The mantle of song had fallen on him; and when next day, before the Abbess Hilda and some of the scholars of the place, he told what had occurred, they gave 20 THE " PAEAPHEASE " OF CAEDMON. him a passage of the Bible to test his new-found skill Within a few hours he composed, on the given subject, a poem of surpass- ing sweetness and power. Thenceforward this monk of Whitby spent his hfe lq the composition of religious poetry. The " Paraphrase '' of Caedmon contained, besides other portions of the Bible, the story of the Creation and the Fall, the history of Daniel, with many passages in the life and death of our Saviour. From the similarity of subject, a likeness has been traced between him and Milton, upon which a charge of plagiarism against our great epic poet has been most foolishly grounded. It is beheved that Caedmon died about 680. Some think that there were two poets of the name, the elder of whom composed those lines on the Creation, which are acknowledged to be among the oldest existing specimens of Anglo-Saxon, whUe the younger was the author of the " Paraphrase." The principal fragmentary Anglo-Saxon poems, which still survive, are the Battle of Finsborough ; the Traveller's Song, which contains a good many geographical names ; and the fragment of Judith. In the Saxon Chronicle of 938 we find a poem caUed AthehtarCa Song of Victory. The following extract from Caedmon's " Paraphrase" — part of the Song of Azariah — may be taken as a specimen of Anglo-Saxon verse : — Thorpe's Translation. Tha of roderum wses. Then from the firmament was Engel selbeorlit. An all-bright angel Ufan onsended. Sent from above, Wlite scyne wer. A man of beauteous form. On his wuldor-haman. In his garb of glory : Se him cwom to frofre. Who to them came for comfort, & to feorh-nere. And for their lives' salvation. Mid lufan & mid lisse. With love and with grace ; Se thone lig toaceaf. Who the flame scattered Halig and heofon-beorht. (Holy and heaven-bright) Hatan fyres. Of the hot fire, Tosweop hine & toswende. Swept it and dashed away, Thurh tha swithan miht. Through his great might, Ligges leoma. The beams of flame ; That hyra lice ne wses. So that their bodies were not Owiht geegled. Injured aught. ALFRED THE GREAT. 21 ANGLO-SAXON PROSE. Alfred. — King Alfred is tlie leading writer of Anglo-Saxon prose, whose works remain. The Welshman Asser has preserved for us an account of this royal scholar's life and works. What Alfred did for England in those dark days, when Danish pirates ravaged the land so sorely, every reader of our history knows. Here it is not as the warrior, victorious at Ethan dune and on the banks of the Lea, that we must view this greatest of the Anglo-Saxons; but as the peaceful man of letters, sitting among his books and plying his patient pen, as his time-candle burns down, riug after ring, through the hours allotted to literary toU. Both sword and pen were familiar tools in that cunning right hand. Alfred the Great was bom in 848, at Wantage in Berkshire. Two visits to Eome in his early days gave him a wider range of observation and thought than Anglo-Saxon children , commonly enjoyed. When he had reached his twelfth year, he won as a prize a beautiful book of Saxon poetry, which his mother had promised to that one of her sons who should first commit its contents to memory. Already Alfred had been noted in the family circle for the ease with which he remembered the songs sung by the wandering gleemen. When in 871 he ascended the throne of Wessex, his great mind found its destined work. Through many perils and dis- heartening changes he broke the power of the insolent Danes, taming the pirates into tillers of the Danelagh. And then, his warlike task for the present done, he turned to the elevation of his people's mind. There being few scholars in the troubled land, he invited learned men from France to preside over the leading schools. Much of his scanty leisure was spent in literary work, chiefly translations into Anglo-Saxon. His chief works were his versions of Bed^s History of the Anglo-Saxon Church, and Boethius on the Consolation of Philosophy. Translations of Orodus, of Pope Gregory's Pastorale, and an unfinished rendering of the Psalms, arc also named among his contributions to literature. 22 THE " SAXON CHEONICLE " Alfeic. — There was an author in the latter days of the Anglo- Saxon period, known as AlMc the Grammarian, about whom much confusion exists among writers on the Anglo-Saxon literature. Whoever this man was, — ^whether, as is generally thought, that monk of Abingdon who was made Archbishop of Canterbury in 995, or another man of York, or yet another of Mahnesbury, — he contributed largely to the literature of his day. Most of his writings are stiU extant. His name, the Grammarian, was taken from a Latin Grammar, which he translated from Donatus and Priscian. His Latin Glossary and Book of Latin Conversation are works of merit. But his Eighty Homilies, written in the simplest Anglo-Saxon, for the use of the common people, are undoubtedly his greatest work. Among these is his famous Paschal Sermon, which embodies the Anglo-Saxon belief on the subject of the Lord's Supper. Alfric of Canterbury died in November 1006. The famous Saxon Chronicle was the work of centuries. An Archbishop of Canterbury, named Plegmund, drawing largely from Bede, is said to have compiled the work up to 891. It was then carried on in various monasteries until 1154, when the registers ceased to be kept. As a work of history, embracing the events of many hundred years, and written for the most part by men who lived in the midst of the scenes they described, it is perhaps the most valuable inheritance we have received from the native hterature of our Saxon forefathers. A romance founded on the story of Apollonius of Tyre, — King Alfred's Will, — some Laws and Charters, — some Homilies, — and a few works on Grammar, Medicine, and Botany, — are nearly aU the specimens of Anglo-Saxon prose that remain. LATIN WORKS. The learned tongue of Europe was then, as it long continued to be, Latin, the writing of which was revived in England by Augustine and his monks. In the stem soldiering days of the Roman period, much Latin had been spoken and read, but little had been written within British bounds But the Anglo-Saxon monks. — THE VENERABLE BEDE. 23 nay, the Anglo-Saxon ladies, — wrote countless pages of Latin prose and verse. The great subject of these Latin works was theology, as was natural from the circumstance that they were chiefly the productions of the cloister. AiDHELM. — Most ancient of the Anglo-Saxon writers in Latin was Aldhelm, Abbot of Malmesbuiy and Bishop of Sherborn. He was born in Wessex about 656, of the best blood in the land. His chief teacher was an Irish monk named Meildulf, who lived a hermit life under the shade of the great oak trees in north-eastern Wilt- shire. When the followers of Meildulf were formed into a mon- astery bearing its founder's name (MeUdulfesbyrig or Malmesbury), Aldhelm was chosen to be their abbot. There he lived a peaceful life, relieving his graver cares with the sweet solace of literature and music. He died at DUton in May 709. His chief works are three ; a prose treatise in praise of Virginity, — a work in verse on the same subject, — and a book of Riddles. His Latin is impure, fiUed with Greek words, and stuffed with those alliterations and metaphors which are characteristic of Anglo-Saxon poetry. Bede. — Second in time, but first in place, comes the name of the Venerable Bede, or Beda. This illustrious man was bom about 672 or 673, at Jarrow in Durham, near the mouth of the Tync. To the newly founded monastery of Wearmouth, not far distant, the studious boy went at the age of seven, to profit by the teaching of Benedict Biscop. Thenceforward — until his death fifty -six years later — the cloisters of Wearmouth were his home; and within their quiet seclusion he wrote the great work, on which his title to the name Venerable is justly founded. In his fifty-ninth year he brought to a close his famous History of the Anglo-Saxon Church, written — like nearly all his works — in Latin. Its style is simple and easy, unsullied by the far-fetched figures which are such favourites with Aldhelm. From it we learn nearly all we know of the early history of the Anglo-Saxons and their Church. At the end of this book Bede gives a list of thirty-eight works, which he had already written or compiled. These are chiefly theological ; but there are, besides, among them, histories, poems, works on physical science, and works on grammar. 24 THE GEEAT SCHOLAR ALCTJIN. Cutlibert, one of Bede's disciples, gives us a sketch of his dying bed. From the beginning of April untU the end of May 735, he continued to sink under an attack of asthma, which had long been sapping his strength. To the very last he worked hard, dictating with his failing breath a translation into Anglo-Saxon of John's Gospel. It was morning on the 27th of May. " Master,'' said one of the young monks who wrote for him, " there is but one chapter, but thou canst iU bear questioning.'' " Write 735 quickly on," said Bede. At noon he took a solemn fare- A.D. weU of his friends, distributing among them his treasured spices and other 'gifts. By sunset there remained but one sentence of the work to do, and scarcely had the concluding words of the Gospel flowed from the pen of the writer, when the venerable monk sighed out, " It is done.'' The thread was just about to snap. Seated on that part of the floor where he had been wont to kneel in prayer, he pronounced the " Gloria Patri," and died aa the last words of the sacred utterance were breathed from his Ups. Alctjin. — The year 735, which sealed the eyes of Bede in death, is thought to have given life to the great scholar Alcuin. It is doubtful whether Alcuin was bom at York or in Scotland. He won a prominent place in the great school presided over at York by Archbishop Egbert, and when he was called to fill the chair — from which his master, Egbert, had taught so weR — he drew even greater crowds of students to this capital of the north. Besides his work as a teacher, he acted as keeper of the fine library col- lected in the Cathedral of York. While returning from a visit to Rome, he became acquainted at Parma with the Emperor Charle- magne, who invited him to France. Going thither in 782, he speedily became one of the most cherished friends of his imperial patron, who was never happier than when he was chatting and laughing unreservedly with men of thought. After a short visit to England (790-792) in the character of Imperial Envoy, Alcuin seems to have settled permanently in France. There his position was a proud one, for he was recognised as chief among the dis- tinguished group of wits and lettered men who encircled the throne of Charlemagne. The name by which he was known in ERIGENA, THE LEARNED LAYMAN. 25 this brilliant circle was Flaccus Albinus, a title under which he could converse more freely with his friend David (Charlemagne), than if the monk and the emperor always retained their distinctive names and titles. In his old age Alcuin desired earnestly to re- tire from the glare and bustle of court life to that quiet monastery round which his earliest associations were twined. He had all ready for the journey, when news came of terrible massacres and burnings in the north of England, such as had not before been suf- fered, although the Eaven's beak had left meny a deep and bloody gash upon the fair English shore. Frightened at such tales, he asked from the emperor a post, in which he might calmly pass the evening of his days. The Abbey of Tours, falling vacant just then, became his place of retirement, where he spent his learned leisure in training a new generation of scholars, and in writing most of those books by which his name has come down to us. At Tours he died in 804. The Letters of Alcuin give a life-like picture of the great events of his day. The wars of Charlemagne against^ the Saracens and the Saxons are there described ; and there, too, we find a graphic account of the inner life of the imperial court. A Life of Charle- magne has been ascribed to the pen of Alcuin; but, if there was ever such a work, it has long been lost. Of his poems, the best is an Elegy on tJie Destruction of Lindisfame hy the Danes. He wrote, besides, a long metrical narrative of the bishops and saints of the Church at York ; which, on the whole, is not very elegant Latin, and poor enough poetry. Theology, of course, was his prin- cipal study; and on this theme he wrote much, pouring from his pen a host of Scriptural commentaries and treatises on knotty points of doctrine. As a teacher he ranks much higher than he ranks as an author. His chief glory — and the thing of which his countrymen were especially proud — was the fact that he, a Briton, had been chosen to give instruction to the great Emperor of the West. Eeigena. — John Scotus or Erigena, although not a Saxon, but, as his name shows, an Irishman, claims our special notice here. Little is known of this great man. He probably settled in France 2G HOW DUNSTAN WON HIS SAINTSHIP. about 845, and lived there, under the patronage of Charles the Bald, for thirty years. He should be well remembered for two things : he was a learned layman, and a well-read Greek scholar, both characters being very rare in those benighted days. His chief works are a treatise on Predestination, in which he argues that God has fore-ordained only rewards for the good, and that man has brought evil on himself by the exercise of his own per- verted win ; a treatise on the Evicharist, denying the doctrine of transubstantiation ; and — more remarkable than either — a book On the Division of Nature, which embraces a wide range of scientific knowledge, and is copiously enriched with extracts from Greek and Latin writers. The bold, fearless nature of the man, and the familiar tone of the Frankish court Ufe, are well illustrated by an anecdote told of Erigena. One day the king and he sat on opposite sides of the table, with the courtiers ranged around. The scholar — through f or- getfulness or ignorance — transgressed some of the rules of etiquette, so as to offend the fastidious taste of those who sat by, upon which, the king asked him what was the difference between a Scot* and a sot. " Just the breadth of the table," said Erigena ; and it is more than Ukely that the royal withng ventured on no more puns, for that day at least, at the scholar's expense. Erigena is said to have died in France some time previous to the year 877. DuNSTAN. — One of the foremost Saxons of his day, though more noted for his learning than for his writings, was Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. Bom in 925, near Glastonbury in Somersetshire, and educated there in the Irish school, he became a monk at an early age. His advances in learning were surprisingly rapid, in spite of the convulsive fits to which he was subject, and under the influence of which he thought that he was hunted by devils. Arithmetic,' geometry, astronomy, and music were his favourite studies. While living at Win- chester, he was persuaded by his uncle the Bishop to crush down his early love for a girl of great beauty, and to devote himself with might and main to the austerities of a monkish life. Be- * A Scot then meant a native of Ire.itiud. DECAY OF SAXON LITEEATUKE. 27 side the church -wall he built a cell, into -which he shut himself ■with his tools of carpentry and smith-work, his paints and brushes for the illuinination of manuscripts. Seldom venturing from this retreat, he soon -won a reputation for wonderful sanctity and alliance with supernatural beings. King Edmund made him Abbot of Glastonbury; and with Edred also — the next king — he was in high favour. Banished by Edwy to Ghent, he was by Edgar recalled to become Archbishop of Canterbury. Thencefor- ward he was first man in the English realm, able not merely to re- buke the Mng, but even to bestow the crown at his pleasure. He died in 988. His works are nearly all theological, the best known being the Benedictine Rule, modified for English monks, and having its Latin interlined with a Saxon translation. He wrote also a Commentary or Set of Lectures on the Rule; which were pro- bably read by him in the various schools with which he was con- nected. The latter days of the Anglo-Saxon literature were feeble compared with the vigour of its youth. Even in the day of Alfred, when it may be said to have reached its prime, decay was at work, and the ravages of the Danes completed the blight of its promise. Those were days when many kings made their mark at the foot of charters, for want of sldll to write their names. Alfred could find no tutors able to teach the higher branches of education ; and he was forced to state publicly, in his preface to " Gregory's Pastorale," that he knew no men south of the Thames, and few south of the Humber, who could follow the sense of the pubUc prayers, or construe a Latin sentence into English. Yet that an Anglo- Saxon literature — however scanty — -did flourish, is no slight won- der, for during those ages clouds of thickest darkness hung over all Europe with a seemingly impenetrable gloom. 28 EFFECTS or THE NOEMAN CONQUEST. CHAPTER IV. ANGLO-NOEMAN WRITERS. Effects of the Conquest John of Salisbury. The Norman Romance. Romance tongues of France. Prevalence of Latin. Latin poetry. The Chronicles. Ingulphas. Ordericus Vitalia William of Malmesbury. Geoffrey of Monmouth. The " Gesta." Nature of the Romance. Stories of Arthur. Master Wace. Langton and Richard L Layamon's "Bi*ut." The " Ormulura." The Norman Conquest wrouglit great ctanges on both, the learn- ing and the literature of England. Saxon scholarship had been growing rustier every day since the great Alfred died; and those Saxon prelates who held sees at the time of the Conquest were far behind the age as men of letters. WiUiam therefore displaced many of them, to make room for polished scholars from the Continent — such as Lanfranc and Anselm, who held the see of Canterbury in succession. The Conqueror, moreover, founded many fine abbeys and convents, within whose quiet cells learned men could think and write in safe and honoured leisure. Schools sprang up on every side. The great seminaries at Oxford and Cambridge — already distin- guished as schools — were elevated to the rank of universities, des- tined to be formidable rivals of the older institutions at Paris and Bologna. Latin being the professional language of churchmen, by whom in those days nearly all learning was monopolized, we find a vast number of Latin works written during the centuries which immediately followed the Norman Conquest. At this time what is called the Scholastic Philosophy, founded on Aristotle's method of argument, grew to a most extravagant degree of favour. Hence imaginative writing of aU kinds suffered a great blight. It was only in the ballads of the people that fancy found utterance at aU. John of Salisbury, who, going to Paris in 1136, spent several years in attending the lectures of the best masters there, wrote a book called Metalogicus, exposing the absurd and childish INTE0DC7CTI0N OF THE NOEMAN EOMANCE. 29 wrangling -wMcli then bore tte dignified name of Logic. Such questions as the following were seriously discussed in learned assemblies : " If a man buy a cloak, does he also buy the hood 1" and, " If a hog be carried to market with a rope tied round its neck and held at the other end by a man, is the animal carried to market by the man or by the rope?" John of Salisbury's chief work was called Polycraiicon, a pleasant and learned treatise upon the " Frivolities of Courtiers, and the Footsteps of Philoso- phers.'' This accomplished monk died in 1182, being then Bishop of Chartres. The great feature in the literary history of this time was the introduction into England of the Norman Eomance. With Chivalry, from which it was inseparable, and from whose stirring life it took all its colours, the Eomance rose and fell. From the corrupted Latin a group of dialects arose, called the Roman or Eomance tongues ; which, owing to slight intermixture with the barbarous languages, assumed somewhat diflferent forma in Italy, France, and Spain. In France two dialects of the Eo- mance language were spoken, distinguished in name by the peculiar words used for our " yes " — oc, (hoc), and oyl, oy, or oui (probably illvd). The language of oc was spoken in the south, and the language of oyl in the north of France. The Langue d'Oc, other- wise known as the Proven gal which was sung by the famous Trouba- doiu-s, blazed out a brief day of glory, was then trampled down with all its lovely garlands of song by Montfort and his crusaders, and now exists merely as the rude patois of the province that bears its name. The Langue d'Oyl, growing into the modern French, has influenced our literature in more ways than one. The lays, sung by the trouvSres of northern France in praise of knights and knighthood, were the delight of the Norman soldiers who fought at Hastings; and when these soldiers had settled as conquerors on the English BoU, what was more natural than that they should stiU. love the old Norman lays, and that a new generation of poets should learn in the Normanized island to sing in Norman too 1 It is no wonder that the list of Saxon writers, during the time when the nation lay stunned by the Conqueror's sword, should be 30 PRINCIPAL LATIN WKITUES. short. The Saxons were then slaves j and slaves never have any literature worth speaiing of. Some romances and chronicles, echoes of the lays sung by their Norman masters, were all that remained to show that the Saxon tongue was living. Yet living it was, with a wealth of life pent up in its hidden root, which was destined at no very distant day to clothe the shorn stem with the brightest honours of leafage and bloom. LATIN WEITEKS. Let us first glance at the Latin writers of the Norman times. As has been already said, Latin was the language of churchmen, the most honoured class in the nation; and , therefore the amount of Latin writing, both in prose and verse, was very great. Sermons were often preached in Latin. Joseph op Exeter. — Josephus Iscanus, or Joseph of Exeter, was the leading Latin poet of this day. His chief works were two epic poems — one on the Trojan War, remarkable for its pure and harmonious Latin; the other, now almost altogether lost, called Antiocheis, a story of the third Crusade. Walter Mapes, or Map, Archdeacon of Oxford, also wrote Latin verses, but of quite a different stamp. A drinking-song in rhyming Latin is a well- known part of his satirical work, called the Confession of Golias, which was directed chiefly against the Church and the clergy. The chief use of Latin at this time was in the compilation of the Chronicles or historical records. We owe much to the patient monks, whose pens traced weary page after page of these old books. There is, indeed, nothing like fine writing in any of these chronicles; and in many of them fiction mixes inextricably with true history like tares in the wheat-field. Yet much good sound truth has been extracted from the old chronicles ; and from such legends as Arthur, Lear, and Cymbeline some of the finest blossoms of our hterature have sprung. Ls^GTJLPHUS. — A history of the Abbey of Croyland, or Crowland, in Lincolnshire, extending from 664 to 1091, is said to have been , written by Ingulphus, who was abbot there for thirty-four years (1075-1 109). But it is doubtful whether or not this was really the THE I^ADING CHEONICLEKS. 31 work of IngulpLus ; and certainly it must not be taken as a trust- worthy record of passing events, for it is fuU of false and impro- bable statements. Oedeeictts Vitalis. — This monk, who was bom in 1075, at the village of Atcham on the Severn, and spent all his life, after his eleventh year, abroad, was the writer of an ecclesiastical history, extending from the Creation to the year 1141. His account of the Norman Conquest is minute ; and that part of his history nar- rating the events of the first four years of the Conqueror's reign (1066-1070), is much prized. Wn.T.TAM OF Malmesbtjey. — The name of William of Malmes- bury, bom probably about the date of the Conquest, is remarkable among the many chroniclers of this period. His History of the Eng- lish Kings, in five books, extends from the landing of the Saxons to 1120; and then three other books, called Historia Novella, are added, carrying the story down to 1142. As an historian, he ex- cels in what is, comparatively speaking, careful writing, and a more exact balancing of facts than was common with the cowled chroniclers of the day. But his pages, too, abound in stories of miracles and prodigies, reflecting the "all-digestive" superstition of the time, from which the wisest heads were not free. Geoiteey of Monmouth. — This learned Welsh monk, who died in 1154, is noted for having preserved the fine antique legends of the Celtic race in his History of the Britons, which he professed to have translated from an old Welsh chronicle. Here we find the story of Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, upon which many noble works of our literature have been composed. The charm of such a book must necessarily be fatal to its value as a history ; for the writer, letting his fancy play upon the adornment of these dim legends, mixes fact with fiction in a confusion that cannot be disentangled. Gerald Barry (Giraldus Cambrensis), Henry of Huntingdon, Koger of Hoveden, and Benedict, Abbot of Peterborough, may also be named among the crowd of chroniclers who have written on the early history of England. A favourite kind of light reading, often conned by the refectory 32 NATtTEE OF THE NOKMAN K0MANCE8. fire in the long winter nights, was an olla podrida of interesting stories, gathered from every possible source and done into Latin by unknown hands. These books, called Gesta, were made up of monkish legends, chivalric romances, ghost-stories, parables, satirical flings at the foibles of women, and such stories from the classics as the Skeleton of PaUas and the Leap of Curtius. The chief reason why they are worthy of our notice here is, that Shakspere, Scott, and other great wizards of the fancy, drawing some of these dim old stories from their dusty sleep, have touched them with the wand of genius and turned the lumps of dull lead into jewels of the finest gold. NORMAN-PEENCH lyEITEES. When the chase was over, and the Norman lords caroused in their English halls around the oak board, flinging scraps of the feast to their weary hounds, that couched on the rush- strewn floor, the lays of the French trouvires were sung by wan- dering minstrels, who were always warmly welcomed and often richly paid. Many poets of English birth soon took up this foreign strain, and wrote lays in Norman-French. The deeds of Alexander, Charlemagne, Havelok the Dane, Guy of Warwick, Coeur de Lion, and other such heroes, were celebrated in these romances. In the earlier stories there is more probability; but by degrees, what critics call the "machinery" of the poem, that is, the introduction of supernatural beings as actors in the drama, becomes wUd and fanciful, borrowing largely from the weird superstitions of the North and the East. As we read, knights and ladies, grim giants dwelling in enchanted castles, misshapen dwarfs, fairies kindly and malevolent, dragons and earthdrakes, magicians with their potent wands, pass before us in a highly- coloured, much-distorted panorama. The romances relating to King Arthur possess a special interest for us, since our Laureate and a brother bard have founded poems on these old tales. The strange and profane legend of the Saint GreaJ is mixed up throughout with the story of Arthur and his Knights. The Greal was said to be the dish from which our Saviour ate the CHIEF WRITERS OF ROMANCE. 33 Last Supper. It was then taken, according to tlie legend, by Joseph of Arimathea, who used it to catch the blood flowing from the wounds of the Saviour. Too sacred for human gaze, it be- came invisible, and only revealed itself in visions to the pure knight Sir Galahad, who, having seen it, prayed for death. The names of Merlin the enchanter, the false knight Lancelot, and others, familiar to the thousands who ha^e read the " Idylls of the King," constantly occur in the romances of Arthur. As has been already stated, the chronicler Geofirey of MonmOuth, who drew his materi- als from ancient Wefsh and Breton songs, iS the chief authority that we find for the story of Arthur. Wage. — The best known of the Norman-French poets is Master Wace, as he calls himself, who was born probably at Jersey about 1112. He was educated at Caen, and there he spent nearly all his life. His cl)ief poems are two — Brut* cP Angleterre, and Eoman de Rou. The former, a translation into eight-syUabled romance verse of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of Britain, contains nearly eighteen hundred lines ; the latter, the Eomance of Eollo, written partly in the same verse, narrates the history of the Dukes of Nor- mandy from KoUo to the sixteenth year of Henry II. The central picture of this poem is the minute account of the battle df Has- tings. Wace, who became Canon of Bayeux on the recommendation of Henry II., is thought to have died in England about 1184. There are two among the Anglo-Norman romancers who are worthy to be named besides, not so much for the excellence of their verse as for th6ir prominence in Engh'sh history — Cardinal Stephen Langton, and Eichard Coeur de Lion. In the British Museum there is a manuscript sermon of Langton's, in the middle of which he breaks into a pretty French song about " la bele Aliz," the fair Alice, and then turns the story of this lady and the flowers she has been plucking in a garden, so as to bear upon the praises of the Virgin Mary. Eichard I. is said to have composed several military poems * The word Brut is said to be derived cither from the name of Brutns, ptreBt-grandson of ^neas, wliom tradition makes the first king of Britain, or from the old word brud (q rumour or history), from wliich has come our bruU. 3 34 SEMI-SAXON WEITEES. called Serveniois, in a ddition to a complaint addressed from his dungeon to the tarons of France and England, bewailing Ms long captivity. Of this latter poem Horace Walpole printed, in his " Koyal and Noble Authors," a Provengal form, -which he took from a manuscript in the library of San Lorenzo at Florence. SEMI-SAXON WEITEBS. As was natural from the miserable state of the Saxon nation immediately after the Conquest — her braver spirits forced, Uke Hereward and Robin Hood, to take to the greenwood and the marshes, whUe her weaker souls were cowed into tame submission and slavery — the works written in English of the second ptage were very few. The Saxon Chronicle, already noticed, runs on to the year 1154, when the registers come to an abrupt stop. Two works are named as the chief remains of the Semi-Saxon , literature. One, a Translation of Wace's "Brut" by Layamon, a priest of Ernleye (Areleye-Eegis), near the Severn in Worcester- shire, is placed by HaUam between the years 1155 and 1200. It rises in many passages beyond a mere translation of Wace's text, and runs to 'more than fourteen thousand long verses. Its language is said to be a western dialect of the Semi-Saxon. The Ormulum, so called from its writer, Ormin or Orm, is a metri- cal paraphrase of Scripture, which has been assigned to the second / stage of the language. Dr. Craik, however, suggests that it pro- bably belongs to the end of the thirteenth century. The language ' of the "Ormulum" is, beyond question, in a more advanced stage than that of Layamon's "Brut." MIJSSTEEL VERSUS MONK. 35 FIRST ERA OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. FROH THE BIRTH OE CHAUCEB ABOUT 1328 A.D. TO THE IKTEO- DUCTION OP PEnfTINQ BY CAXTON IST 1474 A.D. CHAPTER I. THE MIHSTEEL AlfB THE MONK. Minstrel v. Monk. Houoar to the minstreL Other names. Pictnre of a castle hall. Classes of minstrels. Their dress. Decay of the craft. Modem minstrels. English metrical romance. Robert of Gloucester. Robert Mannyng. Thomas the lihymer. Craik^s summary. The JTionk. The Scriptorium. The workmen. Picture of a copyist. Pni-ple and gold. Illumiuations. The literature of England, as indeed of all Europe, lay during the earlier and central periods of the Middle Ages in the hands of the Minstrels and the Monks. The minstrel, roaming through the land, sang ballads of love and war; the monk sat in his dim-lit ceU penning tomes of unreadable theology, very useless logic, or dry but valuable history, and varying these sterner labours with the graceful task of cop-jdng and illuminating the manuscripts, which then held the place of our printed volumes. There was no love lost between the brotherhoods of the Harp and the Missal ; for the minstrel wielded a weapon in his song which often hit monkery sly and terrible blows, and coiild, moreover, open wide the purses of rich nobles, whose coins were doled out with niggard hand to the Church. So it happened that the cloister doors were too often shut in the faces of the wearied gleemen ; and grumbling Brother Ambrose, having shot the bolt, betook himself in wrath to his cell to write a Latin treatise, as ponderous as himself, againsf the abominations of minstrelsy and minstrels. 36 THE MINSTREL IN THE CASTLE HALL. In very early days the Bards and Scalds of northern Europe sang their own verses to the music of the harp, muth as Homer used to sing by the shore of the sounding ^gean. The minstrels of later days recited sometimes their own compositions, but oftener the poems of others. And by no means ignoble was the occupation of these musical wanderers. When Alfred donned the minstrel's dress, he took a downward step, to be sure, but by no means so great a downward step as the Emperor Napoleon would take, if he laid aaide the imperial purple for the robes of a first tenor in the Italian Opera. And when Alfred walked among the tents of Guthrum's camp, a servant bore his harp behind him — a thing which would have at once revealed the secret of the singer, if it had not been a very usual occurrence. Gleeman and Jogeler (our juggler; the French, jongleur; the Latin, j'oeulator) were other names for the minstrel craft in old English days. Nor was there any more honoured or more welcome guest than this wanderer, whose time of triumph came when the rough sub- stantial supper had vanished before the hungry hunters and their dogs, and the cups of mead or wine began to circle round the haU. Mimicry and action accompanied the music and the song. And as the wine fumes mounted to .the brain, and the wild torrent of melody drove their pulses into madder flow, the battle-day seemed to have come again. War-cries rang through the smoky hall; and in the ruddy light, which streamed from crackling logs or flaring pine-knots, flushed brows grew a darker red ; and hands, veined as if with whip-cord, clutched fiercely at knife or biU-hook, and wheeled the weapon in flashing circles through the air. Love, too, was the minstrel's theme ; and here the power of his song struck even deeper to those simple hearts than when he sang of war, although the eye gleamed with another light, and the stern war- shout faded iato gentler tones. The minstrels in feudal times were probably divided into vari- ous classes, which were distinguished as Squire minstrels, Yepman minstrels, (fee. Those attached to noble houses wore the arms of their patron, hung round the neck by a silver chain. The distinc- tive badge of the profession was the wrest.or tuning-key. Many THE PICTURE OF A MINSTEEL. 37 minsh-els earned a tabor ; but iSome played on a viele, supposed to have been like a guitar, in the top of 'which one hand turned a handle, while the other touched the keys of the instrument. The minstrel's dress, of which an idea may be gathered from the fol- lowing passage, bore some resemblance to that of the monks. An old letter, written by a man who was present at the grand entertainment given at Kenilworth in 1575 to Queen Elizabeth, 'describes the dress of a minstrel, who took a prominent part in the pageant. He was dressed in a long gown of Kendal green, with sleeves hanging down to the, middle of the leg; a red belt girt his waist ; his tonsure, like a monk's, was shaven round ; his head was bare; a red ribbon hung round his neck; his shoes were cleanly blacked with soot ; aU his ruffs (this fashion belonged to Elizabeth's own day) stuck stiffly out with the setting-sticks, which then did the work of starch; and rouud his neck were suspended the arms of Islington. Although this depicts the minstrel at a later stage than that of which we write, when the profession had fallen low in public esteem, it may yet serve to give us an idea of the kind of men who wandered from hall to hall, embalming in song those picturesque old histories of early' English days, whose very roughness of flow is a new charm, and whose large admixture of highly-coloured fable, if detracting from their historic worth, yet endeared them all the more to the hearts of the simple people, whose delight it was to sing and hear them by the winter fire or beneath the summer trees. The application of the word Minstrel changed a good deal dur- ing the decay of chivalry. At first used to denote those wander- ing historians of whom we have spoken, "abstracts and brief chronicles of the time,'' who sang of love or war in lordly haUs, playing a musical . accompaniment and gesturing with imitative motions, it came to apply afterwards chiefly to the musician. The song was dropped, and so were the gestures. The Poet took up the song ; the Juggler and Tumbler took up the bodily movements ; while the Minstrel remained a player of music only. Had Alfred Tennyson lived six hundred years ago, in order to win the laurel- crown which he worthily wears as first minstrel in the land, he 38 FALL OF, THE MINSTREL CEAFT. would have needed, in addition to his fine poetic genius, something of the pliant muscle that bears Blondin along the perilous rope, and the rapid finger with which Ernst draws the music of the spheres from tightened cat-gut. An Act of 1597, by which Elizabeth included wandering • min- strels among rogues, vagabonds, and beggars, gave a mortal wound to the minstrel craft. Cromwell, too, denounced terrible penalties against fiddlers or minstrels. So low had the brotherhood of old Homer fallen ! In more enlightened days the poet and the musiciaji have found once more something like their fitting station in society j but the tumbler, . representing the mere physical element of the old min- strel craft, stUl remains among the dregs of the middle classes — but a step or two above the point where Elizabeth and Cromwell left the poor degraded minstrels. Minstrelsy. — The poetry of the Saxons was distinguished from their prose by a pecuHar kind of alliteration. Metre or rhyme they had none. These attributes "of English verse were imported from the Continent by the Normans, who copied both " from the decayed Latin. Even before the age of Constantine a . species of rhythmical poetry, in which the metrical quantity of syllables was almost wholly disregarded, and the accent alone attended to in pronunciation, became common, especially in the mouths of the lower classes of those that spoke Latin. In this rhythmical verse the number, of syllables was irregular. That rhyme was used in Latin poetry from the end of the fourth cen- tury is a distinctly proved fact. No work, in which rhyme or metre was used, can be traced in our literature until after the Norman Conquest. , A few lines in the Saxon Chronicle on the death of the Conqueror, and a short canticle, said by Matthew Paris to have been dictated by the Virgin Mary to a hermit of Durham, are perhaps the earliest speci- mens of rhyme in English verse. Through Layamon's poem, written in the time of Henry II., numbers of short verses are scattered which rhyme together pretty exactly. There are, besides, some eigbt-syUable lines in imitation of Wace's metre. But, on BIRTH OF OUR METRICAL ROMANCE. , 39 tlie whole, the Brut is, like old Saxon verse, without either metre or rhyme. Then comes a gap of a century, during which no maker of English rhymes appeared, at least so far as we know. Metrical romances in Latin and French were plentiful enough, and on them all the literary talent of the time was spent; for the one tongue was the speech of courtiers, and the other that of church- men. The English, thoroughly out of fashion, was left in its fall to the serfs and boors of the land. But a day came, about the opening of the thirteenth pentury, when the enslaved speech began to raise its diminished head and assert its native power, and then metrical romances were written in an English form. These first faltering steps of an infant lite- rature were nearly aU translations from the French romances, some of which have been already noticed. Tyrwhitt says: "I am inclined to believe that we have no English romance prior to the age of Chaucer, which is not a translation or imitation of some earlier French romance." The story-books, called Gesta, whose anecdotes were the delight of the cloister, and often lent a charm to the teachings of the pulpit, were the grand store-houses, from which the romancers drew the material of their tales. A monk, named Eobert of Gloucester, whose known Kfe ia summed up in the single fact that he lived in the abbey of that city, wrote, after 1278, a Rhyming CArowicZe in English, narrating British history to the end of Henry III.'s reign. The earlier part of this work, which seems to be written in west country English, and is printed in lines of fourteen syllables, is a free translation from Geoffrey of Monmouth. Warton condemns it as "totally destitute of art or imagination." Kobert Mannyng of Ermine in Lincolnshire, writing half a century later, also produced a Rhyming Chronicle, translated from the French of Wace and Langtoft. The latter of these was a canon regular of St. Austin, at Bridlington in Yorkshire. An- other name weU known in the list of minstrels is that of Thomas the Ehymer, who flourished during the thirteenth century in the south of Scotland. His full name is thought to have been Thomas 40 HISTOEY OF ENGLISH METKICAL EOMANCE. Learmount of Ercildoun (now Eaiiston near Melrose). He and an unknown poet, Kendal, are mentioned by Eobert of Brunne as the authors of " Sir Tristrem," a romance which was little known until it was published by Sir Walter Scott at the outset of his literal^ career. Dr. Craik thus sums up the leading facts in the history of English metrical romance : — • 1. At least the first examples pf it were translations from the French. 2. If any such were produced so early as before the close of the twelfth century (of which we have no evidence), they were pro- bably designed for the entertainment of the mere commonalty, to whom alone the French language was unknown. 3. In the thirteenth century were composed the, earliest of those we now possess in their original form. 4. In the fourteenth century the English took the place of the French metrical romance in all classes. This was its bright- est era. 5. In the fifteenth it was supplanted by another species of poetry, among the more educated classes, and had also to contend with another rival in the prose romance ; but, nevertheless, it still continued to be produced, although in less quantity and of an inferior fabric. 6. It did not altogether cease to be read and written until after the commencement of the sixteenth century. ■ 7. From that time the taste for this earliest form of our poetical literature lay asleep, until, after the lapse of three hundred years, it was re-awakened in this century by Scott. The Monk. — Let us now turn from the noisy brilliant scenes, in which the old minstrel was most at home, to the quiet gloom of monastic life, and see what literary work went on within those : thick oaken doors, studded with heavy nails, whose tinges creaked out but a churlish welcome to the belated harpist, or often refused to creak at all "VVe pass through the arched gateway — rounded if the building be of the earlier Norman style, pointed if of the later Gothic — and THE SCEIPTOEIUM. 41 \ across the broad quadrangle, through a smaller door into the arched and pillared cloister; where draughts are not unfrequent invaders through the unglazed loop-holes, and the green damp has traced its grotesque velvet-work upon the cold stone walls. A few sombre figures glide silently through the shadowy stillness; but we hnger not here. Up a narrow stair of winding stone into a higher room, arched and pillared too, but lighter, and dotted with longjrobed monks, aU intent upon real and useful work — doing that service to our literature for which the mediaeval mon- astery deserves our warmest gratitude. We .have reached the Scriptorium ; and its chilly bareness certainly presents a striking contrast to the snug, carpeted, and thick-curtained libraries, in which modem clergymen pen their weekly sermons, or their occa- sional essays and reviews. Round the naked stone walls wooden chests are ranged,' heaped with the precious manuscripts, to multi- ply and adorn which is the task of those cowled and dark-skirted men who toil in that work-room of the Abbey. And over the rude desks and tables of the time heads of many hues are bending — choir- boys with locks of curly flax ; grave-browed men, whose ring of raven hair, surrounding the shaven crown, proclaims the noon of life ; and the thinly silvered scalp of weak old age — aU intent upon their work. Now and then a novice, to whom a common work, or some much-used Service-book for the choir, has been intrusted, crosses to the side of that keen-eyed, wrinkled monk, ■ who has power in his very glance, and humbly begs advice as to the form of a letter or the colouring of a design. And ever and anon the grave tone of this same instructor checks with a few calm words the buzz that sometimes rises from the boyish monks whom he guides. There are things in that Scriptorium which we miss in our writing-desks and on our study-tables. Besides the quills and coloured inks, there are reed-pens, pots of brilliant paint, phials of gold and silver size, hair pencils of various shapes and kinds : for the work of the copyist-monks is rather that of the artist than of the mere penman ; and although the figures, which adorn the brilliant illuminations of those -Missals and Psalters that preserve in the nineteenth century the arts of dead ages, have 42 THE COPYIST AT WOEK. much of tlie stiffness of all mediaeval drawing, yet, for beauty of design and richness' of colouring, many productions of the quiet Scriptorium remain unsurpassed by modern pencils. Let us draw near to this cowled transcriber — evidently a moni of note from his solitary state — who sits apart ou his straight- backed wooden chair, and note the progress of his work. He is copying the Gospels upon vellum, and has just put the finishing touches to a painting, glowing with scarlet and gol^ and blue lace-work, fantastically formed of intermingled flowers and birds, which has occupied the hot noonti4e hours of a full week. Th§ brUliant tracery forms, the initial letter of a chapter. This done, he takes the pen, and rapidly, with practised hand, traces in black ink the thick perpendicular strokes of that old English text-hand, which has given their name to our black-letter manuscripts. While the right hand guides the pen, the left holds a knife, whose point, pressed upon the quickly blackening vellum, is ever ready to shape a clumsy hiie or erase a wrong word. There are no capitals except the brilliant and fanciful initials ; nor any points except a slight dash, occasionally used to divide the sentences. When the book is finished, which may be the work of years if the decorations are minute and profuse, the title will, probably be painted in red ink (hence the word Rubric) ; and the name of the copyist, with date and place of completion, wiU also shine in bril- liant scarlet or other coloured ink .at the 'foot of the last page. The headings of the various chapters are also written for the most part in red ink. Perhaps the richest- specimens of the ancient manuscript are those copies of the Gospels on purple veUum, written in silver letters with thei sacred names in gold, which were favourite pro- ductions of the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries. These, how- ever, were not originally of English growth, but were the offspring of Greek luxury. It was upon the initial letters and the marginal ornaments, with which the pages of these mediaeval manuscripts were adorned, that the taste and labou* of the illuminators were chiefly bestowed. Angelic and. human figures, birds, beasts, and fishes, flowers, shells, SPLENDOURS OF ILLUMINATION. 43 and leaves, were all pressed into the service of tlie patient monks. Rare and exquisite patterns grew under their unwearying pencils in the stUl Scriptorium, until each page of the Missal or Service- book presented an embroidery of gorgeous colouring, resembling nothing so much as the many-hued splendours of a great cathedral window, through which the rays of the setting sun stream in a flood of rainbow glory. It would be vain to attempt a description of these beautiful works. Many pages of this book might be filled with a mere enumeration of the various figures and colours combined in one of the splendid designs. How hard and how long the monks must have worked at their copying-desks can only be judged by those who have turned over the leaves of an illuminated Missal, executed in the Scriptorium of some old abbey. 44 MANDEVUiUS's TRAVELS. CHAPTER II. SIR JOHN DE HAMDEVILLE. Born about 1300 A.D Died 1372 A.D. First English prose. Mandevllle's birth. Ills travels. His return. His book Tfritten. His wild Stories. Value of his book. Illustrative extract. The earliest writer of English prose, whose work survives, was Sir John de Mandeville. He was bom at St. Albans in Hertfordshire about the year 1300. Educated for the medical prbfession, he had scarcely finished his studies when, impelled by the irresistible desire of change, or, perhaps, by some deeper motive of which we know nothing, he set out at the age of twenty- two to travel in distant lands. He joined a Mahometan army in Palestine. He saw some service under the Sultan of Egypt. He penetra,ted even as far as Cathay (China), where, we are told, he lived for three years at Pekin. Turkey, Persia, Armenia, India, Ethiopia, Libya, and many other places, were also visited by him. His knowledge of medicine often stood his friend) no doubt, aniong the rude tribes with whom he met. For thirty-four years Mandeville roved over the wildest regions of the Old World, looked upon as lost and dead by all his friends at home. And when he came back a worn greybeard, he found, instead of the many fresh cheeks and bright eyes of the friends from whom he had pal;^;ed so long ago, only the grave welcome of a few thin and withered men. 1356 In or about the year 1356, immediately after his return, A.D. he wrote in Latin a Narrative of his Travels. This work was afterwards translated by Ijimself into French, and thence into English. MandeviEe's great fault as a writer was, that he loaded his pages with the wildest and most absurd stories, picked up by the way, and admitted upon the shallowest testimony — often, indeed, upon none at aU, The most extravagant ofehoots of th^ chival- EXTRAVAGANT STOEIES OF OLD TRAVEL. 45 reus Eomance find a parallel in many passages of the oldest work of English prose, in which monsters, giants, and demons are found to swarm. Such stories as of men with tails, and of a bird native to Madagascar that could carry an elephant in its talons, are given with the greatest seriousness. Much, however, as we may laugh at the extravagant tone of the work, it possesses for us a deep interest, both as a remarkable monument of our noble old speech in its infancy, and as a specimen of the style of thought common in an unripe age. Mandeville, roving again from England, died and was buried at Liege in 1372. The following extract is from the seventh chapter of his Travels, entitled, " Of the Pilgrimages in Jerusalem, and of the Holy Places thereaboute :" — And zee schuU undirstonde that whan men comen to Jerusalem her first pilgrymage is to the chirche of the Holy Sepulor wher oure Lord was huryed, that is withoute the cytee on the north syde. But it is now enclosed in with the ton wall. And there is a full fair chirche all rownd, and open above, and covered with leed. And on the west Syde is a fair tour and an high for belles strongly made. And in the myddes of the chirche is a tabernacle as it wer a lytyll hows, made with a low lityll dore ; and that tabernacle is made in maner of a half a compas right cariousely and richely made of gold and azure and othere riche coloures, full nobelyche made. And in the lyght side of that tabernacle is the sepulcre of oure Lord. And the tabernacle is viij fote long and v fote wide, and. xj fate in heghte. And it is not longe sitbe the sepulcre was all open, that men myghte kisse it and touche it. Bat for pil^rymes that comen thider peyned hem to breke the ston in peces, or in pondr ; therefore the Soudan [Sultan] hath do make a wall aboute the sepolcr that no man may towche it. But in the left syde of the wall of the tabernacle is well the heighte of a man, is a gret ston, to the quautytee of a mannes hed, that was of the holy sepulcr, and that ston kissen the pilgrymes that comen thider. .In that tabernacle ben no wyndowes, but it is all made light with lampes that hangen befor the sepulcr. And there is a lampe that hongeth befor the sepulcr that brenneth light, and on the (rode ffryday it goth out he him self, at that hour that our Lo;:d roos fro deth to lyve. .Also within the chirche at the right syde besyde the queer of the churche is the Mount of Calvarye, wher our Lord was dOn on the cros. And it is a roche of white coloure and a lytill medled with red. And the cros was set in a morteys in the same roche, and on that roche dropped the wouudes of our Lord, whan lie was pyned on the cros, and that is cleped [called] Golgatha. And men gon up to that Oolgatha be degrees [jrfep«], And in the place of that morteys was Adames hed found after Noes flode, in tokene that the synnes of Adam soholde ben bought in that same place. And upon that roche made Abraham sacrifise to our Lord. 46 THE STUDENTS OF OLD OXFOHD, CHAPTER III. JOHN DE ■WYCLUFE. Born about 1324 A.D Died 1384 A.D. WycUffe's With. Enters Oxford. His rapid rise. The Mendicant Fiiars. Begins to lecture. Envoy at Bruges. V/ycliffe at St. Paul's. Synod of Lambeth. His sickness. The Poor Priests. Life at Lutterworth.' His deatli. , His bones burned. The English Bible. Character of his prose. niustratlTe extract. On a rocky point, overhanging tte Tees in Yorkshire, a manor- house stood, in which once lived the WycHffes of Wycliffe.* There, probably in 1324, a boy was bom, who has gilded the family name with undying lustre. Among the rich woodlands of that fertile valley he grew up, taught, we know not certainly where or by whom, until he reached his sixteenth year. Then a new world opened upon the country squire's son. Travelling to Oxford on horseback, and spending, no doubt, many weeks upon the rough and perilous journey, young 1340 WyclifiFe was entered as a Commoner upon the books of A.D. Queen's College, a newly founded school From Queen's he soon removed to Merton. The students of Oxford in that day were, as we learn ' from Chaucer's pictured page, as strongly marked out into reading men and fast men as they are in our own century. Among the motley company that rode out of the Tabard gateway down the Canterbury road, there was " a clerk of Oxenf orde," lean and logcal, who would rather have had twenty red or black-bound books at his bed's head than wear the richest robes or revel in the sweetest joys of music; and in violent contrast to this good threadbare bookworm, the Miller in iis tale gives a full- length portrait of the dissolute "parish clerk Absolon," who, clad in * The name Wi/cligi me&m the "cliff by the water." The family took their surname &-£im their manor. THE DOCTOR OF DIVINITY. 47 hosen red and liglit-blue kirtle, ■witli a snowy surplice flowing around Ms dainty limbs, and the windows of St. Paul's carved upon his shoes, minced through the service of the parish church. Many such did John Wyclifife meet in the streets and schools of Oxford ; but his place must have been, not among the fast men in the brew-houses, ringing with the sounds of fiddle and dance, but among the red-bound books in his quiet rooms, else how could he have won a Fellowship in Merton, which was then con- sidered the most learned college in Oxford? . His rise was rapid. In 1361 he was presented to the college living of Fylingham ; and towards the close of the same year he was elected Master of Balliol College. Four years later, the Primate appointed him to the Wardenship of Canterbury HaU, in the room of the deposed WodehaU. Mendicant friars at that time swarmed all over England, who, by the sale of relics and pardons "all hot from Eome," fleeced the poor country folk of their hard-earned groats. Such a one was the Pardoner of the " Canterbury Tales," who sold clouts and pige' bones as holy relics, for money, wool, cheese, and wheat, swindling even the poorest widow out of her mite; and all the W/hUe, amid the farrago of old stories, with which he pleased his gaping audience, taking up the hypocritical cry, " Kadtx malorum est cupiditas." Such canting and cheating kindled rage in the honest heart of Wycliffe, who directed Ms sturdy eloquence against them. In his treatise called Objections to Friars, he maintained that the Gospel in its freedom, without error of man, is the sole rule of religion. And thus he struck the key-note in the noble music of Ms life. In 1372 Wyclifife took the degree of D.D. at Oxford, and thus became qualified to lecture as a Professor of Divinity. Armed with this new power, the plain-speaking, true-hearted Englishman gathered a band of pupUs in a wooden hall, roughly plastered and roofed with thatch, like all Oxford at that date, and there lifted up Ms voice boldly against the corrupted doctrines and the swollen avarice of the Church. His fame led the rulers of England to send him, in 1374, as 48 WYCLTPPE AT OLD ST. PATJL'S. envoy to Bruges, to protest against certain encroacWments of the papal power. ' A momentous journey it was to Wycliffe, for at Bruges he seems to have become acquainted with John of Ghent, Duke of Lancaster, who ^"hielded the daring reformer in many a perilous hour. Already there was thunder in the air, gathering and blackening round Wycliffe's path. A charge of heresy was laid 1377 against him, and he was summoned before the Houses of A.D. Convocation. On the 19th of February, 1377, a vener- able man, his face "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," stood within old St. Paul's, a grey beard sweeping his breast, a dark belted robe flowing to his feet, and a tall white staff held firmly in his thin hand. But he did not stand alone. The eldest living son of the King, and the Earl Marshal of England stood by his side; for Lancaster and Percy loved and honoured the brave Oxford Doctor. The storm passed harmless by. A dispute which rose between Lancaster and Bishop Court- ney as to whether the accused should sit or stand, Courtney in- sisting on the. latter, excited so fierce a tumult that the meeting was dissolved. During all the evening shouting mobs ran riot through the streets of London. Tben King Edward died, and his grandson Richard reigned. So marked a man had Wycliffe become in this Beformatton struggle, that the first Parliament of Richard IL submitted to hiTn a question, " Was it lawful to keep back the treasure of the king- dom for its own defence, instead of sending it away to the Pope T " Who can need to be told the reply ? This could not go on without drawing forth thunder from the banks of Tiber. ^ Five bulls, couched in the fiercest words, were launched against that " master in error," John Wycliffe, who was forthwith to be committed to jaiL Summoned before a synod at Lambeth in April 1378, he replied to aU charges manfuUy, and to honest minds most convincingly. And yet, in spite of this increased boldness, he was not seized and martyred; because nearly all English laymen were on his side — some from political motives, others on religious grounds. The pope and his creatures, THE SHUTTING OF HIS DIVINITY CLASS. ^46 though their hearts burned to smite him down, dared not do so, for thej feared the people. It was then that a wasting sickness seized him at Oxford. Hia health, worn out with study, gave way under the mental wear of these troubled years. He lay, as it seemed, on the point of death, when eight men — four doctors to represent the mendicant friars, and four aldermen of the town — entered his chamber. They came to talk the old man into an undoing of his life's work — into a penitent recantation of what they called his errors. He listened until they had done, then " holding them with his gKtteringeye," he signed to his servant to raise him in the bed, and in strong, defiant tone he cried, " I shall not die, but hve; and again declare the evil deeds of the friars ! " What could they do but grow pale and go '! As he lay panting on the pillow, new Hfe shot through his tingling nerves ; and in no long time he rose again from that bed to do glorious battle in the cause of truth. His attack upon transubstantiation drew upon him the wrath of his University. One day in 1381 the Chancellor entered his class-room, and in the hearing of his scholars condemned his teaching as heretical This finally led to the shutting of his class. But it was not in the power of Chancellors or Primates to stop the spread of light in the land. Though proceedings were taken against the disciples of Wycliffe — and all the more bitterly when that fiery adherent of the pope, Courtney, became Archbishop of Canterbury — ^yet their number constantly increased. Not one vmce, but many were now heard in the land. " Poor priests," as they were called, trudged barefoot even into the remotest hamlets, preaching, in defiance of the clergy, wherever they could gather a crowd to hear them, in church, church-yard, market-place, or fair. So the good seed was sown broad-cast over England ; and, though often trampled fiercely down by the infuriated priesthood of a later day, especially in London and the great towns, in many a green far-off country nook it sprang and ripened and safely bore its golden fruit. Nearly five years before he was silenced at Oxford, WycKffe had become Rector of Lutterworth, a Leicestershire parish, watered 4 60 THE PAESON OF LtrTTER"WOETH. by the little river Swift. Until 1381 his time was about equally divided between his cottagers in Leicestershire and his students at Oxford But after that date he devoted himself with earnest heart to the work of a country parson; and never does the great Dr. Wycliffe, first scholar of his day and keenest logician of the Oxford halls, seem so truly great as when we trace his .footsteps among the hovels of Lutterworth. A sorry place it would have seemed to a townsman of smart modem Lutterworth, glowing with red brick and gaslight. Two or three rows of thatched cabins, bmlt chiefly of lath and plaster, straggled along the sloping banks of the Swift. From the uneven street one stepped in upon a foul earthen floor. The rafters above hung thick with black soot, for there were no chimneys, and the smoke found its way out of door or window as it best could. There, in the meanest hut, might the good rector be often seen, cheering with kind words the sick peasant, who had then no better bed than a heap of straw, and no softer pillow than a log of wood. The morning he spent among his books, revising a Latin treatise, or adding some sentences to the English Bible that was fast growing beneath his patient pen. In the afternoon he girt his long dark robe about him, took his white stafi", and went out among his flock. And on Sundays, clad in a gorgeous vestment, adorned with golden cherubs, of which some tarnished fragments are still shown, he preached the truth in homely, nervous English words, from that pulpit of carved oak which stands in Lutterworth Church — a sacred memorial of one who has worthily been called " The morning star of our English Eeformation." So passed the last years of this great life. In his sixtieth year, while he was engaged in sacred service within the chancel of Lutterworth Church, paralysis, which had already Dee. 31, shaken his frame severely, struck him down to die. A 1384 _day or two later, in the last hours of the dying year, his A.D. great intrepid spirit passed away from the clouds and toils of earth. More than forty years had swept by, when the pent-up vengeance of his enemies, from which the h'ving man had been mercifully THE WOEKS OF JOHN WYCLIFFE. 51 eliielded, burst in impotent fury upon liis mouldered corpsa The cuffin was torn up, and carried to the little bridge over the Swift, where his bones were burned to ashes and scattered on the waters of the brook. " Thus," says worthy Thomas Fuller, " the brook conveyed his ashes to Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean j and thus the ashes of Wycliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed aU. the world over." As a^vriter, Wycliffe's great merit lies in his having given to England the first English version of the wliole Bible. There were already existing a few English fragments, such as many of the Psalms, certain portions of Mark and Luke, and some of' the Epistles. But to the mass of the people the Bible was a sealed book, locked up in a dead and foreign tongue. Wycliffe soon saw the incalculable value of an English Bible in the work of the English Eeformation, and set himseK to the noble task of giving a boon so precious to his native land. No doubt he sought the aid of other pens, but to what extent we cannot now determine. The greater part of the work — perhaps the whole — ^was done during those quiet years at Lutterworth, between 1381 and his death. It is nearly certain that he saw the work finished before he died. A complete edition of Wycliffe's Bible, in five volumes, was issued in 1850 from the Oxford Press. His Latin works are very numerous. One of the principal was called Tritdogus, which embodies his opinions in a series of con- versations carried on by Truth, Wisdom, and Falsehood. It contains, no doubt, the essence of his class lectures. From his country parsonage by the Swift he poured forth an incredible number of English tracts and treatises, addressed to the people, and thoroughly leavened with his earnest love of truth. The characteristic feature of his English is a manly ruggedness. Content to know that his meanmg is strongly and clearly put, he often disdains all elegance of style, and sometimes lapses into lame and slovenly language. We may compare him, as an opponent of error, not to a gallant master of fence, glistening in well-cut taffeta, who with keen glittering rapier lunges home to the heart. 52 SPECIMEN OF WYCLIPFe's PEOSE. wMle lie never loses tlie elegance of posture and movement, the poise of body and of blade, whicli his graceful art has taught him J but rather to the sturdy leather-clad rustic, who wields his oaken quarter-staff with such sweeping vigour, that in a twinkling he beats down his opponent's guard, and with a rattling shower of heavy blows lays the luckless fellow bleeding and sense- less on the earth. SPECIMEN OF WYCLIFFE'S PROSE. ^ PAST OF IFKE XXIV. ' But in day of the woke M eerli, thei camen to the graue, and broughten swete smelling spices that thei hadden arayed. And thei founden the stoon turnyd awey fro the graxie. And thei geden in and foundun not the bodi of the Lord Jhesus. And it was don, the while thei weren astonyed imthought of this thing, lo twey men stodun bisidis hem in schynyng cloth. And whanne thei dredden and bowiden her semblaunt into erthe, thei seiden to hem, what seeken ye him that lyueth with deede men ? He is not here ; but he is risun : haue ye minde how he spak to yon whanne he was yit in Golilee, and seide, for it behoneth mannes sone to be bitakun into the hondis of syuful men ; and to be crucifyed: and the thridde day to tise agen? And thei bithoughten on hise wordis, and thei geden agen fro the graue : and teelden alle these thingis to the ellevene and to alle othere. And there was Marye Maudeley'n and Jone and Marye of James, and othere wymmen that weren with hem, that seiden to Apostlia these thingis. EAELY UFK OF CHAXJCER. 53 CHAPTEE IV. GEOFFEEY CHAUCEK. £om alicat 1328 A.D Bled 1100 A.S. Chaucer'rearly life. Royal patronage. Visits Genoa. Comptroller of Customs. Sunshin& Under Richard II. Flight of the poet. Abroad. In the Tower. Evening of life. Character. The " Canterbury Tales." Manner of reading Chaucer. Minor works. Illustrative extracts. Chaucer is a star of the first magnitude. First great writer of English verse, he proudly wears the honoured title, — "Father of English Poetry;" nor can the most brilliant of his successors feel ashamed of such a lineage. The accounts of his early Hfe are very uncertain. He calls him- self a Londoner ; and an inscription on his tomb, which signified that in 1400 he died at the age of. seventy-two, seems to fix his birth in the year 1328. The words "PhUogenet, of Cambridge, Clerk," which occur in one of his earliest works in reference to himself, have caused it to be inferred that he was educated at Cambridge. But Warton and others claim him as an Oxford man too; and, if he studied there, it is more than probable that he sat at the feet of WycliflFe, and imbibed the doctrines of the great reformer. An entry in some old regi.stcr of the Inns of Court is said to state, that " Geffrey Chaucer was fined two shillings for beating a Franciscane friar in Fleet Street ; " which ebullition of young blood is the only recorded event of his supposed law-studies in the Inner Temple. The favour of John of Ghent, won we know not how, intro- duced him to Court and the favour of King Edward III. The handsome and accomplished poet, with his red lips and graceful shape, was the very mtin to win Ms way in a courtly circle. He went with the army to France, where in 1359 he was made 54 SUNSHINE AND SHADOW. ' prisoner at the siege of Eetters. On his release and return home, whenever that happened, we find his prospects grow brighter and brighter. One grant following another, showed how dear the man of letters, who could also wield a sword, was to the brave old • king. When, in his thirty-ninth year (1367), the poet received a pension of 20 marks ; which, as each sUvBr mark weighed eight ounces and was worth £10 of our money, was equivalent to £200 a year. Five years later, he was sent with two others to Genoa, on an important commercial mission ; during which trip 1372 he is thought to have travelled in northern Italy, to A.D. have visited Petrarch at, Padua, and to have heard from the very . lips of that " old man eloquent," the story of " Patient GrisUde," which he afterwai'ds embodied ip the Olerkes Tale. Then came other royal grants,-^— a pitcher of wine daily for life — the office of Comptroller of Customs of wool, wine, (fee, in the Port of London — the wardship of a rich heir, for three years' guardianship of whom he got £104. During this sunshine of kingly favour he married a maid of honour, whose sister afterwards became the wife of his patron, John of Ghent. By this union a pension of 100 shillings, lately conferred on his wife, was added to his income. Two more diplomatic missions, to Flanders and to France, proved the confidence reposed in him by his royal master. Thus rich, honoured, useful, and, we may conjecture, happy, Geof- frey Chaucer saw in 1377 the grey head of the third Edward go down with sorrow to the grave. At first, under the new reign, all was bright, and continued so for some seven years. In the first year of Eichard II. his daily gallon of vrine was exchanged for a pension of 20 marks, and other gifts were bestowed on the prosperous comptroller. But soon his sun was darkly clouded. It was not likely that he could avoid taking an active part in the difficulties that arose between Richard andXancaster; and, as his feelings were strongly unlisted on the side of the duke, he fell into disfavour with the king. Embroiled especially in a London riot, raised by John of North- ampton, who was a friend of Lancaster, the poet was forced to flee to the Continent. There, in Hainault, in Frauce, and in Zee- OLD AGE AND DEATH. 55 land, lie lived with his wife and children for eighteen months, becoming at last almost penmless through generosity to his fellow-exiles, and the failure of supplies from^ home, where his agents had treacherously appropriated his rents. Ketuming, he was flung into the Tower, and lay there until he was forced to sell his two pensions to save his family from starva- tion; nor was he freed untU, indignant at the base ingratitude of those in whose cause he was suffering, and pressed both by the threats and the entreaties of the Court, he confessed his gmlt and denounced, his accomplices. Then, Lancaster being once more in the ascendant, royal favour smiled on the poet. He was made Clerk of Works at Westminster and other places, receiving, in heu of the pensions he had been forced to seU, a pension of £20 and an annual pipe of wine. Wearied with public life, he retired about 1391 to his house at Woodstock, where he sat down in sober age and country quiet to write his great work— The Canterbury Tales. His remaining days were spent at Woodstock and Donnington Castle, both gifts from the princely Lancaster ; and within these sheltering walls he rested and wrote. The accession of Henry IV. brought good for- tune to the pofet, whose pension was doubled; but he did not live long to enjoy this greater wealth. Within a house which is said to have stood in a garden near the site of Henry the Seventh's Chapel at Westminster, he died on the 25th of October, 1400. His body was buried close by in the Abbey, where the dust of England's noblest dead '^ laid. Chaucer's chequered life was such as to wear off aU the Httle roughnesses and conceits of his earlier character, and bring the fine grain of the manly nature below into full view. He saw both the lights and the shadows of human existence, — at one time the admired of a brUliant Court, at another a prisoner and an exUe. But through every change he seems to have borne a heart unsoured by care ; and even in old age, when his locks hung in silver threads beneath his buttoned bonnet, a joyous spirit shone in his, wrinkled face. A small, fair, round-trimmed beard fringed those lips, whose red fulness was remarked as a special beauty in the hand- 56 THE " CANTEEB0EY TALES." some face of the young poet. His common dress consisted of rod ho^e, homed shoes, and a loose frock of camlet, reaching to the kne^ with wide sleeves fastened at the wrist. Chaucer's fame as a writer rests chiefly upon his Canterbury . Tales. The idea of the poems is, perhaps, borrowed from the "Decameron" of Boccaccio, in which a hundred tales are supposed to be told after dinner by the persons spending ten days in a country house near Florence during a time of plague. Chaucer's plan is this : A company of some twenty-nine or thirty pilgrims collect at the Tabard Inn in Southwark, bound for the shrine of St. Thomas ^.-Becket at Canterbury. The motley gathering contains specimens of nearly every character then common in the streets and homes of England. After the Prologue has described the company and their start, a brave Knight, bronzed by the Syrian sun, tells the first tale. Then follows the Miller, " dronken of ale;" and so the tale goes round, often merrily, but sometimes of a sadder tone, beguiling the miles of the weary road. As Chaucer sketches the plan of the work in his Prologue, each pilgrim ought to teU two stories when going to Canterbury, and two more on the homeward way; and the whole proceedings were to be wound up with a supper at the Tabard, where the teller of the best tales was to be entertained by the rest of the band. The poet did not live to complete his design. Twenty-four tales only are given ; the arrival at Canterbury, the scenes at the shrine, the tales of the return, the wind-up supper, are all untold. Two of the stories — 'the Tale of Meliieus and the Persones Tale — are in prose, and afford a very favourable specimen of Chaucer's power in that kind of writing. Nothing could surpass the "Canterbury Tales," as a series of pictures of the middle-class English life during the four- teenth century. Every character is a perfect study, drawn from the Uf e with a free yet careful hand, — in effect broad, and brilliant in colour, but painted with a minuteness of touch and a careful finish that remind us strongly of the elaborate penciUin^ of our Pre-Kaphaehte artists, whose every ivy-leaf and straw is a perfect picture. This great work was written during the quiet sunset of Chaucer's minor works. 57 tbe poet's life, ■when, after his sixtieth, year, he rested from the toils and troubles of a public career. It is composed in pentameter couplets, — a form of verse thoroughly suited to the spirit of our English tongue, and used by almost all the great masters of our Uteratufe. The abundance of French words in the language of Chaucer is easily accounted for by the fact that French was not in the poet's day quite superseded as the speech of the upper classes in England. Many of Chaucer'? words require a French accentuation ; such as aventHre, liotur, cordge. There has been much discussion about the true way of reading Chaucer; some maintaining that the rhythm is to be preserved by certain pauses, while others, following Tyrwhitt, sound as a separate syllable the e, which is now silent at the end of so many words. Most prefer the latter method, which has the advantage of giving to the language an antique air, suitable to the cast of the plot and the period of the poem. The ed at the end of certain verbs, and the es terminating nouns in the plural number or ihe posses- sive case, are always to be made separate syllables. Most of Chaucer's minor and earlier works are either in part or altogether translated from French, Italian, and Latin. The Court of Lme, and a heavy tra^c poem in five books, called Troilus and Gresdde, are thought to have been the work of his college days. The Romaunt of the Rose is an allegory, in which the troubled course of true love is painted in rich descriptive verse. The House of Fame depicts a dream, in which the poet is borne by a huge eagle to a temple of beryl, built on a rock of ice, where he sees the Goddess of Fame dispensing her favours from a carbuncle throne. The Legende of Goode Women narrates some passages in the lives of Cleopatra, Dido, Ariadne, and other dames of old classic renown. But most beautiful of all these is the allegory called The Flour and the Lefe, of which the plot is thus given: " A gentlewoman out of an arbour, in a grove, seeth a great com- p&nie of knights and ladies in a daunce upon the greene grasse; the which being ended, they all kneele down, and do honour to the daisie, some to the flower, and some to the leafe. The mean- ing hereof is this:— They which honour the flower, a thing fading 58 " THE ENIGHT AND THE SQUIEE." with every blast, are suct as looke after beautie and woddly pleasure. But they that honour the leafe, ■which" abideth with the root, notwithstanding the frosts and winter storms, are they which follow vertue and during qualities' without regard of worldly respects." While a prisoner in the Tower, Chaucer wrote, in imita- tion of Boethius, his longest prose work, called The Testament of Love. In closing our sketch of Geoffrey Chaucer, the recorded opinions of a great poet and a great critic are well worthy of remembrance. While Spenser says, — Tbat renowned Poet Dan Chaucer, well of English ujidjfyled, On Fame's eternall beadroll worthy to be fyled, no less a literary judge than Hallam classes him with Dante and Petrarch in the great poetic triumvirate of the Middle Ages. The following are specimens of Chaucer's verse : — "THE KNIGHT AND THE SQUIEE." FROM THE PROLOGDB OT THB " OAHTEKBCTKY TALES." A KHIGHT ther was, and that a worthy man, That fro the time that he firste began To riden outj, he loved ch'evalrie, Tronthe and honofir, fredom and curtesie. Ful worthy was he in his lordes werrej [war And therto hadde he ridden, no man ferre, [further As wel in Cristendom as in Hethenesse, And ever honoured for his'worthinesse. This iBce worthy knight hadde ben also [same Somtime with the lord of Palatie, Agen another hethen in Turkie : And evermore he hadde a sovereine pris. [praite And though that he was worthy he was wise, And of his port as meke as is a mayde. He never yet no vilanie ne sayde In alle his lif, unto no mcmere wight. [kind of person He was a veray parfit gentil knight. But for to tellen you of his araie. His hors was good, but he ne was not gaie. " THE FLOUE AND THE LEFE." 59 Of fustian he wered a gipon, Alle besmotred with his habergeon. For he was late yoome from his viage, And wente for to don his pili;rimage. With him ther was his sone a yonge sqxiieb, A lover, and a lusty baoheler. With lockes cruU as they were laide in presse. Of twenty yere of age he was I gesse. Of his stature he was of even lengthe, And wonderly deliver, and grete of strengthe. And he hadde be somtime in clievacMe, In Flaundres, in Artois, apd in Picardie, And borne him wel, as of so litel space, , In hope to stonden in his ladies grace. Emhrouded was he, as it were a mede Alle ful of fresshe floures, white and rede. Singing he was, otfloyting aUe the day. He was as fresshe as is the moneth of May. Short was his goune, with sieves long and wide. Wel coude he sitte on hors, and fayre ride. He coude songes make, and wel endiie, Juste and eke dance, and wel pourtraie and write. So bote he loved, that by nightertale He slep no more than doth the nightingale. Curteis he was, lowly, and servisable. And carf before his fader at the table. [a sJiort cassock [smutted [voyage [curled [mimbk [ail expedition [embroidered [playing on the flute [relate [the night-time carved. STANZAS FROM "THE FLOUE AND THE LEFE" And at the last I cast mine eye aside. And was ware of a lusty company That came roming out of the field wide, Hond in bond a knight and a lady; Tbe-ladies all in surcotes, that richely Pur'filedl were with many a rich stone. And every knight of green ware mantles on. Embrouded well so as the surcotes were. And everich had a chapelet on her had. Which did right well upon the shining here, Made of goodly floures white and red, The knightes eke, that they in honde led. In sute of hem ware chapelets everiehone. And before hem went minstrels many one. [kirtlcs [ivorked on the edge [haw [imitaiion^-them 60 " THE FLOUR AND THE LEFE." As harpes, pipes, lutes, and sautry [psaltery Alle ill greene ; and on ttieir heades bare Of divers fiourea made full oraftely, All in a sute goodly cbapelets they ware ; And so dauncing into the made they /owe, [ffo In mid the wliioh they found a tuft that was All oversprad with floures in oompas. Whereto they enolined everichone With great reyerenoe, and that full humbly ; And, at the last, there began, anone, A lady for tO'Sing right womanly, A iargaret in praising the daisie ; For as me thought among her notes swete. She said "Si dcrme est la Margarcte." UFE OF GOWER. g] CHAPTER V. JOHN GOWEE. Porn al)0utl325 A.D Died 1408 A.D. Gower's poetic rank. i His death. i Cotifessio Amantis. His farally and calling. Three chief works. Opinion of Ellis. His patron. I His French sonnets. | Illustrative extract. Though ranking far below the great Father of English Poetry, " the moral Gower," as his friend Chaucer calls him in the "Troilus and Creseide," yet holds an honoured place among our earlier bards. We know very little of his personal history. He was, perhaps, born in 1325. One of the most illustrious houses in the realm now bears his name ; and even in the far-off days of the poet's birth the family was of noble blood. Supposed to have been a, scion of the gentle Gowers, resident in the twelfth century at Stittenham in Yorkshire, he seems to have studied at Merton College, Oxford, and to have adopted the law as his pro- fession. Indeed there is a story to the effect that he was a judge of the Common Pleas. But evidence is not forthcoming to prove that Sir John Gower the judge and John Gower the poet were one and the same man. Like Chaucer, with whom he was long very intimate, although it is said that their friendship cooled at last, Gower espoused the cause of one of King Eichard's uncles. His patron was the Duke of Gloucester, whose mysterious murder at Calais is one of the darkest spots in a miserable reign. Fired, no doubt, with the strong suspicion, perhaps with the certain knowledge, that his friend and patron was slain by a royal order, Gower seems to have been right glad when the luxurious king was hurled from his throne to die in Pontefract. During the last nine years of his life, Gower was blind (1399- 1 408.) He died rich, leaving to his widow the then large sum of £100, along with the rents of two manors, one in Nottinghamshire 62 gowee's three woees. and one in Suffolk. His tomb in the Church of St. Saviour, Southwark, which was called in the fourteenth century St. Mary Overies, represents the poet pillowed upon 'three volumes, in memento of Ms three great works. His grave face, framed with a mass of long auburn hair, well befits his name of " Moral Gower,'' Gower's three great works were called, Speculum, Meditcmtis, Vox Glamantis, and Confessio Amantis. Of these, the first, said to have been in French, has been lost ; the second, in Latin, is still preserved in manusbript, but has never been printed; the third is that work of the poet which has entitled him to an endur- ing place in our literature, for it is nearly aU in English. There is, in the library of the Duke of Sutherland at Trentham in Staffordshire, a Volume, in which there are many French love' sonnets, written by Gower when young, so full of sweetness and feeling as to have drawn the warmest praises from Warton. The plot of the Confessio Amantis is rather odd, A lover holds a dialogue with his confessor, Genius, who is a priest of Venus. The priest, before he will grant absolution, probes the heart of his penitent to the core, trying all its weak spots. He plies him with moral tales in illustration of his teaching, giving him, en passant, lessons in chemistry and the philosophy of Aris- totle. After all the tedious 'shrift, when our hero seems to be so arrayed in a panoply of purity and learning as to render his victory a certain thing, we suddenly find that he is now too old to care for the triumph suffered for and wished for so long. EUisy in his " Specimens of the Early English Poets,'' characterizes the narra- tive of Gower as being often quite petrifying^. And although this poet's place, as second to Chaucer during the infancy of our literature, cannot be disputed, stiU it must be confessed that old John is often prosy, and sometimes dull. FROM GOWER'S "CONFESSIO AMANTIS." A KOMAN STOKT. In a Crotiiq I fynde thns^ How that Caius Fabricius / Wich whilome was consul of Rome, By whome the lawes yede and ooine, [went " THE CONFESSIO AMANTIS." 63 ■Whan the Sampnitees to him brouht A eomme of golde, and hym by eoulit To done hem fauoure in the lawe, Towarde the golde he gan hym drawe ; Whereof in alle mennes ]oke, A part in to his honde be tooke, Wieh to his mouthe in alle haste He put hit for to smelle and taste, And to his ihe and to his ere, Bot he ne fonde no comfort there : And thanne he be gan it to despise. And tolde vnto hem in this wise: " I not what is with golde to thryve Whan none of all'e my wittes fyve Fynt savour ne delite ther inne So is it bot a nyce sinue Of golde to beij to coveitous, Bot he is riche an glorious Wich hath in his snbieccion The men wich in possession Ben riche of golde, and by this slcUh, [reason For he may alday whan he wille. Or be him leef or be him loth, Justice^ don vppon hem bothe." Lo thus he seide and with that worde He threwe to fore hem on the bortle The golde oute of his honde anon, And seide hem that he wolde none, So that he kepte his liberie To do justice and equite. C4 THE POET KING. CHAPTER VL EINO JAMES I. 07 SCOTLAND. Bom 1394 A.D Died 1437 A.D, Bound for Franco. A captive at Windsor. Falls in love. - The King'a-Qiilialr. His minor poems. Illustrative extract The romantic story of this royal poet is well known. His poor father, Robert III., whose heart had, been well-nigh broken by the murder of his darling son Rothesay, put his only remaining son, James, on board a ship bound for France, that the boy might be safe from tlje wiles of Albany. The ship being seized off the Nor- folk coast, the prince was lad a captive ,to the English Court — an event which brought his father's grey head in sorrow to the grave. This happened in 1405, when young James was only eleven years- of age. From that time, until his release in 1424, he remained in England, living chiefly at Windsor and receiving an education befitting hia royal birth. He seems to have excelled in every study and every sport ; but the music of the harp and the making of verses wer^/his chief delights. Chaucer's poetry and Gower's were studied eagerly by. the captive king, and " from ad- miration to imitation there is but a step." But a power greater than delight in Chaucer's verse was at work in the poet's breast. He fell in love ; and, while all life was bright with the rosy hue of a new-blown passion, he sang his sweetest song. Early one morning, looking from a window in the Round Tower of Windsor out upon a garden thick with May leaves, and musical with the Kquid song of nightingales, he saw walking below a lady, young, lovely, richly dressed and jewelled. This was Joan Beau- fort, daughter of the Duke of Somerset. His love for her, speedily kindled, inspired his greatest work, The King's Quhair (quire or book). The poem, written in one hundred and ninety-seven DEATH OP KING JAMES I. 65 stanzas of seven lines each, contains many particulars of the poet's life, the most admired passage being that in which he describes his first glimpse of his future wife walking in the leafy garden. The polish of many stanzas is exquisite. Although King James ranks so high as a pathetic and amatory poet, he seems equally at home in a broad comic vein of descrip- tion. Two poems of this class, — Christis Kirh on ike Grem and Pehlis to the Play, — are ascribed to him rather than to James V. The former is in the Aberdeenshire dialect, the latter in that of Tweeddale, and both humorously describe certain old Scottish country merry-makings. Ruling not wisely (for himself at least), but too well, this cleverest of the royal Stuarts was stabbed to death in the Monas- tery of the Dominicans at Perth early in the year 1437. The murderers, chief among them Sir Robert Graham, burst late at night into his private room, found him, where he had hidden, in a vault below the flooring, and after a fearful struggle cut him almost to pieces with their swords and knives. VERSES SELECTED FROM " THE KING'S QUHAIR." Cast I down mine eyes again, ■Whore as I sa-w, walking under the Tower, Full secretly, new comen here to plain, The,fairest or the freshest young flower That ever I saw, methought, before that hour, For which sudden abate, anon astart, \ [went and came The blood of all my body to my heart. ♦ » ♦ * • Of her array the form if I shall write, Towards her golden hair and rich attire, In fretwise cmtchit with pearlis white, [inlaid And great balas learning as the fire, / gems of a certain With mony ane emeraut and fair sapphire ; t kind— shining And on her head a chaplet fresh of hue. Of plumis parted red, and -white, and blue. Full of quaking spangis bright as gold, Forged of shape like to the amorets. So new, so fresh, so pleasant to behold, The plumis eke like to the flower jcneis, . [lily And other of shape, like to the flower joneta ; 5 66 "THE king's quhaie." And above all this, tbere was, well I wot, Beauty enongh to make a world to dote: « « * * * And for to walk that fresh May's morrow, Ane hook she had upon her tissue white, That goodlier had not been seen ta-forow, \hefm-e As I suppose ; and girt she was alite, [sUghUj) Thus halflinga loose for haste, to such delight It was to see her youth in goodlihede. That for rudeness to speak thereof I dread. ***** And when she walked had a little thraw Tinder the sweete greene boughis bent. Her fair fresb face, as white as any snaw. She turned has, and furth her wayis went ; But tho began mine aches and torment. To see her part, and follow I na might ; Methought the day was turned into night. "VISION OF PIEES PLOUGHMAN." 67 CHAPTER YIL OTHER WEITERS OF THE FIRST ERA. (1328-1474.) Mlnot Longlande. Plot o( Piers Ploagh- man. Its versification. Barbour. Wyntoun. Occieve. Lydgale. Blind Harry. Trevisa. Fortescue. POETS. Laurence Minot. — This writer, -who flourished under Edward III, is called by Dr. Craik the earliest writer of English verse, who deserves the name of a poet. We have his ten poems, describing the martial achievements of Edward, such as the battles of Halidon Hill, and NeviVs Gross, The Sieges of Tmirnay and Calais, and TJie TaJdng ofGuisnes; written, no doubt, between the years 1333 and 1353, and thrown off under the fresh impression of the great events they record. They have all the fine warlike ring of the older minstrelsy, combined with a polish to which the baUad- singers of former days were strangers. EoBEET or William Longlande. — The author of the Vision of Piers (Peter^ Ploughman was bom in Shropshire about 1300. A secular priest and a FeUow of Oriel College, Oxford, he had many opportunities of knowing thoroughly those abuses which he lashes with an unsparing hand. The time was indeed a terrible one, — ^the nobles and the clergy were alike corrupt to the very core. The poet supposes himself to have fallen asleep after a long ramble over the Malvern HiUs on a May morning. As he sleeps, he dreams a series of twenty dreams. The general subject of the poem has been described as similar to that of "The Pilgrim's Progress." The gaudy, changeful scenes of "Vanity Fair," are much the same, in spirit at least, on the canvas of Longlande as in the later picturai of Bunyan and of Thackeray. Losing no 68 " THE beuce" of baebotir. opportunity of tearing the cloak from the ignorant and vicious churchmen of his day, this old poet may be said to have struck the first great blow in the battle of the English Eeformation. "Piers Ploughman" is unrhymed, having, as its distinctive feature, a kind of alliteration; probably borrowed, as Dr. Percy shows in his " Eeliques," from the Icelandic. The following lines wiU show the nature of this alliteration : — Ac on a May llorwening [and On MaWern hills Me beFel a Yerly, [lomidcr Of Fairy me thought ^^^^ ^^ ^..^^ l^^s-Wearyfor-yiandered, \ wandering And Went me to rest Under a Brood Bank, [broad By a 'Bwn's side ; (stream's And as I Lay and Leaned, And Looked on the waters, I Slombered into a Sleeping, It Swayed so mury, [sou/nded— pleasant John Baebotje. — ^Two dates, 1316 and 1330, are assigned for the birth of Barbour, and Aberdeen is named as his native place. He was made Archdeacon of Aberdeen in 1356. Next year we find him acting as one of the commissioners that met at Edinburgh to deliberate upon the ransom of the king, and also receiving a passport from Edward III. that he might visit Oxford for purposes of study. Three other passports were also granted to him by the English king at various times. Barbour's great poem is The Bruce, an epic, written pro- bably about 1376, in that eight-syllabled verse which Scott has made so famous. The work embraces the events of about forty years, from the death of the Maid of Norway in 1290 to the death of Lord James Douglas in 1330; and though styled by the poet himself a Komaunt, its main narrative has been accepted as true history by all the leading writers upon Scottish affairs. Another poem, called The Stewart, is said to have been written by Barbour ; but it has been lost. Two pensions, one of £10 Scots, the other of 20 shillings, were granted to the poet, both pro- LYDGATE, THE MONK OF BUEY. 69 bably by Robert II. The language in wHch Barbour wrote does not differ much from the English of Chaucer, the chief dis- tinction consisting in the broader vowel-sounds of the Scottish poem. Barbour is thought to have died in 1395. Andrew Wyntoun.— This priest, supposed to have been bom about 1350, was Prior of St. Serf's at Lochleven, a house under the rule of the great Priory of St. Andrews. In ruder strains than Barbour, he wrote about 1420 an Orygynale Gronyldl of Scotland, extending from the creation to 1408. This work, part of which was the composition of another poet, is, when we make allowance for the fabulous legends interwoven with it, a clear, trustworthy historical record. It is divided into nine books, and written in eight-syllabled rhymes. Thomas Occletb. — This wfiter of verses, for poet we can ' scarcely call him, is thought to have lived and written about the beginning of the fifteenth century. We learn from his works that he was a lawyer ; that he held a government situation under the Privy Seal ; and that he led a wild, extravagant life. His chief poem is founded on a Latin work, De Regimine Princvpum, written by Egidius, an Italian monk of the thirteenth century. On the whole, Occleve's verse must be judged rather by its quan- tity than its quality. His admission into the ranks of our Eng- lish writers of note is owing to the circumstance of his writing in a barren age, when every versifier was a man of mark. John Lydgate. — Lydgate, the monk of Bury, flourished in the reigns of Henry V. and Henry VI. Educated at Oxford, he added to his college training a wider view of life by travelling in France and Italy. On his return home he opened a school for the instruction of the young in verse-making and polite composi- tion. His ready pen, kept unceasingly busy, supplied verses of every style and sentiment, producing ballads and hymns with equal ease. He wrote for masks and mummings, coronations and saints' days, for king, citizen, and monk ; and no doubt found the fruit of his work multiplying in the solid shape of gold and silver coin. The chief works of Lydgate, whose forte lay in flowing and dififuse description, were the History of Tliehes, the Fall of 70 PKOSE WRITEHS OF THE FIRST EEA. Princes, and the History of the Siege of Troy — the last named being borrowed from Colonna's prose. Blind Haeet. — A poor man, so named, wandered about Scot- land during the third quarter of the fifteenth century, reciting poems for bread. This was the author of The Wallace, a com- panion work to Barbour's " Bruce," but rougher in the grain and less trustworthy, owing to its being chiefly woven from the popular legends afloat concerning the taU hero of Elderslie. " The Wallace " contains about twelve thousand lines. PEOSE WEITERS. John de Teevisa. — A Latin work, the Polychronicon of Hig- den, a monk of Chester, was translated into English prose about 1387 byTrevisa, who was vicar of Berkeley in Gloucestershire. Many other translations were executed by the same pen. Sm John Foetescub. — Bom, it is supposed, in Devonshire, this eminent lawyer became in 1442 the Chief -Justice of the King's Bench. Eemaining faithful to the Red Rose through every change, he followed Queen Margaret into France, where he lived in exile for some time. Out of evil came good. We owe to this banishment one of the /finest of our early English law- books, De Laudibus Legum Angliae, written in the form of a conversation between himself and his young pupil Prince Edward. Much more interesting, however, to us is an English work from his pen entitled. Of the Difference between an Absolute and a Limited Monarchy, in which he compares the French and the English in regard to liberty, much to the disadvantage of the former people. caxton's feinting office. 71 SECOND ERA OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. FEOM THE nfTKOnnOTIOH OP PRINTING IN 1474 A.D. TO THE ACCESSION OF ELIZABETH IN 1558 A,D. CHAPTER L THE OLD PEmTERS OP ■WESTflONSTEE. Caxton^s honae. His face. liirth and boyhood. On the Continent. iDTentlon of piintlng. Trade in books. Envoy at Bruges. Serves the Dnchess. First literary woris. At Cologne. ^ History of Troy. The Almonry. Old printers at worlt Book.binding. The Game of Chesse. Publishing. Caxton's death. Wynkyn de Worde. Richard Pynson- A contrast In one of the most squalid recesses of Westminster there stood, until 1845, a crazy bmlding of wood and plaster, three stories high. Its pointed roof and wooden balcony were seldom free from poor fluttering rags of clothing, hung out to dry by the wretched tenants. The very sunlight grew sickly when it fell ioto the poverty-stricken street, where slipshod women, unshaven lounging men, and pale stunted children slunk hopelessly about. Foulness, gloom, and wretchedness were the prominent features of the place around the frail timbers of the house in which the first .English printer is said to have lived and wrought. It was almost a mercy when a new street was driven through the poor old house and its tottering neighbours. Not far from this, in the Almonry or Eleemosynary of the Abbey, where the monks of Westminster used to distribute alms to the poor, that London merchant, whose name has grown to be a household word, set up, most probably in 1474, the first printing-press whose types were inked on English ground. 72 EARLY LIFE OF CAXTOK As we write the name of Caxton, a grave and beardless face, with an expression somewhat akin to sadness, rises from the past, looking calmly out from the descending lappets of the hood, which was the fashionable head-dress of his day. All honour to the memory of the Father of the English Press ! Born about 1412 in some lonely farm-house, a few of which were thinly scattered over the Weald or wooded part of Kent, William Caxton grew to boyhood among the simple peasants of that wild district. Probably about 1428 he assumed the flat round cap, narrow falling bands, and long coat of coarse cloth, which then formed the dress of the city apprentice; and was soon, no doubt, promoted to the honour of carrying lantern and cudgel at night before the worshipful Master Eobert Large, the rich mercer to whom he was bound. A mercer then did not confine his trade to silk : he dealt also in wool and woollen cloth ; and, no doubt, in the parcels from the Continent there often came, for sale among the rich English, a few copies of rare and costly manuscripts. From such the apprentice probably obtained his first knowledge of books in their old written shape. Upon the death of his master, Caxton went abroad, and con- tinued to reside chiefly in Holland and Flanders for fully thirty years. What his exact position was cannot be determined ; but it is supposed that he acted as travelling" agent or factor for the Company of London Mercers. While he was thus employed, the great invention of printing began to attract the notice of the world. Laurence Coster, in the woods of Haarlem, had shaped his letters of beech-bark, and had looked with delight upon the impression left by the sap upon the parchment in which he had wrapped them. Gutenberg of Mentz, catching a sight of old Coster's types, had shut himself up in the ruined monastery by Strasbourg, to make the inks, the balls, the cases, and the press. Faust and Schoeffer had joined with Gutenberg, and had betrayed him when they knew his secret. Faust, by offering for sale as many Bibles as were asked for, at one-eighth of the usual price, had excited the wonder of the Paris world, and had evoked a cry that he was in league with the Enemy of man. And those strange CAXTON AT BRUGES. 73 pages, written in the blood of the salesman, as the shuddering gazers whispered to one another, pointing with trembling finger to the letters of brilliant red, had spread their fascinations, too, across the English Channel A sharp business man Hke Caxtou wodd not waste much time in sending these novelties to the' English market. So printed books began to find their way to England among the silks and perfumes, which crossed the sea from Flan- ders. A shrewd and clever man this mercer must have been in mat- ters relating to his trade, for we find him in 1464 nominated one of the envoys to the Court of Burgundy, to negotiate a treaty of commerce between the King of England and Duke Philip. It must not be forgotten that the duchy of Burgundy then included nearly aU of modern Belgium. And when, four years later, Philip's son, lately made Duke Charles by his father's death, married Margaret Plantagenet, the sister of the English king, WiUiam Caxton, who was already a resident in 1468 Bruges, where the rich and luxurious Court of Burgundy A.D. had its seat, entered the service of this English princess, who had changed her country and her name. He had probably already laid down the eU-wand, and had ceased to be seen among the mercers' stalls; but in what capacity he served the duchess we cannot say. His own words tell us that he received from her a vearly fee, for which he rendered honest service. It was when his active mercer's life was over that he took up the pen, and began to work with types and ink-balls. Our printer's entrance on literary work happened thus : Some months before the gorgeous ceremonies with which Duke Charles brought his English bride to her home in Bruges, Caxton, feehng himself to have no great occupation, sat down in some quiet tur- ret chamber to translate a French book into English. This work was BecueiL des Eistoires de Troye, written by Duke Philip's chaplain, Eaoul le Fevre. When five or six quires' were written, he grew dissatisfied with his English and doubtful of his French; • and so the unfinished translation lay aside for two years, tossed among his old invoices and scattered papers. One day '' my Lady 74 THE ALMQNEY OF WESTMINSTEE. Margaret," talking to her trusty servant about many things, chanced to hear of this literary pastime, and asked to see the sheets of manuscript. When she had read them, pointing out some faults in the English, she encouraged Caxton to proceed with the translation, which he did with renewed hope and- vigour. From Bruges he removed to Cologne, where it probably was that he first appeared as a printer, having learned the art, as he tells us, at considerable expense. His instructor, from whom he, no doubt, bought his first set of types, may have been one oi Faust's workmen, who had been driven from Mentz in 1462, when the sack of the city by Adolphus of Nassau ■ scattered the printers over the land. At Cologne in 1471 Caxton finished the "History of Troyj" and it was printed most probably in the same year — the first English book that came from any press. For this, the first great work of his own pen, and the first English production of his press, he was bountifully rewarded by the " dreadful duchess," who had encouraged him to resume his task. When or how the happy idea occurred to Caxton of carrying press and types to- England we do not know ; but, soon 14 74 after his sojourn in Cologne, we find him in the Almonry of A.D. Westminster, surrounded by the materials of his adopted craft, and directing the operations of his workmen. He united in himself nearly all the occupations connected with the production and sale of books ; for in the infancy of printing there was no division of labour. Author, inkmaker, compositor, press- man, corrector, binder, publisher, bookseller, — Caxton was aU these. Let us pass into his workshop, and see the early printers at their toil. Two huge frames of wood support the thick screws wliich work the pressing slabs. There sits the grave compositor before the cases fuU of type, the copy set up before him, and the grooved stick in his hand, which gradually fiUs with type to form a line. There is about his work nothing of that quick, unerring nip which marks the fingers of a modem compositor, as they fly among the type, and seize the very letter wanted in a trice. With' quiet and steady pace, and many a thoughtful pause, his fingers THE OLD PEINTEES AT WOEK. 75 travel through their task. The master printer in his furred gown moves through the room, directs the wedging of a page or sheet, and then resumes his high stool, to complete the reading of a proof pulled freshly from the press. The worker of the press has found the haUs or dabbers, with which the form of types is inked, unfit for use. He must make fresh ones ; so down he sits with raw sheep-skin and carded wool, to stuff the ball and tie it round the handle of the dab. TiU this is done, the press-work is at a stand. But there is no hurry in the Almonry j and all the better this, for the imperfection of the machinery makes great care necessary on the part of the workmen. Then, suppose the proofs corrected, and the sheets, or pages rather, printed off, the binder's work begins. Strong and solid work was this old binding. When the leaves were sewed together in a frame — a rude original of that stUl used — they were hammered well to make them flat, and the back was thickly overlaid with paste and glue. Then came the enclos- ing of the paper in boards — veritable boards — thick pieces of wood like the panel of a door, covered outside with embossed and gilded leather, and thickly studded with brass nails, whose ornamental heads shone in manifold rows. Thick brass corners and solid clasps completed the fortification of the book, which was made to last for centuries. Half a dozen such volumes used then to form an extensive and valuable library. The book which is considered to have been the earliest work from the Westminster press, is that entitled The Game and Playe of the Chesse, translated out of the French, 1474 fynysshid the last day of Marclie, 1474. A second edition a.d. of this work was the first English book illustrated with woodrcuts. A fable about the origin of chess ; an account of the offices, or powers, of the various pieces ; and a prayer for the pros- perity of Edward and England, make up the four treatises into which the " Game of Chesse" is divided. Sixty-five works, translated and original, are assigned to the pen and the press of Caxton, who seems to have supplied nearly aU the copy that was set up in the' side-chapel, or disused Scrip- torium, where his printing was done. His old business tact stood 76 THE DEATH OP CAXTON. well to Mm in his publisMng and bookselling transactions. We have stiU a hand-bill in his largest type, calling on aU who wanted cheap books to come and buy at the Almonry. We find him, when undertaking the publication of the Golden Legend — a large, double-columned work of nearly five hundred pages, pro- fusely illustrated with wood-cuts — securing the promise of Lord Arundel to take a reasonable number of copies, and, moreover, to reward the printer with a yearly gift of venison — a buck in summer, and a doe in winter. So, for some seventeen years, Caxton laboured on at his English printing. The man who, at fifty-nine, had gone to Cologne to learn a new trade when his life's work seemed nearly done, stOl inked the types and worked the lever of the press, when the weight of nearly fourscore years hung upon his frame. But there came a day when the door of the printing-ofiice was shut, and the clank of the press was unheard within. 1491 William Caxton was dead. The rude school-boy of the A.U Kentish Weald — ^the bKthe apprentice of Cheapside — the keen mercer, well known in every Flemish stall — the tnisted tetainer of the house of Burgundy — the grey-haired learner at Colqgne — the old printer of Westminster — had played out his many parts, and had entered into his rest. Another sorrowful time came for his faithful little band of printers, when, with the glare of torches and the deep tolling of a bell, they laid their hoary chief in the grave at St. Margaret's Church, not far from the scene of his daily toils and triumphs. Wynkyn de Woede, a foreigner who had long assisted Caxton at his press, kept up the good work, and probably at first in the old place. There is something touching in the devotion to his dead master which he displays, in uniting the monogram of Caxton with the blazing suns and clustering grapes that adorn his own trade-device. Four hundred and eight works are .assigned to Wynkyn's press. Another of Caxton's assistants — one Kiohaed Pynson, a native of Normandy — set up after a ^ime in business for himself, and throve so well, that he received the somewhat valuable appoint- THE ARCHED ROOM IN WESTMINSTER. 77 ment of King's Printer, being first on the long list of those who have borne the title. Two hundred and twelve works are said to have been printed by Pynson. These were the men who printed our earliest English books. Their types have been multiplied by millions, and their presses by hundreds. A little silver coin can now buy the book for which Caxton charged a piece of gold. The British cottage i.s indeed a poor one which cannot show some volumes as well printed and as finely bound as his finest works. Kejoicing, as we do, in the countless blessings which the Press has given to Britain, let us not forget that arched room in old Westminster, where our earliest printer bent his sUvered head over the first proof-sheets of the " Game of Chesse." 78 THOMAS MOEE AT OXFOKU. OHAPTEE II. SIB THOMAS MORE. Born 1480 A.D Beheaded 1535 A.D. Boyliood of More. His Oxford life. Career as a lawyer. His home at Chelsea. Chancellor. Reverses. Last glimpse of home. Imprisonment. Hia trial. His execution. History of Edward V. The Utopia. Parliamentary fame. Illustrative extract. Thomas Moee, who takes rank as the leading writer during this Becond era of our Kterature, was born In Milk Street, London, in 1480. Having learned some Latin in Threadneedle Street from Nicholas Hart, he became in his fifteenth year a page in the house- hold of Cardinal Morton, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Here his sharp and ready wit attracted so much notice that the arch- bishop, prophesied great things for him; and a dean of St Paul's, one of the most noted scholars of the day, used to say that there was but one wit in England, and that was young Thomas More. Devoted to the law, by his good father, who was a justice in the King's Bench, More went to Oxford at seventeen ; and here, in spite of the frowns of old Sir John, who dreaded lest the seduc- tions of Homer and Plato might cast the grave sages of the law too much into the shade, he studied Greek under Grocyn. And not only did he study it eon amore, but he wrote to the University a powerful letter in defence of this new branch of learning, inveighing strongly against the Trojans, as the opponents of Greek had begun to caU. themselves. The leading Anti-Grecians were the senior clergy, who were too old or too lazy to sit down to the Greek alphabet and grammar; and who, besides, feared that if Greek and Hebrew were studied, the authority of the Latin Vul- gate might be shaken. At' Oxford, More won the friendship of the eminent Erasmus ; and though the Dutchman was thirty and the English boy only seventeen, the attachment was mutual, THE PLEASANT HOME AT CHELSEA. 79 and so strong, that it' was cftily severed by death. Here, too, he wrote many English poems of considerable inerit. These snow- drops of our literature, flowerets of a day hovering between winter and spring, might pass unnoticed among the gay blooms of a sum- mer garden, but rising in pale beauty from the frozen ground, they are loved and welcomed as the harbingers of brighter days. A few notes of his rapid rise must suffice here. Appointed reader, that is, lecturer, at Furnival's Inn,* he soon became a popular lawyer ; and we find him expounding not only the English law, but the works of St. Augustine. This mixture of theology and law was common in those days, when churchmen alone were chancellors. Eunning down occasionally into Essex from his chambers near the Charter House, for a breath of country air, he fell in love with a lady named Jane Colt, whom he soon married. Under Henry VII. he became Under-Sheriff of 'London; and when miser Henry's spendthrift son wore the crown, he stUl rose in favour and in fortune. Employed on many continental missions, he became a Privy Councillor, Treasurer of the Exchequer, and in 1523 Speaker of the Commons. While filling the Speaker's chair he incurred the anger of Wolsey, who strove to injure him with the king. But the magnificent cardinal's own feet were then on quaking, slippery ground, and when in 1529 he fell with a great ruin. More stepped on to the chancellor's bench. We have pleasant domestic pictures of the home at Chelsea, embosomed among flowers and apple-trees, where the great lawyer lived in tranquil happiness with his wife and children. Thither often on a summer afternoon, after his day at court was done, he used to cany his friend Erasmus in his eight-oared barge. Gravely sweet was the talk at the six o'clock supper, and during the twilight stroU by the river. The king, too, often came out to dine with the Mores, sometimes uninvited, when the good but fussy lady of the house (not Jane Colt, but a Second wife, Alice, seven years older than her husband) was in a desperate state until she had got her best scarlet gown put trimly on, to do honour to his * Tho law-Bchools, such as Fnrnivars Inn and Lincoln's Inn, were so called hecanse they vere once used as the inns or town-houses of noblemen. Compare the French use of " hoteL" 80 EESIGNATION OF THB CHANCELLOU. highness. So familiar were the kin^and his chancellor, that, aa theywalked in the garden, the royal arm often lay round More's neck. Yet, a few years later, that neck bled on the block by a royal order. For more thaji two years More held the office of chancellor, dis- charging its high duties with singular purity. While it has been said of his predecessor, Wolsey, that no suitor need apply to him ■ whose fingers were not tipped-with gold, we read of More refusing heavy bribes, and sitting in an open hall to hear in person the petitions of the poor. The rock on which Wolsey had gone down lay ahead of More, who saw it with an anxious but undaunted lieart. His mind was quite made up to steer an honest, straight- forward course. The king, who was bent upon marrying Anne Boleyn, pressed the chancellor urgently for an opinion on the case, expecting, no doubt, that a man who owed his commanding posi- tion to royal favour would not dare to thwart the royal wilL But Henry was mistaken in his man. Eather than give an opinion which must have been against the king. More laid down the seals of his high office. A reverse of fortune so great seemed 1532 to cast no shadow upon his joyous spirit. Quietly reduc- A.D. ing his style of living, he brightened his humble home with the same gentle, gleaming wit, which had given lustre to his splendid days. Poor Mistress Alice, who had loved the grandeur of being a chancellor's lady, did not take so kindly to the change. But worse was yet to come. To thwart Henry the Eighth was a capital offence. More must yield or die. An attempt, soon abandoned however, was made to involve him in the doom of the girl called " The Holy Maid of Kent." Summoned to Lam- beth in April 1534, he left for the last time his weU-Ioved Chelsea liome. Turning, as he hurried to his boat, he caught the 'last glimpse of its dear flower-beds through the wicket, beyond which he would not suffer his family to pass. His refusal to take an oath, which acknowledged the king's marriage with Anne Boleyn to be lawful, so enraged Henry that he was cast into the Tower, where he lay for a year. His letters to his daughter Margaret, written from that prison with a coal, are touching memorials of a great and loving heart. EXECUTION OP MORE. 81 At last he was placed at the bar at Westminster, on a charge, of which the leading points were his opposition to the royal marriage, and his refusal to acknowledge Henry as the head of the Church. He was found guilty and hurried back to prison. As he landed at the Tower wharf,. his daughter, Margaret Eoper, rush- ing forward in spite of the bristling halberds that shut him in, flung her arms round him, and, mingling her bright hair with his . grizzled beard, kissed him over and over again amid the sobs and tears of all around. Without endorsing the opinions of this man, we may freely and honestly admire his excelling genius, his noble courage, and his gentle heart. The wit that sparkled from Cardinal Morton's rosy page, that in bachelor days lit the gloomy chambers in Lincoln's Inn, and added new lustre to the hospitahties of Chelsea, shone bright as ever on the scaffold, undimmed even by the cruel glint- ing of the headsman's axe. As he climbed the crazy timbers where he was to die, he said gaUy to the lieutenant, " I pray you see me safe up ; and for my coming down let me shift for myself" His head was fixed on the spikes of London Bridge; but his brave daughter Margaret caused it to be taken down, and when she died, many years after, it was buried in her grave. And so mouldered together into common dust as great a brain and as true a heart as ever England held. More's fame as a writer rests on two works, written during that happy period of his life, when, as Under-Sherifif of London and a busy lawyer, he enjoyed the sunshine of royal favour and the solid advantage of an income amounting to £4000 or £5000 a year. His Life and Reign of Edward V., written about 1513, is not only the first English work deserving the name of history, but is further remarkable as being our earliest specimen of classical English prose. The character of Eichard IIL is here painted in the darkest colours. But More's Utopia has had a wider fame. In flowing Latin he describes the happy state of an island, which is discovered by one Eaphael Hythloday (learner of trifles), a sup- posed companion of Amerigo Vespucci. The place is called Utopia, which simply means " Nowhere," from ov toVos. A republic, of 6 82 MOEE'S " UTOPIA." which the foundation idea is borrowed from Plato, although the details are More's, has its seat in this favoured land. The Utopian ships lie safe within the horns of the crescent-shaped island j for no enemy can steer through the rocks that guard the harbour's moutk Every house in the fifty-four walled cities has a large garden; and these houses are exchanged by lot every ten years. All the islanders learn agriculture ; but aU have, besides, a certain trade, at which six hours' work, and no more, must be. done every day. There are in Utopia no taverns, no fashions ever changing, few laws, and no lawyers. There, war is considered a brutal thing ; hunting, a degrading thing, fit only for butchers ; and finery, a foolish thing, — for who that could see sun or star would care for jewels. This work was composed shortly after More's return from the Continent, whither he was sent on a mission to Bruges in the summer of 1514. Ilis other works are chiefly theological treatises, written against the Lutheran doctrines, and Latin epigrams, modelled after those of his sarcastic friend, Erasmus. He stands first, too, in the glorious roU of our parliamentary orators. But, unfortunately, of his speeches we know next to nothing ; for an orator's fame is perishable, too often fading into oblivion almost as soon as death has quenched Lis eye of flame and stilled the magical music of his voice. A LETTER FROM SIR THOMAS MOKE TO HIS WIFK (1528.) Maistrca Alyce, in my most harty wise I recommend me to you ; and whereas I am enfourmed by my son Heroh of the losse of our barnes and of our neigh- bours also, with all the com that was therein, albeit (saving God's pleasure) it is gret pitie of so much good come lost, yet sith it hath liked hym to sonde us such a chaunce, we must and are bounden, not only to be content, but also to be glad of his •visitacion. He sente us all that we have loste : and sith he hath by such a chaunce taken it away againe, his pleasure be fulfilled. Let us never grudge ther at, but take it in good worth, and hartely thank him, as well for ad- versitie as for prosperitie. And peradventure we have more cause to thank him for our losse, then for our winning ; for his wisdome better seeth what is good for vs then we do our selves. Therfore I pray you be of good chere, and take all the howsold with you to church, and there thanke God, both for that he hath given us, and for that he hath taken from us, and for that he hath left us, which if it please hym he can encrease when he will. And if it please hym to leave ua yet lesae, at his pleasure be it. SPECIMEN OF MOEE's PEOSB. 83 I pray you to make some good enaearohe what my poore neighbours have loste, and bid them take no thought therfore : for and I shold not leave-myself a spone, there shaJ no pore neighbour of mine here no loaae by any chaunce happened in my house. I pray you be with my children and your household merry in God. And devise some what with your frendes, what waye wer best to take, for pro- vision to be made for come for our household, and for sede thys yere comming, if ye thinke it good that we kepe the ground stU in our handes. And whether ye think it good that we so shall do or not, yet I think it were not best sodenlye thus to leave it all up, and to put away our folk of our farme tiU we have som- what advised us thereon. How beit'if weihave more nowe then ye shall nede, and which can get them other maisters, ye may then discharge us of them. But I would not that any man were sodenly sent away he wote nere wether. At my comming hither I perceived none other but that I shold tary still with the Kinges Grace. But now I shal (I think) because of this chance, get leave this next weke to come home and se you : and then shall we further devyse together uppon all thinges, what order shal be best to take. And thus as hartely fare you well with all our children as ye can wishe. At Woodestok the thirde daye of Septembre by the hand of your louing husbande, Thomas Morb Eniglit. 84 TYND ale's EAELY UPK, CHAPTEE IIL WILLIAM TYNDALE. Bom about 1477 A.S Strangled 1536 A.S. Birth and boyhood. | Settled at Antwerp. Tutor to Sir John Welsh. | The New Testament. In London. 1 Sir Thomas More. Humphrey Monmouth. | Other works. The stake. Literary character. Illustrative extract. Wtt.TiTAM Tyndale is celebrated among our writers as a translator of the New Testament into EngHsh. What Wycliffe had done for his countrymen in the fourteenth century, Tyndale undertook during the troubled reign of the eighth Henry. Of Tyndale's birth and boyhood we know positively nothing be- yond the statement of Fox, that he was bom on the borders of Wales, and brought up from childhood at Oxford. ' Graduating at that university, he went to spend some time at Cambridge. His powers as a linguist and his great love for the Scriptures are specially noted by his early biographer. The next scene of his life was the house of Sir John Welsh, a knight of Gloucestershire, who employed him as tutor to his children. This honourable but troublesome office was most creditably fiUed by the Oxford man, who met at the hospitable board of the good knight most of the lead- ing country clergymen. The talk naturally turned very often upon the religious opinions of such men as Luther and Erasmus; and in these conversations Tynjiale took a most conspicuous part, freely declaring his sympathy with the Eeformers, and his desire — nay, his purpose — ^that every English ploughboy should soon know the Scriptures well Eesigning his tutorship to seek a safer place, he preached for some time at Bristol and through the surrounding country, and then went to London, his big brain bursting with a glorious thought. He would translate the New Testament from the original Greek, and thus feed the hungering English people with the bread of life. TYND ale's new TESTAMENT. 85 Wycliffe's Bible had become, in tbe clianges whicli more than one hundred stirring years had brought upon the English lan- guage, a book unreadable but by a learned few. Disappointed in his attempt to secure the protection of Tonstal, the learned Bishop of London, Tyndale found a refuge in the house of Alderman Humphrey Monmouth, a rich London merchant, whose heart was in the good work. This honest man, keeping the poor scholar in his house for six months, would gladly have seen his friend fare better than on sodden meat and small single beer. But Tyndale would, if given his own way, take nothing else. The kindness of Monmouth did not stop here, for he made Tyndale an allowance of .£1 a year, which enabled him to set in earnest about his grand design. Travelling into Germany, Tyndale saw and talked with Luther, and settled finally at Antwerp. There he finished his Translation of the New Testament. The first edition, printed probably at Wittenberg, was published in 1625 or 1626. An improved and altered version appeared in 1534 The run upon the book, both otf the Continent and in England, was very great. Copies poured by hundreds from the foreign presses into England. In vain the terrors of the Church were threatened and inflicted upon the sellers and owners of Tyndale's Testament. The trans- lator's brother and two others were sentenced, for distributing copies, to pay a fine of £18,840, Os. lOd.; and, moreover, had to ride, facing the horse's taU, with many copies of the condemned volume tacked to their clothes, as far as Cheapside, where a fire blazed to burn the books. Conscious how utterly feeble such exhibitions were as a means of checking the new doctrines, Tonstal applied -to Sir Thomas More for help ; and More, a devoted member of the Eomish Church, dipping his pen in gaU, — with which, however, the honey of his better nature often mingled, — wrote many fierce and bitter things of Tyndale and Tyndale's works. The Five Boohs of Moses, translated from the Hebrew partly by Tyndale, were printed at Hamburg in 1530; and in the following year the same industrious peH produced an English version of the Booh of Jonah. Such work, added to the composition of many EngUsh tracts for sale in England, written in defence of his re- fi6 ■ MAETYRDOM OF TYNDALE. ligious opinions, filled the days, and many of the nights too, of this good man. Nor was the wear and tear of body and brain by night and day all that Tyndale gave to the service of his Master. With- out straining the figure far, we can truly say that hia Bible was written with his blood. One Henry Philips, English student at Lou vain, by the basest treachery betrayed him in 1534 into the hands of the Emperor's officers at Brussels ; near which city, in the €astle of VUvoord, he was kept a close prisoner for A .D. eighteen months. Then, tried and condemned for heresy, 1536 he was strangled at the stake, and his dead body was burned to ashes. His dying words were, " Lord, open the King of England's eyes !" Tyndale's English is considered, by the best authorities, to be remarkably pure and forcible. His New Testament ranks among our best classics. Tyndale also possessed such a know- ledge of the Greek and Hebrew tongues as was rare in his day ; and this, securing the fidelity of the translation, stamps his books with no common value. FROM TYNDALE'S NEW TESTAMENT. Jesns answered and sayde : A certayne man descended from Jerusalem Into Jericho. And fell into the hondes off theves whyoh robbed hym off his rayment and wonded hym and departed levynge him halfe deed. And yt chaunsed that there cam a certayne preste that same waye and saw hym and passed by. And lyke wyse a levite when he was come neye to the place went and loked on hym and passed by. Then a certayne Samaritane as he iomyed cam neye vnto him and behelde hym and had compassion on hym and cam to hym and bounde vppe hys wondea and poured in wyne and oyle and layed hym on his beaste and brought hym to a common hostry, and drest him. And on the morowe when he departed he toke out two pence and gave them to the host and said unto him, Take care of him and whatsoerer thou spendest above this when I come agayne I will recompence the. Which nowe of these thre thynkest thou was neighbour unto him that fell into the theves hondes t And he answered : He that shewed mercy on hym. Then sayd Jesus vnto hym, Goo and do thou lyke wyse, TDE SUPPEE AI CEESSY'S. 87 CHAPTER IV. THOMAS CRANIIER, AECHBISHOP OP CAHTEEBTJEY. Bom 1489 A.D Burned 1556 A.D. Fellow of Cambridge. Archbishop of Canterbury. His gloi'y and his deatlL Book of Common Prayer. The Twelve Homilies. Cranmer'a Bible. Aftee some years of study, sporting, and teaching at Cambridge, Thomas Cramner, a Fellow of Jesus College, born in 1489, at Aslacton in Nottinghamshire, went on a* visit to Waltham Abbey in Essex, where lived a Mr. Cressy, the father of some of his coUege pupils. It happened that King Henry VIII., returning from a royal progress, stayed a night at Waltham ; and, according to the custom of the day, his suite were lodged in the various houses of the place. Cranmer met Fox, the royal almoner, and Gardiner, the royal secretary, at supper in his friend Cressy's ; and when the table-talk turned upon the king's divorce, which was then the great topic of the time, he suggested that the ques- tion should be referred to the Universities of Europe. "The man has got the right sow by the ear," said Henry, next day, when he heard of the remark. And from that day Cranmer was a made man. It is not our purpose here to trace the great career of Cranmer as a politician and a churchman. His literary character and^ works alone claim our notice. The part which he played in the shifting scenes of, the English Eeformation may be read in the annals of our Tudor Sovereigns. In March 1533 he was consecrated Archbishop gf Canterbury, qualifying his oath of obedience to the pope with the statement, " that he did not intend by this oath to restrain himself from anything that he was bound to either by his duty to God or the king or the country." After escaping, in the reign of Henry VIII., the double danger 88 THE BOOK OF COMMON PEAYEE. arising from the king's capricious ferocity and the insidious hatred of the anti-reform party, Cranmer became, during the reign of Henry's gentle son Edward, a leader of the English Eeformation and a founder of the English Church, A few years later, under poor, ill-tempered, misguided Mary, having been induced 1556 in the gloom of a prison cell to sign a denial of his Protes- A.D. tant belief, — a deed which he afterwards utterly repealed ■ — he underwent at Oxford Ihat baptism of fire which has purified his memory from every stain. Cranmer's great fault was a want of decision and firmness. There is a book, which ranks with our Bible and the Pilgrim's Progress, as containing some of the finest specimens of unadulte- rated English to be found in thq whole range of our literature. It is The Booh of Common Prayer, used by the Episcopal Churches of Great Britain and Ireland. To Cranmer the merit of compiling this beautiful service-book is chiefly due. The old Latin Missal, used in various forms all over England, was taken to pieces ; many parts of it were discarded, especially the legends and the prayers to saints, and what remained was re-cast in an English mould. The Litany, difiering only in a single petition from that now read, was added as a new feature of the service. By an Act of Parlia- ment, passed in 1548, aU ministers were ordered to use the Book of Common Prayer in the celebration of Divine service. And ever since, that sweet and solemn music of King Edward's Liturgy has been heard in our lands, rising through the sacred silence of many churches when the Sabbath bells have ceased to chime. A book of Twelve Homilies, or sermons, was also prepared under' the superintendence of Cranmer, for the use of those clergymen who were not able to write sermons for themselves. The need of such a work shows us how far behind the lower clergy then were, even in the knowledge and use of their own tongue. Four of these HomUies are ascribed to the pen of Cranmer. His third great literary work was his superintendence of a re- vised translation of the Bible, which is commonly called either Cranmer's Bible from his share in its publication, or the Great Bible from its comparative size. This edition, which THE GREAT BIBLE. 89 came out in ] 540, appears to have been founded on Tyndale's version. The Hebrew and Greek originals were carefully con- sulted, and tbe Englisb was compared with them, many of the proof-sheets — perhaps all of them — ^passing under Cranmer's pen. Cranmer's extant original works are very many, and possess considerable merit ; but his literary reputation wUl always rest mainly on the fact that he was what we may call editor-in-chief of those three great works of the English Keformation already noticed, — the Book of Common Prayer, the Twelve Homilies, and the Great Bible. 90 EAKTiY LIFE OF SUEEEY. CHAPTER V. HENKY HOWAED, EAEL OF SUREEY. Born aljout 1516 A.D Beheaded 1547 A.D. Sarrey's fame. Early life. Troubles. Trial and death. English metre. Geraldlne. ^ jEneid in blank verse. Illustrative extracts. For two reasons the brilliant but unhappy Surrey Holds a fore- most place in tlie annals of our English literature. He was, so far as we know, the earliest writer of English blank verse, and he gave to English poetry a refinement and polish for which we search in vain among his predecessors. His father was the third Duke of Norfolk; and his mother, Elizabeth, was a daughter of the great house of Buckingham. But Surrey had more from Heaven than noble birth could give, for the sacred fire of poetry burijed in his breast. Of his boyhood we know nothing certain. Nursed in the lap of luxury, and' the darling of a splendid Court, he yet won a soldier's laurels both in Scotland and in France. But his fame was not to be carved out only with a sword. Travelling into Italy, he "tasted the sweet and stately measures and stile of the Italian poesie," and returned home to re-cast in the elegant mould of his accomplished mind the metres of his native land. At home, however, he became involved in many troubles. Some of these resulted from the escapades of his own youthful foUy. He was once imprisoned for rioting in the streets at night arfd breaking windows with a cross-bow. But other and graver evils came. In the latter days of the reign, when " Bluff King Hal" had become " Bloated King Hal," and aU the courtly circle saw that the huge heap of wickedness was sinking into the grave, there arose a keen contest between the noble houses of Howard EXECUTION OF SUEEEY. 91 and Seymour. The element of religious strife added to the bitter- ness of the feeling -which grew up between these two rival families ; for the Howards were Eoman Catholics, and the Earl of Hertford, the head of the Seymours, was a secret friend of the Eefonjiation. The grand aim of Hertford was to secure the protectorship of his young nephew Prince Edward when the old king was dead. Surrey and his father Norfolk, standing in the way, must perish. The thuig was easy to do ; the name of Howard was poison to the king, who had already soiled their proud escutcheon with an ugly smear of blood, drawn, four years earlier, from the fair neck of his fifth wife. Arrested for treason, the father and the son, each ignorant of the other's capture, were hurried Dec. 12, by different ways to the Tower. Surrey was tried at 1 54 6 Guildhall on a flimsy charge of treason, supported chiefly a.d. by the fact that he had quartered the arms of Edward the Confessor on his shield with those of his own family. This was tortured into a proof that he aimed at the throne. He had long worn these arms, he said, even in the king's own sight ; and the heralds had allowed him to do so in virtue of his royal descent. In spite of these simple truths, and the noble eloquence of his defence, the poet was doomed to die; and on the 19th of January 1547 his bright hair, all dabbled in blood, swept the dust of the scaffold. Eight days later,, the blood-stained Henry died, just in time to save from the block the head of Norfolk, whose execution had been arranged for the following morn- ing. Surrey's literary merits have been already noticed. Dr. Nott, who edited Surrey's works, claims for the poet the honour of having revolutionized English poetry, by substituting lines of fixed length, where the accents fall evenly, for the rhythmical lines of earlier poets, in which the number of syllables is irregular, and the equality of the lines requires to be kept up by certain pauses or cadences of the voice. But recent writers have shown that this theory cannot be maintained. In the words of Dr. Craik, " The true merit of Surrey is, that he restored to our poetry a correctness, polish, and general spirit of refinement, such as it had not known 92 THE EARLIEST ENGLISH BLANK- VERSE. since Chaucer's time ; and of which, therefore, in the language aa now spoken, there was no previous example whatever." Like Chaucer, lie caught his inspiration from the great bards of Italy, and sat especially at the feet of Petrarch. In his purification of English verse, he did good service by casting out those clumsy Latin words, with which the lines of even Dunbar are heavily clogged. The poems of Petrarch ring the changes in exquisite music on his love for Laura. So the love- verses of Surrey are filled with the praises of the fair Geraldiue, whom Horace Walpole has tried to identify with Lady Elizabeth Fitzgerald, a daughter of the Earl of KUdare. If this be so, Geraldiue was only a girl of thirteen when the poet, already married to Frances Vere for six years, sang of her beauty and her virtue. It is no unlikely thing that Surrey, an instinctive lover of the beautiful, was smitten with a deep admiration of the fresh, young, girlish face of one — ■ " standing with reluctant feet, Where the broolt and river meet, Womanhood and childhood fleet" Such a feeling could exist — it often has existed — in the poet's breast, free, from all mingling of sin, and casting no shadow of reproach upon a husband's loyalty. > Surrey's chief work was the translation into English hlanh- verse of the Second and Fourth boohs of Virgil's " JJJneid." Some think that he borrowed this verse from Italy ; Dr. Nott supposes that he got the hint from Gavin Douglas, the Scottish translator of VirgiL Wherever the gem was found, Surrey has given it to English literature; a rough gem, indeed, at first, and shining with a dim, uncertain gleam, but soon, beneath Shakspere's magic hand, leaping forth to the sight of men, a diamond of the first water. Hashing with a thousand coloured lights. Surrey is said to have written also the first English bonnets* * The Sonnet is horrowed from the Italian. It is a poem of fourteen lines, two of its four Lanzas having four lines each, and the others three lines. The rhymes are arranged ac- cording to a particular rul^ ... _ _ , SPECIMENS OF SUEEEy's VEESE. 93 FROM SUEEET'S TRANSLATION OF VIRGIL. (fourth book.) But now the wounded quene with heavie care Throwgh out the vainea doth nourishe ay the plage, Surprised with blind flame, and to her minde Gran to resort the prowes of the man And honor of his race, whiles on her brest Imprinted stake his wordea and forme of face, Ne to her lymmes care graunteth quiet rest. The next morowe with Phoebus lampe the erthe Alightned clere, and eke the dawninge daye The shadowe danke gan from the pole remove. SONNET ON SPEING. (modern spelling-.) The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings, [^sweet With green hath clad the hill and eke the vale. [also The nightingale with feathers new she sings ; The turtle to her make hath told her tale. [mate Summer is come, for every spray now springs ; The hart hath hung his old head on the pale, The buck in brake his winter coat he flings ; The fishes flete with new repaired scale ; [float The adder all her slough away she flings ; The swift swallow pursueth the flies snuUe ; Ismail The busy bee her honey now she mings ; [mixes Winfer is worn that was the flowers bale. [evil And thus I see among these pleasant things Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs. u WILLIAM DTJNBAR. CHAPTER VI. OTHER WEITEES 01 THE SECOND ERA. Poets. Robert Henryson. William Dunbar. Gavin Douglas. Alexander Barclay. Stephen Hawes. John Skelton. John Heywood. Sir Thomas Wyatt (1474-1558.) Sir David Lyndaay. Nicholas UdalL Prose Wkiteiis. Robert Fabian. Edward Hall. Lord Bemers. John Fishor. Sir Thomas Elyot John Bellenden. John Leland. Hugh Latimer. Miles Coverdale. John Bale. John Knox. George Cavenrlish. Sir John Cheke. John Fox. POETS. Robert Heneyson was chief schoolmaster at Dunfermline about the end of the fifteenth century. His longest poem is the Tes- tament of Fair Gresdde, in which Chaucer's tale of " TroUus and Creseide',' is continued. The fine ballad of Robin 115 In his seventy-seventh year he breajthed his lafet, ,80 poor that his body was buried at the expense of the city of Edinburgh. His " History of Scotland " was then passing through the press. It is written in Latin, which many writers prefer to that of Livy, and consider equal to that of Sallust. The record of events is brought down to the year 1572, and occupies twenty books, into which, the whole work is divided. Buchanan adopts that prac- tice of the ancient historians, by which they put fictitious speeches i into the mouths of their leading characters. This, however well adapted for displaying the historian's skill in composition, takes from the truthfulness, which should be the peijvading and govern- ing quality of aU history. In his magnificent Latin version of the Psalms he has used twenty-nine different metres. The translation is freely executed, ao that it frequently becomes a paraphrase rather than an exact rendering. The 104th and 137th Psalms are considered the gems of this master-piece of elegant scholarship and poetic fire. Among the miscellaneous works of Buchanan, it may suffice to name two, — the Epiihalamium, which he wrote in honour of Queen Mary's first marriage; and a poem composed on the occasion of James the Sixth's birth. Both are in Latin, and both contain passages of excelling sweetness. A tract, called The Chamceleon, satirizing Secretary Maitland, affords a scanty specimen, but quite enough too,' of the rugged Scotch, in which this Scottish Virgil transacted his daily business. A physician to Charles I., born in 1587 at Aberdeen, by name Arthur Johnston, much of whose life was also spent abroad, wrote a complete Latin version of the Psalms in elegiacs, which Hallara values almost as highly as the version of Buchanan. 116 WHAT PHILIP SIDNEY WAS LIKK. CHAPTER IV. SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. Born 1554 A.D .'....Died 1686 A.D. The boy Philip. On the Continent Appearance and character. The Arcadia. The Defense of Poesie. Tries for Flushing. Skirmish near Zutphen. His death. Other works. Illustrative extract. Whieb Elizabeth in tlie first year of Iter glorious reign was receiving the congratulations of a rejoicing land,, a boy, not yet five years old, was plucking daisies and chasing butterflies on the green lawns of Penshurst in Kentshire. It was Philip Sidney, son of Sir Henry Sidney and Mary Dudley, who was sister to the magnificent Leicester, soon to be prime favourite of the Queen. PMEp, born in 1554, went to school at Shrewsbury, and passed thence to Oxford and Cambridge, where he won a scholar's name. Having spent three years in Continental travel, during which he saw Paris drenched in the blood of Huguenots, and himself nar- rowly escaped death on the fearful day of St. Bartholomew, he returned in his twenty-first year to England, a polished and accomplished man. TTis debut at court was an instant and decided success. No doubt his uncle, Leicester, then in the fuU blaze of royal favour, had much to do with this; but Sidney had personal qualities which won for him the smiles of aU. His finely-cut Anglo-Nor- man face, his faint moustache, his soft blue eyes, and flowing amber hair, were enough to make him the darling of the women; while his sldU in horsemanship, fencing, and manly games, gained the respect and admiration of the men. Higher than these outward and acci- dental graces must we, rank the intellect and scholarship which stamped >iiTn as one of England's greatest sons ; and higher Still, that gentle heart, whose pulses, always human, never throbbed THE "AECADIA." 117 more kindly tlian when, on the field of his death, he turned the cooling draught from his own blackened lips to slake the dying thirst of a bleeding soldier, past whom he was carried. Yet this brilliance was not without its clouds. At tennis one day he quarrelled with the Earl of Oxford, who ordered him to leave the playing-ground. This Sidney refused to do; upon which Oxford, losing temper, called him a puppy. Voices rose high,- and a duel was impending, when Elizabeth interfered and took Sid- ney to task for not paying due respect to his superiors. PhUip'a haughty spirit could not bear the rebuke, and he withdrew from court. Far from the glittering whirl, sheltered amid the oaks of Wilton, the seat of his brother-in-law, Pembroke, he wrote a roman- tic fiction, which he called Tlie Countess of Femhrohe^s Arcadia. Written merely to amuse his leisure hours, it was never finished, and was not given to the world till its gifted young writer had been four years dead. The censures, which Horace Walpole and others have passed upon this work, are quite unmerited. No book has been more knocked about by certain critics ; but its popularity in. the days of Shakspere and the later times of the Cavaliers, with whom it was all the fashion, afibrds suflicient proof that it is a work of remarkable merit. We, who read Scott and Dickens and Thackeray, cannoit, certainly, rehsh the '' Arcadia " as Elizabeth's maids of honour relished it ; but all who look into its pages niust be struck with its rich fancy and its glowing pictures. It is not a pastoral, as, the misnomer " Arcadia," borrowed from Sannaz- zaro, seems to imply. There are indeed in this book shepherds, who dance and sing occasionally; but the life of a knight and courtier — such as Sidney's own — has clearly supplied the thoughts and scenery of the work But the book on which Sidney's reputation as an English classic writer rests, is rather his Defense of Poesie, a short treatise, written in 1581, to combat certain opinions of the Elizabethan Puritans, who would fain, in their well-meant but mistaken zeal, ha've swept away the brightest blossoms of our literature, along with pictures, statues, hohdays, wedding-rings, and other pleasant things. A favourite of Elizabeth, who called him the "jewel of her 118 Sidney's death neae zutphen. dominions," lie was looked coldly on by the Cecils, whose policy it was to keep down men of rising talent. He had to struggle long againat this aversion before he gained the governorship of Flushing. When this dear wish of his heart was at first refused, he was so angry that he resolved to join Sir Francis Drake's expe- dition, just then equipping for the West Indian seas. Nothing but a determined message from the Queen, whose messages were not lightly to be disregarded, could turn him from this step. It is said that about the same time he became a candidate for this crown of Poland, but here again Elizabeth interfered. The bright life had a sad and speedy close. Holland, then bleeding at every pore in defence of her freedom and her faith, had sought the help of England, ceding in return certain towns, of which Flushing was one. Of this seaport Sidney became governor in 1585. In the following year his uncle, Leicester, laid siege to Zutphen (Southfen), a city on the Yssel, one of the mouths of the Rhine. A store of food, under the escort of some thousand troops, being despatched by Parma, the Spanish general, fo;r the relief of the place, Leicester resolved to intercept the supply; and rashly judging one English spear to be worth a dozen Spanish, he sent only a few hundred men on this perilous service. It was one of those glorious blunders, of which our military history is full. Sidney was a volunteer, and as they rode on a chiUy October morning to the fatal field, about a mile from Zutphen, the gallant fellow, meeting an old. general- too lightly equipped for battle, gave him all his armour except the breastplate. Thus his kind- ness killed him; for in the last charge a musket-ball smashed his left thigh-bone to pieces, three inches above the knee» As he pEissed along to the rear, the incident occurred which 1586 has been already noticed. Carried to Arnheim, he lay a A.D. few days, when mortification set in, and he died. His last hours were spent in serious conversation, upon the im- mortality of the soul, in sending kind wishes and keepsakes to his friends, and in the enjtoyment of music. Besides the "Arcadia" and the "Defense of Poesie," Sidney wrote many beautiful sonnets, and in 1584 replied, with perhaps si;ecim]5n of Sidney's prose. 119 more vigour than prudence, to a work called " Leicester's Com- monwealth," impugning the character of his uncle. A STAG HUNT. (PKOM THE "aBOADIA.") They came to tte side of the wood, where the hounds were in couples, staying their coming, but with a whining accent craving liberty ; many of them in colour and marks so resembling, that it shewed they were of one kind. Thehuntsmen handsomely attired in their green liveries, as though they were children of sum- mer, with staves in their hands to beat the guiltless earth, when the hounds were at a fault; and with horns about their necks, to sound an alarm upon a silly fugitive : the hounds were straight uncoupled, and ere long the stag thought it_ better to trust to the nimbleness of his feet than to the slender fortification of his lodging; but even his feet betrayed him; for, howsoever they went, they them- selves uttered themselves to the scent of their enemies, who, one taking it of another, and sometimes believing the wind's advertisements, sometimes the view of—their faithful ooupsellors — the huntsmen, with open mouths, then denounced war, when the war was already begun. Their cry being composed of so well-sorted mouths that any man would perceive therein some kind of proportion, but the skilful woodmen did find a music. Then delight and variety of opinion drew the horsemen sundry ways, yet cheering their hounds with voice and horn, kept still as it were together. The wood seemed to conspire with them against his own citizens, dispersing their noise through aU his quarters ; and even the nymph Echo left to bewail the loss of Narcissus, and became a hunter. -But the stag was in the end so hotly pursued, that, leaving his flight, he was driven to make courage of despair; and so turning his head, made the hounds, with change of speech, to testify that he was at a bay : as if from hot pursuit of their enemy, they were suddenly come to a parley. 120 EDMUND SPENSER AT CAMBEIDGK CHAPTER V. EDfflUNS SPEKSEB. Bom 1553 A.S Died 1599 A.S. Biiih and education. In the noi'^h. The Sheplieard's Calender. The loss of a irlend. Goes to Ireland, Kilcolman Castle. Raleigh's visit. The Faerie Queene. Return to Ireland. Public ofBces. Maniage, Misery and deatll. Chief works. Plan of the Faerie Queene. Its style and stanza. Pastorals. Prose work. Illustrative extract. When Chaucer died, the lamp of English poetry grew dim, shin- ing for many years only with faint, uncertain gleams. A haze of civU blood rose from the trodden battle-fields of the Eoses and the dust of old, decaying systems, the clamour of whose fall resounded through the shaking land, dbscured the light "and blotted out the stars of heaven.'' But only for a while. Truth came with the Bible in her hand. The red mist rolled away. The dust was sprinkled with drops from the everlasting well. Men breathed a purer air and drank a fresher life into their spirit, and a time came of which it may well be said, " There were giants on the earth in those days." Edmund Spenser was, in point of time, the second of the four grand old masters of our poetical literature. He was born in 1553, in East Smithfield, by the Tower of London. It is said that he was of a noble race, but we know little or nothing of his parents. Nor can we tell wHere he went to school. At the age of sixteen (1569) he entered Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, as a sizar, and there in 1576 he took his degree of M.A. So meagre is our knowledge of his early life. A friendship, formed at Cambridge with Gabriel Harvey of Trinity Hall, had considerable influence upon the poet's fortunes. When Spenser left college, having disagreed, it is thought, with the master of his hall, he went to live in the north of England, perhaps to act as tutor to some young friend. He had, no doubt, THE GRANT OP KJLCOLMAN. 121 long been wooing the Muses . by the classic banks of Cam, but now the time had come when his genius was /to shine out in fuUer lustre. His fame, as often happens, had its root in a deep sorrow. A lady, whom he calls Eosalind, made a plaything of his heart, and, when tired of her sport, cast it from her. She little knew the worth of the jewel she had flung away. " The sad mechanic exercise" of verse was balm to the wounded poet, who poured forth his tender soul in The Shephea/rd's Calender, begun in the north but completed under the oak-trees of Penshurst, where dwelt "Malster PhUip Sidney." Spenser owed this brilliant friend to the kindness of Harvey, who had induced him to come to London. Thus he was naturally brought under the notice of Leicester, Sidney's uncle, by whose interest he became secretary to Lord Grey of 1580 Wilton, the newly-appointed Lord -Lieutenant of Ireland. a.d. The next two years were therefore spent in that country. Grey owed much to the gifted pen of his gi-ateful secretary, who zealously defended his poHcy and reputation. The poet's services were rewarded in 1586 by a grant from Elizabeth of more than 3000 acres in the county of Cork. These acres — ^the estate of Eol- colman — formed a part of the forfeited lands of the rebel Desmonds, of which Ealeigh had already received a large share.' This seem- ing generosity — ^which, however, cost Elizabeth nothing — ^is ascribed to the good offices of Grey and Leicester; but there are not want- ing hints that the cool and cautious Burleigh, anxious to thin the ranks of his magnificent rival, managed thus to consign to an honourable exile an adherent of Leicester, whose genius made him a formidable" foe. The life of Spenser, all but the last sad scene, is henceforth chiefly associated with the Irish soil. Smitten in the autumn of 1586 with a great grief — the bloody death of Sidney near Zutphen — Spenser hurried across to his estate, of which he was called the Undertaker, and 1586 which he was compelled to cultivate, in terms of the A.D. grant. It was a lovely scene, and we cannot quarrel with the causes, friendly or the reverse, which led the author of The Faerie Qtieene to take up his dwelling ampng " the green alders by the 122 PUBLICATION OF " THE FAERIE QUEENE." Mulla's shore." The castle of KUcolman, from which the Des- monds had been lately driven, stood by a beautiful lake in the midst ,of an extensive plain, girdled with mountain ranges. Soft woodland and savage hiU, shadowy river-glade and rolling plough- land were all there to gladden the poet's heart with their changeful beauty, and tinge his verse vnth their glowing colours. Dearly he loved the wooded banks of the gentle MuUa, which ran by his home, and by whose wave, doubtless, many sweet lines of his great poem were composed. Hither there came to visit him the brilliant Kaleigh, then a captain in the Queen's (jruard, who seems to have quarrelled with Essex, and to have been " chased from court " by that hot-headed favourite. The result of this remarkable meeting was Spenser's resolve to publish the first three books of " The Faerie Queene," with which Ealeigh was greatly delighted. The two friends — for Ealeigh now filled in the poet's heart the place which poor Sidney had once held — crossed the sea together with the precious cantos. The voyage is poetically described in the Pastoral of Colin Clouts come home againe, published in 1691, where Ealeigh figures as the " Shepherd of the Ocean." Intro- duced by his friend to the Queen, and honoured with her 1590 approval of what he modestly calls his " simple song," the A.D. poet lost no time in giving to the world that part of " The Faerie Queene " which was ready for the press. The suc- cess' of the poem was so decided, that in the following year the publisher issued a collection of smaller pieces from the same pen. A pension of £50 from Elizabeth — no small sum three centuries ago — rewarded the genius and the flattery of Spenser, who then went back to Ireland to tiU his beautiful barren acres,^ and "pipe his oaten quiE" He had, besides his farming and his poetry, a public work to do, and that of no easy or pleasant kind. As Clerk of the Council for Munster, and afterwards as Sheriff of Cork, he came much uito collision with the Irish people, whom it was his policy to keep down with an iron hand. The chief events of his later life were his marriage, and the publication of the second three books of " The Faerie Queene." In the fair city of Cork, not far from his castle^ he was united, pro- DEATH OJF SPENSEE. , 123 bably in 1594, to a lady nsimed ElLzabeth, in whose honour he simg the sweetest marriage song our language boasts., In 1596 he crossed to England and published the -fourth, fifth, and sixth books of his great work. So, laurelled and rejoicing, he returned to Ms Irish castle. To aU appearance a long vista of happy years, bright with the love of a tender wife and blooming children, lay stretching out before the poet But in that day life in Ireland resembled the perilous Hfe of those who dress their vines and gather bursting clusters on the sides of Etna or Vesuvius. Scarcely was he settled in his home, when a torrent of rebellion swept the land. Hordes of long-coated peasants gathered round Kilcolman. Spenser Oct. and his wife had scarcely time to flee. In their haste and 1598 confusion their new-bom child was left behind, and, when a.d. the rebels had sacked the castle, the infant perished in the flames. It was only three months later that Spenser breathed his last at an' inn in King Street, Westminster. A common tale in human life. Bright hopes — a crushing blow — a broken heart — and death ! " Alas for man, if this were all. And nouglit beyond the earth.** In Westminster Abbey, near the dust of Chaucer, the body of this great brother minstrel was laid. The grandest work of Spenser is his Faerie Queene. Among his numerous other writings the Shepheard's Calender, — Colin Clouts come home againe, — Epithcdamion, — and his Yieio of the State of Ireland are worthy of special notice. 'In a letter to Sir Walter Ealeigh, prefixed to the first three bookis of "The Faerie Queene," which were published in 1590, the poet himse]f tells us his object and his plan. His object was, following the example of Homer, Virgil, Ariosto, and Tasso, to vnite a book, coloured with an historical fiction, which should " fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle dis- cipline." The original plan provided for twelve books, " fashion- ing XII. moraU vertues." Of these twelve books we have only six. The old story of the six remaining books being finished in Ireland, 124 PLAN OF "THE FAERIE QUEENE." and lost by a careless servant, or during the poet's voyage to Eng- land, is very improbable. Spenser bad only time between 1696 and his death to write Wo cantos and a fragment of a third. Hallam justly says, '^The short interval before the death of this great poet was filled up by calamities sufficient to wither the fer- tility of any mind." Prince Arthur, -who is chosen as the hero of the poem, faUs in love with the Faerie Queene, and, armed by Merlin, sets out to seek her in Faery Land. She is supposed to hold her ann,ual feast for twelve days, during which twelve adven- tures are achieved by twelve knights, who represent, allegorically, certain virtues. The Eed-Crosse Enight, or Holiness, achieves the adventure of the first and finest book. In spite of the plots of the wizard Archimago (Hypocrisy) and the wiles of the witch Duessa (False- hood), he slays the dragon that ravaged the kingdom of Una's father, and thus wins the hand of that fair princess, (Truth.) Sir Guyon, or'Temperance, is the hero of the second adventure; Brito- martis, or Chastity — a Lady-Ejiight — of the third ; Cambel and Triamond, typifying Friendship, of the fourth; Artegall, or Justice, of the fifth; Sir Calidore, or Courtesy, of the sixth. TThe six books form a descending scale of inerit. The first two have the fresh bloom of genius upon them; the third contains some exqui- site pictures of womanhood, coloured with the light of poetic fancy; but in the last three the divine fire is seen only in fitful and uncertain flashes. It was not that the poet had written him- self out, but he had been tempted to aim at achieving too much. Not content with giving us the most exquisite pictures of chival- rous life that have ever been limned in English words, and at the same time enforcing with some success lessons of true morality and virtue, he attempted to interweave with his bright allegories the history of his own day. Thus Gloriana the Faerie Queene, and Belphoebe the huntresd, represent Elizabeth; Artegall is Lord Grey; Envy is intended for poor Mary Stuart. Spenser's flattery of Qiieen Bess, whose red wig becomes in his melodious verse " yellow locks, crisped like golden wire," is outrageous. It was a fashion of the day, to be sure ; and, after all, poetp are only human. THE LANGUAGE AND STANZA OF SPENSEB. 125 It is almost needless to say that the politics dull and warp the beauty of the poetry, — a fact nowhere more manifest than in the fifth book, whose real hero is Lord Grey of Wilton. "Fhe language of Spenser was purposely cast in an antique mould, of which one example is the frequent use of y before the past participle; The expletives do and did occtir in his pages to a ridiculous extent. The stanza in which this great poem is written, and which bears the poet's name, is the Italian ottava rima, -with a ninth line — an Alexandrine — added to close the cadence. It may well- be compared to the swelling wave of a summer sea, which sweeps on — a green transparent wall — until it break? upon the pebbly shore in long and measured flow. Thom- son, Campbell, and Byron have proved the power of the grand Spenserian stanza. In his Pastorals — the "Shepheard's Calender " and "Colin Clout " — Spenser cast aside much of the stereotyped classic form. Instead of Tit3rrus and Corydon breathing their joys and sorrows in highly polished strains, we find Hobbinoll and Diggoil, Cuddie and Piers, chatting away in good old-fashioned English about the Church and its pastors, poets and their woes, and similar themes. The Calender contains twelve eclogues — one for every month in the year. That Spenser could write capital prose, as well as exquisite verse, is clearly proved by his "View of the State of Ireland," a dialogue in which that land and the habits of its natives are finely described. The views of Spenser as to the government of the Irish people seem to have harmonized with those of relentless Strafiford, whose plan was aptly named "Thorough,'' from its sweeping cruelty. This prose work of Spender, though presented to Elizabeth in 1596, was not printed untU 1633. THE OPENING STANZAS OF THE FIRST CANTO OF "THE FAERIE QUEENE." A gentle Knight -was pricking on the plaine, [riding Yoladd in raightie armes-an'd silver shielde, Wherein old dints of deepe wonndes did remaine, The cruel markes of many a bloody fielde ; 126 STANZAS FEOM " THK FAEEIE QUEENK." Yet armes till that time did he never wield : nis angry steede did chide his foming bitt, As much disdajning to the curbe to yield : Pull lolly knight he seemed, and faire did sitt, As one for l^uightly giusts and fierce encounters fitt. And on his brest a bloodie crosse he bore. The deare remembrance of his dying Lord, For whose sweete sake that glorious badge he wore. And dead, as living ever, him ador'd : Upon his shield the like was also scor'd. For soveraine hope, which in his helpe he had. Eight, faithful!, true he was in deede and word ; But of his cheerg did seeme too solemne sad ; Yet nothing did he dread, but ever was ydrad, [fearrd Upon a great adventure he was bond, That greatest Glonana to him gave, (That greatest glorious queene of Faery lond,) To winne him worshippe, and her grace to have. Which of all earthly thinges he mCst did crave : And ever, as he rode, his hart did earne To prove his puissance in battell brave Upon his foe, and his new force to learne ; Upon his foe, a Dragon horrible and stearne. A lovely Ladie rode him faire beside. Upon a lowly asse more white than snow ; Yet she much whiter ; but the same did hide Under a vele, that wimpled was fall low ; And over all a blacke stole shee did throw: As one that inly mournd, so was she sad. And heavie sate upon her palfrey slow ; Seemed in heart some hidden care she had ; kni^ by her in a line a milke- white lambe she lad. , So pure and innocent, as that same lambe. She was in life and every verluous lore ; And by descent from toyall lynage came / Of ancient kinges and queenes, thait had of yore Their scepters stretcht from east to westerne shore. And all the world in their subjection held ; Till that infernal Feend with foule uprore Forwasted all their land, and them expeld ; Whom to avenge, she had this Knight from far compeld. STANZAS PEOM "THE FAERIE QUEEN E." 127 Behind her farre away a Dwarfe did lag, That lasie seemd, in being' ever last. Or wearied with bearirig of her bag Of needments at his baoke. Thus as they past, The day with cloudes was suddeine overcast, And angry love an hideous storme of raiue Did poure into his lemans lap so fast, • That everie wight to shrowd it did constrain ; And this faire couple eke to shroud themselves were fain. Enforst to seeke some covert nigh at hand, A shadie grove not farr away they spide, , That promist ayde the tempest to withstand; Wliose loftie trees, yclad with sommer's pride. Did spred so broad, that heavens light did hide. Not peroeable with power of any starr : And all within were pathes and alleles wide, With footing worne, and leading inward farr : Faire harbour that them seems ; so in tliey entred ar. And foorth they passe, with pleasure forward led, loying to heare the birdes sweete harmony, Which, the rein shrouded from the tempest dred, Seemd in their song to scorne the crueU sky. Much can they praise the trees so straight and Viy, The sayUng pine ; the cedar proud and tall ; The vine-propp elme ; the poplar never dry ; The builder oake, sole king of forrests all ; The aspine good for staves ; the cypresse funerall; The laurell, meed of mightie conquerours And poets sage ; the firre that weepeth still ; The willow, worne of forlorne paramours ; The eugh, obedient to the benders will ; The birch for shaftes ; the sallow for the mill ; The mirrhe sweete-bleeding in the bitter wound ; The warlike beech,; the ash for nothing ill ; The frnitfuU olive ; and the platane round ; 5^6 carver holme ; the maple seeldom inward sound. Led with delight, they thus beguile the way, UntiU the blustring storme is overblowne ; When, weening to retume whence they did stray. They cannot finde that path, which first was showne, But wander too and fro in waies unknowne. Furthest from end then, when they neerest wecne, 128 STANZAS FROM "THE FAEEIE QUEENE." That makes them doubt their wits be Bot their owne : So many pathes, so many turnings seene, ' That, which of them to take, in diverse douljt they been. At last resolving forward still to fare. Till that some end they finde, or in or out. That path they take, that beaten seemd most bare, And like to lead the labyrinth about ; Which when by tract they hunted had throughout. At length it brought them to a hollow cave. Amid the thickest woods. The Champion stout Eftsoonel dismounted from his courser brave. And to the Dwarfe a while his needlesse spere he gave. EARLY LITE OF HOOKER. ■ 129 CHAPTER XL KICHAEI) HOOEES. Born aliont 1553 A.D Died 1600 A.D. Contemporaries. Early days. Marriage. First living. Master of the Temple. Boscomb. Bishop's-Boume. Death. His great work. Illustrative extract. When Richard Hooker gave to the world his splendid work on the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, English prose literature acquired » dignity it had not known before. The last decade of Elizabeth was indeed a glorious time in the annals of British authorship. The genius of Shakspere was then bursting into the fuU bloom, whose bright colours can never fade; Spenser was penning the Faerie Queene on the sweet banks of Mulla; Bacon, a rising young barrister, was sketching out the ground-plan of the great Novum Organum; and in the quietude of a country parsonage, a meek and hen-pecked clergyman was composing, with loving carefulness, a work which, for force of reasoning and gracefulness of style, is justly regarded as one of the master-pieces of our literature. Richard Hooker was writing his great treatise. Bom at Heavytree near Exeter, in 1553 or 1554, Hooker was indebted to the kindness of Bishop Jewell for a university ecluca- tion. The modest young student, who was enrolled on the books of Corpus Christi at Oxford, did not disappoint the hopes of his patron : his college career was marked with steady application and closed with honour. His eminence as a student of Oriental tongues led to his appointment in 1579 as lecturer on Hebrew. Two years later he entered the Church. And then a great misfortune befell Master Richard Hooker. Appointed to preach at St. Paul's Cross, he left his college, a per- fect simpleton in the world's ways, and journeyed up to Lon- 9 130 THE EECTOE OP BISHOP'S-BOTJENB. don. There he had lodgings in the house of one John Church- man, whose wife so won by her officious attentions upon the drenched and jaded traveller, .that he thought he could not do better than foUow her advice and marry her daughter Joan, whom she strongly recommended as a suitable wife and skilful nurse for a man so delicate as he appeared to be. Accordingly in the fol- lowing year Richard and Joan were married ; and not till it was too late did the poor fellow find that he had bound himself for life to a downright shrew. The first year or so of his married life was spent in Bucks, where he was rector of Drayton-Beauchamp. But the affection of an old pupil, Sandys, son of the Archbishop of York, obtained for him in 1585 the post of Master of the Temple. It was his duty here to preach in the forenoon, while the afternoon lecture was delivered by Travers, a zealous Calvinist. The views of the two preachers were so diametrically opposed to each other, that it was said " the forenoon sermons spoke Canterbury, and the afternoon Geneva." Travers was forbidden to preach by Archbishop Whit- gift ; and a paper war began between the rivals, which so vexed the gentle Hooker, that he begged to be restored to a quiet par- sonage, where he might labour in peace upon the great work he had begun. In 1591 his wish was granted. He received the living of Bos- comb in Wiltshire ; and, gathering Ms darling books and papers round him, he sat down to his desk, no doubt, with, a deep sense of relief. There he wrote the first four books of the Eccle- 1594 dadical Polity, which were published in 1694. In re- A.D. cognition, probably, of this great service to the Church of England, the Queen made him in the following year rector of Bishop's-Bourne in Kent. The important duties of his sacred office and the completion of his eight books filled Up the few remaining years of his life. Never very strong, and weak- ened, perhaps, by ardent study, he caught a heavy cold, which, settling on his lungs, proved fatal on the 2d of November 1600. The fifth book of the " Ecclesiastical Polity" was printed in 1597 ; the remaining three did not appear until 1 647. ' THE " ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY." 1 31 " The first book of tte ' Ecclesiastical Polity,' " says Hallam, " is at this day one of the master- pieces of EngHsh eloquence." The moderate tone of the work, which was written against the Puri- tans, is worthy of aU praise. The author is somewhat censured for the great length of his sentences ; but the best critics agree in admiring the beauty and dignity of his style, which, woven of honest English words chosen by no vulgar hand, is yet embroidered with some of the fairest and loftiest figures of poetry. This charm — the ornament of figures — English prose had probably never possessed till Hooker wrote. ON CHUECH MUSIC. (from THB " EOCLESIASTIOAL POIITT.") Touching musical harmony, ivhether by instrument or by voice, it being but of high and low in sounds a due proportionable disposition, such notwithstand- ing is the force thereof, and so pleasing effects it hath in that very part of man which is most divine, that some have been thereby induced to think that the soul itself by nature is, or hath in it, harmony ; a thing which delighteth all ages, and beseemeth all stat^ ; & thing as seasonable in grief as in joy; as decent ceing added unto actions of greatest weight and solemnity, as being' used when men most sequester themselves from action. The reason hereof is an admirable facility which music hath to express and represent to the mind, more inwardly than any other sensible mean, the very standing, rising and falling, the very steps and inflections every way, the turns and varieties of all passions where- unto the mind is subject ; yea, so to imitate ttem, that, whether it resemble unto ns the same state wherein our minds already are, or a clean contrary, we are not more contentedly by the one c(^nfirmed, than changed and led away by the other. In harmony, the very image and character even of virtue and vice is perceived, the mind delighted with their resemblances, and brought by having them often iterated into a love of the things themselves. For which cause there is nothing more contagious and pestilent than some kinds of harmony; than some, nothing more strong and potent unto good. 132 LORD HIGH TREASUEEE OF ENGLAND. CHAPTER Vn. THOMAS SACKVULE, lOED BUCKHUBST. Born 1536 A-B Died 1608 A.D. Birth. Education. The law-student; Political career. Lord High Treasurer. ' Gorhoduc. Its plan and story, MirroUr of Magistrates. The Induction. Illustrative extract. SACKvnxE was the herald of that splendour in ■which Elizabeth's glorious reign was destined to close. He was born in 1536, at Buckhurst in Sussex, the seat of his ancestors. His father, Eichard SackviUe, had held high office in the Exchequer. Some home teaching, a few terms at Oxford, and a continuation of his course at Cambridge, where he graduated as M.A., prepared the way for his entrance upon the profession of the law and a statesman's life. While at college, his skill in verse-making gained him some little fame; and when entered at the Inner Temple, and regularly set down to the study of dry and dusty law books, he did not forget those flowery paths in which he had spent so many glad hours, but often stole from his graver studies to weave his darling stanzas. With his political career we have here little to do, and a few notes of it must therefore suffice. Created Lord Buckhurst in 1566 by Elizabeth, he laid aside his literary pursuits and gave himself up to the toils of statesmanship. Twice he crossed the seas as ambassador. He was selected, on account of his gentle manner and address, to teU her doom to the wretched woman who once was Queen of Scotland. And, in a later year, he sat as Lord Steward, presiding over those brother peers who were appointed to try the imhappy Essex. The dislike of Leicester clouded his fortunes, and cast him into prison; but when in 1588 death freed him from this foe, he regained the royal favour. He reached the pinnacle of his greatness in 1598, upon the death of Lord Burleigh, when he became Lord High Treasurer of England THE POETRY OF SAOKVILLE. 133 This great office he continued to hold until he died in 1 608, at a good old age. Elizabeth and James, unlike in almost everything else, agreed in appreciating the services of this great and gifted man. While stUl a student in the Temple, he had joined Thomas Norton in writing a play then called Gorboduc, which was acted before Elizabeth at Whitehall bj' a company of his fellow-students of the Inner Temple, as a part of the Christmas revels of 1661. This was the first English tragedy, so far as is known. It resembles the later tragedies in having five acts, of which probably Norton wrote three, and SackviUe the last two ; but it differs from them in the use of that very prosy and unnatural excrescence of the ancient plays, called the Chorus. Every act of Gorhoduc, or Ferrex and Porrex as the authors called it in the revised edition of 1671, is closed with an ode in long-lined stanzas, tilled, as was the old Greek chorus, with moral reflections on the various scenes. The plot of this play was founded on a bloody story of ancient British history. But a greater work than Gorhodno adorns the memory of Sack- viUe. During the last years of Mary, which might well be called gloomy, were it not for the fiery glare that tinges them red as if with martyrs' blood, he sketched out the design of a great poem, which was to be entitled The Mirrour of Magistrates, and was to em- brace poetic histories of aU the great Englishmen who had suffered remarkable disasters. The bulk of this work, which first appeared in 1559, was done by minor writers of the 1559 time ; but the Induction and the Story of the "Duke of a.d. Bucldngham, contributed to the second edition in 1563, are from the powerful pen of Sackville. The ", Induction" is a grand pictured allegory, which describes " within the porch and jaws of hell " Eemorse, Dread, Eevenge, and other terrible things, that are ever gnawing away at the root of our human life. It contains only a few hundred lines, and yet these are enough to place Sackville high on the list of British poets. As already hinted, these poems were the fruit of Sackville's early summer; the ripe luxuriance of liis life was devoted to cares of the state, whose ample honours crowned his head when frosted with the touch of winter. 134 STANZAS FJIOM " THE INDUOTIOIf." OLD AGE. (fROM "the INDtrOTION.") And, nert in order, sad Old Age we found, His beard all hoar, his eyes hollow and blind. With drooping cheer still poring on the ground, As on the place where nature him assigned To rest, when that the Sisters had untwined His vital thread, and ended with their knife The fleeting course of fast-declining life. There heard we him, with broke and hollow plaint, Eue with himself his end approaching fast. And all for nought his wretched mind torment With sweet remembrance of his pleasures past, And fresh delights of lusty youth forewaste; [utterly wasted Kecounting which, how would he sob and shriek, And to be young again of Jove bese'ek ! But, an the cruel fates so fixed be ['/ Sliat time forepast cannot return again. This one request of Jove yet prayed he — That, in such withered plight and wretched pain As Eld, accompanied with lier loathsome train, Had brought on him, all were it woe and grief, He might awhile yet linger forth his life. And not so soon descend into the pit. Where Death, when he the mortal corpse hath slain. With reclfless hand in grave doth cover it, Thereafter never to enjoy again The gladsome light, but, in the ground ylain, [laid In depth of darkness waste and wear to sought. As he had ne'er into the world been brought. But who had seen him sobbing how he stood Unto himself, and how he would bemoan ' His youth forepast, — as though it wrought him good -To talk of youth, all were his youth foregone — He would have mused, and marvelled much, whereon This wretched Age should life desire so fain, And knows full well life doth but length his pain. Crook-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 j)JM, and he with eld forelore ; [peeled 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. THE BUENING OF TYNDAtE's TEiNSLATION. 135 CHAPTER VIIL OUS ENGLISH BIBLE. Earliest translations. The life of Truth. Bible-bumlng. 6ryptofSt Paul's. Geneva and Bishop's Bible. Hampton Court. Translation of 1611. Proposedchange. Hallam's criticism. English of the Bible. We tave already seen tow the first English Bible grew, sentence by sentence, in the quiet study of Lutterworth Eeetory, where John WycUffe sat among his books; how William Tyndale dared death and found it in a foreign land, that he might spread God's word freely among his awakening nation; how MUes Coverdale published in 1535 a version of the whole Bible, translated from the Hebrew and the Greek; and how in 1640 Cranmer, Arch- bishop of Canterbury, superintended the issue of a new translation, which was called Cranmer's, or the Great Bible. The reign of the eighth Henry was a strange era in the history of the Book, evidencing perhaps above all other modem days the everlasting Ufe of Truth. If the Bible were not immortal, it would surely have perished then. One Sunday in February 1626, the great Wolsey sat in old St. Paul's under a canopy of cloth of gold. His robe was purple; scarlet gloves blazed on his hands ; and golden shoes glittered on his feet. A magnificent array of satin and damask-gowned priests encircled his throne; and the grey head of old Bishop Fisher — soon to roU bloody on a scaffold — appeared in the pulpit of the place. Below that pulpit stood rows of baskets, piled high with books, the plunder of London and the university towns. These were Tyndale's Testaments, ferretecj out by the emis- saries of the cardinal, who had swept every cranny in 1526 search of the hated thing. None there fresh from the A.D. printer's hand — aU well-thumbed volumes^ scored with 136 THE CRYPT OF OLD ST. PAUL'S. many a loving mark, and parted from with many bitter tears ! Outside the' gate before the great cross there burned a fire, hungering and leaping for its prey like a red wild beast. On that day no blood slaked its ceaseless thirst, no crackling flesh fed its ravenous maw — this was to be but a prelude to the grand per- formance of later days. Bibles only were to bum; not Bible readers. When the sermon was over, men, who loved to read these books, were forced, with a refinement of cruelty, to throw the precious volumes into the flames, while the cardinal and his prelates stood looking at the pleasant show, until the last sparks died out in the great heaps of tinder ; and then the gorgeous crowd went home to supper, rejoicing in their work of destruction. Poor mis- guided men ! to think that the burning of a few shreds of paper and scraps of leather could destroy the words of eternal Truth ! Scenes like this occurred more than once at St. Paul's Cross ; yet the Bible lived — ^was revised and translated with more untiring industry than ever. Fifteen years after the burning thus described, and five years after the body of Tyndale had perished like his books in the flames, a royal order was issued, commanding a copy of the Bible to be placed in every church, where the people might read or hear it freely. Gladly was the boon welcomed ; young and old flocked in crowds to drink of the now unsealed fountain of life. 1 54 1 Then was often beheld, within the grey crypt of St. Paul's, A.D. a scene which a distinguished living artist* has made the subject of a noble picture. The Great Bible, chauied to one of the solid pillars which upheld the arches of the massive roof, lay open upon a desk. Before it stood a reader, chosen for his clear voice and fluent elocution; and, as leaf after leaf was turned, the breathless hush of the listening crowd grew deeper. Grey-headed old men and beautiful women, mothers with their children beside them and maidens in the young dawn of woman- hood, merchants from their stalls and courtiers from the palace, beggary and disease crawling from the fetid alleys, stood still to hear; while, in the dim back-ground, men who, if they had dared, • George Harvey, Esq., of the Royal Scottish Academy. THE CONFERENCE AT HAMPTON COUET. 137 would have torn the sacred Book to tatters and trampled it in the dust, looked sourly on. This dear privilege of hearing the Bible at church, or reading it at home, so much prized by the Enghsh people then, was snatched from them again by their cruel and fickle kiug. But in 1547 the tyrant died, and dming the reign of the gentle boy Edward Bible-reading ■was restored. Under Elizabeth the Bible was finally estabUslied as the great standard of our national faith. Two editions, appearing before that translation which we use, may be noted, — the Geneva Bible, so dear to the Puritans, finished in 1560 by Miles Coverdale and other exiles who were driven from England by the flames of persecution ; and the Bishop's Bible of 1568, a translation superintended by Matthew Parkerj Archbishop of Canterbury, who was aided by the first scholars of that learned age. Then came the translation which we still use, and to which most of us cling with unchanging love, in spite of the occasional little flaws which the light of modem learning has discovered. How tame and cold the words of that Book, entwined as they are with the memory of earliest chUdhood, would fah upon our ear if rendered into the English in which we speak our common words and read our common books ! Within an oak-panelled and tapestried room of that splendid palace which Wolsey built at Hampton by the Thames, King James the First, most pedantic of our English monarchs, sat enthroned among an assembly of divines, who were met in conference upon the religious affairs of the kingdom. It was then Httle more than nine months after his accession to the English throne, and he took his seat, resolved to teach the Puritan doctors Jan. 14 that in him they had to deal with a prince of logicians 1604 and a master in theology. There were present, to back A.D. the wisdom of the British Solomon and applaud his eloquence, some twenty bishops and high clergy of the Church bf England, the lords of the Privy Council, and many courtiers ; while, to speak in the cause of needed change there were only fQur— two doctors from Oxford, and two from Cambridge. It 138 ' PUBLICATION OF KING JAMES's BIBLE. would be out of place here to describe how, during the three days of conference, amid the titters of the courtiers and the gratified smiles of the clergy, the conceited king called the Puritan doctors " dunces fit to be whipped," and indulged in other similar flights of his peculiar, knock-down style of oratory. The scene, ridiculous in most respects, is memorable to us, because it led to the publication of our English Bible. During one of the pauses of the fusUade, when the royal orator was out of breaith. Dr. Keynolds proposed a new version of the Scriptures ; and James saw fit, by-and-by, to yield his gracious consent. Fifty-four scholars were appointed to the great work, but only, forty-seven of these actually engaged in the translation. Taking the Bishop's Bible as the basis of the new version, they set to their task in divisions, Oxford, Cambridge, and Westminster being the centres of their labour; and, often meeting to compare notes and correct one another's manuscripts, they completed their transla- tion in about three years. Our Bible was therefore pub- 1611 lished, with a dedication to King James, in the year 1611. A.D. Of late years there has been some talk of A new trans- lation. No doubt, a revisal, by which manifest rnis- prints or iaaccuracies in translation might be remedied, would be a good thing ; but a completely new translation would so utterly destroy those solemn associations which, rooted in every heart, are twiued, closer than the ivy around its elm-tree, round the antique English of our Bibles, that to attempt, it would be dangerous and wrong. During the ascendency of the Puritans in Cromwell's day, the same scheme was mooted, for the Puritans long preferred the Geneva Bible to that of King James ; but on the proposal being laid before the leading scholars of that time, they pronounced the translation of 1611 "best of any in the world;" and so the matter dropped. , HaUam reminds us that, even in the days of King James, the language of this translation was older than the prevailing speech. " It may," this great critic says, " in the eyes of njany, be a better English, but it is not the English of Daniel, or Raleigh, or Bacon, as any one may eas^y perceive. It abounds, in fact, especially in THE ENGLISH OF THE BIBLE. 139 the Old Testament, witli obsolete pliraseology, and with single words long since abandoned, or retained only in provincial use." This may all be trvje; yet, in the face of HaUam's implied disparagement, we hold, with scores of better judges, that the English of the Bible is unequalled in the full range of our Uterai- ture. Whether we take the subtile argument of Paul's Epistles, the sublime poetry of Job and the Psalms, the beautiful imagery of the Parables, the simple narrative of the Gospels, the magnifi- cent eloquence of Isaiah, or the clear plain histories of Moses and Samuel, but one impression deepens as we read, and remains as we close the volume, — that, without regard to its infinite greatness as the written word of God, taken simply as a literary work, there is no English book like our English Bible. 140 shaespeee's tomb. CHAPTEK IX. WILLIAH SHAKSPEKE. Bom 1564 A.D Died 1616 A.D. Shakspere's toml). Birth-place. His fatber and motlier. Youtlifal life. Stories of his 'teens. Goes' to London. Eich and famous. Character as an actor. Returns to Stratford. Speedy death. The First Folio. Chief plays. Study of Shakapera His grand quality. Shaksper* v. Histoiy. Faults of bis style. Minor poems. Illustrative extracts. Close by the river Avon in Warwicksliire, a tall grey spire, springing from amid embowering elms and lime-trees, marks the position of the parish church of Stratford, in the chancel of which sleeps the body of our greatest poet. The proud roof of Westminster has been deemed by England the fitting vault for her illustrious dead; but Shakspere's dust rests in a humbler tomb. By his own loved river, whose gentle music fell sweet upon his childish ear, he dropped into his last long sleep; and still its melancholy murmur, as it sweeps between its willowy banks, seems to sing the poet's dirge. Four lines, carved upon the flat stone which lies over his grave, are ascribed to his own pen. Whoever wrote them, they have served their purpose well, for a religious horrpr of disturbing the honoured dust has ever since hung about the place : — ■ Good friend, for Jesus' sake, forheare. To digg the dust encloased lieare. Blest he y^ man y' spares these stones, ' •And curst be he y' moves my hones. A niche in the wall above holds a bust of the poet, whose high arching brow, and sweet oval face, fringed with a peaked beard and small moustache, are so familiar to us all How well we know his face and his spirit ; and yet, how little of the man's real life lias descended to our day ! Not very far from Shakspere's tomb part of the house in which he was bom stiU stands. Sun and rain and air have BIRTH AND PARENTAGE OF SHAKSPERE. 141 gradually reduced the plastered timber of its old neighbours into powder ; but its wood and lime stiE hold together, and the room is stUl shown in which baby Shakspere's voice uttered its first feeble wail. The dingy walls of the little chamber are scribbled all over with the Tiames of visitors, known and unknown to fame. It is pleasant to think that this shrine, sacred to the memory of the greatest English writer, has been lately purchased by the English nation; so that lovers of Shakspere have now the satisfaction of feeling that the relics, which teU so picturesque a story of the poet's earliest days, are in safe and careful keeping. Here, then, was bom in April 1564 WiUiam, son of John Shakspere and Mary Arden, his wife. The gossiping Aubrey, no great authority, certainly, who came into the 1564 world about ten years after Shakspere's death, says that a.d. the poet's father was a butcher ; others make out the honest man to have been a wool-comber or a glover, whUe an ingenious writer strives to reconcile aU accounts by supposing that since good John held some land in the neighbourhood of Stratford, whenever he killed a sheep, he sold the mutton, the wool, and the skin, adding to his other occupations the occasional dressing of leather and fashioning of gloves. Perhaps John Shakspere's chief occupation was dealing in wool. At any rate, whatever may have been his calling, he ranked high enough among the burgesses of Stratford to sit on the bench as High Bailiff or Mayor of the town. Mary Arden, who should f)erhaps interest us more, if the commonly received rule be true, that men more strongly resemble their mothers in nature and genius, seems to have belonged to an old county family, and to have possessed what was then a considerable fortune. The beautiful woodland scenery amid which the boy grew to early manhood made a deep impression on his soul. The beds of violets and banks of wild thyme, whose fragrance seems to mingle with the music of the lines that paint their beauty, blossomed richly by the Avon. The leafy glades, from which were pictured those through whose cool green light the melancholy Jacques wandered, and under whose arching boughs BuUy Bottom and his 142 THE poet's SCHOOL DATS. friends rehearsed their "very tragical mirth," were not in the dales of Middlesex or Surrey, but in the Warwickshire Valley of the Red Horse. But of all men or boys, Shakspere was no mere dreamer, fit only — ^ " To pore upon the brook that babbles by." We have no doubt that, when the daily tasks were done in the Free Grammar School of Stratford, where Will probably got all the regular instruction he ever had, the said Will might often have been spied on Avon banks, rod in hand, thinking more of trout and dace than of violets or wild thyme. And, as we shall shortly see, there is a strong suspicion, not far removed from certainty, that more than once he saw the moon rise over the dark oak woods of Charlecote Park, while he lurked in the shadow, waiting for the deer, with more of the poacher than the poet in his guise. And, while he was receiving from Hunt and Jenkins, then the masters of the school, that education which his friend Jonson characterizes as consisting of " little Latin and less Greek," an occasional visit to scenes of a different kind, not far away, may 'have mingled the colouring of town life and courtly pageants with those pictures of woodland sweetness which his mind 'caught from the home landscape. Warwick and Coventry — Godiva's town — were near ; and in the grand castle of KenUworth in the year 1575, when the princely Leicester feasted the Queen for nineteen days, why may we not suppose that Alderman or Ex- BaiUff Shakspere, his wife Dame Mary, and his little son Will, then aged eleven, were among the crowd of people who had tra- velled from all the country round to see the Queen, the masquers, and the fire-works 1 StroUing players, top, sometimes knocked up their crazy stage, hung with faded curtains, in the market-place of Stratford, and there flourished their wooden swords, and raved through their parts to the immense delight of the gaping rustics. Such visits, dear to all the boys of a country town, were, no doubt, longed for and intensely enjoyed by yOung Shakspere. How he spent his life after he had left school, and before he went to London, we know as dimly as we know the calling of hia TRADITIONS OF HIS YOUTH. 143 father. Aubrey says he helped his father the butcher, and that he acted also as a teacher. It is thought, from the constant re- currence of law terms in his writings, that he spent some of these years in an attorney's oflSce. All stories may be true, for every- thing we know of the poet during this period goes to show that he was by no means a steady or settled character. He may- have killed an odd calf or sheep, have taught an occasional class for his former master, and have driven the quill over many yards of yellow parchment. The very existence of three different stories about his early occupation implies that his hfe at Stratford was changeful and undecided. Nor was he free from youthful faults. To teU the truth, he appears to have engaged in many wild pranks, of which two stories have floated down to our day. One relates to an ale-drinking bout at the neighbouring village of Bidford, by which he was so overcome that, with his companions, he was obliged to spend the night by the road-side imder the sheltering boughs of a large crab-tree. The other story is that of the poaching affair already alluded to. It seems that the wild youths of Stratford could not resist the temptation of hunting deer and rabbits in the park of Sir Thomas Lucy, who lived at Charlecote, about three miles off Shakspere got into the poaching set, was detected one night, and locked up in the keeper's lodge till morning. His examination before the offended justice, and whatever punishment foUpwed it, awoke the anger of the boyish poet, who in revenge wrote some doggerel, punning rhymes upon Sir Thomas, and stuck them on the park gate. This was throwing oil upon flame ; and the knight's rage grew so violent that Shakspere had to flee from Stratford. We have thought it right to notice these traditions, though modern authorities discard them with scorn. With much fictitious colouring they have, perhaps, a ground-work of truth sufficient to afford a strong presumption that Shakspere's opening manhood was wild and riotous. His early marriage, too, contracted 1582 when he was but a raw boy of eighteen, with Anne a.d. Hathaway of Shottery, a yeoman's daughter, some eight years older than himself, affords additional evidence of youthful iudiscretion. 144 PEOSPEEOUS LONDON IIFE. So, driven either by the fear of Sir Thomas Lucy's vengeance, or, more probably, by the need of providing daily bread for his ■wife and children, Shakspere went iip to London in 1686 or 1587; and then began that wonderful theatrical Hfe of six and twenty years, whose great creations form the chief glory of our dramatic literature. The brightest dayat noon is that whose dawn is wrapped in heavy mists ; and so upon the opening of this brilliant time — the midsummer of English poetry — thick clouds of darkness rest. How Shakspere lived when first he arrived in London, we do not certainly know. Three Warwickshire men, one a native of his own town, then held a prominent place among the metropolitan players, and this, no doubt, coupled with his poetical tastes, led him to the theatre. Here, too, there are vague traditions of his life. Accord- ing to one, he was call-boy or deputy -prompter; according to another, he held horses at the theatre door. However he may have earned his first shiUings in London, it is certain that he soon became prosperous, and even wealthy. . In the year 1589 1589 he held a share in the Blackfriars Theatre, having A,D. previously, by his acting, by the adaptation of old plays, and the production of new ones, proved himself worthy to be much more than a mere sleeping partner in the con- cern. As his fame brightened, his purse filled. He became .also a part-owner of the Globe Theatre; and at one time drew from all sources a yearly income fully equivalent to £1500 of our money. " Kespectable " is, perhaps, the best word by which Shakspere's acting may be characterized : the Ghost in " Hamlet," and Adam in " As You Like It," are named among his favourite parts. But his magic pen has taught us almost to forget that he ever was an actor ; nor can. we, without a violent stretch of fancy, realize our greatest poet stalking slowly with whitened cheeks across the boards, or tottering in old-fashioned livery through a rudely painted forefet of Arden. Thus acting, writing, and managing, he lived among the fine London folks, honoured with the special notice of his Queen, and associating every day with the noblest and wittiest Englishmen of that brilliant time, yet never snapping the link which bound him to the sweet banks of Avon. Every year he ran down ■ THE DEATH OF SHAKSPEEB. 145 to Stratford, where his family- continued to reside ; and there ha bought a house and land for the rest and solace of his waning hfe. The year 1612 is given as the date of the poet's final retire- ment from London life. He was then only forty-eight, and might reasonably hope for a f uU score of years, in which to grow his flowers, his mulberries, and his apple-trees, to treat his friends to sack and claret under the hospitable roof of New Place, and to continue that series of Roman plays which had so noble a begihning in " Julius Caesar " and " Coriolanus." But four years more brought this great life to an untimely close. He 1616 died on the 23d of April 1616, of what disease we have a.d. no certain knowledge. In a "Diary" by John Ward, a vicar of Stratford-on-Avon, written between 1648 and 1679, it is stated that the poet drank too much at a merry meeting with Drayton and Jonson, and took a fever in consequence, of which he died ; but this story is considered an exaggeration. His wife survived him seven years ; his only son had gone to the grave before him ; and long before the close of the century that saw this great poet die, aU the descendants of WUliam Shakspere had perished from the face of the earth. From the dim, uncertain story of his life, and the speedy blighting of his family-tree, withered in its third generation, let us turn tp the magnificent works, which have won for this London actor the fame of being, certainly England's — perhaps the world's^ — greatest poet. ■ Seven years after the poet's death, a volume, known to students of Shakspere as the " First FoUo,'' was published by his two professional friends, John Heminge and Henrie CondeU. 1623 This book contained thirty-six plays ; seven more were a.d. added in the Third Folio ; but of these seven, only the play of Pericles is received as genuine. The plays of Shakspere, therefore, so far as the battling of critics has agreed upon their number, are thirty-seven. And these have been corrected and re- corrected, altered and revised, mended and re-mended, until we must have a very true and pure text of the poet in this century of ours, — unless, indeed, something may have happened to certain pas- sages, like that which the fable tells us happened to Jason's ship, 10 146 THE PLATS OF SHAKSPEEE. the Argo, in which he sought the Golden Fleece. So carefully did a grateful and reverent nation patch up the decajdng timbers of the old craft, as she lay high and dry on the Greek shore, that in process of time it became a serious question among learned men whether much of the old ship was left together after aU. The books written about Shakspere and his works would of themselves fill a respectable Kbrary. The thirty-seven plays are classed as Tragedies, Comedies, and Histories. The great Tragedies are five — Macbeth, King Lear, Rcmieo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Othello. The Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, and the Merchant of Venice, are perhaps the finest Comedies ; whUe Richard III., Goriolanics, and Julius Ccesar, stand prominently out among the noble series of Histories. The student who knows these eleven plays, knows Shakspere in his finest vein. Yet fat and vinous old Jack FalstafiF, whose por- traiture is the happiest hit in all the varied range of English comedy, must be sought for in other scenes. Indeed, to know Shakspere as he ought to be known, we must read him right through from first to last ; and in dayswhen our most brilliant essayists draw gems of illustration from tliis' exhaustless mine, when every newspaper and magazine studs its leaders with witty allusions to Shallow or Dogberry, Malvolio or- Mercutlo,. and every orator borrows the lightning of some Shaksperian line to gild his meaner language with its flash, — not to have studied the prince of poets thoroughly, proves not merely the absence of a fine literary taste, but the total lack of that common sense which leads men to aim at knowing well and clearly every subject that may help them in their daily life. The grand, surpassing quality of Shakspere's genius, was its creative power. Coleridge, who saw, perhaps, deeper into the un- fathomed depths of the poet's spirit than any ' man has done, calls him the thousand-souled Shakspere, and speaks of his oceanic mind. And well the dramatist deserves such magnificent epithets, for no writer has ever created a host of characters, so numerous, so varied, and yet so completely distinct from one another. The door of his fancy opened, as if of its own accord, SHAKSPEEE VFJISUS HISTORY. i 147 and out trooped such a procession as the world had never seen. The bloodiest crimes and the broadest fun were represented there; ]the fresh silvery laughter of girls and the maniac shriekings of a wretched old man, the stem njusic of war and the roar of tavern rioters, mingled with a thousand other various sounds, yet no discordant note was heard in the manifold chorus. So true and subtile an interpreter of the human soul, in its myriad moods, has never written novel, play, or poem ; yet he drew but little from the hfe around him. The revels with Eale^h and Jonson at the Mermaid and the Falcon, may have suggested some hints for the pictures of, life in the Boar's Head Tavern, Eastcheap. The court of Elizabeth, and the greenwood that embowered Stratford, doubtless supplied material for many bril- liant and lovely scenes. But those characters which were not drawn from the page of history, are chiefly the creations of his own inexhaustible imagination ; and often, when he does adopt a historic portraiture, the colouring is nearly all his own. Many of us read Shakspere before we read history, and take our ideas of his- torical heroes rather from his masterly idealizations than from the soberer painting of the historian's pencil. So deeply rooted, for example, are our early-caught notions of Macbeth's vUlany, and Eichard Crookback's appaUing guilt, that it is with somewhat of a startle and recoU we come in our later reading upon other and milder views of these Shaksperian jeriminals. And, read as we may, we can never get wholly rid of the magic spell with which the poet's genius has enchained us. The language of Shakspere has been justly censured for its ob- scurity. "It is full of new words in new senses." There are lines and passages, upon whose impenetrable granite the brains of critics and commentators have been well-nigh dashed out ; and yet their meaning is 'still uncertain. Another fault is the frequent use of puns and verbal quibbles, where, quite out of place and keeping, they jar harshly upon the feelings of the reader. Yet these are spots upon the sun, forgotten while we rejoice in his cheerful beams and drink his light into our souls — discoverable only by the cold eyes of those critics who read for business, not dehght. 148 SPECIMENS OF SHAKSPEEE'S STYLE. Besides his plays, Stakspere gave to the world various poems : Venm and Adonis, Ltwrece, The Passionate Pilgrim, A Lover's Complaint, and one hundred and fifty-four Sonnets. The "Venus and Adonis," which formed the first fruits of his ripening powers, was published in 1593, with a dedication to Lord Southampton. Dr. Johnson says, in his Preface to Shakspere's Works, " He that tries to recommend him by select quotations, wiU succeed like the pedant^ in Hierocles, who, when he offered his house to sale, carried a brick in his pocket as a specimen." The comparison is witty and just ; yet, in pursuance of our plan, we must select specimens of Shakspere's style. The first extract illustrates the poet's tragic power ; the second shows Mm in a light' and playful mood : — MACBETH.— Act II., Sokne 1. Macbeth. — Is this a dagger, wMoli I see before me, The handle toward my hand ! Come, let me clutch thee : — I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal visioh, sensible To feeling, as to sight ? or art thou but A dagger of the mind ; a false creation. Proceeding from the heat-oppressed Brain ? • I see thee yet, in form as palpable As this which now I draw. Thou marshal'st me the way that I was going ; And such an instrument I was to use. Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses, * Or else worth all the rest : I see thee still ; And on thy blade and dudgeon, gouts of blood, Which was not so before.— There's no such thing : It is the bloody business, which informs Thus to mine eyes. — Now o'er the one half world Nature seems dead ; and wicked dreams abu^e The curtaiu'd sleep ; now witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecate's offerings ; and withered' murder, Alariim'd by his sentinel, the wolf, Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace. With Tarquin's ravishing strides, toward his design Moves like a ghost. — Thou sure and firm-set earth. Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear Thy very stones prate of my whereabout, , And take tho present horror from the time. Which now suits with it. — Whiles I threat, he Uvea ; SPECIMENS or shakspeee's style. 149 Words to tte heat of deeds too cold breath gives. I go, and it is done ; the bell invites me. [A bdl rings. Hear it not, Duncan ; for it is a knell That summons thee to heaven, or to heU. KOMEO AND JULIET.— Act L, Scene i Mercratio. — Oh, then, I see. Queen Mab hath been with you. She is the fairies' midwife ; aqd she cornea In shape no bigger than an agate-stone On the fore-finger of an alderman. Drawn with a team of little atomies Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep : Her waggon-spokes made of long spinners' lege ; The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers ; The traces, of the smallest spider's web ; The collars, of the moonshine's wat'ry beams : Her whip, of cricket's bone ; the lash, of film : Her waggoner, a small grey-coated gnat, , Not half so big as a round little worm Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid : Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut. Made by the joiner squirrel, or old grub. Time out of mind the fairies' coach-makers. And in this state she gallops night by night Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love : , On courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight : O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees : ^ O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream. Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues, Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are. Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose. And then dreams he of smelling out a suit : And sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig's tail, Tickling a parson's nose, as 'a lies asleep. Then dreams he of another benefice ; Sometimes she driveth o'er a soldier's neck. And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats. Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades. Of healths five fathom deep ; and then anon Drums in his ear ; at which he starts, and wakef ; And, being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two, And sleeps again. 150 EALEIGH AT SEA. CHAPTEK X. Sm WAI.TEK SAIiEIGH. Bom 1553 A.S Beheaded 1618 A.D. Early adventures. Court life. Virginia colonized. Fall of Baleiglu Eis trial. In prison. . History of the World. Hla release. Burning of St. Tlioma! His execution. Minor works. Illustrative extract. No English writer has lived a more romantic Hie than Raleigh. Bom in 1562, at Hayes Farm in Devonshire, and educated at Oriel College, Oxford, he entered at the age of seventeen upon his brilliant and adventurous career as a volunteer in the cause of the French Protestants. For more than five years he fought in Con- tinental wars; but in 1576 a new field of action was opened to his daring spirit. It was the time when Britain began to take her first steps towards winning that ocean-crown which she now so proudly wears. And among the dauntless sailors, who braved the blistering calms of the tropics, and the icy breath of the frigid seas in search of new dominions, Ealeigh was one of the foremost. With his half-brother. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who perished at sea in a later voyage, he sailed to North America ; but after two years of toil he returned home, richer in nothing but, hard-won experience. We then find young Captain Ealeigh en- gaged in Ireland on active service against the rebel Desmonds, winning high honours by his bravery and military talent, and re- warded by being chosen to bear despatches from the Lord Lieu- tenant to the Queen. His court life now began. Hitherto, we picture him keeping watch upon the icy deck in the starry light of a frosty night at sea, or, in dusty and blood-stained doublet, sleeping off tiie ex- haustion of a hard battle-day. A scene of courtly splendour now opens to our view; and, prominent among the plumed and jewelled circle gathered round the throne, stands Sir Walter Ealeigh, high A PLUSH CLOAK IN THE MUD. 151 in the favour of his Queen, the associate or rival of the proudest noble there. The legend of his first introduction to Elizabeth is too romantic to be omitted, although we must not forget that it rests only on tradition. When the Queen in walking one day came to a muddy place, — these were very common on English roads and pathways then, — she stopped and hesitated. Ealeigh, seeing her pause, with ready tact flung down his rich plush cloak for her to step on. The graceful act, which was just the kind of flattering attention that Elizabeth liked best, showed that Ealeigh was cut out for a courtier. A capital investment it was that the young soldier made. He lost his cloak, but' he gained the favour of a Queen, who well knew how to honour and reward those she loved. Within a few years he became a knight, Captain of the Guard, and Seneschal of Cornwall, besides receiving a grant of 12,000 acres of Irish land, and the sole right of licensing wine- seUers in England, His attempts to colonize North America, for which a patent had been granted to him, went far to exhaust his fortune. Twice he sent out expeditions, supphed with all necessary stores; but the red men, who swarmed in the woods ^long the shore, would not suffer the colonies to take root. The first settlers escaped with their lives on board Drake's ships ; the second band perished under the deadly tomahawk. Tobaccoi and the potato were brought to Europe, as the only fruits of these unhappy enterprises. The name Virginia, given to the colony in honour of the .unmarried Elizabeth, and the name Ealeigh, applied to the capital of North Carolina, stiU remind our transatlantic kindred of the ancient ties that bind them to the mother-land. A leader of English ships in the great conflict with the Armada— the courted and prosperous owner of the broad acres of Sherborne in Dorsetshire — the disgraced husband of Elizabeth Throgmorton — the gallant explorer of the Orinoco and its neighbouring shores — the hero of the siege of Cadiz and the capture of Fayal ; — such were the various characters fiUed by this English Proteus during the last years of Elizabeth's reign. Scarcely was James I. seated on the throne when a change came, 152 THE " HISTOEY OP THE WORLD.'' Ealeigi's former associate, Cecil, poisoned the King's mind so much against him, that he was stripped of nearly aU his honours and rewards. A worse blow was then aimed at him. Charged with hav- ing joined in a plot to seize the King and set Lady Arabella 1603 Stuart on the throne, he was brought to trial at Winches- A.D. ter Castle. From eight in the morning tUl nearly midnight he fronted his enemies with unshaken courage. The bluster of Attorney-General Coke roared around him without effect. " I want words," stormed the great prosecutor, " to express • thy viperous treasons ! " " True," said Raleigh, " for you have spoken the same thing half a dozen times over already." But rare wit and eloquence did not save Baleigh from the Tower, where he was left to lie for nearly thirteen weary years. Much of his time within these dark walls was devoted to chemical experiments, in course of which he sought eagerly for the philosopher's stone, and believed at one time that he had discovered an elixir, which would cure all diseases. But what made his imprisonment a memorable era in the annals of English literature, was the composition in his cell of his great History of the World. This work, in the prepara- tion of which he was aided by other able hands, is chiefly valu- able for its spirited histories of Greece and Eome. A fine antique eloquence flows from his pen, enriched with a deep learning, which excites wonder when displayed by Kaleigh. The soldier, the sailor, or the courtier is hardly the man frorh whom we expect profound philosophy or deep research ; yet Raleigh showed by this achieve- ment a power of wielding the pen, at least not inferior to his skill with sword or compass. That part of the History which he was able to complete, opening with the Creation, closes with the second Macedonian war, about one hundred and sixty-eight years before Christ. A deep tinge of melancholy, caught from the sombre walls that were ever frowning on his task, pervades the pages of the great book. A peimUess king, dazzled by the story of an unwrought gold mine, discovered years ago during a cruise up the Orinoco, at length set the prisoner free, and sent him with fourteen ships to make sure of this far-off treasure. The capture of St. Thomas, THE SCAFFOLD AT WESTMINSTER. 153 a Spanish settlement on the banks of the gi-eat river, produced only two bars of gold ; and with " brains broken," as he told his wife in a letter, Kaleigh was forced to sail away, a baffled man, leaving in a foreign grave the body of his eldest son, Walter, who had beei;i killed in the assault. The rage of the Spaniards, who considered aU these rich regions their own by right of prior dis- covery, kindled into flame when the news of this daring move reached Europe. "With a cry of " Pirates ! pirates !" the Spanish ambassador at London rushed into the presence-chamber of King James to demand vengeance on the slayer of his kinsman, who had been governor of St. Thomas, and repaiation for the insult offered to his country's flag. James had good reasons just then for desir- ing to please the Spanish court, since one of his dearest wishes was to marry his son Charles to the Infanta. So Raleigh was arrested upon his landing at Plymouth, and, after more than a week's delay, was carried to London. A few months later, oct. 29, he was executed at Westminster upon the old charge of 1618 treason, for which he had already suffered so many years a.d. of imprisonment. Almost his last words, as he lifted the axe and ran his fingers along its keen edge, show with what feelings he fronted death. Smiling, he said, " This is a sharp medicine, but it will cure all diseases." Two blows severed the neck of the old man^ who had seen so many phases of humaii Ufe, and had played with brilliant success so many varied parts. Besides his great work, a Narrative of his Cruise to Guiana, which proceeded frotn his pen in 1596, is worthy of being named. He wrote many other prose works, and cultivated poetry with such success that Edmund Spenser calls him the " Summer's Night- ingale." THE CONCLUSION OF RALEIGH'S HISTOET. If we seek a reason of the succession and continuance of this boundless ambi- tion 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. 154 SPECIMEN OP EALEIGH's PSOSB. It is he that pats 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, born in London in 1596, was the last of the Elizabethan dramatists. Possessing less fire and force than the rest, he excels them in purity of thought and expression. The true poet shines out in many passages of his plays. He gave up the curacy of St. Albans, when he embraced the Roman Catholic faith ; and, after a vain attempt to get up a school in that town, he went to London to write for bread. The great fire of 1666 burned him out of house and home ; and a little after, in one of the suburbs of London, Ms wife and he died on the same day. Richard Crashaw was a Fellow of Peterhouse College, Cam- bridge, and took holy orders. In France he became a Roman 172 CAMDEN THE ANTIQUAKY. Catholic, and, having passed to Italy, was made a Canon of Loretto, His religious poetry, and his translations from Latin and Italian, are of the first order, though somewhat marred by the affectations of the time. This scholarly poet died in Italy about 1650. Sm John Suckling, bom in 1609, came at eighteen into a great fortune. Having served under the Swedish banner in the Thirty Years' War, he returned to England, to shine as a brilliant but passing meteor in the court of Charles the First. More desirous, perhaps, to win the fame of a skilful gamester and richly dressed gallant than of a literary man, he yet, in the quieter hours of a feverish life, produced some beautiful lyrics, brilliant outpourings of a poetic genius that could not be repressed. Detected in a plot to set Strafford free, he fled to France, where he died before 1642, having, it is thought, committed suicide by poison.* His Ballad on a Wedding, and many of his songs are exquisite specimens of their Mnd. PEOSE WEITEES. , Thomas Wilson was a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and afterwards Dean of Durham, who vrrote about 1553 a System of Rhetoric and Logic, considered to be the first critical work upon the English tongue. He strongly recommends the use of a simple English style. William Camden, the antiquary and writer of history, was born in London in 1551, and received his higher education at Oxford. Much of his earKer hfe was spent in connection with -Westminster School, in which he was successively Second and Head-master. He afterwards became Clarencieux King-at-arms. The Britannia is his great work. Written in Latin, it is espe- cially devoted to a description of the antiquities of his native land. He vrrote, besides other works, Latin narratives of Queen Eliza- beth's reign and the Gunpowder Plot. He died in 1623. EiCHAED Haklttyt and Samuel Puechas were two English clergymen, who, in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I., compiled books of travel and geographical discovery. Haklu'yt's chief work, of which the third volume was completed in 1 600,comprised an account burton's " ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY." 173 ■of all the Principal Voyages undertaken within the previous 1500 years. He was an associate and helper of Sir Walter Ealeigh in the work of colonizing North America. The chief -work of the other writer, bearing the q^uaint title of Purchas his Pilgrims, appeared in 1 625. Another volume, entitled Purchas his Pilgrimage, had been already published. Hakluyt died in 1616; Purchas, about 1628. King James I. of England got rid of his superfluous learning in the shape of certain literary works. Among his productions three are specially remembered, but rather for the amusement than the delight which they afford. His Doemonologie defends his belief in witches in a most erudite dialogua His Basilicon Doron was written in Scotland to leaven Prince Henry's mind with his own notions and opinions. His Counterblast to Tobacco hfts a strenu- ous but often very comical voice against the growing use of that plant. Poems, too, in both English and Latin came from this royal pen. Joseph Hall, Bishop of Norwich, was bom in Leicestershire in 1574. Distinguished as the author of vigorous poetical satires, he deserves yet greater praise for his sermons and other prose writings. Hia Contemplations on Historical Passages of the Old and New Testament and Ms Occasional Meditations form his chief works. He died at a good old age in 1656. KoBEET BuETON, a native of Lindley in Leicestershire, was bom in 1578. Though Eector of Segrave in Ms own sMre, he lived cMefly at Christ-church College, Oxford, where he vrrote Ms famous work. The Anatomy of Melancholy, by Democritus junior. This strangely quaint and witty book, wMch is crammed with learned quotations, and with curious gleanings from works that few men ever read, became a public favourite at once. Laurence Steme has been convicted of stealing brilliants from Burton to mingle with the tinsel and the paste of Ms own sentimentalities. A short poem on Melancholy, containing twelve stslnzas, opens the "Anatomy." Burton's life was chequered with deep melan- choly moods, to relieve which he wrote Ms famous book He died in 1640.- Thomas Dekker, a wild and penniless dramatist who produced 174 THE LEAENED SELDEN. above twenty plays, wrote, among otter prose works, The Gull'i II(yrriho6k, a satirical guide to the follies of London life, wHcli was pubUshed in 1609. Dekker died about 1638. Lord Herbert of Cherbury was bom in 1581 at Eyton in Shropshire, and was educated at Oxford. Though noted for his deistio works, of which the chief is entitled Be Veritdte, he deserves our kindly remembrance for his Life and Reign of Henry VIII., published in 1649. Memoirs of his own Life were printed more than a century after his death, which took place in 1648. James Usshee, Archbishop of Armagh, was born in Dublin in 1581. While Professor of Divinity in Trinity CoUege, Dublin, he became noted as a theologian and controversialist. A treatise, called The Power of the Prince and Obedience of the Svhject, written in the reign of Charles I., fully displayed his Royalist opinions. In 1641 he was obliged by the war in Ireland to take refuge at Oxford, and, after many changes of abode, he died in 1656 at Eyegate in Surrey. He won his chief fame, as a chrono- loger, by the publication (1650-54) of the Annals, a view of general history from the Creation to the Fall of Jerusalem. John Selden, born in 1584 near Tering in Sussex, earned the distinguished praise from Milton of being "the chief of learned men reputed in this land." Educated at Oxford, he studied law in the London schools. Besides several histories and antiquarian works written in Latin, he was the author of an English book called A Treatise on Titles of Honour, which, published in 1614, is still highly valued by heralds and genealogists. His History of Tithes (1618) excited the rage of the clergy and drew a rebuke from the -King. As a member of the Long Parliament, he took a leading part in the politics of the day, but was opposed to the CivU War. Appointed in 1643 Keeper of the Records in the Tower, he continued to write until his death in 1654. Some time after his death Ms secretary, who had been acting the Boswell to this Puritan Johnson, published the Table-talk that had dropped from his learned lips during twenty years. Thomas Hobbes was bom at Mahnesbury in 1588. Some years of his earlier Ufe were spent in travelling on the Continent izAAE Walton's "complete angler." 175 as tutor to Lord Cavendisli, afterwards Earl of Devonshire. After a residence at Chatsworth, he was obliged to hide himself and his Eoyalist doctrines at Paris in 1640; and there some years later he became mathematical tutor to the Prince of Wales. He published four works, dealing with politics and moral philosophy, which gave deep offence to the friends of religion and constitutional govern- ment. The principal of these works he called Leviathan (1651); and the key-note of his whole system, there developed, is the doctrine that aU our notions of right and wrong depend on self- interest alone. Works of a different kind from the pen of Hobbes are his Translation of Homer in Verse, and his Behemoth, a His- tory of the Civil Wars. He died in December 1679. IzAAK Walton, who wielded pen and fishing-rod with equal love and skill, was bom at Stafford in 1593. He kept a linen draper's shop in ComhiU, and then in Fleet Street, London ; retired from business in 1643, and lived afterwards for forty years to enjoy his favourite pursuit. His memory is dear to every lover of our litersr- ture for the delightful book he has left us, redolent of wild-flowers and sweet country air — Tlie Complete Angler, or Contemplative. Man's Becreation (1663). The Lives of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, George Herbert, and, Bishop Sanderson, written with beautiful sim- plicity, remain also as fruits of honest Izaak's old age. He died in 1683 at the age of ninety. James Howell, bom in Caermarthenshire about 159G, spent much of his life travelling on the Continent — as agent for a glass- work — as tutor to a young gentleman — and as a political official. Returning home, he was made in 1640 clerk to the Council; was imprisoned in the Fleet by order of the Parliament; became historio- grapher-royal in 1660, and died six years later. His Familiar Letters (1645), giving, in lively, picturesque language, sketches of his foreign observations, mingled with philosophical remarks, have gained for him the reputation of being the earliest contributor to our epistolary literature. He wrote altogether about forty works. 176 DRESS OF THE CAVAIJEES. FOUETH ERA OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. FEOM THE SHUTTHrQ OP THE THEATRES IN 1648 A.D. TO THE DEATH OF MQTOII IN 1674 A.D. CHAPTEE I. PITEITANS AND CAVAIIEES-THEIR INFLUENCE UPON ENGLISH LITERATURE. Fnrltan and Cavalier. Dress of the Cavaliers. Tlieir wild life. Gallantry In the field. Their writings. Puritan hai)its. Hatred of amnsement Sincerity. Greatest literary names. JoSTLDfO in London streets, and scowling as they passed each other on leafy country roads j grappling in deadly conflict upon many a battle-field from Edgehill to Naseby, resting upon hacked sword or bloody ash-wood pike only till the leaping heart was stiU enough to begin the strife again — Puritans and Cavaliers stand out in violent contrast during that period of English history which is filled with the great central struggle of the seventeenth century. Close and deadly though their occasional collision, the cur- rents of their domestic lives flowed far apart; — the one, a brilliant stream flashing along its noisy way, and toying with its floweiy banks, aU unheeding of the great deep to which its waters ran ;— the other, a dark, strong, and solemn river, sweeping sternly on to its goal between rugged shores of cold grey stone. The violence of the opposition between Puritan and Cavalier was strikingly expressed by the difference of their dress and of their amusements. The Cavalier (the word was borrowed from the Spanish) in full dress wore a brilliant silk or satin doublet with slashed sleeves, a falling collar of rich point lace, a short cloak hanging carelessly from one shoulder, and a broad-leafed WILD LIFE OF THE CAVALIEES. 177 low-crowned hat of Flemish beaver, from which floated one or two graceful feathers. His broad sword-belt, supporting a Spanish rapier, was a marvel of costly embroidered-work. A laced buff coat and silken sash sometimes took the place of the doublet; and when the steel gorget was buckled over this, the gallant Cavalier was ready for the fray. Long waves of curled hair, rippHng on the shoulders, formed a graceful framework for the finely moulded fea- tures of a high-bred Enghsh gentleman ; and to this class of the nation the Cavaliers for the most part belonged. But, unhap- pily, these silks and ringlets filled the taverns and surrounded the gaming-tables of London by night and day. Great fortunes were lost then, as in later times, on a single throw of the dice ; and many a fair-plumed hat was dashed fiercely with curses in the mud, when the half-sobered reveller, staggering with torn and wine-splashed finery out of the tavern into the cold grey hght of the breaking day, found every gold piece vanished, from his shrunken purse. Well might he pluck at the dishevelled love- lock — special eye-sore to the Puritans — ^which hung over his pallid brow, and curse his drunken folly. Such a life lived many of the Cavaliers. Tennis, billiards, drinking, masquerading, dressing, intriguing, composing and singing love songs, filled their days and their nights. Madly the whirlpool spun round with its reckless freight of gaily dressed debauchees, who, seeing one and another wasted face sink from view, only drowned the cry of dying remorse in a wilder burst of revelry. A few were flung out from the fatal circles with ruined fortune and broken health, to find nothing left them but a painful dragging out of days in some lonely country farm-house ; or, if the pure air and quiet hours restored them, a life of exile, as a soldier in some foreign service, and then, perhaps, a grave in unknown soil. Yet even all this vicious round could not destroy the pluck of -Englishmen. Gallantly and gaily did Eupert's horsemen, the very flower of the Cavaliers, ride in the face of hailing buUets upon the Puritan musketeers. While we condemn the vices of the Cavaliers, and pity the wretched end of BO many of these briUiant English gentlemen, we cannot help respecting the bravery of the men who rallied so loyally round 12 178 THE PURITAN DEESS AND MIEN. the banner of their erring king, and, for the cause of monarchy, spilt their blood on English battle-fields with the same care- less gaiety as if they were pouring out bumpers of red wine in the taverns by St. Paul's. The literature of the Cavaliers, we may ^ almost guess, did not, for the most part, go very deep. The poetry was chiefly lyric, — the sparkling, spontaneous effiisious of a genius, that poured forth its sweet and living waters in spite of overwhelming -floods of wine and dense fumes of tobacco-smoke. Herrick, Suckling, Waller, and the unhappy Lovelace were the chief poets of the Cavaliers ; and the works of all are stamped with characters that proclaim their birth-place and their fostering food. The Cavalier was graceful and gay, polite and polished 5 so are the verses of Lovelace and his brother bards. The Cavalier was dissipated, and often vicious; there are many works of these men that bear deepest stains of immorality and vice. History, on the CavaUer side, is best represented by Lord Clarendon; theology, by the witty Thomas Fuller aiid the brilliant Jeremy Taylor. The quaint oddities of the former divine, and the gentle pictures, rich in images of loveliness, with which the sermons of the latter are studded, afford the most pleasing examples of English literature written in the atmosphere of Cavalier Ufe. Of a totally different stamp were the Puritan and his wrilin!gs. Instead of the silk, satin, and lace which decked his gay antago- nists, he affected usually a grave sobriety of dress and manners, which should place him at the utmost possible distance from the fashion of the vain world from which he sought to separate him- self His tastes were simple, his pleasures moderate, and his behavioxir reverent and circumspect. Living in an atmosphere of habitual seriousness, the Bible was much in his hands and its sacred words often on his lips ; while, disdaining lighter recreations, he often found his chief enjoyment in the hearing of sermons and the singing of psalms. As in other days of high religious fer^'our, his children at their baptism were called by sacred names, either drawn from the genealogical lists of Old Testament times, or expressive of his Christian faith and hope. That the perfor- THE PUKITAN UTEEATUEE. . 179 mance of the stage, such, as 'it then was, steeped in a shameless licentiousness which shocked alike good men of every party, should be the object of his utter abhorrence, was a matter of course; but with it were rejected other sports and pastimes of a less question- able kind, but which were stiU, in his view, inseparably mixed up with sin — as the mistletoe, the boar's head, and the country games around the May-pole, decorated with green and flowing boughs. Opposed, in short, to the riotous and dashing Cavaliers, both in political and religious views, the Puritans strove to draw the line as sharply as possible between themselves and their gaily attired antagonists, and to stand in every respect as far apart from these godless revellers as they could. They went too far, undoubtedly; but they were, in point of morality and religion at least, on the right side of the dividing line ; and we can easily forgive the austere tone in which Sergeant Zerubbabel Grace, discoursing to his troopers, proclaimed the truths of the Bible, when we remember that the same brave andhonest soldier gave good proofs of his sincerity, by avoiding the ale-house and the dicing-room, and living in constant fear of Him who said, "Swear not at all." A profound religious thoughtfulness was the root, in the char- acter of the English Puritans, out of which grew their great works of the pen. The period of the Civil War was too full of hurry and blood- shed to be prolific in any but controversial writings. One princely work, indeed, the Areopagitica of Milton, lifted its lofty voice above the clash of swords and the roll of musketry, its noble eloquence undimmed by the blackening sulphur-smoke. Liberty was the grand stake, for which the English Puritans were then playing at the game of war; and there was among them one, the grandest intellect of all, who could not stand idly by and see professing champions of the sacred cause — feUpw-soldiers by liis own side in the great battle of freedom — ^lay, in their blindness, the heavy fetter of a license on the English press. To Milton the freedom of human thought and speech was a far grander aim than even the relief of the English people from the tyranny of Charles Stuart. 180 THE GEEAT PUEITAN MAN OF LETTEES. When the Civil War was over, and Charles rested in his bloody grave, the day of Eoundhead triumph came. Yet not the proudest period of the Puritan literature. Pure in many things, as its name proclaimed it, the Puritan mind needed to pass through a fiery furnace before its dross was quite purged away, and the fine gold shone ont with clearest lustre. While the Cavalier poets had been stringing their garlands of artificial blossoms in the heated air of the Stuart court, Milton had been weaving his sweet chaplets of unfading wild-flowers in the meadows of Horton. It was not in the nature of things that the great Puritan poet should pass through the trying hours of conflict and of triumph without many stains of earth deepening on his spirit. To purge these away, required suffering in many shapes' — blind- ness, bitterness of soul, threatening ruin, and certain narrowness of means. Yet bodily affliction and political disgrace could not break the giant's wing; they but served to give it greater strength. From a fall which would have laid a feebler man stUl in his coflin, Milton arose with his noblest poem completed in his hand. And Milton's noblest poem is the crown and glory of our English literature. What more needs to be said of Puritan influence upon EngKsh letters than that Puritan MUton wrote the Paradise Lost 1 Puritanism acted powerfully, too, upon our English prose, find- . ing its highest erpression under this form in the works of John Bunyan and Eichard Baxter. Here, also, the fervour of religious earnestness leavens the whole mass. A massive strength and solemn elevation of tone, form the grand characteristics of a school in which the naked majesty of the Divine perhaps too much over- shadows the tenderness and gentleness of the human element. The stem work of those sad times was little fitted to nourish in the breasts of good men those feelings from which bright thoughts and happy sunny affections spring) but the worst enemy of these remarkable men cannot deny, that the main-spring of the Puritan nund, as displayed in written works and recorded actions, was a simple fear of God, and an over-mastering desire to fulfil every duty, in the face of any consequences, no matter how perilous or painful. LECTXJEEE AT THE SAVOT. 1 Rl CHAPTER II. THOHAS FULLEB. Born 1608 AD Died 1661 A.D. Birth and education, I Collecting materials. Love of peace. | Endofthowar. The Civil War. i Rector of Waltham. In the field. I Late honoui*s. Death Worthies of England. Character of his works. Illustrative extract. "WoETHT old Fuller," "quaint old Thomas Fuller," are the afifectionate names by which this witty English divine is often called. He was the son of a Northamptonshire clergyman, and was bom in 1608 at Aldwinckle, a place rendered illustrious in later days by the birth of the poet Dryden, Passing from under the tuition of his father, he entered Queen's College, Cambridge, in his thirteenth year. Ten years later he became a Fellow of Sidney Sussex To foUow the steps by which he rose in the Church, would be out of place here ; it is sufficient to say, that when he was little more than thirty years of age he had already won a distinguished reputation in the London pulpits, and had become Lecturer at the Savoy. The clouds of the Civil War, charged with fire and blood, were fast darkening over Britain, as Fuller laboured in this prominent sphere. Remembering that his Master had said, " Blessed are the peace-makers," he lost no opportunity of striving to reconcile the parties, that were every day drifting further apart. His sermons all pointed to this great and noble end; his conversation in society was all woven of this golden thread. At last the deluge burst upon the land ; and the eloquent clergyman, upon whom the Parliament looked with jealous eyes, was forced to leave his pulpit, and betake himself to Oxford, where the King had fixed his court. Fuller's moderation had obtained for him in London, with the Par- liament at least, the name of a keen Royalist; but now in the head- 182 FXTLLEE's life Df THE CAMF. quarters of tte royal party, all hot for carnage, tlie same peace- loving temper caused him to be accused of a Puritan taint. His books and manuscripts, dear companions of his quietest hours, were taken from him ; and there was no resource left him but to join the royal army in the field. As chaplain to Lord Hopton, he moved with the royal troops from place to place, fulfilling his sacred duties faithfully, but employing his leisure in the collection of materials for a Uterary work. Wherever the tents were pitched, or the soldiers quartered, he took care to note down aU the old legends afloat in the district, and to visit every place within reach, which possessed any interest for the historian or the archseologist. No better preparation could have been made for the composition of Tlie Worthies of England;' and when we add to his own personal observations the gleanings of a wide correspondence, we shall form some idea of the industrious care with which Fuller built up a work that has contributed so largely to make his name famous. Camp life seems to have kindled something of warlike ardour in the peaceful chaplain's breast; for we read that, when Basing HaUwas assailed by the Roundheads under Waller, after the battle of Cheriton Down, Fuller, who had been left by his patron in command of tlie garrison, bestirred himself so bravely in its defence, that the besiegers were repulsed vrith heavy loss. After the downfall of the royal cause he lived for some years at Exeter, constantly engaged in preaching or writing. Good Thoughts in Bad Times, and Crood Tlioughts in Worse Times are the titles of the two books which he is said to have written in this capital of south- western England. After about two years of wandering he found himseK once more in London, a worn man in what was in truth a changed place. For some time he preached where he could, until he obtained a permanent pulpit in St. Bride's, Fleet Street. Then, having 1 648 passed the examination of the "Triers," he settled down in A.D. 1 648 at Waltham Abbey in Essex, to the rectory of which he had been presented by the Earl of Carlisle. During the bloody year which followed, and the eleven years of interreg- num, his pen a,nd voice were busy as ever in the cause of truth. WIT AND WISDOM OF THOMAS FULLER. 183 In spite of Cromwell's interdict lie continued to ijiuacli, and in 1 656 his Church History of Britain from the Birth of Christ to the. Year 1648 was given to the world. The Restoration brought him once more prominently into view. He received again his lectureship at the Savoy, and his prebendal stall at Salisbury J he was chosen chaplain to the King, and created Doctor of Divinity by the authorities of Cambridge. But Fuller's, day on earth was near its close. This gleam of sunshine, which followed the grey mist of its afternoon, was brief and passing. Scarcely had he worn these honours for a year, Ang. 16, when he sank into the grave, smitten by a violent fever, 1661 which was then known as " the new disease." Two hun- A.D. dred of his brother ministers in sad procession followed his coffin to the tomb. Thomas FuUer is chiefly remembered for two works, — his " Church nistory of Britain," published in 1656, and his " Worthies of England," published the year after his death. The latter is his greatest work. Begun during his wanderings with the royal army, and continued through all the changes of his after life, this quaint, delightful collection of literary odds and ends, deals not alone with the personal history of eminent Englishmen, as the name would seem to imply; but glso with botany, topo- graphy, architecture, antiquities, and a host of other things con- nected with the shires in which they were born. The queer but very telling wit of Fuller sparkles in every line. He possessed in an eminent degree that curious fehcity of language which condenses a vast store of wisdom into a few brief and pithy words; so that maxims and aphorisms may be culled by the hundred from the pages of his books. We have lately had the " Wit and Wisdom of Sydney Smith," from a London pubhsher; a stiU better book would be the "Wit and Wisdom of Thomas FuUer." The " Church History" was condemned in the author's own day for its "fun and quibble;" but there was nothing venomous or ford in the fun of FuUer, which has well been called " the sweetest-blooded wit that was ever infused into man or book." As weU might we chide the lark for its joyous song, as this gentle parson for his pleasant jokes 184 SPECIMEN OF fuller's PROSE. and quaint conceits. Besides the works already mentioned, FuUer wrote The History of the Holy War, The Holy and the Profane States, A Pisgah View of Palestine, and very many Essays, Tracts, and Sermons. (from "the holy state.") Tell me, ye naturalists, who sounded the first mai;ch and retreat to the tide, " Hither shalt thou come, and no further V Why doth not the water recover his right over the earth, being higher in nature 1 Whence came the salt, and who first boiled it, which made so much brine ? When the winds are not only wild in a storm, but even stark mad in an hurricane, who is it that restores them again to their wits, and brings them asleep in a calm % Who pnade the mighty whales, which swim in a sea of water, and have a sea of oil swimming in them % Who first taught the water to imitate the creatures on land, so that the sea is the stable of horse-fishes, the stall of kine-fishes, the sty of hog-fishes, the kennel of dog-fishes, and in all things the sea the ape of the land ? Whence grows the ambergris in the sea? which is not so hard to find where it is as to know what it is. Was not God the first ship-wright ? and have not all vessels on the water de- scended from the loins (or ribs rather) of Noah's ark % or else, who durst be so bold, with a few crooked boards nailed together, a stick standing upright, and a rag tied to it, to adventure into the ocean ? Whfit loadstone first touched the loadstone ? or how first fell it in love with the North, rather affecting that cold climate than the pleasant East, or fruitful South or West ? How comes that stone to know more than men, and find the way to the land in a mist 1 In most of these, men take sanctuary at occulta gualUas (some hidden quality), and complain that the room is dark, when their eyes are blind. Indeed, they are God's wonders; and that seaman the greatest wonder of all for his blockishness, who, seeing them daily, neither takes notice of them, admires at them, nor is thankful foi them. THE EARLY LIFE OF JEREMY TAYLOR. 185 CHAPTER lit JEEEJIT TAYJ.OE. Born 1613 A.D Died 1667 A.D. PreacMng. Rise of Taylor, The CivU War. The Welsh schooL Pen-work. Retnm to London. Crosses to Ireland. Trouble. The Restoration- Blabop of I>own. DifBcultleB of the post. Death. Taylor's style. Chief works. IllustratiTe extract There is no reason why the picturegque and the fanciful should be excluded from the oratory of the pulpit. As Christianity is emphatically the religion of man, and imparts to every element of his nature at once its highest culture and its noblest consecration, so there is no faculty or power within him which does not admit of being devoted to its service. Within its sacred and truly catholic pale, the poet, the philosopher, the logician, the man of sentiment and the man of abstract thought have each his place. Even the greatest of the apostles would be " all things to all meii, if by any means he might save some." It was on this principle that Jeremy Taylor devoted the stores of his rich and brilliant fancy to the service of the Cross — lending all the charms of beauty to set forth the sanctity of truth. He strove to teach as did that gentle Saviour whose minister he was ; and therefore the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, the dashing sea, the roaring wind, the weeping sky, and a thousand other strong and lovely things scattered around him in the world, supplied him with lessons, whose dear famihar beauty charmed his hearers, and stm charms his readers into rapt attention. This " poet among preachers," the son of a poor but well-de- scended surgeon-barber, was born at Cambridge in 1613. Having received his elementary education at the Grammar-school of his native town, he, when not yet fourteen, entered Caius College as a sizar, — the humblest class of students. When he had studied at Cambridge for some years, he went to London ; and there, by his 186 A SCHOOLMASTER IN T7ALES. handsoiae face and still finer style of preaching, he attracted the notice of the great Archbishop Laud, who was then in the full blaze of power. Under the patronage of so noted a man the advancement of Taylor was rapid. Laud earnestly wished to establish him at Oxford; and in 1636 secured for him a fellowship in All Souls College. In the following year he became, through Juxon, Bishop of London, the rector of Uppingham in Eutlandshire ; and to that quiet parsonage, two years later, he brought, home his first wife, Phoebe Langdale. - Three years passed by — years of mingled joy and sorrow ; for they made him the father of three sons, but took from him his gentle wife. Then came the storm of the Civil War; and in the wreck of the throne the fortunes of Jeremy Taylor suffered shipwreck too. His life at this period presents a striking resemblance to the life of FuUer. Like that witty priest, he joined the royal party at Oxford, accompanied the troops to the field in the capacity of chapl&,in, and took an active share in the hard work of the war. In the battle fought at Cardigan he was .made prisoner by the Soundheads. His release, however, soon followed ; and, having no longer a home among the rich woodlands of Eutlandshire — for his rectory had been sequestrated by the Parliament — ^he resolved to cast his lot in the mountain-land of Wales, and calmly wait for better times. There, at Newton-haU in Caermarthenshire, he set up a school in conjunction with two accomplished friends, who like himself had fallen upon evil days. Time slid away ; King Charles was beheaded, and Oliver assumed, the purple robe of Pro- tector. Far away from the great centres of learning and distinc- tion, girdled round by the huge Cambrian mountains, the Chrys- ostom of our English literature lived a peaceful but very busy Hfe. His good friend John Evelyn, and his kind neighbour the Earl of Carbery, stretched out willing hands to help him in his need. His marriage with a lady, who possessed an estate in Caer- marthen, relieved him from the wearing toil of the school-room. But if his life grew easier, he certainly did not relax in the work for which he was best fitted. Ever labouring with his pen, he sent forth from his secluded BISHOP OF DOVffl AND CONNOR. 1 87 dwelling-place book after book, enriched with the choicest fancies of a most poetic mind But even the privacy of his life could not keep him entirely safe ; fine and imprisouni ent fell heavily on him at various times during the ascendency of the Puritans, against whom he spoke and wrote on some occasions very strongly. At - last, probably weary of a retirement which did not shield him ■from his foes, he returned to London in 1657. An invitation from the Earl of Conway induced him, in the following year, to settle in the north of Ireland, where he officiated as lecturer at Lisburn, and also at Portmore, a village on the shores of Lough Neagh. He fixed his residence at the latter place. Here, too, Puritan resentment found him out. An informer gave evidence that the minister of Lisburn had u^ed the sign of the cross in baptism. Arrested with violence, Taylor was hurried in deep mid-winter to answer before the Irish Council for his act. Exposure and anxiety brought on a fever, which did him the good office of softening the sentence of the court. Soon afterwards visiting London on literary business, he signed the EoyaJist declaration of AprU 24, 1660^ and in the following month the joy-bells, which rang in the Eestoration of the second Charles, sounded a note of preferment to Taylor. The bishopric of Down and Connor, to which was afterwards Ang. added the see of Dromore, rewarded the eloqiient 1660 preacher, whose Royalist zeal had never languished. Yet, a.d. after all, this mitre was but the badge of an honourable, but not an easy exUe, in which Taylor spent his remaining years. A hard and thankless office it must have been for an English bishop to superintend an Irish diocese at that day. His nation and his faith were both unpopular. Congregations, driven by the terror of strict penal laws, crowded the churchey every Sunday to hear a service which many of them could not understand, and which most of them regarded with the strongest dislike. Many of his clergy, also, appointed under the old system • of things, looked jealously on the authority of a bishop. Battling with difficulties so many and so great, Taylor must often have sighed after his quiet parsonage at Uppingham, or even after his 188 STYLE. AND WOKKS OF JEREMY TAYLOR. school-room at Newton-hall. But he did his duty nobly in a most difficult position, until an attack of fever cut him off at the early age of fifty-five. His death took place at Lisbum in 1667. Hallam characterizes the style of Jeremy Taylor's sermons as being far too Asiatic in their abundance of ornament, and too much loaded with flower-garlands of quotation from other, espe- cially classical, writers. Yet the great critic assigns to the great preacher the praise of being " the chief ornament of the English pulpit up to the middle of the seventeenth century," — an admission which does much to blunt the point of his censure. Taylor does, undoubtedly, sometimes run riot in sweet metaphors, and lose his way in a maze of illustrations ; but, even so, is it not pleasanter and better to wander through a lovely garden, although the flowers are sometimes tangling together in a brilliant chaos and tripping us as we walk, than to plod over dry and sandy wastes, where showers, if they ever fall, seem only to wash the green out of the parched and stunted grass ] Jeremy Taylor's most popular devotional work is his Holy Living and Holy Dying. Other works of the same class are The Life of Christ and The Golden Grove; of which the latter is a series of meditations named after the seat of Earl Carbery, his neighbour in Wales. These were all written in his Welsh retreat. There, too, he wrote a generous, Kberal, and most eloquent plea for tolera- tion in religious matters, entitled The Liberty of Prophesying ;* in the dedication of which he refers with pathetic beauty to the violence of the storm which had " dashed the vessel of the Church all in pieces," and had cast himself, a shipwrecked man, on the coast of Wales. His last great work, styled Buctor Dubitantium, treats of the guidance of the conscience, and is still considered our great standard English book on casuistry. But Taylor's style is not weU suited to make clear a subject so difficult and intricate; nor does the plan, which the author lays down, aid in giving dis- tinctness to his teaching. * Prophesying is here used in tlie sense of preacliing. Compare its use in certain parte of the New Testament. SPECIMEN or tayloe's styij:. 189 ON PRATER. Anger is a perfect alienation of the mind from prayer, and therefore is con- trary to that attention which presents our prayers in a right line to God. For so have I 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 irregular and inconstant, descending more at every breath of the tempest than it could recover by the libratiou 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 : when his affairs have required business, and his business was matter of discipline, and his discipline was to pass upon a sinning person, or had a design of charity, his duty met with the infirmities of a man, and anger was its instrument ; and the instrument became stronger than the prime agent, and raised a tempest, and overruled the man ; and then his prayer was broken, and his thoughts were troubled, and his words went up towards a cloud ; and his thoughts pulled them back.again, and made them without intention; and the good man sighs for his infirmity, but must be content to lose that prayer, and he must recover it when his anger is removed, and his spirit is becalmed, made even as the brow of Jesus, and smooth like the heart of God ; and then it ascends to heaven upon the wings of the holy dove, and dwells with God, till it returns, like the useful bee, loaden with a blessing and the dew of heaven. 190 TWO OLD PILLARS IN PICCADILLY. CHAPTER IV. EDWAED HYDE, EAEl OP CLAEENDOIT. Eorn 1608 A.D Died 1674 A.D. Two old pillars. Early days of Hyde, begins public litu His first exile. The Restoration. His second exile. Death. Milton and Clarendon, Histoiy of the liehellion Illustrative exttuet. FoEMiNG the door-posts of a stable-yard, attached to the Three Kings' Inn in Piccadilly, there stand, or stood a short time since, two old defaced Corinthian pillars, chipped, weather-stained, drab- painted, and bearing ^ipon their faded acanthus crowns the sign- board of the livery-stables. Ostlers lounge and smoke there; passers- by give no heed to the poor reUcs of a dead grandeur; and the brown London mud bespatters them pitilessly from capital to base, as rattling wheels jolt past over the uneven pavement. These pillars are all that remain of a splendid palace, which was reared upon that site by the famous Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon and Lord High Chancellor of England. It was built at an unhappy time, when England could but iU spare the .£50,000 sunk in its gorgeous stone-work, and when England's King and Chancellor were hated by the people with a bitter hatred. So it was nicknamed Dunkirk Housft, and Tangier HaU, and insulting couplets were chalked upon its gates by a howling rabble, who shivered its windows with stones, when the Dutch cannon were heard in the estuary of the Thames. Clarendon, who built it, was then near the day of his faU. , ' Already he had seen heavy reverses. When he left the pleasant lawns of Dinton in Wiltshire, where he was bprn in 1608, to study at Oxford for the Church, and afterward? to pore over ponderous law-books in the old chambers of the Middle Temple, he little foresaw either his splendid rise or his sad decline. Still less CLA.EENDON MADE LORD CHANCELLOR. 191 did he dream, in tliose golden days of youth, that out of the dark days of his second exile ■would come a book, which should gild his name with even brighter lustre than statesmanship or devotion to his king could win for him.' A chequered reputatiop on the page of history, and two old pillars in Piccadilly, might have been all that remained of the great lawyer's life-work, had not his brilliant pen raised a monument of eloqilence, imperishable while the English language lives. As member for Wootton Basset he began his political career in 1640, having previously, though enjoying a considerable private fortiine, devoted himself so earnestly to the practice of the law as to win by it much renown and many friends. His rise to royal favour was very speedy. Having aided the King most materially by writing several important papers, he was knighted in 1643, and made Chancellor of the Exchequer. But in spite of all that the swords of the Cavaliers or the eloquence of Hyde could do, the cause of Charles declined, and it was judged right that the Prince of Wales should leave England. Hyde accompanied the 1646 royal boy to Jersey, where after some time he commenced a.d. his great History of the Rebellion. It would be out of place here to trace the wanderings of his first exile. At the Hague he heard of the Whitehall tragedy. At Paris he shared the poverty of the royal Stuart — sometimes with neither clothes nor fire to keep out the winter cold, and often with not a livre he could call his own, All that the unfortunate, lazy, dissipated, uncrowned, and kingdomless monarch could do to recompense the fidelity of tills devoted servant, he did. He made him his Lord Chancellor — an empty name written on an empty purse, as things went then. But soon came the Eestoration with its pealing bells and scattered flowers. Hyde, created Earl of Clarendon, became a real Lord Chancellor, entitled to sit on the 1660 actual woolsack Then for seven years he was the ruling a.d. spirit of English politics, and he shares in many of the dark stains, which lie upon the memory of King Charles II. The feeling of the nation grew strong against him. He lost the royal favour. In Augustl667 he had to give up theGreat Seal; and, withatrial 192 CLARENDON AND MILTON. for high treason hanging over his grey head, he fled down to the coast, and took ship at the pretty village of Erith for the French shore. Louis proved unfriendly to the fallen statesman. From place to place the old man wandered, finding solace only in his pen. Seven years passed wearily by, gout racking his feeble frame. A plaintive petition in his last days entreated his heartless master's leave to die at home. " Seven years," he wrote, " was a time prescribed and limited by God himself for the expiration of some of his greatest judgments ; and it is full that time since I have, with all possible humility, sustained the insupportable weight of the king's displeasure. Since it wiU be in nobody's power long to prevent me from dying, methinks the desiring a 1 6 74 place to die in should not be thought a great presumption." A.D. No answer came ; and when the year 1674 was near its close. Clarendon breathed his last at Rouen. The great Cavalier — prince of historical portrait painters — out- lived the great Puritan — prince of epic poets — but a few days. Born in the same year, Clarendon and Milton stood all their lives apart, towering in rival greatness above their fellows in the grand struggle of their century. The year of the Eestoration, which brought wealth and splendour to the Cavalier, plunged the blind old Puritan in bitter poverty. But a few years more, and the great Earl, too, was stricken down from his lofty place, and sent a home- less wanderer to a stranger's land. To both, their sternest discipline was their greatest gain ; for when the colours of hope and gladness had faded from the landscape of their Kves, and nothing but a waste of splendourless days seemed to stretch in cheerless vista before them, they turned to the desk for solace, and found in the exercise of their literary skill, not peace alone, but fame. Milton wrote most of his great Poem in blindness and disgrace ; Clarendon com- pleted his great History during a painful exUe. Clarendon's " History of the EebeUion " (mark the Cavalier in the last word of this title) is not in aU things a faithful picture of those terrible days, red with civil and with royal blood. Nor is this wonderful, for the writer was absent from his native land dur- ing a great part of the eventful strife, which he designates by so THE " raSTOEY OF THE REBELLION." 193 pointed a name. It is very unequally written, here adorned with a passage of most picturesque and glowing eloquence, and there marred by a " ravelled sleave " of sentences, tangled together in utter de- fiance of grammatical construction. Yet he is never, even in his most slovenly passages, obscure. It has been well remarked that his language is that of the speaker, not of the writer; and if we remember Hyde's training at the bar, we shall cease to wonder at his off-hand, careless style. When he sits down to paint the character of some celebrated man, his pencil seems dipt in the brightest hues, and, as- touch after touch falls lovingly on the canvas, we feel that a master's hand is tracing the growing form. The History was not published until 1707 ; his Life and the Continuation of tlie History, not until 1759. Another remarkable work of Clarendon is his Essay on an Active and Contemplative Life. chakactee and death of lord -falkland, (fkoji the "histokt of the kbbellioh.") When there was any overture or hope of peace, he would be more erect and vigorous, and exceedingly solicitous to press anything which he thought might promote it; and sitting among his friends, often after a deep silence, and frequent sighs, would, with a shrill and sad accent, ingeminate the word Peace, peace ; and would passionately profess, "that the very agony of the war and the view of the calamities and desolation the kingdom did and must endure, took his sleep from him, and would shortly break his heart." This made some think, or pre- tend to think, " that he was so much enamoured of peace, that he would have teen glad the King should have bought it at any price;" which was a most unreasonable calumny ; — as if a man that was himself the most punctual and precise in every circutnstance, that might reflect upon conscience or honour, could have wished the King to have committed a trespass against either In the morning before the battle, as always upon action, he was very cheerful, and put himself into th^ first rank of the Lord Byron's regiment, then advancing upon the enemy, who had lined the hedges on both sides with musketeers ; from whence he was shot with a musket in the lower part of the belly, and in the instant falling from his horse, his body was not found till the next morning ; till when, there was some hope he might have been a prisoner, though his nearest friends, who knew his temper, received small comfort from that imagination. Thus fell that incomparable young man, in the four-and-thirtieth year of his age, having so much despatched the true business of life, that the eldest rarely attain to that immense knowledge, and the youngest enter not into the world with more innocency : whosoever leads such a life, needs be the less anxious upon how short warning it is taken from him. 13 194 SPLENDOUE OF MILTON's FAMB. CHAPTEE V. JOHN HILTON. Bom 1608 A.D Died 1674 A.D. Milton^s fame. The scrivener'a borne. The Puritan school-boy. Ti-oublea at Cambridge. Ode on the Nativity. Life at Horton. Earlier works. Continental travel School in Aidersgate. Marries Mary TowelL Deserted. Areopagitica. Reconciled. The Tenure. , Latin Secretary. Eikonoklastes. The Defences. Blindness, Petty Fi-ance. Begins Paradise Lost. The Restoration. Thomas Ellwood. Paradise Lost completed. Published. Terms of the sale. Not neglected. Later works. Picture of old Milton. His dally life. His death. List of cliiet works. Critical notes. Illustrative extracts. Perhaps the finest sentence in that noble fragment of an English History, bywhich the dead Macaulayyet speaks to a grateful, reverent nation, is a sentence thus recording the glory of John MUton : — " A mightier poet, tried at once by pain, danger, poverty, obloquy, and blindness, meditated, uridisturbed by the obscene tumult which raged all around him, a song so sublime and so holy that it would not have misbecome the lips of those ethereal Virtues whom he saw, with that inner eye which no calamity could darken, flinging down on the jasper pavement their crowns of amaranth and gold." If Milton had written not one line of verse, his richly jewelled and majestic prose would have raised him to a lofty rank among ^;he Ealeighs and the Bacons, the Taylors and the Gibbons of our Eng- lish tongue • and if he had, dropped the poet's lyre for ev6r, when he exchanged the green shades of Horton and the crystal skies of Italy for the smoke and din of London life and the heat of a great controversial war, the songs already sung by the youthful Puritan bard had won a chaplet of unfading bays, at least as bright as those ' that decorate the brows of Dryden and of Pope. But, when we add to these achievements the sublime and solemn anthem of his blind old age, the lustre of his life's work brightens to such intensity, that there is but one name in the long roU of English writers which does not grow dim in the surpassing radiance of his fame. A HAPPY PUETTAN HOME. 195 Shakspere and Milton dw,ell apart from all, in a loftier region of their own. Great Consuls in the mighty republic of English letters, to them alone belong the honours of the ivory chair, the robe with purple hem, and the rod-surrounded axe. In the reign of Elizabeth a certain John Mylton was under- ranger of Shotover Forest, not far from Oxford. This was the poet's grandfather. A strict Roman Cathohc, he disinherited his son for adopting the Protestant faith; and this son, also a John Milton, having gone to London, set up, as a scrivener or notary- public, at the sign of the Spread Eagle in Bread Street. There, in the intervals of his professional will-drawing and money-lending John Milton the scrivener wrote trifling verses and composed elaborate pieces of music. Under the wings of this Spread Eagle, which seems to have shadowed a very com- 1608 fortable, happy home, was born, on the 9th of December A.D. 1608, John Milton the poet, son of a Puritan scrivener, and grandson of a Roman Catholic ranger; — ^receiving from hisj father literary tastes and a love of music ; and from his mother a kind, genUe nature, and the sad inheritance of weak eyes. The Puritan influences, amid which the boy grew up, moulded his character to a shape it never lost. Having received his earlier education at home, from a Scotchman, Thomas Young, he went at about twelve years of age to St. Paul's school, which was then under the direction of a Mr. GilL Even at that unripe age Milton's studious tastes showed themselves. Night after night he was up over his books till past twelve, and neither watering eyes nor increasing headaches could daunt the brave young worker. We cannot but be pained when we think of this intense application, by which Mil- ton laid the foundation of the wonderful learning displayed in " Para- dise Lost." The midnight studies of the child cost the old man his enjoyment of heaven's light and earth's colouring. Yet even here there was a blessing in disguise ; for the affliction which quenched the light of the body's eye, deepened and strengthened the vision of that inner, spiritual eye, " which no calamity could darken." While yet a school-boy, Milton could write capital Latin and Greiek, either lq verse or prose; and knew something, too, of 196 MILTON AT CAMBRIDGE. Hebrew. He had read -with delight the poems of Spenser, and Sylvester's translation of the Frenchman, Du Bartasj and had tried his boyish pen on English verse by translating the 114th and 136th Psalms. Christ's College, Cambridge, being chosen for the higher instruc- 1 ftOA ^^°^ '^^ *^® youthful poet, he went thither in 1624 as a Soinor pensioner. His tutor was Chappel, afterwards Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, and Bishop of Cork. What was the ground of dispute we cannot exactly tell, but a quarrel took place between tutor and pupil, so serious that Milton had to leave his college for a whUe.* This incident Johnson exaggerates into rustication, insinuating on the same page that Milton was whipped at Cambridge. It is true that the rod, plied in the lower schools with systematic cruelty, had not yet been quite abandoned in the coUege class-room ; but there is not sufficient ground for believing that Milton was flogged at college, merely because flogging at coUege was not quite done away with in his youthful days. The delicate beauty of the student's face, with its shell-like pink and white, and the rolling masses of silken auburn hair, parted in the middle, that framed its oval contour, excited the jeers of some rougher class-mates, who called him "The Lady of the College." They might well have spared their mockery, for the blonde beauty was going to outshine them aU, and even then ■ was showing signs of , a wondrous genius in its dawn. In the "winter wild" of 1629, Milton's twenty-first year, he composed his magnificent Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity, which ranks among the finest specimens of lyrical poetry that any age or nation has produced. Yet Johnson, in his Life of Milton, does not even mention this grand burst of song ! - Having completed his course, and taken his degree of M.A., he left Cambridge in , 1632, to spend five calm de- lightful years in his father's country house at Horton in Buckinghamshire. It is impossible to doubt that the lovely pictures of Eden-life. * It bns ^een maintained by some keen and able reasonera tbat Milton nerer left hla coUege at all. FIVE HAPPY YEARS AT HOETON. 197 which we find in the fourth and some succeeding books of " Paradise Lost" — sunny days and innocent enjoyments, shadowy itjse-bowers, gentle labours amid vine and orchard, delicate fruit repasts, and sweet scenes of rosy morning and silver moonlight — were drawn from early memories of the Horton glades and gardens, idealized by the bright sunlight of poetic fancy. Deep study, quiet country walks, and poetic composition, broken now and then by a run to London for books, or tuition in music and mathematics, filled up the softly flowing days of the poet's rural life. At Horton and on the Continent Milton spent the vacation period of his Mfe — a happy six years' holiday intervening between his Cambridge study and his London school; and five poems, round which the scent of the hawthorn hedge is ever fresh and sweet, were the exercises which gave a zest to the enjoyment of these bright and careless years. L' Allegro, 11 Penseroso, Afcades, Comus, and Lyaidas were written at Horton. The country breezes seem to have swept off the grey shadows of the Cambridge roonis, and to have called forth his love of nature in buds and blossoms of the richest luxuriance. How many verses were woven in the fragrant meadows, all embroidered with wild flowers, or by the chime of the silver stream, we do not know; but the odours and the colours of sweet rural life breathe and brighten in every line. How curiously the life one lives is reflected in his works ! As the sea wave takes the colour of the sky above it, the multitudi- nous billows of thought that roll in every human soul are tiliged with the hues of the outward life. Place the Ode on the Naiivity side by side with L Allegro, and mark the contrasted tints. Eesidence within the " studious cloisters pale" has given to the one a stern grey awfulness, a pure classic beauty, and a grave learnedness, which have but little in common with the frolicsome play and brown, healthy, country life, that laugh and gambol in the other. His mother's death in 1637 broke the sweet charm that hafl bound him to Horton. There was nothing now to pre- -„„„ vent him from starting upon his Continental tour, and ** accordingly, in the following year, armed with advice and letters from Sir Henry Wotton, the Provost of Eton, he crossed the 198 IN FEANCE AND ITALY. Straits to France. We shall not foUow him minutely on Ms . journeyings. He was absent from England for^ fifteen monthsj during which he travelled through France and Italy, residing for a tinjie in sonie of the principal cities. At Paris he met Hugo Grotius, the great Dutchman; at Florence he visited the blind old Galileo, who then lay in the prison of the Inquisition for dar- ing to speak what he believed about the stars ; at Kome he heard Leonora Baroni sing, and was welcomed with remarkable attention in the first circles of society ; at Naples, beyond which he did not go, he was guided through the city by the Marquis of VUla, the friend and biographer of Tasso. The influence which Italian scenery, sculpture, and music had in kindling the imagination of the grave English Puritan and storing his memory with a wealth of classic thoughts, that gave shape and colour to the ideas he had drawn from books among the woods of Horton, formed a most important element in the education of the poet for his great work. Amid his recollections of foreign travel, — scenic, artistic, literary, historic, classic, — there stole, too, a tinge of love, whose purple light yet lingers on his Italian Sonnets. It was at Florence that the fair- cheeked Englishman met a beauty of Bologna, whose black eyes subdued his heart, and whose voice completed the conquest by binding it in silver chains — chains which it cost him a pang to break before he could tear himself away. After visiting 1639 Venice and Geneva, among other places, he returned A.D. "by way of France to England. Amid all the license and vice of Continental life, as it then was, he passed pure •and unstained, returning with the bloom of his young religious feelings unfaded, like the flush of English manhood on his cheek. The thought of writing an epic poem appears to have ripened to a purpose in Italy; but he had not yet chosen his great theme. The story of Arthur, or some other hero of ancient British days, seems at this time to have been floating before his mindw The toils of a teacher's life, and the composition of many prose works filled, up the chief part of those ten years which elapsed be- tween Milton's return from abroad and his appointment as Foreign Secretary (1639-1649). His poetic muse was all but silent. Six THE SCHOOL Ef AUJEESflATE STEEET. 199 of ttese years were spent in a retired garden-touse, up an entry off Aldersgate Street. There, with a few leaves and blossoms round him, shut in from the noisy street, he read with his pupils — ■ among them his own nephews, the Phillipses — an extensive course, comprising several uncommon classics, some Hebrew, a sprinkling of Chaldee and Syriac, mathematics and astronomy — not omitting the Greek Testament and some Dutch divinity on Sundays. His pen was at first almost wholly taken up with his intensely bitter attacks upon Episcopacy, opening in 1641 with a pamphlet on He- formation in England, and closing with the best of the series, his Apology for Smectymnuus* To the seclusion of Aldersgate Street, MUton, a man of thirty-five, brought home his first bride— Mary, the daughter of Eichard Powell, a EoyaUst Justice of the Peace, living at Forest Hill near Shotover. It was a hasty mar- 1643 riage, and far from a happy one. The young wife, who a.d. seems not to have fully counted the cost of such a change, had Cavalier notions of housekeeping and social life, very unlike the quiet frugality of Milton's home. She missed the dancing and the laughter of Forest Hill. When the friends who had brought her home left the house, its gloom seemed to deepen tenfold ; her grave and studious husband never thought of leaving his books and pen for a while, to cheer her loneliness urftU she became used to a domestic climate so unlike that which she had left. In a few weeks she returned to her father's house, seemingly to pay a short visit, but inwardly resolved to leave her serious bridegroom and his gloomy garden-house to keep each other company. He wrote, , and got no reply ; he sent, and his messenger was iE-treated. It was a clear case that John Milton was deserted by his wife. His four Works on Divorce, which were published in 1644 and 1645, are evidently the fruits of this matrimonial • 1644 misery. Sweeter fruit, however, than these sour produc- tions marks the former year; for then was addressed to the Parliament the celebrated Areopagitica, finest of all his * Smectymnuus Is a word made up of the initials of the five names of tliose Puritan minls^ ters who joined the strife on Milton's side. They were — Stephen Marshall, Edward Calamy, Thomas Young, Matthew Newcome, and William (UUilliam) Spenstow. 200 APPOINTED LATIN SECRETARY. prose compositions. His Tractate on Education appeared in the same year. The estrangement betvfeen Milton and his wife having lasted for two years, a reconciliation took place in the house of a friend. .Mary Milton, flinging herself in tears at her husband's feet, was once more taken to his home, which was now a large house in Barbican. , So completely was the breach healed, that the husband's door was opened to her ruined family, driven from Forest HiU by the fortunes of the Civil War ; and in Milton's house old Kichard Powell soon died. v His pupils having decreased in number about this time, the poet thought it prudent to take a backward step by removing into a smaller house. We soon find him in Holbom, where his residence had an entrance into Lincoln's Inn Fields.- Here he wrote part of his History of England, and probably some of his compilations; and here, while the axe was falling on the neck of Charles Stuart, 1649 he was correcting the last proofs of a work entitled Ths A.D. Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, which argued the lawful- ness of that terrible deed, whose red stain can never be effaced from the annals of those sg.d times. Published a week or two after the. tragedy of Whitehall, the "Tenure" excited such admir- ing attention that the of&ce of -Foreign or Latin Secretary to the Council, worth about £290 a year, was offered to the author. Thus opened a new era of Milton's life. . The period of eleven years, coming between the Eegicide and the Kestoration, presents perhaps the deepest contrasts of light and shadow that we find in the chequered life of Milton. Appointed Secretary of Foreign Tongues, he removed to Charing Cross, and afterwards to the official apartments at Whitehall, which he occu- pied for about eighteen months. His direct duties were not heavy, consisting merely in conducting the- foreign correspondence of the Council in Latin, which was then the language of diplomacy. But his pen was also required to do higher work than the writing of state papers. The blood of an English king, crying from an English scaffold, had roused rage and horror throughout Europe ; and Milton was selected by the Parliament to front the storm, and MILTON GROWS TOTALLY BLIND. 201 lay it if lie coiild. In reply to the sad description of the suffering king, which was presented by the well-known Eikon Badlike, he wrote his HihonoMastes (Image-breaker) j in which, reviling the memory of Charles with a rancour aUie unbecoming and unchris- tian, he smites with a rude and heavy hand the defender of dead majesty. To this period also belong his two great Latin works, Defences for ilie People of England; in which the voice of the Puritan is uplifted with somewhat more of dignity, and certainly with greater power. The first " Defence" was written in answer to Salmasius of Leydei), a philologpr of European fame ; whom the triumphant reply is said to have smittpn so sorely to the heart, that he died of the blow; But controversies like these are pitiful sights. It is sad to see a magnificent genius Uke Milton stooping to fling those pavingTstones of abuse ^ — "fogue, puppy, foul- mouthed wretch^'— which come ready to the hand of every sot and shrew in England. Why we do iiot know, but Milt'oij soon left his Whitehall lodgings for a pretty garden-house in Petty France, Westminster, with an opening into St. James's Pax]^ There about 1653 two heavy afflictions fell upon the poor mai:}. He lost his wife, Mary, who, with aU her faults, had, since thpir reconciliation, kept his house prudently and well ; and that paralysis of the optic nerve, which had been coming on for years, left him totally blind. Many symptoms had foretold the calamity. He saw an iris round the candle ; his left eye, when uspd alone, diminished the size of the objects he looked at; things swam bdf ore his gaze j and at night, when he lay down and closed his eyes, there came for a time a flash of light and a pl&y of brilhant 1654 colours. A blind and widowed man, with three little a.d. girls under eight to look after, and a heavy loa4 of public pen-work to do, presents a sorrowful spectacle. Such was Milton's case in 1654. In two -or three years he married again ; but his second wife, Catherine Woodcock, whom he dearly loved, died in fifteen months after their union. So his daughters grew up wild and undisci- plined, to cost their father many a heart-ache in his decUning days. 202 " PAEADISB LOST " BEGUN. His blindness did not involve the loss of his office as Foreign Secretary. An assistant, and afterwards a colleague, aided him in the performance of his duties. This colleague, in 1659, was his friend Andrew Marvell, who received, as Milton himself then did, the sum of £200 a year. In spite of the gloom which blindness and bereavement had cast over the garden-house in Petty France, and the worries caused by those poor boisterous hoidens, whose mother was dead, Milton must have enjoyed maiiy hours of sober tranquiUity there. His fame had spread far beyond the borders of his own land. To Continental strangers, Cromwell and Milton, the man of action and the man of thought, were the representative men of England —the great British lions, who were then reaUy worthy of a visit and a view. A 'few literary friends, too, often came to cheer his leisure hours. And, better than all, before the added darkness of poverty, and despair deepened upon him, he had begun to soar on wing subHme into those starry realms of thought, below which he had too long been walking with folded pinions, busied with common cares and soiled with earthly stains. The first lines of Paradise Lost were lying in his desk. , The last state paper written by Milton bears date May 15th, 1659. None but the most important work of the Foreign Office was done by his pen in the later years of the CommonwealtL The Eestoration brought gloom and terrcjr to the household of the Puritan poet, who had written too many bitter things 1660 of the slain father to be easy in his mind at the return A.D. of the eziled son. For a time he was forced to hide himself in a friend's house in Bartholomew Close. But influential admirers exerted their interest for him ; and though the "Eikonoklastes" and the "Defences" were burned by the common hangman, the writer was included in the Act of Indemnity,. and got leave to settle down into safe obscurity. Obscurity it might have been to a common maii, but to Milton it proved the brightest period of his life. / The fresh laurels of the Cambridge student, — the pastoral sweetness of the Horton poet, — the pohshed graces of the traveller, — the triumphs of the keen and bitter controversialist, " PARADISE LOST " COMPLETED. 203 — tlie fame of tlie accbmplislied Latin Secretary, — aR grow dim beside tlie lustrous acMevements of that blind old man, who . was often to be seen on sunny days, in a coat of coarse grey cloth, sitting at the door of a mean house in Artillery Walk near Eunhill Fields. Through all changes and perils his unfailing solace must have been the composition of his great work. A yoimg Quaker, Thomas EUwood, came often of an afternoon to read Latin to the helpless poet ; and this good friend it was who secured for him that cottage at Chalfont in Buckinghamshire, where the MUtons took refuge from the Great Plague that ravaged London in 1665. The Quaker, who was tutor in a rich famUy of' Chal- font, called upon the poet some time after he had settled down in his new abode. During the visit Milton, caUing for a manuscript, handed it to EUwood, and bade him take it 1665 home to read. It was the newly finished poem of a.d. Paradise Lost. Keturning it, after a whUe, to his blind friend, Ellwood said, "Thou hast said much here of Paradise Lost, but what hast thou to say of Paradise Found ?'" This casual remark led to the composition of the minor epic, Paradise Regained. When the terrors of the Plague had passed, Milton returned to BunhiU Fields, prepared to dispose of his great poem. It seemed in many ways an unfortunate time for so heavy a venture. The Great Fire of 1666 -had just laid the shops and dwellings of nearly aU London in ashes. And wares, made to find a ready sale in that day, needed to be highly spiced with choice blasphemies and gross obscenity. At length, however, a bookseller was found who consented to buy the poem. And a very hard bargain indeed did Mr. Samuel Simmons drive with Ex-secretary Milton. The terms agreed upon were these : £5 in hand, £,5 on the sale of 1300 copies of the first edition, and two similar sums on the sale of a like number of the second and third editions, — no edition to exceed 1500 copies. The poem was pub- 1667 lished in 1667, in the form of a small quarto, at three a.d. shillings. Milton was dead when the third edition of " Paradise Lost " appeared in 1€78, and his widow surrendered 204 THE SALE OF "PARADISE LOST." all her claims on Simmons for tke sum of £8. Thus, in all, to Milton and his heirs, there came only £18* for this greatest poem of modern ages ! There is extant, in the poet's own handwriting, a receipt for the second sum of £5, dated 1669, which shows that at least 1300 copies of the book had gone off in its first two years. That scrap of worn paper sufficiently refutes the statement, so often advandfed in former days, that to all the other woes heaped on MUton's grey head, the neglect of the reading public was added as a last and worst infliction. Pew sacred epics would command a larger sale even in these book-devouring days. Though Charles and his glittering voluptuaries preferred the whimsical adventures of Hudibras to the lofty strains of "Paradise Lost," there were thousands of true-hgarted Puritans in !l5ngland to read and love the noble verses of that veteran schql!j,r, who had stood by the great Oliver in the palmy days of the Commonwealth, and had done with his pen for England's glory, at least as much as the rugged Lord Protector had ever done with that weighty sword he bore. In 1670 appeared Miltqn's History qf England, and in the following year Paradise Regained ^qd Samson Agonistes were published in a thin octavo. His last three years were occupied in preparing for the press several minor works in Latin and in English. The clouded close of his hfe was calm and peaceful, on the whole, although his undutiful daughters caused him much vexation. His third wife, Elizabeth jVlinshuU, a young woman whom he had married soon after the Eestoration, tended his de- clining years with careful affection. Such a picture of old Milton's daily life as that which we.sub- ♦Somesny £23 in aU; but it is very unliliely that Simmons would go beyond the ori^final £20 agreed on as the price of tlie poem. During Milton's life he received Uno payments of £5; when the 1300 copies of the second' edition were sold, his widow became entitled to the third £5; and she seems, rather than wait for the sale of "the stipulated number of the third edition, to have preferred £3 in hand in addition to the sum due. This seems to us the meaning of her giving up all her claims on Simmons in 1678 for £8. If she had already received the fourth sum of £5, her claims had ceased to exist; and only by supposing that this fourth sum of £5 was included in the £8, can the total reach £23. The third edition was published in 1678, and no money was due on it until 1300 copies had been sold. Hence the fourth £5 cannot have formed a part of the final settlement of £8. THE LAST DAYS OF MILTON. 205 join possesses a peculiar value, in enabling us to bring nearer to our hearts the great English epic poet, who ranks with Homer, with Virgil, and with Dante. " An ancient clergyman of Dorsetshire, Dr. Wright, found John Milton in a small chamber, hung with rusty green, sitting in a.n elbow-chair, and dressed neatly in black; pale, bllt not cadaverous ; his hands and feet gouty, and with chalk-stones." * " In his latter years he retired every night at nine o'clock, and lay tUl four in summer, tUl five in winteir ; and if not disposed then to rise, he had some one to sit at his bed-side and read to him. When he rose he had a chapter of the Hebrew Bible read for him ; and then, with of course the iritei'vention of l^reakfast, he studied tiU twelve. He then dined, took some exercise for an hour, — generally in a chair, in which he used to swing himself, — and afterwards played on the organ or the bass-viol, and either sang himself or made his wife sing, who, as he said, had a good voice, but no ear. He then resumed his studies till six, from which hour tUl eight he conversed with those who came to visit him. He finally took a light supper, smoked a pipe of tobacco, and drank a glass of water, after which he retired to rest." f So calmly passed the days of the blind old poet, until, a month before the completion of his sixty-sixth year, he passed away from earth with scarcely a pang. It was on Sunday, 1674 the 8th of November, that the sad event occurred. Gout, a.d. his old foe, had for some time been wearing him away ; and for months he knew that his life on earth was drawing to an end. His body was laid beside his father's dust in the church of St. Giles, Gripplegate. The following list contains the names of Milton's chief works, with the dates and places of tteir composition or publication : — POEMS. Ode on the Nativity, ... Composed in 1629, Cambridge. L'Allegro, ... /.. ... Doubtful, Horton. II Penseroao, ... ... — — — Arcades, ... ... ... — 1634, — * Ilichardsbn. t Xelghtley, following Aubroy. 206 LIST OF Milton's chief ■works. Comus, ... ... ... Composed in 1634, Horton. Lycidas, ... ^ ... ... — 1637, — . Italian. Sonnets, ... ... -^ 1638-9, Florence. Paradise Lost, ... ... Published in 1667, London. Paradise Regained, ... ... — 1671, — Samson Agonistes, ... ... — — — English Sonnets, ... ... Various times and places. FEOSE WOBES. Of Keformation in England, ... ' Composed in 1641, London. Prelatical Episcopacy, ... — — — Apology for Smectymnuus, ... — 1642, — Areopagitica, ... ... ^- 1644, — Tractate on Education, ... — — — The,Tenure of Kings, ' ... — 1649, — Eikonoklastes, ... ... — — — Defensio pro Populo Anglioano, — 1650, — Defensio Secunda, ... ... — 1654, — History of England, ... Published in 1670, — De Doctrina Christiana, ... — 1823,* — L' Allegro and II Penseroso are two companion pictures of life at Horton, wliere ttey were written. No ecstasies of joy or sorrow are there depicted, but those mOods of mirth and pensive- ness which chased each other across the poef s mind, lite lights and shadows across a summer landscape. ' , Arcades, a short pastoral masque, which was originally perfomied at Harefield Park before the Dowager-Countess of Derby, consists of three songs and a speech by the Genius of the wood. Some consider " Arcades " to be only a fragment. Giymus is an exquisite masque, founded on an actual occurrence. Its plot is this : A beautiful lady, lost in a wood, is brought under the speUs of the magician Comus. Her fate seems sealed, until a kindly spirit appearing in 'guise of a shepherd to her brothers, who are vainly seeking their sister, gives them a root called haemony, by means of which they set at defiance the power of the enchanter. They dash into the palace, interrupt the progress of a delicious banquet, save their sister, and put to flight Comus and * The Latin manuscript was found in a press in the State-paper OfBce in 1823, vrapped in an envelope with other papers of Mil^n. llie publication of an English version ^avd origin to Macaulay's brilliant Essay on Milton in the Edinburgh Beview (August 182f)}. TEE CHOICE OP A SUBJECT. 207 his attendant rabble. The masque was acted at Lufllow Castle by the children of the Earl of Bridgewater, then President of Wales. Lycidas is a sweetly mournful pastoral, — a poem "In Me- moriam," — written on the death of Milton's college friend, King, who was drowned when crossing to Ireland in a crazy vessel Paradise Lost. — ^For seven years Milton laboured at the com- position of his greatest work (1658-1665); but fortwice seven years or more the v^st design must have been shaping itself into its wonderful symmetry within the poet's brain. The subject was not chosen rashly or with haste, and nowhere could be found a theme richer in material for genius to work upon, or more deeply fraught with a sad human interest. Many themes, no doubt, were carefully weighed, only to be rejected. Those stories of ancient Britain, which Geofirey of Monmouth has collected, early caught the poet's attention and held it long. We can fancy his patriotic heart thrilhng proudly and gladly with the thought of rearing upon the unknown graves of Arthur and his knights a great literary monument, at which the British people gazing, should learn to love the sleeping warriors evermore. But with growing years and wisdom this idea lost its charms, a change which inspired those lines at the beginning of the Ninth Book : — " Since first this subject for heroic song Pleased me, long choosing and beginning late ; Not sedulous by nature to indite Wars, hitherto the only argument Heroic deemed ; chief mastery to dissect With long and tedious havoc fabled knights, In battles feigned ; (the better fortitude Of patience and heroic martyrdom Unsung ;) or to describe races and games. Or tilting, furniture, emblazoned shields, Impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds. Eases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights At joust and tournament ; then marshalled feast Served up in ball with sewers and seneschals ; The skill of artifice or ofBce mean ! Not that which justly gives heroic name To person, or to poem." The first rough sketches of the poem took the shape of a 208 Milton's poeteaituke of satan. tragedy or mystery on the " Fall of Man." Two such draughts are among the Canlbridge manuscripts. But the tragic form was luckily soon abandoned for the epic. The burning lake — the councU of the fallen spirits — the ordain- ing of the plan df silvsltion — Satan's voyage to the' earth — Eden and its gentle tenants — their pure and happy life — Kaphael's visit and discourse uporl the war of tke angels and the creation of the world — Adam's talfe of his own awaking to life, and his first meet- ing with the lovely Ete — the temptation and the fall — Satan's triumphant return to hell, and the sudden f$,ding of exultq.tion under the first stroke of his doom — the intercession of the Son — the mission of Michael to eject the guilty pair — the revelation of the future to Adam in a vision — and the sad departure of our first parents from their happy garden, now guarded by the sword of God, — such are the salient points in the magnificent plan de- velopfed in the twelve books of the " Paradise Lost." Interesting glimpses of Milton's life occur in the opening passages of certain books. Most pathetic of these is the sad but; beautifully patient lament of the old man upon his bKndness at the beginningof the Third. The poet's love of music, which amounted to an absorbing passion, inspired some of the grandest outbursts of his song. , ' HaUam says, " The conception of Satan is doubtless the first effort of Milton's genius. Dante could not have ventured to spare so much lustre for a ruined archangel, in an age when nothing less than horns and a tail were the orthodox creed." The magic power of Milton's genius conjures up before us a winged, colossal, fire- eyed shape, whose size we do not know, but are left to guess dimly at by comparison with the hugest objects. His shield is Uke the moon seen through a telescope ; compared with the spear, which helps his painful steps over the burning marl, the mast of a mighty ship dwindles to a wand. We find no definite outline of shape, no distinct measurement of size. Vague dimness and colossal im- mensity deepen the awfulness of the portrait, raising it infinitely far above the absurd caricature of a terrible subject, to which Hallam's sarcasm refers. THE POWER OF DIMNESS. 209 ' The Adam and Eve of " Paradise Lost " are beautiful creations of poetic fancy, founding on Bible truth. They are true man and woman — not poetic ideals which are never realized in human life^ And what grand conceptions, painted as only true genius can paint, are those dreadful impersonations of Sin and Death, that bar the Arch-fiend's way at Hell's nine-fold gates ! Dimness is here again a wonderful power in the poet's hand. The King of Terrors is thus described in the Second Book : — " The other shape, — If shape it might be called^ that shape had none Distingnishable in member, joint, or limb, Or substance might be called that shadow seemed, For each seemed either : black it stood as night, Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell, And shook a dreadful dart ; what seemed his head The likeness of a kingly crown had on." There are in this fearful image only, three points on which the mind can fasten, — the colour, black — a dreadful dart — the likeness of a kingly crown : all else is shapeless cloud. The verse in whicli this noblest of English poems is written, flows on with a deep and solemn current, not broken, as the blank- verse of a dramatist must be, into various alternations of rapid and of pool — quick, brilliant dialogue, and smooth, extended soli- loquy or speech — but holding the even tenor of its way amid scenes of surpassing terror and delight, changing its music and its hue as it roUs upon its onward course. Awful though its tone is, when the glare of the fiery gulf falls red upon its stream, or the noise of battling angels. shakes its shores, it breathes the sweetest pastoral melody as it glides on through the green and flowery borders of sinless Eden. Faradise Regained, a shorter epic in four books, owed its origin to EUwood's suggestion at ChaKont. It describes in most expres- sive verse the temptation and the triumph of our Saviour, and is said to have been preferred by the poet himself to his grander work. Yet it must be_ reckoned inferior both in style and interest to itg great predecessor, although the authorship of so fine a poem wotild have made the fame of a meaner bard, 14 210 SAMSON AGONISTES. Samson Agonistes is a dramatic poem, cast in the mould of the old Greek tragedies, for which Milton had a deep admiring love. It has, like the Greek plays, a chorus taking part in the dialogue. Samson's captivity, and the revenge he tpok upon his idolatrous oppressors, form the argument of the drama. It was the last great sun-burst of Milton's splendid poetic genius. Such a theme pos- sessed an irresistible attraction for the mind of an intellectual and imaginative Samson, himself smitten vdth blindness, and fallen in his evil days amid a revelling and- blasphemous crowd, that jibed with ceaseless scorn at the venerable Puritan, whose grey eyes roUed in vain to seek the light of heaven. Sonnets. — Many of Milton's sonnets are very fine. One of the noblest is that burst of righteous indignation evoked by the mas- sacre of the Waldenses. Cromwell and Milton felt alike in this momentous affair : while the Lord Protector threatened the thunder of English cannon, the Latin Secretary launched the thunders of his EngHsh verse against the cruel Piedmontese. The Areopagitica is Milton's greatest prose work. Never has the grand theme of a free press been handled with greater elo- quence or power. Here we see how true a figure is that fine image by which Macaulay characterizes Milton's prose,—- "A perfect field of cloth of gold, stiff with gorgeous embroidery." SATAN TO BEELZEBUB. (PAKADISlAOST, BOOK I.-) " Is this the region, this the soil, the clime," Said then the lost archangel, " this the seat That we must change for heaven ? this mournful gloom For that celestial light ? Be it so ! since he. Who now is Sovran, can dispose and bid What shall be right : farthest from him is best, Whom reason hath equalled, force hath made supreme Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields. Where joy for ever dwells ! Hail, horrors ! hail, Infernal world ! and thou, profoundest Hell, Eeceive 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 Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. SPECIMENS OF Milton's VEKSE. 211 What matter where, if I be still the same. And what I should be, — all but less tlian he Whom thunder hath made greater ? Here at least We, shall be free ; the Almighty hath not built Here for his enyy ; 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. But wherefore let we then our faithful friends. The associates and copartners of our loss, Lie thus astonished on the oblivious pool. And call them not to share with us their part In this unhappy mansion ; or once more, With rallied arms, to try what may be yet Regained in Heaven, or what more lost in Hell ? " THE ANGELS. (PAEASISE LOST, BOOK III.) No sooner had the Almighty ceased, but all The multitude of angels, with a shout Loud as from numbers without number, sweet As from blest voices, uttering joy, Heaven rung With jubilee, and loud hosannas filled The eternal regions, lowly reverent Towards either throne they bow, and to the ground. With solemn adoration, down they cast Their crowns inwove with amarant and gold — Immortal amarant, a flower which once In Paradise, fast by the tree of life, Began to bloom ; but soon for man's offence To Heaven removed, where first it grew, there grows, And flowers aloft, shading the fount of life. And where the river of bliss, through midst of Heaven, Kolls o'er Elysian flowers her amber stream ; With these, that never fade, the spirits elect Bind their resplendent locks inwreathed with beams ; Now in loose gai'lands thick thrown off, the bright Pavement, that like a sea of jasper shone, Impurpled with 'celestial roses smiled. Then, crowned again, their golden harps they took — Harps ever tuned, that glittering by their side Like quivers hung ; and, with preamble sweet Of charming symphony, they introduce Their sacred song, and waken raptures high : No voice exempt — no voice but well could join Melodious part ; such concord is in Heaven. 212 DAVKNANT AND WALLER. CHAPTER YL OTHIIB WBITEKS OF THE FOUKTH EKA. POKIS. Sir William Pavenant Edmund Waller. HeDry Yaaghan. Sir John Denliam. Richard Lovelace. Abraham Cowley. William Chamberlayne. Charles Cotton. PROSE WBITERS. John Gauden. Sir Thomas Browne. Balph Cudworth. John Evelyn. Andrew Marvell. .Algernon Sidney, Robert Boyle. Sir William Temple. John Ray. John Tlllotson. Isaac Barrow. Samuel Fepya Robert South. Sm William . Daten ANT, born in 1605 at Oxford, where his father kept a tavern, became laureate on the death of Ben Jonson. He was a keen Royalist, and in the Civil War suffered many changes of fortune. While an exile in France he wrote part of the tedious heroic poem Gondibert, which is the chief work now associated with his name. During the Commonwealth, while on board a ship bound for Virginia, he was arrested by the sailors of the Par- liament, and confined at Cowes and in the Tower. Milton is thought to have aided in obtaining his release; and Davenant, we are told, repaid the kindness, when the Restoration changed the fortunes of the poets. Resuming his old occupation, the manage- ment of a theatre, Davenant spent his last years in peace, and died in 1668. Edmitnd Waller, bom in 1605, is one of the briUiant, courtly, superficial poets, who flourished under the rule of our two Kings Charles. The rich and weU-bom youth was a member of Parlia- ment at eighteen. At first he took the popular side, but in the Civil War, being detected in a Royalist plot, he suffered imprison- ment and fine. After a sojourn in France, he came home to cele- brate in verse the glory of CromweU ; and not long afterwards, in a poem of inferior merit, to welcome the returning Stuart king. He then sat for Hastings, for various other places in successive parhaments, and at eighty years of age for a Cornish borough. He died and was buried in 1687 at Beaconsfield,. where, little LOVELACE AND COWLEY. 213 more than a century later, the body of the great Edmund Burke was laid in the grave. Waller's verses are smooth, elegant, and polished; but they are little more. His speeches in Parliament were, in general, excellent and telling. Henet Vatjghan, born in Brecknockshire in 1614, was first a lawyer and then a physician. His chief merit lies in his Sacred Poetry. But, with much deep feeling, it has aU the faults of the Metaphysical school, many of them in an exaggerated form. Sir John Denham, the author of Cooper's Hill, was born in 1615 at Dublin, the son of the Chief Baron of Exchequer in Ire- land. At Oxford he became acquainted with the most brilliant and dissolute of the young Cavaliers, and with these he after- wards gambled away the fortune left him by his father. " Cooper's Hill " is a descriptive poem, varied by the thoughts suggested by Buch striking objects in the landscape as the Thames, Windsor Forest, and the flats of Eunnymede. It is a good specimen of local poetry. Like all the Royalist party, he rose in fortune and fcivour at the Eestoration, becoming then a surveyor of royal build- ings and a Knight of the Bath. He died in 1668. A poor tra- gedy, the Sophy, founded on incidents in Turkish Ufe, was also written by him. RiCHAKD Lovelace, bom in a knightly mansion in 1618, was the most unhappy of the Cavalier poets. For his gallant struggles in the cause of his king, he suffered imprisonment, during which he collected and published his Odes and Songs. The marriage of his sweetheart with another, — she thought that he had died of his woimds in France, — broke his hopes and his heart ; and through the years of the Commonwealth he continued to sink, until in 1658 he died, a ragged and consumptive beggar, in an alley near Shoe Lane. His poetry resembles Herrick's, but with less sparkle and more conceit. Abeaham Cowley, bom in London in 1618, was the son of a sfaitioner in Cheap'side. He became a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Like Pope, he wrote poems in early boyhood, and published a volume when only thirteen. His Koyahst principles caused him to be expelled from Cambridge j and, after some time 214 THE "EIKON BASILIKE." at Oxford, lie ^'ent with Queen Henrietta to France, where he lived for twelve years. Disappointed after the Restoration in his hopes of preferment, he retired to Chertsey by the Thames, where his old timbered house is still pointed out. There he Uved, in studious quiet but not content, for seven years, when in 1667 a neglected cold killed him after a fortnight's iUness. He wrote Mis- cellanies, theMistress ovLove Verses, Pindaric Odes, and theDavideis, an heroic poem upon David. His light sparkling renderings of Horace and Anacreon are his happiest efforts. In many of his wofks there is a constant straining after effect, which has been well named vnt-vjriting. His prose is simple, pure, and animated. No poet of his day was more popular than Cowley, who is now but little read. WiiiiAM Chambeklayne, of Shaftesbury in Dorset, born in 1619, wrote two long poems, which Campbell rescued from ob- scurity. They are Lovers Victory, a tragi-comedy ; and Pharon- nida, an heroic poem. The latter, especially, contains some fine and varied scenes. Chamberlajoie died in 1689. A country doctor practising at Shaftesbury, he associated little with the great men of his day. Charles Cotton, the witty poet-friend of Walton, was a Derbyshire man, born there in 1630. His father. Sir George, left him the encumbered estate of Ashbourne. Cotton was