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Title: Life of Geoffrey Chaucer Author: William Godwin Date: 1804 Language: en Topics: biography Source: Retrieved on 25th September 2020 from http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/godwin/chaucer/ChaucerTOC.html
and delight, with which they had hitherto had acquaintance. I have led
my readers, with however unconfirmed a speech and inadequate powers, to
the different sources of information; and, if I have been unable to
present what should satisfy a vigorous and earnest curiosity, I have
wished to say enough to awaken their enquiries, and communinicate to
them some image of men from times which have long since been no more.
It was my purpose is to produce a work of a new species. Antiquities
have too generally been regarded as the province of cold tempers and
sterile imaginations, writers who, by their phlegmatic and desultory
industry, have brought discredit upon a science; which is perhaps beyond
all others fraught with wisdom, moral instruction and intellectual
improvement. Their books may indeed be considerably useful to the
patient enquierer who would delineate the picture of past times for
himself; but they can scarecely incite enquiry; and their contents are
put together with such narrow views, so total an absence of
discrimination, and such an unsuspecting ignorance of the materials of
which man is made, that the potential of them tends for the most part to
stupify the sense, and to imbue the soul with moping and lifeless
dejection.
It was my wish, had my power held equal pace with my strong inclination
to carry the workings of fancy and the spirit of philosophy into the
investigation of ages past. I was anxious to rescue for a moment the
illustrious dead from the jaws of the grave, to make them pass in view
before me, to question their spirits and record their answers. I wished
to make myself their master of the ceremonies, to introduce my reader to
their familiar speech, and to enable him to feel for the instant as if
he had lived with Chaucer, I have acknowledged the slightness of the
present work, in comparison of the magnitude of its subject. It has been
my good fortune however, in the course of my undertaking, to encounter
many discoveries. Mr. Tyrwhit, to whom we are indebted for the latest
and best edition of the Canterbury Tales, informs us, that he âhad once
the intention of writing a formal life of Chaucer; but that, after a
reasonable waste of time and pains in searching for materials, he found
that he could do nothing better, than add to his Preface a short
Abstract of the Historical Passages of that Lifeb which, together with
the comments of its compiler, fills only about eight quarto pages. A
late antiquarian has given his approbation to what Mr. Tyrwhit has done
in this respectc.
[b] Edition of the Canterbury Tales, Preface.
[c] Ellis, Specimens of the Early English Poets, Vol. I, Chap. VIII.
The fact is however, that this editor made no exertions as to the
history of the poet, but contented himself with examining what other
biographers had related, and adding a few memorandums taken from Rymerâs
manuscript collections, now in the British Museum. He has not in a
single instance resorted to the national repositories in which our
records are preserved. In this sort of labour I had been indefatigable;
and I have many obligations to acknowledge to the politeness and
liberality of the persons to whose custody these monuments are confided.
I encountered indeed no obstacle, wherever I had occasion to direct my
enquiries among the different offices of government. After all my
diligence however, I am by no means confident that I may not have left
some particulars to be gleaned by the compilers who shall come after me.
The attentive reader will perceive that I have been less copious upon
the last fifteen, than upon the preceding years of the life of Chaucer.
I had advanced as far as the middle of the second volume, when I saw my
materials growing under my hand, and became sensible that, if they were
fully treated, the work would extend beyond the dimensions originally
prescribed to it. But, if I, enamoured of my subject, might have thought
no number of pages or of volumes too much for its developement, it was
by no means impossible that purchasers and readers would think
otherwise. My bookseller, who is professionally conversant with matters
of this sort, assured me, that two volumes in quarto were as much as the
public would allow the title of my book to authorise. It would be in
vain to produce a work, whatever information it might comprise, which no
one will purchase or will read; and I have therefore submitted to his
decision. In fact, less is perhaps lost by this compression, than at
first I was apt to imagine. It had been my object to collect generally
those particulars of contemporary manners, literature and story, which
contributed to make Chaucer what he was: But the ample survey of what
occurred before he was fifty-seven years of age, may seem sufficient for
this purpose; nor is it likely that his mind underwent any essential
revolution after that period. I found John of Gaunt intimately connected
with the history of Chaucer, and I was desirous of showing what sort of
man Chaucer had for his patron and his friend: But, if I have not
adequately rescued this prince from the misrepresentations of the crowd
of historians in what the reader will find in these volumes, I am afraid
it would be to little purpose to have laboured upon the concluding
period of his life. I have been constrained to omit the analysis of
Chaucerâs last productions, his Canterbury Tales, and the endeavour to
trace the descent of these tales through preceding and contemporary
authors: But this part of his works has already been most studied and
illustrated; and the edition of Mr. Tyrwhit, though the production of
such an antiquary as has above been described, has enough of judgment
and knowledge to form some excuse for the writer who declines to
recomment on the same work.
The Appendix to these volumes principally consists of extracts from the
records preserved in the Tower of London and in other public
repositories. In a work so copious as the present, it seemed proper to
give these documents at length. One reader, in perusing, will often find
hints and topics for conjecture and reflection, which may escape the
observation of another. They are here given immediately from the
originals; and, if errors shall be found in them, I have no excuse to
plead, unless the hurry and distraction incident to a transcript to be
made in a public office. The only document here given, of which, for
reasons not necessary to be mentioned, I was unable to obtain a sight,
is the Testimony of Chaucer in the cause of Scrope and Grosvenor,
printed at the end of the first volume, and which forms the subject of a
Dissertation prefixed to that volume. --It is perhaps worthy of notice
that, though the secretary of the Society of Antiquaries obligingly
favoured me with a copy of Chaucerâs Lease (Appendix, No. XXVIII) from a
plate, engraved by Dr. Richard Rawlinson, and deposited in the Library
of the Society, he at the same time informed me that I could not be
permitted to see the engraving. The copy however was so far of use, as
it led me to the original in the archives of the dean and chapter of
Westminster, whence (a small number of errors excepted, which are here
corrected) Dr. Rawlinsonâs plate was taken.
Throughout this publication, care has been taken to make no reference to
any book, which has not been actually consulted, and the reference
verified by inspection. One circumstance has resulted from this, which
it seems candid to explain. In the early part of the work, for about one
hundred pages, the books referred to are few, and many references are
given at second-hand from publications comparatively accessible or
modern; afterward this defect no longer occurs. The cause of this is as
follows. It was impossible for me to purchase all the books I had
occasion to consult; and, reasoning upon general principles, I believed
it could not be difficult in such a metropolis as London to obtain the
loan of them. I accordingly made many efforts for that purpose; but my
efforts were for the most part unsuccessful. Few of our public libraries
suffer their books to be removed beyond the walls of their institution.
And, for private collectors, I generally found that they did not see, in
the illustrations of English history and English literature here
proposed to be made, a sufficient motive to part with their treasures
for a short time out of their own hands. After some interval therefore
of fruitless experiments, it became necessary to form a peremptory
resolution, and to yield to an assiduous and almost daily attendance at
the British Museum. This has been productive of great loss of time and
many disadvantages. No studious man can collate authorities and draw his
inferences satisfactorily, except in his own chamber. No man can
adequately judge what it is that may be necessary to his purpose, till
after repeated essays and comparisons. Add to which, he who studies at
home chooses his seasons of study, while he who resorts to a public
library has them measured out to him by others. But, when animated with
the hope of adding something to the stock of general information or
improvement, it is right that such obstacles should be regarded by us as
unworthy of notice.
October, 1803.
THE dates assigned to the birth and death of Chaucer are among those
points which, from the time perhaps of the erecting his tomb in 1550 to
the present, have never been questioned or disturbed. It is undoubtedly
pleasing, in a subject which in many particulars is involved in
obscurity, to be able to seize some points which are free from the
shadow of a doubt. It has however fallen to the lot of the writer of
these volumes to discover a document, which is calculated in its
consequences to bring the former of these dates into question.
The path which led to this document was as follows. In the Life of
Chaucer prefixed to Urryâs edition of his works, is this remark. âIt may
not be improper to observe, that during Chaucerâs troubles, in the tenth
year of Rich. II. there was a dispute in a case of chivalry depending
between sir Richard Grosvenour and sir Richard le Scrope, concerning
their arms; which the king directed John Staple and Walter Leycester
heralds, to examine. They accordingly met at the Preaching Fryers in
London, on Monday the last day of May, where appeared as witnesses most
of the chief nobility in England, and other persons of distinction;
among whom was our Chaucer, who gave in evidence, âthat he saw Scrope
armed at Rottes in France, azure with a bend dâor, and that coat was by
public voice and fame taken for Scropeâs coat.â The author of the Life
refers, as his authority for this statement, to a âroil in a cause of
chivalry between Scrope and Grosvenour, 10 R. 2. communicated to Mr.
Urry by John Anstis Esq; Garter Principal King at Arms.â
century.
the Norman and Plantagenets Princes.
CHAUCER appears to have passed the latter years of his education at the
university of Cambridge. He speaks of himself as residing there at the
age of eighteen. It is probably from the words above quoted from his
Testament of Love that he received his first initiation in letters in
the city of London.
We are extremely apt to put the cheat upon our imagination by the
familiar and indiscriminate use we make of the terms, the dark, and the
barbarous ages. These terms are far from being applicable, without
material distinctions, to the times in which Chaucer was born. The muddy
effervescence which was stirred up in Europe by the continual influx of
the barbarians, subsided in a considerable degree in the eleventh
century. William the Norman may be considered as having introduced
politeness and learning into this island; and being succeeded after an
interval by his youngest son, upon whom he had bestowed a careful and
elaborate education, and to whom his contemporaries gave the appellation
of Beauclerc, or the fine scholar, to empire of literature became so
fixed among us as not to be easily capable of being exterminated. Henry
II. was still more conspicuously the patron of letters than Henry I. His
court was crowded with scholars, poets, and elegant writers. His
greatest and most illustrious subject, Thomas of Becket, drew around him
a circle of literary men, whose correspondence has been handed down to
us, and who every where compliment each other with the appellation of
philosophers. The Latin style of John of Salisbury, Peter of Blois, and
Joseph of Exeter, who were among this number, is more elegant than that
of the Latin writers of any other age, from the fall of the Western
empire to the reformation: nor are the conceptions of John of Salisbury
in particular, the admirable good-sense of his remarks, and the
pointedness of his satire, in any way inferior to the choice of his
language.
Contemporary with the reign of our Henry I, other memorable exertions
were making to free the intellect of Europe from that state of torpor,
in which it had now been sunk for several ages. The Saracens,
particularly under the caliph Almanon, who reigned in the beginning of
the ninth century, had made considerable strides in the advancement of
science, and, with the exception of its poets and historians, had
rendered the stores of Grecian literature their own, by a translation
into Arabic. Early in the twelfth century several enterprising
Europeans, urged by the thirst of knowledge, and instructed by the
observations of the crusaders as to the spot where they might
successfully seek it, passed over into Asia, and brought back with them,
among various acquisitions, the elements of the sciences of arithmetic,
algebra, geometry, medicine, natural history, alchemy, astronomy,
astrology, and the Aristotelian philosophy. The Aristotelian philosophy
furnished a groundwork for the achievements of those illustrious
champions of human intellect commonly known by the appellation of the
schoolmen.
Such were the beginnings of the revival of letters in the West of
Europe. No sooner was the field of improvement laid open, than the
progress was seen to be not less auspicious and novel than the
commencement. Among various circumstances worthy of notice, our
ancestors seem to have been in no inconsiderable degree indebted,
however fortuitous the concurrence may appear, to the labors of an
officer of the court of Constantinople about the year of 1070, by the
name Simeon Seth. This man was learned in the Oriental tongues, and,
beside other works, translated from Persian and Arabic into Greek, a
fabulous history of the exploits of Alexander the Great, and the book
which under different forms has commonly been known by the name of the
Fables of Pilpay. The first of these pieces received almost immediately
a version into Latin from and unknown hand, and in this form became
familiar to the European nations. The latter was imitated, soon after
teh year 1100, by Piers Alfonse, a converted Jew, whose writings were
well known in the time of Chaucer, and furnished, about the close of the
century, the basis of a work, highly celebrated in those days, entitled
Gesta Romanorum. The above-named productions of Simeon Seth, together
with the writings of Dares Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis, which probably
owed the popularity they now acquired to the pretensions advanced at
this time by several Western nations to a Trojan original, supplied the
first intimations of ancient history to the scholars who lived under the
Normans and the Plantagenets. upon the groundwork furnished by Turpin,
by Geoffrey of Monmouth, (writers whom we shall presently have occasion
to mention) by Simeon Seth, and by the pretended historians of the
Trojan was, the French and Latin poests of the reign of Henry II. built
their lucubrations; and, to crown the literary glories of the period of
that monarch, Galfirede de Vino Salvo, a monk of St. Frideswide near
Oxford, produced a Latin poem on the art of writing verse, entitled De
Nova Poetria.
The thirteenth century witnessed the studies of William de Lorris, Guido
dalla Colonna author of the Troy-Book which was afterward translated by
Lydgate, Thoman Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Alfonso king of Castille inventor
of the Alfonsine tables of astronomy, Dante Alighieri, and Roger Bacon.
Most of these illustrious names we shall have cause to refer to on
future occasions.
The century however in which Chaucer lived, and those which immediately
preceded, labored under one disadvantage from which we have happily
escaped. The invention of printing has enabled us to multiply books
almost the the extent of human want, and has rendered them cheap and
accessible to a great portion of our species. In these early times it
was otherwise. Seven hundred volumes were esteemed to afford a
foundation for a national library. But the times of Chaucer did not in
this respect suffer a disadvantage peculiarly their own. The best ages
of Greece and Rome had no other method for multiplying copies than by
the tedious process of transcription. This undoubtedly prevented
literature from being within the reach of so large a portion of the
community as at present, but was not incompatible with learning. If we
look over the list of authors quoted by Chaucer and other writers of
that period, we shall find it considerably numerous. The libraries of
monasteries probably in a great degree supplied the disadvantage arising
from the small collections of individuals. They were prevented from
being so minute and accurate in quotation as scholars of our own times
frequently are, but not from being learned.
Another disadvantage incident to this remote period was the gloomy and
despotic empire of papal superstition. This was in its highest pride of
power under the emperors Henry III. and Henry IV. in the eleventh
century, and even under our Henry II, whose age was to a considerable
degree and age of letters, in the twelfth. But this evil was greatly
diminished before the time of Chaucer. Popes no longer ventured to talk
of depriving monarchs of their crowns. The Italian writers had decanted
with great freedom upon the corruptions of the church. In England the
scandalous lives of the monks were a favorite topic of invective. The
idea had even been started and gravely discussed in the parliaments of
Edward III, of throwing off the yoke of Rome. The king, the princess of
Wales, and several of the greatest persons in the realm, were suspected
of favouring the doctrines of Wicliffe: John of Gaunt duke of Lancaster,
and many of the ablest and most skillful courtiers avowed themselves his
abettors. When we consider these things, we are almost astonished that
this fervor subsided, and that the spirit of resistance to superstition
appears to have gained no ground from the close of the fourteenth to the
commencement of the sixteenth century. Popery however had acquired so
complete an ascendancy, that nothing less than the art of printing could
give it a decisive and irrecoverable blow. Meanwhile, in spite of all
the appearances which favoured intellectual freedom in matters of
religion, our countrymen still labored under the most powerful
restraints. The right of the church to condemn speculative tenets of
opinion, and to proscribe writings offensive to the reigning religion,
had scarcely been questioned. It was in the year 1010 that Galileo was
condemned for asserting the diurnal motion of the earth.
There was besides an incidental disadvantage in this island, which
powerfully operated to check the growth of English literature. This was
the state of our language. When William the Norman ascended the throne,
he brought over with him great multitudes of his native nobility, and it
was the policy of his reign and the reigns of his immediate successors,
firmly and unrelentingly to depress the former inhabitants of the
island. William possessed great and important districts in France and
under Henry II. these acquired a vast additional extent. A great portion
of the nobility under these princes were natives of France, and most of
those who were not strictly so, possessed estates in that country.
Living in intercourse with each other and with their neighbours on the
continent, and despising the rudeness and barbarity of the Saxon race,
the vernacular language of our island sunk into neglect and contempt.
Few of the nobles or of the dignified clergy were able to express
themselves in it on the most ordinary subjects. Our laws, our pleadings,
our parliamentary discussions, and our deeds of inheritance, were all
French. The very boys at school were confined to translate the
phraseology of the Latin classics into that language. The princes of the
Norman line, who were encouragers of literature, had no conception of
any literature which was not Latin or French. That language, which in
its constituent members is the same which has since been immortalised in
the writings of Shakespear, Bacon, and Milton, was at this time
threatened with total extinction.
Yet, whatever were the disadvantages to which learning was exposed,
there was a great portion of it among us. London itself was one of its
favourite seats. This has induced some of our old writers to style it
the third university. The liberal sciences had not yet so fixed and
denizened themselves at Oxford and Cambridge as they have since done.
The oldest colleges in these universities were founded between the
middle of the thirteenth and the middle of the fourteenth centuries.
Till that time students resided indiscriminately in such lodgings as
they could procure among the citizens of these places. A variety of
incidental circumstances successively concurred to give to Oxford and
Cambridge the distinctive character which they have since borne. William
Fitzstephen, the historian and friend of Thomas of Becket, in a
description of London annexed to his Life of that Prelate, has treated
with some minuteness the studies which in his time were pursued in this
metropolis. He informs us that âthree principal churches in London,â
supposed to be St. Paulâs, St. Peterâs Cornhil, and Westminster, âhad
their respective schools adjoining, of notable privilege and venerable
antiquity. In addition to these there were others which under the
patronage of some individuals, or sustained by the fame of such
celebrated doctors as taught in them, were permitted their several
institutions. On holidays the masters of these schools held their public
assemblies in certain churches assigned for that purpose. The elder
scholars engaged in demonstrative or dialectical disputation, some using
enthymems, and others the regular syllogism. Some exercised their art in
the spirit of an ostentatious contest, and others with a reverent
anxiety for the discovery of truth. The former rester their reputation
upon the arrangement and inundation of words, while their logic could
boast no better than an external speciousness. Orators then delivered
their respective declamations, using every topic of persuasion, adhering
to all the rules of art, and careful to omit no branch of their subject.
The younger boys contended with each other in verse, or tried who could
give the most accurate statement of the element of grammar, and the
rules respecting the preterits and futures of verbs. The whole was wound
up with a recitation of epigrams, ballads and rhymes, in which was
revived the ancient Fescennine liberty of sarcasm, and, whith nameing
indiviuals, teh foibles and frailties of each, or the secret history of
his ancestors, were made the subject of bithing cockeries and tuants in
the Socratic manner, the speakers at the same time taking care not to
overstep the decorum due to the situaiton. The auditors, prepared to
enter into the jest, shook the assembly with peals of laughter. â
Whether London retained, from the time of William Fitzstephen to that of
Chaucer, so many characteristics of an university as are here described,
may be doubted. it is probably that, as the establishments of Oxford and
Cambridge increased in stability and extensiveness of foundation, the
rival colleges of the metropolis declined. it is not however to be
imagined that a young man so advantageously circumstanced as to be
designed to finish his general education at the universities, and
afterward, as we have some reason to believe, to remove to the inns of
court, was not made to partake of every advantage that the scholastic
institutions of the city in which he resided could afford, for the
cultivation of his infant mind. Private tuition, in the sense in which
we now understand it, was as yet scarcely invented. young persons upon
whom the discipline of education was intended to be bestowed, were
either placed in the families of some of our principal nobility, where a
sort of seminary was formed for their improvement in the exercise of the
mind, and still more in those of the body, or were sent to some of those
public resorts of learning, which for a certain stipend were accessible
to all. There seems no reason to believe that Chaucerâs boyish days were
spent under the auspices of nobility. His early poem of Troilus and
Creseide is inscribed to no more magnificent patrons than the âmoral
Gower, and the philosophical Strode. âWe may therefore image to
ourselves our youthful poet as resorting daily to some one of the
classical seminaries of the metropolis, and in the language of
Fitzstephen, âcontending with his fellows for the prize of Latin verse
or emulously reciting with them the elements of grammar, and the rules
for the preterits and futures of Latin verbs. â
Here doubtless Chaucer became acquainted with many of the Roman writers:
of the Greek language it does not appear that he had any knowledge; the
words of Homer, Pindar, Demosthenes, and Thucydides, never sounded in
his ears, or rolled from his tongue. He never drank from their pure and
primeval wells of poetry; he held no intercourse with their manly sense,
and their ardent passion for liberty. Among the Latins the nobler
classics were almost uniformly deserted: the energy of Lucretius, the
simplicity of Tibullus, the unaffected manner of Ternce, and the
poignant gaiety of Horace were forgotten; Virgil was comparatively
neglected; the favourite Roman poets were Ovid, Lucan, Satatius, and
Prudentius. In prose Cicero and Livy were rarely consulted; but the
daily amusement of scholars was in the unnatural style of Seneca and
Boethius, or the desultory collections of Macrobius and Valerius
Maxiumus. To these they added the Latin compositions of authors who had
preceded by a century or two the period in which they lived. The writers
of Latin verse in the twelfth century have already been mentioned with
commendation; the Bellum Trojanum and the Antiocheis of Joseph of
Exeter, and the Phillippid of Guillaume le Breton, were particularly
admired; and the Alexandreid of Gultier de Chatillon was equalled with
the most perfect productions of antiquity.
intimate connection of the feudal system, of chivalry and romance.
Such were the authors some of whom were read by Chaucer in the regular
series of his school-education: there were others who it can scarcely be
questioned furnished some of the favourite recreations of his boyish
years. These were the writers of romance. Several of their most popular
productions are thus enumerated by him in his Rime of Sire Thopas.
Men speken of romaunces of pris,
Of Hornchild and of Ipotis,
Of Bevis and sire Guy,
Of sire Libeux and Pleindamour,
But sire Thopas he bereth the flour
Of real chevalrie.
-Cant. Tales, ver. 13830.
Romance was the offspring of chivalry; as chivalry again was the
offspring of the feudal system. Each of these sprang up in succession,
from the chaos introduced by the barbarian tribes who overwhelmed the
Western Empire. The feudal system, in strictness of speech, may be
considered as commencing in the ninth century, and began to decline
about the middle of the twelfth. Chivalry is referred by the ablest
writers on the subject to the eleventh century. The first romances we
possess were the production of the century immediately following. These
three causes principally contributed to generate the character and
manners which distinguished the age of Chaucer.
The feudal system was particularly military, and was invented, or at
least carried to perfection, from views of defence. Its first model was
derived from the distribution made by the king or his great lords, of
their demesnes or immediate property, to their courters or attendants.
When the northern barbarians first settled in the provinces of the Roman
empire, the whole of the tracts they subdued, with a certain reserve in
favour of the preceding inhabitants, was divided according to a given
proportion among the individuals who subdued it. The wants of the
original invaders were few; the portions into which the territory was
divided were numerous and of small extent; and every possessor of one of
these portions had a voice in the decision of national affairs. The
lands therefore which each man held, were on the principle of allodium,
or free tenure; burthened only with certain engagements for the public
service, and the occasions when this service was to be performed,
subject to the decision of a national assembly. The king, or commander
in chief, had a landed estate assigned him, large enough for the
maintenance of his dignity and authority without demanding contributions
of his subjects.
The gradual change which was operated in a few centuries of the allodial
into feudal tenure, was the result of a certain degree of luxury and
refinement. In proportion as the conquerors of the Roman empire relaxed
from the simplicity of their manners, a greater extent of wealth was
demanded, to enable the chief magistrate to support his dignity. The
nobles, or more eminent subjects, imitated the example of their chief,
and aspired to possess a larger tract of country than had in the first
distribution been allotted them. The king for his own convenience found
it advisable to distribute the lands he possessed among his courtiers,
who were permitted to enjoy the produce, on certain conditions which
were prescribed to them for the benefit of their lord. The grants thus
made had originally nothing in view but the advantage of the chief; the
property continued vested in him; the actual holders of the lands were
his stewards or servants, indued with such immunities as were best
calculated to render their service or super intendance effectual. The
grants therefore were at first during pleasure; then, as agriculture and
civilization advanced, annual; then for ten years, or for life; and at
length, with certain limitations, to the heirs of the original holder.
The idea of property in the chief however was never lost sight of; a
feudal tenure being always conferred as the pledge of future service,
while the allodial was given as a reward for the past. In every stage of
the fief the tenant was not only strictly held to military service and
aid in proportion to the extent of his possessions; but, as the
stability of the tenure advanced, it was incumbered with homage,
wardship, marriage relief and pecuniary aids: that is, the tenant was
obliged to present himself with certain marks of humiliation before his
lord; each successive holder was to pay a certain fine to his superior
for the grace of being admitted to succession; if he were a minor, he
and his estates were taken into the direction of the lord, to be used,
within certain limits, as her should think proper; the lord had the
power of disposing of him in marriage; and he was bound to the three
great pecuniary aids, the contributing a certain sum to ransom his lord
when a captive, to portion his eldest daughter in marriage, and to
defray the expences of the solemn festival which was held when his
eldest son was made a knight.
The advantage powered by the allodial landholder over the feudal tenant
at first sight appears to be so great, that we can scarcely avoid the
imagining to ourselves that it was eagerly maintained and passionately
cherished. Yet in the course of a century or two from the era of
Charlemagne almost the whole allodial property of the chief countries of
Europe was gradually converted into feudal tenure. This was entirely
owing to the turbulent and disordered state of society then prevailing.
The barbarism of these times it is difficult for us without a violent
stretch of fancy to conceive. There was no public law; or the voice of
public law was unheard and ineffectual. There was no magistracy; or the
magistrate possessed no power to bring the offender before him, and to
inforce his decisions. The conquerors of the Roman empire learned
certain lessons of luxury and artificial wants from the people they
subdued; property became unequally distributed; and every petty
chieftain regarded himself as the equal of his prince. The power of the
sovereign was considerable in a period of national war; but in times of
public peace was reduced to almost nothing. The evil in this respect was
small, while the estates of individuals were scanty, and each man could
easily be brought under the control of the national assembly. But, as
property became vested in few hands, the mischief swelled to the most
enormous height. Private war, that is, a violent attempt on the part of
any one who thought himself injured to redress or avenge his own injury,
was nearly universal; and it will be scarcely necessary to give our
imaginations much scope, to represent to ourselves the horrible
mischiefs which must arise from such a mode of proceeding. Their
quarrels, and schemes of mutual aggression and resentment, descended
from father to son; all the relations of the parties were obliged, on
pain of infamy, to take part in the feud. Some of the first remedies
which were thought of to check this growing evil need only be mentioned,
to convince us how terrible was its nature, and how obstinate its
symptoms. Two of these were denominated the Truce of God, and the Peace
of the King. By the former, all acts of private hostility were forbidden
from Thursday night in each week to the morning of the Monday following;
and by the latter, hostilities of this sort were not allowed to commence
till forty days after the omission of the imputed crime they were
instituted to avenge.
The feudal system was far from extinguishing all the evils to which it
was intended to apply. But it was a remedy suited to the genius of the
times in which it arose; and it drew much closer than they had before
been drawn, the bonds of civil society. It was first tried, as has
already been stated, on a smaller scale, and applied only to the
immediate property of the sovereign. When it became extended over
spacious monarchies, like France and Germany, the whole soil of those
monarchies was treated, by a splendid fiction, which strikes our
imagination by its boldness and grandeur, as the sole and direct
property of the first magistrate. The king found his benefit in a scheme
so flattering to his state, and so advantageous to his prerogative: and
the subject found his benefit in a scheme which drew the different
members of the community so near to each other, and erected the whole
body of proprietors into a mighty army, capable of being called forth,
when any powerful emergency demanded it, at the shortest notice. Such is
the main outline of the feudal system, which, though long since
destroyed in its most essential elements, is the legitimate source of an
hundred institutions and an hundred abuses which still prevail in
European society. In the days of Chaucer this system was indeed already
a ruin, but the main lineaments of the edifice remained and it was
impossible for an individual of those times to open his eyes without
their presenting themselves to his view. The feudal system was the
direct parent of the ideas of chivalry.
In the times we have described, which preceded the feudal institution,
began the practice which afterward gained the appellation of
knight-errantry. In remote ages and countries of the world we find a
great similarity between the ideas and customs of nations in a similar
stage of the social progress. Hercules and Theseus were the
knight-errants of antiquity. They destroyed wild beasts with which the
unpeopled regions were infested, and exterminated robbers. These, by the
imagination of an ignorant and superstitious age, were converted into
giants and dragons.
But the feudal system gave permanence and body to a character which
otherwise would speedily have perished. This system was entirely
military. Recourse to the corporeal energies of the human frame for the
decision of differences was sufficiently common in the era which
preceded the feudal system; but that scheme of policy gave order, and a
compact and disciplined motion, to the exertion of those energies. Each
landed proprietor was a soldier, and was bound by the tenor of his
obligation to follow his lord on horseback, when he went to war. A
soldier therefore, in the ideas of these times, was the first of human
characters. To this profession every honourable father carefully
educated his son. They had no learning, no politeness and no arts, to
enter into competition with this education. Every young man of birth
therefore was excited from his earliest infancy to contemplate arms with
burning enthusiasm. As soon as he was of an age to handle them, several
hours of every day were spent in studying the graceful and masterly use
of them. The fair sex, in all ages sufficiently prone to the admiration
of a soldier, had now no other object of attachment and honour. The
effect of this situation was reciprocal and sympathetic. The lady loved
and adored the military adventurer that he might gain the favour of his
mistress. The young champion, when accomplished in the practice of his
art, panted for a theatre on which to display it; and a theatre for
military achievements, in those days was never sought in vain. When a
scene of real war did not readily present itself, the mockery as
substituted in its room; tilts, tournaments, justs, defiances. In those
days the administration of civil justice was inexpressibly imperfect;
and, before the feudal system was introduced, ordeals and miracles had
been substituted by the superstitious, in place of the investigation of
evidence, and the impartiality of a dispassionate hearing. When chivalry
became universal, the appeal to the sword superseded all other
expedient, and the person accused of treason, rape or murder, threw down
his gauntlet, and challenged his libeller to prove the truth of his
charge by dint of mortal combat.
Romance was the record of the adventures of persons educated in these
arts and these habits of thinking, in which the individual who rehearsed
them allowed himself to animate his narrative, by the introduction of a
thousand supernatural and impossible ornaments: impossible to us, but
which the bigotry and ignorance of those ages listened to with
reverence, and admitted with all the passiveness of the most doting
credulity.
Romance was a species of composition originally contrived to be sung at
festivals and convivial meetings, and to be accompanied with the accord
of musical instruments. The simple manners of our ancestors in a remote
age afforded so slender source of recreation and novelty, as to render
the performances of harpers and minstrels objects of high estimation.
Amusements of this sort may be traced as far back as the records of any
nation can lead us. Achilles played upon the lyre, and Alcinous had his
musician, who sang heroic tales to the sound of his harp. In the
earliest accounts of Britain this species of entertainment appears to
have been a branch of religion; and the Bards, no less than the Druids,
formed a part of the hierarchy of the original inhabitants of this
island. With the poets of the Northern nations, the conquerors of the
mistress of the world, we have still better opportunities for a familiar
acquaintance, as several of their productions have come down to us. The
Scalds, that is, the Runic or Scandinavian poets, are probably to be
considered as the legitimate parents of the romance of the middle ages:
in their writings we are presented with giants, fairies, dragons,
enchantments, and the other great materials of the wonderful scenes
invented in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
But it is perhaps after the recital of extraordinary adventures were in
a great degree detached from the religious ceremonies and the mythology
of the state, that the bardic or minstrel art becomes most interesting
to a modern imagination. As long as the alliance of the priest and the
poet maintained its entire intimacy, there is a solemnity in the
performances of the latter, which subdues and appals us. All is sacred,
mysterious and obscure; and the whole comes to our minds forcibly
blended with the craft of political imposition, and the gloomy fears of
enthusiastic ignorance. But no sooner had Christianity proclaimed a
divorce between theology and poetry, than the reciter of heroic
adventures felt himself independent and at large. His imagination was no
longer curbed; his temper became frolic and sportful; and he mingled his
recitals at will with the wildnesses of an untrammeled fancy, and the
occasional ebullitions of a satiric vein. The rhapsodies of the minstrel
were in this stage universally introduced into the houses of the wealthy
and the great; they made a part of every splendid festival or genial
entertainment; and if we could revisit the halls of our ancestors, such
as they were during this period, instead of regarding them, as we are
too apt to do, as the abodes of untaught savages, we should rather be
prompted to consider them as the seas of refinement and the haunts of
the muses. The minstrel profession still subsisted in its highest
prosperity in the time of Chaucer.
In the succession of poets from the destruction of the Roman empire in
the West, it is easy to trace a gradual advance in the merits of each
race over the race which went before; of the Danes over the Saxons, and
of the Normans over the Danes. This does not seem to have been
originally owing to any superiority in one of these barbarian hordes
over another, all of whom emigrated from the same division of Europe,
but to the circumstances which marked their early history. The Saxons
left their native retreats in a more infant and unformed period of
social life. Like a young man who has the misfortune to enter too soon
into possession of his patrimonial estate, the fortune of their
childhood introduced them to a scene of ease and comparative indulgence.
They acquired the advantages of agriculture, and many of the arts of
life, not by their own exertions. They quitted the element which had
nursed them, and destroyed their ships: from the period of their
settlement to the days of Alfred, England was completely without a navy.
They gave themselves up to luxury and the caprices of sloth. The
religion which Augustine and the monks of the seventh century gave them
in the room of their native mythology, had no favourable effect upon
their intellect or their courage.
The Danes were a race of men more favoured by the fortune than the
Saxons. They passed through a long probation of hardy expedients and
stern necessity. In their native woods they brooded over the gloomy and
gigantic conceptions which elevate the savage mind; they formed their
spirits in unison with the rugged and sublime scenery which every way
surrounded them; and they worshipped the deities to which their own free
and heroic imaginations had first given birth. There is no need of much
argument to convince us that the poets of such a nation were greatly
superior to those who (as Bede relates of the Saxons) were chiefly
engaged in celebrating in monkish verse the history of the book of
Genesis, the incarnation of our Saviour, the giving of the Holy Ghost
and preaching of the apostles. Accordingly the Saxons, though the Runic
poetry was almost extinguished among them, were not insensible to its
charms, when incidentally restored to them by the inroads of the Danes.
âIt would be endless,â says a celebrated antiquary, âto name all the
poets of the north who flourished in the courts of the kings of England,
or to relate the distinguished honours and magnificent presents which
were heaped upon them.
The Normans are a race of men who command our admiration and respect in
a much higher degree than either the Saxons or the Danes. They were a
band of soldiers who never fled before an enemy. In their first
irruptions from the north they established themselves in a fair and
fertile province of France, almost immediately under the eye of the
successors of Charlemagne. Thence they spread their warlike bands
through Italy, Sicily and England. Every where they were feared; they
were looked up to as a superior race of men; their friendship was
courted, and their enmity deprecated. Nor did they excel only in arms;
in policy, in the arts of life, in the cultivation of all that is
refined and beautiful, and in generosity of sentiment, they appear to
have given the tone to Europe. They were besides the most successful
suitors to the muses, and we shall see reason to consider them as
eminently the father of modern poetry. âTo return to the invention, the
genealogy of which is thus to be traced.
It is one characteristic of the old romance, a characteristic which
might well be expected from the relative ignorance of the times in which
this species of composition arose, that, whatever heroes were chosen for
the subject of its narratives, whether they had existed only two or
three ages before, or were taken from the remotest periods of Greece and
Rome, its authors bestowed upon them all without scruple the peculiar
manners which discriminated the age of chivalry.
The first subjects of the compositions particularly distinguished by
this title, appear to have been Charlemagne emperor of the West, and
Arthur king of Britain. Taillefer, a soldier in the army of William the
Conqueror, who first broke the ranks of the Anglo- Saxons at the battle
of Hastings, A.D. 1066, is recorded on that occasion to have sung the
song of Roland, one of the heroes of the romance of Charlemagne: and the
manner in which this circumstance is mentioned, is such as to induce us
to believe that the name of Roland was, before this exploit of
Taillefer, familiar to the voice of fame.
It was about the year 1100, the era of the accession of our Henry I,
that a grand prose narrative was compiled in Latin, from the songs
already existing on the subject of Roland, Oliver, and the other heroes
of the imaginary war of Charlemagne against the Saracens in Spain. This
work purported to be the production of Turpin, archbishop of Rheims in
the time of that monarch, and was intended to be received as a history
of his real exploits. It enumerates of this celebrated conqueror, whose
accomplishments and exploits are largely insisted upon; and, among a
variety of fictitious adventures ascribed to its hero, conducts him on a
pilgrimage to the holy sepulchre at Jerusalem.
During the reign of the same English sovereign, but a little later,
Geoffrey if Monmouth, a Benedictine monk, translated into Latin from a
British or Armorican original, found in a convent of Britanny, and
brought over into England by Walter Mapes, archdeacon of Oxford and
himself a poet, a prose Chronile of the Kings of Britain. This book
exhibits a succession of the English sovereigns from the Trojan Brutus,
their imaginary progenitor, and records exploits of the British Arthur
and his knights of the Round Table, no less romantic and extraordinary
than those of Charlemagne and his chivalrous associates. The twelve
peers of France are also represented by Geoffrey as assisting at the
coronation of the British warrior.âThese two productions are regarded,
with a considerable degree of propriety, as the two main sources of the
romances of chivalry.
Proceeding forward then from them as the fountain-head of romance,
which, as has been seen, they cannot be considered but under certain
modifications, we may without much improbability regard Robert Wace, a
native of the island of Jersey, and about thirty years younger than
Geoffrey of Monmouth, as the father of the species of writing strictly
so called, which may be defined a composition in verse containing the
relation of heroic achievements and preternatural adventures. His first
performance seems to have been a poem of several thousand lines in
French octosyllabic verse, entitled Le Brut dâ Angleterre, the materials
of which are drawn from the fabulous History of Geoffrey of Monmouth.
This poem was finished in the year 1155, and presented by its author to
Eleanor, the consort of our Henry II. Another celebrated work of the
same author is the Roman de Rou, or poetical history of Rollo first duke
of Normandy. He also wrote a continued series of romances on the
successors of Rollo, which were at that time extremely popular,
particularly those which treated of the adventure of Richard sans peur
and Robert le diable. Wace had a rival in the favour of Henry II, named
Benoit de St. More, who wrote a French poem about twenty thousand verses
on the Trojan war, the materials of which were taken from the pretended
Dares Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis, and was employed by that prince on
the topics which Wace had also treated, the poetical history of the
dukes of Normandy. The favourite themes of the romance-writers of the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, were the Trojan war; the history of
Alexander the Great; the adventures of Arthur and Charlemagne and the
respective champions of these princes; and the crusade: and at the same
time that these subjects were treated in the vulgar tongue by such
writers as have just been named, they were made the topics of a species
of Latin epics, by Joseph of Exeter, Guillaume le Breton, and Gualtier
de Chatillon, writers already mentioned, who composed in a period
immediately subsequent to Wace and Benoit.
The nature and plan of the greater part of the romances of this period
are sufficiently known, and indeed have been consecrated and preserved
to all future ages in the beautiful fictions of Ariosto and Tasso. A
lady shut up in durance and distress was commonly to be relieved by the
prowess of some redoubted knight. Her champion had not only to encounter
every natural and human opposer; his antagonists were giants of the most
incredible size and strength, hippogryphs and dragons, animals whose
breath was fire and whose scales were iron: he was beleaguered with
every species of inchantment and magical delusion; rocks were to be
scaled, walls to be penetrated, and lakes to be swum; and at the same
time these rocks, walls and lakes, were the mere production of
necromancy, brought forth on the pressure of the instant by the art of
some mighty wizard. Adventures of this sort were interwoven with the
miraculous feats of Christian warriors contending with their impious
Saracen adversaries, who were also magicians. These were the tales with
which the youthful fancy of Chaucer was fed; this was the visionary
scenery by which his genius was awakened; these were the acts and
personages on which his boyish thoughts were at liberty to ruminate for
ever.
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.
After the consideration of the scene in which a man has spent his boyish
years, and the studies and modes of imagination to which his early
attention has been directed, there is nothing which can be of more
importance in moulding the youthful mind, than the religious sentiments
which in our tender age we have been communicated to us. As we have no
direct information as to this particular in the education of Chaucer, it
is fair to fix our ideas respecting him at the middle point, and to
believe that he was brought up in all that intuition which, relatively
to the times when he was born, was regarded as seemly, decent and
venerable, neither deviating into the excesses of libertinism on the one
hand, nor of a minute and slavish spirit of devotion on the other. If it
should be thought that some of his lighter compositions are marked with
no anxious regard to the laws of religion and decorum, there will still
remain a considerable portion of his works which are stamped in no
slight degree with the religious sentiments then in vogue, and his
Testament of Love in particular, the offspring of adversity and
imprisonment, when a manâs early impressions of this sort are most apt
to manifest themselves, is eminently serious, reverential and orthodox.
The religion of England in the times here treated of, was that of the
holy apostolical Roman Catholic faith. It was about two hundred and
fifty years before the birth of Chaucer that the church of Rome had
gradually obtained that extraordinary ascendant and stability which have
excited the astonishment of all subsequent ages. The eleventh century
was marked with the establishment of thos two cardinal dogmas,
transubstantiation and the celibacy of the clergy; the one subduing all
human sense and reason at the foot of mystery and implicit faith, and
the other creating to the sovereign pontiff an immense army of resolute
adherents, dispersed through every region of Christendom, yet detached
from all the ties of country, domestic affection and nature. This was
the period in which the bishop of Rome openly assumed to himself the
power of creating and deposing kings, of setting subjects free from the
bond of allegiance, and of subjecting the most exalted personages to the
basest and most abject penance. It was in the eleventh century that
Henry IV. emperor of Germany waited three days, barefooted and
bareheaded, in the month of January, in the outer court of the fortress
of Canosa, expecting the clemency and forgiveness of its inhabitant,
pope Gregory VII.a It was about one hundred years afterward that Henry
II, one of the ablest of the line of English monarchs, suffered
flagellation from the hands of monks, at the tomb of Thomas of Becket,
his rebellious subject, to expiate the offences he had committed against
that distinguished martyr and against the holy see.b The same era which
was marked by the submission of the emperor, also put into the hand of
the pope the transcendent prerogative of nominating to all vacant
archbishoprics and bishoprics through every country which acknowledged
the Catholic faith. Lastly, the eleventh century gave birth to those
astonishing expeditions which were made for the recovery of the Holy
Land; and the closing year of the century witnessed the reduction of the
city of Jerusalem to the obedience of the venerable head of the Catholic
church. The power of the church of Rome was in a considerable degree
founded upon miracles, and it was necessary to the fascination which it
at that time produced in the minds of its adherents, that all its
enterprises should be attended with brilliancy and success. The
recapture of Jerusalem therefore by the Saracens in the year 1187 may
perhaps be considered as the first great blow which was struck against
the fabric of superstition. This theater of the consummation of the
great sacrifice of the Christian doctrine was never recovered. The
ardent devotees of a faith, the spirit of which it is to mix with all
our concerns and modify all our dispositions, are excited to see the
hand and the express providence of God in every event. To such persons
many disasters and cross accidents may occur without shaking their
confidence. They regard with humble submission the mysterious ways of
heaven in all subordinate parts of the system; but they are scarcely
prepared to encounter without a kind of murmuring and impious
astonishment the miscarriage of what they deem to be the cause of God.
In this view the crusades were a very impolitical project of the holy
see. They were attended indeed with the utmost brilliancy and
astonishment; they propagated a sentiment almost beyond the powers and
the sphere of the human mind. But this very circumstance was pregnant
with ruin: they stretched too vehemently the religious nerve in the soul
of man; and their ultimate defeat recoiled with fatal effect to plague
their inventors. The claims of the popes too, by which they narrowed or
annihilated the prerogatives of kings, are open to a similar censure.
They played in many of these cases for too great a stake; they united
too many interests and passions of princes and subjects in opposing
their incroachments. Their power was too mighty and monstrous, and its
tenure, being founded only in a particular train of thinking, too
fragile, to give it a right to promise itself a very permanent duration.
In the time of Chaucer it already tottered to its base.
But, however the hold which the Roman Catholic superstition had gained
upon the minds of men might at this time be weakened, its external
structure was undefaced and entire. It is the peculiar characteristic, I
may add the peculiar beauty, of the Romish religion, that is so forcibly
addresses itself to our senses, without losing sight of the immense
advantage for giving permanence to a system of religion, which is
possessed by creeds, dogmas, and articles of faith. Religion is nothing,
if it be not a sentiment and a feeling. What rests only in opinion and
speculation, may be jargon, or may be philosophy, but can be neither
piety toward God nor love to man. This truth was never more strikingly
illustrated than in the history of the crusades. A man may be persuaded,
by reading Grotiusâs treatise Of the Truth of the Christian Religion, or
any other work of a similar nature, that the man Jesus was really put to
death eighteen hundred years ago, and that, after having been committed
to the grave, he was seen again a living man; yet this persuasion may
produce no effect upon his temper and heart. Far different was the case,
when the crusaders, after all their toils, and a difficult and obstinate
siege, made themselves masters of Jerusalem by assault. They rushed
toward the scene of the agony and death of their Saviour. They traced
the venerable ground which had been hallowed by the tread of his feet.
They saw the hill on which he died, the fragments of his eross, the
drops still fresh and visible of his sacred blood: they visited the tomb
in which the Creator of the World once reposed among the dead. Their
weaposn, still reeking with blood, dropped from their trembling hands;
the ferocity of a murderer was changed into the tenderness of a child;
they kneeled before the tomb, kissed it with their lips, and bathed it
with their tears, they poured out their souls in one united song of
praise to the Redeemer; every one felt himself at this hour become a
different man, and that a new spirit had taken its abode in his bosom.
The authors or improvers of the Romish religion were perfectly aware of
the influence which the senses possess over the heart and character. The
buildings which they constructed for the purposes of public worship are
exquisitely venerable. Their stained and painted windows admit only a
âdim, religious light.â The magnificence of the fabric, its lofty and
concave roof, the massy pillars, the extensive ailes, the splendid
choirs, are all calculated to inspire the mind with religious solemnity.
Music, painting, images, decoration, nothing is omitted which may fill
the soul with devotion. The uniform garb of the monks and nuns, their
decent gestures, and the slowness of their procession, cannot but call
off the most frivolous mind from the concerns of ordinary life. The
solemn chaunt and the sublime anthem must compose and elevate the heart.
The splendour of the altar, the brilliancy of the tapers the smoke and
fragrance of the incense, and the sacrifice, as is pretended, of God
himself, which makes a part of every celebration of public worship, are
powerful aids to the piety of every sincere devotee. He must have a
heart more than commonly hardened, who could witness the performance of
the Roman Catholic worship on any occasion of unusually solemnity,
without feeling strongly moved.
Whatever effect is to be ascribed to such spectacles, was generated in
ways infinitely more multiform in the time of Chaucer, than in any
present country of the Christian World. Immense sums of money had been
bequeathed by the devout and the timorous to pious and charitable
purposes. Beside the splendour of cathedrals and churches, not now
easily to be conceived, the whole land was planted with monastic
establishments. In London stood the mitred abbeys of St. John and of
Westminster, in addition to the convents of nuns, and the adobes of
monks, and of friars, black, white and grey. Every time a man went from
his house he met some of these persons, whose clothing told him that
they had renounced the world, and that their lives were consecrated to
God. The most ordinary spectacle which drew together the idle and the
curious, was the celebration of some great festival, the performance of
solemn masses for the dead, or the march of some religious procession,
and the exhibition of the Bon Dieu to the eyes of an admiring populace.
Henry VIII, the worse than Vandal of our English story, destroyed the
habitations and the memorials which belonged to our ancient character,
and exerted himself to the best of his power to make us forget we ever
had ancestors. He who would picture to himself the religion of the time
of Chaucer, must employ his fancy in rebuilding these ruined edifices,
restoring the violated shrines, and collecting again the scattered army
of their guardians.
Beside every other circumstance belonging to the religion of this
period, we are bound particularly to recollect two distinguishing
articles of the Roman Catholic system; prayer for the dead, and the
confession of sins. These are circumstances of the highest importance in
modifying the characters and sentiments of mankind. Prayer for the dead
is unfortunately liable to abuses, the most dangerous in increasing the
power of the priest; and the most ridiculous, if we conceive their
masses (which were often directed to be said to the end of time), and
picture to ourselves the devout of a thousand years ago shoving and
elbowing out, by the multiplicity of their donations of this sort, all
posterity, and leaving scarcely a bead to be told to the memory of the
man who yesterday expired. But, if we put these and other obvious abuses
out of our minds, we shall probably confess that it is difficult ot
think of an institution more consonant to the genuine sentiments of
human nature, than that of masses for the dead. When I have lost a dear
friend and beloved associate, my friend is not dead to me. The course of
nature may be abrupt, but true affection admits of no sudden breaks. I
still see my friend; I still talk to him. I consult him in every arduous
question; I study in every difficult proceeding to mould my conduct to
his inclination and pleasure. Whatever assists this beautiful propensity
of the mind, will be dear to every feeling heart. In saying masses for
the dead, I sympathise with my friend. I believe that he is anxious for
his salvation; I utter the language of my anxiety. I believe that he is
passing through a period of trail and purification; I also am sad. It
appears as if he were placed beyond the reach of my kind offices; this
solemnity once again restores to be the opportunity of aiding him. The
world is busy and elaborate to tear him from my recollection; the hour
of this mass revives the thought of him in its tenderest and most awful
form. My senses are mortified that they can no longer behold the object
of their cherished gratification; but this disadvantage is mitigated, by
a scene of which my friend is the principle and essence, presented to my
senses.
The practice of auricular confession is exposed to some of the same
objections as masses for the dead, and is connected with many not less
conspicuous advantages. There is no more restless and unappeasable
propensity of the mind than the love of communication, the desire to
pour out our soul in the ear of a confident and a friend. There is no
more laudable check upon the moral errors and deviations of our nature,
than the persuasion that what we perpetrate of base, sinister and
disgraceful, we shall not be allowed to conceal. Moralists have
recommended to us that, in cases of trail and temptation, we should
imagine Cato, some awful and upright judge of virtue, the witness of our
actions; and that we should not dare to do what he would disapprove.
Devout men have pressed the continued recollection of the omnipresence
of an all-perfect being. But these expedients are inadequate to the end
they are proposed to answer. The first consists of an ingenious effort
of the fancy, which we may sometimes, but cannot always, be prepared to
make. The second depends upon the abstruse and obscure image we may
frame of a being, who, thus represented, is too unlike ourselves to be
of sufficient and uniform operation upon our conduct. The Romish
religion, in the article here mentioned, solves our difficulties, and
saves us the endless search after an associate and an equal in whom we
may usefully repose our confidence. It directs us to some man, venerable
by character, and by profession devoted to the cure and relief of human
frailties. To do justice to the original and pure notion of the benefits
of auricular confession, we must suppose the spiritual father really to
be all that the office he undertakes requires him to be. He has with his
penitent no rival passions nor contending interests. He is a being of a
different sphere, and his thoughts employed about widely different
objects. He has with the person he hears, so much of a common nature ,
and no more, as should lead him to sympathise with his pains, and
compassionate his misfortunes. In this case we have many of the
advanteages of having a living man before us to fix our attention and
satisfy our communicative spirit, combined with those of a superior
nature which appears to us inaccessible to weakness and folly. We gain a
friend to whom we are sacredly bound to tell the little story of our
doubts and anxieties, who hears us with interest and fatherly affection,
who judges us uprightly, who advises us with an enlightened and elevated
mind, who frees us from the load of undivulged sin, and enables us to go
forward with a chaste heart and a purified conscience. There is nothing
more allied to the barbarous and savage character, than sullenness,
concealment and reserve. There is nothing which operates more powerfully
to mollify and humanize the heart, than the habit of confessing all our
actions, and concealing none of our weaknesses and absurdities.
Several other circumstances in the Roman Catholic religion, as it was
practiced in the fourteenth century, co-operated with those which have
just been mentioned, to give it a powerful ascendancy over the mind, and
to turn upon it a continual recollection. One of these s to be found in
the fasts and abstinences of the church. These were no doubt so
mitigated as scarcely to endanger any alarming consequences to the life
or health of the true believer. But they at least interfered, in some
cases to regulate tho diet, and in others to delay the hours of
customary refection. One hundred and seventy-six days (I know not that
whether this catalogue is complete) may be easily be reckoned up in the
calendar, which were modified by directions of this sort. Thus religion
in its most palpable form was continually protruded to the view, and
gained entrance into every family and house.
Again: extreme unction is one of the seven sacraments of the Roman
Catholic religion. A few days ago a person of this persuasion paid me a
visit, and in the course of conversation informed me, that his near
kinsman lay at the point of death, that he would be buried in a week,
and that after the hurry of that affair was over he would call upon me
again. I was surprised at the precision, as well as the apathy, with
which my visitor expressed himself, and asked how he was enabled to
regard this business as entirely arranged. He replied that he had no
doubt of the matter, and that the physician had informed the dying man
he had only twenty-four hours left, in which to arrange his worldly
affairs and the concerns of his soul. This was to me new matter of
astonishment: nothing can be more obvious than that to inform an
expiring man that he is at the point of death, partakes something of the
nature of administering to him a dose of poison. It is equally clear
that , in the view of any rational religion, it is the great scope of a
manâs moral life, the propensities which have accompanied him through
existence, and the way in which he has conducted himself in its various
relations, that must decide upon his acceptance or condemnation wit his
unerring judge.
But such are not the modes, nor such the temper of the Roman Catholic
faith. The preparation for death is one of its foremost injunctions. The
Host, that is, the true and very body of his redeemer, is conducted in
state to the dying manâs house, conveyed to his chamber, and placed upon
his parched and fevered tongue; he is anointed with holy oil; and, after
a thousand awful ceremonies, dismissed upon his dark and mysterious
voyage. Every thing is sedulously employed to demonstrate that he is a
naked and wretched creature about to stand before the tribunal of an
austere and rigorous judge; and that his blameless life, his undaunted
integrity, his proud honour, and his generous exertions for the welfare
of others, will all of them little avail him on this tremendous and
heart-appalling occasion. The chamber of the dying man is the toilet of
his immortal soul, at which it must be delicately and splendidly
attired, before it presumes to enter the courts of the king of heaven.
This scene perhaps produces a stronger effect upon the spectators that
upon the object for whom it is performed.
Death, in the eye of sobriety and reason, is an inevitable accident, of
which we ought not to make too anxious an account. âLive well,â would be
the recommendation of the enlightened moralist; âand die as you can. It
is in all cases a scene of debility and pain, in which human nature
appears in its humblest and most mortifying aspect. But it is not much.
Let not the thought of death taint all the bewitching pleasures, and all
the generous and heroical adventure of life.â
The Roman Catholic doctrine on the topic of a Christianâs death-bed, was
perhaps a no less fruitful source of pusillaninmity, that the lessons of
chivalry and romance were of gallantry and enterprise. The noblest and
most valorous knight often died with a cowl on his head, and a
hair-shirt bound about his languid frame. The priest eloquently
declaimed to him on his manifold and unexpiated crimes done in his days
of nature. He saw nothing before him at the best but purging fires, and
a tedious and melancholy train of salutary tortures. To abridge and
soften these, he often bequeathed no inconsiderable part of his worldly
fortune. Achilles, in the retreat of the Pagan dead, is made by Homer
passionately to declare how willingly he would change his state for that
of the meanest plough-boy who is cheered by the genial beams of the
sun:c with much more reason might this exclamation be adopted by a
person entering upon the Romish purgatory. The pusillanimous spirit
produced by these tenets is clearly to be seen on many occasions by an
attentive reader in the works of Chaucer; and I believe the same remark
might be extended to every author who wrote under the reign of this
superstition.
Such may be conceived to have been the general character and appearance
of the religious institutions of England in the fourteenth century.
There are other circumstances, which are calculated to bring the subject
more immediately home to the period of Chaucerâs life we are here
considering. It is a principal feature of the Roman Catholic system, to
attempt to make profound and indelible impressions upon the minds of its
disciples at a very early age. They soon come to be considered as
integral members of the church of Christ, and various ceremonies are
employed to impress upon them the conviction that they are so. The
ecclesiastical rule of order is, that they are to resort to confession
as soon as they may be supposed capable of clearly distinguishing
between good and evil; and this is ordinarily fixed that the age of
seven years. But this rule is not acted on but with considerable
relaxation. Where the parents are scrupulous and punctilious in matters
of religion, it may be supposed to be adhered to with the utmost
minuteness. But in the case of Chaucer, a layman, probably the son of a
merchant, and whose parents, as we have no particular information
concerning them, we are bound to take at a sort of middle standard, it
is probably that he was so early enjoined to engage in this sacramental
solemnity. In every case, confession is always made previously to the
noviceâs partaking of his first communion, a ceremony almost universally
practiced about the age of thirteen or fourteen years.
All these circumstances naturally involve with them the visit of the
priest, who is to observe, as to the younger members of the family, the
progress of their comprehension, the degree in which they have been made
partakers of religious instruction, and the state of preparation in
which they may be supposed to be for admission to the sacraments of the
church. Chaucer, while a boy, was probably a witness, and was not
altogether excluded from being made a subject, of these visits. If we
picture him to ourselves, at the earliest or the latest period above
assigned for confession, placed on his knees before a grave and
venerable personage of sad and sober attire, enjoined to recollect his
offences against God and the wanderings of his thoughts, reminded of the
solemn judgment which hereafter awaits him, exhorted to penitence,
reformation and devotion, and terrified and encouraged by turns as the
priest shall think fit to set before him the threatenings or the
promises of his heavenly father, we shall then have no very inadequate
idea of the impressions which, judging from general reasonings,
probably, and from the hints afforded in various parts of his writings,
certainly; were made upon the poetâs youthful mind.
If however the sacrament of confession has a certain tendency to lead
the mind to sadness and depression, the festival of the first communion
is happily calculated to associate the young manâs ideas of religion
with sentiments of hilarity, beneficence and a reasonable gaiety. This
is a period which occurs in the Romish church only once in a year. It is
always celebrated in the month of May, when nature puts on her most
pleasing attire, when the fields are clothed in all their freshness, and
the whole animal creation is restored to cheerfulness and vigour. A
procession is formed, which vies gaiety and life to the city or quarter
in which it appears. The most sacred symbols of religion are brought
forth, surrounded by a train of their chosen defenders and ministers;
the young communicants, who are numerous and of both sexes, are drawn
forth in bands, and preceded by banners; they proceed from church to
church through the city or town where the festival is held; and a sum of
money is collected from among them, with which the indigent are
relieved, and with which they sometimes proceed to release the
unfortunate debtor from prison. On this occasion the accidental
distinctions of society are partially suspended; and the poorest are
invited to regale themselves beneath the roofs of the parents of the
richer communicants. After a day thus spent in acts of benevolence,
charity and devotion, the last march of the procession is performed by
the light of torches, and the whole is concluded with that participation
of the body of Christ which was the object of the festival. Certainly
religion never appears more amiable than when thus blended with gay and
cheerful ideas; nor can hilarity perhaps ever be shown to greater
advantage than when chastened by a sense of the frailty of our nature,
and the solemn obligation of our duties.
The rite of confirmation, according to the Roman Catholic discipline, is
always subsequent, and never prior, to the first communion.
[a] A.D. 1077.
[b] A.D.1174
[c] Odyss. Lib. XI.
THE MINSTRELS â VARIETY OF THEIR ACCOMPLISHMENTS.
Next after the studies, the literary compositions, and the religion of
any period, there is no cause which more powerfully tends to modify the
youthful mind, than the species of amusements which may chance to be
prevalent.
A principal source of the amusements which distinguished the age of
Chaucer, arose from a class of men commonly known by the appellation of
minstrels.
These have already been mentioned. They were direct successors of the
bards, the scalds, and the harpers of the ancient Britons, Saxons and
Danes.
There is no reason to doubt that the persons who exercise these
successive professions, originally composed the words and the music of
the pieces they performed. They united in their own persons the
characters of poet, musical composer, and performer of vocal and
instrumental music.
The further we extend our enquiries into the remotest period of their
existence, with the more veneration do we find them to have been
regarded. The bards who flourished in this island in the druidical
times, constituted a part of the religious hierarchy; and their
performances were probably never degraded by being brought forward on
profane and ordinary occasions. The scalds, through perhaps they were
not considered precisely as priests, were viewed in some manner as
sacred; and persons invested with this character passed from province to
province, from country to country, and between the encampments of
hostile armies, in absolute security. There was this difference however
between the scalds and the minstrels of the remotest periods on the one
hand, and the bards on the other, that while the latter only officiated
on religious occasions and the most important solemnities, the former
were itinerant, frequented the halls of princes and barons, and derived
their subsistence from the spontaneous bounty of those whom they sought
to entertain.
Another point of degeneracy which we may remark in the itinerant poets
and musicians even before the Norman conquest, is the be found in the
different end they sometimes proposed to themselves in their
performances. The bard was a serious, as well as sacred, character. So
was the scald of the north, when Regner Lodbrog composed his Funeral
Hymn, and Egil sung the stanzas denominated his Ransom.a The object of
their effusions was to express the heroic sentiments of their souls, and
to inspire into their hearers the love of piety or virtue. Their
successors in the latest periods of the Anglo-Saxon government by no
means discarded this feature of their ancient character; but they
occasionally condescended to engage in a humbler project, to aim at the
amusement of their hearers, and for this purpose to lay aside the
solemnity and gravity of their strains. To the tragic vein of their
ancestors they added a comic vein of their own. This is strongly marked
to us by the word principally employed by the Saxons to denominate their
profession. They were called gleemen.b This name they derived from a
primitive word in their language, originally signifying music. But, as
their art became varied in its object, the word by which they were
denominated insensibly changed its meaning, and glee came to signify
bilarity, sport, laughter, as at this day. This is sufficiently
conformable to what has universally been observed of the progress of
human society. The savage is a grave character, its mode of existence is
too insecure, and he is too often called upon for sudden and unforeseen
exertion, not to maintain in him inflexibly this temper of mind. The
barbarian, in proportion as he recedes from this primitive condition of
man, feels himself more secure and at his east, dismisses his gloom, and
is at leisure to cultivate a sort of rude vein of jocularity and sport.
A further criterion, distinguishing the period when the itinerant
musician was held in the highest honour, from the time of his
degeneracy, seems to be, that in the earliest times persons of this
class travelled for the most part singly, and more lately in companies.
Anlaff king of the Danes came alone into the camp of Athelstan the Saxon
monarch.c The musician was even sometimes followed by an attendant who
bore his harp. It was under this appearance that Alfred the Great
penetrated into the Danish camp.d This style is similar to that which
presents itself in the earliest times of the Greeks. Is thus that we
conceive Homer to have recited his poems; and it is thus that Homer
describes the bard of kind Alcinous.
When literature began to grow more common, one of the first effects was
to detach in a great measure the character of the poet from that of the
reciter of verses. The authors of almost all the old romances now
subsisting were monks. They were written however for the purpose of
being recited to music; and of consequence, while the monk was the
author, the itinerant musician was the performer only. Professors of
this class therefore, having lost the most sacred part of their
character, we glad to associate themselves into bands, and to offer
their joint powers of amusement to such as were willing to give them
audience.
The name of minstrel in England is posterior to the Norman conquest; and
it may be doubted whether persons of this denomination, in opposition to
the scalds and harpers of our remoter ancestors, ever appeared but in
this associated manner. Even before the invasion of king William, we
meet with them on the continent in this form. It is recorded of the
emperor Henry III, that, at his marriage with Agnes de Poitou in 1044,
he âsuffered an infinite multitude of minstrels [infintam bistrionum et
joculatroum multitudinem] to go away sad and fasting, having refused to
bestow upon them either gifts or provisions.âe A similar remark, as to
the point we are treating of, occurs in an ancient historian, respecting
the year 1185.f
The character of the minstrel therefore, at least when he appeared under
this form, was infinitely more complicated than that of the bard or the
scaled, his predecessors. We may distinctly trace in him the different
accomplishments of a player upon some musical instrument, a vocal
performer, a dancer, a posture-master, a jester, a professor of
legerdemain and a sorcerer. We may easily conceive, in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, when the means of amusement invented by our
ancestors were as yet so limited, with what welcome a cheerful and
numerous party of persons, possessing such various powers of
entertainment and surprise, was received in the halls of the great, and
the fairs and places of assembly resorted to by the inferior classes.
That they played on certain musical instruments is a point which needs
not to be insisted upon. This is obviously the first idea annexed to the
term minstrel by the historians and miscellaneous writers their
contemporaries.
That they sung certain poetical compositions to the accord of their
harps is almost equally clear. Nearly all our old ballads and romances
were composed to be sung by the minstrels. Thus Chaucer, in his
voluminous production entitled Troilus and Creseide, addressing his
work, says,
So praie I god that none miswrité the,
Ne the misse-metre, for defaute of tongue,
And, redde where so thou be, or ellés songe,
That though be understonde God I beseche.
B. v, ver. 1794.
Edward IV. in 1469 granted a charter to his minstrels, which is extant,
and, among the duties required of them, one which is specified is, that
they are to âsing,g in the kingâs chapel and the chapel of St. Paulâs
cathedral, for the souls of the king and queen, so long as they live,
and when they shall be no more.â
In the songs of the minstrels, perhaps more than in any other of their
performances, they still preserved that dignity and elevation of
sentiment which descended to them from the bards and scalds of a remoter
antiquity. Many of their songs and tales indeed were of a lighter kind,
and intended to promote hilarity. They certainly did not disdain the
assistance of buffoonery and scurrile mirth. But it is impossible to
look into the poetry of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, without
perceiving that much of it is descriptive of heroic actions, impregnated
with generous sentiment, and calculated to inspire a gallant and noble
spirit of beneficence and adventure. Accordingly, those writers who
speak of them wit hteh greatest severity yet acknowledge, that âthey
frequently celebrated the deeds of illustrious men and heroes, either
relating them in a style of perspicuous and pleasant discourse, or
singing them in a well-modulated voice to the sound of their harps, that
so they might rouse the lords and noble personages who were the auditors
of their amusements, to the practice of virtue, and the imitation of the
purest examples: such as Tacitus tella us was the office of the bards
among the ancient Gauls.
Qui veut avoir renom des bons et des vaillans,
Il doit aler souvent a la pluie et au champs,
et ester en la bataille, ainsty que fu Rollans,
Les Quatre Fils Haimon, et Charlon liplus grans,
lid us lions de bourges, et Guion de Connans,
Perceval li Galois, Lancelot, et Tristans,
Alixandres, Artus, Godefroy li sachans;
Dequoy cils menestriers font les nobles romans.âh
The dancing was one of the accomplishments exhibited by the minstrels,
is evident from various testimonies. In a poem of lydgate, entitled
Reson and Sensualite, he professes to speak
Of all maner mynstralcye
That any man kan specifye,
and in his enumeration observes,
Ffor there were rotys of Almayne,
and eke of Arragon and Spayne,
Songés, stampés and eke daunces,
divers plente of plesaunces.i
Fauchet also, in explaining what were the trouverres and jonglears of
France, says, âThe great lords before whom they performed, were
accustomed to give them distinguished rewards, and even garments from
their own wardrobe, which they did not fail to exhibit at other courts,
with the hope of exciting those who saw them to acts of similar
liberality: a practice which continued a long time, for I myself
remember to have seen Martin Baraton (formerly an old minstrel of
Orleans), who at festivals and marriages, beat upon a tabourin of
silver, ornamented also with little plates of silver, upon which were
engraved the arms of such persons as e had taught to dance.âk
A further accomplishment studied by the minstrels was the skill of a
posture-masture. Thus Joinville in his Life of St. Louis: âWith the
prince there came three minstrels of Armenia, having three horns at
their belts. When they began to blow, you would have vowed that it was
the voice of a swan, so rich and sweet was the melody they uttered. They
also performed three wonderful leaps; and, placing a towel under their
feet, turned round in a very extraordinary manner; the two first held
their heads averted, &c.âl
The minstrels also studied, with a view to the amusement of the persons
whose houses they frequented, the art of showing themselves ready in
various ingenious gibes and mockeries, suggested by such occasions as
might offer. Thus in a poem of Adam Davie, who flourished about the year
1312, we have
Merry it is in halle to here the harpe,
The minstrelles synge, the jogelours carpe m
and in William of Nassyngton, about 1480, in the commencement of a
religious treatise,
I warn you furst at theâ begynninge,
that I will make no vain carpinge
of dedes of armes ne of amours,
as dus mynstrelles and jestours,
that makes carpinge in many a place, &c.n
The minstrels also practised the art of legerdemain. This seems
sufficiently clear from the name of jongleur, jogeler, juglear, by which
they were occasionally known, and which from them has gradually come to
be appropriated to those who are skilful in slight-of-hand. Something
nearly allied to this is described by Chaucer in the Romaunt of the
Rose.
There was many a timberstere,
And sailours that, I dare well swere
Ycoutheo hir crafte full parfitly.
The timbres up full subtilly thei casten, and hentp hem full oft upon a
finger faire and soft, that they ne failed never mo.
Ver. 769.
Tricks of nature similar to his are of a very ancient date. Taillefer,
the gallant warrior who first broke the ranks of the saxon army at the
battle of hastings, and who, by the circumstance of being recorded as
singing on that occasion the Song of Roland, has been made a name of
importance in the history of literature and art, is described by his
poetical historian as, previously to the commencement of the action,
casting his spear three times into the air, and catching it as often by
the point; after which he threw it into the midst of the enemy, and,
drawing his sword, tossed it aloft as many times as he had done his
spear, catching it again with such dexterity that those who looked on
attributed his feats to the power of enchantmentq having thus in the
hearing of the whole army chanted the song of victory, and in their
sight performed this tricks of agility and muscular precision, he rushed
into the thickest ranks of the hostile squadrons, and, dealing death on
every side, became himself the voluntary sacrifice which was to precede
the triumph, fixing his countrymen for ever in the empire of the island
they invaded.
Dexterites of the sort here mentioned may even be traced to a period
more remote than that of Taillefer. In a manuscript of the Psalms of
David, which is supposed to have been written in England, and has been
attributed to the times of the Saxons, there is an illuminated
frontispiece, in which, among several figures, one is introduced in the
act of keeping up three balls with this right hand, and three knives
with his left, at the same time in the air.r
The skill of the minstrels in the art of sorcery and pretended
enchantments likewise, appears from Chaucer and other contemporary
writers ot have been by no means inconsiderable. This species of
illusion is twice spoken of in the Canterbury Tales. The first instance
occurs in the Friarâs Tale. A summoner meets a fiend, and, expressing
some surprise that he finds him exactly in human form, the fiend
replies,
nay certainly, in hell ether have we none,
(no determinate figure)
But whan us liketh we can take us one,
Or elleĆ make you wene that we ben shape
Sometime like a man, or like an ape;
Or like an angel can I ride or go:
it is no wonder thing though it be so,
A lousy jogelour can deceiven the,
And parde yets can I more craft than he.
Ver. 7043, Tyrwhitâs Edition.
A more copious description of this species of illusions occurs in the
Franklinâs Tale.
Doun of his hors Aurelius light anon,
And forth with his magicien is gon
Home to his hous, and madet hem wel at ese,
Hem lackéd no vitaille that might hem plese.
So wel arrayéd hous as ther was one, Aurelius in his lif saw never none.
He shewéd him, uor they went to soupere,
Forestés, parkés, ful of wildé dere;
Ther saw he hartés with vhir hornes hie,
The greates that were ever sene with eie;
He saw of hem an hundred slain with houndes,
And som with arwes blede of bitter woundes;
he saw, whan voided were the wildé dere,
Thise fauconers upon a faire rivere,
That with vhir haukes han the heron slain.
wTho saw he knightés justen in a plain:
And after this he did him xswiche plesance,
That he him shewâd his lady on a dance,
On which himselven dancéd, as him thought.
And whan this maister, that this magike wrought,
Saw it was time, he clappâd his hondĂ©s two,
And farewell, al the revel is ago.
And yet yremued they neâer out of the hous,
Whiley they saw all thise sightés merveillous,
But in his studie, ther his bokés be,
They saten still, and no wight but they thre.
Ver. 11495.
The description given by sir John Mandeville, the traveler, and
contemporary of Chaucer, of the magic exhibited before the khan of
Tartary, is so strikingly similar to this, as to afford a strong
presumption that exhibitions, where something of this kind was
attempted, were the practice of the age, and not the offspring of the
poetâs particular fancy. âand than comen Jogulours and Enchantoures that
don many marvaylles: for they maken to come in the ayr the sonne and the
mone, be seminge, to every mannes sight. And after they maken the nyght
so derk, that no man may see no thinkg. And after they maken the day to
come ayen fair and plesant with bright sonne to every mannes sight. And
than they bringen in daunces of the fairest damyselles of the world and
richest arrayed. And after they maken to comen in other damyselles,
bringinge coupes of gold, fulle of mylk of diverse bestes, and yeven
drynke to lordes and to ladyes. And than they make knyghtes to jousten
in armes fulle lustyly; and they rennen togidre a great randoum; and
they frusschen togidere fulle fiercly; and they breken here speres so
rudely, that the tronchouns flen in sprotes and peces alle aboute the
halle. And than they make to come in hunting for the hert and for the
boor, with houndes renning with open mouthe. And many other thinges they
don be craft of hir enchauntementes, that it is marveyle for to see.â
And elsewhere the traveler remarks, âand wher it be by craft or by
nygromancye, I wot nere.âz
A further talent pretended to by the minstrels, for, as they subsisted
by their profession, they slighted no means of recommending themselves
to the great or to the multitude, was that of the soothsayer and the
apothecary. This is proved by a narrative preserved by Leland, the
antiquary, respecting Fulco Guarine, an ancient baron, against whom king
john entertained a deadly animosityaa the king dispossessed him of his
lands, and Fulco was obliged to fly from place to place, attended by a
band of resolute followers, and thus to save himself from the effects of
the kingâs displeasure, among various expedients employed by him on this
occasion, it is related of him that he âresorted to one John of
Raumpayne, a soothsayer, and jocular, and minstrelle, and made hym his
spy to Morice at Whitington,â the estate of Fulco, but which king john
had granted, by a patent under the broad seal, to this Morice. The
consequence of Raumpayneâs information was, that âFulco and his
bretherne laide waite for Morice as he went toward Salesbyri; and Fulco
ther wounded hym; and Bracy cut off Morice hedde.â This exploit gained
to Fulco the possession of his castle, but, some time after, âsyr Bracy
was sore wounded, and token, and brought by Audeleghe to king John.â In
this situation Raumpayne was again of use. He âfounde the meanes to
caste them that kepte Bracy into a deadely slepe, and so he and Bracy
cam to Fulco to Whitington.â
As the minstrels appear ordinarily to have visited places of public
resort and the houses of the great in companies, it will easily be
supposed that the whole body of persons exercising this profession in
England was extremely numerous. A curious example of this occurs in the
history of the family of Dutton. âHugh the first earl of Chester, in his
charter of foundation of St. Werburgâs Abbey in that city, had granted
such a privilege to those who should come to Chester fair, that they
should not be then apprehended for theft or any other misdemeanor,
except the crime were committed during the fair. This special
protection, occasioning a multitude of loose people to resort to that
fair, was afterwards of signal benefit to one of his successors. For
Ranulph the last earl of Chester, marching into Wales with a slender
attendance, [circa 1212] was contrained to retire to his castle of
Rothelan, to which the Welsh forthwith laid siege. In this distress he
sent for help to the lord de Lacy constable of Chester: âwho, making use
of the minstrels of all sorts then met at Chester fair; by the
allurement of their musick got together a vast number of such loose
people as, by reason of the before specified priviledge, wee then in
that city; whom he forthwith sent under the conduct of Dutton (his
steward),â a gallant youth. Who was also his son-in-law. The Welsh
alarmed at the approach of this rabble, supposing them to be a regular
body of armed and disciplined veterans, instantly raised the siege and
retired.âbb For this service the jurisdiction of the minstrels within
that district was granted to the representative of the name of Dutton,
and continued in that family for several ages.
In this instance then we have an example of a sort of incorporation of
commonwealth of minstrels; and indeed it was not to be supposed that so
numerous an order of men could remain altogether without subordination
and discipline. Under many successive kings of England from Henry I, we
find mention of a court-minstrel.cc Blondel, who discovered Richard I.
in his captivity, stood in this relation to that monarch;cc and it was
the harper, or minstrel, of Edward I, who stands on record for his
excessive zeal, when that prince, in his crusade to the holy land, was
struck with the poisoned knife.dd Henry V, and other English monarchs,
had a number of minstrels regularly in their pay, and these, being
formed into a company, had certain officers over them, who are variously
styled the king, the marshal, and the sergeant of the minstrels.ee The
Great English nobility imitated their sovereigns, in the patronage and
protection they extended to this order of men.ff
Much light may be derived in the history of the minstrels from the
consideration of the various names by which they are designated among
our ancient historians and miscellaneous writers. Minstrel has been
deduced with sufficient probability from minister, a servant, quasi
ministerellus, a little or inferior servant, and is variously written
ministellus, ministrellus, ministrallus, menestrellus &c.gg They
frequently spoken of by the epithet joculator, which term has been
varied into juglator, jugleur, jongleur, and jogeler. Minus and bistrio
are likewise names by which they are described by the Latin writers of
the middle ages. Harlot is also a term which is applied to them in the
charter granting jurisdiction over them to the family of Dutton;hh and
it is probably in this sense that the word is used by Chaucer in the
Romaunt of the Rose, where the god of love is described as appointing
False-semblant his king of harlots:ii the corresponding term in his
French original is âroy des riboulx.âkk
Nothing can be more evident to any careful examiner of the contemporary
writers, that that all this variety of terms is employed to express the
same thing. In the story of Alfred penetrating into the Danish camp, the
expression used by Ingulphus is ârex â fingens se esse joculatorem.â And
William of Malmesbury, describing the same fact, says, âsub specie mimi,
â ut joculatorie professor artis.â Indeed the word joculator is a
literal translation of the Saxon term Glee-man: and this by the way, as
both Ingulphus and Malmesbury wrote a short time after the conquest,
furnishes a stron presumptive proof how soon the term Glee, as applied
to the exhibitions of the minstrels, acquired the sense which it
continues to bear. In like manner John of Salisbury, after having
described the minstrels by every epithet with which his memory could
furnish him, âmimi, salii vel saliares, balatrones, amiliani,
gladiators, palastrita, gignadii,ll prastigiatores, malefici,â sums them
up under one comprehensive term, âtota joculatorum scana.âmm In the
authorities above citied, Lelandâs old English book of the Gestes of
Guarine styles John of Raumpayne, âa soothsayer, and jocular, and
minstrelle:â and the narrator of the story of Dutton, as if labouring in
his expression under the consciousness of the variety of arts to which
the minstrels devoted themselves, describes the multitude of them who
resorted to Chester fair in the time of king John, by the phrase,
âminstrels of all sorts.â Indeed there would be no end in multiplying
quotations from the ancient writers to prove that the minstrels were not
more numerous as individuals, than they were multifarious in the
accomplishments they cultivated.
a Mallet, Introduction Ă lâHistoire de Dannemare, tom. II. Blair,
Dissertation o n Ossian. Henry, Book II, chap. 5.
b This word, with its radix, and various collateral descendants, is
copiously illustrated by Percy, Essay on Minstrels, note I.
c Malmesbury, Lib. II, cap. 6.
d Malmesbury, Lib. II, cap.4. Ingulphus, Scriptores post Bedlam, p. 869.
e Chronie. Virtzburg. apud Percy, Note F.
f Rigordus de Gestis Philippi Aug. apud Du Cange, Gloss. Lat. sub voc.
Ministelli.
g Rymer, Foedera, Tom. XI, 9 Edv. 4, Apr. 24. The word in the patent is
exorare; but, as applied to the minstrels, it cannot be doubted that the
above is the right translation.
h Anonym. apud Du Cange, sub voc. Ministelli.
i Bibliotheca Bodleiana, apud Warton , Vol. II, Sect. x.
k Fauchet, Recueil de lâOrigine de la Langue et Poesie Fracçoise, Liv.
I, ch. 8.
l Vid. Percy, note B.
m Warton, Vol. I, Sect. vi.
n Tyrwhit, Canterbury Tales, note on ver. 13775.
o their.
p them.
q Gaimar, apud Strutt, Sports and Pastimes of the people of England, B.
III, chap. iii.
r Strutt, ubi supra.
s tknow.
t them.
u ere.
v their.
w Then.
x such.
y removed.
z Tyrwhit, Canterbury Tales, note on ver. 11453.
aa Leland, Collectanea, Tom. I, p. 261, et seq.
bb Dugdale, apud Percy, Sect. iv.
cc Percy, Sect. iv.
dd Hemingford, apud ditto, Sect. v..
ee Percy, Sect. v.
ff ditto, Sect. vi.
gg Percy, Notes, A, B, N, A a.
hh Blount, apoud Percy, iv.
ii ver. 6068.
kk ver. 11559.
llforte gymnassii.
mm De Nugis Curialium, Lib. I, cap. 8.
PLAYS â PAGEANTS â MYSTERIES â MASKS.
But, among these accomplishments of the minstrels one has purposely been
reserved, because it seems to have been almost universally overlooked by
the ingenious writers who have undertaken to perpetuate their memory,
and, by those who have just touched upon it, by no means insisted upon
as its importance seems to deserve; and because it tends to elucidate a
very important branch of our theatre. It will probably be found on a
mature investigation, that the minstrels were the first composers and
representers of dramatic performances in England.
It is not indeed extraordinary that this circumstance should be so
little adverted to, as no one of their productions of this sort appears
to have come down to us, as we are ignorant of the very names of the
pieces and the subjects of which they treated, and as we are left to
collect all that can now be known concerning them from indirect
inferences and general circumstances.
One of the first particulars which might well lead us to some suspicion
of the truth of the proposition here started consists in the names by
which the professors of the minstrel art are frequently described by the
Latin writers of the twelfth century, histriones and mimi . These
writers, as has already appeared, were by no means incompetent judges of
language, and ought not to be believed to have employed appellations of
this sort without fully adverting to their meaning.
But, if we look more narrowly into these writers with a view of clearing
the doubt here suggested, we shall find strong reason to confirm us in
the opinion that, from the time of the retreat of the Romans, the
minstrels were the first body of actors in England. No author can be a
more competent witness in this point than John of Salisbury, whether we
consider the degree of intelligence and elegance displayed in his
writings, or the time in which he lived, he having been born and died in
the twelfth century. As the fact here stated is of considerable
importance, it may be worth our while to examine the assertions advanced
by this author, with some degree of minuteness.
John of Salisbury, who was a monk of Canterbury, speaks, like all the
monastic writers, with the utmost contempt and abhorrence of the order
of minstrels. He has particularly treated of the most obvious topics
respecting them in the sixth, seventh and eighth chapters of the first
book of his treatise entitled Policraticus, De Nugis Curialium . We will
enter into an abstract of each of these chapters.
The title of the sixth chapter is, De musica, et instumentis, et modis,
et fructu eorum . [Of music, of instruments, tunes, and the profit to be
derived from them.] The principle object of this chapter is a
commendation of sacred music, and a censure of that which is effeminate
and convivial, by which he particularly means to allude to the musical
performances of the minstrels. By the way, as it is under the head of
music that they are first introduced by John of Salisbury, it is fair to
infer from this, in corroboration of a thousand other evidences, that
music and song were always the chief, though by no means the only,
objects of attention to the minstrels.
The title of the seventh chapter is, De dissimilitudine Augusti et
Neronis . [Of the opposite dispositions of Augustus and Nero.] This
chapter consists of a story of Augustus being roughly reprimanded by an
old soldier who found him playing upon a musical instrument; a freedom
which Augustus took in good part, and in consequence of which he ceased
from practicing as a musician ever after. This is contrasted by the
author with certain well known instances of the infatuation of Nero in
this respect. The chapter concludes with a transition to the stage in
these words, Histrionibus et mimis pecunians infinitas erogare noes
gravabatur . [He (Nero) made no scruple of bestowing immense sums of
money upon actors and stage-buffoons.]
The title of the eighth chapter is, De histrionibus, et mimis, et
proestigiatoribus. . [Of actors, and stage-buffoons, and jugglers.] Here
the author commences with a warm censure of the great men his
contemporaries, who, though they would be unwilling to make common cause
with Neroâs infamy, were not backward to follow his example in this
species of prodigal expence: and it is remarkable that he does not
describe this expence as being employed in rewarding these modern
histriones, but in exhibend&acap; malitia eorum . [On the exhibition of
their wicked devices]. So that it would seem, here were not only plays,
but plays which, in the theatrical phrase, cost considerable sums of
money in the âgetting up.â The author then introduces a most
contemptuous character of the spectacles thus exhibited. He says the
players [ histriones] in Neroâs time were comparatively respectable men,
and worthy of countenance; and he mentions Plautus, Menander and
Terence, apparently for the purpose of casting the greater odium upon
these modern malitaioe. He expressly Denominates the objects against
which he is inveighing spectacula, et infinita tyronicinia vanitatis,
quibus qui omnino toiari non pussunt, perciciousius occupentur
[spectacles, and innumberable ruiments of vanity, by which persons who
could not endure to be totally idle might be occupied in worse than
idleness]. To these words succeeds the enumeration already given of
eight or ten denominations, which the author sums up under the term of
tota joculatorum scoena, an appellation which, as has been shown, was by
the Latin writers of that day particularly appropriated to the
minstrels. He then adds some anecdotes of these exhibitors who were
âadmitted in the greatest houses,â which, if genuine, and not rather
founded upon misinformation, cherished as it was likely to be by the
prejudices of a monk, are well entitled to surprise us. He says that
âthey exposed the obscene parts of the body, and practiced such
indecences respecting them before a public audience, as might make a
cynic blush,â and he concludes with a statement, which, if less
profligate, is perhaps still more filthy, for which we refer the curious
reader to the work itself.
It seems to be evident beyond question, from these passages of Jon of
Salisbury, combined with the terms histriones and mimi, established
appellations for the minstrels among the writers of that age, and with
the consideration of the minstrels, whose epithets and accomplishments
were so exceedingly varied, being the only persons who then travelled
the country proffering their exhibitions to anyone who would pay them,
that there existed profane dramatic entertainments early in the twelfth
century in England, and that it was by this order of men that the
characters which composed them were performed.
It is reasonable to believe that the plays, particularly of this early
period, were, in point of composition, to the last degree mean, poor and
inartificial. Not one of these pieces has come down to us, though we are
in possession of many of the songs, and much of the diffuser poetry of
that period. This argument however is not very decisive, since we have
no books the production of so early an age, except those written by the
monks: the balance of the minstrels were probably preserved by oral
tradition Chaucer and Gower are among the earliest lay the authors in
England whose works are of any considerable size. We may however
recollect that the early dramatic pieces which are preserved in our
language, though the production of a later and more enlightened period,
scarcely deserve a better character than that given above. Perhaps the
stories exhibited by the minstrels were performed only in dumb show.
Perhaps the outline of the scene only was premeditated, and the dialogue
was supplied by the performers on the spot. Some readers will imagine
that performances so rude scarcely deserved the minute investigation in
which we are engaged. But it will speedily be seen that the early
history of the English stage can never be completely understood without
this elucidation.
We may divide the early performance and personation of real or imaginary
events in this country, into two classes, the profane and the sacred.
The sacred were either Miracles, or Mysteries: the Miracle-plays being
an exhibition taken from the history of some saint who had been
canonized by the Church, and the Mysteries a representation of some
event recorded in the Old or New Testament. The earliest record we
possess of a sacred play is in Matthew Paris;a the story being taken
from the legend of St. Catharine, and the play acted in the abbey of
Dunstable, probably about the year 1110. The author of the piece was by
name Gaufrid, a Norman and afterward abbot of St. Albans, one of the
highest monastic dignities in England.
It is easy for any one who will attend to the proceedings of the church
in this period of its history, to explain the policy which led it to
cultivate so assiduously the exhibition of sacred dramas. The clergy
were at this time nearly all-powerful; and they cannot be accused of any
heedlessness or indolence as to the embracing every means to perpetuate
and enlarge their power. Considered as a body, they were no visionaries,
no dealers in spiritualities and abstractions to the neglect of the
practical character of the practical character of the human species.
They had much leisure through the means of their monastic institutions
and their celibacy; and they reflected deeply, and in a sprit of cordial
co-operation, upon the surest methods for swaying implicitly the minds
of mankind. No expedients, of terror, of despotism, or austerity, were
left untried by them but these were not their only expedients. They
could be fierce with the forward, and the gentle with the submissive.
They rendered themselves the confidents and the fathers of those who
trusted them, and there was no fatherly office of encouragement, of
soothing, of prudent counsel and seemingly disinterested sympathy, which
they did not fully discharge.
But there was one principle which above all others stamped the policy of
the clergy in the middle ages. They considered man as the creature of
his senses, and addressed themselves most elaborately to this eye and
his ear. This principle, which must always be important to those who
wish to domineer, was especially so when mankind was so little
enlightened and intellectualized. The clergy therefore sought, as far as
they could, to engross to themselves every thing which was magnificent
and awful. They went further than this. They desired to be the sole
source of amusement to the people. to this purpose were directed their
shows, their processions, and their festivals. Above all, they were
jealous of the minstrels; and, as appears from what has been already
said, not unreasonably so, for in this career the minstrels were
formidable rivals. It is impossible to look into any of the monkish
writers about this period, without being struck with the excessive
antipathy they express to this order of men.
This then is the true explanation of the origin of the Miracle-plays,
and the Mysteries. The clergy were not content with abusing the
minstrels, treating them with the utmost contumely, and refusing them
the sacred communion and Christian burial;b they desired, in addition to
this, to rival them in their own arts. They wished to take away from the
laity the very inclination to listen to them; and for this purpose they
could think of no better expedient than to copy their amusements. This
is probably the true reason why church-music was so assiduously
cultivated in the early ages; for the clergy had the scalds and the
gleemen to contend with, before the appearance of the minstrels. No
sooner then had the minstrels brought forward a new species of
entertainment, the dramatic, than the clergy thought it high time that
they too should have their plays.
They were not deterred by the considerations which might influence the
more demure and decorous churchmen of late ages. They understood the
race of men they had to do with. They knew that they might exhibit Eve
and the serpent, and God and they devil, on a public stage, without in
the least degree shocking the passive audiences of the pious ages. They
knew that their creed was too deeply fixed, and their spiritual pastors
had too many avenues to their passions, to allow the mixture of laughter
and ribaldry with all which was sacred and all which was mysterious, to
be in the least degree dangerous to the stability of their faith. Sober
thinking and extensive information must have taken their turn, before
light laughter can produce any perceptible effect in overturning the
most daring impositions.
Though we do not possess any very detailed account of the Miracle-plays
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, we find them mentioned by the
writers of that period in a way which proves that they were extremely
common. Fitzstephen, the biographer of Thomas of Becket, in his
Description of London, treating of the amusements of this metropolis,
has a passage, thus translated by Strype: âLondon, instead of common
interludes belonging to the theatre, hath plays of a more holy subject;
representations of those miracles which the holy confessors wrought, or
of the sufferings, wherein the glorious constancy of martyrs did
appear.âc And Matthew Paris, a historian of the thirteenth century, in
his account of the play of St. Catharine at Dunstable, above mentioned,
remarks that it was of that species of performance, âwhich we usually
call Miracles;âd a phrase strongly expressive of the frequency of such
exhibitions.
The mention of profane plays and players occurs by no means less
frequently in the old writers. Mr. Wartone has brought forward a record,
which he ascribes to the year 1200, in which the kingâs permission is
sold to a widow, to marry her daughter to whomever she pleases, except
the kingâs mimics (mimici). The fourth general council of Lateran, which
sat in the year 1215, made a decree prohibiting the clergy from
attending secular plays.f In the year 1258 an injunction was given by
the barons of England to the religious houses, that âsecular plays
(histrionum ludi) should not be seen, or heard, or permitted to be
performed before the abbot, or his monks.âg And in 1287 ludi theatrales
are forbidden to be performed in churches and church0yards, on vigils
and festivals, by the synod of Exeter.h
Nothing can be more certain than that the plays and players here
censured were of the profane class. The sacred drama was long a
favourite child of holy mother church, and was cherished and
countenanced in the most pointed manner by popes and cardinals, as we
shall have occasion repeatedly to observe in the sequel. Nor must we
wonder when we find these denunciations and prohibitions of the clergy
frequenting these secular plays, so often repeated. The monks in their
convents, with the exception of the most zealous or the most learned,
were of necessity devoured with ennui: and there was no amusement,
however puerile, coarse or indecorous, which they thought they could
enjoy undetected, to which they did not recur with avidity. A curious
story in Antony Wood to this purpose,i has frequently been referred to
by the writers on these subjects. It belongs to the period of the first
introduction of the friars into England, in the early part of the
thirteenth century. âTwo holy Franciscans, having lost their way,
arrived in the greatest distress at a grange belonging to the
Benedictines of Abingdon, about six miles from Oxford. The porter, who
opened the gate, judged from their squalid appearance, their tattered
garments, and their foreign idiom, that they were farce-player or
maskers (mimos quosdam, seu personatos), and carried the joyful tidings
in all haste to his prior. The prior, with his sacristan, the cellarer
and two younger monks, flew to the gate, and, urged by the hope of
entertainment in the arts of gesticulation and dramatical performance
(gesticulatoriis ludicrisque artibus ), intreated them to enter. The
friars with a sad countenance assured the Benedictines that they had
mistaken their men; that they were no players, but servants of God,
engaged to live according to the rule of the apostles. On this the
monks, exasperated at the disappointment of their joyful hopes, fell
upon them at once, beat and kicked them in a cruel manner, and thrust
them from their doors.â
Respecting the nature of the profane plays exhibited at this period we
can obtain very little light. The only species of secular personation we
find distinctly mentioned, is that of the Pageants which were exhibited
at royal marriages and on other public occasions, and these were
probably conducted in dumb show. Of these we find one on occasion of the
marriage of Henry III in 1236,k a second at the marriage of the eldest
daughter of this monarch to Alexander III. king of Scots in 1252,k and a
third in celebration of the victory of Edward I. over the Scots in
1298.l Many more might easily be traced.
The nature of the Pageants of these times may be illustrated by an
incidental passage of Matthew Paris, applicable to this point. He is
relating the dream or vision of one Thurcill, a villager of Essex, whose
soul is said to have been transported from his body as he lay asleep,
and introduced by a saint to a view of hell and heaven. In hell he sees,
among the tormented, a knight who had passed his life in shedding
innocent blood, in tournaments and robbery. He is completely armed and
on horseback, and couches his lance at the demons who are commissioned
to drag him to his destined torments. There are likewise a priest who
never said mass, and a baron of the exchequer who took bribes. From hell
Thurcill is conveyed to heaven. He is ushered into a garden, adorned
with an immense variety of plants and flowers, and embalmed with the
fragrance of odoriferous trees and fruits. In the midst of this garden
Adam, a personage of gigantic proportion and beautiful symmetry, is seen
reclined on the side of a fountain which sends forth four streams of
different water and colour, and under the shade of a tree of uncommon
size and height, laden with fruits of every kind of emitting the most
delicious odours. The scenes of this vision Matthew Paris names the
infernal pageants.m
The Miracle-plays, as we have seen, were extremely common during the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They are defined by Fitzstephen, as
representing âeither the miracles which the holy confessors wrought, or
the sufferings in which the glorious constancy of martyrs did appear.â
No other species of sacred play is mentioned either by Fitzstephen,
Matthew Paris or Chaucer. Of the Mystery no trace seems to be
discoverable further back than about the close of the thirteenth
century. It was a drama representing the events of the Old and New
Testaments. It passed from the legend to the fundamental record of our
religion, from the ornaments to the stamina of the faith, and in this
respect appears to have been considered as a great improvement upon the
sacred plays which had preceded it.
The earliest mention which seems to occur of a play founded on the
incidents of sacred writ is in the year 1298. On the festival of
Pentecost in that year the Play of Christ, representing his passion,
resurrection, ascension, and the descent of the Holy ghost, was
performed by the clergy of Civita Vecchia in Italy, in the hall of the
patriarch of the Austrian dominions; and again in 1304 the chapter of
Civita Vecchia represented a play of the creation of man, the
annunciation of the virgin, the birth of Christ and other passages of
holy scripture.n A collection of Mysteries said to have been performed
at Chester at the expence of the different trading companies of that
city, in the year 1327, but which the biographer of Lorenzo de Medicis
peremptorily decides to be antedated nearly two centuries,o is still in
existence.p The subjects of these Mysteries are the Fall of Lusifer; the
Creation; the Deluge; Abraham, Melchisedec and Lot; Moses, Balaam and
Balak; the Salutation and the Nativity; the Three Kings; the Massacre of
the Innocents; &c, &amo;c. There is also a collection of Mysteries
performed at Coventry, which pretends to nearly equal antiquity.q A play
of the Children of Israel ( ludus filiorum Israelis ), probably the
Exodus or departure out of Egypt, with the episode of the Red Sea, was
performed by the guild of Corpus Christi at Cambridge in the year 1355.r
The Coventry Mysteries are said to have been performed by the mendicants
of the house of the Gray-Friars in that city.s In France we have and
account of ten pounds being paid toward the charges of acting the
Passion of Christ, which was represented by masks at Anjou in the year
1386:t and in 1398 certain citizens of Paris met at St. Maur to
represent a piece on the same subject, but were prohibited by the
magistrates of that city. Shortly after however they obtained a licence
and patent of incorporation from the king.u
These exhibitions were conceived at this period to contribute so much to
the civilising the minds of the common people, who were thus called off
from sports in which mere brutal strength and corporeal dexterity were
exerted, to amusements of a more intellectual class; and to conduce so
essentially to the instructing persons who were unable to read, in the
great facts and outline of their religion, that, as we are informed by a
document annexed to the Chester Mysteries, the pope proclaimed a pardon
of one thousand days to every on who resorted peaceably to these
exhibitions during the festival of Whitsuntide, to which the bishop of
the diocese, of his munificence, added an indulgence of forty days more;
the pope at the same time denouncing eternal damnation against those
reprobate persons who should presume to disturb or interrupt these
sacred sports.
A memorable exhibition of a Mystery, entitled the Massacre of the
Innocents, took place at Constance in the year 1417; being given by the
English fathers, and performed before the members of the celebrated
council then held at that place.v The account of this piece coincides in
so many points with a drama on the same subject, written by John Parfre
in 1512, and printed in Hawkinâs collection entitled the Origin of the
English Drama, as to make it probably that Parfreâs piece is a liberal
translation, or an abbreviation, of the play at Constance, which must be
supposed to have been written in Latin. As the historian appears to
recite certain expressions from the drama of 1417, we may conclude that
it was not a mere exhibition in dumb show.
About the close of the fourteenth century the practice of acting sacred
plays seems to have assumed a more systematical form, and to have
approached more nearly to the modern prevailing ideas of a regular
theatre. In Shakespear we meet with several allusions to the custom,
sufficiently frequent in his time, of having the characters in plays
wholly represented by boys: particularly there is a passage in his
tragedy of hamlet which has often been quoted in this relation.w This
custom was of long standing, and appears to have been as old as the time
of Chaucer. In 1378, in the beginning of the reign of Richard II, a
petition was presented by the scholars of St. Paulâs School, praying the
king âto prohibit some unexpert people from presentwng the History of
the Old Testament, to the great prejudice of the said clergy, who have
been at a great expence in order to represent it publicly at
Christmas.âx
In the same reign we meet with the representation of dramas of a similar
description by society of the parish-clerks.y The idea of such a
representation carries something ludicrous to our minds. But it
certainly was not so understood at that time. It has justly been
observedz that the parish-clerks might be considered in some sense as a
learned society at a time when the art of reading was comparatively a
rare accomplishment; and no one in the slightest degree accustomed to
speculate upon the operations of the human mind, can fail to acknowledge
that the self-estimation and honest thirst after excellence of any order
of men, eminently depend upon the estimation in which they are held by
their neighbours. The parish-clerks were incorporated into a guild by
Henry III about the year 1240, under the patronage of St. Nicholas.aa It
was anciently customary for men and women of the first quality,
ecclesiastics and others, who were lovers of church music, to be
admitted into this corporation; and they gave large gratuities for the
support and education of persons practiced in this art. This society was
usually hired as a band of vocal performers, to assist at the funerals
of the nobility and other distinguished persons, which were celebrated
in London or its neighbourhood.aa They clearly therefore held a very
different place in the community from that which they occupy at this
time.
Yet the circumstance of the Mysteries being now presented by the
parish-clerks may perhaps be construed as an indication of growing
refinement as an indication of growing refinement in European society.
In the darker ages the high-spirited monk in his cloister, and the
mortified and the mortified friar, did not scruple to take a part in
these godly exhibitions. But now a suspicion seems to have darted into
their minds, that the being thus accoutered in mummery, and personating
fictitious rage and well-disabled grief, was not altogether consistent
with the loftiness or purity of their professions. They resigned this
office therefore to a more modest, and not less pliable order of men.
In the year 1391 the parish-clerks played certain interludes at Skinners
well near London for three days successively, the king, queen, and many
of the nobility being present at the performance.bb And in the year 1409
they represented at the same place âa great play, which lasted eight
dayes, and was of matter from the creation of the world [that is, a sort
of compendium of universal history]: there were to see the same, the
most parte of the nobles and gentles in England: and forthwith after
began a royall justing in Smithfielde, between the carle of Somerset,
the seneshall of Henault,âcc and other distinguished personages.
Chaucer, as has already been observed, mentions the Miracles in his
Canterbury Tales,dd but not the Mysteries: yet his Canterbury Tales were
the last of his works, and it is therefore certain that the
representations of Mysteries were by no means uncommon at the time of
his writing this work. The mention of the Miracle-plays however is put
into the mouth of a city-dame; and the intention of the author may have
been to indicate that these as being of more ancient institution, were
ordinary exhibitions; but that the Mysteries were of a select character,
and had not yet descended to the vulgar.
Profane plays, masquings and pageants, no less than the sacred crama,
seem to have made considerable advances in the fourteenth century.
Before the year 1300 the ceremony of a king of France dining in public
is thus described.ee During the entertainment the company were regaled
with music by the minstrels, who played upon the kettle-drum, conet,
flute, trumpet, violin, and various other instruments. Beside these,
certain farcours, jongleurs, et plaisantins diverted the company with
their drolleries and comedies. The historian adds, that many noblemen of
France were entirely ruined by the expences they lavished upon this
species of performers. About the year 1331 a law was made by the English
Parliament, ordaining that a company of men styled vagrants, who had
made masquerades through the whole city, should be whipped out of
London, because they represented scandalous things in the petty
alehouses, and other places where the populace assembled.ff These were
probably some of the lower retainers of the order of minstrels.
In the year 1348 an item of expenditure is entered in the public
accounts, for furnishing the plays or sports of the king ( ludos ), held
in the castle of Guildford at the festival of Christmas.gg Among various
dresses provided for this purpose, are fourteen visors representing the
faces of women, fourteen of men with beards, and fourteen of angels,
together with fourteen mantles embroidered with the eyes of peacocks,
fourteen with the heads of dragons, fourteen with stars of gold and
silver, and various other devices. An entertainment somewhat similar is
described in 1377, the last year of Edward III, which was made by the
citizens of London for the entertainment of Richard prince of Wales. One
hundred and thirty citizens âin a mummerieâ rode from Newgate
Kennington, Where the prince resided, variously disguised; âone rihley
arrayed like and emperour, and one stately tyred like a pope, whom
followed twenty-four cardinals.â This was a dumb show; for the historian
adds, when they had entered the hall of the palace, they were met by the
prince, his mother and the lords, âwhome the saide mummers did salute,
shewing by a paire of dice upon the table their desire to play with the
prince, which they so handled,â that the prince won of them a bowl, a
cup and a ring of gold.hh Another entertainment, of a like kind to that
of Edward III in 1348, is recorded to have taken place before Richard II
in 1391.ii
Two masquerades in France and England, a little subsequent to this
period, have become objects of general history by the political events
with which they are connected Charles VI of France, the rival monarch of
our Henry V, was subject to occasional fits of melancholy or frantic
alienation of mind. This disease became more obstinate and confirmed by
an accident which befell him in the year 1393. A masquerade was held at
court, in which the king, attired as a satyr, led in a chain of four
young noblemen in similar dresses. The garments they wore were daubed
with resin, and surmounted with tufts and baldrics of tow. The duke of
Orleans, the kingâs brother, accidentally approached with a flambeau too
near to one of these dresses, which caught fire in a moment, and,
communicating to the rest, the four lords were burned to death, and the
life of the king was with the greatest difficulty saved.kk The English
masquerade recorded by our general historians occurred in 1400. The
dukes of Surry, Exeter and Albemarle formed a project for the
assassination of king Henry IV. For this purpose they seized the
occasion of the festival of Christmas, which Henry proposed to celebrate
at Windsor with justings and other entertainments. Under colour of a
mask or mummery they purposed to enter the caste and assault the king;
but he, having received timely notice of their conspiracy, privately
withdrew, and the plot of the malcontents, thus defeated, terminated
only in the ruin of its contrivers.ll
Toward the close of the fourteenth century we meet with more definite
and unquestionable records of the exhibition of profane plays, than in
the periods preceeding. In 1378 a royal carousal was given by Charles V
of France to his guest the emporer Charles IV, which was closed with a
theatrical representation of the Conquest of Jerusalem by Godfrey of
Bouillon.mm In 1392 the school-boys of Angiers are said to have
represented the play of Robin and Marian, according to their annual
custom:nn and in 1395 a play was acted at Paris on the interesting story
of patient Grisilde, which has been printed several times, and, in the
fashionable language of that age, is entitled Le Mystere de Grisildes
marquies de Saluce , though it could scarcely be mistaken by any of the
parties concerned for a story extracted from sacred writ.
An author whose work has been extensively read, says, speaking of the
Miracle-play of St. Catharine acted in 1110, âHence we might be led to
conclude that this miracle-play was composed in dialogue, but there is
reason to conjecture that the whole consisted in dumb shew, and that the
authorâs only merit lay in the arrangement of the incidents and
machinery. â Nor do I conceive it possible to adduce a dramatic
composition in the English language, that can indisputably be placed
before the year 1500; previous to which time they were common in Italy.â
The phrases, âthere is reason to conjecture,â and âthere is every reason
to believe,â certainly have a very imposing effect, when they proceed
from the pen of a writer of credit. But, whatever weight they might have
with us in a cursory reading, they must necessarily pass, in the
discussion in which we are here engaged, for little or nothing. As the
author has refrained from assigning his reasons, it is incumbent upon us
to enquire for ourselves, what it is that there is most âreason to
conjecture.â Now, if we derive our arguments from the nature of the
thing, it does not seem in any degree more obvious and easy to invent a
silent, than a speaking, drama. A drama must necessarily be more or less
an imitation of life, and in real life men do not discharge their most
important concerns in silence, but with the intervention of words. To
judge abstractedly, pantomime would strike us as the offspring of
refinement, not as the first and most easy species of drama. The Greek
theatre did not begin in pantomime. Speculative men are much too apt to
invent great and striking epochs in the progress of society. In fact
however it is difficult to assign the period when any memorable practice
or instutution begins. It ordinarily begins unremarked, and continues
for some time before it acquires a name. There is scarcely a nation in
the world, except the most barbarous, which does not possess some rude
outline of a drama. No sooner is the mode introduced for one individual
to speak or sing for the entertainment of an assembly, than the idea of
two persons speaking or singing alternately or in dialogue is close at
hand. We have then immediately a species of comedy or opera. Examples of
this under the head of singing might easily be adduced from the songs of
the minstrels, thus we know that our ancestors at a very remote period
had public entertainments in dialogue; we know that they had plots of
incident performed in representation and action; and the question which
remains is, whether the indirect hints of John of Sailsbury and others,
together with the strong inferences of general reasoning, shall have
sufficient weight to persuade us, that, from the earliest periods
subsequent to the Norman conquest, the idea occurred to them of joining
plot and dialogue together.
a VitĂŠ Viginti Trium Abbatum Sancti Albani, No. 16.
b De Nugis Curialium, Lib. I, cap. 8.
c Londonia pro spectaculis theatrelibus, pro ludis scenicis, ludos habet
sanctiores, &c. Stephanides, apud Lelandâs Itinerary, Vol. VIII. Stow,
Survey of London, by Strype, Appendix.
d Quem miracula vulgariter appellamus.
e History of English Poetry, Vol. I, Sect. vi. This work merits to be
described as an immense treasury of materials, not always accurately
collected, but always jumbled together in the most incoherent manner of
which perhaps there is any example in the annals of literature.
f Dupin, Hist. Eccles. apud Henry, Book III, chap. vii.
g Annal. Burton. apud Warton, Vol. II, Sect. ix.
h Concil. Magn. Brit. per Wilkins, ditto.
i Historia Universitatis Oxoniensis, ad an. 1224.
k MatthĂŠi Paris Historia Major, ad annos. Stow, Survey of London: sports
and passtimes.
l Stow, ditto.
m Ludi demonum â spectacula. Matt. Paris, ad ann. 1206.
n Chron. Forojul. apud Warton, Vol. I., Sect. vi.
o Life of Lorenzo, Chap. v.
p Among the Harleian manuscripts in the British Museum.
q Among the Cottonian manuscripts in the British Museum.
r Masters, apud Warton, Vol. I, Sect. vi.
s Stevens Monasticon apud Malone Historical Account of the English Stage
prefixed to his edition of Shakespear.
tSuppl ad Du Cange apud Warton Vol I Sect vi.
u Beauchamps, Recherches sur les Theatres de France ditto.
v Enfant Hist Cone Constan ditto.
w Act II, Scene ii.
x Dodsley, Collection of Old Plays, Preface.
y Stow, Survey of London: sports and pastimes.
z Warton, Vol II, Sect xvi.
aa Stow, Surrey of London, by Strype, Book V Chap. xiv.
bb Stow, Surrey of Loudon: sports and pastimes.
cc Stow, Aaaals, A.D. 1409.
dd vers. 6140.
ee Du Cange, Dissertat. sur Joinv. apud Warton, Vol. I, Sect. vi.
ff Dodsley, Collection of Old Plays, Preface.
gg Wardrobe-roll of Edward III, apud Warton, Vol. I, Sect. vi.
hh Stow, Survey of London: sports and pastimes.
ii Wardrobe-roll, apud Warton, Vol. I, Sect. vi.
kk Voltaire, Histoire Générale, chap. lxvii.
ll Hollinshed, apud Warton, Vol. I, Sect. vi.
mm Felibien ditto.
nn Suppl. ad Du Cange, ditto. We shall find hereafter that Maid Marian
was the favourite mistress of the celebrated Robin Hood.
oo Beauchamps, ditto. Warton, Vol. I, Sect. vi.
pp Roscoe, Life of Lorenzo, chap v.
BURLESQUE FESTIVALS. â SUMPTUOUS ENTERTAINMENTS. â SHOWS. â HUNTING AND
HAWKING. â ARCHERY. â ATHLETIC EXCERCISES. â ROBBERY. â TOURNAMENTS.
The tone of manners and of the popular mind in these early ages cannot
be fully understood, without adverting to the Feast of Fools, of the
Ass, and of Innocents, which were duly celebrated at the return of
certain periods, and were long cherished with peculiar affection by the
populace of this, and the neighbouring countries. The indecorums
practiced on these occasions cannot fail to be extremely astonishing to
readers of the present day, and come greatly heightened to our
imagination by the uncouth and extravagant alliance which subsisted
between them and most solemn ordinances of the established religion.
These festivities had in them something of the form of a dramatical
exhibition, and therefore naturally offer themselves to our
consideration in this place. They have been conjectured by eminent
antiquaries to be a remnant of the old Roman Saturnalia;a and those who
are aware of the multitude of paractices prevailing in Christian Rome,
which were borrowed from the religious customs and institutions of pagan
Rome before the commencement of our vulgar era,b will not regard this as
a forced or improbable conjecture.
On the annual return of the Feast of Fools, the ceremony was commenced
by the election of a pontiff or prelate of fools. This dignitary was
suitably attended by a conclave or chapter of his own order.
Ecclasiastics and layen, rich and poor, joined promiscuously in the
burlesque and tumultuous procession. Those who formed it were attired in
the most ridiculous manner; some masked, some with their faces painted
so as to produce a hideous effect, and others accoutered like women, and
indulging themselves in a variety of wanton and indecent gestures. Thus
prepared, they proceeded to the cathedral, or principal church, of which
they took possession; while the bishop of fools, habited in the
ecclesiastical garments, pronounced mass, and gave his benediction to
the audience. The service was interrupted from time to time by the
singing of lascivious songs; and some of the assistants played at dice
on the altar, while others celebrated the holy communion. Another part
of the ceremony was the shaving, probably with the monastic tonsure, on
a stage erected for that purpose, the precentor of fools, who during the
operation amused the spectators with absurd gestures and contortions,
and ribald jests. Filth and the bodies of dead animals were then thrown
from hand to hand, and in the faces of the performers and audience. The
bishop, having quitted the church, was drawn in an open carriage through
the different streets of the town, and the cavalcade was every where
welcomed with riotous mockery, festivity, and joy.c
The Feast of the Ass differed in some particulars from the Feast of
Fools. A wooden ass, inclosing a speaker, was the central figure of the
procession. Balaam was mounted on this ass with and immense pair of
spurs, and otherwise equipped in the most farcical manner. The angel was
to appear, the ass to be unmercifully beaten, and at last to save
himself from further chastisement by the dignity and good sense of his
remonstrances. The miraculous brute was then to be led in triumph, in
commemoration of the signal victory he had obtained over the unholy
prophet. On this occasion the whole band of the ancient patriarchs
attended, to do honour to this new medium of inspiration. Six Jews, and
six Gentiles, among the latter of whom was the poet Virgil, made a part
of his train. As the procession moved on, these personages chanted
certain prayers, and conversed in character on the birth and kingdom of
Christ. At length they arrived at the church, where mass was said as in
the Feast of Fools, and at the end of each paragraph or stanza, by way
of a burthen, the audience sung out a melodious braying, in imitation of
the voice of the animal whose achievement they celebrated.d
These festivals, as will easily be imagined, were most cherished and
cultivated in the darkest ages. The Feast of Innocents was continued to
a considerably later period. This seems to have been observed in all
collegiate churches through England and Frnce. On the anniversary of St.
Nicholas,e the patron of scholars, and on that of the Holy Innocents,f
one of the children of the choir, habited in Episcopal robes, with the
mitre and crosier, assumed the title and state of a bishop, and exacted
ecclaesiastical obedience from his fellows who were attired like
priests. They took possession of the church, and performed all the
offices and ceremonies usually celebrated by the bishop and his
prebendaries. They also presented Moralities and shows of Miracles, with
farces and other sports, but such only as were supposed compatible with
decorum.g Some of their proceedings are thus described in an order of
council made for their suppression, in the latter part of the reign of
Henry VIII. âWhereas heretofore dyvers and many superstitiou and
chyldysh observances have been used, and yet to this day are observed
and kept in many and sundry places of this realm â ; children be
strangelie decked and apparayled to counterfeit priests, bishops and
women, and to sedde with songs and dances from house to house, blessing
the people, and gathering of money; and boyes do singe masse and preache
in the pulpits, with such other unfitinge and inconvenient usages, which
tend rather to derysyon than enie true glorie to God, or honor of his
sayntes --.âh Dr. Colet however, dean of St. Paulâs, and founder of St.
Paulâs school, drawn up in the year 1512, that his scholars âshall every
Childermas (Innocentsâ) day come to Pauleâs churche, and hear the childe
byshopâs sermon; and after be at high masse: and each of them offer a
penny to the childe bishop, and with them the maisters and surveyors of
the scole.âi It was been conjectured that the biennial ceremony at Eton
College of the procession ad montem , originated in this ancient and
popular practice.k
The three festivals of Easter, Whitsuntide and Christmas were anciently
commemorated, by the kings and great nobility of England, with the
utmost expence and magnificence. Our elder annalists apparently consider
it as one indispensible part of their office, to record where and how
the sovereigns of this realm celebrated these periodical seasons of
conviviality. One portion of the gaiety and amusement on these occasions
consisted in the exhibition of these plays, mummeries and disguisings.
The Chester Mysteries, already mentioned, are accordingly denominated,
from the season for which they were written, Whitsun plays. That the
convivialities of these important periods might be conducted in a
suitable manner, and proceed in uninterrupted succession, in was a
frequent practice to appoint a temporary officer to preside over them,
who was variously styled the Lord, and the Abbot, of Misrule. This
mock-officer, as might be expected, was looked to rather to increase the
sport, than to watch over the decorum of the festival. Accordingly in a
journal, preserved in the Collectanea of Leland, the writer syas, âthis
Christmass [an. 5 Hen VII, A.D. 1489], I saw no disgysyngs [at court],
and but right few pleys; but ther was an abbot of misrule, that made
muche sport, and did right well his office.âl As lately as the reign of
Edward VI, in the year 1551, this magistracy was in so high repute, that
George Ferrers, one of the most considerable writers in that celebrated
repository of English poetry, the Mirror of Magistrates, was appointed
by the privy council to exercise it during the twelve days of Christmas.
âWho,â says the old chronicler, âbeing of better credit and estimation
than commonlie his predecessors had beene before, received all his
commissions and warrants by the name of the maister of the kingâs
pastimes. Which gentleman of sundrie sights and devices of rare
invention, and in act of divers interludes, and metters of pastime
plaied by persons, as not onelie satisfied the common sort but also were
verie well liked and allowed by the councell, and other of skill in the
like pastimes: but best of all by the young king himselfe, as appeered
by his princelie liberalitie in rewarding that service.âm
A whimsical account has been preserved of the election and mode of
proceeding of an officer bearing the same title, not resident at court,
or attending upon the ouses of the opulent, but chosen by persons of
inferior rank dwelling in their several parishes. This deserves to be
cited, as particularly illustrative of the tastes and manners of our
ancestors. âFist of all,â says the author, âthe wilde heades of the
parish, flocking together, chuse thema graund captaine of mischiefe,
whom they innoble with the title of Lord of Misrule; and him they crowne
with great solemnity, and adopt for their king. This king annoynted
chooseth forth twentie, fourty, threescore, or an hundred, like to
himself, to waite upon his lordly majesty, and to guarde his noble
person. Then every one of these men he investeth with his liveries of
greene, yellow, or some other light wanton colour, and, as though they
were not gawdy ynough, they bedecke themselves with scarffes, ribbons,
and laces, hanged all over with gold ringes, pretious stones and other
jewels. This done, they tie aboute either legge twentie or fourtie
belles, with riche handkerchiefs in their handes, and sometimes laide
acrosse over their shoulders and neckes. Thus all thinges set in order,
then have their their hobby horses, their dragons, and other atickes,
together with their baudie pipers, and thudring, their belles jyngling,
their handkerchiefs fluttering aboute their heades like madde men, their
hobbie horses and other monsters skirmishing amongst the church, though
the minister be at prayer or preaching, dauncing and singing with such a
confused noise that no man can heare his own voice: and thus these
terrestrial furies spend the Sabbath day. Then they have certaine papers
wherein is painted some babelerie or other of imagerie worke, and these
they call my Lord of Musruleâs badges or cognizances. These they give to
every on that will give them money to maintain them in this their
heathenish devilrie; and who will not show himself buxome to them and
give them money, they shall be mocked and shouted shamefully; yea, and
many times carried upon a cowlstaffe, and dived over heade and eares in
water, or otherwise most horribly abused.ân
The courseness of manner, the broad humour, and the ribaldry, displayed
on these occasions, are essential features of the character of our
ancestors in these early ages. Historians, who from a misjudged delicacy
of sentiment suppress them, by no means discharge the office which they
have rashly and unadvisedly undertaken, and are in danger of painting
all scenes with insipidity, and all ages alike. Critics, who do not bear
these features in their memory, are by no means qualified to do justice
to our ancient poets; and will often impute their flat or indecorous
passages for a fault, where, if they saw the subject in its full extent,
they would be impressed with admiration and awe of the men who, in the
midst of so much rudeness and ill taste, preserved in so high a degree
the purity of their thoughts. Chaucer, however superior he may be
considered to the age in which he lived, had yet the frailties of a man,
spent his days more or less in such scenes as have been described, and
was acted upon, like other men, by what he heard and saw, by what
inspired his contemporaries with approbation or with rapture.
Nothing is more characteristic of these early times than the splendid
style in which persons of royal and noble rank then lived, particularly
on great and solemn festivals. This was a circumstance intimately
connected with the nature of the feudal establishment. As, under this
scheme of policy, all landed property was construed as vesting in the
lord, so all the tenants of the soil were taught to regard it as their
highest privilege, to be deemed his domestic servants. Though the feudal
system is now to be considered as extinct, yet, as has already been
remarked, a thousand vestiges of its operation are found in our present
institutions. It is from this source that we derive our lord chamberlain
and lord steward, our grooms of the bedchamber whose privilege it is to
help the king to his clothes, our masters of the horse of and of the
hounds, and long catalogue of offices, which relatively to our present
manners are sordid, but which are always bestowed upon persons of birth
and rank. In the same manner the different electors of Germany are
variously styled the arch-marshal, or farrier, the arch-sewer, or
butler, and the arch-cupbearer of the Holy Roman Empire.
This system of manners unavoidably led to a profuse and magnificent
style of living. Some idea may be formed of this from that memorable
vestige of ancient hospitality Westminster Hall, which, we are told,o
was built by William Rufus for his dining-room. Hugh Le Despenser the
elder, in the reign of Edward II, in a petition presented by him to the
parliament, enumerates among the contents of his larder six hundred
bacon-hogs, eighty carcases of beef, and six hundred of sheep, of which
he complains that he had been despoiled by the depredations of his
enemies.p There is an account extant of the expenditure of Thomas earl
of Lancaster grandson to Henry III, for one year (the year 1313),q from
which it appears that he paid in that period, on the score of his
houshold-establisment alone, a sum equal to 109,635 of our present
money. Among the items of this account are upward of one hundred and
eighty-four tuns, or three hundred and sixty eight pipes of wine, which
cost him however something less than five shillings and eight pence, or
ÂŁ.4:5:0 of our present money, per pipe. During the reign of Richard II,
ten thousand persons sat down to table every day in the royal houshold.r
And of Richard earl of Warwick, the king-maker, it is related that, when
he came to London, his retinue was so considerable that six oxen were
often eaten by them for a breakfast.s
The English nation appears at this early period to have displayed a most
vehement attachment to shows and spectacles, exhibited in the open air,
and in places of numerous and promiscuous concourse. There is in
spectacles of this nature an entirely different character from that of
shows contrived by professional artists for their private emolument, and
brought out in places where, a certain sum having been demanded for
admission, the spectators are afterward seated at their ease, quiet and
undisturbed. In the old English spectacles alluded to, the passers by or
attendants made and essential part of the show; every thing was free and
unconstrained; and every man was called upon for a certain exertion to
make good his post, and obtain his share of the amusement. There was a
degree therefore of life, animation, gaity, and perhaps humour, required
or called out on such occasions, very unlike the torpid and lethargic
state, in so far at least as reqards muscular exertioina nd active
power, of a spectator at a theatre.
These spectacles, public in the full extent of the word, may perhaps all
be classes under the general denomination of pageants; and the most
remarkable of them were those exhibited at the inauguration of the chief
magistrates of London and other corporate towns, the ceremonial of
May-day, of setting the Midsummer-watch, and the shows exhibited at the
coronation, or some other remarkable incident in the family of the
sovereign. At the lord-mayorâs show, it was customary for the fronts of
the houses before which the procession passed, to be covered with
tapestry, arras and cloth of gold; and at proper distances certain
temporary buildings were erected representing castles, palaces, gardens,
rocks and forests. These scenes were peopled with giants, dragons,
saints, and buffoons; the Nine Worthiest were favourite characters on
such occasions, who usually addressed the personages in honour of whom
the exhibition was made, in respective monologues;u and there were also,
as it appears,
âHercules of monsters conquering,
Huge great giants in forest fighting
With lyons, bears, wolves, apes, foxes and
grayes,
Baiards and brockes.v
The ceremonial of May-day is thus described by the old historian âIn the
moneth of May the citizens of London of all estates, lightly in every
parish, or sometimes two or three parishes joining together, had their
severall mayings, and did fetch in maypoles with diverse warlike shewes;
with good archers, morice dauncers, and other devices for pastime all
the day long; and towards the evening they had stage playes and
bonefiers in the streetes. These great mayings and maygames were made by
the governors and maisters of the citie, with the triumphant setting up
of the great shaft, or principall maypole in Cornehill before the
parish-church of St. Andrew, therefore called St. Andrew Undershaft.âw
Among the pageants exhibited at this festival was one from the ancient
story of Robin Hood. He presided as Lord of the May, and a woman, or
probably a man equipped as a woman, represented Maid Marian, his
faithful mistress, and was styled lady of the May. Robin Hood was
regularly followed by the most noted characters among hi attendants,
appropriately habited, together with a large band of outlaws, in coats
of green.x The first reformers were most zealous adversaries of these
pageants, which they regarded as shreds and relics of popery; and bishop
Latimer relates the following incident respecting them, in one of his
sermons preached before Edward VI. âComing to a certain town on a
holiday to preach, I found the church door fast locked. I taryed there
halfe and houre and more and at last the key was found, and one of the
parish comes to me and sayes, Syr, this is a busy day with us, we cannot
hear you; it is Robin Hoodeâs day; the parish are gone abroad to gather
for Robin Hood; I pray you let them not. â I thought my rochet would
have been regarded; but it would not serve; it was faine to give place
to robin Hood and his men.ây
The setting of the Midsummer-watch was another festival very solemnly
observed, and is copiously described by the same historian. âIn the
moneths of June and July, on the vigiles of festivall dayes, and on the
same festivall dayes in the evenings after the sunne setting, there were
usually made bonefiers in the streetes, every man bestowing wood or
labour towards them: the wealthier sort also before their doores neare
to the said bonefiers, would set out tables on the vigiles, furnished
with sweete breade and good drinke, and on the festivall dayes with
meates and drinks plentifully, whereunto they would invite their
neighbours and passengers also to sit and bee merrie with them in great
familiaritie, praysing God for his benefites bestowed on them. These
were called bonefiers, as well of good amitie amongst neighbours that
being before at controversie, were there by the labour of others
reconciled, and made of bitter enemies, loving friendes, as also for the
vertue that a great fire hath to purge the infection of the ayre. â Then
had ye besides the standing watches, all in bright harness in every ward
and streete of this citie and suburbs, a marching watch, that passed
through the principle streets thereof.â To furnish this watch with
lights, there were appointed nine hundred and forty men bearing
cressets, each with an attendant: so that the number of cresset-men
amounted to about two thousand, and the marching watch consisted of
about two thousand more. The constables were equipped âin bright
harnesse, some over gilte, and every one a jornet of scarlet thereupon,
and chaine of golde. The mayor himselfe came after them, will mounted on
horseback, with his sword-bearer before him in fayre armour well mounted
also, his footmen and torchbearers about him, henchmen twaine upon great
stirring horses following him. The sheriffes watches came one after the
other in like order, but not so large in number; for where the mayor had
besides his giant three pageants, each of the sheriffs had besides their
giants but two pageants, each their morricedance.âz One of these
pageants, which is expressly said to be âaccording to ancient custome,â
is described in ordinance, dated 1564, as consisting of âfour giants,
one unicorn, one dromedary, one luce, one camel, one ass, one dragon,
six hobby-horses, and sixteen naked boys.âa
The following is the description of a pageant exhibited on occasion of
the marriage of Philip and Mary. âNow as the king came to London bridge,
and as he entered at the draw-bridge, and as he entered at the
draw-bridge, was a great spectacle set up, two images representing two
giants, one named Corineus, and the other Gogmagog, holding betweene
them certeine Latine verses, which for the vaine ostentation of
flatterie, I overpasse. From London bridge they passed to the conduit in
Gratious Street, which was finelie painted, â and among other things the
Nine Worthies, whereof king Henrie the Eight was one. He was painted in
harnesse, having one in hand a sword, and in the other hand a booke,
whereupon was written Verbum Dei , delivering the same booke (as it
were) to his sonne king Edward, who was painted in a corner by him.âb
This last particular, it seems, gave great offence to the queen, as
savouring of Protestantism, and was ordered to be expunged. Queen
Elizabeth, the next in succession of the English monarchs, had a strong
propensity in behalf of ostentation and show. The particulars of the
mummeries and devices with which she was received at Kenelworth Castle,
the seat of her favourite earl of Leicester, are too well known to need
to be recited here.c The pageant exhibited as she passed through London,
from the Tower to Westminster, to her coronation, appears to have been
singularly elaborate, and occupies no less than eight filio pages in the
description of the chronicler Hillinshed. In closing his account of it,
Hollinshed remarks, âtwo principall signes especially noted that the
queene in all hir dooings dooth shew hir selfe most mindfull of Godâs
goodnesse and mercie shewed unto hir.â The first was the prayer which
she uttered on leaving the Tower. âThe second was the receiving of the
bible at the little conduit in Cheape.â It was delivered to her by a
child, gorgeously attired, who received it from a personage in a
pageant, âfinlei and well appareled, all clad in white silke, and
directlie over hir head was set hir name and title in Latine and
English, Temporis Filia , The Daughter of Time, and on hir brest was
written in hir proper name, which was Veritas, Truth, a booke being in
hir hand, upon the which was written Verbum Veritas , The Word of
Truth.â This book was âdelivered unto her grace downe by a silken lace.â
Now, âwhen hir grace had learned that the bible in English should there
be offered: she thanked the citie therefore, promised the reading
thereof most diligentlie, and incontinent commanded that it should be
offered: she thanked the citie therefore, promised the reading thereof
most diligentlie and incontinent commanded that it should be brought. At
the receipt whereof, how reverendlie did she with both hir hands take
it, kisse it, and laie it upon hir brest to the great comfort of the
lookers on?âd In the sports and diversions hitherto described the public
at large must be considered as spectators, while certain individuals
exerted themselves, or certain objects were exhibited, for general
amusement. But we must not hence conclude that our ancestors in the
times here treated of were inactive. The fact was directly the reverse.
They were a strenuous and hardy race, living much in the open air,
muscular, alert and resolved, with an eye skilful and experienced to fix
its mark, and an arm which was rarely found recreant and unequal to
execute its masterâs purpose. There are few Englishmen so little
acquainted with their countryâs story, as not readily to conjure up to
themselves the stern baron and adventurous knight of ancient times, whom
no danger could appal, and no hardship subdue; or the firma nd
well-strung yeomanry, whose nerve of mind and strength of frame had so
large a share in securing the victories of their native isle. We are at
present considering them in relation, not to military prowess and
execution, but to those games and pastimes which prepared them for both.
One of the amusements of our ancestors principally entitled to our
attention is hunting. This is a leading pursiot with all barbarous and
half-civilised nations; but it seems to have left in the history of no
state such indelible vestiges of it peration, as in the history of
England. The most memorable even connected with this topic is the
formation of the New Forest by William the Conqueror, in the
neighbourhood of Winchester, the seat of his principle residence. Not
content with the extensive chases our kings already possessed in all
parts of England, he resolved to form one larger, and with circumstances
more memorable than them all. For this purpose he rigorously depopulated
a district of thirty or forty miles in circumference, ruined many towns
and villages, and demolished thirty-six parish-churches, to make a lair
for the habitation of wild beasts.e His proceedings in the prosecution
of this object are thus expressively described by the old historian.
âThe cruell king loved wild beasts, as though hee had beene father of
them, and by wicked counsel he brought to passe, that where men were
wont to inhabite in townes and villages, and where God was wont to bee
honoured, there all kinde of wilde beastes did sport themselves, so that
men saide for certaine, that for the space of more then thirty miles,
good profitable corne ground was turned into a chase; wherein be nine
walks, nine keepers, two rangers, a bow bearer, and the earle of
Arnedale [Arundel] is lord warden by inheritance.âf The contemporaries
of these cruel deeds delighted to remark, that Richard the second son of
the Conqueror, during the life of his father, William II his third son,
and Henry one of his nephews, perished untimely by different accidents
on this unhallowed spot;g and in these events they recognized the hand
of providence, avenging upon his posterity the impiety of the tyrant.h
The penalties awarded by the Conqueror against those who invaded the
privileges of his forests, were not less severe than the measures by
which those forests were established. The killing a deer, a boar, or
even a hare, was punished with castration and loss of the delinquentâs
eyes; and that at a time when the killing a man could be atoned for by
paying a moderate fine or compensation.
Henry I. is celebrated for laying out the park at Woodstock, supposed to
have been the first park inclosed in England, in which he placed lions,
leopards, lynxes, camels, âporpentines,â and other animals such as had
never before been seen in this country;k but whether for the purpose of
hunting, is uncertain. The kings of the Plantagenet race are said to
have possessed sixty-eight forests, thirteen chases and about seven
hundred and eighty-one parks in different parts of England.l All these
circumstances sufficiently prove in how serious and important a light
the occupation of hunting was viewed by the sovereigns and nobility of
the island.
Hawking was so distinguished an amusement of these early times, that, in
what has been written on the subject of ancient rural diversions, it has
often obtained the precedence over hunting itself. This amusement was in
high perfection and honour before the period of the Norman conquest: we
are told of Edward the Confessor, that every day, after having attended
divine service, he spent a portion of his time either in falconry or
hunting;m and Harold his successor is represented, in the contemporary
tapestry of Bayeux, as brought before William of Normandy with his hawk
on his hand.n The education of a hawk, so as completely to prepare him
for the pursuit of his quarry, was an affair of great application and
uncommon ingenuity; and the price of a bird, well trained, and that
would acquit itself with credit in every trial, was extremely high. In
the reign of James the First, for down to that period the diversion of
hawking was still in repute, we read of one thousand pounds being given
for a pair of hawks.o A hawk was one of the most affecting marks of
esteem that one gentleman could by will bequeath to another. This bird
was held to be in a manner the symbol of nobility; a man of rank rarely
went any where, to war or to church without a companion of this sort;
and nothing was considered as more dishonourable to him than to part
with his hawk.p There is a pathetic tale in Boccaccio, of a young
nobleman who had sacrificed everything he possessed in pursuit of a
haughty dame; and at length, as the last proof of his love, resolves to
dress his hawk for her dinner.
Edward III, in whose reign Chaucer was born, had with him, when he
invaded France, thirty falconers on horseback who had charge of his
hawks; and he took every day the diversion of falconry or hunting.q A
statute was made in the reign of this prince, directing that any one who
found a hawk, which had been lost by its owner, should carry it to the
sheriff, who was to cause proclamation to be made in all the principle
towns in the county, for the purpose of restoring it: if in four months
no claimant appeared, the hawk was to become the property of the finder,
if a gentleman, or if a simple man, of the sheriff, he first paying a
reasonable gratuity to the man who brought him.r Chaucer, as might be
expected, is full of allusions to the art of hawking; and his poem of
the parliament of Birds, one of the first he wrote by way of courting
the favour of John of Gaunt, is entirely founded upon the documents and
practices of that art. The perfection to which the musquet was brought
in the course of the seventeenth century, at length wholly abolished
this method of pursuing the feathered natives of the woods.
Archery was an exercise in which the English particularly excelled, and
they are said to have owed their great victories of Cressy, Poitiers and
Agincourt in a considerable degree to their superiority in this
accomplishment. The improvement of this are had a strong tendency to
supersede the importance and credit of warriors cased in complete
armour, as the more modern improvements in the construction of the
musquet have since superseded the value, and of succession, of our far
famed archers.
The practice of archery was cultivated in the times here treated of, for
various purposes. It was regarded as one of the principal sources of
military power, of the ascendancy of any nation over its rivals, and of
the strength of governments for suppressing discontent and rebellion
among their subjects. It was the main qualification required in a
hunter. And it was exercised by our ancestors, in instances where the
destruction of neither men nor animals was in view, as a topic of
friendly competition, and a method by which a man might attain the
reputation of superior judgment and ingenuity among his equals. It had
been particularly the practice of the citizens of London, to spend their
leisure time, on holidays and other occasions, in shooting at buts,
targets and wands; and at certain memorable periods the lord-mayor,
accompanied by the sheriffs and alderman, was accustomed to lead them
out into the fields, for a more solemn competition of victory and
skill.s It was a source of complaint in subsequent times and even a
topic of royal and parliamentary animadversion, that the custom of
shooting with arrows was almost totally laid aside, for the pursuit of
various useless and unlawful games.t So lately as in the reign of
Elizabeth a grand shooting match was held in Smithfield, attended by
three thousand archers sumptuously appareled, nine hundred and forty-two
of them having chains of gold about their necks.u
The archery of our ancestors has been rendered a topic of familiar
contemplation to the lovers of English poetry, by the figure it makes in
the narrative of our ancient ballads. The bow is the principal engine of
destruction in the ballad of Chevy Chace. It was the great instrument of
offence employed by Robin Hood, and his celebrated associates. And, in
the pathetic and impressive tale of William of Cloudesly,v we have the
very incident recorded, with small variation, which has since been
ascribed to William Tell, and represented as the signal for calling into
existence the Helvetic liberty.
The sports of our ancestors were not merely such as called for an
extraordinary degree of skill, and subjected those who pursued them to
considerable fatigue: they also comprised every thing which was robust
and athletic, and were not untinctured with a cast of what was savage
and cruel. The diversion of wrestling, the most innocent of these, is an
old English practice; so much so, that Cornwal and other provinces of
the island, tow which the ancient Britons retired on the invasion of the
Saxons, have for ages been the most celebrated for skill in this species
of rivalship.
What has been styled by the writers on this subject âprize-fighting,â
and âthe noble scince of defence,â was much practiced by our ancestors.
Sir George Buck, in treating of the different arts taught in the
metropolis, says, âIn this cittie there be manie professors of the
Science of Defence, and a very skilfull men in teaching the best and
most offensive and defensive use of verie many weapons, as of the long
sword, the backe sword, the rapier and dagger, the single rapier, the
case of rapiers, the sword and buckler or targate, the pike, the
holberd, the long staffe and other. King Henry the 8 made the professors
of this art a company or corporation by letters pattents. The manner of
the proceedings of our fencers in their schooles is this: first they
which desire to be taught, at their admission are called scholers, and
as they profit they take degrees, and proceed to bee provosts of
defence; and that must be wonne by publicke triall of their
proficiencie, in the presence and view of many hundreds of people: and
at their next and last prize well and sufficiently performed, they doe
proceede maisters of the science: the king ordained that none but such
as have thus orderly proceeded, may professe or teach this art of
defence publikely in any part of England.âw
Sir Richard Steele in the Spectator has preserved a very entertaining
specimen of the style of defiance and rejoinder in combats of this sort,
which, though comparatively modern, may with propriety be introduced
here by way of illustration, there being sufficient evidence that the
manners of the peopleof England remained with scarcely any alteration in
these points for centuries. Steeleâs paper is dated July 21, 1712.
âI James Miller, serjeant, lately come from the frontiers of Portugal,
master of the noble science of defence, hearing in most places where I
have been, of the great fame of Timothy Buck of London, master of the
said science, do invite him to meet me, and exercise at the several
weapons following, viz. Back-swordSingle falchion,Sword and dagger,Case
of falshions,Sword and buckler,Quarter-staff.â
aSelden, Table-Talk: art. Christmas.
bMiddleton, Letter from Rome.
cTillot, Mem. de le F&ecap;te des Fous, apud Warton, Vol. II, Sect. xvi,
Strutt, Book IV, chap. iii.
dWarton, Vo. I, Sec. vi. Strutt, ubi suprta.
eDecember 6.
fDecember 28.
gWarton, ubi supra.
hCoyyonian MSS. apud Srutt, ubi supra.
iKnight, Life of Colet, apud Strutt, ubi supra.
kWarton, Vol. II, Sect. xvi.
lLeland, Collectanea, Vol. IV, p. 255.
mHollinshed, ad ann.
nStubs, Anatomie of Abuses, 1595, apyd Strutt, ubi supra.
oStow, Annals, A.D. 1099.
pHume, Chap. xiv
qStow, Survey of London: of orders and customs. Anderson on Commerce,
sub ann.
rStow, Annals, A.D. 1399.
sDitto, A.D. 1468.
tThese appear to have been arbitrarily varied at different times; in one
instance we find their names to have been Joshua, Hector of Troy, king
David, Alexander the Great, Judas Macchabeus, Julius Caesar, king
Arthur, Charlemagne, and Guy of Warwick. Harleian MS, apud Strutt,
Introd.
uu A number of similar monologues, addressed to Henry VII. at York in
one of his progresses, may be found among Hearneâs additions to Lelandâs
Collectanea, Vol. IV, p. 188, et sequent.
vPromos and Cassandra, Part II, apud Six old Plays, published by
Nichols, Vol. I.
wStow, Survey of London: sports and pastimes.
xStrutt, Book IV, chap. iii.
yLatimerâs Sermons: Sermon vi.
zStow, Survey of London: of watches.
aHarleian MSS, apud Strutt, Introduction.
bHollinshed, A.D. 1554.
cVide Laneham, apud Nichols, Progreses of Queen Elizabeth.
dHollinshed, A.D. 1559.
eAnderson, History of Commerce, A.D. 1078.
fStow, Annals, A.D. 1086.
gSandford, Genealogical History.
hIt is just however to observe that the whole of this account of the
formation of the New Forest has been questioned by modem writers.
Voltaire trents it as an absurdity. Histoirie Générak chap. xxxii. And
Dr. Joseph Warton, in his Essay on Pope, remarks, âthat those who have
most accurately examined the ground can discover no mark or footstep of
any other place or habitation, parish or church or castle, than what at
present remains.â The story, if fictitious, is still apposite to
illustrate the frantic eagerness with which the sports of the field were
at this time pursued.
iSpelman, Gloss. sub voc. Foresta.
kStow, Annals, A.D. 1117.
lSpelman, ubi supra.
mMalmesbury, Lib. II cap. 13.
n Montfaucon, Monumens de la Monarchie Françoise, Tom. I, Regne de
Philippe I.
oStrutt, Book I, chap. ioi.
pHenry, Book II, chap. vii.
qFroissart, Cronique de France, Vol. I, chap. 210.
rStatutes at Large, 35 Edw. III.
sStow, Survey of London: of watches.
tStutt, Book II, chap. i.
uStow, Survey of London, by Strype, Book I, chap. 29.
vPercy, Reliques, Vol. I, Book ii.
wThird University of England, chap, 42.
OF BUILDING. â ANCIENT CASTLES. â PALACES AND MANOR-HOUSES
In several preceding chapters we have been engaged in considering the
various objects, institutions, inventions and practices, which were
likely to have presented themselves early to the view of our poet, and
essentially to have modified his conceptions and character. A most
important branch of this topic must consist in a review, however
imperfect, of the state of the fine arts in the fourteenth century. The
buildings, the images, the painting and the music of his country could
not fail to be continually obtruding themselves upon the senses of
Chaucer, and to form an essential part of his education. The present
chapter therefore shall be devoted to a sketch of the history of
Architecture , and the succeeding one to that of sculpture, painting and
music, so far as they are obviously connected with our subject.
There is probably no age in the history of the world in which the art of
building was more assiduously and extensively cultivated, than in the
period which clapsed from the Norman conquest to the birth of Chaucer.
The was owing to two principal causes, the insecurity of social life in
general, and the flourishing and prosperous condition of the church. The
former of these led to the erection of fortresses, and the latter of
churches, convents and abbeys.
Never in any other age or country did so many arguments cooperate to
persuade the erection of fortress. The Norman invaders had no sooner
obtained possession of the soil, than they spread themselves over the
whole surface of the country, and lived separate and insulated from each
other, in the midst of a people upon whom they trampled, and by whom
they were detested in return. A Norman baron therefore had no security
against the superior population of the conquered race, but what
essentially depended upon his battlements, his portcullis, his moat and
his draw-bridge. No sooner had this expedient been adopted in relation
to the subjugated Saxons, than the haughty chieftain of the feudal ages
found that it was not less adapted to gratify his passions in defying
his equal, and, as occasion mint demand, in resisting the claims or
encroachments of his rightful lord. With these obvious motives an
incidental consideration strongly concurred. The art of attack had not
yet been so improved, as to reach its present superiority over the art
of defense. A ditch and a wall, such as the Norman times produced, would
be found at present a feeble means of resistance; but in these early
centuries they were truly formidable. The consequence of all these
considerations was that, under the first princes of the Norman race in
England, the whole kingdom is all, such as the Norman times produced,
would be found at present a feeble means of resistance; but in these
early centuries they were truly formidable. The consequence of all these
considerations was that, under the first princes of the Norman race in
England, the whole kingdom is represented by their historians to have â
been covered with castles and, in the turbulent reign of king Stephen,
no fewer than eleven hundred and fifteen castles are said to have been
erected from their foundation in the short space of nineteen years.
Nor was the building of monasteries, convents and churches a passion
much less universal in these ages, than the building of fortresses. The
celibacy of the clergy was a dogma of recent establishment, and this
dogma led in a variety of ways to the advancement and extension of the
science of architecture. The monks, who had before been indulged at
pleasure in the permission to marry, had no sooner universally submitted
to the injunction.of celibacy, than they became more holy in the eyes of
the laity, and more enthusiastical and devout in their personal habits
and feelings. Their superior credit and zeal essentially tended to
increase the multitude of votaries in their respective convents, as well
as the number of separate monastic establishments in the different
countries of Europe. The habitations of the religious were thus rendered
at once more numerous and more ample. Their number was calculated to
subtilise and improve the science of building in the minds of its
professors; and the spaciousness required in the different receptacles
of this sort, gave scope for the persons employed in erecting or
enlarging them, to exemplify the ideas which their reflections
engendered.
Frequent have been the occasions we have had to observe that the policy
of the clergy, in those ages when the power of the church was most
stupendous, particularly aimed at striking the senses. The task of the
leaders of sects and religious denominations in later times has been
complicated; it has been necessary to agitate the passions by means of
eloquent representations, and to seem at least to convince the
understanding: the task of these earlier fathers of the church was
perfectly simple. Accordingly, in the darkest period of the middle ages,
much attention was paid to the building of cathedrals and places of
public devotion; and while, among our Saxon ancestors, persons of the
highest rank Were content to gratify their appetites and consume their
wealth in a species of hovels, God and his saints, were lodged with
comparative magnificence. This magnificence, like every other refinement
of civilised life, was greatly improved and exalted under the reign of
theNormans. The wealth of the church was immense; and the religious
policy of the times required that a great portion of it should be
expended in the exercise of beneficence, and the prosecution of
apparently disinterested views. Among these religious architecture
occupied a foremost place. It afforded to the dignified ecclesiastic an
honourable occupation; it enabled him to convince the unlearned and the
vulgar of the superiority of his intellect; and it gratified his thirst
for contemporary and posthumous fame.
The religious architecture of the middle ages naturally Early Gothic
divides itself into two principal classes, which are perhaps best known
by the denominations of the early and the latter Gothic. The term Gothic
is indeed modern, and was probably first applied by the passionate
admirer of classic architecture with a view of expressing their
contempt. There seems however to be no sufficient reason for rejecting
the appellation. The cultivators of the early Gothic architecture
distinguished it by the name of Roman; but it was not the Roman, .such
as had been practised in the times of Augustus, but such as had
prevailed in the decline of the empire, and particularly after he
invasion of the Goths d. This style of building; was brought over into
Britain by the priests who converted our Saxon ancestors to the
Christian faith: Wilfred bishop of York and afterward of Hexham, and
Biscop abbot of Weremouth, both of them luminaries of the seventh
century, are celebrated for the zeal and intelligence with which they
cultivated it: and several specimens of architecture, by no means
contemptible, appear to have been produced in the era of the Saxonse.
The complaints which we read of the destruction of monasteries by the
Danes are a proof both of the number and importance of these edifices.
Alfred however, who checked the progress of the Danes, is said to have
introduced some improvements into the architecture previously practised;
and, under the early princes of the Norman race, the elder Gothic was
carried to the utmost degree of excellence it ever attained.
The characteristic marks of the elder Gothic are the massiveness of its
pillars, and the circular form given to its arches. The churches built
by Wilfred and Biscop appear to have been of a simple quadrangular
form,. Uttle rounded at the eastern end, and composed of a nave, with
two side ailes divided from the nave on each side by a line of columns.
In the age of Alfred an addition was made to this plan, of a transept,
or crossbuilding, intersecting the whole; and of towers, erected for the
purpose of receiving the large and ponderous bells which it now first
became the custom to affix in places of religious worship The Normans
made no essential alteration In this plan but they built their more
considerable religious edifices on a much larger scale than the Saxons,
and elevated their roofs to a much greater height; so that, while the
eminent Saxon churches were usually finished in five or six years, it
seldom happened that the Norman prelates were not obliged to bequeath
the completion of their designs to the pious care of their successors. A
further consequence of the enlarged plan also was, that the walls were
made more solid, and the pillars more ponderous; and there can be need
of little argument to convince any reflecting observer, that an increase
of size, and height, and mass, will as essentially change the impression
of any building upon the spectator, as the substitution of a totally
different species of architecture. The Normans were incredibly expensive
and zealous in their passion for sacred edifices; and accordingly we
find that all our cathedrals, and most of our abbey-churches and an
innumerable multitude of parochial ones, were either wholly rebuilt or
greatly improved within less than a century after the conquest.
Such are the principal facts which offer themselves to our observation
in the history of the elder Gothic. The rage for religious architecture
however which marked these times, had the further effect of engendering
in the minds of those who studied it a totally different species of
building, called the latter Gothic. Much dispute has arisen, and many
hypotheses have been formed as to the origin of this style; and, while
some have derived it from Asia through the medium of the crusaders1, and
others from the Morescoes in Spain, there have not been wanting writers
who, misled by the ambiguity of the name, have ascribed it to the Gothic
conquerors of Rome k, though in reality it did not exist till some
centuries after the name of Goth had perished in Europe. But, beside the
total want of evidence in support of every one of these hypotheses, it
has been well observed that the gradual steps by which we can perceive
it to have arisen demonstrate it to have been the genuine offspring of
the western world. If it had been imported from any other quarter of the
globe, we might reasonably have expected it to have shown itself in full
perfection among us at once. The first symptoms of its existence in
Europe were in this island; and there seems therefore to be some ground
for regarding it as the invention of the Normans, and for adding it as
one more feature to that elevated, enterprising and capable character,
by which they shone with such distinguished lustre amidst the darkness
of the middle ages.
The period of greatest prosperity of the elder Gothic was during the
space of a century immediately after the Norman conquest. The latter
Gothic took its rise in the middle of the twelfth century, appeared in
great splendour during the thirteenth, and continued to be the ruling
style, with such variations as are incident to all human designs, to the
time of the reformation. The great characteristic of the latter Gothic
is the pointed arch: beside which it is distinguished by the slenderness
of its pillars, the vaultings of its roofs formed by the successive
intersections of curves, and the prominent buttresses on the outside of
its walls. An ingenious writer on this subject has ascribed the
invention of the pointed arch to Henry of Blois bishop of Winchester,
brother to king Stephen. About the same time with the invention of this
style of architecture, came into practice the use of painted glass in
the windows, producing the happiest and most solemn effect in the inside
of their buildings; and of spires and pinnacles, contributing in a high
degree to their ornament without0. The greatest improvement which
afterward took place, was that, while, in the reign of Henry III. and
the commencement of the latter Gothic, the windows were long and narrow,
in the reign of Edward II. were introduced those large east and west
windows, which, with their transparent representations of apostles,
saints and martyrs, form one of the most striking and impressive
ornaments of our English collegiate churches and cathedrals. The latter
Gothic had always a strong propensity to embellishment; and the longer
it continued, (he more glaring did this propensity become: so that in
the fifteenth century, its delicate fret-work, and decorations like
embroidery, if they did not calm and awe the soul, had at least an
obvious operation in astonishing and bewildering the sense. The style of
building here described may perhaps with sufficient propriety retain the
name of the latter Gothic, since it was engrafted, as a real or supposed
improvement, upon that species of architecture which attained its
permanent character during the period when the Goths had gained their
highest degree of ascendancy in Italy and other portions of Europe.
Such were some of the objects which were so numerous in the time of
Chaucer, and were regarded with so high a degree of veneration, that
they could not without glaring injustice be omitted in a review of the
different appearances by which his youthful mind was modified and
impressed. He had an opportunity of contemplating both the orders of
architecture here spoken of in the fullest excellence they ever attuned.
The generality of English cathedrals were in the elder taste; and the
latter Gothic had attained a sufficient degree of attention and
popularity, to enable it to present very numerous specimens to the eye
of the youthful poet.
Since the time of Chaucer and the period of the re- CHAP.VIIl formation,
the study of Grecian architecture has been revived; and it has not
failed to excite and engross the commendations of the connoisseurs and
the learned. It undoubtedly possesses many advantages over the
architecture of our Gothic ancestors. It is infinitely more graceful,
beautiful and sweet; its symmetry is more exact, and its simplicity more
perfect; it has a more finished character; it is highly congenial to a
tasteful, a refined and a polished mind.
But, in spite of these recommendations, the edifices of our ancestors
may boldly present themselves, and challenge the comparison. They are
more religious. They posses infinitely more power to excite the
passions, and generate an enthusiastic spirit. We admire more the
Grecian style of building; we feel more from the Gothic. The, Grecian is
like the poetry of an Augustan age; it is harmonious, mellowed,
uniformly majestic, and gently persuasive. The Gothic is like the poetry
of a ruder and more daring period. The artist does not stoop to conform
himself to elaborate rules; he yields to the native suggestions of his
sublime and untutored fancy; he astonishes the observer and robs him of
himself; and the heart of man acknowledges more occasions of sympathy,
of affection and feeling in his productions, than in the laboured and
accurate performances of a more enlightened age.
The cause of this advantage on the side of the Gothic style is partly
the bolder dimensions, of the pillars in the early Gothic, of the height
of the roof in the latter Gothic length in both. The uniformity too of
the columns and arches produces an artificial infinite in the mind of
the spectator. All that the eye can take in at once, however great and
magnificent, quickly produces satiety; but, when the sight has wandered
along the vast and unterminable extent of the nave of an ancient
cathedral, and then discovers two parallel ailes of equal length and
magnificence with the nave itself, after which it is gradually led to
the cross ailes and other compartments of the stupendous edifice, it is
impossible that the mind should not experience a degree of elevation and
delight, which scarcely any other production of human art can generate.
Add to these causes the solemn gloom which pervades these ve. nerable
structures, and the glowing effect, blending with the gloom, which is
produced by the rich and transparent colours of the windows; and no one
can any longer reasonably wonder that the Gothic style of building
should exercise so commanding a power over every pious mind, and every
lover of the sublime, the mysterious and the awful, of all that plunges
the soul in boundless reverie, and leads us to an inexplicable
communication with the invisible, the infinite, and the dead.
Having in some degree compared the Grecian and the fared. Gothic
architecture, it is natural for us toâ indulge in a brief comparison of
the two different classes of the Gothic style. They may most decisively
be estimated by an inspection of both; but, as I cannot lead every one
of my readers into an old English cathedral of each of these kinds, let
us endeavour to visit them in fancy, and by that means to calculate the
impression of each. The latter Gothic is undoubtedly a â light, neat,
and elegant form of building; but in these qualities it cannot perhaps
enter into a strict competition with the Grecian style. Its slender
pillars may possess various excellences, but they are certainly not
magnificent; and the shafts by which the pillars are frequently
surrounded, have an insignificant air, suggesting to us an idea of
fragility, and almost reminding us of the humble vehicle through which
an English or German rustic inhales the fumes of the Indian weed. The
tendency of the latter Gothic, as has been already said, is to excess of
ornament; and some of its structures, tombs for example, which belong to
the century immediately before the reformation, have rather the
appearance of toys to decorate a ladyâs chamber, than of monuments, the
figure of which should excite ideas of duration, and generate in the
mind a solemn and an awful sentiment.
The elder Gothic is undoubtedly free from all the faults which have been
here pointed out in its immediate successor. The gigantic pillars, the
substantial roofs, and the massy walls of a cathedral built in this
style, at once strike us with the idea of an edifice coeval with the
world. There is a sumptuous and proud magnificence in a cathedral such
as that of Durham, which infinitely surpasses the light and pleasant
style of the cathedrals of the thirteenth century. The expanded
dimension of its parts compels us to shrink into our littleness, and to
feel as if we were rather among those grand, fantastic scenes which are
produced by the stupendous sports of nature, than among the works of
human art. It must have been a cathedral of this sort which the poet had
in his mind when he penned that admirable description:
No, all is hushâd, and still as death â âTis
dreadful! â
How reverend is the face of this tall pile;
Whose ancient pillars rear their marble heads
To bear aloft its archâd and ponderous roof,
By its own weight made stedfast and immoveable,
Looking tranquillity!
The latter Gothic however possesses many excellences purely its own.
Such are its spires and pinnacles; its painted glass; and its immense
windows east and west, adapted to exhibit the full effect of this art.
Those buildings in which these advantages should be employed, Without
any other deviation from the style of architecture in vogue in the reign
of Henry I, would perhaps prove the most perfect specimen of a religious
edifice which the mind of man has yet invented.
There is an exquisite passage in the writings of bishop Warburton, in
which, if that extraordinary genius has indulged a little too
exuberantly the impulse of his fancy, he at least has illustrated with
great happiness and beauty the spirit of the modern Gothic style.
âHaving been ?accustomed,â says he, u during the gloom of paganism, to
worship the Deity in Groves (a practice common to all nations) When
their new Religion required covered edifices, they [the Gothic
conquerors of Spain] ingeniously projected to make them resemble Groves,
as nearly as the distance of architecture would permit. Hence no
attentive observer ever viewed a regular Avenue of wellgrown trees
intermixing their branches over head, but it presently put him in mind
of the long Visto through a Gothic Cathedral; or ever entered one of the
larger and more elegant Edifices of this kind, but it represented to his
imagination an Avenue of trees. Under this idea of so extraordinary a
species of Architecture, all the irregular transgressions against art,
all the monstrous offences against nature, disappear; every thing has
its reason, every thing is in order, and an harmonious Whole arises from
the studious application of means proper and proportioned to the end.
For could the Arches be otherwise than pointed, when the Workman was to
imitate that curve which branches make by their intersection with one
another? Or could the Columns be otherways than split into distinct
shafts, when they were to represent the Stems of a group of Trees? On
the same principle was formed the spreading ramification of the
stone-work in the windows, and the stained glass in the interstices; the
one being to represent the branches, and the other the leaves of an
opening Grove; and both concurring to preserve that gloomy light
inspiring religious horror. Lastly, we see the reason of their studied
aversion to apparent solidity in these stupendous masses, deemed so
absurd by men accustomed to the apparent as well as real strength of
Grecian Architecture. Had it been only a wanton exercise of the Artistâs
skill, to shew he could give real strength without the appearance of
any, we might indeed admire his superior science, but we must needs
condemn his ill judgment. But when one considers, that this surprising
lightness was necessary to complete the execution of his idea of a rural
place of worship, one cannot sufficiently admire the ingenuity of the
contrivance*.â
The architecture of the habitations and castles of our antcestors is
less calculated to afford instances of any particular order of building,
capable of vying in some respects with the orders of ancient Greece,
than the architecture of their religious edifices; but it is of the
utmost importance as tending to illustrate their modes of living and the
temper of their minds. This subject comes even more immediately home to
human feelings than the preceding. The sight of a ruin takes a stronger
hold upon our fancy, than that of a complete building even of the same
age. A ruin suggests to us forcibly the idea of men and scenes passed
away, and entirely removed from the theatre of the world, which a
complete building does not. The devotion of one age much more nearly
resembles the devotion of another, than the habits, the customs and the
manners; and therefore can never impress the mind with that notion of
individual and contradistinguished existence, which we derive from the
private life of other timejs. Add to which; though devotion is a
striking and interesting sentiment, it is a sentiment which less
forcibly seizes upon our sympathies than some others. In devotion the
worshipper endeavours to rise out of himself, and to put off human
weaknesses and frailties, and consequently many of the most
characteristic marks of our nature; but, when we see the ancient baron
in the midst of his family, or surrounded by his dependants, personating
the state and munificence of a little sovereign, presiding at the genial
board, or leading the exercises of his regiment of followers, it is then
that we seem to ourselves completely to understand him, and it is then
that we trace all his motions and treasure all his words with the
deepest attention, and a perfect recognition of what he is. These are
the reasons which invite the enquirer after the life of Chaucer to some
consideration of ancient castles.
One of the most conspicuous features of the century immediately
succeeding the conquest, was that every considerable baron was anxious
to build for himself a residence, formed on ideas of military defence,
and capable of resisting the attacks of a besieging army. Such
fortresses were rare previously to the accession of William; and it was
owing to this among various causes that, when he had struck his decisive
blow at the battle of Hastings, the whole kingdom seemed immediately to
surrender at discretion. A different policy however was almost
instantaneously introduced. William the Conqueror was himself
exceedingly partial to the art of fortification, and is described as
âvexing and wearying the nationââ with the erection of castles. He first
parceled the country into a complete feudal monarchy, of which scheme of
policy some essays only had previously existed among us and, as the
feudal system was considerably more military in its character than that
which had preceded, this circumstance also naturally led to the
multiplication of fortresses. Add to this the progress of civilisation ;
for men inevitably become more anxious about the means of defence, in
proportion as they feel they have a larger property and more valuable
possessions to defend. These, combined with the other considerations
mentioned in the beginning of the chapter) led to the construction of
that surprising number of castles which are related to have sprung up in
the reign of Stephen.
Few things can lead more directly to our understanding the notions and
modes of life of our ancestors, than a digested survey of that sort of
building which they denominated a castle, and under the protection of
which the great English barons, for more than a century after the
conquest, held their usual residence.
The word Castle, castellum a diminutive from the Latin castrum,
originally signified a little camp; and the dimensions and plan of the
ancient castles are in sufficient correspondence with this idea. The
projector ordinarily chose for the site of his edifice a rising ground
in the neighbourhood of a river. Having marked out the limits of his
inclosure, he then surrounded it with a wall, ten or twelve feet high,
flanked with towers, and with a narrow projection near the top on the
inside, where the defenders might place themselves for the convenience
of reconnoitring, or of using their weapons. Immediately before this
wall on every side a ditch was hollowed, which was filled with water
where it could be procured, and formed what we call the moat of the
castle. A bridge was built over this ditch, or a draw-bridge set up on
the inside, to be let down as occasion required.
Another essential part of an ancient castle was the barbican, or
watch-tower, always an outwork, and frequently placed beyond the ditch,
at the external foot of the bridge.
In many castles there was a second wall, of considerably smaller circuit
than the first, which was in like manner flanked with towers. In this
case it was not unusual for various works; barracks, a well, a chapel,
an artificial mount, and even sometimes a monastery; to be placed
between the first and second walls. A second ditch with its draw-bridge
was sometimes introduced.
The most important part however of that species of fortification, called
an ancient castle, was the keep, or house of residence, in which the
baron of former times held his state. The walls and towers before
enumerated were a sort of extrinsic defence, from which, when the first
and second walls were taken by the besiegers, the garrison retreated to
the mansion, where they made their last stand. The keep, in the sort of
fortifications erected in England previously to the conquest, seems to
have been generally, if not always, built on the top of an artificial
mount, whose summit was nearly of the same dimensions as the plane of
the edifice it was destined to receive. From this circumstance it is
supposed to have derived its Latin and French appellations, dunjo,
donjon, the etymology of which is ascribed by the glossarists to an old
Saxon and French word, bun, dune, a hill.
Very soon after the conquest however, great improvements were made in
the art of fortification, which are principally ascribed to Gundulph
bishop of Rochester, architect of the White Tower in the Tower of
London, and of Rochester casde. So long as the artificial mount was
retained, the keep was frequently placed in the exterior wall of the
fortification; but, when this contrivance was laid aside as operose and
unnecessary, the keep was for the most part removed into the centre of
the building. In the construction of the artificial mount, particular
attention was given to the rendering it steep, and its sum. The portal,
except in one point, inaccessible. The portal therefore, in this plan of
building, was placed on the ground-floor. The expedient introduced by
Gundulph, with the view of superseding the use of the artificial mount,
consisted in carrying up the portal to the second or third story, and
leaving no place for entrance on the level of the ground; the form of
the keep being commonly square, and the walls ten or twelve feet in
thickness.
In this plan the entrance was by a spacious stone staircase on the
outside of the building. This stair-case frequently went in part round
two sides of the keep. After having ascended a certain number of steps,
there was a strong gate placed, which must be forced by an enemy before
he could proceed further. He then came to what might be called the
landing-place, where was an interval, with a draw-bridge to be let down
on occasion. This drawbridge being passed, he next encountered a second
strong gate, which was usually the entrance of a tower of smaller height
and dimensions, forming a vestibule to the principal tower, or keep.
This portal, beside its gates, was defended by a herse, or portcullis, a
machine precisely in the form of a harrow, composed of beams of wood
crossing each other at right angles, with strong iron spikes projecting
from their points of intersection. This machine was fixed as a slider in
grooves of stone hollowed for that purpose, and was worked up and down
by a windlass securely contained within the walls of the keep. It was
extremely heavy; and, beside the spikes already mentioned, was furnished
with other spikes in a perpendicular direction for the purpose of
striking into the ground or floor beneath. The entrance of the keep
itself was by a further portal, separating the principal tower from the
appendant one, and provided in like manner with strong gates and a
portcullis. The grand entrance is variously placed in the castles of
this period, in some on the second, and in others on the third story.
The keep usually consisted of five floors: one below the surface, which
was commonly the prison; the groundfloor, appropriated for the reception
of stores; the second story, for the accommodation of the garrison; the
third, state-rooms for the habitation of the lord; and the fourth,
bed-chambers.
The accommodations of these times, though stately according to the ideas
then prevailing, were such as would appear to a modern observer slender
and inconvenient. ? Guildford castle, where king John in one instance
celebrated his birth-day, had only one room on a floor. The usual number
of principal rooms, in that floor which the possessor of the castle
appropriated to his own convenience, did not exceed two. The garrison,
who occupied the story immediately beneath, were crowded into a small
and able compass, and slept on trusses of straw. The apartments were
also very inadequately lighted. Those below the story upon which the
state-rooms were placed, received the beams of the sun only through
chinks or loops, extremely narrow, and cautiously constructed in such a
manner as to afford no advantage to besiegers. In the state-rooms there
were windows; but generally small in proportion to the size of the
apartments, often but one in a room, broken through the thickness of the
wall and protected by an internal arch, and placed at a considerable
height from the level of the floor. The state-rooms however, though few
in number, were not small; those in Rochester castle, which may be taken
as a medium, were fifty feet in length by twenty feet broad. The
thickness of the walls, usually amounting to twelve feet, was such as to
afford room for various constructions within the substance of them, such
as wells, galleries of communication, &c. The wells constructed in the
walls, some of them, included circular stair-cases, and others were left
open, being destined for the purpose of raising, to the top of the
building, in the times of siege, beams and other materials for the
making or repairing of military machines. These machines were usually
placed upon leads and a platform, contrived for the purpose, above the
highest story of the keep. Wells for water were also sunk in some part
of the building, but not in the substance of the walls, with
conveniences for raising the water to any story of the edifice. Another,
almost universal, contrivance, was that of a door, intended as a
sally-port, raised several feet above the surface of the ground, but
with no external stair leading to it, which was framed to favour
unexpected attacks upon the besiegers, yet with every imaginable
precaution to prevent the use of it being turned against the besieged.
The chimneys were by loops in the walls, similar to those contrived for
the admission of light into the lower apartments.
Another artifice frequently introduced in the erection of Subterraneous
ancient castles was the formation of a subterraneous passage, the
commencement of which was in the keep itself, while the other extremity
was at some distance without the walls, being intended, like the door
last mentioned, for a sally-port, enabling the garrison to issue forth
upon the besiegers by surprise. It was by such a passage that Edward
III. surprised his mother and Roger Mortimer her paramour in Nottingham
castle. The transaction is thus described by Stow. âThere was a
parliament holden at Nottingham, where Roger Mortimer was in such glorie
and honour, that it was without all comparison. No man durst name him
anie other than earle of March: a greater route of men waited at his
heeles, than on the kinges person: he would suffer the king to rise to
him, and would walke with the king equally, step by step, and cheeke by
cheeke, never preferring the king, but would forgoe himself with his
officers. Which things troubled much the kings friends, to wit, William
Montacute, and other, who for the safegarde of the king, sware
themselves to be true to his person, and drew unto them Robert de
Holland, who had of long time beene keeper of the castle, unto whom all
secret corners of the same were known. Then upon a certain night, the
king lying without the castle, both he and his friends were brought by
torch-light through a secret way under ground, beginning far off from
the sayde castle, till they came even to the queenes chamber, which they
by chance found open: they therefore being armed with naked swords in
their hands, went forwards, leaving the king also armed without the
doore of the chamber, least that his mother shoulde espie him: they
which entred in, slewâ immediately two of the attendants. ,â From
thence, they went towarde the queene mother, whom they found with the
earle of March readie to have gone to bedde: and having taken the sayde
earle, they ledde him out into the hall, after whom the queene followed,
crying, Bel filzt bel jtkt ayes pitie de gentil Mortimer, â Good sonne,
good sonne, take pittie upon gentle Mortimerfor she suspected that her
sonne was there, though she saw him noty.â palaces and In the sort of
castles which have just been described the baronage of England held
their principal residence for a century after the conquest. The
animosity which subsisted between the Saxon inhabitants and their Norman
conquerors, and the disputes which continually arose about the
succession to the crown, held the country for so long a time in a state
of uncertainty and alarm. It was not till the reign of Henry II. that
England attained any considerable degree of tranquillity, which,
cooperating with the improvement of arts and the increase of knowledge,
gradually led to a greater acquaintance with the conveniences of life.
This proved the source of two kinds of revolution in the methods of
building. In the first place, a nobleman of high rank and great property
begata to be desirous of possessing two sorts of habitations of a
totally different nature; castles for strength and the support of his
independence, and palaces for luxury. The second revolution is of a more
curious sort, and derives its character from that principle of
association in man, by which the mind almost always shows itself wedded
to rooted prejudices and customs of an ancient date. If was thus that,
after such castles as those brought to perfection by Gundulph ceased to
be requisite for the sake of security, the man of birth, who had been
brought up under their roofs from his infancy, yet retained a fond
partiality for this style of building, and was led uselessly and
discordantly to mix something of the appearance of fortification, in the
defenceless and more commodious edifices with which he now adorned his
country.
Both these points are illustrated by what we know of the private life of
John of Gaunt duke of Lancaster, the principal patron and encourager of
Chaucer. One of the dignities vested in this nobleman was that of earl
of Lincoln, in virtue of which he held Lincoln castle for one of his
residences. He found however the situation of this castle too bleak and
inhospitable for the winter season; and, prompted by this motive, built
himself a palace of residence for these inclement months in the lower
part of the city. The same celebrated personage also, having comfc into
possession of Kenelworth castle, the principal seat of the famous Simon
Montford earl of Leicester, rebuilt it almost from its foundation, on a
more enlarged and commodious plan than that which had characterised it
in the time of his predecessors.
Considerable light may be thrown upon the manner of living of our
ancestors, from a careful examination of the remains of their once proud
places of residence. Their palaces and manor-houses always included one
spacious apartment, where the lord was accustomed frequently to dine
with his guests and the whole host of his retainers: such was originally
Westminster Hall in the old palace of Westminster, and such was the part
which is yet standing of the palace of our ancient English sovereigns at
Eltham. Many tables were set out in these halls for the reception of a
great multitude of guests ; and, instead of the second and third tables
maintained at present in the houses of our more opulent nobility in
separate apartments, the whole body of those who were fed at the lordâs
expence sat down at once, in the times we are considering, in the great
hall; the servants often dining in the same room, when their superiors
had been already supplied and satisfied. Distinctions of a gross sort,
but sufficiently adapted to the apprehension of the age, were introduced
to distinguish the gradations of rank in this miscellaneous assembly.
The whole room was paved with free-stone, or sometimes had for its floor
the bare earth, hardened by the continual tread of feet to the
consistency of stone. At the upper end was a raised floor of planks,
where the lord and his family with his most distinguished guests were
seated, called the dais, from the French word ais, or the Latin assis,
with the preposition prefixed, signifying, of planks. On some occasions,
and in public royal entertainments, there were several of these dais,
elevated one above the other. Another mode of distinction was by a large
salt-cellar placed in the middle of a long table, while a finer sort of
bread and the choicer wines were never circulated below the salt-cellar.
Yet in these which may on some accounts be styled ruder times, and with
distinctions to our conception so insulting, there was often an
affection between the higher and lower parties in the connection, which
is now almost forgotten. The dignity of the lord was kind, considerate
and fatherly, placing its pride in benefits, and not in oppression; and
the submission of the inferior, which had also its pride, the pride of
fidelity, the pride of liberal service and inviolate attachment, was a
submission less conscious of terror, than of reverence and filial
esteem.
At the lower end of the great hall was usually a screen-work, hiding
from the persons sitting at the table the door of entrance and the
passages to the offices. Over this screen was a gallery for the
minstrelsy, and behind it, in front, the passages just mentioned, and on
one side the door of entrance. The passages led variously to the
buttery, the kitchen, the wine-cellar, and the bedchambers. Annexed to
the buttery, at a greater distance* were the bake-house and the
brew-house; and in the kitchen, to which the passage was by a continual
descent, with a hatchway in the middle, were vast fire-places with irons
for a prodigious number of spits, stoves, great double ranges of
dressers, large chopping-blocks, a massy table hollowed into a sort of
basons to serve as kneading troughs, and every accommodation for
preparing food for an army of guests.
These ancient palaces had also a number of other characteristics, which
seize the imagination, and have lately been called up with great success
by the inventors of fictitious narratives. Such are their trap-doors for
descent; their long-protracted galleries; their immense suite of rooms
opening one beyond the other; their chapels constituting a part of the
mansion, by means of which the solitary explorer of the building
unexpectedly descends among the monuments of the dead and the crumbling
memorials of departed religion; and their arras hangings, with
ill-contrived and rattling doors concealed behind them.
METALLIC â ARTS â EMBROIDERY â MUSIC.
There are few truths more striking in the history of human affairs than
that things which may be hurtful and injurious in one stage of society,
had probably their period in a different stage when they were eminently
advantageous and salutary. No speculation can do less credit to the
discernment of its authors, than that which, examining institutions and
practices in the abstract, decides indiscriminately that this is good
and universally desirable, while that is fitted only to be the plague of
mankind. Every thing has its place; and it would be difficult to find
any cause influencing the mind of man in society, however now perhaps
antiquated, insipid or poisonous, which was not at one period genial and
nourishing, restraining the ferocious and savage passions, or forwarding
and maturing the fairest offspring of intellect. Thus, perhaps the
secularised and degenerate religion established by Constantine and his
successors contributed to bring on the darkness and ignorance of the
middle ages: yet that very religion acting upon the barbarous usurpers
of the Roman empire tended to keep alive some of the arts of a more
cultivated period, and to prevent the darkness from becoming universal
and complete.
What has been called the worship of images, or, more accurately
speaking, the attempt to render more defined and habitual the
intellectual conceptions of the multitude by the assistance of a gross
and sensible representation, was the invention of the dark ages of the
church. This was natural and just: without some contrivance to act
powerfully upon the senses, there could not perhaps in such ages be any
religion. This also tended, not merely to keep alive, but to raise into
an object of general attention and request, the practice of some sort of
sculpture and some sort of painting.
Our Saxon ancestors, when they issued from the forests painting of
Scandinavia, had their images. Thor, Woden, and the other Gods of their
mythology, were each personated by their solid and substantial
representatives. Sometimes perhaps these vicarious divinities were as
rudely fashioned as the God Terminus among the Romans: at others they
were endowed by their creators with something of the human formâ. When
the Saxons were converted to the catholic faith this idolatry was
abolished; but it was not long before the Runic idols were succeeded by
images and representations of a different nature. Crucifixes, and
statues of the virgin Mary and the saints, were essential instruments of
religious worship in these ages of the church. Nor was the art of
painting neglected. Biscop abbot of Wcremouth in particular, who has
already been mentioned as one of the great improvers of architecture in
the seventh century, made five journeys to Rome for the purpose of
procuring books,
In Verstegan [Restitution of Decayed Intelligence] there is a
description of those deities with their attributes in the prints with
which it is accompanied must however be regarded as purely imaginary and
ornaments for the religious edifices he founded. Bede CHAP. IX. informs
us that he adorned his church of St. Peter at ===== Weremouth with
pictures of the virgin mother of God* of the twelve apostles, of the
events of the gospel history, and of the visions of the Apocalypse, with
which the walls appear to have been covered. This was done, as Bede
expresses it, that all the persons who entered the building, though
ignorant of letters, might be impressed with the amiable aspect of
Christ and his saints, and instructed in the contents of the sacred
volume. The church of the monastery of St. Paul, which Biscop built at
Gyrwi or Yarrow, was also decorated in a similar mannerb.
As the veneration for images and demand for the pictures of sacred
subjects increased, the Saxons, the clergy in particular, studied the
art of manufacturing these commodities for themselves. The celebrated
St. Dunstan, among his other accomplishments, was applauded for his
skill in the art of paintingc. This was in the tenth century. At the
same period we read of portraits, which were so common as for the same
person to be painted several timesd; and of historical compositions
representing the actions of persons of merit. Edclfleda, a Saxon and
duchess dowager of Northumberland, had a curtain painted with the heroic
achievements of her deceased lord, to perpetuate the memory of his
integrity and virtuese.
The monks in the different convents were necessarilypersons of great
leisure, and it is not wonderful that they applied themselves with
perseverance and assiduity to the more delicate and refined departments
of the mechanic arts. Among the legacies of Charlemagne, who died in the
year 814, are mentioned three tables of silver, of extraordinary
magnitude and weight. One of them was square, and enchased with a
representation of the city of Constantinople; a second was round, and
exhibited in the same manner the effigies of the city of Rome; and the
third, which was larger and more beautiful than the rest, contained
within three circles a representation of the whole world, in workmanship
exquisitely minute and finef. "Whether these tables were constructed by
the command of the emperor, or were the remains of a greater antiquity,
we are not told; but they may at least be supposed to have excited an
emulation of skill in the minds of the spectators. Accordingly we meet
with various instances of a similar ingenuity in the English nation. St.
Dunstan is no less celebrated by his biographer for dexterity in
engraving, and manufacturing various saintly trinkets, than for his
proficiency in the art of paintingg; and the excellence of the English
artists in these particulars was so notorious, that the mode of
decorating the curious caskets, adorned with gold, silver and precious
stones, in which the relics of the saints were kept, seems in these
times to have been styled by way of distinction opus Anglicumh. The same
commendation was acquired by the natives of England in the practice of
embroidery . A very curious monument of the state of this art at the
time of the Norman conquest is the celebrated tapestry of Bayeux, which
still exists, and is publicly exhibited at stated periods in the
cathedral of that city. It is a web of linen, nearly two feet in
breadth, and two hundred and forty-two in length, embroidered with the
history of that memorable expedition, from the embassy of Harold to the
Norman court in 1065 till his death in the following year. The scenes of
this busy period are successively exhibited, and consist of many hundred
figures of men, horses, beasts, birds, trees, houses, castles and
churches, with inscriptions over them, explanatory of their meaning and
history k. This work is understood to have been performed under the
direction of Matilda consort to William I, and was not improbably
executed by the hands of English women, whose superiority in
performances f this kind was then universally acknowledged.
The revolution produced in this country by the Norman conquest was no
less favourable .to the progress of the arts of sculpture and painting,
than to that of architecture. As the Normans built more costly and
magnificent structures, it was to be expected that they should be
sumptuous and diligent in adorning them. The painted cielings executed
by the orders of Lanfranc archbishop of Canterbury, and Aldred
archbishop of York, contemporaries of William the Conqueror, in certain
cathedrals and churches, are mentioned in terms of warm approbation by
the contemporary historians1. Portraits, supposed to be taken from the
life, of William the Conqueror, his queen Matilda, and his two sons
Robert and William, the latter being yet a stripling, were painted upon
the outside of the .walls of the chapel of St. Stephen's Abbey at Caen,
and were destroyed on occasion of some alterations made in that building
in the year 1 700 m. An extraordinary story is told by William of
Malmesburyn, which, if worthy of credit, would imply that
portrait-painting had at this time, at least .in one essential point,
arrived at considerable perfection. Anselm archbishop of Canterbury
performed a journey to Rome in the year 1097. Urban II. was at that time
pope, and Guibert antipope. The counsellors of Guibert were impressed
with an opinion that Anselm was travelling with an immense sum of money,
drawn from the fertile province of England, and destined to support
Urban in' his pretensions. Under this persuasion they determined to
waylay and plunder him. The pious archbishop however received
information of their plot, and avoided the ambuscade. Guibcrt, incensed
at his escape, projected to intercept him in his return, and for this
purpose dispatched a painter to Rome to make his picture, that, whatever
disguise he might assume, it might be impossible for him again to elude
the pontifical bravoes. The usual interposition of providence however
attended the holy man; intelligence was given him of what had passed,
and he took his journey by a different route.
During the preaching of the crusade under the same pope, one of the
artifices employed to rouse and exasperate the godly to engage in the
expedition, was the transmitting certain pictures into the different
regions of Christendom, and exposing them to the view of the people. One
of these represented Christ, with his usual symbols and tokens, tied to
a stake,, and scourged by an Arabian, supposed to be Mahomet, or, as he
was then named in the West, Mahound. Another displayed a Saracen
champion, mounted on his war-horse, and trampling upon the holy
sepulchre, his horse appearing at the same time in the act of staling
upon this mysterious receptacle of a departed God.
Another invention brought to considerable excellence at this period was
that of illuminating manuscripts, or surrounding the title-page, and
capital letters at the commencement of certain paragraphs, with
paintings. The colours employed in these illuminations are of singular
brilliancy and lustre: they are adorned with a profusion of gilding; and
the workmanship is frequently executed with surprising minuteness and
perseverance. It was natural that the solitary and sedentary monk in his
cloister, one of whose employments often was the transcribing of books,
should strain his eyes, and exhaust his hours, in this delicate and
microscopical industry. A collection has been made, from these sources,
of the miniature portraits of all the kings and several of the queens of
England, from Edward the Confessor to Henry VII, together with many
eminent persons of both sexesp. It is obvious however that little stress
is to be laid upon such portraits, respecting which we may reasonably
believe that the persons they represent never sat to the delineator.
Arts of working In metallic works, tapestry and embroidery, the progress
and was somewhat similar to that which was made in the art of painting.
Matthew Paris, who composed the Lives of the Abbots of St. Albans, has
furnished us with several important anecdotes on this subject. Richard,
abbot of St. Albans in the reign of William Rufus, gave to his convent,
together with various other ornaments, a tapestry in which was figured
the martyrdom of their patron-saint "J. Robert, his successor in the
reign of Henry II, presented to pope Adrian on his accession to the
papal chair three mitres and a pair of sandals of admirable workmanship,
with which the pope was so much pleased that, refusing the other
oblations which this dignitary offered him, he yet condescended to
accept of these, Adrian, understanding the superiority of the English in
metallic arts, further commissioned Robert to procure him two
candlesticks, delicately manufactured of silver and gold, that should be
set before the high altar of St. Peters at Rome; which opmmission the
abbot, to the great satisfaction of the pope, speedily after performed.
Simon the next abbot, a learned man and a devoted friend to Thomas of
Becket, was peculiarly munificent in gifts to his monastery. He oaused a
most sumptuous shrine to be made for receiving the relics of St. Alban,
which was several years in completing. In the front of this shrine was
represented in alto relievo the decollation of the saint, and on the
other sides the events of his life, which formed as it were the earnest
and preparation of his martyrdom. The lid presented to the spectator two
oblique surfaces: on that to the east was carved the crucifixion, with
the Virgin and St. John attending, the whole being set round with a
frame of precious stones: and on the surface to the west appeared the
Virgin with the infant Christ on her knees, seated upon a throne, and
profusely adorned with jewels. Each corner of the shrine was surmounted
with a turret, with windows beautifully carved, and roofs of chrystal.
The same abbot gave to his monastery a large chalice of gold wrought
with flowers and foliage of the most exquisite workmanship; and a vessel
for containing the finest gold, and adorned with gems of inestimable,
value, in which nevertheless the workmanship excelled the materials:
this vessel was suspended over the high altar.
We shall be little surprised at finding some of these arts carried to a
higher degree of perfection, and many of their productions more
elaborately executed, than perhaps from so remote a period of society we
might have been inclined to suspect, if we recollect the pride, the
wealth and ostentation of the clergy of these times, and the innumerable
multitude of persons, secular and regular, of which their body
consisted. The mistaken piety of a superstitious age is computed to have
surrendered into their hands one third of the rent-roll of England;
their leisure was great, their science infinitely superior to that of
their contemporaries, and their ambition immeasurable. They planted the
island with the most beautiful and magnificent religious structures;
and, having done so, it was natural that they should adorn them with
equal prodigality and research. When we consider these men under every
point of view; how wise, how wealthy and how bountiful; that they
possessed themselves of every engine for afiecting the heart of man, and
that the heart of man was laid naked and defenceless beneath their hand;
the wonder is rather, that their operations were not more astonishing,
than that they did so much.
The reign of Henry III. was still more favourable to the imitative arts
than that of any of his predecessors; and this monarch, however
inglorious be the figure he makes CHAP. IX. amidst the turbulent spirits
of the thirteenth century, appears from his records to have cherished
with some anxiety the species of taste which then existed. Upward of
twenty royal warrants have been exhibited, containing various directions
for adorning with historical paintings his palaces of Winchester,
Woodstock, Windsor, Westminster and othersu. Among these we may remark
one dated in the year 1239, directing the wainscot of the king's chamber
in Winchester castle to be painted with the same histories and pictures
with which it had been painted before; whence we may infer that painting
the chambers of profane buildings was in use in England so long before
this period, as for the paintings to be already tarnished, and in want
of being renewed. This warrant, as well as several of the rest, is
directed to the sheriff of the county, and is understood to imply that
he was to impress painters, in the same manner as it was the custom of
these times to impress masons and other artificers; a circumstance which
has no great tendency to excite in us an idea of the improved and
refined state of the art. It has also been remarked that another of
these warrants, dated in the year 123Q, is so expressed as to imply that
the use of oil-colours was then known, an improvement vulgarly supposed
to have been introduced two centuries lateru. The subjects of these
pictures are chiefly from sacred writ; together with some from the
legends of the saints, as St. Christopher bearing Christ, and St. Edward
giving a ring from his finger to a stranger-pilgrim; and some from the
history of the crusades, which last particular is conjectured to have
occasioned one of the apartments in the old palace at Westminster to be
called the Jerusalem chamber.
The art of sculpture docs not seem to have obtained less encouragement
and countenance in this reign than that of painting. Matthew Paris
particularly celebrates Walter of Colchester, sacrist of the abbey of
St. Albans, whom he pronounces an incomparable artist, and declares that
he knew of no one equal to him that had lived before, nor did he believe
that an equal would ever come after him. His most finished performances
were to be found in the abbey of St. Albans, of which Matthew Paris was
a member.
It was from the latter part of the reign of Henry III, that what has
usually been called the revival of the arts in Italy dates its
commencement. Cimabué was born in the year 1240, and Giotto in the year
1276. All that is prior, in painting or sculpture, to the labours of the
first of these artists, may be considered as representative of monsters
rather than men, and has no countervailing merits to redeem its obvious
deformities y. It was useful and commendable in its day; it as
effectually swayed the mind and edified the soul as the more meritorious
productions of ancient or modern refinement are capable of doing; it
awakened the imagination and purified the intellect of its
contemporaries: but it has nothing, brilliancy of colour perhaps
excepted, which, even with every allowance for the rudeness of the
times, a cultivated taste can persuade itself to admire. Such at least
is the decision of artists and connoisseurs; the less disdainful temper
of a sound philosophy would perhaps be less peremptory and
indiscriminate in its judgment.
Nothing however is more unquestionable than the improvements made in the
imitative arts in Italy, in the latter part of the thirteenth and
commencement of the fourteenth century ; improvements which went on with
an almost uninterrupted progress till they terminated in the glorious
and sublime productions of Michel Agnolo and Raffaële. The amendment
which took place under Giotto is perhaps more conspicuous than in the
case of any other individual. The sharp hands and feet, the unbending
drapery, the unforeshortened figures, the shrivelled and unmuscular
limbs, the vacant countenance, and the total want of shadow, all of them
faults to a considerable degree imputable to bis predecessors, are each
remedied or diminished by him. His figures have some degree of freedom
and life; their members are often manly and strong; and the features are
to a surprising degree enlivened with expression and passion.
One of the most curious monuments of the state of the fine arts in
England in the time of Chaucer, was discovered in the year 1800, when
certain alterations were made in the apartment occupied by the lower
house of parliament, in consequence of the addition of one hundred
members from Ireland, by means of the union with that country. This
apartment was originally built by king Stephen, as a chapel for the
accommodation of himself and his successors, within the royal palace of
Westminster; and was dedicated by him to his patron saint, Stephen the
protomartyr. It was rebuilt, or rather finished with great magnificence,
by Edward III; who rendered it collegiate, and established a foundation
in it for one dean and twelve canons, beside vicars, choristers and
servitors, by a patent, dated 6 August 1348 This was one of the
establishments abolished at the reformation, and the chapel given as a
place of assembly to the lower house of parliament by Edward VI. In 1800
the wainscot with which the whole apartment was lined, was taken down,
and behind it were discovered on all sides the most magnificent
paintings, and die richest ornaments and gilding, which England in the
reign of Edward III. was able to produce. Though executed so long
before, they appeared in all their freshness, the gilding brilliant, and
the colours untarnished. These paintings appear to have been modelled in
a certain degree upon the improvements of Giotto, but with that
inferiority which is usually found in proportion as the exertions of any
art depart from the centre (which at that time, under the head of
painting, Was Italy) where that art is most successfully cultivated.
Extraordinary efforts appear to have been made, to render the paintings
in fresco on the walls of St. Stephen's Chapel, the most splendid and
complete that circumstances, and the state of the art of painting at
that time, would allow. A writ appears to have been directed to a
certain knight, authorising and empowering him to procure competent
artists for this great work: and, if artists who should be judged
competent could not be found in England, they were to be invited from
the continent; and, according to the mode of the times, to be
imprisoned, if refractory, till they should show themselves disposed to
apply the whole treasures of their skill to complete this monument of
the monarch's piety. The two principal painters finally employed are
understood to have been by name, John of , and Thomas of and the work,
which was begun in 1347, was not completed till 1379, the second year of
Richard II.
Among the pictures which had sustained the least injury from the hands
of the workmen employed, either on former occasions or in these last
repairs, two of the most observable were, a Nativity, with the adoration
of the shepherds, on one side of the high altar; and a representation of
the catastrophe of the family of Job, as described in the first chapter
of the history of that patriarch: " While his sons and his daughters
were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house, a great
wind came from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house,
and it fell upon the young men, and they died." The length of these
pictures was about three feet each, and the figures about sixteen inches
in height; so that there must have been a great number of similar pieces
painted on the different walls of the chapel. But, beside these sacred
histories, there was an infinite number of figures, above, below, and on
every side, of saints, angels, princes and heroes, with appropriate
inscriptions, and blazonry of arms. There was also, on the side of the
high altar opposite to the Nativity, but not in the corresponding place
{that was blank, the painting which had filled it being effaced), a
delineation of two royal personages, probably Edward III. and his queen
Philippa, as large, or nearly as large, as life. With these more serious
subjects were mixed, according to the manners of the times, several
ludicrous representations in a smaller size ; among them a cat hanging,
attended by other cats, apparently her executioners: this had probably
some satirical meaning which, at this distance of time, we are unable to
decipher.
In these pictures, as in the paintings of Giotto, though they exhibited
great improvements upon the delineations of former artists, there
appeared a continual violation, and" almost total ignorance, of the
principles of anatomy, proportion and perspective, with very little
knowledge of light and shadow, and what is called the harmony of colour.
The breach of perspective was so gross in the picture of the Nativity,
as for Joseph, who was in the back-ground, to be the largest figure,
while several in front were painted in a diminutive si?e. It is to be
remarked that these pictures were unquestionably finished in oil.
Most of these particulars are given on the authority of Mr. Flaxman,
sculptor and royal academician, to whose liberal information I
acknowledge. myself greatly indebted. Some exquisite imitations of parts
of the painting* in St. Stephen's Chapel, by Mr. R. Smirke, junior, are
hung up in the library of the Antiquarian Society. Mr. Smith of Newman
Street is preparing a full delineation and history of these antiquities,
and is understood to have ia
One of the best specimens of the art of painting in England in the
fourteenth century, is said to be a whole length of Richard II, which is
placed in the Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster Abbey. It is however
understood to have been repainted by a modern artist, so that our
judgment of the state of the art is rather perhaps to be formed from the
engraving which has been taken of it, than from the picture as it now
appears. Chaucer therefore had a right to consider himself as fallen
upon no barbarous or inglorious age. Among his immediate predecessors in
the period of their existence were Giotto and Dante; and their
successors, his coequals, perhaps his friends, were fast advancing in
the career which they had opened. The achievements of the human mind
never appear so stupendous as when they exhibit themselves in their
newest gloss. After the lapse of ages we may possibly find that we have
been continually improving, and that in most, though not in all, the
arts and exercises of our nature, we have gained something in scope and
something in address. But our ancestors were so considerable, and our
own additions have been so miscellaneous or minute, as to afford to an
impartial and dispassionate observer small cause for any high degree of
elation. Chaucer had only to look back for a single century to find the
whole of Europe in a state comparatively barbarous. The sun of science
had risen, and the dews which welcome its beams were not yet dissipated:
he smelled the freshness of the morning, and his heart dilated at the
sight of its soft and unsullied hues.
The history of music in this country has been in some degree anticipated
in what has been already said of the minstrels. The island of Great
Britain resounded with musical compositions from the commencement to the
close of the Saxon dynasty. No nation is so barbarous as not to amuse
its hours of festival and recreation with the M concord of sweet
sounds." What has been handed down to us respecting the ancient scalds
and Runic songs, inspires us with more honour and mysterious veneration,
than we feel for the early professors of music of almost any other age
or country. The Death-song of Lodbrog is represented as having been sung
by him, with a firm and threatening voice, amidst the agonies of a
tormenting death; and whether we regard this statement as severe
history, or as heightened by the colouring of imagination, it equally
proves how high an opinion was entertained of, and how powerful effects
were experienced from, the performance of music and song. Egil
Skallagrim had killed the son and several of the friends of the king of
Norway; he was sent a prisoner and a victim to the irritated monarch;
thus circumstanced, he sung before his enemy and judge a song adapted to
the occasion, which afterward received the name of Egil's Ransom, and
the effect of his
song was such, that the king immediately loosened his chains, and
dismissed him free and unhurte. The powerof music is thus hyperbolically
commemorated in one of the songs of the Runic bards. I know a song, by
which I soften and inchant the arms of my enemies; and render their
weapons of none effect. I know a song which I need only to sing when men
have loaded me with bonds; for the moment I sing it, my chains fall in
pieces, and I walk forth at liberty. I know a song, useful to all
mankind; for as soon as hatred inflames the sons of men, the moment I
sing it they are appeased. I know a song of such virtue, that were I
caught in a storm, I can hush the winds, and render the air perfectly
calm." Nor was music more cultivated by the scalds and the of sacred
music minstrels, than it was by the heads of the church their
contemporaries. We have seen the ecclesiastics of these ages ready on
several occasions to take a lesson from the professors of arts which
they vilified, and they found their advantage in it. When Austin, the
apostle of the Saxon dynasty, and the companions of his mission, had
their first audience of Ethelbert king of Kent, they approached him in
procession, singing litanies; and afterward, as they entered the city of
Canterbury, they sung a litany, and at the end of it an Allelujah. They
trusted probably as much to the charms of the Roman Chant, as settled by
pope Gregory the Great, as to the arguments of the apostles and
evangelists, for the. conversion of their idolatrous hearers.
Church-music was one of the studies most assiduously pursued in the
colleges of this period ; professors of this art were distributed
throughout England; those who were desirous of attaining the highest
degree of excellence in it travelled to Rome for that purpose; and no
accomplishment led with greater certainty to the most eminent stations
in the church. The Gospels, the Epistles, and almost every part of the
service, were in these times set to music, and performed by rules of
art, Dancing, as well as music, appears also to have constituted a part
of the service of the church. The word choir as a denomination for that
compartment of the sacred edifice adjoining to the altar, seems to have
owed its origin to this circumstance. Every thing in this era of the
church was adapted to the pleasure of the eye and the car; and men were
won over to the cause of devotion by means best adapted to their rude
habits and untrained understandings.
The eleventh century appears to have been the period at which the most
important and remarkable changes were introduced into the science of
music. It was during this century that counterpoint, or the method of
singing in parts, was introduced; that Guido Aretino invented his scale
of music; and Franco of Cologn the time-table, or method of notation by
which the length to be given to each musical sound was determined '.
Previously to this last indention, time had no separate or independent
existence Chap, Ix. relative to musical sounds, but was regulated by the
long === or short quantity of the syllables of the words to which each
tune or piece of music was appropriated. These three discoveries may be
regarded as the parent events to Which the character and refinements of
modern music are indebted for their origin.
Much may be alleged, and not without justice in commendation of these
refinements; but they ought not to be so praised as to make us forget
the real and indestructible merits of the ancient music. It has already
appeared that the music of the dark ages may without disadvantage
compare with the music of any age or country as to its power over the
passions. Nor has any lapse of time, or progress of improvement, been
able to supersede the favour with which music of this ancient and simple
character is regarded by the mass of almost every nation in Europe.
The reason of these facts is obvious. In the ancient music the sounds
produced by the singer or the instrument were subordinate to the words;
and every man, not infatuated with the passion for music, will admit
that, however rapturous or impressive may be the accord of sounds, yet
the language of music, taken separately from words, is loose, obscure
and enigmatical, susceptible of various interpretations, and guiding us
with no sufficient decision to any. When we hear a tune unaccompanied
with words (unless that tune by past association is enabled to raise up
in our minds the image or general purpose of certain words), or when we
hear a tune in which the luxuriance and multiplicity of musical sounds
obscures and tramples with disdain upon the majestic simplicity of
words, our attention will almost universally be fixed less upon the
passion which ought to be communicated, than upon the skill of the
artist; we shall admire much, and feel comparatively little. In a tune
in which the number and time of the musical sounds are regulated by the
syllabic measure of the verse, there will be an awful or a fascinating
simplicity, which is capable of powerfully moving the heart. Refined and
scientifical music can delight no man, but from affectation, unless it
be aided by previous habits or education. The taste for it is
consequently an artificial taste; and when most perseveringly and
successfully cultivated, yet its power over the mind will never rise to
so great a degree of strength, as the pleasures of natural taste.
Previously to the eleventh century the only species of music which
existed in Europe was that which has been technically denominated Plain
Song; in other words, however great was the number of voices which
joined in executing any piece of music, they all sung precisely the same
note at the same instant of time. The first innovation upon this
simplicity, already referred to, was the practice of singing in parts;
that is, a second or third series of notes was performed during the
execution of the principal part, which was designed to accompany and
embellish the body or main thread of the tune. This had a necessary
tendency to obscure the words, and perhaps to sacrifice in some degree
the passion of the performance, to the design of affording a more rich
and various pleasure to the hearer. The second innovation arose out of
the invention of a method of notation for marking the time to be
assigned to musical sounds. This notation, by rendering in its
consequences the length of the notes entirely independent of the words
and syllables of the song, produced a sort of divorce; between poetry
and music; music being by this contrivance enabled at pleasure either to
drown the words in the luxuriances of her fantastic variations, or to
rest upon her private and intrinsic claims to favour, and reject the aid
of words altogether. Guido Aretinoâs invention of his musical scale was
neutral as to these revolutions ; except that by rendering the method of
committing music to writing more full and exact, he facilitated the
study of the art, and rendered it more easily susceptible either of
fancied or real improvements.
But, though the method of singing in parts is to be traced back as far
as the eleventh century, it made little progress for several centuries
after. The songs of the minstrels still retained for the most part their
ancient rudeness and simplicity; and, when we consider the length of
some of the performances they chanted (poems even of twenty thousand
lines, written at this time, bear internal evidence of being intended
for music), it will not be supposed that the recital of them was
accompanied with many of the graces of a modern tune. Nor did the
innovations we have spoken of find in many instances a more cordial
reception in the church, than from the companies of profaner
practitioners. The ecclesiastics have always been, still more than any
other incorporated body of men, the enemies of change; and the monastic
writers of this period uniformly express themselves with horror against
these daring refinements, which they regard as a sort of sacrilege,
substituting for the solemnity of pious adoration, an unholy emulation
in the tricks of the voice, or in the difficulties and escapes of
instrumental executionl: instruments of Venerable Bede, who died in the
year 735, though minute in his account of the psalmody of his times, is
entirely silent on the subject of instrumental music ma clear proof that
no such was then allowed in the church. The first organ which was seen
in France was sent from Constantinople as a present to king Pepin, soon
after the death of Bede â. This instrument, so peculiarly adapted to
sacred music, gradually gained admission in religious worship. St.
Dunstan in the tenth century appears to have been the constructor of one
of the first organs which were admitted into the English church ?. The
minstrels of the early ages resembled in their performances the
simplicity of the church, and for a long time were contented with the
single accompaniment of the harp. The number of instruments however
gradually increased, and before the middle of the fourteenth century we
have an account of a concert in France, in which no fewer than thirty
musical instruments of different names were introduced.
This remark applies to his treatise De Musica Theorctica. A second
treatise follows in the collection of his works, entitled De Musica
Quudi uta, ten Mensurata, in which the organ, viol, atola, and other
instruments are named. But this treatise speaks also of singing in
parts, or descant; of measured song, and other subsequent improvements;
and could not have been written till some centuries after the death of
Bede.
Chaucer appears to have been himself a great lover of music. He never
omits an occasion of celebrating its power; and the passages of his
works which relate to this subject are peculiarly lively and animated.
The concert of birds at the end of the Court of Love, and the Contention
of the Cuckow and Nightingale, particularly de- serve to be referred to
as examples of this; and the manner in which he describes the â noise
and swetnesseâ that awoke him from his sleep, in the Book of the Duchess
may be cited as a proof that the practice of singing in part was by this
time sufficiently common.
Me thoughten thus, that it was Maye,
And in the dawning there I lay
( Mermet thus) in my bed al naked,
And loked forthe, for I was waked
With smale fouleâs a gret hepe,
That had8 afraied me out of slepe;
And everiche songeâ in his wise
The moste swete and solempne servise
By note, that ever man I trowe
Had herde, for some of hem songe lowe,
Some highe, and al of one accorde.
We have now taken a survey of many of the circumstances, scenes and
institutions of this period, which were particularly fitted to impress
and modify the youthful mind of Chaucer. Many others will spontaneously
present themselves in the course of the narrative, and unite with these
already described, to furnish a picture of the manners, customs,
deficiencies and improvements of the English nation in the fourteenth
century.
and mendicant orders.-The schoolmen.--Natural philosophy in the
fourteenth century
be considered as the father of English poetry.-State of poetry in Europe
previous to the writings of Chaucer.-Characters of William de Lorris,
Dante and Petrarca
-Ancient and modern English poetry compared.--Battle of Cressy
CRESEIDE â SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF BOCCACCIO â ERA OF LOLLIUS
From Cambridge it is not improbable that Chaucer removed to Oxford. It
is affirmed by Leland,a the great English antiquary of the sixteenth
century, that Chaucer was educated at their latter place; and, though
Mr. Tyrwhit has rejected his authority in the point, it will perhaps be
found that he did so without sufficient consideration. There are several
reasons which may induce us to admit Lelandâs assertion.
In the first place it is not true, as stated by Mr. Tyrwhit,b that
Leland had rested âhis supposition that Chaucer was educated at Oxford,
upon supposition that he was born in Oxfordshire or Berkshire.â On the
contrary, Leland sets out with an unqualified averment of the place of
his education, âIsiacas scholas â diligent â celebravit.â He then
proceeds to state with some degree of modesty his conjecture (in which
he is unquestionably mistaken) as to the place of Chaucerâs birth;
strengthening his idea, among various arguments, by its vicinity to the
university in which he studied. âIsiacas scholas â celebravit : id quod
ut facet, academia vicinitas quodammodo invitavit. Nam quibusdam
argumentis adducor ut credam, Isiacam del Berocbensem provinciam illius
natale solum fuisse.â Nor does Leland stop at the mere unqualified
assertion that Chaucer was educated at Oxford, but proceeds to mention
two eminent mathematicians, John Somme and friar Nicholas Lynne (whose
names occur in Chaucerâs treatise of the Astrolabe),c under whom he
affirms that our poet studied. When Mr. Tyrwhit adds that âLeland has
supposed Chaucerâs education at Oxford, without the shadow of a proof,â
he certainly assumes too high a style; and does not sufficiently observe
the decorum due from an antiquary of the eighteenth century to an
antiquary of the sixteenth, who lived as near again to the times and the
persons of whom he professes to treat. Leland may have made many hasty
and erroneous assertions; but it is impossible for us at this distance
of time to pronounce, upon what proofs (known to him, but lost to us)
any one of his unrefuted assertions may have been built.
But a principal reason inducing me to believe that Chaucer studied at
Oxford is the following. His poem of Troilus and Creseide is on all
hands admitted to be a juvenile work. It was written, as has been
already remarked, previously to its authorâs connection with the court,
or to his acquisition of great and elevated patronage. This poem is
dedicated to Gower and Strode,d two scholars, both, as we have reason to
believe, educated at Oxford.e How could Chaucer more naturally, at an
early period of life, have become familiarly acquainted with these
eminent litterery characters, than by studying in the place of education
of which they were members? â if these arguments drawn from the
authority of Leland and of Chaucer have any force, there is an end of
Mr. Tyrwhitâs triumphant sneer at the biographies immediately preceding
his own, the writers of which, he says âinstead of weighing the opposite
accounts of Chaucerâs place of education against each other, have
adopted both; and tell us very gravely, that he was first at Cambridge,
and afterwards removed to complete his studies at Oxford.â
In addition to what has already been offered on this subject, it
deserves to be remarked that these removals from one university, to
another which was regarded as superior, appear to have been extremely
common about the time of Chaucer. Bishop Grossteste is said to have
studied first at Cambridge, thence to have gone to Oxford, and finally
to Paris.f Roger Bacon is related to have studied at Oxford, and
afterward at Paris:g and the same fact is affirmed of Michael Scot the
mathematician,h and William Oceam then celebrated schoolman,i as well as
of the innumerable others.
It was probably during the period of Chaucerâs residence at Oxford, or
shortly after quitting that university, that he produced one of his most
considerable works, The Boke of Troilus and Creseide. Lydgate, in
enumerating the principal productions of our author, places this first,
and expressly asserts it to have been the performance of Chaucerâs
âyouth.âk Nor is it a contemptible argument in support of Lydgateâs
assertion, that there occurs in the work no reference to the connections
in which Chaucer afterward lived at court, and that the patrons to whom
it is inscribed are Gower and Strode, who were members of this
university.
The poem of Troilus and Creseide is avowedly a translation, and there
has arisen some enquiry and discussion as to its author, and the
language in which it was composed. Chaucer in the course of the poem
calls the author Lollius,l and the language of his original Latin;m and
in this account his admirers and critic were till lately contented to
acquiesce. Mr. Tyrwhit however has asserted and attempted to shown that
the author of his original was Boccaccio, and the language in which
Chaucer studied it Italian. âThough Boccaccio was the contemporary of
Petrarca, and lived near the times of Dante, and though these three
authors have commonly and justly been classed together, as a triumvirate
reflecting unprecedented honor upon the infant literature of Italy, I
purposely deferred naming Boccaccio, when I was recapitulating the
merits of his illustrious countrymen, that the whole consideration of
Chaucerâs early obligations to the Florentine novelist and poet might be
brought into one view.
The name of Boccaccio well deserves to be regarded as one of the most
honorable in the records of literature. His prose style in particular is
distinguished for purity, precision, animation and elegance; and it is
to him principally that we are to ascribe the wonderful achievement of
giving to his native tongue that character and form, which have
remained, except in a few unessential particulars, unchanged for more
than four hundred years. The languages of England and France have been
in a constant state of fluctuation; and even the phraseology of
Shakespear, who lived two hundred and fifty years later than Boccaccio,
wears in many respects the rust of antiquity. But Boccaccio is still a
standard to the writers of Italian prose. Much as his country has been
indebted to him, it is to be regretted that no ample and critical
account of his life has yet been given to the world. The following are
some of the principal particulars which are known concerning it.
Boccaccio was the natural son of an Italian merchant, and was born in
the year 1313. He was consequently nine years younger than Petrarca, and
fifteen years older than Chaucer. He was first initiated in learning in
his fatherâs native country of Tuscany. At an early age he displayed a
singular aptness for literary pursuits; but his father had other views
respecting him, and therefore, speedily withdrawing him from the haunts
of the muses, placed him under the direction of an individual of his own
class, who took young Boccaccio with him to Paris; where he was retained
six years, with great violence, as he informs us, to the bias of his own
inclinations, in the drudgery of commerce.o This perhaps was judged by
the father as an experiment of sufficient extent; and accordingly, after
a short subsequent trial of the young man in the same pursuits
immediately under his eye, he resolved to consign him to the tuition of
a celebrated lawyer and professor of Florence, that he might be bred to
the practice of the canon law. This however succeeded no better than the
former project; the destination of the youth to literature was
unconquerable; and his father seems at length to have yielded to a
necessity, which he found it vain to resist.
The catalogue of Boccaccioâs principal works is as follows: four
historical poems, La Teseide; Il Filiostrato; LâAmorosa Visione; and Il
Ninfale Fiesolano: four prose romances, Il Filocopo; La Fiammetta;
LâAmeto; and Il Laberinto dâAmore, otherwise called Il Corbaccio: four
works in Latin prose, De Genealogia Deorum, Libri XV; De Montium,
Sylvarum, Lacuum, Fluviorum, Stagnorum & Marium Nominibus, Liber Unus;
De Casibus Virorum & FĂŠminarum Illustrium, Libri IX; and De Claris
Mulieribus Liber Unus: and sixteen eclogues in Latin verse. The
production upon which the present reputation of Boccaccio almost singly
rests is Il Decamerone, a collection of one hundred tales in Italian
prose. The style of this performance has, ever since it was written,
been regarded as nearly a perfect model of the familiar and elegant in
Italian composition, and the tales are related with great simplicity,
spirit and humour. The poetry of Boccaccio is pronounced by his
countrymen to be as feeble and languid in its character, as his prose is
exquisite and admirable.
We cannot trace the publication of any of the works of Boccaccio further
back than to the twenty-eighth year of his age. This date is ascertained
by a letter of dedication to a lady, whom he calls La Fiammetta, sent
with a copy of La Teseide, which appears to have been written at Naples,
15 April 1341. Boccaccio is usually stated by his biographers to have
been dispatched by his father to Naples in that year on some commercial
concerns, where, being introduced to Robert king of Naples, the most
learned prince of his time, he experienced great encouragement from that
monarch, and conceived a passion for Mary of Arragon, the natural
daughter of the king, to whom he is supposed in several of his works to
refer under the feigned appellation of La Fiammetta.
The Decamerone also admits of a date being assuaged it, from this
circumstance. The tales are feigned to be related through the medium of
a conversation between seven gentlemen and three ladies, who retired
from Florence on account of the great plague in that city in 1348. The
work is represented by its author as having cost him considerable time
in the composition, so that it probably was not completed till several
years after the event which furnished the occasion of its production. It
could not however have been written later than 1302, when Boccaccio was
converted from these trivial pursuits and profane learning, by the
remonstrances of a monk, a stranger, who professed to be divinely
instigated to threaten him with speedy death, and the torments of hell
for ever, if he did not suddenly repent of his iniquities.
Boccaccio, though the contemporary of Petrarca, does not appear to have
been personally acquainted with him till the year 1350. From that time
they furnish a pleasing and delightful example of the two most eminent
literary men of Italy, impressed with a fervent and uninterrupted
attachment for each other. Beside being both poets, and both sedulous
and successful cultivators of their vernacular idiom, they also
sympathised in their zeal for the restoration of ancient learning.
Latin, as we have already seen, was a language much cultivated in these
ages, and several of the illustrious Roman writers received a due degree
of attention and homage; but the Greek tongue had almost been
extinguished in the West. Petrarca procured himself an instructor in
this language, by name Barlaam, in the year 1330; but Barlaam shortly
after died; and, when Petrarca received from Constantinople a present of
a Greek Homer in 1354, though he declared himself charmed with his
acquisition, he confessed that he was unable to communicate with his
illustrious favourite in the tongue in which his poems were written. In
1360 Boccaccio put himself under a master in the Greek language, named
Leontius Pilatus, with whom he carefully perused the Iliad and the
Odyssey.
Boccaccio has left us an entertaining portrait of the preceptor under
whom he studied. âHis aspect,â says he, âis frightful, and his features
monstrous; his beard is long and hirsute, and his hair coarse and black;
he is continually immersed in profound meditation and neglectful of all
the decorums of society; he is harsh, unpolished, without manners, and
without civility; but he is profoundly acquainted with all the treasures
of Greek literature, and is an inexhaustible storehouse of Grecian story
and Grecian fable, though possessing a slight tincture only of the Latin
language.âp This man, such as he was, Boccaccio was contented, for love
of learning, to receive and entertain for a long time under his roof. He
introduced him to Petrarca; but Petrarca was more delicate in his
tastes, and less patient of what offended him. Petrarca observes of
Leontius, that he was âin fact a Calabrian; but that in Italy he called
himself a Thessalonican, just as in Greece he gave himself out for an
Italian, pleasing himself with the foolish idea, that he should be more
respected in either country, in proportion as he was understood to be a
native of the other.âq Boccaccio left him with Petrarca at Venice in the
year 1363, who for some time endeavored to detain him. But this Leo of
yours,â says he in a letter to Boccaccio, âwho is in every point of view
an untamed beast, was as deaf to all my in treaties as the rocks he was
so eager to seek. Soon after your departure therefore he took shipping
for Constantinople. Scarcely had he time to reach that place, before I
received from him a letter as long and as rough as his beard, in which
he curses Constantinople just as much as before he cursed Italy, and
intreats me, more piteously than Peter intreated Christ on the water, to
call him back hither, and show myself his savious. But no! he shall have
neither letter nor message on my part; let him stay where he is, and
live miserably in the pace to which he withdrew insolently.âr Leontius
however, though he received no answer to letters, could not be prevented
from taking his passage to Europe, when, being overtaken by a tempest,
and having clung to a mast of the vessel, a stroke of lightning reached
him, and reduced him and the mast to ashes in an instant.s
The question of the date of the different works of Boccaccio is by no
means foreign to that of the obligations of Chaucer to his writings.
It is thus that Mr. Tyrwhit expresses himself on the subject of the
Troilus and Creseide. âIt is so little a while since the world has been
informed, that the Palamon and Arcite of Chaucer was taken from the
Theseida of Boccace, that it would not have been surprising if another
century had elapsed without our knowing that our countrymen had also
borrowed his Troilus from the Filostrato of the same author; as the
Filostrato is more scarce and much less famous, even in Italy, than the
Theseida.â Mr. Tyrwhit then proceeds to give minute narrative respected
the manner in which he was led to discover what he calls, Chaucerâs
âtheft.â âThe first suspicion which he entertained of it was from
reading the title of the Filostrato at large in Saxii His. Lit. Typog.
Mediolan. ad un. 1498; and he afterward found, in Montfauconâs Bibl.
Mss. t. ii. P. 793. among the king of Franceâs Mes. one with this title,
âPhilostrato, dellâ a morose faticbe di Troile per Gio Baccaccio.â â He
had just employed a person to procure him some account of this Ms. from
Paris, when he had good fortune to meet with a printed copy in the
collection of the Reverend Mr. Crofts, and had soon an opportunity of
satisfying himself that Chaucer was to the full as much obliged to
Boccace in his Troilus as in his Knightes Tale.ât
In another part of his publication however My. Tyrwhit very reasonably
remarks, that Chaucer in the course of his poem has again and again
asserted that the name of the author from whom he translates is Lollius,
and that Lydgate expressly mentions that the title of the original work
was Trophe.u âHow Boccace should have acquired the name of Lollius, and
the Filostrato the title of Trophe, are points which I confess myself
unable to explain.âx
To any person in the least accustomed to consider the nature of
evidence, and to weigh opposite proofs against each other, it can
scarcely be necessary to remark upon this hypothesis of Mr. Tyrwhit,
that direct evidence is of the highest class, and presumptive evidence
of a class essentially inferior; and that the express statements of
Chaucer and Lydgate on this point have a stronger claim upon our assent,
than the conjectures of the editor of the Canterbury Tales.
Since Mr. Tyrwhitâs publication, a modern edition of the Filostrato,
erroneously stated in the title to be the first printed edition, has
appeared at Paris, 1789, and is not difficult to be obtained; so that
every one who pleases may compare the Filostrato with the Troilus and
Creseide, and judge for himself of the degree of resemblance between
them.
But, supposing these two poems to agree to the minutest particular, I
should still believe that Chaucer did not translate Boccaccio. I should
prefer his own assertion as to the name of his author, to this
circuitous proof; nor can I conceive any reason why he should rather
wish to be thought indebted to an imaginary Latin author, called
Lollius, than to his illustrious Italian contemporary Boccaccio.
If the poem of Troilus and Creseide were written at Oxford, or soon
after Chaucer quitted that university, it was probably not finished
later than 1350. Boccaccioâs two large Italian historical poems, the
Teseide and the Filostrato, were the production of his youth. The
Teseide bears date 1341, and the Filostrato, were the production of his
youth. The Teseide bears date 1341, and the Filostrto is usually
considered, and is affirmed by the Parisian editor,y to be a subsequent
performance. From these dates we shall perceive that it is not naturally
impossible that the Troilus should be a translation of the Filostrato.
But, if we consider the comparative slowness and limited nature of the
literary intercourse which then subsisted between England and Italy, if
we recollect that Chaucer had not yet entered into the continental
connections which he afterward formed, and if we add that the young
Boccaccio had by no means acquired the brilliant fame which he
subsequently obtained, we shall think it little probable that his
juvenile essay so speedily obtained the honors of an English
translation. There is indeed a translated sonnet of Petrarca inserted in
the Troilus;z but, though Petrarca was but nine years older than
Boccaccio, it is to be considered that he came at a much earlier period
of life than his friend, into possession of the highest degree of
celebrity.
Mr. Tyrwhit seems inclined to consider Lollius as the name of a man who
had no other existence than in the forgery of Chaucer. But this is a
strange hypothesis. What motive had Chaucer for such a forgery? The poem
of Troilus and Creseide was certainly not written by Lollius Urbicus, a
Roman historian of the third century, to whom it is thoughtlessly
ascribed in Speghtâs and Urfyâs editions;aa since it is interspersed
with ideas of chivalry, which did not exist till long after that period:
and Mr. Tyrwhit perhaps had never heard of any other Lollius. It is
surely however too hasty a conclusion, because his name has not reached
us from any other quarter, to say that he never existed. How many
authors, with their memories, even to their very names, may we
reasonably suppose to have been lost in the darkness of the middle ages!
Not to travel out of present subject for an illustration, if the
Filostrato, a considerable poem of so celebrated an author as Boccaccio,
had so nearly perished, who will wonder that the original work, and the
name of the author from whom Boccaccio translated it, have now sunk into
total oblivion?
There is a further very strong evidence of the real existence of
Lollius, which occurs in the writings of Chaucer. One of our poetâs most
considerable works is entitled the House of Fame; and in this poem,
among a cluster of worthies, he introduces the writers who had recorded
the story of Troy. They are as follow; Homer, Dares, Titus [or Dictys],
Lollius, Guido dalla Colonna, and Geoffrey of Monmouth.bb
Boccaccio is known to have been frequently a translator. Very many of
the tales in the Decamerone, that of Grisildis for example, to which we
shall soon have occasion to refer, existed before his time.cc He assures
us himself that he translated the Teseide from a Latin original.dd Is it
not more than probable that the Filostrato came from the same source? Is
it not obvious to imagine that Chaucer and Boccaccio copied from one
original? Translation was peculiarly the employment of the first
revivers of learning; nor did they hold it otherwise than in the highest
degree honourable, to open to their unlearned countrymen, the sacred
fountains of knowledge which had so long been cosigned to obscurity and
neglect.
After all however the Troilus is by no means the exact counterpart of
the Filostrato. To omit minuter differences, the Filostrato is divided
into ten books, and the Troilus into only five. Add to which, the
Troilus, which consists of about eight thousand lines, contains three
thousand more than the Filostrato. Chaucer is supposed by Tyrwhit and
Warton, ee to have taken his Knightâs Tale from the Teseide of
Boccaccio. What has he done in this case? Most materially abridged his
original. The Teseide is a poem of about ten thousand lines, and Chaucer
has told the same story in little more than two thousand. It is not
improbable ineed, as a poem of Palamon and Arcite the heroes of the
Teseide was one of Chaucerâs early productions, that he first translated
the Teseide, and afterward compressed it as we find in the Canterbury
Tales. Abridgement is infinitely a more natural operation in such cases
than paraphrase. When a man of taste, divested of the partialities of a
parent, surveys critically a poem of length, one of the things most
likely to strike him is that the poem contains superfluities which, with
advantage to the general effect, might be lopped away. These
considerations, even independently of the direct evidence of Chaucer and
Lydgate, would induce an accurate impartial observer to adopt the
hypothesis here maintained that Chaucer in his Troilus went to
Boccaccioâs original, and not to Boccaccio, for the materials upon which
he worked.
Mr. Tyrwhit observes that, all things considered, âit would not have
been surprising if another century had elapsed without our knowing that
our countrymen borrowed his Troilus from the Filostrato of Boccace.â
After what has been offered, the reader may perhaps be opinion, that the
world might have submitted to the want of this knowledge for a century
longer, without suffering any material detriment.
Lollius, of whom it seems absurd to dispute the existence, or to
confound him as an author with the great Florentine novelist, may with
some degree of probability be assigned to the twelfth century, and
considered as the contemporary of Wace and Thomas of Becket. This was
the period of the first great struggle of the human mind, to shake off
the darkness and sleep in which it had been shrouded for ages. The âtale
of Troy divine,âff was one of those which forcibly engaged the attention
of the revivers of a purer Latinity; and it was about this period that
individuals in different countries of Europe were seized with the mania
of deducing their respective nations from a Trojan original. The Greek
language was then almost unknown in the West; the fountains of wisdom
and poetry in Homer were shut; and the men of that age found a
substitute as the could in the books of Dares Phyrygius and Dictys
Cretensis, two pretended eye witnesses of the war they undertook to
describe, whose spurious narratives are supposed to have been written
under the emperors Nero and Constantine. These authors, partial to the
besieged as Homer is to the assailants, were at this time particularly
studied and cherished; and one of the most elegant Latin writers of the
twelfth century, Joseph of Exeter, produced an heroic poem in six books
upon the Trojan war, founded upon the materials they furnished, which
has sometimes been appended to the Delphin edition of the authors
themselves. There is a propensity in human affairs to ripen minds of
nearly the same class and character in different places at the same
time: why may we not then with sufficient plausibility regard Lollius,
in Italy, or of whatever other country he was a native, as laboring upon
his Trophe, about the very period at which our Joseph of Exeter produced
his De Bello Trojano; more fortunate in one respect than his British
rival, that though Lolliusâs work has been lost and the otherâs
preserved, the conceptions of Lollius have been repeated and
immortalised by the pens of Boccaccio and Chaucer, of Shakespear and
Dryden, while the De Bello Trojan slumbers secure and undisturbed in
collections of the curious?
a Scriptores Britannici, cap. dv.
b Canterbury Tales, Preface, Appendix C, note b.
c Preliminary Discourse.
d Troilus, Book V, ver. 1855, 6.
e See chap. XVII.
f Ricardus Monachus Bardeniensis, cap. xvi, xix, apud Anglia Sacra. Wood
Hist. Oxon. A.D. 1228.
g Leland, Script. Brit., cap. ccxxxvi. Wood, A.D. 1292.
h Leland, cap ccxxxii.
i Tanner, Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica, art. Occam.
k Fall of Princes, Prologue, Stanza 41.
l B. I, ver. 395 B. V. ver. 1652.
m B. II, ver. 14.
n Canterbury Tales, Essay on the Language of Chaucer, note 62.
o Boccaccio, Genealogia Deorum, Lib. XV.
p De Sade Memoires pour la Vie de Petrarque, T. III. p 625 Tiraboschi,
Storia della Letteratura Italiana, Lib. Ill, c. l §. 8.
q Tiraboschi, ubi supra.
r Tiraboschi, ubi supra.
s Tiraboschi, ubi supra. The above particulars respecting Boccaccio are
extracted from De Sade, Memoires pour la Vie de Petrarque; Manni,
Istoria del Decamerone, P. I, and Tiraboschi, Lib. III, cap. 2, § 38â45.
t Tyrwhitâs Cant. Tales, Essay, n. 62.
u Fall of Princes, ubi supra.
x Notes on the Canterbury Tales, not. 7 from the end.
y Prefazione.
z Book I, ver. 401.
aa List of authors cited by Chaucer.
bb House of Fame, B. Ill, ver. 374â382.
cc Opera Petrarchi, apud Tyrwhit, Introd. §. 20.
dd Teseide, Lettera alla Fiatnmetta .
ee Tyrwhit, Introd. Warton, Hist. Eng. Poet. Sect. XII.
ff Milton, Il Penseroso.
Chaucer gives the following account of the manner in which he has
conducted his version of Lolliusâs production, which, though it implies
that he did not confine himself to his original with a scrupulous
fidelity, yet does not lead us to suppose that he varied from it in any
very essential particular.
Buta soth is, though I cannot tellen all,
As can mine auctour of his excellence,
Yet have I saied, and Godb to forné shall,
In every thing all wholly his sentence;
And if that I, at lovés reverence,
Have any worde in cechoed for the best,
Doeth therewithal right as your selven lest. For all my wordés here, and
every part,
I speake hem all under correction
Of you that feeling have in loves art,
And put it all in your discrecion.
Book III, ver. 1330.
The poem of Troilus and Creseide is divided into five books. The plan of
the work proceeds on the assumption, in direct opposition to the
narrative of Homer, that Calchas, the great soothsayer of the Grecian
army, is a native of Troy, who, being instructed by his skill in
divination that the city in which he lived will finally fall a victim to
the prowess of the besiegers, prudently takes a resolution of
withdrawing himself in secret, and going over to the enemy. This he does
in so cautious a manner, that he leaves his only daughter, Creseide,
behind him, exposed to all the resentment of his exasperated countrymen.
Creseide, terrified at a danger of which she had not had the smallest
foresight, repairs to Hector, and intreats his protection, who, with the
goodness and nobleness of nature congenial to him, undertakes for her
safety. Thus secured, she conducts herself in all respects with the
utmost discretion and propriety.
A festival soon after occurs, in the month of April, in honour of the
Palladion, when a general procession is made to the temple of Minerva,
and Creseide among the ladies of Troy is introduced as a worshipper. Her
appearance and carriage on this occasion are touched by Chaucer with
great beauty and delicacy.
Among these other folke was Creseida,
In widdowes habite blake: but dnatheles,
Right as our first letter is now an A,
In beauté first so stode shee makeles;
Her godely loking gladded all the fprees:
gNâas never sene thing to be praisâd so derre,
Nor under cloudé blake so bright a sterre, As was Creseide, thei saiden
heverichone
That her beholden in her blaké wede;
And yet she stode ful lowe and stil alone
Behinden other folke in litel ibrede,
And nie the doré under shamés drede,
Simpleâ of atire, and kdebonaire of chere,
With flu assured loking and manere.
ver. 169.
It is here that she unexpectedly seen by Troilus, who immediately
becomes enamoured of her. His frank and unconquered heart is described
with great spirit.
This Troilus, as he was wonât gide
His yongé knightés, ladde hem up and doune
In thilkĂ© largĂ© templeâ on every side,
Beholding aie the ladies of the tone,
Now here, now there; for no devocioune
Had he to none, tol reven him his rest,
But gan to praise and mlacken whom he lest,
And in his walke flu fast he gan to waiten,
If knight or squier of his companie Gan for to nsike, or let his eyeno
baiten
On any woman that he coude espie;
Then he would smile, and hold it a folie,
And say hem thus: O Lorde, she slepeth softe
For love of the, when thou turnest flu ofte.
I have herde tel ppardieux of your living,
Ye lovers, and eke your leude observaunces,
And whiche a labour folke have in winning
Of love, and in the keping qwhiche doutances,
And whan your pray is loste, wo and pernaunces:
O very folés! blinde and nice be ye,
There is not one can ware by other be!
ver. 183.
The following stanzas bring back to us with advantage the figure of
Creseide.
She nâas nat with the rlest of her stature,
But al her limmés so wel answering
Weren to womanhode, that créature
Was never slassé mannishe in seming; And eke the puré wise of her mening
She shewed wel, that men might in her gesse
Honour, estate, and womanly noblesse.
tTho Troilus right wonder wel withal
Gan for to like her mening and her chere,
Whiche usomedele wdeignous was, for she let fal
Her like a xlite aside, in suche manere
Ascaunces, What may I not stonden here?
And after that her loking gan she light,
That never thought him sene so gode a sight.
ver. 281.
These lines beautifully express the struggle of the mind of the lover,
as he first gazed with conscious passion upon the person of his
mistress.
Therwith his herte began to sprede and rise;
And soft he sighéd, lest men might him here,
And caught yayen his former playing chere.
ver. 278.
From the temple Troilus retires to his own chamber, where he is visited
by Pandarus, the uncle of Creseide, a convenient ally, and so devoted to
the hero of the poem, as voluntarily to apply himself to the seduction
of his niece, to insure the tranquility and peace of heart of his
friend. Pandarus, not without difficult, extorts from Troilus the secret
of his love, and undertakes his cause. The first book concludes with an
admirable picture of the manners and temper of Troilus, after his cares
had thus been relieved by the prompt kindness of his auxiliary. Pandarus
finds him thrown in a disconsolate attitude upon his bed; but, when he
takes his leave,
Dan Troilus lay ztho no lenger doun,
But up anon upon his stede baie,
And in the felde he played the lioun;
Wo was that Greke, that with him met that daie;
And in the tone his maner aatho forthe aie So godely was and gat him so
in grace,
That echo him lovâd, that loked in his face.
For he becamen the friendliest wight,
The gentilest, and eke the mosté fre,
The trustiest, and one of the besté knight,
That in his time was, or els mighté be:
Dede were his bbjapés, and his cruelté,
Dede his high porte, and al his maner straunge,
And echo of hem gan for a vertue chaunge.
ver. 1073.
The second book contains the blandishments of Pandarus to Creseide,
which are conducted with great skill, as being addressed to a young lady
of the utmost decorum and bashfulness. Immediately after this, the
author has very happily imagined the return of Troilus from a successful
sally against the besiegers, and his progress necessarily leading him
under the window of his mistress.
His helm ccto-hewen was in twentie places,
That by a ddtissue hong his backe behinde; His shelde eeto-dashâd with
swerdés and with maces,
In whiche men might many an arowe finde,
That ffthirled had bothe horne, and nerfe, and rinde;
And aie the peple cryâd, Here comâth our joie,
And, next his brother, holder up of Troie!
ver. 658
The appearance of Troilus on this occasion operates strongly to fix the
budding and irresolute partiality of the Creseide; and the more speedily
to bring the affair to its desired issue, Pandarus contrives a meeting
of the lovers, and several eminent personages, at a dinner to be given
by Deiphobus, another son of Priam.
When the day of this dinner arrives, Troilus, who, feigning himself
sick, had gone to his brotherâs house the night before, remains in his
apartment, where he is visited by the principal persons of the company,
and last of all by Creseide. Pandarus, who had exaggerated to her the
obloquy and animosity to which she was exposed by the treason of her
father, and prevailed upon her to sue to the rest of the company for
their protection, makes use of this pretense to leave her alone with her
lover, that she might with the better advantage importune him for his
patronage and friendship. This is their first interview. Other meetings
succeed; but they are short, unfrequent and cautious, so as rather to
generate an uneasiness and craving of the mind, than to produce
satisfaction. The conversation that passed was little.
But thilké little that thei spake or wrought,
His wisé ggghoste toke aie of all soche hede,
It seemed her he wisté what she thought
Withouten worde; so that it was no nede
To bid him aught to doân, or aught forbede;
For which she thought that love, al come it late,
Of allĂ© joie had openâd her the hhyate.
ver. 463.
Pandarus in the mean time resolved that their mutual love should be
brought to its full consummation. For this purpose,
Right sone upon the chaunging of the mone,
When lightlesse is the world a night or twaine,
And that the welkin iishope him for to raine,
He straightkk a morowe unto his nece wente,
.......................
And finally he swore, and gan her saie
By this and that, she should him not escape,
Ne lenger done him after her to mmcape,
But certainly she musté by her leve,
Come soupen in his house with him at eve.
.......................
Or ellis softe he swore her in her ere,
He nnnâoldĂ© never comen there she were.
ver. 550
Creseide yields to the urgent importunity of her uncle, and every thing
happens as he had projected. The incidental occurrences of the evening
are described with much life and nature. After staying a proper time at
Pandarusâs house, Creseide takes leave, and prepares to depart; but
fortune intercepts her intention.
The benté moné with her hornés pale,
Saturn and Jove, in Cancro joyned were,
That suche a raine from heven gan ooavaile,
That every maner woman that was there
Had of that smoky raine a very fere.
ver. 625.
Creseide is prevailed upon to take up her abode for that night in her
uncleâs house.
Thus al is wel; but pptho began aright
The newe joie, and al the feste againe;
But Pandarus, if qqgodely had he might,
He would have hiéd her to beddé faine,
And said, O lorde, this is an hugé raine,
This were a wether for to slepen in.
ver. 653.
Pandarus conducts his niece to rest in a small apartment by herself, and
accommodates her female attendants in a more spacious anti-chamber, with
an open door leading to the apartment of Creseide. At the same time he
places Troilus upon a secret stair, conducting by the other side to the
ladyâs bed-chamber. Affairs being in this position,
The sterné winde so loude began to route,
That no wight otherâs noisĂ© might yhere,
And thei that laien at the dore without
Ful rrsikerly thei slepten al ssyfere;
And Pandarus, with a ful sobre chere,
Goth to the dore anon withouten lette
There as thei lay, and softély it shette.
ver. 744.
He then approaches the bedside of Creseide, and, having roused her,
communicates to her the story, that Troilus has just arrived, through
all the rain, in a fit of frantic jealousy; that he has heard, from what
he conceives good authority, that she has bestowed her utmost favours
upon a rival pretender; and that he is driven by the intelligence to
ungovernable desperation. Creseide assures her uncle of her constancy
and honour, and proposes to see Troilus, and satisfy his scruples, early
the next morning. Pandarus exclaims upon the futility of this project,
and asserts that it will be impossible otherwise than by an immediate
interview, to prevent Troilus from laying violent hands upon himself.
Nothing can be better imagined than this preparation. Troilus is then
introduced and his mistress expostulates with him upon the unworthiness
of his accusation, in a style of such ingenuousness and feeling, that
struck with remorse and self-abhorrence, he falls into a swoon. By the
efforts of Pandarus and Creseide he is recovered; and Pandarus, retired
to a distance from the lovers, pretends to sleep. The consequence of
this situation is easily imagined. The triumph of the lover is complete.
Nothing can be more beautiful than the simile in the latter of the two
following stanzas. Creseide all ttquite from every drede and tene,
As she that justé cause had him to uutrist,
Made him soche feste it joie was for to sene,
Whan she his trouth and clene ententé wist;
And, as about a tre with many a twist
wwBitrent and writhen is the swete wodbinde,
Gan eche of hem in armés other winde:
And as the newe abashed nightingale,
That stinteth first, whan she beginneth sing,
Whan that she hereth any herdés tale,
Or in the hedges any wight sterring,
And after xxsiker doeth her voice out ring;
Right so Creseidé, when her dredé yystent,
Openâd her hert, and told him her entent.
ver. 1231.
Such was the first confident and unreserved meeting of the lovers: the
third book concludes with a description of their entire happiness and
content. The fourth book treats of their separation. Calchas, the father
of Creseide, is exceedingly desirous of having his daughter restored to
him; and, a skirmish having been fought in which several Trojans of
distinction were made prisoners, he takes advantage of this circumstance
to propose an exchange. The overture is accordingly made, and the
delivery of Creseide for Antenor is voted in the council of Priam, or,
as Chaucer terms it, the Trojan âparliament.â
The farewel visit of the ladies of Troy to Creseide is described with
considerable vivacity and humour.
zzQuod first that one, I am glad truÂŽely
Because of you, that shal your father se;
Another saied, Ywis so am not I,
For all to little hath she with us be;
zzQuod 1tho the thirde, I hope ywis that she
Shall bringen us the pece on every side,
That, when she goth, almiglltie God her gide. And busille thei gonnen
her comforten
On thing, God wot, on which she little thought,
And with 2her talés 3wended her disporten,
And to be glad thei ofte her besought.
.......................
Tho wordes and 4tho womannishé thingés,
She herd hem right as tho she 5thennés were;
For, God it wore, her herte on other thing is,
Although the body sat emong hem there.
.......................
So that she felte almoste her herté die
For wo, and Ă©werie of that companie.
ver. 687.
After so solemn a decree on the fate of Creseide, there is no longer any
remedy; and, in the interview which takes place between the lovers on
this occasion, Creseide is so affected with her misfortune that she
falls into a swoon.
She was right soche to sene in her visage,
As is that wight that men on 6bere ybinde; Her face, like of paradis the
image,
Was al ychaunged in another kinde;
The plaie, the laughter, men wer wont to finde
In her, and eke her joiés everchone,
Ben fledde: â
ver. 862.
Troilus, imagining her to be dead, determines not to survive her, and
vents his anguish in these spirited apostrophes:
Than said he thus, 7fulfilde of high disdaine,
O cruel Jove, and thou fortune adverse,
This al and 8some is, falsely have ye slaine
Creseide, and sith ye may do me no werse,
Fie on your might and werkés so diverse!
Thus cowardely ye shul me never 9winne;
There shal no deth me fro my lady 10twinne.
And thou, cité, in which I live in wo,
And thou Priam, and brethren al 11yfere,
And thou my mother, farewel, for I go!
And, Attropos, make redy thou my bere!
And thou Creseide, o swetĂ© hertĂ© dere, RecevĂ© now my spirite, â would he
sey,
With swerde at here, al reedy for to dey.
ver. 1191.
The farewel speech of Creseide is stamped with that decorum and dignity,
which had hitherto appeared in all her actions.
For 12trusteth wel, that your estate roiall,
Ne veine delite, nor onely worthinesse
Of you in werre, or 13turnaie marciall,
Ne pompe, arraie, nobley, or eke richesse,
Ne maden me to rue on your distresse;
But morall vertue, grounded upon trouth;
That was the cause I first had on you 14routh.
Eke gentle hert, and manhode that ye had,
And that ye had, as me thought, in dispite
Every thing that 15sowned into bad,
As rudénesse, and 16peplishe appetite,
And that your reson bridled your delite:
This made, above every créature,
That I was yours, and shal while I maie dure. And this may length of
yerés nat fordo,
Ne 17remuable fortuné deface.
ver. 1667.
In conclusion, it is determined between them to meet again at the end of
ten days; and Creseide undertakes for that purpose that she will either
through pretext or stealth contrive at that time to visit the city of
Troy.
The fifth and last book of the poem has for its principal topic the
inconstancy of Creseide. The poet has touched but slightly upon the arts
of Diomed, her seducer; but has applied his utmost force to paint in
glowing colours the sentiments of Troilus, whom he holds up as the model
of a true, a constant and a loyal lover. Nor has he by any means been
unhappy in his execution. Troilus, the youngest of the sons of Priam and
Hecuba, the favourite of the writers of the middle ages, an
accomplished, undaunted, and resistless hero, and, next to Hector, the
chief hope of Troy, by no means degenerates into a whining shepherd. It
is thus that he is introduced expressing himself, immediately after the
departure of Creseide.
Who seeth you now, my righté 18lodésterre?
Who sitteth now or 19stant in your presence?
Who can comforten now your hertés 20werre?
Now I am gon, whom 21yeve ye audience?
Who speketh for me right now in absence?
Alas! no wight, and that is al my care;
For del wore I, as ill as I ye fare.
And when he 22fill in any slomberings,
Anon begin he shouldé for to grone,
And dremen of the dredfullesté things
That mighté ben, as he 23mete he were alone
In place horrible, making aie his mone,
Or 24meten that he was emongés all
His enemies, and in 25her hondés fall.
And therewithal his bodie shouldé sterte,
And with the sterte all sodainly awake,
And soche a tremour fele about his herte, That of the fere his bodie
shouldé quake,
And therewithal he shoulde a noisé make,
And seme as though he shouldé fallen depe,
From high aloft: and than he wouldé wepe,
And rewen on him selfe so pitously,
That wonder was to here his fantasie;
Another time he shouldé mightily
Comfort him selfe, and sain it was folie,
So causélesse soche drede and wo to 26drie;
And 27eft begin his 28aspre sorrows newe,
That every man might on his painés rewe.
ver. 232.
In this distress of mind Pandarus undertakes to comfort him; and finding
him singularly oppressed with the gloomy presentiments excited in him by
his dreams, exclaims
Alas ! alas ! so noble a creture
As is a man, should dreden soche 29ordure!
ver. 584.
The sensations of Troilus in visiting the different parts of the city,
are beautifully expressed. He intreats Pandarus, early the next morning
after the departure of Creseide, to accompany him in a visit to her
palace.
For sens we yet maie have no moré fest,
So let us sene her paleis at the lest.
And therwithall, his 30meiné for to 31blend,
A cause he fonde into the toun to go,
And to Creseidés housé thei gon 32wend:
But lorde! this 33sely Troilus was wo,
Him thought his sorrowful herte34 brast atwo;
For when he saw her dores 35sperred all,
Wel nigh for sorrowâ adoun he gan to fall.
Therwith when he 36was ware, and gan behold
How shet was every window of the place,
As frost him thought his herté gan to cold;
For whiche with chaunged dedly palé face
Withouten worde he 37forthby gan to pace,
And as God would, he gan so faste ride,
That no wight of his countenaunce 38aspide.
ver. 524. Fro thennesforth he rideth up and doune,
And every thing came him to rememberaunce,
As he rode forth by theâ places of the toune,
In whiche he 39whilom had all his plesaunce:
Lo, yonder I saw mine owne lady daunce;
And in that temple with her eyen clere
Me caughté first my righté lady dere;
And yonder have I herde ful lustily
My deré herté laugh; and yonder plaie
Saw I her onés eke ful blisfully;
And yonder onés to me gan she saie,
Now, godé swete, loveth me wel, I praie;
And yonde so godely gan she me beholde,
That to the deth mine hert is to her holde;
And at the corner in the yonder house
Herde I mine alderlevest lady dere
So womanly, with voice melodiouse,
Singen so wel, so godely, and so clere,
That in my soule yet me thinkâth I here
The blisful 40sowne; and in that yonder place
My lady first me toke unto her grace.
ver. 561. And after this he to the 41yatés wente,
Ther as Creseide out rode, a ful gode paas,
And up and down there made he many a 42wente,
And to him selfe ful oft he said, Alas,
Fro hennes rode my blisse and my solas;
As wouldé blisful God now for his joie
I might her sene ayen comen to Troie !
And to the yonder hil I gan her gide,
Alas, and there I toke of her my leve;
And yond I sawe her to her father ride,
For sorow of whiche mine herté shal to43 cleve;
And hither home I came whan it was eve;
And here I dwel, out casté from all joie,
And shal, til I maie sene her 44efte in Troie.
ver. 605.
Upon the wallés fast eke would he walke,
And on the Grekés host he wouldé se,
And to him selfe right thus he wouldé talke:
Lo, yonder is mine owné lady fre,
Or ellés yonder there the tentés be, And thens cometh this ayre that is
so 45sote,
That in my soule I fele it doth me 46bote.
ver. 666.
At length the tenth day arrives, the day appointed by Creseide to see
her beloved Troilus. Troilus scarcely slept on the preceding night; and
no sooner did the first beams of the sun appear above the horizon, than,
accompanied by the friendly Pandarus, he had already taken his station
on the walls to watch her approach.
Till it was 47none, they stoden for to se
Who that there came, and every 48maner wight
That came fro ferre, thei saiden it was she,
Til that they coulden knowen him aright;
Now was his herté dull, now was it light.
.......................
To Pandarus this Troilus, 49tho seide,
For aught I wot before 50none 51sikerly
Into this toune ne cometh not Creseide; She hath inough to doén hardély
To 52twinnen from her father, so trowe I,
Her oldé father wol yet make her dine,
Er that she go. â
Pandare answerd, It maie wel ben certain;
And 53forthy let us dine, I the beseche;
And after 54none than maist thou come again:
And home thei go, withouten moré speche.
.......................
The day goth fast, and after that came eve,
And yet came nat to Troilus Creseide:
He loketh forth by hedge, by tre, by 55greve,
And ferre his hedde over the wal he leide;
And at the last he tourned him, and seide,
By God I wore her mening now, Pandare,
Almost iwis all 56newé was my care.
Now doubtélesse this lady 57can her gode,
I wore she cometh riding privily;
I commenden her wisedome 58by mine hode;
She wol nat maken peple nicély
59Gaure on her when she comâth, but softĂ©ly By night into the toune she
thinketh ride,
And, dere brother! thinke nat long to abide;
We have naught ellés for to doen iwis;
And,--Pandarus, now wilt thou 60trowen me,
Have here my trouth, I se her, yond she is,
Heve up thine even, man; maiest thou nat se?
Pandare answeréd, Naie, so mote I 61the,
Al wrong, by God: what saist thou, man? wher art?
That I se yonder afarre nâis but a carte.
Alas, thou saiest right sothe, quod Troilus;
But hardély it is not all for nought
That in mine herte I now rejoicé thus;
It is ayenst some gode; I have a thought â
62Nâot I nat how, but sens that I was 63wrought,
Ne felt I soche a comfort, dare I saie,
She comâth to-night, my life that durst I laie.
ver. 1114.
The last of these stanzas obviously supplied Shakespear with the hint of
one of his most poetical passages, the beautiful lines in which Romeo
expresses his unusual gaiety just before he receives the intelligence of
Julietâs death.
If I may trust the flattering truth of sleep,
My dreams presage some joyful news at hand:
My bosomâs lord sits lightly on his throne;
And, all this day, an unaccustomâd spirit
Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts.
Act V.
The night however, advances; the chance of seeing Creseide to-day is
lost; and Troilus and his friend are obliged to return home. The lover
in the mean time flatters himself;
But nathelesse he gladded him in this,
He thought he unisacompted had his daie.
ver. 1183.
A fourth, a fifth, and a sixth day pass by, after the tenth which had
been fixed for their interview, and yet he sees and hears nothing of
Creseide. When he is no longer able to feed himself with hopes, he sinks
into the profoundest melancholy. He is so altered that it becomes
difficult for his nearest friends to know him: he is so pale, feeble and
wan, that he can no longer walk without a crutch. Priam however, his
mother, his brothers and sisters, all endeavor in vain to extort from
him to the secret of his uneasiness. He will confess nothing, but that
he feels a grievous malady about his heart, and is anxious to die. He
has a dream, which his sister interprets to him as emblematical of the
guilty familiarity of Diomed and Creseide; but he refuses to trust her
prophetic skill. At length the fact is confirmed to him in such a manner
as no longer to admit of a doubt. In one of the sallies of the Trojans
during the siege, Deiphobus disarms Diomed, and strips him of the coat
of mail with which he was accoutered, Troilus examines the trophy, and
finds within it, just above the seat of the heart, the very jewel which
he had presented to Creseide of the eve of her departure. He now becomes
careless of life; he engages in the most desperate actions, and at
length receives his death from the hand of Achilles.
From this analysis of the poem, it is not difficult to infer the degree
of applause to which its author is entitled. It has already been
observed by one of the critics upon English poetry,64 that it is âalmost
as long as the Ăneid.â Considered in this point of view, the Troilus and
Creseide will not appear to advantage. It is not an epic poem. It is not
that species of composition which Milton65 so admirably describes, as
âthe most consummate act of the authourâs fidelity and ripeness;â the
fruit of âyears and industry;â the reservoir into which are poured the
results of âall his considerat diligence, all his midnight watchings,
and expense of Palladian oyl.â The Ăneid is a little code of politics
and religion. It describes men and manners and cities and countries. It
embraces an outline of the arts of peace and of war. It travels through
the whole circumference of the universe; and brings together heaven and
hell, and all that is natural and all that is divine, to aid the poet in
the completion of his design. It is at once historical and prophetic. It
comprises the sublime horrors of a great city captured and in flames,
and the pathetic anguish of an ardent disappointed and abandoned love.
It comprehends a cycle of science and arts, as far as they could be
connected with the principal subject; and if all other books were
destroyed, the various elements of many sciences and arts might be drawn
from an attentive perusal of this poem.
The plan of the Ăneid in these respects, is precisely what the plan of
an epic poem should be. The Troilus and Creseide can advance no
pretensions to enter into this class of composition. It is merely a
love-tale. It is not the labour of a mans life; but a poem which, with
some previous knowledge of human sentiments and character, and a very
slight preparation of science, the writer might perhaps be expected to
complete in about as many months, as the work is divided into books. It
is certainly much greater in extent of stanzas and pages, than the
substratum and basis of the story can authorise.
It is also considerably barren of incident. There is not enough in it of
matter generating visible images in the reader, and exciting his
imagination with pictures of nature and life. There is not enough in it
of vicissitudes of fortune, awakening curiosity and holding expectation
in suspense.
Add to which, the catastrophe is unsatisfactory and offensive. The poet
who would interest us with a love-tale, should soothe our minds with the
fidelity and disinteredness of the mutual attachment of the parties,
and, if he presents us with a tragical conclusion, it should not be one
which arises out of the total unworthiness of either. Creseide (as Mr.
Urry, in his introduction to Henrysonâs epilogue to the Troilus, has
very truly observed), however prepossessing may be the omanner in which
she appears in the early part of the poem, is âa false inconstant
whore,â and of a class which the mind of the reader almost demands to
have exhibited, if not as âterminating in extreme misery,â at least as
filled with penitence and remorse. Virgil indeed has drawn the
catastrophe of his tale of Dido from the desertion of the lover. But the
habits of European society teach us to apprehend less ugliness and
loathsome deformity in the falshood of the lover, than of his mistress;
and we repose with a tenderer and more powerful sympathy upon the
abandoned and despairing state of the female. Besides, Virgil did not
write a poem expressly upon the tale of Dido, but only employed it for
an episode. The story of Romeo and Juliet is the most perfect model of a
love-tale in the series of human invention. Dryden thoroughly felt this
defect in the poem of Chaucer, and has therefore changed the catastrophe
when he fitted the story for the stage, and represented the two lovers
as faithful, but unfortunate.
But, when all these deductions have been made from the claims of the
Troilus and Creseide upon our approbation, it will still remain a work
interspersed with many beautiful passages, passages of exquisite
tenderness, of great delicacy, and of a nice and refined observation of
the workings of human sensibility. Nothing can be more beautiful,
genuine, and unspoiled by the corrupt suggestions of a selfish spirit,
than the sentiments of Chaucerâs lovers. While conversing with them, we
seem transported into ages of primeval innocence. Even Creseide is so
good, so ingenuous and affectionate, that we feel ourselves as incapable
as Troilus, of believing her false. Nor are the scenes of Chaucerâs
narrative, like the insipid tales of a pretended pastoral life, drawn
with that vagueness of manner, and ignorance of the actual emotions,
which, while we read them, we nauseate and despise. On the contrary, his
personages always feel, and we confess the truth of their feelings; what
passes in their minds, or falls from their tongues, has the clear and
decisive character which proclaims it human, together with the
vividness, subtleness and delicacy, which few authors in the most
enlightened ages have been equally fortunate in seizing. Pandarus
himself comes elevated and refined from the pen of Chaucer: his
occupation loses its grossness, in the disinterestedness of his motive,
and the sincerity of his friendship. In a word, such is the Troilus and
Creseide, that no competent judge can rise from its perusal, without a
strong impression of the integrity and excellence of the authorâs
disposition, and of the natural relish he entertained for whatever is
honourable, beautiful and just.
There is a great difference between merits of any work of human genius
considered abstractedly, taken as it belongs to the general stock of
literary production and tried severely on its intrinsic and unchangeable
pretensions, and the merits of the same work considered in the place
which it occupies in the scale and series of literary history, and
compared with the productions of its authorâs predecessors and
contemporaries. In the former case the question we have to ask is, Is it
good? In the latter we have to enquire, Was it good? To both these
questions, when applied to Chaucerâs poem of Troilus and Creseide, the
fair answer will be an affirmative.
But it is in the latter point of view that the work we are considering
shows to infinitely the greatest advantage. The poem will appear to be
little less than a miracle, when we combine our examination of it, with
a recollection of the times and circumstances in which it was produced.
When Chaucer wrote it, the English tongue had long remained in a languid
and almost perishing state, overlaid and suffocated by the insolent
disdain and remorseless tyranny of the Norman ravagers and dividers of
our soil. Previously to the eleventh century it had no cultivation and
refinement from the cowardly and superstitious Saxons, and during that
century and the following one it appeared in danger of being absolutely
extinguished. With Chaucer it seemed to spring like Minerva from the
head of Jove, at once accoutered and complete. Mandeville, Wicliffe and
Gower, whom we may style the other three evangelists of our tongue,
though all elder in birth than Chaucer, did not begin so early to work
upon the ore of their native language. He surprised countrymen with a
poem, eminently idiomatic, clear and perspicuous in its style, as well
as rich and harmonious in its versification. His Court of Love, an
earlier production, is not less excellent in both these respects. But it
was too slight and short to awaken general attention. The Troilus and
Creseide was of respectable magnitude, and forms an epoch in our
literature.
Chaucer presented to the judgment of his countrymen a long poem,
perfectly regular in its structure, and uninterrupted with episodes. It
contained nothing but what was natural. Its author disdained to have
recourse to what was bloated in sentiment, or romantic and miraculous in
incident, for the purpose of fixing or keeping alive the attention. He
presents real life and human sentiments, and suffers the reader to dwell
upon and expand the operations of feeling and passion. Accordingly the
love he describes is neither frantic, nor brutal, nor artificial, nor
absurd. His hero conducts himself in all respects with the most perfect
loyalty and honour; and his heroine, however she deserts her character
in the sequel, is in the commencement modest, decorous, affectionate,
and prepossessing. The loves of Troilus and Creseide scarcely retain any
traces of the preposterous and rude manners of the age in which they
were delineated.
This poem therefore, as might have been expected, long fixed upon itself
as the admiration of the English nation. Chaucer, by his Court of Love,
and the ditties and songs which had preceded it, had gratified the
partiality of his friends, and given them no mean or equivocal promise
of what he should hereafter be able to perform. But these, we may easily
conceive, were of little general notoriety. The Troilus and Creseide was
probably, more than any of his other works, the basis of his fame, and
the foundation of his fortune. He wrote nothing very eminently superior
to this, till his Canterbury Tales, which were the production of his
declining age. Owing perhaps to the confusion and sanguinary spirit of
the wars of York and Lancaster, English literature rather decayed than
improved during the following century; and we had consequently no poem
of magnitude, and of a compressed and continued plan, qualified to enter
into competition with the Troilus and Creseide, from the earliest
periods of our poetry to the appearance of the Fairy Queen. Accordingly,
among many examples of its praises which might be produced, sir Philip
Sidney in his defense of Poesy has selected this performance, as the
memorial of the talents of our poet, and the work in which he
âundoubtedly did excellently well.â
There are some particular defects belonging to this production beside
those already mentioned, which are the more entitled to our notice, as
they are adapted to characterize the stage of refinement to which our
literature was advanced in fourteenth century. In the first place, the
poem is interspersed with many base and vulgar lines, which are not only
unworthy of the poet, but would be a deformity in any prose composition,
and would even dishonour and debase the tone of familiar conversation.
The following specimens will afford a sufficient illustration of this
fact. Cupid is provoked at the ease and lightness of heart of the hero
and prepares to avenge himself of the contempt.
-Sodainly he hitte him at the full,
And yet as proude a pecocke can he 66pul.
B. I, ver. 210.
Thus wol she saine, and al the toune at ones,
The wretch is dead, the divel have his bones.
ver. 806.
Withouten jelousie, and soche debate,
Shall no husbonde saine unto me checkemate.
B. II, ver. 754.
For him demeth men hote, that seethe him 67swete.
ver. 1533. Now loketh than, if thei be nat to blame,
That hem 68avaunt of women, and by name,
That yet 69behight hem never this ne that,
Ne known hem more than mine oldé hat.
B. III, ver. 321.
I am, til God me better mindé sende,
At Dulcarnon, right at my wittes ende.
ver. 955.
For peril is with 70dretching in ydrawe,
Nay suche 71abodes ben nat worthe an hawe.
ver. 856.
Soche arguments ne be nat worthe a bene.
ver. 1173.
But soche an ese therewith thei in her wrought,
Right as a man is esed for to fele
For ache of hedde, to clawen him on his hele.
B. IV, ver. 728.
I have herd saie eke, timés twisé twelve.
B. V, ver. 97.
There are also lines interspersed in the poem, which are not more
degraded by the meanness of the expression, than by the rudeness, not to
say the brutality, of the sentiment. We may well be surprised, after
considering the delicacy and decorum with which Chaucer has drawn his
heroine, to find him polluting the portrait of her virgin character in
the beginning of the poem with so low and pitiful a joke as this,
But whether that she children had or none,
I rede it nat, therfore I let it gone.
B. I, ver. 132.
The following sentiment must also be deeply disgustful to a just and
well ordered mind. Calchas, the father of Creseide, languishes in the
Grecian army for the restoration of his only child, and at length
effects to his great joy the means of obtaining her in exchange for
Antenor, a prisoner in the Grecian camp.
The whiché tale anon right as Creseide
Had herd, she (whiche that of her father 72 rought, As in this case,
right naught, ne when he deide)
Full busily, &c.
B. IV, ver. 668.
Another defect in this poem of Chaucer, of the same nature, and that is
not less conspicuous, is the tediousness into which he continually runs,
seemingly without the least apprehension that any one will construe this
feature of his composition as a fault. He appears to have had no idea
that his readers could possibly deem it too much to peruse any number of
verses which he should think proper to pour out on any branch of his
subject. To judge from the poem of Troilus and Creseide, we should be
tempted to say, that compression, the strengthening a sentiment by
brevity, and the adding to the weight and power of a work by cutting
away from it all useless and cumbersome excrescences, was a means of
attaining to excellence which never entered into our authorâs mind. A
remarkable instance of this occurs in the fourth book, where upward of
one hundred verses upon predestination are put into the mouth of
Troilus, the materials of which are supposed to have been extracted from
a treatise De Causa Dei, written by Thomas Bradwardline archbishop of
Canterbury, a contemporary of our author. Other examples, scarcely less
offensive to true taste, might be cited.
It is particularly deserving of notice that scarcely any one of the
instances which might be produced under either of these heads of
impropriety, has a parallel in the version made by Boccaccio of the same
story, probably from the same author, and nearly at the same time. Few
instances can be given in which the Italian writer has degenerated into
any thing mean and vulgar, and he never suspends his narrative with idle
and incoherent digressions. He seems to have been perfectly aware, that
one of the methods to render a literary production commendable is to
admit into it nothing which is altogether superfluous. The inference is,
that whatever may be the comparative degrees of imagination and
originality between England and Italy in the fourteenth century, what is
commonly called taste had made a much greater progress in the latter
country than among us.
a sooth, truth.
b going before, helping.
c added.
d nevertheless.
e without a peer: she was the first in beauty among the dames of Troy,
as much beyond a question, as A is unquestionably the first letter in
the alphabet.
f press, multitude.
g was not; or rather was: Chaucer uses the double negative inserted
before and after the verb, conformably to the idiom of the French
language.
h every one.
i breadth in litel brede, not conspicuous.
k gentle, courteous.
l bereave, deprive of.
m blame.
nsigh.
o bait, pause.
p by God.
q what.
r least: she was by no means small.
s less.
t Then.
u somewhat.
w disdainful.
x little.
y again.
z then.
aa thenceforth.
bb gibes.
cc much hewn.
dd string.
ee much bruised.
ff pierced.
gg spirit: wise ghoste, penetrating spirit.
hh gate.
ii shaped, prepared.
kk in the morning.
?
ll cause.
mm caper, dance.
nn would not.
oo descend.
pp then.
qq decently he had been able.
rr securely.
ss together.
tt quit, relieved.
uu trust.
ww twined.
xx secure.
yy stinted, ceased.
zz Quoth.
1 then.
2 their.
3 weened, thought, purposed.
4 Those.
5 thence, in another place.
6 bier.
7 fraught with, impelled by.
8 forte sum.
9 conquer.
10 separate.
11 together.
12 trust: this was the termination of the imperative mood in the time of
Chaucer.
13 tournament.
14 ruth, pity.
15 sounded (inclined) toward.
16 vulgar, gross.
17 unstable.
18 load-star, north star.
19 standeth.
20 war.
21 give.
22 fell.
23 dreamed.
24 their.
25 suffer.
26 after.
27 sharp.
28 trash.
29 attendants.
30 blind.
31 turn.
32 simple.
33 burst.
34 bolted.
35 had recollected himself.
36 forward.
37 espied.
38 formerly.
39 most dear.
40 sound.
41 gates.
42 turn.
43 utterly cleave.
44 again.
45 sweet.
46 profit, good.
47 noon.
48 sort of person.
49 then.
50 noon.
51 certainly.
52 separate.
53 therefore.
54 noon.
55 grove.
56 thoughtless, inexperienced.
57 judges rightly, is discreet.
58 by my hood; a trivial oath.
59 stare.
60 believe.
61 prosper.
62 Ne wot.
63 made.
64 Warton, Vol. I, Sect. 14.
65 Areopagitica; a Speech for the liberty of Unlicensed Printing.
66 strip of its plumage.
67 sweat.
68 vaunt, boast.
69 granted.
70 delay.
71 delays.
72 cared.
TRAGEDY OF SHAKESPEAR ON THE SUBJECT.
Many marks of approbation have been conferred upon the poem of Troilus
and Creseide, beside the eulogium already quoted from sir Philip Sidney.
Some of them are the following. A poet of a succeeding age, who now
appears to have been Mr. Robert Henryson, wrote a sequel to the poem, or
sixth book, which ordinarily bears the name of the This is to be found
in most of the editions of Chaucer; is printed by the earlier editors
without any notice of distinction, as if it had been the work of Chaucer
himself; and is so enumerated by Leland and other antiquaries. The
sequel however contains in itself the most explicit declaration that it
is not the production of Chaucer; and Mr. Urry as annexed to it in his
edition the following description of its source âThe Author of the
Testament of Creseide, I have been informed by Sir James Eriskin, late
Earl of Kelly, and diverse aged Scholars of the Scottish Nation was one
Mr. Robert Henderson, chief School-master of Dumferlinga, near the end
of the Reign of King Henry VIII.â There an be no reasonable doubt that
this is the same person as âMr Rovert Henryson of Dumferling,â
enumerated among the Scottish poets, by William Dunbar author of the
Golden Terge, who died about the year 1530; and as âMaister Rovert
Henrisoun, Scolmaister of Dumferling,â and compiler of âThe morall
Fabillis of Ăsopb, a manuscript existing in the British Museum.
Henryson perceived what there was defective in the close of the story of
Troilus and Creseide, as Chaucer has left it. It is true that the law of
political justice examined. It is true that the law of poetical justice,
as it has been technically termed by some modern critics, has been urged
to a ridiculous strictness, and that the uniform observation of this law
is by no means necessary to the producing the noblest and most admirable
effects. The scheme of real events, and the course of nature, so far as
we are able to follow it, is conducted by no rule analogous to this of
poetical justice; and the works of human imagination ought to be copies
of what is to be found in the great volume of the universe. Poetry has a
right to deal in select nature; but its selections should not be so
fastidious as ot exclude the most impressive scenes which nature has to
boast. No true critic would wish Lear, Othello and the Orphan not to
have existed, or scarcely to be in any respect other than as they are.
Two of the three could not have been changed in their catastrophe,
without the destruction of the main principles of their texture. But,
though virtue may be shown unfortunate, vice should not be dismissed
triumphant. It is not perhaps necessary that it should always be seen
overtaken by some striking and terrible retribution; but it should not
appear ultimately tranquil and self-satisfied; for such is not its
fortune on the great stage of the world. It is followed in most
instances by remorse; or, when it is not, remorse is only excluded by a
certain hardness and brutality of temper, which is solitary in its
character, and incompatible with genuine delight. Henryson therefore
judged truly, when he regarded the poem of Chaucer as in this respect
faulty and incomplete. The inconstant and unfeeling Creseide, as she
appears in the last book of Chaucer, is the just object of aversion, and
no reader can be satisfied that Troilus, the loyal and heroic lover,
should suffer all the consequences of her crime, while she escapes with
impunity.
The poem of Henryson has a degree of merit calculated to make us regret
that it is not a performance standing by itself, instead of thus serving
merely as an appendage to the work of another. The author has conceived
in a very poetical manner his description of the season in which he
supposes himself to have written this dolorous tragedy. The sun was in
Aries; his setting was ushered in with furious storms of hail; the cold
was biting and intense; and the poet sat in a solitary little building
which he calls his âcorature.â The evening star had just risen.
dThroughout the glasse her bemés brast so faire,
That I might se on every side me by;
The northren winde hath purified the aire,
And shedde his misty cloudés fro the skie;
The frost fresed, the blastés bitterly
Fro pole Artike come whisking loud ad shill.
ver. 15.
Creseide is then represented as deserted of Diomed, filled with
discontent, and venting her rage in bitter revilings against Venus and
Cupid. Her ingratitude is resented by these deities, who call a council
of the seven planets. The persons of the Gods bearing the names of these
planets are described with great spirit. Saturn, for example,
Whiche gave to Cupide litel reverence,
But as a boistous chorle in his manere
Came crabbedly with e austern loke and chere.
His face f frounsed, his g lere was like the lede,
His tethe chattred, and shiverâd with the chin,
His eien droupâd hole sonken in his hede,
With lippés blew, and chekés lene and thin.
..............
h Attour his belte his i liart lockés laie,
j Feltred unfaire, oâer fret with frostes hore,
His widdred wed fro him the winde out wore.
ver. 152.
In the council it is decreed that Creseicde shall be punished with
leprosy. Cynthia is deputed in a vision to inform her of her fate. She
wakes and finds that her dream is true. She then intreats her father to
conduct her, unknown, to a hospital for lepers. By the governors of this
hospital she is compelled to go as a beggar on the highway, with a bell
and clapper, as we read was anciently practised by lepers. Among teh
passers by, comes Troilus, who in spite of the dreadful disfigurement of
her person, finds something in her that he thinks he had seen before,
and even draws from a glance of her horrible countenance a contused
recollection of the sweet visage and amorous glances of his beloved
Creseide. His instinct leads him no further: he does not suspect that
his mistress is actually before him. Yet
For knightly pitie and memoriell
Of faire Creseide,
he takes âgirdle, a purse of golde, and many a gaie jewell, and shakes
them doun in the skirteâ of the miserable beggar:
Than rode awaie, and nat a worde he spake.
ver. 103.
No sooner is he gone, than Creseide becomes aware that her benefactor is
no other than Troilus himself. Affected by this unexpected occurrence,
she falls into a frenzy, betrays her real name and condition, bequeaths
to Troilus a ring which he had given her in dowry, and dies. Troilus
laments her fate, and builds her monument.
It seemed to be the more proper that we should take thus much notice of
the poem of the schoolmaster of Dumferling, that by contrasting Henryson
and Chaucer, we might be the better able to judge of the vicissitudes of
poetry and the progress of taste between the reigns of Edward III. and
Henry VIII. The combat indeed is not exactly equal, since Chaucer
possessed at least all the advantages of education which England could
afford, if he were not yet a courtier, when he wrote his Troilus and
Creseide, and Henryson was no more than a provincial schoolmaster.
Accordingly the judicious reader will perceive that the Scottish, was
incaple of rising to the refinements, or conceiving the delicacies of
the English, poet: though it must be admitted tat in the single instance
of the state of mind, the half-recognition, half-ignorance, attributed
to Troilus in his last encounter with Creseide, there is a felicity of
conception impossible to be surpassed. In some respects the younger poet
has clearly the advantage over the more ancient. There is in his piece
abundance of incident, of imagery and of painting, without tediousness,
with scarcely one of those lagging, impertinent and unmeaning lines with
which the production of Chaucer is so frequently degraded.
The principal circumstance however to be remarked respecting the poem of
Henryson, is that, whatever eminence of merit may justly be ascribed to
it, it does not belong to the Troilus and Creseide. Chaucer disowns the
alliance of the Scottish poet. The great excellences of Chaucerâs poem
are its simplicity, its mild and human character, and that it does not
sully the imagination of the reader with pictures of disgust and
deformity. Highway-beggary, the bell and clapper, the leprosy, and the
hideous loathsomeness of Henrysonâs Creseide, start away from and refuse
to be joined to, the magic sweetness and softness of Chaucer. No reader,
who has truly entered into the sentiment of kindness, sympathy and love
subsisting between Chaucerâs personages, will consent the Creseicde,
however apostate, shall be overtaken by so savage and heart-appalling a
retribution. This is not a species of chastisement that can be
recognized in the court of the God whose battery is smiles, and whose
hostility averted glances and lips of amorous resentment.
The poem of Troilus and Creseide was also translated into Latin rhymes
by sir Francis Kinaston in the reign of Charles I, and accompanied with
a commentary and notes. In one of the notes the translator has
introduced an observation, that, if true, would overturn the hypothesis
on which we have prodeeded respecting the age at which Chaucer wrote
this poem, and would even introduce a new incident into our knowledge of
the events of the poetâs life. He remarks that Chaucer has called the
light which burned all night in the apartment of Creseide, by the
appellation âmotar;â and infers that âthis word doth plainly intimate
our author to have been an esquire of the body in ordinary to the king;
as this is the name of the match-light which burns all night at the
kingâs bed-side, which very few courtiers besides esquires of the body
do understand what is meant by itl Every reader may judge for himself of
the inference to be drawn from the paucity of persons initiated into
this profound mystery; and of the âwitâ of Chaucer (for such sir Francis
Kinaston deems it) in calling this light by a neme which note of his
readers, except â esquires of the body in ordinar to the king,â could
understand.
It would be extremely unjust to quit consideration of Chaucerâs poem of
Troilus and Creseide, without noticing the high honour it has received
in having been made the foundations of one of the plays of Shakespear.
There seems to have been in this respect a sort of conspiracy in the
commentators upon Shakespear, against the glory of our old English bard.
In what they have written concerning this play, they make a very slight
mention o Chaucer; they have not consulted his poem for the purpose of
illustrating this admirable drama; and they have agreed, as far as
possible, to transfer to another author the honour of having supplied
materials to the tragic artist. Dr. Johnson says, âShakespeare has in
his story followed, for the greater part, the old book of Caxton, which
was then very popular; but the character of Thersites, of which it makes
no mention, is a proof that this play was written after Chapman had
published his version of Homer.â Mr. Steevens asserts that âShakespeare
received the greatest part of his materials for the structure of this
play from the Troye Boke of Lydgate.â And Mr. Malone repeatedly treats
the âHistory of the Destruction of Troy, translated by Caxton,â as
âShakespeareâs authorityâ in the composition of this drama.
These assertions however are far from being accurate. It would have been
strange indeed if Shakespear, with a soul so poetical, and in so many
respect congenial to that of Chaucer, had not been a diligent student of
the works of his great predecessor. Chaucer made a much greater figure
in the eyes of a reader of poetry in the sixteenth century, than it has
been his fortune to do among the scholars of the eighteenth. After the
death of Chaucer, the English nation experienced a long dearth of
poetry, and it seemed as if the darkness introduced by the first
destroyers of the Roman empire was about once more to cover our isle.
Nothing worthy the name of poetry was the produce of the following
century. English poets indeed existed of great reputation and merit,
beside Chaucer, whose works might recommend themselves to the attention
of Chakespear: Sackville, Marlow, Drayton, Donne, and Spenser. But all
these were the contemporaries of Shakespear, men whom he might have
seen, and with whom he had probably conversed. Chaucer was almost the
only English poet in the juvenile days of Shakespear, upon whose
reputation death had placed his seal; the only one whose laurels were
consecrated and rendered venerable by being seen through the mild and
harmonising medium of a distant age. A further direct proof that
Shakespear was familiarly conversant with the works of Chaucer may be
derived from an examination of the early Poems of our great dramatic
bard. His Rape of Lucredce is written precisely, and his Venus and
Adonis nearly, in the versification and stanza used by Chaucer in the
Troilous and Creseide and in many other of his works. Nor is it
reasonable to doubt that the idea of the luscious paintings contained in
these two pieces of Shakespear, was drawn from the too great fidelity
and detail with which Chaucer has entered into similar situations in the
poem before us. We have already seen a striking instance in which
Shakespear has imitated a passage from the Troilus and Creseide, in his
tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.
The fact is, that the play of Shakespear we are here considering has for
its main foundation, the poem of Chaucer, and is indebted for many
accessory helps to the books mentioned by the commentators. The Troilus
and Creseida seems long to have been regarded by our ancestors in a
manner somewhat similar to that in which the Ăneid was viewed among the
Romans, or the Iliad by the ancient Greeks. Every reader who advanced
any pretensions to poetical taste, felt himself obliged to speak of it
as the great classical regular English poem, which reflected the highest
lustre upon our language. Shakespear therefore, as a man felt ist but a
just compliment to the merits of the great father of our poetry, to
introduce his characters in tangible form, and with all the advantages
and allurements he could bestow upon them, before the eyes of his
countrymen; and as a constructor of dramas, accustomed to consult their
tastes and partialities, he conceived that he could not adopt a more
promising plan, that to entertain them with a tale already familiar to
their minds, which had been the associate and delight of their early
years, which every man had himself praised, and had heard applauded by
all the tasteful and the wise.
We are not however left to provability and conjecture as to the use made
by Shakespear of the poem of Chaucer. His other sources were Chapmanâs
translation of Homer, the Troy Book of Lydgate, and Caxtonâs History of
the Destruction of Troy. It is well known that there is no trace of the
particular story of Troilous and Creseide among the ancients. It occurs
indeed in Lydgate and Caxton; but the name and actions of Pandarus, a
very essential personage in the tale as related by Shakespear and
Chaucer, are entirely wanting, except a single mention of him by
Lydgatem, and that with an express reference to Chaucer as his
authority. Shakespear has taken the story of Chaucer with all its
imperfections and defects, and has coped the series of its incidents
with his customary fidelity; an exactness seldom to be found in any
other dramatic writer.
Since then two of the greatest writers this island has produced have
treated the same story, each in his own peculiar manner, it may neither
unentertaining nor uninstuctive to consider the merit of the respective
modes of composition all illustrated in the present example. It has
already been sufficiently seen that Chaucerâs poem includes many
beauties, many genuine touches of nature, and many strokes of an
exquisite pathos. It is on the whole however written in that style which
has unfortunately been so long imposed upon the world as dignified,
classical and chaste. It is naked of incidents, of ornament, of whatever
should most awaken the imagination, astound the fancy, or hurry away the
soul. It has the stately march of a Dutch burgomaster as he appears in a
procession, or a French poet as he shows himself in his works. It
reminds one too forcibly of a tragedy of Racine. Every thing partakes of
the author, as if he thought he should be everlastingly disgraced by
becoming natural, in artificial and alive. We travel through a work of
this sort as we travel over some of the immense downs with which our
island is interspersed. All is smooth, or undulated wit so gentle and
slow a variation as scarcely to be adverted to by the sense. But all is
homogeneous and tiresome; the mind sinks into a state of aching
torpidity; and we feel as if we should never get to the end of our
eternal journeyn. What a contrast to a journey among mountains and
vallies, spotted with herds of various kinds of cattle, interspersed
with villages, opening ever and anon to a view of the distant ocean, and
refreshed with rivulets and stream; where if the eye is ever fatigued,
it is only with the boundless flood of beauty which is incessantly
pouring upon it! Such is the tragedy of Shakespear.
The historical play of Troilus and Creseida exhibits as full a specimen
of the different styles in which this wonderful writer was qualified to
excelm as is to be found in any of his works. A more poetical passage,
if poetry consists in sublime picturesque and beautiful imagery, neither
ancient nor modern times have produced, than the exhortation addressed
by Patroclus to Achilles, to persuade him to shake off his passion for
Polyxena, the daughter of Priam, and reassume the terrors of his
military greatness.
Sweet, rouse yourself; and the weak wanton Cupid
Shall from your neck unloose his amorous fold,
And like a dew-drop from the lionâs mane,
Be shook to air.
Act III, Scene 3.
Never did morality hold a language more profound, persuasive and
irresistible, than in Shakespearâs Ulysses, who in the same scene, and
engaged in the same cause with Patroclus, thus expostulates with the
chapion of the Grecian forces.
For emulation hath a thousand sons,
That one by one pursue. If you give way,
Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,
Like to an enterâd tide, they all rush by,
And leave you hindmost: there you lie,
Like to a gallant horse fallen in first rank,
For pavement to the abject rear, oâer-run
And trampled on.
âO let not virtue seek
Remuneration for the thing it was!
For beauty, wit, high birth, desert in service,
Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all
To envious and calumniation time.
One touch of nature makes the whole world kin, ...
That all with one consent praise new-born gauds,
And give to dust, that is a little gilt,
More praise than they will give to gold oâer-dusted.
The marvel not, thou great and complete man!
That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax.
âThe cry went once on thee,
And still it might, and yet it may again,
If thou wouldst not entomb thyself alive,
And case thy reputation in thy tent.
But the great beauty of this play, as it is of all the genuine writings
of Shakespear, beyond all didaetic morality, beyond all mere flights of
fancy, and beyond all sublime, a beauty entirely his own, and in which
no writer ancient or modern can enter into competition with him, is that
his men are men; his sentiments are living, and his characters marked
with those delicate, evanescent, undefinable touches, which identify
them with the great delineations of nature. The speech of Ulysses just
quoted, when taken by itself, is purely an exquisite specimen of
didactic morality; but when combined with the explanation given by
Ulysses, before the entrance of Achilles, of the nature of his design,
it becomes the attribute of a real man, and starts into life. âAchilles
(says he)
<quote> âstands in the entrance of his tent.
Please it our general to pass strangely by him,
As if he were forgot; and princes all,
Lay negligent and loose regard upon him:
I will come last: âtis like, heâll question me,
Why such unplausive eyes are bent, why turnâd on him;
If so, I have derision medâcinable,
To use between your strangeness and his pride,
Which his own will shall have desire to drink.
When we compare the plausible and seemingly affectionate manner in which
Ulysses addresses himself to Achilles, with the key which he here
furnishes to his meaning, and especially with the epithet âderision,â we
have a perfect elucidation of his character, and must allow that it is
impossible to exhibit the crafty and smooth-tongued politician in a more
exact or animated style. The advice given by Ulysses is in its nature
sound and excellent, and in its form inoffensive and kind; the name
therefore of âderisionâ which he gives to it, marks to a wonderful
degree the cold and self-centered subtlety of his character.
The following is a most beautiful example of the genuine Shakespearian
manner, such as I have been attempting to describe; where Cressida first
proceeds so far as to confess to Troilus that she loves him.
CRESSIDA.
Boldness comes to me now, and brings me heart: â
Prince Troilus, I have lovâd you night and day,
For many weary months.
TROILUS.
Why was my Cressid then so hard to win?
CRESSIDA.
Hard to seem won; but I was won, my lord,
With the first flance that everâPardon meâ
If I confess much, you will play the tyrant.
I love you now. but not, till now, so much
But I might master it:âin faith, I lie;
My thoughts were like unbridled children, grown
Too headstrong for their mother;âSee, we fools
Why have I blabbâd? Who shall be true to us,
When we are so unsecret to ourselves?â
But, though I lovâd you well, I wooâd you not;â
And yet, good faith, I wishâd myself a man;
Or that we women had men;s privilege
Of speaking first. âSweet, bid me hold my tongue;
For, in this rapture, I shall surely speak
The thing I shall repent, âSee, see, your silence,
Cunning in dumbness, from my weakness draws
My very soul of counsel. âStop my mouth.
Act III, Scene 2.
What charming ingenuousness, what exquisite naiveté, what ravishing
confusion of soul, are expressed in these words! We seem to perceive in
them every fleeting thought as it rises in the mind of Cressida, at the
same time that they delineate with equal skill all the beautiful
timidity and innocent artifice which grace and consummate the feminine
character. other writers endeavor to conjure up before them their
imaginary personages, and seek with violent effort to arrest and
describe what their fancy presents to them; Shakespear alone(though not
without many exceptions to this happiness) appears to have the whole
train of his characters in voluntary attendance upon him, so listen to
their effusions, and to commit to writing all the words, and the very
words, they utter.
The whole catalogue of the dramtis personĂŠ in the play of Troilus and
Cressida, so far as they depend upon a rich and original vein of humour
in the author, are drawn with a felicity which never was surpassed. The
genius of Homer has been a topic of admiration to almost every
generation of men since the period in which he wrote. But his characters
will not bear the slightest comparison with the delineation of the same
characters as they stand in Shakespear. This is a species of honour
which ought by no means to be forgotten when we are making the enlogium
of our immortal bard, a sort of illustration of his greaness which
cannot fail to place it in a very conspicuous light, The dispositions of
men perhaps had not been sufficiently unfolded in the very early period
of intellectual refinement when Homer wrote; the rays of humour had not
been dissected by the glass, or tendered perdurable by the pencil, of
the poet. Homerâs characters are drawn with a laudable portion of
variety and consistency; but his Achilles, his Ajax, and his Nestor are,
each of them, rather a species that an individual, and can boast more of
the propriety of abstraction, than of the vivacity of a moving scene of
absolute life. The Achilles, the Ajax, and the various Grecian heroes of
Shakespear on the other hand, are absolute men, deficient in nothing
which can tend to individualise them, and already touched with the
Promethean fire that might infuse a soul into what, without it, were
lifeless form. From the rest perhaps the character of Thersites deserves
to be selected (how cold and school-boy a sketch in Homer!) as
exhibiting an appropriate vein of sarcastic humour amidst his cowardice,
and a profoundness and truth in his mode of laying open the foibles of
those about him, impossible to be excelled.
Before we quit this branch of Shakespearâs praise, it may not be
unworthy of our attention to advert to one of the methods by which he
has attained this uncommon superiority. It has already been observed
that one of the most formidable adversaries of true poetry, is an
attribute which is generally miscalled dignity. Shakespear possessed, no
man in higher perfection, the true dignity and loftiness of the poetical
afflatus, which he has displayed in many of the finest passages of his
works with miraculous success. But he knew that no man ever was, or ever
can be, always dignified. He knwo that those suvtler traits of character
which identify a man, are familiar and relaxed, pervaded with passion,
and not played off with an eternal eye to decorum. In this respect the
peculiarities of Shakespearâs genius are no where more forcibly
illustrated than in the play we are here considering. The shamions of
Greece and Troy, from the hour in which their names were first recorded,
has always worn a certain formality of attire, and marched with a slow
and measured step. No poet till this time, had ever ventured to force
them out of the manner which their epic creator had given them.
Shakespear first suppled their limbs, took from them the classic
stiffness of their gait, and enriched them with an entire set of those
attributes, which might render them completely beings of the same
species with ourselves.
Yet, after every degree of homage has been paid to the glorious and
awful superiorities of Shakespear, it would be unpardonable in us, on
the present occasion, to forget one particular in which the play of
Troilus and Cressida does not eclipse, but on the contrary falls far
short of its great archetype, the poem of Chaucer. This too is a
particular, in which, as the times of Shakepear ere much mor enlightened
and refined than those of Chaucer, the preponderance of excellence migh
well be expected to be foun int he opposite scale. The fact however is
unquestionable, that the characters of Chaucer are much more respectable
and loveworthy than the correspondent personages in Shakespear. In
Chaucer Troilus is the pattern of an honorable lover, choosing rather
every extremity and the loss of life, than to divulge, whether in a
direct or an indirect manner, anything which might compromise the
reputation of his mistress, or lay open her name as a topic for the
comments of the vulgar. Creseide, however (as Mr. Urry has observed) at
last a âfalse unconstant whore,â yet in the commencement, and for a
considerable time, preserves those ingenuous manners and that propriety
of conduct, which are the brightest ornaments of the female character.
Even Pandarus how and dishonourable as is the part he has to play, is in
Chaucer merely a friendly and kind-hearted man, so easy in his temper
that rather than not contribute to the happiness of the man he loves, he
is content to overlook the odious ames and construction to which his
proceedings are entitled. Not so in Shakespear: his Troilus shows no
reluctence to render his amour a subject of notoriety to the whole city;
his Cressida (for example in the scene with the Grecian chiefso, to all
of whom she is a total stranger) assumes the manners of the most
abandoned prostitute, and his Pandarus enters upon his vile occupation,
not from any venial partiality to the desires of his friend, but from
the direct and simple love of what is gross, impudent and profligate.
For these reasons Shakepearâs play, however enriched with a thousand
various beauties, can scarcely boast of any strong claim upon our
interest or affections. It may be alleged indeed that Shakespear, having
exhibited pretty much at large the whole catalogue of Greek and Trojan
heroes, had by no means equal scope to interest us in the story from
which they play receives its name; but this would scarcely be admitted
as an adequate apology before an impartial tribunal.
a lament for the Loss of the Poets, in Ramsayâs Evergreen, Vol. I,
p.129.
b Percy, Vol. Book i, No. 13
c oratory.
d Through.
e austere.
f wrinkled.
g colour was like lead.
h Down to.
i white.
j tangled.
l Unyâs Chaucer, Life, sig.f. Preface, sig. m. and Glossary, in voce
Morter. The copy of Kinaston in the British Museum contains the text
only, without notes. The notes, it should seem, were never printed.
m Troy Boke, Book III, cap. xxv.
n These remarks apply to nine-tenths of the poem, though by no means to
those happier passages in which the author unfolds the sentiments of his
personages.
o Act iv. Scene 5.