On the Art of Writing Part 9

Well, we strike into the line of our prose-writers, say as early as Malory. We come on this; of the Pa.s.sing of Arthur:--

'My time hieth fast,' said the king. Therefore said Arthur unto Sir Bedivere, 'Take thou Excalibur my good sword, and go with it to yonder water side; and when thou comest there I charge thee throw my sword in that water and come again and tell me what there thou seest.' 'My lord,' said Bedivere, 'Your commandment shall be done; and lightly bring you word again.' So Sir Bedivere departed, and by the way he beheld that n.o.ble sword, that the pommel and the haft was all of precious stones, and then he said to himself, 'If I throw this rich sword in the water, thereof shall never come good, but harm and loss.'

And then Sir Bedivere hid Excaliber under a tree. And so, as soon as he might, he came again unto the king, and said he had been at the water and had thrown the sword into the water, 'What saw thou there?' said the king, 'Sir,' he said, 'I saw nothing but waves and winds.'

Now I might say a dozen things of this and of the whole pa.s.sage that follows, down to Arthur's last words. Specially might I speak to you of the music of its monosyllables--'"What sawest you there?" said the king...

"Do as well as thou mayest; for in me is no trust for to trust in. For I will into the Vale of Avilion, to heal me of my grievous wound. And if thou hear never more of me, pray for my soul."' But, before making comment at all, I shall quote you another pa.s.sage; this from Lord Berners' translation of Froissart, of the death of Robert Bruce:--

It fortuned that King Robert of Scotland was right sore aged and feeble: for he was greatly charged with the great sickness, so that there was no way for him but death. And when he felt that his end drew near, he sent for such barons and lords of his realm as he trusted best, and shewed them how there was no remedy with him, but he must needs leave this transitory life.... Then he called to him the gentle knight, Sir William Douglas, and said before all the lords, 'Sir William, my dear friend, ye know well that I have had much ado in my days to uphold and sustain the right of this realm; and when I had most ado I made a solemn vow, the which as yet I have not accomplished, whereof I am right sorry; the which was, if I might achieve and make an end of all my wars, so that I might once have brought this realm in rest and peace, then I promised in my mind to have gone and warred on Christ's enemies, adversaries to our holy Christian faith. To this purpose mine heart hath ever intended, but our Lord would not consent thereto... And sith it is so that my body can not go, nor achieve that my heart desireth, I will send the heart instead of the body, to accomplish mine avow... I will, that as soon as I am trespa.s.sed out of this world, that ye take my heart out of my body, and embalm it, and take of my treasure as ye shall think sufficient for that enterprise, both for yourself and such company as ye will take with you, and present my heart to the Holy Sepulchre, whereas our Lord lay, seeing my body can not come there. And take with you such company and purveyance as shall be appertaining to your estate. And, wheresoever ye come, let it be known how ye carry with you the heart of King Robert of Scotland, at his instance and desire to be presented to the Holy Sepulchre.' Then all the lords, that heard these words, wept for pity.

There, in the fifteenth century and early in the sixteenth, you have Malory and Berners writing beautiful English prose; prose the emotion of which (I dare to say) you must recognise if you have ears to hear. So you see that already our English prose not only achieves the 'high moment,'

but seems to obey it rather and be lifted by it, until we ask ourselves, 'Who could help writing n.o.bly, having to tell how King Arthur died or how the Bruce?' Yes, but I bid you observe that Malory and Berners are both relating what, however n.o.ble, is quite simple, quite straightforward. It is when prose attempts to _philosophise_, to _express thoughts_ as well as to relate simple sayings and doings--it is then that the trouble begins. When Malory has to philosophise death, to _think_ about it, this is as far as he attains:--

'Ah, Sir Lancelot,' said he, 'thou wert head of all Christian Knights!

And now I dare say,' said Sir Ector, 'that, Sir Lancelot, there thou liest, thou were never matched of none earthly hands; and thou were the curtiest knight that ever bare s.h.i.+eld: and thou were the truest friend to thy lover that ever strood horse, and thou were the truest lover of a sinful man that ever loved woman; and thou were the kindest man that ever strooke with sword; and thou were the goodliest person that ever came among press of knights; and thou were the meekest man and gentlest that ever sat in hall among ladies; and thou were the sternest Knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in the rest.'

Beautiful again, I grant! But note you that, eloquent as he can be on the virtues of his dead friend, when Sir Ector comes to the thought of death itself all he can accomplish is, 'And now I dare say that, Sir Lancelot, there thou liest.'

Let us make a leap in time and contrast this with Tyndale and the translators of our Bible, how they are able to make St Paul speak of death:--

So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pa.s.s the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

There you have something clean beyond what Malory or Berners could compa.s.s: there you have a different kind of high moment--a high moment of philosophising: there you have emotion impregnated with thought. It was necessary that our English verse even after Chaucer, our English prose after Malory and Berners, should overcome this most difficult gap (which stands for a real intellectual difference) if it aspired to be what to-day it is--a language of the first cla.s.s, comparable with Greek and certainly no whit inferior to Latin or French.

Let us leave prose for a moment, and see how Verse threw its bridge over the gap. If you would hear the note of Chaucer at its deepest, you will find it in the famous exquisite lines of the Prioress' Prologue:--

O moder mayde! O mayde moder fre!

O bush unbrent, brenning in Moyses' sight!

in the complaint of Troilus, in the rapture of Griselda restored to her children:--

O tendre, O dere, O yonge children myne, Your woful moder wende stedfastly That cruel houndes or some foul vermyne Hadde eten you; but G.o.d of his mercy And your benigne fader tendrely Hath doon you kept...

You will find a note quite as sincere in many a carol, many a ballad, of that time:--

He came al so still There his mother was, As dew in April That falleth on the gra.s.s.

He came al so still To his mother's bour, As dew in April That falleth on the flour.

He came al so still There his mother lay, As dew in April That falleth on the spray.

Mother and maiden Was never none but she; Well may such a lady G.o.ddes mother be.

You get the most emotional note of the Ballad in such a stanza as this, from "The Nut-Brown Maid":--

Though it be sung of old and young That I should be to blame, Their's be the charge that speak so large In hurting of my name; For I will prove that faithful love It is devoid of shame; In your distress and heaviness To part with you the same: And sure all tho that do not so True lovers are they none: For, in my mind, of all mankind I love but you alone.

All these notes, again, you will admit to be exquisite: but they gush straight from the unsophisticated heart: they are nowise deep save in innocent emotion: they are not _thoughtful_. So when Barbour breaks out in praise of Freedom, he cries

A! Fredome is a n.o.ble thing!

And that is really as far as he gets. He goes on

Fredome mayse man to hafe liking.

(Freedom makes man to choose what he likes; that is, makes him free)

Fredome all solace to man giffis, He livis at ese that frely livis!

A n.o.ble hart may haif nane ese, Na ellys nocht that may him plese, Gif fredome fail'th: for fre liking Is yharnit ouer all othir thing...

--and so on for many lines; all saying the same thing, that man yearns for Freedom and is glad when he gets it, because then he is free; all hammering out the same observed fact, but all knocking vainly on the door of thought, which never opens to explain what Freedom _is_.

Now let us take a leap as we did with prose, and 'taking off' from the Nut-Brown Maid's artless confession,

in my mind, of all mankind I love but you alone,

let us alight on a sonnet of Shakespeare's--

Thy bosom is endeared with all hearts Which I by lacking have supposed dead: And there reigns Love, and all Love's loving parts, And all those friends which I thought buried.

How many a holy and obsequious tear Hath dear religious love stolen from mine eye As interest of the dead!--which now appear But things removed, that hidden in thee lie.

Thou art the grave where buried love doth live, Hung with the trophies of my lovers gone, Who all their parts of me to thee did give; That due of many now is mine alone: Their images I loved I view in thee, And thou, all they, hast all the all of me.

What a new way of talking about love! Not a happier way--there is less of heart's-ease in these doubts, delicacies, subtleties--but how much more thoughtful! How has our Nut-Brown Maid eaten of the tree of knowledge!

Well, there happened a Shakespeare, to do this for English Verse: and Shakespeare was a miracle which I cheerfully leave others to rationalise for you, having, for my own part and so far as I have fared in life, found more profit in a capacity for simple wonder.

But I can tell you how the path was made straight to that miracle. The shock of the New Learning upon Europe awoke men and unsealed men's eyes--unsealed the eyes of Englishmen in particular--to discover a literature, and the finest in the world, which _habitually philosophised life_: a literature which, whether in a chorus of Sophocles or a talk reported by Plato, or in a ribald page of Aristophanes or in a knotty chapter of Thucydides, was in one guise or another for ever asking _Why?_ 'What is man doing here, and why is he doing it?' 'What is his purpose?

his destiny?' 'How stands he towards those unseen powers--call them the G.o.ds, or whatever you will--that guide and thwart, provoke, madden, control him so mysteriously?' 'What are these things we call good and evil, life, love, death?'

These are questions which, once raised, haunt Man until he finds an answer--some sort of answer to satisfy him. Englishmen, hitherto content with the Church's answers but now aware of this great literature which answered so differently--and having other reasons to suspect what the Church said and did--grew aware that their literature had been as a child at play. It had never philosophised good and evil, life, love or death: it had no literary forms for doing this; it had not even the vocabulary.

So our ancestors saw that to catch up their lee-way--to make their report worthy of this wonderful, alluring discovery--new literary forms had to be invented--new, that is, in English: the sonnet, the drama, the verse in which the actors were to declaim, the essay, the invented tale. Then, for the vocabulary, obviously our fathers had either to go to Greek, which had invented the A.B.C. of philosophising; or to seek in the other languages which were already ahead of English in adapting that alphabet; or to give our English Words new contents, new connotations, new meanings; or lastly, to do all three together.

Well, it was done; and in verse very fortunately done; thanks of course to many men, but thanks to two especially--to Sir Thomas Wyat, who led our poets to Italy, to study and adopt the forms in which Italy had cast its cla.s.sical heritage; and to Marlowe, who impressed blank verse upon the drama. Of Marlowe I shall say nothing; for with what he achieved you are familiar enough. Of Wyat I may speak at length to you, one of these days; but here, to prepare you for what I hope to prove--that Wyat is one of the heroes of our literature--I will give you three brief reasons why we should honour his memory:--

(1) He led the way. On the value of that service I shall content myself with quoting a pa.s.sage from Newman:--

When a language has been cultivated in any particular department of thought, and so far as it has been generally perfected, an existing want has been supplied, and there is no need for further workmen. In its earliest times, while it is yet unformed, to write in it at all is almost a work of genius. It is like crossing a country before roads are made communicating between place and place. The authors of that age deserve to be Cla.s.sics both because of what they do and because they can do it. It requires the courage and force of great talent to compose in the language at all; and the composition, when effected, makes a permanent impression on it.

This Wyat did. He was a pioneer and opened up a new country to Englishmen. But he did more.

(2) Secondly, he had the instinct to perceive that the lyric, if it would philosophise life, love, and the rest, must boldly introduce the personal note: since in fact when man asks questions about his fortune or destiny he asks them most effectively in the first person. 'What am _I_ doing?

Why are _we_ mortal? Why do _I_ love _thee_?'

This again Wyat did: and again he did more.

For (3) thirdly--and because of this I am surest of his genius--again and again, using new thoughts in unfamiliar forms, he wrought out the result in language so direct, economical, natural, easy, that I know to this day no one who can better Wyat's best in combining straight speech with melodious cadence. Take the lines _Is it possible?_--

Is it possible?