English Literature for Boys and Girls Part 29

Here are a few quotations from it:--

"Pla ce bo,*

Who is there who?

Di le sci, Dame Margery; Fa re my my, Wherefore and why why?

For the soul of Philip Sparrow That was late slain at Carowe Among the nuns black, For that sweet soul's sake, And for all sparrows' souls, Set in our bead rolls, Pater Noster qui, With an Ave Mari, And with the corner of a creed, The more shall be your need.

*Placebo is the first word of the first chant in the service for the dead. Skelton has here made it into three words. The chant is called the Placebo from the first word.

I wept and I wailed, The tears down hailed, But nothing it availed To call Philip again, That Gib our cat hath slain.

Gib, I say, our cat Worried her on that Which I loved best.

It cannot be expressed My sorrowful heaviness And all without redress.

It had a velvet cap, And would sit upon my lap, And seek after small worms, And sometimes white bread-crumbs.

Sometimes he would gasp When he saw a wasp, A fly or a gnat He would fly at that; And prettily he would pant When he saw an ant; Lord, how he would fly After the b.u.t.terfly.

And when I said Phip, Phip Then he would leap and skip, And take me by the lip.

Alas it will me slo,*

That Philip is gone me fro.

*Slay.

For it would come and go, And fly so to and fro; And on me it would leap When I was asleep, And his feathers shake, Wherewith he would make Me often for to wake.

That vengeance I ask and cry, By way of exclamation, On all the whole nation Of cats wild and tame.

G.o.d send them sorrow and shame!

That cat especially That slew so cruelly My little pretty sparrow That I brought up at Carowe.

O cat of churlish kind, The fiend was in thy mind, When thou my bird untwined.*

I would thou hadst been blind.

The leopards savage, The lions in their rage, Might catch thee in their paws And gnaw thee in their jaws.

*Tore to pieces.

These villainous false cats, Were made for mice and rats, And not for birdies small.

Alas, mine heart is slayeth My Philip's doleful death, When I remember it, How prettily it would sit, Many times and oft, Upon my finger aloft.

To weep with me, look that ye come, All manner of birds of your kind; So none be left behind, To mourning look that ye fall With dolorous songs funeral, Some to sing, and some to say, Some to weep, and some to pray, Every bird in his lay.

The goldfinch and the wagtail; The gangling jay to rail, The flecked pie to chatter Of the dolorous matter; The robin redbreast, He shall be the priest, The requiem ma.s.s to sing, Softly warbling, With help of the red sparrow, And the chattering swallow, This hea.r.s.e for to hallow; The lark with his lung too, The chaffinch and the martinet also; . . . .

The l.u.s.ty chanting nightingale, The popinjay to tell her tale, That peepeth oft in the gla.s.s, Shall read the Gospel at ma.s.s; The mavis with her whistle Shall read there the Epistle, But with a large and a long To keep just plain song.

The peac.o.c.k so proud, Because his voice is loud, And hath a glorious tail He shall sing the grayle;*

The owl that is so foul Must help us to howl.

*Gradual = the part of the ma.s.s between Epistle and Gospel.

At the Placebo We may not forgo The chanting of the daw The stork also, That maketh her nest In chimnies to rest.

The ostrich that will eat A horseshoe so great, In the stead of meat, Such fervent heat His stomach doth gnaw.

He cannot well fly Nor sing tunably.

The best that we can To make him our bellman, And let him ring the bells, He can do nothing else.

Chanticlere our c.o.c.k Must tell what is of the clock By the astrology That he hath naturally Conceived and caught, And was never taught.

To Jupiter I call Of heaven imperial That Philip may fly Above the starry sky To greet the pretty wren That is our Lady's hen, Amen, amen, amen.

Chapter x.x.xVI THE RENAISSANCE

RENAISSANCE means rebirth, and to make you understand something of what the word means in our literature I must take you a long way. You have been told that the fifteenth century was a dull time in English literature, but that it was also a time of new action and new life, for the discovery of new worlds and the discovery of printing had opened men's eyes and minds to new wonders. There was a third event which added to this new life by bringing new thought and new learning to England. That was the taking of Constantinople by the Turks.

It seems difficult to understand how the taking of Constantinople could have any effect on our literature. I will try to explain, but in order to do so clearly I must go back to the time of the Romans.

All of you have read English history, and there you read of the Romans. You know what a clever and conquering people they were, and how they subdued all the wild tribes who lived in the countries around them. Besides conquering all the barbarians around them, the Romans conquered another people who were not barbarians, but who were in some ways more civilized than themselves. These were the Greeks. They had a great literature, they were more learned and quite as skilled in the arts of peace as the Romans. Yet in 146 B.C., long before the Romans came to our little island, Greece became a Roman province.

Nearly five hundred years later there sat upon the throne an Emperor named Constantine. And he, although Rome was still pagan, became a Christian. He was, besides, a great and powerful ruler. His court was brilliant, glittering with all the golden splendor of those far-off times. But although Rome was still pagan, Greece, a Roman province, had become Christian. And in this Christian province Constantine made up his mind to build a New Rome.

In those days the boundaries of Greece stretched far further than they do now, and it was upon the sh.o.r.es of the Bosphorus that Constantine built his new capital. There was already an ancient town there named Byzantium, but he transformed it into a new and splendid city. The Emperor willed it to be called New Rome, but instead the people called it the city of Constantine, and we know it now as Constantinople.

When Constantinople was founded it was a Roman city. All the rulers were Roman, all the high posts were filled by Romans, and Latin was the speech of the people. But in Constantinople it happened as it had happened in England after the Conquest. In England, for a time after the Conquest, the rulers were French and the language was French, but gradually all that pa.s.sed away, and the language and the rulers became English once more. So it was in Constantinople. By degrees it became a Greek city, the rulers became Greek, and Greek was the language spoken.

In building a second capital Constantine had weakened his Empire.

Soon it was split in two, and there arose a western and an eastern Empire. As time went on the Western Empire with Rome at its head declined and fell, while the Eastern Empire with Constantinople as its capital grew great. But it grew into a Greek Empire. Even very clever people cannot tell the exact date at which the Roman Empire came to an end and the Greek or Byzantine Empire, as it is called, began. So we need not trouble about that. All that is needful for us to understand now it that Constantinople was a Christian city, a Greek city, and a treasure-house of Greek learning and literature.

Thus Constantinople was the Christian outpost of Europe. For hundred of year the Byzantine Empire stood as a barrier against the Saracen hosts of Asia. It might have stood still longer, but sad to say, this barrier was first broken down by the Christians themselves. For in 1204 the armies of the fourth Crusade, which had gathered to fight the heathen, turned their swords, to their shame be it said, against the Christian people of the Greek Empire. Constantinople was taken, plundered, and destroyed by these "pious brigands,"* and the last of the Byzantine Emperors was first blinded and then flung from a high tower, so that his body fell shattered to pieces on the paving-stones of his own capital.

*George Finlay, History of Greece.

Baldwin, Count of Flanders, one of the great leaders of the Crusade, was then crowned by his followers and acknowledged Emperor of the East. But the once great Empire was now broken up, and out of it three lesser Empires, as well as many smaller states, were formed.

Baldwin did not long rule as Emperor of the East, and the Greeks after a time succeeded in regaining Constantinople from the western Christians. But although for nearly two hundred years longer they kept it, the Empire was dying and lifeless. And by degrees, as the power of Greece grew less, the power of Turkey grew greater. At length in 1453 the Sultan Mohammed II attacked Constantinople. Then the Cross, which for a thousand years and more had stood upon the ramparts of Christendom, went down before the Crescent.

Constantine XI, the last of the Greek Emperors, knelt in the great church of St. Sophia to receive for the last time the Holy Sacrament. Then mounting his horse he rode forth to battle.

Fighting for his kingdom and his faith he fell, and over his dead body the young Sultan and his soldiers rode into the ruined city.

Then in the church, where but a few hours before the fallen Emperor had knelt and prayed to Christ, the Sultan bowed himself in thanks and praise to Allah and Mohammed.

And now we come to the point where the taking of Constantinople and the fall of the Greek Empire touches our literature.

In Constantinople the ancient learning and literature of the Greeks had lived on year after year. The city was full of scholars who knew, and loved, and studied the Greek authors. But now, before the terror of the Turk, driven forth by the fear of slavery and disgrace, these Greek scholars fled. They fled to Italy. And although in their flight they had to leave goods and wealth behind, the came laden with precious ma.n.u.scripts from the libraries of Constantinople.

These fugitive Greeks brought to the Italians a learning which was to them new and strange. Soon all over Europe the news of the New Learning spread. Then across the Alps scholars thronged from every country in Europe to listen and to learn.

I do not think I can quite make you understand what this New Learning was. It was indeed but the old learning of Greece. Yet there was in it something that can never grow old, for it was human. It made men turn away from idle dreaming and begin to learn that the world we live in is real. They began to realize that there was something more than a past and a future. There was the present. So, instead of giving all their time to vague wonderings of what might be, of what never had been, and what never could be, they began to take an interest in life as it was and in man as he was. They began to see that human life with all its joys and sorrows was, after all, the most interesting thing to man.