A Literary History of the English People Part 21

[321] See below, p. 405.

[322] A great many other English chroniclers wrote in Latin, and among their number: Florence of Worcester, Simeon of Durham, Fitzstephen, the pseudo Benedict of Peterborough, William of Newburgh, Roger de Hoveden (d. ab. 1201) in the twelfth century; Gervase of Canterbury, Radulph de Diceto, Roger de Wendover, Radulph de Coggeshall, John of Oxenede, Bartholomew de Cotton, in the thirteenth; William Rishanger, John de Trokelowe, Nicolas Trivet, Richard of Cirencester, in the fourteenth. A large number of chronicles are anonymous. Most of those works have been published by the English Historical Society, the Society of Antiquaries, and especially by the Master of the Rolls in the great collection: "The Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland ... published under the direction of the Master of the Rolls," London, 1857 ff., in progress. See also the "Descriptive Catalogue of materials relating to the History of Great Britain and Ireland, to the end of the reign of Henry VII." by Sir T. D. Hardy, Rolls, 1862-6, 3 vols. 8vo.

[323] The contrast between the time when Richard writes and the days of his youth, when he studied at Paris, is easy to explain. The Hundred Years' War had begun, and well could the bishop speak of the decay of studies in the capital, "ubi tepuit, immo fere friguit zelus scholae tam n.o.bilis, cujus olim radii lucem dabant universis angulis...o...b..s terrae....

Minerva mirabilis nationes hominum circuire videtur.... Jam Athenas deseruit, jam a Roma recessit, jam Parisius praeterivit, jam ad Britanniam, insularum insignissimam, quin potius microcosmum accessit feliciter." "Philobiblon," chap. ix. p. 89. In the same words nearly, but with a contrary intent, Count Cominges, amba.s.sador to England, a.s.sured King Louis XIV. that "the arts and sciences sometimes leave a country to go and honour another with their presence. Now they have gone to France, and scarcely any vestiges of them have been left here," April 2, 1663. "A French Amba.s.sador at the Court of Charles II.," 1892, p.

205.

CHAPTER IV.

_LITERATURE IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE._

I.

English in the meanwhile had survived, but it had been also transformed, owing to the Conquest. To the disaster of Hastings succeeded, for the native race, a period of stupor and silence, and this was not without some happy results. The first duty of a master is to impose silence on his pupils; and this the conquerors did not fail to do. There was silence for a hundred years.

The clerks were the only exception; men of English speech remained mute.

They barely recopied the ma.n.u.scripts of their ancient authors, the list of whose names was left closed; they listened without comprehending to the songs the foreigner had acclimatised in their island. The manner of speech and the subjects of the discourses were equally unfamiliar; and they stood silent amidst the merriment that burst out like a note of defiance in the literature of the victors.

Necessity caused them to take up the pen once more. After as before the Conquest the rational object of life continued to be the gaining of heaven, and it would have been a waste of time to use Latin in demonstrating this truth to the common people of England. French served for the new masters, and for their group of adherents; Latin for the clerks; but for the ma.s.s of "lowe men," who are always the most numerous, it was indispensable to talk English. "All people cannot,"

had said Bishop Grosseteste in his French "Chateau d'Amour," "know Hebrew, Greek, and Latin"--"nor French," adds his English translator some fifty years later; for which cause:

On Englisch I-chul mi resun schowen Ffor him that con not i-knowen Nouther Ffrench ne Latyn.[324]

The first works written in English, after the Conquest, were sermons and pious treatises, some imitated from Bede, aelfric, and the ancient Saxon models, others translated from the French. No originality or invention; the time is one of depression and humiliation; the victor sings, the vanquished prays.

The twelfth century, so fertile in Latin and French works, only counts, as far as English works are concerned, devotional books in prose and verse. The verses are uncouth and ill-shaped; the ancient rules, half-forgotten, are blended with new ones only half understood. Many authors employ at the same time alliteration and rhyme, and sin against both. The sermons are usually familiar in their style and kind in their tone; they are meant for the poor and miserable to whom tenderness and sympathy must be shown. The listeners want to be consoled and soothed; they are also interested, as formerly, by stories of miracles, and scared into virtue by descriptions of h.e.l.l; confidence again is given them by instances of Divine mercy.[325]

Like the ancient churches the collections of sermons bring before the eye the last judgment and the region of h.e.l.l, with its monstrous torments, its wells of flames, its ocean with seven bitter waves: ice, fire, blood ... a rudimentary rendering of legends interpreted in their turn by Dante in his poem, and Giotto in his fresco.[326] The thought of Giotto especially, when reading those sermons, recurs to the memory, of Giotto with his awkward and audacious attempts, Giotto so remote and yet so modern, childish and n.o.ble at the same time, who represents devils roasting the d.a.m.ned on spits, and on the same wall tries to paint the Unseen and disclose to view the Unknown, Giotto with his search after the impossible, an almost painful search, the opposite of antique wisdom, and the sublime folly of the then nascent modern age. Not far from Padua, beside Venice, in the great Byzantine mosaic of Torcello, can be seen a last reflection of antique equanimity. Here the main character of the judgment-scene is its grand solemnity; and from this comes the impression of awe left on the beholder; the idea of rule and law predominates, a fatal law against which nothing can prevail; fate seems to preside, as it did in the antique tragedies.

In the English sermons of the period it is not the art of Torcello that continues, but the art of Giotto that begins. From time to time among the ungainly phrases of an author whose language is yet unformed, amidst mild and kind counsels, bursts forth a resounding apostrophe which causes the whole soul to vibrate, and has something sublime in its force and brevity: "He who bestows alms with ill-gotten goods shall not obtain the grace of Christ any more than he who having slain thy child brings thee its head as a gift!"[327]

The Psalter,[328] portions of the Bible,[329] lives of saints,[330]

were put into verse. Metrical lives of saints fill ma.n.u.scripts of prodigious size. A complete cycle of them, the work of several authors, in which are mixed together old and novel, English and foreign, materials, was written in English verse in the thirteenth century: "The collection in its complete state is a 'Liber Festivalis,' containing sermons or materials for sermons, for the festivals of the year in the order of the calendar, and comprehends not only saints' lives for saints' days but also a 'Temporale' for the festivals of Christ,"

&c.[331] The earliest complete ma.n.u.script was written about 1300, an older but incomplete one belongs to the years 1280-90, or thereabout.[332] In these collections a large place, as might be expected, is allowed to English saints:

Wolle ye nouthe i-heore this englische tale that is here i-write?

It is the story of St. Thomas Becket: "Of Londone is fader was." St.

Edward was "in Engeland oure kyng"; St. Kenelm,

Kyng he was in Engelond of the march of Walis;

St. Edmund the Confessor "that lith at Ponteneye,"

Ibore he was in Engelond in the toun of Abyndone.

St. Swithin "was her of Engelonde;" St. Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester,

Was here of Engelonde ...

The while he was a yong child clene lif he ladde i-nough; Whenne other children ornen to pleye toward churche he drough.

Seint Edward was kyng tho that nouthe in heovene is.

St. Cuthbert was born in England; St. Dunstan was an Englishman. Of the latter a number of humorous legends were current among the people, and were preserved by religious poets; he and the devil played on each other numberless tricks in which, as behoves, the devil had the worst; these adventures made the subject of amusing pictures in many ma.n.u.scripts. A woman, of beautiful face and figure, calls upon the saint, who is clear-sighted enough to recognise under this alluring shape the arch-foe; he dissembles. Being, like St. Eloi, a blacksmith, as well as a saint and a State minister, he heats his tongs red-hot, and turning suddenly round, while the other was watching confidently the effect of his good looks, catches him by the nose. There was a smell of burnt flesh, and awful yells were heard many miles round, for the "tonge was al afure"; it will teach him to stay at home and blow his own nose:

As G.o.d the schrewe hadde ibeo atom ysnyt his nose.[333]

With this we have graceful legends, like that of St. Brandan, adapted from a French original, being the story of that Irish monk who, in a leather bark, sailed in search of Paradise,[334] and visited marvellous islands where ewes govern themselves, and where the birds are angels transformed. The optimistic ideal of the Celts reappears in this poem, the subject of which is borrowed from them. "All there is beautiful, pure, and innocent; never was so kind a glance bestowed on the world, not a cruel idea, not a trace of weakness or regret."[335]

The mirth of St. Dunstan's story, the serenity of the legend of St.

Brandan, are examples rarely met with in this literature. Under the light ornamentation copied from the Celts and Normans, is usually seen at that date the sombre and dreamy background of the Anglo-Saxon mind.

h.e.l.l and its torments, remorse for irreparable crimes, dread of the hereafter, terror of the judgments of G.o.d and the brevity of life, are, as they were before the Conquest, favourite subjects with the national poets. They recur to them again and again; French poems describing the same are those they imitate the more willingly; the tollings of the funeral bell are heard each day in their compositions. Why cling to this perishable world? it will pa.s.s as "the schadewe that glyt away;" man will fade as a leaf, "so lef on bouh." Where are Paris, and Helen, and Tristan, and Iseult, and Caesar? They have fled out of this world as the shaft from the bowstring:

Heo beoth iglyden ut of the reyne, So the scheft is of the cleo.[336]

Treatises of various kinds, and pious poems, abound from the thirteenth century; all adapted to English life and taste, but imitated from the French. The "Ancren Riwle,"[337] or rule for Recluse women, written in prose in the thirteenth century is perhaps an exception: it would be in that case the first in date of the original treatises written in English after the Conquest. This Rule is a manual of piety for the use of women who wish to dedicate themselves to G.o.d, a sort of "Introduction a la Vie devote," as mild in tone as that of St. Francis de Sales, but far more vigorous in its precepts. The author addresses himself specially to three young women of good family, who had resolved to live apart from the world without taking any vows. He teaches them to deprive themselves of all that makes life attractive; to take no pleasure either through the eye, or through the ear, or in any other way. He gives rules for getting up, for going to bed, for eating and for dressing. His doctrine may be summed up in a word: he teaches self-renunciation. But he does it in so kindly and affectionate a tone that the life he wishes his penitents to submit to does not seem too bitter; his voice is so sweet that the existence he describes seems almost sweet. Yet all that could brighten it must be avoided; the least thing may have serious consequences: "of little waxeth mickle."

Not a glance must be bestowed on the world; the young recluses must even deny themselves the pleasure of looking out of the parlour windows. They must bear in mind the example of Eve: "When thou lookest upon a man thou art in Eve's case; thou lookest upon the apple. If any one had said to Eve when she cast her eye upon it: 'Ah! Eve, turn thee away; thou castest thine eyes upon thy death,' what would she have answered?--'My dear master, thou art in the wrong, why dost thou find fault with me?

The apple which I look upon is forbidden me to eat, not to look at.'--Thus would Eve quickly enough have answered. O my dear sisters, truly Eve hath many daughters who imitate their mother, who answer in this manner. But 'thinkest thou,' saith one, 'that I shall leap upon him though I look at him?'--G.o.d knows, dear sisters, that a greater wonder has happened. Eve, thy mother leaped after her eyes to the apple; from the apple in Paradise down to the earth; from the earth to h.e.l.l, where she lay in prison four thousand years and more, she and her lord both, and taught all her offspring to leap after her to death without end. The beginning and root of this woful calamity was a light look. Thus often, as is said, 'of little waxeth mickle.'"[338]

The temptation to look and talk out of the window was one of the greatest with the poor anch.o.r.esses; not a few found it impossible to resist it. Cut off from the changeable world, they could not help feeling an interest in it, so captivating precisely because, unlike the cellular life, it was ever changing. The authors of rules for recluses insisted therefore very much upon this danger, and denounced such abuses as Aelred, abbot of Rievaulx, reveals, as we have seen, so early as the twelfth century: old women, talkative ones and newsbringers, sitting before the window of the recluse, "and telling her tales, and feeding her with vain news and scandal, and telling her how this monk or that clerk or any other man looks and behaves."[339]

Most of the religious treatises in English that have come down to us are of a more recent epoch, and belong to the first half of the fourteenth century. In the thirteenth, as has been noticed, many Englishmen considered French to be, together with Latin, the literary language of the country; they endeavoured to handle it, but not always with great success. Robert Grosseteste, who, however, recommended his clergy to preach in English, had composed in French a "Chateau d'Amour," an allegorical poem, with keeps, castles, and turrets, "les quatre tureles en haut," which are the four cardinal virtues, a sort of pious Romaunt of the Rose. William of Wadington had likewise written in French his "Manuel des Pechiez," not without an inkling that his grammar and prosody might give cause for laughter. He excused himself in advance: "For my French and my rhymes no one must blame me, for in England was I born, and there bred and brought up and educated."[340]

These attempts become rare as we approach the fourteenth century, and English translations and imitations, on the contrary, multiply. We find, for example, translations in English verse of the "Chateau"[341] and the "Manuel"[342]; a prose translation of that famous "Somme des Vices et des Vertus," composed by Brother Lorens in 1279, for Philip III. of France, a copy of which, chained to a pillar of the church of the Innocents, remained open for the convenience of the faithful[343]; (a bestiary in verse, thirteenth century), devotional writings on the Virgin, legends of the Cross, visions of heaven and h.e.l.l[344]; a Courier of the world, "Cursor Mundi," in verse,[345] containing the history of the Old and New Testaments. A mult.i.tude of legends are found in the "Cursor," that of the Cross for instance, made out of three trees, a cypress, a cedar, and a pine, symbols of the Trinity. These trees had sprung from three pips given to Seth by the guardian angel of Paradise, and placed under Adam's tongue at his death; their miraculous existence is continued on the mountains, and they play a part in all the great epochs of Jewish history, in the time of Moses, Solomon, &c.

Similar legends adorn most of these books: what good could they accomplish if no one read them? And to be read it was necessary to please. This is why verse was used to charm the ear, and romantic stories were inserted to delight the mind, for, says Robert Mannyng in his translation of the "Manuel des Pechiez," "many people are so made that it pleases them to hear stories and verses, in their games, in their feasts, and over their ale."[346]

Somewhat above this group of translators and adaptators rises a more original writer, Richard Rolle of Hampole, noticeable for his English and Latin compositions, in prose and verse, and still more so by his character.[347] He is the first on the list of those lay preachers, of whom England has produced a number, whom an inward crisis brought back to G.o.d, and who roamed about the country as volunteer apostles, converting the simple, edifying the wise, and, alas! affording cause for laughter to the wicked. They are taken by good folks for saints, and for madmen by sceptics: such was the fate of Richard Rolle, of George Fox, of Bunyan, and of Wesley; the same man lives on through the ages, and the same humanity heaps on him at once blessings and ridicule.

Richard was of the world, and never took orders. He had studied at Oxford. One day he left his father's house, in order to give himself up to a contemplative life. From that time he mortifies himself, he fasts, he prays, he is tempted; the devil appears to him under the form of a beautiful young woman, who he tells us with less humility than we are accustomed to from him, "loved me not a little with good love."[348] But though the wicked one shows himself in this case even more wicked than with St. Dunstan, and Rolle has no red-hot tongs to frighten him away, still the devil is again worsted, and the adventure ends as it should.

Rolle has ecstasies, he sighs and groans; people come to visit him in his solitude; he is found writing much, "scribentem multum velociter."

He is requested to stop writing, and speak to his visitors; he talks to them, but continues writing, "and what he wrote differed entirely from what he said." This duplication of the personality lasted two hours.

He leaves his retreat and goes all over the country, preaching abnegation and a return to Christ. He finally settled at Hampole, where he wrote his princ.i.p.al works, and died in 1349. Having no doubt that he would one day be canonised, the nuns of a neighbouring convent caused the office of his feast-day to be written; and this office, which was never sung as Rolle never received the hoped-for dignity, is the main source of our information concerning him.[349]

His style and ideas correspond well to such a life. His thoughts are sombre, Germanic anxieties and doubts reappear in his writings, the idea of death and the image of the grave cause him anguish that all his piety cannot allay. His style, like his life, is uneven and full of change; to calm pa.s.sages, to beautiful and edifying tales succeed bursts of pa.s.sion; his phrases then become short and breathless; interjections and apostrophes abound. "Ihesu es thy name. A! A! that wondyrfull name! A!

that delittabyll name! This es the name that es abowve all names.... I yede (went) abowte be Covaytyse of riches and I fande noghte Ihesu. I rane be Wantonnes of flesche and I fand noghte Ihesu. I satt in companyes of Worldly myrthe and I fand noghte Ihesu.... Tharefore I turnede by anothire waye, and I rane a-bowte be Poverte, and I fande Ihesu pure, borne in the worlde, laid in a crybe and lappid in clathis."[350] Rolle of Hampole is, if we except the doubtful case of the "Ancren Riwle, "the first English prose writer after the Conquest who can pretend to the t.i.tle of original author. To find him we have had to come far into the fourteenth century. When he died, in 1349, Chaucer was about ten years of age and Wyclif thirty.

II.

We are getting further and further away from the Conquest, the wounds inflicted by it begin to heal, and an audience is slowly forming among the English race, ready for something else besides sermons.

The greater part of the n.o.bles had early accepted the new order of things, and had either retained or recovered their estates. Having rallied to the cause of the conquerors, they now endeavoured to imitate them, and had also their castles, their minstrels, and their romances.