CHAPTER I.
BEFORE SHAKESPEARE.
I.
Minute research has been made, in every country, into the origin of thedrama. The origin of the novel has rarely tempted the literaryarchaeologist. For a long time the novel was regarded as literature of alower order; down almost to our time, critics scrupled to speak of it.When M. Villemain in his course of lectures on the eighteenth centurycame to Richardson, he experienced some embarrassment, and it was notwithout oratorical qualifications and certain bashful doubts that hedared to announce lectures on "Clarissa Harlowe" and "Sir CharlesGrandison." He sought to justify himself on the ground that it wasnecessary to track out a special influence derived from England, "theinfluence of imagination united to moral sentiment in eloquent prose."But this neglect can be explained still better. We can at need fix theexact period of the origin of the drama. It is not the same with thenovel. We may go as far back as we please, yet we find the thinramifications of the novel, and we may say literally that it is as oldas the world itself. Like man himself, was not the world rocked in thecradle of its childhood to the accompaniment of stories and tales? Somewere boldly marvellous; others have been called historical; but veryoften, in spite of the dignity of the name, the "histories" were nothingbut collections of traditions, of legends, of fictions: a kind of novel.This noble antiquity might doubtless have been invoked as a furtherjustification by M. Villemain and have confirmed the reasons drawn fromthe "moral sentiment and eloquence" of novels, reasons which were suchas to rather curtail the scope of his lectures.
In England as much and even more than with any other modern nation,novelists can pride themselves upon a long line of ancestors. They can,without abusing the license permitted to genealogists, go back to thetime when the English did not inhabit England, when London, like Paris,was peopled by latinised Celts, and when the ancestors of the puritanssacrificed to the god Thor. The novelists indeed can show that thebeginning of their history is lost in the abysm of time. They can recallthe fact that the Anglo-Saxons, when they came to dwell in the island ofBritain, brought with them songs and legends, whence was evolved thestrange poem of "Beowulf,"[4] the first epic, the most ancient history,and the oldest English romance. In it, truth is mingled with fiction;besides the wonders performed by the hero, a destroyer of monsters, wefind a great battle mentioned by Gregory of Tours, where the Frenchmen,that were to be, cut to pieces the Englishmen that were to be; the firstact of that bloody tragedy continued afterwards at Hastings, Crecy,Agincourt, Fontenoy, and Waterloo.
The battle of Hastings which made England subject to men from Franceresulted in a complete transformation of the literature of the Teutonicinhabitants of the island. Anglo-Saxon literature had had moments ofbrilliance at the time of Alfred, and afterwards at that of SaintDunstan; then it had fallen into decay. By careful search, accents ofjoy, though of strange character, may be discovered in the texts whichnow represent that ancient literature. Taking it as a whole, however,this literature was sad; a cloud of melancholy enveloped it, like thosepenetrating mists, observed by Pytheas and the oldest travellers, whichrose from the marshes of the island and concealed the outlines of itsimpenetrable forests. But the conquerors who came from Normandy, fromBrittany, from Anjou, from all the provinces of France, were of acheerful temperament; they were happy: everything went well with them.They brought with them the gaiety, the wit, the sunshine of the south,uniting the spirit of the Gascon with the tenacity of the Norman. Noisyand great talkers, when once they became masters of the country, theystraightway put an end to the already dying literature of the conqueredrace and substituted their own. God forbid that they should listen tothe lamentations of the Anglo-Saxon mariner or traveller! They had noconcern with their miserable dirges. "Long live Christ who loves theFrench!"[5] Even in the laws and religion of the French there now andthen appeared marks of their irrepressible _entrain_. Shall we not,then, find it in their stories?
The new-comers liked tales of two kinds. First, they delighted instories of chivalry, where they found marvellous exploits differinglittle from their own. They had seen the son of Herleva, a tanner'sdaughter of Falaise, win a kingdom in a battle, in course of which thecares of a conqueror had not prevented him from making jokes. When,therefore, they wrote a romance, they might well attribute extraordinaryadventures and rare courage to Roland, Arthur and Lancelot: in face ofthe behaviour of the bastard of Normandy, it would be difficult to taxthe exploits attributed to those heroes with improbability. Thenumberless epic romances in which they delighted had no resemblance withthe "Beowulf" of old. These stories were no longer filled with meredeeds of valour, but also with acts of courtesy; they were full of loveand tenderness. Even in the more Germanic of their poems, in "Roland,"the hero is shaken by his emotions, and is to be seen shedding tears.Far greater is the part allotted to the gentler feelings in the epics ofa subsequent date, in those written for the English Queen Eleanor, byBenoit de Sainte More in the twelfth century, which tell for the firsttime of the loves of Troilus and Cressida; in those dedicated to Arthurand his knights, where the favour of the mortal deities of whom theheroes are enamoured, is responsible for more feats of chivalry than isthe search after the mysterious Grail.
They can take Constantinople, or destroy the Roman armies; they canfight green giants and strange monsters, besiege castles of steel, puttraitors to death, and escape even the evil practices of enchanters; butthey cannot conquer their passions. All the enemies they have in commonwith Beowulf, be they men or armies, monsters or sorcerers, they canfight and subdue; but enemies unknown to the Gothic warrior oppose themnow more effectually than giants, stormy seas, or armed battalions;enemies that are always present, that are not to be destroyed in battlenor left behind in flight: their own indomitable loves and desires. Whatwould the conqueror of Grendel have thought of such descendants? Oneword in his story answers the question: "Better it is," says he, "forevery man, that he avenge his friend than that he mourn much." This isthe nearest approach to tenderness discoverable in the whole epic of"Beowulf."
In this contest between heroes differing so greatly in their notion ofthe duties and possibilities of life with whom do we side, we of to-day?With Beowulf or with Lancelot? Which of the two has survived? Which ofthem is nearest of kin to us? Under various names and under verydifferent conditions, Lancelot still continues to live in our thoughtsand to play his part in our stories. We shall find him in the pages ofWalter Scott; he is present in the novels of George Eliot. For better orfor worse, the literature begun in England by the conquerors at thebattle of Hastings still reigns paramount.
Moreover, the new possessors of the English country were fond of talesand short stories, either moving or amusing, in which a word would makethe reader laugh or make him thoughtful; but where there was no tirade,no declamation, no loud emphasis, no vague speculation, a style ofwriting quite unknown to the islanders and contrary to their genius.When they returned of an evening to their huge and impregnable castles,in perfect security and in good humour, they liked to hear recitedstories in prose, some of which are still extant and will never be readwithout pleasure: the story of Floire and Blanchefleur, for instance, orperhaps, also that of Aucassin, who preferred "his gentle love" toparadise even more unconcernedly than the lover in the old song rejectedthe gift of "Paris la grand ville;" of Aucassin, in whose adventures theAlmighty interposes, not in the manner of the Jehovah of the Bible, butas "God who loveth lovers;"[6] and where Nicolete is so very beautifulthat the touch of her fair hands is enough to heal sick people.According to the author the same wonder is performed by the tale itself;it heals sorrow:
"Sweet the song, the story sweet, There is no man hearkens it, No man living 'neath the sun, So outwearied, so foredone, Sick and woful, worn and sad, But is healed, but is glad 'Tis so sweet."[7]
So speaks the author, and since his time the performance of the samemiracle has been the aim of the many tale-writers of all countries; theyhave not all of them failed.
&nbs
p; The fusion of these two sorts of stories, the epic-romance and the tale,produced long afterwards in every country of Europe the novel as we knowit now. To the former, the novel owes more especially its width ofsubject, its wealth of incident, its occasionally dignified gait; to thesecond, its delicacy of observation, its skill in expression of detail,its naturalness, its realism. If we care to examine them closely, weshall find in the greater number of those familiar tragi-comedies, whichare the novels of our own day, discernible traces of their twofold andfar-off origin.
II.
The first result of the diffusion in England, after the Conquest, of anew literature full of southern inventions and gaieties, and loves, andfollies, was the silencing of the native singers. This silence lastedfor a hundred years; the very language seemed doomed to disappear. Whatwas the good of writing in English, when there was hardly any one whocared to read it, and even those few were learning French, and coming bydegrees to enjoy the new literature? But it turned out that the nativeEnglish writers had not been swept away for ever. Their race, thoughsilenced, was not extinct; they were not dead, but only asleep.
The first to awake were the scholars, the men who had studied in Paris.It was quite natural that they should be less deeply impressed withnationalism than the rest of their compatriots; learning had made themcosmopolitan; they belonged less to England than to the Latin country,and the Latin country had not suffered from the Conquest. Numerousscholars of English origin shone forth as authors from the twelfthcentury onwards; among them Geoffrey of Monmouth, of Arthurian fame,Joseph of Exeter, John of Salisbury, Walter Map, Nigel Wireker, and manyothers of European reputation.
In the thirteenth century another awakening takes place in the palacewhich the Norman enchanter had doomed to a temporary sleep. Translatorsand imitators set to work; the English language is again employed; thestorm has abated, and it has become evident that there still remainpeople of English blood and language for whom it is worth while towrite. Innumerable books are composed for them, that they may learn,ignorant as they are of French or Latin, what is the thought of the day.Robert Manning de Brunne states, in the beginning of the fourteenthcentury, that he writes:
"Not for the lerid bot for the lewed, Ffor tho that in this land wone, That the Latyn no Frankys cone, Ffor to haf solace and gamen In felawschip when thay sitt samen."
They are to enjoy this new literature in common, be it religious, be itimaginative or historical; they will discuss it and it will improvetheir minds; it will teach them to pass judgments even on kings:
"And gude it is for many thynges For to here the dedis of kynges Whilk were foles and whilk were wyse."[8]
In their turn the English poets sang of Arthur; in all good faith theyadopted his glory as that of an ancestor of their own. Among them a manlike Layamon accepted the French poet Wace for his model, and in thebeginning of the thirteenth century, devoted thirty-two thousand linesto the Celtic hero; nor was he ever disturbed by the thought thatArthur's British victories might have possibly been English defeats.[9]Then came innumerable poems, translated or imitated from Frenchromances, on Charlemagne and Roland, Gawain and the Green Knight, Bovonof Hanstone, Percival, Havelock the Dane, King Horn, Guy of Warwick,Alexander, Octavian, and the Trojan War.[10] Hundreds of manuscripts,some of them splendidly illuminated, testify at the present day to theimmense popularity of these imitations of French originals, and provideendless labour for the many learned societies that in our century haveundertaken to print them.
Layamon's indifference to the price paid by his compatriots for Arthur'sglory was not peculiar to himself. It is characteristic of a policy ofamalgamation deliberately followed from the beginning by the Normans. Assoon as they were settled in the country they desired to unify thetraditions of the various races inhabiting the great island, in thebelief that this was a first and necessary step towards uniting theraces themselves. Rarely was literature used for political purposes withmore cleverness and with more important results. The conquerors set theexample themselves, and from the first adopted and treated all theheroic beings who had won glory in or for England, and whose famelingered in ballads and popular songs, as if they had been personalancestors of their own. At the same time they induced the conqueredrace to adopt the theory that mythic Trojans were their progenitors, atheory already discovered and applied by the French to their own earlyhistory, and about which fables were already current among the Welshpeople: both races were thus connected together as lineal descendants,the one of Brutus, the other of Francus; and an indissoluble link unitedthem to the classic nations of antiquity.[11] So it happened that inmediaeval England French singers were to be heard extolling the glory ofSaxon kings, while English singers told the deeds of Arthur, thearch-enemy of their race. Nothing gives a better idea of thisextraordinary amalgamation of races and traditions than a certain poemof the thirteenth century written in French by a Norman monk ofWestminster, and dedicated to Eleanor of Provence, wife of Henry III.,in which we read:
"In the world, I may confidently say, there never was country, kingdomor empire, where so many good kings, and holy too, were found, as in theEnglish island.... Saints they were, martyrs and confessors, of whomseveral died for God; others most strong and hardy, as were Arthur,Edmund, and Knut."[12]
Rarely was the like seen in any literature; here is a poem dedicated toa Frenchwoman by a Norman of England, which begins with the praise of aBriton, a Saxon, and a Dane. The same phenomenon is to be noticed, afterthe Conquest in romances, chronicles and histories. Whoever the authormay be, whether of French or English blood, the unity of origin of thetwo races receives almost invariably the fullest acknowledgment; theinhabitants of the great island cease to look towards Germany, Denmarkand Scandinavia, for their ancestors or for the sources of theirinspiration; they look rather, like their new French companions, toRome, Greece and Troy. This policy produced not only momentous socialresults, but also very important literary consequences; the intellectualconnection with the north being cut off, the Anglo-French allowedthemselves to be drilled with the Latin discipline; the ancient modelsceased to appear to them heterogeneous; they studied them in all goodfaith as the works of distant relations, with such result that they,unlike the Germanic and Scandinavian peoples, were ready, when the timeof the Renaissance came, to benefit by the great intellectual movementset on foot by southern neo-classic nations; and while Italy producedAriosto and Tasso, while Spain possessed Cervantes, and FranceMontaigne, Ronsard and Rabelais, they were ready to give birth to theunparalleled trio of Spenser, Bacon and Shakespeare.
From the fourteenth century this conclusion was easy to foresee; for,even at that period, England took part in a tentative Renaissance thatpreceded the great one of the sixteenth century. At the time when Italyproduced Petrarca and Boccaccio, and France had Froissart, Englandproduced Chaucer, the greatest of the four.
Famous as Chaucer was as a story-teller, it is strange that he was tohave almost no influence on the development of the novel in England.When we read of Harry Bailly and the Wife of Bath, of the modest Oxfordclerk and the good parson; when we turn the pages of the inimitablestory of Troilus and the fickle, tender, charming Cressida, it seems asif nothing was lacking to the production of perfect novels. All theelements of the art are there complete: the delicate analysis ofpassions, the stirring plot, the natural play of various characters, thevery human mixture of grossness and tenderness, of love songs and roughjokes, the portraits of actual beings belonging to real life and not todreamland. It was only necessary to break the cadence of the verse andto write such stories in prose. No one did it; no one tried to do it.
CAXTON'S REPRESENTATION OF CHAUCER'S PILGRIMS, 1484.]
The fact is the stranger if we remember that Chaucer's popularity neverflagged. It was at its height in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries;in the following period the kings of literature, Dryden and Pope, didhomage to him. His works had been amongst the first to be printed.Caxton's original edition was quickly follow
ed by a second.[13] Thelatter was adorned with illustrations, and this rapid publication of asecond and amended text testifies to the great reverence in which theauthor was held. Nevertheless it is the fact that Chaucer stands alone;authors of prose novels who wrote nearly two centuries after his time,instead of trying to follow in his footsteps, sought their models eitherin the old epic literature or in French and Italian story-books. This isexactly what Chaucer had done himself; but they did it with verydifferent success, and entirely missed the benefits of the great advancemade by him. By another strange caprice of fate it was thesesixteenth-century writers, and not Chaucer, who were to be the ancestorsof the world-famous novelists of a later age, of the Richardsons andFieldings of the eighteenth century.
In one thing, then, the French conquerors entirely failed; they neversucceeded in acclimatizing during the Middle Ages those shorter prosestories which were so popular in their own country, in which theythemselves delighted and of which charming and sometimes exquisitemodels have come to us from the twelfth century downwards. When this artso thoroughly French began, as we shall see, to be cultivated inEngland, it was the outcome of the Renaissance, not of the Conquest.Hundreds of volumes of mediaeval English manuscripts preserve plenty ofsermons, theological treatises, epic-romances, poems of all sorts; butthe student will not discover one single original prose story to set bythe side of the many examples extant in French literature; nothingresembling the French stories of the thirteenth century, so delightfulin their frank language, their brisk style and simple grace, in which wefind a foretaste of the prose of Le Sage and Voltaire; nothing to becompared, even at a distance, in the following century, with thenarratives of Froissart, who, it is true, applied to history his geniusfor pure romance; nothing like the anecdotes so well told by the Knightof La Tour Landry for the instruction of his daughters; nothing that atall approaches "Petit Jehan de Saintre" or the "Cent nouvelles" in thefifteenth century. To find English prose tales of the Middle Ages weshould be forced to look through the religious manuscripts where theyfigure under the guise of examples for the reader's edification. A verytroublesome search it is, but not always a vain one; some of thesestories deserve to be included among the most memorable legends of theMiddle Ages. To give an idea of them I will quote the story of a scholarof Paris, after Caesarius, but told in far better style by the holyhermit Rolle de Hampole, in the fourteenth century. It is short andlittle known:
"A scolere at Pares had done many full synnys the whylke he had schameto schryfe hym of. At the last gret sorowe of herte ouercome his schame,& when he was redy to schryfe till (to) the priore of the abbay ofSaynte Victor, swa mekill contricione was in his herte, syghynge in hisbreste, sobbynge in his throtte, that he moghte noghte brynge a wordefurthe. Thane the prioure said till hym: Gaa & wrytte thy synnes. He dydswa, & come a-gayne to the prioure and gafe hym that he hade wretyn,ffor yitt he myghte noghte schryfe hym with mouthe. The prioure saghethe synnys swa grette that thurghe leve of the scolere he schewedetheyme to the abbotte to hafe conceyle. The abbotte tuke that byll thatware wrettyn in & lukede thare one. He fande na thynge wretyn & sayd tothe priour: What may here be redde thare noghte es wretyne? That saghethe priour & wondyrd gretly & saide: Wyet ye that his synns here warrewretyn & I redde thaym, bot now I see that God has sene hys contrycyone& forgyfes hym all his synnes. This the abbot & the prioure tolde thescolere, & he, with gret joy thanked God."[14]
But instances of this kind of story lack those features of gaiety andsatirical observation of which French stories are full, and which are animportant element of the novel. Some are mystical; others, in which thedevil figures on whom the saints play rude tricks, are intended to raisea loud laugh; in both cases real life is equally distant. A keen facultyof observation however existed in the nation; foibles of human naturedid not escape the English writer's eye any more than its higheraspirations. This is illustrated not only by Chaucer, who chose to writepoetry, but by such men as Nigel Wireker[15] and Walter Map who chose towrite Latin.[16] But not one English author before the Renaissanceemployed such gifts in writing prose studies of real life in his nativetongue. Owing to the Conquest a certain discredit seemed to rest forgenerations on England's original language. Long after an Englishnation, rich in every sort of glory had come into being, writers are tobe found hesitating to use the national idiom. This circumstance ischiefly noticeable in prose where the use of a foreign tongue offersless difficulties than in poetry. Prose was less cultivated in Englandeven so late as the commencement of the sixteenth century than in Franceduring the thirteenth. At the time of the Renaissance, Sir Thomas More,the wittiest Englishman of his day, whose English style was admirableand who moreover loved the language of his native land, wishing topublish a romance of social satire, the "Utopia,"[17] wrote it in Latin.It is one of the oldest examples in modern literature of that species ofbook which includes at a later date the story of Gargantua andPantagruel, Bacon's "New Atlantis," Cyrano de Bergerac's "Etats etempires de la lune et du soleil," Fenelon's "Telemaque," "Gulliver'sTravels," Voltaire's tales, &c. More's use of Latin is to be the moreregretted since his romance exhibits infinite resources of spirit andanimation; of all his writings it is the one that best justifies hisgreat reputation for wit and enlightenment. His characters are livingmen and their conversation undoubtedly resembles that which delightedhim in the society of his friend Erasmus.
The subject of the book is the quest for the best possible government.More and his companions meet at Antwerp one of the fellow voyagers ofAmerigo Vespucci the famous godfather of America, and they question himconcerning the civilizations he has seen. "He likewise very willinglytolde us of the same. But as for monsters, by cause they be no newes, ofthem we were nothyng inquisitive. For nothyng is more easye to beefounde, then bee barkynge Scyllaes, ravenyng Celenes, & Lestrigonesdevourers of people, & suche lyke great, & incredible monsters. But tofind citisens ruled by good & holsome lawes, that is an exceding rare, &harde thyng."[18] By good luck Amerigo's companion had discovered anempire which presented this admirable quality: the island of Utopia, orthe country of "Nowhere." This country became immediately famous allover Europe, so much so that Pantagruel would not look to any otherplace for immigrants to people his newly conquered kingdom of Dispodie.There he transported "Utopians to the number of 9,876,543,210 men," saysRabelais, with his usual care for exact numbers, "without speaking ofwomen and little children." He did so to "refresh, people, and adorn thesaid country otherwise badly enough inhabited and desert in manyplaces."[19] His acting in this manner was only natural, for, as is wellknown, connections existed between his family and the Utopians, his ownmother Badebec, the wife of Gargantua, being "daughter to the king ofthe Amaurotes in Utopia."[20]
A hundred years later, something of this want of confidence in thefuture of English prose still lingered. Bacon, after having employed itin his essays and treatises, was seized with anxiety and kept in his paysecretaries with whose help he meant to translate all his works intoLatin, in order to assure himself of their permanence.
III.
Some years before Sir Thomas More wrote his "Utopia," an Englishman, whohad long lived abroad and had there learnt a new industry, unknown inhis own land, returned to England and settled in Westminster. He and histrade were destined to exercise a very important influence on thediffusion of literature, and especially on the development of romances.His art was printing, and his name was Caxton. We can judge of theamazement he produced among his countrymen by his new art, from his ownwonder; one of his prefaces shows clearly enough how extraordinary hisperformance seemed to himself: "And for as moche, says he, as in thewrytyng of the same my penne is worn, myn hande wery & not stedfast, myneyen dimed with overmoche lokyng on the whit paper & my corage not soprone & redy to laboure as hit hath ben & that age crepeth on me dayly &febleth all the bodye, & also be cause I have promysid to diversegentilmen & to my frendes to addresse to hem as hastely as I myght thissayd book, therfore I have practysed & lerned at my grete charge &dispense to ordeyne this said book
in prynte after the maner & forme asye may here see, & is not wreton with penne & ynke as other bokes ben,to thende that every man may have them attones, ffor all the bookes ofthis storye named the recule of the historyes of troyes thus enpryntidas ye here see were begonne in oon day & also fynysshid in oon day."[21]
The list of his books shows that he was no less intent upon divertinghis customers than upon improving their knowledge and morals. The partallotted to fiction was extremely large, not perhaps quite so extensiveas that occupied by the novel proper in the publishers' lists of to-day;but regarding it as merely a beginning, it must be admitted to be verypromising. Not only did he print the tales of Chaucer, the confessionsof Gower, with their numerous stories, several poems of Lydgate, anumber of mediaeval epic romances in verse, but he also issued from hispress the prose story of "Reynard the Fox," which contains so muchexcellent dialogue and so many fine scenes of comedy; and, besides, themost remarkable prose romance that had yet been written in the Englishlanguage, the famous "Morte d'Arthur" of Sir Thomas Malory. Itsappearance marks an epoch in the history of English romance literature.
Why, among so many famous works, should this publication have obtainedthe preference and the attention of the printer? Caxton states hisreasons very clearly: firstly, for him as for Layamon, Arthur is anational hero, and Englishmen should be proud of him: then again he isone of the nine worthies of the world. These nine dignitaries were, asis well known, three pagans, Hector, Alexander and Caesar; three Jews,Joshua, David and Judas Maccabaeus; three Christians, Arthur, Charlemagneand Godfrey of Bouillon. And lastly, Caxton considered his undertakingjustified by the great lessons that were to be drawn from Arthur'sexample: "And I accordyng to my copye have doon sette it in enprynte tothe entente that noble men may see & lerne the noble actes chyvalrye thejentyl & vertuous dedes that somme knyghtes used in tho dayes by whychethey came to honour & how they that were vycious were punysshed & ofteput to shame & rebuke, humbly byseching al noble lordes & ladyes wyth alother estates of what estate or degree they been of, that shal see &rede in this sayd book & werke, that they take the good & honest actesin their remembraunce & to folowe the same. Wherein they shalle fyndemany joyous & playsaunt hystoryes & noble & renomed actes of humanytegentylnesse & chyualryes. For herein may be seen noble chyvalrye,curtosye, humanyte, frendlynesse, hardynesse, love, frendshyp,cowardyse, murdre, hate, vertue & synne. Doo after the good & leve theevyl & it shal brynge you to good fame & renommee."[22]
Everything, in fact, is to be found in Malory's book; everything, exceptthose marks of character which transform traditional types into livingpersonalities; everything except those analyses of feeling which are forus the primary _raison d'etre_ of the modern novel and its chiefattraction. The old knight's book is a vast compilation in which he hasmelted down and mixed together a large number of tales about Arthur,Lancelot, Gawain, Galahad, Percival, and all the Knights of the RoundTable. An infinite number of short chapters, written in a clear andquiet style, possessing no other charm than its simplicity, tell of theloves and of the fights of these famous men; "of theyr marvaylousenquestes and adventures," as Caxton has it, "thachyevyng of theSangraal, and in thende the dolorous deth and departyng out of thysworld of them al." Malory never made the slightest effort to reach agrand style; he did not think that there could be any other method ofwriting than that of putting on paper, without preparation, what firstcame into his mind. Since he possessed neither a passionate temperamentnor a wandering imagination, he tells, without any apparent emotion, themost important of his stories, even the last battle of his hero[23] andhis final disappearance, when he is borne by fairies into the Vale ofAvilion. It is for sensitive hearts to weep over these misfortunes, ifthey choose. As for him, he goes on his way, telling tale after tale, inthe same clear and even voice; but very rarely giving us his confidenceor opening to us his heart.
ROBERT THE DEVIL, ABOUT 1510.]
Once in the whole length of this immense work he does impart to us hispersonal opinion on a question of importance: in the twenty-fifthchapter of his eighteenth book, Malory confesses what he thinks of love,and lays aside his usual reserve: and thus furnishes the first attemptat analysis of feeling to be found in the English prose romance. Malorydeclares that every man should love God first and his mistressafterwards; and so long as a man does love his God first, the otherlove seems to him to be not only permissible but even commendable; it isa virtue. "Therfore, as may moneth floreth & floryssheth in manygardyns, soo in lyke wyse, lete every man of worship florysshe his hertein this world, fyrst unto God & next unto the joye of them that hepromysed his feythe unto: for there was never worshypful man orworshipfull woman but they loved one better than another ... & suchelove, I calle vertuous love." But now-a-days, continues the old knight,little suspecting that his grievance is one of all ages, men cannot loveseven-night but they must have all their desires. The old love was notso. Men and women could love together seven years, and no wanton lustswere between them, and then was love truth and faithfulness. "And loo,"Malory adds forgetting that his Lancelot and his Tristan waited muchless than seven years, "in lyke wyse was used love in Kynge Arthursdayes."[24]
Very strikingly does this view of love contrast with the southernirrepressible impetuosities of young Aucassin, who, considering, threecenturies earlier, this same question of holy and profane love, of earthand paradise, in the above-mentioned exquisite prose tale which bearshis name, simply alters the order of precedence afterwards adopted bygood Sir Thomas: "Tell me," says he, "where is the place so high in allthe world that Nicolete, my sweet lady and love, would not grace itwell? If she were Empress of Constantinople or of Germany, or Queen ofFrance or England, it were little enough for her.... In Paradise whathave I to win? Therein I seek not to enter, but only to have Nicolete mysweet lady that I love so well.... For in Paradise go none but ... thesesame old priests, and halt old men and maimed, who all day and nightcower continually before the altars, and in the crypts.... These be theythat go into Paradise; with them have I naught to make. But into Hellwould I fain go; for into Hell fare the goodly clerks and goodly knightsthat fall in tourneys and great wars.... And thither pass the sweetladies.... Thither goes the gold and the silver and cloth of vair, andcloth of gris, and harpers and makers, and the prince of this world.With these I would gladly go, let me but have with me Nicolete mysweetest lady."[25]
"NOBLE HELYAS KNYGHTE OF THE SWANNE," ABOUT 1550.]
No one perceived the coldness of Malory's stories. He wrote for ayouthful and enthusiastic people; it was a period of new birththroughout Europe, the period of the spring-time of modern literature,the epoch of the Renaissance. There was no need to depict in realisticfashion the passions and stirrings of the heart in order to excite theemotion of the reader; a relation of events sufficed for him; his ownimagination did the rest, and enlivened the dull-painted canvas withvisions of every colour. The book had as much success as Caxton couldhave expected; it was constantly reprinted during the sixteenth century,and enchanted the contemporaries of Surrey, of Elizabeth, and ofShakespeare. It was in vain that the serious-minded Ascham condemnedit; it survived his condemnation as the popularity of Robin Hoodsurvived the sermons of Latimer. Vainly did Ascham denounce "Certainebookes of Chevalrie.... as one for example, _Morte Arthure_: the wholepleasure of whiche booke standeth in two speciall poyntes, in open mansslaughter, & bold bawdrye. In which booke those be counted the noblestknightes, that do kill most men without any quarell, & commit fowlestaduoulteres by sutlest shiftes."[26]
When the people became more thoughtful or more exacting in the matter ofanalysis, they neglected the old book. After 1634, two hundred yearspassed without a reprint of it. In our time it has met with an aftermathof success, not only among the curious, but among a class of readers whoare not more exacting than Caxton's clients, and who are far moreinterested in fact than in feeling. Children form this class of readers;in the present century Malory's book has been many times re-edited forthem, and it is to Sir Thomas Malory, rather than to Tennys
on, Swinburneor Morris, that many English men and women of to-day owe their earliestacquaintance with King Arthur and his Knights.
Caxton's example was followed by many; printing presses multiplied, andwith most of them fiction kept its ground. A new life was infused intoold legendary heroes, and they began again, impelled not by the geniusof new writers, but simply by the printer's skill, their never endingjourneys over the world. Their stories were published in England insmall handy volumes, often of a very good appearance, and embellishedwith woodcuts. There were prose stories of "Robert the devyll," andthere were verse stories of "Sir Guy of Warwick" and of "Syr Eglamoureof Artoys." Many of the cuts are extremely picturesque and excellentlysuited to the general tone of the story. On the title-page the hero ofthe tale usually sits on his horse, and indomitable he looks with hissword drawn, his plume full spread, his mien defiant. A faithful squiresometimes follows him, sometimes only his dog; between the feet of thehorse fabulous plants spread their unlikely leaves, and give the soleand very doubtful clue to the country in which the knight is travelling,certainly a very desolate and unpleasant one. In this fashion does DukeRobert of Normandy travel, and so does Eglamoure, and Tryamoure, andBevis, and Isumbras. In the same series too is to be seen "Y^e nobleHelyas, Knyght of the Swanne," drawn by the said swan, a somewhat woodenbird, not very different from his successor of a later age whom we areaccustomed to see swimming across the stage to the accompaniment ofWagner's famous music.[27]
"Then went Guy to fayre Phelis."
"SIR GUY OF WARWICK," ABOUT 1560.]
The means by which English printers supplied themselves with theseengravings, is a mystery that they have kept to themselves. Many ofthe blocks were, very probably, purchased in the Low Countries. A veryfew are almost certainly of English manufacture, and among them areCaxton's illustrations of the Canterbury Tales: on this account we havegiven a fac-simile of the most important of them, representing thepilgrims seated round the table at the "Tabard" prior to starting ontheir immortal journey. What is certain is that many of these wood-blockportraits of knights, supplied to the printers by English or Dutchartists, underwent many successive christenings. The same knight, withthe same squire, the same dog and the same fabulous little wooden plantsbetween the legs of the horse was sometimes Romulus and sometimes Robertof Normandy. In one book a rather fine engraving of a lord and a lady ina garden, represents Guy of Warwick courting "fayre Phelis,"[28] but inanother book the same engraving does duty for "La bel Pucell" and theknight "Graund Amoure."[29] It may be observed, in passing, that theseromances might be soundly criticized without much study of theircontents by simply inspecting their illustrations. Full as they are ofextraordinary inventions and adventures, unrestricted as their authorswere by considerations of what was possible or real, some dozenwell-chosen engravings seem enough to illustrate any number of them.For, alas, there is nothing more stale and more subject to repetitionsthan these series of extraordinary adventures; all their heroes are thesame hero, and whether he was following the philosophical turn of hismind, or merely the thrifty orders of his printer, the engraver was welljustified in leaving as he did in most of his drawings an empty scrollover the head of his knights, for the publisher to label them at will,Robert the Devil or Romulus.
We are thus fairly advanced into the sixteenth century; the Renaissancehas come; before long Spenser will sing of the Fairy Queen andShakespeare will leave his native Stratford to present to a Londonaudience the loves of Juliet and Romeo. Scarcely any sign of improvementappears yet in the art of novel-writing; nothing but mediaeval romancescontinue to issue from the press; it is even difficult to foresee anepoch in which something analogous to the actual novel might be producedin England. Contrary to what was taking place in France at the sametime, that period seemed far off. In reality, however, it was near athand; the great age of English literature, the age of Elizabeth and ofShakespeare, was about to furnish, at least in the rough draft, thefirst specimens of the true novel.
LEO.]
FOOTNOTES:
[4] "Beowulf, a heroic poem," ed. T. Arnold, London, 1876, 8vo. Theunique MS. of this poem, discovered in the last century, is preserved atthe British Museum; it has been reproduced in fac-simile by the EarlyEnglish Text Society (Ed. J. Zupitza, 1882, 8vo). We give in fac-similethe first few lines of the MS.
[5] "Vivat qui Francos diligit Christus!" ("Prologue of the Salic Law,"Pardessus, 1843, p. 345.)
[6] "Nouvelles Francaises en prose," ed. Moland and d'Hericault, Paris,1856. Four English versions of the story of Floire and Blanchefleur areextant. The story of Amis and Amile was also very popular. "Amis andAmiloun," ed. Koelbing (Heilbronn, 1884). The cantefable of Aucassin isof the twelfth century (G. Paris, "Litterature francaise au moyen age,"1888, Sec. 51).
[7] Mr. Andrew Lang's translation, "Aucassin and Nicolete" (London,1887, 16mo.).
[8] "The Story of England," A.D. 1338, ed. F. J. Furnivall, London,1887, two vols. 8vo, vol. i. p. 1.
[9] "Layamon's Brut," ed. Madden, London, 1847, three vols. 8vo.
[10] See, among others, the publications of the Early English TextSociety, the Camden Society, the Percy Society, the Roxburghe Club, theBannatyne Club, the Altenglische Bibliothek of E. Koelbing (Heilbronn);the "Metrical Romances of the XIIIth, XIVth, and XVth Centuries," of H.W. Weber (Edinburgh, 1810, three vols. 8vo); the "Catalogue of MS.Romances in the British Museum," by H. L. D. Ward (London, 1887);"Bishop Percy's Folio MS.; Ballads and Romances," ed. J. W. Hales and F.J. Furnivall, London, Ballad Society, 1867, &c.
The publications of the Early English Text Society include, amongothers, the romances of "Ferumbras," "Otuel," "Huon of Burdeux,""Charles the Grete," "Four Sons of Aymon," "Sir Bevis of Hanston," "KingHorn," with fragments of "Floriz and Blauncheflur," "Havelok the Dane,""Guy of Warwick," "William of Palerne," "Generides," "Morte Arthure,"Lonelich's "History of the Holy Grail," "Joseph of Arimathie," "SirGawaine and the Green Knight," &c. Others are in preparation.
[11] The adoption by Geoffrey of Monmouth, in the twelfth century, ofBrutus the Trojan as father of the British race, as Nennius had done twocenturies earlier, did much for the spreading of this belief; thepopularity and authority of Geoffrey's fabulous history was so greatthat for several centuries the gravest English historians accepted hisstatements concerning Brutus without hesitation. Matthew Paris, the mostaccurate and trustworthy historian of the thirteenth century, gives anaccount of his coming to the island of Albion, "that was then inhabitedby nobody but a few giants": "Erat tunc nomen insulae Albion, quae anemine, exceptis paucis gigantibus habitabatur." Brutus proceeds to thebanks of the Thames, and there founds his capital, which he calls theNew Troy, Trojam novam, "quae postea, per corruptionem vocabuliTrinovantum dicta fuerit" ("Chronica Majora," Rolls Series, I. pp.21-22). In the fourteenth century Ralph, in his famous "Polychronicon,"gives exactly the same account of the deeds of the Trojan prince, andthey continued in the time of Shakespeare to be _history_. Here is thelearned account Holinshed gives of these events in his "Chronicles":
"Hitherto have we spoken of the inhabitants of this Ile before the coming of Brute, although some will needs have it that he was the first which inhabited the same with his people descended of the Troians, some few giants onelie excepted whom he utterlie destroied, and left not one of them alive through the whole ile. But as we shall not doubt of Brutes coming hither ..." &c.
"This Brutus or Brytus (for this letter Y hath of ancient times had the sounds both of V and I) ... was the sonne of Silvius, the sonne of Ascanius, the sonne of Aeneas the Trojan, begotten of his wife Creusa, and borne in Troie, before the citie was destroied" (book ii. chap. i.).
[12]
"En mund ne est (ben vus l'os dire) Pais, reaume, ne empire U tant unt este bons rois E seinz, cum en isle d'Englois ... Seinz, martirs e confessurs Ki pur Deu mururent plursurs; Li autre forz e hardiz mutz, Cum fu Arthurs, Aedmunz, e Knudz."
("Lives of Edward the C
onfessor," ed. H. R. Luard, London, Rolls, 1858,8vo.)
[13] Both editions are undated; the first one seems to have beenpublished in 1478, the second in 1484 (W. Blades, "Life and Typographyof William Caxton," 1861, two vols. 4to).
[14] "English Prose Treatises of Richard Rolle de Hampole," ed. G. G.Perry, London, Early English Text Society, 1866, 8vo. p. 7. Rolle deHampole died in 1349. Caesarius' tale (Caesarius Heisterbacensis, d. 1240)begins thus: "Erat ibi juvenis quidam in studio, qui, suggerente humanigeneris inimico, talia quaedam peccata commiserat, quae, obstanteerubescentia, nulli hominum confiteri potuit: cogitans tamen quae malispraeparata sunt tormenta gehennae, & quae bonis abscondita sunt gaudiaperennis vitae, timens etiam quotidie judicium Dei super se, intustorquebatur morsu conscientiae & foris tabescebat in copore...."("Illustrium miraculorum ... libri xii.," bk. ii. ch. 10).
[15] "Speculum Stultorum," in "Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets ... of theTwelfth Century" ed. Th. Wright, London, 1872, 2 vols. 8vo.
[16] "Gualteri Mapes De nugis curialium distinctiones quinque," ed. Th.Wright, Camden Society, 1850, 4to. Part IV. of this work contains thecelebrated "Disuasio Valerii ad Rufinum de ducenda uxore," longattributed to St. Jerome, and one of the principal text-books of theauthors of satires against women during the Middle Ages. It was wellknown to the Wife of Bath, who held it in special abomination.
[17] The "Utopia" was composed in 1515-1516, and was publishedanonymously at Louvain, under the title: "Libellus vere aureus, necminus salutaris quam festivus de optimo reipublicae statu ... cura P.AEgidii ... nunc primum ... editus." Louvain 1516, 4to. It was translatedinto English by Ralph Robinson in 1551, and this translation has beenreprinted by Arber, London, 1869. Another famous novel of the same classwas written in the following century also in Latin by anotherEnglishman, or rather Scotchman, the celebrated "Argenis" of JohnBarclay (1582-1621). It was translated into English by Sir Robert LeGrys, 1629, 4to. Queen Elizabeth appears in it under the name ofHyanisbe.
[18] Ralph Robinson's translation (_ut supra_).
[19] "Pantagruel, apres avoir entierement conqueste le pays de Dispodie,en icelluy transporta une colonie des Utopiens, en nombre de9,876,543,210 hommes, sans les femmes et petitz enfans, artisans de tousmestiers et professeurs de toutes sciences liberales, pour ledict paysrefraischir, peupler et aorner, mal aultrement habite et desert engrande partie" ("Pantagruel," bk. iii. ch. 1).
[20] "Pantagruel," bk. ii. ch. 2.
[21] "Recueyll of the historyes of Troye," Bruges, 1474? Epilogue toBook iii.
[22] "Le Morte Darthur by Syr Thomas Malory," ed. O. Sommer and AndrewLang, London, 1889, 2 vol. 8vo. Caxton's Preface, p. 3. The book wasoriginally published at Westminster, in 1485, under the title: "Thenoble and ioyous book entytled Le Morte Darthur notwythstondyng ittreateth of the byrth, lyf and actes of the sayd kyng Arthur of hisnoble knyghtes of the rounde table, theyr marvayllous enquestes andadventures, thachyevyng of the Sangraal, and in thende the dolorous dethand departyng out of thys world of them al, whiche book was reduced intoenglysshe by Syr Thomas Malory knyght."
It ends with the statement that it was printed and "fynysshed in thabbeyof Westmestre the last day of Juyl the yere of our lord M cccc lxxxv.Caxton me fieri fecit."
[23] "And then kyng Arthur smote syr mordred under the shelde wyth afoyne of his spere thorughoute the body more than a fadom. And when syrmordred felte that he had hys dethes wounde, he thryst hymself wyth themyght that he had up to the bur of kyng Arthurs spere. And right so hesmote his fader Arthur wyth his swerde holden in bothe his handes, onthe syde of the heed, that the swerde persyd the helmet & the braynepanne, & therwythall syr Mordred fyl starke deed to the erthe, & thenobyl Arthur fyl in a swoune to the erthe & there swouned ofte times"(_Ut supra_, book xxi. ch. iv. p. 847).
[24] "Le Morte Darthur," ed. Sommer and Lang, London, 1889, 8vo., bookxviii. ch. 25, p. 771.
[25] "Aucassin and Nicolete," done into English by Andrew Lang, London,1887, pp. 6, 11, and 12.
[26] "The Scholemaster," London, 1570, 4to.
[27] "Robert the deuyll," London, Wynkyn de Worde, 1510? 8vo. "SyrTryamoure," "Syr Beuys of Hampton," "Syr Isumbras," "Syr Degore," "TheKnight of the Swanne," "Virgilius," and many others were published by W.Copland about 1550. "Guy of Warwick" was printed in the same style about1560, "Syr Eglamoure of Artoys," about 1570. Many others were at thisperiod printed in the same way with engravings from the same woodblocks.
[28] London, 1560? 4to.
[29] "The history of Graund Amoure and la bel Pucell, called the Pastimeof pleasure," by Stephen Hawes, London, Tottell, 1555, 4to. The sameengraving embellishes also "The Squyr of Lowe Degre," published by W.Copland, &c.
DRAWING BY ISAAC OLIVER, AFTER AN ITALIAN MODEL.]