dialect, that the sage might enjoy the beauties of a certain Scotch
pastoral poem, and received for his reply, “No, sir; I will not learn
it. You shall retain your superiority by my not knowing it.” It would
not be true to say that Dr. Johnson’s indifference to the Scotch
language and to Scotch poetry has been shared by all cultivated
Englishmen, but it has certainly been shared by a very large majority in
every generation. The superb merit of many of the Scotch ballads, the
lyrics of Burns and the novels of Scott have practically done little to
diminish this majority and to induce English readers to acquire the
knowledge which Dr. Johnson disdained. Nine Englishmen out of ten read
Burns, either with an eye uneasily fishing the glossary at the bottom of
the page, or _ad sensum_, that is, in contented ignorance of about three
words in every nine. And this is, perhaps, all that can reasonably be
expected of the Southerner. Life is short; the world of Scotch drink,
Scotch religion and Scotch manners is not, as Matthew Arnold observed, a
lovely one, and the time which such an accomplishment would require
would be far more profitably spent in acquiring, say, the language of
Dante and Ariosto, or even the language of the _Romancero General_ and
of Cervantes. A modern reader may stumble, with more or less
intelligence, through a poem of Burns, catching the general sense,
enjoying the lilt, and even appreciating the niceties of rhythm. But
this is not the case with the Scotch of the fifteenth century--the
golden age of the vernacular poetry, the age when poets were writing
thus:--
“Catyvis, wrechis, and ockeraris,
Hud-pykis, hurdaris, and gadderaris,
All with that warlo went;
Out of thair throttis thay schot on udder
Hett moltin gold, me thocht, a fudder
As fyre-flawcht, maist fervent,
Ay as thay tumit them of schot,
Feyndis fild thame new up to the thrott
With gold of allkin prent.”
The usual consequences have been the result of this ignorance. The
Scotch have had it all their own way in estimating the merits of their
vernacular classics, and the few outsiders, whether English or German,
who have made the Scotch language and literature a special subject of
study, have very naturally not been willing to underestimate the value
of what it has cost them labour to acquire, and so have supported the
exaggerated estimates of the Scotch themselves. What Voltaire so
absurdly said of Dante, that his reputation was safe because no
intelligent people read him, is literally true of such poets as
Henryson, Douglas, and Dunbar. We simply take them on trust, and, as
with most other things which are taken on trust, we seldom trouble
ourselves about the titles and guarantees. It may be accepted as an
uncontrolled truth that the world is always right, and very exactly
right, in the long run. That mysterious tribunal which, resolved into
the individuals which compose it, seems resolved into every conceivable
source of ignorance, error, and folly, is ultimately infallible. There
are no mismeasurements in the reputation of authors with whom readers of
every class have been familiar for a hundred years. But, in the case of
minor writers who appeal only to a minority, critical literature is the
record of the most preposterous estimates. The history of the building
up of these pseudo-reputations is generally the same in all cases. First
we have the _obiter dictum_ of some famous man whose opinion naturally
carries authority, uttered, it may be, carelessly in conversation, or
committed, without deliberation, to paper, in a letter or occasional
trifle. Then comes some little man, who takes up in deadly seriousness
what the great man has said, and out comes, it may be, an essay or
article. This wakes up some dreary pedant, who follows with an “edition”
or “Study,” which naturally elicits from some kindred spirit a
sympathetic review. Thus the ball is set rolling, or, to change the
figure, bray swells bray, echo answers to echo, and the thing is done.
Meanwhile, all that is of real interest and importance in the author
thus resuscitated is lost sight of; in advocating his factitious claims
to attention his real claims are ignored. For the true point of view is
substituted a false, and the whole focus of criticism, so to speak, is
deranged. The first requisite in estimating the work and relative
position of a particular author is the last thing which these
enthusiasts seem to consider, that is, the application of standards and
touchstones derived not simply from the study of the author himself, but
from acquaintance with the principles of criticism, and with what is
excellent in universal literature.
All this has been illustrated in the case of the poet who is the subject
of the volume before us. As Mr. Ruskin has pronounced _Aurora Leigh_ to
be the greatest poem of this century, so Sir Walter Scott, who has, by
the way, been singularly unjust to Lydgate and Hawes, pronounced Dunbar
to be “a poet unrivalled by any that Scotland has ever produced.” a
reckless judgment which he could never have expressed deliberately.
Ellis followed suit, and in Ellis’ notice Dunbar is “the greatest poet
Scotland has produced.” These judgments have, in effect, been
reverberated by successive writers and editors. In due time, some
fourteen years ago, appeared the inevitable German monograph, “William
Dunbar: sein Leben und seine Gedichte,” by Dr. J. Schipper, to whom Mr.
Oliphant Smeaton appropriately and reverently inscribes the present
monograph.
In Mr. Oliphant Smeaton’s work Dunbar assumes the proportions which
might be expected--he is a “mighty genius.” “The peer, if not in a few
qualities, the superior of Chaucer and Spenser. By the indefeasible
passport of the supreme genius he has an indisputable title to the
apostolic succession of British poetry to that place between Chaucer and
Spenser, that place which can only be claimed by one whose genius was
co-ordinate with theirs.” As probably eight out of every ten of Mr.
Smeaton’s readers will know nothing more of Dunbar than what Mr. Smeaton
chooses to tell them, and as we, considering the space at our disposal,
cannot refute him by a detailed examination of Dunbar’s works, it is
fortunate that he has given us a succinct illustration of the value of
his critical judgment. The following are four typical stanzas of a poem
which Mr. Smeaton ranks with Milton’s _Lycidas_ and Shelley’s
_Adonais_; we give them as Mr. Smeaton gives them, modernised:--
“I that in health was and gladness
Am troubled now with great sickness.
Enfeebled with infirmity,
_Timor mortis conturbat me._
“Our pleasure here is all vain glory,
This false world is but transitory,
The flesh is brittle, the fiend is slee,
_Timor mortis conturbat me._
“The state of man doth change and vary,
Now sound, now sick, now blyth, now sary
Now dancing merry, now like to dee,
_Timor mortis conturbat me._
“No state on earth here stands sicker,
As with the wind waves the wicker,
So waves this world’s vanity,
_Timor mortis conturbat me._”
As the following is pronounced to be one of the finest stanzas Dunbar
ever penned, it is interesting as illustrating what is, in Mr. Smeaton’s
opinion, the best work of this rival of Chaucer and Spenser:--
“Have mercy, love, have mercy, lady bright;
What have I wrought against your womankeid,
That you should murder me a sackless wight,
Trespassing on you nor in word nor deed?
That ye consent thereto, O God forbid;
Leave cruelty and save your man for shame,
Or through the world quite losëd is your name.”
It may be added that what are by far the finest passages in Dunbar’s
poems are passed unnoticed and unquoted by Mr. Smeaton. Indeed, his
acquaintance with Dunbar, or, at all events, his taste in selection, is
exactly on a par with that of Ned Softley’s with Waller. “As that
admirable writer has the best and worst verses among our English poets,
Ned,” says Addison, “has got all the bad ones by heart, which he repeats
upon occasion to show his reading.” Should Mr. Smeaton ever meet his
idol in Hades, we would in all kindness advise him to avoid an
encounter; let him remember that the fulsome eulogy is his own, but that
the verses quoted are the poet’s. Attempted murder--so the irate shade
might argue--is less serious than compulsory suicide.
Dunbar was undoubtedly a man of genius, but a reference to the poets who
immediately preceded him will make large deductions from the praises
lavished on him by his eulogists. He struck no new notes. _The Thistle
and the Rose_ and _The Golden Terge_ are mere echoes of Chaucer and
Lydgate, and, in some degree, of the author of _The King’s Quair_, and
are indeed full of plagiarisms from them. _The Dance of the Seven Deadly
Sins_ is probably little more than a faithful description of a popular
mummery. His moral and religious poems had their prototypes, even in
Scotland, in such poets as Johnston and Henryson. His most remarkable
characteristic is his versatility, which ranges from the composition of
such poems as _The Merle and the Nightingale_ to the _Twa Maryit Wemen
and the Wedo_, from such lyrics as the _Meditation in Winter_ to such
lyrics as the _Plea for Pity_. Mr. Smeaton calls him “a giant in an age
of pigmies.” The author or authoress of _The Flower and the Leaf_ was
infinitely superior to him in point of style, Henryson was infinitely
superior to him in originality, and Gavin Douglas at least his equal in
power of expression and in description.
Let us do Dunbar the justice which Mr. Smeaton has not done him, and
take him at his very best. Here is part of a picture of a May morning,--
“For mirth of May, wyth skippis and wyth hoppis
The birdis sang upon the tender croppis,
With curiouse notis, as Venus Chapell clerkis.
The rosis yong, new spreding of their knoppis,
War powderit brycht with hevinly beriall droppis;
Throu bemes rede, birnyng as ruby sperkis,
The skyes rang for schoutyng of the larkis.”
This is brilliant and picturesque rhetoric touched into poetry by the
“Venus Chapell clerkis,” and the magical note in the last line; so too
the touch in _The Golden Terge_, likening the faery ship to “blossom
upon the spray.” But in his allegorical poem he is too fond of the
“quainte enamalit termes,” and his verse has a certain metallic ring. It
will be admitted, we suppose, that the best of his moral poems would be
_The Merle and the Nightingale_ and “Be Merrie Man”; but the utmost
which can be said for them is, that the philosophy is excellent and its
expression adequate; that is, that they have little to distinguish them
from hundreds of other poems of the same class.
In speaking of Dunbar’s satires, Mr. Smeaton indulges himself in the
following nonsense, “From the genial, jesting, and ironical
incongruities of Horace and Persius we are introduced at once into the
bitter, vitriolic scourgings of Juvenal,” and in the following
rhodomontade, telling us that they unite “the natural directness of
Hall, the subtle depth of Donne, the delicate humour of Breton, the
sturdy vigour of Dryden, the scalding, vitriolic bitterness of Swift,
the pungency of Churchill, the rural smack of Gay, united to an approach
at least to the artistic perfection of Pope.” Stuff like this and
indiscriminate eulogy are, no doubt, much easier to produce than an
estimate of a writer’s historical position and importance. Of the
relation of Dunbar to his predecessors and contemporaries in England and
Scotland, of his prototypes and models in French and Provençal
literature, of the influence which he undoubtedly exercised on
subsequent poetry, and especially on Spenser, Mr. Smeaton has nothing to
say. It never seems to occur to him that his hero, like every one else,
must have had his limitations, that “the many-sidedness of that genius
which has a ring”--the metaphors are not ours, but Mr.
Smeaton’s--“almost Shakespearian, about it,” could hardly have been
distinguished by uniformity of excellence; that “that painter of
contemporary manners, who had all the vividness of a Callot, united to
the broad humour of a Teniers and the minute touch of a Meissonier,” who
“reflected in his verse the most delicate _nuances_, as well as the most
startling colours of the age wherein he lived,” must have had degrees in
success.
We have singled out this volume for special notice, not because of any
intrinsic title it possesses to serious attention, but because it is
typical of a species of literature which is rapidly becoming one of the
pests of our time. While every encouragement should be given to sober,
judicious, and competent reviews of our older writers, every
discouragement should be given, out of respect to the dead, as well as
in the interests of the living, to such books as the present. For they
are as mischievous as they are ridiculous. They misinform; they mislead;
they corrupt, or tend to corrupt, taste. After laying down a volume like
this we feel, and we expect Dunbar would have felt, that there is
something much more formidable than the old horror, “the candid friend,”
even that indicated by Tacitus--_pessimum inimicorum genus--laudantes_.
A GALLOP THROUGH ENGLISH LITERATURE[25]
[Footnote 25: _A Literary History of the English People from the Origins
to the Renaissance._ By J. J. Jusserand.]
There is a breeziness and hilarity, a gay irresponsibility and abandon,
about M. Jusserand which is perfectly delightful. He is the very
Autolycus of History and Criticism. What more sober students, who have
some conscience to trouble them, are “toiling all their lives to find”
appears to be his as a sort of natural right. The fertility of his
genius is such, that it seems to blossom spontaneously into erudition.
Like the lilies he toils not, but unlike the lilies he spins, and very
pretty gossamer too. It is impossible to take him seriously.
The truth is that M. Jusserand belongs to a class of writers which,
thanks to indulgent publishers, a more indulgent public, and most
indulgent reviewers, is just now greatly in the ascendant.
“Encyclopædical heads,” who took all knowledge for their province,
probably died with Bacon, but encyclopædical heads who take all
Literature or all History for their province appear to be as common as
the “excellence” which, in opposition to Matthew Arnold’s opinion, the
American lady maintained was so abundant on both sides of the Atlantic.
These are the gentlemen who complacently sit down “to edit the
Literatures of the world,” or “to trace the development of the human
race, from its picturesque cradle in the valleys of Central Asia, to its
infinite ramifications in our own day”--within “the moderate compass of
an octavo volume.”
M. Jusserand’s first feat is to dispose of some six centuries in
ninety-three pages, in a narrative which simply tells over again, though
certainly after a more jaunty fashion, what Ten Brink, Henry Morley, and
others have told much more seriously, and, we may add, much more
effectively. The Norman Conquest and an account of the Anglo-Norman
literature occupy about a hundred and ten pages, while some eighty pages
more, dealing with the fusion of the races and the gradual evolution of
the English people and language, bring us to Chaucer. It might have been
expected that M. Jusserand would have justified his survey of a period
so often reviewed before, either by tracing, with more fulness and
precision than his predecessors, the successive stages in the
development of our nationality and its expression in literature, or by
adding to our knowledge of the characteristics and peculiarities of the
literature itself. He has done neither. He has, on the contrary,
obscured the first by the constant introduction of irrelevant matter,
and he has apparently no notion of the relative importance of the
authors on whose works he dilates or touches. Thus Richard Rolle of
Hampole fills more space than Layamon, whose work is despatched in a
page! Thus two lines in a note suffice for the _Ormulum_, two lines for
Mannyng’s _Handlyng of Synne_, a singularly interesting and significant
work, ten lines for Robert of Gloucester, who is rather perplexingly
described as “a distant ancestor of Gibbon and Macaulay,” while four
pages are accorded to _Tristan_ and five to the _Roman du Renart_. How
the Latin Chroniclers fare may be judged from the fact that a little
more than a page serves for Geoffrey of Monmouth, a line for Ordericus
Vitalis, and two for Giraldus Cambrensis. In the chapter on Chaucer M.
Jusserand does more justice to his subject, and it is to be regretted
for his own sake that he has not confined himself to such essays. He is
never safe except when he is on the beaten path. Nothing could be more
inadequate than the section on Gower. It certainly indicates that M.
Jusserand is not very familiar with the _Confessio Amantis_. Not one
word is said about the remarkable prologue, and to dismiss such a work
in less than three pages, observing that “it contains a hundred and
twelve short stories, two or three of which are very well told, one, the
adventure of Florent, being, perhaps, related even better than in
Chaucer,” is not quite what we should expect in a work purporting to
narrate the “literary history of the English people.” M. Jusserand has
not even taken the trouble to keep pace with modern investigation in his
subject, but actually tells us that Gower’s _Speculum Meditantis_ is
lost! If Gower’s writings are not of much intrinsic value, they are of
immense importance from an historical point of view. John de Trevisa, a
most important name in the history of English prose, is despatched in
eight lines of mere bibliographical information, without a word being
said about his great services to our literature, and without any
reference being made either to the remarkable preface to his great work,
or to his version of the Dialogue attributed to Occam.
The only satisfactory chapter in the book is the chapter dealing with
Langland and his works; but it is certainly surprising that no account
should be given of the very remarkable anonymous poem entitled _Piers
Ploughman’s Crede_. Again, whole departments of literature, such as the
Metrical Romances, the Laies, Fabliaux, early lyrics and ballads, are
most inadequately treated, some of the most memorable and typical being
not even specified. Surely Minot was not a man to be dismissed, with a
flippant joke, in half a page, or _King Horn_ and _Havelok_ poems to be
relegated to passing reference in a note.
But it is in dealing with the literature of the fifteenth century that
M. Jusserand’s superficiality and, to put it plainly, incompetence for
his ambitious task become most deplorably apparent. In treating the
earlier periods he had trustworthy guides even in common manuals, and he
could not go far wrong in accepting their generalizations and
statements. Books easily attainable, and indeed in everybody’s hands,
could enable him to dance airily through the Anglo-Saxon literature and
through the period between Layamon and Chaucer. No one can now very well
go wrong in Chaucer and his contemporaries, who has at his side some
half-dozen works which any library can supply. But it is otherwise with
the literature of the fifteenth century. Here, as every one who happens
to have paid particular attention to it knows, popular manuals and
histories are most misleading guides. Deterred, no doubt, by the
prolixity of the poetry and by the comparatively uninteresting nature of
the prose literature, modern historians and critics have contented
themselves with accepting the verdicts of Warton and his followers, who
probably had as little patience as themselves; and so a kind of
conventional estimate has been formed, which appears and reappears in
every manual and handbook. We turned, therefore, with much curiosity to
this portion of M. Jusserand’s work. We had, we own, our suspicions
about his first-hand knowledge of the literature through which he glided
so easily in the earlier portions of his book, and here, we thought,
would be the crucial test of his pretension to original scholarship.
Would he do voluminous Lydgate the justice which, as the specialist
knows, has so long been withheld from him? Would he point out the strong
human interest of Hoccleve; the great historical interest of Hardyng;
the power and beauty of the ballads; or, if he included Hawes within the
century, would he show what a singularly interesting poem, intrinsically
and historically, the _Pastime of Pleasure_ really is? If, again, he
included the Scotch poets, how would he deal with the problems presented
by Huchown? Would he accord the proper tribute to the genius of Dunbar;
would he estimate what poetry owes respectively to James I., Henry the
Minstrel, Robert Henryson, and Gavin Douglas? In our prose literature,
would he comment on the great importance of Pecock’s memorable work, of
Fortescue’s two treatises, of the _Paston Letters_, of Caxton’s various
publications? How would he deal with the one “classical” work of the
century, Malory’s _Morte d’Arthur_?
Now, of Lydgate, “to enumerate whose pieces,” says Warton, “would be to
write the catalogue of a little library,” it is not too much to say
that he was one of the most richly gifted of our old poets, that as a
descriptive poet he stands almost on the level of Chaucer, that his
pictures of Nature are among the gems of their kind, that his pathos is
often exquisite, “touching,” as Gray said of him, “the very heartstrings
of compassion with so masterly a hand as to merit a place among the
greatest of poets.” His humour is often delightful, and his pictures of
contemporary life, such as his _London Lickpenny_ and his _Prologue to
the Storie of Thebes_, are as vivid as Chaucer’s. In versatility he has
no rival among his predecessors and contemporaries. Gray notices that,
at times, he approaches sublimity. His style often is
beautiful,--fluent, copious, and at its best eminently musical. The
influence which he exercised on subsequent English and Scotch literature
would alone entitle him to a prominent position in any history of
English poetry. But the handbooks think otherwise, and he occupies just
three pages in M. Jusserand’s work, the only estimate of his work being
confined to the assertion that “he was a worthy man if ever there was
one, industrious and prolific,” etc., and the only criticism is the
remark that his “prosody was rather lax.” And this is how poor Lydgate
fares at our historian’s hands. To Hoccleve are assigned just one page
and a few lines. Hardyng figures only in the bibliography at the bottom
of a page. The ballads are despatched in fifteen lines. Hawes’ _Pastime
of Pleasure_, memorable alike both for the preciseness with which it
marks the transition from the poetry of mediævalism to that of the
Renaissance, for its probable influence on Spenser, and for its
intrinsic charm, its pathos, its picturesqueness, and its sweet and
plaintive music, is curtly dismissed, as the handbooks dismiss it, as
“an allegory of unendurable dulness.” If M. Jusserand would throw aside
the manuals and turn to the original, he would probably see reason to
modify his verdict. Our author’s breathless gallop through the Scotch
poets, to whom he allots nine pages, can only be regarded with silent
astonishment by readers who happen to known anything about those most
remarkable men. Huchown is not so much as mentioned. The amazing
nonsense which he writes in summing up Dunbar, we will transcribe, _ut
ex uno discas omnia_:
“Dunbar, with never-flagging spirit, attempts every style....
His flowers are too flowery, his odours too fragrant; by
moments it is no longer a delight, but almost a pain. It is not
sufficient that his birds should sing; they must sing among
perfumes, and these perfumes are coloured.”