are those which relate to the religious life, the morals, the
superstitions, and ecclesiastical abuses of the times. In these we
see the need of the reformation of which Wyclif was the morning
light. In these we see the hypocrisies and sensualities of both
monks and friars, relieved somewhat by the virtues of the simple
parish priest or poor parson, in contrast with the wealth and
luxury of the regular clergy, as monks were called, in their
princely monasteries, where the lordly abbot vied with both baron
and bishop in the magnificence of his ordinary life. We see before
us the Mediaeval clergy in all their privileges, and yet in all
their ignorance and superstition, shielded from the punishment of
crime and the operation of all ordinary laws (a sturdy defiance of
the temporal powers), the agents and ministers of a foreign power,
armed with the terrors of hell and the grave. Besides the prioress
and the nuns' priest, we see in living light the habits and
pretensions of the lazy monk, the venal friar and pardoner, and the
noisy summoner for ecclesiastical offences: hunters and gluttons
are they, with greyhounds and furs,, greasy and fat, and full of
dalliances; at home in taverns, unprincipled but agreeable
vagabonds, who cheat and rob the people, and make a mockery of what
is most sacred on the earth. These privileged mendicants, with
their relics and indulgences, their arts and their lies, and the
scandals they create, are treated by Chaucer with blended humor and
severity, showing a mind as enlightened as that of the great
scholar at Oxford, who heads the movement against Rome and the
abuses at which she connived if she did not encourage. And there
is something intensely English in his disgust and scorn,--brave for
his day, yet shielded by the great duke who was at once his
protector and friend, as he was of Wyclif himself,--in his severer
denunciation, and advocacy of doctrines which neither Chaucer nor
Duke of Lancaster understood, and which, if they had, they would
not have sympathized with nor encouraged. In these attacks on
ecclesiastics and ecclesiastical abuses, Chaucer should be studied
with Wyclif and the early reformers, although he would not have
gone so far as they, and led, unlike them, a worldly life. Thus by
these poems he has rendered a service to his country, outside his
literary legacy, which has always been held in value. The father
of English poetry belonged to the school of progress and of
inquiry, like his great contemporaries on the Continent. But while
he paints the manners, customs, and characters of the fourteenth
century, he does not throw light on the great ideas which agitated
or enslaved the age. He is too real and practical for that. He
describes the outward, not the inner life. He was not serious
enough--I doubt if he was learned enough--to enter into the
disquisitions of schoolmen, or the mazes of the scholastic
philosophy, or the meditations of almost inspired sages. It is not
the joys of heaven or the terrors of hell on which he discourses,
but of men and women as they lived around him, in their daily
habits and occupations. We must go to Wyclif if we would know the
theological or philosophical doctrines which interested the
learned. Chaucer only tells how monks and friars lived, not how
they speculated or preached. We see enough, however, to feel that
he was emancipated from the ideas of the Middle Ages, and had cast
off their gloom, their superstition, and their despair. The only
things he liked of those dreary times were their courts of love and
their chivalric glories.
I do not propose to analyze the poetry of Chaucer, or enter upon a
critical inquiry as to his relative merits in comparison with the
other great poets. It is sufficient for me to know that critics
place him very high as an original poet, although it is admitted
that he drew much of his material from French and Italian authors.
He was, for his day, a great linguist. He had travelled
extensively, and could speak Latin, French, and Italian with
fluency. He knew Petrarch and other eminent Italians. One is
amazed that in such an age he could have written so well, for he
had no great models to help him in his own language. If
occasionally indecent, he is not corrupting. He never deliberately
disseminates moral poison; and when he speaks of love, he treats
almost solely of the simple and genuine emotions of the heart.
The best criticism that I have read of Chaucer's poetry is that of
Adolphus William Ward; although as a biography it is not so full or
so interesting as that of Godwin or even Morley. In no life that I
have read are the mental characteristics of our poet so ably
drawn,--"his practical good sense," his love of books, his still
deeper love of nature, his naivete, the readiness of his
description, the brightness of his imagery, the easy flow of his
diction, the vividness with which he describes character; his
inventiveness, his readiness of illustration, his musical rhythm,
his gaiety and cheerfulness, his vivacity and joyousness, his
pathos and tenderness, his keen sense of the ridiculous and power
of satire, without being bitter, so that his wit and fun are
harmless, and perpetually pleasing.
He doubtless had great dramatic talent, but he did not live in a
dramatic age. His especial excellence, never surpassed, was his
power of observing and drawing character, united with boundless
humor and cheerful fun. And his descriptions of nature are as true
and unstinted as his descriptions of men and women, so that he is
as fresh as the month of May. In his poetry is life; and hence his
immortal fame. He is not so great as Spenser or Shakspeare or
Milton; but he has the same vitality as they, and is as wonderful
as they considering his age and opportunities,--a poet who
constantly improved as he advanced in life, and whose greatest work
was written in his old age.
Unfortunately, we know but little of Chaucer's habits and
experiences, his trials and disappointments, his friendships or his
hatreds. What we do know of him raises our esteem. Though
convivial, he was temperate; though genial, he was a silent
observer, quiet in his manners, modest in his intercourse with the
world, walking with downcast eye, but letting nothing escape his
notice. He believed in friendship, and kept his friends to the
end, and was stained neither by envy nor by pride,--as frank as he
was affectionate, as gentle as he was witty. Living with princes
and nobles, he never descended to gross adulation, and never wrote
a line of approval of the usurpation of Henry IV., although his
bread depended on Henry's favor, and he was also the son of the
king's earliest and best friend. He was not a religious man, nor
was he an immoral man, judged by the standard of his age. He
probably was worldly, as he lived in courts. We do not see in him
the stern virtues of Dante or Milton; nothing of that moral
earnestness which marked the only other great man with whom he was
contemporary,--he who is called the "morning star" of the
Reformation. But then we know nothing about him which calls out
severe reprobation. He was patriotic, and had the confidence of
his sovereign, else he would not have been employed on important
missions. And the sweetness of his character may be inferred from
his long and tender friendship with Gower, whom some in that age
considered the greater poet. He was probably luxurious in his
habits, but intemperate use of wine he detested and avoided. He
was portly in his person, but refinement marked his features. He
was a gentleman, according to the severest code of chivalric
excellence; always a favorite with ladies, and equally admired by
the knights and barons of a brilliant court. No poet was ever more
honored in his life or lamented in his death, as his beautiful
monument in Westminster Abbey would seem to attest. That monument
is the earliest that was erected to the memory of a poet in that
Pantheon of English men of rank and genius; and it will probably be
as long preserved as any of those sculptured urns and animated
busts which seek to keep alive the memory of the illustrious dead,--
of those who, though dead, yet speak to all future generations.
AUTHORITIES.
Chaucer's own works, especially the Canterbury Tales; publications
of the Chaucer Society; Pauli's History of England; ordinary
Histories of England which relate to the reigns of Edward III. and
Richard II., especially Green's History of the English People; Life
of Chaucer, by William Godwin (4 volumes, London, 1804); Tyrwhitt's
edition of Canterbury Tales; Speglet's edition of Chaucer; Warton's
History of English Poetry; St. Palaye's History of Chivalry;
Chaucer's England, by Matthew Browne (London, 1869); Sir Harris
Nicholas's Life of Chaucer; The Riches of Chaucer, by Charles
Cowden Clarke; Morley's Life of Chaucer. The latest work is a Life
and Criticism of Chaucer, by Adolphus William Ward. There is also
a Guide to Chaucer, by H. G. Fleary. See also Skeat's collected
edition of Chaucer's Works, brought out under the auspices of the
Early English Text Society.
CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS.
A.D. 1446-1506.
MARITIME DISCOVERIES.
About thirteen hundred years ago, when Attila the Hun, called "the
scourge of God," was overrunning the falling empire of the Romans,
some of the noblest citizens of the small cities of the Adriatic
fled, with their families and effects, to the inaccessible marshes
and islands at the extremity of that sea, and formed a permanent
settlement. They became fishermen and small traders. In process
of time they united their islands together by bridges, and laid the
foundation of a mercantile state. Thither resorted the merchants
of Mediaeval Europe to make exchanges. Thus Venice became rich and
powerful, and in the twelfth century it was one of the prosperous
states of Europe, ruled by an oligarchy of the leading merchants.
Contemporaneous with Dante, one of the most distinguished citizens
of this mercantile mart, Marco Polo, impelled by the curiosity
which reviving commerce excited and the restless adventure of a
crusading age, visited the court of the Great Khan of Tartary,
whose empire was the largest in the world. After a residence of
seventeen years, during which he was loaded with honors, he
returned to his native country, not by the ordinary route, but by
coasting the eastern shores of Asia, through the Indian Ocean, up
the Persian Gulf, and thence through Bagdad and Constantinople,
bringing with him immense wealth in precious stones and other
Eastern commodities. The report of his wonderful adventures
interested all Europe, for he was supposed to have found the
Tarshish of the Scriptures, that land of gold and spices which had
enriched the Tyrian merchants in the time of Solomon,--men supposed
by some to have sailed around the Cape of Good Hope in their three
years' voyages. Among the wonderful things which Polo had seen was
a city on an island off the coast of China, which was represented
to contain six hundred thousand families, so rich that the palaces
of its nobles were covered with plates of gold, so inviting that
odoriferous plants and flowers diffused the most grateful perfumes,
so strong that even the Tartar conquerors of China could not subdue
it. This island, known now as Japan, was called Cipango, and was
supposed to be inexhaustible in riches, especially when the reports
of Polo were confirmed by Sir John Mandeville, an English traveller
in the time of Edward III.,--and with even greater exaggerations,
since he represented the royal palace to be more than six miles in
circumference, occupied by three hundred thousand men.
In an awakening age of enterprise, when chivalry had not passed
away, nor the credulity of the Middle Ages, the reports of this
Cipango inflamed the imagination of Europe, and to reach it became
at once the desire and the problem of adventurers and merchants.
But how could this El Dorado be reached? Not by sailing round
Africa; for to sail South, in popular estimation, was to encounter
torrid suns with ever increasing heat, and suffocating vapors, and
unknown dangers. The scientific world had lost the knowledge of
what even the ancients knew. Nobody surmised that there was a Cape
of Good Hope which could be doubled, and would open the way to the
Indian Ocean and its islands of spices and gold. Nor could this
Cipango be reached by crossing the Eastern Continent, for the
journey was full of perils, dangers, and insurmountable obstacles.
Among those who meditated on this geographical mystery was a
young sea captain of Genoa, who had studied in the University of
Pavia, but spent his early life upon the waves,--intelligent,
enterprising, visionary, yet practical, with boundless ambition,
not to conquer kingdoms, but to discover new realms. Born probably
in 1446, in the year 1470 he married the daughter of an Italian
navigator living in Lisbon; and, inheriting with her some valuable
Portuguese charts and maritime journals, he settled in Lisbon and
took up chart-making as a means of livelihood. Being thus trained
in both the art and the science of navigation, his active mind
seized upon the most interesting theme of the day. His studies and
experience convinced him that the Cipango of Marco Polo could be
reached by sailing directly west. He knew that the earth was
round, and he inferred from the plants and carved wood and even
human bodies that had occasionally floated from the West, that
there must be unknown islands on the western coasts of the
Atlantic, and that this ocean, never yet crossed, was the common
boundary of both Europe and Asia; in short, that the Cipango could
be reached by sailing west. And he believed the thing to be
practicable, for the magnetic needle had been discovered, or
brought from the East by Polo, which always pointed to the North
Star, so that mariners could sail in the darkest nights; and also
another instrument had been made, essentially the modern quadrant,
by which latitude could be measured. He supposed that after
sailing west, about eight hundred leagues, by the aid of compass
and quadrant, and such charts as he had collected and collated, he
should find the land of gold and spices by which he would become
rich and famous.
This was not an absurd speculation to a man of the intellect and
knowledge of Columbus. To his mind there were but few physical
difficulties if he only had the ships, and the men bold enough to
embark with him, and the patronage which was necessary for so novel
and daring an enterprise. The difficulties to be surmounted were
not so much physical as moral. It was the surmounting of moral
difficulties which gives to Columbus his true greatness as a man of
genius and resources. These moral obstacles were so vast as to be
all but insurmountable, since he had to contend with all the
established ideas of his age,--the superstitions of sailors, the
prejudices of learned men, and general geographical ignorance. He
himself had neither money, nor ships, nor powerful friends. Nobody
believed in him; all ridiculed him; some insulted him. Who would
furnish money to a man who was supposed to be half crazy,--
certainly visionary and wild; a rash adventurer who would not only
absorb money but imperil life? Learned men would not listen to
him, and powerful people derided him, and princes were too absorbed
in wars and pleasure to give him a helping hand. Aid could come
only from some great state or wealthy prince; but both states and
princes were deaf and dumb to him. It was a most extraordinary
inspiration of genius in the fifteenth century which created, not
an opinion, but a conviction that Asia could be reached by sailing
west; and how were common minds to comprehend such a novel idea?
If a century later, with all the blaze of reviving art and science
and learning, the most learned people ridiculed the idea that the
earth revolved around the sun, even when it was proved by all the
certitudes of mathematical demonstration and unerring observations,
how could the prejudiced and narrow-minded priests of the time of
Columbus, who controlled the most important affairs of state, be
made to comprehend that an unknown ocean, full of terrors, could be
crossed by frail ships, and that even a successful voyage would
open marts of inexhaustible wealth? All was clear enough to this
scientific and enterprising mariner; and the inward assurance that
he was right in his calculation gave to his character a blended
boldness, arrogance, and dignity which was offensive to men of
exalted station, and ill became a stranger and adventurer with a
thread-bare coat, and everything which indicated poverty, neglect,
and hardship, and without any visible means of living but by the
making and selling of charts.
Hence we cannot wonder at the seventeen years of poverty, neglect,
ridicule, disappointment, and deferred hopes, such as make the
heart sick, which elapsed after Columbus was persuaded of the truth
of his theory, before he could find anybody enlightened enough to
believe in him, or powerful enough to assist him.
Wrapped up in those glorious visions which come only to a man of
superlative genius, and which make him insensible to heat and cold
and scanty fare, even to reproach and scorn, this intrepid soul,
inspired by a great and original idea, wandered from city to city,
and country to country, and court to court, to present the certain
greatness and wealth of any state that would embark in his
enterprise. But all were alike cynical, cold, unbelieving, and
even insulting. He opposes overwhelming, universal, and
overpowering ideas. To have surmounted these amid such protracted
opposition and discouragement constitutes his greatness; and
finally to prove his position by absolute experiment and hazardous
enterprise makes him one of the greatest of human benefactors,
whose fame will last through all the generations of men. And as I
survey that lonely, abstracted, disappointed, and derided man,--
poor and unimportant, so harassed by debt that his creditors seized
even his maps and charts, obliged to fly from one country to
another to escape imprisonment, without even listeners and still
less friends, and yet with ever-increasing faith in his cause,
utterly unconquerable, alone in opposition to all the world,--I
think I see the most persistent man of enterprise that I have read
of in history. Critics ambitious to say something new may rake out
slanders from the archives of enemies, and discover faults which
derogate from the character we have been taught to admire and
venerate; they may even point out spots, which we cannot disprove,
in that sun of glorious brightness, which shed its beneficent rays
over a century of darkness,--but this we know, that, whatever may
be the force of detraction, his fame has been steadily increasing,
even on the admission of his slanderers, for three centuries, and
that he now shines as a fixed star in the constellation of the
great lights of modern times, not alone because he succeeded in
crossing the ocean, when once embarked on it, but for surmounting
the moral difficulties which lay in his way before he could embark
upon it, and for being finally instrumental in conferring the
greatest boon that our world has received from any mortal man,
since Noah entered into the ark.
I think it is Lamartine who has said that truly immortal
benefactors have seldom been able to accomplish their mission
without the encouragement of either saints or women. This is
emphatically true in the case of Columbus. The door to success was
at last opened to him by a friendly and sympathetic friar of a
Franciscan convent near the little port of Palos, in Andalusia.
The sun-burned and disappointed adventurer (for that is what he
was), wearied and hungry, and nearly discouraged, stopped at the
convent-door to get a morsel of bread for his famished son, who
attended him in his pilgrimage. The prior of that obscure convent
was the first who comprehended the man of genius, not so much
because he was an enlightened scholar, but because his pious soul
was full of kindly sympathy, showing that the instincts of love are
kindred to the inspirations of genius. It was the voice of Ali and
Cadijeh that strengthened Mohammed. It was Catherine von Bora who
sustained Luther in his gigantic task. The worthy friar, struck by
the noble bearing of a man so poor and wearied, became delighted
with the conversation of his guest, who opened to him both his
heart and his schemes. He forwarded his plans by a letter to a
powerful ecclesiastic, who introduced him to the Spanish Court,
then one of the most powerful, and certainly the proudest and most
punctilious, in Europe. Ferdinand of Aragon was polite, yet wary
and incredulous; but Isabella of Castile listened more kindly to
the stranger, whom the greatness of his mission inspired with
eloquence. Like the saint of the convent, she and she alone of
her splendid court, divined that there was something to be
heeded in the words of Columbus, and gave her womanly and royal
encouragement, although too much engrossed with the conquest of
Grenada and the cares of her kingdom to pay that immediate
attention which Columbus entreated.
I may not dwell on the vexatious delays and the protracted
discouragements of Columbus after the Queen had given her ear to
his enthusiastic prophecies of the future glories of the kingdom.
To the court and to the universities and to the great ecclesiastics
he was still a visionary and a needy adventurer; and they quoted,
in refutation of his theory, those Scripture texts which were
hurled in greater wrath against Galileo when he announced his
brilliant discoveries. There are, from some unfathomed reason,
always texts found in the sacred writings which seem to conflict
with both science and a profound theology; and the pedants, as well
as the hypocrites and usurpers, have always shielded themselves
behind these in their opposition to new opinions. I will not be
hard upon them, for often they are good men, simply unable to throw
off the shackles of ages of ignorance and tyranny. People should
not be subjected to lasting reproach because they cannot emancipate
themselves from prevailing ideas. If those prejudiced courtiers
and scholastics who ridiculed Columbus could only have seen with
his clearer insight, they might have loaded him with favors. But
they were blinded and selfish and envious. Nor was it until
Columbus convinced his sovereigns that the risk was small for so
great a promised gain, that he was finally commissioned to
undertake his voyage. The promised boon was the riches of Oriental
countries, boundless and magnificent,--countries not to be
discovered, but already known, only hard and perhaps impossible to
reach. And Columbus himself was so firmly persuaded of the
existence of these riches, and of his ability to secure them, and
they were so exaggerated by his imagination, that his own demands
were extravagant and preposterous, as must have seemed to an
incredulous court,--that he, a stranger, an adventurer, almost a
beggar even, should in case of success be made viceroy and admiral
over the unexplored realm, and with a tenth of all the riches he
should collect or seize; and that these high offices--almost regal--
should also be continued not only through his own life, but
through the lives of his heirs from generation to generation, thus
raising him to a possible rank higher than that of any of the dukes
and grandees of Spain.
Ferdinand and Isabella, however, readily promised all that the
persistent and enthusiastic adventurer demanded, doubtless with the
feeling that there was not more than one chance in a hundred that
he would ever be heard from again, but that this one chance was
well worth all and more than they expended,--a possibility of
indefinite aggrandizement. To the eyes of Ferdinand there was a
prospect--remote, indeed--of adding to the power of the Spanish
monarchy; and it is probable that the pious Isabella contemplated
also the conversion of the heathen to Christianity. It is possible
that some motives may have also influenced Columbus kindred to
this,--a renewed crusade against Saracen infidels, which he might
undertake from the wealth he was so confident of securing. But the
probabilities are that Columbus was urged on to his career by
ambitious and worldly motives also, or else he would not have been
so greedy to secure honors and wealth, nor would have been so
jealous of his dignity when he had attained power. To me Columbus
was no more a saint than Sir Francis Drake was when he so
unscrupulously robbed every ship he could lay his hands upon,
although both of them observed the outward forms of religious
worship peculiar to their respective creeds and education. There
were no unbelievers in that age. Both Catholics and Protestants,
like the ancient Pharisees, were scrupulous in what were supposed
to be religious duties,--though these too often were divorced from
morality. It is Columbus only as an intrepid, enthusiastic,
enlightened navigator, in pursuit of a new world of boundless
wealth, that I can see him; and it was for his ultimate success in
discovering this world, amid so many difficulties, that he is to be
regarded as a great benefactor, of the glory of which no ingenuity
or malice can rob him.