The Mercer's Apprentice—His Book-knowledge—Commerce in Books—Schools in
London—City Apprentices—City Pageants—Spread of English Language—
English Writers—Chaucer—Gower—Lydgate—The Minstrels—National Literature.
In a book which Caxton printed in 1483, 'The Booke callyd Cathon,' he
says in his prologue or preface, "Unto the noble, ancient, and renowned
city, the city of London in England, I, William Caxton, citizen and
conjury [sworn fellow] of the same, and of the fraternity and fellowship
of the Mercery, owe of right my service and good will; and of very duty
am bounden naturally to assist, aid, and counsel, as farforth as I can
to my power, as to my mother of whom I have received my nurture and
living; and shall pray for the good prosperity and policy of the same
during my life. For as me seemeth it is of great need, by cause I have
known it in my young age much more wealthy, prosperous, and richer than
it is at this day; and the cause is, that there is almost none that
intendeth to the common weal, but only every man for his singular
profit." It is the usual habit of the aged to look back upon the days of
their youth as a period of higher prosperity and more exalted virtue,
public and private, than they witness in their declining years. This is
in most cases merely the mind's own colouring of the picture. But it is
very possible that London, in the first year of Richard III., when
Caxton wrote this preface, was really less prosperous, and its citizens
less devoted to the public good, than half a century earlier, when
Caxton was a blithe apprentice within its walls. The country had passed
through the terrible convulsion of the wars of the Roses; and it is the
nature of civil wars, especially, not only to waste the substance and
destroy the means of existence of every man, but to render all men
selfish, grasping at temporary good, suspicious, faithless. The master
of Caxton was Robert Large, a member of the Mercers' Company, who was
one of the Sheriffs in 1430, and Lord Mayor in 1439-40. The date of
Caxton's apprenticeship has not been ascertained; but it is considered
by several of his biographers to have commenced about 1428. At this
period, the sixth of Henry VI., a law was on the statute-book, and
rigorously enforced, whose object was to prevent the sons of labourers
in husbandry, and indeed of the poorer classes of the yeomanry, from
rising out of the condition in which they were born, by participating in
the higher gains of trade and handicraft. A law of the seventh of Henry
IV., about two-and-twenty years before this conjectural period of
Caxton's apprenticeship, recites that, according to ancient statutes,
those who labour at the plough or cart, or other service of husbandry,
till at the age of twelve years, should continue to abide at such
labour, and not to be put to any mystery or handicraft;—notwithstanding
which statutes, says the law of Henry IV., country people whose fathers
and mothers have no land or rent are put apprentices to divers crafts
within the cities and boroughs, so that there is great scarcity of
labourers and other servants of husbandry. The law then declares, "That
no man nor woman, of what estate or condition they be, shall put their
son or daughtor, of whatsoever age he or she be, to serve as apprentice
to no craft or other labour within any city or borough in the realm,
except he have land or rent to the value of twenty shillings by the year
at least, but they shall be put to other labours as their estates doth
require, upon pain of one year's imprisonment." This iniquitous law was
necessarily as demoralizing and as injurious to the national prosperity
as the institution of castes in India. Yet, by a most extraordinary
blindness to cause and consequence, the makers of the law provided in
the most direct way for its overthrow; for the statute goes on to say,
that, although the husbandry labourer is always to be a labourer, "every
man or woman, of what estate or condition they be, shall be free to set
their son or daughter to take learning at any manner school that
pleaseth them within the realm." The citizens of London, much to their
honour, procured a repeal of this act in the eighth of Henry VI., about
the period when Caxton was apprenticed. The probability is, that he
would not have been affected by the exclusive character of this law; for
his master was a rich and distinguished mercer—a member of that
association which has always had pre-eminence amongst the livery
companies of London. The dignified gravity, the prudence, and the
prosperity of the citizens of that day have been well described by
Chaucer:—
"A Merchant was there with a forkéd beard;
In motley, and high on horse he sat,
And on his head a Flaundrish beaver hat.
His bootes claspéd fair and fetisly;[1]
His reasons spake he full solemnély,
Sounding alway the increase of his winning:
He would the sea were kept[2] for any thing,
Betwixen Middleburgh and Orewell.
Well could he in exchanges shieldies[3] sell,
This worthy man full well his wit beset;[4]
There wiste no wight that he was in debt,
So stedfastly did he his governance
With his bargains, and with his chevisance.[5]"
When we look at William Caxton as the apprentice to a London mercer, his
position does not at first sight appear very favourable to that
cultivation of a literary taste, and that love of books, which was
originally the solace, and afterwards the business, of his life. Yet a
closer insight into the mercantile arrangements of those days will show
us that he could not have been more favourably placed for attaining some
practical acquaintance with books, in the way of his ordinary
occupation. When books were so costly and so inaccessible to the great
body of the people, there was necessarily no special trade of
bookselling. There were indeed stationers, who had books for sale, or
more probably executed orders for transcribing books. Their occupation
is thus described by Mr. Hallam, in his 'Literature of Europe:'—"These
dealers were denominated stationarii, perhaps from the open stalls at
which they carried on their business, though statio is a general word
for a shop, in low Latin. They appear by the old statutes of the
university of Paris, and by those of Bologna, to have sold books upon
commission; and are sometimes, though not uniformly, distinguished from
the librarii; a word which, having originally been confined to the
copyists of books, was afterwards applied to those who traded in them.
They sold parchment and other materials of writing, which, with us,
though, as far as I know, nowhere else, have retained the name of
stationery, and naturally exercised the kindred occupations of binding
and decorating. They probably employed transcribers." The mercer in
those days was not a dealer in small wares generally, as at an earlier
period; nor was his trade confined to silken goods—such an one as
Shakspere describes, "Master Threepile, the mercer," who had thrown a
man into prison for "some four suits of peach-coloured satin." The
mercer of the fifteenth century was essentially a merchant. The mercers
in the time of Edward III. were the great wool-dealers of the country.
They were the merchants of the Staple, in the early days of our woollen
manufacture; and the merchant adventurers of a later period were
principally of their body. In their traffic with other lands, and
especially with the Low Countries, they were the agents by which
valuable manuscripts found their way into England; and in this respect
they were something like the great merchant princes of Italy, whose
ships not unfrequently contained a cargo of Indian spices and of Greek
manuscripts. John Bagford, who wrote a slight Life of Caxton about 1714,
which is in manuscript in the British Museum, says, "Kings, queens, and
noblemen had their particular merchants, who, when they were ready for
their voyage into foreign parts, sent their servants to know what they
wanted, and among the rest of their choice many times books were
demanded, and there to buy them in those parts where they were going."
Caxton tells us in the 'Book of Good Manners,' which he translated from
the French and printed in 1487, that the original French work was
delivered to him by a "special friend, a mercer of London, named William
Praat." This commerce of books could not have been very great; but it
might have been so far carried on by Robert Large, the wealthy master of
Caxton, that a lad of ability might thus possess opportunities
for improvement which were denied to the great body of his
fellow-apprentices. At this particular period there appear to have been
but few opportunities even for the sons of parents of some substance to
obtain the rudiments of knowledge. There is a petition presented to
parliament in the twenty-fifth year of Henry VI., 1446, which exhorts
the Commons "to consider the great number of grammar-schools that
sometime were in divers parts of this realm, besides those that were in
London, and how few there are in these days." The petitioners, who are
four clergymen of the city, go on to say that London is the common
concourse of this land, and that many persons, for lack of schoolmasters
in their own country, resort there to be informed of grammar; and then
they proceed thus: "Wherefore it were expedient that in London were a
sufficient number of schools and good informers in grammar; and not, for
the singular avail of two or three persons, grievously to hurt the
multitude of young people of all this land. For where there is great
number of learners and few teachers, and all the learners be compelled
to go to the few teachers, and to none others, the masters wax rich of
money, and the learners poorer in cunning, as experience openly showeth,
against all virtue and order of weal public." These benevolent clergymen
accomplished the object of their petition, which was that in each of
their parishes they might "ordain, create, establish, and set a person
sufficiently learned in grammar to hold and exercise a school in the
same science of grammar, and there to teach to all that will learn." One
of the schools thus established exists to this day, in connexion with
the Mercers' Company, and is commonly known as the Mercers' School. We
are a little anticipating the period of our narrative, for this petition
belongs to Caxton's mature life; but we mention it as an evidence of the
extreme difficulty which must have existed in those days for the
children of the middle classes to obtain the rudiments of knowledge. It
is evident that Caxton belonged to the more fortunate portion, upon whom
the blessings of education fell like prizes in a lottery. The evil has
not been wholly corrected even during four centuries; but it is devoutly
to be hoped that the time is not far distant when, to use the words of
the benevolent clergymen who knew the value of knowledge at that
comparatively dark period, there shall be in every place a school, and a
competent person "there to teach to all that will learn."
Oldys, the writer of the Life of Caxton in the 'Biographia Britannica,'
says, speaking of Robert Large, the master of Caxton, "The same
magistrate held his mayoralty in that which had been the mansion-house
of Robert Fitzwalter, anciently called the Jews' Synagogue, at the north
corner of the Old Jewry." This Old Jewry appears to have been in earlier
times an accustomed place of residence for the mercers; for there are
records still extant of legal proceedings in the time of Henry III.
against four mercers of that place, for a violent assault upon two
Lombard merchants, whom they regarded as rivals in trade. In the days of
their retail dealings they occupied a portion of Cheapside which went by
the name of the Mercery. In the fourteenth century their shops were
little better than sheds, and Cheapside, or more properly Cheap, was a
sort of market, where various trades collected round the old Cross,
which remained there till the time of the Long Parliament. When the
mercers became large wholesale dealers in woollen cloths and silk, the
haberdashers took up their standing in the same place. In the ballad of
'London Lickpenny,' written in the time of Henry VI., the scene in the
Cheap is thus described:—
"Then to the Cheap I began me drawn,
Where much people I saw for to stand;
One offered me velvet, silk, and lawn,
Another he taketh me by the hand,
'Here is Paris thread, the finest in the land.'"
The city apprentice in the days of Caxton was a staid sober youth, who,
although of gentle blood (as the regulations for the admittance of
freemen required him to be), was meanly clothed, and subjected to the
performance of even household drudgery. We learn from a tract called the
'City's Advocate,' printed in 1628, that the ancient habit of the
apprentices was a flat round cap, hair close cut, narrow falling bands,
coarse side-coats (long coats), close hose, close stockings, and other
such severe apparel. They walked before their masters and mistresses at
night, bearing a lantern, and wearing a long club on their necks. But
the mercer's apprentice had some exceptions which set him above his
fellows: "Anciently it was the general use and custom of all apprentices
in London (mercers only excepted, being commonly merchants and a better
rank as it seems) to carry water-tankards to serve their masters' houses
with water fetched either from the Thames or the common conduits." But,
with all his restraints, the city apprentice was ever prone to frolic,
and too often to mischief. The apprentices were a formidable body in the
days of the Tudors, sometimes defying the laws, and raising tumults
which have more than once ended in the prison and the halter. Chaucer,
writing some few years before the term of Caxton's service, describes
the love of sight-seeing which was characteristic of the London
apprentice:—
"When there any ridings were in Cheap,
Out of the shop thither would he leap;
And till that he had all the sight yseen,
And danced well, he would not come again."
Cheap was the great highway of processions; and London was the constant
theatre of triumphs and pageants, by which the wealthy citizens
expressed their devotion to their ruling authorities. In the fifteenth
century, when the very insecurity of the tenure of the crown demanded a
more ardent display of public opinion, the London apprentice had
"ridings" enough to look upon, where the pageantry was a real expression
of power and magnificence, and not a tawdry mockery, as that which now
disgraces the city of London once a year. Froissart describes the riding
of Henry IV. to his coronation. The entry of his illustrious son into
London after the battle of Agincourt was another of these remarkable
ridings. This, which was an occasion of real enthusiasm, took place in
Caxton's childhood. But in 1432, when he is held to have been an
apprentice, the boy king, Henry VI., upon his return from being crowned
King of France, entered London with a magnificence which chroniclers and
poets have vied in recording. Robert Fabyan, an alderman of London, who
wrote in the reign of Henry VII., describes this ceremonial with such an
admiration of the pomp, as only one could be supposed to feel who was
born, as Chaucer says,
"To sitten in a guildhall on the dais."
To look forward to such occasions of pomp was a satisfaction to the
people, who knew nothing of the real workings of public affairs, and saw
only the outward indications of success or misfortune. The reign of
Henry VI. was an unhappy one for the citizens of London. Violent
contests for authority, insurrections, battles for the crown, left their
fearful traces upon the course of the next thirty years. But during
Caxton's boyhood the evil days seemed distant.
In the books of the Brewers' Company, which, like all other records,
were for the most part in Norman French, there is a curious entry in the
reign of Henry V., which records a great change in the habits of the
people. The entry is in Latin, and is thus translated: "Whereas our
mother-tongue, to wit, the English language, hath in modern days begun
to be honourably enlarged and adorned, for that our most excellent lord
King Henry the Fifth hath in his letters missive, and divers affairs
touching his own person, more willingly chosen to declare the secrets of
his will; and for the better understanding of his people hath, with a
diligent mind, procured the common idiom (setting aside others) to be
commended by the exercise of writing; and there are many of our craft of
brewers who have the knowledge of writing and reading in the said
English idiom, but in others, to wit, the Latin and French, before these
times used, they do not in any wise understand; for which causes, with
many others, it being considered how that the greater part of the lords
and trusty commons have begun to make their matters to be noted down in
our mother-tongue, so we also in our craft, following in some manner
their steps, have decreed in future to commit to memory the needful
things which concern us, as appeareth in the following."
The assertion of the Brewers' Company, in the reign of Henry V., that
"the English language hath in modern days begun to be honourably
enlarged and adorned," rested, we apprehend, upon broader foundations
than the "letters missive" of the king in the common idiom. Great
writers had arisen in our native tongue, with whose productions the
nobler and wealthier classes at any rate were familiar. The very
greatest of these,—the greatest name even now in our literature, with
one exception,—must have furnished employment to hundreds of
transcribers. The poems of Geoffrey Chaucer were familiar to all
well-educated men, however scanty was the supply of copies and dear
their cost. That Caxton himself was acquainted in his youth with these
great works we cannot have a doubt. When it became his fortunate lot to
multiply editions of the Canterbury Tales, and to render them accessible
to a much larger class of the people than in the days when he himself
first knew the solace and the delight of literature, he applied himself
to the task with all the earnestness of an early love. In his preface to
the second edition of the Canterbury Tales he thus delivers himself,
with more than common enthusiasm: "Great thanks, laud, and honour ought
to be given unto the clerks, poets, and historiographs that have written
many noble books of wisdom of the lives, passions, and miracles of holy
saints, of histories, of noble and famous acts and faits [deeds], and of
the chronicles sith [since] the beginning of the creation of the world
unto this present time; by which we are daily informed and have
knowledge of many things, of whom we should not have known if they had
not left to us their monuments written. Amongst whom, and in especial
before all other, we ought to give a singular laud unto that noble and
great philosopher Geoffrey Chaucer, the which, for his ornate writing in
our tongue, may well have the name of a laureat poet. For before that
he, by his labour, embellished, ornated, and made fair our English, in
this royaume [kingdom], was had rude speech and incongrue [incongruous],
as yet it appeareth by old books, which at this day ought not to have
place nor be compared among nor to his beauteous volumes and ornate
writings, of whom he made many books and treatises of many a noble
history, as well in metre as in rhyme and prose; and them so craftily
made, that he comprehended his matters in short, quick, and high
sentences; eschewing prolixity, casting away the chaff of superfluity,
and shewing the picked grain of sentence, uttered by crafty and sugared
eloquence." Again, in his edition of Chaucer's 'Book of Fame' he says,
"Which work, as me seemeth, is craftily made, and worthy to be written
and known: for he toucheth in it right great wisdom and subtle
understanding; and so in all his works he excelleth in mine opinion all
other writers in our English; for he writeth no void words, but all his
matter is full of high and quick sentence, to whom ought to be given
laud and praising for his noble making and writing. For of him all other
have borrowed sith, and taken in all their well saying and writing."
There is another passage in the second edition of the Canterbury Tales
which we quote here, not for the purpose of showing Caxton's honourable
character as a printer, for that belongs to a subsequent period, but to
point out that manuscripts of Chaucer were in private hands, varying
indeed in their text, as books must have varied that were produced by
different transcribers, but still keeping up the fame of the poet, and
highly valued by their possessors: "Of which book so incorrect was one
brought to me six year passed, which I supposed had been very true and
correct, and according to the same I did imprint a certain number of
them, which anon were sold to many and divers gentlemen: of whom one
gentleman came to me, and said that this book was not according in many
places unto the book that Geoffrey Chaucer had made. To whom I answered,
that I had made it according to my copy, and by me was nothing added nor
diminished. Then he said he knew a book which his father had and much
loved, that was very true, and according unto his own first book by him
made; and said more, if I would imprint it again, he would get me the
same book for a copy. How be it, he wist well his father would not
gladly part from it; to whom I said, in case that he could get me such a
book true and correct, that I would once endeavour me to imprint it
again, for to satisfy the author: whereas before by ignorance I erred in
hurting and defaming his book in divers places, in setting in some
things that he never said nor made, and leaving out many things that he
made which are requisite to be set in. And thus we fell at accord; and
he full gently got me of his father the said book, and delivered it to
me, by which I have corrected my book."
There was another poet of considerable popularity who was contemporary
with Chaucer. With the works of Gower, Caxton must have been familiar.
His principal poem, 'Confessio Amantis,' was printed by Caxton in 1483,
and is said to have been the most extensively circulated of all the
books that came from his press. The poem is full of stories that were
probably common to all Europe, running on through thousands of lines
with wonderful fluency, but little force. He was called the "moral
Gower" by Chaucer. The play of Pericles, ascribed to Shakspere, is
founded upon one of these stories. Gower himself shows us what was the
general course of reading in those days:—
"Full oft time it falleth so,
Mine ear with a good pittance
Is fed of reading of romance,
Of Idoyne, and of Amadas,
That whilom[6] weren[7] in my case,
And eke of other many a score,
That loveden[8] long ere I was bore[9]."
The romances of chivalry, the stories of "fierce wars and faithful
loves," were especially the delight of the great and powerful. When the
noble was in camp, he solaced his hours of leisure with the marvellous
histories of King Arthur or Launcelot of the Lake; and when at home, he
listened to or read the same stories in the intervals of the chace or
the feast. Froissart tells in his own simple and graphic manner how he
presented a book to King Richard the Second, and how the king delighted
in the subject of the book: "Then the king desired to see my book that I
had brought for him; so he saw it in his chamber, for I had laid it
there ready on his bed. When the king opened it, it pleased him well,
for it was fair illumined and written, and covered with crimson velvet,
with ten buttons of silver and gilt, and roses of gold in the midst,
with two great clasps, gilt, richly wrought. Then the king demanded me
whereof it treated, and I showed him how it treated matters of love,
whereof the king was glad, and looked in it, and read it in many places,
for he could speak and read French very well." Froissart was a Frenchman
and wrote in French; but even Englishmen wrote in French at that period,
and some of Gower's early poems are in French. According to his own
account, the long poem of the 'Confessio Amantis,' which was written in
English, was executed at the command of the same King Richard:—
"He hath this charge upon me laid,
And bad me do my business,
That to his high worthiness
Some new thing I should book,
That he himself it might look,
After the form of my writing."
Chaucer and Gower lived some time before the period of Caxton's youth in
London, But there was a poet very popular in his day, whom he can
scarcely have avoided having seen playing a conspicuous part in the high
city festivals. This was John Lydgate, monk of Bury, who thus describes
himself—
"I am a monk by my profession,
Of Bury, called John Lydgate by my name,
And wear a habit of perfection,
Although my life agree not with the same."
[Illustration: Lydgate presenting a book to the Earl of Salisbury.]
Thomas Warton has thus exhibited the nature of his genius: "No poet
seems to have possessed a greater versatility of talents. He moves with
equal ease in every mode of composition. His hymns and his ballads have
the same degree of merit: and whether his subject be the life of a
hermit or a hero, of Saint Austin or Guy Earl of Warwick, ludicrous or
legendary, religious or romantic, a history or an allegory, he writes
with facility. His transitions were rapid from works of the most serious
and laborious kind to sallies of levity and pieces of popular
entertainment. His muse was of universal access, and he was not only the
poet of his monastery, but of the world in general. If a disguising was
intended by the company of goldsmiths, a mask before his majesty at
Eltham, a May game for the sheriffs and aldermen of London, a mumming
before the lord mayor, a procession of pageants from the creation for
the festival of Corpus Christi, or a carol for a coronation, Lydgate was
consulted and gave the poetry." A fine illuminated drawing in one of
Lydgate's manuscripts, now in the British Museum, represents him
presenting a book to the Earl of Salisbury. Such a presentation may be
regarded as the first publication of a new work. The royal or noble
person at whose command it was written bestowed some rich gift upon the
author, which would be his sole pecuniary recompence, unless he received
some advantage from the transcribers, for the copies which they
multiplied. Doubtful as the rewards of authorship may be when the
multiplication of copies by the press enables each reader to contribute
a small acknowledgment of the benefit which he receives, the literary
condition must have been far worse when the poet, humbly kneeling before
some mighty man, as Lydgate does in the picture, might have been
dismissed with contumely, or his present received with a low
appreciation of the labour and the knowledge required to produce it. The
fame, however, of a popular writer reached his ears in a far more direct
and flattering manner than belongs to the literary honours of modern
days. There can be little doubt that the narrative poems of Chaucer and
Gower and Lydgate were familiar to the people through the recitations of
the minstrels. An agreeable writer on the Rise and Progress of English
Poetry, Mr. George Ellis, says, "Chaucer, in his address to his Troilus
and Cressida, tells us it was intended to be read 'or elles sung,' which
must relate to the chanting recitation of the minstrels, and a
considerable part of our old poetry is simply addressed to an audience,
without any mention of readers. That our English minstrels at any time
united all the talents of the profession, and were at once poets and
reciters and musicians, is extremely doubtful; but that they excited and
directed the efforts of their contemporary poets to a particular species
of composition, is as evident as that a body of actors must influence
the exertions of theatrical writers. They were, at a time when reading
and writing were rare accomplishments, the principal medium of
communication between authors and the public; and their memory in some
measure supplied the deficiency of manuscripts, and probably preserved
much of our early literature till the invention of printing." We may
thus learn, that, although the number of those was very few whose minds
by reading could be lifted out of the grovelling thoughts and petty
cares of every-day life, yet that the compositions of learned and
accomplished men, who still hold a high rank in our literature, might be
familiar to the people through the agency of a numerous body of singers
or reciters. There has been a good deal of controversy about the exact
definition of the minstrel character—whether the minstrels were
themselves poets and romance-writers, or the depositaries of the
writings of others and of the traditional literature of past
generations. Ritson, a writer upon this subject, says, "that there were
individuals formerly who made it their business to wander up and down
the country chanting romances, and singing songs and ballads to the
harp, fiddle, or more humble and less artificial instruments, cannot be
doubted." They were a very numerous body a century before Chaucer; and
most indefatigable in the prosecution of their trade. There is a writ or
declaration of Edward the Second, which recites the evil of idle
persons, under colour of minstrelsy, being received in other men's
houses to meat and drink; and then goes on to direct that to the houses
of great people no more than three or four minstrels of honour should
come at the most in one day, "and to the houses of meaner men that none
come unless he be desired, and such as shall come to hold themselves
contented with meat and drink, and with such courtesy as the master of
the house will show unto them of his own goodwill, without their asking
of anything." Nothing can more clearly exhibit the general demand for
the services of this body of men; for the very regulation as to the
nature of their reward shows clearly that they were accustomed to
require liberal payment, approaching perhaps to extortion; and then
comes in the State to say that they shall not have a free market for
their labour. They struggled on, sometimes prosperous and sometimes
depressed, according to the condition of the country, till the invention
of printing came to make popular literature always present in a man's
house. The _book_ of ballads or romances, which was then to be bought,
was contented to abide there without any "meat and drink." In the words
of Richard de Bury, whom we quoted in the first chapter, books "are the
masters who instruct us without rods, without hard words and anger,
without clothes and money. If you approach them, they are not asleep; if
investigating you interrogate them, they conceal nothing; if you mistake
them, they never grumble; if you are ignorant, they cannot laugh at
you." One of the later ministrels, to whom is ascribed the preservation,
and by some the composition, of the old ballad of Chevy Chase, thus
humbles himself in a most unpoetical and undignified manner to those who
fed him for his services:—
"Now for the good cheer that I have had here
I give you hearty thanks with bowing of my shanks,
Desiring you by petition to grant me such commission—
Because my name is Sheale—that both for meat and meal
To you I may resort some time for my comfort.
For I perceive here at all times is good cheer,
Both ale, wine, and beer, as it doth now appear;
I perceive, without fable, ye keep a good table.
I can be content, if it be out of Lent,
A piece of beef to take, my hunger to aslake;
Both mutton and veal is good for Richard Sheale.
Though I look so grave, I were a very knave
If I would think scorn, either evening or morn,
Being in hunger, of fresh salmon or congar.
I can find in my heart with my friends to take a part
Of such as God shall send; and thus I make an end.
Now, farewell, good mine host; I thank you for your cost,
Until another time, and thus do I end my rhyme."
But even such a humiliated ballad-maker, or ballad-singer, as poor old
Richard Sheale, was the depositary of treasures of popular fiction, many
of which have utterly perished, but of which a great portion of those
which are still preserved are delightful even to the most refined
reader. For, corrupted as they are by transmission from mouth to mouth
through several centuries, they are full of high and generous
sentiments, of deep pathos, of quiet humour; they carry us back into a
state of society wholly different from our own, when knowledge was
indeed scanty, and riches not very plentiful, but when the feelings and
affections were not so wholly under the direction of worldly wisdom, and
men were brave and loving, and women tender and confiding, with
something more of earnestness than belongs to the discreeter
arrangements of modern social life. The minstrels had indeed something
to call up the tear or the smile in every class of auditor. For the
earls and barons, the knights and squires, there were romances and songs
of chivalrous daring, such as moved the noble heart of Sir Philip
Sidney, even in the days when the minstrel was a poor despised wanderer:
"Is it the Lyric that most displeaseth, who, with his tuned lyre and
well-accorded voice, giveth praise, the reward of virtue, to virtuous
acts? who giveth moral precepts and natural problems? who sometimes
raiseth up his voice to the height of the heavens, in singing the lauds
of the immortal God? Certainly I must confess mine own barbarousness, I
never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas, that I found not my heart
moved more than with a trumpet, and yet it is sung but by some blind
crowder, with no rougher voice than rude style." For those of meaner
sort there were the ballads of Robin Hood, "of whom the foolish vulgar
make lewd entertainment, and are delighted to hear the jesters and
minstrels sing them above all other ballads." So wrote a Scottish
historian in the middle of the fourteenth century.
We have thus briefly recapitulated the popular modes of acquiring
something of a literary taste in the early days of William Caxton. Books
were rare, and difficult to be obtained except by the wealthy. The drama
did not exist. The preachers, indeed, were not afraid to address an
indiscriminate audience with the conviction that, although the majority
were unlettered, they had vigorous understandings, and did not require
the great truths of religion and of private and of social duty to be
adapted to any intellectual weakness or infirmity. The national poetry,
which was heard at the high festivals of the city traders, and even
descended to as lowly a popularity as that of the village circle upon
the ale-bench under the spreading elm on a summer's eve, had no
essentials of vulgarity or childishness, such as in later days have been
thought necessary for general comprehension. We were ever a thoughtful
people, a reasoning people, and yet a people of strong passions and
unconquerable energy. A popular literature was kept alive and preserved,
however imperfectly, before the press came to make those who had learnt
to read self-dependent in their intellectual gratifications; and what
has come down to us of the old minstrelsy, with all its inaccuracy and
occasional feebleness, shows us that the people of England, four or five
centuries ago, had a common fund of high thought upon which a great
literature might in time be reared. The very existence of a poet like
Chaucer is the best proof of the vigour, and to a certain extent of the
cultivation, of the national mind, even in an age when books were
rarities.
[Footnote 1: Neatly.]
[Footnote 2: Guarded.]
[Footnote 3: French crowns, which were stamped with a shield.]
[Footnote 4: Employed.]
[Footnote 5: An agreement for borrowing money.]
[Footnote 6: Formerly.]
[Footnote 7: Were.]
[Footnote 8: Loved.]
[Footnote 9: Born.]