There was a state of transition in our literature, both classical and
vernacular, which deserves our notice in the progress of the genius of
the nation.
A prudent sovereign in the seventh Henry, amid factions rather joined
together than cemented, gave a semblance of repose to a turbulent land,
exhausted by its convulsions. A martial rudeness still lingered among
the great; and we discover by a curious conversation which the learned
Pace held with some of the gentry, with whom, perhaps, he had
indiscreetly remonstrated, attempting to impress on their minds the
advantages of study, that his advice was indignantly rejected. Such
pursuits seemed to them unmanly, and intolerable impediments in the
practice of those more active arts of life which alone were worthy of
one of gentle blood; their fathers had been good knights without this
idling toil of reading.
Henry the Seventh, when Earl of Richmond, during his exile in France
from 1471 to 1485, had become a reader of French romances, an admirer of
French players, and an amateur of their peculiar architecture. After his
accession we trace these new tastes in our poetry, our drama, and in a
novel species of architecture which Bishop Fox called Burgundian, and
which is the origin of the Tudor style.[1] A favourer of the histrionic
art, he introduced a troop of French players. Wary in his pleasures as
in his politics, this monarch was moderate in his patronage either of
poets or players, but he was careful to encourage both. The queen
participated in his tastes, and appears to have bestowed particular
rewards on "players", whose performances had afforded her unusual
delight; and among the curious items of her majesty's expenditure, we
find that many of these players were foreigners--"a French player, an
Italian poet, a Spanish tumbler, a Flemish tumbler, a Welshman for
making a ryme, a maid that came out of Spain and danced before the
queen."
This monarch had suffered one of those royal marriages which are a
tribute paid to the interests of the State. Henry had yielded with
repugnance to a union with Elizabeth the Yorkist; the sullen Lancastrian
long looked on his queen with the eyes of a factionist. Toward the
latter years of his life this repugnance seems to have passed away, as
this gentle consort largely participated in his tastes. It was probably
in their sympathy that the personal prejudices of Henry melted away.
This indeed was a triumph of the arts of imagination over the warped
feelings of the individual; it marked the transition from barbaric arms
to the amenities of literature, and the softening influence of the
mimetic arts; it was the presage of the magnificence of his successor.
The nation was benefited by these new tastes; the pacific reign made a
revolution in our court, our manners, and our literature.
We may date from this period that happy intercourse which the learned
English opened with the Continent, and more particularly with literary
Italy; our learned travellers now appear in number. Colet, the founder
of St. Paul's School, not only passed over to Paris, but lingered in
Italy, and returned home with the enthusiasm of classical antiquity.
Grocyn, to acquire the true pronunciation of the Greek, which he first
taught at Oxford, domesticated with Demetrius Chalcondyles and Angelo
Politian, at Florence. Linacre, the projector of the College of
Physicians, visited Rome and Florence. Lilly, the grammarian, we find at
Rhodes and at Rome, and the learned Pace at Padua. We were thus early
great literary travellers; and the happier Continentalists, who rarely
move from their native homes, have often wondered at the restless
condition of those whom they have sometimes reproached as being
_Insulaires_; yet they may be reminded that we have done no more than
the most ancient philosophers of antiquity. Our reproachers fortunately
possessed the arts, and even the learning, which we were willing by
travel and costs to acquire. "The Islanders" may have combined all the
knowledge of all the world, a freedom and enlargement of the mind, which
those, however more fortunately placed, can rarely possess, who restrict
their locality and narrow their comprehension by their own home-bound
limits.
The king, delighting in poetry, fostered an English muse in the learned
rhyme of STEPHEN HAWES, who was admitted to his private chamber, for the
pleasure which Henry experienced in listening to poetic recitation. It
was probably the taste of his royal master which inspired this bard's
allegorical romance of chivalry, of love, and of science. This elaborate
work is "The Pastime of Pleasure, or the History of Graunde Amour and la
bell Pucell, containing the knowledge of the seven sciences and the
course of man's life." At a time when sciences had no reality, they were
constantly alluding to them; ignorance hardily imposed its erudition;
and experimental philosophy only terminated in necromancy. The seven
sciences of the accomplished gentleman were those so well known,
comprised in the scholastic distich.
In the ideal hero "Graunde Amour," is shadowed forth the education of a
complete gentleman of that day. From the Tower of "Doctrine," to the
Castle of "Chivalry," the way lies equally open, but the progress is
diversified by many bye-paths, and a number of personified ideas or
allegorical characters. These shadowy actors lead to shadowy places; but
the abounding incidents relieve us among this troop of passionless
creatures.
This fiction blends allegory with romance, and science with chivalry. At
the early period of printing, it was probably the first volume which
called in the graver's art to heighten the inventions of the writer, and
the accompanying wood-cuts are an evidence of the elegant taste of the
author, although that morose critic of all poesy, honest Anthony a Wood,
sarcastically concludes that these cuts were "to enable the reader to
understand the story better." This once courtly volume, our sage
reports, "is now thought but worthy of a ballad-monger's stall."[2]
"The Pastime of Pleasure" was even despised by that great
book-collector, General Lord Fairfax, who, on the copy he possessed, has
left a memorandum "that it should be changed for a better book!" The
fate of books vacillates with the fancies of book-lovers, and the
improvements of a later age. In the days of Fairfax, the gloom of the
civil wars annihilated their imaginations.
But the gorgeousness of this romance struck the Gothic fancy of the
historian of our poetry, magic, chivalry, and allegory! In the
circumstantial analysis of Warton, the reader may pursue his "course of
man's life" through the windings of the labyrinth. It seems as if the
patience of the critic had sought a relief amid his prolonged chronicle
of obscure versifiers, in a production of imagination, the only one
which had appeared since Chaucer, and which, to the contemplative poetic
antiquary, showed him the infant rudiments of the future Spenser.
This allegorical romance is imbued with Provencal fancy, and probably
emulated the "Roman de la Rose," which could not fail to be a favourite
with the royal patron, among those French books which he loved. Fertile
in invention, it is, however, of the old stock; fresh meads and
delicious gardens,--ladies in arbours,--magical trials of armed knights
on horses of steel, which, touched by a secret spring, could represent a
tourney. We strike the shield at the castle-gate of chivalry, and we
view the golden roof of the hall, lighted up by a carbuncle of
prodigious size; we repose in chambers walled with silver, and
enamelling many a story. There are many noble conceptions among the
allegorical gentry. She, whom Graunde Amour first beheld was mounted on
her palfrey, flying with the wind, encircled with tongues of fire, and
her two milkwhite greyhounds, on whose golden collars are inscribed in
diamond letters, _Grace_ and _Governance_. She is Fame, her palfrey is
Pegasus, and her burning tongues are the voice of Posterity! There are
some grotesque incidents, as in other romances; a monster wildly
created, the offspring of Disdain and Strangeness--a demon composed of
the seven metals! We have also a dwarf who has to encounter a giant with
seven heads; our subdolous David mounts on twelve steps cut in the rock;
and to the surprise of the giant, he discovered in "the boy whom he had
mocked," his equal in stature, and his vanquisher, notwithstanding the
inconceivable roar of his seven heads!
Warton transcribed a few lines to show this poet's "harmonious
versification and clear expression;" but this short specimen may convey
an erroneous notion. Our verse was yet irregular, and its modulation was
accidental rather than settled; the metrical lines of Hawes, for the
greater part, must be read rhythmically, it was a barbarism that even
later poets still retained. He also affected an ornate diction; and
Latin and French terms cast an air of pedantry, more particularly when
the euphony of his verse is marred by closing his lines with his
elongated polysyllables; he probably imagined that the dimensions of his
words necessarily lent a grandeur to his thoughts. With all these
defects, Hawes often surpasses himself, and we may be surprised that, in
a poem composed in the court of Henry the Seventh, about 1506, the poet
should have left us such a minutely-finished picture of female beauty as
he has given of La Pucelle; Hawes had been in Italy, and seems with an
artist's eye to have dwelt on some picture of Raphael, in his early
manner, or of his master Perugino, in his hard but elaborate style.
Her shining hair, so properly she dresses,
Aloft her forehead, with fayre golden tresses;
Her forehead stepe, with fayre browes ybent;
Her eyen gray; her nose straight and fayre;
In her white cheeks, the faire bloude it went
As among the white, the redde to repayre;
Her mouthe right small; her breathe sweet of ayre;
Her lippes soft and ruddy as a rose;
No hart alive but it would him appose.
With a little pitte in her well-favoured chynne;
Her necke long, as white as any lillye,
With vaynes blewe, in which the bloude ranne in;
Her pappes rounde, and thereto right pretye;
Her armes slender, and of goodly bodye;
Her fingers small, and thereto right longe,
White as the milk, with blewe vaynes among;
Her feet proper; she gartred well her hose;
I never sawe so fayre a creature.
The reign of Henry the Seventh was a misty morning of our vernacular
literature, but it was the sunrise; and though the road be rough, we
discover a few names by which we may begin to count--as we find on our
way a mile-stone, which, however rudely cut and worn out, serves to
measure our distances.