I recur a moment to what was said in our opening talk--as a boy will
wisely go back a little way for a better jump forward. I spoke--the
reader will remember--of ringing, Celtic war-songs, which seemed to be
all of literature that was drifting in the atmosphere, when we began:
then there came a gleam of Christian light and of monkish learning thro’
St. Augustine in Southern England; and another gleam through Iona, and
Lindisfarne, from Irish sources; then came Cædmon’s Bible singing,--which
had echo far down in Milton’s day; next the good old Beda, telling the
story of these things; then--a thousand years ago,--the Great Alfred,
at once a book-maker and a King. Before him and after him came a dreary
welter of Danish wars; the great Canute--tradition says--chirping a song
in the middle of them; and last, the slaughter of Hastings, where the
Saxon Harold went down, and the conquering Norman came up.
_Geoffrey of Monmouth._
We start to-day with an England that has its office-holding and governing
people speaking one language--its moody land-holders and cultivators
speaking another--and its irascible Britons in Wales and Cumbria and
Cornwall speaking yet another. Conquered people are never in much mood
for song-singing or for history-making. So there is little or nothing
from English sources for a century or more. Even the old Saxon Chronicle
kept by monks (at Peterboro in this time), does not grow into a stately
record, and in the twelfth century on the year of the death of King
Stephen, dies out altogether.
But there is a Welsh monk--Geoffrey of Monmouth[13]--living just on
the borders of Wales, and probably not therefore brought into close
connection with this new Norman element--who writes (about one hundred
years after the Conquest) a half-earnest and mostly-fabulous British
Chronicle. He professes to have received its main points from a
Walter--somebody, who had rare old bookish secrets of history, derived
from Brittany, in his keeping. You will remember, perhaps, how another
and very much later writer--sometimes known as Geoffrey Crayon--once
wrote a History of New York, claiming that it was made up from the MSS.
of a certain Diedrich Knickerbocker: I think that perhaps the same sense
of quiet humor belonged to both these Geoffreys. Certainly Geoffrey of
Monmouth’s Chronicle bears about the same relation to British matters
of fact which the Knickerbocker story of New York bears to the colonial
annals of our great city.
The fables which were told in this old Monmouth Chronicle are more
present in men’s minds to-day than the things which were real in it:
there was, for instance, the fable about King Lear (who does not know
King Lear?): then, there were the greater fables about good King Arthur
and his avenging Caliburn (who does not know King Arthur?). These two
stories are embalmed now in Literature, and will never perish.
_King Arthur Legends._
Those Arthur legends had been floating about in ballad or song, but
they never had much mention in anything pretending to be history[14]
until Geoffrey of Monmouth’s day. There is nothing of them in the Saxon
Chronicle: nothing of them in Beda: King Alfred never mentions King
Arthur.
But was there ever a King Arthur? Probably: but at what precise date is
uncertain: probable, too, that he had his court--as many legends run--one
time at Caerleon, “upon Usk,” and again at Camelot.[15] Caerleon is
still to be found by the curious traveller, in pleasant Monmouthshire,
just upon the borders of Wales, with Tintern Abbey and the grand ruin
of Chepstow not far off; and a great amphitheatre among the hills (very
likely of Roman origin) with green turf upon it, and green hillsides
hemming it in--is still called King Arthur’s Round Table.
Camelot is not so easy to trace: the name will not be found in the
guide-books: but in Somersetshire, in a little parish, called “Queen’s
Camel,” are the remains of vast entrenchments, said to have belonged to
the tourney ground of Camelot. A little branch of the Yeo River (you will
remember this name, if you have ever read Charles Kingsley’s “Westward,
Ho”--a book you should read)--a little branch, I say, of the Yeo runs
through the parish, and for irrigating purposes is held back by dykes,
and then shot, shining, over the green meadows: hence, Tennyson may say
truly, as he does in his Idyls of the King--
“They vanished panic-stricken, like a shoal
Of darting fish, that on a summer’s morn
Adown the crystal dykes at _Camelot_,
Come slipping o’er their shadow, on the sand.”
There are some features of this ancient fable of King Arthur, which are
of much older literary date than the times we are now speaking of. Thus
“the dusky barge,” that appears on a sudden--coming to carry off the
dying King,--
“----whose decks are dense with stately forms,
Black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream--by these
Three queens with crowns of gold, and from them rose
A cry that shivered to the tingling stars----”
has a very old germ;--Something not unlike this watery bier, to carry
a dead hero into the Silences, belongs to the opening of that ancient
poem of Beowulf--which all students of early English know and prize--but
which did not grow on English soil, and therefore does not belong to
our present quest.[16] The brand Excalibur, too, which is thrown into
the sea by King Arthur’s friend, and which is caught by an arm clothed
in white samite, rising from the mere, and three times brandished, has
its prototype in the “old mighty sword” which is put into the hands of
Beowulf before he can slay the great sea-dragon of the Scandinavian fable.
Now, these Arthurian stories, put into book by Geoffrey--a Latin book,
for all the monks wrote in Latin, though they may have sung songs
in English, as good father Aldhelm did--were presently caught up by
a romance-writer, named Wace, who was living at Caen, in Normandy,
and whose knightly cousins (some say father and titled baron) had
come over with William the Conqueror,--the name being long known
in Nottinghamshire. This Wace put these Arthur stories into Norman
verse--adding somewhat and giving a French air, which made his book
sought after and read in royal courts; and fragments of it were chanted
by minstrels in castle halls.
Then, this Arthur mine of legends was explored again by another priest
and Welshman, who came to have some place at Oxford, where the beginnings
of the great university were then a-brew. This writer, Walter Map[17] by
name--or Mapes, as he is sometimes called--lived just about the meeting
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when the crusades were in full
blast, and when dreams about the Holy Sepulchre hovered round half the
house roofs of England. People saw in visions the poor famished pilgrims,
fainting with long marches toward the far-away Jerusalem, and shot down
by cruel Saracen arrows, within sight of the Holy of Holies. So Walter
Map, the priest (they say he was one while chaplain to Henry II.),
writing under light of that fierce enthusiasm, puts a religious element
into the Arthur stories; and it is from him--in all probability--comes
that Legend of the Holy Graal--the cup which caught the sacred blood, and
which saintly knights were to seek after, the pure Sir Galahad being the
winning seeker.
Nor did the Arthur legends stop here: but another priestly man,
Layamon[18]--he, too, living on the borders of Wales, in the foraging
ground of Arthur’s knights, not far from the present town of
Kidderminster (which we know carpet-wise)--set himself to turning the
Legends, with many additions, into short, clanging, alliterative Saxon
verses, with occasional rhyme--the first English (or Teutonic) wording
of the story; Map’s version being in Latin and French. He copies very
much from Wace (_Le Brut d’Angleterre_), but his book is longer by a
half. It has its importance, too--this Layamon version--in the history
of the language. Of the why and the how, and of its linguistic relations
to the Anglo-Saxon, or the modern tongue, I shall leave discussion in
the hands of those more instructed in the history of Early English. We
know this Layamon in our present writing, only as a simple-minded, good,
plodding, West-of-England priest, who asked God’s blessing on his work,
and who put that quaint alliterative jingle in it, which in years after
was spent in larger measure over the poem of Piers Plowman, and which,
still later, comes to even daintier usage when the great master--Spenser
“----fills with flowers fair Flora’s painted lap.”
Even now we are not through with this story of the Arthurian legends:
it does not end with the priest Layamon. After printing was invented,
and an easier way of making books was in vogue than the old one of
tediously copying them upon parchment--I say in this new day of printing
a certain Sir Thomas Mallory, who lived at the same time with Caxton,
the first English printer, did, at the instance, I think, of that
printer--put all these legends we speak of into rather stiff, homely
English prose--copying, Caxton tells us, from a French original: but no
such full French original has been found; and the presumption is that
Mallory borrowed (as so many book-makers did and do) up and down, from
a world of manuscripts. And he wrought so well that his work had great
vogue, and has come to frequent issue in modern times, under the hands
of such editors as Southey, Wright, Strachey and Lanier. In the years
following Mallory, succeeding writers poached frequently upon the old
Arthur preserve--bit by bit[19]--till at last, in our day, Tennyson told
his “Idyl of the King”--
“----and all the people cried,
Arthur is come again: he cannot die.
And those that stood upon the hills behind
Repeated--Come again, and thrice as fair.”
_Early Norman Kings._
We come back now from this chase of Arthur, to the time of the Early
Norman Kings: Orderic Vitalis,[20] of Normandy, William of Malmsbury,[21]
Matthew Paris,[22] William of Newburgh,[23] (whose record has just now
been re-edited and printed in England,) and Roger of Hoveden,[24] were
chroniclers of this period; but I am afraid these names will hardly be
kept in mind. Indeed, it is not worth much struggle to do so, unless one
is going into the writing of History on his own account. Exception ought
perhaps to be made in favor of Matthew Paris, who was a monk of St.
Albans, who won his name from studying at Paris (as many live students
of that day did), who put a brave and vehement Saxonism of thought into
his Latin speech--who had art enough to illustrate his own Chronicle
with his pencil, and honesty enough to steer by God’s rule only and
not by the King’s. One should remember, too, that this was about the
period of the best Provençal balladry (in which Richard Cœur de Lion
was proficient);--that strain of mediæval music and love regaling the
Crusader knights on their marches toward Judea, and that strain of music
and love waking delightful echoes against Norman castle-walls on their
return. Again, one should keep note of the year when _Magna Charta_ was
granted by King John (1215), and remember, furthermore, that within ten
years of the same date (1205) Layamon probably put the finishing touches
to his _Brut_, and the Arthurian stories I was but now speaking of.
Throughout these times--we will say the twelfth century and early in the
thirteenth,--England was waxing every day stronger, though it grew strong
in a rough and bloody way; the great Norman castles were a-building
up and down the land--such as Conway and Rochester and Cardiff and
Kenilworth: the older cathedrals, too, such as Durham and Winchester and
Canterbury and Ely were then piling column by column and vault by vault
toward the grand proportions which amaze us to-day. It was the time
of growing trade too: ships from Genoa and Venice lay off the Thames
banks, and had brought thither cargoes of silks and glass, jewels,
Milanese armor, and spices. Cloth-makers came over from Flanders and made
settlements in England.
Perhaps you have read Scott’s story of the “Betrothed.” If so, you will
remember his description of just such a Flemish settlement in its earlier
chapters, with its Wilkin Flammock and its charming Rose. The scene is
laid in the time of Henry II., that sturdy King, who had such woful
trouble with his wild sons, Richard and John, and still larger trouble
with Thomas à Becket, (known now, as Harold is known, by Tennyson’s
tender music) who came to his death at last by the King’s connivance,
under the arches of Canterbury Cathedral; and so made that shrine sacred
for pilgrims, whether they came from the “Tabard Inn,” or otherwheres.
That story of the “Betrothed” puts in presence winningly, the threefold
elements of English population in that day--the Britons, the Saxons, and
the Normans. The Britons are pictured by a scene of revel in the great
rambling palace of a Welsh King, where the bard Cadwallon sings, and that
other bard, Caradoc--both historic characters; and it is upon a legend
in the chronicle of the latter, Southey has based his poem of “Madoc.”
The Normans are represented, in the same romance, by the men-at-arms, or
knights of the Castle of _La Garde Doloureuse_, and the Saxons by the
fierce old lady in the religious house of Baldringham, where Eveline the
heroine, had such fearful experiences with hobgoblins over night. There
may be lapses in the archæology--as where Scott puts a hewn fireplace
upon the wall of the dining-room of the Lady Ermengarde--antiquarians
being pretty well agreed that chimneys of such class were unknown up to
the fourteenth century; but still the atmosphere of twelfth-century life
in England is better given than in most of our histories.[25]
_Richard Cœur de Lion._
In the same connection and with same commendation, may be named those
other romances, “The Talisman” and “Ivanhoe,” both relating to epochs
in the life of King Richard I. I suppose that of all English people,
who have any figure in their minds of Richard Cœur de Lion, his bearing
and character, four-fifths will have derived the larger part of their
impressions from these two books of Scott. It is a painting by a friendly
hand: Scott loved kings; and he loved the trace of Saxonism that was in
Richard’s blood; he loved his bravery, as every Englishman always had
and should. Is it quite needful that the friendly painter should put in
all the bad birth-marks, or the bristling red beard? M. Taine scores him
savagely, and would have him a beast: and Thackeray, in his little story
of Rebecca and Rowena, uses a good deal of blood in the coloring.
No doubt he was cruel: but those were days of cruelty and of cruel kings.
At least he was openly cruel: he carried his big battle-axe in plain
sight, and if he met a foe thwacked him on the head with it, and there
was an end. But he did not kill men on the sly like his brother King
John, nor did he poison men by inches in low dungeons, as did so many of
the polite and courteous Louis’ of France.
As people say now--in a good Saxon way--you knew where to find him.
He was above-board, and showed those traits of boldness and frankness
which almost make one forgive his cruelties. He was a rough burr; and I
daresay wiped his beard upon the sleeve of his doublet, besides killing
a great many people he should not have killed, at Ascalon. At any rate,
we shall not set to work here to gainsay or discredit those charming
historic pictures of Scott. We shall keep on going to the pleasant
tournament-ground at Ashby-de-la-Zouche every time the fanfare of those
trumpets breaks the silence of a leisure day; and so will our children;
and so, I think, will our children’s children. We shall keep on listening
to Wamba’s jokes, and keep on loving Rebecca, and keep on--not thinking
much of the airy Rowena, and keep on throwing our caps in the air
whenever the big knight in black armor, who is Richard of England, rides
in upon the course--whatever all the Frenchmen in the world may say about
him.
This Cœur de Lion appears too in the “Talisman”--one of Scott’s tales
of the crusaders: and here we see him set off against other monarchs of
Europe; as we find England, also, set off against the other kingdoms. The
King came home, you will remember, by the way of Austria, and was caught
and caged there many months--for a time none of his people knowing where
he was: this is good romance and history too. A tradition, which probably
has a little of both, says his prison was discovered by a brother
minstrel, who wandered under castle-walls in search of him, and sang
staves of old Provençal songs that were favorites of the King’s. Finally
Richard responded from the depths of his dungeon. Howsoever this be, he
was found, ransomed, and came home--to the great grief of his brother
John; all which appears in the story of Ivanhoe, and in the chronicles of
the time--based upon the reports of the King’s chaplain, Anselm.
_Times of King John._
King John--a base fellow every way--has a date made for him by the grant
of _Magna Charta_, A.D. 1215, of which I have already spoken, and of its
near coincidence with the writing of the _Brut_ of Layamon. His name and
memory also cling to mind in connection with two other events which have
their literary associations.
First, this scoundrelly King could only keep power by making away with
his little nephew Arthur, and out of this tragedy Shakespeare has woven
his play of John--not very much read perhaps, and rarely acted; but
in the old, school reader-books of my time there used to be excerpted
a passage--a whole scene, in fact--representing the interview between
Arthur and his gaoler Hubert, who is to put out the poor boy’s eyes. I
quote a fragment:--
_Arthur_--Must you with irons burn out both mine eyes?
_Hubert_--Young boy, I must.
_Arthur_--And will you?
_Hubert_--And I will.
_Arthur_--Have you the heart? When your head did but ache,
I knit my handkerchief about your brows.
And again, when the ruffians come in with the irons, Hubert says--
“Give me the irons, I say, and bind him here.”
_Arthur_--Alas, what need you be so boisterous rough?
I will not struggle; I will stand stone still;
For Heaven’s sake, Hubert, let me not be bound.
I don’t know how young people are made up nowadays; but in the old times
this used to touch us and almost set us upon the “weep” and make us rank
King John with Beelzebub and--the Schoolmaster.
Second: In King John’s day Normandy was lost to England--the loss growing
largely, in fact, out of the cruelty just named, and its ensuing wars.
Losing Normandy had a vast influence upon the growing speech of England.
Hitherto the cherished mother-land had been across the channel. Sons of
the well-born had been sent over to learn French on French ground: young
ladies of fashion ordered, without doubt, their best cloaks and hats from
Rouen: the English ways of talk might do for the churls and low-born: but
it was discredited by the more cultivated--above all by those who made
pursuit of the gayeties and elegancies of life. The priest fraternity and
the universities of course kept largely by Latin; and the old British
speech only lived in the mountains and in the rattling war-songs of the
Welsh bards. But when Norman nobles and knights found themselves cut off
from their old home associations with Normandy, and brought into more
intimate relations with the best of the English population, there grew up
a new pride in the land and language of their adoption. Hence there comes
about a gradual weaning from France. London begins to count for more than
Rouen. The Norman knights and barons very likely season their talk with
what they may have called English slang; and the better taught of the
islanders--the sons of country franklins affected more knowledge of the
Norman tongue, and came to know the French romances, which minstrels sang
at their doors. So it was that slowly, and with results only observable
after long lapse of years, the nation and language became compacted into
one; and the new English began to be taught in the schools.
_Mixed Language._
Of the transition stage, as it was called, there are narrative poems of
record, which were written with a couplet in Norman French, and then a
couplet in English. There were medleys, too, of these times, in which
the friars mingled the three tongues of Latin, French, and English.[26]
Blood mingled as languages mingled; and by the middle of the fourteenth
century a man was no longer foreign because he was of Norman descent, and
no longer vulgar because he was of Saxon.
To this transition time--in Henry III.’s day (who had a long reign of
fifty-six years--chiefly memorable for its length), there appeared the
rhyming Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester;[27]--what we should call a
doggerel story of England from fabulous times down, and worthy of mention
as the first serious attempt at an English-written history--others
noticed already being either merely bald chronicles, or in scholastic
Latin, or in French metric form. I give you a little taste of his wooden
verse--
----Lyncolne [has] fairest men,
Grantebrugge, and Hontyndon most plente ò deep fen,
Ely of fairest place, of fairest site Rochester,
Even agen Fraunce stonde ye countre ò Chichester,
Norwiche agen Denemark, Chestre agen Irelond,
Duram agen Norwei, as ich understonde.
Yet he tells us some things worth knowing--about every-day matters--about
the fish and the fruits and the pastures, and the things he saw with his
own eyes. And we learn from these old chroniclers how much better a
story a man can make, and how much more worth it is--in telling of the
things he has really seen, than of the things he has not seen. Most of
these old writing people must needs begin at the beginning--drawling over
the ancient fables about the Creation and Siege of Troy, keeping by the
conventional untruths, and so--very barren and good for nothing, until
they get upon their own days, when they grow rich and meaty and juicy, in
spite of themselves, and by reason of their voluble minuteness, and their
mention of homely, every-day unimportant things. They cannot tell lies,
without fear of detection, on their own ground: and so they get that
darlingest quality of all history--the simple truth.
But if a man wanders otherwheres and makes report, he may tell lies,
and the lies may amuse and get him fame. Thus it happened with another
well-known but somewhat apocryphal writer of this Transition English
epoch; I mean Sir John Mandeville, whose book of travels into distant
countries had a very great run.
_Sir John Mandeville._
We know little of Mandeville except what he tells us;--that he was born
at St. Albans--twenty miles from London, a place famous for its great
abbey and its Roman remains--in the year 1300:--that he studied to be
a mediciner--then set off (1322) on his travels into Egypt, Tartary,
China, and Persia--countries visited by that more famous Venetian
traveller, Marco Polo,[28] a half century earlier;--also, at other dates
by certain wandering Italian Friars[29] of less fame. From some of these
earlier travellers it is now made certain that Sir John pilfered very
largely;--so largely, in fact, and so rashly, that there is reason to
doubt, not only his stories about having been in the service of a Sultan
of Egypt or of the Khan of Kathay--as he avers--but also to doubt if he
visited at all the far-away countries which he pretends to describe.
Nay, so deflowered is he of his honors in these latter days, that recent
critics[30] are inclined to question his right to the title of Sir John,
and to deny wholly his authorship of that English version of the tales of
travel, which have been so long and pleasantly associated with his name.
This seems rather hard measure to mete out to the garrulous old voyager;
nor does the evidence against his having Englished his own _Romance_
stories, appear fully conclusive. What we may count for certain about
the matter is this:--There does exist a very considerable budget of
delightfully extravagant travellers’ tales, bearing the Mandeville name,
and written in an English which--with some mending of bygone words--is
charming now: and which may be called the first fair and square book of
the new English prose;--meaning by that--the first book of length and of
popular currency which introduced a full measure--perhaps over-running
measure--of those words of Romance or Latin origin, which afterward came
to be incorporated in the English of the fifteenth century. The book has
no English qualities--beyond its language; and might have been written
by a Tartar, who could tell of Munchausen escapes and thank God in good
current dialect of Britain.
I give a specimen from the description of his descent into the Valley
Perilous--which he found beside the Isle of Mistorak, nigh to the river
Phison:
This Vale is all full of devils, and hath been always. And
men say there that it is one of the entries of hell. In that
Vale is plenty of gold and silver; wherefore many misbelieving
men, and many Christians also, oftentimes go in, to have of
the treasure.… And in midplace of that Vale is an head of the
visage of a devil bodily--full horrible and dreadful to see.
But there is no man in the world so hardy, Christian man,
ne other, but that he would be drad [afraid] for to behold
it. For he beholdeth every man so sharply with dreadful eyen
that ben evermore moving and sparkling as fire, and changeth
and steereth so often in divers manner, with so horrible
countenance, that no man dare not nighen toward him.
The author says fourteen of his party went in, and when they came
out--only nine: “And we wisten never, whether that our fellows were lost
or elles turned again for dread. But we never saw them never after.”
He says there were plenty of jewels and precious stones thereabout, but
“I touched none, because that the Devils be so subtle to make a thing
to seem otherwise than it is, for to deceive mankind.” He tells us also
of the giants Gog and Magog, and of a wonderful bird--like the roc of
Arabian Nights’ fable--that would carry off an elephant in its talons,
and he closes all his stupendous narratives with thanks to God Almighty
for his marvellous escapes.
I have spoken of its popularity. Halliwell--who edits the London edition
of 1839--says that of no book, with the exception of Scriptures, are
there so many MSS. of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries existing;
showing that for two centuries its fables were either not exploded, or at
least lost not their relish.
_Early Book-making._
And now what do we mean by books and by popularity at the end of the
thirteenth century? The reader must keep in mind that our notion of
popularity measured by thousands of copies would then have been regarded
as strange as the most monstrous of Sir John Mandeville’s stories. There
was no printing; there was no paper, either--as we understand. The art,
indeed, of making paper out of pulp did exist at this date with the
Oriental nations--perhaps with the Moors in Spain, but not in England.
Parchment made from skins was the main material, and books were engrossed
laboredly with a pen or stylus. It was most likely a very popular book
which came to an edition of fifty or sixty copies within five years
of its first appearance: and a good manuscript was so expensive an
affair that its purchase was often made a matter to be testified to by
subscribing witnesses, as we witness the transfer of a house. A little
budget of these manuscripts made a valuable library. When St. Augustine
planted his Church in Kent--he brought nine volumes with him as his
literary treasure.
Lanfranc, who was one of the Norman abbots brought over by the Conqueror
to build up the priesthood in learning, made order in 1072 that at Lent
the librarian should deliver to the worthiest of the brotherhood each a
book; and these were to have a year to read them. At the commencement of
the fourteenth century there were only four classics in the royal library
of Paris; and at the same date the library of Oxford University consisted
of a few tracts kept in chests under St. Mary’s Church.--Green, in his
“Making of England,”[31] cites from Alcuin a bit of that old Churchman’s
Latin poem--“_De Pontificibus_”--which he says is worthy of special note,
as the first catalogue which we have of any English Library.
“Quidquid Gregorius summus docet, et Leo Papa;
Basilius quidquid, Fulgentius atque, coruscant,
Cassiodorus item, Chrysostomus atque Johannes
Quidquid et Athelmus docuit, quid Beda magister.”
Beda and Aldhelm are the only English writers represented; and the
catalogue--if we call it such--could be written on a half-page of note
paper--Metaphors and Geography and Theology and decorative epithets
included.
Thus in these times a book was a book: some of them cost large sums; the
mere transcription into plain black-letter or Old English was toilsome
and involved weeks and months of labor; and when it came to illuminated
borders, or initials and title-pages with decorative paintings, the labor
involved was enormous. There were collectors in those days as now--who
took royal freaks for gorgeous missals; and monkish lives were spent
in gratifying the whims of such collectors. In the year 1237 (Henry
III.) there is entry in the Revenue Roll of the costs of silver clasps
and studs for the King’s _great book of Romances_. Upon the continent,
in Italy, where an art atmosphere prevailed that was more enkindling
than under the fogs of this savage England, such work became thoroughly
artistic; and even now beautiful _motifs_ for decoration on the walls of
New York houses are sought from old French or Latin manuscripts of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
And where was this work of making books done? There were no book-shops
or publishers’ houses, but in place of them abbeys or monasteries--each
having its _scriptorium_ or writing-room, where, under the vaulted Norman
arches and by the dim light of their loop-holes of windows, the work of
transcription went on month after mouth and year after year. Thus it is
recorded that in that old monastery of St. Albans (of which we just now
spoke) eighty distinct works were transcribed during the reign of Henry
VI.; it is mentioned as swift work; and as Henry reigned thirty-nine
years, it counts up about two complete MSS. a year. And the atmosphere
of St. Albans was a learned one; this locality not being overmuch given
to the roisterings that belonged to Bolton Priory--of which you will
remember the hint in a pleasant picture of Landseer’s.
_Religious Houses._
If you or I had journeyed thither in that day--coming from what land
we might--I think we should have been earnest among the first things,
to see those great monasteries that lay scattered over the surface
of England and of Southern Scotland;--not perched on hills or other
defensible positions like the Norman castles of the robber Barons--not
buried in cities like London Tower, or the great halls which belonged
to guilds of merchants--but planted in the greenest and loveliest of
valleys, where rivers full of fish rippled within hearing, and woods
full of game clothed every headland that looked upon the valley; where
the fields were the richest--where the water was purest--where the sun
smote warmest; there these religious houses grew up, stone by stone,
cloister by cloister, chapel by chapel, manor by manor, until there was
almost a township, with outlying cottages--and some great dominating
abbey church--rich in all the choicest architecture of the later Norman
days--lifting its spire from among the clustered buildings scarce less
lovely than itself.
Not only had learning and book-making been kept alive in these great
religious houses, but the art of Agriculture. Within their walled courts
were grown all manner of fruits and vegetables known to their climate;
these monks knew and followed the best rulings of Cato, and Crescenzius
(who just now has written on this subject in Northern Italy, and is heard
of by way of Padua). They make sour wine out of grapes grown against
sunny walls: they have abundant flocks too--driven out each morning from
their sheltering courts, and returned each night; and they have great
breadth of ground under carefullest tillage.
Of such character was Tintern Abbey--in the valley of the Wye--now
perhaps the most charming of all English ruins. Such another was Netley
Abbey, on Southampton water, and Bolton Priory, close by that famous
stream, the Wharfe, which you will remember in Wordsworth’s story of
the “White Doe of Rylstone.” Fountain’s Abbey, in Yorkshire, was yet
another, from whose ruin we can study better perhaps than from any other
in England, the extent and disposition of these old religious houses.
Melrose was another; and so was Dryburgh, where Scott’s body lies, and
Abingdon, close upon Oxford--where was attached that Manor of Cumnor,
which Scott assigns for a prison to the sad-fated Amy Robsart, in the
tale of “Kenilworth.” Glastonbury was another: this too (once encircled
by the arms of the river Brue), was the “Isle of Avalon” in Arthurian
romance;
“Where falls not hail, or rain or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly.”
Here (at Glastonbury) is still in existence the abbot’s barn of
the fourteenth century, and here, too, a magnificent abbot’s
kitchen--thirty-three feet square and seventy-two feet high: Think what
the cooking and the meats must have been in a kitchen of that style!
Now, these shrewd people who lived in these great monasteries, and built
them, and enjoyed the good things kept in store there--made friends of
the vassals about them; they were generous with their pot-herbs and
fruits; they were the medicine-men of the neighborhood; they doled out
flasks of wine to the sick; they gave sanctuary and aid to the Robin
Hoods and Little Johns; and Robin Hood’s men kept them in supply of
venison; they enlivened their courts with minstrelsy. Warton says that
at the feast of the installation of Ralph, Abbot of St. Augustine’s,
Canterbury, in 1309, seventy shillings was expended for minstrels in the
gallery, and six thousand guests were present in and about the halls.
Many abbeys maintained minstrels or harpers of their own; and we may be
sure that the monks had jolly as well as religious ditties.
They made friends of all strong and influential people near them; their
revenues were enormous. They established themselves by all the arts of
conciliation. Finding among their young vassals one keener and sharper
witted than his fellows, they beguiled him into the abbey--instructed
him--perhaps made a clerk of him, for the transcription of the MSS. we
have spoken of (it was thus Cædmon was brought into notice); if very
promising, he might come to place of dignity among the monks--possibly
grow, as Thomas à Becket did, from such humble beginnings to an
archbishopric and to the mastership of the religious heart of England.
These houses were the fat corporations of that day, with their lobby-men
and spokesmen in all state assemblages. Their representatives could
wear hair shirts, or purple robes and golden mitres, as best suited the
needs of the occasion. They could boast that their institutions were
established--like our railways--for the good of the people, and in the
interests of humanity; but while rendering service, waxing into such
lustiness of strength and such habits of corruption and rapacity, that
at last, when fully bloated, they were broken open and their riches
drifted away under the whirlwind of the wrath of King Henry VIII. Great
schemes of greed are very apt to carry an avenging Henry VIII. somewhere
in their trail. But let us not forget that there was a time in the early
centuries of Christian England when these great religious houses--whose
ruins appeal to us from their lovely solitudes--were the guardians of
learning, the nurses of all new explorations into the ways of knowledge,
the expounders of all healing arts, and the promoters of all charities
and all neighborly kindliness.[32] Whatever young fellow of that day
did not plant himself under shadow of one of these religious houses for
growth, or did not study in the schools of Oxford or Cambridge, must
needs have made his way into favor and fame and society with a lance and
good horse--just as young fellows do it now with an oar or a racket.
_Life of a Damoiselle._
But what shall be said of a young person of the other sex of like age and
tastes--to whose ambitions war and knight-errantry and the university
cloisters are not open? Whither should the daughters of the great
houses go, or how fill up the current of their young lives in that old
thirteenth-century England?
It is true, there are religious houses--nunneries--priories--for these,
too, with noble and saintly prioresses, such as St. Hilda’s, St.
Agatha’s, St. Margaret’s; all these bountiful in their charities, strict
for most part in their discipline. To these cloistered schools may go
the cousins, sisters, nieces of these saintly lady superiors; here they
may learn of music, of embroidery, of letter-writing, and Christian
carols--in Latin or English or French, as the case may be. If not an
inmate of one of these quiet cloisters, our young thirteenth-century
damsel will find large advantage in its neighborhood; in the interchange
of kindly offices--in the loan of illuminated missals, of fruits, of
flowers, of haunches of venison, and in the assurance that tenderest of
nurses and consolers will be at hand in case of illness or disaster; and
always there--an unfailing sanctuary. At home, within the dingy towers
of a castle or squat Saxon homestead, with walls hung in tapestry, or
made only half bright with the fire upon the hearthstone--with slits of
windows filled with horn or translucent bits of skin--there must have
been wearisome _ennui_. Yet even here there were the deft handmaids,
cheery and companionable; the games--draughts of a surety (in rich houses
the checkers being of jasper or rock crystal); the harp, too, and the
falcons for a hunting bout in fair weather; the little garden within the
court--with its eglantine, its pinks, its lilies fair. Possibly there may
be also transcripts of old _chansons_ between ivory lids--images carven
out of olive wood--relics brought to the castle by friendly knights from
far-away Palestine. And travelling merchants find their way to such
homes--bringing glass beads from Venice, and little dainty mirrors, just
now the vogue in that great City by the Sea; and velvet and filigree
head-dresses, and jewels and bits of tapestry from Flemish cities.
Perhaps a minstrel--if the revenues of the family cannot retain one--will
stroll up to the castle-gates of an evening, giving foretaste of his
power by a merry snatch of song about Robin Hood, or Sir Guy, or the Nut
Brown Maid.
Some company of priests with a lordly abbot at their head, journeying up
from St. Albans, may stop for a day, and kindle up with cheer the great
hall, which will be fresh strown with aromatic herbs for the occasion;
and so some solitary palmer, with scollop shell, may make the evening
short with his story of travel across the desert; or--best of all--some
returning knight, long looked for--half doubted--shall talk bravely of
the splendors he has seen in the luxurious court of Charles of Anjou,
where the chariot of his Queen was covered with velvet sprinkled with
lilies of gold, and men-at-arms wore plumed helmets and jewelled collars;
he may sing, too, snatches of those tender madrigals of Provence, and
she--if Sister Nathalie has taught her thereto--may join in a roundelay,
and the minstrel and harpist come clashing in to the _refrain_.
Then there is the home embroidery--the hemming of the robes, the trimming
of the mantles, the building up of the head pieces. Pray--in what age and
under what civilization--has a young woman ever failed of showing zeal in
those branches of knowledge?
* * * * *
So, we will leave England--to-day--upon the stroke of thirteen hundred
years. When we talk of life there again, we shall come very swiftly
upon traces of one of her great philosophers, and of one of her great
reformers, and of one of her greatest poets.