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 the 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 naïveté, 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.