SERMONS AND HISTORIES, IN VERSE AND PROSE
It is one of the common difficulties in studying ancient literature that
the things preserved are not always what we would have chosen. In modern
literature, criticism and the opinion of the reading public have
generally sorted out the books that are best worth considering; few
authors are wrongfully neglected, and the well-known authors generally
deserve their reputation. But in literature such as that of the
thirteenth century, or the fourteenth before the time of Chaucer, not
much has been done by the opinion of the time to sift out the good from
the bad, and many things appear in the history of literature which are
valuable only as curiosities, and some which have no title to be called
books at all. The _Ayenbite of Inwit_ is well known by name, and passes
for a book; it is really a collection of words in the Kentish dialect,
useful for philologists, especially for those who, like the author of the
book, only care for one word at a time. The _Ayenbite of Inwit_ was
translated from the French by Dan Michel of Northgate, one of the monks
of St. Augustine’s at Canterbury, in 1340; it is extant in his own
handwriting; there is no evidence that it was ever read by any one else.
The method of the author is to take each French word and give the English
for it; if he cannot read the French word, or mistakes it, he puts down
the English for what he thinks it means, keeping his eye firmly fixed on
the object, and refusing to be distracted by the other words in the
sentence. This remarkable thing has been recorded in histories as a
specimen of English prose.
The _Ormulum_ is another famous work which is preserved only in the
author’s original handwriting. It is a different thing from the
_Ayenbite_; it is scholarly in its own way, and as far as it goes it
accomplishes all that the author set out to do. As it is one of the
earliest books of the thirteenth century, it is immensely valuable as a
document; not only does it exhibit the East Midland language of its time,
in precise phonetic spelling (the three G’s of the _Ormulum_ are now
famous in philology), but it contains a large amount of the best ordinary
medieval religious teaching; and as for literature, its author was the
first in English to use an exact metre with unvaried number of syllables;
it has been described already. But all those merits do not make the
_Ormulum_ much more than a curiosity in the history of poetry—a very
distinct and valuable sign of certain common tastes, certain
possibilities of education, but in itself tasteless.
One of the generalities proved by the _Ormulum_ is the use of new metres
for didactic work. The Anglo-Saxon verse had been taken not infrequently
for didactic purposes—at one time for the paraphrase of _Genesis_, at
another for the moral emblems of the _Whale_ and the _Panther_. But the
Anglo-Saxon verse was not very well fitted for school books; it was too
heavy in diction. And there was no need for it, with Anglo-Saxon prose
established as it was. After the Norman Conquest, however, there was a
change. Owing to the example of the French, verse was much more commonly
used for ordinary educational purposes. There is a great deal of this
extant, and the difficulty arises how to value it properly, and
distinguish what is a document in the history of general culture, or
morality, or religion, from what is a poem as well.
One of the earliest Middle English pieces is a Moral Poem which is found
in several manuscripts and evidently was well known and popular. It is in
the same metre as the _Ormulum_, but written with more freedom, and in
rhyme. This certainly is valuable as a document. The contents are the
ordinary religion and morality, the vanity of human wishes, the
wretchedness of the present world, the fearfulness of Hell, the duty of
every man to give up all his relations in order to save his soul. This
commonplace matter is, however, expressed with great energy in good
language and spirited verse; the irregularity of the verse is not
helplessness, it is the English freedom which keeps the rhythm, without
always regularly observing the exact number of syllables.
Ich am eldrè than ich was, a winter and eke on lorè,
Ich weldè morè than ich dyde, my wit oughtè be morè.
i.e.—
I am older than I was, in winters and also in learning;
I wield more than I did [I am stronger than I once was], my wit ought
to be more.
The first line, it will be noticed, begins on the strong syllable; the
weak syllable is dropped, as it is by Chaucer and Milton when they think
fit. With this freedom, the common metre is established as a good kind of
verse for a variety of subjects; and the _Moral Ode_, as it is generally
called, is therefore to be respected in the history of poetry. One vivid
thing in it seems to tell where the author came from. In the description
of the fire of Hell he says—
Ne mai hit quenchè salt water, ne Avene stream ne Sture.
He is thinking of the rivers of Christchurch, and the sea beyond, as
Dante in Hell remembers the clear mountain waters running down to the
Arno.
Layamon’s _Brut_ shows how difficult it might be for an Englishman in the
reign of King John to find the right sort of verse. The matter of the
_Brut_ is Geoffrey of Monmouth’s history, originally in Latin prose. This
had been translated into French, and of course into rhyme, because
nothing but rhyme in French was thought a respectable form. Layamon has
the French rhyming version before him, and naturally does not think of
turning it into prose. That would be mean, in comparison; once the
historical matter has been put into poetical form, it must not be allowed
to fall back into any form less honourable than the French. Layamon,
however, has no proper verse at command. He knows the old English
alliterative verse, but only in the corrupt variety which is found in
some of the later Anglo-Saxon pieces, with an increasing taste for rhyme;
Layamon, of course, had also in his head the rhymes of the French
couplets which he was translating; and the result is a most disagreeable
and discordant measure. The matter of Layamon in many places compensates
for this; much of it, indeed, is heavy and prosaic, but some of it is
otherwise, and the credit of the memorable passages is at least as often
due to Layamon as to the original British history. He found the right
story of the passing of Arthur, and that makes up for much of his
uncomfortable verse and ranks him higher than the mere educational
paraphrasers.
The _Bestiary_ and the _Proverbs of Alfred_ are two other works which
resemble the _Brut_ more or less in versification, and are interesting
historically. It ought to be said, on behalf of the poorer things in this
early time, that without exception they prove a very rich colloquial
idiom and vocabulary, which might have been used to good effect, if any
one had thought of writing novels, and which is in fact well used in many
prose sermons, and, very notably, in the long prose book of the _Ancren
Riwle_.
Looking at the _Ancren Riwle_ and some other early prose, one is led to
think that the French influence, so strong in every way, so distinctly
making for advance in civilization, was hurtful to the English, and a bad
example, in the literature of teaching, because the French had nothing
equal to the English prose. French prose hardly begins till the
thirteenth century; the history of Villehardouin is contemporary with the
_Ancren Riwle_. But the English prose authors of that time were not
beginners; they had the Anglo-Saxon prose to guide them, and they
regularly follow the tradition of Ælfric. There is no break in the
succession of prose as there is between Anglo-Saxon and Plantagenet
verse; Anglo-Saxon prose did not lose its form as the verse did, and
Ælfric, who was copied by English preachers in the twelfth century, might
have taught something of prose style to the French, which they were only
beginning to discover in the century after. And there might have been a
thirteenth-century school of English prose, worthy of comparison with the
Icelandic school of the same time, if the English had not been so
distracted and overborne by the French example of didactic rhyme. French
rhyme was far beyond any other model for romance; when it is used for
historical or scientific exposition it is a poor and childish mode,
incomparably weaker than the prose of Ælfric. But the example and the
authority of the French didactic rhyme proved too strong, and English
prose was neglected; so much so that the _Ancren Riwle_, a prose book
written at the beginning of the thirteenth century, is hardly matched
even in the time of Chaucer and Wycliffe; hardly before the date of
Malory or Lord Berners.
The _Ancren Riwle_ (the _Rule of Anchoresses_) is a book of doctrine and
advice, like many others in its substance. What distinguishes it is the
freshness and variety of its style. It is not, like so many excellent
prose works, a translation. The writer doubtless took his arguments where
he found them, in older books, but he thinks them over in his own way,
and arranges them; and he always has in mind the one small household of
religious ladies for whom he is writing, their actual circumstances and
the humours of the parish. His literary and professional formulas do not
get in his way; he sees the small restricted life as it might have
appeared to a modern essayist, and writes of it in true-bred language,
the style in which all honest historians agree. The passages which are
best worth quoting are those which are oftenest quoted, about the
troubles of the nun who keeps a cow; the cow strays, and is pounded; the
religious lady loses her temper, her language is furious; then she has to
beseech and implore the heyward (parish beadle) and pay the damages after
all. Wherefore it is best for nuns to keep a cat only. But no one
quotation can do justice to the book, because the subjects are varied,
and the style also. Much of it is conventional morality, some of it is
elementary religious instruction. There are also many passages where the
author uses his imagination, and in his figurative description of the
Seven Deadly Sins he makes one think of the ‘characters’ which were so
much in fashion in the seventeenth century; there is the same love of
conceits, though not carried quite so far as in the later days. The
picture of the Miser as the Devil’s own lubberly boy, raking in the ashes
till he is half blind, drawing ‘figures of augrim’ in the ashes, would
need very little change to turn it into the manner of Samuel Butler,
author of _Hudibras_, in his prose _Characters_; so likewise the
comparison of the envious and the wrathful man to the Devil’s jugglers,
one making grotesque faces, the other playing with knives. Elsewhere the
writer uses another sort of imagination and a different style; his
description of Christ, in a figure drawn from chivalry, is a fine example
of eloquent preaching; how fine it is, may be proved by the imitation of
it called the _Wooing of Our Lord_, where the eloquence is pushed to an
extreme. The author of the _Ancren Riwle_ felt both the attraction and
the danger of pathos; and he escaped the error of style into which his
imitator fell; he kept to the limits of good prose. At the same time,
there is something to be said in defence of the too poetic prose which is
exemplified in the _Wooing of Our Lord_, and in other writings of that
date. Some of it is derived from the older alliterative forms, used in
the _Saints’ Lives_ of found something Ælfric; and this, with all its
faults and excesses, at any rate kept an idea of rhythm which was
generally wanting in the alliterative verse of the thirteenth century. It
may be a wrong sort of eloquence, but it could not be managed without a
sense of rhythm or beauty of words; it is not meagre or stinted, and it
is in some ways a relief from the prosaic verse in which English authors
copied the regular French couplets, and the plain French diction.
One of the best pieces of prose about this time is a translation from the
Latin. _Soul’s Ward_ is a homily, a religious allegory of the defence of
Man’s Soul. The original Latin prose belongs to the mystical school of
St. Victor in Paris. The narrative part of the English version is as good
as can be; the mystical part, in the description of Heaven and the
Beatific Vision, is memorable even when compared with the greatest
masters, and keeps its own light and virtue even when set alongside of
Plotinus or Dante. Here, as in the _Ancren Riwle_, the figures of
eloquence, rhythm and alliteration are used temperately, and the phrasing
is wise and imaginative; not mere ornament. By one sentence it may be
recognized and remembered; where it is told how the souls of the faithful
see ‘all the redes and the runes of God, and his dooms that dern be, and
deeper than any sea-dingle’.
The greatest loss in the transition from Anglo-Saxon to Norman and
Angevin times was the discontinuance of prose history, and the failure of
the Chronicle after the accession of Henry II. It made a good end. The
Peterborough monk who did the reign of Stephen was much worse off for
language than his predecessors either in the time of Edward the Elder or
Edward the Confessor. His language is what he chooses to make it, without
standard or control. But his narrative is not inferior in style to the
best of the old work, though it is weaker in spelling. It is less
restrained and more emotional than the Anglo-Saxon history; in telling of
the lawlessness under King Stephen the writer cannot help falling into
the tone of the preachers. In the earlier Chronicle one is never led to
think about the sentiments of the writer; the story holds the attention.
But here the personal note comes in; the author asks for sympathy. One
thinks of the cold, gloomy church, the small depressed congregation, the
lamentable tones of the sermon in the days when ‘men said openly that
Christ slept and his saints’. With the coming of Henry of Anjou a new
order began, but the Chronicle did not go on; the monks of Peterborough
had done their best, but there was no real chance for English prose
history when it had come to depend on one single religious house for its
continuance. The business was carried on in Latin prose and in French
rhyme; through the example of the French, it became the fashion to use
English verse for historical narrative, and it was long before history
came back to prose.
Of all the rhyming historians Robert of Gloucester in the reign of Edward
I is the most considerable by reason of his style. Robert Manning of
Brunne was more of a literary critic; the passage in which he deals
severely with the contemporary rhyming dunces is singularly interesting
in a time when literary criticism is rare. But Robert of Brunne is not so
successful as Robert of Gloucester, who says less about the principles of
rhyme, but discovers and uses the right kind. This was not the short
couplet. The short couplet, the French measure, was indeed capable of
almost anything in English, and it was brilliantly used for history by
Barbour, and not meanly in the following century by Andrew Wyntoun. But
it was in danger of monotony and flatness; for a popular audience a
longer verse was better, with more swing in it. Robert of Gloucester took
the ‘common measure’, with the ordinary accepted licences, as it is used
by the ballad poets, and by some of the romances—for example, in the most
admirable _Tale of Gamelyn_. He turns the history of Britain to the tune
of popular minstrelsy, and if it is not very high poetry, at any rate it
moves.
The same kind of thing was done about the same time with the _Lives of
the Saints_—possibly some of them by Robert of Gloucester himself. These
are found in many manuscripts, with many variations; but they are one
book, the Legend, keeping the order of Saints’ Days in the Christian
Year. This has been edited, under the title of the _South English
Legendary_, and there are few books in which it is easier to make
acquaintance with the heart and mind of the people; it contains all sorts
of matter: church history as in the lives of St. Dunstan, St. Thomas of
Canterbury and St. Francis ‘the Friar Minor’; and legend, in the common
sense of the word, as in the life of St. Eustace, or of St. Julian ‘the
good harbinger’. There is the adventure of Owen the knight in St.
Patrick’s Purgatory; there is also the voyage of St. Brandan. In one
place there is a short rhyming treatise on natural science, thoroughly
good and sound, and in some ways very modern. The right tone of the
popular science lecture has been discovered; and the most effective
illustrations. The earth is a globe; night is the shadow of the earth;
let us take an apple and a candle, and everything is plain. Astronomical
distances are given in the usual good-natured manner of the lecturer who
wishes to stir but not to shock the recipient minds. The cosmography, of
course, is roughly that of Dante and Chaucer; seven spheres beneath the
eighth, which is the sphere of the fixed stars and the highest visible
heaven. The distance to that sphere from the earth is so great that a man
walking forty miles a day could not reach it in eight thousand years. If
Adam had started at once at that rate, and kept it up, he would not be
there yet—
Much is between heaven and earth; for the man that mightè go
Every day forty mile, and yet some deal mo,
He ne shoulde nought to the highest heaven, that ye alday y-seeth
Comen in eighte thousand year, there as the sterren beeth:
And though Adam our firstè father had begun anon
Tho that he was first y-made, and toward the heaven y-gon,
And had each day forty mile even upright y-go
He ne had nought yet to heaven y-come, by a thousand mile and mo!
Encyclopedias and universal histories are frequent in rhyme. The Northern
dialect comes into literary use early in the fourteenth century in a long
book, the _Cursor Mundi_ or _Cursor o Werld_, which is one of the best of
its kind, getting fairly over the hazards of the short couplet. In the
Northern dialect this type of book comes to an end two hundred years
later; the _Monarchy_ of Sir David Lyndsay is the last of its race, a
dialogue between Experience and a Courtier, containing a universal
history in the same octosyllabic verse as the _Cursor Mundi_. The Middle
Ages may be dated as far down as this; it is a curiously old-fashioned
and hackneyed form to be used by an author so original as Lyndsay, but he
found it convenient for his anti-clerical satire. And it may be observed
that generally the didactic literature of the Middle Ages varies
enormously not only as between one author and another, but in different
parts of the same work; nothing (except, perhaps, the _Tale of Melibeus_)
is absolutely conventional repetition; passages of real life may occur at
any moment.
The _Cursor Mundi_ is closely related to the Northern groups of _Miracle
Plays_. The dramatic scheme of the _Miracle Plays_ was like that of the
comprehensive narrative poem, intended to give the history of the world
‘from Genesis to the day of Judgement’. It is impossible in this book to
describe the early drama, its rise and progress; but it may be observed
that its form is generally near to the narrative, and sometimes to the
lyrical verse of the time.
The _Cursor Mundi_ is one of a large number of works in the Northern
dialect, which in that century was freely used for prose and
verse—particularly by Richard Rolle of Hampole and his followers, a
school whose mysticism is in contrast to the more scholastic method of
Wycliffe. The most interesting work in the Northern language is Barbour’s
_Bruce_. Barbour, the Scottish contemporary of Chaucer, is not content
with mere rhyming chronicles; he has a theory of poetry, he has both
learning and ambition, which fortunately do not interfere much with the
spirit of his story.