Produced by Tapio Riikonen and David Widger
THE LAST OF THE BARONS
By Edward Bulwer Lytton
DEDICATORY EPISTLE.
I dedicate to you, my indulgent Critic and long-tried Friend, the work
which owes its origin to your suggestion. Long since, you urged me
to attempt a fiction which might borrow its characters from our own
Records, and serve to illustrate some of those truths which History is
too often compelled to leave to the Tale-teller, the Dramatist, and the
Poet. Unquestionably, Fiction, when aspiring to something higher than
mere romance, does not pervert, but elucidate Facts. He who employs it
worthily must, like a biographer, study the time and the characters
he selects, with a minute and earnest diligence which the general
historian, whose range extends over centuries, can scarcely be
expected to bestow upon the things and the men of a single epoch. His
descriptions should fill up with colour and detail the cold outlines
of the rapid chronicler; and in spite of all that has been argued by
pseudo-critics, the very fancy which urged and animated his theme
should necessarily tend to increase the reader’s practical and familiar
acquaintance with the habits, the motives, and the modes of thought
which constitute the true idiosyncrasy of an age. More than all, to
Fiction is permitted that liberal use of Analogical Hypothesis which is
denied to History, and which, if sobered by research, and enlightened
by that knowledge of mankind (without which Fiction can neither harm
nor profit, for it becomes unreadable), tends to clear up much that
were otherwise obscure, and to solve the disputes and difficulties of
contradictory evidence by the philosophy of the human heart.
My own impression of the greatness of the labour to which you invited me
made me the more diffident of success, inasmuch as the field of English
historical fiction had been so amply cultivated, not only by the most
brilliant of our many glorious Novelists, but by later writers of high
and merited reputation. But however the annals of our History have been
exhausted by the industry of romance, the subject you finally pressed
on my choice is unquestionably one which, whether in the delineation of
character, the expression of passion, or the suggestion of historical
truths, can hardly fail to direct the Novelist to paths wholly untrodden
by his predecessors in the Land of Fiction.
Encouraged by you, I commenced my task; encouraged by you, I venture,
on concluding it, to believe that, despite the partial adoption of that
established compromise between the modern and the elder diction,
which Sir Walter Scott so artistically improved from the more rugged
phraseology employed by Strutt, and which later writers have perhaps
somewhat overhackneyed, I may yet have avoided all material trespass
upon ground which others have already redeemed from the waste. Whatever
the produce of the soil I have selected, I claim, at least, to have
cleared it with my own labour, and ploughed it with my own heifer.
The reign of Edward IV. is in itself suggestive of new considerations
and unexhausted interest to those who accurately regard it. Then
commenced the policy consummated by Henry VII.; then were broken up the
great elements of the old feudal order; a new Nobility was called
into power, to aid the growing Middle Class in its struggles with the
ancient; and in the fate of the hero of the age, Richard Nevile, Earl of
Warwick, popularly called the King-maker, “the greatest as well as the
last of those mighty Barons who formerly overawed the Crown,” [Hume
adds, “and rendered the people incapable of civil government,”--a
sentence which, perhaps, judges too hastily the whole question at issue
in our earlier history, between the jealousy of the barons and the
authority of the king.] was involved the very principle of our existing
civilization. It adds to the wide scope of Fiction, which ever loves
to explore the twilight, that, as Hume has truly observed, “No part
of English history since the Conquest is so obscure, so uncertain, so
little authentic or consistent, as that of the Wars between the two
Roses.” It adds also to the importance of that conjectural research
in which Fiction may be made so interesting and so useful, that “this
profound darkness falls upon us just on the eve of the restoration of
letters;” [Hume] while amidst the gloom, we perceive the movement of
those great and heroic passions in which Fiction finds delineations
everlastingly new, and are brought in contact with characters
sufficiently familiar for interest, sufficiently remote for adaptation
to romance, and above all, so frequently obscured by contradictory
evidence, that we lend ourselves willingly to any one who seeks to help
our judgment of the individual by tests taken from the general knowledge
of mankind.
Round the great image of the “Last of the Barons” group Edward the
Fourth, at once frank and false; the brilliant but ominous boyhood of
Richard the Third; the accomplished Hastings, “a good knight and gentle,
but somewhat dissolute of living;” [Chronicle of Edward V., in Stowe]
the vehement and fiery Margaret of Anjou; the meek image of her “holy
Henry,” and the pale shadow of their son. There may we see, also, the
gorgeous Prelate, refining in policy and wile, as the enthusiasm and
energy which had formerly upheld the Ancient Church pass into the
stern and persecuted votaries of the New; we behold, in that social
transition, the sober Trader--outgrowing the prejudices of the rude
retainer or rustic franklin, from whom he is sprung--recognizing
sagaciously, and supporting sturdily, the sectarian interests of his
order, and preparing the way for the mighty Middle Class, in which our
Modern Civilization, with its faults and its merits, has established its
stronghold; while, in contrast to the measured and thoughtful notions
of liberty which prudent Commerce entertains, we are reminded of the
political fanaticism of the secret Lollard,--of the jacquerie of the
turbulent mob-leader; and perceive, amidst the various tyrannies of the
time, and often partially allied with the warlike seignorie, [For it
is noticeable that in nearly all the popular risings--that of Cade, of
Robin of Redesdale, and afterwards of that which Perkin Warbeck made
subservient to his extraordinary enterprise--the proclamations of the
rebels always announced, among their popular grievances, the depression
of the ancient nobles and the elevation of new men.]--ever jealous
against all kingly despotism,--the restless and ignorant movement of a
democratic principle, ultimately suppressed, though not destroyed, under
the Tudors, by the strong union of a Middle Class, anxious for security
and order, with an Executive Authority determined upon absolute sway.
Nor should we obtain a complete and comprehensive view of that most
interesting Period of Transition, unless we saw something of the
influence which the sombre and sinister wisdom of Italian policy
began to exercise over the councils of the great,--a policy of refined
stratagem, of complicated intrigue, of systematic falsehood, of
ruthless, but secret violence; a policy which actuated the fell
statecraft of Louis XI.; which darkened, whenever he paused to think and
to scheme, the gaudy and jovial character of Edward IV.; which appeared
in its fullest combination of profound guile and resolute will in
Richard III.; and, softened down into more plausible and specious
purpose by the unimpassioned sagacity of Henry VII., finally attained
the object which justified all its villanies to the princes of its
native land,--namely, the tranquillity of a settled State, and the
establishment of a civilized but imperious despotism.
Again, in that twilight time, upon which was dawning the great invention
that gave to Letters and to Science the precision and durability of the
printed page, it is interesting to conjecture what would have been
the fate of any scientific achievement for which the world was less
prepared. The reception of printing into England chanced just at the
happy period when Scholarship and Literature were favoured by the great.
The princes of York, with the exception of Edward IV. himself, who had,
however, the grace to lament his own want of learning, and the taste
to appreciate it in others, were highly educated. The Lords Rivers and
Hastings [The erudite Lord Worcester had been one of Caxton’s warmest
patrons, but that nobleman was no more at the time in which printing is
said to have been actually introduced into England.] were accomplished
in all the “witte and lere” of their age. Princes and peers vied with
each other in their patronage of Caxton, and Richard III., during his
brief reign, spared no pains to circulate to the utmost the invention
destined to transmit his own memory to the hatred and the horror of all
succeeding time. But when we look around us, we see, in contrast to the
gracious and fostering reception of the mere mechanism by which
science is made manifest, the utmost intolerance to science itself. The
mathematics in especial are deemed the very cabala of the black art.
Accusations of witchcraft were never more abundant; and yet, strange
to say, those who openly professed to practise the unhallowed science,
[Nigromancy, or Sorcery, even took its place amongst the regular
callings. Thus, “Thomas Vandyke, late of Cambridge,” is styled (Rolls
Parl. 6, p. 273) Nigromancer as his profession.--Sharon Turner, “History
of England,” vol iv. p. 6. Burke, “History of Richard III.”] and
contrived to make their deceptions profitable to some unworthy political
purpose, appear to have enjoyed safety, and sometimes even honour, while
those who, occupied with some practical, useful, and noble pursuits
uncomprehended by prince or people, denied their sorcery were despatched
without mercy. The mathematician and astronomer Bolingbroke (the
greatest clerk of his age) is hanged and quartered as a wizard, while
not only impunity but reverence seems to have awaited a certain Friar
Bungey, for having raised mists and vapours, which greatly befriended
Edward IV. at the battle of Barnet.
Our knowledge of the intellectual spirit of the age, therefore, only
becomes perfect when we contrast the success of the Impostor with the
fate of the true Genius. And as the prejudices of the populace ran high
against all mechanical contrivances for altering the settled conditions
of labour, [Even in the article of bonnets and hats, it appears that
certain wicked falling mills were deemed worthy of a special anathema in
the reign of Edward IV. These engines are accused of having sought, “by
subtle imagination,” the destruction of the original makers of hats and
bonnets by man’s strength,--that is, with hands and feet; and an act of
parliament was passed (22d of Edward IV.) to put down the fabrication
of the said hats and bonnets by mechanical contrivance.] so probably,
in the very instinct and destiny of Genius which ever drive it to a war
with popular prejudice, it would be towards such contrivances that a
man of great ingenuity and intellect, if studying the physical sciences,
would direct his ambition.
Whether the author, in the invention he has assigned to his philosopher
(Adam Warner), has too boldly assumed the possibility of a conception so
much in advance of the time, they who have examined such of the works
of Roger Bacon as are yet given to the world can best decide; but
the assumption in itself belongs strictly to the most acknowledged
prerogatives of Fiction; and the true and important question will
obviously be, not whether Adam Warner could have constructed his model,
but whether, having so constructed it, the fate that befell him was
probable and natural.
Such characters as I have here alluded to seemed, then, to me, in
meditating the treatment of the high and brilliant subject which your
eloquence animated me to attempt, the proper Representatives of the
multiform Truths which the time of Warwick the King-maker affords to our
interests and suggests for our instruction; and I can only wish that the
powers of the author were worthier of the theme.
It is necessary that I now state briefly the foundation of the
Historical portions of this narrative. The charming and popular “History
of Hume,” which, however, in its treatment of the reign of Edward IV. is
more than ordinarily incorrect, has probably left upon the minds of many
of my readers, who may not have directed their attention to more
recent and accurate researches into that obscure period, an erroneous
impression of the causes which led to the breach between Edward IV. and
his great kinsman and subject, the Earl of Warwick. The general notion
is probably still strong that it was the marriage of the young king to
Elizabeth Gray, during Warwick’s negotiations in France for the alliance
of Bona of Savoy (sister-in-law to Louis XI.), which exasperated the
fiery earl, and induced his union with the House of Lancaster. All our
more recent historians have justly rejected this groundless fable,
which even Hume (his extreme penetration supplying the defects of his
superficial research) admits with reserve. [“There may even some doubt
arise with regard to the proposal of marriage made to Bona of Savoy,”
etc.--HUME, note to p. 222, vol. iii. edit. 1825.] A short summary of
the reasons for this rejection is given by Dr. Lingard, and annexed
below. [“Many writers tell us that the enmity of Warwick arose from his
disappointment caused by Edward’s clandestine marriage with Elizabeth.
If we may believe them, the earl was at the very time in France
negotiating on the part of the king a marriage with Bona of Savoy,
sister to the Queen of France; and having succeeded in his mission,
brought back with him the Count of Dampmartin as ambassador from Louis.
To me the whole story appears a fiction. 1. It is not to be found in the
more ancient historians. 2. Warwick was not at the time in France. On
the 20th of April, ten days before the marriage, he was employed in
negotiating a truce with the French envoys in London (Rym. xi. 521), and
on the 26th of May, about three weeks after it, was appointed to treat
of another truce with the King of Scots (Rym. xi. 424). 3. Nor could he
bring Dampmartin with him to England; for that nobleman was committed a
prisoner to the Bastile in September, 1463, and remained there till
May, 1465 (Monstrel. iii. 97, 109). Three contemporary and well-informed
writers, the two continuators of the History of Croyland and Wyrcester,
attribute his discontent to the marriages and honours granted to the
Wydeviles, and the marriage of the princess Margaret with the Duke of
Burgundy.”--LINGARD, vol. iii. c. 24, pp. 5, 19, 4to ed.] And, indeed,
it is a matter of wonder that so many of our chroniclers could have
gravely admitted a legend contradicted by all the subsequent conduct
of Warwick himself; for we find the earl specially doing honour to the
publication of Edward’s marriage, standing godfather to his first-born
(the Princess Elizabeth), employed as ambassador or acting as minister,
and fighting for Edward, and against the Lancastrians, during the five
years that elapsed between the coronation of Elizabeth and Warwick’s
rebellion.
The real causes of this memorable quarrel, in which Warwick acquired his
title of King-maker, appear to have been these.
It is probable enough, as Sharon Turner suggests, [Sharon Turner:
History of England, vol. iii. p. 269.] that Warwick was disappointed
that, since Edward chose a subject for his wife, he neglected the more
suitable marriage he might have formed with the earl’s eldest daughter;
and it is impossible but that the earl should have been greatly chafed,
in common with all his order, by the promotion of the queen’s relations,
[W. Wyr. 506, 7. Croyl. 542.] new men and apostate Lancastrians. But it
is clear that these causes for discontent never weakened his zeal for
Edward till the year 1467, when we chance upon the true origin of the
romance concerning Bona of Savoy, and the first open dissension between
Edward and the earl.
In that year Warwick went to France, to conclude an alliance with Louis
XI., and to secure the hand of one of the French princes [Which of the
princes this was does not appear, and can scarcely be conjectured. The
“Pictorial History of England” (Book v. 102) in a tone of easy decision
says “it was one of the sons of Louis XI.” But Louis had no living
sons at all at the time. The Dauphin was not born till three years
afterwards. The most probable person was the Duke of Guienne, Louis’s
brother.] for Margaret, sister to Edward IV.; during this period, Edward
received the bastard brother of Charles, Count of Charolois, afterwards
Duke of Burgundy, and arranged a marriage between Margaret and the
count.
Warwick’s embassy was thus dishonoured, and the dishonour was aggravated
by personal enmity to the bridegroom Edward had preferred. [The Croyland
Historian, who, as far as his brief and meagre record extends, is the
best authority for the time of Edward IV., very decidedly states the
Burgundian alliance to be the original cause of Warwick’s displeasure,
rather than the king’s marriage with Elizabeth: “Upon which (the
marriage of Margaret with Charolois) Richard Nevile, Earl of Warwick,
who had for so many years taken party with the French against the
Burgundians, conceived great indignation; and I hold this to be the
truer cause of his resentment than the king’s marriage with Elizabeth,
for he had rather have procured a husband for the aforesaid princess
Margaret in the kingdom of France.” The Croyland Historian also speaks
emphatically of the strong animosity existing between Charolois and
Warwick.--Cont. Croyl. 551.] The earl retired in disgust to his castle.
But Warwick’s nature, which Hume has happily described as one of
“undesigning frankness and openness,” [Hume, “Henry VI.,” vol. iii. p.
172, edit. 1825.] does not seem to have long harboured this
resentment. By the intercession of the Archbishop of York and others,
a reconciliation was effected, and the next year, 1468, we find Warwick
again in favour, and even so far forgetting his own former cause
of complaint as to accompany the procession in honour of Margaret’s
nuptials with his private foe. [Lingard.] In the following year,
however, arose the second dissension between the king and his
minister,--namely, in the king’s refusal to sanction the marriage of his
brother Clarence with the earl’s daughter Isabel,--a refusal which was
attended with a resolute opposition that must greatly have galled the
pride of the earl, since Edward even went so far as to solicit the Pope
to refuse his sanction, on the ground of relationship. [Carte. Wm. Wyr.]
The Pope, nevertheless, grants the dispensation, and the marriage takes
place at Calais. A popular rebellion then breaks out in England. Some of
Warwick’s kinsmen--those, however, belonging to the branch of the Nevile
family that had always been Lancastrians, and at variance with the
earl’s party--are found at its head. The king, who is in imminent
danger, writes a supplicating letter to Warwick to come to his aid.
[“Paston Letters,” cxcviii. vol. ii., Knight’s ed. See Lingard, c. 24,
for the true date of Edward’s letters to Warwick, Clarence, and
the Archbishop of York.] The earl again forgets former causes for
resentment, hastens from Calais, rescues the king, and quells the
rebellion by the influence of his popular name.
We next find Edward at Warwick’s castle of Middleham, where, according
to some historians, he is forcibly detained,--an assertion treated by
others as a contemptible invention. This question will be examined
in the course of this work; [See Note II.] but whatever the true
construction of the story, we find that Warwick and the king are still
on such friendly terms, that the earl marches in person against a
rebellion on the borders, obtains a signal victory, and that the rebel
leader (the earl’s own kinsman) is beheaded by Edward at York. We
find that, immediately after this supposed detention, Edward speaks of
Warwick and his brothers “as his best friends;” [“Paston Letters,” cciv.
vol. ii., Knight’s ed. The date of this letter, which puzzled the worthy
annotator, is clearly to be referred to Edward’s return from York,
after his visit to Middleham in 1469. No mention is therein made by
the gossiping contemporary of any rumour that Edward had suffered
imprisonment. He enters the city in state, as having returned safe and
victorious from a formidable rebellion. The letter goes on to say: “The
king himself hath (that is, holds) good language of the Lords Clarence,
of Warwick, etc., saying ‘they be his best friends.’” Would he say
this if just escaped from a prison? Sir John Paston, the writer of
the letter, adds, it is true, “But his household men have (hold) other
language.” very probably, for the household men were the court creatures
always at variance with Warwick, and held, no doubt, the same language
they had been in the habit of holding before.] that he betroths his
eldest daughter to Warwick’s nephew, the male heir of the family. And
then suddenly, only three months afterwards (in February, 1470), and
without any clear and apparent cause, we find Warwick in open rebellion,
animated by a deadly hatred to the king, refusing, from first to last,
all overtures of conciliation; and so determined is his vengeance,
that he bows a pride, hitherto morbidly susceptible, to the vehement
insolence of Margaret of Anjou, and forms the closest alliance with
the Lancastrian party, in the destruction of which his whole life had
previously been employed.
Here, then, where History leaves us in the dark, where our curiosity
is the most excited, Fiction gropes amidst the ancient chronicles, and
seeks to detect and to guess the truth. And then Fiction, accustomed
to deal with the human heart, seizes upon the paramount importance of
a Fact which the modern historian has been contented to place amongst
dubious and collateral causes of dissension. We find it broadly and
strongly stated by Hall and others, that Edward had coarsely attempted
the virtue of one of the earl’s female relations. “And farther it erreth
not from the truth,” says Hall, “that the king did attempt a thing once
in the earl’s house, which was much against the earl’s honesty; but
whether it was the daughter or the niece,” adds the chronicler, “was
not, for both their honours, openly known; but surely such a thing WAS
attempted by King Edward,” etc.
Any one at all familiar with Hall (and, indeed, with all our principal
chroniclers, except Fabyan), will not expect any accurate precision as
to the date he assigns for the outrage. He awards to it, therefore, the
same date he erroneously gives to Warwick’s other grudges (namely, a
period brought some years lower by all judicious historians) a date at
which Warwick was still Edward’s fastest friend.
Once grant the probability of this insult to the earl (the probability
is conceded at once by the more recent historians, and received without
scruple as a fact by Rapia, Habington, and Carte), and the whole
obscurity which involves this memorable quarrel vanishes at once.
Here was, indeed, a wrong never to be forgiven, and yet never to be
proclaimed. As Hall implies, the honour of the earl was implicated in
hushing the scandal, and the honour of Edward in concealing the offence.
That if ever the insult were attempted, it must have been just previous
to the earl’s declared hostility is clear. Offences of that kind
hurry men to immediate action at the first, or else, if they stoop to
dissimulation the more effectually to avenge afterwards, the outbreak
bides its seasonable time. But the time selected by the earl for his
outbreak was the very worst he could have chosen, and attests the
influence of a sudden passion,--a new and uncalculated cause of
resentment. He had no forces collected; he had not even sounded his own
brother-in-law, Lord Stanley (since he was uncertain of his intentions);
while, but a few months before, had he felt any desire to dethrone the
king, he could either have suffered him to be crushed by the popular
rebellion the earl himself had quelled, or have disposed of his person
as he pleased when a guest at his own castle of Middleham. His evident
want of all preparation and forethought--a want which drove into rapid
and compulsory flight from England the baron to whose banner, a few
months afterwards, flocked sixty thousand men--proves that the cause of
his alienation was fresh and recent.
If, then, the cause we have referred to, as mentioned by Hall and
others, seems the most probable we can find (no other cause for such
abrupt hostility being discernible), the date for it must be placed
where it is in this work,--namely, just prior to the earl’s revolt. The
next question is, who could have been the lady thus offended, whether
a niece or daughter. Scarcely a niece, for Warwick had one married
brother, Lord Montagu, and several sisters; but the sisters were married
to lords who remained friendly to Edward, [Except the sisters married to
Lord Fitzhugh and Lord Oxford. But though Fitzhugh, or rather his son,
broke into rebellion, it was for some cause in which Warwick did not
sympathize, for by Warwick himself was that rebellion put down; nor
could the aggrieved lady have been a daughter of Lord Oxford, for he was
a stanch, though not avowed, Lancastrian, and seems to have carefully
kept aloof from the court.] and Montagu seems to have had no daughter
out of childhood, [Montagu’s wife could have been little more than
thirty at the time of his death. She married again, and had a family by
her second husband.] while that nobleman himself did not share Warwick’s
rebellion at the first, but continued to enjoy the confidence of Edward.
We cannot reasonably, then, conceive the uncle to have been so much more
revengeful than the parents,--the legitimate guardians of the honour
of a daughter. It is, therefore, more probable that the insulted maiden
should have been one of Lord Warwick’s daughters; and this is the
general belief. Carte plainly declares it was Isabel. But Isabel it
could hardly have been. She was then married to Edward’s brother, the
Duke of Clarence, and within a month of her confinement. The earl had
only one other daughter, Anne, then in the flower of her youth; and
though Isabel appears to have possessed a more striking character of
beauty, Anne must have had no inconsiderable charms to have won the
love of the Lancastrian Prince Edward, and to have inspired a tender and
human affection in Richard Duke of Gloucester. [Not only does Majerus,
the Flemish annalist, speak of Richard’s early affection to Anne, but
Richard’s pertinacity in marrying her, at a time when her family was
crushed and fallen, seems to sanction the assertion. True, that Richard
received with her a considerable portion of the estates of her parents.
But both Anne herself and her parents were attainted, and the whole
property at the disposal of the Crown. Richard at that time had
conferred the most important services on Edward. He had remained
faithful to him during the rebellion of Clarence; he had been the
hero of the day both at Barnet and Tewksbury. His reputation was then
exceedingly high, and if he had demanded, as a legitimate reward,
the lands of Middleham, without the bride, Edward could not well have
refused them. He certainly had a much better claim than the only other
competitor for the confiscated estates,--namely, the perjured and
despicable Clarence. For Anne’s reluctance to marry Richard, and the
disguise she assumed, see Miss Strickland’s “Life of Anne of Warwick.”
For the honour of Anne, rather than of Richard, to whose memory one
crime more or less matters but little, it may here be observed that
so far from there being any ground to suppose that Gloucester was an
accomplice in the assassination of the young prince Edward of Lancaster,
there is some ground to believe that that prince was not assassinated at
all, but died (as we would fain hope the grandson of Henry V. did
die) fighting manfully in the field.--“Harleian Manuscripts;” Stowe,
“Chronicle of Tewksbury;” Sharon Turner, vol. iii. p. 335.] It is also
noticeable, that when, not as Shakspeare represents, but after long
solicitation, and apparently by positive coercion, Anne formed her
second marriage, she seems to have been kept carefully by Richard from
his gay brother’s court, and rarely, if ever, to have appeared in London
till Edward was no more.
That considerable obscurity should always rest upon the facts connected
with Edward’s meditated crime,--that they should never be published
amongst the grievances of the haughty rebel is natural from the very
dignity of the parties, and the character of the offence; that in such
obscurity sober History should not venture too far on the hypothesis
suggested by the chronicler, is right and laudable. But probably it will
be conceded by all, that here Fiction finds its lawful province, and
that it may reasonably help, by no improbable nor groundless conjecture,
to render connected and clear the most broken and the darkest fragments
of our annals.
I have judged it better partially to forestall the interest of the
reader in my narrative, by stating thus openly what he may expect, than
to encounter the far less favourable impression (if he had been hitherto
a believer in the old romance of Bona of Savoy), [I say the old romance
of Bona of Savoy, so far as Edward’s rejection of her hand for that
of Elizabeth Gray is stated to have made the cause of his quarrel with
Warwick. But I do not deny the possibility that such a marriage had
been contemplated and advised by Warwick, though he neither sought
to negotiate it, nor was wronged by Edward’s preference of his fair
subject.] that the author was taking an unwarrantable liberty with the
real facts, when, in truth, it is upon the real facts, as far as they
can be ascertained, that the author has built his tale, and his boldest
inventions are but deductions from the amplest evidence he could
collect. Nay, he even ventures to believe, that whoever hereafter shall
write the history of Edward IV. will not disdain to avail himself of
some suggestions scattered throughout these volumes, and tending to
throw new light upon the events of that intricate but important period.
It is probable that this work will prove more popular in its nature
than my last fiction of “Zanoni,” which could only be relished by those
interested in the examinations of the various problems in human life
which it attempts to solve. But both fictions, however different and
distinct their treatment, are constructed on those principles of art
to which, in all my later works, however imperfect my success, I have
sought at least steadily to adhere.
To my mind, a writer should sit down to compose a fiction as a painter
prepares to compose a picture. His first care should be the conception
of a whole as lofty as his intellect can grasp, as harmonious and
complete as his art can accomplish; his second care, the character of
the interest which the details are intended to sustain.
It is when we compare works of imagination in writing with works of
imagination on the canvas, that we can best form a critical idea of the
different schools which exist in each; for common both to the author
and the painter are those styles which we call the Familiar, the
Picturesque, and the Intellectual. By recurring to this comparison we
can, without much difficulty, classify works of Fiction in their
proper order, and estimate the rank they should severally hold. The
Intellectual will probably never be the most widely popular for the
moment. He who prefers to study in this school must be prepared for much
depreciation, for its greatest excellences, even if he achieve them, are
not the most obvious to the many. In discussing, for instance, a modern
work, we hear it praised, perhaps, for some striking passage, some
prominent character; but when do we ever hear any comment on its harmony
of construction, on its fulness of design, on its ideal character,--on
its essentials, in short, as a work of art? What we hear most valued in
the picture, we often find the most neglected in the book,--namely, the
composition; and this, simply because in England painting is recognized
as an art, and estimated according to definite theories; but in
literature we judge from a taste never formed, from a thousand
prejudices and ignorant predilections. We do not yet comprehend that the
author is an artist, and that the true rules of art by which he should
be tested are precise and immutable. Hence the singular and fantastic
caprices of the popular opinion,--its exaggerations of praise or
censure, its passion and reaction. At one while, its solemn contempt for
Wordsworth; at another, its absurd idolatry. At one while we are stunned
by the noisy celebrity of Byron, at another we are calmly told that he
can scarcely be called a poet. Each of these variations in the public is
implicitly followed by the vulgar criticism; and as a few years back our
journals vied with each other in ridiculing Wordsworth for the faults
which he did not possess, they vie now with each other in eulogiums upon
the merits which he has never displayed.
These violent fluctuations betray both a public and a criticism utterly
unschooled in the elementary principles of literary art, and entitle the
humblest author to dispute the censure of the hour, while they ought to
render the greatest suspicious of its praise.
It is, then, in conformity, not with any presumptuous conviction of his
own superiority, but with his common experience and common-sense, that
every author who addresses an English audience in serious earnest is
permitted to feel that his final sentence rests not with the jury before
which he is first heard. The literary history of the day consists of a
series of judgments set aside.
But this uncertainty must more essentially betide every student, however
lowly, in the school I have called the Intellectual, which must ever
be more or less at variance with the popular canons. It is its hard
necessity to vex and disturb the lazy quietude of vulgar taste; for
unless it did so, it could neither elevate nor move. He who resigns the
Dutch art for the Italian must continue through the dark to explore
the principles upon which he founds his design, to which he adapts his
execution; in hope or in despondence still faithful to the theory which
cares less for the amount of interest created than for the sources from
which the interest is to be drawn; seeking in action the movement of the
grander passions or the subtler springs of conduct, seeking in repose
the colouring of intellectual beauty.
The Low and the High of Art are not very readily comprehended. They
depend not upon the worldly degree or the physical condition of the
characters delineated; they depend entirely upon the quality of the
emotion which the characters are intended to excite,--namely, whether of
sympathy for something low, or of admiration for something high. There
is nothing high in a boor’s head by Teniers, there is nothing low in
a boor’s head by Guido. What makes the difference between the two? The
absence or presence of the Ideal! But every one can judge of the
merit of the first, for it is of the Familiar school; it requires a
connoisseur to see the merit of the last, for it is of the Intellectual.
I have the less scrupled to leave these remarks to cavil or to sarcasm,
because this fiction is probably the last with which I shall trespass
upon the Public, and I am desirous that it shall contain, at least, my
avowal of the principles upon which it and its later predecessors have
been composed. You know well, however others may dispute the fact,
the earnestness with which those principles have been meditated and
pursued,--with high desire, if but with poor results.
It is a pleasure to feel that the aim, which I value more than the
success, is comprehended by one whose exquisite taste as a critic
is only impaired by that far rarer quality,--the disposition to
over-estimate the person you profess to esteem! Adieu, my sincere and
valued friend; and accept, as a mute token of gratitude and regard,
these flowers gathered in the Garden where we have so often roved
together. E. L. B.
LONDON, January, 1843.
PREFACE TO THE LAST OF THE BARONS
This was the first attempt of the author in Historical Romance upon
English ground. Nor would he have risked the disadvantage of comparison
with the genius of Sir Walter Scott, had he not believed that that great
writer and his numerous imitators had left altogether unoccupied the
peculiar field in Historical Romance which the Author has here sought to
bring into cultivation. In “The Last of the Barons,” as in “Harold,”
the aim has been to illustrate the actual history of the period, and
to bring into fuller display than general History itself has done the
characters of the principal personages of the time, the motives by which
they were probably actuated, the state of parties, the condition of
the people, and the great social interests which were involved in what,
regarded imperfectly, appear but the feuds of rival factions.
“The Last of the Barons” has been by many esteemed the best of the
Author’s romances; and perhaps in the portraiture of actual character,
and the grouping of the various interests and agencies of the time, it
may have produced effects which render it more vigorous and lifelike
than any of the other attempts in romance by the same hand.
It will be observed that the purely imaginary characters introduced are
very few; and, however prominent they may appear, still, in order not
to interfere with the genuine passions and events of history, they are
represented as the passive sufferers, not the active agents, of the
real events. Of these imaginary characters, the most successful is
Adam Warner, the philosopher in advance of his age; indeed, as an ideal
portrait, I look upon it as the most original in conception, and the
most finished in execution, of any to be found in my numerous prose
works, “Zanoni” alone excepted.
For the rest, I venture to think that the general reader will obtain
from these pages a better notion of the important age, characterized by
the decline of the feudal system, and immediately preceding that great
change in society which we usually date from the accession of Henry
VII., than he could otherwise gather, without wading through a vast mass
of neglected chronicles and antiquarian dissertations.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
BOOK I
THE ADVENTURES OF MASTER MARMADUKE NEVILE
CHAPTER
I The Pastime-ground of old Cockaigne
II The Broken Gittern
III The Trader and the Gentle; or, the Changing Generation
IV Ill fares the Country Mouse in the Traps of Town
V Weal to the Idler, Woe to the Workman
VI Master Marmaduke Nevile fears for the Spiritual Weal of his
Host and Hostess
VII There is a Rod for the Back of every Fool who would be Wiser
than his Generation