stout warriors, their survivors had but little leisure to lament them.
It is not easy to read Froissart’s account of certain battles, serious
enough in their results, without being strangely impressed by the
boyish enthusiasm with which the combatants went to work; so that even
now, five centuries later, our blood tingles with their pleasurable
excitement. When France undertook to support the Earl of Flanders
against Philip van Arteveld and the rebellious citizens of Ghent, the
Flemish army entrenched themselves in a strong position on the river
Lys, destroying all bridges save one, which was closely guarded. The
French, in the dead of night, crossed the river in rickety little
boats, a handful of men at a time, and only a mile or so distant from
the spot where nine thousand of the enemy lay encamped. Apparently they
regarded this hazardous feat as the gayest kind of a lark, crowding
like schoolboys around the boats, and begging to be taken on board.
“It was a pleasure to see with what eagerness they embarked,” says
the historian; and indeed, so great was the emulation, that only men
of noble birth and tried valor were permitted to cross. Not a single
varlet accompanied them. After infinite labor and danger, some twelve
hundred knights--the flower of French chivalry--were transported to the
other side of the river, where they spent the rest of a cold and stormy
November night standing knee-deep in the marshes, clad in complete
armor, and without food or fire. At this point the fun ceases to sound
so exhilarating; but we are assured that “the great attention they paid
to be in readiness kept up their spirits, and made them almost forget
their situation.” When morning came, these knights, by way of rest
and breakfast, crossed the intervening country, fell upon the Flemish
ranks, and routed them with great slaughter; for what could a mass of
untrained artisans do against a small body of valiant and accomplished
soldiers? A few days later, the decisive battle of Rosebecque ended the
war. Van Arteveld was slain, and the cause of democracy, of “the ill
intentioned,” as Froissart for the most part designates the toiling
population of towns, received its fatal blow.
Yet this courtly chronicler of battles and deeds of chivalry is not
without a sense of justice and a noble compassion for the poor.
He disapproves of “commonalties” when they assert their claims too
boisterously; he fails to detect any signs of sapience in a mob; and
he speaks of “weavers, fullers, and other ill-intentioned people,”
as though craftsmen were necessarily rebellious,--which perhaps was
true, and not altogether a matter for surprise. But the grievous
taxes laid upon the French peasantry fill him with indignation; the
distress of Ghent, though brought about, as he believes, by her own
pride and presumption, touches him so deeply that he grows eloquent in
her behalf; and he records with distinct approbation the occasional
efforts made by both the French and the English kings to explain to
their patient subjects what it was they were fighting about. Eloquent
bishops, he tells us, were sent to preach “long and fine sermons,”
setting forth the justice of the respective claims. “In truth, it was
but right that these sovereigns, _since they were determined on war_,
should explain and make clear to their people the cause of the quarrel,
that they might understand it, and have the better will to assist their
lords and monarchs.” Above all, he gives us a really charming and
cheerful picture of the French and English fishermen, who went quietly
about their daily toil, and bore each other no ill will, although
their countries were so hard at war. “They were never interrupted in
their pursuits,” he says, “nor did they attack each other; but, on the
contrary, gave mutual assistance, and bought or sold, according as they
had more fish or less than they required. For if they were to meddle in
the national strife, there would be an end of fishing, and none would
attempt it unless supported by men-at-arms.” So perhaps there is one
lesson of common sense and forbearance we may learn, even now, from
those barbarous days of old.
As for the personal touches which give such curious vitality to
Froissart’s pages, they belong naturally to an unscientific age,
when history,--or what passed as such,--biography, court gossip, and
legendary lore were all mingled together, with no vexatious sifting
of material. The chronicler tells us in ample detail every separate
clause of an important treaty, and then breaks off to recount, at great
length and with commendable gravity, the story of the Lord de Corasse
and his familiar demon, Orthon, who served him out of pure love, and
visited him at night, to the vexation and terror of his lady wife. We
hear in one chapter how the burghers of Ghent spoiled all the pleasure
of the Lord d’Estournaz’s Christmas by collecting and carrying away his
rents, “which made him very melancholy,” as well it might; and in the
next we are told in splendid phrases of the death of Duke Wenceslaus
of Bohemia, “who was, in his time, magnificent, blithe, prudent,
amorous, and polite. God have mercy on his soul!” It is hard to see how
anything could be better described, in fewer words, than the disastrous
expedition of William of Hainault against the Frieslanders. “About
the feast of St. Rémy, William, Earl of Hainault, collected a large
body of men-at-arms, knights, and squires, from Hainault, Flanders,
Brabant, Holland, Gueldres, and Juliers, and, embarking them on board a
considerable fleet at Dordrecht, made sail for Friesland; for the Earl
considered himself as lord thereof. If the Frieslanders had been people
to listen to the legality and reasonableness of the claim, the Earl
was entitled to it. But as they were obstinate, he exerted himself
to obtain it by force, and was slain, as well as a great many other
knights and squires. God forgive them their sins!”
Surely that line about the unreasonable Frieslanders is worthy of
Carlyle,--of Carlyle whose grim and pregnant humor lurks beneath
sentences that, to the unwary, seem as innocent as the sheathed dagger
before the blade is sprung. He it was who hated with a just and
lively abhorrence all constitutional histories, and all philosophy
of history, as likewise “empty invoice lists of Pitched Battles and
Changes of Ministry,”--as dead, he declared, as last year’s almanacs,
“to which species of composition they bear, in several points of view,
no inconsiderable affinity.” He it was, moreover, who welded together
history and literature, and gave us their perfect and harmonious
union in the story of the “Diamond Necklace.” The past was enough for
Carlyle, when he worked amid her faded parchments, and made them glow
with renewed color and fire. That splendid pageant of events, that
resistless torrent of life, that long roll-call of honored names which
we term comprehensively history, had for him a significance which
needed neither moral nor maxim to confirm it. If we can believe with
him that it is better to revere great men than to belittle them, better
to worship blindly than to censure priggishly, better to enlarge our
mental vision until it embraces the standards of other centuries than
to narrow it in accordance with the latest humanitarian doctrine,--then
we may stray safely through the storied past, until even Froissart,
writing in a feudal chimney-corner strange tales of chivalry and
carnage, will have for us a message of little practical service, but of
infinite comfort in hours of idleness and relaxation. It is an engaging
task to leave the present, so weighted with cumbersome enigmas and
ineffectual activity, and to go back, step by step, to other days, when
men saw life in simpler aspects, and moved forward unswervingly to the
attainment of definite and obvious desires.
One voice has been recently raised with modest persistence in behalf of
old-fashioned history,--history which may possibly be inaccurate here
and there, but which gives to the present generation some vivid insight
into the lives of other generations which were not without importance
in their day. Now that we are striving to educate every class of
people, whether they respond to our advances or not, it is at least
worth while to make their instruction as pleasant and as profitable
as we can. Mr. Augustus Jessopp, whose knowledge of the agricultural
classes is of that practical and intimate kind which comes of living
with them for many years in sympathy and friendship, has a right to be
heard when he speaks in their behalf. If they must be taught in scraps
and at the discretion of committees, he believes that the Extension
lecturers who go about dispensing “small doses of Ruskin and water,
or weak dilutions of Mr. Addington Symonds,” would be better employed
in telling the people something of their own land and of their rude
forefathers. And this history, he insists, should be local, full of
detail, popular in character, and without base admixture of political
science, so that the rustic mind may accustom itself to the thought of
England, in all Christian ages, as a nation of real people; just as Tom
Tulliver woke gradually, under the stimulating friction of Maggie’s
questions, to the astonishing conviction that the Romans were once live
men and women, who learned their mother tongue through some easier
medium than the Latin grammar.
Again and again Mr. Jessopp has tried the experiment of lecturing on
local antiquities and the dim traditions of ancient country parishes;
and he has always found that these topics, which carried with them
some homely and familiar flavor of the soil, awoke a deep and abiding
interest in minds to which abstract ethics and technical knowledge
appealed alike in vain. School boards may raise the cry for useful
information, and fancy that a partial acquaintance with chlorides
and phosphates is all that is necessary to make of a sulky yokel an
intelligent agriculturist and a contented citizen; but a man must
awaken before he can think, and think before he can work, and work
before he can realize his position and meaning in the universe. And it
needs a livelier voice than that of elementary chemistry to arouse him.
“The Whigs,” said Sir Walter Scott, “will live and die in the belief
that the world is ruled by pamphlets and speeches;” and a great many
excellent people in every country will live and die in the belief that
the world is ruled by printed books, full of proven and demonstrable
truths. But we, the world’s poor children, sick, tired, and fractious,
know very well that we never learn unless we like our lesson, and never
behave ourselves unless inspired by precept and example. The history of
every nation is the heritage of its sons and daughters; and the story
of its struggles, sufferings, misdeeds, and glorious atonements is the
story that keeps alive in all our hearts that sentiment of patriotism,
without which we are speeding swiftly on our path to national
corruption and decay.
THE ROYAL ROAD OF FICTION.
“A tale,” says that charming scholar and critic, M. Jusserand, “is the
first key to the heart of a child, the last utterance to penetrate the
fastnesses of age.” And what is true of the individual is true also
of the race. The earliest voice listened to by the nations in their
infancy was the voice of the story-teller. Whether he spoke in rude
prose or in ruder rhyme, his was the eloquence which won a hearing
everywhere. All through the young world’s vigorous, ill-spent manhood
it found time mid wars, and pestilence, and far migrations to cherish
and cultivate the first wild art of fiction. We, in our chastened,
wise, and melancholy middle age, find still our natural solace in this
kind and joyous friend. And when mankind grows old, so old we shall
have mastered all the knowledge we are seeking now, and shall have
found ourselves as far from happiness as ever, I doubt not we shall
be comforted in the twilight of existence with the same cheerful and
deceptive tales we hearkened to in childhood. Facts surround us from
the cradle to the grave. Truth stares us coldly in the face, and checks
our unmeaning gayety of heart. What wonder that we turn for pleasure
and distraction to those charming dreams with which the story-teller,
now grown to be a novelist, is ever ready to lure us away from
everything that it is comfortable to forget.
And it was always thus. From the very beginning of civilization, and
before civilization was well begun, the royal road of fiction ran
straight to the hearts of men, and along it traveled the gay and
prosperous spinners of wondrous tales which the world loved well to
hear. When I was a little girl, studying literature in the hard and
dry fashion then common in all schools, and which was not without its
solid advantages after all, I was taught, first that “Pamela” was the
earliest English novel; then that “Robinson Crusoe” was the earliest
English novel; then that Lodge’s “Rosalynde” was the earliest English
novel. By the time I got that far back, I began to see for myself,
what I dare say all little girls are learning now, that the earliest
English novel dates mistily from the earliest English history, and that
there is no such thing as a firm starting-point for their uncertain
feet to gain. Long, long before Lodge’s “Rosalynde” led the way for
Shakespeare’s “Rosalind” to follow, romantic tales were held in such
high esteem that people who were fortunate enough to possess them in
manuscript--the art of printing not having yet cheapened such precious
treasures--left them solemnly by will to their equally fortunate
heirs. In 1315, Guy, Earl of Warwick, bequeathed to Bordesley Abbey
in Warwickshire his entire library of thirty-nine volumes, which
consisted almost exclusively, like the library of a modern young
lady, of stories, such as the “Romaunce de Troies,” and the “Romaunce
d’Alisaundre.” In 1426, Thomas, Duke of Exeter, left to his sister Joan
a single book, perhaps the only one he possessed, and this too was a
romance on that immortal knight and lover, Tristram.
Earlier even than Thomas of Exeter’s day, the hardy barons of England
had discovered that when they were “fested and fed,” they were ready
to be amused, and that there was nothing so amusing as a story. In
the twelfth century, before St. Thomas à Becket gave up his life in
Canterbury cloisters, English knights and ladies had grown familiar
with the tragic history of King Lear, the exploits of Jack the Giant
Killer, the story of King Arthur and of the enchanter Merlin. The
earliest of these tales came from Brittany, and were translated from
Armorican into Latin by Geoffrey of Monmouth, a Benedictine monk, and
a benefactor to the world; but, by the following century, Robin Hood,
Tom-a-Lincoln, and a host of sturdy English-born heroes shared in the
popular attention. It must have been inexpressibly helpful to the
writers and compilers of early fiction that the uncritical age in which
they lived had not yet been vitiated by the principles of realistic
art. The modern maxims about sinning against the probabilities, and the
novelist’s bondage to truth, had not then been invented; and the man
who told a story was free to tell it as he pleased. His readers or his
hearers were seldom disposed to question his assertions. A knight did
not go to the great and unnecessary trouble of learning his letters in
order to doubt what he read. Merlin was as real to him as Robin Hood.
He believed Sir John Mandeville, when that accomplished traveler told
him of a race of men who had eyes in the middle of their foreheads. It
was a curious fact, but the unknown world was full of greater mysteries
than this. He believed in Prester John, with his red and white lions,
his giants and pigmies, his salamanders that built cocoons like
silk-worms, his river of stones that rolled perpetually with a mighty
reverberation into a sandy sea. Why, indeed, should these wonders be
doubted; for in that thrice famous letter sent by Prester John to
Manuel Comnenus, Emperor of Constantinople, did he not distinctly say,
“No vice is tolerated in our land, and, with us, no one lies.”
This broad-minded, liberal credulity made smooth the novelist’s path.
He always located his romances in far and unknown countries, where
anything or everything might reasonably be expected to happen. Scythia,
Parthia, Abyssinia, were favorite latitudes; Bohemia could always
serve at a pinch; and Arcadia, that blessed haven of romance, remained
for centuries his happy hunting-ground, where shepherds piped, and
nymphs danced sweetly in the shade, and brave knights met in glorious
combat, and lovers dallied all day long under the whispering boughs.
In Elizabeth’s day, Arcadia had reached the zenith of its popularity.
Robert Green had peopled its dewy fields with amorous swains, and Sir
Philip Sidney had described its hills and dales in the four hundred
and eighty folio pages of his imperishable romance. A golden land, it
lies before us still, brilliant with sunshine that shall never fade.
Knights and noble ladies ride through it on prancing steeds. Well-bred
shepherds, deeply versed in love, sing charming songs, and extend
open-hearted hospitality. Shepherdesses, chaste and fair, lead their
snowy flocks by meadows and rippling streams. There is always plenty
of fighting for the knights when they weary of plighting their vows,
and noble palaces spring up for their entertainment when they have
had enough of pastoral pleasures and sylvan fare. Ah, me! We who have
passed by Arcadia, and dwell in the sad haunts of men, know well what
we have lost. Yet was there not a day when the inhabitants of the
strange new world, a world not yet familiar with commercial depression
and the stock exchange, were thus touchingly described in English verse?
“Guiltless men who danced away their time,
Fresh as their groves, and happy as their clime.”
And what gayer irresponsibility could be found even in the fields of
Arcadia?
“In Elizabeth’s day,” says M. Jusserand, “adventurous narratives
were loved for adventure’s sake. Probability was only a secondary
consideration.” Geographical knowledge being in its innocent infancy,
people were curious about foreign countries, and decently grateful for
information, true or false. When a wandering knight of romance “sailed
to Bohemia,” nobody saw any reason why he should not, and readers were
merely anxious to know what happened to him when he got there. So
great, indeed, was the demand for fiction in the reign of the virgin
queen that writers actually succeeded in supporting themselves by
this species of composition, a test equally applicable to-day; and it
is worth while to remember that the prose tales of Nash, Green, and
Sidney were translated into French more than a century before that
distinction was conferred on any play of Shakespeare’s.
It need not be supposed, however, that Romance, in her triumphant
progress through the land, met with no bitter and sustained hostility.
From the very beginning she took the world by storm, and from the
very beginning the godly denounced and reviled her. The jesters and
gleemen and minstrels who relieved the insufferable ennui of our rude
forefathers in those odd moments when they were neither fighting nor
eating, were all branded as “Satan’s children” by that relentless
accuser, “Piers Plowman.” In vain the simple story-spinners who
narrated the exploits of Robin Hood and Tom-a-Lincoln claimed that
their merry legends were “not altogether unprofitable, nor in any way
hurtful, but very fitte to passe away the tediousness of the long
winter evenings.” It was not in this cheerful fashion that the “unco
gude”--a race as old as humanity itself--considered the long winter
evenings should be passed. Roger Ascham can find no word strong enough
in which to condemn “certaine bookes of Chivalrie, the whole pleasure
of whiche standeth in two speciall poyntes, in open man-slaughter and
bolde bawdrye.” The beautiful old stories, so simply and reverently
handled by Sir Thomas Malory in the “Morte d’Arthur,” were regarded
with horror and aversion by this gentle ascetic; yet the lessons that
they taught were mainly “curtosye, humanyte, friendlynesse, hardynesse
and love.” The valorous deeds of Guy of Warwick and Thomas of Reading
lent cheer to many a hearth, and sent many a man with brave and joyous
heart to battle; yet the saintly Stubbes, who loved not joyousness,
lamented loudly that the unregenerate persisted in reading such “toys,
fantasies and babbleries,” in place of that more dolorous fiction,
Fox’s “Book of Martyrs.” Even Sir Philip Sidney’s innocent “Arcadia”
was pronounced by Milton a “vain, amatorious” book; and the great
poet who wrote “Comus” and “L’Allegro” harshly and bitterly censured
King Charles because that unhappy monarch beguiled the sad hours of
prison with its charming pages, and even, oh! crowning offense against
Puritanism! copied for spiritual comfort, when condemned to die, the
beautiful and reverent invocation of its young heroine, Pamela. “The
king hath, as it were, unhallowed and unchristened the very duty of
prayer itself,” wrote Milton mercilessly. “Who would have imagined so
little fear in him of the true all-seeing deity, so little care of
truth in his last words, or honor to himself or to his friends, as,
immediately before his death, to pop into the hand of that grave bishop
who attended him, for a special relique of his saintly exercises, a
prayer stolen word by word from the mouth of a heathen woman praying to
a heathen god.”
But not even the mighty voice of Milton could check the resistless
progress of romantic fiction. Not even dominant Puritanism could stamp
it ruthlessly down. When “Pilgrim’s Progress,” the great pioneer
of religious novels, was given to the world, England read it with
devout delight; but she read too, with admirable inconsistency, those
endless tales, those “romances de longue haleine,” which crossed
the channel from France, and replaced the less decorous Italian
stories so popular in the preceding century. Some of these prolix and
ponderous volumes, as relentless in dullness as in length, held their
own stoutly for centuries, and won allegiance where it seemed least
due. There is an incredible story narrated of Racine, that, when a
student at Port Royal, his favorite reading was an ancient prose epic
entitled “Ethiopica; the history of Theagenes and Chariclea.” This
guileless work, being too bulky for concealment, was discovered by his
director and promptly burned, notwithstanding its having been written
by a bishop, which ought to have saved it from the flames. Racine,
undaunted, procured another copy, and fearing it would meet with the
same cruel fate, he actually committed large portions of it to memory,
so that nothing should deprive him of his enjoyment. Yet “Ethiopica”
would seem as absolutely unreadable a book as even a bishop ever wrote.
The heroine, though chaste as she is beautiful, has so many lovers, all
with equally unpronounceable names, and so many battles are fought in
her behalf, that no other memory than Racine’s could have made any sort
of headway with them; while, just in the middle of the story, an old
gentleman is suddenly introduced, who, without provocation, starts to
work and tells all _his_ life’s adventures, two hundred pages long.
The real promoters and encouragers of romance, however,--the real
promoters and encouragers of fiction in every age--were women, and this
is more than enough to account for its continued triumphs. There was
little use in the stubborn old Puritan, Powell, protesting against the
idle folly of females who wasted their time over Sidney’s “Arcadia,”
when they ought to have been studying the household recipe books. Long
before Cromwell the mighty revolutionized England, women had wearied
of recipes as steady reading, and had turned their wanton minds to
matters more seductive. Wise and wary was the writer who kept these
fair patronesses well in view. When John Lyly gave to the world his
amazing “Euphues,” he dexterously announced that it was written for
the amusement and the edification of women, and that he asked for it
no better fate than to be read by them in idle moments, when they were
weary of playing with their lap-dogs. For a young man of twenty-five,
Lyly showed an admirable knowledge of feminine inconsistency. By
alternately flattering and upbraiding the subtle creatures he hoped
to please, now sweetly praising their incomparable perfections,
now fiercely reviling their follies and their sins, he succeeded in
making “Euphues” the best-read book in England, and he chained with
affectations and foolish conceits the free and noble current of English
speech.