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BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
=SHAKESPEARE IN FRANCE.= Illustrated. Demy 8vo, cloth, 21s.
Also 20 Copies on Japan paper, signed, L2 2s.
=ENGLISH WAYFARING LIFE IN THE MIDDLE AGES (XIVth CENTURY).=
Fourth and Revised Edition. Illustrated. Large crown 8vo,
cloth, 7s. 6d.
"A handsome volume, which may be warmly recommended to all
who wish to obtain a picture of one aspect of English life
in the fourteenth century."--_Academy._
"An extremely fascinating book."--_Times._
=A FRENCH AMBASSADOR AT THE COURT OF CHARLES II. (LE COMTE
DE COMINGES).= From his Unpublished Correspondence. Ten
Portraits. Large Crown 8vo, cloth, 7s. 6d.
"Is sure to interest any one who takes it up."--_Speaker._
"The whole book is delightful reading."--_Spectator._
=ENGLISH ESSAYS FROM A FRENCH PEN.= Photogravure
Frontispiece and 4 other Full-page Illustrations. Large
Crown 8vo, cloth, 7s. 6d.
=PIERS PLOWMAN, 1362-1398: A Contribution to the History of
English Mysticism.= With a Heliogravure Frontispiece and
Twenty-three other Engravings. Demy 8vo, cloth, gilt top,
12s.
"M. Jusserand has once more made English literature his
debtor by his admirable monograph on Piers Plowman.... It is
a masterly contribution to the history of our literature,
inspired by rare delicacy of critical
appreciation."--_Times._
"The work is marked by the felicitous insight and vivid
suggestiveness that charm us in previous writings by the
same author."--_Saturday Review._
=A LITERARY HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE: From the Origins
to the Renaissance.= Demy 8vo, cloth, 12s. 6d. nett.
LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN
[Illustration: QUEEN ELIZABETH.]
THE
ENGLISH NOVEL
IN THE
TIME OF SHAKESPEARE
BY
J. J. JUSSERAND
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY
ELIZABETH LEE
REVISED AND ENLARGED BY THE AUTHOR
NEW IMPRESSION
London
T. FISHER UNWIN
PATERNOSTER SQUARE
MDCCCXCIX
_First Edition, May, 1890._
_Reprinted November, 1895._
_Reprinted March, 1899._
[_All rights reserved._]
_The work here presented to English readers was published in French
three years ago in an abbreviated form. Worthy of attention as are the
older novelists of Great Britain, it was not to be expected that details
about Chettle, Munday, Ford, or Crowne, would prove very acceptable
south of the Channel, especially when it is remembered that the history
of French fiction, not an insignificant one, from "Aucassin" to "Jehan
de Saintre," to "Gargantua," and to "Astree," still remains to be
written. A compressed account of the subject, amounting to scarcely more
than a hundred pages of the present volume, was therefore deemed
sufficient to satisfy such craving as there was for information
concerning Nash, Greene, Lodge, and the more important among their
peers. According to the publishers of the book this estimate was not
fallacious, and there were no complaints of omission.
When the honour of a translation was proposed for the small volume, it
appeared that a more thorough account of the distant forefathers of the
novelists of to-day would perhaps be acceptable in England; for here the
question was of countrymen and ancestors. The work was for this reason
entirely remodelled and rewritten in order to furnish fuller particulars
on our authors' lives and works, and to extract from their darksome
place of retirement such forgotten heroes as Zelauto, Sorares, Parismus,
who had, some of them, once upon a time, been known to fame, and had
played their part in the toilsome task of bringing the modern English
novel to shape.
In writing of Shakespeare's contemporaries, care has been taken to enable
the reader to judge them on their own merits. With this view an effort has
been made to illustrate their spirit by what was best in their books, and
not necessarily what would recall the master-dramatist's works, and would
expose them to the extreme danger of being dwarfed by him beyond desert,
and of fading away in his light as moths in the sunshine. Considered from
this standpoint, they will not, however, cease to offer some degree of
interest to the Shakespearean student, for this process makes us aware not
merely of what materials Shakespeare happened to use, but from what stores
he chose them. On this account such works as Greene's tales of real life
have been studied at some length, and a chapter has been devoted to Nash,
who, high as he stands among the older novelists, has been allowed to pass
unnoticed as a tale writer by all historians of fiction. If, therefore, a
large use has been made of the publications of learned societies devoted
to the study of Shakespeare, liberal recourse also has been had to the
depositories of old original pamphlets, to the Bodleian library
especially, where, surprising as it may be in this age of reprints, single
copies of early novels, not to be met anywhere else, are even now to be
found. Some other writings of the same kind, even less known, such as
"Zelinda," a very witty parody of a romantic tale by Voiture, the
"Adventures of Covent Garden," illustrative of the novel and the drama in
the seventeenth century, were found in the primitive and only issue nearer
at hand, in that matchless granary of knowledge, whose name no student can
pronounce without a feeling of awe, because it is so noble, and of
gratitude, because it is so generously administered, the British Museum.
Engravings have been added, for it seemed that scattered as the rare
originals of our tales remain, it would be of assistance to gather
together those curious characteristics. They give an idea of the kind of
illustrations then in fashion, of the sort of appearance some of our
authors wore; they show how in the course of centuries, Guy of Warwick
was transformed from an armour-clad knight into a plain squire with a
cane and a cocked hat; and they exemplify the way in which foreign
artists were in several cases imitated with the burin, in the same books
in which foreign literary models were imitated with the pen. Objection
having been taken, in the very kindly criticisms passed upon this work,
to the absence of the only known representation of Greene, this defect
has been supplied in the present edition.
I need not say that the translator of the portions written originally in
French took the trouble to overlook my additions, and to revise my
revisions. I need say that my heartiest thanks are due also to the
well-known Elizabethan scholar, Mr. A. H. Bullen, who, putting aside for
a while much more important work, has shown me the great kindness of
reading the proofs of this volume. J._
SAINT HAON-LE-CHATEL, _Nov., 1890_.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
TABLE OF CONTENTS 5
EXPLANATORY LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 11
INTRODUCTION 23
CHAPTER I.
_BEFORE SHAKESPEARE_ 31
I. Remote origin of the novel--Old historical romances or
epics--Beowulf.
The French conquest of England in the eleventh
century--The mind and literature of the new-comers--Their
romances, their short tales 31
II. Effects of the conquest on the minds of the English
inhabitants--Slow awakening of the native
writers--Awakening of the clerks, of the translators and
imitators--The English inhabitants connected through a
literary imposture with Troy and the classical nations of
antiquity--Consequences of this imposture.
Chaucer--His lack of influence on later prose
novelists--The short prose tales of the French never
acclimatized in England before the Renaissance--More's
Latin "Utopia" 37
III. Printing--Caxton's _role_--Part allotted to fiction
in the list of his books--Morte Darthur.
Development of printing--Mediaeval romances set in type in
the sixteenth century 52
CHAPTER II.
_TUDOR TIMES--THE FASHIONS AND THE
NOVEL_ 69
I. The Renaissance and the awakening of a wider
curiosity--Travelling in Italy--Ascham's censures 69
II. Italian invasion of England--Italian books
translated, Boccaccio, Ariosto, Tasso, &c.
English collections of short stories imitated from the
French or Italian--Separate short stories--Lucrece of
Sienna--A "travelling literature" 74
III. Learning--Erasmus' judgment and prophecies--The part
played by women--They want books written for
themselves--Queen Elizabeth, her talk, her tastes, her
dress, her portraits--The "paper work" architecture of
the time 87
CHAPTER III.
_LYLY AND HIS "EUPHUES"_ 103
I. "Euphues," a book for women 103
II. "Euphuism," its foreign origin--How embellished and
perfected by Lyly--Fanciful natural history of the
time--The mediaeval bestiaries--Topsell's scientific works 106
III. The plot of the novel--Moral tendencies of
"Euphues"--Lyly's precepts concerning men, women and
children 123
IV. Lyly's popularity--Courtly talk of the
time--Translations and abbreviations of "Euphues" in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 135
CHAPTER IV.
_LYLY'S LEGATEES_ 145
I. Lyly's influence--His principal heirs and successors,
Riche, Dickenson, Melbancke, Munday, Warner, Greene,
Lodge, &c. 145
II. Robert Greene's biography--His autobiographical
tales--His life and repentance, characteristic of the
times 150
III. His love stories and romantic tales--His
extraordinary success--His tales of real life--His fame
at home and abroad 167
IV. N. Breton, an imitator of Greene--Thomas Lodge, a
legatee of Lyly--His life--His "Rosalynd" and other
works--His relation to Shakespeare 192
CHAPTER V.
_SIR PHILIP SIDNEY AND PASTORAL
ROMANCE_ 217
Of shepherds.
I. Sidney's life--His travels and friendship with
Languet--His court life and love--His death--The end of
"Stella" 219
II. Sidney's works--Miscellaneous writings--The
"Apologie"--Sidney's appreciation of the poetic and
romantic novel.
The "Arcadia," why written--Sidney's various heroes:
shepherds, knights, princesses, &c.--Eclogues and
battles, fetes, masques and tournaments--Anglo-arcadian
architecture, gardens, dresses and furniture.
Sidney's object according to Fulke Greville, and
according to himself--His lovers--Youthful love, unlawful
love, foolish love, innocent love--Pamela's prayer--The
final imbroglio.
Sidney's style as a novel writer--His wit and
brightness--His eloquence--His bad taste--His fanciful
ornaments 228
III. Sidney's reputation in England--Continuators,
imitators, and admirers among dramatists, poets and
novelists--Shakespeare, Jonson, Day, Shirley,
Quarles--Lady Mary Wroth and her novel--Sidney's
reputation in the eighteenth century, Addison, Young,
Walpole, Cowper--Chap-books.
In France--He is twice translated, and gives rise to a
literary quarrel--Charles Sorel's judgment in the "Berger
extravagant," and Du Bartas' praise--Mareschal's drama
out of the "Arcadia"--Niceron and Florian 260
CHAPTER VI.
_THOMAS NASH; THE PICARESQUE AND
REALISTIC NOVEL_ 287
I. Merry books as a preservative of health--Sidney's
contempt for the comic.
Studies in real life--The picaresque tale; its Spanish
origin--Its success in Europe---Lazarillo and Guzman 287
II. Thomas Nash--His birth, education and life--His
writings, his temperament--His equal fondness for mirth
and for lyrical poetry--His literary theories on art and
style--His vocabulary, his style.
His picaresque novel, "Jack Wilton"--Scenes and
characters--Observation of nature--Dramatic and
melodramatic parts--Historical personages--Nash's
troubles on account of "Jack Wilton."
His other works--Scenes of light comedy in
them--Portraits of the upstart, of the sectary, &c. 295
III. Nash's successors--H. Chettle--Chettle's combined
imitation of Nash, Greene and Sidney.
Dekker--His dramatic and poetical faculty--His prose
works--His literary connection with Nash--His pictures of
real life--His humour and gaiety--Grobianism--A gallant
at the play-house in the time of Shakespeare--Defoe and
Swift as distant heirs 327
CHAPTER VII.
_AFTER SHAKESPEARE_ 347
I. Heroical romances--Their origin mainly French--The new
heroism _a panache_ on the stage, in epics, in the novel,
in real life--The heroic ideal--The Hotel de Rambouillet 347
II. Heroes and heroism _a panache_ migrate to
England--Their welcome in spite of the
Puritans--Translations of French romances--Use of French
engravings--Imitation and appreciation of French
manners--Orinda, the Duchess of Newcastle, Dorothy
Osborne, Mrs. Pepys 362
III. Original English novels in the heroical style--Roger
Boyle, J. Crowne--Heroism on the stage 383
IV. Reaction in France--Sorel, Scarron, Furetiere,
&c.--Reaction in England--"Adventures of Covent Garden,"
"Zelinda," &c. 397
V. Conclusion--The end of the period--Ingelo, Harrington,
Mrs. Behn; how she anticipates Rousseau.
Connection between the master-novelists of the eighteenth
century and the prentice-novelists of the sixteenth 411
INDEX 419
[Illustration: ARIES.]
[Illustration: TAURUS.]
EXPLANATORY LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
1.--Queen Elizabeth in State costume, with the royal
insignia, after the engraving by William Rogers (born
in London, about 1545) _Frontispiece_
2 to 13.--The signs of the Zodiac, after Robert Greene's
"Francesco's Fortunes," 1590. Towards the end of this
novel a palmer is asked by his host to leave a
remembrance of his visit in his entertainer's house;
the palmer engraves on an ivory arch verses and
drawings illustrating at the same time, and in the same
way as the signs of the Zodiac, both the course of the
year and the course of human life _p. 9 et passim_
[_tail-pieces to all the chapters_]
14.--An Elizabethan Shepherdess, from a wood-block
illustrating a ballad (the inscription added) 23
15.--Beginning of the unique MS. of "Beowulf," preserved
in the British Museum 31
16.--Chaucer's pilgrims seated round the table of the
"Tabard" at Southwark, a reproduction of Caxton's
engraving in his second edition of the "Canterbury
Tales," 1484 45
17.--Robert the devil on horseback (_alias_ Romulus), being
the frontispiece of several romances in verse published
by Wynkyn de Worde, London, 1510 (?), 8vo. The history
of Robert is illustrated throughout 57
18.--The knight of the swan, from the frontispiece of the
metrical romance: "The Knight of the Swanne. Here
beginneth the history of ye noble Helyas knyght of the
swanne, newly translated out of frensshe," London,
Copland, 1550 (?), 4to 61
19.--"Then went Guy to fayre Phelis." From the metrical
romance "Guy of Warwick," London, 1550 (?), 4to, Sig.
Cc. iij 65
20.--Drawing by Isaac Oliver (b. 1556) after an Italian
model, from the original preserved in the British
Museum; illustrative of the cultivation of Italian art
by Englishmen in Tudor times 69
21.--Frontispiece to Harington's translation of Ariosto,
London, 1591, fol. This engraving and the numerous
copper-plates adorning this very fine book are usually
said to be English. But these plates were in fact a
product of Italian art, being the work of Girolamo
Porro, of Padua; they are to be found in the Italian
edition of Ariosto published at Venice in 1588, and in
various other editions. The English engraver, Thomas
Coxon (or Cockson), whose signature is to be seen at
the bottom of the frontispiece, only drew the portrait
of Harington in the space filled in the original by a
figure of Peace. Coxon, according to the "Dictionary of
National Biography" and other authorities, is supposed
to have flourished from about 1609 to 1630 or 1636. The
date on this plate (1st August, 1591), shows that he
began to work nearly twenty years earlier.
It must be added that this portrait of Harington has an
Italian softness and elegance, and differs greatly in
its style from the other portraits signed by Coxon
(portrait of Samuel Daniel on the title-page of his
Works, 1609; of John Taylor, "Workes," 1630, etc.). It
is possible that Harington's portrait was merely drawn
by Coxon, and engraved by an Italian 77
22.--How the knight Eurialus got secretly into his
lady-love's chamber. From the German version of the
history of the Lady Lucrece of Sienna, 1477, fol. (a
copy in the British Museum) 82
23.--Queen Cleopatra as represented on the English stage in
the eighteenth century: Mrs. Hartley in "All for
Love"; Page's engraving, dated 1776, for Bell's
"Theatre" 97
24.--Sketches made by Inigo Jones in Italy, 1614; from his
sketch-book reproduced in fac-simile by the care of the
Duke of Devonshire, London, 1832 100
25.--Persians standing as caryatides, from a drawing by
Inigo Jones for the circular court projected at
Whitehall, and reproduced by W. Kent: "The Drawings of
Inigo Jones," London, 1835, 2 vols., fol. 101
26.--A dragon according to Topsell, "The historie of
Serpents," London, 1608, fol., p. 153 103
27.--The "AEgyptian or land crocodile," according to
Topsell's "Historie of Serpents," London, 1608, fol.,
p. 140 109
28.--A Hippopotamus taking its food, according to Topsell's
"Historie of foure footed beastes," London, 1607, fol.,
p. 328 113
29.--"The true picture of the Lamia," _ibid._, p. 453 117
30.--"The boas," from Topsell's "Serpents," 1608,
frontispiece 121
31.--The Great Sea-serpent, _ibid._, p. 236 125
32.--Knightly pastimes; Hawking; illustrative of Gerismond's
life in the forest of Arden as described in Lodge's
"Rosalynd"; from Turberville's "Booke of Faulconerie,"
London, 1575, 4to, frontispiece 144
33.--Another dragon from Topsail's "Serpents," 1608, p. 153 145
33A.--Robert Greene in his shroud, from Dickenson's "Greene
in conceipt," 1598 161
34.--Yet another dragon, from Topsell's "Serpents," p. 153 171
35.--Velvet breeches and cloth breeches, from Greene's
"Quip," 1592, frontispiece 190
36.--Preparing for the Hunt, from Turberville's "Noble Arte
of Venerie or Hunting," London, 1575, 4to, frontispiece 205
37.--Penshurst, Sidney's birthplace, from a drawing by
M. G. du Thuit.
"Thou art not, Penshurst, built to envious show
Of touch or marble ...
Thou hast thy walks for health as well as sport ...
That taller tree which of a nut was set
At his great birth, where all the Muses met."
(Ben Jonson, "The Forest") 217
38.--A shepherd of Arcady, as seen on the title-page of various
editions of Sidney's "Arcadia," _e.g._, the third, 1598 242
39.--A Princess of Arcady, _ibid._ 243
40.--Argalus and Parthenia reading a book in their garden; from
Quarles' poem of "Argalus and Parthenia," London, 1656,
4to, p. 135 265
41.--"The renowned Argalus and Parthenia":
"See the fond youth! he burns, he loves, he dies;
He wishes as he pines and feeds his famish'd eyes."
From "The unfortunate Lovers, the History of Argalus and
Parthenia, in four books," London, 12mo, a chap-book of
the eighteenth century. Frontispiece 273
42.--"How the two princesses, Pamela and her sister
Philoclea, went to bath themselves in the river Ladon,
accompanied with Zelmane and Niso: And how Zelmane
combated with Amphialus for the paper and glove of the
princess Philoclea, and what after hapned." From "The
famous history of heroick acts ... being an abstract of
Pembroke's Arcadia," London, 1701, 12mo, p. 31. Not
without truth does the publisher state that the book is
illustrated with "curious cuts, the like as yet not
extant" 275
43.--"How the two illustrious princesses, Philoclea and
Pamela, being Basilius's only daughters, were married to
the two invincible princes, Pyrocles of Macedon and
Musidorus of Thessalia: and of the glorious
entertainments that graced the happy nuptials," from the
same chap-book, p. 139 277
44.--An interior view of the Swan Theatre in the time
of Shakespeare, from a drawing by John de Witt, 1596,
recently discovered in the Utrecht library by M. K. T.
Gaedertz, of Berlin. Reproduced as illustrative of
Dekker's "Horne-booke," 1609 (_infra_, ch. vi. Sec. 3).
Spectators have not been represented. They must be
supposed to fill the pit, "planities sive arena," where
they remained standing in the open air, and the covered
galleries. The more important people were seated on the
stage. Actors, to perform their parts, came out of the
two doors inscribed "mimorum aedes." The boxes above
these doors, concerning which some doubts have been
expressed, seem to be what was called "the Lords'
room." "Let our gallant," says Dekker, "advance himself
up to the throne of the stage. I meane not the Lords
roome (which is now but stages suburbs): no, those
boxes, by the iniquity of custome, conspiracy of
waiting women and gentlemen ushers, that there sweat
together, and the covetousness of sharers are
contemptibly thrust into the reare, and much new satten
is there dambd by being smothrd to death in darknesse.
But on the very rushes, where the comedy is to daunce,
yea and under the state of Cambises himselfe must our
fethered Estridge be planted valiantly, because
impudently, beating downe the mewes and hisses of
opposed rascality" ("Works," ed. Grosart, vol. ii. p.
247) 286
45.--Elizabethan gaieties. The actor Kemp's dance to
Norwich, from the frontispiece of "Kemps nine daies
wonder performed in a from London to Norwich,
containing the pleasure, paines and kind entertainment
of William Kemp betweene London and that city ...
written by himselfe to satisfie his friends," London,
1600, reprinted by Dyce, Camden Society, 1840, 4to 287
46.--Portrait of Nash, from "Tom Nash his ghost ...
written by Thomas Nash his ghost" (no date). A copy in
the British Museum 326
47.--Portrait of Dekker, from "Dekker his dreame," a
poem by the same, London, 1620, frontispiece 333
48.--Heroical deeds in an heroical novel. "Pandion
slayes Clausus," from "Pandion and Amphigenia," by J.
Crowne, London, 1665, 8vo 347
49.--Sir Guy of Warwick addressing a skull, in a
churchyard, from "The history of Guy, earl of Warwick,"
1750? (a chap-book), p. 18 350
50.--Burial of Sir Guy of Warwick, from the same chap-book 351
51.--A map of the "tendre" country. The original map
was inserted by Mdlle. de Scudery in her novel of
"Clelie," Paris, 1654, _et seq._, 10 vols., 8vo, vol.
i. p. 399. It was a map drawn by Clelia and sent by her
to Herminius, and which "showed how to go from New
Friendship to Tender." It was reproduced in the English
translations of "Clelie"; the plate we give is taken
from the edition of 1678 359
52.--Endymion plunged into the river in the presence of
Diana, after an engraving by C. de Pas, in "L'Endimion
de Gombauld," Paris, 1624, 8vo, p. 223. The French
plates were sent to England and used for the English
version of this novel: "Endimion, an excellent fancy
... interpreted by Richard Hurst," London, 1639, 8vo 367
53.--Frontispiece to Part IV. of the translation of La
Calprenede's "Cleopatre," by Robert Loveday: "Hymen's
praeludia or Loves master-piece," London, 1652, _et
seq._, 12mo. This frontispiece was drawn according to
the instructions of Loveday himself, "Loveday's
Letters," Letter lxxxiii. 371
54.--A fashionable conversation, from the frontispiece
of "La fausse Clelie," by P. de Subligny, Amsterdam,
1671, 12mo. An enlarged plate was made after this one,
to serve as frontispiece to the English version of the
same work: "The mock Clelia, being a comical history of
French gallantries ... in imitation of Don Quixote,"
London, 1678, 8vo 375
55.--Conversations and telling of stories at the house
of the Duchess of Newcastle, from a drawing by Abr. a
Diepenbeck, engraved for her book: "Natures pictures
drawn by Fancies pencil to the life," London, 1656, fol. 379
56.--Moorish heroes, from an engraving in Settle's
drama: "The Empress of Morocco," London, 1673, 4to 393
57.--A poet's dream realized, from the English version
of Sorel's "Berger Extravagant," "The extravagant
Shepherd," London, 1653, fol., translated by John
Davies. The usual description of the heroine of a novel
has been taken to the letter by the engraver, who
represents Love sitting on her forehead, and lilies and
roses on her cheeks. Two suns have taken the place of
her eyes, her teeth are actual pearls, &c. 401
[Illustration: GEMINI.]
[Illustration: AN ELIZABETHAN SHEPHERDESS.]
The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare.
INTRODUCTION.
The London publishers annually issue statistics of the works that have
appeared in England during the year. Sometimes sermons and books on
theology reach the highest figures; England is still the England of the
Bible, the country that at the time of the Reformation produced three
hundred and twenty-six editions of the Scriptures in less than a
century, and whose religious literature is so abundant that to-day
twenty-eight volumes of the British Museum catalogue treat of the single
word Bible. When theology does not obtain the first rank, it holds the
second. The only writings that can compete with it, in the country of
Shakespeare, of Bacon and of Newton, are neither dramas, nor books of
philosophy nor scientific treatises; they are novels. Theology had the
supremacy in 1885; novels obtained it in 1887, 1888, and 1889. Omitting
stories written for children, nine hundred and twenty-nine novels were
published in England in 1888, and one thousand and forty in 1889. Thus
the conscientious critic who wished to acquaint himself with all of them
would have to read more than two novels and a half, often in three
volumes, every day all the year round, without stopping even on Sundays.
This passion for the novel which does not exist in the same degree in
any other nation, only acquired its full strength in England in the
eighteenth century. At that time English novels produced in Europe the
effect of a revelation; they were praised extravagantly, they were
copied, they were imitated, and the popularity hitherto enjoyed by the
"Princesse de Cleves," "Marianne," and "Gil Blas," was obscured for a
while. "I say that Anglicism is gaining on us," wrote d'Argenson; "after
'Gulliver' and 'Pamela,' here comes 'Tom Jones,' and they are mad for
him; who could have imagined eighty years ago that the English would
write novels and better ones than ours? This nation pushes ahead by
force of unrestricted freedom."[1]
Modern society had at length found the kind of literature which could
be most suitably employed to depict it. Society had been presented on
the English stage by the authors of domestic comedies; Steele and
Addison had painted it in their essays. But in both forms the portrait
was incomplete. The exigencies of the stage, the necessary brevity of
the essay, made it impossible to give adequate expression to the
infinite complexity of the subject. The novel created anew by Defoe,
Fielding, and Richardson, made it an easy thing to introduce into the
arena of literature those men and women of intelligence and feeling who,
for long ages, had been pleased to see other people the chief subjects
of books and inwardly desired that authors should at last deal more
especially with themselves. The age of chivalry was gone; the time of
the Arthurs and the Tristans had passed away; such a society as the new
one could not so well be sung in verse; but it could extremely well be
described in prose.
As Fielding remarked, the novel takes the place of the old epic. We
think of the Harlowes when in the olden time we should have dreamed of
the Atridae. While man's attachment to science and demonstrated truth is
growing year by year, so, simultaneously, the art of the historian and
the art of the novelist, both essentially empirical, become more highly
valued and more widely cultivated. As for the lengthy tales devoted to
Tristan and to "l'Empereur magne," we know that their day is done, and
we think of them with all the pensive tenderness we cannot help feeling
for the dead, for the dim past, for a race without posterity, for
childhood's cherished and fast-fading dreams. Thus in the same age when
Clarissa Harlowe and Tom Jones came to their kingdom, the poets
Chatterton, Percy, Beattie, and others, turned back lovingly to the
Middle Ages; and thus too the new taste for history, archaeology, and the
painting of real life, all put together and combined, ended by producing
a particular school of novel, the _romantic_ school, at whose head
stands Sir Walter Scott.
Perhaps, however, something besides poetry is to be sought for in these
bygone epochs. Movements of human thought have seldom that suddenness
with which they are sometimes credited; if those literary innovations,
apparently so spasmodic, are carefully and closely studied, it will be
nearly always found that the way had been imperceptibly prepared for
them through the ages. We are in the habit of beginning the history of
the English novel with Defoe or Richardson; but was there no work of the
kind in England before their time? had they to invent it all, matter and
method? It is not enough to say that the gift of observation and
analysis was inborn in the race, as shown already, long before the
eighteenth century, in the work of the dramatists, moralists and
philosophers. Had not the same gift already manifested itself in the
novel?
The truth is that the novel shed its first splendour during the age of
Elizabeth; but the glory of Shakespeare has overshadowed the multitude
of the lesser authors of his time, a multitude which included the early
novelists. While they lived, however, they played no insignificant part;
now they are so entirely forgotten that it will perhaps be heard with
some surprise that they were prolific, numerous, and very popular. So
great was the demand for this kind of literature that some succeeded in
making an income out of their novels. Their books went through many
editions for that age, many more than the majority of Shakespeare's
plays. They were translated into French at a time when even the name of
the great dramatist was entirely unknown to the French people. Lyly's
"Euphues," for example, went through five editions in five years; in the
same period "Hamlet" passed through only three, and "Romeo and Juliet"
through two editions. Not a line of Shakespeare was put into French
before the eighteenth century, while prose fictions by Nash, Greene, and
Sidney were translated more than a century earlier.
As in our own day, some of these novelists busied themselves chiefly
with the analysis of passion and refined emotion; others chiefly
concerned themselves with minute observation of real life, and strove to
place before the reader the outward features of their characters in a
fashion impressive enough to enable him to realize what lay below the
surface. Many of these pictures of manners and of society were
considered by contemporaries good likenesses, not the less so because
embellished. Thus, having served as models to the novelists, the men and
women of the day in their turn took as example the copies that had been
made from them. They had had their portraits painted and then tried hard
to resemble their counterfeit presentments. Lyly and Sidney embellished,
according to the taste of the age, the people around them, whom they
chose as patterns for the heroes of their novels; and as soon as their
books were spread over the country, fashionable ladies distinguished
themselves from the common sort by being "Arcadian" or "Euphuizd."[2]
Thus through these very efforts, a literature, chiefly intended for
women, was arising in England, and this is one characteristic more that
links these authors to our modern novelists. So that, perhaps, bonds,
closer than we imagine, unite those old writers lost in a far-off past
with the novelists whose books reprinted a hundred times are to be found
to-day on every reading-table and in everybody's hands.
We make no pretence of covering in the present volume this vast and
little trodden field. To keep within reasonable bounds we shall have to
leave altogether, or barely mention, the collections of tales translated
by Paynter, Whetstone and others from the Italian or French, although
they were well known to Shakespeare, and provided him with several of
his plots. In spite of their charm, we shall in like manner pass by the
simple popular prose tales, which were also very numerous, the stories
of Robin Hood, of Tom-a-Lincoln, of Friar Bacon, however "merry and
pleasant," they may be, "not altogether unprofitable, nor any way
hurtfull, very fitte to passe away the tediousness of the long winters
evenings."[3] We intend to deal here chiefly with those writers from
whom our modern novelists are legitimately descended. These descendants,
improving upon the early examples of their art left by the Elizabethan
novelists, have won for themselves a lasting place in literature, and
their works are among the undisputed pleasures of our lives. Our
gratitude may rightly be extended from them to their progenitors. We
must be permitted, therefore, to go far back in history, nearly as far
as the Flood. The journey is long, but we shall travel rapidly. It was,
moreover, the customary method of many novelists of long ago to begin
with the beginning of created things. Let their example serve as our
excuse.
[Illustration: CANCER.]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] "Memoires et Journal inedit du Marquis d'Argenson," Paris, 1857, 5
vols.; vol. v., "Remarques en lisant."
[2] Dekker, "The Guls Horne-booke," 1609.
[3] "The Gentle Craft," 1598. "Early English Prose Romances," ed. W. J.
Thoms, London, 2nd edition, 1858, 3 vols., 8vo, contents: "Robert the
Devyll," "Thomas of Reading," by Thomas Deloney, "Fryer Bacon," "Frier
Rush," "George a Green," "Tom-a-Lincoln," by Richard Johnson, "Doctor
Faustus," &c. Nearly all the stories in this collection bear the date of
Shakespeare's time.
[Illustration: BEGINNING OF THE UNIQUE MS. OF "BEOWULF."]
CHAPTER I.
BEFORE SHAKESPEARE.
I.
Minute research has been made, in every country, into the origin of the
drama. The origin of the novel has rarely tempted the literary
archaeologist. For a long time the novel was regarded as literature of a
lower order; down almost to our time, critics scrupled to speak of it.
When M. Villemain in his course of lectures on the eighteenth century
came to Richardson, he experienced some embarrassment, and it was not
without oratorical qualifications and certain bashful doubts that he
dared to announce lectures on "Clarissa Harlowe" and "Sir Charles
Grandison." He sought to justify himself on the ground that it was
necessary to track out a special influence derived from England, "the
influence of imagination united to moral sentiment in eloquent prose."
But this neglect can be explained still better. We can at need fix the
exact period of the origin of the drama. It is not the same with the
novel. We may go as far back as we please, yet we find the thin
ramifications of the novel, and we may say literally that it is as old
as the world itself. Like man himself, was not the world rocked in the
cradle of its childhood to the accompaniment of stories and tales? Some
were boldly marvellous; others have been called historical; but very
often, in spite of the dignity of the name, the "histories" were nothing
but collections of traditions, of legends, of fictions: a kind of novel.
This noble antiquity might doubtless have been invoked as a further
justification by M. Villemain and have confirmed the reasons drawn from
the "moral sentiment and eloquence" of novels, reasons which were such
as to rather curtail the scope of his lectures.
In England as much and even more than with any other modern nation,
novelists can pride themselves upon a long line of ancestors. They can,
without abusing the license permitted to genealogists, go back to the
time when the English did not inhabit England, when London, like Paris,
was peopled by latinised Celts, and when the ancestors of the puritans
sacrificed to the god Thor. The novelists indeed can show that the
beginning of their history is lost in the abysm of time. They can recall
the fact that the Anglo-Saxons, when they came to dwell in the island of
Britain, brought with them songs and legends, whence was evolved the
strange poem of "Beowulf,"[4] the first epic, the most ancient history,
and the oldest English romance. In it, truth is mingled with fiction;
besides the wonders performed by the hero, a destroyer of monsters, we
find a great battle mentioned by Gregory of Tours, where the Frenchmen,
that were to be, cut to pieces the Englishmen that were to be; the first
act of that bloody tragedy continued afterwards at Hastings, Crecy,
Agincourt, Fontenoy, and Waterloo.
The battle of Hastings which made England subject to men from France
resulted in a complete transformation of the literature of the Teutonic
inhabitants of the island. Anglo-Saxon literature had had moments of
brilliance at the time of Alfred, and afterwards at that of Saint
Dunstan; then it had fallen into decay. By careful search, accents of
joy, though of strange character, may be discovered in the texts which
now represent that ancient literature. Taking it as a whole, however,
this literature was sad; a cloud of melancholy enveloped it, like those
penetrating mists, observed by Pytheas and the oldest travellers, which
rose from the marshes of the island and concealed the outlines of its
impenetrable forests. But the conquerors who came from Normandy, from
Brittany, from Anjou, from all the provinces of France, were of a
cheerful temperament; they were happy: everything went well with them.
They brought with them the gaiety, the wit, the sunshine of the south,
uniting the spirit of the Gascon with the tenacity of the Norman. Noisy
and great talkers, when once they became masters of the country, they
straightway put an end to the already dying literature of the conquered
race and substituted their own. God forbid that they should listen to
the lamentations of the Anglo-Saxon mariner or traveller! They had no
concern with their miserable dirges. "Long live Christ who loves the
French!"[5] Even in the laws and religion of the French there now and
then appeared marks of their irrepressible _entrain_. Shall we not,
then, find it in their stories?
The new-comers liked tales of two kinds. First, they delighted in
stories of chivalry, where they found marvellous exploits differing
little from their own. They had seen the son of Herleva, a tanner's
daughter of Falaise, win a kingdom in a battle, in course of which the
cares of a conqueror had not prevented him from making jokes. When,
therefore, they wrote a romance, they might well attribute extraordinary
adventures and rare courage to Roland, Arthur and Lancelot: in face of
the behaviour of the bastard of Normandy, it would be difficult to tax
the exploits attributed to those heroes with improbability. The
numberless epic romances in which they delighted had no resemblance with
the "Beowulf" of old. These stories were no longer filled with mere
deeds of valour, but also with acts of courtesy; they were full of love
and tenderness. Even in the more Germanic of their poems, in "Roland,"
the hero is shaken by his emotions, and is to be seen shedding tears.
Far greater is the part allotted to the gentler feelings in the epics of
a subsequent date, in those written for the English Queen Eleanor, by
Benoit de Sainte More in the twelfth century, which tell for the first
time of the loves of Troilus and Cressida; in those dedicated to Arthur
and his knights, where the favour of the mortal deities of whom the
heroes are enamoured, is responsible for more feats of chivalry than is
the search after the mysterious Grail.
They can take Constantinople, or destroy the Roman armies; they can
fight green giants and strange monsters, besiege castles of steel, put
traitors to death, and escape even the evil practices of enchanters; but
they cannot conquer their passions. All the enemies they have in common
with Beowulf, be they men or armies, monsters or sorcerers, they can
fight and subdue; but enemies unknown to the Gothic warrior oppose them
now more effectually than giants, stormy seas, or armed battalions;
enemies that are always present, that are not to be destroyed in battle
nor left behind in flight: their own indomitable loves and desires. What
would the conqueror of Grendel have thought of such descendants? One
word in his story answers the question: "Better it is," says he, "for
every man, that he avenge his friend than that he mourn much." This is
the nearest approach to tenderness discoverable in the whole epic of
"Beowulf."
In this contest between heroes differing so greatly in their notion of
the duties and possibilities of life with whom do we side, we of to-day?
With Beowulf or with Lancelot? Which of the two has survived? Which of
them is nearest of kin to us? Under various names and under very
different conditions, Lancelot still continues to live in our thoughts
and to play his part in our stories. We shall find him in the pages of
Walter Scott; he is present in the novels of George Eliot. For better or
for worse, the literature begun in England by the conquerors at the
battle of Hastings still reigns paramount.
Moreover, the new possessors of the English country were fond of tales
and short stories, either moving or amusing, in which a word would make
the reader laugh or make him thoughtful; but where there was no tirade,
no declamation, no loud emphasis, no vague speculation, a style of
writing quite unknown to the islanders and contrary to their genius.
When they returned of an evening to their huge and impregnable castles,
in perfect security and in good humour, they liked to hear recited
stories in prose, some of which are still extant and will never be read
without pleasure: the story of Floire and Blanchefleur, for instance, or
perhaps, also that of Aucassin, who preferred "his gentle love" to
paradise even more unconcernedly than the lover in the old song rejected
the gift of "Paris la grand ville;" of Aucassin, in whose adventures the
Almighty interposes, not in the manner of the Jehovah of the Bible, but
as "God who loveth lovers;"[6] and where Nicolete is so very beautiful
that the touch of her fair hands is enough to heal sick people.
According to the author the same wonder is performed by the tale itself;
it heals sorrow:
"Sweet the song, the story sweet,
There is no man hearkens it,
No man living 'neath the sun,
So outwearied, so foredone,
Sick and woful, worn and sad,
But is healed, but is glad
'Tis so sweet."[7]
So speaks the author, and since his time the performance of the same
miracle has been the aim of the many tale-writers of all countries; they
have not all of them failed.
The fusion of these two sorts of stories, the epic-romance and the tale,
produced long afterwards in every country of Europe the novel as we know
it now. To the former, the novel owes more especially its width of
subject, its wealth of incident, its occasionally dignified gait; to the
second, its delicacy of observation, its skill in expression of detail,
its naturalness, its realism. If we care to examine them closely, we
shall find in the greater number of those familiar tragi-comedies, which
are the novels of our own day, discernible traces of their twofold and
far-off origin.
II.
The first result of the diffusion in England, after the Conquest, of a
new literature full of southern inventions and gaieties, and loves, and
follies, was the silencing of the native singers. This silence lasted
for a hundred years; the very language seemed doomed to disappear. What
was the good of writing in English, when there was hardly any one who
cared to read it, and even those few were learning French, and coming by
degrees to enjoy the new literature? But it turned out that the native
English writers had not been swept away for ever. Their race, though
silenced, was not extinct; they were not dead, but only asleep.
The first to awake were the scholars, the men who had studied in Paris.
It was quite natural that they should be less deeply impressed with
nationalism than the rest of their compatriots; learning had made them
cosmopolitan; they belonged less to England than to the Latin country,
and the Latin country had not suffered from the Conquest. Numerous
scholars of English origin shone forth as authors from the twelfth
century onwards; among them Geoffrey of Monmouth, of Arthurian fame,
Joseph of Exeter, John of Salisbury, Walter Map, Nigel Wireker, and many
others of European reputation.
In the thirteenth century another awakening takes place in the palace
which the Norman enchanter had doomed to a temporary sleep. Translators
and imitators set to work; the English language is again employed; the
storm has abated, and it has become evident that there still remain
people of English blood and language for whom it is worth while to
write. Innumerable books are composed for them, that they may learn,
ignorant as they are of French or Latin, what is the thought of the day.
Robert Manning de Brunne states, in the beginning of the fourteenth
century, that he writes:
"Not for the lerid bot for the lewed,
Ffor tho that in this land wone,
That the Latyn no Frankys cone,
Ffor to haf solace and gamen
In felawschip when thay sitt samen."
They are to enjoy this new literature in common, be it religious, be it
imaginative or historical; they will discuss it and it will improve
their minds; it will teach them to pass judgments even on kings:
"And gude it is for many thynges
For to here the dedis of kynges
Whilk were foles and whilk were wyse."[8]
In their turn the English poets sang of Arthur; in all good faith they
adopted his glory as that of an ancestor of their own. Among them a man
like Layamon accepted the French poet Wace for his model, and in the
beginning of the thirteenth century, devoted thirty-two thousand lines
to the Celtic hero; nor was he ever disturbed by the thought that
Arthur's British victories might have possibly been English defeats.[9]
Then came innumerable poems, translated or imitated from French
romances, on Charlemagne and Roland, Gawain and the Green Knight, Bovon
of Hanstone, Percival, Havelock the Dane, King Horn, Guy of Warwick,
Alexander, Octavian, and the Trojan War.[10] Hundreds of manuscripts,
some of them splendidly illuminated, testify at the present day to the
immense popularity of these imitations of French originals, and provide
endless labour for the many learned societies that in our century have
undertaken to print them.
Layamon's indifference to the price paid by his compatriots for Arthur's
glory was not peculiar to himself. It is characteristic of a policy of
amalgamation deliberately followed from the beginning by the Normans. As
soon as they were settled in the country they desired to unify the
traditions of the various races inhabiting the great island, in the
belief that this was a first and necessary step towards uniting the
races themselves. Rarely was literature used for political purposes with
more cleverness and with more important results. The conquerors set the
example themselves, and from the first adopted and treated all the
heroic beings who had won glory in or for England, and whose fame
lingered in ballads and popular songs, as if they had been personal
ancestors of their own. At the same time they induced the conquered
race to adopt the theory that mythic Trojans were their progenitors, a
theory already discovered and applied by the French to their own early
history, and about which fables were already current among the Welsh
people: both races were thus connected together as lineal descendants,
the one of Brutus, the other of Francus; and an indissoluble link united
them to the classic nations of antiquity.[11] So it happened that in
mediaeval England French singers were to be heard extolling the glory of
Saxon kings, while English singers told the deeds of Arthur, the
arch-enemy of their race. Nothing gives a better idea of this
extraordinary amalgamation of races and traditions than a certain poem
of the thirteenth century written in French by a Norman monk of
Westminster, and dedicated to Eleanor of Provence, wife of Henry III.,
in which we read:
"In the world, I may confidently say, there never was country, kingdom
or empire, where so many good kings, and holy too, were found, as in the
English island.... Saints they were, martyrs and confessors, of whom
several died for God; others most strong and hardy, as were Arthur,
Edmund, and Knut."[12]
Rarely was the like seen in any literature; here is a poem dedicated to
a Frenchwoman by a Norman of England, which begins with the praise of a
Briton, a Saxon, and a Dane. The same phenomenon is to be noticed, after
the Conquest in romances, chronicles and histories. Whoever the author
may be, whether of French or English blood, the unity of origin of the
two races receives almost invariably the fullest acknowledgment; the
inhabitants of the great island cease to look towards Germany, Denmark
and Scandinavia, for their ancestors or for the sources of their
inspiration; they look rather, like their new French companions, to
Rome, Greece and Troy. This policy produced not only momentous social
results, but also very important literary consequences; the intellectual
connection with the north being cut off, the Anglo-French allowed
themselves to be drilled with the Latin discipline; the ancient models
ceased to appear to them heterogeneous; they studied them in all good
faith as the works of distant relations, with such result that they,
unlike the Germanic and Scandinavian peoples, were ready, when the time
of the Renaissance came, to benefit by the great intellectual movement
set on foot by southern neo-classic nations; and while Italy produced
Ariosto and Tasso, while Spain possessed Cervantes, and France
Montaigne, Ronsard and Rabelais, they were ready to give birth to the
unparalleled trio of Spenser, Bacon and Shakespeare.
From the fourteenth century this conclusion was easy to foresee; for,
even at that period, England took part in a tentative Renaissance that
preceded the great one of the sixteenth century. At the time when Italy
produced Petrarca and Boccaccio, and France had Froissart, England
produced Chaucer, the greatest of the four.
Famous as Chaucer was as a story-teller, it is strange that he was to
have almost no influence on the development of the novel in England.
When we read of Harry Bailly and the Wife of Bath, of the modest Oxford
clerk and the good parson; when we turn the pages of the inimitable
story of Troilus and the fickle, tender, charming Cressida, it seems as
if nothing was lacking to the production of perfect novels. All the
elements of the art are there complete: the delicate analysis of
passions, the stirring plot, the natural play of various characters, the
very human mixture of grossness and tenderness, of love songs and rough
jokes, the portraits of actual beings belonging to real life and not to
dreamland. It was only necessary to break the cadence of the verse and
to write such stories in prose. No one did it; no one tried to do it.
[Illustration: CAXTON'S REPRESENTATION OF CHAUCER'S PILGRIMS, 1484.]
The fact is the stranger if we remember that Chaucer's popularity never
flagged. It was at its height in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries;
in the following period the kings of literature, Dryden and Pope, did
homage to him. His works had been amongst the first to be printed.
Caxton's original edition was quickly followed by a second.[13] The
latter was adorned with illustrations, and this rapid publication of a
second and amended text testifies to the great reverence in which the
author was held. Nevertheless it is the fact that Chaucer stands alone;
authors of prose novels who wrote nearly two centuries after his time,
instead of trying to follow in his footsteps, sought their models either
in the old epic literature or in French and Italian story-books. This is
exactly what Chaucer had done himself; but they did it with very
different success, and entirely missed the benefits of the great advance
made by him. By another strange caprice of fate it was these
sixteenth-century writers, and not Chaucer, who were to be the ancestors
of the world-famous novelists of a later age, of the Richardsons and
Fieldings of the eighteenth century.
In one thing, then, the French conquerors entirely failed; they never
succeeded in acclimatizing during the Middle Ages those shorter prose
stories which were so popular in their own country, in which they
themselves delighted and of which charming and sometimes exquisite
models have come to us from the twelfth century downwards. When this art
so thoroughly French began, as we shall see, to be cultivated in
England, it was the outcome of the Renaissance, not of the Conquest.
Hundreds of volumes of mediaeval English manuscripts preserve plenty of
sermons, theological treatises, epic-romances, poems of all sorts; but
the student will not discover one single original prose story to set by
the side of the many examples extant in French literature; nothing
resembling the French stories of the thirteenth century, so delightful
in their frank language, their brisk style and simple grace, in which we
find a foretaste of the prose of Le Sage and Voltaire; nothing to be
compared, even at a distance, in the following century, with the
narratives of Froissart, who, it is true, applied to history his genius
for pure romance; nothing like the anecdotes so well told by the Knight
of La Tour Landry for the instruction of his daughters; nothing that at
all approaches "Petit Jehan de Saintre" or the "Cent nouvelles" in the
fifteenth century. To find English prose tales of the Middle Ages we
should be forced to look through the religious manuscripts where they
figure under the guise of examples for the reader's edification. A very
troublesome search it is, but not always a vain one; some of these
stories deserve to be included among the most memorable legends of the
Middle Ages. To give an idea of them I will quote the story of a scholar
of Paris, after Caesarius, but told in far better style by the holy
hermit Rolle de Hampole, in the fourteenth century. It is short and
little known:
"A scolere at Pares had done many full synnys the whylke he had schame
to schryfe hym of. At the last gret sorowe of herte ouercome his schame,
& when he was redy to schryfe till (to) the priore of the abbay of
Saynte Victor, swa mekill contricione was in his herte, syghynge in his
breste, sobbynge in his throtte, that he moghte noghte brynge a worde
furthe. Thane the prioure said till hym: Gaa & wrytte thy synnes. He dyd
swa, & come a-gayne to the prioure and gafe hym that he hade wretyn,
ffor yitt he myghte noghte schryfe hym with mouthe. The prioure saghe
the synnys swa grette that thurghe leve of the scolere he schewede
theyme to the abbotte to hafe conceyle. The abbotte tuke that byll that
ware wrettyn in & lukede thare one. He fande na thynge wretyn & sayd to
the priour: What may here be redde thare noghte es wretyne? That saghe
the priour & wondyrd gretly & saide: Wyet ye that his synns here warre
wretyn & I redde thaym, bot now I see that God has sene hys contrycyone
& forgyfes hym all his synnes. This the abbot & the prioure tolde the
scolere, & he, with gret joy thanked God."[14]
But instances of this kind of story lack those features of gaiety and
satirical observation of which French stories are full, and which are an
important element of the novel. Some are mystical; others, in which the
devil figures on whom the saints play rude tricks, are intended to raise
a loud laugh; in both cases real life is equally distant. A keen faculty
of observation however existed in the nation; foibles of human nature
did not escape the English writer's eye any more than its higher
aspirations. This is illustrated not only by Chaucer, who chose to write
poetry, but by such men as Nigel Wireker[15] and Walter Map who chose to
write Latin.[16] But not one English author before the Renaissance
employed such gifts in writing prose studies of real life in his native
tongue. Owing to the Conquest a certain discredit seemed to rest for
generations on England's original language. Long after an English
nation, rich in every sort of glory had come into being, writers are to
be found hesitating to use the national idiom. This circumstance is
chiefly noticeable in prose where the use of a foreign tongue offers
less difficulties than in poetry. Prose was less cultivated in England
even so late as the commencement of the sixteenth century than in France
during the thirteenth. At the time of the Renaissance, Sir Thomas More,
the wittiest Englishman of his day, whose English style was admirable
and who moreover loved the language of his native land, wishing to
publish a romance of social satire, the "Utopia,"[17] wrote it in Latin.
It is one of the oldest examples in modern literature of that species of
book which includes at a later date the story of Gargantua and
Pantagruel, Bacon's "New Atlantis," Cyrano de Bergerac's "Etats et
empires de la lune et du soleil," Fenelon's "Telemaque," "Gulliver's
Travels," Voltaire's tales, &c. More's use of Latin is to be the more
regretted since his romance exhibits infinite resources of spirit and
animation; of all his writings it is the one that best justifies his
great reputation for wit and enlightenment. His characters are living
men and their conversation undoubtedly resembles that which delighted
him in the society of his friend Erasmus.
The subject of the book is the quest for the best possible government.
More and his companions meet at Antwerp one of the fellow voyagers of
Amerigo Vespucci the famous godfather of America, and they question him
concerning the civilizations he has seen. "He likewise very willingly
tolde us of the same. But as for monsters, by cause they be no newes, of
them we were nothyng inquisitive. For nothyng is more easye to bee
founde, then bee barkynge Scyllaes, ravenyng Celenes, & Lestrigones
devourers of people, & suche lyke great, & incredible monsters. But to
find citisens ruled by good & holsome lawes, that is an exceding rare, &
harde thyng."[18] By good luck Amerigo's companion had discovered an
empire which presented this admirable quality: the island of Utopia, or
the country of "Nowhere." This country became immediately famous all
over Europe, so much so that Pantagruel would not look to any other
place for immigrants to people his newly conquered kingdom of Dispodie.
There he transported "Utopians to the number of 9,876,543,210 men," says
Rabelais, with his usual care for exact numbers, "without speaking of
women and little children." He did so to "refresh, people, and adorn the
said country otherwise badly enough inhabited and desert in many
places."[19] His acting in this manner was only natural, for, as is well
known, connections existed between his family and the Utopians, his own
mother Badebec, the wife of Gargantua, being "daughter to the king of
the Amaurotes in Utopia."[20]
A hundred years later, something of this want of confidence in the
future of English prose still lingered. Bacon, after having employed it
in his essays and treatises, was seized with anxiety and kept in his pay
secretaries with whose help he meant to translate all his works into
Latin, in order to assure himself of their permanence.
III.
Some years before Sir Thomas More wrote his "Utopia," an Englishman, who
had long lived abroad and had there learnt a new industry, unknown in
his own land, returned to England and settled in Westminster. He and his
trade were destined to exercise a very important influence on the
diffusion of literature, and especially on the development of romances.
His art was printing, and his name was Caxton. We can judge of the
amazement he produced among his countrymen by his new art, from his own
wonder; one of his prefaces shows clearly enough how extraordinary his
performance seemed to himself: "And for as moche, says he, as in the
wrytyng of the same my penne is worn, myn hande wery & not stedfast, myn
eyen dimed with overmoche lokyng on the whit paper & my corage not so
prone & redy to laboure as hit hath ben & that age crepeth on me dayly &
febleth all the bodye, & also be cause I have promysid to diverse
gentilmen & to my frendes to addresse to hem as hastely as I myght this
sayd book, therfore I have practysed & lerned at my grete charge &
dispense to ordeyne this said book in prynte after the maner & forme as
ye may here see, & is not wreton with penne & ynke as other bokes ben,
to thende that every man may have them attones, ffor all the bookes of
this storye named the recule of the historyes of troyes thus enpryntid
as ye here see were begonne in oon day & also fynysshid in oon day."[21]
The list of his books shows that he was no less intent upon diverting
his customers than upon improving their knowledge and morals. The part
allotted to fiction was extremely large, not perhaps quite so extensive
as that occupied by the novel proper in the publishers' lists of to-day;
but regarding it as merely a beginning, it must be admitted to be very
promising. Not only did he print the tales of Chaucer, the confessions
of Gower, with their numerous stories, several poems of Lydgate, a
number of mediaeval epic romances in verse, but he also issued from his
press the prose story of "Reynard the Fox," which contains so much
excellent dialogue and so many fine scenes of comedy; and, besides, the
most remarkable prose romance that had yet been written in the English
language, the famous "Morte d'Arthur" of Sir Thomas Malory. Its
appearance marks an epoch in the history of English romance literature.
Why, among so many famous works, should this publication have obtained
the preference and the attention of the printer? Caxton states his
reasons very clearly: firstly, for him as for Layamon, Arthur is a
national hero, and Englishmen should be proud of him: then again he is
one of the nine worthies of the world. These nine dignitaries were, as
is well known, three pagans, Hector, Alexander and Caesar; three Jews,
Joshua, David and Judas Maccabaeus; three Christians, Arthur, Charlemagne
and Godfrey of Bouillon. And lastly, Caxton considered his undertaking
justified by the great lessons that were to be drawn from Arthur's
example: "And I accordyng to my copye have doon sette it in enprynte to
the entente that noble men may see & lerne the noble actes chyvalrye the
jentyl & vertuous dedes that somme knyghtes used in tho dayes by whyche
they came to honour & how they that were vycious were punysshed & ofte
put to shame & rebuke, humbly byseching al noble lordes & ladyes wyth al
other estates of what estate or degree they been of, that shal see &
rede in this sayd book & werke, that they take the good & honest actes
in their remembraunce & to folowe the same. Wherein they shalle fynde
many joyous & playsaunt hystoryes & noble & renomed actes of humanyte
gentylnesse & chyualryes. For herein may be seen noble chyvalrye,
curtosye, humanyte, frendlynesse, hardynesse, love, frendshyp,
cowardyse, murdre, hate, vertue & synne. Doo after the good & leve the
evyl & it shal brynge you to good fame & renommee."[22]
Everything, in fact, is to be found in Malory's book; everything, except
those marks of character which transform traditional types into living
personalities; everything except those analyses of feeling which are for
us the primary _raison d'etre_ of the modern novel and its chief
attraction. The old knight's book is a vast compilation in which he has
melted down and mixed together a large number of tales about Arthur,
Lancelot, Gawain, Galahad, Percival, and all the Knights of the Round
Table. An infinite number of short chapters, written in a clear and
quiet style, possessing no other charm than its simplicity, tell of the
loves and of the fights of these famous men; "of theyr marvaylous
enquestes and adventures," as Caxton has it, "thachyevyng of the
Sangraal, and in thende the dolorous deth and departyng out of thys
world of them al." Malory never made the slightest effort to reach a
grand style; he did not think that there could be any other method of
writing than that of putting on paper, without preparation, what first
came into his mind. Since he possessed neither a passionate temperament
nor a wandering imagination, he tells, without any apparent emotion, the
most important of his stories, even the last battle of his hero[23] and
his final disappearance, when he is borne by fairies into the Vale of
Avilion. It is for sensitive hearts to weep over these misfortunes, if
they choose. As for him, he goes on his way, telling tale after tale, in
the same clear and even voice; but very rarely giving us his confidence
or opening to us his heart.
[Illustration: ROBERT THE DEVIL, ABOUT 1510.]
Once in the whole length of this immense work he does impart to us his
personal opinion on a question of importance: in the twenty-fifth
chapter of his eighteenth book, Malory confesses what he thinks of love,
and lays aside his usual reserve: and thus furnishes the first attempt
at analysis of feeling to be found in the English prose romance. Malory
declares that every man should love God first and his mistress
afterwards; and so long as a man does love his God first, the other
love seems to him to be not only permissible but even commendable; it is
a virtue. "Therfore, as may moneth floreth & floryssheth in many
gardyns, soo in lyke wyse, lete every man of worship florysshe his herte
in this world, fyrst unto God & next unto the joye of them that he
promysed his feythe unto: for there was never worshypful man or
worshipfull woman but they loved one better than another ... & suche
love, I calle vertuous love." But now-a-days, continues the old knight,
little suspecting that his grievance is one of all ages, men cannot love
seven-night but they must have all their desires. The old love was not
so. Men and women could love together seven years, and no wanton lusts
were between them, and then was love truth and faithfulness. "And loo,"
Malory adds forgetting that his Lancelot and his Tristan waited much
less than seven years, "in lyke wyse was used love in Kynge Arthurs
dayes."[24]
Very strikingly does this view of love contrast with the southern
irrepressible impetuosities of young Aucassin, who, considering, three
centuries earlier, this same question of holy and profane love, of earth
and paradise, in the above-mentioned exquisite prose tale which bears
his name, simply alters the order of precedence afterwards adopted by
good Sir Thomas: "Tell me," says he, "where is the place so high in all
the world that Nicolete, my sweet lady and love, would not grace it
well? If she were Empress of Constantinople or of Germany, or Queen of
France or England, it were little enough for her.... In Paradise what
have I to win? Therein I seek not to enter, but only to have Nicolete my
sweet lady that I love so well.... For in Paradise go none but ... these
same old priests, and halt old men and maimed, who all day and night
cower continually before the altars, and in the crypts.... These be they
that go into Paradise; with them have I naught to make. But into Hell
would I fain go; for into Hell fare the goodly clerks and goodly knights
that fall in tourneys and great wars.... And thither pass the sweet
ladies.... Thither goes the gold and the silver and cloth of vair, and
cloth of gris, and harpers and makers, and the prince of this world.
With these I would gladly go, let me but have with me Nicolete my
sweetest lady."[25]
[Illustration: "NOBLE HELYAS KNYGHTE OF THE SWANNE," ABOUT 1550.]
No one perceived the coldness of Malory's stories. He wrote for a
youthful and enthusiastic people; it was a period of new birth
throughout Europe, the period of the spring-time of modern literature,
the epoch of the Renaissance. There was no need to depict in realistic
fashion the passions and stirrings of the heart in order to excite the
emotion of the reader; a relation of events sufficed for him; his own
imagination did the rest, and enlivened the dull-painted canvas with
visions of every colour. The book had as much success as Caxton could
have expected; it was constantly reprinted during the sixteenth century,
and enchanted the contemporaries of Surrey, of Elizabeth, and of
Shakespeare. It was in vain that the serious-minded Ascham condemned
it; it survived his condemnation as the popularity of Robin Hood
survived the sermons of Latimer. Vainly did Ascham denounce "Certaine
bookes of Chevalrie.... as one for example, _Morte Arthure_: the whole
pleasure of whiche booke standeth in two speciall poyntes, in open mans
slaughter, & bold bawdrye. In which booke those be counted the noblest
knightes, that do kill most men without any quarell, & commit fowlest
aduoulteres by sutlest shiftes."[26]
When the people became more thoughtful or more exacting in the matter of
analysis, they neglected the old book. After 1634, two hundred years
passed without a reprint of it. In our time it has met with an aftermath
of success, not only among the curious, but among a class of readers who
are not more exacting than Caxton's clients, and who are far more
interested in fact than in feeling. Children form this class of readers;
in the present century Malory's book has been many times re-edited for
them, and it is to Sir Thomas Malory, rather than to Tennyson, Swinburne
or Morris, that many English men and women of to-day owe their earliest
acquaintance with King Arthur and his Knights.
Caxton's example was followed by many; printing presses multiplied, and
with most of them fiction kept its ground. A new life was infused into
old legendary heroes, and they began again, impelled not by the genius
of new writers, but simply by the printer's skill, their never ending
journeys over the world. Their stories were published in England in
small handy volumes, often of a very good appearance, and embellished
with woodcuts. There were prose stories of "Robert the devyll," and
there were verse stories of "Sir Guy of Warwick" and of "Syr Eglamoure
of Artoys." Many of the cuts are extremely picturesque and excellently
suited to the general tone of the story. On the title-page the hero of
the tale usually sits on his horse, and indomitable he looks with his
sword drawn, his plume full spread, his mien defiant. A faithful squire
sometimes follows him, sometimes only his dog; between the feet of the
horse fabulous plants spread their unlikely leaves, and give the sole
and very doubtful clue to the country in which the knight is travelling,
certainly a very desolate and unpleasant one. In this fashion does Duke
Robert of Normandy travel, and so does Eglamoure, and Tryamoure, and
Bevis, and Isumbras. In the same series too is to be seen "Y^e noble
Helyas, Knyght of the Swanne," drawn by the said swan, a somewhat wooden
bird, not very different from his successor of a later age whom we are
accustomed to see swimming across the stage to the accompaniment of
Wagner's famous music.[27]
[Illustration: "Then went Guy to fayre Phelis."
"SIR GUY OF WARWICK," ABOUT 1560.]
The means by which English printers supplied themselves with these
engravings, is a mystery that they have kept to themselves. Many of
the blocks were, very probably, purchased in the Low Countries. A very
few are almost certainly of English manufacture, and among them are
Caxton's illustrations of the Canterbury Tales: on this account we have
given a fac-simile of the most important of them, representing the
pilgrims seated round the table at the "Tabard" prior to starting on
their immortal journey. What is certain is that many of these wood-block
portraits of knights, supplied to the printers by English or Dutch
artists, underwent many successive christenings. The same knight, with
the same squire, the same dog and the same fabulous little wooden plants
between the legs of the horse was sometimes Romulus and sometimes Robert
of Normandy. In one book a rather fine engraving of a lord and a lady in
a garden, represents Guy of Warwick courting "fayre Phelis,"[28] but in
another book the same engraving does duty for "La bel Pucell" and the
knight "Graund Amoure."[29] It may be observed, in passing, that these
romances might be soundly criticized without much study of their
contents by simply inspecting their illustrations. Full as they are of
extraordinary inventions and adventures, unrestricted as their authors
were by considerations of what was possible or real, some dozen
well-chosen engravings seem enough to illustrate any number of them.
For, alas, there is nothing more stale and more subject to repetitions
than these series of extraordinary adventures; all their heroes are the
same hero, and whether he was following the philosophical turn of his
mind, or merely the thrifty orders of his printer, the engraver was well
justified in leaving as he did in most of his drawings an empty scroll
over the head of his knights, for the publisher to label them at will,
Robert the Devil or Romulus.
We are thus fairly advanced into the sixteenth century; the Renaissance
has come; before long Spenser will sing of the Fairy Queen and
Shakespeare will leave his native Stratford to present to a London
audience the loves of Juliet and Romeo. Scarcely any sign of improvement
appears yet in the art of novel-writing; nothing but mediaeval romances
continue to issue from the press; it is even difficult to foresee an
epoch in which something analogous to the actual novel might be produced
in England. Contrary to what was taking place in France at the same
time, that period seemed far off. In reality, however, it was near at
hand; the great age of English literature, the age of Elizabeth and of
Shakespeare, was about to furnish, at least in the rough draft, the
first specimens of the true novel.
[Illustration: LEO.]
FOOTNOTES:
[4] "Beowulf, a heroic poem," ed. T. Arnold, London, 1876, 8vo. The
unique MS. of this poem, discovered in the last century, is preserved at
the British Museum; it has been reproduced in fac-simile by the Early
English Text Society (Ed. J. Zupitza, 1882, 8vo). We give in fac-simile
the first few lines of the MS.
[5] "Vivat qui Francos diligit Christus!" ("Prologue of the Salic Law,"
Pardessus, 1843, p. 345.)
[6] "Nouvelles Francaises en prose," ed. Moland and d'Hericault, Paris,
1856. Four English versions of the story of Floire and Blanchefleur are
extant. The story of Amis and Amile was also very popular. "Amis and
Amiloun," ed. Koelbing (Heilbronn, 1884). The cantefable of Aucassin is
of the twelfth century (G. Paris, "Litterature francaise au moyen age,"
1888, Sec. 51).
[7] Mr. Andrew Lang's translation, "Aucassin and Nicolete" (London,
1887, 16mo.).
[8] "The Story of England," A.D. 1338, ed. F. J. Furnivall, London,
1887, two vols. 8vo, vol. i. p. 1.
[9] "Layamon's Brut," ed. Madden, London, 1847, three vols. 8vo.
[10] See, among others, the publications of the Early English Text
Society, the Camden Society, the Percy Society, the Roxburghe Club, the
Bannatyne Club, the Altenglische Bibliothek of E. Koelbing (Heilbronn);
the "Metrical Romances of the XIIIth, XIVth, and XVth Centuries," of H.
W. Weber (Edinburgh, 1810, three vols. 8vo); the "Catalogue of MS.
Romances in the British Museum," by H. L. D. Ward (London, 1887);
"Bishop Percy's Folio MS.; Ballads and Romances," ed. J. W. Hales and F.
J. Furnivall, London, Ballad Society, 1867, &c.
The publications of the Early English Text Society include, among
others, the romances of "Ferumbras," "Otuel," "Huon of Burdeux,"
"Charles the Grete," "Four Sons of Aymon," "Sir Bevis of Hanston," "King
Horn," with fragments of "Floriz and Blauncheflur," "Havelok the Dane,"
"Guy of Warwick," "William of Palerne," "Generides," "Morte Arthure,"
Lonelich's "History of the Holy Grail," "Joseph of Arimathie," "Sir
Gawaine and the Green Knight," &c. Others are in preparation.
[11] The adoption by Geoffrey of Monmouth, in the twelfth century, of
Brutus the Trojan as father of the British race, as Nennius had done two
centuries earlier, did much for the spreading of this belief; the
popularity and authority of Geoffrey's fabulous history was so great
that for several centuries the gravest English historians accepted his
statements concerning Brutus without hesitation. Matthew Paris, the most
accurate and trustworthy historian of the thirteenth century, gives an
account of his coming to the island of Albion, "that was then inhabited
by nobody but a few giants": "Erat tunc nomen insulae Albion, quae a
nemine, exceptis paucis gigantibus habitabatur." Brutus proceeds to the
banks of the Thames, and there founds his capital, which he calls the
New Troy, Trojam novam, "quae postea, per corruptionem vocabuli
Trinovantum dicta fuerit" ("Chronica Majora," Rolls Series, I. pp.
21-22). In the fourteenth century Ralph, in his famous "Polychronicon,"
gives exactly the same account of the deeds of the Trojan prince, and
they continued in the time of Shakespeare to be _history_. Here is the
learned account Holinshed gives of these events in his "Chronicles":
"Hitherto have we spoken of the inhabitants of this Ile
before the coming of Brute, although some will needs have it
that he was the first which inhabited the same with his
people descended of the Troians, some few giants onelie
excepted whom he utterlie destroied, and left not one of
them alive through the whole ile. But as we shall not doubt
of Brutes coming hither ..." &c.
"This Brutus or Brytus (for this letter Y hath of ancient
times had the sounds both of V and I) ... was the sonne of
Silvius, the sonne of Ascanius, the sonne of Aeneas the
Trojan, begotten of his wife Creusa, and borne in Troie,
before the citie was destroied" (book ii. chap. i.).
[12]
"En mund ne est (ben vus l'os dire)
Pais, reaume, ne empire
U tant unt este bons rois
E seinz, cum en isle d'Englois ...
Seinz, martirs e confessurs
Ki pur Deu mururent plursurs;
Li autre forz e hardiz mutz,
Cum fu Arthurs, Aedmunz, e Knudz."
("Lives of Edward the Confessor," ed. H. R. Luard, London, Rolls, 1858,
8vo.)
[13] Both editions are undated; the first one seems to have been
published in 1478, the second in 1484 (W. Blades, "Life and Typography
of William Caxton," 1861, two vols. 4to).
[14] "English Prose Treatises of Richard Rolle de Hampole," ed. G. G.
Perry, London, Early English Text Society, 1866, 8vo. p. 7. Rolle de
Hampole died in 1349. Caesarius' tale (Caesarius Heisterbacensis, d. 1240)
begins thus: "Erat ibi juvenis quidam in studio, qui, suggerente humani
generis inimico, talia quaedam peccata commiserat, quae, obstante
erubescentia, nulli hominum confiteri potuit: cogitans tamen quae malis
praeparata sunt tormenta gehennae, & quae bonis abscondita sunt gaudia
perennis vitae, timens etiam quotidie judicium Dei super se, intus
torquebatur morsu conscientiae & foris tabescebat in copore...."
("Illustrium miraculorum ... libri xii.," bk. ii. ch. 10).
[15] "Speculum Stultorum," in "Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets ... of the
Twelfth Century" ed. Th. Wright, London, 1872, 2 vols. 8vo.
[16] "Gualteri Mapes De nugis curialium distinctiones quinque," ed. Th.
Wright, Camden Society, 1850, 4to. Part IV. of this work contains the
celebrated "Disuasio Valerii ad Rufinum de ducenda uxore," long
attributed to St. Jerome, and one of the principal text-books of the
authors of satires against women during the Middle Ages. It was well
known to the Wife of Bath, who held it in special abomination.
[17] The "Utopia" was composed in 1515-1516, and was published
anonymously at Louvain, under the title: "Libellus vere aureus, nec
minus salutaris quam festivus de optimo reipublicae statu ... cura P.
AEgidii ... nunc primum ... editus." Louvain 1516, 4to. It was translated
into English by Ralph Robinson in 1551, and this translation has been
reprinted by Arber, London, 1869. Another famous novel of the same class
was written in the following century also in Latin by another
Englishman, or rather Scotchman, the celebrated "Argenis" of John
Barclay (1582-1621). It was translated into English by Sir Robert Le
Grys, 1629, 4to. Queen Elizabeth appears in it under the name of
Hyanisbe.
[18] Ralph Robinson's translation (_ut supra_).
[19] "Pantagruel, apres avoir entierement conqueste le pays de Dispodie,
en icelluy transporta une colonie des Utopiens, en nombre de
9,876,543,210 hommes, sans les femmes et petitz enfans, artisans de tous
mestiers et professeurs de toutes sciences liberales, pour ledict pays
refraischir, peupler et aorner, mal aultrement habite et desert en
grande partie" ("Pantagruel," bk. iii. ch. 1).
[20] "Pantagruel," bk. ii. ch. 2.
[21] "Recueyll of the historyes of Troye," Bruges, 1474? Epilogue to
Book iii.
[22] "Le Morte Darthur by Syr Thomas Malory," ed. O. Sommer and Andrew
Lang, London, 1889, 2 vol. 8vo. Caxton's Preface, p. 3. The book was
originally published at Westminster, in 1485, under the title: "The
noble and ioyous book entytled Le Morte Darthur notwythstondyng it
treateth of the byrth, lyf and actes of the sayd kyng Arthur of his
noble knyghtes of the rounde table, theyr marvayllous enquestes and
adventures, thachyevyng of the Sangraal, and in thende the dolorous deth
and departyng out of thys world of them al, whiche book was reduced into
englysshe by Syr Thomas Malory knyght."
It ends with the statement that it was printed and "fynysshed in thabbey
of Westmestre the last day of Juyl the yere of our lord M cccc lxxxv.
Caxton me fieri fecit."
[23] "And then kyng Arthur smote syr mordred under the shelde wyth a
foyne of his spere thorughoute the body more than a fadom. And when syr
mordred felte that he had hys dethes wounde, he thryst hymself wyth the
myght that he had up to the bur of kyng Arthurs spere. And right so he
smote his fader Arthur wyth his swerde holden in bothe his handes, on
the syde of the heed, that the swerde persyd the helmet & the brayne
panne, & therwythall syr Mordred fyl starke deed to the erthe, & the
nobyl Arthur fyl in a swoune to the erthe & there swouned ofte times"
(_Ut supra_, book xxi. ch. iv. p. 847).
[24] "Le Morte Darthur," ed. Sommer and Lang, London, 1889, 8vo., book
xviii. ch. 25, p. 771.
[25] "Aucassin and Nicolete," done into English by Andrew Lang, London,
1887, pp. 6, 11, and 12.
[26] "The Scholemaster," London, 1570, 4to.
[27] "Robert the deuyll," London, Wynkyn de Worde, 1510? 8vo. "Syr
Tryamoure," "Syr Beuys of Hampton," "Syr Isumbras," "Syr Degore," "The
Knight of the Swanne," "Virgilius," and many others were published by W.
Copland about 1550. "Guy of Warwick" was printed in the same style about
1560, "Syr Eglamoure of Artoys," about 1570. Many others were at this
period printed in the same way with engravings from the same wood
blocks.
[28] London, 1560? 4to.
[29] "The history of Graund Amoure and la bel Pucell, called the Pastime
of pleasure," by Stephen Hawes, London, Tottell, 1555, 4to. The same
engraving embellishes also "The Squyr of Lowe Degre," published by W.
Copland, &c.
[Illustration: DRAWING BY ISAAC OLIVER, AFTER AN ITALIAN MODEL.]