Chapter XV: Part 15

Such was the march of events, the steppings which were conducting the national genius to the verge of tragedy and comedy; a vast interval of time and labour separates the writers of these primitive plays from the fathers of dramatic art; yet however ludicrous to us the simplicity of the age, often these singular productions betray shrewd humour and natural emotions. To condemn them as barbarous and absurd would be forming a very inadequate notion of the influence of these earliest of our European dramas on their contemporaries. An enlightened lover of the arts has said, perhaps with great truth, that Raphael never received from his age such flattering applause, and excited such universal approbation, as did Cimabue, the rude father of his art. The first essays strike more deeply than even the masterpieces of a subsequent age after all its successful labour; for its more finished excellence depends partly on reflection, as well as on sensation.

The mystery and the morality lingered among us; but in the improved taste and literature of the court of Henry the Eighth, the facetious INTERLUDE, while it was facetious, won the royal smile. The successive agitations of the age, however, could not fail to reflect its tempers in these public exhibitions. In the reforming government of Edward the Sixth, the miracle-plays were looked on as Romish spectacles, and were fast sinking into neglect, when the clergy of the papistic queen retrograded into this whole fabulous mythology; adepts not only in the craft of miracles, but desirous, by these shows or "plays of miracles," to revive the taste in the imaginations of the people. The public authorities patronised what recently they had laughed at or had scorned. On Corpus Christi day, the Lord Mayor and the Privy Council were spectators of _The Passion of Christ_, always an affecting drama; and it was again represented before this select audience: and on St. Olave's day, the truly "miracle-play" of that legendary saint was enacted in the church dedicated to the saint.[18]

The history of the INTERLUDE more particularly marks an epoch, for it enters into our political history. Mysteries and moralities were purely religious or ethical themes, but the comic interludes took a more adventurous course; and their writers, accommodating themselves to the fashions of the day, were the organs of the prevalent factions then dividing the unquiet realm.

From the earliest moment of the projected reformation or emancipation from the Papal dominion by Henry, we discover the players of interludes at their insidious work; but affairs were floating in that uncertain state when the new had by no means displaced the old. In 1527, Henry the Eighth was greatly diverted at an interlude where the heretic Luther and his wife were brought on the stage, and the Reformers were ridiculed.[19] The king in the Creed and the ceremonies remained a Romanist; and in 1533, a proclamation inhibits "the playing of enterludes concerning doctrines now in question and controversy."[20] "The Defender of the Faith" was still irresolute to defend or to attack. In 1543, an act of parliament was passed for the control of dramatic representations; and at this later date, this reforming monarch decreed, that "no person should play in interludes any matter contrary to the doctrines of the Church of Rome!" Chronology in history is not only useful to date events, but to date the passions of sovereigns. It was absolutely necessary for Edward the Sixth on his ascension immediately to repeal this express act of parliament of his father;[21] and then the emancipated interluders now, openly, with grave logic or laughing ridicule, struck at all "the Roman superstitions." Hence we had Catholic and Protestant dramas. The Romanists had made very free strictures on Cromwell, Cranmer, and their followers; and on the side of the reformed we have no deficiency of oppugners of the Romish Church. Under Henry the Eighth, we have the sacred drama of _Every-man_, a single personage, by whom the writer not unaptly personifies human nature. This drama came from the Romanists to recall the auditors back to the forsaken ceremonies and shaken creed of their fathers. Under Edward the Sixth, we have _Lusty Juventus_, whom Satan and his old son Hypocrisy, with an extraordinary nomenclature of "holy things," would inveigle back to that seductive harlot, "Abominable Living," which the Reformer imagined was the favourite Dulcinea of "the false priests."[22] On the accession of Mary, this queen hastened a proclamation against the interludes of the Reformers. The term used in the proclamation looks like an ironical allusion to a word which now had long been bandied on the lips of the populace. It specifies to be for "the _reformation_ of busy meddlers in matters of religion." A strict watch was kept on the players, some of whom suffered for enacting a reformed interlude. Such plays seem to have been patronised in domestic secrecy. The interference of the Star Chamber was called forth in 1556 for the total suppression of dramatic entertainments. In many places some magistrates had slackened their pursuit after "players," and reluctantly obeyed the public authorities. The first act of Elizabeth resembled in its character those of her brother Edward and her sister Mary, however opposite were the systems of their governments. The queen put a sudden stop to the enacting of all interludes which opposed the progress of the Reformation; there seemed to be no objection to any of a different cast; but Elizabeth lived to be an auditor of more passionate dramas than these theological logomachies performed on the stage, where the dull poet had sometimes quoted chapter and verse in Genesis or St. Matthew.

It is not generally known that, while these Catholic and Protestant dramas were opposed to each other in England, at the same period the Huguenots in France had also entertained the derisory muse of the more comic interludes. There was, however, this difference in the fortunes of the writers; as in France the government had never reformed nor changed their position, there could have been no period which admitted of the public representation of these satirical dramas. In their dramatic history, it was long considered that the subjects of these Hugonistic dramas were too tender to bear the handling; and the brothers Parfait, in their copious "History of the French Theatre," only afford a slight indication of "the turbulent Calvinists," who had spread "pieces of dangerous heresy and fanaticism against the Pope, the cardinals, and the bishops; works which could not be noticed without profaning the page!"--and therefore they refrain from giving even their titles! It is in this spirit, and with such apologies, that historians have often castrated their own history. The existence of these dramas might have escaped our knowledge, had not the more enlightened judgment of the Duke de la Valliere supplied what the more stubborn Romanists had suppressed. This lover of literature has favoured the curious with the interesting analysis of two rare French Protestant plays, _Le Marchand Converti_, in 1558; and _Le Pape Malade et tirant a sa Fin_, in 1561. Allowing largely for the gross invectives of the Calvinist--"_les impietes_"--they display an original comic invention, and sparkle with the most lively sallies.[23] It is remarkable that _Le Marchand Converti_, at such an early period of modern literature, is a regular comedy of five acts, introduced by a prologue in verse; odes are interspersed, and each act concludes with a chorus, whom the author calls "the company." The classical form of this unacted play, instinct with the spirit of the new reform, betrays the work of a learned hand.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Warton's "Hist. of Eng. Poetry," iii. 195, 8vo edition; but it
has been suggested that, as Saint Gregory composed more poetically,
this earliest sacred drama was the production of a later writer,
another Gregory, bishop of Antioch, A.D. 572. The dramatist, however,
was an ecclesiastic, and that point only is important on the present
occasion.

[2] TERTULLIAN, CHRYSOSTOM, LACTANTIUS, CYPRIAN, and others, have
vehemently declaimed against theatres and actors. It is doubtless the
invectives of the Fathers which have been the true origin of the
puritanic denouncement against "stage-plays" and "play-goers." The
Fathers furnished ample quotations for PRYNNE in his "Histriomastix."
It is, however, curious to observe that at a later day, in the
thirteenth century, the great schoolman, Thomas Aquinas, greatly
relaxed the prohibitions; confessing that amusement is necessary to
the happiness of man, he allows the decent exercise of the histrionic
art. See a curious tract, "The Stage Condemned," which contains a
collection of the opinions of the Fathers, 1698. Riccoboni, "Sur les
Theatres," does not fail to appeal to the great schoolman.

[3] "Tiraboschi," iv.

[4] These dramas subsequently formed no uncommon spectacle in the
streets of Italy, whence some Italian critics have fancied that the
Gothic poem of Dante--his Hell, his Purgatory, and his Paradise--was
an idea caught from the threefold stage of a mystery which often
fixed his musings in the streets of his own Florence. As late as in
the year 1739, a mystery of _The Damned Soul_, acted by living
personages, was still exhibited by a company of strollers in Turin;
we have the amusing particulars in a letter by Spence.--Spence's
"Anecdotes," 397. They have sunk to the humble state of puppet-shows,
and are still exhibited at Carnival time at Venice and elsewhere.

[5] See the note and this extraordinary blunder in _Fabliaux_, ii.
152.

[6] Mr. Wright has published a curious collection of Latin mysteries
of the twelfth century. [For a detailed notice of other printed
collections see note to "Curiosities of Literature," vol. i. p.
352.--ED.]

[7] Perhaps the very last remains of such rude dramatic exhibitions
are yet to be traced in our counties--about Christmas-tide, or rather
old Christmas, whose decrepit age is personified. In Lancashire and
Yorkshire, and also in Dorsetshire, families are visited by "the
great Emperor of the Turks" and St. George of England, or by the
lion-hearted Richard. After a fierce onset, ringing their tin swords,
the Saracens groan and drop. The Leech appears holding his phial;
from some drops the dead survive their fate, and rise for the
hospitable supper. The dialogue, however, has not been so traditional
as the exhibition. The curious portion of these ancient exhibitions
is, therefore, totally lost in the substitutions of the rude rustics.
The Wassail Songs, or the Christmas Carols, have come down with fewer
losses than these ancient "Tales of the Crusaders;" for the language
of emotion, and the notice of old picturesque customs, cling to the
memory, and endure with their localities. But for these we must
travel far from the land of the Cockneys.

[8] Bouterwek.

[9] The clergy long continued to assist at these exhibitions, if they
did not always act in them. In 1417, an _English Mystery_ was
exhibited before the Emperor Sigismund, at the Council of Constance,
on the usual subject of the Nativity. The _English Bishops_ had it
rehearsed several days, that the actors might be perfect before their
imperial audience. We are not told in what language their _English
Mystery_ was recited; but we are furnished with a curious fact, that
"the Germans consider this play as the first introduction of that
sort of dramatic performance in their country."--"Henry of Monmouth,"
by the Rev. J. E. Tyler, ii. 61.

[10] The Spanish nation, unchangeable in their customs, have retained
the last remains of the ancient Mysteries in the divisions of their
dramas, called "Jornadas."

[11] "A sheep-skin for Jews, wigs for the Apostles, and vizards for
Devils," appear in the churchwardens' accounts at Tewkesbury, 1578,
"for the players' geers."--"Hist. of Dramatic Poetry," ii. 140. The
same diligent inquirer has also discovered the theatrical term
"properties," in allusion to the furniture of the stage, and which is
so used by Shakspeare, employed in its present sense in an ancient
morality.--Ib. ii. 129.

[12] "Reliques of Ancient Poetry," i. 129.

[13] "Dictionnaire de l'Academie Francaise."--The proverbial phrase
is accompanied by a very superfluous remark--"Ce mot a passe d'usage
avec les moeurs de ces temps anciens." See also "Dict. de Trevoux,"
art. _Mystere_.

[14] That the translation of the "Chester Plays" was made from the
_French_, and not from the _Latin_, as Warton supposed, is
ingeniously elucidated by Mr. Collier. In the English translation,
some of the original French passages have been preserved.--"Annals of
the Stage," ii. 129.

When Warton found that these plays were translated into English, he
concluded that they were from the Latin. He totally forgot that the
French was long the prevalent language of England. And this important
circumstance, too often overlooked by preceding inquirers, has thrown
much confusion in our literary history.

The best account we have of Ralph Higden may be found in the _first_
volume of Lardner's Cyclopaedia on "The Early History of the English
Stage," a work of some original research, at page 193.

[15] The earliest and rudest known miracle-play in English has been
published by Mr. Halliwell--_The Harrowing of Hell_. It was written
in the reign of Edward the Second, and is a curious instance of the
childhood of the drama.

[16] The reign of Henry the Sixth may he fixed upon as the epoch of a
new species of dramatic representation, known by the name of a
moral.--_Collier_, i. 23.

[17] The reader may gratify his curiosity, and derive considerable
amusement, from the skilful analysis of primitive dramas, both
manuscript and printed, which Mr. COLLIER has drawn up with true
dramatic taste. There are also copious specimens in a curious article
on Heywood in the volume on "The English Drama" of Lardner's
Cyclopaedia,--the labour of a learned antiquary. [One of Heywood's
Interludes was printed by the Percy Society from his MS. in the
British Museum, under the editorial care of Mr. Fairholt; who
prefixed an analysis with copious extracts from his other
Interludes.] The progress of the drama was similar both in France and
England, yet our vivacious neighbours seem to have invented a
peculiar burlesque piece of their own, under the title of _Sotties_,
and whose chief personage takes the quality of _Prince des Sots_; and
_La Mere Sotte_, who is represented with her infant _Sots_. These
pieces still retained their devout character, with an intermixture of
profane and burlesque scenes, highly relished by the populace. "Ils
le nommerent par un quolibet vulgaire, _Jeux de Pois pilez_, et ce
fut selon toutes les apparences a cause de melange du sacre et du
profane qui regnait dans ces sortes de jeux." The cant phrase which
the people coined for this odd mixture of sacred and farcical
subjects, of _Mashed Peas_, may lose its humour with us, but we find
by Bayle, art. "D'Assoucy," that they were collected and printed
under this title, and fetched high prices among collectors. These
_Sotties_ were acted by a brotherhood calling themselves _Enfans sans
Soucy_.--Parfait, "Hist. du Theatre Francais," i. 52. One of their
chief composers was PIERRE GRINGOIRE, of whose rare _Sotties_ I have
several reprints by the learned Abbe Caron. Gringoire invented and
performed his _Sotties_, in ridicule of the Pope, on a scaffold or
stage, to charm his royal master, Louis the Twelfth, in 1511; for an
ample list of his gay satires see "Biog. Universelle," art.
"Gringoire."

[18] Strype's "Mem. of Eccles. Hist.," iii. 379.

[19] "Annals of the Stage," i. 107.

[20] Warton's "Hist. of Eng. Poetry," iii. 428, 8vo.

[21] Rastell's "Collection of Statutes," fo. 32--d.

[22] Both these ancient dramas are reprinted in Hawkins' "Origin of
the English Drama." Many such dramas remain in manuscript.

[23] "Bibliotheque du Theatre Francais," iii. 263, ascribed to the
Duke de la Valliere. He has preserved many passages exquisitely
humorous. He felt awkwardly in performing his duty to his readers,
after what his predecessors, Messieurs Parfait, had declared;--and,
to calm the terrors of _les personnes scrupuleuses_, it is amusing to
observe his plea, or his apology, for noticing these admirable
antipapistic satires:--"They are outrageous and abound with
impieties; but they are extremely well written for their time, and
truly comic. I considered that I could not avoid giving these
extracts, were it only to show to what lengths the first pretended
reformers carried their unreasonable violence against the holy
Father, and the court of Rome." The apology for their transcription,
if not more ingenuous, is at least more ingenious than the apology
for their suppression.

THE REFORMER BISHOP BALE; AND THE ROMANIST JOHN HEYWOOD, THE COURT JESTER.

BALE, Bishop of Ossory, and JOHN HEYWOOD, the court jester, were contemporaries, and both equally shared in the mutable fortunes of the satiric dramas of their times; but they themselves were the antipodes of each other: the earnest Protestant BALE, the gravest reformer, and the inflexible Catholic HEYWOOD, noted for "his mad merry wit," form one of those remarkable disparities which the history of literature sometimes offers.

BALE was originally educated in a monastery; he found an early patron, and professed the principles of the Reformation; and, like Luther, sealed his emancipation from Catholic celibacy by a wife, whom he tenderly describes as "his faithful Dorothea." It was a great thing for a monk to be mated with such constancy at a time when women were usually to be described as shrews, or worse. From the day of marriage the malice of persecution haunted the hapless heretic; such personal hatreds could not fail of being mutual. He seems to have too hastily anticipated the Reformation under Henry the Eighth, for though that monarch had freed himself from "the bishop of Rome," he had by no means put aside the doctrines, and Bale, who had already begun a series of two-and-twenty reforming interludes in his "maternal idiom," found it advisable to leave a kingdom but half reformed. He paused not, however, till he had written a whole library against "the Papelins," the last production always seemed the most envenomed. On the death of Henry he unexpectedly appeared before Edward the Sixth, who imagined that he had died. Bale had the misfortune to be promoted to the Irish bishopric of Ossory--to plant Protestantism in a land of Papistry! Frustrated in his unceasing fervour, Bale escaped from martyrdom by hiding himself in Dublin. The death of Edward relieved our Protestant bishop from this sad dilemma; for on the accession of Mary he flew into Switzerland. There he indulged his anti-papistical vein; the press sent forth a brood, among which might have been some of better growth, for he laboured on our British biography and literature; but as there were yet but few Protestants to record, it flowed, and sometimes overflowed, against all the friends of the Papacy; Pits, who subsequently resumed the task, a sullen and fierce Papist, in revenge omitted in the line of our illustrious Britons, Wickliffe and every Wickliffite. Such were the beginnings of our literary history. On the accession of Elizabeth, his country received back its exile; but Bale refused to be reinstated in his Irish see, and sunk into a quiet prebendary of Canterbury. Fuller has called our good bishop "Bilious Bale." Some conceive that this bishop has suffered ill-treatment merely for having thrown out some remarkable, or abominable, invectives. Proselytes, however sincere in their new convictions and their old hatreds, both operating at once, colour their style as some do their faces, till by long use the heightened tint seems faint, and they go on deepening it, and thus at last the natural countenance is lost in the artificial mass.

If Bale were no poet, in the singular dramas we have, he at least displays a fluent invention; he tells plainly what is meant, which we like to learn; and I do not know whether it be owing to his generally indifferent verse that we sometimes are struck by an idiomatic phrase, and a richness of rhymes peculiar to himself, which sustain our attention.[1]

Of JOHN HEYWOOD, the favourite jester of Henry the Eighth and his daughter Mary, and the intimate of Sir Thomas More, whose congenial humour may have mingled with his own, more table-talk and promptness at reply have been handed down to us than of any writer of the times. His quips, and quirks, and quibbles are of his age, but his copious pleasantry still enlivens; these smoothed the brow of Henry, and relaxed the rigid muscles of the melancholy Mary. He had the _entree_ at all times to the privy-chamber, and often to administer a strong dose of himself, which her majesty's physicians would prescribe. He is distinguished as Heywood the epigrammatist; a title fairly won by the man who has left six centuries of epigrams, collected and adjusted as many English proverbs in his verse, besides the quaint conceits of "crossing of proverbs."[2] Of these six hundred epigrams it is possible not a single one is epigrammatic: we have never had a Martial. Even when it became a fashion, to write books of epigrams half a century subsequently, they usually closed in a miserable quibble, a dull apophthegm, or at the best, like those of Sir John Harrington, in a plain story rhymed. Wit, in our sense of the term, was long unpractised, and the modern epigram was not yet discovered.

Heywood, who had flourished under Henry, on the change in the reign of Edward, clung to the ancient customs. He was a Romanist, but had he not recovered in some degree from the cecity of superstition, he had not so keenly exposed, as he has done, some vulgar impostures. It happened, however, that some unlucky jest, trenching on treason, flew from the lips of the unguarded jester; it would have hanged some--but pleasant verses promptly addressed to the young sovereign saved him at the pinch,--however, he gathered from "the council" that this was no jesting-time, and he left the country in the day that Bale was returning from his emigration under King Henry. On Mary's accession, Bale again retired, and Heywood suddenly appeared at court. Asked by the queen "What wind blew him there?" "Two specially; the one to see your majesty!" he replied. "We thank you for that," said the queen, "but I pray you what is the other?" "That your grace might see me!" There was shrewdness in this pleasantry, to bespeak the favour of his royal patroness. Four short years did not elapse ere Elizabeth opened her long reign, and then the merry Romanist for ever bid farewell to his native land, while Bale finally sat beside his English hearth. These were very moveable and removeable times, and no one was certain how long he should remain in his now locality.

The genius of HEYWOOD created "The Merrie Interlude;" unlike BALE, as in all things, he never opened the Bible for a stage-play, but approaching Comedy, he became the painter of manners, and the chronicler of domestic life. Warton certainly has hastily and contradictorily censured Heywood, without a right comprehension of his peculiar subjects; yet he admired at least one of Heywood's writings, in which, being anonymous, he did not recognise the victim of his vague statements. Warton and his followers have obscured a true genius for exuberant humour, keen irony, and exquisite ridicule, such as Rabelais and Swift would not have disdained, and have not always surpassed. One of his interludes is accessible for those who can revel in a novel scene of comic invention. This interlude is "The Four P's; the Palmer, the Pardoner, the Poticary, and the Pedler." Each flouts the other, and thus display their professional knaveries.[3]

The ludicrous strokes of this piece could never have come from a bigot to the ancient superstition, however attached to the ancient creed. We cannot tell how far the jester may have been influenced by a proclamation of 28th of Henry the Eighth, to protect "the poor innocent people from those light persons called pardoners by colour of their indulgences," &c. He has curiously exhibited to us all the trumpery regalia of papistry; as he also exposed "The Friery" in another interlude which has all the appearance of a merry tale from Boccaccio.

So plays the jocund spirit of Heywood the Jester, in his minstrel-verse and pristine idiom; but we have now to tell another tale. Heywood is the author of a ponderous volume, and an interminable "parable" of "The Spider and the Fly." It is said to have occupied the thoughts of the writer during twenty years. This unlucky "heir of his invention" is dressed out with a profusion of a hundred woodcuts--then rare and precious things--among which starts up the full-length of the author more than once. Warton impatiently never reached the conclusion, where the author has confided to us the secret of his incomprehensible intention. There Warton would have found that "we must understand that the spiders represent the Protestants, and the flies the Catholics; that the maid with the broom sweeping away the cobwebs (to the annoyance of their weavers) is Mary armed with the civil power, executing the commands of her Master (Christ), and her mistress (Mother Church)." We see at once all the embarrassments and barrenness of this wearying and perplexed fancy. Warton contents himself with what he calls "a sensible criticism," taken from Harrison, a Protestant minister, and one of the partners of Holinshed's Chronicle; it is as mordacious as a periodical criticism. "Neither he who made this book, nor any who reads it, can reach unto the meaning." Warton, to confirm "the sensible criticism," alleges as a proof of its unpopularity, that it was never reprinted; but it was published in 1556, and Mary died in 1558. A vindication of "the maid with the broom" might be equally unwelcome to "spiders and flies."

How it happened that the court jester who has sent forth such volumes of mirth could have kept for years hammering at a dull and dense poem, is a literary problem which perhaps admits of a solution. We may ascribe this aberration of genius to the author's position in society. Heywood was a Romanist from principle; that he was no bigot, his free satires on vulgar superstitions attest. But the jester at times was a thoughtful philosopher. One of his interludes is _The Play of the Weather_, where the ways of Providence are vindicated in the distribution of the seasons. But "mad, merry Heywood" was the companion of many friends--Papists and Protestants--at court and in all the world over. His creed was almost whole in broken times, perhaps agreeing a little with the Protestant, and then reverting to the Romanist. In this unbalanced condition, mingling the burlesque with the solemn, unwilling to excommunicate his friend the Protestant "spider," and intent to vindicate the Romanist "fly;" often he laid aside, and often resumed, his confused emotions. It might require dates to settle the precise allusions; what he wrote under Henry and Edward would be of another colour than under the Marian rule. His gaiety and his gravity offuscate one another; and the readers of his longsome fiction, or his dark parallel, were puzzled, even among his contemporaries, to know in what sense to receive them. Sympathising with "the fly," and not uncourteous to "the spider," our author has shown the danger of combining the burlesque with the serious; and thus it happened that the most facetious genius could occupy twenty years in compounding, by fits and starts, a dull poem which neither party pretended rightly to understand.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] One of these interludes has been recently published by the Camden
Society, under the skilful editorship of Mr. Collier, from a
manuscript corrected by Bale himself in the Devonshire collection--it
is entitled "Kynge Johan," [and founded on events in his reign, made
subservient to the ultra-protestantism of Bale.] Others have been
printed in the "Harleian Collection," vol. i.; and in Dodsley's "Old
English Drama."

[2] That is, proverbs with humorous answers to them. See the
"Bibliographical and Critical Catalogue," by Mr. Payne Collier, of
Lord Francis Egerton's "Library of Early English Literature," p. 2.

[3] Dodsley's "Old Plays," vol. i.

ROGER ASCHAM.

It would, perhaps, have surprised ROGER ASCHAM, the scholar of a learned age, and a Greek professor, that the history of English literature might open with his name; for in his English writings he had formed no premeditated work, designed for posterity as well as his own times. The subjects he has written on were solely suggested by the occasion, and incurred the slight of the cavillers of his day, who had not yet learned that humble titles may conceal performances which exceed their promise, and that trifles cease to be trivial in the workmanship of genius.

An apology for a favourite recreation, that of archery, for his indulgence in which his enemies, and sometimes his friends, reproached the truant of academic Greek; an account of the affairs of Germany while employed as secretary to the English embassy; and the posthumous treatise of "The Schoolmaster," originating in an accidental conversation at table, constitute the whole of the claims of Ascham to the rank of an English classic--a degree much higher than was attained by the learning of Sir Thomas Elyot, and the genius of Sir Thomas More.

The mind of Ascham was stored with all the wealth of ancient literature the nation possessed. Ascham was proud, when alluding to his master the learned Cheke, and to his royal pupil Queen Elizabeth, of having been the pupil of the greatest scholar, and the preceptor to the greatest pupil in England; but we have rather to admire the intrepidity of his genius, which induced him to avow the noble design of setting an example of composing in our vernacular idiom. He tells us in his "Toxophilus," "I write this English matter in the English language for Englishmen." He introduced an easy and natural style in English prose, instead of the pedantry of the unformed taste of his day; and adopted, as he tells us, the counsel of Aristotle, "to speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do."

The study of Greek was the reigning pursuit in the days of Ascham. At the dispersion of the Greeks on the loss of Constantinople, the learned emigrants brought with them into Europe their great originals; and the subsequent discovery of printing spread their editions. The study of Greek, on its first appearance in Europe, alarmed the Latin Church, and was long deemed a dangerous and heretical innovation. The cultivation of this language was, however, carried on with enthusiasm, and a controversy was kindled, even in this country, respecting the ancient pronunciation. A passion for Hellenistic lore pervaded the higher classes of society. There are fashions in the literary world as sudden and as capricious as those of another kind; and which, when they have rolled away, excite a smile, although possibly we have only adopted another of fresher novelty. The Greek mania raged. Ascham informs us that his royal pupil Elizabeth understood Greek better than the canons of Windsor; and, doubtless, while the queen was translating Isocrates, the ladies in waiting were parsing. Lady Jane Grey studying Plato was hardly an uncommon accident; but the touching detail which she gave to Ascham of her domestic persecution, on trivial forms of domestic life, which had induced her to fly for refuge to her Greek, has thrown a deep interest on that well-known incident. All educated persons then studied Greek; when Ascham was secretary to our ambassador at the Court of Charles the Fifth, five days in the week were occupied by the ambassador reading with the secretary the Greek tragedians, commenting on Herodotus, and reciting the Orations of Demosthenes. But this rage was too capricious to last, and too useless to be profitable; for neither the national taste nor the English language derived any permanent advantage from this exclusive devotion to Greek, and the fashion became lost in other studies.

It was a bold decision in a collegiate professor, who looked for his fame from his lectures on Greek, to venture on modelling his native idiom, with a purity and simplicity to which it was yet strange. Ascham, indeed, was fain to apologise for having written in English, and offered the king, Henry the Eighth, to make a Greek or a Latin version of his "Toxophilus," if his grace chose. "To have written in another tongue had been both more profitable for my study, and also more honest [honourable] for my name; yet I can think my labour well bestowed, if, with a little hindrance of my profit and name, may come any furtherance to the pleasure or commodity of _the gentlemen and yeomen of England_. As for the Latin and Greek tongue, everything is so excellently done in them that none can do better; _in the English tongue_, contrary, _everything in a manner so meanly, both for the matter and handling, that no man can do worse_."

Such were the first difficulties which the fathers of our native literature had to overcome. Sir Thomas Elyot endured the sneer of the cavillers, for his attempt to inlay our unpolished English with Latin terms; and Roger Ascham, we see, found it necessary to apologise for at all adopting the national idiom. Since that day neologisms have fertilised the barrenness of our Saxon, and the finest geniuses in Europe have abandoned the language of Cicero, to transfuse its grace into an idiom whose penury was deemed too rude for the pen of the scholar. Ascham followed his happier genius, and his name has created an epoch in the literature of England.

A residence of three years in Germany in the station of confidential secretary of our ambassador to the Emperor Charles the Fifth, placed him in a more extensive field of observation, and brought him in contact with some of the most remarkable men of his times. It is much to be regretted, that the diary he kept has never been recovered. That Ascham was inquisitive, and, moreover, a profound observer at an interesting crisis in modern history, and that he held a constant intercourse with great characters, and obtained much secret history both of persons and of transactions, fully appears in his admirable "Report of the Affairs and State of Germany, and the Emperor Charles' Court." This "Report" was but a chance communication to a friend, though it is composed with great care. Ascham has developed with a firm and masterly hand the complicated intrigues of the various powers, when Charles the Fifth seemed to give laws to Germany and Italy. This emperor was in peace with all the world in 1550, and in less than two years after, he was compelled to fly from Germany, surrounded by secret enemies. Ascham has traced the discontents of the minor courts of Italian dukes, and German princes, who gradually deserted the haughty autocrat--an event which finally led to the emperor's resignation. It is a moral tale of princes openly countenancing quietness, and "privily brewing debate"--a deep catastrophe for the study of the political student. Ascham has explained the double game of the court of Rome, under the ambitious and restless Julius the Third, who, playing the emperor against the French monarch, and the French monarch against the emperor, worked himself into that intricate net of general misery, spun out of his own crafty ambidexterity. This precious fragment of secret history might have offered new views and many strokes of character to the modern historian, Robertson, who seems never to have discovered this authentic document; yet it lay at hand. So little even in Robertson's day did English literature, in its obscurer sources, enter into the pursuits of our greatest writers.

Ascham's first work was the "Toxophilus, the Schole, or Partitions of Shootinge." At this time fire-arms were so little known, that the term "shooting" was solely confined to the bow, then the redoubtable weapon of our hardy countrymen. In this well-known treatise on archery, he did what several literary characters have so well done, apologised for his amusement in a manner that evinced the scholar had not forgotten himself in the archer.

It affords some consolation to authors, who often suffer from neglect, to observe the triumph of an excellent book. Its first appearance procured him a pension from Henry the Eighth, which enabled him to set off on his travels. Subsequently, in the reign of Mary, when that eventful change happened in religion and in politics, adverse to Ascham, our author was cast into despair, and hastened to hide himself in safe obscurity. It was then that this excellent book, and a better at that time did not exist in the language, once more recommended its author; for Gardiner, the papal bishop of Winchester, detected no heresy in the volume, and by his means, the Lords of the Council approving of it, the author was fully reinstated in royal favour. Thus Ascham twice owed his good fortune to his good book.

"The Schoolmaster," with its humble title, "to teach children to understand, write, and speak the Latin tongue," conveys an erroneous notion of the delight, or the knowledge which may be drawn from this treatise, notwithstanding that the work remains incomplete, for there are references to parts which do not appear in the work itself. "The Scholemaster" is a classical production in English, which may be placed by the side of its great Latin rivals, the Orations of Cicero, and the Institutes of Quintilian. It is enlivened by interesting details. The first idea of the work was started in a real conversation at table, among some eminent personages, on occasion of the flight of some scholars from Eton College, driven away by the iron rod of the master. "Was the schoolhouse to be a house of bondage and fear, or a house of play and pleasure?" During the progress of the work the author lost his patron, and incurred other disappointments; he has consigned all his variable emotions to his volume. The accidental interview with Lady Jane Grey; his readings with Queen Elizabeth in their daily intercourse with the fine writers of antiquity, and their recreations at the regal game of chess--for such was the seduction of Attic learning, that the queen on the throne felt a happiness in again becoming the pupil of her old master; these, and similar incidents, present those individual touches of the writer, which give such a reality to an author's feelings.[1]

It is to be regretted that Ascham held but an indolent pen. Yet it were hard to censure the man for a cold neglect of his fame, who seems equally to have neglected his fortune. Ascham has written little; and all he left his family was "this little book" (The Schoolmaster), and which he bequeathed to them, as the right way to good learning, "which, if they follow, they shall very well come to sufficiency of living." This was an age when the ingenious clung to a patron; the widow and the son of Ascham found the benefits of this testamentary recommendation. It must, however, be confessed to have been but a capricious legacy, for no administrator might have been found to "the will." The age of patronage was never that of independence to an author.

Johnson, in his admirable "Life of Ascham," observed, that "his disposition was kind and social; he delighted in the pleasure of conversation, and was probably not much inclined to business." It is certain that he preferred old books to pounds sterling, for once he requested to commute a part of his pension for a copy of the "Decem Rhetores Graeci," which he could not purchase at Cambridge. His frequent allusions in his letters when abroad to "Mine Hostess Barnes," who kept a tavern at Cambridge in the reign of Edward the Sixth, with tender reminiscences of her "fat capons," and the "good-fellowship" there; and further, his sympathy at the deep potation, when standing hard by the emperor at his table, he tells us, "the emperor drank the best I ever saw,--he had his head in the glass five times as long as any of us, and never drank less than a good quart at once of Rhenish wine," and his determination of providing "every year a little vessel of Rhenish" for his cronies: and still further, his haunting the cockpit, and sometimes trusting fortune by her dice, notwithstanding that he describes "dicing" as "the green pathway of Hell;" all these _traits_ mark the boon companion loving his leisure and his lounge.

When engaged in public life, a collegiate fellowship appeared to him to offer supreme felicity. He writes thus,--"Ascham to his friends: who is able to maintain his life at Cambridge, knows not what a felicity he hath." Such was the conviction of one who had long lived in courts.

But when we consider that Ascham was Latin secretary to Edward the Sixth, to Mary, and to Elizabeth, and intimately acquainted with the transactions of these cabinets, with the sovereigns, and the ministers; and during three years held a personal intercourse with the highest foreign court;--we must regret, if we no not censure, the man who, possessing these rare advantages, with a vigorous intellect, and a felicitous genius, has left the world in silence. Assuredly, in Ascham, we have lost an English Comines, who would have rivalled our few memoir-writers, who, though with pens more industrious, had not eyes more observant, nor heads more penetrating, than this secretary of three sovereigns.

There is, however, reason to conclude, that he himself was not insensible to these higher claims which his station might have urged on his genius and his diligence. Every night during his residence abroad, which was of no short period, he was occupied by filling his Diary, which has not, in any shape, come down to us. He has also himself told, that he had written a book on "The Cockpit," one of the recreations of "a courtly gentleman." We cannot imagine that such writings, by the hand of Ascham, would be destroyed by his family, who knew how to value them. A modern critic, indeed, considers it fortunate for Ascham's credit, that this work on "The Cockpit" has escaped from publication. The criticism is fallacious, for if an apology for cock-fighting be odious, the author's reputation is equally hurt by the announcement as by the performance. But the truth is, that such barbarous sports, like the bear-baiting of England and the bull-fights of Spain, have had their advocates. Queen Elizabeth had appointed Ascham her bear-keeper; and he was writing in his character when disclosing the mysteries of the cockpit. But the genius of our author was always superior to his subject; and this was a treatise wherein he designed to describe "all kinds of pastimes joined with labour used in open place, and in the day-light." The curious antiquary, at least, must regret the loss of Ascham's "Cockpit."

Ascham lived in the ferment of the Reformation: zealously attached to the new faith under Edward the Sixth and Elizabeth, how did he preserve himself during the intermediate reign, when he partook of the favours of the papistical sovereign? His master and friend, the learned Sir John Cheke, had only left for himself the choice of a recantation, or a warrant for execution; but of Ascham's good fortune, nothing is known but its mystery. The novel religion had, however, early heated the passions, and narrowed the judgment, of Ascham. He wrote at a period when the Romanist and the Protestant reciprocally blackened each other. Ascham not only abhorred all Italians as papists, but all Italian books as papistical. He invokes the interposition of the civil magistrate against Petrarch and Boccaccio, whose volumes were then selling in every shop. Baretti strikes at his manes with his stiletto-pen, in an animated passage;[2] and Warton is indignant at his denunciation of our ancient romances, of which the historian of our poetry says, "he has written in the spirit of an early Calvinistic preacher, rather than as a sensible critic and a polite scholar"--he who, in his sober senses, was eminently both.

We may lament that the first steps in every revolution are taken in darkness, and that the reaction of opinions and prejudices is itself accompanied by errors and prejudices of its own. The bigotry of the new faith was not inferior to the old. The reforming Archbishop Grindal substituted the dull and barbarous Palingenius, Sedulius, and Prudentius, for the great classical authors of antiquity. The Reformation opened with fanaticism; and men were reformers before they were philosophers. Had Ascham, a learned scholar, and a man of fine genius, been blessed with the prescient eye of philosophy, he had perceived that there was not more papistry in the solemn "Trionfi" of Petrarch, and not less "honest pastime" in a "merrie tale" of Boccaccio, than in cock-fighting and dicing; and that with these works the imagination of the public was gradually stepping out of a supernatural world of folio legends, into a world of true nature, which led to that unrivalled era which immortalised the closing century.

We must recollect that the bigotry of the Reformation, or that which afterwards assumed the form of puritanism, in their absurd notion of the nature of idolatry attached to every picture and every statue on sacred subjects, eventually banished the fine arts from England for a long century, and retarded their progress even to our own days. A curious dialogue has been preserved by Strype, whose interlocutors are Queen Elizabeth and a Dean. The Dean having obtained some of those fine German paintings, those book-miniatures which are of the most exquisite finish, placed them in her majesty's prayer-book. For this the queen proscribed the dean, as she did those beautiful illuminations, as "Romish and idolatrous;" and with a Gothic barbarism, strange in a person with her Attic taste, commanded the clergy "to wash all pictures out of their walls." To this circumstance the painter Barry ascribes the backward state of the fine arts, which so long made us a by-word among the nations of Europe, and even induced the critical historian of the arts, Winkelman, to imagine that the climate of England presented an internal obstruction to the progress of art itself; it was too long supposed that no Englishman could ever aspire to be an artist of genius. The same principle which urged Ascham to denounce all Italian books, instigated his royal pupil "to wash out all pictures;" and even so late as the reign of George the Third, when the artists of England made a noble offer, gratuitously to decorate our churches with productions of their own composition, the Bishop of London forbade the glorious attempt to redeem English art from the anathema of foreign critics.

Ascham, whose constitutional delicacy often impeded his studies, died prematurely. The parsimonious queen emphatically rated his value by declaring, that she would rather have lost ten thousand pounds--no part of which, during his life, the careless yet not the neglected Ascham ever shared.

Roger Ascham was truly what Pope has described Gay to have been, "in wit a man, simplicity a child;" and he has developed his own character in his letters. Latin and English, they are among the earliest specimens of that domestic and literary correspondence in which the writer paints himself without reserve, with all the warm touches of a free pencil, gay sallies of the moment, or sorrows of the hour, confiding to the bosom of a friend the secrets of his heart and his condition; such as we have found in the letters of Gray and of Shenstone.

The works of Ascham, which are collected in a single volume, remain for the gratification of those who preserve a pure taste for the pristine simplicity of our ancient writers. His native English, that English which we have lost, but which we are ever delighted to recover, after near three centuries, is still critical without pedantry, and beautiful without ornament: and, which cannot be said of the writings of Sir THOMAS ELYOT and Sir THOMAS MORE, the volume of ASCHAM is indispensable in every English library, whose possessor in any way aspires to connect together the progress of taste and of opinion in the history of our country.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] There were five editions of "The Scholemaster" within twenty
years of its first publication, of which that of 1573 is the most
correct and rare.--Dr. Valpy's "Cat."

[2] Baretti's "Account of the Manners of Italy," ii. 137--the most
curious work of this Anglo-Italian.

PUBLIC OPINION.

How long has existed that numerous voice which we designate as "Public Opinion;" which I shall neither define nor describe?

The history of the English "people," considered in their political capacity, cannot be held to be of ancient date. The civil wars of England, and the intestine discords of the bloody Roses, seem to have nearly reduced the nation to a semi-barbarous condition; disputed successions, cruel factions, and family feuds, had long convulsed the land, and the political disorganization had been as eventful as were, not long after, the religious dissensions.

The grandfather of Elizabeth, Henry the Seventh, had terminated a political crisis. It was his policy to weaken the personal influence of the higher nobility, whose domination our monarchs had often fatally experienced. This seems to have been the sole "public" concern of this prudential and passionless sovereign, who, as the authority of the potent aristocracy declined, established that despotic regality which remained as the inheritance of the dynasty of the Tudors.

In the days of the queen's father all "public interests" were concentrated in the court-circle and its dependencies. The Parliament was but the formal echo of the voice which came from the cabinet. The learned Spelman has recorded that when the Lower House hesitated to pass the bill for the dissolution of the monasteries, they were summoned into the king's presence; and the Commons being first kept in waiting some hours in his gallery, the king entered, looking angrily on one side and then on the other: the dark scowl of the magnificent despot announced his thoughts; and they listened to the thunder of his voice. "I hear," said he, "that my bill will not pass, but I will have it pass, or I will have some of your heads."[1] I do not recollect whether it was on this occasion that his majesty saluted his faithful Commons as "brutes!" but the burly tyrant treated them as such. The penalty of their debates was to be their heads; therefore this important bill passed _nemine contradicente_!

However contemptuously this monarch regarded those who were within his circle, he was sufficiently enlightened in the great national revolution he meditated to desire to gain over the multitude on his side. The very circumstance of the king allowing, as the letters patent run, "the free and liberal use of the Bible in _our own natural English tongue_," was a _coup-d'etat_, and an evidence that Henry at one time designed to create a people of readers on whom he counted to side with him. The people were already possessed of the Reformation, before Henry the Eighth had renounced the papacy. The reformers abroad had diligently supplied them with versions of the Scriptures, and no small numbers of pamphlets printed abroad in English were dispersed among the early "gospellers," the expressive distinction of the new heretics; a humble but fervent rabble of tailors, joiners, weavers, and other handicraftsmen, who left "the new for the old God," ready martyrs against the gross papistical impostures, and many females theological, who turned away from the corporal presence, and whom no bishop could seduce to curtsey to a saint.

The new concession made to this people was indeed received with enthusiasm. All flocked to read, or to be read to. Never were the Scriptures so artlessly scrutinised; they furnished whole scenes for interludes, and were tagged with rhymes for ballads; even the grave judges, before they delivered their charges, prefaced them by a text. Each reader became an expounder, and new schismatics were busied with new heresies. The king had not calculated on this result; and when he found the nation abounded not with readers so much as with disputants--that controversies raged where uniformity was expected--Henry became so irritated at the universal distraction of opinion, that his first attempt to raise a public voice ended, as has been since often attempted, in its suppression. The permission to read the sacred volume was contracted by the most qualifying clauses. The noble and the gentry might read it "alone in their garden or orchard, or other retired places," but men and women in the lower ranks were absolutely forbidden to read it, or to have it read to them.[2]

The clashing polemics of the brother and the sister of Elizabeth did not advance the progress of civil society. The novelists, if we may so term these lovers of novelty, flushed with innovation, were raging with every rapid change, while the ancients, in spite and in despondence, sullenly clung to the old, which they held could never be the obsolete. The first movements of the great reform seemed only to have transferred the late civil wars which had distracted the land, to the minds of the people in a civil war of opinions.