Chapter VIII: Part 8

Are the works of our great poet to be consigned to the literary dungeon of the antiquary's closet? I fear that there is more than one obstruction which intervenes between the poet's name, which will never die, and the poet's works, which will never be read. A massive tome, dark with the Gothic type, whose obsolete words and difficult phrases, and, for us, uncadenced metre, are to be conned by a glossary as obsolete as the text, to be perpetually referred to, to the interruption of all poetry and all patience, appalled even the thorough-paced antiquary, Samuel Pegge, as appears by his honest confession. Already a practised bibliosopher proclaims, alluding to the edition by Tyrwhit of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," "And who reads any other portion of the poet?" Yet the "Canterbury Tales" are but the smallest portion of Chaucer's works! But some skilful critics have perpended and decided differently: even among the projected labours of Johnson was an edition of Chaucer's works; and Godwin, when diligently occupied on this great poet, with just severity observed that "a vulgar judgment had been propagated by slothful and indolent persons, that the 'Canterbury Tales' are the only part of the works of Chaucer worthy the attention of a modern reader, and this has contributed to the wretched state in which his works are permitted to exist."

Are we then no longer to linger over the visionary emotions of the great poet in the fine portraitures of his genius from his youthful days, when the fever of his soul, not knowing where to seek for its true aliment, careless of life, fed on its own sad musings, in Chaucer's "DREME," or, onwards in life, in the "TESTAMENT OF LOVE," that chronicle of the heart in a prison solitude? And are we no longer interested in those personal traits Chaucer has so frequently dropped of his own tastes and humours, so that we are in fact better acquainted with Chaucer than we are with Shakspeare? Even during his official occupations, this poet loved his studious solitary nights, and frequently alludes to his passion. Must we close that "HOUSE OF FAME," with whose fragments Pope reared "The Temple?" Has all the enchantment of the moonlight-land of chivalry and fairyism in "THE FLOURE AND THE LEAFE" vanished? Are we no longer to listen to "THE COMPLAINT OF THE BLACK KNIGHT," which touched a duchess or a queen? or the stanzas of "THE CUCKOO AND THE NIGHTINGALE," which musically resound that musical encounter? Is the legend of pathetic tenderness in the impassioned "TROILUS," and "the sillie woman who falsed Troilus," ever to be closed? there may we pursue the vicissitudes of love, in what the poet calls "a little tragedy;" and we find Ovidian graces amid its utter simplicity. There are, indeed, vicissitudes of taste as well as of love. "Troilus and Cressida" was the favourite in the days of Henry VIII. over the "Canterbury Tales" and "The Floure and the Leafe;" it was, too, the model of Sidney in the court of Elizabeth; Love triumphed at court over Humour and Fancy.

It is true that the language of Chaucer has failed, but not the writer. The marble which Chaucer sculptured has betrayed the noble hand of the artist; the statue was finished; but the grey and spotty veins came forth, clouding the lucid whiteness.

For the poet or the poetical, the difficulty of the language may be surmounted with a reasonable portion of every-day patience. I know, from several of my literary contemporaries, that this, however, has not been conceded. The more familiar I became with Chaucer, the more I delighted in the significance of the Chaucerian words. From some modern critics, occasionally the name of Chaucer startles the ear. One, indeed, has recently complained that "Chaucer's divine qualities are languidly acknowledged by his unjust countrymen;"[5] and Coleridge emphatically said, "I take unceasing delight in Chaucer. His manly cheerfulness is especially delicious in my old age. How exquisitely tender he is!"[6]

But the popularity of this gifted child of nature, and this shrewd observer of mankind, is doomed to another obstruction than that of his curious diction. The playfulness of his comic invention, and the freedom of his simplicity, will no longer be allowed to atone for the levity of some of his incidents. When Warton, to display the genuine vein of the Chaucerian humour, imprudently analysed the "Miller's Tale," having reached the middle, the critic, recollecting himself, suddenly breaks off with a curt remark--"The sequel cannot be repeated here!" In a recklessness of all knowledge, and in an unhappy hour, the poet of "Don Juan" decided, while he probably would have started from Chaucer's black-letter tome, that "Chaucer, notwithstanding the praises bestowed on him, I think obscene and contemptible. He owed his celebrity merely to his antiquity." As if the greatest of our poets had only been celebrated in the day when Byron wrote! Yet in all the unfettered invention and nudity of style, there was no grossness in the temper, and less in the habits, of the poet. He addressed his own age as his contemporaries were doing in France and in Italy, and from whom he had borrowed the very two tales on which this censure has fallen. In telling "a merrie tale," Chaucer could not have anticipated this charge; and, in truth, for subjects which are obscene and disgustful he had no taste, as he showed in his reproof of Gower for having selected two repulsive ones--the unnatural passions of Canace and Apollonius Tyrius. Of these our Chaucer cries,--

Of all swiche cursed stories I say, Fy!

Our poet has himself pleaded that having fixed on his personage, he had no choice to tell any other tale than what that individual would himself have told. Before we immolate Chaucer on the altar of the Graces, we should not only listen to his plea, but to his own easy remedy for this disorder produced by his too faithful copy after nature.

--------Whoso list not to hear,
Turn over the leaf, and chese another tale!

Our notions and our customs of delicacy are the result of a change in our manners of no distant period; and, compared with our neighbours, many are still but conventional. They are so even in respect to ourselves, for, not to go back to the golden days of Elizabeth, the language and the manners of the court of Anne would have startled modern decorum. The "polite conversation" of Swift has fortunately preserved for us specimens which we could not have imagined. Our poems, our comedies, and our tales, so late as the days of Swift and Pope, have allusions, and even incidents and descriptions, which we no longer tolerate. How far our fastidiousness lies on the surface of our lesser morals, I will not decide; but men of genius have complained that this fastidiousness has become too restrictive, by contracting the sphere of inventive humour, which flashes often in such small matters as ludicrous tales and playful levities, which must not lie on our tables.

Chaucer long remained a favourite in the most polite circles; Aubrey, at the close of the seventeenth century, in his "Idea," recommends the study of Chaucer, as the poet in full reputation. At a later period, the days of Dryden and Pope, our versifiers were continually renovating his humour and his more elegant fictions. OGLE, with others, attempted to modernize Chaucer; but it is as impossible to give such a version of Chaucer as to translate the Odes of Horace. They corrupted by their interpolations, and weakened by their diffusion; Chaucer was not discernible in the dimness of their paraphrase. The great beauties of Chaucer spring up from the soil in which they lie embedded; and the most skilful hand will discover that in gathering the flower it must cease to live without its root.

We never possessed a tolerably correct edition of this master-poet; and the very circumstance of the continued popularity of the poems with the many has occasioned their present wretched condition. When works circulated in their manuscript state, before the era of printing, the popularity of a poet made his text the more liable to corruption. Multiplied transcripts were produced by heedless or licentious scribes, whose careless omissions, and whose perpetuated blunders and even interpolations can only be credited by the collators of the manuscripts of Chaucer. This happened with the very first printed edition by Caxton. Our patriarchal publisher discovered that he had printed from a very faulty manuscript, and, in that primitive age of simplicity and printing, nobly suppressed the edition which dishonoured the author, and substituted an improved one. Doubtless GOWER, a grave and learned poet, whose copies are remarkably elegant, has descended to us in a purer condition than CHAUCER, for he was rarely transcribed. Speght was the first editor who gave a more complete edition of Chaucer, with the useful appendage of a glossary, the first of its kind, and which has been a fortunate acquisition for later glossographers. But Speght, with the aid of Stowe, who was equally industrious, was so deficient in critical acumen, as to have impounded any stray on the common stamped with the initials of Chaucer. Thus our poet has suffered all the mischances of faithless scribes, unintelligent printers, and uncritical editors. To make the bad worse, the last modern edition of Chaucer, by URRY, though recommended by the white letter, offering this bland relief to a modern reader, is a showy volume, of which we are forbidden to read a line! The history of this edition is an evidence how ill our scholars, at no remote period, were qualified to decide on the fate of a great vernacular author. Urry, the pupil of Dean Aldrich, and the friend of Bishop Atterbury, appears to have been one of that galaxy or confederacy of wits called "the Wits of Christ Church." The "Student of Christ Church, Oxon," offered a title and a place which would sanction an edition of Chaucer; one object of which was to contribute five hundred pounds to finish Peckwater Quadrangle. The pompous folio appeared heralded by the queen's licence for the exclusive sale for fourteen years. Our editor at first seems to have been reluctant and modest, till instigated by his great patrons to divest himself of all fear of the author. In his innocence conceiving that the strokes of his own pen would silently improve an obsolete genius, this merciless interpolator, changing words and syllables at pleasure, has furnished a text which Chaucer never wrote![7] If the worst edition that was ever published contributed to finish Peckwater Quadrangle, it is amusing to be reminded that causes are often strangely disproportionate to their effects.

The famous portion of Chaucer's Miscellaneous Volume has been fortunate in the editorial cares of TYRWHIT. Tyrwhit, a scholar as well as an antiquary, was an expert philologer; his extensive reading in the lore of our vernacular literature and our national antiquities promptly supplied what could not have entered into his more classical studies; and his sagacity seems to have decided on the various readings of all the manuscripts, by piercing into the core of the poet's thoughts.[8]

It is remarkable that some of the most lively productions of several great writers have been the work of their maturest age. Johnson surpassed all his preceding labours in his last work, the popular Lives of the Poets. The "Canterbury Tales" of Chaucer were the effusions of his advanced age, and the congenial verses of Dryden were thrown out in the luxuriance of his later days. Milton might have been classed among the minor poets had he not lived to be old enough to become the most sublime. Let it be a source of consolation, if not of triumph, in a long studious life of true genius, to know that the imagination may not decline with the vigour of the frame which holds it; there has been no old age for many men of genius.

We must lament that at such an early period in our vernacular literature, we have to record that the two fathers of our poetry, congenial spirits as they were, too closely resembled most of their sons--in one of the most painful infirmities of genius. I have said elsewhere that jealousy, long supposed to be the offspring of little minds, is not, however, confined to them. We do not possess the secret history of the two great poets, Chaucer and Gower; but we are told by Berthelet in his edition of Gower's "Confessio Amantis," when he quotes the commendatory lines on Gower by Chaucer, that the poets "were both excellently learned, _both great friendes together_." Ancient biographers usually fall into this vague style of eulogy, which served their purpose rather than a more critical research. True it is that "they were both great friends," but, what Berthelet has not told, they became also "both great enemies." We know that Chaucer has commemorated the dignified merits of "the moral Gower," and that Gower has poured forth an effusion not less fervid than elegant from the lips of Venus, who calls Chaucer "her own clerk, who in the flower of his youth had made ditees and songes glad which have filled the land." Did this little passion of poetic jealousy creep into their great souls? Else how did it happen that Chaucer, who had once solicited the correcting hand of his friend, in his latest work, reprehended the sage and the poet, and that Gower, who had not stinted the rich meed of his eulogy which appeared in the first copies of his "Confessio Amantis," erased the immortality which he had bestowed. The justice of their reciprocal praise neither of these rivals could efface, for that outlives their little jealousies.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] After Godwin had sent to press his biography of Chaucer, a
deposition on the poet's age in the Herald's College detected the
whole erroneous arrangement: as the edifice so ingeniously
constructed had fallen on the aerial architect, he alleged truly that
the deposition "contradicted the received accounts of all the
biographers;" in fact, they had repeated original misstatements. The
appendix, therefore, to the history of this modern biographer stands
as a perpetual witness against its authenticity;--there are some
histories to which an appendix might prove to be as fatal. In this
dilemma, our bold sophist was "absurd and uncharitable enough" to add
one more conjecture to his "Life of Chaucer,"--that "the poet, from a
motive of vanity, had been induced _to state on oath_ that he was
about forty when, in truth, he was fifty-eight!"--Hippisley's
"Chapters on Early English Literature," 85.

[2] It has been alleged by more than one writer, that this mysterious
affair relates to the election for the mayoralty of John of
Northampton, a Wickliffite and a Lancastrian. But Mr. Turner, whose
researches are on a more extended scale than any of his predecessors,
truly observes that--"There are other periods besides the one usually
selected to which the personal evils which Chaucer complains of are
applicable."--"Hist. of England," v. 296. It is as likely to have
occurred when Nicholas Brambre, a confidential partisan of government
in the City, appointed to the mayoralty by his party, caught "the
Freemen" by ambushes of armed men, and turned the Guildhall into a
fortress. At such a time "Free Elections" might have been considered
by Chaucer as something "noble and glorious for all the people."

[3] Dreams.

[4] Better.

[5] Autobiography of an Opium-Eater.--"Tait's Mag." August, 1835.

[6] Coleridge's "Table-Talk."

[7] So unskilful or so incurious was Warburton in the language of our
ancient poets, that in his notes on Pope he quotes the following
lines of Chaucer--

"Love wol not be _constreined_ by maistrie.
Whan maistrie cometh, the _God_ of love anon
_Beteth_ his wings, and _farewel_, he is gon"--

from Urry's edition, in which they appear thus transformed and
corrupted:

Love will not be _confined_ by maisterie.
When maisterie comes, the _Lord_ of love anon
_Flutters_ his wings, and _forthwith_ is he gone.

[An excellent example of the superior vigour of Chaucer may be seen
in an original passage of his "Palamon and Arcite," contrasted with
Dryden's tamer modernization of the same, in "Curiosities of
Literature," vol. ii. p. 107.--ED.]

[8] This "sagacity" has been much and justly questioned by the more
advanced students of medieval literature. Sir Harris Nicolas has
produced an excellent edition of the poet; but the best text of the
"Canterbury Tales" has been published by Mr. Thos. Wright, from a
careful collation of the oldest manuscript.--ED.

GOWER.

In the church of St. Saviour in Southwark may be viewed an ancient monument with its sculptured and Gothic canopy; pictured on its side the three visionary virgins, Charity, Mercy, and Pity, solicit the prayer of the passenger for the soul of the suppliant whose image lies extended on the tomb, with folded hands, and in his damask habit flowing to his feet. His head reposes on three mighty tomes, and is decked with a garland, either of roses which proclaim his knighthood, or the wreath of literature which would more justly distinguish the wearer,--JOHN GOWER, the poet.

In the life of this poet, almost the only certain incident seems to be his sepulchral monument: and even this it had been necessary to repair after the malignity of the Iconoclasts; and of the three sculptured volumes which support the poet's head, a single one only has been opened by the world, for the tomb has perpetuated what the press has not.

The three tomes on the tomb of Gower represent his three great works; but what is remarkable, and shows the unsettled state of our literature, each of these great works is written in a different language, though equally graced with Latin titles. The first, in French, is the "Speculum Meditantis;" the moral reflections relieved by historical examples. The second, in Latin verse, is "Vox Clamantis;" this "Voice" comes not from the desert, for it is that of the clamours of the people; a satire on all ranks, and an exhortation to the youthful monarch to check his own self-indulgence; it includes a chronicle of the insurrection of the populace, or "the clowns," as they were called in Richard the Second's reign. The vernacular style, rather than Latin verse, would have more aptly celebrated the feats of Wat Tyler, or Bet and Sim, Gibbe and Hyke, Hudde and Judde, Jack and Tib. The reporter had no doubt been present at the active scene. The swarm rush on to the call of one another, in hexameters and pentameters. The singularity of the subject, which gives no bad picture of the hurry of a disorderly mob, and the felicity of an old translation, induce me to preserve a partial extract from the manuscript. Our own age has witnessed similar scenes.

Watte vocat, cui Thome venit, neque Symme retardat,
Betteque, Gibbe simul Hyke venire jubent.
Colle furit, quem Gibbe juvat nocumenta parantes,
Cum quibus ad dampnum Wille coire vovet.
Grigge rapit, dam Dawe strepit, comes est quibus Hobbe,
Lorkin et in medio non minor esse putat.
Hudde ferit, quos Judde terit, dum Tebbe juvatur,
Jacke domos que viros vellit, et ense necat.

Tom comes, thereat, when called by Wat, and Simon as forward we find;
Bet calls as quick to Gibb, and to Hyck that neither would tarry
behinde.
Gibbe, a good whelp of that litter, doth help mad Coll more mischief
to do,
And Will he doth vow, the time is come now, he'll join with their
company too.
Davie complains whiles Grigg gets the gains, and Hobb with them doth
partake;
Lorkin aloud, in the midst of the crowd, conceiveth as deep is his
stake.
Hudde doth spoil, whom Judde doth foile, and Tebbe lends his helping
hand,
But Jack, the mad-patch, men and horses doth snatch, and kills all at
his command.

The third and greater work, and the only printed one of Gower, is the "Confessio Amantis," an English poem of about thirty thousand lines; a singular miscellany of allegory, of morality, and of tales. It is studded with sententious maxims and proverbs, and richly diversified with narrations, pleasant and tragic; but the affectation of learning, for learning in its crude state always obtrudes itself, even in works of recreation, has compressed the Aristotelian philosophy, to edify and surprise the readers of the poet's fairy or romantic tales. Robert de Brunne, to illustrate monachal morals, interspersed domestic stories; and amidst the prevalent penury of imagination, that rhyming monk affords the most ancient specimens of English tales in verse: and as Gower's single printed work is of the same species of composition, a system of ethics illustrated by tales, it has been thought that the monk who rhymed in 1300 was the true predecessor of the poet who flourished at the close of that century, however Gower may have purified the "rime doggrel," and elevated the puerile tale. The straw-roof must be raised before the cupola. Genius in its genealogy must not blush at its remote ancestor; the noblest knight may often go back to the mill or the forge. If this rude moralising rhymer really be the poetical father of Gower, then is this antiquated monk the inventor of that narrative poetry which Chaucer, Spenser, Dryden, and even some of our contemporaries, have so delightfully diversified. But story-telling has been of all periods.

There is a portion in this volume which concerns the personal history of the poet.

This work was composed at the suggestion of Richard the Second himself, who among other luxuries loved Froissart's romance and Chaucer's rhymes, and was even willing to be taught the grave lessons which he could not practise. As Gower one day was rowed in his boat on the Thames, he met his "liege lord" in the royal barge, who commanded the poet to enter, and, in a long unrestrained conversation, desired him "to book some new thing in the way he was used." Probably the youthful monarch alluded to the "Vox Clamantis," in which the poet had exhorted his "liege lord" to exercise every kingly virtue, and had without reserve touched on too many imperfections of a court-life. It was to be "a book," added the young monarch, "in which he himself might often look." The poet aspired to fix the honour which he had received, and resolved, in his own words,

To write in such a manner-wise,
Which may be wisdom to the wise,
And play to them that list to play.

In a word, we have here the great Horatian precept by the intuition of our earliest poet.

The political admonitions, and the keen satire on the youthful favourites of the youthful monarch of a luxurious court, and the relaxed morals of the higher ranks, the clergy, and the judges, were all offered with more than the freedom of a poet--they sound the deep tones of the patriot. The sage had solemnly contemplated on the discontents and clamours of the people, and presciently observed the rising of that state-tempest, which in an instant dethroned this magnificent and thoughtless prince.

In the course of the reign of Richard the Second it appears that several alterations were made in the poem. The dedicatory preface was suppressed. Berthelet, the ancient printer of the "Confessio Amantis," discovered that "the prologue" had disappeared, though the same number of lines were substituted, "cleane contrary both in sentence and in meaning." Gower has therefore incurred the reproach of a disloyal desertion of his hapless master to court a successful usurper. One critic tells that "he was given to change with the turns of state." Bishop Nicholson, with dull levity, has a fling at all poets, for he censures Gower for "making too free with his prince--a liberty, it seems, allowed to men of his profession;" while Thomas Hearne, the blind bigot of passive obedience, in editing a monkish life of Richard the Second, would have all Gower condemned to oblivion, because "he had treated the monarch's memory ill, and spoke with equal freedom of the clergy." This vacillating conduct of "the moral Gower," however, need not leave any stain on his memory. We see he had never at any time adulated the youthful monarch; however his tales may have charmed the royal ear, the verse often left behind a wholesome bitterness. Gower had praised Henry of Lancaster at a period when he could not have contemplated the change of dynasty; and when it happened, the poet was of an age far too advanced either to partake of the hopes or the fears that wait on a new reign.

But this tale of Gower's free and honest satire on courts and courtiers is not yet concluded. The sphere of a poet's influence is far wider than that of his own age; and however we may now deem of this grave and ancient poet, he still found understanding admirers so late as in the reign of Charles the First. In the curious "Conference" which took place when Charles the First visited the Marquess of Worcester, at Ragland Castle, with his court, there is the following anecdote respecting the poet Gower.

The marquess was a shrewd though whimsical man, and a favourite of the king for his frankness and his love of the arts. His lordship entertained the royal guest with extraordinary magnificence. Among his rare curiosities was a sumptuous copy of Gower's volume.

Charles the First usually visited the marquess after dinner. Once he found his lordship with the book of John Gower lying open, which the king said he had never before seen. "Oh!" exclaimed the marquess; "it is a book of books! and if your majesty had been well versed in it, it would have made you a king of kings." "Why so, my lord?" "Why, here is set down how Aristotle brought up and instructed Alexander the Great in all the rudiments and principles belonging to a prince." And under the persons of Aristotle and Alexander, the marquess read the king such a lesson that all the standers-by were amazed at his boldness.

The king asked whether he had his lesson by heart, or spake out of the book? "Sir, if you would read my heart, it may be that you might find it there; or if your majesty pleased to get it by heart, I will lend you my book." The king accepted the offer.

Some of the new-made lords fretted and bit their thumbs at certain passages in the marquess's discourse; and some protested that no man was so much for the absolute power of a king as Aristotle. The marquess told the king that he would indeed show him one remarkable passage to that purpose; and turning to the place, read--

A king can kill, a king can save;
A king can make a lord a knave;
And of a knave, a lord also.

On this several new-made lords slank out of the room, which the king observing, told the marquess, "My lord, at this rate you will drive away all my nobility."

This amusing anecdote is an evidence that this ethical poet, after two centuries and a half, was not forgotten; his spirit was still vital, his volume still lay open on the library table; it afforded a pungent lesson to the courtiers of Charles the First as it had to those of Richard the Second.

GOWER was learned, didactic, and dignified. The manuscripts of his works are usually noble and sumptuous copies; more elegantly written and more richly illuminated than the works of other poets. His commonplaces and his legendary lore seem to have awed the simplicity of the readers of two centuries, whose taste did not yet feel that failure of the poet who narrated a fable from Ovid with the dull prolixity of a matter-of-fact chronicler. His fictions are rarely imaginative; yet critics, far abler judges of his relative merits than ourselves, since they lived within the sphere of his influence, hailed this grave father of our poesy. Leland, the royal antiquary of Henry the Eighth, expressed his ideas with great elegance and sensibility, when he said of Gower that "his diligent culture of our poesy had extirpated the ordinary herbs; and that the soft violet and the purple narcissus were now growing, where erst was nothing seen but the thistle and the thorn." There are indeed some graceful flowers in his desert. But all criticism is usually relative to the age, and excellence is always comparative. GOWER stamped with the force of ethical reasoning his smooth rhymes; and this was a near approach to poetry itself. If in the mind of CHAUCER we are more sensible of the impulses of genius--those creative and fugitive touches--his diction is more mixed and unsettled than the tranquil elegance of GOWER, who has often many pointed sentences and a surprising neatness of phrase. A modern reader, I think, would find the style of Gower more easily intelligible than the higher efforts of the more inventive poet.

PIERS PLOUGHMAN.

Contemporary with GOWER and CHAUCER lived the singular author of "The Visions of William concerning PIERS PLOUGHMAN;" singular in more respects than one, for his subject, his style, and, we may add, for the intrepidity and the force of his genius.

This extraordinary work is ascribed to one whose name is merely traditional, to Robert Langland, a secular priest of Salop; when he wrote, and where he died, are as dubious as his text, the authenticity of which is often uncertain from the variations in all the manuscripts. But the real life of an author, at least for posterity, lies beyond the grave; and no writer is nameless whose volume has descended to us as one of the most memorable in our ancient vernacular literature.

In character, in execution, and in design, "The Visions of William of PIERS PLOUGHMAN" are wholly separated from the polished poems of GOWER and CHAUCER; the work bears no trace of their manner, nor of their refinement, nor of their versification; and it has baffled conjectural criticism to assign the exact period of a composition which appears more ancient than any supposed contemporary writings. Those who would decide of the time in which an author wrote by his style, here are at a loss to conceive that the splendid era of romantic chivalry, the age of Edward the Third and his grandson, which produced the curious learning and the easy rhymes of the "Confessio Amantis," and the pleasantry and the fine discriminations of character of the "Canterbury Tales," could have given birth to the antiquated Saxon and rustic pith of this genuine English bard. Either his labour was concluded ere the writings of the court poets had travelled to our obscure country priest in his seclusion in a distant county, or else he disdained their exotic fancies, their Latinisms, their Gallicisms, and their Italianisms, and their trivial rhymes, that in every respect he might remain their astonishing contrast, with no inferiority of genius. There was no philosophical criticism in the censure of this poet by Warton, when he condemns him for not having "availed himself of the rising and rapid improvements of the English language," and censures him for his "affectation of obsolete English." These rising improvements may never have reached our bard, or if they had he might have disdained them; for the writer of the "Visions concerning Piers Ploughman" was strictly a national poet; and there was no "affectation of obsolete English" in a poet preserving the forms of his native idiom, and avoiding all exotic novelties in the energy of his Anglo-Saxon genius. His uncontaminated mind returned to or continued the Anglo-Saxon alliterative metre and unrhymed verse; he trusted its cadence to the ear, scorning the subjection of rhyme. WEBBE, a critic of the age of Elizabeth, considered this poet as "the first who had observed the quantity of our verse without the curiosity of rhyme."

It is useless to give the skeleton of a desultory and tedious allegorical narrative. The last editor, Dr. Whitaker, imagined that "he for the first time had shown that it was written after a regular and consistent design," notwithstanding that he himself confesses, that "the conclusion is singularly cold and comfortless and _leaves the inquirer, after a long peregrination, still remote from the object of his search_"--a conclusion where nothing is concluded! The visionist might have been overtaken by sleep among the bushes of the Malvern Hills for twenty cantos more, without at all deranging anything which he had said, or inconveniencing anything which he might say. In truth, it is a heap of rhapsodies, without any artifice of connexion or involution of plot, or any sustained interest of one actor more than another among the numerous ideal beings who flit along the dreamy scenes.

The true spirit of this imaginative work is more comprehensible than any settled design. That mysterious or mythical personage, "Piers Ploughman," is the representative of "the Universal Church," says Dr. Whitaker; or "Christian life," says Mr. Campbell. What he may be is very doubtful, for we have "True Religion," a fair lady, who puts in surely a higher claim to represent "the Universal Church," or "Christian life," than "the Ploughman," who has to till his half-acre and save his idling companions from "waste" and "wane." The most important personage is "Mede," or bribery, who seems to exert an extraordinary influence over the Bench, and the Bar, and the Church, and through every profession which occurred to the poet.

The pearls in these waters lie not on the surface. The visionist had deeper thoughts and more concealed feelings than these rhapsodical phantoms. In a general survey of society, he contemplates on the court and the clergy, glancing through all the diversified ranks of the laity, not sparing the people themselves, as their awful reprover. It was a voice from the wilderness in the language of the people. The children of want and oppression had found their solitary advocate. The prelacy, dissolved in the luxuriousness of papal pomp, and a barbarous aristocracy, with their rapacious dependents, were mindless of the morals or the happiness of those human herds, whose heads were counted, but whose hearts they could never call their own.

We are curious to learn, in this disordered state of the Commonwealth, the political opinions entertained by this sage. They are as mysterious as Piers Ploughman himself.

Passive obedience to the higher powers is inculcated apparently rather for its prudence than its duty. This we infer from his lively parable of "the Cat of a Court," and "A Route of Ratones and Small Mice." "Grimalkin, though sometimes apt to play the tyrant when appetite was sharp, would often come laughing and leaping among them. A rat, a whisker of renown, cunningly proposed to adorn the cat with an ornament, like those which great lords use who wear chains and collars about their necks; it should be a tinkling bell, which, if cats would fancy the fashion, would warn us of their approach. We might then in security be all lords ourselves, and not be in this misery of creeping under benches. But not a raton of the whole rout, for the realm of France, or to win all England, would bind the bell round the imperial neck. A mouseling, who did not much like rats, concluded that if they should even kill the cat, then there would come another to crunch us and our kind; for men will not have their meal nibbled by us mice, nor their nights disturbed by the clattering of roystering rats. Better for us to let the cat alone! My old father said a kitten was worse. The cat never hurt me; when he is in good-humour, I like him well,--and by my counsel cat nor kitten shall be grieved. I will suffer and say nothing. The beast who now chastiseth many, may be amended by misfortune. Are the rats to be our governors? I tell ye, we would not rule ourselves!" The poet adds, "What this means, ye men who love mirth interpret for me, for I dare not!"

The parable seems sufficiently obvious. The ratons represent a haughty aristocracy, and "the small mouse" is one of the people themselves, who in his mouse-like wisdom preferred a single sovereign to many lords. But the poet's own reflection, addressed to "the men of mirth," seems enigmatic. Is he indulging a secret laugh at the passive obedience of the prudential mouse?

Our author's indignant spirit, indeed, is vehemently democratic. He dared to write what many trembled to whisper. Genius reflects the suppressed feelings of its age. It was a stirring epoch. The spirit of inquisition had gone forth in the person of Wickliffe; and wherever a Wickliffe appears, as surely will there be a Piers Ploughman. When a great precursor of novel opinions arises, it is the men of genius in seclusion who think and write.

But our country priest, in his contemplative mood, was not less remarkable for his prudence than for his bold freedom, aware that the most corrupt would be the most vindictive. The implacable ecclesiastics, by the dread discipline of the church, would doom the apostle of humanity, but the apostate of his order, to perpetual silence--by the spell of an anathema; and the haughty noble would crush his victim by the iron arm of his own, or of the civil power. The day had not yet arrived when the great were to endure the freedom of reprehension. The sage, the satirist, and the seer, for prophet he proved to be, veiled his head in allegory; he published no other names than those of the virtues and the vices; and to avoid personality, he contented himself with personification.

A voluminous allegory is the rudest and the most insupportable of all poetic fictions; it originates in an early period of society--when its circles are contracted and isolated, and the poet is more conversant with the passions of mankind than with individuals. A genius of the highest order alone could lead us through a single perusal of such a poem, by the charm of vivifying details, which enables us to forget the allegory altogether--the tedious drama of nonentities or abstract beings. In such creative touches the author of Piers Ploughman displays pictures of domestic life, with the minute fidelity of a Flemish painting; so veracious is his simplicity! He is a great satirist, touching with caustic invective or keen irony public abuses and private vices; but in the depth of his emotions, and in the wildness of his imagination, he breaks forth in the solemn tones and with the sombre majesty of Dante.

But this rude native genius was profound as he was sagacious, and his philosophy terminated in prophecy. At the era of the Reformation they were startled by the discovery of an unknown writer, who, two centuries preceding that awful change, had predicted _the fate of the religious houses from the hand of a king_. The visionary seer seems to have fallen on the principle which led Erasmus to predict that "_those who were in power_" would seize on the rich shrines, because _no other class of men_ in society could mate with so mighty a body as the monks. Power only could accomplish that great purpose, and hence our Vaticinator fixed on the highest as the most likely; and the deep foresight of an obscure country priest, which required two centuries to be verified, became a great moral and political prediction.

Without, however, depreciating the sagacity of the predictor, there is reason to suspect that the same thought was occurring to some of the great themselves. The Reformation of Henry the Eighth may be dated from the reign of Richard the Second. That mighty transition into a new order of events in our history would then have occurred, for the stag was started, and the hunt was up. It was an accidental and unexpected circumstance which turned aside the impending event, which was to be future and not immediate. Henry Bolingbroke, in the early part of his life, seems to have entertained some free opinions respecting the property of the church. He seemed not unfavourable to Wickliffe's doctrines, and, when Earl of Derby, once declared that "princes had too little, and religious houses too much." This unguarded expression, which was not to be forgotten, we are told, occasioned one of the rebellions during his reign. But when Henry Bolingbroke usurped the throne, age and prudence might have come together; the monarch balanced the dread of a turbulent aristocracy, and the uncertain tenure of dominion to be held at their pleasure, against the security of sheltering the throne under the broad alliance of a potent prelacy; a potent prelacy whose doom was fixed, though the hour had not yet struck! The monarch affixed a bloody seal to this political convention by granting a statute which made the offence of heresy capital; a crime which heretofore in law was as unknown as it seemed impossible to designate, and described only in figurative terms, as something very alarming, but which any prudent heretic might easily, if not explain, at least recant. To give it more solemnity, the statute is delivered in Latin, and the punishment of burning was to be inflicted "_corum populo, in eminente loco_."[1]

The "Visions of Piers Ploughman," when the day which his prescience anticipated arrived, were eagerly received; it is said the work passed through three editions in one year, about 1550, in the reign of the youthful monarch of the Reformation; the readers at that early period of printing would find many passages congenial to the popular sentiments, and our nameless author was placed among the founders of a new era.

The "VISIONS OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN" will always offer studies for the poetical artist. This volume, and not Gower's nor Chaucer's, is a well of English undefiled. SPENSER often beheld these Visions; MILTON, in his sublime description of the Lazar House, was surely inspired by a reminiscence of Piers Ploughman. Even Dryden, whom we should not suspect to be much addicted to black-letter reading beyond his Chaucer, must have carefully conned our Piers Ploughman; for he has borrowed one very striking line from our poet, and possibly may have taken others. BYRON, though he has thrown out a crude opinion of Chaucer, has declared that "the Ploughman" excels our ancient poets. And I am inclined to think that we owe to Piers Ploughman an allegorical work of the same wild invention, from that other creative mind, the author of the "Pilgrim's Progress." How can we think of the one, without being reminded of the other? Some distant relationship seems to exist between the Ploughman's _Dowell_ and _Dobet_, and _Dobest_, Friar _Flatterer_, _Grace_ the Portress of the magnificent Tower of _Truth_ viewed at a distance, and by its side the dungeon of _Care_, _Natural Understanding_, and his lean and stern wife _Study_, and all the rest of this numerous company, and the shadowy pilgrimage of the "Immortal Dreamer" to "the Celestial City." Yet I would mistrust my own feeling, when so many able critics, in their various researches after a prototype of that singular production, have hitherto not suggested what seems to me obvious.[2]

Why our rustic bard selected the character of a ploughman as the personage adapted to convey to us his theological mysteries, we know not precisely to ascertain; but it probably occurred as a companion fitted to the humbler condition of the apostles themselves. Such, however, was the power of the genius of this writer, that his successors were content to look for no one of a higher class to personify their solemn themes. Hence we have "The Crede of Piers Ploughman;" "The Prayer and Complaint of the Ploughman;" "The Ploughman's Tale," inserted in Chaucer's volume; all being equally directed against the vicious clergy of the day.

"The Crede of Piers Ploughman," if not written by the author of the "Vision," is at least written by a scholar who fully emulates his master; and Pope was so deeply struck with this little poem, that he has very carefully analysed the whole.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Barrington's "Observations on the more ancient Statutes."

[2] For the general reader I fear that "The Visions of Piers
Ploughman" must remain a sealed book. The last edition of Dr.
WHITAKER, the most magnificent and frightful volume that was ever
beheld in the black letter, was edited by one whose delicacy of taste
unfitted him for this homely task: the plain freedom of the vigorous
language is sometimes castrated, with a faulty paraphrase and a
slender glossary; and passages are slurred over with an annihilating
&c. Much was expected from this splendid edition; the subscription
price was quadrupled, and on its publication every one would rid
himself of the mutilated author. The editor has not assisted the
reader through his barbarous text interspersed with Saxon characters
and abbreviations, and the difficulties of an obscure and elliptical
phraseology in a very antiquated language. Should ever a new edition
appear, the perusal would be facilitated by printing with the white
letter. There is an excellent specimen for an improved text and
edition in "Gent. Mag.," April, 1834. [This improved text of the
"Vision" and "Crede" has, since this note was originally written,
been published with notes by T. Wright, M.A.; and has been again
reprinted recently.]

OCCLEVE; THE SCHOLAR OF CHAUCER.

Warton passed sentence on OCCLEVE as "a cold genius, and a feeble writer." A literary antiquary, from a manuscript in his possession, published six poems of Occleve; but that selection was limited to the sole purpose of furnishing the personal history of the author.[1] Ritson's sharp snarl pronounced that they were of "peculiar stupidity;" George Ellis refused to give "a specimen;" and Mr. Hallam, with his recollection of the critical brotherhood, has decreed, that "the poetry of Occleve is wretchedly bad, abounding with pedantry, and destitute of grace or spirit." We could hardly expect to have heard any more of this doomed victim--this ancient man, born in the fourteenth century, standing before us, whose dry bones will ill bear all this shaking and cuffing.

A literary historian, who has read manuscripts with the eagerness which others do the last novelty, more careful than Warton, and more discriminate than Ritson, has, with honest intrepidity, confessed that "OCCLEVE has not had his just share of reputation. His writings greatly assisted the growth of the popularity of our infant poetry."[2] Our historian has furnished from the manuscripts of OCCLEVE testimonies of his assertion.

Among the six poems printed, one of considerable length exhibits the habits of a dissipated young gentleman in the fourteenth century.

OCCLEVE for more than twenty years was a writer in the Privy Seal, where we find quarter days were most irregular; and though briberies constantly flowed in, yet the golden shower passed over the heads of the clerks, dropping nothing into the hands of these innocents.

Our poet, in his usual passage from his "Chestres Inn by the Strond" to "Westminster Gate," by land or water--for "in the winter the way was deep," and "the Strand" was then what its name indicates--often was delayed by

The outward signe of Bacchus and his lure,
That at his dore hangeth day by day,
Exciteth Folk to taste of his moisture
So often that they cannot well say Nay!

There was another invitation for this susceptible writer of the Privy Seal.

I dare not tell how that the fresh repair
Of Venus femel, lusty children dear,
That so goodly, so shapely were, and fair,
And so pleasant of port and of manere.

There he loitered,

To talk of mirth, and to disport and play.

He never "pinched" the taverners, the cooks, the boatmen, and all such gentry.

Among this many in mine audience,
Methought I was ymade a man for ever--
So tickled me that nyce reverence,
That it me made larger of dispence;--
For Riot payeth largely ever mo;
He stinteth never till his purse be bare.

He is at length seized amid his jollities,

By force of the penniless maladie,
Ne lust[3] had none to Bacchus House to hie.
Fy! lack of coin departeth compaignie;
And heve purse with Herte liberal
Quencheth the thirsty heat of Hertes drie,
Where chinchy Herte[4] hath thereof but small.

This "mirror of riot and excess" effected a discovery, and it was, that all the mischiefs which he recounts came from the high reports of himself which servants bring to their lord. The Losengour or pleasant flatterer was too lightly believed, and honied words made more harmful the deceitful error. Oh! babbling flattery! he spiritedly exclaims, author of all lyes, that causest all day thy lord to fare amiss. Such is the import of the following uncouth verse:--

Many a servant unto his Lord saith
That all the world speaketh of him, Honour,
When the contrarie of that is sooth in faith;
And lightly leeved is this Losengour,[5]
His hony wordes wrapped in Errour,
Blindly conceived been, the more harm is,
O thou, FAVELE, of lesynges auctour,[6]
Causest all day thy Lord to fare amiss.
The Combre worldes;[7] 'clept been Enchantours
In Bookes, as I have red----.

OCCLEVE was a shrewd observer of his own times. That this rhymer was even a playful painter of society we have a remarkable evidence preserved in the volume of his great master. "The Letter of Cupid," in the works of Chaucer, was the production of Occleve, and appears to have been overlooked by his modern critics. He had originally entitled it, "A Treatise of the Conversation of Men and Women in the Little Island of Albion." It is a caustic "polite conversation;" and deemed so execrably good, as to have excited, as our ancient critic Speght tells, "such hatred among the gentlewomen of the Court, that Occleve was forced to recant in that boke of his called 'Planetas Proprius.'"[8] The Letter of Cupid is thus dated:--

Written in the lusty month of May,
In our Paleis where many a million
Of lovers true have habitation,
The yere of grace joyfull and jocund,
A thousand four hundred and second.

Imagery and imagination are not required in the school of society. Occleve seems, however, sometimes to have told a tale not amiss, for WILLIAM BROWN, the pastoral bard, inserted entire a long story by old Occleve in his "Shepherd's Pipe." To us he remains sufficiently uncouth. The language had not at this period acquired even a syntax, though with all its rudeness it was neither wanting in energy nor copiousness, from that adoption of the French, the Provencal, and the Italian, with which Chaucer had enriched his vein. The present writer seems to have had some notions of the critical art, for he requests the learned tutor of Prince Edward, afterwards Edward the Fourth, to warn him, when,--

Metring amiss;

and when

He speaks unsyttingly,[9]
Or not by just peys[10] my sentence weigh,
And not to the order of enditing obey,
And my colours set ofte sythe awry.

We might be curious to learn, with all these notions of the suitable, the weighty, the order of enditing, and the colours often awry, whether these versifiers had really any settled principles of criticism. Occleve is a vernacular writer, bare of ornament. He has told us that he knew little of "Latin nor French," though often counselled by his immortal master. His enthusiastic love thus exults:--

Thou wer't acquainted with Chaucer?--Pardie!
God save his soul!
The first finder of our faire langage!

There is one little circumstance more which connects the humble name of this versifier with that of Chaucer. His affectionate devotion to the great poet has been recorded by Speght in his edition of Chaucer. "Thomas Occleve, for the love he bare to his master, caused his picture to be truly drawn in his book 'De Regimine Principis,' dedicated to Henry the Fifth." In this manuscript, with "fond idolatry," he placed the portraiture of his master facing an invocation. From this portrait the head on the poet's monument was taken, as well as all our prints. It bears a faithful resemblance to the picture of Chaucer painted on board in the Bodleian Library.[11] Had Occleve, with his feelings, sent us down some memorial of the poet and the man, we should have conned his verse in better humour; but the history of genius had not yet entered even into the minds of its most zealous votaries.[12]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] "_Poems by_ THOMAS HOCCLEVE, _never before printed, selected from
a manuscript in the possession of George Mason, with a preface,
notes, and glossary_," 1796. The notes are not amiss, and the
glossary is valuable; but the verses printed by Mason are his least
interesting productions. The poet's name is here written with an H,
as it appeared in the manuscript; but there is no need of a modern
editor changing the usual mode, because names were diversely written
or spelt even in much later times. The present writer has been called
not only _Occleve_, but _Occliffe_, as we find him in Chaucer's
works.

[2] Turner's "History of England," v. 335.

[3] No desire.

[4] Niggardly heart.

[5] A Chaucerian word, which well deserves preservation in the
language.

[6] FAVELL, author of "Lyes." FAVELL, the editor of Hoccleve,
explains as _cajolerie_, or flattery, by words given by Carpentier in
his supplement to "Du Cange." Pavel is personified by "Piers
Ploughman," and in Skelton's "Bouge of Court." FAVELE in langue
Romane is Flattery--hence _Fabel_, Fabling.--Roquefort's
"Dictionnaire." The Italian FAVELLIO, parlerie, babil,
caquet--Alberti's "Grand Dictionnaire"--does not wholly convey the
idea of our modern _Humbug_, which combines _fabling_ and _caquet_.

[7] The encumbrances to the world. In another poem he calls death
"that Coimbre-world." It was a favourite expression with him, taken
from Chaucer. See "Warton," ii. 352, note.

[8] A title which does not appear in the catalogue of his writings by
Ritson, in his "Bibliographia Poetica."

[9] Unfittingly.