Chapter VIII (1)

In opening the preceding chapter I spoke of that dainty John Lyly, who first set a fashion in letters, and whose daintiness hid much of the strength and cleverness that were in him: I spoke of the wonderful twin development of the Lord Chancellor Bacon--selfish and ignoble as a man, serene and exalted as a philosopher; and I tried to fasten in the reader’s mind the locality of his tomb and home at the old town of St. Alban’s--a short coach-ride away from London, down in “pleasant Hertfordshire:” I spoke of Hobbes (somewhat before his turn) whose free-thinking--of great influence in its day, and the sharply succeeding days--is supplemented by more acute and subtle, if not more far-reaching, free-thinking now. I quoted the Homer of Chapman, under whose long and staggering lines there burned always true Homeric fire. I cited Marlowe, because his youth and power promised so much, and the promise so soon ended in an early and inglorious death. Then came Lodge, Nashe, and Greene, mates of Marlowe, all well-bred, all having an itch for penwork, and some of them for the stage; all making rendezvous--what time they were in London--at some tavern of Bankside, or at the Mermaid, where we caught a quick glimpse of Ben Jonson, and another of the Stratford player.

_George Peele._

I might, however, have added to the lesser names that decorated the closing years of the sixteenth century that of George Peele,[107] of Devonshire birth, but, like so many of his fellows, a university man: he came to be a favorite in London; loved taverns and wine as unwisely as Greene; was said to have great tact for the ordering of showy pageants; did win upon Queen Elizabeth by his “Arraignment of Paris” (half masque and half play) represented by the children of the Chapel Royal--and carrying luscious flattery to the ready ears of Eliza, Queen of--

“An ancient seat of Kings, a second Troy,
Y’compassed round with a commanding sea;
Her people are y-clepéd _Angeli_.
This paragon, this only, this is she
In whom do meet so many gifts in one
In honor of whose name the muses sing.”

Yet even such praises did not keep poor Peele from hard fare and a stinging lack of money.

“An Old Wives Tale,” which he wrote, has conjurers and dragons in it, with odd twists of language which remind one of the kindred and nonsensical jingle of “Patience” or “Pinafore:”--

“Phillida, Philleridos--pamphilida, florida, flortos;
Dub--dub a-dub, bounce! quoth the guns
With a sulpherous huff-snuff!”

This play is further notable for having supplied much of the motive for the machinery and movement of Milton’s noble poem of _Comus_. It is worth one’s while to compare the two. Of course Peele will suffer--as those who make beginnings always do.

This writer is said to have been sometime a shareholder with Shakespeare in the Blackfriars Theatre; he was an actor, too, like his great contemporary; and besides the plays which carried a wordy bounce in them, wrote a very tender scriptural drama about King David and the fair Bethsabe, with charming quotable things in it. Thus--

“Bright Bethsabe gives earth to my desires,
Verdure to earth, and to that verdure--flowers;
To flowers--sweet odors, and to odors--wings
That carries pleasure to the hearts of Kings!”

And again:--

“Now comes my lover tripping like the roe,
And brings my longings tangled in her hair
To joy her love, I’ll build a Kingly bower
Seated in hearing of a hundred streams.”

Tom Campbell said--“there is no such sweetness to be found in our blank verse anterior to Shakespeare.” And for his lyrical grace I cannot resist this little show, from his “Arraignment of Paris:”--

_Ænone [singeth and pipeth]._

“Fair and fair, and twice so fair,
As fair as any may be;
The fairest shepherd on our green,
A love for any lady.”

_And Paris._

“Fair and fair and twice so fair,
As fair as any may be:
Thy love is fair for thee alone
And for no other lady.”

_Then Ænone._

“My love is fair, my love is gay,
As fresh as bin the flowers in May,
And of my love my roundelay,
My merry, merry, merry roundelay,
Concludes with Cupid’s curse,
They that do change old love for new,
Pray Gods, they change for worse!”

_Thomas Dekker._

Dekker was fellow of Peele and of the rest;[108] he quarrelled bitterly with Ben Jonson--they beating each other vilely with bad words, that can be read now (by whoso likes such reading) in the _Poetaster_ of Jonson, or in the _Satiromastix_ of Dekker. ’Twould be unfair, however, to judge him altogether by his play of the cudgels in this famous controversy. There is good meat in what Dekker wrote: he had humor; he had pluck; he had gift for using words--to sting or to praise--or to beguile one. There are traces not only of a Dickens flavor in him, but of a Lamb flavor as well; and there is reason to believe that, like both these later humorists, he made his conquests without the support of a university training. Swinburne characterizes him as a “modest, shiftless, careless nature:” but he was keen to thrust a pin into one who had offended his sensibilities; in his plays he warmed into pretty lyrical outbreaks, but never seriously measured out a work of large proportions, or entered upon execution of such with a calm, persevering temper. He was many-sided, not only literary-wise, but also conscience-wise. It seems incredible that one who should write the coarse things which appear in his _Bachelor’s Banquet_ should also have elaborated, with a pious unction (that reminds of Jeremy Taylor) the saintly invocations of the _Foure Birds of Noah’s Ark_: and as for his _Dreame_ it shows in parts a luridness of color which reminds of our own Wigglesworth--as if this New England poet of fifty years later may have dipped his brush into the same paint-pot. I cite a warm fragment from his _Dreame of the Last Judgement_;--

“Their cries, nor yelling did the Judge regard,
For all the doores of Mercy up were bar’d:
Justice and Wrath in wrinkles knit his forhead,
And thus he spake: You cursed and abhorred,
You brood of Sathan, sonnes of death and hell,
In fires that still shall burne, you still shall dwell;
In hoopes of Iron: then were they bound up strong,
(Shrikes [shrieks] being the Burden of their dolefull song)
Scarce was Sentence breath’d-out, but mine eies
Even saw (me thought) a Caldron, whence did rise
A pitchy Steeme of Sulphure and thick Smoake,
Able whole coapes of Firmament to choake:
About this, Divels stood round, still blowing the fire,
Some, tossing Soules, some whipping them with wire,
Across the face, as up to th’ chins they stood
In boyling brimstone, lead and oyle, and bloud.”

It is, however, as a social photographer that I wish to call special attention to Dekker; indeed, his little touches upon dress, dinners, bear-baitings, watermen, walks at _Powles_, Spanish boots, tavern orgies--though largely ironical and much exaggerated doubtless, have the same elements of nature in them which people catch now with their pocket detective cameras. His _Sinnes of London_, his answer to _Pierce Pennilesse_, his _Gull’s Horne Boke_ are full of these sketches. This which follows, tells how a young gallant should behave himself in an ordinary:--

“Being arrived in the room, salute not any but those of your
acquaintance; walke up and downe by the rest as scornfully and
as carelessly as a Gentleman-Usher: Select some friend (having
first throwne off your cloake) to walke up and downe the roome
with you, … and this will be a meanes to publish your clothes
better than Powles, a Tennis-court, or a Playhouse; discourse
as lowd as you can, no matter to what purpose if you but make
a noise, and laugh in fashion, and have a good sower face to
promise quarrelling, you shall be much observed.

“If you be a souldier, talke how often you have beene in
action: as the _Portingale_ voiage, Cales voiage, besides some
eight or nine imploiments in Ireland.… And if you perceive that
the untravellᵈ Company about you take this doune well, ply them
with more such stuffe, as how you have interpreted betweene
the French king and a great Lord of Barbary, when they have
been drinking healthes together, and that will be an excellent
occasion to publish your languages, if you have them: if not,
get some fragments of French, or smal parcels of Italian, to
fling about the table: but beware how you speake any Latine
there.”

And he goes on to speak of the three-penny tables and the twelve-penny tables, and of the order in which meats should be eaten--all which as giving glimpses of something like the every-day, actual life of the ambitious and the talked-of young fellows about London streets and taverns is better worth to us than Dekker’s dramas.

_Michael Drayton._

We encounter next a personage of a different stamp, and one who, very likely, would have shaken his head in sage disapproval of the flippant advices of Dekker; I refer to Michael Drayton,[109] who wrote enormously in verse upon all imaginable subjects; there are elegiacs, canzonets, and fables; there are eclogues, and heroic epistles and legends and _Nimphidia_ and sonnets. He tells of the Barons’ Wars, of the miseries of Queen Margaret, of how David killed Goliath, of Moses in the burning bush--in lines counting by thousands; _Paradise Lost_ stretched six times over would not equal his pile of print; and all the verse that Goldsmith ever wrote, compared with Drayton’s portentous mass would seem like an iridescent bit of cockle-shell upon a sea of ink. This protracting writer was a Warwickshire man--not a far-off countryman of Shakespeare, and a year only his senior; a respectable personage, not joining in tavern bouts, caring for himself and living a long life. His great poem of _Poly-olbion_ many know by name, and very few, I think, of this generation ever read through. It is about the mountains, rivers, wonders, pleasures, flowers, trees, stories, and antiquities of England; and it is twenty thousand lines long, and every line a long Alexandrine. Yet there are pictures and prettinesses in it, which properly segregated and detached from the wordy trails which go before and after them, would make the fortune of a small poet. There are descriptions in it, valuable for their utter fidelity and a fulness of nomenclature which keeps alive pleasantly ancient names. Here, for instance, is a summing up of old English wild-flowers, where, in his quaint way, he celebrates the nuptials of the river Thames (who is groom) with the bridal Isis, that flows by Oxford towers. It begins at the one hundred and fiftieth line of the fifteenth song of the fiftieth part:--

“The Primrose placing first, because that in the Spring
It is the first appears, then only flourishing;
The azuréd Hare-bell next, with them they gently mix’d
T’ allay whose luscious smell, they Woodbine plac’d betwixt;
Amongst those things of scent, there prick they in the Lily,
And near to that again, her sister--Daffodilly
To sort these flowers of show, with th’ other that were so sweet,
The Cowslip then they couch, and the Oxlip, for her meet;
The Columbine amongst, they sparingly do set,
The yellow King-cup wrought in many a curious fret;
And now and then among, of Eglantine a spray,
By which again a course of Lady-smocks they lay;
The Crow-flower, and thereby the Clover-flower they stick,
The Daisy over all those sundry sweets so thick.”

The garden-flowers follow in equal fulness of array; and get an even better setting in one of his Nymphals, where they are garlanded about the head of Tita; and in these pretty Nymphals, and still more in the airy, fairy _Nymphidia_--with their elfins and crickets and butterflies, one will get an earlier smack of our own “Culprit Fay.” Those who love the scents of ancient garden-grounds--as we do--will relish the traces of garden love in this old Warwickshire man. In his Heroic Epistles, too, one will find a mastership of ringing couplets: and there are spirit and dash in that clanging battle ode of his which sets forth the honors and the daring of Agincourt. Its martial echoes--kept alive by Campbell (“Battle of the Baltic”) and revived again in Tennyson’s “Balaclava,” warrant me in citing two stanzas of the original:--

“Warwick in blood did wade,
Oxford the foe invade,
And cruel slaughter made
Still as they ran up;
Suffolk his axe did ply,
Beaumont and Willoughby
Bear them right doughtily,
Ferrers and Fanhope.

“They now to fight are gone;
Armour on armour shone,
Drum now to drum did groan,
To hear, was wonder;
That, with the cries they make,
The very earth did shake,
Trumpet to trumpet spake,
Thunder to thunder.”[110]

_Ben Jonson._

I now go back to that friend of Drayton’s--Ben Jonson,[111] whom we saw at the closing of the last chapter going into the tavern of the Mermaid. He goes there, or to other like places, very often. He is a friend no doubt of the landlady; he is a friend, too, of all the housemaids, and talks university chaff to them; a friend, too, of all such male frequenters of the house as will listen to him, and will never dispute him; otherwise he is a slang-whanger and a bear.

He was born, as I have said, some years after Shakespeare, but had roared himself into the front ranks before the people of London were thoroughly satisfied that the actor-author of “Richard III.” was a better man than Ben. Very much of gossip with respect to possible jealousies between Shakespeare and Ben Jonson may be found in the clumsy, bundled-up life of the latter by William Gifford.[112]

Jonson was born probably in the west of London--and born poor; but through the favor of some friends went to Westminster School, near to which his step-father, who was a bricklayer, lived: afterward, through similar favor, he went to Cambridge[113]--not staying very long, because called home to help that step-father at his bricklaying. But he did stay long enough to get a thorough taste for learning, and a thorough grounding in it. So he fretted at the bricks, and ran off and enlisted--serving a while in the Low Countries, where poor Philip Sidney met his death, and coming back, a swaggerer, apt with his sword and his speech, into which he had grafted continentalisms; apt at a quarrel, too, and comes to fight a duel, and to kill his man.[114] For this he went to prison, getting material this way--by hard rubs with the world--for the new work which was ripening in the mind of this actor-author. So, full of all experiences, full of Latin, full of logic, full of history, full of quarrel, full of wine (most whiles) this great, beefy man turned poet. I do not know if you will read--do not think the average reader of to-day will care to study--his dramas. The stories of them are involved, but nicely adjusted as the parts of an intricate machine: you will grow tired, I dare say, of matching part to part; tired of their involutions and evolutions; tired of the puppets in them that keep the machinery going; tired of the passion torn to tatters; tired of the unrest and lack of all repose. Yet there are abounding evidences of wit--of more learning than in Shakespeare, and a great deal drearier; aptnesses of expression, too, which show a keen knowledge of word-meanings and of etymologies; real and deep acquirement manifest, but worn like stiff brocade, or jingling at his pace, like bells upon the heels of a savage. You wonder to find such occasional sense of music with such heavy step--such delicate poise of such gross corporosity.

He helped some hack-writer to put Bacon’s essays into Latin--not that Bacon did not know his Latin; but the great chancellor had not time for the graces of scholastics. Ben wrote an English Grammar, too, which--for its syntax, so far as one may judge from that compend of it which alone remains--is as good as almost any man could invent now. Such learning weighed him down when he put on the buskins, and made the stage tremble with his heaviness. But when he was at play with letters--when he had no plot to contrive and fabricate and foster, and no character to file and finish, and file again, and to fit in with precise order and methodic juxtaposition--when a mad holiday masque--wild as the “Pirates of Penzance”--tempted him to break out into song, his verse is rampant, joyous, exuberant--blithe and dewy as the breath of May-day mornings: See how a little damsel in the dance of his verse sways and pirouettes--

“As if the wind, not she did walk;
Nor pressed a flower, nor bowed a stalk!”

Then, again, in an Epithalamion of his _Underwoods_, as they were called, there is a fragment of verse, which, in many of its delicious couplets, shows the grace and art of Spenser’s wonderful “Epithalamion,” which we read a little time ago:--He is picturing the bridesmaids strewing the bride’s path with flowers:--

“With what full hands, and in how plenteous showers
Have they bedewed the earth where she doth tread,
As if her airy steps did spring the flowers,
And all the ground were garden, where she led.”

Such verses do not come often into our newspaper corners, from first hands: such verses make one understand the significance of that inscription which came by merest accident to be written on his tomb in Westminster Abbey--“O rare Ben Jonson!”

I do not believe I shall fatigue you--and I know I shall keep you in the way of good things if I give another fragment from one of his festal operettas;--the “Angel” is describing and symbolizing Truth, in the _Masque of Hymen_:--

“Upon her head she wears a crown of stars,
Thro’ which her orient hair waves to her waist,
By which believing mortals hold her fast,
And in those golden cords are carried even
Till with her breath she blows them up to Heaven.
She wears a robe enchased with eagles’ eyes,
To signify her sight in mysteries;
Upon each shoulder sits a milk-white dove,
And at her feet do witty serpents move;
Her spacious arms do reach from East to west,
And you may see her heart shine thro’ her breast.
Her right hand holds a sun with burning rays
Her left, a curious bunch of golden keys
With which Heaven’s gates she locketh and displays.
A crystal mirror hangeth at her breast,
By which men’s consciences are searched and drest;
On her coach-wheels, Hypocrisy lies racked;
And squint-eyed Slander with Vain glory backed,
Her bright eyes burn to dust, in which shines Fate;
An Angel ushers her triumphant gait,
Whilst with her fingers fans of stars she twists,
And with them beats back Error, clad in mists,
Eternal Unity behind her shines,
That Fire and Water, Earth and Air combines;
Her voice is like a trumpet, loud and shrill,
Which bids all sounds in earth and heaven be still.”

In that line of work Shakespeare never did a better thing than this. Indeed, in those days many, perhaps most, people of learning and culture thought Ben Jonson the better man of the two;--more instructed (as he doubtless was); with a nicer knowledge of the unities; a nicer knowledge of mere conventionalities of all sorts: Shakespeare was a humble, plain Warwickshire man, with no fine tinsel to his wardrobe--had no university training; not so much schooling or science of any sort as Ben Jonson; had come up to London--as would seem--to make his fortune, to get money--to blaze his way: and how he did it!

I suppose a Duchess of Buckingham or any lady of court consequence would have been rather proud of the obeisance of Ben Jonson, after that play of “Every Man in his Humour,” and would have given him a commendatory wave of her fan, much sooner, and more unhesitatingly, than to the Stratford actor, who took the part of Old Knowell in it. Ben believed in conventional laws of speech or of dramatic utterance far more than Shakespeare; he regretted (or perhaps affected to regret when his jealousies were sleeping), that Will Shakespeare did not shape his language and his methods with a severer art;[115] he would--very likely--have lashed him, if he had been under him at school, for his irregularities of form and of speech--irregularities that grew out of Shakespeare’s domination of the language, and his will and his power to make it, in all subtlest phases, the servant, and not the master of his thought.

Do I seem, then, to be favoring the breakage of customs, and of the rules of particular grammarians? Yes, unhesitatingly--if you have the mastery to do it as Shakespeare did it; that is, if you have that finer sense of the forces and delicacies of language which will enable you to wrest its periods out of the ruts of every-day traffic, and set them to sonorous roll over the open ground, which is broad as humanity and limitless as thought. Parrots must be taught to prate, particle by particle; but the Bob-o-Lincoln swings himself into his great flood of song as no master can teach him to sing.

Even now we do not bid final adieu to Ben Jonson; but hope to encounter him again in the next reign (that of James I.) through the whole of which he carried his noisy literary mastership.

_Some Prose Writers._

You must not believe, because I have kept mainly by poetic writers in these later days of Queen Elizabeth, that there were no men who wrote prose--none who wrote travels, histories, letters of advice; none who wrote stupid, dull, goodish books; alas, there were plenty of them; there always are.

But there were some to be remembered too: there was William Camden--to whom I have briefly alluded already--and of whom, when you read good histories of this and preceding reigns, you will find frequent mention. He was a learned man, and a kind man, excellent antiquarian, and taught Ben Jonson at Westminster School. There was Stow,[116] who wrote a _Survey of London_, which he knew from top to bottom. He was born in the centre of it, and as a boy used to fetch milk from a farm at the Minories, to his home in Cornhill, where his father was a tailor. His fulness, his truthfulness, his simplicities, and his quaintness have made his chief book--on London--a much-prized one.

Again there was Hakluyt,[117] who was a church official over in Bristol, and who compiled _Voyages_ of English seamen which are in every well-appointed library. Dr. Robertson says in his _History_, “England is more indebted [to Hakluyt] for its American possessions than to any man of that age.” Of so much worth is it to be a good geographer! The “Hakluyt Society” of England will be his enduring monument.

There was also living in those last days of the sixteenth century a strange, conceited, curious travelling man, Thomas Coryat[118] by name, who went on foot through Europe, and published (in 1611) what he called--with rare and unwitting pertinence--_Coryat’s Crudities_. He affixed to them complimentary mention of himself--whimseys by the poets, even by so great a man as Ben Jonson--a budget of queer, half-flattering, half-ironical rigmarole, which (having plenty of money) he had procured to be written in his favor; and so ushered his book into the world as something worth large notice. He would have made a capital showman. He had some training at Oxford, and won his way by an inflexible persistence into familiarity with men of rank, who made a butt of him. With a certain gift for language he learned Arabic in some one of his long journeyings, was said to have knowledge of Persian, and made an oration in that speech to the Great Mogul--with nothing but language in it. His _Crudities_ are rarely read; but some letters and fragments relating to later travels of his, appear in Purchas’ _Pilgrims_. He lays hold upon peculiarities and littlenesses of life in his work which more sensible men would overlook, and which give a certain quaint piquancy to what he told; and we listen, as one might listen to barbers or dressmakers who had just come back from Paris, and would tell us things about cravats and hair-oil and street sights that we could learn no otherwheres. Coryat says:--

“I observe a custom in all those Italian Cities, and tounes
thro’ the which I passed, that is not used in any other
countrie that I saw--nor do I think that any other nation of
Christendom doth use it, but only Italy. The Italian and most
other strangers that are _cormorant_ in Italy doe always at
their meales use a little forke, when they cut their meate. For
while, with their knife which they hold in one hand they cut
the meate out of the dish, they fasten the forke which they
hold in their other hand upon the same dish, so that whatsoever
he be that sitting in the companie of any others at meale,
should unadvisidly touch the dish of meate with his fingers
from which alle at the table doe cut, he will give occasion of
offence unto the company, as having transgressed the laws of
good manners.

“This forme of feeding is, I understand, common in all places
of Italy--their forkes being for the most part made of iron
or steele, and some of silver--but _these_ are used only by
gentlemen.

“I myself have thought good to imitate the Italy fashion by
this forked cutting of meate not only while I was in Italy, but
also in Germany, and oftentimes in England, since I came home.”

Thus we may connect the history of silver forks with Tom Coryat’s _Crudities_, and with the first reported foot-journeys of an Englishman over the length and breadth of Europe. The wits may have bantered him in Elizabeth’s day; but his journeyings were opened and closed under James.

Again, there were books which had a little of humor, and a little of sentiment, with a great deal of fable, and much advice in them; as a sample of which I may name Mr. Leonard Wright’s _Displaie of Duties, deck’t with sage Sayings, pythie Sentences, and proper Similes: Pleasant to read, delightful to hear, and profitable to practice_:[119] By which singularly inviting title we perceive that he had caught the euphuistic ways of Mr. John Lyly. In enumerating the infelicities of a man who marries a shrew, he says:--

“Hee shall find compact in a little flesh a great number
of bones too hard to digest. And therefore some doe thinke
wedlocke to be that same purgatorie which some learned divines
have so long contended about, or a sharpe penance to bring
sinful men to Heaven. A merry fellow hearing a preacher saye
in his sermon that whosoever would be saved must take up and
beare his cross, ran straight to his wife, and cast _her_ upon
his back.… Finally, he that will live quietly in wedlock must
be courteous in speech, cheerful in countenance, provident for
his house, careful to traine up his children in virtue, and
patient in bearing the infirmities of his wife. Let all the
keys hang at her girdle, only the purse at his own. He must
also be voide of jealousy, which is a vanity to think, and more
folly to suspect. For eyther it needeth not, or booteth not,
and to be jealous without a cause is the next way to have a
cause.

“This is the only way to make a woman dum:
To sit and smyle and laugh her out, and not a word but _mum_!”

Quite another style of man was Philip Stubbes,[120] a Puritan reformer--not to be confounded with John Stubbes who had his right hand cut off, by order of the Queen, for writing against the impropriety and villainy of her prospective marriage with a foreign prince--but a kinsman of his, who wrote wrathily against masques and theatre-going; whipping with his pen all those roystering poets who made dramas or madrigals, all the fine-dressed gallants, and all the fans and ruffs of the women as so many weapons of Satan.

“One arch or piller,” says he, “wherewith the Devil’s kingdome
of great ruffes is under propped, is a certain kind of liquid
matter which they call _starch_, wherein the Devil hath learned
them to wash and die their ruffes, which, being drie, will
stand stiff and inflexible about their neckes.”

And he tells a horrific story--as if it were true--about an unfortunate wicked lady, who being invited to a wedding could not get her ruff stiffened and plaited as she wanted; so fell to swearing and tearing, and vowed “that the Devil might have her whenever she wore _neckerchers_ again.” And the Evil One took her at her word, appearing in the guise of a presentable young man who arranged her ruffs

“--to her so great contentation and liking, that she became
enamored with him. The young man kissed her, in the doing
whereof he writhed her neck in sunder, so she died miserably;
her body being straightwaies changed into blue and black
colors, most ugglesome to behold, and her face most deformed
and fearful to look upon. This being known in the city great
preparation was made for her burial, and a rich coffin was
provided, and her fearful body was laid therein. Four men
assay’d to lift up the corps, but could not move it. Whereat
the standers-by--marvelling causing the coffin to be opened to
see the cause thereof, found the body to be taken away, and a
blacke catte, very leane and deformed, sitting in the coffin,
setting of great ruffes, and frizzling of haire, to the great
feare and wonder of all the beholders.”

We do not preach in just that way against fashionable dressing in our time.

A book on the _Arte of English Poesie_ belongs to those days--supposed to be the work of George Puttenham[121]--written for the “recreation and service” of the Queen; it has much good counsel in it--specially in its latter part; and the author says he wrote it to “help the gentlewomen of the Court to write good Poetry.” As an exampler, under his discussion of “Ornament,” he cites what he graciously calls a “sweet and sententious ditty” from the Queen’s own hand. The reader will be curious perhaps to see some portion of this:--

“The doubt of future foes, exiles my present joy,
And wit me warnes to shun such snares as threaten mine annoy,
For falsehood now doth flow, and subject faith doth ebbe,
Which would not be, if reason rul’d, or wisdome wev’d the webbe.”

This much will serve for our republican delectation; but it is not the only instance in which we find mention of her Majesty’s dalliance with verse: In an old book called the _Garden of the Muses_, of the date of 1600, the author says the flowers are gathered out of many excellent speeches spoken to her Majesty at triumphs, masques, and shows, as also out of divers choice ditties sung to her; and “some especially proceeding from her own most sacred selfe.” No one of them, however, would have ranked her with any of the poets of whom we have made particular mention; but for fine, clear, nervous, masculine English, to put into a letter, or into a despatch, or into a closet scolding, I suspect she would have held rank with any of them.

If not a poet, she led poets into gracious ways of speech. Her culture, her clear perceptions, her love of pageants even, her intolerance of all forms of dulness or slowness, her very vanities--were all of them stimulants to those who could put glowing thought into musical language. Her high ruff, her jewelled corsage, her flashing eye, her swift impulses, her perils, her triumphs, her audacities, her maidenhood--all drew flatteries that heaped themselves in songs and sonnets. So live a woman and so live a Queen magnetized dulness into speech.

_The Queen’s Progresses._

I spoke but now of her love of pageants; every visiting prince from every great neighbor kingdom was honored with a pageant; every foreign suitor to her maidenly graces--whether looked on with favor or disfavor (as to which her eye and lip told no tales)--brought gala-days to London streets--brought revels, and bear-baitings, and high passages of arms, and swaying of pennons and welcoming odes. Many and many a time the roystering poets I named to you--the Greenes, the Marlowes, the Jonsons, the Peeles, may have looked out from the Mermaid Tavern windows upon the royal processions that swept with gold-cloth, and crimson housings through Cheapside, where every house blazed with welcoming banners, and every casement was crowded with the faces of the onlookers.

Thereby, too, she would very likely have passed in her famous “Progresses” to her good friends in the eastern counties; or to her loved Lord Burleigh, or to Cecil, at their fine place of Theobalds’ Park,[122] near Waltham Cross. True, old Burleigh was wont to complain that her Majesty made him frequent visits, and that every one cost him a matter of two or three thousand pounds. Indeed it was no small affair to take in the Queen with her attendants. Hospitable people of our day are sometimes taken aback by an easy-going friend who comes suddenly on a visit with a wife, and four or five children, and Saratoga trunks, and two or three nursery-maids, and a few poodles and a fox-terrier; but think of the Queen, with her tiring-women, and her ladies of the chamber, and her ushers, and her grand falconer, and her master of the hounds, and her flesher--who knows the cuts she likes--and her cook, and her secretary, and her fifty yeomen of the guard, and her sumpter mules, and her chaplain, and her laundry-women, and her fine-starchers! No wonder Lord Burleigh groaned when he received a little notelet from his dear Queen saying she was coming down upon him--for a week or ten days.

And Elizabeth loved these little surprises overmuch, and the progress along the high roads thither and back, which so fed her vanities: She was a woman of thrift withal, and loved her savings; and the kitchen fires at Nonsuch palace, or at Greenwich or at Richmond, might go out for a time while she was away upon these junketings.

I know that my young readers will be snuggling in their minds a memory of that greatest Progress of hers, and that grandest of all private entertainments--at Kenilworth Castle; wondering, maybe, if that charming, yet over-sad story of Walter Scott’s is true to the very life? And inasmuch as they will be devouring that book, I suspect, a great deal oftener than they will read Laneham’s account of the great entertainment, or Gascoigne’s,[123] I will tell them how much, and where it varies from the true record. There _was_ a Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester--a brilliant man, elegant in speech, in person, in manner--at a court where his nephew Philip Sidney had shone--altogether such a courtier as Scott has painted him: And the Queen had regarded him tenderly--so tenderly that it became the talk of her household and of the world. It is certain, too, that Leicester gave to the Queen a magnificent entertainment at his princely castle of Kenilworth, in the month of July, 1575. There were giants, there were Tritons, there were floating islands. Lawns were turned into lakes, and lakes were bridged with huge structures, roofed with crimson canopies, where fairies greeted the great guest with cornucopias of flowers and fruits. There was fairy music too; there were dances and plays and fireworks, that lighted all the region round about with a blaze of burning darts, and streams and hail of fire-sparks.

In all this there is no exaggeration in Scott’s picturing; none either in his portraiture of the coquetries and princely graces of the Queen. It is probable that no juster and truer picture of her aspect and bearing, and of the more salient points of her character ever will or can be drawn.

Thither, too, had come--from all the country round--yeomen, strolling players, adventurous youths, quick to look admiringly after that brilliant type of knighthood Sir Philip Sidney, then in his twenty-first year, and showing his gay trappings in the royal retinue: amongst such youths were, very likely, Michael Drayton and William Shakespeare, boys both in that day, just turned of eleven, and making light of the ten or twelve miles of open and beautiful country which lay between Kenilworth and their homes of Atherstone and of Stratford-upon-Avon.

It is true too, that Leicester, so admired of the Queen, and who was her host, had once married an Amy Robsart: true, too, that this Amy Robsart had died in a strangely sudden way at an old manor-house of Cumnor; and true that a certain Foster and Varney, who were dependants of Leicester, did in some sense have her in their keeping. But--and here the divergence from history begins--this poor Amy Robsart had been married to Sir Robert Dudley before he came to the title of Leicester, and she died in the mysterious way alluded to, some fifteen years before these revels of Kenilworth: but not before Elizabeth had been attracted by the proud and noble bearing of Robert Dudley. Her fondness for him began about the year 1559. And it was this early fondness of hers which gave color to the story that he had secretly caused the death of Amy Robsart. The real truth will probably never be known: there was a public inquiry (not so full, he said, as he could have wished) which acquitted Leicester; but his character was such that he never outlived suspicion. I observe that Mr. Motley, in his _History of the United Netherlands_, on the faith of a paper in the Record Office, avers Leicester’s innocence; but the tenor of a life counts for more than one justifying document in measuring a man’s moral make-up.

In the year 1575, when the revels of Kenilworth occurred, the Earl of Leicester was a widower and Amy Robsart had been ten years mouldering in her grave: but in the year 1576 the young Countess of Essex suddenly became a widow, and was married privately, very shortly afterward, to the Earl of Leicester. In the next year, 1577, the story was blazed abroad, and the Queen showed her appreciation of the sudden match by sending Leicester straight to the Tower. But she forgave him presently. And out of these scattered actualities, as regards the Earl, Sir Walter Scott has embroidered his delightful romance.

But we have already brought our literary mention up to a point far beyond this in the Queen’s life; up to a point where Shakespeare, instead of tearing over hedge-rows and meadows to see the Tritons and the harlequins of Kenilworth, has put his own Tritons to swimming in limpid verse, and has put his bloated, dying Falstaff to “babbling o’ green fields.” The Queen, too, who has listened--besides these revels--to the tender music of Spenser and outlived him; who has heard the gracious courtliness of Sidney, and outlived him; who has lent a willing ear to the young flatteries of Raleigh and seen him ripen into a gray-haired adventurer of the seas; who has watched the future Lord Keeper, Francis Bacon, as he has shot up from boyhood into the stateliness of middle age; who has seen the worshipful Master John Lyly grow up, and chant his euphuism and sing his songs and die: she too, now, is feeling the years--brilliant as they may be in achievement--count and weigh upon her.

Long as she could, she cherished all the illusions of youth. That poor old face of hers was, I suspect, whited and reddened with other pigments than what the blood made, as the years went by. Such out-of-door sports as bear-baiting became rarer and rarer with her; and she loved better such fun as the fat Falstaff made, in her theatre of Whitehall. But only nicest observers saw the change; and she never admitted it--perhaps not to herself.

The gossiping Paul Hentzner, who had an ambassador’s chances of observation, says of her, on her way to chapel at Greenwich:--

“Next came the Queen, in her sixty-fifth year, as we are
told--very majestic: her face, oblong, fair but wrinkled; her
eyes small, yet black and pleasant; her nose a little hooked.
She had in her ears two pearls with very rich drops; and she
had on a necklace of exceeding fine jewels. She was dressed in
white silk bordered with pearls of the size of beans, and over
it a mantle of black silk shot with silver threads.”

This, observe, was over twenty years after the revels of Kenilworth: and two years beyond this date, when the Queen was sixty-seven, a courtier writes: “Her Majesty is well, and every second day is on horseback.” No suitor could say a pleasanter thing to her than--“Your majesty is looking very young!” She danced, when it made her old bones ache to dance.

No suitor could say a more inapt thing than to express a fear that a revel, or a play, or a hunt, or a dance might possibly fatigue her Majesty. It would bring a warning shake of the head that made the jewels rattle.

But at last the days come--as like days are coming to us all--when she can counterfeit youth no longer. The plays entice her no more. The three thousand court dresses that she left, hang unused in her wardrobe: weaknesses hem her in, turn which way she may. Cecil, the son of her old favorite Burleigh, urges that she must quit her chair--which she clung to, propped with pillows--that she _must_ take to her bed. “_Must_,” she cries, with a kindling of her old passionate life, “little man, little man, thy father never dared to use such a word to his Queen.” The gust passes; and she clings to life, as all do, who have such fast, hard grip upon it. In short periods of languor and repose, taking kindly to the issue--going out, as it were, like a lamp. Then, by some windy burst of passion--of hate, flaming up red and white and hot--her voice a scream, her boding of the end a craze, her tenacity of purpose dragging all friends, all hopes, all the world to the terrible edge where she stands--the edge where Essex stood (she bethinks herself with a wild tempest of tears)--the edge where Marie Stuart stood at Fotheringay, in her comely widow’s dress; thinks of this with a shrug that means acquiescence, that means stubborn recognition of a fatal duty: _that_ ghost does no way disturb her.

But there are others which well may. Shall we tell them over?

No; let us leave her with her confessor, saying prayers maybe; her rings on her fingers; the lace upon her pillow; not forgetting certain fine coquetries to the last: strong-souled, keen-thoughted, ambitious, proud, vindictive, passionate woman, with her streaks of tenderness out of which bitter tears flowed--out of which kindlinesses crept to sun themselves, but were quick overshadowed by her pride.

Farewell to her!

* * * * *

In our next talk we shall meet a King--but a King who is less a man than this Queen who is dead.

FOOTNOTES

[1]

The breeze which swept away the smoke
Round Norham Castle rolled,
When all the loud artillery spoke,
With lightning flash and thunder stroke,
As Marmion left the hold.

[2] London was possibly a British settlement before the Romans built there; though latest investigators, I think, favor the contrary opinion.

[3]

“To Cattraeth’s vale, in glittering row,
Twice two hundred warriors go;
Every warrior’s manly neck
Chains of regal honor deck,
Wreathed in many a golden link:
From the golden cup they drink
Nectar that the bees produce,
Or the grape’s ecstatic juice,
Flush’d with mirth and hope they burn,
But none from Cattraeth’s vale return
Save Aëron brave, and Conan strong
(Bursting through the bloody throng),
And I, the meanest of them all
That live to weep and sing their fall.”

[4] Lady CHARLOTTE ELIZABETH SCHREIBER (_née_ GUEST) made the first translations which brought these Welsh romances into vogue. Among them is _Geraint, the son of Erbin_, which in our day has developed into the delightful _Geraint and Enid_. Mr. W. F. Skene has published the texts of various poems (from original MSS.) attributed to Taliesin, Aneurin, and others, with translations by D. Sylvan Evans and Robert Williams.

[5] There was a sort of Christianizing of Britain in later Romish times, but not much warmth or spending force in it; and Wright assures us that amid all the Roman remains thus far brought to light of mosaics and vases, only one Christian symbol has been found. This is on a tessellated pavement of a Roman villa at Frampton, in Dorsetshire. Lysons published an engraving of this pavement.

See also GREEN (introduction to _Making of England_) in reference to Christian inscriptions and ornaments of Roman date. He makes no allusion to the Frampton symbol.

[6] GREEN: _Making of England_, p. 337. A church he erected at Bradford-on-Avon stands in almost perfect preservation to-day. MURRAY’S _Alph. Eng. Handbook_. The Editor of Guide Book makes an error in date of the erection.

[7] _Sonnet composed or suggested during a tour in Scotland, in summer of 1833._

“Isle of Columba’s Cell,
Where Christian piety’s soul-cheering spark,
(Kindled from Heaven between the light and dark
Of time) shone like the morning-star,--farewell!”

[8] Of late years, owing to the difficulty of working, the mining and manufacture of the jet has nearly gone by--other carbon seams in Spain offering better and more economic results; these latter, however, still bear the name of Whitby Jet.

[9] I ought to mention that recent critics have questioned if all the verse usually attributed to Cædmon was really written by him: nay, there have been queries--if the picture of Satan itself was not the work of another hand. An analysis of the evidence, by Thomas Arnold, may be found in _Ency. Br._ See, also, _Making of England_, Chap. VII., note, p. 370.

[10] “During his last days verses of his own English tongue broke from time to time from the master’s lip--rude runes that told how before the ‘need-fare,’ Death’s stern ‘must go,’ none can enough bethink him what is to be his doom for good or ill. The tears of Beda’s scholars mingled with his song. So the days rolled on to Ascension tide,” etc.

[11] It is of record in MATTHEW OF WESTMINSTER, a Benedictine monk of the fourteenth century--_Flores Historiarum_--first printed in 1567. “_Nuda equum ascendens, crines capitis et tricas dissolvens, corpus suum totum, prater crura candidissima inde velavit._” The tradition is subject of crude mention in the _Poly-olbion_ of DRAYTON; I also refer the reader to the charming _Leofric and Godiva_ of LANDOR.

[12] _Harold: the Last of the Saxon Kings_; first published in 1848 and dedicated to the Hon. C. T. D’Eyncourt, M.P., whose valuable library--says BULWER--supplied much of the material needed for the prosecution of the work.

[13] GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH (Bishop of St. Asaph), d. 1154. His _Cronicon, sive Historia Britonum_ first printed in 1508: translated into Eng., 1718. Vid. _Wright’s Essays Arch. Sub._, 1861.

[14] Such exception as the name warrants, must be made in favor of NENNIUS, § 50, A.D. 452.

[15] Other important Arthurian localities belong to the north and west of England; and whoso is curious in such matters, will read with interest Mr. STUART GLENNIE’S ingenious argument to prove that Scotland was the great cradle of Arthurian Romance. _Early English Text Society, Part iii._, 1869.

[16] The fable is Scandinavian. The Anglo-Saxon version, dating probably from the seventh century, makes it a very important way-mark in the linguistic history of England. Eng. editions are numerous: among them--those of KEMBLE, 1833-7: THORPE, 1855 and 1875: ARNOLD, 1876: also (Am. ed.) HARRISON, 1883: Translations accompany the three first named: a more recent one has appeared (1883) by DR. GARNETT of Md.

[17] WALTER MAP, or MAPES, was born on the borders of Wales about 1143, and was living as Archdeacon at Oxford as late as 1196: possibly this was the Walter who supplied material to GEOFFREY of Monmouth; there was however another WALTER (CALIENUS) who was also Archdeacon at Oxford.

[18] Layamon’s work supposed to date (there being only internal evidence of its epoch) in the first decade of the thirteenth century. Vid. MARSH: _English Language and Early Literature_. Lecture IV. An edition, with translation, was published by Sir Frederic Madden in 1857.

[19] Among other direct Arthurian growths may be noted MORRIS’S _Defence of Guinevere_; ARNOLD’S _Tristram and Issult_; QUINET’S _Merlin_, WAGNER’S Operatic Poems, and SMITH’S _Edwin of Deira_.

[20] ORDERIC VITALIS, b. 1075; d. 1150. Of Abbey of St. Evroult, in Normandy. An edition of his _Ecclesiastical History of England and Normandy_ was published in 1826, with notice of writer, by GUIZOT.

[21] WILLIAM OF MALMSBURY: dates uncertain; his record terminates with year 1143.

[22] MATTHEW PARIS, 1200-1259, a monk of St. Albans. His _Historia Major_ extends from 1235 to 1259.

[23] WILLIAM OF NEWBURGH, b. 1136; d. 1208. New edition of his record (_Hist. Rerum Anglicarum_), edited by RICHARD HOWLET, published in 1884.

[24] ROGER DE HOVEDEN of twelfth century, (date uncertain.) His annals first published in 1595.

[25] I do not mean to say that Scott’s portraitures may be taken as archæologic data, or that one in search of the last and minutest truths respecting our Welsh or Saxon progenitors should not go to more recondite sources; meantime you will get very much from the reading of Scott to aid you in forming an image of those times; and, what is better still, you will very likely carry from the Romancer’s glowing pages a sharpened appetite for the more careful but duller work of the historians proper.

[26] I give fragment of one, of the reign of Edward II., cited by MR. MARSH: p. 247, _English Language and Early Literature_.

“Quant honme deit parleir, videat qua verba loquatur;
Sen covent aver, ne stultior inveniatur,
Quando quis loquitur, bote resoun reste therynne
Derisum patitur, ant lutel so shal he wynne,” _etc._

[27] Robert of Gloucester lived in the latter part of the thirteenth century, perhaps surviving into the fourteenth. In addition to his _Chronicle of England_, he is thought to have written _Lives and Legends of the English Saints_.

[28] _Il milione di Messer Marco Polo, Veneziano._ Florence, 1827. MARCO POLO d. 1323.

[29] ODORIC, a priest of Pordenone in Friuli, who went on Church mission about 1318. His narrative is to be found in the _Ramusio Col._, 2d Vol. 1574. CARPINI (JOANNES _de Plano_), was a Franciscan from near Perugia, who travelled East about 1245. HAKLUYT has portions of his narrative: but full text is only in _Recueil de Voyages_, Vol. IV., by M. D’AVEZAC.

[30] Messrs. NICHOLSON and YULE, who are sponsors for the elaborate article in the _Br. Ency._

[31] Page 407, chap. viii.

[32] An abbot presided over monasteries--sometimes independent of the bishop--sometimes (in a degree) subject. Priors also had presidence over some religious houses--but theirs was usually a delegated authority. An æsthetic abbot or prior was always building--or always getting new colors for the _missal_ work in the _scriptorium_: hunting abbots were thinking more of the refectory. At least six religious services were held a day, and always midnight mass. It was easy, but not wholly a life of idleness. A bell summoned to breakfast, and bells to mass. Of a sunny day--monks were teaching boys one side of the cloister--artistic monks working at their missals the other; perhaps under such prior as he of _Jorvaulx_ (Scott’s Ivanhoe) some young monk would be training his hawks or dogs. An interesting abstract of the Rule of the Benedictines may be found under Monachism, _Br. Ency._, Vol. xvi.

[33] College Statutes of Merton date from 1274; those of University from 1280; and of Balliol from 1282. Paper of GEORGE C. BRODERICK, _Nineteenth Century_, September, 1882.

[34] The story of the Black Prince meets with revival in our day, by the recent publication of “_Le Prince Noir, Poeme du Herault d’Armes Chandos_,” edited, translated, etc., by FRANCISQUE MICHEL, F.A.S. Fotheringham: London, 1884. The original MS. is understood to be preserved in the Library of Worcester College, Oxford.

[35] Precise dates are wanting with respect to Langlande. Facts respecting his personal history are derived from what leaks out in his poem, and from interpolated notes (in a foreign hand) upon certain MS. copies. Of three different texts (published by the _E. E. Text Soc._) Mr. SKEAT dates one about 1362--a second in or about 1377, and the third still later. The first imprint has date of 1550.

[36] Not that he is specially free from foreign vocables: MARSH (_Lec. VI., Eng. Language_) gives his percentage of Anglo-Saxon words in _Passus XIV._ at only 84. See also SKEAT’S _Genl. Preface_, p. xxxiii.

[37] In saying this I follow literal statement of the poem (_Pass._ xviii., 12,948), as do TYRWHIT, PRICE, and Rev. Mr. SKEAT, whose opinions overweigh the objections of Mr. WRIGHT, (_Introduction_, p. ix., note 3, to WRIGHT’S _Piers Plowman_.) The Christian name William seems determined by a find of SIR FREDERIC MADDEN on the fly-leaf of a MS. in the library of Trinity College, Dublin.

_Piers Plowman’s Creed_, often printed with the _Vision_, is now by best critics counted the work of another hand.