Chapter I (3)

[79] This very curious fact in literary history has been brought to
light by Lord Stuart of Rothsay, who printed at Paris, in 1823,
twenty-five copies of a collection of ancient Portuguese songs,
from a manuscript in the library of the College of Nobles at
Lisbon. An account of this book by M. Raynouard, will be found in
the Journal des Savans for August, 1825; and I have been favoured
by my noble friend the editor with the loan of a copy; though my
ignorance of the language prevented me from forming an exact
judgment of its contents. In the preface the following
circumstances are stated. It consists of seventy-five folios, the
first part having been torn off, and the manuscript attached to a
work of a wholly different nature. The writing appears to be of the
fourteenth century, and in some places older. The idiom seems older
than the writing; it may be called, if I understand the meaning of
the preface, as old as the beginning of the thirteenth century, and
certainly older than the reign of Denis, pode appellidarse coevo do
seculo xiii., e de certo he anterior ao reynado de D. Deniz. Denis
king of Portugal reigned from 1279 to 1325. It is regular in
grammar, and for the most part in orthography; but contains some
gallicisms, which show either a connection between France and
Portugal in that age, or a common origin in the southern tongues of
Europe; since certain idioms found in this manuscript are preserved
in Spanish, Italian, and Provençal, yet are omitted in Portuguese
dictionaries. A few poems are translated from Provençal, but the
greater part are strictly Portuguese, as the mention of places,
names, and manners shows. M. Raynouard, however, observes, that the
thoughts and forms of versification are similar to those of the
Troubadours. The metres employed are usually of seven, eight, and
ten syllables, the accent falling on the last; but some lines occur
of seven, eight, or eleven syllables accented on the penultimate,
and these are sometimes interwoven, at regular intervals, with the
others.

The songs, as far as I was able to judge, are chiefly, if not
wholly, amatory: they generally consist of stanzas, the first of
which is written (and printed) with intervals for musical notes,
and in the form of prose, though really in metre. Each stanza has
frequently a burden of two lines. The plan appeared to be something
like that of the Castilian glosas of the fifteenth century, the
subject of the first stanza being repeated, and sometimes expanded,
in the rest. I do not know that this is found in any Provençal
poetry. The language, according to Raynouard, resembles Provençal
more than the modern Portuguese does. It is a very remarkable
circumstance, that we have no evidence, at least from the letter of
the Marquis of Santillana early in the fifteenth century, that the
Castilians had any of these love songs till long after the date of
this Cancioneiro; and that we may rather collect from it, that the
Spanish amatory poets chose the Galician or Portuguese dialect in
preference to their own. Though the very ancient collection to
which this note refers seems to have been unknown, I find mention
of one by Don Pedro, Count of Barcelos, natural son of King Denis,
in Dieze’s notes on Velasquez. Gesch. der Span. Dichtkunst, p. 70.
This must have been in the first part of the fourteenth century.

|Early Italian language.|

45. Italy came last of those countries where Latin had been spoken to the possession of an independent language and literature. No industry has hitherto retrieved so much as a few lines of real Italian till near the end of the twelfth century;[80] and there is not much before the middle of the next. Several poets, however, whose versification is not wholly rude, appeared soon afterwards. The Divine Comedy of Dante seems to have been commenced before his exile from Florence in 1304. The Italian language was much used in prose, during the times of Dante and Petrarch, though very little before.

[80] Tiraboschi, iii. 323, doubts the authenticity of some inscriptions
referred to the twelfth century. The earliest genuine Italian seems
to be a few lines by Ciullo d’Alcamo, a Sicilian, between 1187 and
1193, vol. iv. p. 340.

|Dante and Petrarch.|

46. Dante and Petrarch are, as it were, the morning stars of our modern literature. I shall say nothing more of the former in this place: he does not stand in such close connection as Petrarch with the fifteenth century; nor had he such influence over the taste of his age. In this respect Petrarch has as much the advantage over Dante, as he was his inferior in depth of thought and creative power. He formed a school of poetry, which, though no disciple comparable to himself came out of it, gave a character to the taste of his country. He did not invent the sonnet; but he, perhaps, was the cause that it has continued in fashion for so many ages.[81] He gave purity, elegance, and even stability to the Italian language, which has been incomparably less changed during near five centuries since his time, than it was in one between the age of Guido Guinizzeli and his own. And none have denied him the honour of having restored a true feeling of classical antiquity in Italy, and consequently in Europe.

[81] Crescimbeni (Storia della vulgar poesia, vol. ii. p. 269) asserts
the claim of Guiton d’Arezzo to the invention of the regular
sonnet, or at least the perfection of that in use among the
Provençals.

|Change of Anglo-Saxon to English.|

47. Nothing can be more difficult, except by an arbitrary line, than to determine the commencement of the English language; not so much, as in those of the continent, because we are in want of materials, but rather from an opposite reason, the possibility of tracing a very gradual succession of verbal changes that ended in a change of denomination. We should probably experience a similar difficulty, if we knew equally well the current idiom of France or Italy in the seventh and eighth centuries. For when we compare the earliest English of the thirteenth century with the Anglo-Saxon of the twelfth, it seems hard to pronounce, why it should pass for a separate language, rather than a modification or simplification of the former. We must conform, however, to usage, and say that the Anglo-Saxon was converted into English: 1. by contracting or otherwise modifying the pronunciation and orthography of words; 2. by omitting many inflections, especially of the noun, and consequently making more use of articles and auxiliaries; 3. by the introduction of French derivatives; 4. by using less inversion and ellipsis, especially in poetry. Of these the second alone, I think, can be considered as sufficient to describe a new form of language; and this was brought about so gradually, that we are not relieved from much of our difficulty, whether some compositions shall pass for the latest offspring of the mother, or the earliest fruits of the daughter’s fertility.[82]

[82] It is a proof of this difficulty that the best masters of our
ancient language have lately introduced the word semi-Saxon, which
is to cover everything from 1150 to 1250. See Thorpe’s preface to
Analecta Anglo-Saxonica, and many other recent books.

48. The Anglo-Norman language is a phrase not quite so unobjectionable as the Anglo-Norman constitution; and as it is sure to deceive, we might better lay it aside altogether.[83] In the one instance, there was a real fusion of laws and government, to which we can find but a remote analogy, or rather none at all, in the other. It is probable, indeed, that the converse of foreigners might have something to do with those simplifications of the Anglo-Saxon grammar, which appear about the reign of Henry II., more than a century after the Conquest; though it is also true, that languages of a very artificial structure, like that of England before that revolution, often became less complex in their forms, without any such violent process as an amalgamation of two different races.[84] What is commonly called the Saxon Chronicle is continued to the death of Stephen, in 1154, and in the same language, though with some loss of its purity. Besides the neglect of several grammatical rules, French words now and then obtrude themselves, but not very frequently, in the latter pages of this Chronicle. Peterborough, however, was quite an English monastery; its endowments, its abbots, were Saxon; and the political spirit the Chronicle breathes, in some passages, is that of the indignant subjects, _servi ancor frementi_, of the Norman usurpers. If its last compilers, therefore, gave way to some innovations of language, we may presume that these prevailed more extensively in places less secluded, and especially in London.

[83] A popular and pleasing writer has drawn a little upon his
imagination in the following account of the language of our
forefathers after the Conquest:--“The language of the church was
Latin; that of the king and nobles, Norman; that of the people,
Anglo-Saxon; _the Anglo-Norman jargon was only employed in the
commercial intercourse between the conquerors and the
conquered_.” Ellis’s Specimens of Early English Poets, vol. i.
p. 17. What was this jargon? and where do we find a proof of its
existence? and what was the commercial intercourse hinted at? I
suspect Ellis only meant, what has often been remarked, that the
animals which bear a Saxon name in the fields acquire a French one
in the shambles. But even this is more ingenious than just; for
muttons, beeves, and porkers are good old words for the living
quadrupeds.

[84] “Every branch of the low German stock from whence the Anglo-Saxon
sprung, displays the same simplification of its grammar.” Price’s
Preface to Warton, p. 110. He therefore ascribes little influence
to the Norman conquest or to French connections.

|Layamon.|

49. We find evidence of a greater change in Layamon, a translator of Wace’s romance of Brut from the French. Layamon’s age is uncertain; it must have been after 1155, when the original poem was completed, and can hardly be placed below 1200. His language is accounted rather Anglo-Saxon than English; it retains most of the distinguishing inflections of the mother-tongue, yet evidently differs considerably from that older than the Conquest by the introduction, or at least more frequent employment, of some new auxiliary forms, and displays very little of the characteristics of the ancient poetry, its periphrases, its ellipses, or its inversions. But though translation was the means by which words of French origin were afterwards most copiously introduced, very few occur in the extracts from Layamon hitherto published; for we have not yet the expected edition of the entire work. He is not a mere translator, but improves much on Wace. The adoption of the plain and almost creeping style of the metrical French romance, instead of the impetuous dithyrambics of Saxon song, gives Layamon at first sight a greater affinity to the new English language than in mere grammatical structure he appears to bear.[85]

[85] See a long extract from Layamon in Ellis’s Specimens. This writer
observes, that, “it contains no word which we are under the
necessity of referring to a French root.” _Duke_ and _Castle_ seem
exceptions: but the latter word occurs in the Saxon Chronicle
before the Conquest, A.D. 1052.

|Progress of English language.|

50. Layamon wrote in a monastery on the Severn; and it is agreeable to experience, that an obsolete structure of language should be retained in a distant province, while it has undergone some change among the less rugged inhabitants of a capital. The disuse of Saxon forms crept on by degrees; some metrical lives of saints, apparently written not far from the year 1250,[86] may be deemed English; but the first specimen of it that bears a precise date is a proclamation of Henry III., addressed to the people of Huntingdonshire in 1258, but doubtless circular throughout England.[87] A triumphant song, composed probably in London, on the victory obtained at Lewes by the confederate barons in 1264, and the capture of Richard Earl of Cornwall, is rather less obsolete in its style than this proclamation, as might naturally be expected. It could not have been written later than that year, because in the next the tables were turned on those who now exulted, by the complete discomfiture of their party in the battle of Evesham. Several pieces of poetry, uncertain as to their precise date, must be referred to the latter part of this century. Robert of Gloucester, after the year 1297, since he alludes to the canonisation of St. Louis,[88] turned the chronicle of Geoffrey of Monmouth into English verse; and on comparing him with Layamon, a native of the same county, and a writer on the same subject, it will appear that a great quantity of French had flowed into the language since the loss of Normandy. The Anglo-Saxon inflections, terminations, and orthography, had also undergone a very considerable change. That the intermixture of French words was very slightly owing to the Norman conquest will appear probable, by observing at least as frequent an use of them in the earliest specimens of the Scottish dialect, especially a song on the death of Alexander III. in 1285. There is a good deal of French in this, not borrowed, probably, from England, but directly from the original sources of imitation.

[86] Ritson’s Dissertat. on Romance. Madden’s Introduction to Havelok.
Notes of Price, in his edition of Warton. Warton himself is of no
authority in this matter. Price inclines to put most of the poems
quoted by Warton near the close of the thirteenth century.

It should here be observed, that the language underwent its
metamorphosis into English by much less rapid gradations in some
parts of the kingdom than in others. Not only the popular dialect
of many counties, especially in the north, retained long, and still
retains, a larger proportion of the Anglo-Saxon peculiarities, but
we have evidence that they were not everywhere disused in writing.
A manuscript in the Kentish dialect, if that phrase is correct,
bearing the date of 1340, is more Anglo-Saxon than any of the poems
ascribed to the thirteenth century, which we read in Warton, such
as the legends of saints or the Ormulum. This very curious fact was
first made known to the public by Mr. Thorpe, in his translation of
Cædmon, preface, p. xii.; and an account of the manuscript itself,
rather fuller than that of Mr. T., has since been given in the
catalogue of the Arundel MSS. in the British Museum.

[87] Henry’s Hist. of Britain, vol. viii., appendix. “Between 1244 and
1258,” says Sir F. Madden, “we know, was written the versification
of part of a meditation of St. Augustine, as proved by the age of
the prior, who gave the manuscript to the Durham library,” p. 49.
This, therefore, will be strictly the oldest piece of English, to
the date of which we can approach by more than conjecture.

[88] Madden’s Havelock, p. 52.

|English of the fourteenth century. Chaucer. Gower.|

51. The fourteenth century was not unproductive of men, both English and Scots, gifted with the powers of poetry. Laurence Minot, an author unknown to Warton, but whose poems on the wars of Edward III. are referred by their publisher Ritson to 1352, is perhaps the first original poet in our language that has survived; since such of his predecessors as are now known appear to have been merely translators, or at best amplifiers of a French or Latin original. The earliest historical or epic narrative is due to John Barbour, archdeacon of Aberdeen, whose long poem in the Scots dialect, The Bruce, commemorating the deliverance of his country, seems to have been completed in 1373. But our greatest poet of the middle ages, beyond comparison, was Geoffrey Chaucer; and I do not know that any other country, except Italy, produced one of equal variety in invention, acuteness in observation, or felicity of expression. A vast interval must be made between Chaucer and any other English poet; yet Gower, his contemporary, though not, like him, a poet of nature’s growth, had some effect in rendering the language less rude, and exciting a taste for verse; if he never rises, he never sinks low; he is always sensible, polished, perspicuous, and not prosaic in the worst sense of the word. Longlands, the supposed author of Piers Plowman’s Vision, with far more imaginative vigour, has a more obsolete and unrefined diction.

|General disuse of French in England.|

52. The French language was spoken by the superior classes of society in England from the conquest to the reign of Edward III.; though it seems probable that they were generally acquainted with English, at least in the latter part of that period. But all letters, even of a private nature, were written in Latin till the beginning of the reign of Edward I., soon after 1270, when a sudden change brought in the use of French.[89] In grammar schools boys were made to construe their Latin into French; and in the statutes of Oriel College, Oxford, we find, in a regulation so late as 1328, that the students shall converse together, if not in Latin, at least in French.[90] The minutes of the corporation of London, recorded in the Town Clerk’s office, were in French, as well as the proceedings in parliament, and in the courts of justice; and oral discussions were perhaps carried on in the same language, though this is not a necessary consequence. Hence the English was seldom written, and hardly employed in prose till after the middle of the fourteenth century. Sir John Mandeville’s travels were written in 1356. This is our earliest English book. Wicliffe’s translation of the Bible, a great work that enriched the language, is referred to 1383, Trevisa’s version of the Polychronicon of Higden was in 1385, and the Astrolabe of Chaucer in 1392. A few public instruments were drawn up in English under Richard II.; and about the same time, probably, it began to be employed in epistolary correspondence of a private nature. Trevisa informs us, that, when he wrote (1385), even gentlemen had much left off to have their children taught French, and names the schoolmaster (John Cornwall) who soon after 1350 brought in so great an innovation as the making his boys read Latin into English.[91] This change from the common use of French in the upper ranks seems to have taken place as rapidly as a similar revolution has lately done in Germany. By a statute of 1362, (36 E. 3, c. 15,) all pleas in courts of justice are directed to be pleaded and judged in English, on account of French being so much unknown. But the laws, and, generally speaking, the records of parliament, continued to be in the latter language for many years; and we learn from Sir John Fortescue, a hundred years afterwards, that this statute itself was but partially enforced.[92] The French language, if we take his words literally, even in the reign of Edward IV., was spoken in affairs of mercantile account, and in many games, the vocabulary of both being chiefly derived from it.[93]

[89] I am indebted for this fact, which I have ventured to generalise,
to the communication of Mr. Stevenson, sub-commissioner of public
records.

[90] Si qua inter se proferant, colloquio Latino vel saltem Gallico
perfruantur. Warton, i. 6. In Merton College statutes, given in
1271, Latin alone is prescribed.

[91] The passage may be found quoted in Warton, ubi suprà, or in many
other books.

[92] “In the courts of justice they formerly used to plead in French,
till, in pursuance of a law to that purpose, that custom was
_somewhat restrained_, but not hitherto quite disused, de Laudibus
Legum Angliæ, c. xlviii.” I quote from Waterhouse’s translation;
but the Latin runs _quam plurimum_ restrictus est.

[93] Ibid.

|State of European languages about 1400.|

53. Thus by the year 1400, we find a national literature subsisting in seven European languages, three spoken in the Spanish peninsula, the French, the Italian, the German, and the English; from which last, the Scots dialect need not be distinguished. Of these the Italian was the most polished, and had to boast of the greatest writers; the French excelled in their number and variety. Our own tongue, though it had latterly acquired much copiousness in the hands of Chaucer and Wicliffe, both of whom lavishly supplied it with words of French and Latin derivation, was but just growing into a literary existence. The German, as well as that of Valencia, seemed to decline. The former became more precise, more abstract, more intellectual, (_geistig_), and less sensible (_sinnlich_), (to use the words of Eichhorn), and of consequence less fit for poetry; it fell into the hands of lawyers and mystical theologians. The earliest German prose, a few very ancient fragments excepted, is the collection of Saxon laws (Sachsenspiegel), about the middle of the thirteenth century; the next the Swabian collection (Schwabenspiegel), about 1282.[94] But these forming hardly a part of literature, though Bouterwek praises passages of the latter for religious eloquence, we may deem John Tauler, a Dominican friar of Strasburg, whose influence in propagating what was called the mystical theology, gave a new tone to his country, to be the first German writer in prose. “Tauler,” says a modern historian of literature, “in his German sermons, mingled many expressions invented by himself, which were the first attempt at a philosophical language, and displayed surprising eloquence for the age wherein he lived. It may be justly said of him, that he first gave to prose that direction in which Luther afterwards advanced so far.”[95] Tauler died in 1361. Meantime, as has been said before, the nobility abandoned their love of verse, which the burghers took up diligently, but with little spirit or genius; the common language became barbarous and neglected, of which the strange fashion of writing half Latin, half German, verses, is a proof.[96] This had been common in the darker ages: we have several instances of it in Anglo-Saxon; but it was late to adopt it in the fourteenth century.

[94] Bouterwek, p. 163. There are some novels at the end of the
thirteenth, or beginning of the fourteenth century. Ibid.

[95] Heinsius, iv. 76.

[96] Eichhorn, Allg. Gesch., i. 240.

|Ignorance of reading and writing in darker ages.|

54. The Latin writers of the middle ages were chiefly ecclesiastics. But of these in the living tongues a large proportion were laymen. They knew, therefore, how to commit their thoughts to writing; and hence the ignorance characteristic of the darker ages must seem to be passing away. This, however, is a very difficult, though interesting question, when we come to look nearly at the gradual progress of rudimentary knowledge. I can offer but an outline, which those who turn more of their attention towards the subject will be enabled to correct and supply. Before the end of the eleventh century, and especially after the ninth, it was rare to find laymen in France who could read and write.[97] The case was probably not better anywhere else, except in Italy. I should incline to except Italy, on the authority of a passage in Wippo, a German writer soon after the year 1000, who exhorts the Emperor Henry II. to cause the sons of the nobility to be instructed in letters, using the example of the Italians, with whom, according to him, it was a universal practice.[98] The word clerks or clergymen became in this and other countries synonymous with one who could write or even read; we all know the original meaning of benefit of clergy, and the test by which it was claimed. Yet from about the end of the eleventh, or at least of the twelfth century, many circumstances may lead us to believe that it was less and less a conclusive test, and that the laity came more and more into possession of the simple elements of literature.

[97] Hist. Litt. de la France, vii. 2. Some nobles sent their children
to be educated in the schools of Charlemagne, especially those of
Germany, under Raban, Notker, Bruno, and other distinguished
abbots. But they were generally destined for the church. Meiners,
ii. 377. The signatures of laymen are often found to deeds of the
eighth century, and sometimes of the ninth. Nouv. Traité de la
Diplomatique, ii. 422. The ignorance of the laity, according to
this authority, was not strictly parallel to that of the church.

[98]
Tunc fac edictum per terram Teutonicorum
Quilibet ut dives sibi natos instruat omnes
Litterulis, legemque suam persuadeat illis,
Ut cum principibus placitandi venerit usus,
Quisque suis libris exemplum proferat illis.
Moribus his dudum vivebat Roma decenter,
His studiis tantos potuit vincere tyrannos.
Hoc servant Itali post prima crepundia cuncti.

I am indebted for this quotation to Meiners, ii. 344.

|Reasons for supposing this to have diminished after 1100.|

55. I. It will of course be admitted that all who administered or belonged to the Roman law were masters of reading and writing, though we do not find that they were generally ecclesiastics, even in the lowest sense of the word, by receiving the tonsure. Some indeed were such. In countries where the feudal law had passed from unwritten custom to record and precedent, and had grown into as much subtlety by diffuseness as the Roman, which was the case of England from the time of Henry II., the lawyers, though laymen, were unquestionably clerks or learned. II. The convenience of such elementary knowledge to merchants, who, both in the Mediterranean and in these parts of Europe, carried on a good deal of foreign commerce, and indeed to all traders, may render it probable that they were not destitute of it; though it must be confessed that the word clerk rather seems to denote that their deficiency was supplied by those employed under them. I do not, however, conceive that the clerks of citizens were ecclesiastics.[99] III. If we could rely on a passage in Ingulfus, the practice in grammar schools of construing Latin into French was as old as the reign of the Conqueror;[100] and it seems unlikely that this should have been confined to children educated for the English church. IV. The poets of the north and south of France were often men of princely or noble birth, sometimes ladies; their versification is far too artificial to be deemed the rude product of an illiterate mind; and to these, whose capacity of holding the pen few will dispute, we must surely add a numerous class of readers, for whom their poetry was designed. It may be surmised, that the itinerant minstrels answered this end, and supplied the ignorance of the nobility. But many ditties of the troubadours were not so well adapted to the minstrels, who seem to have dealt more with metrical romances. Nor do I doubt that these also were read in many a castle of France and Germany. I will not dwell on the story of Francesca of Rimini, because no one, perhaps, is likely to dispute that a Romagnol lady in the age of Dante would be able to read the tale of Lancelot. But that romance had long been written; and other ladies doubtless had read it, and possibly had left off reading it in similar circumstances, and as little to their advantage. The fourteenth century abounded with books in French prose; the extant copies of some are not very few; but no argument against their circulation could be urged from their scarcity in the present day. It is not of course pretended that they were diffused as extensively as printed books have been. V. The fashion of writing private letters in French instead of Latin, which, as has been mentioned, came in among us soon after 1270, affords perhaps a presumption that they were written in a language intelligible to the correspondent, because he had no longer occasion for assistance in reading them; though they were still generally from the hand of a secretary. But at what time this disuse of Latin began on the Continent I cannot exactly determine. The French and Castilians, I believe, made general use of their own languages in the latter half of the thirteenth century.

[99] The earliest recorded bills of exchange, according to Beckmann,
Hist. of Inventions, iii. 430, are in a passage of the jurist
Baldus, and bear date 1328. But they were by no means in common use
till the next century. I do not mention this as bearing much on the
subject of the text.

[100] Et pueris etiam in scholis principia literarum Gallicè et non
Anglicè traderentur.

|Increased knowledge of writing in fourteenth century.|

56. The art of reading does not imply that of writing; it seems likely that the one prevailed before the other. The latter was difficult to acquire, in consequence of the regularity of characters preserved by the clerks, and their complex system of abbreviations, which rendered the cursive handwriting, introduced about the end of the eleventh century, almost as operose to those who had not much experience of it as the more stiff characters of older manuscripts. It certainly appears that even autograph signatures are not found till a late period. Philip the Bold, who ascended the French throne in 1272, could not write, though this is not the case with any of his successors. I do not know that equal ignorance is recorded of any English sovereign, though we have I think only a series of autographs beginning with Richard II. It is said by the authors of Nouveau Traité de la Diplomatique, Benedictines of laborious and exact erudition, that the art of writing had become rather common among the laity of France before the end of the thirteenth century: out of eight witnesses to a testament in 1277 five could write their names; at the beginning of that age, it is probable, they think, that not one could have done so.[101] Signatures to deeds of private persons, however, do not begin to appear till the fourteenth, and were not in established use in France till about the middle of the fifteenth century.[102] Indorsements upon English deeds, as well as mere signatures, by laymen of rank, bearing date in the reign of Edward II., are in existence; and there is an English letter from the lady of Sir John Pelham to her husband in 1399, which is probably one of the earliest instances of female penmanship. By the badness of the grammar we may presume it to be her own.[103]

[101] Vol. ii. p. 423.

[102] Ibid. p. 434, et post.

[103] I am indebted for a knowledge of this letter to the Rev. Joseph
Hunter, who recollected to have seen it in an old edition of
Collins’s Peerage. Later editions have omitted it as an unimportant
redundancy though interesting even for its contents, independently
of the value it acquires from the language. On account of its
scarcity, being only found in old editions now not in request, I
shall insert it here; and till anything else shall prefer a claim,
it may pass for the oldest private letter in the English language.
I have not kept the orthography, but have left several incoherent
and ungrammatical phrases as they stand. It was copied by Collins
from the archives of the Newcastle family.

My dear Lord,

I recommend me to your high lordship with heart and body and
all my poor might, and with all this I thank you as my dear
lord dearest and best beloved of all earthly lords I say for
me, and thank you my dear lord with all this that I say before
of your comfortable letter that ye sent me from Pontefract
that come to me on Mary Magdalene day; for by my troth I was
never so glad as when I heard by your letter that ye were
strong enough with the grace of God for to keep you from the
malice of your enemies. And dear lord if it like to your high
lordship that as soon as ye might that I might hear of your
gracious speed; which as God Almighty continue and increase.
And my dear lord if it like you for to know of my fare, I am
here by laid in manner of a siege with the county of Sussex,
Surrey, and a great parcel of Kent, so that I may nought out
no none victuals get me but with much hard. Wherefore my dear
if it like you by the advice of your wise counsel for to get
remedy of the salvation of your castle and withstand the
malice of the shires aforesaid. And also that ye be fully
informed of their great malice workers in these shires which
that haves so despitefully wrought to you, and to your castle,
to your men, and to your tenants for this country have yai
[sic] wasted for a great while. Farewell my dear lord, the
Holy Trinity you keep from your enemies, and ever send me good
tidings of you. Written at Pevensey in the castle on St. Jacob
day last past,

By your own poor
J. PELHAM.
_To my true Lord._

|Average state of knowledge in England.|

57. Laymen, among whom Chaucer and Gower are illustrious examples, received occasionally a learned education; and indeed the great number of gentlemen who studied in the inns of court is a conclusive proof that they were not generally illiterate. The common law required some knowledge of two languages. Upon the whole we may be inclined to think, that in the year 1400, or at the accession of Henry IV., the average instruction of an English gentleman of the first class would comprehend common reading and writing, a tolerable familiarity with French, and a slight tincture of Latin; the latter retained or not, according to his circumstances and character, as school learning is at present. This may be rather a favourable statement; but after another generation it might be assumed, as we shall see, with more confidence as a fair one.[104]

[104] It might be inferred from a passage in Richard of Bury, about
1343, that none but ecclesiastics could read at all. He deprecates
the putting of books into the hands of _laici_, who do not know one
side from another. And in several places it seems that he thought
they were meant for “the tonsured” alone. But a great change took
place in the ensuing half century; and I do not believe he can be
construed strictly even as to his own time.

|Invention of paper.|

58. A demand for instruction in the art of writing would increase with the frequency of epistolary correspondence, which, where of a private or secret nature, no one would gladly conduct by the intervention of a secretary. Better education, more refined manners, a closer intercourse of social life, were the primary causes of this increase in private correspondence. But it was greatly facilitated by the invention, or, rather, extended use, of paper as the vehicle of writing instead of parchment; a revolution, as it may be called, of high importance, without which both the art of writing would have been much less practised, and the invention of printing less serviceable to mankind. After the subjugation of Egypt by the Saracens, the importation of the papyrus, previously in general use, came in no long time to an end; so that, though down to the end of the seventh century all instruments in France were written upon it, we find its place afterwards supplied by parchment; and under the house of Charlemagne, there is hardly an instrument upon any other material.[105] Parchment, however, a much more durable and useful vehicle than papyrus,[106] was expensive, and its cost not only excluded the necessary waste which a free use of writing requires, but gave rise to the unfortunate practice of erasing manuscripts in order to replace them with some new matter. This was carried to a great extent, and has occasioned the loss of precious monuments of antiquity, as is now demonstrated by instances of their restoration.

[105] Montfaucon, in Acad. des Inscript., vol. vi. But Muratori says
that the papyrus was little used in the seventh century, though
writings on it may be found as late as the tenth, Dissert. xliii.
This dissertation relates to the condition of letters in Italy as
far as the year 1100; as the xlivth does to their subsequent
history.

[106] Heeren justly remarks (I do not know that others have done the
same), of how great importance the introduction of parchment, to
which, and afterwards to paper, the old perishable papyraceous
manuscripts were transferred, has been to the preservation of
literature. P. 74.

|Linen paper when first used.|

|Cotton paper.|

59. The date of the invention of our present paper, manufactured from linen rags, or of its introduction into Europe, has long been the subject of controversy. That paper made from cotton was in use sooner, is admitted on all sides. Some charters written upon that kind not later than the tenth century were seen by Montfaucon; and it is even said to be found in papal bulls of the ninth.[107] The Greeks, however, from whom the west of Europe is conceived to have borrowed this sort of paper, did not much employ it in manuscript books, according to Montfaucon, till the twelfth century, from which time it came into frequent use among them. Muratori had seen no writing upon this material older than 1100, though, in deference to Montfaucon, he admits its employment earlier.[108] It certainly was not greatly used in Italy before the thirteenth century. Among the Saracens of Spain, on the other hand, as well as those of the East, it was of much greater antiquity. The Greeks called it _charta Damascena_, having been manufactured or sold in the city of Damascus. And Casiri, in his catalogue of the Arabic manuscripts in the Escurial, desires us to understand that they are written on paper of cotton or linen, but generally the latter, unless the contrary be expressed.[109] Many in this catalogue were written before the thirteenth, or even the twelfth century.

[107] Mém. de l’Acad. des Inscriptions, vi. 604. Nouveau Traité de
Diplomatique, i. 517. Savigny, Gesch. des Römischen Rechts, iii.
534.

[108] Dissert. xliii.

[109] Materiæ, nisi membraneus sit codex, nulla mentio: cæteros
bombycinos, ac, maximam partem, chartaceos esse colligas.
Præfatio, p. 7.

|Linen paper as old as 1100.|

60. This will lead us to the more disputed question as to the antiquity of linen paper. The earliest distinct instance I have found, and which I believe has hitherto been overlooked, is an Arabic version of the aphorisms of Hippocrates, the manuscript bearing the date of 1100. This Casiri observes to be on linen paper, not as in itself remarkable, but as accounting for its injury by wet. It does not appear whether it were written in Spain, or, like many in that catalogue, brought from Egypt or the East.[110]

[110] Casiri, N. 787. Codex anno Christi 1100, chartaceus, &c.

|Known to Peter of Clugni.|

61. The authority of Casiri must confirm beyond doubt a passage in Peter Abbot of Clugni, which has perplexed those who place the invention of linen paper very low. In a treatise against the Jews, he speaks of books, ex pellibus arietum, hircorum, vel vitulorum, sive ex biblis vel juncis Orientalium paludum, aut ex _rasuris veterum pannorum_, seu ex aliâ qualibet, forte viliore materia compactos. A late English writer contends that nothing can be meant by the last words, “unless that all sorts of inferior substances capable of being so applied, among them, perhaps, hemp and the remains of cordage, were used at this period in the manufacture of paper.”[111] It certainly at least seems reasonable to interpret the words “ex rasuris veterum pannorum,” of linen rags; and when I add that Peter Cluniacensis passed a considerable time in Spain about 1141, there can remain, it seems, no rational doubt that the Saracens of the peninsula were acquainted with that species of paper, though perhaps it was as yet unknown in every other country.

[111] See a memoir on an ancient manuscript of Aratus, by Mr. Ottley,
in Archæeologia, vol. xxvi.

|And in 12th and 13th centuries.|

62. Andrès asserts, on the authority of the Memoirs of the Academy of Barcelona, that a treaty between the kings of Arragon and Castile, bearing the date of 1178, and written upon linen paper, is extant in the archives of that city.[112] He alleges several other instances in the next age; when Mabillon, who denies that paper of linen was then used in charters, which, indeed, no one is likely to maintain, mentions, as the earliest specimen he had seen in France, a letter of Joinville to St. Louis, which must be older than 1270. Andrès refers the invention to the Saracens of Spain, using the fine flax of Valencia and Murcia; and conjectures that it was brought into use among the Spaniards themselves by Alfonso of Castile.[113]

[112] Vol. ii. p. 73. Andrès has gone much at length into this subject,
and has collected several important passages which do not appear in
my text. The letter of Joinville has been supposed to be addressed
to Louis Hutin in 1314, but this seems inconsistent with the
writer’s age.

[113] Id. p. 84. He cannot mean that it was never employed before
Alfonso’s time, of which he has already given instances.

|Paper of mixed materials.|

63. In the opinion of the English writer to whom we have above referred, paper, from a very early period, was manufactured of mixed materials, which have sometimes been erroneously taken for pure cotton. We have in the Tower of London a letter addressed to Henry III. by Raymond, son of Raymond VI., Count of Toulouse, and consequently between 1216 and 1222, when the latter died, upon very strong paper, and certainly made, in Mr. Ottley’s judgment, of mixed materials; while in several of the time of Edward I., written upon genuine cotton paper of no great thickness, the fibres of cotton present themselves everywhere at the backs of the letters so distinctly that they seem as if they might even now be spun into thread.[114]

[114] Archæologia, ibid. I may however observe, that a gentleman as
experienced as Mr. Ottley himself, inclines to think the letter of
Raymond written on paper wholly made of cotton, though of better
manufacture than usual.

|Invention of paper placed by some too low.|

64. Notwithstanding this last statement, which I must confirm by my own observation, and of which no one can doubt who has looked at the letters themselves, several writers of high authority, such as Tiraboschi and Savigny, persist not only in fixing the invention of linen paper very low, even after the middle of the fourteenth century, but in maintaining that it is undistinguishable from that made of cotton, except by the eye of a manufacturer.[115] Were this indeed true, it would be sufficient for the purpose we have here in view, which is not to trace the origin of a particular discovery, but the employment of a useful vehicle of writing. If it be true that cotton paper was fabricated in Italy of so good a texture that it cannot be discerned from linen, it must be considered as of equal utility. It is not the case with the letters on cotton paper in our English repositories; most, if not all, of which were written in France or Spain. But I have seen in the Chapter House at Westminster a letter written from Gascony about 1315, to Hugh Despencer, upon thin paper, to all appearance made like that now in use, and with a water mark. Several others of a similar appearance, in the same repository, are of rather later time. There is also one in the King’s Remembrancer’s Office of the 11th of Edward III. (1337 or 1338), containing the accounts of the King’s ambassadors to the court of Holland and probably written in that country. This paper has a water mark, and if it is not of linen, is at least not easily distinguishable. Bullet declares that he saw at Besançon a deed of 1302 on linen paper: several are alleged to exist in Germany before the middle of the century; and Lambinet mentions, though but on the authority of a periodical publication, a register of expenses from 1323 to 1354, found in a church at Caen, written on two hundred and eight sheets of that substance.[116] One of the Cottonian manuscripts (Galba, B. I.) is called Codex Chartaceus in the catalogue. It contains a long series of public letters, chiefly written in the Netherlands, from an early part of the reign of Edward III. to that of Henry IV. But upon examination I find the title not quite accurate; several letters, and especially the earliest, are written on parchment, and paper does not appear at soonest till near the end of Edward’s reign.[117] Sir Henry Ellis has said that “very few instances indeed occur before the fifteenth century of letters written upon paper.”[118] The use of cotton paper was by no means general, or even, I believe, frequent, except in Spain and Italy, perhaps also in the south of France. Nor was it much employed even in Italy for books. Savigny tells us there are few manuscripts of law books among the multitude that exist which are not written on parchment.

[115] Tiraboschi, v. 85. Savigny, Gesch. des Römischen Rechts, iii.
534. He relies on a book I have not seen, Wehrs vom Papier. Hall,
1789. This writer, it is said, contends that the words of Peter of
Clugni, ex rasuris veterum pannorum, mean cotton paper. Heeren, p.
208. Lambinet, on the other hand, translates them, without
hesitation, “chiffons de linge,” Hist. de l’Origine de
l’Imprimerie, i. 93.

Andrès has pointed out, p. 70, that Maffei merely says he has seen
no paper of linen earlier than 1300, and no instrument on that
material older than one of 1367, which he found among his own
family deeds. Tiraboschi, overlooking this distinction, quotes
Maffei for his own opinion as to the lateness of the invention.

[116] Lambinet, ubi suprà.

[117] Andrès, p. 68, mentions a note written in 1342, in the Cotton
library, as the earliest English specimen of linen paper. I do not
know to what this refers; in the above-mentioned Codex Chartaceus
is a letter of 1341, but it is on parchment.

[118] Ellis’s Original Letters, i. 1.

|Not at first very important.|

65. It will be manifest from what has been said how greatly Robertson has been mistaken in his position, that “in the eleventh century the art of making paper, in the manner now become universal, was invented, by means of which not only the number of manuscripts increased but the study of the sciences was wonderfully facilitated.”[119] Even Ginguéné, better informed on such subjects than Robertson, has intimated something of the same kind. But paper, whenever, or wherever invented, was very sparingly used, and especially in manuscript books, among the French, Germans, or English, or linen paper, even among the Italians, till near the close of the period which this chapter comprehends. Upon the “study of the sciences” it could as yet have had very little effect. The vast importance of the invention was just beginning to be discovered. It is to be added, as a remarkable circumstance, that the earliest linen paper was of very good manufacture, strong and handsome, though perhaps too much like card for general convenience; and every one is aware that the first printed books are frequently beautiful in the quality of their paper.

[119] Hist. of Charles V. vol. i. note 10. Heeren inclines to the same
opinion, p. 200.

|Importance of legal studies.|

66. III. The application of general principles of justice to the infinitely various circumstances which may arise in the disputes of men with each other is in itself an admirable discipline of the moral and intellectual faculties. Even where the primary rules of right and policy have been obscured in some measure by a technical and arbitrary system, which is apt to grow up, perhaps inevitably, in the course of civilisation, the mind gains in precision and acuteness, though at the expense of some important qualities; and a people wherein an artificial jurisprudence is cultivated, requiring both a regard to written authority, and the constant exercise of a discriminating judgment upon words, must be deemed to be emerging from ignorance. Such was the condition of Europe in the twelfth century. The feudal customs, long unwritten, though latterly become more steady by tradition, were in some countries reduced into treatises: we have our own Glanvil in the reign of Henry II., and in the next century much was written upon the national laws in various parts of Europe. Upon these it is not my intention to dwell; but the importance of the civil law in its connection with ancient learning, as well as with moral and political science, renders it deserving of a place in any general account either of mediæval or modern literature.

|Roman laws never wholly unknown.|

67. That the Roman laws, such as they subsisted in the western empire at the time of its dismemberment in the fifth century, were received in the new kingdoms of the Gothic, Lombard, and Carlovingian dynasties, as the rule of those who by birth and choice submitted to them, was shown by Muratori and other writers of the last century. This subject has received additional illustration from the acute and laborious Savigny, who has succeeded in tracing sufficient evidence of what had been, in fact, stated by Muratori, that not only an abridgment of the Theodosian code, but that of Justinian, and even the Pandects, were known in different parts of Europe long before the epoch formerly assigned for the restoration of that jurisprudence.[120] The popular story, already much discredited, that the famous copy of the Pandects, now in the Laurentian library at Florence, was brought to Pisa from Amalfi, after the capture of that city by Roger king of Sicily with the aid of a Pisan fleet in 1135, and became the means of diffusing an acquaintance with that portion of the law through Italy, is shown by him not only to rest on very slight evidence, but to be unquestionably, in the latter and more important circumstance, destitute of all foundation.[121] It is still indeed an undetermined question whether other existing manuscripts of the Pandects are not derived from this illustrious copy, which alone contains the entire fifty books, and which has been preserved with a traditional veneration indicating some superiority; but Savigny has shown, that Peter of Valence, a jurist of the eleventh century, made use of an independent manuscript; and it is certain that the Pandects were the subject of legal studies before the siege of Amalfi.

[120] It can be no disparagement to Savigny, who does not claim
perfect originality, to say that Muratori, in his 44th
dissertation, gives several instances of quotations from the
Pandects in writers older than the capture of Amalfi.

[121] Savigny, Geschichte des Römischen Rechts in mittel alter, iii. 83.

|Irnerius, his first successors.|

68. Irnerius, by universal testimony, was the founder of all learned investigation into the laws of Justinian. He gave lectures upon them at Bologna his native city, not long, in Savigny’s opinion, after the commencement of the century.[122] And besides this oral instruction, he began the practice of making glosses, or short marginal explanations, on the law books, with the whole of which he was acquainted. We owe also to him, according to ancient opinion, though much controverted in later times, an epitome, called the Authentica, of what Gravina calls the prolix and difficult (salebrosis atque garrulis) Novels of Justinian, arranged according to the titles of the Code. The most eminent successors of this restorer of the Roman law during the same century were Martinus Gosias, Bulgarus, and Placentinus. They were, however, but a few among many interpreters, whose glosses have been partly, though very imperfectly preserved. The love of equal liberty and just laws in the Italian cities rendered the profession of jurisprudence exceedingly honourable; the doctors of Bologna and other universities were frequently called to the office of podestà, or criminal judge, in these small republics; in Bologna itself they were officially members of the smaller or secret council; and their opinions, which they did not render gratuitously, were sought with the respect that had been shown at Rome to their ancient masters of the age of Severus.

[122] Vol. iv. p. 16. Some have erroneously thought Irnerius a German.

|Their glosses.|

69. A gloss, γλωσσα [glôssa], properly meant a word from a foreign language, or an obsolete or poetical word, or whatever requires interpretation. It was afterwards used for the interpretation itself; and this sense, which is not strictly classical, maybe found in Isidore, though some have imagined Irnerius himself to have first employed it.[123] In the twelfth century, it was extended from a single word to an entire expository sentence. The first glosses were interlinear; they were afterwards placed in the margin, and extended finally in some instances to a sort of running commentary on an entire book. These were called an Apparatus.[124]

[123] Alcuim defines glossa, “unius verbi vel nominis interpretatio.”
Ducange, præfat. in Glossar., p. 38.

[124] Savigny, iii. 519.

|Abridgments of laws. Accursius’s Corpus Glossatum.|