Outlines of English and American Literature Part 7

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ALMONRY, WESTMINSTER Caxton's printing office From an old print]

[Sidenote: STORY OF THE PRINTING PRESS]

The story of how printing came to England, not as a literary but as a business venture, is a very interesting one. Caxton was an English merchant who had established himself at Bruges, then one of the trading centers of Europe. There his business prospered, and he became governor of the _Domus Angliae_, or House of the English Guild of Merchant Adventurers. There is romance in the very name. With moderate wealth came leisure to Caxton, and he indulged his literary taste by writing his own version of some popular romances concerning the siege of Troy, being encouraged by the English princess Margaret, d.u.c.h.ess of Burgundy, into whose service he had entered.

Copies of his work being in demand, Caxton consulted the professional copyists, whose beautiful work we read about in a remarkable novel called _The Cloister and the Hearth_. Then suddenly came to Bruges the rumor of Gutenberg's discovery of printing from movable types, and Caxton hastened to Germany to investigate the matter, led by the desire to get copies of his own work as cheaply as possible. The discovery fascinated him; instead of a few copies of his ma.n.u.script he brought back to Bruges a press, from which he issued his _Recuyell of the Historyes of Troy_ (1474), which was probably the first book to appear in English print. Quick to see the commercial advantages of the new invention, Caxton moved his printing press to London, near Westminster Abbey, where he brought out in 1477 his _Dictes and Sayinges of the Philosophers_, the first book ever printed on English soil. [Footnote: Another book of Caxton's, _The Game and Playe of the Chesse_ (1475) was long accorded this honor, but it is fairly certain that the book on chess-playing was printed in Bruges.]

[Sidenote: THE FIRST PRINTED BOOKS]

From the very outset Caxton's venture was successful, and he was soon busy in supplying books that were most in demand. He has been criticized for not printing the cla.s.sics and other books of the New Learning; but he evidently knew his business and his audience, and aimed to give people what they wanted, not what he thought they ought to have. Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_, Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_, Mandeville's _Travels_, aesop's _Fables_, parts of the _aeneid_, translations of French romances, lives of the saints (The Golden Legend), cookbooks, prayer books, books of etiquette,--the list of Caxton's eighty-odd publications becomes significant when we remember that he printed only popular books, and that the t.i.tles indicate the taste of the age which first looked upon the marvel of printing.

POPULAR BALLADS. If it be asked, "What is a ballad?" any positive answer will lead to disputation. Originally the ballad was probably a chant to accompany a dance, and so it represents the earliest form of poetry. In theory, as various definitions indicate, it is a short poem telling a story of some exploit, usually of a valorous kind. In common practice, from Chaucer to Tennyson, the ballad is almost any kind of short poem treating of any event, grave or gay, in any descriptive or dramatic way that appeals to the poet.

For the origin of the ballad one must search far back among the social customs of primitive times. That the Anglo-Saxons were familiar with it appears from the record of Tacitus, who speaks of their _carmina_ or narrative songs; but, with the exception of "The Fight at Finnsburgh" and a few other fragments, all these have disappeared.

During the Middle Ages ballads were constantly appearing among the common people, [Footnote: Thus, when Sidney says, "I never heard the old song of Percy and Dougla.s.s that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet," and when Shakespeare shows Autolycus at a country fair offering "songs for men and women of all sizes," both poets are referring to popular ballads. Even later, as late as the American Revolution, history was first written for the people in the form of ballads.] but they were seldom written, and found no standing in polite literature. In the eighteenth century, however, certain men who had grown weary of the formal poetry of Pope and his school turned for relief to the old vigorous ballads of the people, and rescued them from oblivion. The one book to which, more than any other, we owe the revival of interest in balladry is _Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_ (1765).

[Sidenote: THE MARKS OF A BALLAD]

The best of our ballads date in their present form from the fifteenth or sixteenth century; but the originals were much older, and had been transmitted orally for years before they were recorded on ma.n.u.script. As we study them we note, as their first characteristic, that they spring from the unlettered common people, that they are by unknown authors, and that they appear in different versions because they were changed by each minstrel to suit his own taste or that of his audience.

A second characteristic is the objective quality of the ballad, which deals not with a poet's thought or feeling (such subjective emotions give rise to the lyric) but with a man or a deed. See in the ballad of "Sir Patrick Spence" (or Spens) how the unknown author goes straight to his story:

The king sits in Dumferling towne, Drinking the blude-red wine: "O whar will I get guid sailor To sail this schip of mine?"

Up and spak an eldern knicht, Sat at the king's richt kne: "Sir Patrick Spence is the best sailor That sails upon the se."

There is a brief pause to tell us of Sir Patrick's dismay when word comes that the king expects him to take out a s.h.i.+p at a time when she should be riding to anchor, then on goes the narrative:

"Mak hast, mak haste, my mirry men all, Our guid schip sails the morne."

"O say na sae, my master deir, For I feir a deadlie storme:

"Late, late yestreen I saw the new moone Wi the auld moone in hir arme, And I feir, I feir, my deir master, That we will c.u.m to harme."

At the end there is no wailing, no moral, no display of the poet's feeling, but just a picture:

O lang, lang may the ladies stand, Wi thair gold kems in their hair, Waiting for thair ain deir lords, For they'll se thame na mair.

Haf owre, haf owre to Aberdour, It's fiftie fadom deip, And thair lies guid Sir Patrick Spence, Wi the Scots lords at his feit.

Directness, vigor, dramatic action, an ending that appeals to the imagination,--most of the good qualities of story-telling are found in this old Scottish ballad. If we compare it with Longfellow's "Wreck of the Hesperus," we may discover that the two poets, though far apart in time and s.p.a.ce, have followed almost identical methods.

Other good ballads, which take us out under the open sky among vigorous men, are certain parts of "The Gest of Robin Hood," "Mary Hamilton," "The Wife of Usher's Well," "The Wee Wee Man," "Fair Helen," "Hind Horn,"

"Bonnie George Campbell," "Johnnie O'c.o.c.kley's Well," "Catharine Jaffray"

(from which Scott borrowed his "Lochinvar"), and especially "The Nutbrown Mayde," sweetest and most artistic of all the ballads, which gives a popular and happy version of the tale that Chaucer told in his "Patient Griselda."

SUMMARY. The period included in the Age of Chaucer and the Revival of Learning covers two centuries, from 1350 to 1550. The chief literary figure of the period, and one of the greatest of English poets, is Geoffrey Chaucer, who died in the year 1400. He was greatly influenced by French and Italian models; he wrote for the middle and upper cla.s.ses; his greatest work was _The Canterbury Tales_.

Langland, another poet contemporary with Chaucer, is famous for his _Piers Plowman_, a powerful poem aiming at social reform, and vividly portraying the life of the common people. It is written in the old Saxon manner, with accent and alliteration, and is difficult to read in its original form.

After the death of Chaucer a century and a half pa.s.sed before another great writer appeared in England. The time was one of general decline in literature, and the most obvious causes were: the Wars of the Roses, which destroyed many of the patrons of literature; the Reformation, which occupied the nation with religious controversy; and the Renaissance or Revival of Learning, which turned scholars to the literature of Greece and Rome rather than to English works.

In our study of the latter part of the period we reviewed: (1) the rise of the popular ballad, which was almost the only type of literature known to the common people. (2) The work of Malory, who arranged the best of the Arthurian legends in his _Morte d'Arthur._ (3) The work of Caxton, who brought the first printing press to London, and who was instrumental in establis.h.i.+ng the East-Midland dialect as the literary language of England.

SELECTIONS FOR READING. Typical selections from all authors of the period are given in Manly, English Poetry, and English Prose; Newcomer and Andrews, Twelve Centuries of English Poetry and Prose; Ward, English Poets; Morris and Skeat, Specimens of Early English.

Chaucer's Prologue, Knight's Tale, and other selections in Riverside Literature, King's Cla.s.sics, and several other school series. A good single-volume edition of Chaucer's poetry is Skeat, The Student's Chaucer (Clarendon Press). A good, but expensive, modernized version is Tatlock and MacKaye, Modern Reader's Chaucer (Macmillan).

Metrical version of Piers Plowman, by Skeat, in King's Cla.s.sics; modernized prose version by Kate Warren, in Treasury of English Literature (Dodge).

Selections from Malory's Morte d'Arthur in Athenaeum Press Series (Ginn and Company); also in Camelot Series. An elaborate edition of Malory with introduction by Sommer and an essay by Andrew Lang (3 vols., London, 1889); another with modernized text, introduction by Rhys, ill.u.s.trations by Aubrey Beardsley (London, 1893).

The best of the old ballads are published in Pocket Cla.s.sics, and in Maynard's English Cla.s.sics; a volume of ancient and modern English ballads in Ginn and Company's Cla.s.sics for Children; Percy's Reliques, in Everyman's Library. Allingham, The Ballad Book; Hazlitt, Popular Poetry of England; Gummere, Old English Ballads; Gayley and Flaherty, Poetry of the People; Child, English and Scottish Popular Poetry (5 vols.); the last-named work, edited and abridged by Kittredge, in one volume.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. The following works have been sifted from a much larger number dealing with the age of Chaucer and the Revival of Learning. More extended works, covering the entire field of English history and literature, are listed in the General Bibliography.

_HISTORY_. Snell, the Age of Chaucer; Jusserand, Wayfaring Life in the Fourteenth Century; Jenks, In the Days of Chaucer; Trevelyan, In the Age of Wyclif; Coulton, Chaucer and His England; Denton, England in the Fifteenth Century; Green, Town Life in the Fifteenth Century; Einstein, The Italian Renaissance in England; Froissart, Chronicles; Lanier, The Boy's Froissart.

_LITERATURE_. Ward, Life of Chaucer (English Men of Letters Series); Kittredge, Chaucer and His Poetry (Harvard University Press); Pollard, Chaucer Primer; Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer; Lowell's essay in My Study Windows; essay by Hazlitt, in Lectures on the English Poets; Jusserand, Piers Plowman; Roper, Life of Sir Thomas More.

_FICTION AND POETRY_. Lytton, Last of the Barons; Yonge, Lances of Lynwood; Scott, Marmion; Shakespeare, Richard II, Henry IV, Richard III; Bates and Coman, English History Told by English Poets.

CHAPTER IV

THE ELIZABETHAN AGE (1550-1620)

This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war, This happy breed of men, this little world, This precious stone set in the silver sea, ...

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England!

Shakespeare, _King Richard II_

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND. In such triumphant lines, falling from the lips of that old imperialist John of Gaunt, did Shakespeare reflect, not the rebellious spirit of the age of Richard II, but the boundless enthusiasm of his own times, when the defeat of Spain's mighty Armada had left England "in splendid isolation,"

unchallenged mistress of her own realm and of the encircling sea.

For it was in the latter part of Elizabeth's reign that England found herself as a nation, and became conscious of her destiny as a world empire.

There is another and darker side to the political s.h.i.+eld, but the student of literature is not concerned with it. We are to remember the patriotic enthusiasm of the age, overlooking the frequent despotism of "good Queen Bess" and entering into the spirit of national pride and power that thrilled all cla.s.ses of Englishmen during her reign, if we are to understand the outburst of Elizabethan literature. Nearly two centuries of trouble and danger had pa.s.sed since Chaucer died, and no national poet had appeared in England. The Renaissance came, and the Reformation, but they brought no great writers with them. During the first thirty years of Elizabeth's reign not a single important literary work was produced; then suddenly appeared the poetry of Spenser and Chapman, the prose of Hooker, Sidney and Bacon, the dramas of Marlowe, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and a score of others,--all voicing the national feeling after the defeat of the Armada, and growing silent as soon as the enthusiasm began to wane.

LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS. Next to the patriotic spirit of Elizabethan literature, its most notable qualities are its youthful freshness and vigor, its romantic spirit, its absorption in the theme of love, its extravagance of speech, its lively sense of the wonder of heaven and earth.

The ideal beauty of Spenser's poetry, the bombast of Marlowe, the boundless zest of Shakespeare's historical plays, the romantic love celebrated in unnumbered lyrics,--all these speak of youth, of springtime, of the joy and the heroic adventure of human living.

This romantic enthusiasm of Elizabethan poetry and prose may be explained by the fact that, besides the national impulse, three other inspiring influences were at work. The first in point of time was the rediscovery of the cla.s.sics of Greece and Rome,--beautiful old poems, which were as new to the Elizabethans as to Keats when he wrote his immortal sonnet, beginning: