Amenities of Literature Part 38

Travers was silenced by "authority." He boldly appealed to her majesty and the privy council, where he had many friends. His pet.i.tion argued every point of divinity, while he claimed the freedom of his ministry.

But there stood Elizabeth's "black husband," as the virgin queen deigned in her coquetry to call the archbishop. The party of Travers circulated his pet.i.tion, which was cried up as unanswerable; it was carried in "many bosoms:" Hooker was compelled to reply; and the churchmen extolled "an answer answerless:" the buds of the great work appear among these sterile leaves of controversy.[2]

The absence of Travers from the Temple seemed to be more influential than even his presence. He had plenteously sown the seeds of nonconformity, and the soil was rich. Hooker had foreseen the far-remote event; "Nothing can come of contention but the mutual waste of the parties contending, till a common enemy dance in the ashes of them both." It must be confessed that Hooker had a philosophical genius.

It was amid the disorders around him that the master of the Temple meditated to build up the great argument of polity, drawn from the nature of all laws, human and divine. The sour neglect and systematic opposition of the rising party of the dissenters had outwearied his musings. Clinging to the great tome which was expanding beneath his hand, the studious man entreated to be removed to some quieter place. A letter to the primate on this occasion reveals, in the sweetness of his words, his innate simplicity. He tells that when he had lost the freedom of his cell at college, yet he found some degree of it in his quiet country parsonage: but now he was weary of the noise and opposition of the place, and G.o.d and nature did not intend him for contention, but for study and quietness. He had satisfied himself in his studies, and now had begun a treatise in which he intended the satisfaction of others: he had spent many thoughtful hours, and he hoped not in vain; but he was not able to finish what he had begun, unless removed to some quiet country parsonage, where he might see G.o.d's blessings spring out of our mother earth, and "eat his own bread in peace and privacy."

The humble wish was obtained, and the great work was prosecuted.

In 1594, four books of the "Ecclesiastical Polity" were published, and three years afterwards the fifth. These are for ever sanctioned by the last revisions of the author. The intensity of study wore out a frame which had always been infirm; and his premature death left his ma.n.u.scripts roughly sketched, without the providence of a guardian.

These unconcocted ma.n.u.scripts remained in the sole custody of the widow.

Strange rumours were soon afloat, and transcripts from Hooker's papers got abroad, attesting that in the termination of the "Ecclesiastical Polity," the writer had absolutely sided with the nonconformists. The great work, however, was appreciated of such national importance, that it was deemed expedient to bring it to the cognizance of the privy council, and the widow was summoned to give an account of the state of these unfinished ma.n.u.scripts. Consonantly with her character, which we have had occasion to observe, in the short interval of four months which had pa.s.sed since the death of Hooker, this widow had become a wife. She had at first refused to give any account of the ma.n.u.scripts; but now, in a conference with the archbishop, she confessed that she had allowed certain puritanic ministers "to go into Hooker's study and to look over his writings; and further, that they burned and tore many, a.s.suring her that these were writings not fit to be seen." There never was an examination by the privy council, for the day after her confession this late widow of Hooker was found dead in her bed. A mysterious coincidence! The suspected husband was declared innocent, so runs the tale told by honest Izaac Walton.

These ma.n.u.scripts were now delivered up to the archbishop, who placed them in the hands of the learned Dr. Spenser to put into order; he was an intimate friend of Hooker, and long conversant with his arguments.

However, as this scholar was deeply occupied in the translation of the Bible, he entrusted the papers to a student at Oxford, Henry Jackson, a votary of the departed genius.

On the decease of Dr. Spenser, the ma.n.u.scripts of Hooker were left as "a precious legacy" to Dr. King, bishop of London, in 1611. They were resigned with the most painful reluctance by the speculative and ingenious student to whom they had been so long entrusted, that he looked on them with a parental eye, having transcribed them and put many things together according to his idea of the system of Hooker.[3] During the time the ma.n.u.scripts reposed in the care of the bishop of London, an edition of the five books of the "Ecclesiastical Polity," with some tractates and sermons, was published in 1617;[4] had Dr. King thought that these ma.n.u.scripts were in a state fitted for publication, he would have doubtless completed that edition. He died in 1621, and the ma.n.u.scripts were claimed by Archbishop Abbot for the Lambeth library.

Again, in 1632, the five undoubted genuine books were reprinted. Laud, then archbishop of Canterbury, attracted probably by this edition, examined the papers--he was startled by some antagonist principles, and left the phantom to sleep in its darkness; whether some doctrines which broadly inculcate _jure divino_ were touches from the Lambeth quarter, or whether the interpolating hand of some presbyter had insidiously turned aside the weapon, the conflicting opinions could not be those of the judicious Hooker.

But their fate and their perils had not yet terminated; the episcopalian walls of Lambeth were no longer an asylum, when the ma.n.u.scripts of Hooker were to be grasped by the searching hands and heads of Prynne and Hugh Peters, by a vote of the Commons! At this critical period the sixth and eighth books were given to the world, announced as "a work long expected, and now published according to the most authentique copies."

We are told of six transcripts with which this edition was collated. It is perplexing to understand when these copies got forth, and how they were all alike deficient in the seventh book, which the setter forth of this edition declares to be irrecoverable. After the Restoration, Dr.

Gauden made an edition of Hooker; in the dedication to the king he offers the work as "now augmented and I hope completed, with the three last books, so much desired and so long concealed." This remarkable expression indicates some doubt whether he possessed the perfect copies, nor does he inform us of the manner in which he had recovered the lost seventh book. The recent able editor of the works of Hooker favours its genuineness by internal evidence, notwithstanding it bears marks of hasty writing; but he irresistibly proves that the sixth book is wholly lost, that which is named the sixth being never designed as a part of the "Ecclesiastical Polity."

Both the great parties are justly ent.i.tled to suspect one another; a helping hand was prompt to twist the nose of wax to their favourite shape; and the transcripts had always omissions, and we may add, commissions. Some copies of the concluding book a.s.serted that "Princes on earth are only accountable to Heaven," while others read "to the people." We perceive the facility of such slight emendations, and may be astonished at their consequences; but we need not question the hands which furnished the various readings. When we recollect the magnificent entrance into the work, we must smile at the inconclusive conclusion, the small issue from so vast an edifice. "Too rigorous it were that the breach of human law should be held a deadly sin. A mean there is between extremities, _if so be that we can find it out_." Never was the _juste milieu_ suggested with such hopeless diffidence. Such was not the tone, nor could be the words, of our eloquent and impressive HOOKER. From the first conception of his system, his comprehensive intellect had surveyed all its parts, and the intellectual architecture was completed before the edifice was constructed. This admirable secret in the labour of a single work, on which many years were to be consumed, our author has himself revealed to us; a secret which may be a lesson. "I have endeavoured that every former part might give strength unto all that follow, and every latter bring some light unto all before; so that if the judgments of men do but hold themselves in suspense, as touching the first more general meditations, till in order they have perused the rest that ensue, what may seem dark at the first will afterwards be found more plain, even as the latter particular decisions will appear, I doubt not, more strong, when the other have been read before."[5] Here we have an allusion to a n.o.ble termination of his system.

This great work of Hooker strictly is theological, but here it is considered simply as a work of literature and philosophy. The first book lays open the foundations of law and order, to escape from "the mother of confusion which breedeth destruction. The lowest must be knit to the highest." We may read this first book as we read the reflections of Burke on the French revolution; where what is peculiar, or partial, or erroneous in the writer does not interfere with the general principles of the more profound views of human policy. And it is remarkable that during the anarchical misrule of France, when all governments seemed alike unstable, some one who had not wholly lost his senses among those raving politicians, published separately this _first book of Ecclesiastical Polity_; a timely admonition, however, alas! timeless! I was not surprised to find cla.s.sed among "Legal Bibliography" the works of Hooker.

The fate of those controversies which in reality admit of no argument, is singularly exemplified in the history of this great work. These are the controversies where the parties apparently going the same course, and intent on the same object, but impelled by opposite principles, can never unite; like two parallel lines, they may run on together, but remain at the same distance, though they should extend themselves to infinity. Opposite propositions are a.s.signed by each party, or from the same premises are educed opposite inferences. In the present case both parties inquired after a model for church-government; there was none!

Apostolical Christianity had hardly left the old synagogue. Hooker therefore a.s.serted that the form of church-government was merely a human inst.i.tution regulated by laws; and that laws were not made for private men to dispute, but to obey. The nonconformist urged the Protestant right of private judgment and a satisfied conscience. Hooker, alarmed at this irruption of schisms, to maintain established authority, or rather supremacy, was driven to take refuge in the very argument which the Romanist used with the Protestant.

The elaborate preface of Hooker is a tract of itself; it is the secret history of nonconformity, and of the fiery Calvin. Yet was it from positions here laid down that James the Second declared that it was one of the two books which sent him back to the fold of Rome. It is not therefore surprising that when a part was eagerly translated by an English Romanist to his Holiness, who had declared that "he had never met with an English book whose writer deserved the name of an author!"--so low then stood our literature in the eyes of the foreigner,--that the Pope perceived nothing anti-papal in the eloquent advocate of established authority, while he was deeply struck at the profundity of the genius of "a poor obscure English priest;" and the bishop of Rome exclaimed, "There is no learning that this man has not searched into; nothing too hard for his understanding, and his books will get reverence by age." Our James the First, who it must be allowed was no ordinary judge of polemics, on his arrival in England inquired after Hooker, and was informed that his recent death had been deeply lamented by the queen. "And I receive it with no less sorrow," observed the new English monarch, "for I have received more satisfaction in reading a leaf in Mr. Hooker than I have had in large treatises by many of the learned: many others write well, but yet in the next age they will be forgotten."

The attestations of his Holiness and our James the First, to some of my readers, may appear very suspicious. They are, however, prophetic; and this is an evidence that the "Ecclesiastical Polity" must contain principles more deeply important than those which might more particularly have been grateful to these regal critics. Our sage, it is true, has not escaped from a severer scrutiny, and has been taxed as "too apt to acquiesce in all ancient tenets." What was transitory, or what was partial, in this great work, may be subtracted without injury to its excellence or its value. Hooker has written what posterity reads.

The spirit of a later age, progressive in ameliorating the imperfect condition of all human inst.i.tutions, must often return to pause over the first book of "Ecclesiastical Polity," where the master-genius has laid the foundations and searched into the nature of all laws whatever.

HOOKER is the first vernacular writer whose cla.s.sical pen harmonised a numerous prose. While his earnest eloquence, freed from all scholastic pedantry, a.s.sumed a style stately in its structure, his gentle spirit sometimes flows into natural humour, lovely in the freshness of its simplicity.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] When our literary history was only partially cultivated, the readers of Hooker were often disturbed amidst the profound reasonings of "The Ecclesiastical Polity," by frequent references to volumes and pages of T. C. The editors of Hooker had thrown no light on these mysterious initials. Contemporaries are not apt to mortify themselves by recollecting that what is familiar to them may be forgotten by the succeeding age. Sir John Hawkins, a literary antiquary, drew up a memoir which explains these initials as those of Thomas Cartwright, and has correctly arranged the numerous tracts of the whole controversy. But Hawkins having consigned this accurate catalogue to "The Antiquarian Repertory," it could be little known; and Beloe, in his "Anecdotes of Literature," vol. i., transcribing the entire memoir of Hawkins, _verbatim_, without the slightest acknowledgment, obtains a credit for original research. Beloe is referred to for this _authentic_ information by Burnet, in his "Specimens of English Prose-Writers."

[2] Both these papers of Travers and Hooker are preserved in Hooker's Works. Many curious points are discussed by Hooker with admirable reasoning. The divinity of Hooker, who is the firm advocate of legal authority, is enlightened and tolerant; while Travers, who advocated unrestrained personal freedom, is in his divinity narrow and merciless. He sees only "the Elect," and he casts human nature into the flames of eternity.

[3] "A studious and cynical person, who never expected or desired more than his small preferment. He was a great admirer of Richard Hooker, and collected some of his small treatises."--_Athenae Oxonienses._

[4] Anthony Wood has said it contained all the eight books, (followed by General Dictionary and Biographia Britannica,) and accused Gauden of pretending to publish three books for the first time in 1662.

[5] "Ecclesiastical Polity," book First.

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

Were I another Baillet, solely occupied in collecting the "_jugemens des scavans_"--the decisions of the learned--the name of Sir Philip Sidney would bring forth an awful crash of criticism, rarely equalled in dissonance and confusion.

He who first ventured to p.r.o.nounce a final condemnation on "THE ARCADIA"

of Sir PHILIP SIDNEY as a "tedious, lamentable, pedantic, pastoral romance," was Horace Walpole;--a decision suited to the heartlessness which wounded the personal qualities of an heroic man, the pride of a proud age. Have modern critics too often caught the watchword when given out by an imposing character? The irregular Hazlitt honestly confides to us, in an agony of despair, that "Sir Philip Sidney is a writer for whom I cannot acquire a taste," tormented by a conviction that a taste should be acquired. The peculiar style of this critic is at once sparkling and vehement, ant.i.thetical and metaphysical. The volcano of his criticism heaves; the short, irruptive periods clash with quick repercussion; the lava flows over his pages, till it leaves us in the sudden darkness of an hypercriticism on "the celebrated description of the 'Arcadia.'"

Gifford, once the Coryphaeus of modern criticism, whose native shrewdness admirably fitted him for a partisan, both in politics and in literature, did not deem Walpole's depreciation of Sidney "to be without a certain degree of justice; the plan is poor, the incidents trite, the style pedantic." But our prudential critic harbours himself in some security by confessing to "some nervous and elegant pa.s.sages."

At our northern Athens, the native coldness has touched the leaves of "The Arcadia" like a frost in spring. The agreeable researcher into the history of fiction confesses the graceful beauty of the language, but considers the whole as "extremely tiresome." Another critic states a more alarming paroxysm of criticism, that of being "lulled to sleep over the interminable 'Arcadia.'"

What innocent lover of books does not imagine that "The Arcadia" of Sidney is a volume deserted by every reader, and only to be cla.s.sed among the folio romances of the Scuderies, or the unmeaning pastorals whose scenes are placed in the golden age? But such is not the fact.

"n.o.body, it is said, reads 'The Arcadia;' we have known very many persons who read it, men, women, and children, and never knew one read it without deep interest and admiration," exclaims an animated critic, probably the poet Southey.[1] More recent votaries have approached the altar of this creation of romance.

It may be well to remind the reader that, although this volume, in the revolutions of times and tastes, has had the fate to be depreciated by modern critics, it has pa.s.sed through fourteen editions, suffered translations in every European language, and is not yet sunk among the refuse of the bibliopolists. "The Arcadia" was long, and it may still remain, the haunt of the poetical tribe. SIDNEY was one of those writers whom Shakespeare not only studied but imitated in his scenes, copied his language, and transferred his ideas.[2] s.h.i.+RLEY, BEAUMONT and FLETCHER, and our early dramatists turned to "THE ARCADIA" as their text-book.

Sidney enchanted two later brothers in WALLER and COWLEY; and the dispa.s.sionate Sir WILLIAM TEMPLE was so struck by "The Arcadia," that he found "the true spirit of the vein of ancient poetry in Sidney." The world of fas.h.i.+on in Sidney's age culled their phrases out of "The Arcadia," which served them as a complete "Academy of Compliments."

The reader who concludes that "The Arcadia" of Sidney is a pedantic pastoral, has received a very erroneous conception of the work. It was unfortunate for Sidney that he borrowed the t.i.tle of "The Arcadia" from Sannazaro, which has caused his work to be cla.s.sed among pastoral romances, which it nowise resembles; the pastoral part stands wholly separated from the romance itself, and is only found in an interlude of shepherds at the close of each book; dancing brawls, or reciting verses, they are not agents in the fiction. The censure of pedantry ought to have been restricted to the attempt of applying the Roman prosody to English versification, the momentary folly of the day, and to some other fancies of putting verse to the torture.

"The Arcadia" was not one of those spurious fictions invented at random, where an author has little personal concern in the narrative he forms.

When we forget the singularity of the fable, and the masquerade dresses of the actors, we p.r.o.nounce them to be real personages, and that the dramatic style distinctly conveys to us incidents which, however veiled, had occurred to the poet's own observation, as we perceive that the scenes which he has painted with such precision must have been localities. The characters are minutely a.n.a.lyzed, and so correctly preserved, that their interior emotions are painted forth in their gestures as well as revealed in their language. The author was himself the tender lover whose amorous griefs he touched with such delicacy, and the undoubted child of chivalry he drew; and in these finer pa.s.sions he seems only to have multiplied himself.

The manners of the court of Elizabeth were still chivalric; and Sidney was trained in the discipline of those generous spirits whom he has n.o.bly described as men of "high-erected thoughts seated in a heart of courtesy." Hume has censured these "affectations, conceits, and fopperies," as well became the philosopher of the Canongate; but there was a reality in this shadow of chivalry. Amadis de Gaul himself never surpa.s.sed the chivalrous achievements of the Earl of Ess.e.x; his life, indeed, would form the finest of romances, could it be written. He challenged the governor of Corunna to single combat for the honour of the nation, and proposed to encounter Villars, governor of Rouen, on foot or on horseback. And thus run his challenge:--"I will maintain the justice of the cause of Henry the Fourth of France, against the league; and that I am a better man than thou, and that my mistress is more beautiful than thine." This was the very language and the deed of one of the Paladins. It was this spirit, fantastic as it may appear to us, which stirred Sidney, when Parsons the Jesuit, or some one who lay concealed in a dark corner of the court, sent forth anonymously the famous state-libel of "Leicester's Commonwealth." To the unknown libeller who had reflected on the origin of the Dudleys, that "the Duke of Northumberland was not born a gentleman," Sir Philip Sidney, in the loftiest tone of chivalry, designed to send a cartel of defiance.

Touched to the quick in any blur in the _Stemmata Dudleiana_, which, it is said, occupied the poet Spenser when under the princely roof of Leicester, Sidney exclaims, "I am a Dudley in blood, that Duke's daughter's son; my chief honour is to be a Dudley, and truly am I glad to have cause to set forth the n.o.bility of that blood; none but this fellow of invincible shamelessness could ever have called so palpable a matter in question." He closed with the intention of printing at London a challenge which he designed all Europe to witness. "Because that thou the writer hereof doth most falsely lay want of gentry to my dead ancestors, I say that thou therein liest in thy throat, which I will be ready to justify upon thee in any place of Europe where thou wilt a.s.sign me a free place of coming, as within three months after the publis.h.i.+ng thereof I may understand thy mind. And this which I write, I would send to thine own hands if I knew thee; but I trust it cannot be intended that he should be ignorant of this printed in London, who knows the very whisperings of the Privy-chamber."[3]

We, who are otherwise accustomed to anonymous libels, may be apt to conclude that there was something fantastical in sending forth a challenge through all Europe:--we, who are content with the obscure rencontre of a morning, and with the lucky chance of an exchange of shots.

The narrative of "The Arcadia" is peculiar; but if the reader's fort.i.tude can yield up his own fancy to the feudal poet, he will find the tales diversified. Sidney had traced the vestiges of feudal warfare in Germany, in Italy, and in France; those wars of petty states where the walled city was oftener carried by stratagem than by storm, and where the chivalrous heroes, like champions, stepped forth to challenge each other in single combat, almost as often as they were viewed as generals at the head of their armies. Our poet's battles have all the fierceness and the hurry of action, as if told by one who had stood in the midst of the battle-field; and in his "s.h.i.+pwreck," men fight with the waves, ere they are flung on the sh.o.r.e, as if the observer had sat on the summit of a cliff watching them.

He describes objects on which he loves to dwell with a peculiar richness of fancy; he had s.h.i.+vered his lance in the tilt, and had managed the fiery courser in his career; that n.o.ble animal was a frequent object of his favourite descriptions; he looks even on the curious and fanciful ornaments of its caparisons; and in the vivid picture of the shock between two knights, we see distinctly every motion of the horse and the horseman.[4] But sweet is his loitering hour in the suns.h.i.+ne of luxuriant gardens, or as we lose ourselves in the green solitudes of the forests which most he loves. His poetic eye was pictorial; and the delineations of objects, both in art and nature, might be transferred to the canvas.

There is a feminine delicacy in whatever alludes to the female character, not merely courtly, but imbued with that sensibility which St. Palaye has remarkably described as "full of refinement and fanaticism." And this may suggest an idea not improbable, that Shakespeare drew his fine conceptions of the female character from Sidney. Shakespeare solely, of all our elder dramatists, has given true beauty to woman; and Shakespeare was an attentive reader of "The Arcadia." There is something, indeed, in the language and the conduct of Musidorus and Pyrocles, two knights, which may startle the reader, and may be condemned as very unnatural and most affected. Their friends.h.i.+p resembles the love which is felt for the beautiful s.e.x, if we were to decide by their impa.s.sioned conduct and the tenderness of their language. Coleridge observed that the language of these two friends in "The Arcadia" is such as we would not now use, except to women; and he has thrown out some very remarkable observations.[5] Warton, too, has observed, that the style of friends.h.i.+p between males in the reign of Elizabeth would not be tolerated in the present day; sets of sonnets, in a vein of tenderness which now could only express the most ardent affection for a mistress, were then prevalent.[6] They have not accounted for this anomaly in manners by merely discovering them in the reigns of Elizabeth and James. It is unquestionably a remains of the ancient chivalry, when men, embarking in the same perilous enterprise together, vowed their mutual aid and their personal devotion. The dangers of one knight were to be partic.i.p.ated, and his honour to be maintained, by his brother-in-arms. Such exalted friends.h.i.+ps, and such interminable affections, often broke out both in deeds and words which, to the tempered intercourse of our day, offend by their intensity. A male friend, whose life and fortune were consecrated to another male, who looks on him with adoration, and who talks of him with excessive tenderness, appears to us nothing less than a chimerical and monstrous lover! It is certain, however, that in the age of chivalry, a Damon and Pythias were no uncommon characters in that brotherhood.

It is the imperishable diction, the language of Shakespeare, before Shakespeare wrote, which diffuses its enchantment over "The Arcadia;"

and it is for this that it should be studied; and the true critic of Sidney, because the critic was a true poet, offers his unquestioned testimony in Cowper--

SIDNEY, WARBLER OF POETIC PROSE!

Even those playful turns of words, caught from Italian models, which are usually condemned, conceal some subtility of feeling, or rise in a pregnant thought.[7] The intellectual character of Sidney is more serious than volatile; the habits of his mind were too elegant and thoughtful to sport with the low comic; and one of the defects of "The Arcadia" is the attempt at burlesque humour in a clownish family.

Whoever is not susceptible of great delight in the freshness of the scenery, the luxuriant imagery, the graceful fancies, and the stately periods of "The Arcadia," must look to a higher source than criticism, to acquire a sense which nature and study seem to deny him.

I have dwelt on the finer qualities of "The Arcadia;" whenever the volume proves tedious, the remedy is in the reader's own hands, provided he has the judgment often to return to a treasure he ought never to lose.