METRICAL ROMANCES. ENGLISH LITERATURE. as of history. Even where a really historical person * It was not till the English language had risen into some consideration, that it became a vehicle for romantic metrical tales. One composition of the kind, entitled Sir Tristrem, published by Sir Walter Scott in 1804, was believed by him, upon what he thought tolerable evidence, to be the composition of Thomas of Ercildoun, identical with a person noted in Scottish tradition under the appellation of Thomas the Rhymer, who lived at Earlston in Berwickshire, and If this had been the case, died shortly before 1299. Sir Tristrem must have been considered a production of the middle or latter part of the thirteenth But the soundness of Sir Walter's theory century. is now generally denied. Another English romance, the Life of Alexander the Great, was attributed by Mr Warton to Adam Davie, marshall of Stratfordle-Bow, who lived about 1312; but this, also, has One only, King Horn, can be been controverted. assigned with certainty to the latter part of the Mr Warton has placed some thirteenth century. others under that period, but by conjecture alone; and in fact dates and the names of authors are alike wanting at the beginning of the history of this class of compositions. As far as probability goes, the reign of Edward II. (1307-27) may be set down as the era of the earlier English metrical romances, or rather of the earlier English versions of such works from the French, for they were, almost without exception, of that nature. Sir Guy, the Squire of Low Degree, Sir Degore, King Robert of Sicily, the King of Tars, Impomedon, and La Mort Artur, are the names of some from which Mr Warton gives copious extracts. Others, probably of later date, or which at least were long after popular, are entitled Sir Thopas, Sir Isenbras, Gawan and Gologras, and Sir Bevis. In an Essay on the Ancient Metrical Romances, in the second volume of Dr Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, the names of many more, with an account of some of them, and a prose abstract of one entitled Sir Libius, are given. Mr Ellis has also, in his Metrical Romances, given prose abstracts of many, with some of the more agreeable passages. The metrical romances flourished till the close of the fifteenth century, and their spirit affected English literature till a still later period. Many of the ballads handed down amongst the common people are supposed to have been derived from them. *Ellis. [Extract from the King of Tars.] [The Soudan of Damascus, having asked the daughter of the The Soudan sat at his dess,1 They comen into the hall And said, 'Sire, the king of Tars Heathen hound he doth thee call; And thy barons all !' His robe he rent adown ; The table adown right he smote, He looked as a wild lion. Earl and eke baron. So he fared forsooth aplight, That no man might him chast :5 That they comen to his parliament, Both least and maist.6 Of Tars the Christian king; And he said, withouten fail, To wit of you counsail.' 3 Became First. 11 It shall be ill-fortune to him that he 12 Order. 9 The Soudan gathered a host unride, With Saracens of muckle pride, The king of Tars to assail. When the king it heard that tide, All that he might of send; Battle they set upon a day, Ne longer nold they lend. The Soudan come with great power, With helm bright, and fair banner, Upon that king to wend. The Soudan led an huge host, Of helins leamed light.3 The king of Tars came also, With mony a Christian knight. That grisly was of sight, Three heathen again two Christian men, And felled them down in the fen, With weapons stiff and good. The stern Saracens in that fight, They fought as they were wood. When the king of Tars saw that sight, Wood he was for wrath aplight, In hand he hent a spear, And to the Soudan he rode full right, Adown he 'gan him bear. The Soudan nigh he had y-slaw, And brought him again upon his steed, That no man might him der.7 When he was brought upon his steed, And all that he hit he made 'em bleed, 'Mahoun help!' he 'gan cry. Mony a helm there was unweaved, Men might see upon the field, Of the Christian company. When the king of Tars saw him so ride, No longer there he wold abide, But fleeth to his own city. The Saracens, that ilk tide, Our Christian men so free. The Saracens that time, sans fail, 1 Unreckoned. [Extract from the Squire of Low Degree.] [The daughter of the king of Hungary having fallen into melancholy, in consequence of the loss of her lover, the squire of low degree, her father thus endeavours to console her. The passage is valuable, because,' says Warton, it delineates, in lively colours, the fashionable diversions and usages of ancient times.'] To-morrow ye shall in hunting fare;2 And cloths of fine gold all about your head, With damask white and azure blue, Well diapered with lilies new. Your pommels shall be ended with gold, Your chains enamelled many a fold, Your mantle of rich degree, Jennets of Spain, that ben so wight, Trapped to the ground with velvet bright. Ye shall have Rumney and Malespine, Both Algrade and despice eke, Pyment also and garnard ; You shall have venison y-bake, The best wild fowl that may be take; Ye shall be set at such a tryst, That hart and hynd shall come to your fist, To hear the bugles there y-blow. With gosshawk and with gentle falcón, When you come home your menzies among, * Little children, great and small, 8 Gleamed with light. 5 Blow. 4 Took. 6 Defend. 6 A drink of wine, honey, and spices. 8 Household. 9 Set. IMMEDIATE PREDECESSORS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. With cloth of arras pight to the ground, Th' one half of stone, th' other of tree; At your bridges to bring you light. That when ye sleep the taste may come; All night minstrels for you shall wake. IMMEDIATE PREDECESSORS OF CHAUCER. Hitherto, we have seen English poetry only in the forms of the chronicle and the romance: of its many other forms, so familiar now, in which it is employed to point a moral lesson, to describe natural scenery, to convey satiric reflections, and give expression to refined sentiment, not a trace has as yet engaged our The dawn of miscellaneous poetry, as attention. these forms may be comprehensively called, is to be faintly discovered about the middle of the thirteenth century, when Henry III. sat on the English throne, and Alexander II. on that of Scotland. A considerable variety of examples will be found in the volumes of which the titles are given below. The earliest that can be said to possess literary merit is an elegy on the death of Edward I. (1307), written in musical and energetic stanzas, of which one is subjoined : Jerusalem, thou hast i-lore 2 The flour of all chivalerie, Our baners that bueth broht to grounde; Er we such a kyng han y-founde ! The first name that occurs in this department of our literature is that of LAWRENCE MINOT, who, about 1350, composed a series of short poems on the victories of Edward III., beginning with the battle of Halidon Hill, and ending with the siege of Guines Castle. His works were in a great measure unknown until the beginning of the present century, when they were published by Ritson, who praised them for the ease, variety, and harmony of the versification. About the same time flourished RICHARD ROLLE, a hermit of the order of St Augustine, and doctor of divinity, who lived a solitary life near the Edward had intended to go on a crusade to the Holy Land. *Mr Thomas Wright's Political Songs and Specimens of Lyric nunnery of Hampole, four miles from Doncaster. [What is in Heaven.] Ther is lyf withoute ony deth, And ther is nevere wynter in that countrie :- And ther is alle manner frendshipe that may be, ROBERT LANGLAND. The Vision of Pierce Ploughman, a satirical poem of the same period, ascribed to ROBERT LONGLANDE, a secular priest, also shows very expressively the progress which was made, about the middle of the fourteenth century, towards a literary style. This poem, in many points of view, is one of the most important works that appeared in England previous to the invention of printing. It is the popular representative of the doctrines which were silently specimen of the English language than Chaucer, bringing about the Reformation, and it is a peculiarly but as exhibiting the revival of the same system of national poem, not only as being a much purer alliteration which characterised the Anglo-Saxon poetry. It is, in fact, both in this peculiarity and in its political character, characteristic of a great literary and political revolution, in which the language as well as the independence of the AngloSaxons had at last gained the ascendency over those of the Normans.* Pierce is represented as falling asleep on the Malvern hills, and as seeing, in his sleep, a series of visions; in describing these, he exposes the corruptions of society, but particularly the dissolute lives of the religious orders, with much bitterness. [Extracts from Pierce Plowman.] 1 Age. 2 Burd, i. e. a maiden. * A popular edition of this poem has been recently published 11 naturally made. by Mr Wright. The lines are there divided, as we believe in strictness they ought to be, in the middle, where a pause is A full comely creature, truth she hight, Of the din and of the darkness, &c. [Covetousness is thus personified.] And then came Covetise, can I him not descrive, Well syder than his chin, they shriveled for eld: With an hood on his head and a lousy hat above. Al so-torn and baudy, and full of lice creeping; [The existing condition of the religious orders is delineated in the following allegorical fashion. It might be supposed that the final lines, in which the Reformation is predicted, was an interpolation after that event; but this has been ascertained not to have been the case.] Ac now is Religion a rider, a roamer about, A pricker on a palfrey from manor to manor. An heap of hounds [behind him] as he a lord were: Little had lords to done to give lond from her heirs In many places there they be parsons by hemself at With these imperfect models as his only native guides, arose our first great author, GEOFFREY CHAUCER, distinctively known as the Father of English poetry. Though our language had risen into importance with the rise of the Commons in the time of Edward I., the French long kept possession of the court and higher circles, and it required a genius like that of Chaucer-familiar with different modes tractions which followed, and the paucity of any striking poetical genius for at least a century and a half after his death, too truly exemplify the fine simile of Warton, that Chaucer was like a genial day in an English spring, when a brilliant sun enlivens the face of nature with unusual warmth and lustre, but is succeeded by the redoubled horrors of winter, and those tender buds and early blossoms which were called forth by the transient gleam of a temporary sunshine, are nipped by frosts and torn by tempests.' Chaucer was a man of the world as well as a student; a soldier and courtier, employed in public affairs of delicacy and importance, and equally acquainted with the splendour of the warlike and magnificent reign of Edward III., and with the bitter reverses of fortune which accompanied the subsequent troubles and convulsions. He had partaken freely in all; and was peculiarly qualified to excel in that department of literature which alone can be universally popular, the portraiture of real life and genuine emotion. His genius was not, indeed, fully developed till he was advanced in years. His early pieces have much of the frigid conceit and pedantry of his age, when the passion of love was erected into a sort of court, governed by statutes, and a system of chivalrous mythology (such as the poetical worship of the rose and the daisy) supplanted the stateliness of the old romance. In time he threw off these conceits When about sixty, in the calm evening of a busy He stoop'd to truth, and moralised his song. of life both at home and abroad, and openly patronised by his sovereign-to give literary permanence and consistency to the language and poetry of Eng-life, he composed his Canterbury Tales, simple and land. Henceforward his native style, which Spenser varied as nature itself, imbued with the results terms the pure well of English undefiled,' formed of extensive experience and close observation, and a standard of composition, though the national dis- coloured with the genial lights of a happy temperament, that had looked on the world without austerity, and passed through its changing scenes without los 1 Hanging wider than his chin. 2 As the mouth of a bondman or rural labourer is with the ing the freshness and vivacity of youthful feeling bacon he eats, so was his beard beslabbered-an image still familiar in England. and imagination. The poet tells us himself (in his Testament of Love) that he was born in London, and 8 Loveday is a day appointed for the amicable settlement of the year 1328 is assigned, by the only authority we possess on the subject, namely, the inscription on his tomb, as the date of his birth. One of his poems CHAUCER. ENGLISH LITERATURE. is signed Philogenet of Cambridge, Clerk,' and Learned at Padua of a worthy clerk- The tale thus learned is the pathetic story of Patient Grisilde, which, in fact, was written by Boccaccio, and only translated into Latin by Petrarch. Why,' asks Mr Godwin, did Chaucer choose to confess his obligation for it to Petrarch rather than to Boccaccio, from whose volume Petrarch confessedly translated it? For this very natural reason-because he was eager to commemorate his interview with this venerable patriarch of Italian letters, and to record the pleasure he had reaped from his society.' We fear this is mere special pleading; but it would be a pity that so pleasing an illusion should be dispelled. Whether or not the two poets ever met, the Italian journey of Chaucer, and the fame of Petrarch, must have kindled his poetical ambition and refined his taste. The Divine Comedy of Dante had shed a glory over the literature of Italy; Petrarch received his crown of laurel in the Capitol of Rome only five years before Chaucer first appeared as a poet (his Court of Love was written about the year 1346); and Boccaccio (more poetical in his prose than his verse) had composed that inimitable century of tales, his Decameron, in which the charms of romance are clothed in all the pure and sparkling graces of composition. These illustrious examples must have inspired the English traveller; but the rude northern speech with which he had to deal, formed a chilling contrast to the musical language of Italy! Edward III. continued his patronage to the poet. He was made comptroller of the customs of wine and wool in the port of London, and had a pitcher of wine daily from the royal table, which was afterwards commuted into a pension of twenty marks. He was appointed a joint envoy to France to treat of a marriage between the Prince of Wales and Mary, the daughter of the French king. At home, he is supposed to have resided in a house granted by the king, near the royal manor at Woodstock, where, according to the description in his Dream, he was Surrounded with every mark of luxury and distinction. The scenery of Woodstock Park has been described in the Dream with some graphic and picturesque touches: And right anon as I the day espied, All green and white was nothing else seen. The destruction of the Royal Manor at Woodstock, The character of Chaucer may be seen in his works. He was the counterpart of Shakspeare in Ito mirth and joviality, yet delighting in his books, cheerfulness and benignity of disposition-no enemy 13 |