Amenities of Literature Part 14

Mandeville first composed his travels in the Latin language, which he afterwards translated into French, and lastly out of French into English, that "every man of my nation may understand it." We see the progressive estimation of the languages by this curious statement which Mandeville has himself given. The author first secured the existence of his work in a language familiar to the whole European world; the French was addressed to the politer circles of society; and the last language the author cared about was the vernacular idiom, which, at that time the least regarded, required all the patriotism of the writer in this devotion of his pen.

Copies of these travels were multiplied till they almost equalled in number those of the Scriptures; now we may smile at the "mervayles" of the fourteenth century, and of Mandeville, but it was the spirit of these intrepid and credulous minds which has marched us through the universe. To the children of imagination perhaps we owe the circ.u.mnavigation of the globe and the universal intercourse of nations.[2]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] CTESIAS, a physician in high repute at the Persian Court, and often referred to by Diodorus. He has been universally condemned as a fabulous writer, to which charge his descriptions of some animals was liable. But a naturalist of the highest order, the famous CUVIER, has perhaps done an act of justice to this fabricator of animals. Ctesias reported the mythological creations which he had witnessed in hieroglyphical representations as actual living animals. It is glorious to remove from the darkened name of a writer, unjustly condemned, the obloquy of two thousand years.--"Theory of the Earth,"

translated by Professor Jameson, 76.

[2] Of modern editions of Mandeville's "Travels in England," that of 1725, printed by Bowyer, is a large octavo. There are numerous ma.n.u.scripts of Mandeville in existence. An edition collated might discover either omissions or interpolations. This might serve as the labour of an amateur. Mandeville has not had the fortune of his predecessor Marco Polo, to have met with a Marsden, learned in geographical and literary ill.u.s.tration.

Long subsequently to the time that this article was written, this edition of 1725 has been reprinted, with the advantage of a bibliographical introduction by Mr. Halliwell, and a collation of texts. [It was published in 1839, in an octavo volume of 326 pages, with ill.u.s.trative engravings from ma.n.u.scripts and printed books.]

CHAUCER.

In the chronology of our poetical collectors, GOWER takes precedence of CHAUCER unjustly, for Chaucer had composed many of his works in the only language which he has written before the elder claimed the honours of an English vernacular poet, and, probably, then only emulating the success of him who first set the glorious example. Nor less in the rank of poetry must Chaucer hold the precedence. The first true English poet is Chaucer; and notwithstanding that the rhythmical cadences of his unequal metre are now lost for us, Chaucer is the first modeller of the heroic couplet and other varieties of English versification. By the felicity of his poetic character, Chaucer was not only the parent, but the master, of those two schools of poetry which still divide its votaries by an idle rivalry, and which have been traced, like our architecture, the one to a Gothic origin, and the other to a cla.s.sical model.

The personal history of CHAUCER, poetical and political, might have been susceptible of considerable development had the poet himself written it, for his biographers had no life to record. Speght, one of the early editors, in the good method of that day, having set down a variety of heads, including all that we might wish to know of any man, when this methodiser of commonplaces came to fill up these well-planned divisions concerning Chaucer, he could only disprove what was accepted, and supply only what is uncertain. The "Life of Chaucer" by G.o.dwin is a theoretical life, and, as much as relates to Chaucer himself, a single fatal fact, when all was finished, dispersed the baseless vision.[1] The whole rested on the unauthenticated and contradictory statements of Leland, who, writing a century after the times of Chaucer, hastily collected unsubstantial traditions, and, what was less pardonable in Leland, fell into some anachronisms.

This defective chronology in the life of the poet has involved the more important subject of the chronology of his works. Posterity may be little concerned in the dates of his birth and his burial--his unknown parentage--his descriptive name--and, above all, his suspicious s.h.i.+eld, which the heralds opined must have been blazoned out of the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth propositions of the first book of Euclid, from the poet's love of geometry, or, more obviously, from having no coat-of-arms to show of "far more ancient antiquity." But posterity would have been interested in the history of the genius of Chaucer, who having long paced in a lengthened circuit of verbal version and servile imitation, pa.s.sed through some remarkable transitions, kindling the cold ashes of translation into the fire of invention; from cloudy allegory breaking forth into the suns.h.i.+ne of the loveliest landscape-painting; and from the amatory romance gliding into that vein of humour and satire which in his old age poured forth a new creation.

All this he might himself have told, or Gower might have revealed, had the elder bard who lauded the lays and "ditties" of the youth of "the Clerk of Venus" loved him as well in his old age. But elegant literature, as distinguished from scholastic, was then without price or reward. The few men of genius who have written at this early period are only known to us by their writings, and probably were more known to their contemporaries by the station which they may have occupied, than by that which they maintain with posterity.

By royal patents and grants to the poet, we trace his early life at court, his various appointments, and his honourable missions to Genoa and to France--we must not add as confidently his visit to Petrarch.

Chaucer, in his political life, was bound up with the party of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster; and, by a congenial spirit, with the novel doctrines of his friend, Dr. Wickliffe. The sister of his lady finally became the third d.u.c.h.ess of Lancaster, and the family alliance strengthened the political bond. How the Lancastrian exploded in the poet, something we know, but little we comprehend; and those who have attempted to lift the veil have not congratulated themselves on their success. The poet himself has not entrusted his secret to posterity, except, as is usual with poets, by eloquent lamentations. The exposition of a political transaction is never without some valued results; and though deprived of names and dates, we are not without some dim lights: the palpable truth may not be obvious, but it may happen that we may stumble on it.

Chaucer himself has stated, "In _my youth_ I was drawn in to be a.s.senting to certain _conjurations_ and other _great matters of ruling of citizens_, and those things have been my _drawers in and exciters_ in the matters _so painted and coloured_, that _first_ to me seemed then _n.o.ble and glorious for all the people_."

Here the tale is plain, for this is the language of one who early in life had engaged in some popular scheme, and these early indications of the temper of the Wickliffite or the Lancastrian, or both, had subsequently led to some more perilous attempts. They were, like all reforms, something "n.o.ble and glorious for the people," and as sometimes happens among reformers, what _at first_ appeared to promise so well, ended in disappointment and "penance in a dark prison."

The locality of this patriotic act was the city of London. He alludes to "free elections by great clamours of much people," for great disease of misgovernment in the hands of "_torcentious citizens_." When the fatal day arrived that he openly joined with a party for "the people," against those citizens whom he has so awfully denounced, it is evident, though we have no means to discriminate factions in an age of factions,[2]

that he and his "conjurors" discovered that "all the people" were not of one mind. This votary or this victim of reform suddenly flings his contempt at "the hatred of the mighty senators of London or of its commonalty," and closes with a painful remembrance of "the janglings of THE SHEEPY PEOPLE!" The style of Chaucer bears the stamp of pa.s.sionate emotions; words of dimension, or of poignant sarcasm. The "torcentious citizens" is an awful bolt, and "the sheepy people" is sufficiently picturesque.

In dismay the whole party took flight. Chaucer, in Zealand, exhausted his means to supply the wants of his political a.s.sociates, till he himself found that even the partners.h.i.+p of common misery does not always preserve men from ingrat.i.tude. Returning home, potent persecutors cast him into a dungeon. Was the Duke of Lancaster absent, or the Duke of Gloucester in power? Let us observe that in all these dark events the loyalty of the poet is never impeached, for Chaucer enjoyed without interruption the favour of both his sovereigns, Edward III. and Richard II.; and we discover that once when dismissed from office, Richard allowed him to serve by deputy, which was evidence that Chaucer had never been dismissed by the king himself. The whole transaction, whatever it was, was a political movement between two factions. Chaucer indeed pleads that whatever he had done was under the control of others, himself being but "the servant of his sovereign." At that period the factions in the state were more potent than the monarch. In the convulsive administration of a youthful prince, they who oppose the court are not necessarily opposing the sovereign.

It was behind the bars of a gloomy window in the Tower, where "every hour appeared to be a hundred winters," that Chaucer, recent from exile, and sore from persecution, was reminded of a work popular in those days, and which had been composed in a dungeon--"The Consolations of Philosophy," by Boethius--and which he himself had formerly translated.

He composed his "TESTAMENT OF LOVE," subst.i.tuting for the severity of an abstract being the more genial inspiration of love itself. But the fiction was a reality, and the griefs were deeper than the fancies. In this chronicle of the heart the poet mourns over "the delicious hours he was wont to enjoy," of his "richesse," and now of his dest.i.tution--the vain regret of his abused confidence--the treachery of all that "summer-brood" who never approach the lost friend in "the winter hour"

of an iron solitude. The poet energetically describes his condition; there he sate "witless, thoughtful; and sightless, looking." This work the poet has composed in prose; but in the leisure of a prison the diction became more poetical in thoughts and in words than the language at that time had yet attained to, and for those who read the black letter it still retains its impressive eloquence.

But this apology which Chaucer has left of his conduct in this political transaction has incurred a fatal censure. "Never," observes Mr.

Campbell, "was an obscure affair conveyed in a more obscure apology."

His political integrity has been freely suspected. Chaucer has even been struck by the brilliant arrow of the Viscount de Chateaubriand.

"Courtisan, Lancastrien, Wickliffist, infidele a ses convictions, traitre a son parti, tantot banni, tantot voyageur, tantot en faveur, tantot en disgrace." No, thou eloquent Gaul! Chaucer never was out of favour, however he may have been more than once dismissed from his office; nor can we know whether the poet was ever "infidele a ses convictions."

Obscure must ever remain the tale of justification in a political transaction which terminated on the part of the apologist by revealing "disclosures for the peace of the kingdom," denied by those whom they implicated, though their truth was offered to be maintained by the accuser, in the custom of the times, by single combat; and by confessions which acknowledge errors of judgment, but not of intention; and by penitence, which, if the patriot designed what was "glorious to all the people," he should never have repented of.

This obscure apology conceals the agony of conflicting emotions--indignation at ungrateful a.s.sociates, and a base desertion of ancient friends, who were plotting against him. Whether Chaucer was desirous of burying in obscurity a story of torturous details, or one too involved in confused motives for any man to tell with the precision of a simple statement, we know of no evidence which can enable us to decide with any certainty on an affair which no one pretends to understand. Chaucer might have been the scapegoat of the sovereign, or the champion of the people. We can rather decide on his calamity than his conduct. Many are the causes which may dissolve the bonds of faithless "conjurations;" and it is not always he who abandons a party who is to be criminated by political tergiversation.

The circ.u.mstances of Chaucer's life had combined with his versatile powers. He had mingled with the world's affairs both at home and abroad: accomplished in manners, and intimately connected with a splendid court, Chaucer was at once the philosopher who had surveyed mankind in their widest sphere, the poet who haunted the solitudes of nature, and the elegant courtier whose opulent tastes are often discovered in the graceful pomp of his descriptions. It was no inferior combination of observation and sympathy which could bring together into one company the many-coloured conditions and professions of society, delineated with pictorial force, and dramatised by poetic conception, reflecting themselves in the tale which seemed most congruous to their humours. The perfect ident.i.ty of these a.s.sembled characters, after the lapse of near five centuries, make us familiar with the domestic habits and modes of thinking of a most interesting period in our country, not inspected by the narrow details of the antiquarian microscope, but in the broad mirror reflecting that truth or satire which alone could have discriminated the pa.s.sions, the pursuits, and the foibles of society.

Thus the painter of nature, who caught the glow of her skies and her earth in his landscape, was also the miniature portrayer of human likenesses. When Chaucer wrote, the cla.s.sics of antiquity were imperfectly known in this country--the Grecian muse had never reached our sh.o.r.es; this was, probably, favourable to the native freedom of Chaucer. The English poet might have lost his raciness by a cold imitation of the Latin masters; among the Italians, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, Chaucer found only models to emulate or to surpa.s.s. Hence the English bard indulged that more congenial abundance of thoughts and images which owns no other rule than the pleasure it yields in the profusion of nature and fancy. A great poet may not be the less Homeric because he has never read Homer.

Nature in her distinct forms lies open before this poet-painter; his creative eye pursued her through all her mutability, but in his details he was a close copier. In his rural scenery there is a freshness in its luxuriance; for his impressions were stamped by their locality. This locality is so remarkable, that Pope had a notion, which he said no one else had observed, that Chaucer always described real places to compliment the owners of particular gardens and fine buildings. Let us join him in his walks--

When that the misty vapour was agone, And clear and fair was the morning, The dews, like silver, s.h.i.+ning Upon the leaves.

The flowers sparkle in "their divers hues"--he sometimes counts their colours--"white, blue, yellow, and red"--on their stalks, spreading their leaves in breadth against the sun, gold-burned. His gra.s.s is "so small, so thick, so fresh of hue." The poet goes by a river whose water is "clear as beryl or crystal;" turning into "a little way" towards a park in compa.s.s round, and by a small gate.

Whoso that would freely might gone (go) Into this Park walled with green stone.

The owner of that park, probably, was startled when he came to "the little way," and to "the small gate." This was either the park of some great personage, or possibly Woodstock Park, where stood a stone lodge, so long known by the name of "Chaucer's House," that in the days of Elizabeth it was still described as such in the royal grant. If poets have rarely built houses, at least their names have consecrated many.

His

Garden upon a river in a green mead; The gravel gold, the water pure as gla.s.s,

and "the eglantine and sycamore arbour, so thickly woven, where the priers who stood without all day could not discover whether any one was within," was a.s.suredly some particular garden. The stately grove has all the characters of its trees--the oak, the ash, and the fir--to "the fresh hawthorn,"

Which in white motley that so swote doth smell.

In all these lovely scenes there was a delicious sense of joyous existence; the inmates of the forest burst forth, from "the little conies, the beasts of gentle kind," to "the dreadful roe and the buck,"

and from their green leaves they who "with voice of angels" entranced the poet-musician--

So loud they sang that all the woodes rung Like as it should s.h.i.+ver in pieces small, And as methought that the Nightingale With so great might her voice out-wrest, Right as her heart for love would brest (burst).

So true is the accidental remark of the celebrated Charles Fox, that "of all poets Chaucer seems to have been the fondest of the singing of birds." These were the peculiar delights in the poetic habits of Chaucer, who was an early riser, and often mused on many a rondel in gardens, and meads, and woods, at earliest dawn. This poet's sun-risings are the most exhilarating in our poetry.

We may doubt if the vernal scenes of Chaucer can be partaken by his more chilly posterity. Did England in the seasons of Chaucer flourish with a more genial May and a more refulgent June? Or should we suspect that the travelled poet clothed our soil with the luxuriance of Provencal fancy, and borrowed the clear azure of Italy to soften the British roughness even of our skies?

Tyrwhit, the able commentator of Chaucer, has thrown out an incidental remark, which seems equally refined and true. "Chaucer in his serious pieces often follows his author with the servility of a mere translator; and in consequence his narration is jejune and constrained (as often appears in the "Romaunt of the Rose" and his translations of Dante), whereas in the comic he is generally satisfied with borrowing a slight hint of his subject, which he varies, enlarges, and embellishes at pleasure, and gives the whole the air and colour of an original; a sure sign that his genius rather led him to compositions of the latter kind."

This remark is an instance of critical sagacity. The creative faculty in Chaucer had not broken forth in his translations, which evidently were his earliest writings. The native bent of his genius, the hilarity of his temper, betrays itself by playful strokes of raillery and concealed satire when least expected. His fine irony may have sometimes left his commendations, or even the objects of his admiration, in a very ambiguous condition. The learned editor of the second part of the "Paston Letters" hence has been induced to infer that the spirit of chivalry, from the reign of the third Edward, had entirely declined, and only existed in the forms of conventional and fas.h.i.+onable society, and had sunk into a mere foppery, a system of forms and etiquettes, because Chaucer, a court-poet, treats with irony the chivalric manners. Whether this ingenious inference will hold with literary antiquaries, I will not decide; but I am inclined to suspect that Chaucer's indulgence of his taste for irony was not in the mind of this learned editor. Our poet has stamped with his immortal ridicule the tale told in his own person--"The Rime of Sir Thopas," which is considered as a burlesque of the metrical romances. In those days there was an inundation of these romances, as "the thirst and hunger" of the present is accommodated with as spurious a brood. We have our "drafty prose" as they had their "drafty riming."

But shall we infer from this ludicrous effusion of the great poet, that he held so light the venerable fablers, the ancient romancers, with whose "better parts" he had nourished his own genius? This is his own confession. Often in his years of grief, when the poet wondered

How he lived, for day ne night, I may not sleep-- Sitting upright in my bed,

then it was that he prescribed for his "secret sorrows" that medicine which, "drunk deeply," makes us forget ourselves. In those hours the poet

Bade one reach me a Boke, A ROMANCE, and he it me took To read, and drive the Night away; For methought it better play Than play either at Chess or Tables.

And a.s.suredly Chaucer found many pa.s.sages in the old fablers not less entrancing than some of his own. Our poet indulged this vein of playful irony on persons as well as on things. A sly panegyric, sufficiently ambiguous for us to accept as a refined stroke, we find on the abstruse and interminable question of predestination; on which the Nonne's priest declares--

But I ne cannot boult it to the bren, As can the holy doctor Augustin, Or Boece, or _the bishop Bradwardin_.

As this bishop, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, was the first who treated theology on mathematical principles, and likewise wrote on the "Quadrature of the Circle," we may presume "Bishop Bradwardin" rather perplexed the poet. Chaucer discovers his ironical manner when gravely stating the different theories of dreaming--