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twg_000012922500 | , 8vo. [] "York Plays," pp. xxxiv, xxxvii. [] This preliminary note is in Latin: "Sit ipse Adam bene instructus quando respondere debeat, ne ad respondendum nimis sit velox aut nimis tardus, nec solum ipse, sed omnes persone sint. Instruantur ut composite loquentur; et gestum faciant convenientem rei de qua loquuntur, et, in rithmis nec sillabam addant nec demant, sed | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922501 | omnes firmiter pronuncient." "Adam, Mystre du XIIe. Sicle," ed. Palustre, Paris, , 8vo. [] "Digby Mysteries," p. xix. [] "The Pageants ... of Coventry," ed. Sharp. [] [So called] "Coventry Mysteries," Trial of Christ. [] The French drama written on this subject is lost (it is, however, mentioned in the catalogue of a bookseller of the fifteenth century; see "Les | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922502 | Mystres," by Petit de Julleville, vol. ii. chap, xxiii., "Mystres perdus"); but the precision of details in the miniature is such that I had no difficulty in identifying the particular version of the story followed by the dramatist. It is an apocryphal life of Apollinia, in which is explained how she is the saint to be applied to when suffering | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922503 | toothache. This episode is the one Fouquet has represented. Asked to renounce Christ, she answers: "'Quamdiu vivero in hac fragili vita, lingua mea et os meum non cessabunt pronuntiare laudem et honorem omnipotentis Dei.' Quo audito jussit [imperator] durissimos stipites parari et in igne duros fieri et pracutos ut sic dentes ejus et per tales stipites lderent, radices dentium cum | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922504 | forcipe everentur radicitus. In illa hora oravit S. Apollinia dicens: 'Domine Jesu Christe, precor te ut quicumque diem passionis me devote peregerint ... dolorem dentium aut capitis nunquam sentiant passiones.'" The angels thereupon (seated on wooden stairs, in Fouquet's miniature) come down and tell her that her prayer has been granted. "Acta ut videntur apocrypha S. Apolloni," in Bollandus, "Acta | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922505 | Sanctorum," Antwerp, vol. ii. p. , under the 9th February. See also the miniatures of a later date (sixteenth century) in the MS. of the Valenciennes Passion, MS. fi. , in the National Library, and the model made after one of them, exhibited in the Opra Museum, Paris. [] What the place is-- ... Vous le povez congnoistre Par l'escritel | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922506 | que dessus voyez estre. Prologue of a play of the Nativity, performed at Rouen, ; Petit de Julleville, "Les Mystres," vol. i. p. . [] "Digby Mysteries," ed. Furnivall, p. . [] "Mystre du vieil Testament," Paris, , with curious cuts, "pour plus facile intelligence." Many other editions; one modern one by Baron J. de Rothschild, Socit des Anciens Textes | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922507 | Franais, ff. [] "Chester Plays," ii. [] "Adoncques doit Adam couvrir son humanit, faignant avoir honte. Icy se doit semblablement vergongner la femme et se musser de sa main." "Mystre du vieil Testament." [] Reproduced by Mr. R. T. Blomfield, in the _Portfolio_, May, June, July, . [] _Diabolus._ Jo vis Adam, mais trop est fols. _Eva._ Un poi est | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922508 | durs. _Diabolus._ Il serra mols; Il est plus durs que n'est un fers ... Tu es fieblette et tendre chose, Et es plus fresche que n'est rose; Tu es plus blanche que cristal, Que nief qui chiet sor glace en val. Mal cuple en fist le criatur; Tu es trop tendre et il trop dur ... Por o fait bon | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922509 | se treire tei; Parler te voil. [] All my smale instrumentes is putt in my pakke. ("Digby Mysteries," p. .) [] "Towneley Mysteries." [] _Ibid._--Magnus Herodes. [] "Towneley Mysteries."--Processus Talentorum. [] "Digby Mysteries."--Candlemas Day, p. . [] "Digby Mysteries."--Mary Magdalen, p. . [] _Ibid._, p. . [] "Chester Plays."--Salutation and Nativity. [] "Digby Mysteries," p. . [] "Digby Mysteries," pp. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922510 | , . After living wickedly Mary Magdalen repents, comes to Marseilles, converts the local king and performs miracles. This legend was extremely popular; it was told several times in French verse during the thirteenth century; see A. Schmidt, "Guillaume, le Clerc de Normandie, insbesondere seine Magdalenenlegende," in "Romanische Studien" vol. iv. p. ; Doncieux, "Fragment d'un Miracle de Sainte Madeleine, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922511 | texte restitu," in "Romania," , p. . There was also a drama in French based on the same story: "La Vie de Marie Magdaleine ... Est xxii. personages," Lyon, , 12mo (belongs to the fifteenth century). [] "York Plays," viii., ix. See also, _e.g._, as specimens of comical scenes, the discussions between the quack and his man in the "Play | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922512 | of the Sacrament": "Ye play of ye conversyon of ser Jonathas ye Jewe by myracle of ye blyssed sacrament." Master Brundyche addresses the audience as if he were in front of his booth at a fair. He will cure the diseases of all present. Be sure of that, his man Colle observes, What dysease or syknesse yt ever ye have, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922513 | He wyll never leve yow tylle ye be in your grave. Ed. Whitley Stokes, Philological Society, Berlin, -, p. (fifteenth century). [] "Chester Plays."--Salutation and Nativity. [] "Towneley Mysteries."--Secunda Pastorum. [] See, for instance, "Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages," ed. G. Paris and U. Robert, Socit des Anciens Textes, -, vols. 8vo. [] In Mon's edition, Paris, , vol. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922514 | ii. pp. ff. [] Plays of this kind were written (without speaking of many anonyms) by Medwall: "A goodly Enterlude of Nature," , fol.; by Skelton, "Magnyfycence," , fol.; by Ingelend, "A pretie Enterlude called the Disobedient Child," printed about : by John Bale, "A comedye concernynge thie Lawes," London, , 8vo (against the Catholics); all of them lived under | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922515 | Henry VIII., &c. The two earliest English moralities extant are "The Pride of Life" (in the "Account Roll of the priory of the Holy Trinity," Dublin, ed. J. Mills, Dublin, , 8vo), and the "Castle of Perseverance" (an edition is being prepared, , by Mr. Pollard for the Early English Text Society), both of the fifteenth century; a rough sketch | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922516 | showing the arrangement of the representation of the "Castle" has been published by Sharp, "A Dissertation on the Pageants at Coventry," plate . [] "Interlude of the four Elements," London, (?), 8vo. [] See, for example, the mournful passages in the "Disobedient Child," the "Triall of Treasure," London, , 4to, and especially in "Everyman," ed. Goedeke, Hanover, , 8vo, written | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922517 | at the beginning of the reign of Henry VIII. [] Song of the Clown in "Twelfth Night," iv. . [] "Pantagruel," iii. . [] Furnivall, "Digby Mysteries," p. xxvii. [] "York Plays," p. xvi. [] Petit de Julleville, "Les Mystres," , vol. i. pp. ff. [] They continued later in some towns, at Newcastle, for example, where they survived till | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922518 | . At this date "Romeo" and the "Merchant of Venice" had already appeared. There were even some performances at the beginning of the seventeenth century. [] A drawing of this fresco, now destroyed, has been published by Sharp: "Hell-mouth and interior, from the chapel at Stratford-upon-Avon"; "A Dissertation on the pageants ... at Coventry," , plate . . THE END | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922519 | OF THE MIDDLE AGES. I. In the autumn of the year , Geoffrey Chaucer, the son of the Thames Street vintner, universally acknowledged the greatest poet of England, had been borne to his tomb in the transept of Westminster Abbey. Not far from him sleep the Plantagenet kings, his patrons, Edward III. and Richard II. wrapped in their golden robes. | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922520 | With them an epoch has drawn to its close; a new century begins, and this century is, for English thought, a century of decline, of repose, and of preparation. So evident is the decline that even contemporaries perceive it; for a hundred years poets unceasingly mourn the death of Chaucer. They are no longer able to discover new ways; instead | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922521 | of looking forward as their master did, they turn, and stand with eyes fixed on him, and hands outstretched towards his tomb. An age seeking its ideal in the epoch that has just preceded it is an age of decline; so had been in past times the age of Statius, who had professed such a deep veneration for Virgil. For | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922522 | a century thus the poets of England remain with their gaze fastened on the image of the singer they last heard, and at each generation their voice becomes weaker, like an echo that repeats another echo. Lydgate imitates Chaucer, and Stephen Hawes imitates Lydgate.[] Around and below them countless rhymers persist in following the old paths, not knowing that these | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922523 | paths have ceased to lead anywhere, and that the time has come to search for new ones. The most skilful add to the series of English fabliaux, borrowed from France; others put into rhyme, disfiguring them as they go along, romances of chivalry, lives of the saints, or chronicles of England and Scotland. Very numerous, nearly all devoid of talent, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922524 | these patient, indefatigable word-joiners write in reality, they too, as M. Jourdain, "de la prose sans le savoir."[] These poets of the decline write for a society itself on the decline, and all move along, lulled by the same melody to a common death, out of which will come a new life that they can never know. The old feudal | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922525 | and clerical aristocracy changes, disappears, and decays; many of the great houses become extinct in the wars with France, or in the fierce battles of the Two Roses; the people gain by what the aristocracy lose. The clergy who keep aloof from military conflicts are also torn by internecine quarrels; they live in luxury; abuses publicly pointed out are not | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922526 | reformed; they are an object of envy to the prince and of scorn to the lower classes; they find themselves in the most dangerous situation, and do nothing to escape from it. Of warnings they have no lack; they receive no new endowments; they slumber; at the close of the century nothing will remain to them but an immense and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922527 | frail dwelling, built on the sand, that a storm can blow over. How innovate when versifying for a society about to end? Chaucer's successors do not innovate; they fasten their work to his works, and patch them together; they build in the shadow of his palace. They dream the same dreams on a May morning; they erect new Houses of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922528 | Fame; they add a story to the "Canterbury Tales."[] A gift bestowed on them by a spiteful fairy makes the matter worse: they are incredibly prolific. All they write is poor, and the spiteful fairy, spiteful to us, has granted them the faculty to write thus, without any trouble, for ever. Up to this day Lydgate's works have baffled the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922529 | attempts of the most enterprising literary societies; the Early English Text Society has some time ago begun to publish them; if it carries out the undertaking, it will be a proof of unparalleled endurance. Lydgate and Hoccleve are the two principal successors of Chaucer. Lydgate, a monk of the monastery of Bury St. Edmund's,[] a worthy man, it seems, if | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922530 | ever there was one, and industrious, and prolific, above all prolific, writes according to established standards, tales, lays,[] fabliaux satires,[] romances of chivalry, poetical debates, ballads of former times,[] allegories, lives of the saints, love poems, fables[]; five thousand verses a year on an average, and being precocious as well as prolific, leaves behind him at his death a hundred | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922531 | and thirty thousand verses, merely counting his longer works. Virgil had only written fourteen thousand. He copies Latin, French, and English models, but especially Chaucer,[] he adds his "Story of Thebes"[] to the series of the "Canterbury Tales," he has met, he says, the pilgrims on their homeward journey; the host asked him who he was: I answerde my name | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922532 | was Lydgate, Monk of Bery, nygh fyfty yere of age. Admitted into the little community, he contributes to the entertainment by telling a tale of war, of love, and of valorous deeds, in which the Greeks wear knightly armour, are blessed by bishops, and batter town walls with cannon. His "Temple of Glas"[] is an imitation of the "Hous of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922533 | Fame"; his "Complaint of the Black Knight" resembles the "Book of the Duchesse"; his "Falle of Princes"[] is imitated from Boccaccio and from the tale of the Monk in Chaucer. The "litel hevynesse" which the knight noticed in the monk's stories is particularly well imitated, so much so that Lydgate himself stops sometimes with uplifted pen to yawn at his | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922534 | ease in the face of his reader.[] But his pen goes down again on the paper, and starts off with fresh energy. From it proceeds a "Troy Book, or Historie of the Warres betwixte the Grecians and the Troyans," of thirty thousand lines, where pasteboard warriors hew each other to pieces without suffering much pain or causing us much sorrow[]; | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922535 | a translation of that same "Plerinage" of Deguileville, which had inspired Langland; a Guy of Warwick[]; Lives of Our Lady, of St. Margaret, St. Edmund, St. Alban; a "pageant" for the entry of Queen Margaret into London in ; a version of the "Secretum Secretorum," and a multitude of other writings.[] Nothing but death could stop him; and, his last | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922536 | poem being of , his biographers have unanimously concluded that he must have died in that year. The rules of his prosody were rather lax. No one will be surprised at it; he could say like Ovid, but for other reasons: "I had but to write, and it was verses." He is ready for everything; order them, and you will | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922537 | have at once verses to order. These verses are slightly deformed, maybe, and halt somewhat; he does not deny it: I toke none hede nouther of shorte nor longe.[] But let us not blame him; Chaucer, his good master, would, he assures us, have excused his faulty prosody, and what right have we to be more severe than Chaucer?[] To | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922538 | this there is, of course, nothing to answer, but then if we cannot answer, at least we can leave. We can go and visit the other chief poet of the time, Thomas Hoccleve; he does not live far off, the journey will be a short one; we have but to call at the next door. This other poet is a | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922539 | public functionary; he is a clerk of the Privy Seal[]; his duties consist in copying documents; an occupation he finds at length somewhat tiresome.[] By way of diversion he frequents taverns; women wait on him there, and he kisses them; a wicked deed, he admits; but he goes no further; at least so he assures us, being doubtless held back | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922540 | by a remembrance of officialdom and promotion.[] At all events this little was even too much, for we soon find him sick unto death, rhyming supplications to the god of health, and to Lord Fournivall, another kind of god, very useful to propitiate, for he was Lord Treasurer. He writes a good many detached pieces in which, thanks to his | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922541 | mania for talking about himself, he makes us acquainted with the nooks and corners of the old city, thus supplying rare and curious information, treasured by the historian. He composes, in order to make himself noticed by the king, a lengthy poem on the Government of Princes, "De Regimine Principum," which is nothing but a compilation taken from three or | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922542 | four previous treatises; he adds a prologue, and in it, following the example of Gower, he abuses all classes of society. He does not fail to begin his confession over again: from which we gather that he is something of a drunkard and of a coward, that he is vain withal and somewhat ill-natured. He had, however, one merit, and, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922543 | in spite of his defects, all lovers of literature ought to be grateful to him; the best of his works is not his Government of Princes; it is a drawing. He not only, like Lydgate, loved and mourned Chaucer, but wished to keep the memory of his features, and he caused to be painted on the margin of a manuscript | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922544 | the portrait mentioned above, which agrees so well with the descriptions contained in the writings of the master that there is no doubt as to the likeness.[] II. Let us cross the hills, and we shall still find Chaucer; as in England, so is he wept and imitated in Scotland. But the poets live there in a different atmosphere; the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922545 | imitation is not so close a one; a greater proportion of a Celtic blood maintains differences; more originality survives; the decline is less apparent. The best poets of English tongue, "Inglis" as they call it, "oure Inglis," Dunbar says, are, in the fifteenth century, Scots. Among them are a king, a monk, a schoolmaster, a minstrel, a bishop. The king | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922546 | is James I., son of Robert III., of the family of those Stuarts nearly all of whom were destined to the most tragic fate. This one, taken at sea by the English, when only a child, remained nineteen years confined in various castles. Like a knight of romance, and a personage in a miniature, he shortened the hours of his | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922547 | captivity by music, reading, and poetry; the works of Chaucer and Gower filled him with admiration. Then he found a better comfort for his sorrows; this knight of miniature and of romance saw before him one day the maiden so often painted by illuminators, the one who appears amidst the flowers and the dew, Aucassin's Nicolette, the Emily of the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922548 | Knight's Tale, the one who brings happiness. She appeared to the king, not in a dream but in reality; her name was Jane Beaufort, she was the daughter of the Earl of Somerset, and great grand-daughter of John of Gaunt. In her family, too, there were many tragic destinies; her brother was killed at the battle of St. Albans; her | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922549 | three nephews perished in the Wars of the Roses; her grand-nephew won the battle of Bosworth and became king Henry VII. A mutual love sprang up between the two young people, and when James was able to return to Scotland he took back with him his queen of romance, whom he had wedded before the altar of St. Mary Overy's, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922550 | next to the grave of one of his literary masters, the poet Gower. His reign lasted thirteen years, and they were thirteen years of struggle: vain endeavours to regulate and centralise a kingdom composed of independent clans, all brave and ready for foreign wars, but quite as ready, too, for civil ones. Assisted by his queen of romance, the knightly | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922551 | poet displayed in this task an uncommon energy, and was, with all his faults, one of the best kings of Scotland. He had many children; one of his daughters became dauphiness of France, and another duchess of Brittany. Towards the end of , he had so many enemies among the turbulent chieftains that sinister prophecies began to circulate; one of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922552 | them announced the speedy death of a king; and as he played at chess on Christmas eve with a knight surnamed the "king of love," he said to him: "There are no other kings in Scotland save me and you; I take heed to myself, do you likewise." But the king of love had nothing to fear. During the night | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922553 | of the 20th of February, , an unwonted noise was suddenly heard in the courtyard of the monastery of Perth where James lodged; it was Robert Graham and his rebel band. Vainly did the king offer resistance, though unarmed; the foe were too numerous, and they stretched him dead, pierced with sixteen sword wounds. The constant love of the king | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922554 | for Jane Beaufort had been celebrated by himself in an allegorical poem, imitated from Chaucer: "The King's Quhair," a poem all aglow with bright hues and with the freshness of youth.[] The prince is in bed at night, and, like Chaucer in his poem of the Duchess, unable to sleep, he takes up a book. It is the "Consolation" of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922555 | Boethius, and the meditations of "that noble senatoure" who had also known great reverses, occupied his thoughts while the night hours glided on. The silence is broken by the matin bell: Bot now, how trowe ye? suich a fantasye Fell me to mynd, that ay me-thoght the bell Said to me: "Tell on, man, quhat the befell." And the king, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922556 | invoking Clio and Polymnia, like Chaucer, and adding Tysiphone whom he takes for a Muse, because he is less familiar with mythology than Chaucer, tells what befell him, how he parted with his friends, when quite a boy, was imprisoned in a foreign land, and from the window of his tower discovered one day in the garden: The fairest or | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922557 | the freschest yong floure That ever I sawe. The maid was so beautiful that all at once his "hert became hir thrall": A! suete, are ye a warldly creature, Or hevinly thing in likenesse of nature? To be cleared from his doubts the royal poet ventures into the kingdom of Venus, and finds her stretched on her couch, her white | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922558 | shoulders covered with "ane huke," a loose dress that Chaucer had not placed upon them. Then he reaches the kingdom of Minerva; and passing through dissertations, beds of flowers, and groups of stars, he returns to earth, reassured as to his fate, with the certitude of a happiness promised him both by Venus and Minerva. A eulogy on Gower and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922559 | Chaucer closes the poem, which is written in stanzas of seven lines, since called, because of James, "Rhyme Royal."[] Blind Harry, the minstrel, sings the popular hero, William Wallace.[] We are in the midst of legends. Wallace causes Edward I. to tremble in London; he runs extraordinary dangers and has wonderful escapes; he slays; he is slain; he recovers; his | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922560 | body is thrown over the castle wall, and picked up by his old nurse; the daughter of the nurse, nurse herself, revives the corpse with her milk. The language is simple, direct and plain; the interest lies in the facts, and not in the manner in which they are told; and this, to say the truth, is also the case | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922561 | with chap-books. Blind Harry continues Barbour rather than Chaucer, but Chaucer resumes his rights as an ancestor with Henryson and Dunbar. The former[] sits with his feet to the fire one winter's night, takes "ane drink" to cheer him, and "Troilus" to while away the time. The little homely scene is described in charming fashion; one seems, while reading, to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922562 | feel the warmth of the cosy corner, the warmth even of the "drink," for it must have been a warm one: I mend the fyre, and beikit (basked) me about, Than tuik ane drink my spreitis to comfort, And armit me weill fra the cold thairout; To cut the winter nicht and mak it schort, I tuik ane quair and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922563 | left all uther sport, Writtin be worthie Chaucer glorious Of fair Cresseid and worthie Troilus. He read, but unable to understand the master's leniency towards the frail and deceitful woman, he takes pen and adds a canto to the poem: the "Testament of Cresseid," where he makes her die a dreadful death, forsaken by all. A greater pleasure will be | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922564 | taken in his rustic poems, ballads, or fables. His "Robene and Makyne" is a "disputoison" between a shepherd and shepherdess. Makyne loves Robin, and tells him so; and he accordingly cares not for her. Makyne goes off, her eyes full of tears; but Robin is no sooner left alone than he begins to love: Makyne, the nicht is soft and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922565 | dry, The weddir is warme and fair And the grene woid rycht neir us by To walk atour (over) all quhair (everywhere); Thair ma na janglour us espy That is to lufe contrair; Thairin, Makyne, bath ye and I Unsene we ma repair. In her turn Makyne is no longer willing; she laughs now, and he weeps, and she leaves | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922566 | him in solitude under a rock, with his sheep. This is a lamentable ending; but let us not sorrow overmuch; on these pathless moors people are sure to meet, and since they quarrelled and parted for ever, in the fifteenth century, Robin and Makyne have met many times. Another day, Henryson has a dream, after the fashion of the Middle | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922567 | Ages. In summer-time, among the flowers, a personage appears to him, His hude of scarlet, bordowrit weill with silk. In spite of the dress he is a Roman: "My native land is Rome;" and this Roman turns out to be sop, "poet laureate;" there is no room for doubt: we are in the Middle Ages. sop recites his fables in | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922568 | such a new and graceful manner, with such a pleasing mixture of truth and fancy, that he never told them better, not even when he was a Greek slave, and saved his head by his wit. Henryson takes his time; he observes animals and nature, and departs as much as possible from the epigrammatic form common to most fabulists. The | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922569 | story of the "uplandis Mous and the burges Mous," so often related, has never been better told than by Henryson, and this can be affirmed without forgetting La Fontaine. The two mice are sisters; the elder, a mouse of importance, established in town, well fed on flour and cheese, remembers, one day, her little sister, and starts off at dusk | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922570 | to visit her. She follows lonely paths at night, creeps through the moss and heather of the interminable Scottish bogs, and at last arrives. The dwelling strikes her as strangely miserable, frail, and dark; a poor little thief like the younger sister does not care much about burning dips. Nevertheless, great is the joy at meeting; the "uplandis mous" produces | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922571 | her choicest stores; the "burges mous" looks on, unable to quite conceal her astonishment. Is it not nice? inquires the little sister. Excuse me, replies the other, but: Thir widderit (withered) peis and nuttis, or thay be bord, Will brek my teith and make my wame full sklender.... Sister, this victuall and your royal feist May well suffice unto ane | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922572 | rurall beist. Lat be this hole, and cum in-to my place, I sall to yow schaw be experience My Gude-fryday is better nor your Pace (Easter). And off they trot through the bushes, and through those heathery bogs which have by turns charmed and wearied many others besides mice. They reach the elder sister's. There are delicious provisions, cheese, butter, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922573 | malt, fish, and dishes without number. And lordis fair thus couth thay counterfeit, Except ane thing: thay drank the watter cleir Instead of wyne; bot yit thay maid gude cheir. The little sister admires and nibbles. But how long will this last? Always, says the other. Just at that moment a rattle of keys is heard; it is the _spenser_ | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922574 | coming to the pantry. A dreadful scene! The great mouse runs to her hole, and the little one, not knowing where to hide herself, faints. Luckily, the man was in a hurry; he takes what he came for, and departs. The elder mouse creeps out of her hole: How fair ye sister? cry peip quhair-ever ye be. The other, half | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922575 | dead with fright, and shaking in her four paws, is unable to answer. The great mouse warms and comforts her: 'tis all over, do not fear; Cum to your meit, this perell is overpast. But no, it is not all over, for now comes "Gilbert" (for Tybert, the name of the cat in the "Roman de Renart"), "our jolie cat"; | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922576 | another rout ensues. This time, perched on a partition where Tybert cannot reach her, the field mouse takes leave of her sister, makes her escape, goes back to the country, and finds there her poverty, her peas, her nuts, and her tranquillity. The mouse of Scotland has been fortunate in her painters; another, and a still better portrait was to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922577 | be made of the "wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous beastie," by the great poet of the nation, Robert Burns. With Gavin Douglas, bishop of Dunkeld, of the illustrious house of the Douglas, earls of Angus, the translator of Virgil, and with William Dunbar, a mendicant friar, favourite of James IV., sent by him on missions to London and Paris, we cross | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922578 | the threshold of a new century; they die in the midst of the Renaissance, but with them, nevertheless, the Chaucerian tradition is continued. Douglas writes a "Palice of Honour," imitated from Chaucer.[] Dunbar,[] with never flagging spirit, attempts every style; he composes sentimental allegories and coarse tales (very coarse indeed), satires, parodies, laments.[] His fits of melancholy do not last | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922579 | long; he must be ill to be sad; however keen his satires, they are the work of an optimist; they end with laughter and not with tears. He is nearer to Jean des Entommeures than to William Langland. His principal poems, "The Goldyn Targe," on the targe or shield of Reason exposed to the shafts of Love; "Thrissil and the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922580 | Rois" (thistle and rose) are close imitations of the Chaucer of the "Parlement of Foules" and of the "Hous of Fame," with the same allegories, the same abstract personages, the same flowers, and the same perfumes. The "Thrissil and the Rois," written about , celebrates the marriage of Margaret, rose of England, daughter of Henry VII., to James IV., thistle | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922581 | of Scotland, the flower with a purple crown: that famous marriage which was to result in a union of both countries under the same sceptre. Endowed with an ever-ready mind and an unfailing power of invention, Dunbar, following his natural tastes, and wishing, at the same time, to imitate Chaucer, decks his pictures with glaring colours, and "out-Chaucers Chaucer." His | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922582 | flowers are too flowery, his odours too fragrant; by moments it is no longer a delight, but almost a pain. It is not sufficient that his birds should sing, they must sing among perfumes, and these perfumes are coloured; they sing Amang the tendir odouris reid and quhyt.[] These are undoubted signs of decline; they are found, in different degrees, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922583 | among the poets of England and of Scotland, nearly without exception. The anonymous poems, "The Flower and the Leaf," "The Court of Love," &c.,[] imitated from Chaucer, exhibit the same symptoms. The only ones who escape are, chiefly in the region of the Scottish border, those unknown singers who derive their inspiration directly from the people, who leave books alone, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922584 | and who would not be found, like Henryson, sitting by the fireside with "Troilus" on their knees. These singers remodel in their turn ballads that will be remade after them,[] and which have come down stirring and touching; love-songs, doleful ditties, the ride of the Percy and the Douglas[] ("Chevy Chase"), that, in spite of his classic tastes, Philip Sidney | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922585 | admired in the time of Elizabeth. Though declining in castles, poetry still thrills with youth along the hedges and in the copses; and the best works of poets with a name like Dunbar or Henryson are those in which are found an echo of the songs of the woods and moors. This same echo lends its charm to the music | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922586 | of the "Nut-brown Maid,"[] that exquisite love-duo, a combination of popular and artistic poetry written by a nameless author, towards the end of the period, and the finest of the "disputoisons" in English literature. But apart from the songs the wayfarer hums along the lanes, the works of the poets most appreciated at that time, Lydgate, Henryson, Dunbar, Stephen Hawes,[] | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922587 | represent a dying art; they write as architects build, and their literature is a florid one; their poems are in Henry VII.'s style. Their roses are splendid, but too full-blown; they have expended all their strength, all their beauty, all their fragrance; no store of youth is left to them; they have given it all away; and what happens to | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922588 | such roses? They shed their leaves; of this past glory there will soon remain nothing save a stalk without petals. III. The end of the feudal world has come, its literature is dying out; but at the same time a double revival is preparing. The revival most difficult to follow, but not the least considerable, originated in the middle and | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922589 | lower classes of society. While great families destroy each other, humble ones thrive: only lately has this fact been sufficiently noticed. So long as the historian was only interested in battles and in royal quarrels, the fifteenth century in England was considered by every one, except by that keen observer, Commines, to be the time of the war of the | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922590 | Two Roses, of the murder of Edward's children, and nothing else. It seemed as though the blood of the youthful princes had stained the entire century, and as if the whole nation, stunned with horror, had remained aghast and immobile. Curiosity has been felt in our days as to whether this impression was a correct one, and it has been | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922591 | ascertained to be false. Instead of being absorbed in the contemplation of these dreadful struggles, holding its breath at the sight of the slaughter, the nation paid very little attention to them, and regarded these doings in the light of "res inter alios acta." Feudalism was perishing, as human organisations often perish, from the very fact of its having attained | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922592 | its full development; feudal nobles had so long towered above the people that they were now almost completely severed from them; feudalism had pushed its principle so far that it was about to die, like the over-blown roses of Dunbar. While the nobles and their followers, that crowd of _bravi_ that the statutes against maintenance had vainly tried to suppress, | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922593 | strewed the fields of Wakefield, Towton, and Tewkesbury with their corpses, the real nation, the mass of the people, stood apart and was engaged in a far different occupation. It strove to enrich itself, and was advancing by degrees towards equality between citizens. A perusal of the innumerable documents of that epoch, which have been preserved and which concern middle | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922594 | classes, leave a decided impression of peaceful development, of loosening of bondage, of a diffusion of comfort. The time is becoming more remote, when some sat on thrones and others on the ground; it begins to be suspected that one day perhaps there may be chairs for everybody. In the course of an examination bearing on thousands of documents, Thorold | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922595 | Rogers found but two allusions to the civil wars.[] The duration of these wars must not, besides, be exaggerated; by adding one period of hostilities to another it will be found they lasted three years in all. The boundaries between the classes are less strictly guarded; war helps to cross them; soldiers of fortune are ennobled; merchants likewise. The importance | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922596 | of trade goes on increasing; even a king, Edward IV., makes attempts at trading, and does not fear thus to derogate; English ships are now larger, more numerous, and sail farther. The house of the Canynges of Bristol has in its pay eight hundred sailors; its trading navy counts a _Mary Canynge_ and a _Mary and John_, which exceed in | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922597 | size all that has hitherto been seen. A duke of Bedford is degraded from the peerage because he has no money, and a nobleman without money is tempted to become a dangerous freebooter and live at the expense of others.[] For the progress is noticeable only by comparison, and, without speaking of open wars, brigandage, which is dying out, is | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922598 | not yet quite extinct. The literature of the time corroborates the testimony of documents exhumed from ancient muniment rooms. It gives an impression of a wealthier nation than formerly, counting more free men, with a more extensive trade. The number of books on courtesy, etiquette, good breeding, good cooking, politeness, with an injunction not to take "always" the whole of | 60 | gutenberg |
twg_000012922599 | the best morsel,[] is a sign of these improvements. The letters of the Paston family are another.[] In spite of all the mentions made in these letters of violent and barbarous deeds; though in them we see Margaret Paston and her twelve defenders put to flight by an enemy of the family, and Sir John Paston besieged in his castle | 60 | gutenberg |
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