FROM CELT TO TUDOR***


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      Project Gutenberg has the other three volumes of this work.
          II: From Elizabeth to Anne
                  see http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/54142
         III: Queen Anne and the Georges
                  see http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37226
          IV: The Later Georges to Victoria
                  see http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/54143





ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS AND KINGS

From Celt to Tudor


      *      *      *      *      *      *

ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS AND KINGS

_By Donald G. Mitchell_

  I. From Celt to Tudor
 II. From Elizabeth to Anne
III. Queen Anne and the Georges
 IV. The Later Georges to Victoria

_Each 1 vol., 12mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.50_

AMERICAN LANDS AND LETTERS

From the Mayflower to Rip Van Winkle

_1 vol., square 12mo, Illustrated, $2.50_

      *      *      *      *      *      *


ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS AND KINGS

From Celt to Tudor

by

DONALD G. MITCHELL

[Illustration]






New York
Charles Scribner’s Sons
MDCCCXCVII

Copyright, 1889, by
Charles Scribner’S Sons

Trow’S
Printing and Bookbinding Company,
New York.




_PREFACE._


This little book is made up from the opening series of a considerable
range of “talks,” with which--during the past few years--I have
undertaken to entertain, and (if it might be) instruct a bevy of friends;
and the interest of a few outsiders who have come to the hearings has
induced me to put the matter in type. I feel somewhat awkwardly in
obtruding upon the public any such panoramic view of British writers, in
these days of specialists--when students devote half a lifetime to the
analysis of the works of a single author, and to the proper study of a
single period.

I have tried, however, to avoid bad mistakes and misleading ones, and
shall reckon my commentary only so far forth good--as it may familiarize
the average reader with the salient characteristics of the writers
brought under notice, and shall put these writers into such a swathing of
historic and geographic enwrapments as shall keep them better in mind.

When I consider the large number of books recently issued on similar
topics, and the scholarly acuteness, and the great range belonging to
so many of them, I am not a little discomforted at thought of my bold
scurry over so wide reach of ground. Indeed, I have the figure before me
now--as I hint an apology--of an old-time country doctor who has ventured
with his saddle-bags and spicy nostrums into competition with a half
score of special practitioners--with their microscopy and their _granules
dosimetriques_; but I think, consolingly, that possibly the old-time
mediciner--if not able to cure, can at the least induce a pleasurable
slumber.

                                                          EDGEWOOD, 1889.




_CONTENTS._


                                                     PAGE
                       CHAPTER I.

    PRELIMINARY,                                        1

    EARLY CENTURIES,                                    5

    CELTIC LITERATURE,                                  7

    BEGINNING OF ENGLISH LEARNING,                      9

    CÆDMON,                                            13

    BEDA,                                              15

    KING ALFRED,                                       17

    CANUTE AND GODIVA,                                 22

    WILLIAM THE NORMAN,                                25

    HAROLD THE SAXON,                                  29

                      CHAPTER II.

    GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH,                              37

    KING ARTHUR LEGENDS,                               39

    EARLY NORMAN KINGS,                                46

    RICHARD CŒUR DE LION,                              50

    TIMES OF KING JOHN,                                53

    MIXED LANGUAGE,                                    56

    SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE,                               59

    EARLY BOOK-MAKING,                                 62

    RELIGIOUS HOUSES,                                  66

    LIFE OF A DAMOISELLE,                              72

                      CHAPTER III.

    ROGER BACON,                                       77

    WILLIAM LANGLANDE,                                 84

    JOHN WYCLIF,                                       90

    CHAUCER,                                           97

                      CHAPTER IV.

    OF GOWER AND FROISSART,                           127

    TWO HENRYS AND TWO POETS,                         132

    HENRY V. AND WAR TIMES,                           141

    JOAN OF ARC AND RICHARD III.,                     146

    CAXTON AND FIRST ENGLISH PRINTING,                149

    OLD PRIVATE LETTERS,                              154

    A BURST OF BALLADRY,                              158

                       CHAPTER V.

    EARLY DAYS OF HENRY VIII.,                        167

    CARDINAL WOLSEY, AND SIR THOMAS MORE,             173

    CRANMER, LATIMER, KNOX, AND OTHERS,               182

    VERSE-WRITING AND PSALMODIES,                     189

    WYATT AND SURREY,                                 193

    A BOY-KING, A QUEEN, AND SCHOOLMASTER,            197

                      CHAPTER VI.

    ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND,                              204

    PERSONALITY OF THE QUEEN,                         207

    BURLEIGH AND OTHERS,                              210

    A GROUP OF GREAT NAMES,                           214

    EDMUND SPENSER,                                   217

    THE FAERY QUEEN,                                  221

    PHILIP SIDNEY,                                    230

    CHAPTER VII.

    JOHN LYLY,                                        245

    FRANCIS BACON,                                    250

    THOMAS HOBBES,                                    261

    GEORGE CHAPMAN,                                   266

    MARLOWE,                                          269

    A TAVERN COTERIE,                                 274

                     CHAPTER VIII.

    GEORGE PEELE,                                     284

    THOMAS DEKKER,                                    287

    MICHAEL DRAYTON,                                  291

    BEN JONSON,                                       295

    SOME PROSE WRITERS,                               303

    THE QUEEN’S PROGRESSES,                           312




_ENGLISH LANDS, LETTERS, & KINGS._




CHAPTER I.


I have undertaken in this book a series of very familiar and informal
talks with my readers about English literary people, and the ways in
which they worked; and also about the times in which they lived and
the places where they grew up. We shall have, therefore, a good deal
of concern with English history; and with English geography too--or
rather topography: and I think that I have given a very fair and honest
descriptive title to the material which I shall set before my readers, in
calling it a book about ENGLISH LANDS AND LETTERS AND KINGS.

It appears to me that American young people have an advantage over
British-born students of our History and Literature--in the fact that the
localities consecrated by great names or events have more illuminating
power to us, who encounter them rarely and after voyage over sea, than to
the Englishman who lives and grows up beside them. Londoners pass Bolt
Court, Fleet Street, and Dr. Johnson’s tavern a hundred times a year with
no thought but of the chops and the Barclay’s ale to be had there. But
to the cultivated American these localities start a charming procession,
in which the doughty old Dictionary-maker, with his staff and long brown
coat and three cornered hat, is easily the leader.

For my own part, when my foot first struck the hard-worked pavement of
London Bridge, even the old nursery sing-song came over me with the force
of a poem,--

    As I was going over London Bridge
    I found a penny and bought me a kid.

So, too--once upon a time--on a bright May-day along the Tweed, I was
attracted by an old square ruin of a tower--very homely--scarcely
picturesque: I had barely curiosity enough to ask its name. A
stone-breaker on the high-road told me it was Norham Castle; and
straightway all the dash and clash of the poem of “Marmion”[1] broke
around me.

Now I do not think our cousins the Britishers, to whom the loveliest
ruins become humdrum, can be half as much alive as we, to this sort of
enjoyment.

I shall have then--as I said--a great deal to say about the topography
of England as well as about its books and writers; and shall try to tie
together your knowledge of historic facts and literary ones, with the yet
more tangible and associated geographic facts--so that on some golden
day to come (as golden days do come) the sight of a mere thread of spire
over tree-tops, or of a cliff on Yorkshire shores, or of a quaint gable
that might have covered a “Tabard Tavern,” shall set all your historic
reading on the flow again--thus extending and brightening and giving
charm to a hundred wayside experiences of Travel.

One other preliminary word:--On that great reach of ground we are to
pass over--if we make reasonable time--there must be long strides, and
skippings: we can only seize upon illustrative types--little kindling
feeders of wide-reaching flame. It may well be that I shall ignore and
pass by lines of thought or progress very lively and present to you; may
be I shall dwell on things already familiar; nay, it may well happen that
many readers--young and old--fresh from their books--shall know more of
matters touched on in our rapid survey than I know myself: never mind
that; but remember,--and let me say it once for all--that my aim is not
so much to give definite instruction as to put the reader into such ways
and starts of thought as shall make him eager to instruct himself.


_Early Centuries._

In those dreary early centuries when England was in the throes of its
beginnings, and when the Roman eagle--which had always led a half-stifled
life amongst British fogs, had gone back to its own eyrie in the
South--the old stock historians could and did find little to fasten
our regard--save the eternal welter of little wars. Indeed, those who
studied fifty years ago will remember that all early British history was
excessively meagre and stiff; some of it, I daresay, left yet in the
accredited courses of school reading; dreadfully dull--with dates piled
on dates, and battles by the page; and other pages of battle peppered
with such names as Hengist, or Ethelred and Cerdic and Cuthwulf, or
whoever could strike hardest or cut deepest.

But now, thanks to modern inquiry and to such men as Stubbs and Freeman
and Wright, and the more entertaining Green--we get new light on those
old times. We watch the ribs of that ancient land piling in distincter
shape out of the water: we see the downs and the bluffs, and the
fordable places in the rivers; we know now just where great wastes of
wood stood in the way of our piratical forefathers--the Saxons, the
Jutes, and the Angles; these latter either by greater moral weight in
them, or by the accident of numbers (which is the more probable), coming
to give a name to the new country and language which were a-making
together.

We find that those old Romans did leave, besides their long, straight,
high-roads, and Roman villas, and store of sepulchral vases, a germ
of Roman laws, and a little nucleus of Roman words, traceable in the
institutions and--to some slight degree--in the language of to-day.

We see in the later pages of Green through what forests the rivers
ran, and can go round about the great Roman-British towns (Roman first
and then adopted by Britons) of London[2] and of York; and that other
magnificent one of Cirencester (or Sisister as the English say, with a
stout defiance of their alphabet). We can understand how and why the fat
meadows of Somersetshire should be coveted by marauders and fought for
by Celts; and we behold more clearly and distinctly than ever, under the
precise topography of modern investigators, the walls of wood and hills
which stayed Saxon pursuit of those Britons who sought shelter in Wales,
Cumberland, or the Cornish peninsula.


_Celtic Literature._

Naturally, this flight of a nation to its fastnesses was not without
clamor and lament; some of which--if we may trust current Cymric
traditions--was put into such piercing sound as has come down to our own
day in the shape of Welsh war-songs. Dates are uncertain; but without
doubt somewhat of this Celtic shrill singing was of earlier utterance
than anything of equal literary quality that came from our wrangling
Saxon or West-Saxon forefathers in the fertile plains of England.

Some of these Celtic war strains have been turned into a music by
the poet Gray[3] which our English ears love; Emerson used to find
regalement in the strains of another Welsh bard; and the Mabinogion, a
pleasant budget of old Cymric fable,[4] has come to a sort of literary
resurrection in our day under the hands of the late Sidney Lanier. If
you would know more of things Celtic, I would commend to your attention
a few lectures read at Oxford in 1864-65 by Matthew Arnold in which he
has brought a curious zeal, and his wonted acumen to an investigation
of the influences upon English literature of that old Celtic current.
It was a wild, turbulent current; it had fret and roar in it; it had
passion and splendor in it; and there are those who think that whatever
ardor of imagination, or love for brilliant color or music may belong to
our English race is due to old interfusion of British blood. Certainly
the lively plaids of the Highlander and his bagpipes show love for much
color and exuberant gush of sound; and we all understand that the Celtic
Irishman has an appetite for a shindy which demonstrates a rather lively
emotional nature.


_Beginning of English Learning._

But over that ancient England covered with its alternating fens and
forests, and grimy Saxon hamlets, and Celtic companies of huts, there
streams presently a new civilizing influence. It is in the shape of
Christian monks[5] sent by Pope Gregory the Great, who land upon the
island of Thanet near the Thames mouth (whereabout are now the bustling
little watering places of Ramsgate and Margate), and march two by
two--St. Augustine among them and towering head and shoulders above
the rest--bearing silver crosses and singing litanies, up to the halls
of Ethelbert--near to the very site where now stands, in those rich
Kentish lands, the august and beautiful Cathedral of Canterbury. There,
too, sprung up in those earlier centuries that Canterbury School, where
letters were taught, and learned men congregated, and whence emerged
that famous scholar--Aldhelm,[6] of whom the great King Alfred speaks
admiringly; who not only knew his languages but could sing a song; a
sort of early Saxon Sankey who beguiled wanderers into better ways by
his homely rhythmic utterance. I think we may safely count this old
Aldhelm, who had a strain of royal blood in him, as the first of English
ballad-mongers.

From the north of England, too, there was at almost the same date,
another gleam of crosses, coming by way of Ireland and Iona, where St.
Columba,[7] commemorated in one of Wordsworth’s Sonnets, had established
a monastery. We have the good old Irish monk’s lament at leaving his home
in Ireland for the northern wilderness; there is true Irish fervor in
it:--“From the high prow I look over the sea, and great tears are in my
gray eyes when I turn to Erin--to Erin, where the songs of the birds are
so sweet, and where the clerks sing like the birds; where the young are
so gentle, and the old so wise; where the great men are so noble to look
at, and the women so fair to wed.”

Ruined remnants of the Iona monastery are still to be found on that
little Western island--within hearing almost of the waves that surge
into the caves of Staffa. And from this island stand-point, the monkish
missions were established athwart Scotland; finding foothold too all down
the coast of Northumberland. Early among these and very notable, was the
famous Abbey of Lindisfarne or the Holy Isle, not far southward from
the mouth of the Tweed. You will recall the name as bouncing musically,
up and down, through Scott’s poem of “Marmion.” A little farther to
the south, upon the Yorkshire coast, came to be established, shortly
afterward, the Whitby monastery; its ruins make now one of the shows of
Whitby town--one of the favorite watering places of the eastern coast
of England, and well known for giving its name to what is called Whitby
jet--which is only a finer sort of bituminous coal, of which there are
great beds in the neighborhood.[8] The Abbey ruin is upon heights, from
which are superb views out upon the German Sea that beats with grand
uproar upon the Whitby cliffs. To the westward is the charming country of
Eskdale, and by going a few miles southward one may come to Robinhood’s
bay; and in the intervening village of Hawsker may be seen the two stones
said to mark the flight of the arrows of Robinhood and Little John, when
they tried their skill for the amusement of the monks of Whitby