With a fever of
excitement
he
sustains his own interest (and sometimes yours) in his strange
medley of gossip, document and exhortation.
sustains his own interest (and sometimes yours) in his strange
medley of gossip, document and exhortation.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v03
With a sort of pathos, he pleads that men who
have brought hidden Histories from duskie darkness to the sight
of the world' deserve thanks for their pains, and should not be
misrepresented. 'I write not this,' says he, 'to complain of some
men's ingratitude towards me (although justly I might). ' There
is the pith of the matter enclosed within parentheses, and Stow,
may be, was thinking of Grafton's reckless animadversion on the
memories of superstitious foundacions, fables and lyes foolishly
stowed together. ' Speed lags not behind in reproach of the world,
and felicitation of himself. He describes his work as 'this large
Edifice of Great Britain's Theatre,' and likens himself to the
6
6
21--2
## p. 324 (#346) ############################################
324
Chroniclers and Antiquaries
a
silkworm, that ends her life in her long-wrought clue. "So I in
this Theatre have built my owne grave,' he writes; 'whose Archi-
tecture howsoever defective it may be said to be, yet the project
is good, and the cost great, though my selfe have freely bestowed
this paines to the Presse, without pressing a penny from any man's
purse. Yet neither the one nor the other complained justly of
'
neglect. Stow won all the honour, both in his lifetime and after,
which belongs to the lettered citizen. He grew into a superstition
of homely wit and genial humour. Henry Holland, Philemon's
son, calls him the merry old man,' and Fuller celebrates his
virtues as Stow himself would have them celebrated. He admits
that he reported toys and trifles, res in se minutas, that he was
a smell-feast, who could not pass by Guildhall without giving his
pen a taste of the good cheer, and he excuses this on the ground
that 'it is hard for a citizen to write history, but that the fire
of his gun may be felt therein. ' So much may be truly said in
dispraise. For the rest, Fuller has nothing but applause. He
declares that our most elegant historians have thrown away the
basket and taken the fruit-even Sir Francis Bacon and Master
Camden. And ‘let me add of John Stow, he concludes, 'that
(however he kept tune) he kept time very well, no author being
more accurate in the notation thereof. ' And Speed, even if he
pressed no penny from any man's purse, did not ask the aid of
any scholar in vain. Sir Robert Cotton opened his library and
his collections to the chronicler's eye. Master John Barkham
gave such help as he alone could give, while Master William
Smith, Rouge Dragon, was ever at hand to solve the problems of
heraldry. Surely no citizen ever found better encouragement,
especially in the telling of a thrice-told tale.
Stow was the more industrious of the two. In 1561, he pub-
,
lished an edition of Chaucer's works. Four years later came his
Summarie of Englyshe Chronicles, and then, in 1580, he dedicated
to Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, a far better book, The Chronicles
of England from Brute until this present yeare of Christ 1580.
His purpose it is to celebrate 'the worthie exploits of our Kings
and governors,' and of that purpose he takes a lofty view. He
regards himself not only as a historian, but as an inculcator of
sound morals. “It is as hard a matter,' he says in pride,
6
for the Recorder of Chronicles, in my fansie, to passe without some colours of
wisedome, invitements to vertue, and loathing of naughtie factes, as it is for a
welfavoured man to walk up and downe in the hot parching Sunne, and not
to be therewith sunburned.
## p. 325 (#347) ############################################
John Speed
325
His knowledge is not often better than that of his predecessors.
He believes in the same fairy-tales; he accepts without question the
same rumours. But, in one respect, he differs from all his rivals: he
possesses an interest in literature which they lack. Under the year
1341, he records the death of John Malvern, fellow of Oriel College,
and author of the book entitled The Visions of Pierce Plowman,
and, in due course, he laments Geoffrey Chaucer, 'the most ex-
cellent poet of Englande, deceased the XXV of October, 1400. '
His knowledge of literature did not give him a lettered style.
His prose is the plainest and most straightforward of his time,
and he deserves whatever praise may be given to the diligent and
conscientious journeyman.
John Speed, on the other hand, was a born rhetorician. His
love of words outstripped his taste. When Richard I dies, 'now
ensued,' says he, 'the fatall accident, which drew the blacke cloud
of death over this triumphal and bright shining Starre of Chevalrie. '
The battle of Agincourt inspires him to such a piece of coloured
writing as Hall would not have disdained. Whatever the occasion
be, he is determined to attain what he thinks is a brilliant
effect, and his Historie of Great Britaine is marred by a monstrous
ingenuity. One virtue he has which must not be passed over :
he supports his narrative more often than the others from un-
published documents. He quotes the Life of Woolsey, which Stow
had quoted before him without acknowledgment, and ascribes it
honourably to George Cavendish. His character of Henry VII is
borrowed, with some verbal differences, from the manuscript of
Sir Francis Bacon, 'à learned, eloquent knight, and principall
lawyer of our time. In brief, truth and patriotism are his aims.
Like all the chroniclers, and with an unrestrained eloquence, he
hymns the glory of England, 'the Court of Queene Ceres, the
Granary of the Western world, the fortunate Island, the Paradise
of Pleasure and Garden of God. '
With William Camden, the chronicle reached its zenith. His
Rerum Anglicarum et Hibernicarum Annales, regnante Elizabetha
is by far the best example of its kind. Though it is 'digested
into annals,' according to the practice of the time, though
its author bundles marriages, deaths, embassies and successions
together, like the common ‘stitchers of history,' though he does
not disdain strange stars and frozen rivers, it is informed through-
out with a sense of history and with a keen perception of con-
flicting policies. Old-fashioned in design alone, the work is a
genuine piece of modern history, in which events are set in
## p. 326 (#348) ############################################
326
Chroniclers and Antiquaries
a proper perspective, and a wise proportion is kept of great and
small. Its faults are the faults inherent in the chronicle: no sure
plan of selection, a rigid division into years, an interspersion of
the text with documents. Its virtues are its own : clearness
of expression, catholicity of interest, a proud consciousness of
the great events, whereof Camden was at once the partaker and
the historian.
He declares in his preface that William Cecil, baron Burghley,
opened unto him first some memorials of state of his own,' and
that afterwards he
6
sought all manner of help on every side . . . for most of which (as I ought) I
hold myself chiefly bound to Sir R. Cotton, who with great expense and happy
labour hath gathered most choice variety of Histories and antiquity; for at
his torch be willingly suffered me to light my taper.
He learned much, also, by his own observation and by converse
with those who had played their part in affairs, and, heedless of
himself, he made no sacrifice save to truth. Nor does he vaunt
his achievement in any lofty terms. He will be content, he says,
with professional modesty, to be 'ranked amongst the lowest
writers of great things. ' He would have been placed far higher
in the general esteem, if he had not, by an unhappy accident,
composed his book in Latin. This misfortune, the greater because
he was one of the last to inflict so grave an injustice upon himself,
was mitigated by the skill and loyalty of his translators. The first
part of his Annales, the substance of which had already been
communicated to Thuanus, was published in 1615, and, ten years
later, translated out of the French into English by Abraham
Darcie, who gave his own flourishing title to the book : The True
and Royall History of the famous Empresse Elizabeth, Queene
of England France and Ireland &c. True Faith's defendresse
of Divine renowne and happy Memory. The second part, which
describes the affairs of the kingdom from 1589 to the queen's
death, was printed posthumously in 1627, and translated into
English by Thomas Browne, student of Christ Church, under the
title of Tomus Idem et Alter (1629).
Such is the history of the book. Its purpose and motive are
apparent upon every page: to applaud the virtues of the queen and
to uphold the protestant faith. In devising fitting titles for Eliza-
beth, Camden exhausts his ingenuity. She is the Queen of the
Sea, the North Star, the restorer of our naval glory. He defends
her actions with the quiet subtlety which suggests that defence is
seldom necessary. His comment upon the death of Mary of
## p. 327 (#349) ############################################
William Camden
327
Scotland is characteristic. Thus were achieved, he thinks, the two
things which Mary and Elizabeth always kept nearest their hearts:
the union of England and Scotland was assured in Mary's son,
and the true religion, together with the safety of the English
people, was effectively maintained. But Camden was not wholly
engrossed in the glory and wisdom of the queen. He looked
beyond her excellences to the larger movements of the time.
None understood better than he the spirit of enterprise which
was founding a new England across the sea. He pays a just
tribute of honour to Drake and Hawkins, he celebrates the
prowess of John Davis and William Sanderson and he hails the
rising colony of Virginia. Of Shakespeare and the drama he has
not a word to say. The peculiar glory of his age escaped him.
The death of Ascham, it is true, tempts him to a digression, and
persuades him to deplore that so fine a scholar should have lived
and died a poor man through love of dicing and cock-fighting.
And he fires a salute over the grave of Edmund Spenser, who
surpassed all English poets, not excepting Chaucer, and into
whose tomb the other poets cast mournful elegies and the pens
wherewith they wrote them. But, in the end, he returns to his
starting-place, and concludes, as he began, on a note of panegyric.
No oblivion,' he says,
shall ever dim the glory of her Name: for her happy and renowned memory
still lives, and shall for ever live in the Minds of Man to all posterity, as of
one who (to use no other than her successor's expression) in Wisedome and
Felicitie of goverment surpassed (without envy be it spoken) all the Princes
since the days of Augustus.
6
Master Camden, as his contemporaries call him with respect,
was well fitted for his task by nature and education. He was
a man of the world as well as a scholar. Born in 1551, he was
brought up at the Blue Coat school, and sent thence, as chorister
or servitor, to Magdalen College, Oxford. Presently, he migrated to
Broadgate's Hostel, now Pembroke College, and, afterwards, to Christ
Church. In 1582, he took his famous journey through England,
the result of which was his Britannia; ten years later, he was
made headmaster of Westminster school ; and, in 1597, was ap-
pointed, successively, Richmond Herald, and Clarencieux King of
Arms. His life was full and varied ; his character, as all his
biographers testify, candid and amiable. The works he left behind
speak eloquently of his learning and industry. To our age, he is
best known as the historian of Elizabeth. To his own age, he
was eminent as an antiquary, and it was his Brilannia, published
>
## p. 328 (#350) ############################################
328
Chroniclers and Antiquaries
.
in 1582, and rescued from Latin by the incomparable Philemon
Holland in 1610, which gave him his greatest glory. Anthony
à Wood calls him 'the Pausanias of the British Isles. ' Fuller, not
to be outdone in praise, says that he restored Britain to herself. '
Like all the other topographers of his century, he made use of
Leland's notes, but the works of the two men are leagues apart.
Camden's Britannia is, in effect, a real piece of literature. It is
not intimate, like Harrison's England. It is not a thing of shreds
and patches, like the celebrated Itinerary. Wisely planned, nobly
written and deliberately composed, it is the fruit of deep and
diligent research. Camden loved England and loved to embellish
her with his phrases. He carried his readers along the high-roads,
through the towns and cities of his native country, revealing, as
he went, her natural scenery, her antiquities, her learning and her
strength. And if, to-day, we shared his pride in England, we should
still echo, with all sincerity, the praises lavished upon his work
by his contemporaries.
Ralph Brooke, with more malice than discretion, charged Camden
with making an unacknowledged use of Leland's Collectanea. The
acknowledgment was generously given, and Leland's Collections
were made but to be used. Camden, in fact, was only following
the general practice of his age. There was no topographer who
did not take what he wanted from Leland, and there was none
who did not improve what he took. If Leland's inchoate notes
were of service to Harrison and Camden, they did all that could
be expected of them. The truth is, Leland was a superstition.
He received the inordinate praise which is easily given to those
of whom it is said that they might achieve wonders if they would.
The weight of learning which he carried was thought to be so
great that he could not disburden it in books. He aroused great
expectations, and never lessened them by performance. His
erudition was inarticulate; his powers were paralysed by ambition;
he knew so much that he feared to give expression to his know-
ledge; and he won the greater glory because the masterpiece
never achieved was enveloped in an atmosphere of mystery. His
career, however, the career of the silent scholar, is not without
its interest and tragedy. Born in 1506, he studied both at Christ's
College, Cambridge, and at All Souls, Oxford, and, after some
years spent in Paris, where he was the friend of Budé, and
may, through his mediation, have encountered Rabelais, he was
appointed chaplain and librarian to Henry VIII, and rector of
Pepeling in the marches of Calais. In 1533, his great opportunity
## p. 329 (#351) ############################################
John Leland
329
came, for, in that year, he was given a commission, under the broad
seal, to travel in search of England's antiquities, to examine what-
ever records were to be found and to read in the libraries of
cathedrals, colleges, priories and abbeys. For some six years he
gave himself to this toil with tireless diligence, and, in 1546,
presented to the king the only finished piece of his writing that
exists in English : The laboriouse Journey and Serche of Johan
Leylande, for Englandes Antiquities, geven of hym as a newe
yeares gyfte to kyng Henry the VIII in the XXXVII yeare of
his raigne.
In this somewhat ornate pamphlet, Leland extols the
reformation, reproves the usurped authority of the bishop of Rome
and his complices and sets forth the extent and result of his many
journeys. In no spirit of pride, but with a simple truth, he de-
,
scribes his peragration. 'I have so traveled in your domynions,'
he writes,
both by the see coastes and the myddle partes, sparynge neyther labour nor
costes by the space of these vi yeares past, that there is almost neyther cape
nor baye, haven, creke or pere, ryver or confluence of ryvers, breches, washes,
lakes, meres, fenny waters, mountaynes, valleys, mores, hethes, forestes, woodes,
cyties, burges, castels, pryncypall manor places, monasterys, and colleges, but
I have seane them, and noted in so doynge a whole worlde of thynges verye
memorable.
8
It is a formidable list, and we may well believe that this old
pedant on the tramp omitted nothing in his survey. Whatever he
saw or heard he committed to his note-book, and carried back with
him the vast undigested mass of facts from which many wiser
heads are said to have pilfered. His ambition was commensurate
with his industry. He trusted shortly to see the time when the
king should have his 'worlde and impery of Englande set forthe
in a quadrate table of sylver,' and, knowing that silver or brass is
impermanent, he intended, as he told the king,
by the leave of God, within the space of xn moneths folowyng, such a descrip-
eion to make of the realme in wryttinge, that it shall be no mastery after, for
the graver or painter to make the lyke by a perfect example.
Nor would his work end here. He determined to restore the
ancient names which Caesar, Tacitus and others employed. In
brief, said he,
I trust so to open the wyndow, that the lyght shal be seane, so long, that is to
say by the space of a whole thousand yeares, stopped up, and the glory of your
renoumed Britain to reflorish through the worlde.
Alas for the vanity of human hopes ! It is easy to travel;
it is not easy to convert a traveller's note-book into literature ;
## p. 330 (#352) ############################################
330
Chroniclers and Antiquaries
and John Leland, elegant poet though he was in the Latin
tongue, found the work of arrangement and composition beyond
his powers. Unhappily, he seems to have known the limit of his
talent. He complains that 'except truth be delycately clothed
in purpure her written veryties can scant fynde a reader. ' This
purple vesture it was not his to give, and the world looked in
vain for his expected masterpiece. When, at last, he recognised
that it was for others he had gathered the honey of his knowledge,
he went mad, 'upon a foresight,' said Wood, that he was not able
to perform his promise. ' Some charged him with pride and vain-
glory without justice. He was not proud, merely inarticulate.
The work he designed for himself was done by Camden. And,
now that his Itinerary is printed, it is difficult to understand the
enthusiasm of his contemporaries. It makes no pretence to be
written. It is the perfection of dryasdust, and the only writer
with whom Leland may profitably be compared is the author of
Bradshaw's Guide. Here are two specimens of his lore, chosen
at random :
6
Mr Pye dwellit at. . . a litle from Chippenham, but in Chippenham Paroche.
One told me that there was no notable Bridge on Avon betwixt Malmeshyri
and Chippenham. I passed over 2 Bekkes betwixt Malmesbyri and Clip-
penham.
The statements are superbly irrelevant, and it is clear that the
old tailors had the better of the vaunted scholar.
As a topographer, indeed, it is Stow who takes his place by
Camden's side. The Survey of the Cities of London and West-
minster (1598 and 1603) is a diligent and valuable piece of work,
at once faithful and enthusiastic. For Stow, London was the
fairest, largest, richest and best inhabited city in the world, and
he gave it all the care and study which he thought it deserved.
Other travellers went further afield. To Richard Carew, we owe
A Survey of Cornwall (1602); and John Norden cherished the
wider ambition of composing a series of county histories. Only
a fragment of his vast design, which he would have entitled
Speculum Britanniae, has come down to us--a 'preparative' to
the whole work, together with brief sketches of Middlesex and
Hertford (1593). The failure is more to be regretted because
Norden himself was a man of parts. He came of a gentile family,'
says Wood, was authorised, in 1593, by a privy council order to
travel through England and Wales, 'to make more perfect de-
scriptions, charts and maps' and was a very deft cartographer, as
## p. 331 (#353) ############################################
Sir Thomas Smith
331
is shown to all in Camden's Britannia. The liveliest of his works,
the Surveyor's Dialogue (1608), may still be read with pleasure.
Therein, Norden deplores, like many another, the luxury which had
come upon the country under the rule of the Tudors; he observes,
with sorrow, the enhanced prices of all commodities, the smoke of
many chimneys, which ‘hinders the heate and light of the Sunne
from earthly creatures, and the many acres of deforested land,
The farmers, he says, are not content unless they are gentry, and
'gentlemen have sunke themselves by rowing in vanities boate. '
In brief, he sees about him the signs of ruin and desolation, and
his treatise may aptly be compared with some passages of
Harrison's Description of England,
What the travellers did for their country, Sir Thomas Smith,
in his Common Wealth of England (written in 1565, printed in
1583), did for its law and government. No treatise ever written
owed less to ornament. As the author himself says, he has
declared summarily as it were in a Chart or Map' the form
and manner of government and the policy of England. His
is no feigned commonwealth such as never was nor shall be,
no vain imagination, no fantasy of philosophers, but England
as she
6
6
standeth and is governed at this day the eight and twentie of March, Anno
1565, in the seventh yeere of the Raigne and Administration thereof by the
most religious, virtuous, and noble Queene Elizabeth.
In style and in substance the book is as concise as a classic. It
wastes no words and betrays few emotions. Only once or twice
does Sir Thomas Smith permit himself a touch of humanity or
a bint of observation. The yeomen of England, the good Archers,
‘the stable troupe of Footmen that affraid all France,' arouse him
to a fitful enthusiasm, and, in the discussion of England's male-
factors, he reveals a flash of real insight, namely that Englishmen,
while they neglect death, will not endure torture. The nature
of our Nation is free, stout, hault, prodigall of life and blood,'
says he, “but contumely, beating, servitude, and servile torment,
and punishment it will not abide. ' The popularity of the book is
easily intelligible. It appealed to a people hungry for knowledge
of itself, but it gives no hint of the erudite Greek professor, the
adroit ambassador, the wise secretary of state, the curious astro-
loger, all whose parts Sir Thomas Smith played with distinction
and success.
An encyclopaedic method claims for John Foxe, the martyro-
logist, a place among the chroniclers. Not that his aim and
## p. 332 (#354) ############################################
332
Chroniclers and Antiquaries
6
purpose resembled theirs. It was not for him to exalt his country,
or to celebrate the triumphs of her past. His was the gloomier
task of recounting the torments suffered by the martyrs of all
ages, and he performed it with so keen a zest that it was not his
fault if one single victim escaped his purview. In other words,
he was content only with universality, and how well he succeeded
let Fuller tell : 'In good earnest, as to the particular subject of
our English martyrs, Mr Foxe hath done everything, leaving
posterity nothing to work upon. ' And so he goes back to the
beginning, describing the martyrdoms of the early church, and of
those who suffered in England under king Lucius. As he passes
by, he pours contempt upon Becket, proving that he, at least,
was no true martyr, being the open and avowed friend of the
pope. But it is when he arrives within measurable distance of
his own time that he finds the best food for his eloquence. The
prowess of Henry VIII, the exploits of Thomas Cromwell, his
prime hero, the magnanimity of Anne Boleyn, who, without
controversy, was a special comforter and aider of all the pro-
fessors of Christ's gospel,' tempt him to enthusiasm, and he rises
to the highest pitch of his frenzy when he recounts the tortures
of those who suffered death in the reign of queen Mary. He is no
sifter of authorities; he is as credulous as the simplest chronicler ;
he gathers his facts where Grafton and Stow gathered theirs, and
he makes no attempt to test their accuracy. His sin is the greater
because he is not writing to amuse or to enlighten his readers,
but to prove a point in controversy. He is, in brief, a violent
partisan. His book is the longest pamphlet ever composed by
the hand of man. It is said to be twice as long as Gibbon's
Decline and Fall, and never for one moment does it waver from
its purpose, which is to expose the wickedness of the persecutors
of God's truth, commonly called Papists. ' It is idle, therefore, to
expect accuracy or a quiet statement from Foxe. If anyone belong
to the other side, Foxe can credit him neither with honesty nor with
intelligence. Those only are martyrs who die for the protestant
The spilt blood of such men as Fisher and More does not
distress him. For the author of Utopia, indeed, he has a profound
contempt. He summarily dismisses him as 'a bitter persecutor
of good men, and a wretched enemy against the truth of the
gospel. ' It follows, therefore, that Foxe's mind also was enchained.
It was not liberty of opinion which seemed good in his eyes, but
the vanquishing of the other side. Though he interceded for
certain anabaptists condemned by queen Elizabeth, it was his
6
cause.
## p. 333 (#355) ############################################
John Foxe
333
object to rescue them not from punishment but from the flames,
which was, he thought, in accord with a Roman rather than with a
Christian custom. However, the success of his Actes and Monu-
ments was immediate. It was universally read, it aroused a storm
of argument, it was ordered to be chained in churches for the
general edification of the people. The temper in which it is
written, the inflexible judgment which, throughout, distorts the
truth with the best motive, have rendered the book less valu-
able in modern than in contemporary eyes. If we read it to-day,
we read it not for its matter or for its good counsel, but for its
design. As a mere performance, the Actes and Monuments is
without parallel. Foxe was an astounding virtuoso, whose move-
ment and energy never flag.
With a fever of excitement he
sustains his own interest (and sometimes yours) in his strange
medley of gossip, document and exhortation. The mere style of
the work-homely, quick and appropriate—is sufficient to account
for its favour. The dramatic turn which Foxe gives to his dia-
logues, the vitality of the innumerable men and women, tortured
and torturers, who throng his pages—these are qualities which
do not fade with years. Even the spirit of bitter raillery which
breathes through his pages amazes, while it exasperates, the
reader. From the point of view of presentation, the work's worst
fault is monotony. Page after page, the martyrologist revels in
the terms of suffering. He spares you nothing, neither the
,
creeping flames, nor the chained limb, until you begin to
believe that he himself had a love of blood and fire.
The man was just such a one as you would expect from his
book. Born in 1517, to parents 'reputed of good estate,' sent to
Oxford, in 1533, by friends who approved his “good inclination
and towardness to learning,' and elected fellow of Magdalen
College, he was presently accused of heresy and expelled from
Oxford. He was of those who can neither brook opposition nor
accept argument. Henceforth, though he never stood at the
stake, he suffered the martyrdom of penury and distress. Now
tutor in a gentleman's house, now in flight for the sake of his
opinions, be passed some years at Basel reading for the press,
and, in 1559, he published at Strassburg the first edition of his
masterpiece, in Latin. In 1563, it was printed in English by John
Day, with the title Actes and Monuments of these latter and
perilous times touching matters of the Church. With characteristic
ingenuity, he composed four dedications : to Jesus Christ, to the
queen, to the learned reader and to the persecutors of God's truth,
## p. 334 (#356) ############################################
334
Chroniclers and Antiquaries
commonly called papists. The last is a fine example of savage
abuse, and, as Foxe wrote in safety and under the protection of
a protestant queen, its purpose is not evident. No more can be
said than that rage and fury are in his heart and on his tongue,
that he possessed a genius of indignation which he had neither
wish nor power to check and that he bequeathed to us a larger
mass of invective than any writer in any age has been able to
achieve.
The most of the writers hitherto discussed have been intent
either to amuse or to inform. They have composed their works,
for the most part, in sound and living English, because they spoke
and wrote a language that had not yet been attenuated by the
formality of pedants and grammarians. Few, if any, of them were
sensible of an artistic impulse. They began at the beginning and
pursued their task patiently unto the end, unconscious of what
the next page would bring forth. But there are three writers,
the author of The history of King Richard the thirde, George
Cavendish and Sir John Hayward, who are separated from the
chroniclers, even from Camden himself, both by ambition and by
talent. Each of them set before him a consistent and harmonious
design ; each of them produced, in his own fashion, a deliberately
artistic effect. The history of Richard the thirde has been gene-
rally ascribed to Sir Thomas More, on hazardous authority. An
incomplete manuscript of the book was found among his papers,
and printed as his both in Hall's Chronicle and in Grafton's
edition of Hardyng. Some have attributed to More no more than
the translation, giving to cardinal Morton the credit of a Latin
original. Sir George Buck, in his History of the Life and Reigne
of Richard III, printed in 1646, but written many years earlier,
declares that ‘Doctor Morton (acting the part of Histiaeus) made
the Booke, and Master Moore like Aristagoras set it forth, amplifying
and glossing it. ' Where the evidence is thus scanty, dogmatism
is inapposite, and no more can be said than that the book itself
does not chime with the character and temper of More. It is
marked throughout by an asperity of tone, an eager partisan-
ship, which belong more obviously to Morton than to the humane
author of Utopia.
From beginning to end, Richard III is painted in the blackest
colours. No gossip is overlooked which may throw a sinister light
upon the actions of the prince. It is hinted, not only that he
slew Henry VI, but that he was privy to Clarence's death. The
most is made of his deformed body and cunning mind, the least
## p. 335 (#357) ############################################
1
The history of King Richard the thirde 335
of his policy. If accuracy be sacrificed, the artistic effect is en-
hanced. The oneness of Richard's character gives a unity and
concentration to the portrait which cannot be overpraised. For the
first time in English literature, we come upon a history which is not
a mere collection of facts, but a deliberately designed and care-
fully finished whole. The author has followed the ancient models.
He knows how fine an effect is produced by the putting of
appropriate speeches in the mouths of his characters. The value
of such maxims as sum up a situation and point a moral does not
escape him. “Slipper youth must be underpropped with elder
counsayle,' says he. And, again : The desire of a kingdome
knoweth no kinred. The brother hath bene the brother's bane. '
Here we have the brevity and the wise commonplace of the Greek
chorus. Above all, he proves the finest economy in preparing his
effects. The great scene in which Richard arrests lord Hastings
opens in a spirit of gentle courtesy. 'My Lord,' says the protector
to the bishop of Ely,
you have very good strawberries at your gardayne in Holberne, I request you
let ns have a messe of them. Gladly my lord, quod he, woulde God I had
some better thing as redy to your pleasure as that.
And then the storm breaks. In brief, the author's sense of what
is picturesque never slumbers. The sketches of the queen and
Shore's wife are drawn by a master. The persistence with which
Richard tightens his grasp upon the throne is rendered with the
utmost skill. Nor is the sense of proportion ever at fault. You
are given the very essence of the tragedy, and so subtle is the design
that, at the first reading, it may escape you. The style is marked
by a strict economy of words and a constant preference of English
before Latin. From beginning to end, there is no trace of flam-
boyancy or repetition, and, while we applaud the wisdom of the
chroniclers who made this history of Richard their own, we cannot
but wonder that one and all failed to profit by so fine an example
of artistry and restraint.
Few books have had a stranger fate than George Cavendish's
Life and Death of Thomas Woolsey. Written when queen Mary
was on the throne, it achieved a secret and furtive success.
passed in manuscript from hand to hand. Shakespeare knew it
and used it. As I have said, both Stow and Speed leaned upon
its authority. First printed in 1641, it was then so defaced by
interpolations and excisions as to be scarce recognisable, and it
was not until 1657 that a perfect text was given to the world.
And then, for no visible reason, it was ascribed to William, not to
It was
## p. 336 (#358) ############################################
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Chroniclers and Antiquaries
George, Cavendish. The uncertainty had no other excuse save
that William, the better known of the two, was the founder of
a great family. Speed gives the credit where it was due, to George
-and Speed's word was worth more than surmise. However, all
doubt was long since removed, and to George Cavendish, a simple
gentleman of the cardinal's household, belongs the glory of having
given to English literature the first specimen of artistic biography.
Steadfast in devotion, plain in character, Cavendish left all to
follow the fortunes of the cardinal. He was witness of his master's
pomp and splendour; he was witness of his ruin and his death.
He embellished his narrative with Wolsey's own eloquence; he re-
corded the speech of Cromwell, Northumberland and others; and
he imparts to his pages a sense of reality which only a partaker
of Wolsey's fortunes could impart. But he was not a Boswell,
attempting to produce a large effect by a multiplicity of details.
His book has a definite plan and purpose. Consciously or un-
consciously, Cavendish was an artist. His theme is the theme of
many a Greek tragedy, and he handles it with Greek austerity.
He sets out to show how Nemesis descends upon the haughty and
overbold, how the mighty are suddenly cast down from their seats,
how the hair-shirt lurks ever beneath the scarlet robes of the
cardinal. This is the confessed end and aim of his work. He is
not compiling a life and times. ' He discards as irrelevant many
events which seem important in the eye of history. The famous
words which he puts in the mouth of Wolsey dying might
serve as a text for the whole work: 'If I had served God as
diligently as I have done the king, he would not have given me
over in my grey hairs. '
That his readers may feel the full pathos of Wolsey's fall, he
paints the magnificence of his life in glowing colours. Titles are
heaped upon titles. The boy bachelor grows to the man of affairs,
the ambassador, the king's almoner, the chancellor of England, the
archbishop of York, the cardinal. In lavish entertainment, in noble
pageantry, the cardinal surpassed the king. His banquets 'with
monks and mummers it was a heaven to behold. ' The officers of his
chapel and of his household were like the sands in number. He moved
always in a procession. 'He rode like a cardinal, very sumptuously,
on a mule trapped with crimson velvet upon velvet, his stirrups of
copper and gilt; and his spare mule following him with like
apparel. ' Is it any wonder that fortune ‘began to was something
wroth with his prosperous estate'? Almost at the outset, the note
of warning is struck. The sinister influence of Anne Boleyn begins
## p. 337 (#359) ############################################
Cavendish's Life of Woolsey 337
to be felt from the moment that the cardinal comes between her and
the love of lord Percy. In other words, fortune 'procured Venus,
the insatiate goddess, to be her instrument. The king's displeasure
at the slow process of divorce is heightened by the whisperings of
Mistress Anne. And then, at Grafton, the blow falls. The cardinal
is ordered to give up the great seal and to retire to Esher. Hence-
forth, misfortunes are heaped upon him, as they were heaped upon
Job, and he bears them with an equal resignation. He is stripped
of wealth and state. His hopeless journey from town to town
brings him nearer only to death. The omens are bad. A cross
falls upon Bonner's head as he sits at meat. When the earl
of Northumberland, charged to arrest him of high treason, visits
him, 'Ye shall have such cheer,' says the cardinal, with the true
irony of Sophocles, as I am able to make you, with a right good
will. . . hoping hereafter to see you oftener, when I shall be more
able and better provided to receive you with better fare. ' So,
at last, he dies at Leicester, dishonoured and disgraced, stripped
of his splendour, abandoned by his train. And Cavendish, speak-
ing with the voice of the tragic chorus, exhorts his readers
to behold 'the wondrous mutability of vain honours, the brittle
assurance of abundance, the uncertainty of dignities, the flattery
of feigned friends, and the fickle trust to worldly princes. '
Talent and opportunity were given to the simple, unlettered
Cavendish, and he made the fullest use of them. Sir John Hayward
was a historian of another kind. He was not driven by accident
or experience to the practice of his craft. He adopted it as a
profession, and resembled the writers of a later age more nearly
than any of his contemporaries. Born in Suffolk, about 1560, he
was educated at the university of Cambridge, and devoted himself
with a single mind to the study of history. He was in no sense
a mere chronicler. He aimed far higher than the popular history,
digested into annals. His mind was always intent upon the ex-
ample of the ancients. He liked to trick out his narratives with
appropriate speeches after the manner of Livy. He delighted
in the moral generalisations which give an air of solemnity to
the art of history as it was practised by the Greeks and Romans.
His first work, in which are described the fall of Richard II and
the first years of Henry IV, and which was dedicated to the earl
of Essex, incurred the wrath of Elizabeth, and cost him some
years of imprisonment. The queen asked Bacon if he could find
any passages in the book which savoured of treason. 'For treason
surely I find none,' said Bacon, but for felony very many. ' And
22
6
E. L. III.
CH. XV.
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Chroniclers and Antiquaries
when the queen asked him 'Wherein ? ' he told her that 'the
author had committed very apparent theft; for he had taken
most of the sentences of Cornelius Tacitus, and translated them
into English, and put them in his text. ' This criticism is as
true as it is witty. Hayward aims at sententiousness with an
admirable success, and did his best to make himself the Tacitus
of England.
In the 'Epistle Dedicatorie' to his Lives of the Three
Normans, Kings of England, he declares that, though he had
written of the past, he ‘did principally bend and binde himself
to the times wherein he should live. ' His performance did not
agree with his bent. Concerning the times near which he lived he
has left but a fragment: The beginning of the Reigne of Queene
Elizabeth, of which beginning he had no more personal knowledge
than of the Life and Reigne of King Edward the Sixt, which,
in some respects, is his masterpiece. But, whatever was the
period of his choice, he treated it with the same knowledge and
impartiality. He made a proper use of unpublished material.
The journal of Edward VI gives an air of authenticity to his
biography of that king, and, in treating of William I, he went
back to sources of information which all the chroniclers had
overlooked. In brief, he was a scholar who took a critical view
of his task, who was more deeply interested in policies and their
result than in the gossip of history and who was always quick to
illustrate modern England by the examples of Greece and Rome.
His pages are packed with literary and historical allusions. He
was, moreover, always watchful of his style, intent ever upon
producing a definite effect, and, if he errs, as he does especially
in his Henry IV, on the side of elaboration, it is a fault of which
he is perfectly conscious, and which he does not disdain. Thus,
at last, with the author of Richard III and Sir John Hayward,
England reverted to the ancient models, and it is from them and
not from the chroniclers that our art of history must date its
beginnings.
>
1
## p. 339 (#361) ############################################
CHAPTER XVI
ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION
AMONG the prose compositions of the Elizabethan era are
numerous works which, with many points of difference, have thi
in common, that they all aim at affording entertainment by means
of prose narrative. They are variously styled Phantasticall
treatises, Pleasant histories, Lives, Tales and Pamphlets, and the
methods and material they employ are of corresponding variety;
they are, moreover, obviously written in response to demands
from different classes, and yet their common motive, as well as
a common prose form, unmistakably suggest a single literary
species.
Previous examples of the type will rarely be found in our
literature, for medieval fiction had mostly assumed the form of
verse. The general adoption of prose at this date is, therefore, an
innovation, and, as such, it was due to more than one cause. It
was the outcome, in the first place, of natural development, the
result of that national awakening which led to the overthrow of
Latin as the language of the learned ; with its activities extended
!
in the one direction, the vernacular was not long in recommending
itself for use in another, and so it came about that pros joined
verse in the service of delight. Then, again, Malory, Caxton and
the translators of Boccaccio had shown that narrative might adopt
prose form without disadvantage; through the Bible and the liturgy
the use of vernacular prose was fast becoming familiar; while
further possibilities of prose were being revealed from its place in
the drama. And, lastly, with the departure of the minstrel and the
appearance of the printing press, there ceased, naturally enough,
that exclusive use of verse for narrative purposes, which, under
earlier conditions, alone had made long narrative possible.
Prose fiction, therefore, is one of the gifts of the Elizabethans
to our literature, and the gift is none the less valuable because
unconsciously made. It was no special creation, fashioned upon
22-2
## p. 340 (#362) ############################################
340
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
a definite model, but, rather, the result of a variety of efforts
which, indirectly, converged towards one literary type. Its
elements were of various origin, being borrowed, in part, from
medieval England, in part, from abroad, while much, also, was due
to the initiative of the age. The material with which it dealt,
varied in accordance with the immediate end in view. Its
'treatises' and its pamphlets embodied studies of manners and
character-sketches; it comprised tales of adventure as well as
romance; it dealt with contemporary life and events of the past,
with life at the court, and life in the city ; it was, by turns,
humorous and didactic, realistic and fanciful, in short, it repre-
sented the first rough drafts of the later novel. The history of
the novel had really begun, and, although the term was not, as
yet, generally applied, the word itself had already entered the
language.
The two main centres of influence around which Elizabethan
prose fiction revolved were the court and the people. The court
was easily the supreme element in national life, and one great aim
of contemporary letters became that of supplying the courtier's
needs, just as, in Rome, it was the orator, the typical figure of the
classical age, who had won similar attention. At the same time,
à strong and self-conscious middle class was emerging from the
ruins of feudalism, and the commons were becoming alive to the
interests of their class. Hence, now for the first time, they made
their way into literature, and the treatment of their affairs
became the secondary aim of this prose fiction.
A period of apprenticeship came first, in which the lines of
translation were closely followed, and then, with skill acquired in
the art of story-telling, a host of writers devoted themselves to the
newly found craft. A series of moral treatises, in narrative form,
were the first to appear. They aimed, for the most part, at courtly
education, and, up to about 1584, instruction, often in sugared
form, became the main concern of a body of writers, of whom Lyly
was chief. Then the business became one of a more cheerful kind:
Greene and Lodge wrote their romances for court entertainment,
while Sidney sought distraction in the quiet shades of Arcadia.
In the last decade of the century came the assertion of the
bourgeois element. As an embodiment of realistic tendencies, it
followed, naturally enough, upon the previous romancing; but
social considerations had, also, made it inevitable. Greene, Nashe
and Deloney laboured to present the dark and the fair side of the
life of the people: they wrote to reform as well as to amuse.
## p. 341 (#363) ############################################
Earlier Native Types 341
Throughout the whole period, England, as is well known, was
singularly sensitive to foreign influence : one foreign work or
another seems to have been continually inspiring Elizabethan pens.
Castiglione and Guevara, Montemayor and Mendoza, each in his
different way, exercised influence, which was certainly stimulative,
and was, to some extent, directive, But, while this is true, it is
equally true that, in most cases, the actual production springs
readily and naturally from English soil; southern influence,
undoubtedly, helped to warm the seed into life, but the seed itself
was of an earlier sowing.
First, with regard to the treatises : the enthusiasm inspired by
North’s translation (1557) of Guevara's El Reloa de Principes,
and Hoby's translation (1561) of Castiglione's Il Cortegiano, was as
great as it was undoubted, but it does not altogether account
for Lyly's great work. Courtesy books had been written in English
before those works appeared. The Babees' Boke (1475) 'a lytyl
reporte of how young people should behave,' and Hugh Rhodes's
Boke of Nurture (1450, published 1577), had previously aimed at
inculcating good manners; afterwards came Elyot's Governour
(1531), Ascham’s Scholemaster (published 1570) and Sir Humphrey
Gilbert's Queene Elizabethes Achademy (written after 1562), all of
which treated of instruction, not only in letters, but also in social
and practical life'. Such works as these, together with the numerous
Mirrours, aimed at pointing the way to higher social refinement,
and thus the movement which culminated in Lyly had already
begun in fifteenth century England, and had kept pace with the
national development, of which it is, indeed, the logical outcome.
Secondly, the romance is an obvious continuation of a literary
type familiar to medieval England. Sanazzaro and Montemayor
modified, but did not supply the form, while the French and
Spanish works of chivalry introduced by Paynel and Munday
(1580—90) merely catered for a taste which had then become
jaded. Medieval romances, it is true, had fallen by this time into
a decrepit old age. They were cherished by antiquaries, some-
times reprinted, less frequently reread; they figured mainly with
'blind harpers and. . . taverne minstrels. . . at Christmasse diners
and bride ales, in tavernes and ale-houses and such other places of
base resort? ' But their tradition lived on in the romantic works
1 Note, also, 4 lytle Booke of Good Maners for Chyldren (1554) by Whittinton, R. ,
The Myrrour of Good Maners, translated from the Latin by Alexander Barclay and
printed by Pynson, and R. Peterson's translation of G. della Casa's Galateo (1576).
Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie, reprint of 1811, pp. 36, 69.
## p. 342 (#364) ############################################
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Elizabethan Prose Fiction
of Greene, Sidney and Lodge, though in the form of their sur-
vival they owed something to foreign influence. The pastoral
colouring, for instance, is caught from the fashions of Italy and
Spain; but, for the rest, their differences from the earlier English
forms may be fairly put down to changed aspects of national life.
In a general awakening, something of the old wonder and awe
had, naturally, been lost; the world of chivalry and enchantment
had receded, leaving the heroes of romance in a setting less
heroic, just as, in active life, the knight had turned courtier and
castles had become palaces. Moreover, the medley of form which
these romances exhibit corresponds to that medley of past and
present which lingered in men’s minds at masque and pageant.
The Elizabethan romance is, in short, firmly rooted in Elizabethan
life. Modifying influences came from abroad; but the animating
tradition and guiding impulses were forces derived from the
national life.
And, again, the immediate origin of the realistic work which
followed must be sought for in English works of an earlier
date. It is not necessary to ascribe Nashe's Unfortunate
Traveller, any more than the other realistic works of 1590—1600,
entirely to the influence of Lazarillo de Tormes. In part, all
these works represented a reaction against those ‘feyned-no-where
acts' which had proved enchanting in the preceding decade.
But the ultimate causes were yet more deeply rooted, being social
changes, partly national, partly European. Agricultural depres-
,
sion, long years of militarism and the closing of the monasteries,
had done much to reinforce those bands of 'broken men' that
swarmed like plagues over England.
have brought hidden Histories from duskie darkness to the sight
of the world' deserve thanks for their pains, and should not be
misrepresented. 'I write not this,' says he, 'to complain of some
men's ingratitude towards me (although justly I might). ' There
is the pith of the matter enclosed within parentheses, and Stow,
may be, was thinking of Grafton's reckless animadversion on the
memories of superstitious foundacions, fables and lyes foolishly
stowed together. ' Speed lags not behind in reproach of the world,
and felicitation of himself. He describes his work as 'this large
Edifice of Great Britain's Theatre,' and likens himself to the
6
6
21--2
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Chroniclers and Antiquaries
a
silkworm, that ends her life in her long-wrought clue. "So I in
this Theatre have built my owne grave,' he writes; 'whose Archi-
tecture howsoever defective it may be said to be, yet the project
is good, and the cost great, though my selfe have freely bestowed
this paines to the Presse, without pressing a penny from any man's
purse. Yet neither the one nor the other complained justly of
'
neglect. Stow won all the honour, both in his lifetime and after,
which belongs to the lettered citizen. He grew into a superstition
of homely wit and genial humour. Henry Holland, Philemon's
son, calls him the merry old man,' and Fuller celebrates his
virtues as Stow himself would have them celebrated. He admits
that he reported toys and trifles, res in se minutas, that he was
a smell-feast, who could not pass by Guildhall without giving his
pen a taste of the good cheer, and he excuses this on the ground
that 'it is hard for a citizen to write history, but that the fire
of his gun may be felt therein. ' So much may be truly said in
dispraise. For the rest, Fuller has nothing but applause. He
declares that our most elegant historians have thrown away the
basket and taken the fruit-even Sir Francis Bacon and Master
Camden. And ‘let me add of John Stow, he concludes, 'that
(however he kept tune) he kept time very well, no author being
more accurate in the notation thereof. ' And Speed, even if he
pressed no penny from any man's purse, did not ask the aid of
any scholar in vain. Sir Robert Cotton opened his library and
his collections to the chronicler's eye. Master John Barkham
gave such help as he alone could give, while Master William
Smith, Rouge Dragon, was ever at hand to solve the problems of
heraldry. Surely no citizen ever found better encouragement,
especially in the telling of a thrice-told tale.
Stow was the more industrious of the two. In 1561, he pub-
,
lished an edition of Chaucer's works. Four years later came his
Summarie of Englyshe Chronicles, and then, in 1580, he dedicated
to Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, a far better book, The Chronicles
of England from Brute until this present yeare of Christ 1580.
His purpose it is to celebrate 'the worthie exploits of our Kings
and governors,' and of that purpose he takes a lofty view. He
regards himself not only as a historian, but as an inculcator of
sound morals. “It is as hard a matter,' he says in pride,
6
for the Recorder of Chronicles, in my fansie, to passe without some colours of
wisedome, invitements to vertue, and loathing of naughtie factes, as it is for a
welfavoured man to walk up and downe in the hot parching Sunne, and not
to be therewith sunburned.
## p. 325 (#347) ############################################
John Speed
325
His knowledge is not often better than that of his predecessors.
He believes in the same fairy-tales; he accepts without question the
same rumours. But, in one respect, he differs from all his rivals: he
possesses an interest in literature which they lack. Under the year
1341, he records the death of John Malvern, fellow of Oriel College,
and author of the book entitled The Visions of Pierce Plowman,
and, in due course, he laments Geoffrey Chaucer, 'the most ex-
cellent poet of Englande, deceased the XXV of October, 1400. '
His knowledge of literature did not give him a lettered style.
His prose is the plainest and most straightforward of his time,
and he deserves whatever praise may be given to the diligent and
conscientious journeyman.
John Speed, on the other hand, was a born rhetorician. His
love of words outstripped his taste. When Richard I dies, 'now
ensued,' says he, 'the fatall accident, which drew the blacke cloud
of death over this triumphal and bright shining Starre of Chevalrie. '
The battle of Agincourt inspires him to such a piece of coloured
writing as Hall would not have disdained. Whatever the occasion
be, he is determined to attain what he thinks is a brilliant
effect, and his Historie of Great Britaine is marred by a monstrous
ingenuity. One virtue he has which must not be passed over :
he supports his narrative more often than the others from un-
published documents. He quotes the Life of Woolsey, which Stow
had quoted before him without acknowledgment, and ascribes it
honourably to George Cavendish. His character of Henry VII is
borrowed, with some verbal differences, from the manuscript of
Sir Francis Bacon, 'à learned, eloquent knight, and principall
lawyer of our time. In brief, truth and patriotism are his aims.
Like all the chroniclers, and with an unrestrained eloquence, he
hymns the glory of England, 'the Court of Queene Ceres, the
Granary of the Western world, the fortunate Island, the Paradise
of Pleasure and Garden of God. '
With William Camden, the chronicle reached its zenith. His
Rerum Anglicarum et Hibernicarum Annales, regnante Elizabetha
is by far the best example of its kind. Though it is 'digested
into annals,' according to the practice of the time, though
its author bundles marriages, deaths, embassies and successions
together, like the common ‘stitchers of history,' though he does
not disdain strange stars and frozen rivers, it is informed through-
out with a sense of history and with a keen perception of con-
flicting policies. Old-fashioned in design alone, the work is a
genuine piece of modern history, in which events are set in
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Chroniclers and Antiquaries
a proper perspective, and a wise proportion is kept of great and
small. Its faults are the faults inherent in the chronicle: no sure
plan of selection, a rigid division into years, an interspersion of
the text with documents. Its virtues are its own : clearness
of expression, catholicity of interest, a proud consciousness of
the great events, whereof Camden was at once the partaker and
the historian.
He declares in his preface that William Cecil, baron Burghley,
opened unto him first some memorials of state of his own,' and
that afterwards he
6
sought all manner of help on every side . . . for most of which (as I ought) I
hold myself chiefly bound to Sir R. Cotton, who with great expense and happy
labour hath gathered most choice variety of Histories and antiquity; for at
his torch be willingly suffered me to light my taper.
He learned much, also, by his own observation and by converse
with those who had played their part in affairs, and, heedless of
himself, he made no sacrifice save to truth. Nor does he vaunt
his achievement in any lofty terms. He will be content, he says,
with professional modesty, to be 'ranked amongst the lowest
writers of great things. ' He would have been placed far higher
in the general esteem, if he had not, by an unhappy accident,
composed his book in Latin. This misfortune, the greater because
he was one of the last to inflict so grave an injustice upon himself,
was mitigated by the skill and loyalty of his translators. The first
part of his Annales, the substance of which had already been
communicated to Thuanus, was published in 1615, and, ten years
later, translated out of the French into English by Abraham
Darcie, who gave his own flourishing title to the book : The True
and Royall History of the famous Empresse Elizabeth, Queene
of England France and Ireland &c. True Faith's defendresse
of Divine renowne and happy Memory. The second part, which
describes the affairs of the kingdom from 1589 to the queen's
death, was printed posthumously in 1627, and translated into
English by Thomas Browne, student of Christ Church, under the
title of Tomus Idem et Alter (1629).
Such is the history of the book. Its purpose and motive are
apparent upon every page: to applaud the virtues of the queen and
to uphold the protestant faith. In devising fitting titles for Eliza-
beth, Camden exhausts his ingenuity. She is the Queen of the
Sea, the North Star, the restorer of our naval glory. He defends
her actions with the quiet subtlety which suggests that defence is
seldom necessary. His comment upon the death of Mary of
## p. 327 (#349) ############################################
William Camden
327
Scotland is characteristic. Thus were achieved, he thinks, the two
things which Mary and Elizabeth always kept nearest their hearts:
the union of England and Scotland was assured in Mary's son,
and the true religion, together with the safety of the English
people, was effectively maintained. But Camden was not wholly
engrossed in the glory and wisdom of the queen. He looked
beyond her excellences to the larger movements of the time.
None understood better than he the spirit of enterprise which
was founding a new England across the sea. He pays a just
tribute of honour to Drake and Hawkins, he celebrates the
prowess of John Davis and William Sanderson and he hails the
rising colony of Virginia. Of Shakespeare and the drama he has
not a word to say. The peculiar glory of his age escaped him.
The death of Ascham, it is true, tempts him to a digression, and
persuades him to deplore that so fine a scholar should have lived
and died a poor man through love of dicing and cock-fighting.
And he fires a salute over the grave of Edmund Spenser, who
surpassed all English poets, not excepting Chaucer, and into
whose tomb the other poets cast mournful elegies and the pens
wherewith they wrote them. But, in the end, he returns to his
starting-place, and concludes, as he began, on a note of panegyric.
No oblivion,' he says,
shall ever dim the glory of her Name: for her happy and renowned memory
still lives, and shall for ever live in the Minds of Man to all posterity, as of
one who (to use no other than her successor's expression) in Wisedome and
Felicitie of goverment surpassed (without envy be it spoken) all the Princes
since the days of Augustus.
6
Master Camden, as his contemporaries call him with respect,
was well fitted for his task by nature and education. He was
a man of the world as well as a scholar. Born in 1551, he was
brought up at the Blue Coat school, and sent thence, as chorister
or servitor, to Magdalen College, Oxford. Presently, he migrated to
Broadgate's Hostel, now Pembroke College, and, afterwards, to Christ
Church. In 1582, he took his famous journey through England,
the result of which was his Britannia; ten years later, he was
made headmaster of Westminster school ; and, in 1597, was ap-
pointed, successively, Richmond Herald, and Clarencieux King of
Arms. His life was full and varied ; his character, as all his
biographers testify, candid and amiable. The works he left behind
speak eloquently of his learning and industry. To our age, he is
best known as the historian of Elizabeth. To his own age, he
was eminent as an antiquary, and it was his Brilannia, published
>
## p. 328 (#350) ############################################
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Chroniclers and Antiquaries
.
in 1582, and rescued from Latin by the incomparable Philemon
Holland in 1610, which gave him his greatest glory. Anthony
à Wood calls him 'the Pausanias of the British Isles. ' Fuller, not
to be outdone in praise, says that he restored Britain to herself. '
Like all the other topographers of his century, he made use of
Leland's notes, but the works of the two men are leagues apart.
Camden's Britannia is, in effect, a real piece of literature. It is
not intimate, like Harrison's England. It is not a thing of shreds
and patches, like the celebrated Itinerary. Wisely planned, nobly
written and deliberately composed, it is the fruit of deep and
diligent research. Camden loved England and loved to embellish
her with his phrases. He carried his readers along the high-roads,
through the towns and cities of his native country, revealing, as
he went, her natural scenery, her antiquities, her learning and her
strength. And if, to-day, we shared his pride in England, we should
still echo, with all sincerity, the praises lavished upon his work
by his contemporaries.
Ralph Brooke, with more malice than discretion, charged Camden
with making an unacknowledged use of Leland's Collectanea. The
acknowledgment was generously given, and Leland's Collections
were made but to be used. Camden, in fact, was only following
the general practice of his age. There was no topographer who
did not take what he wanted from Leland, and there was none
who did not improve what he took. If Leland's inchoate notes
were of service to Harrison and Camden, they did all that could
be expected of them. The truth is, Leland was a superstition.
He received the inordinate praise which is easily given to those
of whom it is said that they might achieve wonders if they would.
The weight of learning which he carried was thought to be so
great that he could not disburden it in books. He aroused great
expectations, and never lessened them by performance. His
erudition was inarticulate; his powers were paralysed by ambition;
he knew so much that he feared to give expression to his know-
ledge; and he won the greater glory because the masterpiece
never achieved was enveloped in an atmosphere of mystery. His
career, however, the career of the silent scholar, is not without
its interest and tragedy. Born in 1506, he studied both at Christ's
College, Cambridge, and at All Souls, Oxford, and, after some
years spent in Paris, where he was the friend of Budé, and
may, through his mediation, have encountered Rabelais, he was
appointed chaplain and librarian to Henry VIII, and rector of
Pepeling in the marches of Calais. In 1533, his great opportunity
## p. 329 (#351) ############################################
John Leland
329
came, for, in that year, he was given a commission, under the broad
seal, to travel in search of England's antiquities, to examine what-
ever records were to be found and to read in the libraries of
cathedrals, colleges, priories and abbeys. For some six years he
gave himself to this toil with tireless diligence, and, in 1546,
presented to the king the only finished piece of his writing that
exists in English : The laboriouse Journey and Serche of Johan
Leylande, for Englandes Antiquities, geven of hym as a newe
yeares gyfte to kyng Henry the VIII in the XXXVII yeare of
his raigne.
In this somewhat ornate pamphlet, Leland extols the
reformation, reproves the usurped authority of the bishop of Rome
and his complices and sets forth the extent and result of his many
journeys. In no spirit of pride, but with a simple truth, he de-
,
scribes his peragration. 'I have so traveled in your domynions,'
he writes,
both by the see coastes and the myddle partes, sparynge neyther labour nor
costes by the space of these vi yeares past, that there is almost neyther cape
nor baye, haven, creke or pere, ryver or confluence of ryvers, breches, washes,
lakes, meres, fenny waters, mountaynes, valleys, mores, hethes, forestes, woodes,
cyties, burges, castels, pryncypall manor places, monasterys, and colleges, but
I have seane them, and noted in so doynge a whole worlde of thynges verye
memorable.
8
It is a formidable list, and we may well believe that this old
pedant on the tramp omitted nothing in his survey. Whatever he
saw or heard he committed to his note-book, and carried back with
him the vast undigested mass of facts from which many wiser
heads are said to have pilfered. His ambition was commensurate
with his industry. He trusted shortly to see the time when the
king should have his 'worlde and impery of Englande set forthe
in a quadrate table of sylver,' and, knowing that silver or brass is
impermanent, he intended, as he told the king,
by the leave of God, within the space of xn moneths folowyng, such a descrip-
eion to make of the realme in wryttinge, that it shall be no mastery after, for
the graver or painter to make the lyke by a perfect example.
Nor would his work end here. He determined to restore the
ancient names which Caesar, Tacitus and others employed. In
brief, said he,
I trust so to open the wyndow, that the lyght shal be seane, so long, that is to
say by the space of a whole thousand yeares, stopped up, and the glory of your
renoumed Britain to reflorish through the worlde.
Alas for the vanity of human hopes ! It is easy to travel;
it is not easy to convert a traveller's note-book into literature ;
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and John Leland, elegant poet though he was in the Latin
tongue, found the work of arrangement and composition beyond
his powers. Unhappily, he seems to have known the limit of his
talent. He complains that 'except truth be delycately clothed
in purpure her written veryties can scant fynde a reader. ' This
purple vesture it was not his to give, and the world looked in
vain for his expected masterpiece. When, at last, he recognised
that it was for others he had gathered the honey of his knowledge,
he went mad, 'upon a foresight,' said Wood, that he was not able
to perform his promise. ' Some charged him with pride and vain-
glory without justice. He was not proud, merely inarticulate.
The work he designed for himself was done by Camden. And,
now that his Itinerary is printed, it is difficult to understand the
enthusiasm of his contemporaries. It makes no pretence to be
written. It is the perfection of dryasdust, and the only writer
with whom Leland may profitably be compared is the author of
Bradshaw's Guide. Here are two specimens of his lore, chosen
at random :
6
Mr Pye dwellit at. . . a litle from Chippenham, but in Chippenham Paroche.
One told me that there was no notable Bridge on Avon betwixt Malmeshyri
and Chippenham. I passed over 2 Bekkes betwixt Malmesbyri and Clip-
penham.
The statements are superbly irrelevant, and it is clear that the
old tailors had the better of the vaunted scholar.
As a topographer, indeed, it is Stow who takes his place by
Camden's side. The Survey of the Cities of London and West-
minster (1598 and 1603) is a diligent and valuable piece of work,
at once faithful and enthusiastic. For Stow, London was the
fairest, largest, richest and best inhabited city in the world, and
he gave it all the care and study which he thought it deserved.
Other travellers went further afield. To Richard Carew, we owe
A Survey of Cornwall (1602); and John Norden cherished the
wider ambition of composing a series of county histories. Only
a fragment of his vast design, which he would have entitled
Speculum Britanniae, has come down to us--a 'preparative' to
the whole work, together with brief sketches of Middlesex and
Hertford (1593). The failure is more to be regretted because
Norden himself was a man of parts. He came of a gentile family,'
says Wood, was authorised, in 1593, by a privy council order to
travel through England and Wales, 'to make more perfect de-
scriptions, charts and maps' and was a very deft cartographer, as
## p. 331 (#353) ############################################
Sir Thomas Smith
331
is shown to all in Camden's Britannia. The liveliest of his works,
the Surveyor's Dialogue (1608), may still be read with pleasure.
Therein, Norden deplores, like many another, the luxury which had
come upon the country under the rule of the Tudors; he observes,
with sorrow, the enhanced prices of all commodities, the smoke of
many chimneys, which ‘hinders the heate and light of the Sunne
from earthly creatures, and the many acres of deforested land,
The farmers, he says, are not content unless they are gentry, and
'gentlemen have sunke themselves by rowing in vanities boate. '
In brief, he sees about him the signs of ruin and desolation, and
his treatise may aptly be compared with some passages of
Harrison's Description of England,
What the travellers did for their country, Sir Thomas Smith,
in his Common Wealth of England (written in 1565, printed in
1583), did for its law and government. No treatise ever written
owed less to ornament. As the author himself says, he has
declared summarily as it were in a Chart or Map' the form
and manner of government and the policy of England. His
is no feigned commonwealth such as never was nor shall be,
no vain imagination, no fantasy of philosophers, but England
as she
6
6
standeth and is governed at this day the eight and twentie of March, Anno
1565, in the seventh yeere of the Raigne and Administration thereof by the
most religious, virtuous, and noble Queene Elizabeth.
In style and in substance the book is as concise as a classic. It
wastes no words and betrays few emotions. Only once or twice
does Sir Thomas Smith permit himself a touch of humanity or
a bint of observation. The yeomen of England, the good Archers,
‘the stable troupe of Footmen that affraid all France,' arouse him
to a fitful enthusiasm, and, in the discussion of England's male-
factors, he reveals a flash of real insight, namely that Englishmen,
while they neglect death, will not endure torture. The nature
of our Nation is free, stout, hault, prodigall of life and blood,'
says he, “but contumely, beating, servitude, and servile torment,
and punishment it will not abide. ' The popularity of the book is
easily intelligible. It appealed to a people hungry for knowledge
of itself, but it gives no hint of the erudite Greek professor, the
adroit ambassador, the wise secretary of state, the curious astro-
loger, all whose parts Sir Thomas Smith played with distinction
and success.
An encyclopaedic method claims for John Foxe, the martyro-
logist, a place among the chroniclers. Not that his aim and
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6
purpose resembled theirs. It was not for him to exalt his country,
or to celebrate the triumphs of her past. His was the gloomier
task of recounting the torments suffered by the martyrs of all
ages, and he performed it with so keen a zest that it was not his
fault if one single victim escaped his purview. In other words,
he was content only with universality, and how well he succeeded
let Fuller tell : 'In good earnest, as to the particular subject of
our English martyrs, Mr Foxe hath done everything, leaving
posterity nothing to work upon. ' And so he goes back to the
beginning, describing the martyrdoms of the early church, and of
those who suffered in England under king Lucius. As he passes
by, he pours contempt upon Becket, proving that he, at least,
was no true martyr, being the open and avowed friend of the
pope. But it is when he arrives within measurable distance of
his own time that he finds the best food for his eloquence. The
prowess of Henry VIII, the exploits of Thomas Cromwell, his
prime hero, the magnanimity of Anne Boleyn, who, without
controversy, was a special comforter and aider of all the pro-
fessors of Christ's gospel,' tempt him to enthusiasm, and he rises
to the highest pitch of his frenzy when he recounts the tortures
of those who suffered death in the reign of queen Mary. He is no
sifter of authorities; he is as credulous as the simplest chronicler ;
he gathers his facts where Grafton and Stow gathered theirs, and
he makes no attempt to test their accuracy. His sin is the greater
because he is not writing to amuse or to enlighten his readers,
but to prove a point in controversy. He is, in brief, a violent
partisan. His book is the longest pamphlet ever composed by
the hand of man. It is said to be twice as long as Gibbon's
Decline and Fall, and never for one moment does it waver from
its purpose, which is to expose the wickedness of the persecutors
of God's truth, commonly called Papists. ' It is idle, therefore, to
expect accuracy or a quiet statement from Foxe. If anyone belong
to the other side, Foxe can credit him neither with honesty nor with
intelligence. Those only are martyrs who die for the protestant
The spilt blood of such men as Fisher and More does not
distress him. For the author of Utopia, indeed, he has a profound
contempt. He summarily dismisses him as 'a bitter persecutor
of good men, and a wretched enemy against the truth of the
gospel. ' It follows, therefore, that Foxe's mind also was enchained.
It was not liberty of opinion which seemed good in his eyes, but
the vanquishing of the other side. Though he interceded for
certain anabaptists condemned by queen Elizabeth, it was his
6
cause.
## p. 333 (#355) ############################################
John Foxe
333
object to rescue them not from punishment but from the flames,
which was, he thought, in accord with a Roman rather than with a
Christian custom. However, the success of his Actes and Monu-
ments was immediate. It was universally read, it aroused a storm
of argument, it was ordered to be chained in churches for the
general edification of the people. The temper in which it is
written, the inflexible judgment which, throughout, distorts the
truth with the best motive, have rendered the book less valu-
able in modern than in contemporary eyes. If we read it to-day,
we read it not for its matter or for its good counsel, but for its
design. As a mere performance, the Actes and Monuments is
without parallel. Foxe was an astounding virtuoso, whose move-
ment and energy never flag.
With a fever of excitement he
sustains his own interest (and sometimes yours) in his strange
medley of gossip, document and exhortation. The mere style of
the work-homely, quick and appropriate—is sufficient to account
for its favour. The dramatic turn which Foxe gives to his dia-
logues, the vitality of the innumerable men and women, tortured
and torturers, who throng his pages—these are qualities which
do not fade with years. Even the spirit of bitter raillery which
breathes through his pages amazes, while it exasperates, the
reader. From the point of view of presentation, the work's worst
fault is monotony. Page after page, the martyrologist revels in
the terms of suffering. He spares you nothing, neither the
,
creeping flames, nor the chained limb, until you begin to
believe that he himself had a love of blood and fire.
The man was just such a one as you would expect from his
book. Born in 1517, to parents 'reputed of good estate,' sent to
Oxford, in 1533, by friends who approved his “good inclination
and towardness to learning,' and elected fellow of Magdalen
College, he was presently accused of heresy and expelled from
Oxford. He was of those who can neither brook opposition nor
accept argument. Henceforth, though he never stood at the
stake, he suffered the martyrdom of penury and distress. Now
tutor in a gentleman's house, now in flight for the sake of his
opinions, be passed some years at Basel reading for the press,
and, in 1559, he published at Strassburg the first edition of his
masterpiece, in Latin. In 1563, it was printed in English by John
Day, with the title Actes and Monuments of these latter and
perilous times touching matters of the Church. With characteristic
ingenuity, he composed four dedications : to Jesus Christ, to the
queen, to the learned reader and to the persecutors of God's truth,
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Chroniclers and Antiquaries
commonly called papists. The last is a fine example of savage
abuse, and, as Foxe wrote in safety and under the protection of
a protestant queen, its purpose is not evident. No more can be
said than that rage and fury are in his heart and on his tongue,
that he possessed a genius of indignation which he had neither
wish nor power to check and that he bequeathed to us a larger
mass of invective than any writer in any age has been able to
achieve.
The most of the writers hitherto discussed have been intent
either to amuse or to inform. They have composed their works,
for the most part, in sound and living English, because they spoke
and wrote a language that had not yet been attenuated by the
formality of pedants and grammarians. Few, if any, of them were
sensible of an artistic impulse. They began at the beginning and
pursued their task patiently unto the end, unconscious of what
the next page would bring forth. But there are three writers,
the author of The history of King Richard the thirde, George
Cavendish and Sir John Hayward, who are separated from the
chroniclers, even from Camden himself, both by ambition and by
talent. Each of them set before him a consistent and harmonious
design ; each of them produced, in his own fashion, a deliberately
artistic effect. The history of Richard the thirde has been gene-
rally ascribed to Sir Thomas More, on hazardous authority. An
incomplete manuscript of the book was found among his papers,
and printed as his both in Hall's Chronicle and in Grafton's
edition of Hardyng. Some have attributed to More no more than
the translation, giving to cardinal Morton the credit of a Latin
original. Sir George Buck, in his History of the Life and Reigne
of Richard III, printed in 1646, but written many years earlier,
declares that ‘Doctor Morton (acting the part of Histiaeus) made
the Booke, and Master Moore like Aristagoras set it forth, amplifying
and glossing it. ' Where the evidence is thus scanty, dogmatism
is inapposite, and no more can be said than that the book itself
does not chime with the character and temper of More. It is
marked throughout by an asperity of tone, an eager partisan-
ship, which belong more obviously to Morton than to the humane
author of Utopia.
From beginning to end, Richard III is painted in the blackest
colours. No gossip is overlooked which may throw a sinister light
upon the actions of the prince. It is hinted, not only that he
slew Henry VI, but that he was privy to Clarence's death. The
most is made of his deformed body and cunning mind, the least
## p. 335 (#357) ############################################
1
The history of King Richard the thirde 335
of his policy. If accuracy be sacrificed, the artistic effect is en-
hanced. The oneness of Richard's character gives a unity and
concentration to the portrait which cannot be overpraised. For the
first time in English literature, we come upon a history which is not
a mere collection of facts, but a deliberately designed and care-
fully finished whole. The author has followed the ancient models.
He knows how fine an effect is produced by the putting of
appropriate speeches in the mouths of his characters. The value
of such maxims as sum up a situation and point a moral does not
escape him. “Slipper youth must be underpropped with elder
counsayle,' says he. And, again : The desire of a kingdome
knoweth no kinred. The brother hath bene the brother's bane. '
Here we have the brevity and the wise commonplace of the Greek
chorus. Above all, he proves the finest economy in preparing his
effects. The great scene in which Richard arrests lord Hastings
opens in a spirit of gentle courtesy. 'My Lord,' says the protector
to the bishop of Ely,
you have very good strawberries at your gardayne in Holberne, I request you
let ns have a messe of them. Gladly my lord, quod he, woulde God I had
some better thing as redy to your pleasure as that.
And then the storm breaks. In brief, the author's sense of what
is picturesque never slumbers. The sketches of the queen and
Shore's wife are drawn by a master. The persistence with which
Richard tightens his grasp upon the throne is rendered with the
utmost skill. Nor is the sense of proportion ever at fault. You
are given the very essence of the tragedy, and so subtle is the design
that, at the first reading, it may escape you. The style is marked
by a strict economy of words and a constant preference of English
before Latin. From beginning to end, there is no trace of flam-
boyancy or repetition, and, while we applaud the wisdom of the
chroniclers who made this history of Richard their own, we cannot
but wonder that one and all failed to profit by so fine an example
of artistry and restraint.
Few books have had a stranger fate than George Cavendish's
Life and Death of Thomas Woolsey. Written when queen Mary
was on the throne, it achieved a secret and furtive success.
passed in manuscript from hand to hand. Shakespeare knew it
and used it. As I have said, both Stow and Speed leaned upon
its authority. First printed in 1641, it was then so defaced by
interpolations and excisions as to be scarce recognisable, and it
was not until 1657 that a perfect text was given to the world.
And then, for no visible reason, it was ascribed to William, not to
It was
## p. 336 (#358) ############################################
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Chroniclers and Antiquaries
George, Cavendish. The uncertainty had no other excuse save
that William, the better known of the two, was the founder of
a great family. Speed gives the credit where it was due, to George
-and Speed's word was worth more than surmise. However, all
doubt was long since removed, and to George Cavendish, a simple
gentleman of the cardinal's household, belongs the glory of having
given to English literature the first specimen of artistic biography.
Steadfast in devotion, plain in character, Cavendish left all to
follow the fortunes of the cardinal. He was witness of his master's
pomp and splendour; he was witness of his ruin and his death.
He embellished his narrative with Wolsey's own eloquence; he re-
corded the speech of Cromwell, Northumberland and others; and
he imparts to his pages a sense of reality which only a partaker
of Wolsey's fortunes could impart. But he was not a Boswell,
attempting to produce a large effect by a multiplicity of details.
His book has a definite plan and purpose. Consciously or un-
consciously, Cavendish was an artist. His theme is the theme of
many a Greek tragedy, and he handles it with Greek austerity.
He sets out to show how Nemesis descends upon the haughty and
overbold, how the mighty are suddenly cast down from their seats,
how the hair-shirt lurks ever beneath the scarlet robes of the
cardinal. This is the confessed end and aim of his work. He is
not compiling a life and times. ' He discards as irrelevant many
events which seem important in the eye of history. The famous
words which he puts in the mouth of Wolsey dying might
serve as a text for the whole work: 'If I had served God as
diligently as I have done the king, he would not have given me
over in my grey hairs. '
That his readers may feel the full pathos of Wolsey's fall, he
paints the magnificence of his life in glowing colours. Titles are
heaped upon titles. The boy bachelor grows to the man of affairs,
the ambassador, the king's almoner, the chancellor of England, the
archbishop of York, the cardinal. In lavish entertainment, in noble
pageantry, the cardinal surpassed the king. His banquets 'with
monks and mummers it was a heaven to behold. ' The officers of his
chapel and of his household were like the sands in number. He moved
always in a procession. 'He rode like a cardinal, very sumptuously,
on a mule trapped with crimson velvet upon velvet, his stirrups of
copper and gilt; and his spare mule following him with like
apparel. ' Is it any wonder that fortune ‘began to was something
wroth with his prosperous estate'? Almost at the outset, the note
of warning is struck. The sinister influence of Anne Boleyn begins
## p. 337 (#359) ############################################
Cavendish's Life of Woolsey 337
to be felt from the moment that the cardinal comes between her and
the love of lord Percy. In other words, fortune 'procured Venus,
the insatiate goddess, to be her instrument. The king's displeasure
at the slow process of divorce is heightened by the whisperings of
Mistress Anne. And then, at Grafton, the blow falls. The cardinal
is ordered to give up the great seal and to retire to Esher. Hence-
forth, misfortunes are heaped upon him, as they were heaped upon
Job, and he bears them with an equal resignation. He is stripped
of wealth and state. His hopeless journey from town to town
brings him nearer only to death. The omens are bad. A cross
falls upon Bonner's head as he sits at meat. When the earl
of Northumberland, charged to arrest him of high treason, visits
him, 'Ye shall have such cheer,' says the cardinal, with the true
irony of Sophocles, as I am able to make you, with a right good
will. . . hoping hereafter to see you oftener, when I shall be more
able and better provided to receive you with better fare. ' So,
at last, he dies at Leicester, dishonoured and disgraced, stripped
of his splendour, abandoned by his train. And Cavendish, speak-
ing with the voice of the tragic chorus, exhorts his readers
to behold 'the wondrous mutability of vain honours, the brittle
assurance of abundance, the uncertainty of dignities, the flattery
of feigned friends, and the fickle trust to worldly princes. '
Talent and opportunity were given to the simple, unlettered
Cavendish, and he made the fullest use of them. Sir John Hayward
was a historian of another kind. He was not driven by accident
or experience to the practice of his craft. He adopted it as a
profession, and resembled the writers of a later age more nearly
than any of his contemporaries. Born in Suffolk, about 1560, he
was educated at the university of Cambridge, and devoted himself
with a single mind to the study of history. He was in no sense
a mere chronicler. He aimed far higher than the popular history,
digested into annals. His mind was always intent upon the ex-
ample of the ancients. He liked to trick out his narratives with
appropriate speeches after the manner of Livy. He delighted
in the moral generalisations which give an air of solemnity to
the art of history as it was practised by the Greeks and Romans.
His first work, in which are described the fall of Richard II and
the first years of Henry IV, and which was dedicated to the earl
of Essex, incurred the wrath of Elizabeth, and cost him some
years of imprisonment. The queen asked Bacon if he could find
any passages in the book which savoured of treason. 'For treason
surely I find none,' said Bacon, but for felony very many. ' And
22
6
E. L. III.
CH. XV.
## p. 338 (#360) ############################################
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Chroniclers and Antiquaries
when the queen asked him 'Wherein ? ' he told her that 'the
author had committed very apparent theft; for he had taken
most of the sentences of Cornelius Tacitus, and translated them
into English, and put them in his text. ' This criticism is as
true as it is witty. Hayward aims at sententiousness with an
admirable success, and did his best to make himself the Tacitus
of England.
In the 'Epistle Dedicatorie' to his Lives of the Three
Normans, Kings of England, he declares that, though he had
written of the past, he ‘did principally bend and binde himself
to the times wherein he should live. ' His performance did not
agree with his bent. Concerning the times near which he lived he
has left but a fragment: The beginning of the Reigne of Queene
Elizabeth, of which beginning he had no more personal knowledge
than of the Life and Reigne of King Edward the Sixt, which,
in some respects, is his masterpiece. But, whatever was the
period of his choice, he treated it with the same knowledge and
impartiality. He made a proper use of unpublished material.
The journal of Edward VI gives an air of authenticity to his
biography of that king, and, in treating of William I, he went
back to sources of information which all the chroniclers had
overlooked. In brief, he was a scholar who took a critical view
of his task, who was more deeply interested in policies and their
result than in the gossip of history and who was always quick to
illustrate modern England by the examples of Greece and Rome.
His pages are packed with literary and historical allusions. He
was, moreover, always watchful of his style, intent ever upon
producing a definite effect, and, if he errs, as he does especially
in his Henry IV, on the side of elaboration, it is a fault of which
he is perfectly conscious, and which he does not disdain. Thus,
at last, with the author of Richard III and Sir John Hayward,
England reverted to the ancient models, and it is from them and
not from the chroniclers that our art of history must date its
beginnings.
>
1
## p. 339 (#361) ############################################
CHAPTER XVI
ELIZABETHAN PROSE FICTION
AMONG the prose compositions of the Elizabethan era are
numerous works which, with many points of difference, have thi
in common, that they all aim at affording entertainment by means
of prose narrative. They are variously styled Phantasticall
treatises, Pleasant histories, Lives, Tales and Pamphlets, and the
methods and material they employ are of corresponding variety;
they are, moreover, obviously written in response to demands
from different classes, and yet their common motive, as well as
a common prose form, unmistakably suggest a single literary
species.
Previous examples of the type will rarely be found in our
literature, for medieval fiction had mostly assumed the form of
verse. The general adoption of prose at this date is, therefore, an
innovation, and, as such, it was due to more than one cause. It
was the outcome, in the first place, of natural development, the
result of that national awakening which led to the overthrow of
Latin as the language of the learned ; with its activities extended
!
in the one direction, the vernacular was not long in recommending
itself for use in another, and so it came about that pros joined
verse in the service of delight. Then, again, Malory, Caxton and
the translators of Boccaccio had shown that narrative might adopt
prose form without disadvantage; through the Bible and the liturgy
the use of vernacular prose was fast becoming familiar; while
further possibilities of prose were being revealed from its place in
the drama. And, lastly, with the departure of the minstrel and the
appearance of the printing press, there ceased, naturally enough,
that exclusive use of verse for narrative purposes, which, under
earlier conditions, alone had made long narrative possible.
Prose fiction, therefore, is one of the gifts of the Elizabethans
to our literature, and the gift is none the less valuable because
unconsciously made. It was no special creation, fashioned upon
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340
Elizabethan Prose Fiction
a definite model, but, rather, the result of a variety of efforts
which, indirectly, converged towards one literary type. Its
elements were of various origin, being borrowed, in part, from
medieval England, in part, from abroad, while much, also, was due
to the initiative of the age. The material with which it dealt,
varied in accordance with the immediate end in view. Its
'treatises' and its pamphlets embodied studies of manners and
character-sketches; it comprised tales of adventure as well as
romance; it dealt with contemporary life and events of the past,
with life at the court, and life in the city ; it was, by turns,
humorous and didactic, realistic and fanciful, in short, it repre-
sented the first rough drafts of the later novel. The history of
the novel had really begun, and, although the term was not, as
yet, generally applied, the word itself had already entered the
language.
The two main centres of influence around which Elizabethan
prose fiction revolved were the court and the people. The court
was easily the supreme element in national life, and one great aim
of contemporary letters became that of supplying the courtier's
needs, just as, in Rome, it was the orator, the typical figure of the
classical age, who had won similar attention. At the same time,
à strong and self-conscious middle class was emerging from the
ruins of feudalism, and the commons were becoming alive to the
interests of their class. Hence, now for the first time, they made
their way into literature, and the treatment of their affairs
became the secondary aim of this prose fiction.
A period of apprenticeship came first, in which the lines of
translation were closely followed, and then, with skill acquired in
the art of story-telling, a host of writers devoted themselves to the
newly found craft. A series of moral treatises, in narrative form,
were the first to appear. They aimed, for the most part, at courtly
education, and, up to about 1584, instruction, often in sugared
form, became the main concern of a body of writers, of whom Lyly
was chief. Then the business became one of a more cheerful kind:
Greene and Lodge wrote their romances for court entertainment,
while Sidney sought distraction in the quiet shades of Arcadia.
In the last decade of the century came the assertion of the
bourgeois element. As an embodiment of realistic tendencies, it
followed, naturally enough, upon the previous romancing; but
social considerations had, also, made it inevitable. Greene, Nashe
and Deloney laboured to present the dark and the fair side of the
life of the people: they wrote to reform as well as to amuse.
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Earlier Native Types 341
Throughout the whole period, England, as is well known, was
singularly sensitive to foreign influence : one foreign work or
another seems to have been continually inspiring Elizabethan pens.
Castiglione and Guevara, Montemayor and Mendoza, each in his
different way, exercised influence, which was certainly stimulative,
and was, to some extent, directive, But, while this is true, it is
equally true that, in most cases, the actual production springs
readily and naturally from English soil; southern influence,
undoubtedly, helped to warm the seed into life, but the seed itself
was of an earlier sowing.
First, with regard to the treatises : the enthusiasm inspired by
North’s translation (1557) of Guevara's El Reloa de Principes,
and Hoby's translation (1561) of Castiglione's Il Cortegiano, was as
great as it was undoubted, but it does not altogether account
for Lyly's great work. Courtesy books had been written in English
before those works appeared. The Babees' Boke (1475) 'a lytyl
reporte of how young people should behave,' and Hugh Rhodes's
Boke of Nurture (1450, published 1577), had previously aimed at
inculcating good manners; afterwards came Elyot's Governour
(1531), Ascham’s Scholemaster (published 1570) and Sir Humphrey
Gilbert's Queene Elizabethes Achademy (written after 1562), all of
which treated of instruction, not only in letters, but also in social
and practical life'. Such works as these, together with the numerous
Mirrours, aimed at pointing the way to higher social refinement,
and thus the movement which culminated in Lyly had already
begun in fifteenth century England, and had kept pace with the
national development, of which it is, indeed, the logical outcome.
Secondly, the romance is an obvious continuation of a literary
type familiar to medieval England. Sanazzaro and Montemayor
modified, but did not supply the form, while the French and
Spanish works of chivalry introduced by Paynel and Munday
(1580—90) merely catered for a taste which had then become
jaded. Medieval romances, it is true, had fallen by this time into
a decrepit old age. They were cherished by antiquaries, some-
times reprinted, less frequently reread; they figured mainly with
'blind harpers and. . . taverne minstrels. . . at Christmasse diners
and bride ales, in tavernes and ale-houses and such other places of
base resort? ' But their tradition lived on in the romantic works
1 Note, also, 4 lytle Booke of Good Maners for Chyldren (1554) by Whittinton, R. ,
The Myrrour of Good Maners, translated from the Latin by Alexander Barclay and
printed by Pynson, and R. Peterson's translation of G. della Casa's Galateo (1576).
Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie, reprint of 1811, pp. 36, 69.
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Elizabethan Prose Fiction
of Greene, Sidney and Lodge, though in the form of their sur-
vival they owed something to foreign influence. The pastoral
colouring, for instance, is caught from the fashions of Italy and
Spain; but, for the rest, their differences from the earlier English
forms may be fairly put down to changed aspects of national life.
In a general awakening, something of the old wonder and awe
had, naturally, been lost; the world of chivalry and enchantment
had receded, leaving the heroes of romance in a setting less
heroic, just as, in active life, the knight had turned courtier and
castles had become palaces. Moreover, the medley of form which
these romances exhibit corresponds to that medley of past and
present which lingered in men’s minds at masque and pageant.
The Elizabethan romance is, in short, firmly rooted in Elizabethan
life. Modifying influences came from abroad; but the animating
tradition and guiding impulses were forces derived from the
national life.
And, again, the immediate origin of the realistic work which
followed must be sought for in English works of an earlier
date. It is not necessary to ascribe Nashe's Unfortunate
Traveller, any more than the other realistic works of 1590—1600,
entirely to the influence of Lazarillo de Tormes. In part, all
these works represented a reaction against those ‘feyned-no-where
acts' which had proved enchanting in the preceding decade.
But the ultimate causes were yet more deeply rooted, being social
changes, partly national, partly European. Agricultural depres-
,
sion, long years of militarism and the closing of the monasteries,
had done much to reinforce those bands of 'broken men' that
swarmed like plagues over England.
