No More Learning

301 (#323) ############################################

Webbe
301
6
of honest civilitie nor skilfull Poetrie,' excepting Gorboduc, which
itself is not faultless. It is faulty in place and time: all the rest
are faulty not only in these but in action. And then we have
the often quoted passage satirising the 'free' drama in all these
respects, with a further censure of the mixture of tragedy and
comedy, and an aspiration after the limiting of comedy to Terentian-
Plautine types and of tragedy to the divine admiration' excited
by the tragedies of Buchanan. 'Our Songs and Sonets' are frigid,
etc, etc. He insinuates, rather than definitely advances, a sug-
gestion that English should use both riming and versing. And
he ends with a half-enthusiastic, half-satirical peroration on the
Planet-like Music of Poetrie. '
The quaint perversity of all this, and the still quainter revenge
which time took on it by making the next fifty years and more
a flourishing time of English poetry in almost direct consequence
of the neglect of Sidney's censures, is a commonplace. It ought
to be as much a commonplace to repeat the sufficient explanation
of it—that he lacked the basis and sine qua non of all sound
criticism, to wit, a sufficient quantity of precedent good poetry.
But, of late, considerable interest has been taken in the question
whether he got his principles from specific or general sources; and
there has been a tendency to regard him as specially echoing not
merely Scaliger but the Italian critic Minturno. There are, no
doubt, coincidences with these two, and, especially, with Minturno;
but it is the opinion of the present writer that Sidney was rather
familiar with the general drift of Italian criticism than following
any special authority.
The Discourse of English Poetrie which William Webbe, a
Cambridge graduate and private tutor in the house of an Essex
squire, published in 1586, is far below Sidney's in learning, in
literary skill and, above all, in high sympathy with the poetic
spirit. But Webbe is enthusiastic for poetry according to his
lights; he has the advantage of writing later; and his dealings
with his subject are considerably less in the air. '
He even
attempts a historical survey—the first thing that ought to have
been done and the last that actually was done-but deficiency of
information and confusion of view are wofully evident in this.
Gower is the first English poet that he has heard of; though he
admits that Chaucer may have been equal in time. But it does
not seem that he had read anything of Gower's, though that poet
was easily accessible in print. He admires Chaucer, but in a rather
suspiciously general way; thinks Lydgate comparable with him for


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Elizabethan Criticism
6
meetly good proportion of verse' and 'supposes that Piers Plough-
man was next. Of the supposed author of this poem, he makes
the strange, but very informing, remark that he is the first who
observed the quantity of our verse without the curiosity of rhyme. '
He knows Skelton; does not, apparently, know Wyatt; speaks
again strangely of 'the old earl of Surrey'; but, from Gascoigne
onwards, seems fairly acquainted with the first Elizabethans,
especially commending Phaer, Golding and Googe, and thinking
Anthony Munday's work very rare poetry' in giving the sweet
sobs of Shepherds, an estimate which has had much to do
with the identification of Munday and 'Shepherd Tony. But
Webbe's judgment is too uncertain to be much relied on.
Still, it must be to his eternal honour that he admires Spenser,
lavishly and ungrudgingly, while not certain that the author of
The Shepheards Calender is Spenser. He is deeply bitten with
the mania for ‘versing'; and a great part of the tractate is
occupied with advice and experiments in relation to it and with
abuse of rime. He actually tries to 'verse' some of the most
beautiful lines of the Calender itself, and hopes that Spenser and
Harvey (whom he evidently thinks Spenser's equal) will 'further
that reformed kind of poetry. ' So that, once more, though
Webbe is not to be compared with Sidney in any other way, we
find a strange and almost laughable similarity in their inability
to 'orientate' themselves—to put themselves at the real English
point of view. If one had had his way, we should have had no
Shakespeare; if the other had had his, we should never have
had the true Spenser.
Somewhat earlier than Webbe's little book there had, ap-
parently, been written, and, somewhat later (1589), there was
published, a much more elaborate Arte of English Poesie, which
is a sort of combination of a Poetic and a Rhetoric especially
copious on the subject of figures. It appeared anonymously, the
printer even saying (but this was not a very uncommon trick)
that it came into his hands without any author's name. ' That
of Puttenham was not attached to it for another quarter of a
century. Until quite recently, it has been usual to identify
the author with a certain George Puttenham. Arguments for
preferring his brother Richard were put forward so long ago as
1883, by Croft, in his edition of The Governour of Sir Thomas
Elyot, a relation of the Puttenhams; but little notice was taken
of them for a time. Of late, Richard Puttenham has been the
favourite, without, in the present writer's judgment, much cause.
6


## p. 303 (#325) ############################################

a
The Arte of English Poesie 303
The fact is that there are arguments against both the Puttenhams,
and there is little more than presumption in favour of either. The
authorship, however, is of little or no importance; the book is
a remarkable one. It is quite evidently written by a courtier,
a man of some age, who represents all but the earliest Elizabethan
generation, but one who has survived to witness the advent of
Spenser, and who is well acquainted with the as yet unpublished
work of Sidney. He has pretty wide reading, and is something
of a scholar—the extraordinary names of some of his figures are,
probably, a printer's blunder. He knows rather more about
English poetry than Webbe, for he does not omit Wyatt; but he
includes the chronicler Harding in a fashion which raises suspicions.
Still, that 'Piers Plowman's verse is but loose metre' is a distinct
improvement. Contemporaries, with the inclusion of the Queene
our Sovereign Lady,' who, of course, "easily surmounteth all the
rest,' are judged not unhappily-Sidney and that other gentle-
man who wrote the late Shepherds Calendar' being praised for
eclogue and pastoral; Ralegh’s verse receiving the memorable
phrase 'most lofty, insolent and passionate,' while the attribution
of sweet solemn and high conceit' to Dyer, of a good metre and a
plentiful vein' to Gascoigne and of ‘learned and well corrected'
verse to Phaer and Golding, is, in none of these instances, unhappy.
And the distinct recognition of Surrey and Wyatt as 'the two chief
lanterns of light to all others that have since employed their pens
in English poesy' deserves the highest praise. It is, in fact, except
the traditional and parrot-like encomia on Chaucer, the first
jalon-the first clear and firm staking out of English poetical -
history. Puttenham, however, is chiefly busy, as his title justified
him in being, with the most strictly formal side of poetry-with
its art. He will not allow feet, for a reason which, at any rate
in his own statement of it, is far from clear, but seems to have
a confused idea that individual English words are seldom complete
feet of any kind, and that we have too many monosyllables. But
he is exact in the enumeration of 'measures' by syllables, and
of 'staffs' by lines, pushing his care, in this respect, so far as to
give careful diagrams of the syllabic outline, and the rime-
connection of these latter. In fact, Puttenham is nothing if not
diagrammatic; and his leaning in this direction makes him very
complacent towards the purely artificial forms-eggs, altars,
lozenges, rhombi—which were to be the object of much ridicule.
He is also copious (though he regards it with lukewarm approval)
on classical ‘versifying'; and, in fact, spares no pains to make
6


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304
Elizabethan Criticism
his work a manual of practical directions for manufacturers of
verse. These directions occupy the whole of his second book-
‘of proportion' as he calls it. The third of ornament'-is almost
wholly occupied by the elaborate list of figures above referred
to. His fourth, 'of Poets and Poesy,' contains the history also
mentioned, and a good deal of stock matter as to the kinds of
poetry, its ethical position and purport, an enquiry into the origin
and history of rime (much less prejudiced and much better informed
than the strictures of the versers') and several other things.
Puttenham, it is clear, is, to some extent, hampered and led astray
by the common form and commonplace of the school rhetorics
which he is trying to adjust to English poetic; and he has the
enormous disadvantage of writing twenty years too soon. If his
Arte of Poesie could have been informed by the spirit, and en-
riched by the experience, of Daniel's Defence of Ryme, or if
Daniel had cared to extend and particularise this latter in the
manner, though not quite on the principles, of Puttenham, we
should possess a book on English prosody such as we do not yet
possess and perhaps never shall. As it is, there is a great deal
of dead wood' in the Arte. But it is none the less a document
of the highest value and interest historically, as showing the
seriousness with which the formal and theoretical side of poetry
was, at last and after almost utter'neglect, being taken in England.
It may owe something to Sidney-Gregory Smith has well ob-
served that all these critical writers, long before Sidney's tract
was published, evidently knew it in MS. But by far the greater
part of it is devoted to exactly the matters that Sidney did
not touch.
Sir John Harington, in that preface to his Ariosto which he
rightly calls, rather, a brief apology of poetry and of the author
and translator, refers directly to Sidney and, indeed, travels over
much the same ground in the general part of his paper; but he
acquires independent interest when he comes to deal with his
special subject. Indeed, one may, perhaps, say that his is the first
'critical introduction' in English, if we except ‘E. K. 's' to the
Calender. It is interesting to find him at once striking out for the
rope which, down to Addison, if not still later, the critic who felt
himself out of his depth in pure appreciation always tried to
seize—the tracing of resemblances in his author to the ancients,
in this case to Vergil. One might, indeed, be inclined to think
that, except in point of adventure, no two poets could possibly
be more unlike than the author of the Aeneid and the author of


## p. 305 (#327) ############################################

6
>
Harington and others
305
Orlando. But Sir John does not consider so curiously. There
is arma in the first line of the one and arme in the first line of
the other; one ends with the death of Turnus and the other with
that of Rodomont; there is glorification of the Julian house in
one and glorification of the house of Este in the other. In fact,
'there is nothing of any special observation in Vergil but my
author hath with great felicity imitated it. ' Now, if you imitate
Vergil, you must be right. Did not ‘that excellent Italian poet,
Dant' profess that, when he wandered out of the right way, Vergil
reclaimed him? Moreover, Ariosto 'hath followed Aristotle's
rules very strictly' and, though this assertion may almost take
the reader's breath away, Harington manages to show some case
for it in the same Fluellinian fashion of argument which has just
been set forth in relation to Vergil. Nor ought we to regard this
with any contempt. Defensible or indefensible, it was the method
of criticism which was to be preferred for the greater part of at
least two centuries. And Harington has a few remarks of interest
in regard to his own metre, rime, and such matters.
The illiberal, and, to some tastes, at any rate, rather wearisome,
'flyting' between Harvey and Nashe over the dead body of Greene
necessarily contains a large number of passages which are critical
after a fashion-indeed, the names of most writers of the strictly
Elizabethan period will be found with critical epithets or phrases
attached to them. But the whole is so thoroughly subdued to the
general tone of wrangling that any pure critical spirit is, neces-
sarily, absent. Nashe, with his usual faculty of hard hitting, says
to his foe, 'You will never leave your old tricks of drawing Master
Spenser into every piebald thing you do. ' But the fact is that
both merely use other men of letters as offensive or defensive
weapons for their own purposes.
A few, but only a few, fragments of criticism strictly or approxi-
mately Elizabethan may now be noticed. These are The Excellency
of the English Tongue by Richard Carew (1595–6 ? ), a piece in
which patriotism reinforces itself with a good amount of know-
ledge; the critical prefatory matter of Chapman's Iliad (or,
rather, its first instalments in 1598), which contains a vigorous
onslaught on Scaliger for his 'soulblind impalsied diminuation'
of Homer; Drayton's interesting prosodic note (1603) on his own
change of metre, etc. , when he rehandled Mortimeriados into The
Barons Wars (his still more interesting verse epistle to Reynolds
is much later); Meres's famous catalogue of contemporary wits
(1598), known to everyone for its references to Shakespeare, but
20
E. L. III.
CH. XIV.


## p. 306 (#328) ############################################

306
Elizabethan Criticism
>
6
in no part or respect discovering much critical ability ; passages
of William Vaughan (1600), Edmund Bolton and a few others.
But the last of all strictly Elizabethan discussion of matters
literary, and almost the most valuable part of it, is the notable
duel between Thomas Campion and Samuel Daniel on the question
of rime.
These two tractates, entitled, respectively, Observations in the
Art of English Poesy and A defence of Ryme, appeared in the
second and, probably, the third years of the new century, and
both the attack and the defence exhibit a most noteworthy altera-
tion when we compare them with the disquisitions on 'versing'
from fifty to ten years earlier. Nothing keeps the same,' except
Campion's abuse of the rime that he had used, was using and was
to use with such charm. The earlier discussions could hardly be
called controversies, because there was practically nothing said on
behalf of rime—unless the silent consensus of all good poets in
continuing to practise it may be allowed to be more eloquent than
any positive advocacy. And nearly (not quite) the whole energy
of the attack had been employed, not merely to dethrone rime, but
to instal directly classical metres, especially hexameters and
clegiacs, in the place of it. Campion still despises rime; but he
throws the English hexameter overboard with perfect coolness,
without the slightest compunction and, indeed, with, nearly as
much contempt as he shows towards rime itself. “The Heroical
verse that is distinguished by the dactyl hath oftentimes been
attempted in our English tongue but with passing pitiful success,'
and no wonder, seeing that it is 'an attempt altogether against
the nature of our language. ' Accordingly, in the 'reformed un-
rhymed numbers' which he himself proceeds to set forth, he relies,
in the main, on iambs and trochees, though (and this is his
distinguishing characteristic and his saving merit) he admits not
merely spondees but dactyls, anapaests (rarely) and even tri-
brachs as substitutes. By the aid of these he works out eight
kinds of verse : the 'pure iambic' or decasyllabic , the 'iambic
dimeter or English march,' which, in strict classical terminology,
is an iambic (or trochaic) monometer hypercatalectic? , the
English trochaic, a trochaic decasyllables, the English elegiac,
6
>
6
1 The more secure the more the stroke we feel.
(With licence of substitution. )
2 Raving war, begot
In the thirsty sands.
3 Kate can only fancy beardless husbands.


## p. 307 (#329) ############################################

6
3
>
Campion. Daniel
307
an eccentric and not very harmonious combination of an ordinary
iambic decasyllable and of two of his ‘dimeters' run together,
the English sapphic”, a shortened form of this, a peculiar quintet*
and the English anacreontic5.
He ends with an attempt, as arbitrary and as unsuccessful as
Stanyhurst's, to determine the quantity of English syllables on a
general system : e. g. the last syllables of plurals, with two or more
vowels before the 8, are long, etc.
The Defence of Ryme with which Daniel replied is, time and
circumstance being duly allowed for, one of the most admirable
things of its kind in English literature. It is perfectly politea
merit not too common in criticism at any time, and particularly rare
in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. Indeed, Daniel,
though it would not appear that there was personal acquaintance
between him and Campion, has the combined good taste and good
sense (for it is a powerful argument on his own side) to compliment
his adversary on his own success with rime. His erudition is not
impeccable; but it is sufficient. He devotes some, but not much,
attention to the 'eight kinds of verses, making the perfectly true,
and very damaging, observation that they are all perfectly con-
sonant with the admitted practice of English poetry, and that they
wantonly divest themselves of the additional charm that they might
derive from the rime usual in it. But, with true critical he
sticks in the main to the chief point—the unreason of the ob-
jection to rime, and the futility of the arguments or no-arguments
by which it had been supported. “Our understandings are not all
to be built by the square of Greece and Italy. ' 'Ill customs are
to be left,' but what have we save bare assertion to prove that
rime is an ill custom? Let the ancients have done well without it;
1 Constant to none but ever false to me,
Traitor still to love through thy faint desires.
Faith's pure shield, the Christian Diana,
England's glory crowned with all divineness,
Live long with triumphs to bless thy people
At thy sight triumphing.
3 Rose-cheeked Laura, come,
Sing thou smoothly with thy beauty's
Silent music, either other
Sweetly gracing.
- Just beguiler,
Kindest love yet only chastest,
Royal in thy smooth denials,
Frowning or demurely smiling
Still my pure delight.
5 Follow, follow
Though with mischief.
20-2


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308
Elizabethan Criticism
is that any reason why we should be forbidden to do well with it?
Let us 'tend to perfection' by 'going on in the course we are in. '
He admits blank verse freely in drama and allows, not less freely, that
rime may be abused. But he will defend the 'sacred monuments
of English,' the ‘best power of our speech, that wherein so many
honourable spirits have sacrificed to Memory their dearest passions,
the ‘kind and natural attire of Rhyme,' which adds more grace
and hath more delight than ever bare numbers can yield. ' And
So, with no bombast or slop of rhetoric, but with that quiet
enthusiasm which is the inspiration of his own best poetry, and that
simple propriety of style which distinguishes him both in poetry
and prose, Daniel lays down, almost or quite for the first time
in English, the great principle that 'the Dorians may speak Doric,'
that each language and each literature is entitled to its own ways
and its own fashions. It is curious enough that Ascham, who, long
before, had begun by the sturdy determination to write English
matters in the English tongue for Englishmen, should, also, have
been the first to be false to this principle in the prosodic direction.
Daniel, two generations after Toxophilus, establishes the principle
in this department also.
The critical work of two of the greatest of Elizabethans, Bacon
and Ben Jonson, falls, both logically and chronologically, into other
chapters, and represents, wholly in Bacon's case, almost wholly
in Jonson's, a different and more advanced stage of criticism. Yet
something of what we are about to say applies to them also, and it
may be of hardly less use as a preliminary to the study of them
than as a summary and criticism of the positive results which have
been presented in historical survey by the foregoing pages.
Until the provision of increased facilities for study which has
been given during the last thirty years or so by the labours of
many scholars, there was some excuse for want of clear com-
prehension of the importance of Elizabethan criticism. But
there is no such excuse now; though it is doubtful whether,
even yet, the subject has generally received from students
the attention that it deserves. The episode-if the term may
be applied to a passage at the beginning of an action—is an
interesting, and almost entirely normal, example of the peculiar
English way of proceeding in such matters, the way which is eu-
phemistically described as that of tentative experiment, but which
has received from political plain speaking the description of 'mud-
dling through. ' After such purely preliminary attitudes to criticism
as those of Chaucer and Caxton, men, about the second quarter of the


## p. 309 (#331) ############################################

Summary
309
sixteenth century, perceive that some theory of English writing, and
some regular adjustment of practice to that theory, is advisable, if
not positively necessary; and that the advisability, if not even
the necessity, is more especially applicable to verse-writing. But,
so far as regards English itself, they have absolutely no precedent ;
they have a century of very dubious practice immediately behind
them, and hardly any knowledge of what is beyond that century,
except in regard to one very great writer, and one or two smaller
ones, who are separated from them by a great gulf in pronunciation,
vocabulary and thought. On the other hand, in the ancient
,
languages and literatures they have not merely models of practice
universally accepted as peerless, but theoretical treatises, numerous
and elaborate ; while the more accomplished modern languages,
also, offer something in precept and more in practice. It is almost
inevitable that they should do what they do do—should apply
ancient and foreign-modern principles to English without sufficient
consideration whether application is possible and desirable.
Hence, the too famous English 'heroic'; hence, the cumbering
and lumbering of the new English rhetoric with matter which may
have been not at all cumbrous or lumbering in its original place.
Hence, the ready adoption of the interesting, but, to a great extent,
irrelevant and otiose, discussions about the abstract virtue of
poetry. Hence, the undue haste to teach the infant, or hardly
adolescent, drama the way it should go, without waiting to see
what would come of the way in which it was going.
It was a partial misfortune-but partial only because the
efforts made were far better than none at all that the chief and
most abundant modern critical treatises available were either
mere echoes of the classics or devoted to a modern language-
Italian—which has but small affinities with English. The Spanish
critics began just too late to give much assistance, even had
English writers been disposed to take lessons from Spain; and, in
their own country, their voices were soon whelmed. The French
required very careful reading not to do more harm than good.
And, above all, behind the whole of at least poetical, and especially
prosodic, criticism, there was easily perceivable, though, perhaps,
not consciously perceived, the dread of relapse into doggerel—the
aspiration after order, civility, accomplishment, as contrasted with
'barbarous and balductoom' vernacularity. And, outside the
strictly literary sphere, numerous influences determined or affected
some, at least, of the issues of criticism : the puritan distrust of
poetry and, specially, of the stage; the Anglican dislike of possible
2


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310
Elizabethan Criticism
6
Roman influences in foreign literature, the contempt of the whole
period for medieval things.
Yet it is remarkable how, from the very first and throughout,
there is a glimmering sense that, after all, English must 'do for
itself'--that 'the kingdom is within,' here as elsewhere. In the
act of abusing rime and recommending' verse,' Ascham admits more
than a misgiving as to whether the English hexameter is possible. In
the act of limiting English poetry as a matter of actual observation
to dissyllabic feet, Gascoigne is careful to remark that we have
had' others, and, apparently, rather wishes that we may have
them again; while it is remarkable how directly he goes to the
positive material of actual poetry for the source of his rules.
Sidney, classiciser as he is, practically assures us, by that famous
confession as to Chevy Chace, that we need be under no apprehen-
sion but that English verse will always appeal to the Englishman
as no other can. A rather sapless formalist like Puttenham does
adopt, and with not so very scanty knowledge, that historical
method in which all salvation lies ; and so, in his more blundering
way, does even an enthusiast for innovation like Webbe. Finally,
we find Daniel striking into and striking out in the full stream of
truth. "We shall best tend to perfection by going on in the
course we are in. ' Tu contra audentior ito!
Yet, at the same time, the critical literature of the period not less
distinctly avoids the mistake, too well known elsewhere, of neglecting
the comparative study of other languages and literatures, ancient
as well as modern. Indeed, half the mistakes that it does make may
be said to come from overdoing this comparison. At the particular
stage, however, this mattered very little. It was, undoubtedly, up
to this period, a defect of English that, though constantly trans-
lating and imitating, it had translated and imitated, if not quite
unintelligently, yet with no conscious and critical intelligence
in a blind and instinctive sort of way. This is now altered.
Sidney's not daring to allow Spenser’s ‘framing of his style to an
olde rusticke language . . . since neither Theocritus . . . Virgill . . .
nor Sanazara . . . did affect it,' is, indeed, altogether wrong. It is
wrong, as a matter of fact, to some extent, as regards Theocritus ;
it is inconsistent as ranking a mere modern like Sanazzaro, of
certainly no more authority than Spenser himself, with Theocritus
and Vergil; and it is a petitio principii in its assumption that
Greeks, or Latins, or Italians, can serve as prohibitory precedents
-as forbidders, merely by the fact of not having done a thing-
to Englishmen. But the process is literary and critical, if the


## p. 311 (#333) ############################################

Summary
311
procedure and application are erroneous. English, so to speak,
is, at least, 'entered in the general academy of literatures ; it
submits itself to competition and to co-examination; it is no
longer content to go on-not, indeed, as Ascham vainly says, 'in
a foul wrong way' but—in an uncultivated and thoughtless way.
It is taking stock and making audit of itself, investigating what
has been done and prospecting for what is to be done. Nor
should it be forgotten that there is such work as Mulcaster's, which,
though not strictly literary criticism, is linguistic and scholastic
criticism of no unliterary kind. Mulcaster', in his Positions and
Elementary, following Thynne and others, almost founds the
examination of the language itself; as does that part of Ascham's
Scholemaster which has hitherto been passed over and which
concerns the teaching of the classical tongue by means of English-
a process which, as all sound thinking on education has seen since,
involves, and carries with it, the teaching of English by means of
the classical tongues. The whole body of effort in this kind is one
great overhauling of the literary and linguistic resources of the
nation—a thing urgently required, long neglected, yet, perhaps,
not possible to have been attempted with any real prospect of
benefit until this particular time.
Nor would it be wise to over-estimate the futility of the
futilities, the mistake of the mistakes, that were committed. The
worst and most prominent of them all—the craze for 'versing'-
sprang from a just sense of the disorderliness of much recent
English poetry, and led almost directly to the introduction of a
new and better order. As for what may seem to us the idle
expatiations on the virtues of poetry in the abstract, or the super-
fluous defences of it, these were things which, according to all
precedent, had to be gone through, and to be got over. Even on
the side where there was still most to seek—the diligent and
complete exploring of the actual possessions of English in a really
historical spirit-more must have been done than is obvious on the
surface, or we should not be able to find, a few years after Elizabeth's
death, a man like William Browne acquainted with the poems of
Occleve, who had never been favoured by the early printers, and
actually reproducing Occleve's work among his own. That there was
even some study of Old English is well known. On the whole, there,
fore, though these various efforts were not well co-ordinated, and, in
many cases, not even well directed to their immediate objects, it
would be the grossest oï errors to belittle or misprise them; and
i See also chap. xix.


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Elizabethan Criticism
it is only a pity that the taste for critical enquiry was not better
represented in the first two generations of the seventeenth-century
itself. For, in that case, Dryden, who actually availed himself of
what he could get from Jonson, would have found far more to go
upon; and, with his own openness of mind and catholicity of
appreciation, would have done even more than he did to keep his
successors in turn from falling into that pit of ignorant contempt
for older literature which engulfed too many of them. Even as it
was, the Elizabethan critics did something to give pause to the
hasty generalisation that periods of criticism and periods of creation
cannot coincide. If they did not lay much of a foundation,
Gascoigne, Sidney and Daniel, in their different ways, did some-
thing even in this way; they did a good deal towards clearing the
ground and a good deal more towards surveying it. It is unfor-
tunate, and it is a little curious, that they did not devote more
attention to prose, especially as their guides, the ancients, had left
them considerable assistance; but they were, no doubt, misled
(as, for that matter, the ancients themselves were, to a great extent)
by the exclusively rhetorical determination of ancient criticism in
this respect. For poetry, however, they did not a little ; and, after
all, there are those who say that by 'literature' most people mean
poetry.
>


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CHAPTER XV
CHRONICLERS AND ANTIQUARIES
The chroniclers and antiquaries of the Tudor period, various
as they were in style and talent, shared the same sentiment, the
same ambition. There breathed in each one of them the spirit
of nationality. They recognised that the most brilliant discovery
of a brilliant age was the discovery of their own country. With
a full voice and a fervent heart they sang the praise of England.
They celebrated with what eloquence they possessed her gracious
climate, her fruitful soil, her brave men and her beautiful women.
Both by precept and by example they did honour to their native
tongue.
'Our English tongue,' said Camden, 'is as fluent as the
Latin, as courteous as the Spanish, as Court-like as the French,
and as amorous as the Italian. ' Camden praised by precept
alone, and composed all his works, save one, in Latin. The other
chroniclers, discarding Latin and writing in their own English,
paid the language a far higher tribute—the tribute of example.
All agreed with Plutarch that “a part of the Elisian Fields is to
be found in Britain. And, as they regarded these fair fields with
enthusiasm, so they looked back with pride upon Britain's legendary
history and the exploits of her kings. Steadfast in observation,
tireless in panegyric, they thought no toil, no paean, outran the
desert of England. Topographers, such as Camden and Leland,
travelled the length and breadth of England, marking high road,
village and township, collecting antiquities, copying inscriptions
and painting with what fidelity they might the face of the country.
The ingenuity of Norden and Speed designed the maps which
have acquired with time an unexpected value and importance.
The popular historians, gentle and simple, gathered the truth and
falsehood of the past with indiscriminate hand, content if they
might restore to the world the forgotten splendour of England,
and add a new lustre to England's ancient fame.
Their good will and patriotism were limited only by their talent.


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Chroniclers and Antiquaries
Zealous in intention, they were not always equal to the task they
set themselves. The most of them had but a vague sense of history.
They were as little able to sift and weigh evidence as to discern
the true sequence and meaning of events. Few of them were even
dimly interested in the conflict of policies or in the science of
government. What they best understood were the plain facts of
battle and death, of plague, and famine, of sudden comets and
strange monsters. The most of their works are the anecdotage
of history, and not to be wholly despised on that account, since
an anecdote false in itself is often the symbol of the truth, and
since, in defiance of research, it is from the anecdotes of the
Tudor chroniclers that we derive our knowledge of English
history. For that which had been said by others they professed
an exaggerated respect. They accepted the bare word of their
predecessors with a touching credulity. In patient submission and
without criticism they followed the same authorities. There is no
chronicler that did not use such poor light as Matthew Paris and
Roger Hoveden, Geoffrey of Monmouth and Gildas, Giraldus
Cambrensis and Polydore Vergil could afford. Each one of them
borrowed his description of Agincourt from Titus Livius, and, with
a wisdom which deserves the highest applause, they all adapted to
their purpose the account of Richard III's reign attributed to Sir
Thomas More. With one or two exceptions, then, the Chronicles
are not so much separate works as variations of the same legend.
Their authors pillaged from one another with a light heart and
an unsparing hand, and, at times, did what they could to belittle
their robberies by abusing the victims.
If their sense of history was small, small also was their tact
of selection. They looked upon the world with the eye of the
modern reporter. They were hot upon the discovery of strange
'stories. ' They loved freaks of nature and were never so happy
as when a new star flashed into their ken. Their works, indeed,
hold a place midway between history and what we should now call
journalism. Stow, for instance, tells us that, in 1505, 'on S. Thomas
Day at night, afore Christmas was a bakers house in Warwike Lane
brent, with the Mistres of the House, ii women servants, and iii
others’; and he brings his Chronicle to an end, not upon the praise
of England or of queen Elizabeth but upon a monstrous birth. "The
XVII day of June last past,' he writes, in the year 1580,‘in the
parish of Blamsdon, in Yorkshire, after a great tempest of lightning
and thunder, a woman of foure score years old named Ales Perin,
was delivered of a straunge and hideous Monster, whose beade


## p. 315 (#337) ############################################

Edward Hall
315
was like unto a sallet or heade-peece. . . . Which Monster,' adds
Stow; devoutly, 'brought into the world no other news, but an
admiration of the devine works of God. ' Not even Camden,
scholar though he was, rose always superior to the prevailing
habit of gossip. 'I know not,' he writes, under the year 1572,
whether it be materiall or no, here to make mention, as all the
Historiographers of our time have done, how in the moneth of
November was seene a strange starre. ' And, presently, he inter-
rupts his account of a mission to Russia, in 1583, with this comment
upon Sir Hierome Bowes, the ambassador:
Hee was the first that brought into England, where the like was never
seene (if an Historian may with good leave make mention of so small a thing)
a beast called Maclis, which is a creature likest to an Alçe, very swift, and
without joynts.
Camden at least apologised for his amiable irrelevancy, and it is
not for modern readers to regret a practice which has preserved
for them the foolish trivial excitements of the moment. But it
is a truth not without significance that the chroniclers, who might
have kept before their eyes the example of the classics, and who
might have studied the two masters of what was then modern
history-Macchiavelli and Commines—should have preferred to
follow in the footsteps of the medieval gossips and of the ambling
Fabyan. And, as they thought no facts too light to be recorded,
so they considered no age too dark for their investigation. They
penetrated, with a simple faith, “the backward and abysm of time. '
The most of them begin their histories with Brute, who, they say,
was born 1108 B. C. , and thus prove that, for all their large interests
and their love of life, they were not without a spice of that
pedantry which delights to be thought encyclopaedic.
The chroniclers, then, share the same faults and the same
virtues. But beyond these similarities of character there is
room enough for the display of different temperaments and
personal talents. Each one will be found to possess a quality or
an interest which the others lack, and it is by their differences
rather than by their resemblances that they must be judged. The
first of them, Edward Hall, holds a place apart. Of the man
himself we know little. Of gentle parentage, he was educated
at Eton and King's College, Cambridge. He entered Gray's Inn
in due course, was appointed common serjeant of the city of
London in 1532 and was afterwards a judge in the sheriff's
court. The first edition of his Chronicle was printed by Berthelet,
in 1542, and was so effectively burnt by the orders of queen


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Chroniclers and Antiquaries
Mary that it exists only in fragments. Reprinted by Grafton, in
1548 and 1550, it won and deserved esteem and is now com-
monly regarded, for one reign at least, as an authority at first
hand. The truth is, Hall wrote as an eye-witness as well as a
chronicler, and his work is naturally divided into two parts, far
distant from one another both in style and substance. The title
of the book gives an instant clue to this natural division. The
"
Union of the two noble and illustrate famelies of Lancastre and
Yorke,' thus Hall describes it in his grandiloquent language,
beeyng long in continual discension for the croune of this noble realme, with
all the actes done in bothe the tymes of the Princes, both of the one linage, and
of the other, beginnyng at the tyme of Kyng Henry the Fowerth, the first
aucthor of this devision, and so successively proceadyng to the reigne of the
high and prudent prince, King Henry the Eight, the indubitate flower and
very heire of both the sayd linages.
So far as the death of Henry VII, Hall is a chronicler after the
fashion of Holinshed and Stow. He accepted the common autho-
rities, and translated them into his own ornate English, or em-
bellished them with new words and strange images. With the
accession of Henry VIII he began a fresh and original work.
Henceforth, he wrote only of what he saw and thought from day
to day. And, in thus writing, he revealed most clearly what manner
of man he was. His patriotism equalled his loyal worship of king
Henry VIII, the greatest monarch, in Hall's eyes, who had sat
upon the English throne. The reformation had his full sympathy,
and he looked upon the see of Rome with protestant suspicion.
When the king was proclaimed supreme head of the church,
Hall's enthusiasm was unbounded. Hereafter, he says, 'the Pope
with all his college of Cardinalles with all their Pardons and
Indulgences was utterly abolished out of this realme. God be ever-
lastyngly praysed therefore. ' And, if he was a patriotic Englishman
first, he was, in the second place, a proud and faithful Londoner.
He championed the interests of his fellow-citizens with a watchful
eloquence. When, in 1513, the fields about Islington, Hoxton
and Shoreditch were enclosed by hedges and ditches, that youth
might not shoot nor old age walk abroad for its pleasure, Hall
triumphantly records that a mob of citizens, armed with shovels
and spades, levelled the hedges and filled the ditches with so
diligent a speed that the mayor bowed in submission, and that the
hateful restraints were never afterwards set in the way of young
or old. He was, moreover, the first to raise the cry of 'London
for the Londoners. He hated the alien with a constant heart, and
a


## p. 317 (#339) ############################################

Edward Hall
317
in the many quarrels which arose between the citizens and the
French artificers, Hall was always on the side of the citizens.
And it was this feeling for London which intensified Hall's dislike of
the proud cardinal. A student rather of the world than of politics,
he could not appreciate at their proper worth the grandeur of
Wolsey's schemes. He knew only that Wolsey was extortionate,
that, whenever he was in need of money, he came to the city, and
he echoed the cry of the aldermen: 'For Goddes sake, remembre
this, that riche merchauntes in ware be bare of money. '
It has been thrown at Hall for a reproach by some of his
critics that he was too keenly interested in the pomp of the
court, in the shows and sights of the streets. One of his editors
has gone so far in misunderstanding as to expunge or curtail
many of his characteristic descriptions. This perversity seems the
stranger, because a love of display was in Hall's blood. He lived
in an age, and a city, of pageants. King and cardinal vied with
one another in splendour and ingenuity. They found a daily
excuse for some piece of well-ordered magnificence. May Day,
Christmas and Twelfth Night each had its appointed festival.
The king and his friends lived in a perpetual masquerade, and
Hall found the right words for their every extravagance. No
writer ever employed a more variously coloured vocabulary. Turn
his pages where you will, and you will find brave pictures of
banquets and disguises. And his style rises with the occasion.
The Field of the Cloth of Gold inspires his masterpiece. The
pages dedicated to this royal meeting-place are brilliant with
jewels and the precious metals. Gold and the cloth of gold,
tissue and hangings of cramosyn, sackbuts and clarions flash and
re-echo like the refrain of a ballade, and everywhere 'Bacchus
birls the wine,' which 'by the conduyctes in therth ranne, to all
people plentiously with red, white, and claret wyne, over whose
hedde was writen in letters of Romayn in gold, faicte bonne
chere quy condra. ”
I have said that Hall's Chronicle is made up of two separate
works. With a wise sense of propriety he employs two separate
styles. If this distinction be not made, it is not easy to admit
the justice of Ascham's famous criticism. Now, Ascham, in urging
the use of epitomes, illustrates his argument thus from Hall's
Chronicle :
As if a wise man would take Halles Cronicle, where moch good matter is
quite marde with Indenture Englishe, and first change strange and inkhorne
tearmes into proper, and commonlie used wordes: next, specially to wede out


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318
Chroniclers and Antiquaries
that, that is superfluous and idle, not onelie where wordes be vainlie heaped
one upon an other, but also where many sentences, of one meaning, be so
clowted up together, as though M. Hall had bene, not writing the storie of
England, but varying a sentence in Hitching schole.
The censure implied in this passage is amply justified by the first
part of Hall's Chronicle. Where he is adapting the words of
other writers, he does not check his love of 'Indenture Englishe';
he exults in 'inkhorne tearmes'; and he clowtes' up his
sentences with superfluous variations. But no sooner does he de-
scribe what he sees, no sooner do his brain and hand respond to
his eye, than he forgets the lessons of 'Hitching schole,' and
writes with a direct simplicity which in no sense deserves the
reproach of Ascham. Though it is true that the simplicity of
his time was not the simplicity of ours, Hall employs with ex-
cellent effect the words of familiar discourse, and records that of
which he was an eye witness with an intimate sincerity, which
separates him, on the one hand, from journeymen like Stow, and,
on the other, from scholars like Camden and Hayward, whose
ambition it was to give a classic shape and form to their
prose.
Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland and
Ireland are wider in scope and more ambitious in design than
the work of Hall. Though they are not more keenly critical, they
are, at least, more widely comprehensive than any of their rivals.
They begin with Noah and the Flood, and the history of the
British Isles descends well-nigh to the day of publication. And,
if Richard Stanyhurst may speak for them all, the industrious
compilers took a lofty view of their craft.
The learned,' says
Stanyhurst,
have adjudged an historie to be the marrow of reason, the cream of sapience,
the sap of wisdome, the pith of judgment, the librarie of knowledge, the kernell
of policie, the unfoldresse of treacherie, the kalendar of time, the lanterne of
truth, the life of memorie, the doctresse of behaviour, the register of antiquitie,
the trumpet of chivalrie.
If Holinshed's history were all these, it is not surprising that it
was fashioned by many hands, and in nothing did the editor prove
his wisdom more clearly than in the selection of his staff. Of
Holinshed himself little is recorded. He came of a Cheshire
family, and is said by Anthony à Wood to have been educated
at Cambridge and to have been a minister of God's word. ' All
that is certain is that he took service with Wolfe, the publisher,
to whom, says he, he was 'singularly beholden,' and under whose
auspices he planned the Chronicles which bear his name. The
6


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Raphael Holinshed
319
death of Wolfe, in 1573, was no interruption to the work, and
in 1578 appeared the first edition, dedicated, in the familiar terms
of adulation, to Sir William Cecil, baron of Burghley. Each portion
of the Chronicles is assigned to its author with peculiar care. The
Description of England is William Harrison's. It is Holinshed
himself who compiled the Historie of England from the accustomed
sources. The Description of Scotland is a 'simple translation'
made by William Harrison. His vocation, he tells us, calls him
to a far other kind of study, 'and this is the cause,' he writes,
wherefore I have chosen rather, onlie with the loss of three or foure daies to
translate Hector out of the Scotish (a toong verie like unto ours) than with
more expence of time to devise a new, or follow the Latine copie. . . . How
excellentlie if you consider the art, Boetius hath penned it, . . . the skilfull are
not ignorant, but how profitablie and compendiouslie John Bellenden Arch-
deacon of Murrey his interpretor hath turned him from the Latine into the
Scotish toong, there are verie few Englishmen that know.
From the same Hector Boece, together with Johannes Major and
Jovian Ferreri Piedmontese,' 'interlaced sometimes with other
authors,' Holinshed digested his Historie of Scotland. The De-
scription of Ireland was the work of Richard Stanyhurst and
Edmund Campion, his ‘first friend and inward companion,' and
Richard Hooker provided the translation of Giraldus Cambrensis,
which served Ireland for a chronicle.
The work, done by many hands, preserves a uniformity of
character. Holinshed, it is true, made the apology which his
age seems to have demanded. "The histories,' he says, 'I have
gathered according to my skill . . . having had more regard to
the manner than the apt penning. Again, declaring that his
speech is plain, he disclaimed any rhetorical show of elegance.
Thus the Elizabethans deceived themselves. Plainness was the
one virtue beyond their reach. They delighted in fine phrases
and far-sought images. Even while they proclaimed their devotion
to truth unadorned, they were curious in the selection of 'deck-
ing words,' and Holinshed and his colleagues wrote with the
colour and dignity which were then within the reach of all. The
history which was of his own compiling is of a better scholarship
than we expect of the time. He cites his authorities at first hand,
though he still accepts them without question ; he avoids the
trivialities which tempt too many of the chroniclers; and he con-
cludes the reign of each king with a deftly drawn character. The
popularity which the work achieved is not surprising. The simple
citizen found in its pages the panegyric of England which was
grateful to his patriotism. The poet sought therein, and sought
not in vain, a present inspiration. Master Holinshed,' said
6


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Chroniclers and Antiquaries
Spenser, ‘hath much furthered and advantaged me. ' Shakespeare
borrowed from his pages the substance of his historical plays,
and, paying him the same compliment which he paid to North,
did not disdain to turn his rugged prose into matchless verse-
a compliment which, of itself, is sufficient for immortality.
As Hall's Chronicle is memorable chiefly for the vivid sketch
it affords of life as it was lived in the reign of Henry VIII, so
it is Harrison's Description of England which gives a separate
distinction to the history of Raphael Holinshed. No work of
the time contains so vivid and picturesque a sketch. In his
first book, Harrison makes the customary concession to the en-
cyclopaedic habit of the Elizabethans. He begins with a description
of the whole earth, accepts with a simple credulity the familiar
legends and wonders gravely whether the land was ever inhabited
by giants. But no sooner does he leave the province of fairy-
stories for the province of fact, than he displays a knowledge as
wide as his interest is deep. His is a very vigilant treatise. His
theme is whatever was done or thought in the England of his day.
Nothing comes amiss to him. He is as learned in the history of
the church as in the speech and rascality of the Egyptian rogues,
his account of whom closely follows Harman's Caveat or Waren-
ing for Commen Corsetors. He is eloquent concerning either
university, as in duty bound, since he belonged to both. For
fine and excellent workmanship he praises “the moold of the
king's chapell in Cambridge,' next to which in beauty he sets the
divinity school at Oxford. For the rest, he finds perfect equality
between them; they are the body of one well ordered common-
wealth, divided only by distance; in brief 'they are both so deere
unto me,' says he, 'as that I can not readilie tell unto whether of
them I owe the most good will. ' Thereafter, he discusses the food
and diet of the English, approving'our tables plentifully garnished,
and deploring the cooks of the nobility, who are ‘for the most
part musicall headed Frenchmen and strangers. Our apparel
and attire suggest to him a chapter of fine invective. He is the
resolute enemy of foreign fashions. He cannot bear the fantastical
folly of our nation more easily than Shakespeare. He is at pains
to prove that nothing is more constant in England than incon-
stancy of attire. "Such is our mutabilitie,' he writes
that today there is none to the Spanish guise, to morrow the French toies
are most fine and delectable, ere long no such apparell as that which is after
the High Almaine fashion, by and by the Turkish maner is generallie best
liked of, otherwise the Morisco gounes and the Barbarian sleeves make such a
comelie vesture that except it were a dog in a doublet, you shall not see anie
so disguised, as are my countrie men of England.
6


## p. 321 (#343) ############################################

Harrison's Description of England 321
In the same spirit he describes the building and furniture of
Englishmen, their cities and towns, their fairs and markets, their
gardens and orchards, their woods and marishes, their dogs,
especially the mastiff or banddog, stubbourne, ougly, eagre,
burthenous of body (and therefore but of little swiftnesse),
terrible and feareful to behold, and more fearse and fell than
any Archadien curre. ' And to all things animate and inanimate
he brings the criticism of an active and humorous mind, which
not even patriotism can warp to a false judgment.
And, in describing England, he has half knowingly described
himself. It is our own fault if this amiable, shrewd and scholarly
parson be not our familiar friend. Born in London, in 1534, he
was educated at Westminster school and (as has been said) took
* his degrees at both universities. Henceforth, he lived the tranquil
life of a country clergyman, endowed with forty pounds a year,
which, computatis computandis, he thought no great thing. He
was household chaplain to Sir William Brooke and rector of
Radwinter in Essex, and, wherever he sojourned, he pursued most
zealously the calling of scholar and antiquary. He devised the
chronology which served as a guide to Holinshed. He collected
coins, he examined monuments; in brief, he neglected nothing which
could throw a light upon the history of his country. While his
wife and her maids brewed his beer with such skill and economy
'that for my twentie shillings I have ten score gallons of beere
or more,' he boasted of his garden, whose whole area was little
above 300 foot of ground, and which yet contained three hundred
simples, 'no one of them being common or usuallie to be had. '
An untravelled man, he wrote often of what he knew only by
hearsay. 'Untill nowe of late,' he confesses to Sir W. Brooke,
except it were from the parish where I dwell, unto your Honour in Kent; or
out of London where I was borne, unto Oxford and Cambridge where I have
bene brought up, I never travelled 40 miles foorthright and at one journey in
all my life.
And not only was he something of a recluse, but he wrote his
Description when his books and he'were parted by fourtie miles
in sunder. ' Nevertheless, he managed to consult the best authori-
ties. He was one of the unnumbered scholars who owed a debt to
Leland's famous notes. Stow and Camden were of his friends, and,
doubtless, lent him their aid, and he acknowledges a debt to
'letters and pamphlets, from sundrie places and shires of England. '
Yet, if we leave his first book out of our count, he was far less
beholden than the most of his contemporaries. He had the skill
21
a
E. L. III.
Cl. XV.


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322
Chroniclers and Antiquaries
6
of making the facts of others his own. And as the substance, so
the style, of the book belongs to him. Though he proffers the
same apology as Holinshed, he proffers it with far less excuse.
He protests that he never made any choice of words, 'thinking it
sufficient truelie and plainlie to set foorth such things as I minded
to treat of, rather than with vaine affectation of eloquence to paint
out a rotten sepulchre. ' And then straightway he belies himself
by describing his book as 'this foule frizeled Treatise of mine,'
which single phrase is enough to prove his keen interest, and
lively habit, in the use of words.
In love of country he yielded to no man of his age. Herein,
also, he was a true Elizabethan. The situation of the island, its
soil, its husbandry (“my time fellows can reape at this present
great commoditie in a little roome'), the profusion of its hops,
which industrie God continue,' the stature of its men, the comeli-
ness of its women--all these he celebrates in his dithyrambic
prose. He is one of the first to exalt the English navy. Certes,'
says he, 'there is no prince in Europe that hath a more beautifull
and gallant sort of ships than the queenes majestie of England
at this present. ' And, like many other patriots, he fears the en-
croachment of softer manners and of growing luxury.