A later maker, of very fine taste, perceiving the merits. and defects of this version, removed the vulgar details, supplied the poetical opening as it stands in Scott's version, added the effective touch of the "rich wedding," which the Queen gives as the reason for the journey to Edinburgh, and judiciously closed the poem, in the same way as the original inventor, with the beautifully melodious stanza about the Queen's Maries.1 Like his predecessor, however, he spoke of Mary Queen of Scots in a very unhistorical manner :-- And down then cam the auld queen, Goud tassels tied her hair. Scott's poet saw that this was wrong, and changed "auld" into "gude queen"; but in other respects altered the second maker's version much for the worse. He had, indeed, sufficient taste to preserve the amended opening, but he seems to have been loth to part with the details of "the kitchen" and "the ha'," which he reintroduces at a later stage. Nor was he well inspired when he changed the position of the stanza on the Queen's Maries, leaving the poem with a flat and prosaic ending. The curious history of this ballad has a practical significance for the critic, in view of the great influence which, since the publication of the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, the ballad form has exercised on the course of our poetry. Appearing at a time when there was an incipient revolt in the world of taste against the trammels of classical rule, and an uprising of the democratic spirit against government by aristocracy, Percy's book was seized as a weapon by the leaders of the new movement. They argued from its contents that the ballad was the heroic product of popular genius; and they contrasted the supposed "natural" style of the ballad with the "poetical diction," in vogue with the verse-writers of the day, against which they directed their main attack. The history of ballad poetry, however, does not justify their reasoning. All the evidence cited in this chapter shows that, so far 1 English and Scottish Popular Ballads, p. 390, Version G. from the ballad being a spontaneous product of popular imagination, it was a type of poem adapted, by the professors of the declining art of minstrelsy, from the romances once in favour with the educated classes. Everything in the ballad-matter, form, composition—is the work of the minstrel; all that the people do is to remember and repeat what the minstrel has put together; and, in order to assist the memory, the minstrel continues to use from age to age stereotyped moulds of diction, no less artificial than the stilted phraseology of literary poetry criticised by Wordsworth. Mary Hamilton furnishes an apt illustration of this remark. The story does not take its rise out of Scottish history: the ballad-maker chooses a striking incident from foreign parts, and gives it a national colour to suit the taste of his audience. The language of the ballad in no way reflects "the language of the peasantry," but follows the venerable precedents handed down by generations of minstrels. Mary Hamilton laughs "loud laughters three," and "the tear blinds her ee," because the same kind of emotion had been previously exhibited by Sir Patrick Spens; the accent is thrown upon the last syllable in a word like "bodye," because one age of poets after another had found this obsolete pronunciation useful for rhyming purposes; when the Queen bids Mary rise, she does not say, as Wordsworth would have required, "for I am going to Edinburgh to see a rich wédding,” but For I am going to Edinburgh town A rich wedding for to see. By artifices of this kind a ballad-maker, putting his materials into shape at least as late as 1719, is easily able to persuade a critic, so familiar with the style of minstrelsy as Scott, that, in Mary Hamilton, oral tradition has preserved through many generations the memory of a real incident in the court of Mary Queen of Scots. CHAPTER XII A RETROSPECT THE reader was warned that, in the early stages of this history, he must not look for the interest arising out of biographical or artistic detail. We have to regard the art of English poetry as a reflection of the imaginative life of the English people; and it would be as unreasonable to expect a clearly defined conscience, or finished eloquence, in a young nation, as in a young child. What is of interest in our early poetry is the growth of embryonic life; the fusion of the opposite characters of antagonistic races, the gradual formation of moulds of thought, the secret transmutations of language and rhythm. The course of the narrative has hitherto been confined to the development of metrical composition during the Middle Ages, when the poets are seen for the most part to be creating new forms of art out of the swathing bands and envelopes of thought with which they are surrounded. Except in the work of Chaucer, no commanding personality of character has yet made its appearance, but now that we are entering on the period of the Renaissance and the Reformation, we shall soon see that Englishmen have, through the labours of their predecessors, acquired the power of giving harmonious expression to their individual ideas and sentiments. It will be well, therefore, before approaching the works of Surrey and Wyatt, to survey the extent of the ground described in this volume as having been conquered for the rising art of English poetry. In order to trace the connection of thought between the period known as the Renaissance and the period known as the Middle Ages, it was necessary to show how the intellectual system of the Middle Ages grew out of the Roman Empire. Hence, at the outset of this history, we occupied ourselves with a brief preliminary survey of the state of European society, on the eve of the irruption of the barbarians. Looking back to those times, a multitude of cities is seen in the south and west of Europe, in Asia Minor, and along the shores of the Mediterranean, preserving, under the guardianship of the Roman Empire, all the treasures bequeathed to them by ancient art and philosophy, but, politically and intellectually, vegetating in the last stages of decay. One great organisation alone, the Christian Church, remains conspicuously alive in the midst of the universal torpor, and absorbs into its system the various vital forces, which once animated the framework of Hellenic culture. Then the dykes of civilisation give way, and the face of civilised Europe is covered with wave after wave of those whom the "populous North" poured from Her frozen loins, to cross Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous sons All traces of the ancient civilisation seem to be submerged beneath the ever- flowing tide of barbaric immigration. Nevertheless the continuity of intellectual life is all the time secretly maintained by the educational system of the Catholic Church; and on the Continent old ideas and traditions pass into the life of Europe in a new form by the transmutation of the tongues of the barbarous conquerors into the Romance languages. The fresh and vigorous imagination of the Teutonic tribesman is refined by the intellectual training of the Church; and his minstrels, introduced to rich sources of knowledge, learn how to convert poetry from an oral into a literary art. Posted on the western flank of Europe, and preserved by their insular position from the succession of tempests, which, with each new tide of conquest, make fresh ravages in what remains of civil society on the Continent, the various Teutonic tribes, after their settlement in Britain, fuse themselves, by means of common laws, customs, and language, into a single nation, But they lose vitality by isolation; and, in the eleventh century, the Anglo-Saxons, lacking initiative energy, need the shock of the Norman Conquest to bring them into sympathy with the main current of European life. The fusion of French thoughts, words, and metres in the body of the slowly changing "Englisc" prepares the way for those forms of metrical harmony, in which Chaucer expresses the ideas of the English nation, as it emerges from its mediæval chrysalis into a consciousness of its own existence. The various classes of English poetry-epical, allegorical, dramatic-reviewed in this volume, are to be regarded as the moulds which poetical invention constructed for itself out of its intellectual surroundings. In each class we see the same principle at work, namely, a movement away from the original didactic purpose of poetry, either towards the direct imitation of nature, or towards the mere technical development of art. Thus the moral character of the tale, as illustrated in the fables of Bidpai, changes gradually into the epical representation of human action and passion. The elaborate "moralisation," with which the ecclesiastical story-teller of the Gesta Romanorum sanctifies profane fables, is dropped in the Canterbury Tales; the "occasion," which provides the framework for the collection of written stories, is sought by Boccaccio and Chaucer in the incidents of actual life. A somewhat similar movement discovers itself in the history of allegorical poetry. Allegory is at first employed as an aid to spiritual thought, as in the myths of Plato or in the parables of the Bible. Afterwards it becomes the recognised philosophical method of interpretation, and, being applied to the text of Scripture, is universally adopted as a necessary part of Christian instruction. An atmosphere of scholasticism is thus created, which in course of time generates a new kind of poetry. The habit of abstract thinking multiplies the personification of abstract qualities; these are then engaged in an imaginary action as in the Psychomachia of Prudentius, or in Martianus |