the exaltation of virtue, but bearing about it all the signs of a decadent method. King Hart is, perhaps, a better poem; its theme is the courtship of Heart, i.e. human nature, by Dame Pleasaunce, his temporary defeat and his repentance. The work which keeps the name of Gawain Douglas fresh is his translation of Virgil's Eneid, which was completed in 1513. He not only translated the whole of the twelve books, but a thirteenth additional one, and to each book he wrote a prologue in addition. The work was clearly the outcome of a true admiration and respect for Virgil, and this is of itself a virtue in Douglas. It is not, of course, satisfying to the requirements of a modern scholar, nor is the verse distinguished by any noteworthy qualities of finish or grace. The medium is indeed a rude one, and achieves its best results in the prologues, especially in descriptions of the wilder aspects of nature inspired by Scottish scenery. But the work is humanistic in spirit, without having been prompted by the coming spirit of the Renaissance. It foreshadows, however faintly, the enthusiasm for learning and literature that was imminent; and for this it must be held in honourable memory. THE BALLADS In this section may be included the ballad literature of Scotland and England— a literature which is found in all districts of our island, but of which the greatest examples seem to be confined to the borderland of the two kingdoms. Of no branch of literary art is the peculiar quality more easily recognized, and in none are the sources and ancestry more obscure. Four main theories have been promulgated. There is, first, the "communal" school, who maintain that the ballad was born at some primeval date out of tribal song and dance, as free from specific human parentage as Melchizedek. The second school, which may be called the "popular,” do not deny an original unknown author, but maintain that the ballads deal chiefly with legends common to all early peoples, and were not the product of a literary class, but were elaborated and transmitted by ordinary folk. The third school definitely attributes the authorship to a minstrel class, but minstrels living before the days of the chivalric romance, folk-singers who flourished in times antecedent to recorded history. The fourth school holds that the ballads in their existing form belong to a comparatively late age, and were the work of popular minstrels, who were the successors of the old skalds and gleemen, and worked on a literary tradition which represented the breakdown of the elder tradition of the romance or fabliau, when they were not composing lays like the chansons de geste, called forth by a contemporary event. On a survey of the surviving ballads and such historic facts as are known about them, it would appear that the view of the fourth school is the most reasonable. Art-and the ballads are often great art-does not come into being from popular excitement, but from the inspiration of a particular gifted individual: it cannot be syndicated and socialized. The doctrine of the extreme antiquity of the original minstrel seems to be contradicted by the facts before us. Besides the bards maintained by the feudal lords, there was also a tradition of a rude popular minstrelsy, which contained elements reaching back to beliefs far older than Christianity. As the romantic tradition of the fabliaux died away, its remnants took popular shape in country tales, and out of this material the ballads were made by men whose identity has not been preserved. The probability is that most of the ballads were fashioned in the 16th century by minstrels who summed up a long ancestry of popular poetry, as in Burns culminated a long tradition of Scottish vernacular song. Ballad literature falls roughly into three classes. There is the historical ballad, such as Otterburn, The Bonny Earl o' Moray, The Outlaw Murray, and the Robin Hood cycle. There is the romantic ballad, such as the Douglas Tragedy and The Gay Goss Hawk; and there is the ballad of the half-world, of faëry and the things seen between light and darkness, such as Tamlane, The Wife of Usher's Well, and the Lyke-wake Dirge. English and Scottish ballad literature has been collected in almost all its variants by the late Professor F. J. Child of Harvard, in five volumes -The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Boston, 1882-98). (See also p. 640.) SUPPLEMENTARY READING LIST Texts.-JAMES I.: The Kingis Quair, ed. W. W. Skeat (Scottish Text Society, 1884).-DUNBAR, W.: Poems, ed. H. B. Baildon (Cambridge University Press, 1907).-BARBOUR, J.: The Bruce, ed. W. M. Mackenzie (Black, 1909).-HENRYSON, ROBERT: Poems, ed. by G. Gregory Smith (3 vols., 1906-14).— DOUGLAS, GAVIN: Poetical Works, ed. J. Small (Edinburgh, 4 vols., 1874). Studies. HENDERSON, F. T.: Scottish Vernacular Literature (1898).-MILLAR, J. H.: A Literary History of Scotland (Unwin, 1903).-SMITH, G. GREGORY: The Transition Period (Blackwood, 1900). CHAPTER 6. PROSE-WRITERS Fifteenth-century Prose-Mandeville, Pecock, Fortescue, Paston Letters- One of the events that help to define the boundaries between medieval and modern times is the invention of printing. Its effect on literary production was immense. When readers were more easily supplied with books, writers were no longer obliged to conform to the fettering requirements of the professional reciter. Though ballads and popular stories continued to be produced for illiterate audiences, these have tended ever since to form an inferior class, only in the case of a writer of genius like Defoe or Bunyan having affinities with literature. The higher classes of literary work were deeply affected by the circumstance that they were to be read at leisure by educated people. One result was that more books were written in prose. Most prose works hitherto written in England were either in Latin or in French, or else merely translations. Most Anglo-Saxon prose had consisted of homilies or works intended for popular instruction. But in the 15th century the spread of education is evidenced by the existence of a mass of clear and racy prose such as the Paston Letters, and the printing press encouraged writers to publish miscellaneous books in this medium. PROSE BEFORE CAXTON "Sir John Mandeville."-Jean d'Outremeuse, a writer living at Liége, states in his Myreur des Histors that he received the story known to us as The Travels of Sir John Mandeville" in 1472 from the lips of a dying man, Jean à la Barbe, who alleged that his real name was Sir John Mandeville. Whether Jean à la Barbe was an invention of Jean d'Outremeuse or the inventor of the travels, it is certain that the book is a most amusing perversion of all that was known, believed, or fancied at that time about the Eastern world, the pretended object being to furnish pilgrims with a guide to Jerusalem. It was translated into most European languages, and there were three English versions, two of which are remarkable for their racy and spirited style, and are usually drawn upon for modern editions. The princess transformed into a serpent appears thus: And some men say that in the isle of Lango is yet the daughter of Ypocras, in form and like. ness of a great dragon, that is a 100 fathom of length, as men say, for I have not seen her. And they of the Isles call her lady of the land. And she lieth in an old castle, in a cave, and sheweth twice or thrice in the year, and she doth no harm to no man, but if men do her harm. And she was thus changed and transformed from a fair damosel into likeness of a dragon by a goddess that was clept Diana. And men say that she shall so endure in that form of a dragon unto the time that a knight come that is so hardy that dare come to her and kiss her on the mouth. Learned Writers.-Theologians, philosophers, and lawyers preferred Latin to English still; yet they sometimes wrote pamphlets or even more extended works in English. (1) REGINALD PECOCK (c. 1395-1460), Bishop of St. Asaph and afterwards of Chichester, was an active opponent of the Lollards, and wrote his famous Repressor of Overmuch Weeting (Blaming) of the Clergy (1455) as a systematic defence of the Church and hierarchy against Wyclifite criticisms. Unfortunately, his bold reasoning and intellectual superiority excited the hostility of the clergy whom he was essaying to defend, and he was condemned to recantation. His style is admirable for its clearness and vigour. (2) SIR JOHN FORTESCUE, lord chief justice under Henry VI., besides many Latin works, wrote Monarchia, or The Difference between an Absolute and a Limited Monarchy, in English (c. 1471). Fortescue also wrote a dialogue retracting his defence of the Lancastrian house, when the Yorkists William Caxton. came in, and a reflective dialogue between Understanding and Faith. (3) JOHN DE TREVISA (c. 1322-1402), a Cornishman by birth, was at Exeter College, Oxford (1362-5), and fellow of Queen's (1369), and from 1362 he held the vicarage of Berkeley, where he is buried. His translation of the Benedictine Ranulf Higden's (c. 1299-1363) historical and general compendium, the Polychronicon (c. 1364), was the first historical work in English prose since the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and was immensely popular. It was finished in 1387, printed in 1482 by Caxton, and long remained a standard book. The Paston Letters. - From the point of view of the literary and social history of the people, the Paston Letters are more important than a good many works of professed literature. They consist of a number of letters, accounts, and other family documents giving a detailed picture of a Norfolk family of gentlefolk through three generations. The main plot is the story of how the family clung to the Fastolf estates in spite of legal and illegal attempts to dispossess them. Apart from these dramatic events, the letters are an intimate portrayal of manners, and also of character, and give us vividly the daily life, the business concerns, the domestic routine, the daily relations with outsiders of every description, and, not least, the recreations of such a family. The general style is surprisingly straightforward and vivid. Thus a servant writes to a lord: And gyf hyt plees your Hygnes, as towchyng the soden aventuer that fell latly at Coventre, plees hyt your Lordshyp to her that, on Corpus Christi Even last passed, be twene viij and ix of the clok at afternon, Syr Umfrey Stafford had browth my mayster Syr James of Urmond toward hys yn from my Lady of Shrewsbery, and reterned from hym toward hys yn, he met with Syr Robert Harcourt comyng from hys moder towards hys yn, and passed Syr Umfrey, and Richard, hys son, came somewhat be hynd, and when they met to gyder they fell in handes togyder, and Syr Robert sinot hym a grette stroke on the hed with hys sord, and Richard with hys dagger hastely went toward hym. And as he stombled, on of Harcourts men smot hym in the bak with a knyfe; men wotte not ho hyt was reddely. Hys fader hard noys, and rode toward hem, and hys men ronne befor hym thyder ward; and in the goynge downe of hys hors, on, he wotte not ho, be hynd hym smot hym on the hede with a nege tole, men know not with us with what wepone, that he fell downe; and hys son fell downe be fore hym as good as dede. And all thys was don, as men sey, in a Pater Noster wyle. Malory's "Morte Darthur."-Malory's style is of a far superior order. He had a subject worthy of the highest literary art, and he had the genius, and in the poems and the prose romances from which he paraphrased he had not inadequate models, to fashion a kind of prose exquisitely adapted to his theme. The simplicity of his style is deliberately cultivated. He chose consciously the concrete, sensuous words that were the natural language of the poets from whom much of his material was immediately drawn; and he preferred racy, vernacular idioms and the expressive cadences of the spoken language to the involved phraseology of the learned style. Malory's is a poetical vocabulary though he wrote in prose. His style was highly flexible, fitted alike for plain narrative and for lofty imaginative passages. The impressive chapter telling of Lancelot's despairing attempt to see the mysteries of the Grail owes much to its original, one of the noblest pas sages in the French prose romances. When they come near the hallowed spot, Galahad takes leave of his father. Han I remembre that euerp man is boundn By the comandiment a councepit of the wyse man to eschewe skouthe andy ydlenia Why. che is moder and, nourysshar of vyces ande ought to put my self onto tertious ocupacion andy Be, pee/Than I hauenge no grete charge of ocupacion and rede therm many strange and meruapalous hifto, folowynge the faydy counceyll / toke a frenche looke 1pcs Whxx in J Hid, gixte pleaser and Delyte / aß Weff for the nouelte of the fame as for the fapt langage of fn. whyche wasm profe so well and comm diously fette andy warton, whiche me thought I vnter food the sentence and substance of cuerp mater/ Ande for fo moche as thie woke was newe andy late maadi and draweŋ ni to freushe / and neuer hady seen hit in oute gh tonge: I thought in my self hit shold be a good pnce to translate het mn to our english to thende that hyt might be handy as well in the ropame of Eng Cona mother lands/ and also for to passe ther wopth fap worke. And forthwith to ke penne and puke andr the tyme, and thus concludedy in my self to Begynne this Began boldly to renne forth as blyne bayardy in the prefente werke whyche in named the recupell of the troian hiftorico And afterwarde whan I rein embry dy my felf of my spinplenes and unperfightnes that I hady mBothy langagea that is to wete in frenshea in engl/h form france was I neuer / and was bin & lerned, myn gents in the weelde where I woubte not ie spor Londhaus contynued by the space of. rrr. pere for the ken as brod and rude englissh as 18 mony place of eng noft partem the contres of Brabandy. flandre holandy A page from Caxton's First Book printed in Bruges, Thenne he wente to his fader and kyst hym swetely and sayd / Fair swete fader I wote not whan I shal see you more tyl I see the body of Ihesu Cryst / I praye you sayd Launcelot praye ye to the hyghe fader that he hold me in his seruyse and soo he took his hors/ and ther they herd a voyce that sayd thynke for to doo wel / for the one shal neuer see the other before the dredeful day of dome / Now sone Galahad said Launcelot syn we shal departe and neuer see other / I pray to the hygh fader to conserue me and yow bothe/Sire said Galahad noo prayer auaylleth |