I. The 1. Characteristics of the earliest Poetry.

Beginnings.

BY the time the English settlements in Britain had assumed permanent form, little seems to have been left from the prior Roman occupation to influence the language and literature of the invaders. Their thought and speech, no less than their manners and customs, were of direct Teutonic origin, though these were afterwards, in some slight degree, modified by Celtic ideas, derived from the receding tribes, and, later, and in a greater measure, by the Christian and Latin elements that resulted from the mission of St. Augustine. Danish inroads and Norman-French invasions added fresh qualities to the national character and to its modes of expression; but, in the main, English literature, as we know it, arose from the spirit inherent in the viking makers of England before they finally settled in this island. Of the origins of Old English poetry we know nothing; what remains to us is chiefly the reflection of earlier days. The fragments that we possess are not those of a literature in the making, but of a school which had passed through its age of transition from ruder elements. The days of apprenticeship were over; the Englishman of the days of Beowulf and Widsith, The Ruin andThe Seafarer, knew what he wished to say, and said it, without exhibiting any apparent trace of groping after things dimly seen or apprehended. And from those days to our own, in spite of periods of decadence, of apparent death, of great superficial change, the chief constituents of English literaturea reflective spirit, attachment to nature, a certain carelessness of art, love of home and country and an ever present consciousness that there are things worse than deaththese have, in the main, continued unaltered. Death is better, says Wiglaf, in Beowulf, for every knight than ignominious life, and, though Claudio feels death to be a fearful thing, the sentiment is only uttered to enable Shakespeare to respond through the lips of Isabella, And shamed life a hateful. It is, for instance, significant of much in the later history of the English people and of their literature, that the earliest poems in Old English have to do with journeyings in a distant land and with the life of the sea. Our forefathers had inhabited maritime regions before they came to this island; the terror and the majesty and the loneliness of the sea had already cast their natural spells on far-travelled seafarers when English literature, as we know it, opens. The passionate joy of the struggle between man and the forces of nature, between seamen and the storms of the sea, finds its expression in the relation of the struggle between Beowulf and the sea monster Grendel, and of the deeds of Beowulf and his hard-fighting comrades. Though die Nordsee ist eine Mordsee, love of the sea and of seathings and a sense of the power of the sea are evident in every page of Beowulf. The note is struck in the very opening of the poem, wherein the passing of the Danish king Scyld Scefing, in a golden-bannered ship, is told in lines that recall those in which a later poet related the passing of an English king, whose barge was seen to pass on and on, and go From less to less and vanish into light. The life of those whose task it was to wander along the ocean-paths across the icecold northern sea, where feet were fettered by the frost, is described in The Seafarer as a northern fisher of to-day might describe it, could he unlock the word-hoard; English and northern also is the spirit of the lines in the same poem wherein is described the spell cast by the sea on its lovers: For the harp he has no heart, nor for having of the rings,

Nor in woman is his weal; in the world hes no delight, Nor in anything whatever save the tossing oer the waves! O for ever he has longing who is urged towards the sea. 1 These wanderers are of the same blood as the sea kings and pirates of the old sagas, and their love of nature is love of her wilder and more melancholy aspects. The rough woodland and the stormy sky, the scream of the gannet and the moan of the sea -mew find their mirror and echo in Old English literature long before the more placid aspects of nature are noted, for it is not to be forgotten that, as Jusserand says, the sea of our forefathers was not a Mediterranean lake. 2 The more placid aspects have their turn later, when the conquerors of the shore had penetrated inland and taken to more pastoral habits; when, also, the leaven of Christianity had worked. II. Early National Poetry. 1. Early National Poems the work of Minstrels.

THE poetry of the Old English period is generally grouped in two main divisions, national 1 and Christian. To the former are assigned those poems of which the subjects are drawn from English, or rather Teutonic, tradition and history or from the customs and conditions of English life; to the latter those which deal with Biblical matter, ecclesiastical traditions and religious subjects of definitely Christian origin. The line of demarcation is not, of course, absolutely fixed. Most of the national poems in their present form contain Christian elements, while English influence often makes itself felt in the presentation of Biblical or ecclesiastical subjects. But, on the whole, the division is a satisfactory one, in spite of the fact that there are a certain number of poems as to the classification of which some doubt may be entertained. We are concerned here only with the earlier national poems. With one or two possible 2 exceptions they are anonymous, and we have no means of assigning to them with certainty even an approximate date. There can be little doubt, however, that they all belong to times anterior to the unification of England under King Alfred (A.D. 886). The later national poetry does not begin until the reign of Aethelstan. With regard to the general characteristics of these poems one or two preliminary remarks 3 will not be out of place. First, there is some reason for believing that, for the most part, they are the work of minstrels rather than of literary men. In two cases, Widsith and Deor, we have definite statements to this effect, and from Bedes account of Caedmon we may probably infer that the early Christian poems had a similar origin. Indeed, it is by no means clear that any of the poems were written down very early. Scarcely any of the MSS. date from before the tenth century and, though they are doubtless copies, they do not betray traces of very archaic orthography. Again, it is probable that the authors were as a rule attached to the courts of kings or, at all events, to the retinues of persons in high position. For this statement also we have no positive evidence except in the cases of Widsith and Deor; but it is favoured by the tone of the poems. Some knowledge of music and recitation seems, indeed, to have prevailed among all classes. Just as in Beowulf not only Hrothgars bard but even the king himself is said to have taken part among others in the recitation of stories of old time, so Bede, in the passage mentioned above, relates how the harp was passed around at a gathering of villagers, each one of whom was expected to produce a song. But the poems which survived, especially epic poems, are likely to have been the work of professional minstrels, and such persons would naturally be attracted to courts by the richer rewardsboth in

gold and landwhich they received for their services. It is not only in Old English poems that professional minstrels are mentioned. From Cassiodorus (Variarum, II, 40 f.) we learn that Clovis begged Theodric, king of the Ostrogoths, to send him a skilled harpist. Again, Priscus, in the account of his visit to Attila, 1 describes how, at the evening feast, two men, whom probably we may regard as professional minstrels, came forward and sang of the kings victories and martial deeds. Some of the warriors, he says, had their fighting spirit roused by the melody, while others, advanced in age, burst into tears, lamenting the loss of their strengtha passage which bears rather a striking resemblance to Beowulfs account of the feast in Hrothgars hall. It is customary to classify the early national poems in two groups, epic and elegiac. The former, if we may judge from Beowulf, ran to very considerable length, while all the extant specimens of the latter are quite short. There are, however, one or two poems which can hardly be brought under either of these heads, and it is probably due to accident that most of the shorter poems which have come down to us are of an elegiac character. 2. Teutonic Epic Poetry.

The history of our national epic poetry is rendered obscure by the fact that there is little 5 elsewhere with which it may be compared. We need not doubt that it is descended ultimately from the songs in which the ancients were wont to celebrate deeds of famous men, such as Arminius 2 ; but, regarding the form of these songs, we are unfortunately without information. The early national epic poetry of Germany is represented only by a fragment of 67 lines, while the national poetry of the north, rich as it is, contains nothing which can properly be called epic. It cannot, therefore, be determined with certainty, whether the epos was known to the English before the invasion or whether it arose in this country, or, again, whether it was introduced from abroad in later times. Yet the fact is worth nothing that all the poems of which we have any remains deal with stories relating to continental or Scandinavian lands. Indeed, in the whole of our early national poetry, there is no reference to persons who are known to have lived in Britain. Kgel put forward the view that epic poetry originated among the Goths, and that its appearance in the northwest of Europe is to be traced to the harpist who was sent to Clovis by Theodric, king of the Ostrogoths. Yet the traditions preserved in our poems speak of professional minstrels before the time of Clovis. The explanation of the incident referred to may be merely that minstrelsy had attained greater perfection among the Goths than elsewhere. Unfortunately Gothic poetry has wholly perished. Although definite evidence is wanting, it is commonly held that the old Teutonic poetry was entirely strophic. Such is the case with all the extant Old Norse poems, and there is no reason for thinking that any other form of poetry was known in the north. Moreover, in two of the earliest Old English poems, Widsith and Deor, the strophes may be restored practically without alteration of the text. An attempt has even been made to reconstruct Beowulf in strophic form; but this can only be carried out by dealing with the text in a somewhat arbitrary manner. InBeowulf, as indeed in most Old English poems, new sentences and even new subjects begin very frequently in the middle of the verse. The effect of this is, of course, to produce a continuous metrical narrative, which is essentially foreign to the strophic type of poetry. Further, it is not to be overlooked that all the strophic poems which we possess are quite short. Even Atlaml, the longest narrative poem in the Edda, scarcely reaches one eighth of the length of Beowulf.According to another theory epics were derived from strophic lays, though never actually composed in strophic form themselves. This theory is, of course, by no means open to such serious

objections. It may be noted that, in some of the earliest Old Norse poems, e.g. Helgakvi[char]a Hundingsbana II. and Helgakvi[char]a Hi[char]ssonar the strophes contain only speeches, while the connecting narrative is given quite briefly, in prose. Such pieces might very well serve as the bases of epic poems. The greater length of the latter may, then, be accounted for by the substitution of detailed descriptions for the short prose passages, by the introduction of episodes drawn from other sources and perhaps also by the combination of two or more lays in one poem. In any such process, however, the original materials must have been largely transformed. 3. Beowulf: Scandinavian Traditions; Personality of the Hero; Origin and Antiquity of the Poem; the Religious Element.

By far the most important product of the national epos is Beowulf, a poem of 3183 lines, 7 which has been preserved practically complete in a MS. of the tenth century, now in the British Museum. It will be convenient at the outset to give a brief summary of its contents. The poem opens with a short account of the victorious Danish king Scyld Scefing, whose 8 obsequies are described in some detail. His body was carried on board a ship, piled up with arms and treasures. The ship passed out to sea, and none knew what became of it (11. I52). The reigns of Scylds son and grandson, Beowulf and Healfdene, are quickly passed over, and we are next brought to Hrothgar, the son of Healfdene. He builds a splendid hall, called Heorot, in which to entertain his numerous retinue (11. 53100). His happiness is, however, destroyed by Grendel, a monster sprung from Cain, who attacks the hall by night and devours as many as thirty knights at a time. No one can withstand him, and, in spite of sacrificial offerings, the hall has to remain empty (11. 101193). When Grendels ravages have lasted twelve years, Beowulf, a nephew of Hygelac, king of the Geatas, and a man of enormous strength, determines to go to Hrothgars assistance. He embarks with fourteen companions and, on reaching the Danish coast, is directed by the watchman to Hrothgars abode (11. 194319). The king, on being informed of his arrival, relates how he had known and befriended Ecgtheow, Beowulfs father. Beowulf states the object of his coming, and the visitors are invited to feast (11. 320497). During the banquet Beowulf is taunted by Hunferth (Unferth), the kings orator, with having failed in a swimming contest against a certain Breca. He replies, giving a different version of the story, according to which he was successful (11. 498606). Then the queen (Wealhtheow) fills Beowulfs cup, and he announces his determination to conquer or die. As night draws on, the king and his retinue leave the hall to the visitors (11. 607665). They go to sleep, and Beowulf puts off his armour, declaring that he will not use his sword. Grendel bursts into the hall and devours one of the knights. Beowulf, however, seizes him by the arm, which he tears off after a desperate struggle, and the monster takes to flight, mortally wounded (11. 665833). Beowulf displays the arm, and the Danes come to express their admiration of his achievement. They tell stories of heroes of the past, of Sigemund and his nephew Fitela and of the Danish prince Heremod. 3 Then Hrothgar himself arrives, congratulates Beowulf on his victory and rewards him with rich gifts (11. 8341062). During the feast which follows, the kings minstrel recites the story of Hnaef and Finn (11. 10631159), to which we shall have to return later. The queen comes forward and, after addressing Hrothgar together with his nephew and colleague Hrothwulf, thanks Beowulf and presents him with a valuable necklace (11.11601232). This necklace, it is stated (11. 12021214), was afterwards worn by Hygelac and fell into the hands of the Franks at his death. Hrothgar and Beowulf now retire, but a number of knights settle down to sleep in the hall. During the night Grendels mother appears and carries off Aeschere,

the kings chief councillor (11. 12331306). Beowulf is summoned and the king, overwhelmed with grief, tells him what has happened and describes the place where the monsters were believed to dwell. Beowulf promises to exact vengeance (11. 13061399). They set out for the place, a pool overshadowed with trees, but apparently connected with the sea. Beowulf plunges into the water and reaches a cave, where he has a desperate encounter with the monster. Eventually he succeeds in killing her with a sword which he finds in the cave. He then comes upon the corpse of Grendel and cuts off its head. With this he returns to his companions, who had given him up for lost (11. 13971631). The head is brought in triumph to the palace, and Beowulf describes his adventure. The king praises his exploit and contrasts his spirit with that of the unfortunate prince Heremod. From this he passes to a moralising discourse on the evils of pride (1632 1784). On the following day Beowulf bids farewell to the king. They part affectionately, and the king rewards him with further gifts. Beowulf and his companions embark and return to their own land (17851921). The virtues of Hygd, the young wife of Hygelac, are praised, and she is contrasted with Thrytho, the wife of Offa, who, in her youth, had displayed a murderous disposition (11. 19221962). Beowulf greets Hygelac and gives him an account of his adventures. Part of his speech, however, is taken up with a subject which, except for a casual reference in 11. 8385, has not been mentioned before, namely, the relations between Hrothgar and his son-in-law Ingeld, prince of the Heathobeardan. Ingelds father, Froda, had been slain by the Danes and he was constantly incited by an old warrior to take vengeance on the son of the slayer. Then Beowulf hands over to Hygelac and Hygd the presents which Hrothgar and Wealhtheow had given him, and Hygelac in turn rewards him with a sword and with a large share in the kingdom (11. 19632199). A long period is now supposed to elapse. Hygelac has fallen, and his son Heardred has 9 been slain by the Swedes. Then Beowulf has succeeded to the throne and reigned gloriously for fifty years (11. 22002210). In his old age the land of the Geatas is ravaged and his own home destroyed by a firespitting dragon which, after brooding for three hundred years over the treasure of men long since dead, has had its lair robbed by a runaway slave. Beowulf, greatly angered, resolves to attack it (11. 22102349). Now comes a digression referring to Beowulfs past exploits, in the course of which we learn that he had escaped by swimming when Hygelac lost his life in the land of the Frisians. On his return Hygd offered him the throne, but he refused it in favour of the young Heardred. The latter, however, was soon slain by the Swedish king Onela, because he had granted asylum to his nephews, Eanmund and Eadgils, the sons of Ohthere. Vengeance was obtained by Beowulf later, when he supported Eadgils in a campaign which led to the kings death (11. 23492396). Beowulf now approaches the dragons lair. He reflects on the past history of his family. Haethcyn, king of the Geatas, had accidentally killed his brother Herebeald, and their father, Hrethel, died of grief in consequence. His death was followed by war with the Swedes, in which first Haethcyn and then the Swedish king Ongentheow (Onelas father) were slain. When Hygelac, the third brother, perished among the Frisians, Daeghrefn, a warrior of the Hugas, was crushed to death by the hero himself (11. 23972509). Beowulf orders his men to wait outside while he enters the dragons barrow alone. He is attacked by the dragon, and his sword will not bite. Wiglaf, one of his companions, now comes to the rescue; but the rest, in spite of his exhortations, flee into a wood. As the dragon darts forward again Beowulf strikes it on the head; but his sword breaks, and the dragon seizes him by the neck. Wiglaf succeeds in wounding it, and Beowulf, thus getting a moments respite, finishes it off with his knife (11. 25102709). But the hero is mortally wounded. At his request Wiglaf brings the treasure out of the lair. Beowulf gives him directions with regard to his funeral, presents him with his armour and

necklace and then dies (11. 27092842.) The cowardly knights now return and are bitterly upbraided by Wiglaf (11. 28422891). A messenger brings the news to the warriors who have been waiting behind. He goes on to prophesy that, now their heroic king has fallen, the Geatas must expect hostility on all sides. With the Franks there has been no peace since Hygelacs unfortunate expedition against the Frisians and Hetware, while the Swedes cannot forget Ongentheows disaster, which is now described at length. The warriors approach the barrow and inspect the treasure which has been found (11. 2891 3075). Wiglaf repeats Beowulfs instructions, the dragon is thrown into the sea and the kings body burnt on a great pyre. Then a huge barrow is constructed over the remains of the pyre, and all the treasure taken from the dragons lair is placed in it. The poem ends with an account of the mourning and the proclamation of the kings virtues by twelve warriors who ride round the barrow. Many of the persons and events mentioned in Beowulf are known to us also from various 10 Scandinavian records, especially Saxos Danish History, Hrlfs Saga Kraka, Ynglinga Saga(with the poem Ynglingatal) and the fragments of the lost Skildunga Saga. Scyld, the ancestor of the Scyldungas (the Danish royal family), clearly corresponds to Skildr, the ancestor of the Skildungar, though the story told of him in Beowulf does not occur in Scandinavian literature. Healfdene and his sons Hrothgar and Halga are certainly identical with the Danish king Hafdan and his sons Hrarr (Roe) and Helgi; and there can be no doubt that Hrothwulf, Hrothgars nephew and colleague, is the famous Hrlfr Kraki, the son of Helgi. Hrothgars elder brother Heorogar is unknown, but his son Heoroweard may be identical with Hirvar[char]r, the brother-in-law of Hrlfr. It has been plausibly suggested also that Hrethric, the son of Hrothgar, may be the same person as Hroereker (Roricus), who is generally represented as the son or successor of Ingialdr. The name of the Heathobeardan is unknown in the north, unless, possibly, a reminiscence of it is preserved in Saxos Hothbroddus, the name of the king who slew Roe. Their princes Froda and Ingeld, however, clearly correspond to Fr[char] (Frotho IV) and his son Ingialdr, who are represented as kings of the Danes. Even the story of the old warrior who incites Ingeld to revenge is given also by Saxo; indeed, the speaker (Starcatherus) is one of the most prominent figures in his history. Again, the Swedish prince Eadgils, the son of Ohthere, is certainly identical with the famous king of the Svear, A[char]ils, the son of ttarr, and his conflict with Onela corresponds to the battle on lake Vener between A[char]ils and li. The latter is described as a Norwegian; but this is, in all probability, a mistake arising from his surname hinn Upplenzki, which was thought to refer to the Norwegian Upplnd instead of the Swedish district of the same name. The other members of the Swedish royal family, Ongentheow and Eanmund, are unknown in Scandinavian literature. The same remark applies, probably, to the whole of the royal family of the Geatas, except, perhaps, the hero himself. On the other hand, most of the persons mentioned in the minor episodes or incidentallySigemund and Fitela, Heremod, Eormenric, Hama, Offaare more or less well known from various Scandinavian authorities, some also from continental sources. With the exception of Ynglingatal, which dates probably from the ninth century, all the 11 Scandinavian works mentioned above are quite late and, doubtless, based on tradition. Hence they give us no means of fixing the dates of the kings whose doings they record unless one can argue from the fact that Harold the Fairhaired, who appears to have been born in 850, claimed to be descended in the eleventh generation from A[char]ils. Indeed, we have unfortunately no contemporary authorities for Swedish and Danish history before the ninth century. Several early Frankish writings, however, refer to a raid which was made upon the territories of the Chattuarii on the lower Rhine about the year 520. The

raiders were defeated by Theodberht, the son of Theodric I, and their king, who is called Chohilaicus (Chlochilaicus) or Huiglaucus, was killed. This incident is, without doubt, to be identified with the disastrous expedition of Hygelac against the Franks, Hetware (Chattuarii) and Frisians, to which Beowulf contains several references. We need not hesitate, then, to conclude that most of the historical events mentioned in Beowulfare to be dated within about the first three decades of the sixth century. In Gregory of Tours Historia Francorum (III, 3) and in the Gesta Regum 12 Francorum (cap. 19) the king of the raiders is described as rex Danorum; in the Liber Monstrorum, 4 however, as rex Getarum. As Getarum can hardly be anything but a corruption of BeowulfsGeatas the latter description is doubtless correct. The Geatas are, in all probability, to be identified with the Gautar of Old Norse literature, i.e. the people of Gtaland in the south of Sweden. It may be mentioned that Procopius, a contemporary of Theodberht, in his description (Goth. II, 15) of Thule, i.e. Scandinavia, speaks of the Gtar (Gautoi) as a very numerous nation. The hero himself still remains to be discussed. On the whole, though the identification is 13 rejected by many scholars, there seems to be good reason for believing that he was the same person as B[char]varr Biarki, the chief of Hrlfr Krakis knights. In Hrlfs Saga Kraka, Biarki is represented as coming to Leire, the Danish royal residence, from Gtaland, where his brother was king. Shortly after his arrival he killed an animal demon (a bear according to Saxo), which was in the habit of attacking the kings farmyard at Yule. Again, according to Skaldskaparml,cap. 44 (from Skildunga Saga), he took part with A[char]ils in the battle against li. In all these points his history resembles that of Beowulf. It appears from Hrlfs Saga Kraka that Biarki had the faculty of changing into a bear. And Beowulfs method of fighting, especially in his conflict with Daeghrefn, may point to a similar story. On the other hand, the latter part of Biarkis career is quite different from that of Beowulf. He stayed with Hrlfr to the end and shared the death of that king. But the latter part of Beowulfs life can hardly be regarded as historical. Indeed, his own exploits throughout are largely of a miraculous character. There is another Scandinavian story, however, which has a very curious bearing on the 14 earlier adventures of Beowulf. This is a passage in Grettis Saga (cap. 64 ff.), in which the hero is represented as destroying two demons, male and female. The scene is laid in Iceland; yet so close are the resemblances between the two stories, in the character of the demons, in the description of the places they inhabit and in the methods by which the hero deals with them, as well as in a number of minor details, that it is impossible to ascribe them to accident. Now Grettir seems to be a historical person who died about the year 1031. The presumption is, then, that an older story has be become attached to his name. But there is nothing in the account that gives any colour to the idea that it is actually derived from the Old English poem. More probably the origin of both stories alike is to be sought in a folk-tale, and, just as the adventures were attributed in Iceland to the historical Grettir, so in England, and, possibly, also in Denmark, at an earlier date they were associated with a historical prince of the Gtar. From the occurrence of the local names Beowanham and Grendles mere in a Wiltshire charter 5 some scholars have inferred that the story was originally told of a certain Beowa, whom they have identified with Beaw or Beo, the son of Scyld (Sceldwea) in the West Saxon genealogy. But since this person is, in all probability, identical with the first (Danish) Beowulf of the poem, and since the name Beowa may very well be a shortened form of Beowulf, while the other names are obscure, the inferenceseems to be of somewhat doubtful value. On the whole there is, perhaps, more to be said for the view that the association of Beowulf with the folk-tale arose out of some real adventure with an animal. This, however, must remain

largely a matter of speculation. The fight with the dragon is, of course, common motive in folk-tales. An attempt has been made to show that Beowulfs adventure has a specially close affinity with a story told by Saxo of the Danish king Frotho I. But the resemblance between the two stories is not very striking. With regard to the origin and antiquity of the poem it is impossible to arrive at any 15 definite conclusions with certainty. From investigations which have been made into its linguistic and metrical characteristics the majority of scholars hold that it was originally composed in a northern or midland dialect though it has been preserved only in West Saxon formand that it is at least as old as any other considerable piece of Old English poetry which we possess. The question of antiquity, however, is complicated by the doubt which is commonly felt as to the unity of the poem. Moreover, it cannot be denied that this feeling of doubt is, at least to some extent, justified. In its present form the poem must date from Christian times as it contains a considerable number of passages of distinctly Christian character. On the other hand, the relationships of the various Danish and Swedish kings can hardly have been remembered otherwise than in a more or less stereotyped form of words for more than a generation after their lifetime. Hence we are bound to conclude that the formation of the poem, or, at all events, that of the materials from which it was made up, must have occupied at least the greater part of a century. It is generally thought that several originally separate lays have been combined in the 16 poem, and, though no proof is obtainable, the theory in itself is not unlikely. These lays are usually supposed to have been four in number and to have dealt with the following subjects: (i) Beowulfs fight with Grendel, (ii) the fight with Grendels mother, (iii) Beowulfs return, (iv) the fight with the dragon. In view of the story in Grettis Saga I am very much inclined to doubt whether it is justifiable to separate the first two incidents. The fight with the dragon, however, is certainly quite distinct, and the part of the poem dealing with Beowulfs reception by Hygelac may also have ori ginally formed the subject of a separate lay. Some scholars have gone much further than this in their analysis of the poem. According to one view nearly half of it is the work of interpolators; according to another the present text is a composite one made up from two parallel versions. It is much to be doubted, however, whether any really substantial result has been obtained from these investigations into the inner history of the poem. The references to religion seem to afford the only safe criterion for distinguishing between earlier and later elements. Thus, it is worth nothing that in 11. 175 ff. the Danes are represented as offering heathen sacrifices, a passage which is wholly inconsistent with the sentiments afterwards attributed to Hrothgar. But at what stage in the history of the poem was the Christian element introduced? Certainly this element seems to be too deeply interwoven in the text for us to suppose 17 that it is due to additions made by scribes at a time when the poem had come to be written down. Indeed there is little evidence for any additions or changes of this kind. We must ascribe it, then, either to the original poet or poets or to minstrels by whom the poem was recited in later times. The extent to which the Christian element is present varies somewhat in different parts of the poem. In the last portion (11. 22003183) the number of lines affected by it amounts to less than four per cent., while in the section dealing with Beowulfs return (11. 19042199) it is negligible. In the earlier portions, on the other hand, the percentage rises to between nine and ten, but this is partly due to four long passages. One fact worth observing is that the Christian element is about equally distributed between the speeches and the narrative. We have noticed above that, according to a theory which has much in its favour, epics are derived from mixed pieces, in which speeches were given in verse and narrative in prose. If Christian influence had made itself

felt at this stage, we should surely have expected to find it more prominent in the narrative than in the speeches, for the latter would, presumably, be far less liable to change. There is one curious feature in the poem which has scarcely received sufficient attention, 18 namely the fact that, while the poets reflections and even the sentiments attributed to the various speakers are largely, though not entirely, Christian, the customs and ceremonies described are, almost without exception, heathen. This fact seems to point, not to a Christian work with heathen reminiscences, but to a heathen work which has undergone revision by Christian minstrels. In particular, I cannot believe that any Christian poet either could or would have composed the account of Beowulfs funeral. It is true that w e have no references to heathen gods, and hardly any to actual heathen worship. But such references would necessarily be suppressed or altered when the courts became Christian. Indeed, there is a fairly clear case of alteration in 11. 175 ff., to which I have already alluded. It may, perhaps, be urged that, if the work had been subjected to such a thorough revision, descriptions of heathen ceremonies would not have been allowed to stand. But the explanation may be that the ceremonies in question had passed out of use before the change of religion. In the case of cremation, which is the prevalent form of funeral rite found in the poem, we have good reason for believing this to be true. Hence, such passages could not excite the same repugnance among the clergy as they would have done in countries where the ceremonies were still practised. I am disposed, then, to think that large portions at least of the poem existed in epic form before the change of faith and that the appearance of the Christian element is due to revision. The Christianity of Beowulf is of a singularly indefinite and undoctrinal type, which contrasts somewhat strongly with what is found in later Old English poetry. In explanation of this fact it has been suggested that the poem was composed or revised under the influence of the missionaries from Iona. But is there really any reason for thinking that the teaching of the Irish missionaries would tend in that direction? A more obvious explanation would be that the minstrels who introduce the Christian element had but a vague knowledge of the new faith. Except in 11. 1743 ff., where there seems to be a reference to Ephesians, vi, 16, the only passages of the Bible made use of are those relating to the Creation, the story of Cain and Abel and the Deluge. In the first case (11. 90 ff.) one can hardly help suspecting a reference to Caedmons hymn, and the others also may just as well have been derived from Christian poems or songs as from the Bible itself. In any case, however, the fact noted favours the conclusion that the revision took place at an earlier date. IV. Old English Christian Poetry. 1. Celtic Christianity. ONLY two names emerge from the anonymity which shrouds the bulk of Old English 1 Christian poetry, namely, those of Caedmon and Cynewulf; and in the past, practically all the religious poetry we possess had been attributed to one or other of these two poets. But, as well shall see, the majority of the poems to be considered here should rather be regarded as the work of singers whose names have perished, as folk-song, as manifestations of the spirit of the peoplein the same sense in which the tale of Beowulfs adventures embodied the aspirations of all valiant thegns, or the epic of Waldhere summarised the popular ideals of love and honour. The subject of the Christian epic is indeed, for the most part, apparently, foreign and even at times Oriental: the heroes of the Old and New Testaments, the saints as they live in the legends of the church, furnish the theme. The method of treatment hardly differs, however, from that followed in non-Christian poetry;

the metrical form with rare exceptions is the alliterative line constructed on the same principles as in Beowulf; Wyrd has become the spirit of providence, Christ and His apostles have become English kings or chiefs followed, as in feudal duty bound, by hosts of clansmen; the homage paid to the Divine Son is the allegiance due to the scion of an Anglian king, comparable to that paid by Beowulf to his liege lord Hygelac, or to that displayed by Byrhtnoth on the banks of the Panta; the ideals of early English Christianity do not differ essentially from those of English paganism. And yet there is a difference. The Christianity of England in the seventh and eighth centuries, and the Latin influences brought in its wake, which inspired the poetry under discussion, was a fusion, a commingling, of two different strains. Accustomed as we are to date the introduction of Christianity into England from the mission of St. Augustine, we are apt to forget that, prior to the landing of the Roman missionary on the shores of Kent, Celtic missionaries from the islands of the west had impressed upon the northern kingdoms, the earliest home of literary culture in these islands, a form of Christianity differing in many respects from the more theological type preached and practised by St. Augustine and his followers. Oswald, the martyr king of Northumbria, had been followed from Iona, where, in his youth, he had found sanctuary, by Aidan, the apostle of the north, to whose missionary enterprise was due the conversion of the rude north Anglian tribes. The monastery at Streoneshalh, or Whitby, for ever famous as the home of Caedmon, was ruled by the abbess Hild in accordance with Celtic, not Roman, usage; and though, at the synod of Whitby in 664, the unity of the church in England was assured by the submission of the northern church to Roman rule, yet the influence of Celtic Christianity may be traced in some of the features that most characteristically distinguish Christian from non-Christian poetry. It would for instance, be hard to deny that the depth of personal feeling expressed in a poem like The Dream of the Rood, the joy in colour attested by the vivid painting of blossom and leaf in The Phoenix and the melancholy sense of kinship between the sorrow of the human heart and the moaning of the grey cold waves that make The Seafarer a human wail, are elements contributed to English poetry by the Celts. St. Columba had built his monastery on the surf-beaten shores of the Atlantic, where mans dependence on nature was an everpresent reality. The Celtic monastery was the home of a brotherhood of priests, and the abbot was the father of a family as well as its ecclesiastical superior. The Christian virtues of humility and meekness, in which the emissaries of the British church found Augustine so deficient, were valued in Iona above orthodoxy and correctness of religious observance; and the simplicity of ecclesiastical organisation characteristic of Celtic Christianity, differing from the comparatively eleborate nature of Roman organisation and ritual, produced and simple form of Christianity, readily understood by the unlettered people of the north. It is the personal relation of the soul to God the Father, the humanity of Christ, the brotherhood of man, the fellowship of saints, that the Celtic missionaries seem to have preached to their converts; and these doctrines inspired the choicest passages of Old English religious poetry, passages worthy of comparison with some of the best work of a later, more self-conscious and introspective age. 2. Changes wrought by the New Spirit. This subjectivity is a new feature in English literature; for most non-Christian English poetry is sternly epic. Beowulf is a tale of brave deeds nobly done, with but few reflections concerning them. At rare intervals, scattered here and there throughout the poem, we meet with some touch of sentiment, a foreboding of evil to come, a few words on the inexorable character of fate, an exhortation to do great deeds so that in Walhalla the chosen warrior may fare the better, occasionally a half-Christian reference to an all-ruling Father (probably the

addition of a later and Christian hand); but, as a rule, no introspection checks the even flow of narrative: arma virumque cano. When Christianity became the source of poetic inspiration, we find the purely epic character of a poem modified by the introduction of a lyric element. The hero no longer aspires to win gold from an earthly king; his prize is a heavenly crown, to be won, it may even be, in spiritual conflict; the glories of life on earth are transitory; earthly valour cannot atone for the stains of sin upon the soul; the beauty of nature, in her fairest aspects, cannot compare with the radiance of a better land; the terror that lurks waiting for the evil-doer upon earth fades away at the contemplation of that day of wrath and mourning when the Judge of all the earth shall deal to every man according to his deeds. The early Christian poet does not sing of earthly love; we have no erotic poetry in pre-Conquest England; but the sentiment that gives life to the poetry of Dante and Milton is not absent from the best of our early poets attempts at religious self-expression. VII. From Alfred to the Conquest. 1. The Chronicle. It seems permissible to treat the year 901, when king Alfred died, as the dividing line between the earlier and later period of Old English literature. 1 According to this classification, nearly all the poetry composed in this country before the Norman conquest would fall within the first period; while the bulk of the prose writings in the vernacular would be included in the second. It was, indeed, during the tenth and eleventh centuries that our language in its Old English stage attained its highest development as a prose medium. The circumstances of the time were unfavourable to the production of sustained poems. This may be owing to the gradual break-up of Old English tradition and to the influence of another Germanic literature, then at its height, in the English court. The chief poetical fragments that have survived from these years deal with contemporary events, and seem to be the outbreak of emotions too strong to be suppressed. Like feelings find their expression also in the prose literature of these centuries, which saw not only the rise of the West Saxon kings to full mastery over England, but also the victories of Dane and Norman, and the quenching of all hope of English rule over England until the conquered should absorb the conquerors. There was scarcely a year during this period in which the harassed rulers of the kingdom could afford to lay aside their arms; though during the time of comparative quiet between the death of Aethelstan and the accession of Aethelred England took an active part in the monastic revival which was so marked a feature of contemporary European history. In these times of struggle, letters and learning found, for a time, their grave, and long years of patient struggle were needed to revive them. The gloomy tale is nowhere better told than in the Chronicle which, written in simple language, alone marks for more than half a century the continuance of literary activity in England The beginning of the Chronicle is usually ascribed to the influence of Alfred, and it continues for two and a half centuries after that kings reign, long after the last English king had been slain and the old tongue banished from court and school. Its principal recensions 2 differ from one another not in the main story, but in the attention given to various details, and in the length to which they are carried. Owing to the number of hands employed in its composition, the literary merit is very unequal; sometimes the entries consist of a date and the simple statement of an event; at others we find passages of fluent and glowing narrative, as in the record of the war-filled years from 911 to 924. The period from 925 to 975 is very bare, and such entries as exist relate mostly to church 1

matters. It is, however, within this time that the principal poems of theChronicle are inserted. Under 991 is told the story of Anlafs raid at Maldon in which Byrhtnoth fell. In the years 9751001 the Chronicle is of extreme interest, and the annals for the year 1001 are very full. Some time about the middle, or towards the last quarter, of the eleventh century the present recension of the Winchester chronicle was transplanted to Christ Church, Canterbury, and there completed with Canterbury annals, passages being interpolated in various places from beginning to end from the chronicle kept at St. Augustines, Christ Church library having been previously burnt. Before this, the notice taken of Canterbury events was so extremely slight that we do not even hear of the murder of archbishop Aelfh[char]ah (St. Alphege) by the Dances. 3 The MS. known as Cott. Tib. A. VI seems to have been originally meant to serve as an introduction to further annals, which, however, were never written; and it is apparently a copy of the original Abingdon chronicle (itself a copy of the original Winchester, written at Abingdon), which did not reach beyond 977. The MS. under consideration is shown by a mass of internal and external evidence to have been written about 977, the year to which its annals reach. It may fitly be called the shorter Abingdon chronicle to distinguish it from thelonger Abingdon chronicle referred to below, with which it has much in common; 4 both, for example, bodily insert the Mercian annals (sometimes called the chronicle of Aethelflamed). These extend from 902925, and tell, with some detail, of the warlike feats of the Lady of Mercia. It may be noted, in passing, that these Mercian annals occur in the socalled Worcester chronicle 5 where, however, they are distributed, with some omissions, amongst other matter. These Mercian annals are of the greatest interest, both in origin and history. Their chronology differs considerably from that of other chronicles. Perhaps the original document, or some copy of it, in which they were contained, is to be traced under the record Cronica duo Anglica in theCatalogi veteres librorum Ecclesiae Dunelmi, where we also find the record of Elfledes Bocin the same place. This at once suggests to us the existence of these annals in a book of Aethelflaed, telling of her fight for English freedom. Thus the inscription and record bring us into close connection with what may well have suggested and stimulated the heroic poem ofJudith 6 The (Longer) Abingdon chronicle is so called because, from its references to the affairs 5 of that monastery, it is supposed to have been written there. This longer chronicle is not expanded from the shorter, nor the shorter extracted from the longer. Both have a number of independent annals up to the very year 977 where the common original ended. It may be surmised that the author of the recension under notice found the original Abingdon ready up to 977 (when the troubles consequent on Edgars death may have accounted for many things), and further annals up to 1018, to which he made later additions. The MS. tells of the election of Siward, abbot of Abingdon, as archbishop of Canterbury in 1044, the appointment of Aethelstan as his successor to the abbacy, Aethelstans death in 1047 and archbishop Siwards return to the monastery after his retirement from office in 1048. In 892, a copy of the southern chronicle was sent to a northern cloister, and there was 6 revised with the aid of the text of Bedes Ecclesiastical History.. There seems, also to have been a northern continuation of Bedes History, and, from this, were woven into the chroniclers text annals 737806. Fifteen of these annals are wholly, and sixteen party, Northumbrian. That these annals were taken from some such source seems to be proved by their being found also in other works. The chronicler then followed southern sources until 904, when he began to weave into his text the book of Aethelflaed, mingling with it southern and northern records. From 9831022, he returned to his Abingdon source. After this he struck out on his own line. From the original thus created was copied the

extant MS. commonly known as the Worcester or Evesham chronicle 7 which shows especial acquaintance with the midlands and north. The close connection between Worcester and York is shown by the fact that the archbishop of York is mentioned simply as the archbishop. The chronicle shows strong feeling on the subject of Godwins outlawry, and in every way supports that nobleman. Alone amongst the chronicles it tells the sad tale of the battle of Hastings. The original from which the above chronicle was copied, seems also to have been the basis for that patriotic Kentish chronicle, now lost, which was the chief source both of the Peterborough chronicle up to 1123 and the rescension known as Cott. Dom. A. VIII, 2. The Peterborough chronicle 8 is the longest of all, extending to the year 1154. In 1116 the town and monastery of Peterborough were destroyed by a terrible fire, which left standing only the monastic chapterhouse and dormitory, and when, in 1121, the rebuilding was completed, the annals contained in this chronicle were undertaken to replace those lost in the fire. They were based on the lost Kentish chronicle, which must have been forwarded to Peterborough for that purpose. This original Kentish chronicle is full of patriotic feeling and shows great knowledge of southern affairs from Canutes death, the burial of Harold Harefoot (the record of which it alone rightly tells) and the viking raid on Sandwich, to the feuds between English and Norman in the reign of the Confessor. It relates count Eustaces broils with the English of Canterbury and Dover, and the flight of archbishop Robert, leaving his pallium behind him, an annal recorded with dangerously schismatic glee. The scribe had lived at the court of William the Conqueror, and had, therefore, seen the face of the great enemy of the English. The entries for the tenth century are very meagre; but from 991 to 1075 they are much fuller and contain, among other contemporary records, the story of the ravages of Hereward. Towards the end of the chronicle, which is written in a somewhat rough and ready manner, occurs the famous passage, so often quoted by historians, telling of the wretchedness of the common folk during the reign of Stephen and its civil wars. From the lost Kentish chronicle is derived the recension known as F or Cott. Domitian A. VIII, 2, seemingly written by one hand in the twelfth century, and of interest because of its mixed use of Latin and English. In this it indicates the approach of the employment of Latin as the general literary vehicle of English culture. There is great confusion in its bilingual employment of Latin and English; sometimes English is the original and Latin the copy, at other times the process is reversed; finally, in some passages, Latin and English become ludicrously mixed. Two other recensions exist as mere fragments: one, of three damaged leaves, in a hand of the eleventh century, is bound up with a copy of Bedes Ecclesiastical History 9 ; and the other 10 consists of a single leaf. The manuscript to which the former of these fragments belonged was edited by Wheloc in 1644 before it was consumed in the Cottonian fire. The following table adapted from Plummer shows the relations of the various MSS. to each other, the exrtant MSS. being indicated by initial letters; The Chronicle is of inestimable value as an authority for the history of the time. The impression it leaves on the reader is one of almost unrelieved gloom. Records of harrying with fire and sword occur on almost every page, and, whether the English ealdorment or the Danes possess the place of slaughter, the wild lawlessness and the contempt for human life which prevailed during the greater part of the period are plainly visible. Sometimes the chronicler displays bitter indignation at the misgovernment of the country, as when he tells how Aethelred and his ealdormen and the high witan forsook the navy which had been collected with immense effort by the people and let the toil of all t he nation thus lightly perish. But the entries are usually of an entirely impersonal kind; the

9 10

horror and desolation, the fiery signs in the heaven, and the plagues that befell men and cattle upon earth, are recorded without comment; such misfortunes were too common to call for special remark in the days of the long struggle between Dane and Englishman. It has already been said that this portion of the Chronicle contains several fragments of verse. These will be noticed later. Here, it may, however, be remarked that some passages written as prose are based on songs which have been inserted, after some slight modification, by the scribe; and, towards the end of the Peterborough chronicle, there occur some long stretches of rhythmic prose almost akin to the sung verse of the people. These may be either a development of the loose rhythm of Aelfrics prose, or may, possibly, result from the incorporation of ballads and their reduction to prose. The subject is, however, still too obscure to admit of any very definite statement on this point, and most of what has been said on this subject seems far removed from finality. 2. The Monastic Reform. From this brief description of the manuscripts of the Chronicle we must turn to the homilists, who showed especial vigour between 960 and 1020. The development reached in style and in literary tradition is at once apparent; it had its origin, doubtless, in the religious revival of the tenth century, which emanated from Fleury, and was identified in England with the names of Dunstan, Aethelwold and Oswald, the three torches of the church. At the beginning of the tenth century, English monasticism and, therefore, the state of learning in England, were in a deplorable condition, from which all the efforts of king Alfred had been unable to lift them. There were religious houses, of course, but most of these seem to have been in the condition of Abingdon when Aethelwold was appointed abbota place in which a little monastery had been kept up from ancient days, but then desolate and neglected, consisting of mean buildings and possessing only a few hides. To the influence of the Benedictine reformers we owe much of the prose literature of the tenth and eleventh centuries. The great bond thus knit once more between English literature and the literature of the continent ensured our share in what was then living of classical and pseudo-classical lore. With the accession of Edgar (959) better times dawned. On the death of Odo, Dunstan became archbishop, and, in 961 Oswald, Odos nephew, was consecrated to the see of Worcester. His appointment was followed in 963 by that of Aethelwold, abbot of Abingdon, to the see of Winchester, and the three bishops set about a vigorous ecclesiastical reform. During the reigns of Edgar and his sons no fewer than forty monasteries for men were founded or restored, and these were peopled chiefly by monks trained at Abingdon or Winchester. The most famous school of all was that founded at Winchester by Aethelwold, one of the most distiguished of the pupils of Dunstan, and himself an enthusiastic teacher, who did not scorn to explain the difficulties of Donatus and Priscian to the postulants and other youthful frequenters of the Benedictine school. The most important of his scholars was Aelfric, the greatest prose writer in the vernacular before the Conquest. The inhabitants of the newly restored monasteries naturally required instruction in the Benedictine rule, and to this necessity is due the version of the rule which Aethelwold drew up under the title Regularis Concordia Anglicae Nations Monachorum Sanctimonialiumque. In the beginning of this he stated that the work had the sanction of the king, and that it was framed at a council at Winchester. The name of the writer is nowhere given, and, were it not that Aelfric, in his Letter to the Monks of Eynsham, says

12

13

14

15

16

that the source of his information is bishop Aethelwolds De Consuetudine, and quotes long passages from the Regularis (evidently the same work), we should be ignorant of the authorship. 11 But it was not enough to multiply copies and commentaries of the Rule in Latin. Many of the newly admitted postulants and novices were quite ignorant of that language, and, therefore, king Edgar further entrusted Aethelwold with the task of translating the Rule into English, giving him in acknowledgement the manor of Southborne, which he assigned to the newly restored monastery at Ely. There are several MSS. containing an Old English version of the Rule, and in one of them 12 it is followed by a historical sketch of the monastic revival of the tenth century, which recounts Edgars share in the movement, his refounding of Abingdon and his command to translate into English the Rule. Schrer thinks that this tractate is by the author of the foregoing version of the Rule; but, since the writer calls himself everywhere abbot, and not bishop, if it is by Aethelwold he must have made it between 959, the year of Edgars accession, and 963, when he became bishop of Winchester. III. The Beginnings of English Prose. 1. Early English Prose. EARLY English prose had, of necessity, a practical character. To those who understood neither Latin nor French all proclamations and instructions, laws and sermons, had to be issued in English, while, for a long time, the official Latin of the accountant and the law clerk had been very English in kind, even to the insertion of native words with a case-ending appended. With the increasing importance of the commons in the fourteenth century, the proceedings of parliament itself began to descend to the vulgar tongue, which obtained a signal recognition when three successive parliaments (13624) were opened by English speeches from the chancellor. Furthermore, a statute, in 1362, ordered the pleadings in the law courts to be conducted in English, though the cases were to be recorded in Latin, on the ground that French was no longer sufficiently understood. Political sentiment may have inspired this declaration, which was as much overstated as the plea of two of Henry IVs envoys that French was, to their ignorant understandings, as bad as Hebrew; for the yearbooks continued to be recorded in French, and in French not only diplomatic letters but reports to Henry IV himself were written. The use of that tongue, so long the medium of polite intercourse, did not vanish suddenly, but a definite movement which ensured its doom took place in the grammar schools, after the Black Death, when English instead of French was adopted as the medium of instruction. John Trevisa, writing in 1385, tells us that this reform was the work of John Cornwall and his disciple Richard Pencrich, and that, in alle pe gramere scoles of Engelond children leve[char] Frensche and construe[char] and lerne[char] an Englische, with the result that they learned their grammar more quickly than children were wont to do, but with the disadvantage that they conne[char] na more frensche than can hir lift heeleand [char]at is harme for hem and [char]ey schulle passe [char]e see and travaille in straunge landes. Even noblemen had left off teaching their children French.

 2. Early Translations Before the close of the fourteenth century, therefore, it could no longer be assumed that all 2 who wished to read would read French or Latin. There was a dearth of educated clergy after the Black Death; disaster abroad and at home left little inclination for refinement, and, when life was reduced to its essentials, the use of the popular speech naturally became universal. Thus, in the great scene of Richard IIs deposition, English was used at the crucial moments, while, at the other end of the scale, king Richards master cook was setting down his Forme of Cury for practical people. In the same way, on the continent, Sir John Mandeville was writing in French before 1371 for the sake of nobles and gentlemen who knew not Latin, and there, as at home, Latin books and encyclopaedias were so far ceasing to be read that he could venture to plagiarise from the most recent. In England, the needs of students, teachers and preachers were now supplied in the vernacular by the great undertakings of John Trevisa, who translated what may be called the standard works of the time on scientific and humane knowledgeDe Proprietatibus Rerum by Bartholomaeus Anglicus and Higdens Polychronicon. These great treatises are typically medieval, and the former a recognised classic in the universities. The minorite friar Bartholomaeus, who must have been born an Englishman, was a theological professor of the university of Paris, and his De Proprietatibus Rerum, an encyclopaedia of all knowledge concerned with nature, was compiled in the middle of the thirteenth century, possibly during his residence in Saxony, whither he was sent, in 1231, to organise the Franciscans of the duchy. Ranulf Higden was a monk of St. Werburghs Chester, and wrote his Polychroniconabout 1350. It is compiled from many authorities, and embraces the history of the entire world, from the Creation to Higdens own times; the different countries are described geographically, and all the favourite medieval legends in the histories of Persia, Babylon and Rome are introduced. There are many points in which Higden, Bartholomaeus and the later Sir John Mandeville accord, revealing some common predecessor among the earlier accepted authorities; for the object of the medieval student was knowledge and no merit resided in originality: he who would introduce novelty did wisely to insert it in some older work which commanded confidence. Naturally, therefore, translations of books already known were the first prose works to be set before the English public, namely the two great works of Trevisa, and The Travels of Sir John Mandeville, a book which, under a thin disguise of pious utility, was really a volume of entertainment. The translators of these works aimed at being understood by a wider class of readers than the audience of Chaucer or even of Piers the Plowman. The style, therefore, though simple, is by no means terse. Where any doubt of the meaning might arise, pairs of words are often used, after a fashion not unknown to the poets. This usage prevailed during the following centuryand with some reason, for the several dialects of England still differed so much that a southern man could scarcely apprehend what Trevisa calls the scharpe slitting, frotynge and unschape speech of York. The translators desired only to convey the meaning of their originals and their renderings are extremely free; they omit or expand as they choose, and this saves early English prose from the pitfall of Latinism, giving it a certain originality, though at the cost of tautology. Trevisa, in the introduction to Polychronicon, explains to his patron that though he must sometimes give word for word, active for active, passive for passive, yet he must sometimes change the order and set active for passive, or a resoun (a phrase) for a word, but he promises that, in any case, he will render the meaning exactly. These translations became recognised authorities among the reading public of the fifteenth century and may reasonably be considered the corner-stones of English prose. All three were accepted as absolutely veracious; the

adventures of Mandeville, the legends of Polychronicon, the fairy-tale science of quotations or hints on health. The information, all the same, seems to be conveyed with an eye to entertainment; little effort of thought is required in the reader; paragraphs are short, statements definite and the proportion of amusing anecdote is only equalled by the trite moralising, couched in common-place phrases, which had become a required convention in a materialist age. Books were distributed to the public by means of professional scribes; but, since there lay no sanctity in exact phraseology, the translators themselves were at the mercy of copyists. Cheaper copies were sometimes produced by curtailing the text, or newer information might be added. Trevisas Bartholomaeus was probably brought up to date by many a scribe, and the different MSS. of his Polychronicon, though unaltered as to the narrative, present a variety of terms. Mandeville, too, appears in (probably) three distinct translations, the most popular of which was multiplied in shortened forms. It is, therefore, dangerous to base theories upon the forms found in any one MS.; for we can rarely be sure of having the actual words of the author. Often, though not always, the MS. may be inconsistent with itself, and, in any cas, few MSS. of philological interest exist in many copies; in other words, they were not popular versions, and, as most of the MSS. are inconsistent with each other in spelling and in verb-forms, it seems that the general reader must have been accustomed to different renderings of sound. Caxton need hardly have been so much concerned about the famous egges or eyren. VII. Chaucer. 1. Chaucers Life. OF the date of the birth of Geoffrey Chaucer we have no direct knowledge. But indirect 1 evidence of various kinds fixes it between 1328, when his father, John Chaucer, was still unmarried, and 1346, before which date his own statement, at the Scroope-Grosvenor suit in 1386, of his age as forty years or more would place it. Within this rather wide range, selection has, further, to be guided by certain facts to be mentioned presently; and, for some time past, opinion has generally adopted, in face of some difficulties, the date about 1340. John Chaucer himself was a citizen and vinter of London, the son of Robert le Chaucer, who, in 1310, was collector of the customs on wine, and who had property at Ipswich and elsewhere in Suffolk. In 1349, John was certainly married to an Agnes whose maiden surname is unknown, who survived him and, in 1367, married again: therefore, unless she was the vintners second wife, she must have been Chaucers mother. The father seems to have had some link of service with the royal household, and the poet was connected with it more or less all his days. Probably he was born in Thames Street, London, where his father had a house at the time of his death in 1366. We first hear of Chaucer himself (or, at least, of a Geoffrey Chaucer who is not likely to 2 be anyone else) in 1357, when he received a suit of livery as member of the household of Edward IIIs son Lionel (afterwards duke of Clarence), or of his wife Elizabeth de Burgh. Two years later, he served in France, was taken prisoner at a place called Retters (alternately identified with Retiers near Rennes, and with Rethel near Reims), but was liberated on ransom by March 1360the king subscribing 16(=over 200 now) towards the sum paid. Seven years later, on a June 1367, Edward gave him an annuity of 20 marks for life, as to dilectus valettus noster, and he rose to be esquire at the end of the next year. Meanwhile, at a time earlier than that of his own pension, on 12 September 1366, another of half the amount had been granted to Philippa Chaucer, one of the damsels of the queens chamber: and this Philippa, beyond reasonable doubt, must have been the poets wife. If she was born Philippa Roet or Rouet, daughter of Sir Payn Roet, a Hainault knight, and sister of Katharine Rouet or Swynford, third wife of John of Gaunt, Chaucers

undisputed patronage by time-honoured Lancaster would have been a matter of course. But we do not know Philippas parentage for certain. There is also much doubt about the family that Geoffrey and Philippa may have had. The poet directly dedicates, in 1391, hisAstrolabe to little Lewis my son, who was then ten years old; but of this son we hear nothing more. On the other hand, chancellor Gascoigne, in the generation after Chaucers death, speaks of Thomas Chaucer, a known man of position and wealth in the early fifteenth century, as Chaucers son: and this Thomas took the arms of Rouet late in life, while, in 1381, John of Gaunt himself established an Elizabeth Chaucer as a nun at Barking. Beyond these facts and names nothing is known. Of Chaucer himselfor, at least, of a Geoffrey Chaucer who, as it is very important to 3 remember, and as has not always been remembered, may not be the same in all cases a good many facts are preserved, though these facts are in very few cases, if any, directly connected with his literary position. By far the larger part of the information concerns grants of money, sometimes connected with the public service in war, diplomacy and civil duties. He joined the army in France again in 1369; and, next year, was abroad on public duty of some kind. In 1372, he was sent to Genoa to arrange for the selection of some English port as a headquarters for Genoese trade, and must have been absent for a great part of the twelvemonth between the November of that year and of the next. On St. Georges day 1374, he began to receive from the king a daily pitcher of wine, commuted later for money. In the following month, he leased the gatehouse of Aldegate from the corporation, and a month later again, was made controller of customs for wool, etc., in the port of London, receiving, in this same June, an additional pension of 10 a year from John of Gaunt to himself and his wife. Wardships, forfeitures and other casualties fell to him, and, in 1377, he went on diplomatic duties to Flanders and to France. In 1378, after the death of Edward III and the accession of Richard II, it is thought that he was again in France and, later in that year, he certainly went once more to Italy, in the mission to Bernabo Visconti of Milan. These duties did not interfere with the controllership; to which another, that of the petty customs, was added in 1382, and we have record of various payments and gifts to him up to the autumn of 1386, when he sat in parliament as knight of the shire for Kent, and gave evidence in the Scroope-Grosvenor case. Then the tide turned against him. In the triumph of the duke of Gloucester and the eclipse of Gaunt during his absence in Spain, Chaucer lost his controllership; and it would appear that, in 1387, his wife died. In May 1388, he assigned his pensions and allowances to another person, which looks like (though it cannot be said certainly to be) a sign of financial straits in the case of a man whose party was out of favour. But the fall of Gloucester and the return of John of Gaunt brought him out of the shadow again. In July 1389, he was made clerk of the works to the king at various places; and, in the next year (when, as part of his new duty, he had to do with St. Georges chapel, Windsor), commissioner of roads between Greenwich and Woolwich. This latter post he seems to have retained; the clerkship he only held for two years. On 6 September 1390, he fell twice in one day among the same thieves, and was excused robbed of some public money, which, however, he was excused from making good. During parts of this year and the next, he held an additional post, that of the forestership of North Petherton Park in Somerset. In 1394 he received from Richard a fresh pension of 20 (say 300) a year. But, judging by the evidence of records of advances and protections from suits for debt, he seems to have been needy. In 1398, however, he obtained an additional tun of wine a year from Richard; while that luckless princes ouster and successor, John of Gaunts son, added, in October 1399, forty marks to the twenty pounds, making the poets yearly income, besides the tun of wine, equal, at least, to between 600 and 700 of our money. On the strength of this,

possibly, Chapter (who had given up the Aldegate house thirteen years before, and whose residence in the interval is unknown) took a lease of a house in the garden of St. Mary, Westminster. But he did not enjoy it for a full year, and dying (according to his tomb, which is, however, of the sixteenth century) on 25 October 1400, was buried in Westminster Abbey, in the chapel of St. Benedict, thus founding Poets Corner. That he was actually dead by the end of that year is proved by the cessation of entries as to this pensions. Almost every known incident in his life has been mentioned in this summary, for the traditions of his residence at Woodstock and of his beating a Franciscan friar in Fleet street have been given upthe latter perhaps hastily. One enigmatical incident remains to wit, that in May 1380, one Cecilia de Chaumpaigne gave Chaucer a release de raptu meo.There is, however, no probability that there was anything in this case more romantic or more shocking than one of the attempts to kidnap a ward of property and marry him or her to somebody in whom the kidnapper was interestedattempts of which, curiously enough, Chaucers own father is known to have been nearly the victim. Otherwise, there is namore to seyn, so far as true history goes. And it does not seem necessary to waste space in elaborate confutation of unhistorical traditions and assertions, which, though in some cases of very early origin, never had any basis of evidence, and, in most cases, can be positively disproved. They have, for some decades, passed out of all books of the slightest authority, except as matter for refutation; and it is questionable whether this last process itself does not lend them an injudicious survival. It will be observed, however, that, in the authentic account, as above given, while it is possible that some of its details may apply to a Geoffrey Chaucer other than the poet whom we honour, there is not one single one of them which concerns him as a poet at all. There are, however, one or two references in his lifetime, and a chain, unbroken for a long time, of almost extravagantly laudatory comments upon his work, starting with actual contemporaries. Though there can be little doubt that the pair met more than once, Froissarts mention of him is only in reference to diplomatic and not literary business. But Eustache Deschamps, perhaps, on the whole, the foremost poet of France in Chaucers time, has left a ballade of the most complimentary character, though, already anticipating the French habit of looking always at French literature first, it addresses him as grant translateur, which, beyond doubt, he was. In a certainly contemporary work of English prose, The Testament of Love, which, for sheer want of careful examination, was long attributed to Chaucer and which is now decided to be the work of one Usk, who was executed in 1386 by the Gloucester faction, Chaucer is spoken of with equal admiration, and his work is largely drawn upon. Scogan, another contemporary and a correspondent of his, celebrates him; and a far more important person than these, the poet Gower, his personal friend, has left a well-known tribute. The two principal poets of the next generation, in England, Occleve and Lydgate, were, the former certainly, the latter probably, personal friends likewise: and, while both are copious in laudation, Occleve has left us a portrait of Chaucer illuminated on the margin of one of his own MSS. Throughout the fifteenth and early sixteenth century, the chorus of praise from poets, Scotish as well as English, continues unabated and uninterrupted. Caxton, though never executing a complete edition, repeatedly prints part of the works and is followed by others; and, towards the middle of the sixteenth century, in a passage which writers on Chaucer have generally missed, Lilius Giraldus, one of the foremost humanists od Italy, in a survey of European letters, recognises the eminence of Chaucer in English.

VII. Chaucer. 2. Canon of Works. We must, however, now make a further advance, and turn from the Chaucer who figures in records, and the Chaucer who is eulogised as a poet, to that other sense of Chaucer which indicates the work, not the manthe work which gained for the man the reputation and the eulogy. Uncritically accepted, and recklessly amplified during more than three centuries, it has, since the masterly investigations of Tyrwhitt in the latter part of the eighteenth century, been subjected to a process of severe thinning, on principles which will be referred to again. Of external, or rather positive, evidence of early date, we have some, but not a very great dealand that not of the most unexceptionable kind. The help of the MSS. is only partial; for no one of them is accepted by anyone as an autograph, and no one of them contains all the pieces which the severest methods of separation have left to Chaucer. But, in two of these pieces, which themselves as wholes are undoubted, there are lists, ostensibly by the poet, of his own works, and cross-references in other places. The fullest of thesethe list contained in the palinode or retraction at the end of The Parsons Tale and The Canterbury Tales generallyhas, indeed, been suspected by some, apparently without any reason, except that they would rather Chaucer had not repented of things of which, as it seems to them, he had no reason to repent. But, even in case of forgery, the forger would, probably, have taken care to be correct in his attribution. This list contains Troilus; The book [House] of Fame; The book of the XXV Ladies [Legend of Good Women]; The book of the Duchess; The book of St. Valentines day of the Parliament of Birds [Fowls]; The Canterbury Tales themselves, where the repentance extends only to those that sounen into sinne";The book of the Lion; and many others which he cannot remember, while Baece is specified as requiring to repentance. All these exist except The book of the Lion. Further, in the body of the Tales, in the introduction to The Man of Laws Prologue, Chaucer is mentioned by name with an unmistakably autobiographical humility, whether serious or humorous; and the Legend is again acknowledged under the general title of the Seintes Legende of Cupyde. Now, in the Legend itself, there is another list of works claimed by the author in which Troilus, The House of Fame, The book of the Duchess [Death of Blanche], The Parliament of Fowls and Boece reappear, and The Rose, Palamon and Arcite and divers smaller works named and unnamed are added. This, however, does not exhaust the list of contemporary testimony, though it may exhaust that of Chaucers own definite claim to the works specified. Lydgate, besides referring to a mysterious Dant in English, which some have identified with The House of Fame, specifies the A B C, Anelida and Arcite, The Complaint of Mars and the Treatise on the Astrolabe. But there is another witness, a certain John Shirley, who seems to have passed his first youth when Chaucer died, and not to have died himself till the fifteenth century was more than half over. He has left us copies, ascribed by himself to Chaucer, of the three poems last mentioned as ascribed also by Lydgate, and of the minor pieces entitled The Complaint unto Pity, The Complaint of Venus, Fortune, Truth, Gentilesse, Lack of Steadfastness and the Empty Purse . The epistles (or envoys) to Scogan and Bukton, the Rosemounde ballade, The Former Age and one or two scraps are also definitely attributed to the poet in early MSS. VII. Chaucer.

 11. The Canterbury Tales. That he found what he wanted in the scheme of The Canterbury Tales, and that, though 30 these also are unfinished (in fact not half finished according to their apparent design), they are one of the greatest works of literatureeverybody knows. Of the genesis of the scheme itself nobody knows anything. As Dickens says, I thought of Mr. Pickwick: so, no doubt, did Chaucer think of his pilgrims. It has been suggestedand deniedthat Boccaccio, so often Chaucers immediate inspirer, was his inspirer in this case also, by the scheme and framework of The Decameron. It is, indeed, by no means unlikely that there was some connection; but the plan of collecting individually distinct tales, and uniting them by means of a framework of central story, was immemorial in the east; and at least one example of it had been naturalised in Europe, under many different forms, for a couple of centuries, in the shape of the collection known as The Seven Sages. It is not necessary to look beyond this for general suggestion; and the still universal popularity of pilgrimages provided a more special hint, the possibilities of which it certainly did not require Chaucers genius to recognise. These fortuitous associationsmasses of driftwood kept together for a time and then separatedoffer almost everything that the artist, desirous of painting character and manners on the less elaborate and more varied scale, can require. Though we have little of the kind from antiquity, Petronius shows us the germs of the method; and, since medieval literature began to become adult in Italy, it has been the commonest of the common. To what extent Chaucer regarded it, not merely as a convenient vehicle for anything that 31 he might take a fancy to write, but as a useful one to receive anything of the less independent kind that he had already written, is a very speculative question. But the general tendency has been to regard The Knights Tale, that of the Second Nun and, perhaps, others, as examples of this latter process, while an interesting hypothesis has been started that the capital Tale of Gamelynwhich we find mixed up with Chaucers works, but which he cannot possibly have writtenmay have been selected by him and laid by as the subject of rehandling into a Canterbury item. But all this is guesswork; and, perhaps, the elaborate attempts to arrange the tales in a consistent order are a little superfluous. The unquestionable incompleteness of the whole and of some of the parts, the irregular and unsystematic character of the minor prologues and framework-pieces, alike preclude the idea of a very orderly plan, worked out so far as it went in an orderly fashion. In fact, as has been hinted above, such a thing is repugnant to Chaucers genius as manifested not merely here but everywhere. Fortunately, however, he was able to secure a sufficient number of happy moments to 32 draw the main part of the frameworkThe Prologue, in which the plan of the whole is sketched, the important characters delineated and the action launchedwithout gap or lapse. For it would be short-sighted to regard the grouping of certain figures in an undescribed batch as an incompleteness. Some writers of more methodical disposition would, probably, have proceeded from this to work out all the framework part, including, perhaps, even a termination, however much liberty they might reserve to themselves for the inset tales. But this was not Chaucers way. There have been controversies even as to the exact number of tales that he originally promises or suggests: and the incident of the canons yeoman shows that he might very well have reinforced his company in numbers, and have treated them to adventures of divers kinds. In fact, the unknown deviser of the The Pardoner and the Tapster,though what he has produced is quite unlike Chaucer in form, has been much less out of the spirit and general verisimilitude of the whole work than more modern continuators. But it is most probable that the actual frame-stuffso much of it as is genuine (for there are fragments of link in some MSS. which are very

unlikely to be so)was composed by its author in a very haphazard manner, sometimes with the tale he had in his mind, sometimes to cobble on one which he had written more or less independently. The only clear string of connection from first to last is the pervading personality of the host, who gives a unity of character, almost as great as the unity of frame-story, to the whole work, inviting, criticising, admiring, denouncing, but always keeping himself in evidence. As to the connection of origin between individual tales and the whole, more hazardous conjectures in things Chaucerian have been made than that the couplet-verse pieces were all or mostly written or rewritten directly for the work, and that those in other metres and in prose were the adopted part of the family. But this can never be known as a fact. What is certain is that the couplets of The Prologue, which must be of the essence of the scheme, and those of most parts of it where the couplets appear, are the most accomplished, various, thoroughly mastered verse that we find in Chaucer himself or in any English writer up to his time, while they are not exceeded by any foreign model unless it be the terza rima of Dante. A medium which can render, as they are rendered here, the manners-painting of The Prologue, the comic monodrama of The Wife of Bath and the magnificent description of the temple of Mars, has handed in its proofs once for all. Whether, however, it was mere impatience of steady labour on one designed plan, or a 33 higher artistic sense which transcended a mere mechanical conception of unity, there can be no doubt of the felicity of the result. Without the various subject and quality, perhaps even without the varied metre, of the tales, the peculiar effect of Gods plenty (a phrase itself so felicitous that it may be quoted more than once) would not be produced; and the essential congruity of the tales as a whole with the mixed multitude supposed to tell them, would be wholly impossible. Nothing is more remarkable than the intimate connection between the tales and The Prologue. They comment and complete each other with unfailing punctuality. Not only is it of great importance to read the corresponding portion of The Prologue with each tale; not only does each tale supply, as those of the Monk and the Prioress especially, important correction as well as supplement; but it is hardly fantastic to say that the whole Prologue ought to be read, or vividly remembered, before reading each tale, in order to get its full dramatic, narrative and pictorial effect. The sharp and obvious contrasts, such as that of The Knights Tale with the two that follow, though they illustrate the clearness with which the greatest English men of letters appreciated the value of the mixture of tragedy or romance with farce or comedy, are less instructive, and, when properly appreciated, less delightful, than other contrasts of a more delicate kind. Such is the way in which the satire of Sir Thopas is left to the host to bring out; and yet others, where the art of the poet is probably more instinctive than deliberate, such as the facts that nobody is shocked by theThe Wife of Baths Prologue (the interruption by the friar and summoner is of a different character), and (still more incomprehensible to the mere modern) that nobody is bored by The Tale of Melibeus. Of the humour which is so constantly present, it will be more convenient to speak presently in a separate passage. It cannot be missed, though it may sometimes be mistaken. The exquisite and unlaboured pathos which accompanies it, more rarely, but not less consummately, shown, has been acknowledged even by those who, like Matthew Arnold, have failed to appreciate Chaucer as a whole. But, on the nature and constitution of that variety which has also been insisted on, it may be desirable to say something here and at once. It is no exaggeration or flourish, but a sound and informing critical and historical 34 observation, to say that The Canterbury Tales supply a miniature or even microcosm, not only of English poetry up to their date, but of medieval literature, barring the strictly

lyrical element, and admitting a part only of the didactic, but enlarged and enriched by additional doses, both of the personal element and of that general criticism of life which, except in Dante, had rarely been present. The first or Knights Tale is romance on the full, if not on the longest, scale, based on Boccaccios Teseide, but worked out with Chaucers now invariable idiosyncrasy of handling and detail; true to the main elements of fierce wars and faithful loves; possessing much more regular plot than most of its fellows; concentrating and giving body to their rather loose and stock description; imbued with much more individuality of character; and with the presence of the author not obtruded but constantly throwing a shadow. That it is representative of romance in general may escape those who are not, as, perhaps, but a few are, thoroughly acquainted with romance at largeand especially those who do not know the man of the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries regarded the heroes of the Charlemagne and Arthur stories, and those of antiquity, as absolutely on a par. With the high seriousness and variegated decoration of this romance of adventure and 35 quality contrast the two tales that follow, one derived from a known fabliau, the other, possibly, original, but both of the strict fabliau kindthat is to say, the story of ordinary life with a preferably farcical tendency. If the morals are not above those of the time, the nature and the manners of that timethe nature and manners no longer of a poetic Utopia, localised, for the moment, in France or Britain or Greece or Rome or Jerusalem or Ind, but of the towns and villages of Englandare drawn with a vividness which makes their French patterns tame. What threatens a third story of this same kind, The Cooks Tale, is broken off short without any explanation after about fifty linesone MS. asserting that Chaucer maked namore of it. The Man of Laws Tale, the pathetic story of the guiltless and injured Constance, returns to a favourite romance-motive and treats it in rime royalthe most pathetic of metreswhile The Shipman falls back on the fablian and the couplet. But Chaucer was not the man to be monotonous in his variety. The next pair, The Prioresss Tale and Chaucers own Sir Thopas,indeed, keep up the alternation of grave and gay, but keep it up in quite a different manner. Approximately in every way, the beautiful and pathetic story of the innocent victim of Jewish ferocity is an excursion into that hagiology which was closely connected with romance, and which may even, perhaps, be regarded as one of its probable sources. But the burlesque of chivalrous adoration is not of the fabliau kind at all: it is parody of romance itself, or, at least, of its more foolish and more degenerate offshoots. For, be it observed, there is in Chaucer no sign whatever of hostility to, or undervaluation of, the nobler romance in any way, but, on the contrary, great and consummate practice thereof on his own part. Now, parody, as such, is absolutely natural to man, and it had been frequent in the Middle Ages, though, usually, in a somewhat rough and horseplayful form. Chaucers is of the politest kind possible. The verse, though sing-song enough, is of the smoothest variety of romance six or rime coue (664664aabccb); the hero is a very parfit carpet knight; it cannot be proved that, after his long preparation, he did not actually encounter something more terrible than buck and hare; and it is impossible not to admire his determination to be satisfied with nobody less than the Fairy Queen to love par amours. But all the weak points of the weaker romances, such as Torrent and Sir Eglamour, are brought out as pitilessly as politely. It is one of the minor Chaucerian problems (perhaps of as much importance as some that have received more attention), whether the hosts outburst of wrath is directed at the thing as a romance or as a parody of romance. It is certain that uneducated and uncultivated people do not, as a rule, enjoy the finer irony; that it makes them uncomfortable and suspicious of being laughed at themselves. And it is pretty certain that Chaucer was aware of this point also in human nature.

Of The tale of Melibeus something has been said by a hint already. There is little doubt 36 that, in a double way, it is meant as a contrast not merely of grave after gay, but of good, sound, serious stuff after perilously doubtful matter. And it is appreciated accordingly as, in the language of Tennysons farmer, whot a owt to a said. But the monks experience is less happy, and his catalogue of unfortunate princes, again strongly indebted to Boccaccio, is interrupted and complained of, not merely by the irrepressible and irreverent host but by the knight himselfthe pattern of courtesy and sweet reasonableness. The criticism is curious, and the incident altogether not less so. The objection to the histories, as too dismal for a mixed and merry company, is not bad in itself, but a little inconsistent considering the patience with which they had listened to the woes of Constance and the prioresss little martyr, and were to listen (in this case without even the sweetmeat of a happy ending) to the physicians story of Virginia. Perhaps the explanation is meant to be that the monks accumulation of drerimentdisaster heaped on disaster without sufficient detail to make each interestingwas found oppressive: but a subtler reading may not be too subtle. Although Chaucers flings at ecclesiastics have been exaggerated since it pleased the reformers to make arrows out of them, they do exist. He had thought it well to atone for the little gibes in The Prologue at the prioresss coquettishness of way and dress by the pure and unfeigned pathos and piety of her tale. But he may have meant to create a sense of incongruity, if not even of hypocrisy, between the frank worldliness of the monkhis keenness for sport, his objection to pore over books, his polite contempt of Austin, his portly personand his display of studious and goody pessimism. At any rate, another member of the cloth, the nuns priest, restores its popularity with the famous and incomparable tale of the Cock and the Fox, known as far back as Marie de France, and, no doubt, infinitely older, but told here with the quintessence of Chaucers humour and of his dramatic and narrative craftsmanship. There is uncertainty as to the actual order here; but the Virginia story, above referred to, comes in fairly well, and it is noticeable that the doctor, evidently a good judge of symptoms and of his patients powers of toleration, cuts it short. After this, the ancient and grisly but powerful legend of Death and the robbers strikes a new veinin this case of eastern origin, probably, but often worked in the Middle Ages. It comes with a sort of ironic yet avowed impropriety from the pardoner: but we could have done with more of its kind. And then we have one of the most curious of all the divisions, the long and brilliant Wife of Baths Prologue, with her short, and by no means insignificant but, relatively, merely postscript-like, tale. This disproportion, and that of the prologue itself to the others, seems to have struck Chaucer, for he makes the friar comment on it; but it would be quite a mistake to found on this a theory that the length was either designed or undesigned. Vogue la galre seems to have been Chaucers one motto: and he let things grow under his hand, or finished them off briefly and to scale, or abandoned them unfinished, exactly as the fancy took him. Broadly, we may say that the tales display the literary and deliberately artistic side of his genius; the prologues, the observing and dramatic side; but it will not do to push this too hard. The Wife of Baths Prologue, it may be observed, gives opportunity for the display of reading which he loves, as well as for that of his more welcome knowledge of humanity: the tale is like that of Florent in Gower, but the original of neither is known The interruption by the friar of The Wife of Baths Prologue, and a consequent wrangle 37 between him and the summoner, lead to a pair of satiric tales, each gibing at the others profession, which correspond to the earlier duel between the miller and reeve. The friars is a tale of diablerie as well as a lampoon, and of very considerable merit; the summoners is of the coarsest fabliau type with a farcically solemn admixture. There is no comment upon it; and, ifThe Clerks Tale was really intended to follow, the contrast of

its gravity, purity and pathos with the summoners ribaldry is, no doubt, intentional. For the tale, introduced by some pleasant rallying from the host on the clerks shyness and silence, and by a most interesting reference of the clerks own to Francis Petrarch the laureate poet, is nothing less than the famous story of Griselda, following Petrarchs own Latin rendering of Boccaccios Italian. Some rather unwise comment has been made (in a purely modern spirit, though anticipated, as a matter of fact, by Chaucer himself) on the supposed excessive patience of the heroine. But it is improbable that Griseldas ever were, or ever will be, unduly common; and the beauty of the piece on its own scheme and sentiment is exquisite. The indebtedness to Boccaccio is still more direct, and thefabliau element reappears, in The Merchants Tale of January and Maywith its curious fairy episode of Pluto and Proserpine. And then romance comes back in the halftold tale of the squire, the story of Cambuscan bold; which Spenser did not so much continue as branch off from, as the minor romances of adventure branch off from the Arthurian centre; of which Milton regretted the incompleteness in the famous passage just cited; and the direct origin of which is quite unknown, though Marco Polo, the French romance of Clomads and other things may have supplied parts or hints. The romantic tone is kept up in The Franklins Tale of Arviragus and Dorigen, and the squire Aurelius and the philosopher-magician, with their strange but fascinating contest of honour and generosity. This is one of the most poetical of all the tales, and specially interesting in its portrayalside by side with an undoubted belief in actual magicof the extent of medieval conjuring. The Second Nuns Tale or Life of St. Cecily is introduced with no real link, and has, usually, been taken as one of the poets insertions of earlier work. It has no dramatic or personal interest of connection with the general scheme; but this is largely made up by what followsthe tale of the follies and rogueries of alchemy told by the Yeoman of a certain canon, who falls in with the pilgrims at Boughton-underBlee, and whose art and mystery is so frankly revealed by his man that he, the canon, flees away for very sorrow and shame. The exposure which follows is one of the most vivid parts of the whole collection, and shows pretty clearly either that Chaucer had himself been fleeced, or that he had profited by the misfortunes of his friends in that kind. Then the host, failing to get anything out of the cook, who is in the drowsy stage of drunkenness, extracts from the manciple The Tale of the Crow and the reason that he became blackthe whole ending with the parsons prose tale, or, rather, elaborate treatise, of penitence and the seven deadly sins. This, taken from both Latin and French originals, is introduced by a verse-prologue in which occur the lines, famous in literary history for their obvious allusion to alliterative rhythm, But trusteth wel, I am a southren man, I can nat geste rum, ram, ruf by lettre, and ending with the retraction of his earlier and lighter works, explicitly attributed to Chaucer himself, which has been already referred to. Of the attempts already mentioned t distribute the tales according to the indications of place and time which they themselves contain, nothing more need be said here, nor of the moot point whether, according to the hosts words in The Prologue, the pilgrims were to tell four stories eachtwo on the way to Canterbury and two on the return journey or two in allone going and one returning. The only vestige we have of a double tale is in the fragment of the cooks above referred to, and the hosts attempt to get another out of him when, as just recorded, the manciple comes to the rescue. All these matters, together with the distribution into days and groups, are very problematical, and unnecessary, if the hypothesis favoured above be adopted, that Chaucer never got his plan into any final order, but worked at parts of it as the fancy took him. But, before speaking shortly of the general characteristics of his work, it will be to notice briefly the

parts of it not yet particularised. The Parsons Tale, as last mentioned, will connect itself well with the remainder of Chaucers prose work, of which it and The Tale of Melibeusare specimens. It may be observed that, at the beginning of Melibeus, and in the retraction at the end of The Parsons Tale, there are some curious fragments of blank verse. VIII. Shakespeare: Life and Plays. 5. Biographical aspects of the Sonnets. It may, however, be fully admitted that the Sonnets stand in a very different category from that of the plays. Not only does the poet of this kind speak ex professo from his heart, while the dramatist speaks ex professo as an outside observer and representer, but there is no poetry of this kind which approaches Shakespeares Sonnets in apparent vehemence and intensity of feeling. There is even hardly any which mingles, with the expression of that feeling, so many concrete hints, suggesting so broadly a whole romance of personal experience, as they do. How are we to take all this? One of the best known things in Shakespearean studyeven to those who have hardly dabbled in itis that one of the ways in which it has been taken is an endless series of earnest and almost frantic attempts to reconstruct this romance as a history. The personality of the Mr. W. H. to whom the complete edition of 1609 is dedicated, though perhaps the chief, is but one, of the points of dispute. The reality and identity of the fair young man and the dark lady who are by turns or together concerned in the Sonnets themselves come next, and with some enquirers, first; while the incidents and sentiments, expressed, implied, commemorated, in them, have occupied a not small library of discussion, appreciation, attack, defence and so forth. The extravagance of much of this has always been perceptible to impartial observers; and, perhaps the extravagance of most of itexcept the particular theory to which they are themselves inclinedhas been clear enough even to the theorists themselves. Sometimesand of late with especial learning and elaboration by Sidney Leea sort of general caveat has been entered on the ground of the peculiarly traditional and conventional character of sonnet writing, especially at this particular time. Sometimes, all attempts to interpret have been shaken off, angrily, contemptuously or critically, according to temperament. And it may be suspected that some people who would confess it, and more who would not, have always inclined to Hallams curious but courageous wish that Shakespeare had never written them. But he did write themthere is hardly a thing of his as to the authorship of which what with Meress early ascription, the publication with his name seven years before his death and the entire absence of denial, counter-claim, or challenge of any kindwe can be so certain. And, probably, there is no lover of poetry as poetry who would not wish that anything else had never been written, so that these might be saved. But, undoubtedly, the mean is very hard to hit in the interpretation of these poems. Although it is quite certain that the sonnet tradition, starting from Petrarch and continued through generations of Italian, French and English practitioners, had resulted in a vast and complicated common form of expressiona huge mass of publica materies of which the individual builder took his store, sometimes directly from other individuals, sometimes indirectlyit is possible to lay too much stress on this. After all, even if the sonnet thoughts and phrases were as stereotyped as the figures of a pack of cardsand they were not quite thisthere is infinite shuffling possible with a pack of cards, infinite

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varieties of general game and still more of personal play, above all, infinite varieties of purpose and stake. You may play for love in one sense or for love in another and a very different one. You may play for trifles or for your last pennyto show your skill, or merely to win, or to pass the time, or from many other motives. That Shakespeare was the Deschapelles or Clay of sonnet whist is pretty certain. But that he did not play merely for pastime is almost more so to any one who takes the advice of Sidneys Look in thy heart and applies it to reading, not writing. The Sonnets, then, are great poetry, that is to say, in a certain sense, great fiction; and they are intense expressions of feeling, that is to say, in another certain sense, great facts. But to what extent and degree are this fiction and this fact dosed and proportioned? How are we to separate them? How do they colour and react upon one another? Here, no doubt, is the ruband it is a rub which it seems to the present writer impossible to remove or lubricate. Once more, to those who have accustomed themselves really to weigh evidence, it is impossible to accept it either as proved or disproved that Mr. W. H. was Pembroke, or Southampton, or any other friend-patron of Shakespeare, or merely somebody concerned with the publication, or, in fact a personage of any kind in this play. Nor is it possible to extricate, from the obscurity in which, to all appearance designedly, they were involved, either the other dramatis personae or even, save to the vaguest extent, the scenario itself. Friendship and lovebene velle and amare exchange parts, combine, divorce, sublimate or materialise themselves and each other in too Protean a fashion to be caught and fixed in any form. The least unreasonable of all the extravagant exegeses would be that the whole is a phantasmagoria of love itself, of all its possible transformations, exaltations, agonies, degradations, victories, defeats. The most reasonable explanation, perhaps, and certainly not the least Shakespearean, is that it is partly thisbut partly, also, in degree impossible to isolate, a record of actual experience. And it is not unimportant to observe that the Sonnets, a lock in themselves, become a key (Dryden would have recognised the catachresis) to the plays. How far they reveal Shakespeares facts may be doubtful; his method of treating fact, his own or others, is clear in them. VIII. Shakespeare: Life and Plays. 10. Remaining Meres Plays: Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Nights Dream andThe Merchant of Venice. As to the other seven named plays in the Meres list, there are practically no means of 27 certain chronological arrangement. Those who choose to do so may, of course, observe that, in Romeo and Juliet, the nurse says T is since the earthquake now eleven years, discover that there was an earthquake in 1580 and point to 1591. There were, doubtless, also salmons caught in both years. So, also, in dealing with The Merchant of Venice, it has been observed that the queens physician, Lopez, of Jewish descent, was tried and executed in 1594. And there is an oin Lopez and an o in Shylock; likewise an l in both. There were marriages in 1595, and there are marriages in A Midsummer Nights Dream. Let these things appeal to those to whom they do appeal. Others, perhaps, more happily, may be content to abide by Meres and before 1598, except in so far as without positiveness but making suggestions for what they may be worth they rely on the kind of internal evidence already outlined. For reasons of convenience, we may take the three plays just mentioned first, leaving the histories for the moment. For all reasons, Romeo and Juliet seems likely to be the earliest. It has not, indeed, quite 28 such a mixture of metres as A Midsummer Nights Dream has, and the mere picture of young love may easily deceive us. But, on the other hand, there is much of Marlowes

single-moulded line; and, together with many things among the most magnificent in Shakespeare, there are crudities and inequalities of the kind natural to a beginner. On the other hand, such a beginner as this is not frequent in literature; and he is already far, in more than one or two respects, from his beginnings. Already, we have seen something of that astonishing power of vivification which distinguishes him from all his predecessors; already, the characters have begun to take the play into their own hands, as it were, and to work it out, not regardless of the story, by any means, but in a way that gives to that story a tenfold power and interest. But it has been only in touchesthe whole story has never been treated in this way, still less have all the characters undergone this peculiar transforming influence. In Romeo and Juliet, much further advance has been made. As beforeas alwaysShakespeare takes a given story and does not vary the mere incidents much, or add very much to them. But the personages become persons; and this personality extends throughout the drama. Independently of Romeo and Juliet themselvesthe very opposites and contradictions of the stock hero and the stock heroineof Mercutio and the nurse, the whole houses of Montague and Capulet almost down to Antony and Potpan, are alive. There is hardly a figure in the play except, perhaps, the unfortunate count Paris, to whom Shakespeare has not communicated this vivacity: and Paris had to be a contrast to Romeo. Here, too, not for the first timefor we have seen it in Loves Labours Lost, in The Two Gentlemen and even in Titus Andronicusbut in far larger measure and intenser form, is the splendid poetry which Shakespeare puts at the service of the drama, as (save in a few flashes of Marlowe and Peele) it had not been put since the great days of Greek tragedy. There is hardly less of this in A Midsummer Nights Dream; though, as comports with comedy, it is of a less poignant and transporting nature. And this play, as was remarked above, is more of an olio of metres. But, in certain respects, it still marks progress. If not in all parts, in the whole, it is the most original of Shakespeares plays in point of subject up to this time; in fact, it is one of the most original of all in that respect. And this subject is worked up into action with a skill not yet displayedindeed, Shakespeare here depends more on incident than on character. It is not always fully recognised how artfully the several motives of the Theseus and Hippolyta storythe quarrel of Oberon and Titania, the fortunes of the lovers and the tedious brief playwork into each other and work out each other. Popular as fairy mythology had, in a manner, been, nobody had made anything like this use of it; it is only necessary to name Gloriana and Titania, in order to prove any rapprochement of Spenser and Shakespeare on this head to be out of the question. Puck was feared in field and town long before Shakespeare; but Shakespeares Puck is something very different from a mere lob of spirits. The multiplicity of the interests and beauties in this short play is almost bewildering: there is the stuff of half a dozen poetical comedies in it, yet not in the least confusedly disposed. 19. His special gifts: poetic phrasing, dramatic construction and character-drawing. Except from the historical side, however, it is unnecessary to dwell on this part of the 67 matter. What establishes the greatness of Shakespeare is the substance of Shakespeares work. Take and read is the very best advice that can be given in reference to him. It is not necessary, nor at all desirable, to disparage at least part of the enormous labour that has been spent upon him by others. But it is quite certain that anyone who, with fair education and competent wits, gives his days and nights to the reading of the actual plays will be a far better judge than anyone who allows himself to be distracted by comment and controversy. The important thing is to get the Shakespearean atmosphere, to feel the breath of the Shakespearean spirit. And it is doubtful whether it is not much safer to get

this first, and at first hand, than to run the risk of not getting it while investigating the exact meaning of every allusion and the possible date of every item. The more thoroughly and impartially this spirit is observed and extracted, the more will it be found to consist in the subjection of all things to what may be called the romantic process of presenting them in an atmosphere of poetical suggestion rather than as sharply defined and logically stated. But this romantic process is itself characterised and pervaded by a philosophical depth and width of conception of life which is not usually associated with romance. And it is enlivened and made actual by the dramatic form which, whether by separable or inseparable accident, the writer has adopted. Thus, Shakespeareas no one had done before him, and as people have done since far more often in imitation of him than independentlyunites the powers and advantages of three great forms: the romance (in verse or prose), pure poetry and the drama. The first gives him variety, elasticity, freedom from constraint and limit. The second enables him to transport. The third at once preserves his presentations from the excessive vagueness and vastness which nondramatic romance invites, and helps him to communicate actuality and vividness. It is in the examination of his treatment, now of individual incidents and personages, 68 now of complicated stories, by the aid of these combined instruments, that the most profitable, as well as the most delightful, study of Shakespeare consists. But there is no doubt that, as a result of this study, two things emerge as his special gifts. The first is the coinage of separate poetic phrases; the second is the construction and getting into operation of individual and combined character. In a third pointthe telling of a story or the construction of a dramahe is far greater than is often allowed. After his earliest period, there is very little in any play that does not directly bear upon the main plot in his sense of that word. Even in so very long, so very complicated, a piece as Hamlet, it is almost impossible to cut without lossto the intelligent and unhasting reader, at any rate, if not to the eager or restless spectator. But plot, in his sense, means, mainlynot entirelythe evolution of character; and so we may return to that point. Two features strike us in Shakespearean character drawing which are not so prominent 69 in any other. The one is its astonishing prodigality, the other its equally astonishing thoroughness, regard being had to the purpose of the presentation. On this latter head, reference may be made to the examination of the character of Claudius above given; but it would be perfectly easy to supplement this by scores, nay, literally, by hundreds, of others, were there space for it. Shakespeare never throws away a character; but, at the same time, he never scamps one that is in any way necessary or helpful to his scheme. But this thoroughness, of course, shows itself more fully still in his great personages. It has been almost a stumbling-blockthe bounty of the describing detail being so great that interpreters have positively lost themselves in it. Nor was this probably unintended; for Shakespeare knew human nature too well to present the narrow unmistakable type character which belongs to a different school of drama. His methods of drawing character are numerous. The most obvious of them is the soliloquy. This has been found fault with as unnaturalbut only by those who do not know nature. The fact is that the soliloquy is so universal that it escapes observers who are not acute and active. Everybody, except persons of quite abnormal hebetude, talks to himself as he walks by himself, and thus to himself says he. According to temperament and intellect, he is more or less frank with himself; but his very attempts to deceive himself are more indicative of character than his bare actions. The ingenious idea of the palace of truth owes all its ingenuity and force to this fact. Now, Shakespeare has constituted his work, in its soliloquies, as a vast palace of truth, in which those characters who are important enough are compelled thus to reveal themselves. Nothing contributes quite so much to the solidity and completeness of his

system of developing plot by the development of character; nor does anything display more fully the extraordinary power and range, the largeness and universality, of his own soul. For the soliloquy, like all weapons or instruments which unite sharpness and weight, is an exceedingly difficult and dangerous one to wield. It may very easily be overdone in the novel (where there are not the positive checks on it which the drama provides) even more than in the drama itself. It is very difficult to do well. And there is a further danger even for those who can do it well and restrain themselves from overdoing it: that the soliloquies will represent not the character but the author; that they will assist in building up for us, if we desire it, the nature of Brown or Jones, but will not do very much for the construction or revelation of that of Browns or Joness heroes and heroines. Shakespeare has avoided or overcome all these points. His soliloquies, or set speeches of a soliloquial character, are never, in the mature plays, overdone; they are never futile or unnatural; and, above all, they are so variously adapted to the idiosyncrasies of the speakers that, while many people have tried to distil an essence of Shakespeare out of them, nobody has succeeded. From Thackerays famous parabases (even when they are put in the mouths of his characters as they sometimes are) we learn very little more about these characters than he has told us or will tell us in another way; but we learn to know himself almost infallibly. From Shakespeares soliloquies we hardly see him even in a glass darkly; but we see the characters who are made to utter them as plain as the handwriting upon the wall. It remains, before concluding with a skeleton table of dates and facts which may serve to vertebrate this chapter, to consider three points of great, though varying, importance Shakespeares morality in the wide sense, his versification and his style. 21. Universality of his style. Equally matter subject to opinion, but matter much more difficult to pronounce upon with even tolerable distinctness and trenchancy, is the feature of style. It is, perhaps, in this point that Shakespeare is most distinguished from the other greatest writers. He has mannerisms; but they are mostly worn as clothesadopted or discarded for fashions or seasons sake. He has no mannerism in the sense of natural or naturalised gesture which is recognisable at once. When we say that a phrase is Shakespearean, it is rather because of some supreme and curiously simple felicity than because of any special hall-mark, such as exists in Milton and even in Dante. Even Homer has more mannerism than Shakespeare, whose greatest utterancesProsperos epilogue to the masque, Cleopatras death words, the crispest sayings of Beatrice and Touchstone, the passion of Lear, the reveries of Hamlet, others too many even to cataloguebear no relation to each other in mere expression, except that each is the most appropriate expression for the thought. Euphuism and word play, of course, are very frequentshockingly frequent, to some people, it would seem. But they are merely things that the poet plays atwhether for his own amusement or his readers, or both, is a question, perhaps of some curiosity, but of no real importance. The well ascertained and extraordinary copiousness of his vocabulary is closely connected with this peculiar absence of peculiarity in his style. The writer given to mannerism necessarily repeats, if not particular words, particular forms of phrasesnotoriously, in some cases, particular words also. The man who, in all cases, is to suit his phrase to his meaning, not his meaning to his phrase, cannot do this. Further, Shakespeare, like almost all good English writers, though to the persistent displeasure of some good English critics, coins words with the utmost freedom, merely observing sound analogy. He shows no preference for English over Latin vocabulary nor any the other way. But, no doubt, he appreciates, and he certainly employs, the advantages offered by their contrast, as in the capital instance of

The multitudinous seas incarnadine Making the green one red, where all but the whole of the first line is Aristotles xenon and the whole of the next clause hiskyrion. In fact, it is possible to talk about Shakespeares style for ever, but impossible in any way to define it. It is practically allstyle, as a certain condiment is called allspice; and its universality justifies the Buffonian definitioneven better, perhaps, that earlier one of Shakespeares obscure Spanish contemporary Alfonso Garcia Matamoros as habitus orationis a cujusque natura fluens. 23. Shakespearean Blank Verse: management of metre, pause, trisyllabic substitution and the redundant syllable. But the third peculiarity which distinguishes the accomplished blank verse of 78 Shakespeare is the most important of all. It is the masteryon good principles of English prosody from the thirteenth century onwards, but in the teeth of critical dicta in his own day and for centuries to followof trisyllabic substitution. By dint of this, the cadence of the line is varied, and its capacity is enlarged, in the former case to an almost infinite, in the latter to a very great, extent. Once more, the decasyllabic norm is keptis, in fact, religiously observed. But the play of the verse, the spring and reach and flexibility of it, are as that of a good fishing-rod to that of a brass curtainpole. The measure is never really looseit never in the least approaches doggerel. But it has absolute freedom: no sense that it wishes to convey, and no sound that it wishes to give as accompaniment to that sense, meet the slightest check or jar in their expression. In the latest division, one of the means of variation which had been used even before 79 Shakespeare, and freely by him earlier, assumes a position of paramount and, perhaps, excessive importance, which it maintains in successors and pupils like Fletcher, and which, perhaps, carries with it dangerous possibilities. This is what is sometimes called the feminine, or, in still more dubious phrase, the weak, ending; but what may be better, and much more expressively, termed the redundant syllable. That, with careful, and rather sparing, use it adds greatly to the beauty of the measure, there is no doubt at all: the famous Florizel and Perdita scene in The Winters Tale is but one of many instances. But it is so convenient and so easy that it is sure to be abused; and abused it was, not, perhaps, by Shakespeare, but certainly by Fletcher. And something worse than mere abuse, destruction of the measure itself, and the substitution of an invertebrate mass of lines that are neither prose nor verse, remained behind. But this has nothing to do with Shakespeare, who certainly cannot be held responsible for the mishaps of those who would walk in his circle without knowing the secrets of his magic. Of that magic his manipulation of all verse that he triedsonnet, stanza, couplet, lyric, what notis, perhaps, the capital example, but it reaches its very highest point in regard to blank verse. And, after all, it may be wrong to use the word capital even in regard to this. For he is the caputthroughout, in conception and in execution, in character and in storynot an unnatural, full-blown marvel, but an instance of genius working itself up, on precedent and by experiment, from promise to performance and from the part to the whole.

X. Shakespeare:

Poems.

2. Dedication of the Sonnets. There is nothing, therefore, so far, in what may be called the external and bibliographical history of the work, which justifies any special diversion from the study of it as literature. But, beyond all question, there is perilous stuff of temptation away from such study in the matter of the Sonnets.And, unfortunately, Thomas Thorpe stuck a burning fuse in the live shell of this matter by prefixing some couple of dozen words of dedication: To the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets Mr. W. H. all happiness and that eternity promised by our ever-living poet wisheth the well-wishing adventurer in setting forth T. T. It would be rash to guess, and impossible to calculate, how many million words of comment these simple nouns and verbs have called forth. The present writer has never seen any reason to abandon what has been, on the whole, the view most generally accepted by those who have some knowledge of Elizabethan literature and language, that this may be translated T. T., publisher of these sonnets, wishes to the sole inspirer of them, Mr. W. H., the happiness and eternity promised by Shakespeare. Moreover, though feeling no particular curiosity about the identification of Mr. W. H., he has never seen any argument fatal to that identification with William Herbert, earl of Pembroke, which has also been usual. He admits, however, the possibility that W. H. may be designedly inverted for H. W., and that this may be Henry Wriothesly, earl of Southampton, which would bring the three great poem units into line. Nor, without attempting an impossible summary of theories and arguments on this head, must we omit to mention that there is one, commanding the support of Sidney Lee, to the effect that Mr. W. H.s begetting had nothing whatever to do with the inspiration of theSonnets; and that he himself was merely a sort of partner in their commercial production. And so, having solidly based the account of the poems on known facts and known facts only, let us pursue it in reference to their actual contents and literary character. 5. The Sonnets: the problem of their interpretation. Almost everyone who has any interest in literature is more or less acquainted with the interminable theories and disputes which have arisen on the subject of the Sonnets. Yet it should not be very difficult for anyone who has some intelligence to divest himself sufficiently of this acquaintance to enable him to read them as if they were a new book uncommented, unintroduced, with nothing but its own contents to throw light or darkness upon it. If they are thus read, in the original order (for long after Shakespeares death this order, purposely or not, was changed, though modern editions usually, and rightly, disregard this change), certain things will strike the careful reader at once. The first is that, by accident or design, the pieces composing the series are sharply, but very unequally, divided in subject, design being, on further inspection, pretty clearly indicated by the fact that the dividing point, sonnet 126, is not a sonnet at all, but a douzain. In this reading, it will, also, have become clear that the direct and expressed object of most of the first and far larger batch is a man, and that those of this batch which do not specify person or sex fall in with the others well enough; while the main object of the last and smaller batch is a woman. The first score or so of the earlier group, though containing expressions of passionate affection, are mainly, if not wholly, occupied with urging the person addressed to marry. Both batches contain repeated complaintthough it is not always exactly complaintthat the friend has betrayed the poet with the mistress and the mistress with the friend. (It is, however, perhaps possible to argue that the identity of friend and mistress in the two batches is not proved to demonstration.) A large portion of the wholeperhaps nearly a thirdis full of that half abstract, and almost impersonal, meditation on the joys and sorrows of love which is the special matter of the

sonnet. One or two special and particular points, however, emergesuch as the indication of jealousy of other poets in respect of the friend, expressions of dissatisfaction with the writers public means of living or profession (which, most probably, is the actors, but, it must be observed, far from necessarily so), and, in regard to the mistress, special, and repeated, insistence on the fact of her being a dark lady with black eyes and hair. There is a good deal of wordplay on the name Will, which, of course, it would be absurd to overlook, but which had rather less significance in those days than it would have now.