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CAXTON AS AUTHOR

271

prodigious industry sustained for fourteen years. The little we know of Caxton personally seems to indicate that he was in addition an active member of society, well esteemed by his fellow citizens. At one time he audited the parochial accounts. He died at some uncertain date in 1491, and was interred in St. Margaret's, Westminster, where his memory is honoured with a tablet and a stained glass

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window.

Caxton's literary gifts were not inconsiderable. His experience of life, both as merchant and courtier, had been of a nature to enlarge his mind, and endow him with fluency of expression and ease of manner. These qualities are apparent when he speaks for himself, as in his prefaces. As a translator he did much to enrich the language, something also to alloy it by an over liberal employment of French words and idioms, hardly to be avoided under his circumstances. He did not pique himself upon fidelity to his original, nor was it requisite that he should, as he was not dealing with masterpieces, and had neither the ambition nor the capacity to produce a monument of fine English like Lord Berners' Froissart. He frequently paraphrases and interpolates, but his versions are not really the worse. That he could appreciate the literary rank of a great writer is shown by his enthusiastic praise of Chaucer which we are about to quote; even though, except by the slight references to "metre" (stanzas) and rhyme" (heroic couplets), it would hardly have been discovered that he was speaking of a poet. Of Chaucer's services to the language he writes much as a critic of the eighteenth century might have written about Dryden. When his orthography is

From the "XV. O'es," circa 1491

The fifteen prayers, so called from the fact of their all commencing

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with the letter O

Caxton as author and critic

Afær dyuezse Werkes made/ tianslated and achieued/ha uyng noo Werke in hanæ. I sittyng in my studye Wheœ as lage many dyuerse paunflettis and lookys, happened that to my hand cam a lytyl booke in frenshe. Which late tas translated out of latyy by some noble clerke of fzauce whi che looke is named Enepos/ max in latyn by that noble poet & grew clerke Byrgyle/ Which woke I salbe ouez and wow thezin. Holb after the generall æstruccyon of the gæ & Trope, Eneas pazæd krynge his olæ faær anchises Bpon his sholdres/his lityl fon yolus on his honæ,his wy Fe Depth moche other people fololbpnge/and hold he shopped and æpa2œd wyth alle thystorye of his aduentures that he had er he cam to the achicuement of his conquest of ptalye as all a longe shall & shelbed in this present woke. In whi che looke I had got playfyz.by cause of the faye and hone st wzmes & Words in frenshe/ Whyche I neuer salbe to fos relyke,ne none so playfaunt ne so wel ordred which foo, ke as me semed shold be moche requpsyte to noble men to see as wel for the eloquence as the historpes/ Holh wel that many honærd yerys passed was the says looke of enews Wyth other Werkes mad and krned dayly in soolis specyal: ly in ytalye & other places/which historpe the fayd Sygyle max in metœe! And WhaŋI had aduysed me in this sayd lo ke .I delplered and concluded to translate it in to englyssße And forthwyth toke a penne e ynke and wowote a leef or tbeyne /Whyche Jouezsalbe agayy to covecte itsAnd Whã I falbe the fayz & straunge termes therin/I wußted that it holæ not please some gentylmen which lace blamed me sayeng ý in my translacpons I had ouez curyous termes Whiche coude not be Bnæstand of comyy peple / and æsiœd me de Bse old and homely termes in my translacyons, and

A Page from "The Boke of Eneydos," printed by Caxton in 1490

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CAXTON AS AUTHOR

273 modernised it will be seen how nearly he approaches the standard English of our day:

Great thanks, laud, and honour ought to be given unto the clerks, poets, and historiographs, that have written many noble books of wisdom, of the lives, passions, and miracles, of holy saints, of histories of noble and famous acts and feats, and of the chronicles with the beginning of the creation of the world unto this present time, by which we be daily informed and have knowledge of many things of whom we should not have known if they had not left us their monuments written. Among whom and in especial to-fore all other we ought to give a singular laud unto that noble and great philosopher Geoffry Chaucer, the which for his ornate writing in our tongue may well have the name of a laureate poet. For to-fore that he by his labour embellished, ornated, and made fair our English, in this royame was had rude speech and incongrue, as yet it appeareth by old books, which at this day ought not to have place nor be compared among us to his beauteous volumes and adornate writings, of whom he made many books and treatises of many a noble history as well in metre as in rhyme and prose, and them so craftily made that he comprehended his matters in short, quick and high sentences, eschewing prolixity, casting away the chaff of superfluity, and showing the picked grain of sentence uttered by crafty and sugared eloquence. Of whom among all other of his books I purpose to imprint by the grace of God his Tales of Canterbury, in which I find many a noble history of every estate and degree, first rehearsing the conditions and the array of each of them as proper as possible is to be said, and after these tales, which be of noblesse, wisdom, gentleness, mirth, and also of very holiness and virtue, wherein he finisheth this said book, which book I have diligently overseen and duly examined to the end that it be made according to his own making. For I find many of the said books which writers have abridged and many things left out; and in some places have set certain verses that he never made nor set in his book, of which books so incorrect was one brought to me six years passed which I supposed had been very true and correct. And according to the same I did to imprint a certain number of them, which anon were sold to many and divers gentlemen, of whom one gentleman came to me and said that this book was not according in many places to the book Geoffry Chaucer had made. To whom I answered that I had made it according to my copy, and that by me was nothing added or minished. Then he said he knew a book which his father had and much loved, that was very true and according to his [Chaucer's] own first book by him made, and said more, if I would imprint it again he would get me the same book for a copy, howbeit he wist well that his father would not gladly depart from it.

Caxton proceeds to describe how, the more correct manuscript being courteously placed at his disposition by the gentleman's father, he amended his former edition by its aid. The probable date of this edition is 1478, and that of the improved one 1484. The episode shows how faulty MSS. were becoming when printing appeared to stop further degeneracy, but also in some cases to perpetuate errors already existing. He was succeeded by his apprentice, Wynkyn de Worde, and Richard Pynson about the same time took up the business of his rival, William de Machlinia. We part from him with the remark that in his day literature was first officially recognised as a meet subject for encouragement by Government by a proclamation of Richard the Third repealing duties on the importation of books, and allowing them to be sold in England by foreign booksellers.

VOL. I

S

Scotch and

ture

CHAPTER IX

THE LITERATURE OF SCOTLAND TO THE END OF THE
FIFTEENTH CENTURY-THE BALLAD

We have now arrived at the brink of the great revival of literature which has ballad litera- continued to our own times. The chief barrier between writer and reader has been broken down by the invention of printing, and henceforth the stream of literary production is to be continuous, and literature is to acquire more and more influence as an agency in the affairs of the world. Hitherto, as we have had ample opportunity of observing, the course of literature has been liable to such interruptions as to render it difficult of treatment as a whole but henceforth every people with pretensions to civilisation has a continuous literary history. The wish to preserve as much continuity as possible in the record of British literature has induced us to reserve for special treatment two departments clearly demarcated from the rest of the subject. These are the literature of Scotland and ballad literature, both originating and attaining a considerable development before the introduction of printing, and therefore to be dealt with ere we trace the consequences of the greatest intellectual revolution hitherto effected by a material process. This parenthesis involves no considerable retrogression in our narrative, as literature hardly existed in Scotland before Barbour in the middle of the fourteenth century: and the ballad, though already on the lips of the people, rarely enlisted the pen of the scribe until an even later date.

English and
Scotch nation-

identical

Before entering upon the history of Scottish literature, it may be necessary ality virtually to remove some misconceptions. We are accustomed to regard the Scotland prior to the accession of James I. as a foreign country, but in fact, however politically estranged, the Lowland Scotch, with whose literature alone we are concerned, were in blood and character as English as any of the dwellers to the south of the Tweed. There was indeed a large Celtic admixture in the Western Lowlands, where British chieftains had for a considerable period maintained their independence, but this has for centuries ceased to be recognisable. The Anglian colonisation of the Eastern Lowlands is manifested by the fact that the Scottish metropolis itself bears the name (Edwin's burgh) given to it by the Northumbrian monarch who made it his capital in the seventh century. At subsequent periods, indeed, the Eastern Lowlands were conquered, now by Celts, now by Danes, but the close resemblance of the Northumbrian dialect to the Scotch shows how slightly the composition of the population was affected by these political changes. "The Danes chose

ENGLISH LITERATURE IN SCOTLAND

275

Deira, not Bernicia; their traces are found in Yorkshire, not in Northumberland." Cumberland for a long time belonged to Scotland, the English Kings did not finally renounce their claims upon the Lothians until 1016, but neither the linguistic nor the ethnological character of the districts was affected except by the absorption of the Celtic element. Meanwhile a powerful Celtic monarchy was growing up in central Scotland, formed by the fusion of the Picts, an ancient people of uncertain extraction, but entirely Celticised, with the Scoti or immigrants from Scotia, i.e., Ireland. But the monarch under whom this kingdom was finally consolidated, Malcolm Canmore, was half an Englishman in virtue of his mother; his queen, a princess of the royal family of Hungary, was half Saxon also; and ere long a succession of matrimonial alliances made his successors Anglo-Normans. When, at the beginning of the twelfth century, King Edgar made Edinburgh his capital, the Celtic element retired definitively into the background. The institutions of the kingdom became substantially Anglo-Norman; and, except in the illiterate Highlands, Saxon speech prevailed so thoroughly that the Scotch poets describe their language as “English." The first author who professed to write “Scottish” was Gavin Douglas, under the influence of the anti-English feeling generated by the disaster of Flodden Field.

literature

The slow literary progress of Scotland in comparison with England is Slow progress solely attributable to external causes-the poor and unpeopled condition of of Scotch the country, the perpetual feuds, foreign and intestine, and the absence of any foundation for a literary superstructure. England possessed a national literature before the Conquest, which although almost obliterated was capable of revival: she also had an imported literature which for long supplied its place, and by which, when the time for fusion came, it was enormously enriched. Scotland had no ancient indigenous literature for modern writers to develop, and no imported literature to rouse the emulation and stimulate the ambition of her own children. The themes of her poets were frequently national, but their execution and even their language were English. The best of them continually remind us of Chaucer, but not until near the close of the fifteenth century do they seem in any measure to prefigure Burns or Scott. No one thought of attempting prose literature. Scotland in the thirteenth century produced powerful minds in Michael Scott and Duns Scotus, but they wrote in Latin on subjects infinitely remote from the comprehension of ordinary readers. No one seemed to have an idea that the ordinary speech could be fit for anything beyond the transaction of the ordinary affairs of life.

Many, perhaps most, ancient literatures claim a patriarchal founder, who from some points of view wears the semblance of a fable and from others that of a fact. Scotland has her Orpheus or Linus in THOMAS of ERCILDOUNE, called also THOMAS the RHYMER, who does not indeed precede her Ennius, John Barbour, by any immense interval of time, but is still sufficiently in advance of him to fulfil the requisites of a venerable ancestor, could we but be sure that he was indeed an author. His actual existence is unquestionable. Ercildoune

Thomas the
Rhymer

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