Part 15

Recent inventions have dealt some heavy blows at time and space, but have not as yet done much towards abolishing national distinctions of character. One result of them, as melancholy as it is inevitable, is the slow vanishing of the picturesque. The period of general dead-level has set in; old customs have fallen into abeyance and old costumes are being laid aside. The “Ranz des Vaches” no longer echoes among the Swiss mountains; the Spanish _sombrero_ has been discarded in favor of a chimney-pot hat; the Hungarian nobles reserve their magnificent frippery for rare state occasions, and the black coat, deemed so significant a sign of the times by Alfred de Musset, is everywhere replacing the gay clothing of a less material era. But, for all that, mastiffs are mastiffs and spaniels spaniels. Democracy claims to be cosmopolitan: perhaps some of us may live long enough to see what the boast is worth. If it be permitted to ground a prophecy upon the lessons of history, we may say that co-operation is possible only so long as interests are identical, and that the mainspring of all human collective action is, and will be, nothing more or less than that selfishness which, as Lord Beaconsfield once told us, is another word for patriotism.—_Cornhill Magazine._

FRENCH DUELLING.

BY H. R. HAWEIS.

One of the liveliest little duels we have lately heard of is that which took place in October between the journalist M. Rochefort and Captain Fournier. It appears that the gallant captain felt himself aggrieved by some free expressions in the “Intransigeant,” challenged the editor, and both belligerents went out with swords, whereupon Rochefort pinked Fournier, Fournier slashed Rochefort, both lost a teaspoonful or so of blood, and honor appears to have been satisfied.

In the eyes of the average Briton there is always something absurd about a duel. He either thinks of the duel in “The Rivals,” as it is occasionally witnessed at Toole’s theatre, or of Mark Twain’s incomparable “affair” with M. Gambetta; but it seldom occurs to any one in this country to think of a duel as being honorable to either party, or capable of really meeting the requirements of two gentlemen who may happen to have a difference of opinion.

The Englishman kicks his rival in Pall Mall, canes him in Piccadilly, or pulls his nose and calls him a liar at his club. He is then had up for assault and battery, his grievance is well aired in public, he is consoled by the sympathy of an enlarged circle of friends, pays a small fine, and leaves the court “without a stain upon his character.” If, on the other hand, his rival is in the right, the damages are heavy, and his friends say, “Pity he lost his temper and made a fool of himself,” and there the matter ends. In either case outraged justice or wounded honor is attended to at the moderate cost of a few sovereigns, a bloody nose, or a smashed hat.

We think on the whole it is highly creditable to England that this should be so. The abolition of duelling by public opinion is a distinct move up in the scale of civilisation.

Perhaps we forget how very recent that “move up” is.

When it ceased to be the fashion to wear swords in the last century, pistols were substituted for these personal encounters. This made duelling far less amusing, more dangerous, and proportionally less popular. The duel in England received practically its _coup de grâce_ with the new Articles of War of 1844, which discredited the practice in the army by offering gentlemen facilities for public explanation, apology, or arbitration in the presence of their commanding officer. But previous to this “the duel of satisfaction” had assumed the most preposterous forms. Parties agreed to draw lots for pistols and to fight, the one with a loaded, the other with an unloaded weapon.

This affair of honor (?) was always at short distances and “point-blank,” and the loser was usually killed. Another plan was to go into a dark room together and commence firing. There is a beautiful and pathetic story told of two men, the one a “kind” man and the other a “timid” man, who found themselves unhappily bound to fight, and chose the dark-room duel. The kind man had to fire first, and, not wishing to hurt his adversary, groped his way to the chimney-piece and, placing the muzzle of his pistol straight up the chimney, pulled the trigger, when, to his consternation, with a frightful yell down came his adversary the “timid” man, who had selected that fatal hiding-place.

Another grotesque form was the “medical duel,” one swallowing a pill made of bread, the other swallowing one made of poison. When matters had reached this point, public opinion not unnaturally took a turn for the better, and resolved to stand by the old obsolete law against duelling, whilst enacting new bye-laws for the army, which of course reacted powerfully, with a sort of professional authority, upon the practice of bellicose civilians.

The duel was originally a mere trial of _might_, like our prize fight; it was so used by armies and nations, as in the case of David and Goliath, or as when Charles V. challenged Charlemagne to single combat. But in mediæval times it got to be also used as a test of _right_, the feeling of a judicial trial by ordeal entering into the struggle between two persons, each claiming right on his side.

The judicial trial by ordeal was abandoned in the reign of Elizabeth, but the practice of private duelling has survived in spite of adverse legislation, and is exceedingly popular in France down to the present day. The law of civilised nations has, however, always been dead against it. In 1599 the parliament of Paris went so far as to declare every duellist a rebel to his majesty; nevertheless, in the first eighteen years of Henri Quatre’s reign no fewer than 4,000 gentlemen are said to have perished in duels, and Henri himself remarked, when Creyin challenged Don Philip of Savoy, “If I had not been the king I would have been your second.” Our ambassador, Lord Herbert, at the court of Louis XIII., wrote home that he hardly ever met a French gentleman of repute who had not either killed his man or meant to do so! and this in spite of laws so severe that the two greatest duellists of the age, the Count de Boutteville and the Marquis de Beuron, were both beheaded, being taken _in flagrante delicto_.

Louis XIV. published another severe edict in 1679, and had the courage to enforce it. The practice was checked for a time, but it received a new impulse after the close of the Napoleonic wars. The dulness of Louis Philippe’s reign and the dissoluteness of Louis Napoleon’s both fostered duelling. The present “opportunist” Republic bids fair to outbid both. You can hardly take up a French newspaper without reading an account of various duels. Like the suicides in Paris, and the railway assaults in England, duels form a regular and much appreciated item of French daily news.

It is difficult to think of M. de Girardin’s shooting dead poor Armand Carell—the most brilliant young journalist in France—without impatience and disgust, or to read of M. Rochefort’s exploit the other day without a smile.

The shaking hands in the most cordial way with M. Rochefort, the compliments on his swordsmanship, what time the blood flowed from an ugly wound, inflicted by him as he was mopping his own neck, are all so many little French points (of honor?) which we are sure his challenger, Captain Fournier, was delighted to see noticed in the papers. No doubt every billiard-room and café in Paris gloated over the details, and the heroes, Rochefort and Fournier, were duly fêted and dined together as soon as their respective wounds were sufficiently healed.

Meanwhile John Bull reads the tale and grunts out loud, “The whole thing is a brutal farce and the ‘principals’ are no better than a couple of asses.”

Now, admitting that there are some affronts which the law cannot and does not take cognisance of, in these days such affronts are very few. That terrible avenger, public opinion, is in this nineteenth century a hundred-handed and a hundredfold more free, powerful, and active than it used to be, before the printing-press, and, I may add, railways, telegraphs, and daily newspapers. But of all cases to which duelling, by the utmost stretch of honorable license, could be applied—a mere press attack is perhaps the least excusable.

Here are the French extolling the freedom of the English press by imitating—or trying to imitate—English independence and the right to speak and act and scribble _sans gêne_—and it turns out that an honorable member in the Senate cannot lose his temper, or a journalist write a smart article, without being immediately requested to fight. “Risum teneatis, amici!” and this is the people who think themselves fit for liberty, let alone equality and fraternity! (save the mark!)

The old town clerk at Ephesus in attempting to compose a dispute of a rather more serious character some eighteen hundred years ago, between a certain Jew and a Greek tradesman, spoke some very good sense when he appealed to both disputants thus: “If Demetrius have a matter against any man the law is open, and there are deputies: let them implead one another.”

Next time M. Rochefort pokes fun at Captain Fournier in the “Intransigeant,” we advise the captain, instead of pinking that witty but scurrilous person, to try the law of libel. If he wins he will get money in his purse, which is better than an ugly gash in his side; if he loses he will go home to consider his ways and perchance amend them, under the stimulus of a just public rebuke—a sadder and perhaps a _wiser_ man: that, indeed, both he and Rochefort might easily be.—_Belgravia._

JOHN WYCLIFFE: HIS LIFE AND WORK.

The quincentenary of the death of John Wycliffe occurring on the 31st day of this month (December 1884), invites us to review the work with which the name of Wycliffe is associated and identified. “John Wycliffe,” says Dean Hook, “may be justly accounted one of the greatest men that our country has produced. He is one of the very few who have left the impress of their minds, not only on their own age, but on all time,”[8] He is also one of the few who are known to us only in their work, and by their work. For it may be said that, apart from Wycliffe’s work, we know nothing of the man. His work is his memorial: in it he lives.

Wycliffe’s work may be viewed in its relation to the University—Oxford; to the Crown—the national independence; to the hierarchy—the clergy; and to the laity—the people. According to this method of survey and review, Wycliffe appears successively in history as a student and scholastic disputant; as a politician and patriot; as a theologian and reformer; and as a Christian evangelist and preacher of grace, righteousness, and truth. These successive phases of Wycliffe’s work correspond with the events of his life; and they indicate the progress of the great work to which Wycliffe had dedicated his powers. This, again, implies that it was only step by step—little by little—that Wycliffe’s views assumed that form in which they were developed and expressed in the later years of his life.

It is impossible to determine either the date of Wycliffe’s first admission to Oxford or the college in which he first studied. Of his early life at the university, as of his earlier life at home, we know nothing. According to the statements of some of his biographers, Wycliffe was born in the year 1324, in the hamlet of Spreswell, near old Richmond, in Yorkshire. In 1340, he went to Oxford, and was one of the first commoners received into Queen’s college—an institution opened that year for the first time. After a short attendance in Queen’s, he joined himself to Merton, and became a fellow of that famous College. The historian Fuller says that Wycliffe was a graduate of Merton, but he makes no mention of his having been at an earlier time connected with Queen’s College. “We can give no account,” he says, “of Wycliffe’s parentage, birthplace, or infancy; only we find an ancient family of the Wycliffes in the bishopric of Durham,[9] since by match united to the Brackenburies, persons of prime quality in those parts. As for this our Wycliffe, history at the very first meets with him a man, and full grown, yea, graduate of Merton College in Oxford.”[10] Of the six Oxford colleges of that time, Merton had acquired for itself a splendid and well-deserved reputation. “And, indeed, malice itself cannot deny that this college, or little university, rather, doth equal, if not exceed, any one foundation in Christendom, for the famous men bred therein.”[11] Roger Bacon (1280), _Doctor Mirabilis_; John Duns Scotus (1308), _Doctor Subtilis_; Walter Burley (1337), _Doctor Approbatus_; William of Ocham (1347), _Doctor Singularis_ or _Pater Nominalium_; and Thomas Bradwardine (1350), _Doctor Profundus_,—were all bred in Merton College. John Wycliffe seems to have early entertained and cherished the ambition to add his name to the number of those renowned doctors who as students had preceded him in Merton College. If this was his ambition, he attained to the object of his desire when, by his contemporaries, he was recognised as _Doctor Evangelicus_. It would appear that, at an early period in his life, he had, after much deliberation, made choice of the Bible or the Gospel as his great theme. To be a “Biblicist,” or Bible student and interpreter, was not considered a high or honorable distinction by the schoolmen—the men of “culture” of that age. But to think for himself and to choose for himself was a notable characteristic of the young Yorkshireman, John Wycliffe. In making his choice and in linking himself indissolubly to the Word and “cause of God,”[12] he seems to have been much influenced by the example and by the teaching of Bradwardine. But he made it his aim to be a proficient, and, if possible, a master in all attainable science and learning. That he had been a thorough student of the Trivium and Quadrivium is proved by his works, for they all bear the impress of the disciplined scholastic and the skilful dialectician. In all respects he was a worthy successor of the distinguished band of men who had been his predecessors in Merton. The writings of Wycliffe show that he had studied very carefully the works of Roger Bacon, of Duns Scotus, and of William of Ocham. But the same writings show that he had early learned to call no man master—for while he accepts much from Duns Scotus, he also accepts much from William of Ocham. Truth seems to have been the object of his early, eager, and constant pursuit.

The first notable and formal recognition of Wycliffe’s eminence within the university, is found in his appointment to be Warden or Master of Balliol. In this honorable office he continued only for a few years—1360-1362. From Balliol he received nomination to the rectorship of the parish of Fylingham, in Lincolnshire. Soon after his appointment to a pastoral cure, he resigned his position as Master of Balliol. Wycliffe’s connection with the diocese of Lincoln, through his being rector of Fylingham, seems to have had an important influence on the progressive development of his ecclesiastical and religious life. A former Bishop of Lincoln—1235-1254—Grossetête (Greathead), was spoken of by Roger Bacon as “the only man living” in that age “who was in possession of all the sciences.” The writings of this great and good bishop are continually quoted or referred to by Wycliffe.

A most significant testimony to the standing influence and reputation of Wycliffe in the university was given in 1365 by Simon Islip, Archbishop of Canterbury, who appointed him Warden of Canterbury Hall. In the Archbishop’s letter of institution, Wycliffe is described, “as one in whose fidelity, circumspection, and prudence his Grace very much confided, and on whom he had fixed his eyes on account of the honesty of his life, his laudable conversation, and his knowledge of letters.” The significance and worth of this testimony can hardly be overestimated. It is all the more significant because of the circumstances in which it was given, and the nomination to which it was designed to give effect. In founding Canterbury Hall, Islip had appointed Woodhull—a monk of Canterbury—to be Warden. With him three other monks and eight secular scholars were associated in the government of the hall. After a trial of four years of this mixed administration, finding that it did not work well, more particularly because of the jealousies, contentions, and collisions between the monks and the secular associates, Islip, in the exercise of a right which he had reserved to himself, displaced the Warden and the three other monks, and appointed Wycliffe in the place of Woodhull; and three secular priests, Selby, Middleworth, and Benger, to be associates or fellows in the room of the three monks. This action on the part of the Archbishop gave great offence to the monks of Christ Church and to the whole order of the Friars. It was regarded as virtually and in effect an act by which the Archbishop of Canterbury gave the weight of his high position and great authority to those who in Oxford were the resolute and strenuous opponents of the mendicant friars. Consequences that could not have been foreseen by any concerned in this action flowed from it. For not long after Wycliffe’s appointment to the Wardenship of Canterbury Hall, Archbishop Islip died on the 26th April 1366, and was succeeded in November by Simon Langham, who had been monk, prior, and abbot of Westminster. By this Archbishop, Wycliffe and the three secular priests who had been so recently appointed to govern Canterbury Hall were removed. Woodhull and his associates were reinstated in the position from which they had been expelled by Islip, and, in violation of the founder’s will, the eight secular scholars were ejected. The hall thus became virtually a monastic institution. Wycliffe’s appeal to the papal court at Avignon was of no avail. After a protracted process and long delay, the Pope gave judgment against him in 1370. We cannot better conclude this chapter in Wycliffe’s life than by quoting the words of Godwin. They will prepare us for what comes next in the order of events:—

“From Canterbury College, which his predecessor had founded, he (Langham) sequestered the fruits of the benefice of Pageham, and otherwise molested the scholars there, intending to displace them all and to put in monks, which in the end he brought to pass. John Wycliffe was one of them that were so displaced, and had withstood the Archbishop in this business with might and main. By the Pope’s favor and the Archbishop’s power, the monks overbore Wycliffe and his fellows. If, then, Wycliffe were angry with Pope, Archbishop, monks, and all, you cannot marvel.”[13]

Nothwithstanding the very reasonable remark of Godwin that we need not wonder much if Wycliffe, considering the treatment which he had received at the hands of the Pope, the Archbishop, and the monks, should be angry against them all, there is no proof or evidence whatever in support of the allegation of his adversaries, that his antagonism to the friars and his attitude towards the Pope proceeded from irritated feeling, discontent, and disappointed ambition. On the contrary, the absence of all such feelings is one of the most remarkable and characteristic distinctions of his numerous writings.

Wycliffe’s nomination by Islip to the Wardenship of Canterbury Hall is dated the 9th of December 1365. In that year Pope Urban V. revived and urged a claim against Edward III. which had been in abeyance for thirty-three years. This was the demand that Edward should pay the feudal tribute or annual fee which for the crown of England he owed to Urban the Fifth of that name, exercising the functions of Bishop of Rome in the place of the papal captivity at Avignon. The Servant of servants at Avignon—moved by that necessity which knows no law, or by an equally lawless covetousness and ambition—demanded of Edward III. of England payment of the feudal tribute-money alleged to be due by that monarch to the Holy See. The demand of the Pope was for payment of the sum of a thousand marks annually due, and for payment of the arrears that had accumulated for thirty-three years, or since Edward, ceasing to be a minor, had exercised his sovereign rights as monarch of England. This papal claim was accompanied with an intimation to the King of England that, in case of his failing to comply with the pontifical demand, he should appear to answer for his non-fulfilment of this duty in the presence of his feudal lord and sovereign, the Pope of Rome, at Avignon. It is difficult to say whether the arrogance or the folly of Pope Urban V., in reviving and urging this claim at this time was the greater of the two. Edward III., even in his decrepitude, and in the midst of the reverses which marked his declining years, was not likely to crouch, like John, under the ignominious burden laid on him in the time of his adversity by the Papacy. The Pope’s claim proved the occasion of uniting the King and the nation in a common assertion and vindication of the national independence, and of the inalienable rights and prerogatives of the English Crown. It was the occasion of Wycliffe’s first public appearance as the champion of the royal supremacy and national independence against the usurpation and arrogance of the Court of Rome. The papal claim was submitted by Edward to the Parliament which met at Westminster in May 1366. After deliberation, the answer of the Parliament—the Lords and Commons of England—to the demand of the Pope, concluded with these weighty and well-measured words:—

“Forasmuch as neither King John nor any other king could bring this realm and kingdom in such thraldom and subjection but by common consent of Parliament, the which was not done; therefore, that which he did was against his oath at his coronation, besides many other causes. If, therefore, the Pope should attempt anything against the King, by process or other matters in deed, the King, with all his subjects, should with all their force and power resist the same.”[14]