Part 6

The diction of Barclay's version is exceptionally fine. Jamieson calls it "a rich and unique exhibition of early art," and says:--"Page after page, even in the antique spelling of Pynson's edition, may be read by the ordinary reader of to-day without reference to a dictionary; and when reference is required, it will be found in nine cases out of ten that the archaism is Saxon, not Latin. This is all the more remarkable that it occurs in the case of a priest translating mainly from the Latin and French, and can only be explained with reference to his standpoint as a social reformer of the broadest type, and to his evident intention that his book should be an appeal to all classes, but especially to the mass of people for amendment of their follies."

As the original work belonged to the German satirist, the extract from the 'Ship of Fools' is placed under the essay entitled 'Sebastian Brandt.' His 'Eclogues' show Barclay at his best. They portray the manners and customs of the period, and are full of local proverbs and wise sayings. According to Warton, Barclay's are the first 'Eclogues' that appeared in the English language. "They are like Petrarch's," he says, "and Mantuans of the moral and satirical kind; and contain but few touches of moral description and bucolic imagery." Two shepherds meet to talk about the pleasures and crosses of rustic life and life at court. The hoary locks of the one show that he is old. His suit of Kendal green is threadbare, his rough boots are patched, and the torn side of his coat reveals a bottle never full and never empty. His wallet contains bread and cheese; he has a crook, and an oaten pipe. His name is Cornix, and he boasts that he has had worldly experience. The other shepherd, Coridon, having seen nothing, complains of country life. He grumbles at the summer's heat and the winter's cold; at beds on the flinty ground, and the dangers of sleeping where the wolves may creep in to devour the sheep; of his stiff rough hands, and his parched, wrinkled, and weather-beaten skin. He asks whether all men are so unhappy. Cornix, refreshing himself at intervals with his bottle and crusts, shows him the small amount of liberty at court, discourses upon the folly of ambition, lays bare the rapine, avarice, and covetousness of the worldly-minded, and demonstrates that the court is "painted fair without, but within it is ugly and vile." He then gives the picture of a courtier's life, which is cited below. He tells how the minstrels and singers, philosophers, poets, and orators are but the slaves of patronizing princes; how beautiful women deceive; describes to him, who has known nothing but a diet of bread and cheese, the delights of the table; dilates on the cups of silver and gold, and the crystal glass shining with red and yellow wine; the sewers bearing in roasted crane, gorgeous peacocks, and savory joints of beef and mutton; the carver wielding his dexterous knife; the puddings, the pasties, the fish fried in sweet oils and garnished with herbs; the costumes of the men and women in cloth of gold and silver and gay damask; the din of music, voices, laughter, and jests; and then paints a picture of the lords and ladies who plunge their knives into the meats and their hands into platters, spilling wine and gravy upon their equally gluttonous neighbors. He finishes by saying:--

"Shepherds have not so wretched lives as they: Though they live poorely on cruddes, chese, and whey, On apples, plummes, and drinke cleree water deepe, As it were lordes reigning among their sheepe. The wretched lazar with clinking of his bell, Hath life which doth the courtiers excell; The caytif begger hath meate and libertie, When courtiers hunger in harde captivitie. The poore man beggeth nothing hurting his name, As touching courters they dare not beg for shame. And an olde proverb is sayde by men moste sage, That oft yonge courters be beggars in their age."

The third 'Eclogue' begins with Coridon relating a dream that he went to court and saw the scullions standing

"about me thicke With knives ready for to flay me quicke."

This is a text for Cornix, who continues his tirade, and convinces Coridon of the misery of the court and his happier life, ending as follows:--

"Than let all shepheardes, from hence to Salisbury With easie riches, live well, laugh and be mery, Pipe under shadowes, small riches hath most rest, In greatest seas moste sorest is tempest, The court is nought els but a tempesteous sea; Avoyde the rockes. He ruled after me."

The fourth 'Eclogue' is a dialogue on the rich man's treatment of poets, by two shepherds, Codrus and Menalcas, musing in "shadowe on the green," while their snowy flocks graze on the sweet meadow. This contains a fine allegorical description of 'Labour.'

The fifth 'Eclogue' is the 'Cytezen and the Uplondyshman.' Here the scene changes, and two shepherds, Faustus and Amyntas, discourse in a cottage while the snows of January whirl without. Amyntas has learned in London "to go so manerly." Not a wrinkle may be found in his clothes, not a hair on his cloak, and he wears a brooch of tin high on his bonnet. He has been hostler, costermonger, and taverner, and sings the delights of the city. Faustus, the rustic, is contented with his lot. The 'Cytezen and the Uplondyshman' was printed from the original edition of Wynkyn de Worde, with a preface by F. W. Fairholt, Percy Society (Vol. xxii.).

Other works ascribed to Barclay are:--'The Figure of Our Holy Mother Church, Oppressed by the French King'; 'The Lyfe of the Glorious Martyr Saynt George,' translated (from Mantuan) by Alexander Barclay; 'The Lyfe of the Blessed Martyr, Saynte Thomas'; 'Contra Skeltonum,' in which the quarrel he had with his contemporary poet, John Skelton, was doubtless continued.

Estimates of Barclay may be found in 'The Ship of Fools,' edited by T. H. Jamieson (1874); 'Sibbald's Chronicle of Scottish Poetry,' from the thirteenth century to the union of the crowns (1802); 'The History of English Poetry,' by Thomas Warton (1824); 'The History of Scottish Poetry,' by David Irving (1861); and 'Chips from a German Workshop,' by F. Max Müller (1870).

THE COURTIER'S LIFE

Second Eclogue

CORNIX

Some men deliteth beholding men to fight, Or goodly knights in pleasaunt apparayle, Or sturdie soldiers in bright harnes and male, Or an army arrayde ready to the warre, Or to see them fight, so that he stand afarre. Some glad is to see those ladies beauteous Goodly appoynted in clothing sumpteous: A number of people appoynted in like wise In costly clothing after the newest gise, Sportes, disgising, fayre coursers mount and praunce, Or goodly ladies and knightes sing and daunce, To see fayre houses and curious picture, Or pleasaunt hanging or sumpteous vesture Of silke, of purpure or golde moste oriente, And other clothing divers and excellent, Hye curious buildinges or palaces royall, Or chapels, temples fayre and substantial, Images graven or vaultes curious, Gardeyns and medowes, or place delicious, Forestes and parkes well furnished with dere, Cold pleasaunt streams or welles fayre and clere, Curious cundites or shadowie mountaynes, Swete pleasaunt valleys, laundes or playnes, Houndes, and such other things manyfolde Some men take pleasour and solace to beholde.

But all these pleasoures be much more jocounde, To private persons which not to court be bounde, Than to such other whiche of necessitie Are bounde to the court as in captivitie; For they which be bounde to princes without fayle When they must nedes be present in battayle, When shall they not be at large to see the sight, But as souldiours in the middest of the fight, To runne here and there sometime his foe to smite, And oftetimes wounded, herein is small delite, And more muste he think his body to defende, Than for any pleasour about him to intende, And oft is he faynt and beaten to the grounde, I trowe in suche sight small pleasour may be founde. As for fayre ladies, clothed in silke and golde, In court at thy pleasour thou canst not beholde. At thy princes pleasour thou shalt them only see, Then suche shalt thou see which little set by thee, Whose shape and beautie may so inflame thine heart, That thought and languor may cause thee for to smart. For a small sparcle may kindle love certayne, But skantly Severne may quench it clene againe; And beautie blindeth and causeth man to set His hearte on the thing which he shall never get. To see men clothed in silkes pleasauntly It is small pleasour, and ofte causeth envy. While thy lean jade halteth by thy side, To see another upon a, courser ride, Though he be neyther gentleman nor knight, Nothing is thy fortune, thy hart cannot be light. As touching sportes and games of pleasaunce. To sing, to revell, and other daliaunce: Who that will truely upon his lord attende, Unto suche sportes he seldome may entende. Palaces, pictures, and temples sumptuous, And other buildings both gay and curious, These may marchauntes more at their pleasour see, Men suche as in court be bounde alway to bee. Sith kinges for moste part passe not their regions, Thou seest nowe cities of foreyn nations. Suche outwarde pleasoures may the people see, So may not courtiers for lacke of libertie. As for these pleasours of thinges vanable Whiche in the fieldes appeareth delectable,

But seldome season mayest thou obtayne respite. The same to beholde with pleasour and delite, Sometime the courtier remayneth halfe the yere Close within walls muche like a prisonere, To make escapes some seldome times are wont, Save when the powers have pleasour for to hunt, Or its otherwise themselfe to recreate, And then this pleasour shall they not love but hate; For then shall they foorth most chiefely to their payne, When they in mindes would at home remayne. Other in the frost, hayle, or els snowe, Or when some tempest or mightie wind doth blowe, Or else in great heat and fervour excessife, But close in houses the moste parte waste their life, Of colour faded, and choked were with duste: This is of courtiers the joy and all the lust.

CORIDON

What! yet may they sing and with fayre ladies daunce, Both commen and laugh; herein is some pleasaunce.

CORNIX

Nay, nay, Coridon, that pleasour is but small, Some to contente what man will pleasour call, For some in the daunce his pincheth by the hande, Which gladly would see him stretched in a bande. Some galand seketh his favour to purchase Which playne abhorreth for to beholde his face. And still in dauncing moste parte inclineth she To one muche viler and more abject then he. No day over passeth but that in court men finde A thousande thinges to vexe and greve their minde; Alway thy foes are present in thy sight, And often so great is their degree and might That nedes must thou kisse the hand which did thee harm, Though thou would see it cut gladly from the arme. And briefly to speake, if thou to courte resorte, If thou see one thing of pleasour or comfort, Thou shalt see many, before or thou depart, To thy displeasour and pensiveness of heart: So findeth thy sight there more of bitternes And of displeasour, than pleasour and gladnes.

RICHARD HARRIS BARHAM

(1788-1845)

The author of the 'Ingoldsby Legends' belonged to a well-defined and delightful class of men, chiefly found in modern England, and indeed mostly bred and made possible by the conditions of English society and the Anglican Church. It is that of clergymen who in the public eye are chiefly wits and diners-out, jokers and literary humorists, yet are conscientious and devoted ministers of their religion and curators of their religious charges, honoring their profession and humanity by true and useful lives and lovable characters. They are men of the sort loathed by Lewis Carroll's heroine in the 'Two Voices,'

"a kind of folk Who have no horror of a joke,"

and indeed love it dearly, but are as firm in principle and unostentatiously dutiful in conduct as if they were leaden Puritans or narrow devotees.

By far the best remembered of this class, for themselves or their work, are Sydney Smith and Richard Harris Barham; but their relative repute is one of the oddest paradoxes in literary history. Roughly speaking, the one is remembered and unread, the other read and unremembered. Sydney Smith's name is almost as familiar to the masses as Scott's, and few could tell a line that he wrote; Barham's writing is almost as familiar as Scott's, and few would recognize his name. Yet he is in the foremost rank of humorists; his place is wholly unique, and is likely to remain so. It will be an age before a similar combination of tastes and abilities is found once more. Macaulay said truly of Sir Walter Scott that he "combined the minute learning of an antiquary with the fire of a great poet." Barham combined a like learning in different fields, and joined to a different outlook and temper of mind, with the quick perceptions of a great wit, the brimming zest and high spirits of a great joker, the genial nature and lightness of a born man of the world, and the gifts of a wonderful improvisatore in verse. Withal, he had just enough of serious purpose to give much of his work a certain measure of cohesive unity, and thus impress it on the mind as no collection of random skits could do. That purpose is the feathering which steadies the arrows and sends them home.

It is pleasant to know that one who has given so good a time to others had a very good time himself; that we are not, as so often happens, relishing a farce that stood for tragedy with the maker, and substituting our laughter for his tears. Barham had the cruel sorrows of personal bereavement so few escape; but in material things his career was wholly among pleasant ways. He was well born and with means, well educated, well nurtured. He was free from the sordid squabbles or anxious watching and privation which fall to the lot of so many of the best. He was happy in his marriage and its attendant home and family, and most fortunate in his friendships and the superb society he enjoyed. His birth and position as a gentleman of good landed family, combined with his profession, opened all doors to him.

But it was the qualities personal to himself, after all, which made these things available for enjoyment. His desires were moderate; he counted success what more eager and covetous natures might have esteemed comparative failure. His really strong intellect and wide knowledge and cultivation enabled him to meet the foremost men of letters on equal terms. His kind heart, generous nature, exuberant fun, and entertaining conversation endeared him to every one and made his company sought by every one; they saved much trouble from coming upon him and lightened what did come. And no blight could have withered that perennial fountain of jollity, drollery, and light-heartedness. But these were only the ornaments of a stanchly loyal and honorable nature, and a lovable and unselfish soul. One of his friends writes of him thus:--

"The profits of agitating pettifoggers would have materially lessened in a district where he acted as a magistrate; and duels would have been nipped in the bud at his regimental mess. It is not always an easy task to do as you would be done by; but to think as you would be thought of and thought for, and to feel as you would be felt for, is perhaps still more difficult, as superior powers of tact and intellect are here required in order to second good intentions. These faculties, backed by an uncompromising love of truth and fair dealing, indefatigable good nature, and a nice sense of what was due to every one in the several relations of life, both gentle and simple, rendered our late friend invaluable, either as an adviser or a peacemaker, in matters of delicate and difficult handling."

Barham was born in Canterbury, England, December 6th, 1788, and died in London, June 17th, 1845. His ancestry was superior, the family having derived its name from possessions in Kent in Norman days. He lost his father--a genial _bon vivant_ of literary tastes who seems like a reduced copy of his son--when but five years old; and became heir to a fair estate, including Tappington Hall, the picturesque old gabled mansion so often imaginatively misdescribed in the 'Ingoldsby Legends,' but really having the famous blood-stained stairway. He had an expensive private education, which was nearly ended with his life at the age of fourteen by a carriage accident which shattered and mangled his right arm, crippling it permanently. As so often happens, the disaster was really a piece of good fortune: it turned him to or confirmed him in quiet antiquarian scholarship, and established connections which ultimately led to the 'Legends'; he may owe immortality to it.

After passing through St. Paul's (London) and Brasenose (Oxford), he studied law, but finally entered the church. After a couple of small curacies in Kent, he was made rector of Snargate and curate of Warehorn, near Romney Marsh; all four in a district where smuggling was a chief industry, and the Marsh in especial a noted haunt of desperadoes (for smugglers then took their lives in their hands), of which the 'Legends' are rich in reminiscences. In 1819, during this incumbency, he wrote a novel, 'Baldwin,' which was a failure; and part of another, 'My Cousin Nicholas,' which, finished fifteen years later, had fair success as a serial in Blackwood's Magazine.

An opportunity offering in 1821, he stood for a minor canonry in St. Paul's Cathedral, London, and obtained it; his income was less than before, but he had entered the metropolitan field, which brought him rich enjoyment and permanent fame. He paid a terrible price for them: his unhealthy London house cost him the lives of three of his children. To make up for his shortened means he became editor of the London Chronicle and a contributor to various other periodicals, including the notorious weekly John Bull, sometime edited by Theodore Hook. In 1824 he became a priest in the Chapel Royal at St. James's Palace, and soon after gained a couple of excellent livings in Essex, which put him at ease financially.

He was inflexible in principle, a firm Tory, though without rancor. He was very High Church, but had no sympathy with the Oxford movement or Catholicism. He preached careful and sober sermons, without oratorical display and with rigid avoidance of levity. He would not make the church a field either for fireworks or jokes, or even for displays of scholarship or intellectual gymnastics. In his opinion, religious establishments were kept up to advance religion and morals. And both he and his wife wrought zealously in the humble but exacting field of parochial good works.

He was, however, fast becoming one of the chief ornaments of that brilliant group of London wits whose repute still vibrates from the early part of the century. Many of them--actors, authors, artists, musicians, and others met at the Garrick Club, and Barham joined it. The names of Sydney Smith and Theodore Hook are enough to show what it was; but there were others equally delightful,--not the least so, or least useful, a few who could not see a joke at all, and whose simplicity and good nature made them butts for the hoaxes and solemn chaff of the rest. Barbara's diary, quoted in his son's (Life,) gives an exquisite instance.

In 1834 his old schoolmaster Bentley established Bentley's Miscellany; and Barham was asked for contributions. The first he sent was the amusing but quite "conceivable" (Spectre of Tappington); but there soon began the immortal series of versified local stories, legendary church miracles, antiquarian curios, witty summaries of popular plays, skits on London life, and so on, under the pseudonym of 'Thomas Ingoldsby,' which sprang instantly into wide popularity, and have never fallen from public favor since--nor can they till appreciation of humor is dead in the world. They were collected and illustrated by Leech, Cruikshank, and others, who were inspired by them to some of their best designs: perhaps the most perfect realization in art of the Devil in his moments of jocose triumph is Leech's figure in 'The House-Warming.' A later series appeared in Colburn's New Monthly Magazine in 1843.

He wrote some excellent pieces (of their kind) in prose, besides the one already mentioned: the weird and well-constructed 'Leech of Folkestone' and the 'Passage in the Life of Henry Harris,' both half-serious tales of mediaeval magic; the thoroughly Ingoldsbian 'Legend of Sheppey,' with its irreverent farce, high animal spirits, and antiquarianism; the equally characteristic 'Lady Rohesia,' which would be vulgar but for his sly wit and drollery. But none of these are as familiar as the versified 'Legends,' nor have they the astonishing variety of entertainment found in the latter.

The 'Ingoldsby Legends' have been called an English naturalization of the French metrical _contes;_ but Barham owes nothing to his French models save the suggestion of method and form. Not only is his matter all his own, but he has _Anglified_ the whole being of the metrical form itself. His facility of versification, the way in which the whole language seems to be liquid in his hands and ready to pour into any channel of verse, was one of the marvelous things of literature. It did not need the free random movement of the majority of the tales, where the lines may be anything from one foot to six, from spondaic to dactylic: in some of them he tied himself down to the most rigid and inflexible metrical forms, and moved as lightly and freely in those fetters as if they were non-existent. As to the astonishing rhymes which meet us at every step, they form in themselves a poignant kind of wit; often double and even treble, one word rhyming with an entire phrase or one phrase with another,--not only of the oddest kind, but as nicely adapted to the necessities of expression and meaning as if intended or invented for that purpose alone,--they produce on us the effect of the richest humor.

One of his most diverting "properties" is the set of "morals" he draws to everything, of nonsensical literalness and infantile gravity, the perfection of solemn fooling. Thus in the 'Lay of St. Cuthbert,' where the Devil has captured the heir of the house,

"Whom the nurse had forgot and left there in his chair, Alternately sucking his thumb and his pear,"

the moral is drawn, among others,--

"Perhaps it's as well to keep children from plums, And pears in their season--and sucking their thumbs."

And part of the moral to the 'Lay of St. Medard' is--

"Don't give people nicknames! don't, even in fun, Call any one 'snuff-colored son of a gun'!"

And they generally wind up with some slyly shrewd piece of worldly wisdom and wit. Thus, the closing moral to 'The Blasphemer's Warning' is:--

"To married men this--For the rest of your lives, Think how your misconduct may act on your wives! Don't swear then before them, lest haply they faint, Or--what sometimes occurs--run away with a Saint!"