Chapter 37

While no translation exists of this remarkable work, nor indeed can be made to reproduce the power and melody of the original, yet a very good idea of its spirit may be had from the work of Dr. J. Mason Neale, who made from selected portions this English poem, which is very much more than what he modestly called it, "a close imitation." Dr. Neale has made no attempt to reproduce the metre of the original.

BRIEF LIFE IS HERE OUR PORTION

Brief life is here our portion, Brief sorrow, short-lived care: The Life that knows no ending, The tearless Life, is _there_: O happy retribution, Short toil, eternal rest! For mortals and for sinners A mansion with the Blest! That we should look, poor wanderers, To have our home on high! That worms should seek for dwellings Beyond the starry sky! And now we fight the battle, And then we wear the Crown Of full and everlasting And passionless renown: Then glory, yet unheard of, Shall shed abroad its ray; Resolving all enigmas, An endless Sabbath-day. Then, then, from his oppressors The Hebrew shall go free, And celebrate in triumph The year of Jubilee: And the sun-lit land that recks not Of tempest or of fight Shall fold within its bosom Each happy Israelite. 'Midst power that knows no limit, And wisdom free from bound, The Beatific Vision Shall glad the Saints around; And peace, for war is needless, And rest, for storm is past, And goal from finished labor, And anchorage at last. There God, my King and Portion, In fullness of His Grace, Shall we behold forever, And worship face to face; There Jacob into Israel, From earthlier self estranged, And Leah into Rachel Forever shall be changed; There all the halls of Syon For aye shall be complete: And in the land of Beauty All things of beauty meet. To thee, O dear, dear country! Mine eyes their vigils keep; For very love, beholding Thy happy name, they weep: The mention of Thy glory Is unction to the breast, And medicine in sickness, And love, and life, and rest. O one, O onely mansion! O Paradise of joy! Where tears are ever banished, And smiles have no alloy: Beside thy living waters All plants are, great and small; The cedar of the forest, The hyssop of the wall; With jaspers glow thy bulwarks, Thy streets with emeralds blaze; The sardius and the topaz Unite in thee their rays; Thine ageless walls are bonded With amethyst unpriced; Thy saints build up its fabric, And the Corner-stone is CHRIST. Thou hast no shore, fair Ocean! Thou hast no time, bright Day! Dear fountain of refreshment To pilgrims far away! Upon the Rock of Ages They raise thy holy Tower. Thine is the Victor's laurel, And thine the golden dower. Thou feel'st in mystic rapture, O Bride that know'st no guile, The Prince's sweetest kisses, The Prince's loveliest smile. Unfading lilies, bracelets Of living pearl, thine own; The Lamb is ever near thee, The Bridegroom thine alone; And all thine endless leisure In sweetest accents sings The ills that were thy merit, The joys that are thy King's. Jerusalem the golden! With milk and honey blest, Beneath thy contemplation Sink heart and voice opprest; I know not, oh, I know not What social joys are there, What radiancy of glory, What light beyond compare; And when I fain would sing them, My spirit fails and faints, And vainly would it image The assembly of the Saints. They stand, those halls of Syon, All jubilant with song, And bright with many an Angel, And many a Martyr throng; The Prince is ever in them, The light is aye serene; The Pastures of the Blessed Are decked in glorious sheen; There is the Throne of David, And there, from toil released, The shout of them that triumph, The song of them that feast; And they, beneath their Leader, Who conquered in the fight, For ever and for ever Are clad in robes of white. Jerusalem the glorious! The glory of the elect, O dear and future vision That eager hearts expect: Ev'n now by faith I see thee, Ev'n here thy walls discern; To thee my thoughts are kindled And strive and pant and yearn: Jerusalem the onely, That look'st from Heav'n below, In thee is all my glory, In me is all my woe: And though my body may not, My spirit seeks thee fain; Till flesh and earth return me To earth and flesh again. O Land that seest no sorrow! O State that fear'st no strife! O princely bowers! O Land of flowers! O realm and Home of Life!

JULIANA BERNERS

(Fifteenth Century)

About the year 1475 one William Caxton, a prosperous English wool merchant of good standing and repute, began printing books. The art which he introduced into his native country was quickly taken up by others; first, it seems, by certain monks at St. Albans, and shortly afterward by Wynkyn de Worde, who had been an apprentice to Caxton. In 1486 the press at St. Albans issued two books printed in English, of which one was entitled 'The Boke of St. Albans.' Of this volume only three perfect copies are known to exist. It is a compilation of treatises on hawking, on hunting, and on heraldry, and contained but little evidence as to their authorship. Ten years later Wynkyn de Worde reprinted the work with additions, under the following elaborate title, in the fashion of the time:--'Treatyse perteynynge to Hawkynge, Huntynge, and Fysshynge with an Angle; also a right noble Treatyse on the Lynage of Coote Armeris; ending with a Treatyse which specyfyeth of Blasyng of Armys.'

The authorship of this volume, one of the earliest books printed in the English language, has generally been ascribed to a certain (or uncertain) Juliana Berners, Bernes, or Barnes, who lived in the early part of the fifteenth century, and who is reputed to have been prioress of the Nunnery of Sopwell,--long since in ruins,--near St. Albans, and close to the little river Ver, which still conceals in its quiet pools the speckled trout. If this attribution be correct, Dame Berners was the first woman to write a book in English. Although the question of the authorship is by no means settled, yet it is clear that the printer believed the treatise on hunting to have been written by this lady, and the critics now generally assign a portion at least of the volume to her. In the sixteenth century the book became very popular, and was reprinted many times.

Of the several treatises it contains, that on fishing has the greatest interest, an interest increased by the fact that it probably suggested 'The Compleat Angler' of Izaak Walton, which appeared one hundred and sixty years later.

HERE BEGYNNYTH

THE TREATYSE OF FYSSHYNGE WYTH AN ANGLE

Salomon in his parablys sayth that a glad spyryte makyth a flourynge aege, that is a fayre aege and a longe. And syth it is soo: I aske this questyon, whiche ben the meanes and the causes that enduce a man in to a mery spyryte: Truly to my beste dyscrecon it seemeth good dysportes and honest gamys in whom a man Joyeth without any repentaunce after.

Thenne folowyth it yt gode dysportes and honest games ben cause of mannys fayr aege and longe life. And therefore now woll I chose of foure good disportes and honest gamys, that is to wyte: of huntynge: hawkynge: fysshynge: and foulynge. The best to my symple dyscrecon whyche is fysshynge: called Anglynge wyth a rodde: and a lyne and an hoke. And thereof to treate as my symple wytte may suffyce: both for the said reason of Salomon and also for the reason that phisyk makyth in this wyse. _Si tibi deficiant medici tibi fiant: hec tria mens leta labor et moderata dieta_. Ye shall vnderstonde that this is for to saye, Yf a man lacke leche or medicyne he shall make thre thynges his leche and medicyne: and he shall nede neuer no moo. The fyrste of theym is a mery thought. The seconde is labour not outrageo. The thyrd is dyete mesurable....

Here folowyth the order made to all those whiche shall haue the vnderstondynge of this forsayd treatyse & vse it for theyr pleasures.

Ye that can angle & take fysshe to your pleasures as this forsayd treatyse techyth & shewyth you: I charge & requyre you in the name of alle noble men that ye fysshe not in noo poore mannes seuerall water: as his ponde: stewe: or other necessary thynges to kepe fysshe in wythout his lycence & good wyll. Nor that ye vse not to breke noo mannys gynnys lyenge in theyr weares & in other places dve vuto theym. Ne to take the fysshe awaye that is taken in theym. For after a fysshe is taken in a mannys gynne yf the gynne be layed in the comyn waters: or elles in suche waters as he hireth, it is his owne propre goodes. And yf ye take it awaye ye robbe hym: whyche is a ryght shamfull dede to ony noble man to do yt that theuys & brybours done: whyche are punysshed for theyr evyll dedes by the necke & other wyse whan they maye be aspyed & taken. And also yf ye do in lyke manere as this treatise shewyth you: ye shal haue no nede to take of other menys: whiles ye shal haue ynough of your owne takyng yf ye lyste to labour therfore. Whyche shall be to you a very pleasure to se the fayr bryght shynynge scalyd fysshes dysceyved by your crafty meanes & drawen vpon londe. Also that ye breke noo mannys heggys in goynge abowte your dysportes: ne opyn noo mannes gates but that ye shytte theym agayn. Also ye shall not vse this forsayd crafty dysporte for no covety senes to thencreasynge & sparynge of your money oonly, but pryncypally for your solace & to cause the helthe of your body, and specyally of your soule. For whanne ye purpoos to goo on your disportes in fysshyng ye woll not desyre gretly many persones wyth you, whiche myghte lette you of your game. And thenne ye maye serue God deuowtly in sayenge affectuously youre custumable prayer. And thus doynge ye shall eschewe & voyde many vices, as ydylnes whyche is pryncypall cause to enduce man to many other vyces, as it is ryght well knowen.

Also ye shall not be to rauenous in takyng of your sayd game as to moche at one tyme: whyche ye maye lyghtly doo, yf ye doo in euery poynt as this present treatyse shewyth you in euery poynt, whyche lyghtly be occasyon to dystroye your owne dysportes & other mennys also. As whan ye haue a suffycyent mese ye sholde coveyte nomore as at that tyme. Also ye shall besye yourselfe to nouryssh the game in all that ye maye: & to dystroye all such thynges as ben devourers of it. And all those that done after this rule shall haue the blessynge of god & saynt Petyr, whyche be theym graunte that wyth his precyous blood vs boughte.

And for by cause that this present treatyse sholde not come to the hondys of eche ydle persone whyche wolde desire it yf it were enpryntyd allone by itself & put in a lytyll plaunflet therfore I have compylyd it in a greter volume of dyverse bokys concernynge to gentyll & noble men to the entent that the forsayd ydle persones whyche sholde have but lytyll mesure in the sayd dysporte of fyshyng sholde not by this meane utterly dystroye it.

EMPRYNTED AT WESTMESTRE BY WYNKYN THE WORDE THE YERE THYN-CARNACON OF OUR LORD M.CCCC.LXXXXVI.

Reprinted by Thomas White, Crane Court

MDCCCXXVII.

WALTER BESANT

(1838-)

Walter Besant, born in Portsmouth, England, in 1838, did not begin his career as a novelist till he was thirty years old. His preparation for the works that possess so certain a maturity of execution, with as certain an ideal of performance, was made at King's College, London, and afterwards at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he took mathematical honors. Abandoning his idea of entering the Church, he taught for seven years in the Royal College of Mauritius. Ill health compelled his return to England, and he then took up literature as a profession. His first novel he had the courage to burn when the first publisher to whom he showed it refused it.

But the succeeding years brought forth 'Studies in Early French Poetry,' a delicate and scholarly series of essays; an edition of Rabelais, of whom he is the biographer and disciple, and, with Professor Palmer, a 'History of Jerusalem,' a work for which he had equipped himself when secretary of the Palestine Exploration Fund.

Mr. Besant was also a student in another special field. He knew his Dickens as no other undergraduate in the University knew that branch of polite literature, and passed an examination on the 'Pickwick Papers' which the author declared that he himself would have failed in. By these processes Mr. Besant fitted himself mentally and socially for the task of story-telling. The relations of a man of letters to the rest of the world are comprehensively revealed in the long list of his novels.

From the beginning he was one who comes with a tale "which holdeth children from play and old men from the chimney corner"; nor is the charm lessened by the sense of a living and kindly voice addressing the hearer. His novels are easy reading, and do not contain an obscure sentence. As art is an expression of the artist's mind, and not a rigid ecclesiastical canon, it may be expressed in as many formulas as there are artists. Therefore, while to few readers life casts the rosy reflection that we have learned to call Besantine, one would not wish it to disappear nor to be discredited.

It was in the year 1869 that Walter Besant, by a happy chance, made the acquaintance of James Rice, the editor of Once a Week, and became a contributor to that magazine. In 1871 that literary partnership between them began, which is interesting in the history of collaboration. Mr. Rice had been a barrister, and added legal lore to Mr. Besant's varied and accurate literary equipment. The brilliant series of novels that followed includes 'Ready-Money Morti-boy,' 'My Little Girl,' 'With Harp and Crown,' 'The Golden Butterfly,' 'The Seamy Side,' and 'The Chaplain of the Fleet.' The latter story, that of an innocent young country girl left to the guardianship of her uncle, chaplain of the Fleet prison, by the death of her father, is delicately and surprisingly original. The influence of Dickens is felt in the structure of the story, and the faithful, almost photographic fidelity to locality betrays in whose footsteps the authors have followed; but the chaplain, though he belongs to a family whose features are familiar to the readers of 'Little Dorrit' and 'Great Expectations,' has not existed until he appears in these pages,--pompous, clever, and without principle, but not lacking in natural affection. The young girl whose guileless belief in everybody forces the worst people to assume the characters her purity and innocence endows them with, is to the foul prison what Picciola was to Charney. Nor will the moralist find fault with the author whose kind heart teaches him to include misfortune in his catalogue of virtues.

Mr. Rice died in 1882, and 'All Sorts and Conditions of Men,' Mr. Besant's first independent novel, appeared the same year. It is a novel with a purpose, and accomplished its purpose because an artist's hand was necessary to paint the picture of East London that met with such a response as the People's Palace. The appeal to philanthropy was a new one. It was a plea for a little more of the pleasures and graces of life for the two million of people who inhabit the east end of the great city. It is not a picture of life in the lowest phases, where the scenes are as dramatic as in the highest social world, but a story of human life; the nobility, the meanness, the pathos of it in hopelessly commonplace surroundings, where the fight is not a hand-to-hand struggle with bitter poverty or crime, but with dullness and monotony. The characters in 'All Sorts and Conditions of Men' are possibly more typical than real, but one hesitates to question either characters or situation. The "impossible story" has become true, and the vision that the enthusiastic young hero and heroine dream has materialized into a lovely reality.

'The Children of Gibeon' (1884) and 'The World Went Very Well Then' (1885) are written with the same philanthropic purpose; but if Sir Walter Besant were not first of all a story-teller, the possessor of a living voice that holds one spellbound till he has finished his tale, the reader would be more sensible of the wide knowledge of the novelist, and his familiarity with life in its varied forms.

Here are about thirty novels, displaying an intimate knowledge of many crafts, trades, and professions, the ways of landsman and voyager, of country and town, of the new world and the old, of modern charlatanism as shown in 'Herr Paulus,' of the "woman question" among London Jews as in the 'Rebel Queen,' and the suggestion of the repose and sufficiency of life's simple needs as told in 'Call Her Mine' and 'Celia's Arbor.'

In the 'Ivory Gate' the hero is the victim of a remarkable hallucination; in the story of 'The Inner House' the plummet of suggestion plunges into depths not sounded before, and the soul's regeneration is unfolded in the loveliest of parables.

The range of Sir Walter Besant reaches from the somewhat conventionalized 'Dorothy Forster' to 'St. Katharine's Tower,' where deep tragedy approaches the melodramatic, or from the fascination of 'The Master Craftsman' to the 'Wapping Idyll' of the heaps of miser's treasure. There is largeness of stroke in this list, and a wide prospect. His humor is of the cheerful outdoor kind, and the laugh is at foibles rather than weakness. He pays little attention to fashion in literature, except to give a good-natured nod to a passing fad.

It would be difficult to classify him under any school. His stories are not analytical, nor is one conscious of that painstaking fidelity to art which is no longer classed among the minor virtues. When he fights, it is with wrong and oppression and the cheerless monotony of the lives of the poor; but he fights classes rather than individuals, although certain characters like Fielding the plagiarist, in 'Armorel of Lyonesse,' are studied from life. The village of bankrupts in 'All in a Garden Fair' is a whimsical conceit, like the disguise of Angela in 'All Sorts and Conditions of Men,' and the double identity of Edmund Gray in 'The Ivory Gate.' In reading Besant we are constantly reminded that humanity is wider than the world; and though its simplest facts are its greatest, there is both interest and edification in eccentricities.

In 1895 he was made a baronet, and is president of the Society of Authors, of whom he has been a gallant champion against the publishers.

OLD-TIME LONDON

From Sir Walter Besant's 'London': Harper and Brothers

The London house, either in Saxon or Norman time, presented no kind of resemblance to the Roman villa. It had no cloisters, no hypocaust, no suite or sequence of rooms. This unlikeness is another proof, if any were wanting, that the continuity of tenure had been wholly broken. If the Saxons went into London, as has been suggested, peaceably, and left the people to carry on their old life and their trade in their own way, the Roman and British architecture--no new thing, but a style grown up in course of years and found fitted to the climate--would certainly have remained. That, however, was not the case. The Englishman developed his house from the patriarchal idea.

First, there was the common hall; in this the household lived, fed, transacted business, and made their cheer in the evenings. It was built of timber, and to keep out the cold draughts it was afterwards lined with tapestry. At first they used simple cloths, which in great houses were embroidered and painted; _perches_ of various kinds were affixed to the walls, whereon the weapons, the musical instruments, the cloaks, etc., were hung up. The lord and lady sat on a high seat; not, I am inclined to think, on a dais at the end of the hall, which would have been cold for them, but on a great chair near the fire, which was burning in the middle of the hall. This fashion long continued. I have myself seen a college hall warmed by a fire in a brazier burning under the lantern of the hall. The furniture consisted of benches; the table was laid on trestles, spread with a white cloth, and removed after dinner; the hall was open to all who came, on condition that the guest should leave his weapons at the door.

The floor was covered with reeds, which made a clean, soft, and warm carpet, on which the company could, if they pleased, lie round the fire. They had carpets or rugs also, but reeds were commonly used. The traveler who chances to find himself at the ancient and most interesting town of Kingston-on-Hull, which very few English people, and still fewer Americans, have the curiosity to explore, should visit the Trinity House. There, among many interesting things, he will find a hall where reeds are still spread, but no longer so thickly as to form a complete carpet. I believe this to be the last survival of the reed carpet.

The times of meals were: the breakfast at about nine; the "noon-meat," or dinner, at twelve; and the "even-meat," or supper, probably at a movable time, depending on the length of the day. When lighting was costly and candles were scarce, the hours of sleep would be naturally longer in winter than in the summer.

In their manner of living the Saxons were fond of vegetables, especially of the leek, onion, and garlic. Beans they also had (these were introduced probably at the time when they commenced intercourse with the outer world), pease, radishes, turnips, parsley, mint, sage, cress, rue, and other herbs. They had nearly all our modern fruits, though many show by their names, which are Latin or Norman, a later introduction. They made use of butter, honey, and cheese. They drank ale and mead. The latter is still made, but in small quantities, in Somerset and Hereford shires. The Normans brought over the custom of drinking wine.

In the earliest times the whole family slept in the common hall. The first improvement was the erection of the solar, or upper chamber. This was above the hall, or a portion of it, or over the kitchen and buttery attached to the hall. The arrangement may be still observed in many of the old colleges of Oxford or Cambridge. The solar was first the sleeping-room of the lord and lady; though afterward it served not only this purpose, but also for an ante-chamber to the dormitory of the daughters and the maid-servants. The men of the household still slept in the hall below. Later on, bed recesses were contrived in the wall, as one may find in Northumberland at the present day. The bed was commonly, but not for the ladies of the house, merely a big bag stuffed with straw. A sheet wrapped round the body formed the only night-dress. But there were also pillows, blankets, and coverlets. The early English bed was quite as luxurious as any that followed after, until the invention of the spring mattress gave a new and hitherto unhoped-for joy to the hours of night.