Chaucer's early poems have music and fancy, they are full of a natural delight in sunshine and the greenness of foliage; but they have little human interest. They are allegories for the most part, more or less satisfactorily wrought out. The allegorical turn of thought, the delight in pageantry, the "clothing upon" of abstractions with human forms, flowered originally out of chivalry and the feudal times.

Chaucer imported it from the French, and was proud of it in his early poems, as a young fellow of that day might be proud of his horse furniture, his attire, his waving plume. And the poetic fashion thus set retained its vitality for a long while,--indeed, it was only thoroughly made an end of by the French Revolution, which made an end of so much else. About the last trace of its influence is to be found in Burns' sentimental correspondence with Mrs. M'Lehose, in which the lady is addressed as Clarinda, and the poet signs himself Sylvander.

It was at best a mere beautiful gauze screen drawn between the poet and nature; and pa.s.sion put his foot through it at once. After Chaucer's youth was over, he discarded somewhat scornfully these abstractions and shows of things. The "Flower and the Leaf" is a beautiful-tinted dream; the "Canterbury Tales" are as real as anything in Shakspeare or Burns. The ladies in the earlier poems dwell in forests, and wear coronals on their heads; the people in the "Tales" are engaged in the actual concerns of life, and you can see the splashes of mire upon their clothes. The separate poems which make up the "Canterbury Tales"

were probably written at different periods, after youth was gone, and when he had fallen out of love with florid imagery and allegorical conceits; and we can fancy him, perhaps fallen on evil days and in retirement, anxious to gather up these loose efforts into one consummate whole. If of his flowers he would make a bouquet for posterity, it was of course necessary to procure a string to tie them together. These necessities, which ruin other men, are the fortunate chances of great poets. Then it was that the idea arose of a meeting of pilgrims at the Tabard in Southwark, of their riding to Canterbury, and of the different personages relating stories to beguile the tedium of the journey. The notion was a happy one, and the execution is superb. In those days, as we know, pilgrimages were of frequent occurrence; and in the motley group that congregated on such occasions, the painter of character had full scope. All conditions of people are comprised in the noisy band issuing from the courtyard of the Southwark inn on that May morning in the fourteenth century. Let us go nearer, and have a look at them.

There is a grave and gentle Knight, who has fought in many wars, and who has many a time hurled his adversary down in tournament before the eyes of all the ladies there, and who has taken the place of honour at many a mighty feast. There, riding beside him, is a blooming Squire, his son, fresh as the month of May, singing day and night from very gladness of heart,--an impetuous young fellow, who is looking forward to the time when he will flesh his maiden sword, and shout his first war-cry in a stricken field. There is an Abbot, mounted on a brown steed. He is middle-aged, his bald crown shines like gla.s.s, and his face looks as if it were anointed with oil. He has been a valiant trencher-man at many a well-furnished feast. Above all things, he loves hunting; and when he rides, men can hear his bridle ringing in the whistling wind loud and clear as a chapel bell. There is a thin, ill-conditioned Clerk, perched perilously on a steed as thin and ill-conditioned as himself. He will never be rich, I fear. He is a great student, and would rather have a few books bound in black and red hanging above his bed than be sheriff of the county. There is a Prioress, so gentle and tender-hearted that she weeps if she hears the whimper of a beaten hound, or sees a mouse caught in a trap. There rides the laughing Wife of Bath, bold-faced and fair. She is an adept in love-matters. Five husbands already "she has fried in their own grease" till they were glad to get into their graves to escape the scourge of her tongue. Heaven rest their souls, and swiftly send a sixth! She wears a hat large as a targe or buckler, brings the artillery of her eyes to bear on the young Squire, and jokes him about his sweetheart. Beside her is a worthy Parson, who delivers faithfully the message of his Master. Although he is poor, he gives away the half of his t.i.thes in charity. His parish is waste and wide, yet if sickness or misfortune should befall one of his flock, he rides, in spite of wind, or rain, or thunder, to administer consolation. Among the crowd rides a rich Franklin, who sits in the Guildhall on the dais.

He is profuse and hospitable as summer. All day his table stands in the hall covered with meats and drinks, and every one who enters is welcome. There is a Ship-man, whose beard has been shaken by many a tempest, whose cheek knows the kiss of the salt sea spray; a Merchant, with a grave look, clean and neat in his attire, and with plenty of gold in his purse. There is a Doctor of Physic, who has killed more men than the Knight, talking to a Clerk of Laws. There is a merry Friar, a lover of good cheer; and when seated in a tavern among his companions, singing songs it would be scarcely decorous to repeat, you may see his eyes twinkling in his head for joy, like stars on a frosty night. Beside him is a ruby-faced Sompnour, whose breath stinks of garlic and onions, who is ever roaring for wine,--strong wine, wine red as blood; and when drunk, he disdains English,--nothing but Latin will serve his turn. In front of all is a Miller, who has been drinking over-night, and is now but indifferently sober. There is not a door in the country that he cannot break by running at it with his head. The pilgrims are all ready, the host gives the word, and they defile through the arch. The Miller blows his bagpipes as they issue from the town; and away they ride to Canterbury, through the boon sunshine, and between the white hedges of the English May.

Had Chaucer spent his whole life in seeking, he could not have selected a better contemporary circ.u.mstance for securing variety of character than a pilgrimage to Canterbury. It comprises, as we see, all kinds and conditions of people. It is the fourteenth-century England in little. In our time, the only thing that could match it in this respect is Epsom down on the great race-day. But then Epsom down is too unwieldy; the crowd is too great, and it does not cohere, save for the few seconds when gay jackets are streaming towards the winning-post. The Prologue to the "Canterbury Tales," in which we make the acquaintance of the pilgrims, is the ripest, most genial and humourous, altogether the most masterly thing which Chaucer has left us. In its own way, and within its own limits, it is the most wonderful thing in the language. The people we read about are as real as the people we brush clothes with in the street,--nay, much _more_ real; for we not only see their faces, and the fashion and texture of their garments, we know also what they think, how they express themselves, and with what eyes they look out on the world. Chaucer's art in this Prologue is simple perfection. He indulges in no irrelevant description, he airs no fine sentiments, he takes no special pains as to style or poetic ornament; but every careless touch tells, every sly line reveals character; the description of each man's horse-furniture and array reads like a memoir. The Nun's pretty oath bewrays her. We see the bold, well-favoured countenance of the Wife of Bath beneath her hat, as "broad as a buckler or a targe"; and the horse of the Clerk, "as lean as is a rake," tells tales of his master's cheer. Our modern dress is worthless as an indication of the character, or even of the social rank, of the wearer; in the olden time it was significant of personal tastes and appet.i.tes, of profession, and condition of life generally. See how Chaucer brings out a character by touching merely on a few points of attire and personal appearance:--

"I saw his sleeves were purfiled at the hand With fur, and that the finest of the land; And for to fasten his hood under his chin He had of gold ywrought a curious pin.

A love-knot in the greater end there was; His head was bald, and shone as any gla.s.s, And eke his face as if it was anoint."

What more would you have? You could not have known the monk better if you had lived all your life in the monastery with him. The sleeves daintly purfiled with fur give one side of him, the curious pin with the love-knot another, and the shining crown and face complete the character and the picture. The sun itself could not photograph more truly.

On their way the pilgrims tell tales, and these are as various as their relaters; in fact, the Prologue is the soil out of which they all grow.

Dramatic propriety is everywhere instinctively preserved. "The Knight's Tale" is n.o.ble, splendid, and chivalric as his own nature; the tale told by the Wife of Bath is exactly what one would expect. With what good-humour the rosy sinner confesses her sins! how hilarious she is in her repentance! "The Miller's Tale" is coa.r.s.e and full-flavoured,--just the kind of thing to be told by a rough, humourous fellow who is hardly yet sober. And here it may be said that although there is a good deal of coa.r.s.eness in the "Canterbury Tales,"

there is not the slightest tinge of pruriency. There is such a single-heartedness and innocence in Chaucer's vulgarest and broadest stories, such a keen eye for humour, and such a hearty enjoyment of it, and at the same time such an absence of any delight in impurity for impurity's sake, that but little danger can arise from their perusal.

He is so fond of fun that he will drink it out of a cup that is only indifferently clean. He writes often like Fielding, he never writes as Smollett sometimes does. These stories, ranging from the n.o.ble romance of Palamon and Arcite to the rude intrigues of Clerk Nicholas,--the one fitted to draw tears down the cheeks of n.o.ble ladies and gentlemen; the other to convulse with laughter the midriffs of illiterate clowns,--give one an idea of the astonishing range of Chaucer's powers.

He can suit himself to every company, make himself at home in every circ.u.mstance of life; can mingle in tournaments where beauty is leaning from balconies, and the knights, with spear in rest, wait for the blast of the trumpet; and he can with equal ease sit with a couple of drunken friars in a tavern laughing over the confessions they hear, and singing questionable catches between whiles. Chaucer's range is wide as that of Shakspeare,--if we omit that side of Shakspeare's mind which confronts the other world, and out of which Hamlet sprang,--and his men and women are even more real, and more easily matched in the living and breathing world. For in Shakspeare's characters, as in his language, there is surplusage, superabundance; the measure is heaped and running over. From his sheer wealth, he is often the most _un_dramatic of writers. He is so frequently greater than his occasion, he has no small change to suit emergencies, and we have guineas in place of groats. Romeo is more than a mortal lover, and Mercutio more than a mortal wit; the kings in the Shakspearian world are more kingly than earthly sovereigns; Rosalind's laughter was never heard save in the Forest of Arden. His madmen seem to have eaten of some "strange root."

No such boon companion as Falstaff ever heard chimes at midnight. His very clowns are transcendental, with sc.r.a.ps of wisdom springing out of their foolishest speech. Chaucer, lacking Shakspeare's excess and prodigality of genius, could not so gloriously err, and his creations have a harder, drier, more realistic look, are more like the people we hear uttering ordinary English speech, and see on ordinary country roads against an ordinary English sky. If need were, any one of them could drive pigs to market. Chaucer's characters are individual enough, their idiosyncrasies are sharply enough defined, but they are to some extent literal and prosaic; they are of the "earth, earthy;"

out of his imagination no Ariel ever sprang, no half-human, half-brutish Caliban ever crept. He does not effloresce in ill.u.s.trations and images, the flowers do not hide the gra.s.s; his pictures are masterpieces, but they are portraits, and the man is brought out by a multiplicity of short touches,--caustic, satirical, and matter of fact. His poetry may be said to resemble an English country road, on which pa.s.sengers of different degrees of rank are continually pa.s.sing,--now knight, now boor, now abbot: Spenser's, for instance, and all the more fanciful styles, to a tapestry on which a whole Olympus has been wrought. The figures on the tapestry are much the more n.o.ble-looking, it is true; but then they are dreams and phantoms, whereas the people on the country road actually exist.

The "Knight's Tale"--which is the first told on the way to Canterbury--is a chivalrous legend, full of hunting, battle, and tournament. Into it, although the scene is laid in Greece, Chaucer has, with a fine scorn of anachronism, poured all the splendour, colour, pomp, and circ.u.mstance of the fourteenth century. It is brilliant as a banner displayed to the sunlight. It is real cloth of gold. Compared with it, "Ivanhoe" is a spectacle at Astley's. The style is everywhere more adorned than is usual, although even here, and in the richest parts, the short, homely, caustic Chaucerian line is largely employed. The "Man of Law's Tale," again, is distinguished by quite a different merit. It relates the sorrows and patience of Constance, and is filled with the beauty of holiness. Constance might have been sister to Cordelia; she is one of the white lilies of womanhood. Her story is almost the tenderest in our literature. And Chaucer's art comes out in this, that although she would spread her hair, nay, put her very heart beneath the feet of those who wrong her, we do not cease for one moment to respect her. This is a feat which has but seldom been achieved. It has long been a matter of reproach to Mr. Thackeray, for instance, that the only faculty with which he gifts his good women is a supreme faculty of tears. To draw any very high degree of female patience is one of the most difficult of tasks. If you represent a woman bearing wrong with a continuous unmurmuring meekness, presenting to blows, come from what quarter they may, nothing but a bent neck, and eyelids humbly drooped, you are in nine cases out of ten painting elaborately the portrait of a fool; and if you miss making her a fool, you are certain to make her a bore. Your patient woman, in books and in life, does not draw on our grat.i.tude. When her goodness is not stupidity,--which it frequently is,--it is insulting.

She walks about an incarnate rebuke. Her silence is an incessant complaint. A teacup thrown at your head is not half so alarming as her meek, much-wronged, unretorting face. You begin to suspect that she consoles herself with the thought that there is another world, where brutal brothers and husbands are settled with for their behaviour to their angelic wives and sisters in this. Chaucer's Constance is neither fool nor bore, although in the hands of anybody else she would have been one or the other, or both. Like the holy religion which she symbolises, her sweet face draws blessing and love wherever it goes; it heals old wounds with its beauty, it carries peace into the heart of discord, it touches murder itself into soft and penitential tears. In reading the old tender-hearted poet, we feel that there is something in a woman's sweetness and forgiveness that the masculine mind cannot fathom; and we adore the hushed step and still countenance of Constance almost as if an angel pa.s.sed.

Chaucer's orthography is unquestionably uncouth at first sight; but it is not difficult to read if you keep a good glossary beside you for occasional reference, and are willing to undergo a little trouble. The language is antique, but it is full of antique flavour. Wine of excellent vintage originally, it has improved through all the years it has been kept. A very little trouble on the reader's part, in the reign of Anne, would have made him as intelligible as Addison; a very little more, in the reign of Queen Victoria, will make him more intelligible than Mr. Browning. Yet somehow it has been a favourite idea with many poets that he required modernisation, and that they were the men to do it. Dryden, Pope, and Wordsworth have tried their hands on him. Wordsworth performed his work in a reverential enough spirit; but it may be doubted whether his efforts have brought the old poet a single new reader. Dryden and Pope did not translate or modernise Chaucer, they committed a.s.sault and battery upon him. They turned his exquisitely _nave_ humour into their own coa.r.s.eness, they put _doubles entendre_ into his mouth, they blurred his female faces,--as a picture is blurred when the hand of a Vandal is drawn over its yet wet colours,--and they turned his natural descriptions into the natural descriptions of "Windsor Forest" and the "Fables." The grand old writer does not need translation or modernisation; but perhaps, if it be done at all, it had better be reached in that way. For the benefit of younger readers, I subjoin short prose versions of two of the "Canterbury Tales,"--a story-book than which the world does not possess a better. Listen, then, to the tale the Knight told as the pilgrims rode to Canterbury:--

"There was once, as old stories tell, a certain Duke Theseus, lord and governor of Athens. The same was a great warrior and conqueror of realms. He defeated the Amazons, and wedded the queen of that country, Hypolita. After his marriage, the duke, his wife, and his sister Emily, with all their host, were riding towards Athens, when they were aware that a company of ladies, clad in black, were kneeling two by two on the highway, wringing their hands and filling the air with lamentations. The duke, beholding this piteous sight, reined in his steed and inquired the reason of their grief. Whereat one of the ladies, queen to the slain King Capeneus, told him that at the siege of Thebes (of which town they were), Creon, the conqueror, had thrown the bodies of their husbands in a heap, and would on no account allow them to be buried, so that their limbs were mangled by vultures and wild beasts. At the hearing of this great wrong, the duke started down from his horse, took the ladies one by one in his arms and comforted them, sent Hypolita and Emily home, displayed his great white banner, and immediately rode towards Thebes with his host. Arriving at the city, he attacked boldly, slew the tyrant Creon with his own hand, tore down the houses,--wall, roof, and rafter,--and then gave the bodies to the weeping ladies that they might be honourably interred. While searching amongst the slain Thebans, two young knights were found grievously wounded, and by the richness of their armour they were known to be of the blood royal. These young knights, Palamon and Arcite by name, the duke carried to Athens and flung into perpetual prison. Here they lived year by year in mourning and woe. It happened one May morning that Palamon, who by the clemency of his keeper was roaming about in an upper chamber, looked out and beheld Emily singing in the garden and gathering flowers. At the sight of the beautiful apparition he started and cried, 'Ha!' Arcite rose up, crying, 'Dear cousin, what is the matter?' when he too was stricken to the heart by the shaft of her beauty. Then the prisoners began to dispute as to which had the better right to love her. Palamon said he had seen her first; Arcite said that in love each man fought for himself; and so they disputed day by day. Now, it so happened that at this time the Duke Perotheus came to visit his old playfellow and friend Theseus, and at his intercession Arcite was liberated, on the condition that on pain of death he should never again be found in the Athenian dominions. Then the two knights grieved in their hearts. 'What matters liberty?' said Arcite,--'I am a banished man! Palamon in his dungeon is happier than I. He can see Emily and be gladdened by her beauty!' 'Woe is me!' said Palamon; 'here must I remain in durance. Arcite is abroad; he may make sharp war on the Athenian border, and win Emily by the sword.' When Arcite returned to his native city he became so thin and pale with sorrow that his friends scarcely knew him. One night the G.o.d Mercury appeared to him in a dream and told him to return to Athens, for in that city destiny had shaped an end of his woes. He arose next morning and went.

He entered as a menial into the service of the Duke Theseus, and in a short time was promoted to be page of the chamber to Emily the bright.

Meanwhile, by the help of a friend, Palamon, who had drugged his jailer with spiced wine, made his escape, and, as morning began to dawn, he hid himself in a grove. That very morning Arcite had ridden from Athens to gather some green branches to do honour to the month of May, and entered the grove in which Palamon was concealed. When he had gathered his green branches he sat down, and, after the manner of lovers (who have no constancy of spirits), he began to pour forth his sorrows to the empty air. Palamon, knowing his voice, started up with a white face: 'False traitor Arcite! now I have found thee. Thou hast deceived the Duke Theseus! I am the lover of Emily, and thy mortal foe! Had I a weapon, one of us should never leave this grove alive!'

'By G.o.d, who sitteth above!' cried the fierce Arcite, 'were it not that thou art sick and mad for love, I would slay thee here with my own hand! Meats, and drinks, and bedding I shall bring thee to-night, tomorrow swords and two suits of armour: take thou the better, leave me the worse, and then let us see who can win the lady.' 'Agreed,' said Palamon; and Arcite rode away in great fierce joy of heart. Next morning, at the crowing of the c.o.c.k, Arcite placed two suits of armour before him on his horse, and rode towards the grove. When they met, the colour of their faces changed. Each thought, 'Here comes my mortal enemy; one of us must be dead.' Then, friend-like, as if they had been brothers, they a.s.sisted each the other to rivet on the armour; that done, the great bright swords went to and fro, and they were soon standing ankle-deep in blood. That same morning the Duke Theseus, his wife, and Emily went forth to hunt the hart with hound and horn, and, as destiny ordered it, the chase led them to the very grove in which the knights were fighting. Theseus, shading his eyes from the sunlight with his hand, saw them, and, spurring his horse between them, cried, 'What manner of men are ye, fighting here without judge or officer?'

Whereupon Palamon said, 'I am that Palamon who has broken your prison; this is Arcite the banished man, who, by returning to Athens, has forfeited his head. Do with us as you list. I have no more to say.'

'You have condemned yourselves!' cried the duke; 'by mighty Mars the red, both of you shall die!' Then Emily and the queen fell at his feet, and, with prayers and tears and white hands lifted up, besought the lives of the young knights, which was soon granted. Theseus began to laugh when he thought of his own young days. 'What a mighty G.o.d is Love!' quoth he. 'Here are Palamon and Arcite fighting for my sister, while they know she can only marry one, Fight they ever so much, she cannot marry both. I therefore ordain that both of you go away, and return this day year, each bringing with him a hundred knights; and let the victor in solemn tournament have Emily for wife.' Who was glad now but Palamon! who sprang up for joy but Arcite!

"When the twelve months had nearly pa.s.sed away, there was in Athens a great noise of workmen and hammers. The duke was busy with preparations. He built a large amphitheatre, seated, round and round, to hold thousands of people. He erected also three temples,--one for Diana, one for Mars, one for Venus; how rich these were, how full of paintings and images, the tongue cannot tell! Never was such preparation made in the world. At last the day arrived in which the knights were to make their entrance into the city. A noise of trumpets was heard, and through the city rode Palamon and his train. With him came Lycurgus, the king of Thrace. He stood in a great car of gold, drawn by four white bulls, and his face was like a griffin when he looked about. Twenty or more hounds used for hunting the lion and the bear ran about the wheels of his car; at his back rode a hundred lords, stern and stout. Another burst of trumpets, and Arcite entered with his troop. By his side rode Emetrius, the king of India, on a bay steed covered with cloth of gold. His hair was yellow, and glittered like the sun; when he looked upon the people, they thought his face was like the face of a lion; his voice was like the thunder of a trumpet.

He bore a white eagle on his wrist, and tame lions and leopards ran among the horses of his train. They came to the city on a Sunday morning, and the jousts were to begin on Monday. What p.r.i.c.king of squires backwards and forwards, what clanking of hammers, what baying of hounds, that day! At last it was noon of Monday. Theseus declared from his throne that no blood was to be shed, that they should take prisoners only, and that he who was once taken prisoner should on no account again mingle in the fray. Then the duke, the queen, Emily, and the rest, rode to the lists with trumpets and melody. They had no sooner taken their places than through the gate of Mars rode Arcite and his hundred, displaying a red banner. At the self-same moment Palamon and his company entered by the gate of Venus, with a banner white as milk. They were then arranged in two ranks, their names were called over, the gates were shut, the herald gave his cry, loud and clear rang the trumpet, and crash went the spears, as if made of gla.s.s, when the knights met in battle shock. There might you see a knight unhorsed, a second crushing his way through the press, armed with a mighty mace, a third hurt and taken prisoner. Many a time that day in the swaying battle did the two Thebans meet, and thrice were they unhorsed. At last, near the setting of the sun, when Palamon was fighting with Arcite, he was wounded by Emetrius, and the battle thickened at the place. Emetrius, is thrown out of his saddle a spear's length.

Lycurgus is overthrown, and rolls on the ground, horse and man; and Palamon is dragged by main force to the stake. Then Theseus rose up where he sat, and cried, 'Ho! no more; Arcite of Thebes hath won Emily!' at which the people shouted so loudly that it almost seemed the mighty lists would fall. Arcite now put up his helmet, and, curveting his horse through the open s.p.a.ce, smiled to Emily, when a fire from Pluto started out of the earth; the horse shied, and his rider was thrown on his head on the ground. When he was lifted, his breast was broken, and his face was as black as coal. Then there was grief in Athens; every one wept. Soon after, Arcite, feeling the cold death creeping up from his feet and darkening his face and eyes, called Palamon and Emily to his bedside, when he joined their hands, and died.

The dead body was laid on a pile, dressed in splendid war gear; his naked sword was placed by his side; the pile was heaped with gums, frankincense, and odours; a torch was applied; and when the flames rose up, and the smoky fragrance rolled to heaven, the Greeks galloped round three times, with a great shouting and clashing of shields."

The Man of Law's tale runs in this wise:

"There dwelt in Syria once a company of merchants, who scented every land with their spices. They dealt in jewels, and cloth of gold, and sheeny satins. It so happened that while some of them were dwelling in Rome for traffic, the people talked of nothing save the wonderful beauty of Constance, the daughter of the emperor. She was so fair that every one who looked upon her face fell in love with her. In a short time the ships of the merchants, laden with rich wares, were furrowing the green sea, going home. When they came to their native city they could talk of nothing but the marvellous beauty of Constance. Their words being reported to the Sultan, he determined that none other should be his wife; and for this purpose he abandoned the religion of the false prophet, and was baptised in the Christian faith.

Amba.s.sadors pa.s.sed between the courts, and the day came at length when Constance was to leave Rome for her husband's palace in Syria. What kisses and tears and lingering embraces! What blessings on the little golden head which was so soon to lie in the bosom of a stranger! What state and solemnity in the procession which wound down from the sh.o.r.e to the ship! At last it was Syria. Crowds of people were standing on the beach. The mother of the Sultan was there; and when Constance stepped ash.o.r.e, she took her in her arms and kissed her as if she had been her own child. Soon after, with trumpets and melody and the trampling of innumerable horses, the Sultan came. Everything was joy and happiness. But the smiling demoness, his mother, could not forgive him for changing his faith, and she resolved to slay him that very night, and seize the government of the kingdom. He and all his lords were stabbed in the rich hall while they were sitting at their wine.

Constance alone escaped. She was then put into a ship alone, with food and clothes, and told that she might find her way back to Italy. She sailed away, and was never seen by that people. For five years she wandered to and fro upon the sea. Do you ask who preserved her? The same G.o.d who fed Elijah with ravens, and saved Daniel in the horrible den. At last she floated into the English seas, and was thrown by the waves on the Northumberland sh.o.r.e, near which stood a great castle.

The constable of the castle came down in the morning to see the woful woman. She spoke a kind of corrupt Latin, and could neither tell her name nor the name of the country of which she was a native. She said she was so bewildered in the sea that she remembered nothing. The man could not help loving her, and so took her home to live with himself and his wife. Now, through the example and teaching of Constance, Dame Hermigild was converted to Christianity. It happened also that three aged Christian Britons were living near that place in great fear of their pagan neighbours, and one of these men was blind. One day, as the constable, his wife, and Constance were walking along the sea-sh.o.r.e, they were met by the blind man, who called out, 'In the name of Christ, give me my sight, Dame Hermigild!' At this, on account of her husband, she was sore afraid; but, encouraged by Constance, she wrought a great miracle, and gave the blind man his sight. But Satan, the enemy of all, wanted to destroy Constance, and he employed a young knight for that purpose. This knight had loved her with a foul affection, to which she could give no return. At last, wild for revenge, he crept at night into Hermigild's chamber, slew her, and laid the b.l.o.o.d.y knife on the innocent pillow of Constance. The next morning there was woe and dolour in the house. She was brought before Alla, the king, charged with the murder. The people could not believe that she had done this thing; they knew she loved Hermigild so. Constance fell down on her knees and prayed to G.o.d for succour. Have you ever been in a crowd in which a man is being led to death, and, seeing a wild, pale face, know by that sign that you are looking upon the doomed creature?--so wild, so pale looked Constance when she stood before the king and people. The tears ran down Alla's face. 'Go fetch a book,'

cried he; 'and if this knight swears that the woman is guilty, she shall surely die.' The book was brought, the knight took the oath, and that moment an unseen hand smote him on the neck, so that he fell down on the floor, his eyes bursting out of his head. Then a celestial voice was heard in the midst, crying, 'Thou hast slandered a daughter of Holy Church in high presence, and yet I hold my peace.' A great awe fell on all who heard, and the king and mult.i.tudes of his people were converted. Shortly after this, Alla wedded Constance with great richness and solemnity. At length he was called to defend his border against the predatory Scots, and in his absence a man-child was born.

A messenger was sent with the blissful tidings to the king's camp; but, on his way, the messenger turned aside to the dwelling of Donegild, the king's mother, and said, 'Be blithe, madam; the queen has given birth to a son, and joy is in the land. Here is the letter I bear to the king.' The wicked Donegild said, 'You must be already tired; here are refreshments.' And while the simple man drank ale and wine, she forged a letter, saying that the queen had been delivered of a creature so fiendish and horrible that no one in the castle could bear to look upon it. This letter the messenger gave to the king; and who can tell his grief! But he wrote in reply, 'Welcome be the child that Christ sends!

Welcome, O Lord, be thy pleasure! Be careful of my wife and child till my return.' The messenger on his return slept at Donegild's court, with the letter under his girdle. It was stolen while in his drunken sleep, and another put in its place, charging the constable not to let Constance remain three days in the kingdom, but to send her and her child away in the same ship in which she had come. The constable could not help himself. Thousands are gathered on the sh.o.r.e. With a face wild and pale as when she came from the sea, and bearing her crying infant in her arms, she comes through the crowd, which shrinks back, leaving a lane for her sorrow. She takes her seat in the little boat; and while the cruel people gaze hour by hour from the sh.o.r.e, she pa.s.ses into the sunset, and away out into the night under the stars. When Alla returned from the war, and found how he had been deceived, he slew his mother, in the bitterness of his heart.

"News had come to Rome of the cruelty of the Sultan's mother to Constance, and an army was sent to waste her country. After the land had been burned and desolated, the commander was crossing the seas in triumph, when he met the ship sailing in which sat Constance and her little boy. They were both brought to Rome, and although the commander's wife and Constance were cousins, the one did not know the other. By this time, remorse for the slaying of his mother had seized Alla's mind, and he could find no rest. He resolved to make a pilgrimage to Rome in search of peace. He crossed the Alps with his train, and entered the city with great glory and magnificence. One day he feasted at the commander's house, at which Constance dwelt; and at her request her little son was admitted, and during the progress of the feast the child went and stood looking in the king's face. 'What fair child is that standing yonder?' said the king. 'By St. John; I know not!' quoth the commander; 'he has a mother, but no father that I know of.' And then he told the king--who seemed all the while like a man stunned--how he had found the mother and child floating about on the sea. The king rose from the table and sent for Constance; and when he saw her, and thought on all her wrongs, he could not refrain from tears. 'This is your little son, Maurice,' she said, as she led him in by the hand. Next day she met the emperor her father in the street, and, falling down on her knees before him, said, 'Father, has the remembrance of your young child Constance gone out of your mind? I am that Constance whom you sent to Syria, and who was thought to be lost in the sea.' That day there was great joy in Rome; and soon afterwards Alla, with his wife and child, returned to England, where they lived in great prosperity till he died."

BOOKS AND GARDENS

Most men seek solitude from wounded vanity, from disappointed ambition, from a miscarriage in the pa.s.sions; but some others from native instinct, as a duckling seeks water. I have taken to my solitude, such as it is, from an indolent turn of mind, and this solitude I sweeten by an imaginative sympathy which re-creates the past for me,--the past of the world, as well as the past which belongs to me as an individual,--and which makes me independent of the pa.s.sing moment. I see every one struggling after the unattainable, but I struggle not, and so spare myself the pangs of disappointment and disgust. I have no ventures at sea, and, consequently, do not fear the arrival of evil tidings. I have no desire to act any prominent part in the world, but I am devoured by an unappeasable curiosity as to the men who do act. I am not an actor, I am a spectator only. My sole occupation is sight-seeing. In a certain imperial idleness, I amuse myself with the world. Ambition! What do I care for ambition? The oyster with much pain produces its pearl. I take the pearl. Why should I produce one after this miserable, painful fashion? It would be but a flawed one, at best. These pearls I can pick up by the dozen. The production of them is going on all around me, and there will be a nice crop for the solitary man of the next century. Look at a certain silent emperor, for instance: a hundred years hence _his_ pearl will be handed about from hand to hand; will be curiously scrutinised and valued; will be set in its place in the world's cabinet. I confess I should like to see the completion of that filmy orb. Will it be pure in colour? Will its purity be marred by an ominous b.l.o.o.d.y streak? Of this I am certain, that in the cabinet in which the world keeps these peculiar treasures, no one will be looked at more frequently, or will provoke a greater variety of opinions as to its intrinsic worth. Why should I be ambitious? Shall I write verses? I am not likely to surpa.s.s Mr.

Tennyson or Mr. Browning in that walk. Shall I be a musician? The blackbird singing this moment somewhere in my garden shrubbery puts me to instant shame. Shall I paint? The intensest scarlet on an artist's palette is but ochre to that I saw this morning at sunrise. No, no, let me enjoy Mr. Tennyson's verse, and the blackbird's song, and the colours of sunrise, but do not let me emulate them. I am happier as it is. I do not need to make history,--there are plenty of people willing to save me trouble on that score. The cook makes the dinner, the guest eats it; and the last, not without reason, is considered the happier man.

In my garden I spend my days; in my library I spend my nights. My interests are divided between my geraniums and my books. With the flower I am in the present; with the book I am in the past. I go into my library, and all history unrolls before me. I breathe the morning air of the world while the scent of Eden's roses yet lingered in it, while it vibrated only to the world's first brood of nightingales, and to the laugh of Eve. I see the Pyramids building; I hear the shoutings of the armies of Alexander; I feel the ground shake beneath the march of Cambyses. I sit as in a theatre,--the stage is time, the play is the play of the world. What a spectacle it is! What kingly pomp, what processions file past, what cities burn to heaven, what crowds of captives are dragged at the chariot-wheels of conquerors! I hiss, or cry "Bravo," when the great actors come on the shaking stage. I am a Roman emperor when I look at a Roman coin. I lift Homer, and I shout with Achilles in the trenches. The silence of the unpeopled Syrian plains, the out-comings and in-goings of the patriarchs, Abraham and Ishmael, Isaac in the fields at eventide, Rebekah at the well, Jacob's guile, Esau's face reddened by desert sun-heat, Joseph's splendid funeral procession,--all these things I find within the boards of my Old Testament. What a silence in those old books as of a half-peopled world; what bleating of flocks; what green pastoral rest; what indubitable human existence! Across brawling centuries of blood and war I hear the bleating of Abraham's flocks, the tinkling of the bells of Rebekah's camels. O men and women so far separated yet so near, so strange yet so well known, by what miraculous power do I know ye all!

Books are the true Elysian fields, where the spirits of the dead converse; and into these fields a mortal may venture unappalled. What king's court can boast such company? What school of philosophy such wisdom? The wit of the ancient world is glancing and flashing there.

There is Pan's pipe, there are the songs of Apollo. Seated in my library at night, and looking on the silent faces of my books, I am occasionally visited by a strange sense of the supernatural. They are not collections of printed pages, they are ghosts. I take one down, and it speaks with me in a tongue not now heard on earth, and of men and things of which it alone possesses knowledge. I call myself a solitary, but sometimes I think I misapply the term. No man sees more company than I do. I travel with mightier cohorts around me than ever did Timour or Genghis Khan on their fiery marches. I am a sovereign in my library, but it is the dead, not the living, that attend my levees.

The house I dwell in stands apart from the little town, and relates itself to the houses as I do to the inhabitants. It sees everything, but is itself unseen, or, at all events, unregarded. My study-window looks down upon Dreamthorp like a meditative eye. Without meaning it, I feel I am a spy on the on-goings of the quiet place. Around my house there is an old-fashioned rambling garden, with close-shaven gra.s.sy plots, and fantastically clipped yews which have gathered their darkness from a hundred summers and winters; and sun-dials in which the sun is constantly telling his age; and statues green with neglect and the stains of the weather. The garden I love more than any place on earth; it is a better study than the room inside the house which is dignified by that name. I like to pace its gravelled walks, to sit in the moss-house, which is warm and cosey as a bird's nest, and wherein twilight dwells at noonday; to enjoy the feast of colour spread for me in the curiously shaped floral s.p.a.ces. My garden, with its silence and the pulses of fragrance that come and go on the airy undulations, affects me like sweet music. Care stops at the gates, and gazes at me wistfully through the bars. Among my flowers and trees Nature takes me into her own hands, and I breathe freely as the first man. It is curious, pathetic almost, I sometimes think, how deeply seated in the human heart is the liking for gardens and gardening. The sickly seamstress in the narrow city lane tends her box of sicklier mignonette. The retired merchant is as fond of tulips as ever was Dutchman during the famous mania. The author finds a garden the best place to think out his thought. In the disabled statesman every restless throb of regret or ambition is stilled when he looks upon his blossomed apple-trees. Is the fancy too far brought that this love for gardens is a reminiscence haunting the race of that remote time in the world's dawn when but two persons existed,--a gardener named Adam, and a gardener's wife called Eve?

When I walk out of my house into my garden I walk out of my habitual self, my every-day thoughts, my customariness of joy or sorrow by which I recognise and a.s.sure myself of my own ident.i.ty. These I leave behind me for a time, as the bather leaves his garments on the beach. This piece of garden-ground, in extent barely a square acre, is a kingdom with its own interests, annals, and incidents. Something is always happening in it. To-day is always different from yesterday. This spring a chaffinch built a nest in one of my yew-trees. The particular yew which the bird did me the honour to select had been clipped long ago into a similitude of Adam, and, in fact, went by his name. The resemblance to a human figure was, of course, remote, but the intention was evident. In the black shock head of our first parent did the birds establish their habitation. A prettier, rounder, more comfortable nest I never saw, and many a wild swing it got when Adam bent his back, and bobbed and shook his head when the bitter east wind was blowing. The nest interested me, and I visited it every day from the time the first stained turquoise sphere was laid in the warm lining of moss and horse-hair, till, when I chirped, four red hungry throats, eager for worm or slug, opened out of a confused ma.s.s of feathery down. What a hungry brood it was, to be sure, and how often father and mother were put to it to provide them sustenance! I went but the other day to have a peep, and, behold! brood and parent-birds were gone, the nest was empty, Adam's visitors had departed. In the corners of my bedroom window I have a couple of swallows' nests, and nothing can be pleasanter in these summer mornings than to lie in a kind of half-dream, conscious all the time of the chatterings and endearments of the man-loving creatures. They are beautifully restless, and are continually darting around their nests in the window-corners. All at once there is a great twittering and noise; something of moment has been witnessed, something of importance has occurred in the swallow-world,--perhaps a fly of unusual size or savour has been bolted. Clinging with their feet, and with heads turned charmingly aside, they chatter away with voluble sweetness, then with a gleam of silver they are gone, and in a trice one is poising itself in the wind above my tree-tops, while the other dips her wing as she darts after a fly through the arches of the bridge which lets the slow stream down to the sea. I go to the southern wall, against which I have trained my fruit-trees, and find it a sheet of white and vermeil blossom; and as I know it by heart, I can notice what changes take place on it day by day, what later clumps of buds have burst into colour and odour. What beauty in that blooming wall! the wedding-presents of a princess ranged for admiration would not please me half so much; what delicate colouring! what fragrance the thievish winds steal from it, without making it one odour the poorer! with what a complacent hum the bee goes past! My chaffinch's nest, my swallows,--twittering but a few months ago around the kraal of the Hottentot, or chasing flies around the six solitary pillars of Baalbec,--with their nests in the corners of my bed-room windows, my long-armed fruit-trees flowering against my sunny wall, are not mighty pleasures, but then they are my own, and I have not to go in search of them. And so, like a wise man, I am content with what I have, and make it richer by my fancy, which is as cheap as sunlight, and gilds objects quite as prettily. It is the coins in my own pocket, not the coins in the pockets of my neighbour, that are of use to me. Discontent has never a doit in her purse, and envy is the most poverty stricken of the pa.s.sions.

His own children, and the children he happens to meet on the country road, a man regards with quite different eyes. The strange, sunburnt brats returning from a primrose-hunt and laden with floral spoils, may be as healthy looking, as pretty, as well-behaved, as sweet-tempered, as neatly dressed as those that bear his name,--may be in every respect as worthy of love and admiration; but then they have the misfortune not to belong to him. That little fact makes a great difference. He knows nothing about them; his acquaintance with them is born and dead in a moment. I like my garden better than any other garden, for the same reason. It is my own. And ownership in such a matter implies a great deal. When I first settled here, the ground around the house was sour moorland. I made the walk, planted the trees, built the moss-house, erected the sun-dial, brought home the rhododendrons and fed them with the mould which they love so well. I am the creator of every blossom, of every odour that comes and goes in the wind. The rustle of my trees is to my ear what his child's voice is to my friends the village doctor or the village clergyman. I know the genealogy of every tree and plant in my garden. I watch their growth as a father watches the growth of his children. It is curious enough, as showing from what sources objects derive their importance, that if you have once planted a tree for other than commercial purposes,--and in that case it is usually done by your orders and by the hands of hirelings,--you have always in it a peculiar interest. You care more for it than you care for all the forests of Norway or America. _You_ have planted it, and that is sufficient to make it peculiar amongst the trees of the world. This personal interest I take in every inmate of my garden, and this interest I have increased by sedulous watching. But, really, trees and plants resemble human beings in many ways. You shake a packet of seed into your forcing-frame; and while some grow, others pine and die, or struggle on under hereditary defect, showing indifferent blossoms late in the season, and succ.u.mb at length. So far as one could discover, the seeds were originally alike,--they received the same care, they were fed by the same moisture and sunlight; but of no two of them are the issues the same. Do I not see something of this kind in the world of men, and can I not please myself with quaint a.n.a.logies? These plants and trees have their seasons of illness and their sudden deaths.

Your best rose-tree, whose fame has spread for twenty miles, is smitten by some fell disease; its leaves take an unhealthy hue, and in a day or so it is sapless,--dead. A tree of mine, the first last spring to put out its leaves, and which wore them till November, made this spring no green response to the call of the sunshine. Marvelling what ailed it, I went to examine, and found it had been dead for months; and yet during the winter there had been no frost to speak of, and more than its brothers and sisters it was in no way exposed. These are the tragedies of the garden, and they shadow forth other tragedies nearer us. In everything we find a kind of dim mirror of ourselves. Sterne, if placed in a desert, said he would love a tree; and I can fancy such a love would not be altogether unsatisfying. Love of trees and plants is safe. You do not run risk in your affections. They are my children, silent and beautiful, untouched by any pa.s.sion, unpolluted by evil tempers; for me they leaf and flower themselves. In autumn they put off their rich apparel, but next year they are back again, with dresses fair as ever; and--one can extract a kind of fanciful bitterness from the thought--should I be laid in my grave in winter, they would all in spring be back again, with faces a bright and with breaths as sweet, missing me not at all. Ungrateful, the one I am fondest of would blossom very prettily if planted on the soil that covers me,--where my dog would die, where my best friend would perhaps raise an inscription!

I like flowering plants, but I like trees more,--for the reason, I suppose, that they are slower in coming to maturity, are longer lived, that you can become better acquainted with them, and that in the course of years memories and a.s.sociations hang as thickly on their boughs as do leaves in summer or fruits in autumn. I do not wonder that great earls value their trees, and never, save in direst extremity, lift upon them the axe. Ancient descent and glory are made audible in the proud murmur of immemorial woods. There are forests in England whose leafy noises may be shaped into Agincourt and the names of the battle-fields of the Roses; oaks that dropped their acorns in the year that Henry VIII. held his Field of the Cloth of Gold, and beeches that gave shelter to the deer when Shakspeare was a boy. There they stand, in sun and shower, the broad-armed witnesses of perished centuries; and sore must his need be who commands a woodland ma.s.sacre. A great English tree, the rings of a century in its boll, is one of the n.o.blest of natural objects; and it touches the imagination no less than the eye, for it grows out of tradition and a past order of things, and is pathetic with the suggestions of dead generations. Trees waving a colony of rooks in the wind to-day, are older than historic lines.

Trees are your best antiques. There are cedars on Lebanon which the axes of Solomon spared, they say, when he was busy with his Temple; there are olives on Olivet that might have rustled in the ears of the Master and the Twelve; there are oaks in Sherwood which have tingled to the horn of Robin Hood, and have listened to Maid Marian's laugh.

Think of an existing Syrian cedar which is nearly as old as history, which was middle-aged before the wolf suckled Romulus! Think of an existing English elm in whose branches the heron was reared which the hawks of Saxon Harold killed! If you are a notable, and wish to be remembered, better plant a tree than build a city or strike a medal; it will outlast both.

My trees are young enough, and if they do not take me away into the past, they project me into the future. When I planted them, I knew I was performing an act, the issues of which would outlast me long. My oaks are but saplings; but what undreamed-of English kings will they not outlive! I pluck my apples, my pears, my plums; and I know that from the same branches other hands will pluck apples, pears, and plums when this body of mine will have shrunk into a pinch of dust. I cannot dream with what year these hands will date their letters. A man does not plant a tree for himself, he plants it for posterity. And, sitting idly in the sunshine, I think at times of the unborn people who will, to some small extent, be indebted to me. Remember me kindly, ye future men and women! When I am dead, the juice of my apples will foam and spurt in your cider-presses, my plums will gather for you their misty bloom; and that any of your youngsters should be choked by one of my cherry-stones, merciful Heaven forfend!

In this pleasant summer weather I hold my audience in my garden rather than in my house. In all my interviews the sun is a third party.

Every village has its Fool, and, of course, Dreamthorp is not without one. Him I get to run my messages for me, and he occasionally turns my garden borders with a neat hand enough. He and I hold frequent converse, and people here, I have been told, think we have certain points of sympathy. Although this is not meant for a compliment, I take it for one. The poor faithful creature's brain has strange visitors; now 't is fun, now wisdom, and now something which seems in the queerest way a compound of both. He lives in a kind of twilight which obscures objects, and his remarks seem to come from another world than that in which ordinary people live. He is the only original person of my acquaintance; his views of life are his own, and form a singular commentary on those generally accepted. He is dull enough at times, poor fellow; but anon he startles you with something, and you think he must have wandered out of Shakspeare's plays into this out-of-the-way place. Up from the village now and then comes to visit me the tall, gaunt, atrabilious confectioner, who has a hankering after Red-republicanism, and the destruction of Queen, Lords, and Commons.

Guy Fawkes is, I believe, the only martyr in his calendar. The sourest-tempered man, I think, that ever engaged in the manufacture of sweetmeats. I wonder that the oddity of the thing never strikes himself. To be at all consistent, he should put poison in his lozenges, and become the Herod of the village innocents. One of his many eccentricities is a love for flowers, and he visits me often to have a look at my greenhouse and my borders. I listen to his truculent and revolutionary speeches, and take my revenge by sending the gloomy egotist away with a nosegay in his hand, and a gay-coloured flower stuck in a b.u.t.ton-hole. He goes quite unconscious of my floral satire.

The village clergyman and the village doctor are great friends of mine; they come to visit me often, and smoke a pipe with me in my garden.

The twain love and respect each other, but they regard the world from different points of view, and I am now and again made witness of a good-humoured pa.s.sage of arms. The clergyman is old, unmarried, and a humourist. His sallies and his gentle eccentricities seldom provoke laughter, but they are continually awakening the pleasantest smiles.

Perhaps what he has seen of the world, its sins, its sorrows, its death-beds, its widows and orphans, has tamed his spirit and put a tenderness into his wit. I do not think I have ever encountered a man who so adorns his sacred profession. His pious, devout nature produces sermons just as naturally as my apple-trees produce apples. He is a tree that flowers every Sunday. Very beautiful in his reverence for the Book, his trust in it; through long acquaintance, its ideas have come to colour his entire thought, and you come upon its phrases in his ordinary speech. He is more himself in the pulpit than anywhere else, and you get nearer him in his sermons than you do sitting with him at his tea-table, or walking with him on the country roads. He does not feel confined in his orthodoxy; in it he is free as a bird in the air.

The doctor is, I conceive, as good a Christian as the clergyman, but he is impatient of pale or limit; he never comes to a fence without feeling a desire to get over it. He is a great hunter of insects, and he thinks that the wings of his b.u.t.terflies might yield very excellent texts; he is fond of geology, and cannot, especially when he is in the company of the clergyman, resist the temptation of hurling a fossil at Moses. He wears his scepticism as a coquette wears her ribbons,--to annoy if he cannot subdue; and when his purpose is served, he puts his scepticism aside,--as the coquette puts her ribbons. Great arguments arise between them, and the doctor loses his field through his loss of temper,--which, however, he regains before any harm is done; for the worthy man is irascible withal, and opposition draws fire from him.

After an outburst, there is a truce between the friends for a while, till it is broken by theological battle over the age of the world, or some other the like remote matter, which seems important to me only in so far as it affords ground for disputation. These truces are broken sometimes by the doctor, sometimes by the clergyman. T'other evening the doctor and myself were sitting in the garden, smoking each a meditative pipe. Dreamthorp lay below, with its old castle and its lake, and its hundred wreaths of smoke floating upward into the sunset.

Where we sat, the voices of children playing in the street could hardly reach us. Suddenly a step was heard on the gravel, and the next moment the clergyman appeared, as it seemed to me, with a peculiar airiness of aspect, and the light of a humourous satisfaction in his eye. After the usual salutations, he took his seat beside us, lifted a pipe of the kind called "churchwarden" from the box on the ground, filled and lighted it, and for a little while we were silent all three. The clergyman then drew an old magazine from his side pocket, opened it at a place where the leaf had been carefully turned down, and drew my attention to a short poem which had for its t.i.tle, "Vanity Fair,"

imprinted in German text. This poem he desired me to read aloud.

Laying down my pipe carefully beside me, I complied with his request.

It ran thus; for as after my friends went it was left behind, I have written it down word for word:--

"The world-old Fair of Vanity Since Bunyan's day has grown discreeter No more it flocks in crowds to see A blazing Paul or Peter.

"Not that a single inch it swerves From hate of saint or love of sinner, But martyrs shock aesthetic nerves, And spoil the _got_ of dinner.

"Raise but a shout, or flaunt a scarf,-- Its mobs are all agog and flying; They 'll cram the levee of a dwarf, And leave a Haydon dying.

"They live upon each newest thing, They fill their idle days with seeing; Fresh news of courtier and of king Sustains their empty being.