Some Prose Writers.
You must not believe, because I have kept mainly by poetic writers in these later days of Queen Elizabeth, that there were no men who wrote prose—none who wrote travels, histories, letters of advice; none who wrote stupid, dull, goodish books; alas, there were plenty of them; there always are.
But there were some to be remembered too: there was William Camden—to whom I have briefly alluded already—and of whom, when you read good histories of this and preceding reigns, you will find frequent mention. He was a learned man, and a kind man, excellent antiquarian, and taught Ben Jonson at Westminster School. There was Stow,[116] who wrote a Survey of London, which he knew from top to bottom. He was born in the centre of it, and as a boy used to fetch milk from a farm at the Minories, to his home in Cornhill, where his father was a tailor. His fulness, his truthfulness, his simplicities, and his quaintness have made his chief book—on London—a much-prized one.
Again there was Hakluyt,[117] who was a church official over in Bristol, and who compiled Voyages of English seamen which are in every well-appointed library. Dr. Robertson says in his History, “England is more indebted [to Hakluyt] for its American possessions than to any man of that age.” Of so much worth is it to be a good geographer! The “Hakluyt Society” of England will be his enduring monument.
There was also living in those last days of the sixteenth century a strange, conceited, curious travelling man, Thomas Coryat[118] by name, who went on foot through Europe, and published (in 1611) what he called—with rare and unwitting pertinence—Coryat’s Crudities. He affixed to them complimentary mention of himself—whimseys by the poets, even by so great a man as Ben Jonson—a budget of queer, half-flattering, half-ironical rigmarole, which (having plenty of money) he had procured to be written in his favor; and so ushered his book into the world as something worth large notice. He would have made a capital showman. He had some training at Oxford, and won his way by an inflexible persistence into familiarity with men of rank, who made a butt of him. With a certain gift for language he learned Arabic in some one of his long journeyings, was said to have knowledge of Persian, and made an oration in that speech to the Great Mogul—with nothing but language in it. His Crudities are rarely read; but some letters and fragments relating to later travels of his, appear in Purchas’ Pilgrims. He lays hold upon peculiarities and littlenesses of life in his work which more sensible men would overlook, and which give a certain quaint piquancy to what he told; and we listen, as one might listen to barbers or dressmakers who had just come back from Paris, and would tell us things about cravats and hair-oil and street sights that we could learn no otherwheres. Coryat says:—
“I observe a custom in all those Italian Cities, and tounes thro’ the which I passed, that is not used in any other countrie that I saw—nor do I think that any other nation of Christendom doth use it, but only Italy. The Italian and most other strangers that are cormorant in Italy doe always at their meales use a little forke, when they cut their meate. For while, with their knife which they hold in one hand they cut the meate out of the dish, they fasten the forke which they hold in their other hand upon the same dish, so that whatsoever he be that sitting in the companie of any others at meale, should unadvisidly touch the dish of meate with his fingers from which alle at the table doe cut, he will give occasion of offence unto the company, as having transgressed the laws of good manners.
“This forme of feeding is, I understand, common in all places of Italy—their forkes being for the most part made of iron or steele, and some of silver—but these are used only by gentlemen.
“I myself have thought good to imitate the Italy fashion by this forked cutting of meate not only while I was in Italy, but also in Germany, and oftentimes in England, since I came home.”
Thus we may connect the history of silver forks with Tom Coryat’s Crudities, and with the first reported foot-journeys of an Englishman over the length and breadth of Europe. The wits may have bantered him in Elizabeth’s day; but his journeyings were opened and closed under James.
Again, there were books which had a little of humor, and a little of sentiment, with a great deal of fable, and much advice in them; as a sample of which I may name Mr. Leonard Wright’s Displaie of Duties, deck’t with sage Sayings, pythie Sentences, and proper Similes: Pleasant to read, delightful to hear, and profitable to practice:[119] By which singularly inviting title we perceive that he had caught the euphuistic ways of Mr. John Lyly. In enumerating the infelicities of a man who marries a shrew, he says:—
“Hee shall find compact in a little flesh a great number of bones too hard to digest. And therefore some doe thinke wedlocke to be that same purgatorie which some learned divines have so long contended about, or a sharpe penance to bring sinful men to Heaven. A merry fellow hearing a preacher saye in his sermon that whosoever would be saved must take up and beare his cross, ran straight to his wife, and cast her upon his back.… Finally, he that will live quietly in wedlock must be courteous in speech, cheerful in countenance, provident for his house, careful to traine up his children in virtue, and patient in bearing the infirmities of his wife. Let all the keys hang at her girdle, only the purse at his own. He must also be voide of jealousy, which is a vanity to think, and more folly to suspect. For eyther it needeth not, or booteth not, and to be jealous without a cause is the next way to have a cause.
“This is the only way to make a woman dum:
To sit and smyle and laugh her out, and not a word but mum!”
Quite another style of man was Philip Stubbes,[120] a Puritan reformer—not to be confounded with John Stubbes who had his right hand cut off, by order of the Queen, for writing against the impropriety and villainy of her prospective marriage with a foreign prince—but a kinsman of his, who wrote wrathily against masques and theatre-going; whipping with his pen all those roystering poets who made dramas or madrigals, all the fine-dressed gallants, and all the fans and ruffs of the women as so many weapons of Satan.
“One arch or piller,” says he, “wherewith the Devil’s kingdome of great ruffes is under propped, is a certain kind of liquid matter which they call starch, wherein the Devil hath learned them to wash and die their ruffes, which, being drie, will stand stiff and inflexible about their neckes.”
And he tells a horrific story—as if it were true—about an unfortunate wicked lady, who being invited to a wedding could not get her ruff stiffened and plaited as she wanted; so fell to swearing and tearing, and vowed “that the Devil might have her whenever she wore neckerchers again.” And the Evil One took her at her word, appearing in the guise of a presentable young man who arranged her ruffs
“—to her so great contentation and liking, that she became enamored with him. The young man kissed her, in the doing whereof he writhed her neck in sunder, so she died miserably; her body being straightwaies changed into blue and black colors, most ugglesome to behold, and her face most deformed and fearful to look upon. This being known in the city great preparation was made for her burial, and a rich coffin was provided, and her fearful body was laid therein. Four men assay’d to lift up the corps, but could not move it. Whereat the standers-by—marvelling causing the coffin to be opened to see the cause thereof, found the body to be taken away, and a blacke catte, very leane and deformed, sitting in the coffin, setting of great ruffes, and frizzling of haire, to the great feare and wonder of all the beholders.”
We do not preach in just that way against fashionable dressing in our time.
A book on the Arte of English Poesie belongs to those days—supposed to be the work of George Puttenham[121]—written for the “recreation and service” of the Queen; it has much good counsel in it—specially in its latter part; and the author says he wrote it to “help the gentlewomen of the Court to write good Poetry.” As an exampler, under his discussion of “Ornament,” he cites what he graciously calls a “sweet and sententious ditty” from the Queen’s own hand. The reader will be curious perhaps to see some portion of this:—
“The doubt of future foes, exiles my present joy,
And wit me warnes to shun such snares as threaten mine annoy,
For falsehood now doth flow, and subject faith doth ebbe,
Which would not be, if reason rul’d, or wisdome wev’d the webbe.”
This much will serve for our republican delectation; but it is not the only instance in which we find mention of her Majesty’s dalliance with verse: In an old book called the Garden of the Muses, of the date of 1600, the author says the flowers are gathered out of many excellent speeches spoken to her Majesty at triumphs, masques, and shows, as also out of divers choice ditties sung to her; and “some especially proceeding from her own most sacred selfe.” No one of them, however, would have ranked her with any of the poets of whom we have made particular mention; but for fine, clear, nervous, masculine English, to put into a letter, or into a despatch, or into a closet scolding, I suspect she would have held rank with any of them.
If not a poet, she led poets into gracious ways of speech. Her culture, her clear perceptions, her love of pageants even, her intolerance of all forms of dulness or slowness, her very vanities—were all of them stimulants to those who could put glowing thought into musical language. Her high ruff, her jewelled corsage, her flashing eye, her swift impulses, her perils, her triumphs, her audacities, her maidenhood—all drew flatteries that heaped themselves in songs and sonnets. So live a woman and so live a Queen magnetized dulness into speech.