The works of Richard Hurd, volume 4 (of 8)

by Richard Hurd

LETTER XI.

But you are weary of hearing so much of these exploded fancies; and are ready to ask, if there be any truth in this representation, “Whence it has come to pass, that the classical manners are still admired and imitated by the poets, when the Gothic have long since fallen into disuse?”

The answer to this question will furnish all that is now wanting to a proper discussion of the present subject.

One great reason of this difference certainly was, that the ablest writers of Greece ennobled the system of heroic manners, while it was fresh and flourishing; and their works, being master-pieces of composition, so fixed the credit of it in the opinion of the world, that no revolutions of time and taste could afterwards shake it.

Whereas the Gothic having been disgraced in their infancy by bad writers, and a new set of manners springing up before there were any better to do them justice, they could never be brought into vogue by the attempts of later poets; who yet, in spite of prejudice, and for the genuine charm of these highly poetical manners, did their utmost to recommend them.

But, FURTHER, the Gothic system was not only forced to wait long for real genius to do it honour; real genius was even very early employed against it.

There were two causes of this mishap. The old Romancers had even outraged the truth in their extravagant pictures of Chivalry; and Chivalry itself, such as it once had been, was greatly abated.

So that men of sense were doubly disgusted to find a representation of things unlike to what they observed in real life, and beyond what it was ever possible should have existed. However, with these disadvantages, there was still so much of the old spirit left, and the fascination of these wondrous tales was so prevalent, that a more than common degree of sagacity and good sense was required to penetrate the illusion.

It was one of this character, I suppose, that put the famous question to Ariosto, which has been so often repeated that I shall spare you the disgust of hearing it. Yet long before his time an immortal genius of our own (so superior is the sense of some men to the age they live in) saw as far into this matter, as Ariosto’s examiner.

You will, perhaps, be as much surprised, as I was (when, many years ago, the observation was, first, made to me) to understand, that this sagacious person was Dan Chaucer; who in a reign that almost realized the wonders of Romantic Chivalry, not only discerned the absurdity of the old Romances, but has even ridiculed them with incomparable spirit.

“His Rime of Sir Topaz in the Canterbury Tales (said the curious observer, on whose authority I am now building) is a manifest banter on these books, and may be considered as a sort of prelude to the adventures of Don Quixote. I call it a manifest banter: for we are to observe that this was Chaucer’s own tale; and that, when in the progress of it the good sense of the Host is made to break in upon him, and interrupt him, Chaucer approves his disgust, and, changing his note, tells the simple instructive tale of Meliboeus; a moral tale virtuous, as he terms it; to shew, what sort of fictions were most expressive of real life, and most proper to be put into the hands of the people.

It is, further, to be noted, that the tale of the Giant Olyphant and Chylde Topaz was not a fiction of his own, but a story of antique fame, and very celebrated in the days of Chivalry: so that nothing could better suit the poet’s design of discrediting the old Romances, than the choice of this venerable legend for the vehicle of his ridicule upon them.

But what puts the satyric purpose of the Rime of Sir Topaz out of all question, is, that this short poem is so managed as, with infinite humour, to expose the leading impertinencies of books of Chivalry; the very same, which Cervantes afterwards drew out, and exposed at large, in his famous history.

Indeed Sir Topaz is all Don Quixote in little; as you will easily see from comparing the two knights together; who are drawn with the same features, are characterized by the same strokes, and differ from each other but as a sketch in miniature from a finished and full-sized picture.

1. Cervantes is very particular in describing the person and habit of his Hero, agreeably to the known practice of the old Romancers. Chaucer does the same by his knight, and in a manner that almost equals the arch-gravity of the Spanish author:

Sir Topaz was a doughty swaine,
White was his face as paine maine,
His lippes red as rose,
His rudde is like scarlet in graine,
And I you tell in good certaine,
He had a seemely nose.

His haire, his berde, was like safroune,
That to his girdle raught adowne,
His shoone of cordewaine,
Of Bruges were his hosen broun.
His robe was of chekelatoun,
That cost many a jane.

2. Cervantes tells us how Don Quixote passed his time in the country, before he turned Knight-errant. Chaucer, in the same spirit, celebrates his knight’s country diversions of hunting, hawking, shooting, and wrestling, those known prolusions to feats of arms:

He couth hunt at the wilde dere,
And ride an hauking for by the rivere
With grey Goshauke on honde,
Thereto he was a good archere,
Of wrastling was there none his pere
There any Ram should stonde.

3. The Knights of Romance were used to dedicate their services to some paragon of beauty, such as was only conceived to exist in the land of Fairy, and could no where be found in this vulgar disenchanted world. Hence one of the strongest features in Don Quixote’s character is the sublime passion he had conceived for an imaginary or fairy mistress. Sir Topaz is not behind him in this extravagance:

An Elfe-queene woll I love, I wis,
For in this world no woman is
To be my make in towne,
All other women I forsake
And to an Elfe-queene I me take
By dale and eke by downe.

4. Don Quixote’s passion for this idol of his fancy was so violent, that, after all the bangs and bruises of the day, instead of suffering his weary limbs to take any rest, it occupied him all night with incessant dreams and reveries of his mistress. Sir Topaz is in the same woful plight:

Sir Topaz eke so weary was—
That down he laid him in that place—
Oh, Saint Mary, benedicite
What aileth this love at me
To blind me so sore?
Me dreamed all this night parde
An Elfe-queen shall my leman be
And sleepe under my gore.

5. As the chastity of the hero of La Mancha is well known, from a variety of trying temptations, so Sir Topaz distinguishes himself by this knightly virtue:

Full many a maide bright in boure
They mourne for him their paramoure.
Whan hem were bet to sleepe,
But he was chaste and no lechoure,
And sweet as is the bramble floure
That bereth the red hipe.

6. The fight of Sir Topaz with the Giant of three heads, in honour of his mistress,

For needes must he fight
With a giant with heads thre,
For paramours and jolitie
Of one that shone full bright—

together with his arming, and the whole ridiculous preparation for the combat, described at large in several stanzas, is exactly in the style and taste of Cervantes, on similar occasions.

7. Cervantes gives us to understand that it was familiar with his knight to sleep in the open air, to endure all hardships that befell, and to let his horse graze by him. Chaucer, in like manner, of his knight, with much humour:

And for he was a knight auntrous,
He nolde slepen in none house
But liggen in his hood,
His bright helme was his wanger
And by him fed his destrer
Of herbes fine and good.

8. And, lastly, as Cervantes, after the example of the Romance-writers, will have it, that his knight surpasses all others of ancient fame, so Dan Chaucer is careful to vindicate this high prerogative, to his hero:

Men speaken of Romances of pris
Of Hornechild and of Ipotis,
Of Bevis and Sir Gie,
Of Sir Libeaux and Blandamoure;
But Sir Topaz, he beareth the floure
Of rial chivalrie.”

Thus far, at least to this effect, the concealed author (for the dispensers of these fairy favours would not be inquired after) of this new interpretation of the Rime of Sir Topaz. Other circumstances of resemblance might be added (for when a well-grounded hint of this sort is once given, and opened in some instances, it is not difficult to pursue it), but one needs go no further to be certain that the general scope of this poem is, Burlesque.

Only, I would observe, that though, in this ridiculous ballad, the poet clearly intended to expose the Romances of the time, as they were commonly written, he did not mean, absolutely and under every form, to condemn the kind of writing itself: as, I think, we must conclude from the serious air, and very different conduct, of the Squire’s tale; which Spenser and Milton were so particularly pleased with.

We learn too, from the same tale, that, though Chaucer could be as pleasant on the other fooleries of Romance, as any modern critic, he let the marvellous of it escape his ridicule, or rather esteemed this character of the Gothic Romance, no foolery. For the tale of Cambuscan is all over Marvellous; and Milton, by specifying the virtuous ring and glass, and the wondrous horse of brass, as the circumstances that charmed him most, shews very plainly, that, in his opinion, these amusing fictions were well placed, and of principal consideration, as they surely are, in this Fairy way of writing.

But, whatever our old Bard would insinuate by his management of this enchanting tale, and whatever conclusions have, in fact, been drawn from it by such superior and congenial spirits as our two epic poets, the half-told story of Cambuscan could never atone for the mischiefs done to the cause of Romance, by the pointed ridicule of the Rime of Sir Topaz. Common readers would be naturally induced by it to reject the old Romances, in the gross: and thus it happened, according to the observation I set out with, “that these phantoms of Chivalry had the misfortune to be laughed out of countenance by men of sense, before the substance of it had been fairly and truly represented by any capable writer.”

Still, the principal cause of all, which brought disgrace on the Gothic manners of Chivalry, no doubt, was, That these manners, which sprang out of the feudal system, were as singular, as that system itself: so that when that political constitution vanished out of Europe, the manners, that belonged to it, were no longer seen or understood. There was no example of any such manners remaining on the face of the earth: and as they never did subsist but once, and are never likely to subsist again, people would be led of course to think and speak of them, as romantic, and unnatural. The consequence of which was a total contempt and rejection of them; while the classic manners, as arising out of the customary and usual situations of humanity, would have many archetypes, and appear natural even to those who saw nothing similar to them actually subsisting before their eyes.

Thus, though the manners of Homer are perhaps as different from ours, as those of Chivalry itself, yet as we know that such manners always belong to rude and simple ages, such as Homer paints; and actually subsist at this day in countries that are under the like circumstances of barbarity; we readily agree to call them natural, and even take a fond pleasure in the survey of them.

Your question then is easily answered, without any obligation upon me to give up the Gothic manners as visionary and fantastic. And the reason appears, why the Fairy Queen, one of the noblest productions of modern poetry, is fallen into so general a neglect, that all the zeal of its commentators is esteemed officious and impertinent, and will never restore it to those honours which it has, once for all, irrecoverably lost.

In effect, what way of persuading the generality of readers that the romantic manners are to be accounted natural, when not one in ten-thousand knows enough of the barbarous ages, in which they arose, to believe they ever really existed?

Poor Spenser then,

—— ——“in whose gentle spright
The pure well-head of Poesie did dwell,”

must, for aught I can see, be left to the admiration of a few lettered and curious men: while the many are sworn together to give no quarter to the marvellous, or, which may seem still harder, to the moral of his song.

However, this great revolution in modern taste was brought about by degrees; and the steps, that led to it, may be worth the tracing in a distinct Letter.