CHAPTER II.
Anglo-Saxon Humour—Rhyme—Satires against the Church—The Brunellus—Walter Mapes—Goliardi—Piers the Ploughman—Letters of Obscure Men—Erasmus—The Praise of Folly—Skelton—The Ship of Fools—Doctour Doubble Ale—The Sak full of Nuez—Church Ornamentation—Representations of the Devil.
The rude character of the Anglo-Saxon humour may be gathered from our having derived from it the word fun. This term which we often apply to romping and boisterous games, refers principally to the sense of feeling, and always implies some low kind of amusement connected with the senses. We also discover among the Anglo-Saxons an unamiable tendency to give nicknames to people from their personal peculiarities. But if we look for anything better, we can find only a translation of the Latin riddles of Symposius by Aldhelm, Bishop of Shirburn. This prelate, who was a relation of Ina, King of the West Saxons, was in attainments far superior to his age. He was celebrated as a harper, poet, and theologian, and wrote several works, especially one in praise of Virginity. His translations from Symposius were probably intended for the post-prandial delectation of the monks.
Aristophanes seems to have made the first approach to rhyming, for he introduced some repetitions of the same word at the end of lines. He probably thought the device had an absurd effect and used it as a kind of humour. Aulus Gellius blames Isocrates, who lived about 400 B.C., for introducing jingles into his orations, and as he also refers to Lucilius' condemnation of them, he would probably have objected to them in poetry.
Classic Latin versification is supposed to have died out with Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers in the sixth century, but an advance was made towards playing with words by the introduction of rhymes in the church hymns. Some trace of them is found in the verses of Hilary in the fourth century, but we find them first regularly adopted in a Latin panegyric written for Clotaire II. in France at the commencement of the seventh. Some suppose that "Leonine verses" were invented shortly afterwards by Pope Leo II. As in the days of Greece and Rome, the development of poetry was accompanied by a considerable activity in the fabrication of metres. This did not limit itself to a distich or alternate rhyme called "tailed" or "interlaced," but included the "horned," "crested," and "squared" verses—the last forming double acrostics. Sometimes half a dozen lines were made to rhyme together. This movement, pedantic as it was, showed an advance in finding similarities in things dissimilar, a change in the appreciation of the harmony. Previously rhymes were considered ludicrous, as they seem to us now in prose, and even in the French drama. The old Welsh poetry depended merely upon alliteration—as in the words ascribed to the British Queen—
"Ruin seize thee, ruthless king."
And among our old proverbs we have "Many men of many minds." "Fools build houses, for wise men to live in." "First come, first served." The motto of the Duke of Athole runs "Furth fortune and fill the fetters."
The "Exeter Book," presented to his cathedral by Leofric, first Bishop of Exeter in 1046 deserves notice, as indicative of the course of early Anglo-Saxon literature. Here we have first religious meditations and legends of Saints, then proverbial, or as they are called "gnomic" verses, next allegorical descriptions by means of animals, and finally riddles. The last are very long, and generally consist of emblematic descriptions.
It is a part of the great system of compensation under which we live, that those who are most highly praised are most exposed to the attacks of the envious, and that those who stand on an eminence above others should have their bad as well as their good deeds recorded. And thus we find that the earliest shafts of censure were directed against princes and priests, and the first Norman satires of which we hear were some songs called Sirventois, against Arnould, who was chaplain to Robert Courthose in the time of William Rufus. He was apparently an excellent man, established schools at Caen, and was afterwards promoted to be patriarch of Jerusalem. The next attack of which we have any record was that made by Luc de la Barr against Henry I. The nature of the imputations it contained may be conjectured from the fact, that the king ordered the writer's eyes to be put out. Another satire was directed against Richard, "King of the Romans," who was taken prisoner at Lewes. It was written to triumph over him, and taunt him with his defeat, and the nearest approach to humour in it is where it speaks of his making a castle of a windmill, which is supposed to refer to his having been captured in such a building. The humour in the satires of this time was almost entirely of a hostile or optical character. We have two metrical ballads of the thirteenth century directed against the Scotch and French, but containing little but animosity. There is also one complaining of heavy taxation in the reign of Edward I., but generally the church was attacked, as the clergy formed a prominent mark in every parish in the country, and were safer game than the king or barons. Thus, in the Harleian MSS., there is an ancient French poem pretending to eulogise a new conventual order for both men and women, who are to live together in great luxury and be bound to perpetual idleness. Several monasteries in England are mentioned as affording instances of such a mode of living.