The “romance of chivalry” was sinking to be succeeded by the heavier tomes of Gomberville, Scudery, &c., but the extension of classical knowledge, the vast strides in acquirement of various kinds, the utter change, so to speak, in the system of literature, all contributed to the downfall of the chivalric romance. Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia introduced a rage for high-flown pastoral effusions; and now too was re-born that taste for metaphorical effusion and spiritual romance, which was first exhibited in the fourth century in the Bishop of Tricca’s romance of “Barlaam and Josaphat,” and which now pervaded the fast-rising puritan party, and was afterwards fully developed in that unaccountably fascinating work, “The Pilgrim’s Progress.” Nevertheless, as yet
“Courted and caress’d,
High placed in hall, a welcome guest,”
the harper poured to lord and lady gay not indeed “his unpremeditated lay,” but a poetical abridgment (the precursor of a fast succeeding race of romantic ballads) of the doughty deeds of renowned knights, so amply expatiated upon in the time-honoured folios of the “olden time.” The wandering harper, if fallen somewhat from his “high estate,” was still a recognised and welcome guest; his “matter being for the most part stories of old time, as the tale of Sir Topas, the reportes of Bevis of Southampton, Guy of Warwicke, Adam Bell, and Clymme of the Clough, and such other old romances or historical rhimes.” Though the character of the minstrel gradually lost respectability, yet for a considerable part of Elizabeth’s reign it was one so fully acknowledged, that a peculiar garb was still attached to the office.
“Mongst these, some bards there were that in their sacred rage
Recorded the descents and acts of everie age.
Some with their nimbler joynts that strooke the warbling string;
In fingering some unskild, but onelie vsed to sing
Vnto the other’s harpe: of which you both might find
Great plentie, and of both excelling in their kind.”
The superstitions of various kinds, the omens, the warnings, the charms, the “potent spells” of the wizard seer, which
“Could hold in dreadful thrall the labouring moon,
Or draw the fix’d stars from their eminence,
And still the midnight tempest,”—
the supernatural agents, the goblins, the witches, the fairies, the satyrs, the elves, the fauns, the “shapes that walk,” the
“Uncharnel’d spectres, seen to glide
Along the lone wood’s unfrequented path”—
the being and active existence of all these was considered “true as holy writ” by our ancestors of the Elizabethan age. On this subject we will transcribe a beautifully illustrative passage from Warton:—
“Every goblin of ignorance” (says he) “did not vanish at the first glimmerings of the morning of science. Reason suffered a few demons still to linger, which she chose to retain in her service under the guidance of poetry. Men believed, or were willing to believe, that spirits were yet hovering around, who brought with them airs from heaven, or blasts from hell; that the ghost was duly relieved from his prison of torment at the sound of the curfew, and that fairies imprinted mysterious circles on the turf by moonlight. Much of this credulity was even consecrated by the name of science and profound speculation. Prospero had not yet broken and buried his staff, nor drowned his book deeper than did ever plummet sound. It was now that the alchemist and the judicial astrologer conducted his occult operations by the potent intercourse of some preternatural being, who came obsequious to his call, and was bound to accomplish his severest services, under certain conditions, and for a limited duration of time. It was actually one of the pretended feats of these fantastic philosophers to evoke the queen of the fairies in the solitude of a gloomy grove, who, preceded by a sudden rustling of the leaves, appeared in robes of transcendant lustre. The Shakspeare of a more instructed and polished age would not have given us a magician darkening the sun at noon, the sabbath of the witches, and the cauldron of incantation.”