[811] Udal was not the first, if we could trust Harwood’s Alumni Etonenses, who established an Eton theatre. Of Rightwise, who succeeded Lily as master of St. Paul’s, it is said by him, that he was “a most eminent grammarian, and wrote the tragedy of Dido from Virgil, which was acted before Cardinal Wolsey with great applause by himself and other scholars of Eton.” But as Rightwise left Eton for King’s College in 1508, this cannot be true, at least so far as Wolsey is concerned. It is said afterwards in the same book of one Hallewill, who went to Cambridge in 1532, that he wrote “the tragedy of Dido.” Which should we believe, or were there two Didos? But Harwood’s book is not reckoned of much authority beyond the mere records which he copied.
[812] Hist. of Engl. Poetry, iii. 213.
[813] See an analysis with extracts of Ralph Roister Doister, in Collier’s Hist. of Dram. Poetry, ii. 445-460.
Sect. III.
Romances and Novels—Rabelais.
Romances of chivalry. 47. The popularity of Amadis de Gaul gave rise to a class of romances, the delight of the multitude in the sixteenth century, though since chiefly remembered by the ridicule and ignominy that has attached itself to their name, those of knight-errantry. Most of these belong to Spanish or Portuguese literature. Palmerin of Oliva, one of the earliest, was published in 1525. Palmerin, less fortunate than his namesake of England, did not escape the penal flame to which the barber and curate consigned many also of his younger brethren. It has been observed by Bouterwek that every respectable Spanish writer, as well as Cervantes, resisted the contagion of bad taste which kept the prolix mediocrity of these romances in fashion.[814]
[814] Hist. of Spanish Literature, p. 304. Dunlop’s Hist. of Fiction, vol. ii.
Novels. 48. A far better style was that of the short novel, which the Italian writers, especially Boccaccio, had rendered popular in Europe. But, though many of these were probably written within this period of thirty years, none of much distinction come within it, as the date of their earliest publication, except the celebrated Belphegor of Machiavel.[815] The amusing story of Lazarillo de Tormes was certainly written by Mendoza in his youth. But it did not appear in print till 1586. This is the first known specimen in Spain of the picaresque, or rogue style, in which the adventures of the low and rather dishonest part of the community are made to furnish amusement for the great. The Italian novelists are by no means without earlier instances; but it became the favourite, and almost peculiar class of novel with the Spanish writers about the end of the century.
[815] I cannot make another exception for Il Pellegrino by Caviceo of Parma, the first known edition of which, published at Venice in 1526, evidently alludes to one earlier; diligentemente in lingua tosca corretto, e nuovamente stampato et historiato. The editor speaks of the book as obsolete in orthography and style. It is probably, however, not older than the last years of the fifteenth century, being dedicated to Lucrezia Borgia. It is a very prolix and tedious romance, in three books and two hundred and nineteen chapters, written in a semi-poetical diffuse style, and much in the usual manner of love stories. Ginguéné and Tiraboschi do not mention it; the Biographie Universelle does.
Mr. Dunlop has given a short account of a French novel, entitled Les Aventures de Lycidas et de Cleorithe, which he considers as the earliest and best specimen of what he calls the spiritual romance, unmixed with chivalry or allegory, iii. 51. It was written in 1529, by Basire, archdeacon of Sens. I should suspect that there had been some of this class already in Germany; they certainly became common in that country afterwards.