“Bluebeard,” “Red-riding Hood,” and “Cinderella,” are tales told alike in the nurseries of England and France, Germany and Denmark; and the domestic warning to the Lady Bird, the chant of our earliest day, is sung by the nurse of Germany.[10] All nations seem alike concerned in this copartnership of tale-telling; borrowing, adulterating, clipping, and even receiving back the identical coin which had circulated wherever it was found. Douce, one of whose favourite pursuits was tracing the origin and ramification of tales, to my knowledge could have afforded a large volume of this genealogy of romance; but that volume probably reposes for the regale of the next century, that literary antiquary being deterred by caustic reviewers from the publication of his useful researches.
The people, however, did not advance much in intelligence, even after the discovery of printing, for new works, which should have been designed for popular purposes, were still locked up in a language which none spoke and only the scholar read; and this, notwithstanding a noble example had been set by the Italians to the other nations of Europe. In the early days of our printing, the vernacular productions of the press were thrown out to amuse the children of society, fashioned as their toys. We have an abundance of poetical and prose facetiæ, all of which were solely adapted to the popular taste, and some of the writers of which were eminent persons. Few but have heard of “The Merry Tales of the Madmen of Gotham,” and of “Scogin’s Jests, full of witty mirth and pleasant shifts.” These facetious works are said to be “gathered” by Andrew Borde,[11] a physician and humorist of a very original cast of mind, and who professedly wrote for “the Commonwealth,” that is, the people, many other works on graver topics, not less seasoned with drolleries. He was the first who composed medical treatises in the vernacular idiom. His “Breviarie of Health” is a medical dictionary, and held to be a “jewel” in his time, as Fuller records. In this alphabetical list of all diseases, his philosophy reaches to the diseases of the mind, whose cure he combines with that of the body, the medicine and the satire often pleasantly illustrating each other. From the “Dietarie of Health” the modern apostles of regimen might expand their own revelations; it contains many curious matters, not only on diet, but on the whole system of domestic economy, even to the building of a house, regulating a family, and choosing a good air to dwell in, &c. Another of his books, “The Introduction of Knowledge,” is a miscellany of great curiosity, describing the languages and manners of different countries; in it are specimens of the Cornish, Welsh, Irish, and Scotch languages, as also of the Turkish and Egyptian, and others, and the value of their coins. The apt yet concise discrimination of the national character of every people is true to the hour we are writing.
The writings of Borde incidentally preserve curious notices of the domestic life and of the customs and arts of that period. Whitaker, in his history of Whalley, has referred to his directions for the construction of great houses, in illustration of our domestic architecture. In all his little books much there is which the antiquary and the philosopher would not willingly pass by.
Andrew Borde was one of those eccentric geniuses who live in their own sphere, moving on principles which do not guide the routine of society. He was a Carthusian friar; his hair-shirt, however, could never mortify his unvarying facetiousness; but if he ever rambled in his wits, he was a wider rambler, even beyond the boundaries of Christendom, “a thousand or two and more myles;” an extraordinary feat in his day. He took his degree at Montpelier, was incorporated at Oxford, and admitted into the College of Physicians in London, and was among the physicians of Henry the Eighth. His facetious genius could not conceal the real learning and the practical knowledge which he derived from personal observation. Borde has received hard measure from our literary historians. This ingenious scholar has been branded by Warton as a mad physician. To close the story of one who was all his days so facetious, we find that this Momus of philosophers died in the Fleet. This was the fate of a great humorist, neither wanting in learning or genius.
It is said that such was his love of “the commonwealth,” that he sometimes addressed them from an open stage, in a sort of gratuitous lecture, as some amateurs of our own days have delighted to deliver; and from whence has been handed down to us the term of “Merry-Andrew.”
In the limited circles which then divided society, the taste for humour was very low. We had not yet reached to the witty humours of Shakspeare and Jonson. Sir Thomas More’s “Long Story,” in endless stanzas, which Johnson has strangely placed among the specimens of the English language, was held as a tale of “infinite conceit,” assuredly by the great author himself, who seems to have communicated this sort of taste to one of his family. Rastall, the learned printer, brother-in-law of More, and farther, the grave abbreviator of the statutes in English, issued from his press in 1525, “The Widow Edith’s Twelve Merrie Gestys.” She was a tricking widow, renowned for her “lying, weeping, and laughing,” an ancient mumper, who had triumphed over the whole state spiritual, and the temporality: travelling from town to town in the full practice of dupery and wheedling, to the admiration of her numerous victims. The arts of cheatery were long held to be facetious; most of the “Merrie Jests” consist of stultifying fools, or are sharping tricks, practised on the simple children of dupery. There is a stock of this base coinage. This taste for dupery was carried down to a much later period; for the “Merrie conceited jests of George Peele,” and of Tarleton, are chiefly tricks of sharpers.
“The Hye Way to the Spyttel Hous,” or as we should say, “the road to ruin,” exposes the mysteries and craft of the venerable brotherhood of mendicancy and imposture; their ingenious artifices to attract the eye, and their secret orgies concealed by midnight; all that flourishes now in St. Giles’s, flourished then in the Barbican. Not long after we have the first vocabulary of cant language of “The Fraternitye of Vacabondes:” whose honorary titles cannot be yet placed in Burke’s Extinct Peerage.
There were attacks on the fair sex in those days which were parried by their eulogies. We seem to have been early engaged in that battle of the sexes, where the perfections or the imperfections of the female character offered themes for a libel or a panegyric. From the days of Boccaccio, the Italians have usually paid their tribute to “illustrious women,” notwithstanding the free insinuations of some malicious novelists; that people preceded in the refinement of social life the tramontani. England and France, in their ruder circle of society, contracted a cynicism which appears in a variety of invectives and apologies for the beautiful sex.
One of the most popular attacks of this sort was “The School-house of Women,” a severe satire, published anonymously. One of the heaviest charges is their bitter sarcasm on the new dresses of their friends. The author, one Edward Gosynhyll, charmed, no doubt, by his successful onset, and proud in his victory, threw off the mask; mending his ambidextrous pen for “The Praise of all Women,” called “Mulierum Pean,” he acknowledged himself to be the writer of “The School-house.” Probably he thought he might now do so with impunity, as he was making the amende honorable. Whether this saved the trembling Orpheus from the rage of the Bacchantes, our scanty literary history tells not; but his defence is not considered as the least able among several elicited by his own attack.
“The Wife lapped in Morels’ Skins, or the Taming of a Shrew,” was the favourite tale of the Petruchios of those days, where a haughty dame is softened into a degrading obedience by the brutal command of her mate; a tale which some antiquaries still chuckle over, who have not been so venturous as this hero.[12]