The same phenomenon already pointed out in connection with the Anglo-Saxons occurs again with regard to the new English people. For a long time (and not to speak of practical useful works), poetry alone seems worthy of being remembered; most of the early monuments of the new language for the sake of which the expense of parchment is incurred are poems; verse is used, even in works for which prose would appear much better fitted, such as history. Robert of Gloucester writes his chronicles in English verse, just as Wace and Benoit de Sainte-More had written theirs in French verse. After some while only it is noticed that there is an art of prose, very delicate, very difficult, very worthy of care, and that it is a mistake to look upon it in the light of a vulgar instrument, on which every one can play without having learnt how, and to confine oneself to doing like Molière's Monsieur Jourdain "de la prose sans le savoir."
At the epoch at which we have arrived, and owing to the renovation and new beginnings occasioned by the Conquest, English prose found itself far behind French. In the fourteenth century, if French poets are poor, prose-writers are excellent; as early as the twelfth and thirteenth there were, besides Joinville, many charming tale writers who had told in prose delightful things, the loves of Aucassin and Nicolette, for example; now, without speaking of the novelists of the day, there is Froissart, and to name him is to say enough; for every one has read at least a few pages of him, and a single page of Froissart, taken haphazard in his works, will cause him to be loved. The language glides on, clear, limpid, murmuring like spring water; and yet, in spite of its natural flow, art already appears. Froissart selects and chooses; the title of "historian," which he gives himself, is no mean one in his eyes, and he strives to be worthy of it. The spring bubbles up in the depths of the wood, and without muddying the water the artist knows how to vary its course at times, to turn it off into ready prepared channels, and make it gush forth in fountains.
In England nothing so far resembles this scarcely perceptible and yet skilful art, a mixture of instinct and method, and many years will pass before prose becomes, like verse, an art. In the fourteenth century English prose is used in most cases for want of something better, from necessity, in order to be more surely understood, and owing to this its monuments are chiefly translations, scientific or religious treatises, and sermons. An English Froissart would at that time have written in Latin; several of the chronicles composed in monasteries, at St. Albans and elsewhere, are written in a brisk and lively style, animated now by enthusiasm and now by indignation; men and events are freely judged; characteristic details find their place; the personages live, and move, and utter words the sound of which seems to reach us. Walsingham's account of the revolt of the peasants in 1381, for example, well deserves to be read, with the description of the taking of London that followed, the sack of the Tower and the Savoy Palace, the assassination of the archbishop,[666] the heroic act of the peasant Grindecobbe who, being set free on condition that he should induce the rebels to submit, meets them and says: "Act to-day as you would have done had I been beheaded yesterday at Hertford,"[667] and goes back to his prison to suffer death. Every detail is found there, even the simple picturesque detail; the rebels arm themselves as they can, with staves, rusty swords, old bows blackened by smoke, arrows "on which only a single feather remained." The account of the death of Edward III. in the same annals is gloomy and tragic and full of grandeur. In the "Chronicon Angliæ,"[668] the anonymous author's burning hatred for John of Gaunt inspires him with some fiery pages: all of which would count among the best of old English literature, had these historians used the national idiom. The prejudice against prose continued; to be admitted to the honours of parchment it had first to be ennobled; and Latin served for that.
Translations begin to appear, however, which is already an improvement. Pious treatises had been early turned into English. John of Trevisa, born in Cornwall, vicar of Berkeley, translates at a running pace, with numerous errors, but in simple style, the famous Universal History, "Polychronicon," of Ralph Higden,[669] and the scientific encyclopædia, "De Proprietatibus Rerum,"[670] of Bartholomew the Englishman. The first of these works was finished in 1387, and had at the Renaissance the honour of being printed by Caxton; the second was finished in 1398.
The English translation of the Travels of Mandeville enjoyed still greater popularity. This translation is an anonymous one.[671] It has been found out to-day that the original text of the "Travels" was compiled in French by Jean de Bourgogne, physician, usually called John-with-the-Beard, "Joannes-ad-Barbam," who wrote various treatises, one in particular on the plague, in 1365, who died at Liège in 1372, and was buried in the church of the Guillemins, where his tomb was still to be seen at the time of the French Revolution.[672] John seems to have invented the character of Mandeville as Swift invented Gulliver, and Defoe Robinson Crusoe. Now that his imposture is discovered, the least we can do is to acknowledge his skill: for five centuries Europe has believed in Mandeville, and the merit is all the greater, seeing that John-with-the-Beard did not content himself with merely making his hero travel to a desert island; that would have been far too simple. No, he unites beforehand a Crusoe and a Gulliver in one; it is Crusoe at Brobdingnag; the knight comes to a land of giants; he does not see the giants, it is true, but he sees their sheep (the primitive sheep of Central Asia); elsewhere the inhabitants feed on serpents and hiss as serpents do; some men have dogs' faces; others raise above their head an enormous foot, which serves them for a parasol. Gulliver was not to behold anything more strange. Still the whole was accepted with enthusiasm by the readers of the Middle Ages; with kindness and goodwill by the critics of our time. The most obvious lies were excused and even justified, and the success of the book was such that there remain about three hundred manuscript copies of it, whereas of the authentic travels of Marco Polo there exist only seventy-five. "Mandeville" had more than twenty-five editions in the fifteenth century and Marco Polo only five.[673]
Nothing, indeed, is more cleverly persuasive than the manner in which Jean de Bourgogne introduces his hero. He is an honest man, somewhat naïve and credulous perhaps, but one who does not lack good reasons to justify if need be his credulity; he has read much, and does not hide the use he makes of others' journals; he reports what he has seen and what others have seen. For his aim is a practical one; he wants to write a guide book, and receives information from all comers. The information sometimes is very peculiar; but Pliny is the authority: who shall be believed in if Pliny is not trusted? After a description of wonders, the knight takes breathing time and says: Of course you won't believe me; nor should I have believed myself if such things had been told me, and if I had not seen them. He felt so sure of his own honesty that he challenged criticism; this disposition was even one of the causes why he had written in French: "And know you that I should have turned this booklet into Latin in order to be more brief: but for the reason that many understand better romance," that is French, "than Latin, I wrote in romance, so that everybody will be able to understand it, and that the lords, knights, and other noblemen, who know little Latin or none, and have been over the sea, perceive and understand whether I speak truth or not. And if I make mistakes in my narrative for want of memory or for any cause, they will be able to check and correct me: for things seen long ago, may be forgotten, and man's memory cannot embrace and keep everything."[674]
And so the sail is spread, and being thus amply supplied with oratorical precautions, our imaginary knight sets out on his grand voyage of discovery through the books of his closet. Having left St. Albans to visit Jerusalem, China, the country of the five thousand islands, he journeys and sails through Pliny, Marco Polo, Odoric de Pordenone,[675] Albert d'Aix, William of Boldensele, Pierre Comestor, Jacques de Vitry, bestiaries, tales of travels, collections of fables, books of dreams, patching together countless marvels, but yet, as he assures us, omitting many so as not to weary our faith: It would be too long to say all; "y seroit trop longe chose à tot deviser." With fanciful wonders are mingled many real ones, which served to make the rest believed in, and were gathered from well-informed authors; thus Mandeville's immense popularity served at least to vulgarise the knowledge of some curious and true facts. He describes, for example, the artificial hatching of eggs in Cairo; a tree that produces "wool" of which clothing is made, that is to say the cotton-plant; a country of Asia where it is a mark of nobility for the women to have tiny feet, on which account they are bandaged in their infancy, that they may only grow to half their natural size; the magnetic needle which points out the north to mariners; the country of the five thousand islands (Oceania); the roundness of the earth, which is such that the inhabitants of the Antipodes have their feet directly opposite to ours, and yet do not fall off into space any more than the earth itself falls there, though of much greater weight. People who start from their own country, and sail always in the same direction, finally reach a land where their native tongue is spoken: they have come back to their starting-point.
In the Middle Ages the English were already passionately fond of travels; Higden and others had, as has been seen, noted this trait of the national character. This account of adventures attributed to one of their compatriots could not fail therefore greatly to please them; they delighted in Mandeville's book; it was speedily translated,[676] soon became one of the classics of the English language, and served, at the time of its appearance, to vulgarise in England the use of that simple and easy-going prose of which it was a model in its day, the best that had been seen till then.[677]
Various scientific and religious treatises were also written in prose; those of Richard Rolle, hermit of Hampole, count amongst the oldest and most remarkable.[678] We owe several to Chaucer; they pass unnoticed in the splendour of his other works, and it is only fair they should. Chaucer wrote in prose his tale of the parson, and his tale of Melibeus, both taken from the French, his translation of Boethius, and his treatise on the Astrolabe. His prose is laboured and heavy, sometimes obscure; he, whose poetical similes are so brilliant and graceful, comes to write, when he handles prose, such phrases as this: "And, right by ensaumple as the sonne is hid whan the sterres ben clustred (that is to seyn, whan sterres ben covered with cloudes) by a swifte winde that highte Chorus, and that the firmament stant derked by wete ploungy cloudes, and that the sterres nat apperen up-on hevene, so that the night semeth sprad up-on erthe: yif thanne the wind that highte Borias, y-sent out of the caves of the contree of Trace, beteth this night (that is to seyn, chaseth it a-wey, and discovereth the closed day): than shyneth Phebus y-shaken with sodein light, and smyteth with his bemes in mervelinge eyen."[679] Chaucer, the poet, in the same period of his life, perhaps in the same year, had expressed, as we have seen, the same idea thus:
But right as whan the sonne shyneth brighte
In march that chaungeth ofte tyme his face,
And that a cloud is put with wind to flighte
Which over-sprat the sonne as for a space,
A cloudy thought gan thorugh hir soule pace,
That over-spradde hir brighte thoughtes alle.[680]