I am not now able to keep abreast with the tide of modern scholarship; (nor, to say the truth, do I make the effort, the first edge of its waves being mostly muddy, and apt to make a shallow sweep of the shore refuse:) so that I have no better book of reference by me than the confused essay on the antiquity of ryme at the end of Turner's Anglo-Saxons. I cannot however conceive a more interesting piece of work, if not yet done, than the collection of sifted earliest fragments known of rymed song in European languages. Of Eastern I know nothing; but, this side Hellespont, the substance of the matter is all given in King Canute's impromptu
'Gaily (or is it sweetly?—I forget which, and it's no matter)
sang the monks of Ely,
As Knut the king came sailing by;'
much to be noted by any who make their religion lugubrious, and their Sunday the eclipse of the week. And observe further, that if Milton does not ryme, it is because his faculty of Song was concerning Loss, chiefly; and he has little more than faculty of Croak, concerning Gain; while Dante, though modern readers never go further with him than into the Pit, is stayed only by Casella in the ascent to the Rose of Heaven. So, Gibbon can write in his manner the Fall of Rome; but Virgil, in his manner, the rise of it; and finally Douglas, in his manner, bursts into such rymed passion of praise both of Rome and Virgil, as befits a Christian Bishop, and a good subject of the Holy See.
'Master of Masters—sweet source, and springing well,
Wide where over all ringes thy heavenly bell;
* * * *
Why should I then with dull forehead and vain,
With rude ingene, and barane, emptive brain,
With bad harsh speech, and lewit barbare tongue
Presume to write, where thy sweet bell is rung,
Or counterfeit thy precious wordis dear?
Na, na—not so; but kneel when I them hear.
But farther more—and lower to descend
Forgive me, Virgil, if I thee offend
Pardon thy scolar, suffer him to ryme
Since thou wast but ane mortal man sometime.'
'Before honour is humility.' Does not clearer light come for you on that law after reading these nobly pious words? And note you whose humility? How is it that the sound of the bell comes so instinctively into his chiming verse? This gentle singer is the son of—Archibald Bell-the-Cat!
And now perhaps you can read with right sympathy the scene in Marmion between his father and King James.
'His hand the monarch sudden took—
Now, by the Bruce's soul,
Angus, my hasty speech forgive,
For sure as doth his spirit live
As he said of the Douglas old
I well may say of you,—
That never king did subject hold,
In speech more free, in war more bold,
More tender and more true:
And while the king his hand did strain
The old man's tears fell down like rain.'
I believe the most infidel of scholastic readers can scarcely but perceive the relation between the sweetness, simplicity, and melody of expression in these passages, and the gentleness of the passions they express, while men who are not scholastic, and yet are true scholars, will recognise further in them that the simplicity of the educated is lovelier than the simplicity of the rude. Hear next a piece of Spenser's teaching how rudeness itself may become more beautiful even by its mistakes, if the mistakes are made lovingly.