It is the old quarrel of classicists and Romanticists, of the ancien régime and the new school in literature, which runs nearly through every age. It might be Victor Cousin reproving Victor Hugo, or, say, M. Renan protesting, if he could protest, against M. Zola. Nor is the diatribe against the evil communication that had corrupted good manners any novelty in the quarrel. Critics have practically recognised that letters are a reflex of life long before Matthew Arnold formulated the relation. And in the disputing between Classicists and Romanticists it has invariably happened that the Classicists were the earlier generation, and therefore more given to convention, while the Romanticists were likely to be experimental in life as in literature. Altogether then, we must discount somewhat Ascham’s fierce denunciation, of the Italianate Englishman, and of the Englishing of Italian books.
There can be little doubt, I think, that in the denunciation of the “bawdie stories” introduced from Italy, Ascham was thinking mainly and chiefly of Painter’s “Palace of Pleasure.” The whole passage is later than the death of Sir Thomas Sackville in 1566, and necessarily before the death of Ascham in December 1568. Painter’s First Tome appeared in 1566, and his Second Tome in 1567. Of its immediate and striking success there can be no doubt. A second edition of the first Tome appeared in 1569, the year after Ascham’s death, and a second edition of the whole work in 1575, the first Tome thus going through three editions in nine years. It is therefore practically certain that Ascham had Painter’s book in his mind[9] in the above passage, which may be taken as a contemporary criticism of Painter, from the point of view of an adherent of the New-Old Learning, who conveniently forgot that scarcely a single one of the Latin classics is free from somewhat similar blemishes to those he found in Painter and his fellow-translators from the Italian.
But it is time to turn to the book which roused Ascham’s ire so greatly, and to learn something of it and its author.[10] William Painter was probably a Kentishman, born somewhere about 1525.[11] He seems to have taken his degree at one of the Universities, as we find him head master of Sevenoaks’ school about 1560, and the head master had to be a Bachelor of Arts. In the next year, however, he left the pædagogic toga for some connection with arms, for on 9 Feb. 1561, he was appointed Clerk of the Ordnance, with a stipend of eightpence per diem, and it is in that character that he figures on his title page. He soon after married Dorothy Bonham of Dowling (born about 1537, died 1617), and had a family of at least five children. He acquired two important manors in Gillingham, co. Kent, East Court and Twidall. Haslewood is somewhat at a loss to account for these possessions. From documents I have discovered and printed in an Appendix, it becomes only too clear, I fear, that Painter’s fortune had the same origin as too many private fortunes, in peculation of public funds.
So far as we can judge from the materials at our disposal, it would seem that Painter obtained his money by a very barefaced procedure. He seems to have moved powder and other materials of war from Windsor to the Tower, charged for them on delivery at the latter place as if they had been freshly bought, and pocketed the proceeds. On the other hand, it is fair to Painter to say that we only have the word of his accusers for the statement, though both he and his son own to certain undefined irregularities. It is, at any rate, something in his favour that he remained in office till his death, unless he was kept there on the principle of setting a peculator to catch a peculator. I fancy, too, that the Earl of Warwick was implicated in his misdeeds, and saved him from their consequences.
His works are but few. A translation from the Latin account, by Nicholas Moffan, of the death of the Sultan Solyman,[12] was made by him in 1557. In 1560 an address in prose, prefixed to Dr. W. Fulke’s Antiprognosticon, was signed “Your familiar friend, William Paynter,”[13] and dated “From Sevenoke xxii. of Octobre;” and the same volume contains Latin verses entitled “Gulielmi Painteri, ludimagistri Seuenochensis Tetrastichon.” It is perhaps worth while remarking that this Antiprognosticon was directed against Anthony Ascham, Roger’s brother, which may perhaps account for some of the bitterness in the above passage from the Scholemaster. These slight productions, however, sink into insignificance in comparison with his chief work, “The Palace of Pleasure.”
He seems to have started work on this before he left Seven Oaks in 1561. For as early as 1562 he got a licence for a work to be entitled “The Citye of Cyuelite,” as we know from the following entry in the Stationers’ Registers:—
W. Jonnes—Receyued of Wylliam Jonnes for his lycense for pryntinge of a boke intituled The Cytie of Cyuelitie translated into englisshe by William Paynter.
From his own history of the work given in the dedication of the first Tome to his patron, the Earl of Warwick, it is probable that this was originally intended to include only tales from Livy and the Latin historians. He seems later to have determined on adding certain of Boccaccio’s novels, and the opportune appearance of a French translation of Bandello in 1559 caused him to add half a dozen or so from the Bishop of Agen. Thus a book which was originally intended to be another contribution to the New Learning of classical antiquity turned out to be the most important representative in English of the Newest Learning of Italy. With the change of plan came a change of title, and the “City of Civility,” which was to have appeared in 1562, was replaced by the “Palace of Pleasure” in 1566.[14]
The success of the book seems to have been immediate. We have seen above Ascham’s indignant testimony to this, and the appearance of the Second Tome, half as large again as the other, within about eighteen months of the First, confirms his account. This Second Tome was practically the Bandello volume; more than half of the tales, and those by far the longest, were taken from him, through the medium of his French translators, Boaistuau and Belleforest. Within a couple of years another edition was called for of the First Tome, which appeared in 1569, with the addition of five more stories from the Heptameron, from which eleven were already in the first edition. Thus the First Tome might be called the Heptameron volume, and the second, that of Bandello. Boccaccio is pretty evenly divided between the two, and the remainder is made up of classic tales and anecdotes and a few novelle of Ser Giovanni and Straparola. Both Tomes were reprinted in what may be called the definitive edition of the work in 1575.
Quite apart from its popularity and its influence on the English stage, on which we shall have more to say shortly, Painter’s book deserves a larger place in the history of English Literature than has as yet been given to it. It introduced to England some of the best novels of Boccaccio, Bandello, and Queen Margaret, three of the best raconteurs of short stories the world has ever had. It is besides the largest work in English prose that appeared between the Morte Darthur and North’s Plutarch.[15] Painter’s style bears the impress of French models. Though professing to be from Italian novellieri, it is mainly derived from French translations of them. Indeed, but for the presence of translations from Ser Giovanni and Straparola, it might be doubtful whether Painter translated from the Italian at all. He claims however to do this from Boccaccio, and as he owns the aid of a French “crib” in the case of Bandello, the claim may be admitted. His translations from the French are very accurate, and only err in the way of too much literalness.[16] From a former dominie one would have expected a far larger proportion of Latinisms than we actually find. As a rule, his sentences are relatively short, and he is tolerably free from the vice of the long periods that were brought into vogue by “Ciceronianism.” He is naturally free from Euphuism and for a very good reason, since Euphues and his Englande was not published for another dozen years or so. The recent suggestion of Dr. Landmann and others that Euphuism came from the influence of Guevara would seem to be negatived by the fact that the “Letters of Trajan” in the Second Tome of Painter are taken from Guevara and are no more Euphuistic than the rest of the volume.