Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth
Wheels her pale course: they on their mirth and dance
Intent, with jocund music charm his ear:
At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.’
So our young novices must have felt when they first saw the magic of the scene, and heard its syren sounds with rustic wonder, and the scholar’s pride: and the joy that streamed from their eyes at that fantastic vision, at that gaudy shadow of life, of all its business and all its pleasures, and kindled their enthusiasm to join the mimic throng, still has left a long lingering glory behind it; and though now ‘deaf the praised ear, and mute the tuneful tongue,’ lives in their eloquent page, ‘informed with music, sentiment, and thought, never to die!’
LECTURE V
ON SINGLE PLAYS, POEMS, ETC., THE FOUR P’S, THE RETURN FROM PARNASSUS, GAMMER GURTON’S NEEDLE, AND OTHER WORKS.
I shall, in this Lecture, turn back to give some account of single plays, poems, etc.; the authors of which are either not known or not very eminent, and the productions themselves, in general, more remarkable for their singularity, or as specimens of the style and manners of the age, than for their intrinsic merit or poetical excellence. There are many more works of this kind, however, remaining, than I can pretend to give an account of; and what I shall chiefly aim at, will be, to excite the curiosity of the reader, rather than to satisfy it.
The Four P’s is an interlude, or comic dialogue, in verse, between a Palmer, a Pardoner, a Poticary, and a Pedlar, in which each exposes the tricks of his own and his neighbours’ profession, with much humour and shrewdness. It was written by John Heywood, the Epigrammatist, who flourished chiefly in the reign of Henry VIII., was the intimate friend of Sir Thomas More, with whom he seems to have had a congenial spirit, and died abroad, in consequence of his devotion to the Roman Catholic cause, about the year 1565. His zeal, however, on this head, does not seem to have blinded his judgment, or to have prevented him from using the utmost freedom and severity in lashing the abuses of Popery, at which he seems to have looked ‘with the malice of a friend.’ The Four P’s bears the date of 1547. It is very curious, as an evidence both of the wit, the manners, and opinions of the time. Each of the parties in the dialogue gives an account of the boasted advantages of his own particular calling, that is, of the frauds which he practises on credulity and ignorance, and is laughed at by the others in turn. In fact, they all of them strive to outbrave each other, till the contest becomes a jest, and it ends in a wager, who shall tell the greatest lie? when the prize is adjudged to him, who says, that he had found a patient woman.[[27]] The common superstitions (here recorded) in civil and religious matters, are almost incredible; and the chopped logic, which was the fashion of the time, and which comes in aid of the author’s shrewd and pleasant sallies to expose them, is highly entertaining. Thus the Pardoner, scorning the Palmer’s long pilgrimages and circuitous route to Heaven, flouts him to his face, and vaunts his own superior pretensions.
‘Pard. By the first part of this last tale,
It seemeth you came of late from the ale: