finished romantic tale of Eastern magic told by the Squire. Milton gives it warm praise: Or call up him that left half told That owned the virtuous ring and glass, On which the Tartar king did ride The Franklin now relates a charming tale about a Squire of Low Degree who wins his mistress, and the Merchant tells of January and May. Before the Pilgrims reach their destination they are overtaken by a Canon and his Yeoman. This latter turns upon his master and exposes his rascally devices as an alchemist, and after the Canon has fled in shame tells a story of similar rascality. Chaucer's significance in English literature depends on two things. He was the first great conscious artist in English letters; his narrative power, his realism, and his wonderfully keen but genial humor place him high as a poet irrespective of his historical position. It is for the freshness and charm of our "Morning Star of Song," that he is read to-day. In the second place Chaucer stands at the parting of the ways between the Middle Ages and modern times. There is in him much of prolixity and bookishness and of the submission to authority characteristic of the medieval "clerk," but his frank realism and love of truth ally him with the work of the artists of the Italian Renaissance, who learned to paint as they saw and felt. His intellectual and critical side was represented by penetrating satire upon social conditions, particularly the corruption of the Church, and by a gentle, humorous portrayal of human follies. These qualities bring him into kinship with the great English realists: Shakespeare, Fielding, Thackeray, and Byron of the period of Don Juan. JOHN GOWER (1330-1408) The "moral" Gower, lacking Chaucer's genius, never rose above the plane of dull mediocrity. Vox Clamantis expresses the fear felt by a gently bred person towards the terror of the labor uprising. Confessio Amantis and Tripartite Chronicle, poems composed on conventional models of the day, lack freshness and originality. Without Chaucer, English literature might not have come into its own, and yet Gower proved himself an acceptable court poet who accomplished well whatever others were still attempting to do. Unfortunately for his fame, Chaucer's more powerful genius and sharper wit have caused the lesser poet to seem duller than he really is. THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY The fifteenth century is of little significance to us in our study of the formation of English literature. Nearly the whole period was absorbed in the quarrels of the great nobles for the throne of England, in consequence of which the institution of feudalism yielded to the growing power of the monarchy. The Wars of the Roses were but a civil quarrel between the houses of Lancaster and York, the bulk of the people taking little interest in the outcome. Feudalism died, and a real nation emerged from : the struggle under the leadership of Henry Tudor, known in history as Henry VII. Except in the realm of popular literature, the period is barren of writing of any consequence. In England various imitators of Chaucer wrote prolifically. John Lydgate, Thomas Occleve, and Stephen Hawes wrote imitative, uninspired verse; the rhymed doggerel of Skelton, the most original product of this time, became an instrument of sharp satire upon events and personalities of the day. The Scotch poets, King James I, Robert Henryson, and William Dunbar, proved themselves better poets than their English contemporaries. The lastnamed in particular wrote some distinguished verse. In 1476, William Caxton established his printing press in Westminster, thus definitely inaugurating a new era. Upon this press were printed Recuyell of the Histories of Troy, Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers, editions of Chaucer, Gower, and the Golden Legend, and Malory's Morte d'Arthur. Lord Berners's translation of Froissart's Chronicles, one of the most splendid of medieval histories, was printed in 1525. The famous Wynkyn de Worde succeeded to Caxton's press. LITERATURE OF THE FOLK THE POPULAR BALLAD Professor Gummere defined the popular ballad as "a narrative in lyrical form, with no traces of individual authorship, and preserved mainly by oral tradition." In the early days, when the people wished to while away the time by telling each other about an event or by repeating the details of an incident well known to them all, they began with a refrain which all would sing in unison, after which one would chant an additional detail, and all would join in the refrain again. Many scholars, however, deny that the element of individual composition was ever lacking in the primitive ballads, that the theory of communal authorship is entirely fallacious. We may, at any rate, look upon the ballad as molded by communal influence; if we do so, we shall discover that the earliest ballads were built about a stock refrain which the crowd chanted in unison and accompanied by a swaying of the body and a beating of the foot. This procedure was, of course, in the very beginning of ballad composition, for none of the ballads that have been preserved to us exists in any such primitive form as this. Read, however, The Hangman's Tree which Professor Kittredge quotes in his introduction to the Cambridge edition of the English and Scottish popular ballads, or Edward for an effect that certainly reveals traces of primitive origin. A rude narrative was thus actually composed by the folk or molded by direct folk influence. In like manner do children sit in a circle and tell stories or sing songs improvised on the spur of the moment. Perhaps the most childlike race from whom we may study ballad literature in the making is the negroes of the southern states. There have also been gathered many of the songs, very often versions of well known individual compositions and so not genuine ballads, which the cowboys have sung together in the long watches of the night. The yo-ho-ho of the sailors as they pull at the rope will illustrate the aid which a song will give in lightening arduous labor. One sailor's chantey, this one a pirate's song, Robert Louis Stevenson has given us in Treasure Island: Fifteen men on a dead man's chest, Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum; Drink and the Devil had done for the rest, It is a curious fact that of the three hundred and five original ballads that have been discovered in England and Scotland, but eighty-five survive in England, whereas almost as many, seventy-three, are to be found in the United States, and of these, forty-eight are still recited among the mountain whites of the state of Virginia. These descendants of the original settlers of the state have evidently preserved their oral traditions in a very pure form. The popular ballad is not to be confused with the music-hall songs, which have been taken up and made popular among great numbers of people. Nor is it the same as the broadside or popular song made upon any contemporary person or event and sung in the street, like the songs composed upon the occasion of the Jacobite uprising at the end of the seventeenth century. These came too late in the development of the English people to be composed by the people themselves. The characteristics of ballad poetry are interesting. The story tends to leap from point to point without much regard for logical connection. Swiftness of narrative and simplicity of language characterize all genuine ballads, and most of them have a conventional refrain repeated with increasing effect. The popular ballad is swift and inevitable but wants the sentiment of the ballad of conscious art. Often, however, the very rudeness of structure gives a sudden tragic effect to a situation that many artists have tried to imitate but have never perfectly reproduced. |