Chapter CXCII

MORE OF THE DOCTOR'S PHILOSOPHY, WHICH WILL AND WILL NOT BE LIKED BY THE LADIES, AND SOME OF THE AUTHOR'S WHICH WILL AND WILL NOT BY THE GENTLEMEN. THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO COUNT CASTIGLIONE, AND TO SIR JOHN CHEKE.

_Ou tend l'auteur à cette heure?
Que fait-il? Revient-il? Va-t-il? Ou s'il demeure?_

L'AUTEUR.

_Non, je ne reviens pas, car je n'ai pas été;
Je ne vais pas aussi, car je suis arrété;
Et ne demeure point, car, tout de ce pas même
Je pretens m'en aller._

MOLIERE.

The passage with which the preceding Chapter is concluded, is extracted from Sterne's Sermons, one of those discourses in which he tried the experiment of adapting the style of Tristram Shandy to the pulpit;—an experiment which proved as unsuccessful as it deserved to be. Gray however thought these sermons were in the style which in his opinion was most proper for the pulpit, and that they showed “a very strong imagination and a sensible head. But you see him, he adds, often tottering on the verge of laughter, and ready to throw his perriwig in the face of his audience.”

The extract which has been set before the reader is one of those passages which bear out Gray's judgement; it is of a good kind, and in its kind so good, that I would not weaken its effect, by inserting too near it the following Epigram from an old Magazine, addressed to a lady passionately fond of cards.

Thou, whom at length incessant gaming dubs,
Thrice honourable title! Queen of Clubs,
Say what vast joys each winning card imparts,
And that, too justly, called the King of Hearts.
Say, when you mourn of cash and jewels spoil'd,
May not the thief be Knave of Diamonds stil'd?
One friend, howe'er, when deep remorse invades,
Awaits thee Lady; 'tis the Ace of Spades!

It has been seen that the Doctor looked upon the love of gaming as a propensity given us to counteract that indolence which if not thus amused, would breed for itself both real and imaginary evils. And dancing he thought was just as useful in counteracting the factitious inactivity of women in their youth, as cards are for occupying the vacuity of their minds at a later period. Of the three semi-intellectual propensities, as he called them which men are born with, those for hunting and gaming are useful only in proportion, as the earth is uncultivated, and those by whom it is inhabited. In a well ordered society there would be no gamblers, and the Nimrods of such a society, must like the heroes in Tongataboo, be contented with no higher sport than rat-catching: but dancing will still retain its uses. It will always be the most graceful exercise for children at an age when all that they do is graceful; and it will always be that exercise which can best be regulated for them, without danger of their exerting themselves too much, or continuing in it too long. And for young women in a certain rank, or rather region of life,—the temperate zone of society,—those who are above the necessity of labour, and below the station in which they have the command of carriages and horses,—that is for the great majority of the middle class;—it is the only exercise which can animate them to such animal exertion as may suffice

“To give the blood its natural spring and play.”[1]

[Footnote 1: SOUTHEY.]

Mr. Coleridge says (in his Table Talk) “that the fondness for dancing in English women is the reaction of their reserved manners: it is the only way in which they can throw themselves forth in natural liberty.” But the women are not more fond of it in this country, than they are in France and Spain. There can be no healthier pastime for them, (as certainly there is none so exhilarating, and exercise unless it be exhilarating is rarely healthful)—provided,—and upon this the Doctor always insisted,—provided it be neither carried on in hot rooms, nor prolonged to late hours. They order these things, he used to say, better in France; they order them better indeed anywhere than in England, and there was a time when they were ordered better among ourselves.

“The youth of this city,” says the honest old chronicler and historian of the metropolis his native place, “used on holidays, after evening prayers, to exercise their basters and bucklers, at their master's doors; and the maidens, one of them playing on a timbrel, to dance for garlands hanged athwart the streets, which open pastimes in my youth, being now suppressed, worser practises within doors are to be feared.”

Every one who is conversant with the Middle Ages, and with the literature of the reigns of Elizabeth, James and Charles I. must have perceived in how much kindlier relations the different classes of society existed toward each other in those days than they have since done. The very word independence had hardly found a place in the English language, or was known only as denoting a mischievous heresy. It is indeed, as one of our most thoughtful contemporaries has well said, an “unscriptural word,”—and “when applied to man, it directly contradicts the first and supreme laws of our nature; the very essence of which is universal dependence upon God, and universal interdependence on one another.”

The Great Rebellion dislocated the relations which had for some centuries thus happily subsisted; and the money getting system which has long been the moving principle of British society, has, aided by other injurious influences, effectually prevented the recovery which time, and the sense of mutual interest, and mutual duty, might otherwise have brought about. It was one characteristic of those old times, which in this respect deserve to be called good, that the different classes participated in the enjoyments of each other. There were the religious spectacles, which, instead of being reformed and rendered eminently useful as they might have been, were destroyed by the brutal spirit of puritanism. There were the Church festivals, till that same odious spirit endeavoured to separate, and has gone far toward separating, all festivity from religion. There were tournaments and city pageants at which all ranks were brought together: they are now brought together only upon the race-course. Christmas Mummers have long ceased to be heard of. The Morris dancers have all but disappeared even in the remotest parts of the kingdom. I know not whether a May-pole is now to be seen. What between manufactures and methodism England is no longer the merry England which it was once a happiness and an honour to call our country. Akenside's words “To the Country Gentlemen of England,” may be well remembered.

And yet full oft your anxious tongues complain
That lawless tumult prompts the rustic throng;
That the rude Village-inmates now disdain
Those homely ties which rul'd their fathers long.
Alas, your fathers did by other arts
Draw those kind ties around their simple hearts.
And led in other paths their ductile will;
By succour, faithful counsel, courteous cheer,
Won them their ancient manners to revere,
To prize their countries peace and heaven's due rites fulfil.

My friend saw enough of this change in its progress to excite in him many melancholy forebodings in the latter part of his life. He knew how much local attachment was strengthened by the recollection of youthful sports and old customs; and he well understood how little men can be expected to love their country, who have no particular affection for any part of it. Holidays he knew attached people to the Church, which enjoined their observance; but he very much doubted whether Sunday Schools would have the same effect.

In Beaumont and Fletcher's Play of the Prophetess, the countrymen discourse concerning the abdicated Emperor who has come to reside among them. One says to the other,

Do you think this great man will continue here?

the answer is

Continue here? what else? he has bought the great farm;
A great man[2] with a great inheritance
And all the ground about it, all the woods too
And stock'd it like an Emperor. Now all our sports again
And all our merry gambols, our May Ladies,
Our evening dances on the green, our songs,
Our holiday good cheer; our bagpipes now, boys,
Shall make the wanton lasses skip again,
Our sheep-shearings and all our knacks.

[Footnote 2: Southey has inserted a query here. “Qy Manor or Mansion.” It is usually printed as in the text.—See Act v. Sc. iii.]

It is said however in the _Cortegiano, che non saria conveniente che un gentilhuomo andasse ad honorare con la persona sua una festa di contado, dove i spettatori, et i compagni fussero gente ignobile._ What follows is curious to the history of manners. _Disse allhor' il S. Gasparo Pallavicino, nel paese nostro di Lombardia non s'hanno queste rispetti: anzi molti gentil'huomini giovani trovansi, che le feste ballano tuttol' di nel Sole co i villani, et con esti giocano a lanciar la barra, lottare, correre et saltare; et io non credo che sia male, perche ivi non si fa paragone della nobiltà, ma della forza, e destrezza, nelle quai cose spesso gli huomini di villa non vaglion meno che i nobili; et par che que quella domestichezza habbia in se una certa liberalità amabile._—An objection is made to this; _Quel ballar nel Sole, rispose M. Federico, a me non piace per modo alcuno; ne so che guadagno vi si trovi. Ma chi vuol pur lottar, correr et saltar co i villani, dee (al parer mio) farlo in modo di provarsi, et (come si suol dir) per gentilezza, non per contender con loro, et dee l'huomo esser quasi sicuro di vincere; altramente non vi si metta; perche sta troppo male, et troppo è brutta cosa, et fuor de la dignità vedere un gentilhuomo vinto da un villano, et massimamente alla lotta; però credo io che sia ben astenersi almano in presentia di molti, perche il guadagno nel vincere è pochissimo, et la perdita nell' esse vinto è grandissima._

That is, in the old version of Master Thomas Hoby; “it were not meet that a gentleman should be present in person, and a doer in such a matter in the country, where the lookers-on and the doers were of a base sort. Then said the Lord Gasper Pallavicino, in our country of Lombardy these matters are not passed upon; for you shall see there young gentlemen, upon the holydays, come dance all the day long in the sun with them of the country, and pass the time with them in casting the bar, in wrestling, running and leaping. And I believe it is not ill done; for no comparison is there made of nobleness of birth, but of force and slight; in which things many times the men of the country are not a whit inferior to gentlemen: and it seemeth this familiar conversation containeth in it a certain lovely freeness.” “The dancing in the sun,” answered Sir Frederick, “can I in no case away withal; and I cannot see what a man shall gain by it. But whoso will wrestle, run and leap with men of the country, ought, in my judgement, to do it after a sort; to prove himself, and (as they are wont to say) for courtesy, not to try mastery with them. And a man ought (in a manner) to be assured to get the upper hand, else let him not meddle withal; for it is too ill a sight, and too foul a matter, and without estimation, to see a gentleman overcome by a carter, and especially in wrestling. Therefore I believe it is well done to abstain from it, at the leastwise in the presence of many; if he be overcome, his gain is small, and his loss in being overcome very great.”

This translation is remarkable for having a Sonnet, or more correctly speaking, a quatorzain by Sackville prefixed to it, and at the end of the volume a letter of Sir John Cheke's to the translator, curious for its peculiar spelling, and for the opinion expressed in it that our language ought as much as possible to be kept pure and unmixed.

“I have taken sum pain,” he says, “at your request, cheflie in your preface; not in the reading of it, for that was pleasaunt unto me, boath for the roundnes of your saienges and welspeakinges of the saam, but in changing certein wordes which might verie wel be let aloan, but that I am verie curious in mi freendes matters, not to determijn, but to debaat what is best. Whearin I seek not the bestnes haplie bi truth, but bi mijn own phansie and sheo of goodnes.

“I am of this opinion that our own tung shold be written cleane and pure, unmixt and unmangeled with borowing of other tunges; wherein if we take not heed bi tijm, ever borowing and never payeng, she shall be fain to keep her house as bankrupt. For then doth our tung naturallie and praiseablie utter her meaning, when she boroweth no conterfectness of other tunges to attire her self withall, but useth plainlie her own with such shift as nature, craft, experiens, and folowing of other excellent doth lead her unto; and if she went at ani tijm (as being unperfight she must) yet let her borow with suche bashfulnes, that it mai appear, that if either the mould of our own tung could serve us to fascion a woord of our own, or if the old denisoned wordes could content and ease this neede, we wold not boldly venture of unknoven wordes. This I say, not for reproof of you, who have scarslie and necessarily used, whear occasion serveth, a strange word so, as it seemeth to grow out of the matter and not to be sought for; but for mijn our defens, who might be counted overstraight a deemer of thinges, if I gave not thys accompt to you, my freend and wijs, of mi marring this your handiwork.

“But I am called awai. I prai you pardon mi shortnes; the rest of my saienges should be but praise and exhortacion in this your doinges, which at moar leisor I shold do better.

From my house in Wood street

the 16 of July 1557.

Yours assured

JOAN CHEEK.”

Sir John Cheke died about two months after the date of this letter: and Hoby's translation was not published till 1561, because “there were certain places in it, which of late years being misliked of some that had the perusing of it, the Author thought it much better to keep it in darkness a while, then to put it in light, imperfect, and in piecemeal, to serve the time.” The book itself had been put in the list of prohibited works, and it was not till 1576 that the Conte Camillo Castiglione, the author's son, obtained permission to amend the obnoxious passages and publish an expurgated edition.

It would have vexed Sir John if he had seen with how little care the printer, and his loving friend Master Hoby observed his system of orthography, in this letter. For he never used the final e unless when it is sounded, which he denoted then by doubling it; he rejected the y, wrote u when it was long, with a long stroke over it, doubled the other vowels when they were long, and threw out all letters that were not pronounced. No better system of the kind has been proposed, and many worse. Little good would have been done by its adoption, and much evil, if the translators of the Bible had been required to proceed upon his principle of using no words but such as were true English of Saxon original. His dislike of the translation for corrupting as he thought the language into vocables of foreign growth, made him begin to translate the New Testament in his own way. The Manuscript in his own hand, as far as it had proceeded, is still preserved at Bene't College,[3] and it shows that he found it impracticable to observe his own rule. But though as a precisian he would have cramped and impoverished the language, he has been praised for introducing a short and expressive style, avoiding long and intricate periods, and for bringing “fair and graceful writing into vogue;” he wrote an excellent hand himself, and it is said that all the best scholars in those times followed his example, “so that fair writing and good learning seemed to commence together.”

[Footnote 3: This has been since printed with a good Glossary by the Rev. James Goodwin, Fellow and Tutor of Corpus Christi Coll. Cambridge, and is very curious. All that remains is the Gospel according to St. Matthew. As an instance of Cheke's Englishisms I may refer to the rendering of _προσήλυτον_ in c. xxiij. _v._ 15, by _freschman_. Some little of the MS. is lost.—See Preface, p. 10.]

O Soul of Sir John Cheke, thou wouldst have led me out of my way, if that had been possible,—if my ubiety did not so nearly resemble ubiquity, that in Anywhereness and Everywhereness I know where I am, and can never be lost till I get out of Whereness itself into Nowhere.