all his synnes. This the abbot & the prioure tolde the scolere, & he, with gret joy thanked God." I

But instances of this kind of story lack those features of gaiety and satirical observation of which French stories are full, and which are an important element of the novel. Some are mystical; others, in which the devil figures on whom the saints play rude tricks, are intended to raise a loud laugh; in both cases real life is equally distant. A keen faculty of observation however existed in the nation; foibles of human nature did not escape the English writer's eye any more than its higher aspirations. This is illustrated not only by Chaucer, who chose to write poetry, but by such men as Nigel Wireker 2 and Walter Map who chose to write Latin.3 But not

1

"English Prose Treatises of Richard Rolle de Hampole," ed. G. G. Perry, London, Early English Text Society, 1866, 8vo. p. 7. Rolle de Hampole died in 1349. Cæsarius' tale (Cæsarius Heisterbacensis, d. 1240) begins thus: "Erat ibi juvenis quidam in studio, qui, suggerente humani generis inimico, talia quædam peccata commiserat, quæ, obstante erubescentia, nulli hominum confiteri potuit: cogitans tamen quæ malis præparata sunt tormenta gehennæ, & quæ bonis abscondita sunt gaudia perennis vitæ, timens etiam quotidie judicium Dei super se, intus torquebatur morsu conscientiæ & foris tabescebat in copore. . . .” (“Illustrium miraculorum . . . libri xii.," bk. ii. ch. 10).

2

...

"Speculum Stultorum," in "Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets of the Twelfth Century" ed. Th. Wright, London, 1872, 2 vols. 8vo.

3 "Gualteri Mapes De nugis curialium distinctiones quinque," ed. Th. Wright, Camden Society, 1850, 4to. Part IV. of this work contains the celebrated "Disuasio Valerii ad Rufinum de ducenda uxore," long attributed to St. Jerome, and one of the principal text-books of the authors of satires against women during the Middle Ages. It was well known to the Wife of Bath, who held it in special abomination.

one English author before the Renaissance employed such gifts in writing prose studies of real life in his native tongue. Owing to the Conquest a certain discredit seemed to rest for generations on England's original language. Long after an English nation, rich in every sort of glory had come into being, writers are to be found hesitating to use the national idiom. This circumstance is chiefly noticeable in prose where the use of a foreign tongue offers less difficulties than in poetry. Prose was less cultivated in England even so late as the commencement of the sixteenth century than in France during the thirteenth. At the time of the Renaissance, Sir Thomas More, the wittiest Englishman of his day, whose English style was admirable and who moreover loved the language of his native land, wishing to publish a romance of social satire, the "Utopia," I wrote it in Latin. It is one of the oldest examples in modern literature of that species of book which includes at a later date the story of Gargantua and Pantagruel, Bacon's "New Atlantis," Cyrano de Bergerac's "Etats et empires de la lune et du soleil," Fenelon's "Télémaque," "Gulliver's

The "Utopia" was composed in 1515-1516, and was published anonymously at Louvain, under the title: Libellus vere aureus, nec minus salutaris quam festivus de optimo reipublicæ statu . . . cura P. Ægidii . . . nunc primum . . . editus." Louvain 1516, 4to. It was translated into English by Ralph Robinson in 1551, and this translation has been reprinted by Arber, London, 1869. Another famous novel of the same class was written in the following century also in Latin by another Englishman, or rather Scotchman, the celebrated "Argenis" of John Barclay (1582-1621). It was translated into English by Sir Robert Le Grys, 1629, 4to. Queen Elizabeth appears in it under the name of Hyanis be.

Travels," Voltaire's tales, &c. More's use of Latin is to be the more regretted since his romance exhibits infinite resources of spirit and animation; of all his writings it is the one that best justifies his great reputation for wit and enlightenment. His characters are living men and their conversation undoubtedly resembles that which delighted him in the society of his friend Erasmus.

The subject of the book is the quest for the best possible government. More and his companions meet at Antwerp one of the fellow voyagers of Amerigo Vespucci the famous godfather of America, and they question him concerning the civilizations he has seen. "He likewise very willingly tolde us of the same. But as for monsters, by cause they be no newes, of them we were nothy ng inquisitive. For nothyng is more easye to bee founde, then bee barkynge Scyllaes, ravenyng Celenes, & Lestrigones devourers of people, & suche lyke great, & incredible monsters. find citisens ruled by good & holsome lawes, that is an exceding rare, & harde thyng." By good luck Amerigo's companion had discovered an empire which presented this admirable quality: the island of Utopia, or the country of "Nowhere." This country became immediately famous all over Europe, so much so that Pantagruel would not look to any other place for immigrants to people his newly conquered kingdom of Dispodie. There he transported Utopians to

But to

the number of 9,876,543,210 men," says Rabelais, with his usual care for exact numbers, "without speaking of women and little children." He did so to "refresh, people, and adorn the said country otherwise Ralph Robinson's translation (ut supra).

I

badly enough inhabited and desert in many places." I His acting in this manner was only natural, for, as is well known, connections existed between his family and the Utopians, his own mother Badebec, the wife of Gargantua, being "daughter to the king of the Amaurotes in Utopia." 2

A hundred years later, something of this want of confidence in the future of English prose still lingered. Bacon, after having employed it in his essays and treatises, was seized with anxiety and kept in his pay secretaries with whose help he meant to translate all his works into Latin, in order to assure himself of their permanence.

III.

Some years before Sir Thomas More wrote his Utopia," an Englishman, who had long lived abroad and had there learnt a new industry, unknown in his own land, returned to England and settled in Westminster. He and his trade were destined to exercise a very important influence on the diffusion of literature, and especially on the development of romances. His art was printing, and his name was Caxton. We can judge of the amazement he produced among his countrymen by his new art, from his own wonder;

I

"Pantagrue!, après avoir entièrement conquesté le pays de Dispodie, en icelluy transporta une colonie des Utopiens, en nombre de 9,876,543,210 hommes, sans les femmes et petitz enfans, artisans de tous mestiers et professcurs de toutes sciences liberales, pour ledict pays refraischir, peupler et aorner, mal aultrement habité et désert en grande partie" ("Pantagruel," bk. iii. ch. 1). 2Pantagruel," bk. ii. ch. 2.

one of his prefaces shows clearly enough how extraordinary his performance seemed to himself: "And for as moche, says he, as in the wrytyng of the same my penne is worn, myn hande wery & not sted fast, myn eyen dimed with overmoche lokyng on the whit paper & my corage not so prone & redy to laboure as hit hath ben & that age crepeth on me dayly & febleth all the bodye, & also be cause I have promysid to diverse gentilmen & to my frendes to addresse to hem as hastely as I myght this sayd book, therfore I have practysed & lerned at my grete charge & dispense to ordeyne this said book in prynte after the maner & forme as ye may here see, & is not wreton with penne & ynke as other bokes ben, to thende that every man may have them attones, ffor all the bookes of this storye named the recule of the historyes of troyes thus enpryntid as ye here see were begonne in oon day & also fynysshid in oon day." I

The list of his books shows that he was no less intent upon diverting his customers than upon improving their knowledge and morals. The part allotted to fiction was extremely large, not perhaps quite so extensive as that occupied by the novel proper in the publishers' lists of to-day; but regarding it as merely a beginning, it must be admitted to be very promising. Not only did he print the tales of Chaucer, the confessions of Gower, with their numerous stories, several poems of Lydgate, a number of medieval epic romances in verse, but he also issued

I

"Recueyll of the historyes of Troye," Bruges, 1474? Epilogue to Book iii.