Part 7 (1/2)
The gardin was by mesuring Right even and squar in compa.s.sing.
The trees were set even, five fathom or six from one another.
In places saw I welles there In whiche ther no frogges were And fair in shadwe was every welle; But I ne can the nombre telle Of stremes smale that by device Mirth had done come through coundys, Of which the water in renning Can make a noyse ful lyking.
The dreamer finds Sir Mirth and a company of fair folk and fresh, dancing a _carole_.
This folk of which I telle you so Upon a carole wenten tho; A lady caroled hem, that highte Gladnesse the blisful the lighte; Wel coude she singe and l.u.s.tily, Non half so wel and semely, And make in song swich refreininge It sat her wonder wel to singe.
The dream, the May morning, the garden, the fair company, the carole all were repeated for three hundred years by poets of every degree, who drew from the _Romaunt of the Rose_ unsparingly, as from a perennial fountain.
The writers whom one would expect to be impatient with all things conventional, Chaucer and Sir David Lyndsay, give no sign that the May of the old French poet has lost its charm for them; though each on one occasion, Chaucer in the _Hous of Fame_ and Lyndsay in the _Dreme_, with a definite purpose changes the time to winter. With both, the May comes back again, in the _Legend of Good Women_ and in the _Monarchy_.
Even Petrarch, the first of the moderns to think contemptuously of the Middle Ages, uses the form of the Dream in his _Trionfi_-he lies down and sleeps on the gra.s.s at Vaucluse, and the vision follows, of the Triumph of Love.
The _Pearl_, one of the most beautiful of the English medieval poems, is an allegory which begins in this same way; the _Vision of Piers Plowman_ is another. Neither of these has otherwise much likeness to the _Rose_; it was by Chaucer and his school that the authority of the _Rose_ was established. The _Pearl_ and _Piers Plowman_ are original works, each differing very considerably from the French style which was adopted by Chaucer and Gower.
The _Pearl_ is written in a lyrical stanza, or rather in groups of stanzas linked to one another by their refrains; the measure is unlike French verse. The poem itself, which in many details resembles many other things, is altogether quite distinct from anything else, and indescribable except to those who have read it. Its resemblance to the _Paradiso_ of Dante is that which is less misleading than any other comparison. In the English poem, the dreamer is instructed as to the things of heaven by his daughter Marjory, the Pearl that he had lost, who appears to him walking by the river of Paradise and shows him the New Jerusalem; like Dante's Beatrice at the end she is caught away from his side to her place in glory.
But it is not so much in these circ.u.mstances that the likeness is to be found-it is in the fervour, the belief, which carries everything with it in the argument, and turns theology into imagination. As with Dante, allegory is a right name, but also an insufficient name for the mode of thought in this poem.
In the _Pearl_ there is one quite distinct and abstract theory which the poem is intended to prove; a point of theology (possibly heretical): that all the souls of the blessed are equal in happiness; each one is queen or king. In _Sir Gawayne_, which is probably by the same author, there is the same kind of definite thought, never lost or confused in the details.
_Piers Plowman_, on the other hand, though there are a number of definite things which the author wishes to enforce, is wholly different in method.
The method often seems as if it were nothing at all but random a.s.sociation of ideas. The whole world is in the author's mind, experience, history, doctrine, the estates and fortunes of mankind, 'the mirror of middle-earth'; all the various elements are turned and tossed about, scenes from Bartholomew Fair mixed up with preaching or philosophy. There is the same variety, it may be said, in _The Pilgrim's Progress_. But there is not the same confusion. With Bunyan, whatever the conversation may be, there is always the map of the road quite clear. You know where you are; and if ever the talk is abstract it is the talk of people who eat and drink and wear clothes-real men, as one is accustomed to call them. In _Piers Plowman_ there is as much knowledge of life as in Bunyan; but the visible world is seen only from time to time. It is not merely that some part of the book is comic description and some of it serious discourse, but the form of thought s.h.i.+fts in a baffling way from the pictorial to the abstract. It is tedious to be told of a brook named 'Be buxom of speech', and a croft called 'Covet not men's cattle nor their wives', when nothing is made of the brook or the croft by way of scenery; the pictorial words add nothing to the moral meaning; if the Ten Commandments are to be turned into allegory, something more is wanted than the mere tacking on to them of a figurative name. The author of _Piers Plowman_ is too careless, and uses too often a mechanical form of allegory which is little better than verbiage.
But there is more than enough to make up for that, both in the comic scenes like the Confession of the Seven Deadly Sins, and in the sustained pa.s.sages of reasoning, like the argument about the righteous heathen and the hopes allowable to Saracens and Jews. The Seven Sins are not abstractions nor grotesque allegories; they are vulgar comic personages such as might have appeared in a comedy or a novel of low life, in London taverns or country inns, figures of tradesmen and commercial travellers, speaking the vulgar tongue, natural, stupid, ordinary people.
Also there is beauty; the poem is not to be dismissed as a long religious argument with comic interludes, though such a description would be true enough, as far as it goes. The author is no great artist, for he lets his meaning overpower him and hurry him, and interrupt his pictures and his story. But he is a poet, for all that, and he proves his gift from the outset of his work 'in a May morning, on Malvern hilles'; and with all his digressions and seemingly random thought the argument is held together and moves harmoniously in its large s.p.a.ces. The secret of its construction is revealed in the long triumphant pa.s.sage which renders afresh the story of the Harrowing of h.e.l.l, and in the transition to what follows, down to the end of the poem. The author has worked up to a climax in what may be called his drama of the Harrowing of h.e.l.l. This is given fully, and with a sense of its greatness, from the beginning when the voice and the light together break in upon the darkness of h.e.l.l and on the 'Dukes of that dim place'-_Attollite portas_: 'be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors'. After the triumph, the dreamer awakes and hears the bells on Easter morning-
That men rongen to the resurrexioun, and right with that I waked And called Kitte my wyf and Kalote my doughter: Ariseth and reverenceth G.o.ddes resurrexioun, And crepeth to the crosse on knees, and kisseth it for a juwel, For G.o.ddes blessid body it bar for owre bote, And it afereth the fende, for suche is the myghte May no grysly gost glyde there it shadoweth!
This is the end of one vision, but it is not the end of the poem. There is another dream.
I fel eftsones aslepe and sodeynly me mette That Pieres the plowman was paynted al blody And come on with a crosse before the comune people And righte lyke in alle lymes to oure lorde Jhesu And thanne called I Conscience to kenne me the sothe: 'Is this Jhesus the juster' quoth I 'that Jewes did to death?
Or is it Pieres the plowman? Who paynted him so rede?'
Quoth Conscience and kneled tho: 'This aren Pieres armes, His coloures and his cote-armure, ac he that cometh so blody Is Cryst with his crosse, conqueroure of crystene'.
The end is far off; Antichrist is to come; Old Age and Death have their triumph likewise. The poem does not close with a solution of all problems, but with a new beginning; Conscience setting out on a pilgrimage. The poet has not gone wrong in his argument; the world is as bad as ever it was, and it is thus that he ends, after scenes of ruin that make one think of the Twilight of the G.o.ds, and of the courage which the Northern heroes opposed to it.
It is not by accident that the story is shaped in this way. The construction is what the writer wished it to be, and his meaning is expressed with no failure in coherence. His mind is never satisfied; least of all with such conclusions as would make him forget the distresses of human life. He is like Blake saying-
I will not cease from mental fight Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand.
The book of _Piers Plowman_ is found in many ma.n.u.scripts which were cla.s.sified by Mr. Skeat in his edition of the poem as representing three versions, made at different times by the author who twice revised his book, so that there is an earlier and a later revised and expanded version besides the first. This theory of the authors.h.i.+p is not accepted by every one, and attempts have been made to distinguish different hands, and more particularly to separate the authors.h.i.+p of the first from the second version. Those who wish to multiply the authors have to consider, among other things, the tone of thought in the poem; it is hard to believe that there were two authors in the same reign who had the same strong and weak points, the same inconsistencies, wavering between lively imagination and formal allegory, the same indignation and the same tolerance. _Piers Plowman_ is one of the most impartial of all reformers.
He makes heavy charges against many ranks and orders of men, but he always remembers the good that is to be said for them. His remedy for the evils of the world would be to bring the different estates-knights, clergy, labourers and all-to understand their proper duty. His political ideal is the commonwealth as it exists, only with each part working as it was meant to do: the king making the peace, with the knights to help him, the clergy studying and praying, the commons working honestly, and the higher estates also giving work and getting wages. In this respect there is no inconsistency between the earlier and the later text. In the second version he brings in Envy as the philosophical socialist who proves out of Plato and Seneca that all things should be in common. This helps to confirm what is taught in the first version about the functions of the different ranks. If the later versions are due to later hands, they, at any rate, continue and amplify what is taught in the first version, with no inconsistency.
CHAPTER VIII SERMONS AND HISTORIES, IN VERSE AND PROSE