Volume II Part 12 (1/2)
In the play of the ”Shepherds” there is provision for green cheese and Halton ale, a suitable recruitment after their long journey to the birthplace of our Saviour. ”Payd to the players for rehearsal: imprimis, to G.o.d, ii_s._ viii_d._; to Pilate his wife, ii_s._; item, for keeping fyer at h.e.l.l's mouth, iii_d._” A strict attention to chronology is not exacted; Herod swears by Mohammed, and promises one of his councillors to make him pope. Noah's wife, who, it appears, was a termagant, swears by the Virgin Mary that she will not go into the ark, and, indeed, is only constrained so to do by a sound cudgelling administered by the patriarch, the rustic justice of the audience being particularly directed to the point that such a flogging should not be given with a stick thicker than her husband's thumb. The sentiment of modesty seems not to have been very exacting, since in the play of ”the Fall of Man”
Adam and Eve appear entirely naked; one of the chief incidents is the adjustment of the fig-leaves. Many such circ.u.mstances might be related, impressing us perhaps with an idea of the obscenity and profanity of the times. But this would scarcely be a just conclusion. As the social state improved, we begin to find objections raised by the more thoughtful ecclesiastics, who refused to lend the holy vestments for such purposes, and at last succeeded in excluding these exhibitions from consecrated places. After dwindling down by degrees, these plays lingered in the booths at fairs or on market-days, the Church having resigned them to the guilds of different trades, and these, in the end, giving them up to the mountebank. And so they died. Their history is the outward and visible sign of a popular intellectual condition in process of pa.s.sing away.
[Sidenote: Moral plays, their character.] The mystery and miracle plays were succeeded by the moral play. It has been thought by some, who have studied the history of the English theatre, that these plays were the result of the Reformation, with the activity of which movement their popularity was coincident. But perhaps the reader who is impressed with the principle of that definite order of social advancement so frequently referred to in this book, will agree with me that this relation of cause and effect can hardly be sustained, and that devotional exercises and popular recreations are in common affected by antecedent conditions. Of the moral play, a very characteristic example still remains under the t.i.tle of ”Everyman,” It often delineates personification and allegory with very considerable power. This short phase of our theatrical career deserves a far closer attention than it has. .h.i.therto obtained, for it has left an indelible impression on our literature. I think that it is to this, in its declining days, that we are indebted for much of the machinery of Bunyan's ”Pilgrim's Progress.” Whoever will compare that work with such plays as ”Everyman” and ”l.u.s.ty Juventus,” cannot fail to be struck with their resemblances. Such personages as ”Good Council,”
”Abominable Living,” ”Hypocrasie,” in the play, are of the same family as those in the Progress. The stout Protestantism of both is at once edifying and amusing. An utter contempt for ”holy stocks and holy stones, holy clouts and holy bones,” as the play has it, animates them all. And it can hardly be doubted that the immortal tinker, in the carnal days when he played at tipcat and romped with the girls on the village green at Elstow, indulged himself in the edification of witnessing these dramatic representations.
[Sidenote: Real plays, Shakespeare.] As to the pa.s.sage from this dramatic phase to the real, in which the character and actions of man are portrayed, to the exclusion or with the subordination of the supernatural, it is only necessary to allude with brevity--indeed, it is only necessary to recall one name, and that one name is Shakespeare. He stands, in his relations to English literature, in the same position that the great Greek sculptors stood with respect to ancient art, embodying conceptions of humanity in its various attributes with indescribable skill, and with an exquisite agreement to nature.
[Sidenote: The pulpit and the stage.] Not without significance is it that we find mystery in the pulpit and mystery on the stage. They appertain to social infancy. Such dramas as those I have alluded to, and many others that, if s.p.a.ce had permitted, might have been quoted, were in unison with the times. The abbeys were boasting of such treasures as the French hood of the Virgin, ”her smocke or s.h.i.+fte,” the manger in which Christ was laid, the spear which pierced his side, the crown of thorns. The transition from this to the following stage is not without its political attendants, the prohibition of interludes containing anything against the Church of Rome, the royal proclamation against preaching out of one's own brain, the appearance of the Puritan upon the national stage, an increasing acerbity of habit and sanctimoniousness of demeanour.
With peculiar facility we may, therefore, through an examination of the state of the drama, determine national mental condition. The same may be done by a like examination of the state of the pulpit. Whoever will take the trouble to compare the results cannot fail to observe how remarkably they correspond.
Such was the state of the literature of amus.e.m.e.nt; as to political literature, even at the close of the period we are considering, it could not be expected to flourish after the judges had declared that no man could publish political news except he had been duly authorized by the crown. [Sidenote: Newspapers and coffee-houses.] Newspapers were, however, beginning to be periodically issued, and, if occasion called for it, broadsides, as they were termed were added. In addition, newsletters were written by enterprising individuals in the metropolis, and sent to rich persons who subscribed for them; they then circulated from family to family, and doubtless enjoyed a privilege which has not descended to their printed contemporary, the newspaper, of never becoming stale. Their authors compiled them from materials picked up in the gossip of the coffee-houses. The coffee-houses, in a non-reading community, were quite an important political as well as social inst.i.tution. They were of every kind, prelatical, popish, Puritan, scientific, literary, Whig, Tory. Whatever a man's notions might be, he could find in London, in a double sense, a coffee-house to his taste. In towns of considerable importance the literary demand was insignificant; thus it is said that the father of Dr. Johnson, the lexicographer, peddled books from town to town, and was accustomed to open a stall in Birmingham on market-days, and it is added that this supply of literature was equal to the demand.
[Sidenote: Liberty of the press slowly secured.] The liberty of the press has been of slow growth. Scarcely had printing been invented when it was found necessary everywhere to place it under some restraint, as was, for instance, done by Rome in her ”Index Expurgatorius” of prohibited books, and the putting of printers who had offended under the ban; the action of the University of Paris, alluded to in this volume, p. 198, was essentially of the same kind. In England, at first, the press was subjected to the common law; the crown judges themselves determined the offence, and could punish the offender with fine, imprisonment, or even death. Within the last century this power of determination has been taken from them, and a jury must decide, not only on the fact, but also on the character of the publication, whether libellous, seditious, or otherwise offensive. [Sidenote: Its present condition.] The press thus came to be a reflector of public opinion, casting light back upon the public; yet as with other reflectors, a portion of the illuminating power is lost. The restraints under which it is laid are due, not so much to the fear that liberty will degenerate into license, for public opinion would soon correct that; they are rather connected with the necessities of the social state.
[Sidenote: Contrast between progress in the ages of Faith and Reason.]
Whoever will examine the condition of England at successive periods during her pa.s.sage through the Age of Faith will see how slow was her progress, and will, perhaps, be surprised to find at its close how small was her advance. The ideas that had served her for so many centuries as a guide had rather obstructed than facilitated her way. But whoever will consider what she has done since she fairly entered on her Age of Reason will remark a wonderful contrast. There has not been a progress in physical conditions only--a securing of better food, better clothing, better shelter, swifter locomotion, the procurement of individual happiness, an extension of the term of life. There has been a great moral advancement. Such atrocities as those mentioned in the foregoing paragraphs are now impossible, and so unlike our own manners that doubtless we read of them at first with incredulity, and with difficulty are brought to believe that these are the things our ancestors did. What a difference between the dilatoriness of the past, its objectless exertions, its unsatisfactory end, and the energy, and well-directed intentions of the present age, which have already yielded results like the prodigies of romance.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE EUROPEAN AGE OF REASON.
REJECTION OF AUTHORITY AND TRADITION, AND ADOPTION OF SCIENTIFIC TRUTH.--DISCOVERY OF THE TRUE POSITION OF THE EARTH IN THE UNIVERSE.
_Ecclesiastical Attempt to enforce the_ GEOCENTRIC DOCTRINE _that the Earth is the Centre of the Universe, and the most important Body in it._
_The_ HELIOCENTRIC DOCTRINE _that the Sun is the Centre of the Solar System, and the Earth a small Planet, comes gradually into Prominence._
_Struggle between the Ecclesiastical and Astronomical Parties.--Activity of the Inquisition.--Burning of_ BRUNO.--_Imprisonment of_ GALILEO.
INVENTION OF THE TELESCOPE.--_Complete Overthrow of the Ecclesiastical Idea.--Rise of Physical Astronomy._--NEWTON.--_Rapid and resistless Development of all Branches of Natural Philosophy._
_Final Establishment of the Doctrine that the Universe is under the Dominion of mathematical, and, therefore, necessary Laws._
_Progress of Man from the Anthropocentric Ideas to the Discovery of his true Position and Insignificance in the Universe._
[Sidenote: An astronomical problem.] The Age of Reason in Europe was ushered in by an astronomical controversy.
Is the earth the greatest and most n.o.ble body in the universe, around which, as an immovable centre, the sun, and the various planets, and stars revolve, ministering by their light and other qualities to the wants and pleasures of man, or is it an insignificant orb--a mere point--submissively revolving, among a crowd of compeers and superiors, around a central sun? The former of these views was authoritatively a.s.serted by the Church; the latter, timidly suggested by a few thoughtful and religious men at first, in the end gathered strength, and carried the day.
[Sidenote: Its important consequences.] Behind this physical question--a mere scientific problem--lay something of the utmost importance--the position of man in the universe. The conflict broke out upon an ostensible issue, but every one saw what was the real point in the dispute.
[Sidenote: Treatment of the Age of Reason.] In the history of the Age of Reason in Europe, which is to fill the remaining pages of this book, I am constrained to commence with this astronomical controversy, and have therefore been led by that circ.u.mstance to complete the survey of the entire period from the same, that is, the scientific point of view. Many different modes of treating it spontaneously present themselves; but so vast are the subjects to be brought under consideration, so numerous their connexions, and so limited the s.p.a.ce at my disposal, that I must give the preference to one which, with sufficient copiousness, offers also precision. Whoever will examine the progress of European intellectual advancement thus far manifested will find that it has concerned itself with three great questions: 1. The ascertainment of the position of the earth in the universe; 2. The history of the earth in time; 3. The position of man among living beings. Under this last is ranged all that he has done in scientific discovery, and all those inventions which are the characteristics of the present industrial age.
What am I? Where am I? we may imagine to have been the first exclamations of the first man awakening to conscious existence. Here, in our Age of Reason, we have been dealing with the same thoughts. They are the same which, as we have seen, occupied Greek intellectual life.
[Sidenote: Roman astronomical ideas.] When Halley's comet appeared in 1456, it was described by those who saw it as an object of ”unheard-of magnitude;” its tail, which shook down ”diseases, pestilence, and war”
upon earth, reached over a third part of the heavens. It was considered as connected with the progress of Mohammed II., who had just then taken Constantinople. It struck terror into all people. From his seat, invisible to it, in Italy, the sovereign pontiff, Calixtus III., issued his ecclesiastical fulminations; but the comet in the heavens, like the sultan on the earth, pursued its course undeterred. In vain were all the bells in Europe ordered to be rung to scare it away; in vain was it anathematized; in vain were prayers put up in all directions to stop it.
True to its time, it punctually returns from the abysses of s.p.a.ce, uninfluenced by anything save agencies of a material kind. A signal lesson for the meditations of every religious man.