Part 3 (1/2)

Of money:

”Coyne more than cunning exalteth every man.”

Of clothing:

”It is not clothing can make a man be good Better is in ragges pure liuing innocent Than a soule defiled in sumptuous garment.”

It is as the graphic delineator of the life and condition of the country in his period that the chief interest of Barclay's writings, and especially of the ”s.h.i.+p of Fools,” now lies. Nowhere so accessibly, so fully, and so truthfully will be found the state of Henry the Eighth's England set forth.

Every line bears the character of truthfulness, written as it evidently is, in all the soberness of sadness, by one who had no occasion to exaggerate, whose only object and desire was, by ma.s.sing together and describing faithfully the follies and abuses which were evident to all, to shame every cla.s.s into some degree of moral reformation, and, in particular, to effect some amelioration of circ.u.mstances to the suffering poor.

And a sad picture it is which we thus obtain of merrie England in the good old times of bluff King Hal, wanting altogether in the _couleur de rose_ with which it is tinted by its latest historian Mr Froude, who is ably taken to task on this subject by a recent writer in the Westminster Review, whose conclusions, formed upon other evidence than Barclay's, express so fairly the impression left by a perusal of the ”s.h.i.+p of Fools,” and the Eclogues, that we quote them here. ”Mr Froude remarks: 'Looking therefore, at the state of England as a whole, I cannot doubt that under Henry the body of the people were prosperous, well-fed, loyal, and contented. In all points of material comfort, they were as well off as ever they had been before; better off than they have ever been in later times.' In this estimate we cannot agree. Rather we should say that during, and for long after, this reign, the people were in the most deplorable condition of poverty and misery of every kind. That they were ill-fed, that loyalty was at its lowest ebb, that discontent was rife throughout the land. 'In all points of material comfort,' we think they were worse off than they had ever been before, and infinitely worse off than they have ever been since the close of the sixteenth century,--a century in which the cup of England's woes was surely fuller than it has ever been since, or will, we trust, ever be again. It was the century in which this country and its people pa.s.sed through a baptism of blood as well as 'a baptism of fire,'

and out of which they came holier and better. The epitaph which should be inscribed over the century is contained in a sentence written by the famous Acham in 1547:--'Nam vita, quae nunc vivitur a plurimis, non vita sed miseria est.'” So, Bradford (Sermon on Repentance, 1533) sums up contemporary opinion in a single weighty sentence: ”All men may see if they will that the wh.o.r.edom pride, unmercifulness, and tyranny of England far surpa.s.ses any age that ever was before.” Every page of Barclay corroborates these accounts of tyranny, injustice, immorality, wretchedness, poverty, and general discontent.

Not only in fact and feeling are Barclay's s.h.i.+p of Fools and Eclogues thoroughly expressive of the unhappy, discontented, poverty-stricken, priest-ridden, and court-ridden condition and life, the bitter sorrows and the humble wishes of the people, their very texture, as Barclay himself tells us, consists of the commonest language of the day, and in it are interwoven many of the current popular proverbs and expressions. Almost all of these are still ”household words” though few ever imagine the garb of their ”daily wisdom” to be of such venerable antiquity. Every page of the ”Eclogues” abounds with them; in the ”s.h.i.+p” they are less common, but still by no means infrequent. We have for instance:--

”Better is a frende in courte than a peny in purse”--(I. 70.) ”Whan the stede is stolyn to shyt the stable dore”--(I. 76.) ”It goeth through as water through a syue.”--(I. 245.) ”And he that alway thretenyth for to fyght Oft at the prose is skantly worth a hen For greattest crakers ar nat ay boldest men.”--(I. 198.) ”I fynde foure thynges whiche by no meanes can Be kept close, in secrete, or longe in preuetee The firste is the counsell of a wytles man The seconde is a cyte whiche byldyd is a hye Upon a montayne the thyrde we often se That to hyde his dedes a louer hath no skyll The fourth is strawe or fethers on a wyndy hyll.”--(I. 199.) ”A crowe to pull.”--(II. 8.) ”For it is a prouerbe, and an olde sayd sawe That in euery place lyke to lyke wyll drawe.”--(II. 35.) ”Better haue one birde sure within thy wall Or fast in a cage than twenty score without”--(II. 74) ”Gapynge as it were dogges for a bone.”--(II. 93.) ”Pryde sholde haue a fall.”--(II. 161).

”For wyse men sayth ...

One myshap fortuneth neuer alone.”

”Clawe where it itchyth.”--(II. 256.) [The use of this, it occurs again in the Eclogues, might be regarded by some of our Southern friends, as itself a sufficient proof of the author's Northern origin.]

The following are selected from the Eclogues as the most remarkable:

”Each man for himself, and the fende for us all.”

”They robbe Saint Peter therwith to clothe Saint Powle.”

”For might of water will not our leasure bide.”

”Once out of sight and shortly out of minde.”

”For children brent still after drede the fire.”

”Together they cleave more fast than do burres.”

”Tho' thy teeth water.”

”I aske of the foxe no farther than the skin.”

”To touche soft pitche and not his fingers file.”

”From post unto piller tost shall thou be.”

”Over head and eares.”

”Go to the ant.”

”A man may contende, G.o.d geueth victory.”

”Of two evils chose the least.”

These are but the more striking specimens. An examination of the ”s.h.i.+p,”

and especially of the ”Eclogues,” for the purpose of extracting their whole proverbial lore, would be well worth the while, if it be not the duty, of the next collector in this branch of popular literature. These writings introduce many of our common sayings for the first time to English literature, no writer prior to Barclay having thought it dignified or worth while to profit by the popular wisdom to any perceptible extent. The first collection of proverbs, Heywood's, did not appear until 1546, so that in Barclay we possess the earliest known English form of such proverbs as he introduces. It need scarcely be said that that form is, in the majority of instances, more full of meaning and point than its modern representatives.

Barclay's adoption of the language of the people naturally elevated him in popular estimation to a position far above that of his contemporaries in the matter of style, so much so that he has been traditionally recorded as one of the greatest improvers of the language, that is, one of those who helped greatly to bring the written language to be more nearly in accordance with the spoken. Both a scholar and a man of the world, his phraseology bears token of the greater cultivation and wider knowledge he possessed over his contemporaries. He certainly aimed at clearness of expression, and simplicity of vocabulary, and in these respects was so far in advance of his time that his works can even now be read with ease, without the help of dictionary or glossary. In spite of his church training and his residence abroad, his works are surprisingly free from Latin or French forms of speech; on the contrary, they are, in the main, characterised by a strong Saxon directness of expression which must have tended greatly to the continuance of their popularity, and have exercised a strong and advantageous influence both in regulating the use of the common spoken language, and in leading the way which it was necessary for the literary language to follow. Philologists and dictionary makers appear, however, to have hitherto overlooked Barclay's works, doubtless owing to their rarity, but their intrinsic value as well as their position in relation to the history of the language demand specific recognition at their hands.

Barclay evidently delighted in his pen. From the time of his return from the Continent, it was seldom out of his hand. Idleness was distasteful to him. He pet.i.tions his critics if they be ”wyse men and cunnynge,” that:--

”They shall my youth pardone, and vnchraftynes Whiche onely translate, to eschewe ydelnes.”