Part 7 (1/2)
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ALMONRY, WESTMINSTER Caxton's printing office From an old print]
[Sidenote: STORY OF THE PRINTING PRESS]
The story of how printing came to England, not as a literary but as a business venture, is a very interesting one. Caxton was an English merchant who had established himself at Bruges, then one of the trading centers of Europe. There his business prospered, and he became governor of the _Domus Angliae_, or House of the English Guild of Merchant Adventurers. There is romance in the very name. With moderate wealth came leisure to Caxton, and he indulged his literary taste by writing his own version of some popular romances concerning the siege of Troy, being encouraged by the English princess Margaret, d.u.c.h.ess of Burgundy, into whose service he had entered.
Copies of his work being in demand, Caxton consulted the professional copyists, whose beautiful work we read about in a remarkable novel called _The Cloister and the Hearth_. Then suddenly came to Bruges the rumor of Gutenberg's discovery of printing from movable types, and Caxton hastened to Germany to investigate the matter, led by the desire to get copies of his own work as cheaply as possible. The discovery fascinated him; instead of a few copies of his ma.n.u.script he brought back to Bruges a press, from which he issued his _Recuyell of the Historyes of Troy_ (1474), which was probably the first book to appear in English print. Quick to see the commercial advantages of the new invention, Caxton moved his printing press to London, near Westminster Abbey, where he brought out in 1477 his _Dictes and Sayinges of the Philosophers_, the first book ever printed on English soil. [Footnote: Another book of Caxton's, _The Game and Playe of the Chesse_ (1475) was long accorded this honor, but it is fairly certain that the book on chess-playing was printed in Bruges.]
[Sidenote: THE FIRST PRINTED BOOKS]
From the very outset Caxton's venture was successful, and he was soon busy in supplying books that were most in demand. He has been criticized for not printing the cla.s.sics and other books of the New Learning; but he evidently knew his business and his audience, and aimed to give people what they wanted, not what he thought they ought to have. Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_, Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_, Mandeville's _Travels_, aesop's _Fables_, parts of the _aeneid_, translations of French romances, lives of the saints (The Golden Legend), cookbooks, prayer books, books of etiquette,--the list of Caxton's eighty-odd publications becomes significant when we remember that he printed only popular books, and that the t.i.tles indicate the taste of the age which first looked upon the marvel of printing.
POPULAR BALLADS. If it be asked, ”What is a ballad?” any positive answer will lead to disputation. Originally the ballad was probably a chant to accompany a dance, and so it represents the earliest form of poetry. In theory, as various definitions indicate, it is a short poem telling a story of some exploit, usually of a valorous kind. In common practice, from Chaucer to Tennyson, the ballad is almost any kind of short poem treating of any event, grave or gay, in any descriptive or dramatic way that appeals to the poet.
For the origin of the ballad one must search far back among the social customs of primitive times. That the Anglo-Saxons were familiar with it appears from the record of Tacitus, who speaks of their _carmina_ or narrative songs; but, with the exception of ”The Fight at Finnsburgh” and a few other fragments, all these have disappeared.
During the Middle Ages ballads were constantly appearing among the common people, [Footnote: Thus, when Sidney says, ”I never heard the old song of Percy and Dougla.s.s that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet,” and when Shakespeare shows Autolycus at a country fair offering ”songs for men and women of all sizes,” both poets are referring to popular ballads. Even later, as late as the American Revolution, history was first written for the people in the form of ballads.] but they were seldom written, and found no standing in polite literature. In the eighteenth century, however, certain men who had grown weary of the formal poetry of Pope and his school turned for relief to the old vigorous ballads of the people, and rescued them from oblivion. The one book to which, more than any other, we owe the revival of interest in balladry is _Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_ (1765).
[Sidenote: THE MARKS OF A BALLAD]
The best of our ballads date in their present form from the fifteenth or sixteenth century; but the originals were much older, and had been transmitted orally for years before they were recorded on ma.n.u.script. As we study them we note, as their first characteristic, that they spring from the unlettered common people, that they are by unknown authors, and that they appear in different versions because they were changed by each minstrel to suit his own taste or that of his audience.
A second characteristic is the objective quality of the ballad, which deals not with a poet's thought or feeling (such subjective emotions give rise to the lyric) but with a man or a deed. See in the ballad of ”Sir Patrick Spence” (or Spens) how the unknown author goes straight to his story:
The king sits in Dumferling towne, Drinking the blude-red wine: ”O whar will I get guid sailor To sail this schip of mine?”
Up and spak an eldern knicht, Sat at the king's richt kne: ”Sir Patrick Spence is the best sailor That sails upon the se.”
There is a brief pause to tell us of Sir Patrick's dismay when word comes that the king expects him to take out a s.h.i.+p at a time when she should be riding to anchor, then on goes the narrative:
”Mak hast, mak haste, my mirry men all, Our guid schip sails the morne.”
”O say na sae, my master deir, For I feir a deadlie storme:
”Late, late yestreen I saw the new moone Wi the auld moone in hir arme, And I feir, I feir, my deir master, That we will c.u.m to harme.”
At the end there is no wailing, no moral, no display of the poet's feeling, but just a picture:
O lang, lang may the ladies stand, Wi thair gold kems in their hair, Waiting for thair ain deir lords, For they'll se thame na mair.
Haf owre, haf owre to Aberdour, It's fiftie fadom deip, And thair lies guid Sir Patrick Spence, Wi the Scots lords at his feit.
Directness, vigor, dramatic action, an ending that appeals to the imagination,--most of the good qualities of story-telling are found in this old Scottish ballad. If we compare it with Longfellow's ”Wreck of the Hesperus,” we may discover that the two poets, though far apart in time and s.p.a.ce, have followed almost identical methods.
Other good ballads, which take us out under the open sky among vigorous men, are certain parts of ”The Gest of Robin Hood,” ”Mary Hamilton,” ”The Wife of Usher's Well,” ”The Wee Wee Man,” ”Fair Helen,” ”Hind Horn,”
”Bonnie George Campbell,” ”Johnnie O'c.o.c.kley's Well,” ”Catharine Jaffray”
(from which Scott borrowed his ”Lochinvar”), and especially ”The Nutbrown Mayde,” sweetest and most artistic of all the ballads, which gives a popular and happy version of the tale that Chaucer told in his ”Patient Griselda.”
SUMMARY. The period included in the Age of Chaucer and the Revival of Learning covers two centuries, from 1350 to 1550. The chief literary figure of the period, and one of the greatest of English poets, is Geoffrey Chaucer, who died in the year 1400. He was greatly influenced by French and Italian models; he wrote for the middle and upper cla.s.ses; his greatest work was _The Canterbury Tales_.