The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon
shabby, but sententious friend, in the oil-cloth hat and copper nose.
Thus have I given a “tedious brief” account of this interesting
research, for which, if it prove too short and unsatisfactory, I can
only plead my inexperience in this branch of literature, so deservedly
popular at the present day. I am aware that a more skilful illustrator
of the immortal bard would have swelled the materials I have touched
upon to a good merchantable bulk, comprising the biographies of William
Walworth, Jack Straw, and Robert Preston; some notice of the eminent
fishmongers of St. Michael’s; the history of Eastcheap, great and
little; private anecdotes of Dame Honeyball and her pretty daughter,
whom I have not even mentioned; to say nothing of a damsel tending the
breast of lamb (and whom, by the way, I remarked to be a comely lass
with a neat foot and ankle);--the whole enlivened by the riots of Wat
Tyler, and illuminated by the great fire of London.
All this I leave, as a rich mine, to be worked by future commentators,
nor do I despair of seeing the tobacco-box, and the “parcel-gilt goblet”
which I have thus brought to light the subject of future engravings,
and almost as fruitful of voluminous dissertations and disputes as the
shield of Achilles or the far-famed Portland Vase.
THE MUTABILITY OF LITERATURE.
A COLLOQUY IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
I know that all beneath the moon decays,
And what by mortals in this world is brought,
In time’s great periods shall return to nought.
I know that all the muses’ heavenly rays,
With toil of sprite which are so dearly bought,
As idle sounds, of few or none are sought--
That there is nothing lighter than mere praise.
DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN.
THERE are certain half-dreaming moods of mind in which we naturally
steal away from noise and glare, and seek some quiet haunt where we may
indulge our reveries and build our air castles undisturbed. In such a
mood I was loitering about the old gray cloisters of Westminster Abbey,
enjoying that luxury of wandering thought which one is apt to dignify
with the name of reflection, when suddenly an irruption of madcap boys
from Westminster school, playing at football, broke in upon the monastic
stillness of the place, making the vaulted passages and mouldering tombs
echo with their merriment. I sought to take refuge from their noise by
penetrating still deeper into the solitudes of the pile, and applied to
one of the vergers for admission to the library. He conducted me through
a portal rich with the crumbling sculpture of former ages, which opened
upon a gloomy passage leading to the chapter-house and the chamber in
which Doomsday Book is deposited. Just within the passage is a small
door on the left. To this the verger applied a key; it was double
locked, and opened with some difficulty, as if seldom used. We now
ascended a dark narrow staircase, and, passing through a second door,
entered the library.
I found myself in a lofty antique hall, the roof supported by massive
joists of old English oak. It was soberly lighted by a row of Gothic
windows at a considerable height from the floor, and which apparently
opened upon the roofs of the cloisters. An ancient picture of some
reverend dignitary of the Church in his robes hung over the fireplace.
Around the hall and in a small gallery were the books, arranged in
carved oaken cases. They consisted principally of old polemical writers,
and were much more worn by time than use. In the centre of the library
was a solitary table with two or three books on it, an inkstand without
ink, and a few pens parched by long disuse. The place seemed fitted
for quiet study and profound meditation. It was buried deep among the
massive walls of the abbey and shut up from the tumult of the world.
I could only hear now and then the shouts of the school-boys faintly
swelling from the cloisters, and the sound of a bell tolling for prayers
echoing soberly along the roofs of the abbey. By degrees the shouts of
merriment grew fainter and fainter, and at length died away; the bell
ceased to toll, and a profound silence reigned through the dusky hall.
I had taken down a little thick quarto, curiously bound in parchment,
with brass clasps, and seated myself at the table in a venerable
elbow-chair. Instead of reading, however, I was beguiled by the solemn
monastic air and lifeless quiet of the place, into a train of musing.
As I looked around upon the old volumes in their mouldering covers, thus
ranged on the shelves and apparently never disturbed in their repose,
I could not but consider the library a kind of literary catacomb, where
authors, like mummies, are piously entombed and left to blacken and
moulder in dusty oblivion.
How much, thought I, has each of these volumes, now thrust aside with
such indifference, cost some aching head! how many weary days! how
many sleepless nights! How have their authors buried themselves in the
solitude of cells and cloisters, shut themselves up from the face of
man, and the still more blessed face of Nature; and devoted themselves
to painful research and intense reflection! And all for what? To occupy
an inch of dusty shelf--to have the titles of their works read now and
then in a future age by some drowsy churchman or casual straggler like
myself, and in another age to be lost even to remembrance. Such is the
amount of this boasted immortality. A mere temporary rumor, a local
sound; like the tone of that bell which has tolled among these towers,
filling the ear for a moment, lingering transiently in echo, and then
passing away, like a thing that was not!
While I sat half-murmuring, half-meditating, these unprofitable
speculations with my head resting on my hand, I was thrumming with the
other hand upon the quarto, until I accidentally loosened the clasps;
when, to my utter astonishment, the little book gave two or three yawns,
like one awaking from a deep sleep, then a husky hem, and at length
began to talk. At first its voice was very hoarse and broken, being much
troubled by a cobweb which some studious spider had woven across it, and
having probably contracted a cold from long exposure to the chills and
damps of the abbey. In a short time, however, it became more distinct,
and I soon found it an exceedingly fluent, conversable little tome.
Its language, to be sure, was rather quaint and obsolete, and its
pronunciation what, in the present day, would be deemed barbarous; but I
shall endeavor, as far as I am able, to render it in modern parlance.
It began with railings about the neglect of the world, about merit being
suffered to languish in obscurity, and other such commonplace topics of
literary repining, and complained bitterly that it had not been opened
for more than two centuries--that the dean only looked now and then into
the library, sometimes took down a volume or two, trifled with them for
a few moments, and then returned them to their shelves. “What a plague
do they mean?” said the little quarto, which I began to perceive was
somewhat choleric--“what a plague do they mean by keeping several
thousand volumes of us shut up here, and watched by a set of old
vergers, like so many beauties in a harem, merely to be looked at now
and then by the dean? Books were written to give pleasure and to be
enjoyed; and I would have a rule passed that the dean should pay each of
us a visit at least once a year; or, if he is not equal to the task, let
them once in a while turn loose the whole school of Westminster among
us, that at any rate we may now and then have an airing.”
“Softly, my worthy friend,” replied I; “you are not aware how much
better you are off than most books of your generation. By being stored
away in this ancient library you are like the treasured remains of those
saints and monarchs which lie enshrined in the adjoining chapels, while
the remains of their contemporary mortals, left to the ordinary course
of Nature, have long since returned to dust.”
“Sir,” said the little tome, ruffling his leaves and looking big, “I
was written for all the world, not for the bookworms of an abbey. I was
intended to circulate from hand to hand, like other great contemporary
works; but here have I been clasped up for more than two centuries, and
might have silently fallen a prey to these worms that are playing the
very vengeance with my intestines if you had not by chance given me an
opportunity of uttering a few last words before I go to pieces.”
“My good friend,” rejoined I, “had you been left to the circulation of
which you speak, you would long ere this have been no more. To judge
from your physiognomy, you are now well stricken in years: very few of
your contemporaries can be at present in existence, and those few owe
their longevity to being immured like yourself in old libraries; which,
suffer me to add, instead of likening to harems, you might more properly
and gratefully have compared to those infirmaries attached to religious
establishments for the benefit of the old and decrepit, and where, by
quiet fostering and no employment, they often endure to an amazingly
good-for-nothing old age. You talk of your contemporaries as if in
circulation. Where do we meet with their works? What do we hear of
Robert Grosteste of Lincoln? No one could have toiled harder than he for
immortality. He is said to have written nearly two hundred volumes. He
built, as it were, a pyramid of books to perpetuate his name: but,
alas! the pyramid has long since fallen, and only a few fragments are
scattered in various libraries, where they are scarcely disturbed
even by the antiquarian. What do we hear of Giraldus Cambrensis, the
historian, antiquary, philosopher, theologian, and poet? He declined two
bishoprics that he might shut himself up and write for posterity; but
posterity never inquires after his labors. What of Henry of Huntingdon,
who, besides a learned history of England, wrote a treatise on the
contempt of the world, which the world has revenged by forgetting him?
What is quoted of Joseph of Exeter, styled the miracle of his age in
classical composition? Of his three great heroic poems, one is lost
forever, excepting a mere fragment; the others are known only to a few
of the curious in literature; and as to his love verses and epigrams,
they have entirely disappeared. What is in current use of John Wallis
the Franciscan, who acquired the name of the tree of life? Of William
of Malmsbury--of Simeon of Durham--of Benedict of Peterborough--of John
Hanvill of St. Albans--of----”
“Prithee, friend,” cried the quarto in a testy tone, “how old do you
think me? You are talking of authors that lived long before my time, and
wrote either in Latin or French, so that they in a manner expatriated
themselves, and deserved to be forgotten;* but I, sir, was ushered into
the world from the press of the renowned Wynkyn de Worde. I was written
in my own native tongue, at a time when the language had become fixed;
and indeed I was considered a model of pure and elegant English.”
(I should observe that these remarks were couched in such intolerably
antiquated terms, that I have had infinite difficulty in rendering them
into modern phraseology.)
“I cry you mercy,” said I, “for mistaking your age; but it matters
little. Almost all the writers of your time have likewise passed into
forgetfulness, and De Worde’s publications are mere literary rarities
among book-collectors. The purity and stability of language, too, on
which you found your claims to perpetuity, have been the fallacious
dependence of authors of every age, even back to the times of the worthy
Robert of Gloucester, who wrote his history in rhymes of mongrel Saxon.+
Even now many talk of Spenser’s ‘well of pure English undefiled,’ as