The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon
if the language ever sprang from a well or fountain-head, and was not
rather a mere confluence of various tongues perpetually subject to
changes and intermixtures. It is this which has made English literature
so extremely mutable, and the reputation built upon it so fleeting.
Unless thought can be committed to something more permanent and
unchangeable than such a medium, even thought must share the fate of
everything else, and fall into decay. This should serve as a check
upon the vanity and exultation of the most popular writer. He finds
the language in which he has embarked his fame gradually altering and
subject to the dilapidations of time and the caprice of fashion. He
looks back and beholds the early authors of his country, once the
favorites of their day, supplanted by modern writers. A few short ages
have covered them with obscurity, and their merits can only be relished
by the quaint taste of the bookworm. And such, he anticipates, will be
the fate of his own work, which, however it may be admired in its day
and held up as a model of purity, will in the course of years grow
antiquated and obsolete, until it shall become almost as unintelligible
in its native land as an Egyptian obelisk or one of those Runic
inscriptions said to exist in the deserts of Tartary.” “I declare,” added
I, with some emotion, “when I contemplate a modern library, filled
with new works in all the bravery of rich gilding and binding, I feel
disposed to sit down and weep, like the good Xerxes, when he surveyed
his army, pranked out in all the splendor of military array, and
reflected that in one hundred years not one of them would be in
existence.”
* “In Latin and French hath many soueraine wittes had great
delyte to endite, and have many noble thinges fulfilde, but
certes there ben some that speaken their poisye in French,
of which speche the Frenchmen have as good a fantasye as w
ave in hearying of Frenchmen’s Englishe.”--CHAUCER’S
Testament of Love.
+ Holinshed in his Chronicle, observes, “Afterwards, also,
by diligent vell f Geffry Chaucer and John Gowre, in the
time of Richard the Second, and after them of John Scogan
and John Lydgate, monke of Berrie, our said toong was
brought to an excellent passe, notwithstanding that it never
came unto the type of perfection until the time of Queen
Elizabeth, wherein John Jewell, Bishop of Sarum, John Fox,
and sundrie learned and excellent writers, have fully
accomplished the ornature of the same to their great praise
and mortal commendation.”
“Ah,” said the little quarto, with a heavy sigh, “I see how it is: these
in modern scribblers have superseded all the good old authors. I suppose
nothing is read nowadays but Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, Sackville’s
stately plays and Mirror for Magistrates, or the fine-spun euphuisms of
the ‘unparalleled John Lyly.’”
“There you are again mistaken,” said I; “the writers whom you suppose in
vogue, because they happened to be so when you were last in circulation,
have long since had their day. Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia, the
immortality of which was so fondly predicted by his admirers,* and
which, in truth, was full of noble thoughts, delicate images, and
graceful turns of language, is now scarcely ever mentioned. Sackville
has strutted into obscurity; and even Lyly, though his writings were
once the delight of a court, and apparently perpetuated by a proverb, is
now scarcely known even by name. A whole crowd of authors who wrote and
wrangled at the time, have likewise gone down with all their writings
and their controversies. Wave after wave of succeeding literature has
rolled over them, until they are buried so deep, that it is only now and
then that some industrious diver after fragments of antiquity brings up
a specimen for the gratification of the curious.
* “Live ever sweete booke; the simple image of his gentle
witt, and the golden pillar of his noble courage; and ever
notify unto the world that thy writer was the secretary of
eloquence, the breath of the muses, the honey bee of the
daintyest flowers of witt and arte, the pith of morale and
intellectual virtues, the arme of Bellona in the field, the
tongue of Suada in the chamber, the spirits of Practise in
esse, and the paragon of excellence in print.”--Harvey
Pierce’s Supererogation.
“For my part,” I continued, “I consider this mutability of language a
wise precaution of Providence for the benefit of the world at large, and
of authors in particular. To reason from analogy, we daily behold the
varied and beautiful tribes of vegetables springing up, flourishing,
adorning the fields for a short time, and then fading into dust, to
make way for their successors. Were not this the case, the fecundity of
nature would be a grievance instead of a blessing. The earth would groan
with rank and excessive vegetation, and its surface become a tangled
wilderness. In like manner, the works of genius and learning decline and
make way for subsequent productions. Language gradually varies, and with
it fade away the writings of authors who have flourished their allotted
time; otherwise the creative powers of genius would overstock the world,
and the mind would be completely bewildered in the endless mazes of
literature. Formerly there were some restraints on this excessive
multiplication. Works had to be transcribed by hand, which was a slow
and laborious operation; they were written either on parchment, which
was expensive, so that one work was often erased to make way for
another; or on papyrus, which was fragile and extremely perishable.
Authorship was a limited and unprofitable craft, pursued chiefly by
monks in the leisure and solitude of their cloisters. The accumulation
of manuscripts was slow and costly, and confined almost entirely to
monasteries. To these circumstances it may, in some measure, be owing
that we have not been inundated by the intellect of antiquity--that the
fountains of thought have not been broken up, and modern genius drowned
in the deluge. But the inventions of paper and the press have put an end
to all these restraints. They have made every one a writer, and enabled
every mind to pour itself into print, and diffuse itself over the
whole intellectual world. The consequences are alarming. The stream of
literature has swollen into a torrent--augmented into a river-expanded
into a sea. A few centuries since five or six hundred manuscripts
constituted a great library; but what would you say to libraries, such
as actually exist, containing three or four hundred thousand volumes;
legions of authors at the same time busy; and the press going on with
fearfully increasing activity, to double and quadruple the number?
Unless some unforeseen mortality should break out among the progeny of
the Muse, now that she has become so prolific, I tremble for posterity.
I fear the mere fluctuation of language will not be sufficient.
Criticism may do much; it increases with the increase of literature,
and resembles one of those salutary checks on population spoken of by
economists. All possible encouragement, therefore, should be given to
the growth of critics, good or bad. But I fear all will be in vain; let
criticism do what it may, writers will write, printers will print, and
the world will inevitably be overstocked with good books. It will soon
be the employment of a lifetime merely to learn their names. Many a man
of passable information at the present day reads scarcely anything but
reviews, and before long a man of erudition will be little better than a
mere walking catalogue.”
“My very good sir,” said the little quarto, yawning most drearily in my
face, “excuse my interrupting you, but I perceive you are rather given
to prose. I would ask the fate of an author who was making some noise
just as I left the world. His reputation, however, was considered quite
temporary. The learned shook their heads at him, for he was a poor,
half-educated varlet, that knew little of Latin, and nothing of Greek,
and had been obliged to run the country for deer-stealing. I think his
name was Shakespeare. I presume he soon sunk into oblivion.”
“On the contrary,” said I, “it is owing to that very man that the
literature of his period has experienced a duration beyond the ordinary
term of English literature. There rise authors now and then who seem
proof against the mutability of language because they have rooted
themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature. They are like
gigantic trees that we sometimes see on the banks of a stream, which
by their vast and deep roots, penetrating through the mere surface and
laying hold on the very foundations of the earth, preserve the soil
around them from being swept away by the ever-flowing current, and hold
up many a neighboring plant, and perhaps worthless weed, to perpetuity.
Such is the case with Shakespeare, whom we behold defying the
encroachments of time, retaining in modern use the language and
literature of his day, and giving duration to many an indifferent
author, merely from having flourished in his vicinity. But even he, I
grieve to say, is gradually assuming the tint of age, and his whole form
is overrun by a profusion of commentators, who, like clambering vines
and creepers, almost bury the noble plant that upholds them.”
Here the little quarto began to heave his sides and chuckle, until at
length he broke out into a plethoric fit of laughter that had wellnigh
choked him by reason of his excessive corpulency. “Mighty well!” cried
he, as soon as he could recover breath, “mighty well! and so you would
persuade me that the literature of an age is to be perpetuated by a
vagabond deer-stealer! by a man without learning! by a poet! forsooth--a
poet!” And here he wheezed forth another fit of laughter.
I confess that I felt somewhat nettled at this rudeness, which, however,
I pardoned on account of his having flourished in a less polished age. I
determined, nevertheless, not to give up my point.
“Yes,” resumed I positively, “a poet; for of all writers he has the best
chance for immortality. Others may write from the head, but he writes
from the heart, and the heart will always understand him. He is the
faithful portrayer of Nature, whose features are always the same and
always interesting. Prose writers are voluminous and unwieldy; their
pages crowded with commonplaces, and their thoughts expanded into
tediousness. But with the true poet every thing is terse, touching, or
brilliant. He gives the choicest thoughts in the choicest language. He
illustrates them by everything that he sees most striking in nature and
art. He enriches them by pictures of human life, such as it is passing
before him. His writings, therefore, contain the spirit, the aroma, if I
may use the phrase, of the age in which he lives. They are caskets which
inclose within a small compass the wealth of the language--its family
jewels, which are thus transmitted in a portable form to posterity. The
setting may occasionally be antiquated, and require now and then to be
renewed, as in the case of Chaucer; but the brilliancy and intrinsic
value of the gems continue unaltered. Cast a look back over the long
reach of literary history. What vast valleys of dulness, filled with
monkish legends and academical controversies! What bogs of theological
speculations! What dreary wastes of metaphysics! Here and there only
do we behold the heaven-illumined bards, elevated like beacons on
their widely-separated heights, to transmit the pure light of poetical
intelligence from age to age.” *
I was just about to launch forth into eulogiums upon the poets of the
day when the sudden opening of the door caused me to turn my head. It