CHAPTER IX

JACOBEAN PROSE

WHILE the condition of poetry and drama in the age which we are now considering was in a very high degree satisfactory and healthy, that of prose was singularly the reverse. The reign of James I. is one of the most discouraging in our history so far as the advance of prose style is concerned. Two English works of great importance, The Advancement of Learning, in 1605, and The History of the World, in 1614, have been described in an earlier chapter, for they belong to the maturity of those characteristically Elizabethan authors, Bacon and Raleigh. The English Bible, in its final form, is the glory of James I., but in like manner it has been discussed on previous pages, as representing, in its essential character, the revised and completed labours of many sixteenthcentury divines from Tyndale and Coverdale down to Parker and his bishops. The Bible belongs in its glory to no one man or set of men; it grew, in the eighty years of its evolution, like a cathedral. When these features, at all events, are removed from our field of vision, we are struck by the poverty of what remains. The reign of James I. was a period of verse; it was not a period of prose; and we do not discover one other masterpiece to chronicle.

In the ordinary Jacobean prose which we have now to examine we observe a very singular lack of the qualities which belong to growth and encourage to hope. In the very days of Shakespeare, prose, without having reached maturity, is already in decay. The current divinity and history and romance of the early seventeenth century are on the downward, not the upward grade. The mass of them is ponderous, involved, pedantic in a degree not found in the imperfect but vigorous prose-writers of the sixteenth century. If we compare, in the matter of style, Samuel Purchas with Hakluyt, or Morton with Hooker, the decline in lucidity and strength is very remarkable. The whole manner has become complicated and loquacious, with a certain softness which is absolutely decadent. But the parlous state into which English prose was falling is still more surely and more instructively seen by a comparison of it with contemporary French prose. In the mere construction and arrangement of sentences, for instance, it is instructive to compare a page of one of Donne's sermons-and we have nothing better to produce of its kind-with one of Donne's immediate contemporary, St. Francis de Sales. The comparison is between a spirited barbarian and a finished man of the world.

It may be said, however, that the literature of England had for centuries been at least fifty years behind that of France, and that English prose of the

early seventeenth century ought to be weighed against French prose of the middle of the sixteenth. But in that case the advantage is none the less on the side of France. It is not that England did not happen to produce a Rabelais or a Montaigne, because the styles of these men were so extremely personal that they may not have had a direct influence on the national manner of expression. But what was missing in English prose were the formative forces applied by great authors who were a little less individual than Montaigne and Rabelais. For instance, Calvin used the French language with such concise severity, such bitter power, that every Frenchman who read his trenchant sentences instinctively tried to emulate his vigour; while, on the other hand, the sweetness and lightness of Amyot not merely fascinated his readers by their grace, but stimulated them to be graceful themselves. In England we had no one who in any measure acted upon our style as Calvin did on the French; while in place of Amyot, with his pure simplicity, we have to point to Lyly, with his affected amenities and his perilous balance of sentences. Here, indeed, there was stimulus and an encouragement to imitation, but of the most unwholesome kind, so that in fact, while acknowledging the merits of Lyly, we must charge his Euphuism with not a little of the decadence of Jacobean prose, since what he led his unfortunate disciples to do was to strain for delicate effects upon an instrument which was simply out of tune.

It is perhaps not surprising that history did not flourish in England at the The historians beginning of the seventeenth century, for it merely underwent the depression which affected this branch of literature throughout Europe. But the difference between us and our neighbours was that they had enjoyed, at the close of the Middle Ages, valuable schools of history. In Commines, particularly, France had possessed a great chronicling statesman, a man who could at once be with those who were moving about the centre of affairs and observe the movements in the spirit of a philosopher. With all the romantic charm of Raleigh, he makes no pretension to be a psychologist; he is scarcely curious as to the reasons which guide men to their actions. The French historians of the sixteenth century had in no single case equalled Commines in genius, but they had followed him with careful enthusiasm. He was their model, and we in England had no great man to follow. Even the impassioned patriotism of the best Frenchmen, although not less felt on our side of the Channel, received far poorer expression, from the lack of skill and practice which our orators enjoyed.

The style of the lesser English historians was artless and casual, and Sir JOHN HAYWARD took credit to himself for giving it a classical turn. Sir Henry Craik, who has recently drawn attention to his writings, holds that Heyward was justified in his self-gratulation, and that his books "mark a distinct step forward in the historical style." He attempted to improve upon the old humdrum chroniclers by arranging his events rhetorically, in the manner of Livy, whom he followed in putting dramatic speeches into the mouths of his prominent personages. This had been done by Machiavelli

and others, and although it is contrary to modern scientific methods, it was not unfavourable to the literary form of history. A humbler writer was the industrious John Speed (see p. 80), who laboured under the disadvantage of a lack of education. He was a great collector and compiler, and before he essayed his own History of Great Britain, Speed not merely spent years in making himself acquainted with what had been gathered together by his predecessors, but he called in other and more learned men than himself to help him. Among these the most eminent was "that worthy repairer of eating Time's ruins," Sir Robert Cotton (see p. 80), who revised, corrected and polished the whole work before Speed ventured upon issuing it. Cotton was the leading antiquary of the age, and his "cabinets were unlocked, and his library continually set open to the free access" of Speed and of his army of assistants. These men had much in common with the restless city chronicler of a previous generation, John Stow. Like him, they thought mainly of collecting and arranging. The accuracy of the documents affected them little, and their philosophical import not at all, but they amassed material with the energy of the coral insect. While we mention their modest services, we should not forget those of Sir HENRY SPELMAN, who had something of the spirit of Stubbs and Freeman, since he would not adopt the rhetorical paraphrases at that time fashionable, but in compiling the civil affairs of the country down to Magna Charta, whenever he could do so printed them in the exact words of his authorities. But the excellent Spelman is hardly to be included among writers of English prose.

Sir John Hayward

Sir John Hayward (1564-1627) was born at Felixstowe about 1564, and was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge. His First Year of Henry IV. appeared in 1599, with a dedication to Essex in such glowing terms that Queen Elizabeth ordered Bacon to examine the book for treason. The reply was that the Queen need not "rack his person," but his style, as he had committed no treason, but a great deal of felony by his plagiarisms. James I. liked Hay ward, and patronised his various publications, knighting him in 1619; and he acted as a sort of historiographer to the unfortunate Prince Henry. Hayward worked with Camden at Chelsea College. Sir Henry Spelman (1564-1641), a lifelong friend and associate of each of the preceding historians, was born at

Congham, near Lynn Regis. He was an Anglo-Saxon scholar who mainly composed his archæological and historical works in Latin, but his Life of King Alfred the Great, which remained in MS. until Hearne published it in 1709, was composed in English. Spelman was a scholar of prodigious energy and perseverance, and filled vast storehouses with information which later investigators have referred to at their ease. The relation of each of the writers mentioned in this chapter to the illustrious Camden, who was their intellectual father, must not be overlooked.

The writers who have just been mentioned were contented to be hewers of wood and drawers of water for those who came after them, but RICHARD KNOLLES Seems to have been ambitious to achieve fame in his own person as a picturesque writer. If this was his aim, we have to admit that to a partial and fitfu! degree he succeeded in attaining it. His one book was still widely read long after its author passed away, and has met with admirers among the most punctilious of modern critics. Dr. Johnson had an extraordinary enthusiasm for Knolles, whom he considered, as a writer, the greatest among British historians. He said that "his style. though sometimes vitiated by false wit, is pure, nervous, elevated and clear." Hallam, Southey and Coleridge were also admirers of Knolles, and Byron attributed to the reading of The History of the

Turks in childhood "the oriental colouring which is observed in my poetry." It must be confessed that Knolles' huge folio, adorned with plates of all the Sultans, real and fabulous, has ceased to attract readers. The subject, so keenly interesting to Jacobean readers, has become hopelessly remote to us. To enjoy the rolling sentences and haughty rhetoric of The History of the Turks we must throw ourselves back to the leisurely times in which it was composed. Still Knolles is as likely as any Jacobean prose writer extant to enjoy one of those sudden revivals of literary reputation which occur from time to time. At present his fame, if not precisely extinct, is certainly dormant, and we cannot any longer see the flamboyant Amuraths and Mustaphas as they were seen by the simple, single-minded and romantic old dominie of Sandwich.

Richard Knolles (1548 ?-1610) was born at Cold Ashby, in Northamptonshire, and educated at Lincoln College, Oxford, of which he was made a fellow in 1570. He was poor, and his abilities attracted the notice of a prominent Kentish Jawyer, Sir Roger Marwood, who made Knolles master of the Grammar School of

Theology

Sandwich. In this little town he resided for the remainder of his life. It appears that Knolles had always been fascinated by Turkish history, but soon after 1590 he settled down to the composition of a great work on the subject. While he was preparing, in 1598, the French antiquary, J. J. Boissard, published a Latin Lives of the Sultans at Frankfort; this greatly encouraged Knolles, who, to tell the truth, did not scruple to poach systematically on Boissard's preserves. In 1603 Knolles published his General History of the Turks. He continued to enlarge it, and after

his death it was further revised by other hands. Knolles was buried at Sandwich on July 2, 1610.

The question of the toleration of religious dissent, and of Church discipline

generally, produced an enormous amount of printed matter to very little of which the word "literature" can any longer, even by indulgence. be applied. Many years ago, Mr. Swinburne, commenting on the romantic interest, interest, literary and linguistic, which attaches to all Elizabethan and Jacobean writings, suggested that sooner or later every book of that period might be reprinted with some profit,-except, of course, the divinity. This exception on the part of a scholar so enthusiastically devoted to the Jacobean genius exemplifies the worthlessness of the body of controversial theology. Our language produced under Elizabeth and under James I. two theologians of genius-Hooker and Donne respectively, one in each generation. If we remove these two, the residue is seen to be poor indeed. As to the spirit of it, factious, intolerant and rude, we have only to study Bacon's Pacification and Edification of the Church of England to learn how its strident notes jarred on the ear of that urbane philosopher. It was perceived quite early in the seventeenth century by perspicuous statesmen, that the English Church had to deal with two very dangerous and insidious enemies, foes whose peril was greater in that they were of her own household. These were Catholicism on the one hand and Puritanism on the other. Almost on James I.'s arrival in London the Millenary Petition showed him what a profound interest all classes of his subjects took in ceremonial legislation, and this was a theme about which the author of the Basilicon Doron of 1599 was as eager as the keenest of them.

The importance of all these enactments and solutions was immense; but the literature which prepared the way for and accompanied them was, as a