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endured; to set free the upheaving aspirations that must have vent. He thinks that it is only the crushing of the popular will that makes it dangerous-that it is only the outrages inflicted on the sentiment of nationality that makes it insurgent. He saw that France would have glory and democracy: he gave her the one, and wields the other. He saw that Italy would have unity and freedom: and he interfered to help her, and has done so even more effectually than he designed. He sees that Hungary will have administrative independence, and we expect that, when the time comes, he will aid her cause; believing that when Hungary is reconciled and Venetia sold or lost, Austria will be, not crushed, but tranquil. What further conclusions he may draw from the conception which he has grasped, we will not attempt to predict.

ART. II.-MEDIEVAL ENGLISH LITERATURE:
PIERS PLOUGHMAN.

The Vision and Creed of Piers Ploughman. Edited from a contemporary Manuscript, with an Historical Introduction, Notes, and a Glossary, by Thomas Wright, M.A., F.S. A., &c. In two volumes. Second and revised edition. Russell Smith.

THE revival of modern taste for olden literature (if the taste ever really ceased) is a curious subject, and worthy of more attention than it has yet received, or can now be given to it here. It is a general opinion in this country, that the appearance of Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, in 1765, first directed the public mind to our old writers. But it may be doubted whether this conclusion does not confound cause with effect, attributing a change in the national taste to the influence of a single volume, whereas the change had probably been growing for some years. What Percy unquestionably did, was to eschew the solemn tediousness and minute trifling of the mere archæologists, and to bring an elegant literature and an agreeable criticism to the illustration of antiquarian subjects, thus appealing to a larger number of readers. But he was too immediately followed by labourers of a similar class to justify the ascription of the entire results to his example. In 1774, Warton produced the first volume of his History of English Poetry. In the following year, Tyrwhitt

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began the publication of his learned and elaborate edition of Chaucer. Ritson, though he died in 1803, was young enough to have been influenced by the publication of the Reliques, had he not been "an original" in every sense of the word. He can scarcely be called elegant or agreeable either as a writer or a man; but his industry, acuteness, and causticity almost forced attention to a subject of which he treated. These, however, are only leading names. From before the publication of Percy up to the close of the last century, various collections, or historical sketches, of our old poetry appeared, indicative of the current of the public mind. Dodsley and Hawkins sent forth Old Plays; the Maitland Collection of Ancient Scottish Poems, and Pinkerton's Scottish Poems, reprinted from scarce editions, appeared; Alexander Campbell produced his Introduction to the History of Scottish Poetry from the Thirteenth Century, and George Ellis his Specimens of the Early English Poets. These, and others of a like kind, might seldom possess the elegance of Percy, though they were often more accurate. But while they aided in promoting an archæological taste, they also proved its direction. For though enthusiasts may publish books at a loss, or even a publisher may now and then commit such a mistake, a class of works for which there is no demand will soon cease to be brought out.

But the taste for olden literature did not terminate in the republication of old books. So strong an interest was excited towards our literary antiquities, that a Record Commission was appointed about the close of the last century. This body lasted nearly forty years, under various formal reconstitutions; doing little compared with its means and opportunities, and grossly neglecting its duties in many things. At last public opinion, gradually roused by the pertinacious attacks of the late Sir Harris Nicolas and others in exposing the insufficiency and jobbery of these Commissions, caused the dissolution of the Sixth Commission. This was soon after followed by the inauguration of the new system under the auspices of the late Lord Langdale, continued by the present Sir John Romilly. The change was a very great improvement. A stop was put to the careless or wanton destruction of the Records; steps were taken to collect them into one national depository, under one uniform control, instead of allowing them to be scattered through the country, often in careless or indifferent custody. Our public muniments have now been classified and reduced to order, and made readily accessible to the inquirer,—a most important point. The publication department is perhaps not altogether so great an improvement upon the old commissions as its friends believe, except in greater activity and regularity.

For if the old commissioners were occasionally injudicious in the choice of muniments for publication, and cumbrous in the form of their volumes, their successors have now and then been slight in matter and merit. However, the broad improvements over the old system are vast, though somewhat of the old leaven, or of the exclusiveness of the bibliomania, still lurks about them. For instance, so little of a business spirit is found, that it is difficult to ascertain what works they have published.

While these proceedings were going on as regards the public records, the literary world beyond the official archeologists and archivists was steadily diffusing the taste for olden literature. Bibliomania, which rose to such an absurd and costly height during the first dozen or twenty years of the present century, at least made attention to old books a fashion. One of its results-the prices of the Roxburghe sale, where a book, whose only distinction was its bibliographical rarity, sold for 2,260.-originated the various Clubs and Printing Societies, -as the Roxburghe, the Bannatyne, the Abbotsford, the Camden, and the like,-for republishing scarce books, and printing manuscripts. And though some of these societies may have been tainted with bibliomaniacal exclusiveness, or occasionally have printed trivial things, while they might undoubtedly have shown more liberality in allowing the sale of particular publications, yet they have preserved curious or valuable documents that otherwise might have perished, and rendered many things accessible, if somewhat difficult to reach.

During this time, too, individual authors were labouring, perhaps still more effectually, in calling attention to the wits, wisdom, or maybe dulness of our ancestors. Among those who may be termed the last generation, if they did not really belong to the last century, George Ellis, Leyden, Weber-all friends of Walter Scott-may be mentioned. But Scott himself stands preeminent over all, not excepting Percy, for stimulating the public attention to the past. And perhaps he did this more by his novels and poems than by his direct antiquarian labours, though these were not inconsiderable. Of able, and, what is more, of sensible, antiquarians belonging rather to the present than the past generation, and who value antiquities more for their use than their age, the late Sir Harris Nicolas, the late Sir Francis Palgrave, Singer, Wright, Halliwell, Hunter, are the most popularly known; but there are others of equal powers, if employed on more recondite subjects. Nor has "the trade" been indifferent to the subject: publishers have produced works in which their legitimate objects of profit must have been subordinate to their feeling for literary antiquities.

These facts would seem to prove that the taste for medieval literature has extended widely and penetrated deeply. But we doubt this apparently reasonable conclusion. In addition to professed antiquarians, there has always been a small public in this country-chiefly found among the leisurely and professional classes with a strong turn for inquiring into the arts and manners, and realising the life, of the past. That this class has largely increased of late, and that it pursues its studies on a better system, and may turn them to a better account than formerly, we believe to be true. Except in the cheap reprints of old authors, this would of itself account for the publication of a class of books, the extent of whose impression is always limited. But the number of persons who buy books without any intention of reading them is much greater now than formerly. The practice of making books a species of furniture has descended from magnates to millionaires. The mansions of great manufacturers in the northern counties, or of lucky speculators at the West End of London, are now furnished with splendid libraries, many books in which the owners could not read, and many whose subjects they could not enter into, however disposed they might be. The books are like the pictures, statues, and articles of vertu, which are found in their company, and stand in the owner's real estimation no higher than the furniture, if so high. Like Pope's pretender to taste,

"Not for himself he sees, or hears, or eats;

Artists must choose his pictures, music, meats.
He buys for Topham drawings and designs
For Pembroke statues, dirty gods, and coins;
Rare monkish manuscripts for Hearne alone,

And books for Mead, and butterflies for Sloane."

Undoubtedly these remarks do not apply to many purchasers, especially of the cheaper editions; and there are probably conscientious students of the Father of English poetry among those who cannot afford to buy any book which they do not intend to read. But we suspect that many purchase the Canterbury Tales without exactly knowing the impediments they will meet with, and that the real readers, or more properly students, of that great storehouse of medieval characters, manners, and opinions, are few.

Persons who agree with this opinion will ascribe the cause to Chaucer's language, for this is "every one's thought." Upwards of a century and a half ago Dryden reproduced several of Chaucer's tales, giving as a reason that his "language is so obsolete, that his sense is scarcely to be understood." Not many years after, Pope, in like manner, modernised two of the tales, and made the House of Fame a basis for his own Temple. The

reason he assigned was similar to Dryden's. Pope, indeed, in the Essay on Criticism, appears to consider the existence of modern authors threatened, through the alleged instability of modern languages:

"No longer now that golden age appears,

When patriarch wits survived a thousand years:
Now length of fame (our second life) is lost,
And bare threescore is all ev'n that can boast;
Our sons their fathers' failing language see,
And such as Chaucer is, shall Dryden be."

This we all see is hyperbole; yet some such notion is vaguely held to the present day. But the difficulty of the mere language is exaggerated. There are doubtless many obsolete words that must be "looked out," while many are used in a different sense to that which now obtains, and the true sense must be inferred. Such words, however, are seldom met with in clusters, so as to obscure the broad meaning of a passage, and would little impede a reader's first perusal were not other causes at work. The difficulty of the medieval writers is as much with their diction as their language, if by language we mean words, and by diction the order or mode of their combination. Many of the Anglo-Saxon inflexions were discontinued in the fourteenth century, and those which were retained seldom offer any difficulty as to meaning; but the ellipsis and inversion which inflected languages admit were still in use. Hence sentences, whose words are plain English, require attention to apprehend, on account of the collocation of words, or their omission, when modern practice requires their insertion. Then there are forms of speech or peculiarities of style which are rather strange than obscure. The style moreover, like the age itself, was primitive, almost childlike. In short, a "general reader," when first introduced to a medieval writer, is much in the condition of a pure cockney forced into conversation with a pure countryman. If the words were presented singly, he would understand most of them; but the arrangement, the subject-matter, the mode of thought and of speech, are so alien to the Londoner's previous experience, that he cannot "make the fellow out," except by what may be called a critical attention, which he has not been trained to give.

The obstacles connected with language must of course be conquered by the student himself. Almost as great an impediment is created by the spelling as by the language, and perhaps gratuitously. No doubt an archaic character is given to the poet's page by the old orthography; and reasons may be alleged. for retaining the spelling of the manuscripts. An obsolete word may as well be spelled one way as another; to change the

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