Читать книгу History of English Literature from "Beowulf" to Swinburne - Andrew Lang, Robert Kirk - Страница 31

The books of the age which most interest us are the histories written in Latin, by various authors of known names, who often were not cloistered monks, but clergymen who lived much at court, and knew the men who were making history, kings and great nobles.

Of all of these authors the most important in the interests of literature, not of history, is Geoffrey of Monmouth, a Welshman, whose "History of the Kings of Britain" is really no veracious chronicle, but a romance pretending to be a history of Britain, especially of King Arthur. The name of Arthur spells romance, and Geoffrey's book is almost the first written source of all the poems and tales of Arthur which fill the literature of England and the Continent. But it is more convenient to discuss Geoffrey when we reach the age of the Arthurian romance.

It is not necessary to speak here of all the writers of Latin histories in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the North were Simeon of Durham, and Richard, Prior of Hexham, who wrote "The Deeds of King Stephen," and Ailred, whose account of the defeat of David I of Scotland at the Battle of the Standard (1138) is very well told and full of spirit. In reading Ailred we find ourselves, as it were, among modern men: he speaks as a good English patriot, yet as a friend and admirer, in private life, of the invading Scottish king and prince. Florence of Worcester attempted a history of the world, compiled out of other books, called "Chronicon ex chronicis". The habit of "beginning at the beginning," namely with the creation, took hold of some of these historians, whose books are of little use till they reach their own times (if they live to do so), and speak of men and events known to themselves.

Eadmer, on the other hand, wrote of what he himself knew, a "History of Recent Times in England," down to 1122, and especially about the Archbishop of Canterbury, Anselm, and his dealings with William Rufus and Henry I (Henry Fairclerk, a patron of learning).

William of Malmesbury (1095?-1143?) like Geoffrey of Monmouth, was patronized by Robert, Earl of Gloucester, to whom they dedicated books. William understood, and said that there were two Arthurs, one a warrior of about 500-516 (?) the other a hero of fairy-land; but, as time went on, people began to confuse them, and to believe as historical the stories of Arthur which Geoffrey had written as a romance. William wrote the "History of the Kings of England," with several lives of saints and books on theology. The "History of the Kings" begins with the coming of the Anglo-Saxons, and ends in 1127, the reign of Henry; towards the close of its sequel, the "Historia Novella," his patron, Robert of Gloucester, an enemy of Stephen, is his hero. The book contains a history of the First Crusade.

William sometimes treats history in almost a modern way, he quotes his sources of information, chiefly Bede and the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle". He refuses to vouch for the exact truth of events before his own time: he throws the responsibility on earlier authors, his authorities. Later, he speaks of what he has seen, or learned from trustworthy witnesses. When he reaches the time of the British resistance to the Anglo-Saxons, he mentions "warlike Arthur, of whom the Bretons fondly tell so many fables, even to the present day, a man worthy to be celebrated, not by idle tales, but by authentic history".

Happily for his readers, William is not above telling anecdotes like the romance of the statue at Rome, with an inscription on the head, "Strike here". How this was misunderstood, how at last a wise man marked the place where the shadow of the fore-finger of the statue fell at noon, and what wonderful adventures followed when men dug there, and found a golden palace lighted up by a blazing carbuncle stone, is narrated in a captivating way, but is not scientific history. (Bk. II, Ch. X.) William mingles real letters and other documents with miracles and ghost stories: indeed, he is determined to amuse as well as to instruct, and he succeeds. In describing the enthusiasm stirred by the preaching of the First Crusade, he falls into the very manner of Macaulay. "The Welshman left his hunting, the Scot his fellowship with lice, the Dane his drinking-party, the Norwegian his raw fish."

Certainly William was not a wholly scientific historian. He is never uninteresting. If he finds any set of events tedious, he says so plainly, and passes onwards. He is very fair, is learned in the manner of his age, and his love of digressions and good stories reminds us of the Greek Herodotus, "the Father of History," and the most entertaining of historians.

Among the names of other Latin chroniclers is that of Henry of Huntingdon (writing in 1125-1154). The author of the "Deeds of King Stephen" is unknown: the work of William of Newburgh in the reigns of Henry II and Richard Cœur de Lion, is well remembered for his attack on the "lies" of Geoffrey of Monmouth. The assault on Geoffrey's truthfulness was not so superfluous as it seems, because his romance won the belief of many generations.

Richard Fitz Neale, who was Treasurer of England and for nine years Bishop of London (1189-1198), wrote the Dialogue "De Scaccario," "concerning the Exchequer," which is still studied as the best authority on mediaeval national finance in England, and on our early constitutional history.

Jocelin de Brakelond left a "Chronicle" (1173-1202) much concerned with life in his own monastery at St. Edmundsbury, and with the wise rule of Abbot Sampson. This book forms the text on which Carlyle preaches in his "Past and Present": it proves sufficiently that the monks were not the lazy drones of popular tradition and abounds in vivid pictures of men and of society.

Gerald of Wales (Girald de Barri, called Cambrensis, "the Welshman," 1147-1217?) was of royal Welsh and noble Norman birth, his family, the de Barris, were among the foremost Norman knights who took part in the invasion (it can hardly be called the conquest) of Ireland, under Strongbow; and he himself was a great fighter in the disputes of churchmen. There was not much schooling to be had in wild Wales, then very rebellious, but he probably learned Latin from the chaplains of his uncle, a Bishop, before he went to the University of Paris, to study law and science. Gerald was more like a modern literary man than a mediaeval chronicler. He never ceased from travelling, now following the Court, now rushing to Paris, now to Rome. When Archdeacon of St. David's, which the Welsh wanted to make a Canterbury of their own, with their own Archbishop, he stood up against the Bishop of St. Asaph; when the Bishop threatened to excommunicate him, he had bell, book, and candle ready to excommunicate the Bishop, whom he frightened away.

But Henry II would not permit Gerald to be Bishop of St. David's, thinking him certain to stand up for Wales against England. In 1184, Gerald went to Ireland with Henry's son, Prince John, who cannot be better described, as an insolent ribald young man, than he is in Scott's "Ivanhoe".

Gerald wrote a "Topography of Ireland," which is really "A Little Tour in Ireland". His chapters on the "Marvels of Ireland" lead us to suppose that the natives hoaxed him with strange stories, for example the tale of a church bell that wandered about the country of its own will: the innumerable fleas at St. Nannan's in Connaught is more credible, but the tale of the wolves who asked to receive the Holy Communion was not believed in England. One miracle was only a beautifully illuminated manuscript of the kind decorated by Irish artists 400 years earlier. The art had been lost, and the artist was supposed to have copied the designs of an angel.

Gerald found the Irish very ignorant, lazy, dirty, and ferocious. Every man used a battle-axe in place of a walking stick, and man-slayings were frequent. The Irish clergy were devout and chaste, but drank too much. On the wild beasts and birds of Ireland Gerald wrote like a naturalist and a sportsman, though he supposed that salmon, before leaping a fall, put their tails in their mouths, and letting go, fly upward by the spring thus obtained.

His "History of the Invasion of Ireland" is valuable, but he introduced, in the manner of some Greek and many Roman historians, long speeches which were never made. He also, after an energetic wandering life, always fighting to be made Bishop of St. David's, wrote his own autobiography, an amusing conceited book, full of adventures of travel. He wrote, too, on the natural history and the inhabitants of Wales, a book very valuable to this day. He died after reaching the age of 70.