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“How easy dost thou take all England up: From forth this morsel of dead royalty——”

No book is more quoted and less read than Holinshed’s Chronicles. Since the original editions of 1577 and 1587 (the latter an expansion of the former), the work has been but once republished. Early in this century a syndicate of the great London booksellers issued an expensive reprint, far more inaccessible to the general reader than are the folios of the time of Elizabeth. Even morsels of the work have never been attempted until the issue by the “New Shakspere Society,” a dozen years ago, of Dr. Furnivall’s careful condensed edition of Harrison’s introduction to Holinshed. Now Harrison is the genius of the whole performance. Holinshed is a hodge-podge of many men’s endeavours. Remarkable as may be the portions contributed by other men, that of Harrison can be said to be unique. William Harrison is the only man who has ever given a detailed description of England and the English. He had the assistance doubtless of many special informants, directly and indirectly, some of which assistance overloads his ancient utterances with superfluous matter. His own views however are a running rill of delight. When it was only an amputation of interjected details, my task was easy; and Dr. Furnivall (to whom is due all credit of initiative in the publication of the work, and who has kindly accorded valuable suggestions during the rather anxious and difficult process) had already cut off the greater portion of dead issue and dead tissue. The work of disjointing and then rejointing Harrison’s own discourse is not so agreeable. Even Harrison’s interlarding of his own book-learning in his own inimitable fashion is a rare frolic for the mirthful mind. Badly as I may have finally wriggled through the task, seamy as may be the patchwork, the solace remains that no scrap of Harrison’s text lacks its own individual interest. Not without reason may an extract from Holinshed be entitled a

“Morsel of dead royalty.”

Holinshed is one of the monarchs and monuments of literature. It filled the channels of thought, and moulded the character of history. Harrison’s contribution to Holinshed is not only the most important but the most perfect portion of the work, and it evidently derives its perfect character from being a labour of love, and not written to order. John Harrison the printer doubtless got his country relative the parson to help out the heavy enterprise which tasked such an alliance of master-printers even to partially perfect. Not that William Harrison was a countryman by birth. He was a Cockney of the Cockneys, born right beneath Bow Bells themselves; but when you come to gather the threads of his connections, you seem indeed to

“Take all England up,”

jumping at once to the heart of Westmoreland fells, and traversing every shire in England and Wales for his cousinry. It was a stirring age, and great human upheavals made sudden shiftings and scatterings of kindred. It was this very factor which made such works as Holinshed possible. The complete Holinshed was issued one year before the Armada year, two years before Shakspere’s first play was printed. Harrison was old enough to have stood on Tower Hill and seen with infant eyes the author of Utopia (the “most perfect of Englishmen,” as Harrison himself allows) lay down his life for truth. Harrison’s own life just spans that stormy period which settled the destiny of the English race, and left the race the masters of the earth. The part played in this mighty struggle by the printer boys of Aldersgate is something beyond all exaggeration. They made and unmade men and measures, and uprooted empires as well as recorded their histories. Above all else, these printers kept their own secrets; for life and death were in every utterance. They furnished of their own ranks the pioneers of daring brain and varied knowledge who led the English race far to east and far to west. We can well imagine that these Aldersgate printers took delight in clubbing together to produce such a work as Holinshed, giving the story of the England they loved so well. Holinshed was eminently a printer’s book, produced out of the fulness of their hearts. Harrison himself belonged to a family of printers. Yet it is a remarkable fact that this present volume is the first attempt ever made to use any portion of Holinshed as a popular text-book, and to bring its text into familiar relations with modern eyes as regards orthography and typography. As to the diction, it would be impertinence to modify the work of such masters of our mother-tongue as William Harrison. The writers of his day make rules for us, not we for them. Their English is the only English which future ages will know, and their successors will be measured by their standard. In compiling this work, the end sought by me has been as much variety and as much Elizabethan England as possible, throwing aside matter however instructive which was not especially allied to the days of Elizabeth, making of most of Harrison’s second, some of his third, and a bit of his first book one concise story. Harrison’s Description of England is in three books, the second and third of which were reprinted by Dr. Furnivall, along with extracts from the first. An account of these books and their relation to Holinshed will be found in the Doctor’s “Forewords.” Using Dr. Furnivall’s text, his excellent and generally exhaustive notes have been inserted. As for my own follies, sprinkled here and there, they are as occasional relief for frivolous readers from the classical height of Harrison and the scholarly depth of the Doctor. There was no particular sacrilege in rearranging Harrison’s fragments in a new and compact fashion; for he varied his two editions in evident indifference. It has had to be cut to measure, and the difficulty has been to make a new garment out of odd cuttings. Suffice to say, well or ill jointed, the story here told plucks the heart out of the mystery of the cradle of the English race at the exact period of Shakspere’s youthful manhood. But this story no more than Shakspere’s own work is the exclusive property of the residents of one particular spot. England is not merely a matter of political arrangement. Race after race have swept over the island home and left lasting impression upon the soil. England is not a matter of bounds and barriers; it is a human fabric like Rome and Greece, living in distant climes, an inheritance of all who speak the English tongue and inherit the boundless treasures of English thought, far surpassing the known accomplishment of any other people. By far the greater portion of these treasures of the mind were worked out in the England of Harrison. It was the outcome of a young giant’s strength. The full realisation of the earth’s existence, the full grasp of man’s true relation to the footstool beneath him, produced this startling activity of mind, and this sudden leap to perfection. Such another epoch will never occur until we poor crawling mites on this rolling ball discover the socket it rolls in and once again feel ourselves masters of all knowledge and devoid of all doubts.

L. W.