LECTURE XI.

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE FROM CAXTON

TO THE ACCESSION OF ELIZABETH.

THE importance of the invention of printing, startling and mysterious as it seemed, was very imperfectly appreciated by contemporary Europe. It was at first regarded only as an economical improvement, and in England it was slow in producing effects which were much more speedily.realized on the Continent. In England, for a whole generation, its influence was scarcely perceptible in the increase of literary productivity, and it gave no sudden impulse to the study of the ancient tongues, though the printing-offices of Germany and Italy, and, less abundantly, of France, were teeming with editions of the Greek and Latin classics, as well as of the works of Gothic and Romance writers, new and old.

The press of Caxton, the first English printer, was in activity from 1474 to 1490. In these sixteen years, it gave to the world sixty-three* editions, among which there is not the text of a

*The whole number of productions issued by Caxton is stated, in the Appendix to the late reprint of The Game of the Chesse, by Mr. Vincent Figgins, at sixtyseven, three of which were printed before Caxton's return to England. Several of these were but pamphlets, or perhaps single sheets. They may be classed as follows: In French, two; in Latin, seven; two or three with Latin titles, but language of text not indicated in the list; the remainder in English. The only original works of native English authors are: The Chronicles of Euglond, The Descripcioun of Britayne, The Polycronycon, Gower's Confessio Amantis, Chaucer's Tayles of Cantyrburye, Chaucer's and Lydgate's Minor Poems, Chaucer's Book of Fame, Troylus and Creseide, Lydgate's Court of Sapience, Lydgate's Lyf of our Ladye, and possibly one or two others. These, with the exception of the poems of Lydgate, and of Caxton's own additions to the works he published, all belong to the preceding century.

single work of classic antiquity, though there are a few translations of Greek and Latin authors, chiefly taken, however, at second hand from the French. Caxton printed a few ecclesiastical manuals, and a volume of parliamentary statutes, in Latin, and one or two works in French; but it does not satisfactorily appear that his press issued a single original work by a contemporary English author, if we except his own continuations of older works published by him. He rendered good service to his own generation, indeed, by printing editions of Chaucer, Gower and Lydgate, and thus disseminating the works of those authors through England; but it is very doubtful whether, in the end, the publication of those editions was not an injury, rather than a benefit, to the cause of later English literature.

It was Caxton's general practice, as appears from his own repeated avowals, to reduce the orthography and grammar, and sometimes even the vocabulary, of the authors he printed, to the usage of his own time, or rather to an arbitrary and not very uniform standard set up by himself. He had spent a large part of his life in Flanders and in France, where he established presses, and where he printed both in French and in Latin before undertaking any English work. His own style is full of Gallicisms in vocabulary and phrase, and there is very little doubt that his changes of his copy were much oftener corruptions than improvements. In the preface to his second edition of the Canterbury Tales, he professes to have conformed to an approved manuscript; but this declaration evidently only negatives the addition or omission of verses, or, as he expresses it:

The number of French words in Caxton's translations is large. In the second edition of the Game of the Chesse- believed to be the first book he printed in England - they are nearly three times as numerous, proportionately, as in the Morte d' Arthur printed by him, but translated by Malorye; and yet Malorye whose general diction is perhaps more purely Anglo-Saxon than that of any English writer, except the Wycliffite translators, for at least a century before his age-adopted from his original many words which appear for the first time in English in his pages.

'setting in somme thynges that he [Chaucer] never sayd ne made, and leving out many thynges that he made, whyche ben requysite to be sette in it;' and we have no reason to doubt that in what he held to be minor matters, he practised in this case something of the same license as with other authors.*

The printing of a manuscript generally involves the destruction of the original; and there is little probability that any of those employed by Caxton escaped the usual fate of authors' copies. Besides this, the printing of a work greatly diminishes the current value of existing manuscripts of the same text, just as a new edition of a modern book often makes earlier impressions worthless. In Caxton's age, English scholars possessed no such critical acquaintance with their mother tongue, as to have the slightest notion of the great importance of scrupulously preserving the original texts of earlier writers; and hence Caxton's editions undoubtedly caused, not only the sacrifice of the manuscripts on which they were founded, but the neglect and destruction of many others, which might otherwise have

The whole passage is as follows: Whiche book I have dylygently oversen, and duly examyned to the ende that it be made accordyng unto his owen makyng; for I fynde many of the sayd bookes, whiche wryters have abrydgyd it, and many thynges left out, and in some places have sette certayn versys that he never made ne sette in hys booke; of whyche bookes so incorrecte was one broughte to me vi. yere passyd, whiche I supposed had ben veray true and correcte, and accordyng to the same I dyde do enprynte a certayn nomber of them, whyche anon were solde to many and dyverse gentyl men, of whom one gentylman cam to me, and sayd that this book was not according in many places unto the book that Gefferey Chaucer had made. To whom I answered, that I had made it accordyng to my copye, and by me was nothing added ne mynushyd. Thenne he sayd, he knewe a book whyche hys fader had and moche lovyd, that was very trewe, and accordyng unto hys owen first book by hym made; and sayd more, yf I wold enprynte it agayn, he wold gete me the same book for a copye. How be it he wyst well that hys fader wold not gladly departe fro it. To whom I said, in caas that he coude gete me suche a book, trewe and correcte, yet I wold ones endevoyre me to enprynte it agayn, for to satisfy the auctour, where as tofore by ygnoraunce I erryd in hurtyng and dyffamyng his book in dyverce places, in setting in somme thynges that he never sayd ne made, and leving out many thynges that he made whyche ben requysite to be sette in it. And thus we fyll at accord, and he full gentylly gate of hys fader the said book, and delyvered it to me, by whiche I have corrected my book, as heere after alle alonge by the ayde of almighty God shal folowe, whom I humbly beseche &c.'

been saved to a period when their worth would have been better appreciated. This serves to explain how it is that we have older, better, and more numerous manuscripts of the Wycliffite versions of the Bible than of Chaucer; and, in a purely literary point of view, it is a cause of congratulation, rather than of regret, that Caxton never undertook the publishing of those translations. Had he done this, we should, in all probability, now possess only a corrupt printed text, and a few manuscripts of doubtful value; whereas the want of an early printed edition has insured the careful preservation of the codices, and the scholarship of this century has given us two complete and admirably edited ancient texts, with various readings from a great number of old and authentic copies.

The works of Pecock, as I have observed, show that in his hands the English theological prose dialect, though still substantially the same in grammatical form, had made a considerable advance upon Wycliffe in vocabulary, and more especially in the logical structure of period; and the poems of King James I. and of Lydgate exhibit, though in a less degree, increased affluence and polish of diction as compared with Chaucer. But in the secular prose of the fifteenth century we find few evidences of real progress; and in the productions of Caxton's press, which, as we have seen, generally bear his own ear-mark, little improvement is visible. For the every-day purposes of material life, and for the treatment of such poetic themes and the creation of such poetical forms as satisfied the taste of the English people, the language of England was very nearly sufficient, as Chaucer and his contemporaries had left it, and there was naturally little occasion for efforts at improvement in speech until new conditions of society and of moral and intellectual culture should create a necessity for it.

These new conditions, which were common to Great Britain and to the Continent, produced a visible effect upon the intellectual life of the latter long before they showed themselves as influential agencies in the literature of England. The insular

position of that country prevented the rapid spread of the new opinions and the new discoveries which originated in German and Romance Europe; and they were the slower in disseminating themselves among the English people, because France, the country with which England had the freest and most frequent communication, was behind Italy and Germany in availing itself of them.

The commercial and political relations between England on the one hand, and Germany and the Italian states on the other, were of no such closeness or importance as to create a reciprocal influence between them. The vernacular tongues of these latter were stranger to the Englishman than the speech of France, which was still, to a considerable extent, the language of English jurisprudence; and classical literature had not yet become so well known to English laymen as to make the Latin works of German and Italian literati readily intelligible to them. At the same time, a growing national hostility to France had gradually diminished the influence of French literature; and thus, from the end of the fourteenth century till near the close of the fifteenth, the English mind was left to its own unaided action, its own inherent resources, while all the other European states were territorially and politically so connected that they were constantly acting and reacting upon each other as enlivening and stimulating forces.

The civil wars of England had also an unfavourable effect upon English literature; for-though the moral excitement of periods of strife and revolution often begets a mental activity which, after the tumult of war is over, manifests itself in splendid intellectual achievement it is as true of letters as of laws, that, for the time being, the clash of arms hushes their voice to silence.

Perhaps there is no better method of enabling the reader to form an idea of the condition in which Caxton found the English of his time, and the state to which he contributed to bring it, than by introducing extracts from the Morte d'Arthur