Wordsworth, Coleridge, Tennyson, Carlyle, etc. 41 been used and abused by various parties; and the world, as is its wont, may often have taken more note of the abuse of what was noble in this case than of its use. But as the character of Aristotle has come unsullied from the cobweb weavings of medieval schoolmen, and the consequent vituperations of men like Luther and Bacon, who paint him chiefly after the caricatures of his pseudo-disciples, so Plato, after seeing his name used for centuries to stamp every idlest imagination that has steamed up from the diseased brain of every transcendental devotee, can still be recognised by all who wish to find him, as the great bearer of all the loftiest truths to which the human mind in its hours of loftiest exercise aspires. Behind the pure Doric temple of his intellectual system, when the mists of centuries of vain talkers are blown aside, the blue sky of sober contemplation shines as clearly now, as ever it did to the Alexandrian fathers, who recognised in the great preacher of ideas the preparatory Moses of the heathen world; and, from pillar to pillar of that stable architecture, festoons woven from the flowers of paradise blossom with the same brightness, and scatter the same fragrance, that belonged to them in their native gardens of the Academy. We may account ourselves particularly happy in the present age, when the whole tone and temper of those writers who are exercising the deepest influence on the expanding intellect of the generation to come, are all either profound disciples or spiritual brothers of the great apostle of innate truths. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Tennyson, Carlyle, Kingsley, Maurice, Elizabeth Browning, are all fundamentally Platonic. The nation which produced minds of this class is not altogether "a nation of shopkeepers ;" and the age which delights in the productions of their genius believes in something better than the mere mass of material "production " which is the idol of a certain school of political economists. Plato, I venture to predict, will be the favourite author of the men who read Greek in the very delicate and difficult transition epoch of the national speculation on which we seem to be entering; and the restored familiarity with such a thinker may not remain without some very sensible influence on our received formulas of expression in the highest regions of speculation and faith. J. S. B. EARLY ENGLISH LIFE IN THE DRAMA. THE HE old historians narrate facts to us which might be safely predicated of any nation under the sun; the severe virtues of the Republic, the superb impurities of the Empire; how masses of men met together, and how stern discipline and the Roman square endured the assaults of barbarians; admirable lessons indeed, and deserving due consideration from all subsequent soldiers and statesmen. Still these are but the dry bones of history, from which the roundness of form and the light of life have departed, and something more is needed to refill the shrivelled husk of the past. Livy may write of dynasties, and Cæsar of battles; but a passing glimpse into an antique dwelling-house at Herculaneum or Pompeii brings us into more intimate contact, not it may be with royal or military formalities, but with quick-witted men who, along the white sands of their sea-girt Calabria, lived, and enjoyed life, sumptuously. And through this association the most trivial details are invested with significance and interest. The unstrung harp of the dancing-girl-lying there idle in the window, as it has lain since she cast it from her in the first terror of her flight becomes tragic as Ophelia or Lear! In English histories-whether literary or political—this connection has been too long neglected. Much of our ephemeral literature is of no value whatever, except as indicating the political faith of the society which produced it: and the problems of our political history cannot be interpreted aright apart from the effervescent table-talk which illustrates and explains them. Our social literature assumes an important England in the Fifteenth Century. 43 function when regarded as the habitual expression of national life; and our political history ceases to be a record of hopeless and unintelligible conflicts when read by the light of the minor moralities. Among ourselves such men as Hallam, Macaulay, and Froude have done good service by asserting this sound principle of historic criticism; but we must not forget that these writers have avowedly treated the connection, exclusively or mainly, from the political point of view. So that a history of "The Social and Political Literature of England "—a history, that is, where the characteristic forms of literary activity shall not be subordinated to the authoritative facts of public lifeis a history that remains to be written. I have selected for analysis the era which followed the termination of the protracted conflict between the Houses of York and Lancaster, as one in which this union, especially as preserved in our dramatic literature, may be illustrated not without interest. And I purposely select the reign of Henry VII. because as the breathing-place between the strife of the Roses and the strife of the Reformation-it supplies an age in which the forms of the old life, half military, half monastic, continued to exist; an age, therefore, which may be rightly regarded as typal in its essential conditions of several preceding centuries. The spirit of the living God already stirred upon the face of the waters; but that colossal system which the statecraft and priestcraft of seven centuries had consolidated, though stricken at the heart, remained to outward seeming in vigorous and obstinate vitality. The changes that have taken place in the external aspect of this country since the close of the fifteenth century are sufficiently remarkable. A more complete metamorphosis has not been effected in the character of the English people than in the character of the land which they inhabit. Great forests, such as now clothe the American savannahs, stretched across whole counties. The traveller might wander for days through the open straths by which they were traversed without encountering a single human habitation, except the wooden lodges of the keepers who protected the game. The Normans, in their passion for field-sports, laid waste entire districts which had been rescued from sterility by the industrious energy of the Saxon; and though the later sovereigns had forced their nobles to adopt a more sagacious policy, so that large tracts in fertile situations had been and were being "disforested;" yet, to the end of Henry's reign, the woods and marshes occupied a good half of the land of England. The fens were of even greater magnitude than the forests. Many of them extended continuously for more than thirty miles, and travelling was much impeded, as it was necessary to skirt their borders. The city of Elie stood in the midst of one upwards of sixty miles in length, and was, like the ancient capital of Mexico, approached by three great dykes thrown across the marshes. The rich meadow pastures which now surround the town were overflowed for months together; the cormorant and other sea birds haunted the eaves of the abbey and the precipitous towers of the cathedral; and from the walls the eye embraced a vast expanse of water, dotted with green wooded islands, and traversed by the narrow lines of the causeways which led to the mainland. A desolate waste indeed!—and the picture of that inland sea which the old chronicle enables us to reconstruct, communicates a peculiar charm to the well-known fragment which describes King Canute and his knights lying on their oars, and listening to the even-song of the monks.1 Around the chief towns, and throughout several counties in the immediate neighbourhood of the metropolis, the country was tolerably cultivated. Even under the most enterprising landowners, however, the proportion of arable to pasture land was comparatively insignificant. It is impossible to ascertain the total amount of grain then produced in England; but from the extraordinary variations in the price of wheat which 1 "Merie sungen the muneches binnen Elie, And here we thes muneches saeng." Harrison mentions the three causeways that led to Elie; the cormorant, he adds, was called the "night raven.' "There is no cause wherefore I should describe the cormorant among hawks, of which some be black, and many pied, chiefly about the Isle of Elie, where they are taken for the night raven." The Red Deer and the Beaver. 45 generally took place during the year, and from the frequency with which we find the poorer classes reduced to bread made of "peasen, vetches, and fern-roots," we may infer that the quantity raised was hardly adequate to meet the necessities of a not very dense population. For more than three hundred years these fluctuations are observable; but as centuries elapse, and cultivation extends, they become less continuous and extreme. In the year 1246 the price of the bushel of wheat was sixteen shillings; three years before it had been as low as two. During 1254 it sold in the Northampton market at one pound; in the Dunstaple at a fourth of that price. At Leicester, in the early part of March 1317, it was fifty-four shillings; four days later it fell to fourteen; during the harvest it reached eighty; a fortnight afterwards, when the crop had been collected, it was under six. From these and similar statistics, we are entitled to conclude that the supply of grain was often insufficient for the demand; that at the commencement of autumn the nation was generally in great want, sometimes on the verge of starvation; and that, consequently, the extent of land under permanent cultivation must have been extremely limited.1 Dense masses of forest, immense breadths of moor and morass, narrow stripes of arable and considerable tracts of pasture ground-such was the aspect presented by England in the fifteenth century. The forests were stocked with the roe and the fallow, and the antlered red-deer, who has now retreated into the naked fastnesses of Athol or Braemar, then "haunted the fens of Doncaster, and the great meres thereabouts." Along the sluggish banks of the inland rivers colonies of industrious beavers had erected their lodges, "wherein," says an old naturalist, "their bodies lie drie above the river, although they so provide most commonly that their tails may hang within the same;" and no traveller could fail to notice "the fair warrens of conies," which met him wherever he went. 1 State of the Poor, by Sir F. M. Eden, Bart., 1797. Appendix Table of Prices. Local History of Chester in the Vale Royal. It is necessary to remember, however, that an acre never produced more than twelve bushels of wheat or "one good load of hay." Of course, this difference in the rate of production must be taken into account when estimating the total extent of cultivation. |