doctrine: communism—Qualifications and attenuations—Tendency towards Royal supremacy
427 |
| V. English Works of Wyclif.—He wants to be understood by all—He translates the Bible—Popularity of the translation—Sermons and treatises—His style—Humour, eloquence, plain dealing—Paradoxes and utopies—Lollards—His descendants in Bohemia and elsewhere |
432 |
CHAPTER VI. |
| THE THEATRE. |
| I. Origins. Civil Sources.—Mimes and histrions—Amusements and sights provided by histrions—How they raise a laugh—Facetious tales told with appropriate gestures—Dialogues and repartees—Parodies and caricatures—Early interludes—Licence of amusers—Bacchanals in churches and cemeteries—Holy things derided—Feasts of various sorts—Processions and pageants—"Tableaux Vivants"—Compliments and dialogues—Feasts at Court—"Masks" |
439 |
| II. Religious Sources.—Mass—Dialogues introduced in the Christmas service—The Christmas cycle (Old Testament)—The Easter cycle (New Testament). |
|
| The religious drama in England—Life of St. Catherine (twelfth century)—Popularity of Mysteries in the fourteenth century—Treatises concerning those representations—Testimony of Chaucer William of Wadington—Collection of Mysteries in English. |
|
| Performances—Players, scaffolds or pageants, dresses, boxes, scenery, machinery—Miniature by Jean Fouquet—Incoherences and anachronisms |
456 |
| III. Literary and Historical value of Mysteries.—The ancestors' feelings and tastes—Sin and redemption—Caricature of kings—Their "boast"—Their use of the French tongue—They have to maintain silence—Popular scenes—Noah and his wife—The poor workman and the taxes—A comic pastoral—The Christmas shepherds—Mak and the stolen sheep |
476 |
| IV. Decay of the Mediæval Stage.—Moralities—Personified abstractions—The end of Mysteries—They continue being performed in the time of Shakespeare |
489 |
CHAPTER VII. |
| THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES. |
| I. Decline.—Chaucer's successors—The decay of art is obvious even to them—The society for which they write is undergoing a transformation—Lydgate and Hoccleve |
495 |
| II. Scotsmen.—They imitate Chaucer but with more freedom—James I.—Blind Harry—Henryson—The town mouse and the country mouse—Dunbar—Gavin Douglas—Popular ballads—Poetry in the flamboyant style |
503 |
| III. Material welfare; Prose.—Development of the lower and middle class—Results of the wars—Trade, navy, savings. |
|
| Books of courtesy—Familiar letters; Paston Letters—Guides for the traveller and trader—Fortescue and his praise of English institutions—Pecock and his defence of the clergy—His style and humour—Compilers, chroniclers, prosators of various sort—Malory, Caxton, Juliana Berners, Capgrave, &c. |
513 |
| IV. The Dawn of the Renaissance.—The literary movement in Italy—Greek studies—Relations with Eastern men of letters—Turkish wars and Greek exiles—Taking of Constantinople by Mahomet II.—Consequences felt in Italy, France, and England |
523 |
Index |
527 |
BOOK I.
THE ORIGINS.
CHAPTER I.
BRITANNIA.
I.
The people that now occupies England was formed, like the French people, by the fusion of several superimposed races. In both countries the same races met and mingled at about the same period, but in different proportions and under dissimilar social conditions. Hence the striking resemblances and sharply defined contrasts that exist in the genius of the two nations. Hence also the contradictory sentiments which mutually animated them from century to century, those combinations and recurrences of esteem that rose to admiration, and jealousy that swelled to hate. Hence, again, the unparalleled degree of interest they offer, one for the other. The two people are so dissimilar that in borrowing from each other they run no risk of losing their national characteristics and becoming another's image; and yet, so much alike are they, it is impossible that what they borrowed should remain barren and unproductive. These loans act like leaven: the products of English thought during the Augustan age of British literature were mixed with French leaven, and the products of French thought during the Victor Hugo period were penetrated with English yeast.
Ancient writers have left us little information concerning the remotest period and the oldest inhabitants of the British archipelago; works which would be invaluable to us exist only in meagre fragments. Important gaps have fortunately been filled, owing to modern Science and to her manifold researches. She has inherited the wand of the departed wizards, and has touched with her talisman the gate of sepulchres; the tombs have opened and the dead have spoken. What countries did thy war-ship visit? she inquired of the Scandinavian viking. And in answer the dead man, asleep for centuries among the rocks of the Isle of Skye, showed golden coins of the caliphs in his skeleton hand. These coins are not a figure of speech; they are real, and may be seen at the
