THE BOOKFELLOW.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 47, 25 February 1911, Page 9

THE BOOKFELLOW.

Written for The Post, by A. G. Stephens. (Copyright.— All Rights Reserved.) THE ASSIMILATIVE, ENGLISHMAN. "The gloriotfs Elizabethans" in English literature out heroic figures that every schoolboy is taught to admire. "The spacious times of great Elizabeth" have become out red-letter date for literary force, vivacity, fertility. In the last decade comparative criticism has shown that a- great part of Elizabethan literature amounted to glorious piracy. 'Just as Fn.ikie Drake set sail for the Spanish main, seized his property where lie found it, and come triumphantly home laden with golden spoil, so Spencer and Shakespeare, Chapman, Daniel, Lodge, and fifty more valiant Englishmen of renown, went plundering the fair fields cf France and Italy — translated, adapted, paraphrased, borrowed, and stole — and from their booty wen undying fame. "On the taking of Constantinople in the year 1433, the dispersed Greeks made their way to the kingdom of the West, carrying with them Byaantme learning and culture. Italy became the chosen home of these exiles. The almost simultaneous invention of printing, coupled with an outburst of genius in. painting and poetry, and a new-born thirst for classical knowledge, made up what ie known by the name of the Renaissance." From Italy the movement sped to France, and from France came slowly to England. Italy and France pillaged Greek and Roman literature ; England pilbged Italy and France. Jt is not denied that there was a transmutation of metals, an addition of elements, as the splendid robbery proceeded. Yet it was from the old materials, seized and transported across lands and seas that many line new castles were built. An English debt has always been admitted. In "The French Renaissance in England, an account of ihe literary relations of England and Fiance in tho sixteenth century " (Oxford University Press, 10s 6d net). Dr. Sidney Lee endeavours to trace the precise dimensions of the debt to France. 3ie finds them huge ; though the adjective is not his. It is that which may be applied by any reader of his learned", laborious, and illuminating book. Particularly to and through France our glorious Elizabethans owe a great deal of their glory. With whatever compensations, six-teenth-century England was in the esteem of urbanei- Europe a barbarous country. How very barbarous is indicated by the wide acceptance of the tradition that K-entishmsn had tails. A French writer in 1571 declared with a pleasant delangement cf epithets, that the English weva "fair-skinned, overweeniug enemies of the French, archers, rebellious, tailed, warlike, anglo-saxon, arrogant, red, enraged, bold and hardy." The Scotch were "noble, brave, proud, fair-skinned, haughty, northerners, prompt, warriors, bores, with rude manners, savage, handsome, active." The English returned scorn for scorn, and railing for railing ; and a foreigner in England was apt to be greeted as "French dog" or worse; and perhaps might be deemed fortunate if people merely spat in his face as lie passed along the streets. Into this disagre«ablo_ relationship an. impulse originating in Greece 2000 years previously was gradually to bring sweetness and light. Dr. Lee commences with a general survey of the- debt of Tudor culture to France, and, passing to literature, contrasts "French, light" and "English gloom." He enters then into aai examination in detail of French influence upon Elizabethan prose, upon lyric poetry, and upon drama; consicbis the message brought to England by the Huguencts; and adds significant "specimens of Elizethan poetry which are borrowed without acknowledgement from contemporary French sources." AH the footsteps point the same way ; all lead into the cave where the English giant prowls in his grand pursuit of assimilating tho land, the lucre, tho letters, and the life of the universe. For a patriotic Englishman Dr. Lee's book has 3io soothing unction ; though he touches the tender spots as: lightly as he can. That Shakespeare's Roman plays had predecessors on the French stage is, of course, well-known. But Dr. Lee will interest the Shakespeare clubs by showing precisely how our great dramatist transfused North's "Plutarch," which closely translates the Frenchman Amyot's vci'sion of the original. The close of Antony's dying speech in Plutarch's life of Mark Antony is rendered. by_ North from the French, in oratio obliqua, thus : ''And as for himTself, he entreated that she (Cleopatra) should not lament nor sorrow for the miserable change of hh fortune at the end of his days, but rather that sho should ihinl- him the more fortunate for the former triumphs and honours he had received, considering that while he lived he was the noblest and greatest prince of the world, and that now he was overcome not cowardly, but valiantly, a Roman by another Roman.' Shakespeare transforms this passage into oratio recta. Shakespeare Antony with his last' breath bids Cleopatra — Tho miserable change now at my end Lament noi 1 sorrow at; but please your thoughts In feeding them with those my former fortunes Wherein' l lived, the greatest prince o' the world, The noblest ; and do now not basely die Nor cowardly put off my helmet to. My countrymen ; a Roman by a Roman Valiantly vanquished. "There are slight inversions, and abouthalf a dozen words are added. But Amyot may almost bs held responsible for one ol the most tragic utterances penned by the English dramatists. So bhakesp-eare's Roman plays offer a hundred similar examples of his loans on Engljsh prose which is of French inspiration. Amyot is a hero of English as well as of French literature." Shakespeare's debt to the poets of tho French Pleiade (of which Dr. Lee gives an excellent account) is shown in scores of parallol passages. For example, Ronsnrd wrote a "Preface on Music" (1572), in which he said : "He who, healing a sweet concord of instruments or the sweetness of the human voice, is not rejoiced thereby, is not moved thereby, end is not from head to foot thrilled by it, as if softly ravished and I do not know how transported out of himself; — it is a sign that he has a spirit thwarted, vicious, and depraved, and that it is necessary to beware of him, as of one vvho is unhappily born." Shakespeare translates this into a famous passage of "The Merchant of Venice" (v. i). Tho man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with ooncord of sweet sounds, Is lit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils ; Tho motions of his spirit are dull as night And his affections dark as Erebus; Let.no such man be trusted. Many passages in Shakespeare, similarly well known, are traced to French sources. Of a song like "Hark ! hark ! the Lark at Heaven's Gate Sings," which people are wont to offer as crucial evidence" of genius, Dr. Lee writes : Shakespeare's original worked here all in its original freshness. Yet there is hardly a syllable in Shakespeare's farfamed greeting of tie dawn which cannot be independently; matched ia the jrerse fif the Pleiaiga --- - -

When, we come to Lodge, Daniel, Drummond, and others the pillage ;i wholesale. Shakespeare can at least b« seen like an eagle, loftily bearing oft hie quarry. Lodge's activity is characterised by Dr. I>ee as a "barefaced plagiarism," and the proof is tendered in so many lines, so many sonnets. The precise extent to which Lodge' 3 and Chapman's mode of literal transference spread in Elizabethan literature cannot bo determined till all the voluminous poetry of Italy, as well ab of .b ranee, has been thoroughly ransacked. Almost infinite time must bo devoted to a searching comparison belove the full truth will be known. ' The vogue which the practice enjoyed among the Elizabethans stoutly maintained its hold in the next generation. Early in the seventeenth century William Drummond, of Hawthornden, tha bcottish poet whose lyric genius seems steeped in Elizabethan tradition, bore exceptionally convincing testimony to the persistency of the Elizabethan habit ot secret borrowing from contemporary i'rench verse. Very often do Drummond s lyrics appear to echo the genuine Elizabethan strain, and very curi« ous is it to learn that the affinity usually cornea of almost direct translation from the French. Another invention of the Pleiado was the In Memonam" stanza : Elizabethan poetry levied on France for form as well as matter. Shakespeare adopted words and phrases, particularly 1 Bonsards, trick of compound epithets., Shakespeare's "lark that tiu-a-lirraf Chan* comes directly from Ronsard's ode, referring to a lover who hears the lark chanter "t» tire-lire." As to sonnets: Shakespeare owed more to French than lo Italian tuition. Hie lyric pootrv ay under far emaUer obligation thaS w- -i \1&\ 1& felloW6 to forei 8 n masters. His inaebladneM is slight when it is contrasted with the repeated dependence of his fellows on the precise phraseology as well as on the precise ideas of the Pleiade, but thought and expression in Shakespeare's sonnets reflect too often and too closely tho French strain to justify the thcorv of lortuitous coincidence. In many other iilizabethan fionnet-eequences thera figure not merely separate- quatrains but whole sonnets which are silently and uitblashingly translated from foreign and more ©specially from French, collections. When some Elizabethan sonnet -sequences are fully analysed, they are found to be haphazard mosaics of French or Italian^ originala. Constable, Daniel, and Loage, who all enjoyed high repute as iilizabethan. sonneteers, wero tha moat conspicuous offenders. Even Spenser fells at times under the same indictment. The habit of literal transference without acknowledgment spread further in the sonneteering work cf the Elizabethans than in any other direction. Dr. Lee gives warrant for the theory, that Shakespeare's much debated eonnets were literary exercises, and that "there never was no sich a 1 person" "aa the famous "dark lady,"— who may havo been conveyed holus-bolue from th<s French home where she ifi found along with the other "properties" of a good British poet. As to drama: "There is indeed no form of tho dramatic effort of which' Elizabethan England, despite her triumphant handling of all, can claim t.ha honoura of the inventor." Shakes'peare'o comic figure Holoferne© and his kindredi are traced to the French dramatist Lariyey. Dr. Lee's conclusion of a highly; interesting argument is that : In the study of the causes aiid the origins of English literature in the sixteenth century it must always be born* in mind that France stimulated England's intellectual energy in two ways— by imparting her own knowledge, ideas, and example, and by imparting the knowledge, ideas, and example which she herself derived from Greece and ancient and modern Italy. England benefited not only by the original inventions of literary I'tonce, but by tho French power of absorbing the Gpirit and forme of Greek, Latin and Italian literature. Much came to Elizabethan, England from Italy direct. Italy may well claim to have introduced the firefc English humanists, Linacre and Colet, to an intelligent study of the classics.. Elizabethan men and women of culture wero well read in Italian poetry and prose. Yet it was the French habit of translation, of which England took every, advantage, that must be credited with making the subject-matter of Greek and Latin literature current coin of English thought and expression, while only, slightly smaller was the service which Frenchmen rendered the general Elizabethan public by their interpretation ol Italian literature. HENRY OF NAVARRE. Henry tho Fourth of France wafl assassinated by Bavaillac on 14th May, 1610 — and that doesn't matter to an Aus. tralian in tho throes of calculating hia land- lax. We ai-e learning to look forward instead* of backward — to spend our thoughts upon the future that belongs to us instead of upon tho unalterable past. Still, if the past can yield us incit&ment or excitement, a moment's menial titillation to ease the strenuous purruiU of all the scientific winners? In "The Fate of Henry of Navarre"(G. Bell; 10s 6d), John BknnxkJle. Burton cajoles one to wonder why Kavaillao assassinated Henry. Cooking a dainty di.«h of historical gossip ov-sp diaries and memoirs, ho shows that Dr. Lee's "barbarian" England of the epoch, may slill have been more civilised than France, despite the pretty rhymes of Pleiado. The manner of Rav%illac's execution "would have been more suitable to a race of crnnibals." When, after horrible torture, the miserable wretcU was drawn asunder by horses, the crowd toro tie body piecemeal, and all Paris carried off its scrap of flesh in execration. Sweet gioss upon Ronsard's tirra-lirra lark ! But- why did Havaillac? The accepted story is that he was a religious mania-o hired by tho Due d'Epernon. Burton, says "No"; he was simply a religious maniac, dreeing his weird. It doesn'fc matter to a New Zealander wondering whether a continuous Government will end this year or will not. Yet upon the unimportant peg Burton hangs a saucy picture of people and things in old France. It is curious that everybody, and Henry recognised that it was "up to " him _to be assassinated ; that almanacs picked the year and a propheti picked the day. As curious is it to learn (if we may trust the- lesjend) that d'Epernon had ten men waiting to do Ravaillac's very deed, at Ravailla-c'a very place anr 1 time, when Ravaillaa independently forestalled them. If Mr. Burton is right — and, if he is wrong, it doesn't matter. His argument is brightly woven, and bedecked with portraits of Henry, his lady loves, and h.i§ royal lairs.