The Project Gutenberg eBook, English Lands Letters and Kings: From Elizabeth to Anne, by Donald Grant Mitchell This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: English Lands Letters and Kings: From Elizabeth to Anne Author: Donald Grant Mitchell Release Date: February 9, 2017 [eBook #54142] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS AND KINGS: FROM ELIZABETH TO ANNE*** E-text prepared by MWS and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org) Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/englishlandslett02mitc Project Gutenberg has the other three volumes of this work. I: From Celt to Tudor: see http://www.gutenberg.org/files/54168/54168-h/54168-h.htm III: Queen Anne and the Georges: see http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37226/37226-h/37226-h.htm IV: The Later Georges to Victoria: see http://www.gutenberg.org/files/54143/54143-h/54143-h.htm ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS AND KINGS From Elizabeth to Anne ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS AND KINGS By Donald G. Mitchell I. From Celt to Tudor [i] [ii] II. From Elizabeth to Anne III. Queen Anne and the Georges Each one volume, 12mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.50 ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS AND KINGS From Elizabeth to Anne BY Donald G. Mitchell NEW YORK Charles Scribner’s Sons MDCCCXCVI Copyright, 1890, by CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS TROW’S PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY, NEW YORK. PREFATORY LETTER. [To Mrs. J. C. G. Piatt, of Utica School, N. Y.] My Dear Julia,—We have both known, in the past, a certain delightsome country home; you—in earliest childhood, and I—in latest youth-time: and I think we both relish those reminders—perhaps a Kodak view, or an autumn gentian plucked by the road-side, or actual glimpse of its woods, or brook, on some summer’s drive —which have brought back the old homestead, with its great stretch of undulating meadow—its elms—its shady lanes—its singing birds—its leisurely going big-eyed oxen—its long, tranquil days, when the large heart of June was pulsing in all the leaves and all the air: Well, even so, and by these light tracings of Lands and Kings, and little whiffs of metric music, I seek to bring back to you, and to your pupils and associates (who have so kindly received previous and kindred reminders) the rich memories of that great current of English letters setting steadily forward amongst these British lands, and these sovereigns, from Elizabeth to Anne. But slight as these glimpses are, and as this synopsis may be, they will together serve, I hope, to fasten attention where I wish to fasten it, and to quicken appetite for those fuller and larger studies of English Literature and History, which shall make even these sketchy outlines valued—as one values little flowerets plucked from old fields—for bringing again to mind the summers of youth-time, and a world of summer days, with their birds and abounding bloom. Affectionately yours, [iii] [iv] [v] D. G. M. EDGEWOOD; MARCH, 1890. CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER I. Preliminary, 1 The Stuart Line, 4 James I., 6 Walter Raleigh, 11 Nigel and Harrison, 19 A London Bride, 23 Ben Jonson Again, 26 An Italian Reporter, 29 Shakespeare and the Globe, 32 CHAPTER II. Gosson and Other Puritans, 42 King James’ Bible, 44 Shakespeare, 56 Shakespeare’s Youth, 61 Family Relations, 67 Shakespeare in London, 73 Work and Reputation, 77 His Thrift and Closing Years, 81 CHAPTER III. Webster, Ford, and Others, 88 Massinger, Beaumont, and Fletcher, 93 King James and Family, 99 A New King and some Literary Survivors, 105 Wotton and Walton, 109 George Herbert, 115 Robert Herrick, 120 Revolutionary Times, 126 CHAPTER IV. King Charles and his Friends, 132 Jeremy Taylor, 135 A Royalist and a Puritan, 140 Cowley and Waller, 144 John Milton, 150 Milton’s Marriage, 157 The Royal Tragedy, 161 Change of Kings, 167 Last Days, 174 CHAPTER V. Charles II. and his Friends, 182 Andrew Marvell, 189 Author of Hudibras, 193 Samuel Pepys, 198 A Scientist, 207 John Bunyan, 209 CHAPTER VI. Three Good Prosers, 221 [vi] [vii] [viii] [ix] W John Dryden, 227 The London of Dryden, 234 Later Poems and Purpose, 240 John Locke, 248 End of the King and Others, 255 CHAPTER VII. Kings Charles, James, and William, 261 Some Literary Fellows, 268 A Pamphleteer, 272 Of Queen Anne, 277 An Irish Dragoon, 280 Steele’s Literary Qualities, 285 Joseph Addison, 288 Sir Roger De Coverley, 291 CHAPTER VIII. Royal Griefs and Friends, 301 Builders and Streets, 306 John Gay, 308 Jonathan Swift, 312 Swift’s Politics, 324 His London Journal, 328 In Ireland Again, 333 ENGLISH LANDS, LETTERS, & KINGS. CHAPTER I. e take outlook to-day from the threshold of the seventeenth century. Elizabeth is dead (1603), but not England. The powers it had grown to under her quickening offices are all alive. The great Spanish dragon has its teeth drawn; Cadiz has been despoiled, and huge galleons, gold-laden, have come trailing into Devon ports. France is courteously friendly. Holland and England are in leash, as against the fainter-growing blasts of Popedom. In Ireland, Tyrone has been whipped into bloody quietude. A syndicate of London merchants, dealing in pepper and spices, has made the beginnings of that East-Indian empire which gives to the present British sovereign her proudest title. London is growing apace in riches and in houses; though her shipping counts for less than the Dutch shipping, great cargoes come and go through the Thames—spices from the East, velvets and glass from the Mediterranean, cloths from the Baltic. Cheapside is glittering with the great array of goldsmiths’ shops four stories high, and new painted and new gilded (in 1594) by Sir Richard Martin, Mayor. The dudes of that time walk and “publish” their silken suits there, and thence through all the lanes leading to Paul’s Walk—which is, effectively, the aisle of the great church. There are noblemen who have tall houses in the city and others who have built along the Strand, with fine grounds reaching to the river and looking out upon the woods which skirt the bear-gardens of Bankside in Southwark. The river is all alive with boats—wherries, barges, skiffs. There are no hackney carriages as yet for hire; but rich folks here and there rumble along the highways in heavy Flemish coaches. Some of the great lights we have seen in the intellectual firmament of England have set. Burleigh is gone; Hooker is gone, in the prime of his years; Spenser gone, Marlowe gone, Sidney gone. But enough are left at the opening of the century and at the advent of James (1603) to keep the great trail of Elizabethan literary splendors all aglow. George Chapman (of the Homer) is alive and active; and so are Raleigh, and Francis Bacon, and Heywood, and Dekker, and Lodge. Shakespeare is at his best, and is acting in his own plays at the newly built Globe Theatre. Michael Drayton is in full vigor, plotting and working at the tremendous poem from which we culled—in advance—a pageful of old English posies. Ben Jonson, too, is all himself, whom we found a giant and a swaggerer, yet a man of great learning and capable of the delicious bits of poesy which I cited. You will further remember how we set right the story of poor Amy Robsart —told of the great Queen’s vanities—of her visitings—of her days of illness—and of the death of the last sovereign of the name of Tudor. The Stuart Line. Henceforth, for much time to come, we shall meet—when we encounter British royalty at all—with men of the house of Stuart. But how comes about this shifting of the thrones from the family of Tudor to the family of Stuart? I explained in a recent chapter how the name of Tudor became connected with the crown, by the marriage of a Welsh knight— [x] [1] [2] [3] [4] Owen Tudor—with Katharine, widow of Henry V. Now let us trace, if we can, this name of Stuart. Henry VII. was a Tudor, and so was Henry VIII.; so were his three children who succeeded him—Edward, the bigot Mary, and Elizabeth; no one of these, however, left direct heirs; but Henry VIII. had a sister, Margaret, who married James IV. of Scotland. This James was a lineal descendant of a daughter of Robert Bruce, who had married Walter Stuart, the chief of a powerful Scotch family. That James I. of whom I have spoken, who was a delicate poet, and so long a prisoner in Windsor Tower, was great-grandson of this Stuart-daughter of Robert Bruce. And from him—that is from James I.— was directly descended James IV., who married the sister of Henry VIII. James IV. had a son, succeeding him, called James V. who by a French marriage, became the father of that Frenchy queen, poor Marie of Scotland, who suffered at Fotheringay, and who had married her cousin, Henry Darnley (he also having Stuart blood), by whom she had a son, James Stuart—being James VI. of Scotland and James I. of England, who now succeeds Elizabeth. This strong Scotch strain in the Stuart line of royalty will explain, in a certain degree, how ready so clannish a people as the Scotch were to join insurrection in favor of the exiled Stuarts; a readiness you will surely remember if you have read Waverley and Redgauntlet. And in further confirmation of this clannish love, you will recall the ever-renewed and gossipy boastfulness with which the old Scotch gentlewoman, Lady Margaret Bellenden, in Old Mortality, tells over and over of the morning when his most gracious majesty Charles II. partook of his disjune at Tillietudlem Castle. But we have nothing to do with so late affairs now, and I have only made this diversion into Scotland to emphasize the facts about the Stuart affiliation to the throne of England, and the reasons for Scotch readiness to fling caps in the air for King Charlie or for the Pretender. James I. And now what sort of person was this James Stuart, successor to Elizabeth? He was a man in his thirty-eighth year, who had been a king—or called a king, of Scotland—ever since he was a baby of twelve months old; and in many matters he was a baby still. He loved bawbles as a child loves its rattle; loved bright feathers too—to dress his cap withal; was afraid of a drawn sword and of hobgoblins. He walked, from some constitutional infirmity, with the uncertain step of a child—swaying about in a ram-shackle way—steadying himself with a staff or a hold upon the shoulder of some attendant. He slobbered when he ate, so that his silken doublet—quilted to be proof against daggers —was never of the cleanest. He had a big head and protruding eyes, and would laugh and talk broad Scotch with a blundering and halting tongue, and crack unsavory jokes with his groom or his barber. Yet he had a certain kindness of heart; he hated to see suffering, though he had no objection to suffering he did not see; the sight of blood almost made him faint; his affection for favorites sometimes broke out into love-sick drivel. Withal he had an acute mind; he had written bad poems, before he left Scotland, calling himself modestly a royal apprentice at that craft. He had a certain knack at logical fence and loved to argue a man to death; he had power of invective, as he showed in his Counterblast to Tobacco—of which I will give a whiff by and by. He had languages at command, and loved to show it; for he had studied long and hard in his young days, under that first and best of Scotch scholars and pedagogues—George Buchanan. He had, in general, a great respect for sacred things, and for religious observances—which did not prevent him, in his moments of petulant wrath or of wine-y exaltation, from swearing with a noisy vehemence. Lord Herbert of Cherbury—elder brother of the poet Herbert, and English ambassador to France —wittily excused this habit of his sovereign, by saying he was too kind to anathematize men himself, and therefore asked God to do so. This was the man who was to succeed the great and courtly Elizabeth; this was the man toward whom all the place- hunters of the court now directed their thoughts, and (many of them) their steps too, eager to be among the foremost to bow in obsequience before him; besieging him, as every United States President is besieged, and will be besieged, until the disgraceful hunt for spoils is checked by some nobler purpose on the part of political victors than the rewarding of the partisans. There was Sir Robert Cary—a far-away cousin of Elizabeth’s—who was so bewitched to be foremost in this agreeable business that he dashes away at a headlong gallop, night and day—before the royal couriers have started— gets thrown from his horse, who gave him a vicious blow with his heels, which he says “made me shed much blood.” But he pushes on and carries first to Edinburgh the tidings of the Queen’s death. Three days of the sharpest riding would only carry the news in those days; and the court messenger took a week or so to get over the heavy roads between the Scotch capital and London. It does not appear that James made a show of much sorrow; he must have remembered keenly, through all his stolidity, how his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, had suffered at Fotheringay; and remembered through whose fiat this dismal tragedy had come about. He hints that perhaps the funeral services had better not tarry for his coming;—writes that he would be glad of the crown jewels (which they do not send, however) for the new Queen’s wearing. Then he sets off at leisure; travels at leisure; receiving deputations at leisure, and all manner of prostrations; stopping at Berwick; stopping at Belvoir Castle; stopping at York; stopping wherever was good eating or lodging or hunting; flatterers coming in shoals to be knighted by him; even the great Bacon, wanting to be Sir Francised—as he was presently: and I am afraid the poets of the time might have appeared, if they had possessed the wherewithal to make the journey, and were as hopeful of fat things. Curiously enough, the King is grandly entertained in Huntingdonshire by one Oliver Cromwell, to whom James takes a great liking; not, of course, the great Cromwell; but this was the uncle and the godfather of the famous Oliver, who [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] was to be chief instrument in bringing James’ royal son, Charles, to the scaffold. Thence the King goes for four or five days of princely entertainment to Theobalds, a magnificent seat of old Burleigh’s, where Elizabeth had gone often; and where his son, Cecil, now plies the King with flatteries, and poisons his mind perhaps against Raleigh—for whom Cecil has no liking;—perhaps representing that Raleigh, being in Parliament at the time, might have stayed the execution of Queen Mary, if he had chosen. The King is delighted with Theobalds; so far delighted that a few years after he exchanges for it his royal home of Hatfield House, which magnificent place is still held by a descendant of Cecil, in the person of the present Earl of Salisbury. That place of Theobalds became afterward a pet home of the King; he made great gardens there, stocked with all manner of trees and fruits: every great stranger in England must needs go to see the curious knots and mazes of flowers, and the vineries and shrubbery; but the palace and gardens are now gone. At last King Jamie gets to London, quartering at the Charter-house—where is now a school and a home of worn-out old pensioners (dear old Colonel Newcome died there!) within gunshot of the great markets by Smithfield;—and James is as vain as a boy of sleeping and lording it, at last, in a great capital of two realms that call him master. Walter Raleigh. I said that his mind had been poisoned against Raleigh;[1] that poison begins speedily to work. There are only too many at the King’s elbow who are jealous of the grave and courtly gentleman, now just turned of fifty, and who has packed into those years so much of high adventure; who has written brave poems; who has fought gallantly and on many fields; who has voyaged widely in Southern and Western seas; who has made discovery of the Guianas; who has, on a time, befriended Spenser, and was mate-fellow with the gallant Sidney; who was a favorite of the great Queen; and whose fine speech, and lordly bearing, and princely dress made him envied everywhere, and hated by less successful courtiers. Possibly, too, Raleigh had made unsafe speeches about the chances of other succession to the throne. Surely he who wore his heart upon his sleeve, and loved brave deeds, could have no admiration for the poltroon of a King who had gone a hunting when the stains upon the scaffold on which his mother suffered were hardly dry. So it happened that Sir Walter Raleigh was accused of conspiring for the dethronement of the new King, and was brought to trial, with Cobham and others. The street people jeered at him as he passed, for he was not popular; he had borne himself so proudly with his exploits, and gold, and his eagle eye. But he made so noble a defence—so full—so clear— so eloquent—so impassioned, that the same street people cheered him as he passed out of court—but not to freedom. The sentence was death: the King, however, feared to put it to immediate execution. There was a show, indeed, of a scaffold, and the order issued. Cobham and Gray were haled out, and given last talks with an officiating priest, when the King ordered stay of proceedings: he loved such mummery. Raleigh went to the Tower, where for thirteen years he lay a prisoner; and they show now in the Tower of London the vaulted chamber that was his reputed (but doubtful) home, where he compiled, in conjunction with some outside friends—Ben Jonson among the rest—that ponderous History of the World, which is a great reservoir of facts, stated with all grace and dignity, but which, like a great many heavy, excellent books, is never read. The matter-of-fact young man remembers that Sir Walter Raleigh first brought potatoes and (possibly) tobacco into England; but forgets his ponderous History. I may as well finish his story here and now, though I must jump forward thirteen and more years to accomplish it. At the end of that time the King’s exchequer being low (as it nearly always was), and there being rumors afloat of possible gold findings in Raleigh’s rich country of Guiana, the old knight, now in his sixty-seventh year, felt the spirit of adventure stirred in him by the west wind that crept through the gratings of his prison bringing tropical odors; and he volunteered to equip a fleet in company with friends, and with the King’s permission to go in quest of mines, to which he believed, or professed to believe, he had the clew. The permission was reluctantly granted; and poor Lady Raleigh sold her estate, as well as their beloved country home of Sherborne (in Dorset) to vest in the new enterprise. But the fates were against it: winds blew the ships astray; tempests beat upon them; mutinies threatened; and in Guiana, at last, there came disastrous fights with the Spaniards. Keymis, the second in command, and an old friend of Raleigh’s, being reproached by this latter in a moment of frenzy, withdraws and shoots himself; Raleigh’s own son, too, is sacrificed, and the crippled squadron sets out homeward, with no gold, and shattered ships and maddened crews. Storm overtakes them; there is mutiny; there is wreck; only a few forlorn and battered hulks bring back this disheartened knight. He lands in his old home of Devon— is warned to flee the wrath that will fall upon him in London; but as of old he lifts his gray head proudly, and pushes for the capital to meet his accusers. Arrived there, he is made to know by those strong at court that there is no hope, for he has brought no gold; and yielding to friendly entreaties he makes a final effort at escape. He does outwit his immediate guards and takes to a little wherry that bears him down the Thames: a half-day more and he would have taken wings for France. But the sleuth-hounds are on his track; he is seized, imprisoned, and in virtue of his old sentence—the cold- hearted Bacon making the law for it—is brought to the block. He walks to the scaffold with serene dignity—greets old friends cheerfully—dies cheerfully, and so enters on the pilgrimage he had set forth in his cumbrous verse:— [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] “There the blessed paths we’ll travel, Strow’d with rubies thick as gravel; Ceilings of diamonds, sapphire floors, High walls of coral and pearly bowers. From thence to Heaven’s bribeless hall, Where no corrupted voices brawl; No conscience molten into gold, No forg’d accuser bought or sold, No cause deferr’d, no vain-spent Journey, For there Christ is the King’s Attorney, Who pleads for all without degrees, And He hath angels, but no fees. And when the grand twelve-million jury Of our sins, with direful fury, Against our souls black verdicts give, Christ pleads his death and then we live.” Again to his wife, in a last letter from his prison, he writes:— “You shall receive, my dear wife, my last words in these my last lines: my love I send you, that you may keep when I am dead; and my counsel, that you may remember when I am no more. I would not with my will, present you sorrows, my dear Bess: let them go to the grave with me and be buried in the dust. And seeing that it is not the will of God that I shall meet you any more, bear my destruction patiently, and with a heart like yourself. “I beseech you for the love that you bear me living, that you do not hide yourself many days; but, by your labors seek to help my miserable fortunes, and the rights of your poor child. Your mourning cannot avail me, that am but dust. I sued for my life, but, God knows, it was for you and yours that I desired it: for, know it, my dear wife, your child is the child of a true man, who in his own respect, despiseth Death and his misshapen and ugly forms. I cannot write much (God knows how hardly I steal this time when all sleep), and it is also time for me to separate my thoughts from the world. Beg my dead body, which living was denied you, and either lay it in Sherborne or Exeter church, by my father and mother. “My dear wife, farewell; bless my boy; pray for me; and let my true God hold you both in his arms.” It is not as a literary man proper that I have spoken of Raleigh; the poems that he wrote were very few, nor were they overfine; but they did have the glimmer in them of his great courage and of his clear thought. They were never collected in book shape in his own day, nor, indeed, till long after he had gone: they were only occasional pieces,[2] coming to the light fitfully under stress of mind—a trail of fire-sparks, as we may say, flying off from under the trip- hammer of royal wrath or of desperate fortunes. Even his History was due to his captivity; his enthusiasms, when he lived them in freedom, were too sharp and quick for words. They spent themselves in the blaze of battles—in breasting stormy seas that washed shores where southern cypresses grew, and golden promises opened with every sunrise. And when I consider his busy and brilliant and perturbed life, with its wonderful adventures, its strange friendships, its toils, its quiet hours with Spenser upon the Mulla shore, its other hours amidst the jungles of the Orinoco, its lawless gallantries in the court of Elizabeth, its booty snatched from Spanish galleons he has set ablaze, its perils, its long captivities—it is the life itself that seems to me a great Elizabethan epic, with all its fires, its mated couples of rhythmic sentiment, its poetic splendors, its shortened beat and broken pauses and blind turns, and its noble climacteric in a bloody death that is without shame and full of the largest pathos. When you read Charles Kingsley’s story of Westward, Ho! (which you surely should read, as well as such other matter as the same author has written relating to Raleigh) you will get a live glimpse of this noble knight of letters, and of those other brave and adventurous sailors of Devonshire, who in those times took the keels of Plymouth over great wastes of water. Kingsley writes of the heroes of his native Devon, in the true Elizabethan humor—putting fiery love and life into his writing; the roar of Atlantic gales breaks into his pages, and they show, up and down, splashes of storm- driven brine. Nigel and Harrison. In going back now to the earlier years of King James’ reign, I shall make no apology for calling attention to that engaging old story of the Fortunes of Nigel. I know it is the fashion with many of the astute critics of the day to pick flaws in Sir Walter, and to expatiate on his blunders and shortcomings; nevertheless, I do not think my readers can do better—in aiming to acquaint themselves with this epoch of English history—than to read over again Scott’s representation of the personality and the surroundings of the pedant King. There may be errors in minor dates, errors of [16] [17] [18] [19] detail; but the larger truths respecting the awkwardness and the pedantries of the first Stuart King, and respecting the Scotch adventurers who hung pressingly upon his skirts, and the lawless street scenes which in those days did really disturb the quietude of the great metropolis, are pictured with a liveliness which will make them unforgetable. Macaulay says that out of the gleanings left by historic harvesters Scott has made “a history scarce less valuable than theirs.” Nor do I think there is in the Fortunes of Nigel a deviation from the truth (of which many must be admitted) so extravagant and misleading as Mr. Freeman’s averment, that in Ivanhoe “there is a mistake in every line.” There are small truths and large truths; and the competent artist knows which to seize upon. Titian committed some fearful anachronisms, and put Venetian stuffs upon Judean women; Balthasar Denner, on the other hand, painted with minute truthfulness every stubby hair in a man’s beard, and no tailor could have excepted to his button-holes: nobody knows Denner; Titian reigns. Among those whom Scott placed under tribute for much of his local coloring was a gossipy, kindly clergyman, William Harrison[3] by name, who was born close by Bow Lane, in London, who studied at Westminster, at Oxford, and Cambridge (as he himself tells us), and who had a parish in Radwinter, on the northern borders of Essex; who came to be a canon, finally, at Windsor; and who died ten years before James came to power. He tells us, in a delightfully quaint way, of all the simples which he grew in his little garden—of the manner in which country houses were builded, and their walls white-washed—of the open chimney vents, and the smoke-burnished rafters. “And yet see the change,” he says, “for when our houses were builded of willow, then had we oken men; but now that our houses are come to be made of oke, our men are not onlie become willow, but a great manie, through Persian delicacie crept in among us, altogether of straw, which is a sore alteration.” When the old parson gets upon the subject of dress he waxes eloquent; nor was he without fullest opportunities for observation, having been for much time private chaplain to the Earl of Cobham. “Oh, how much cost,” he says, “is bestowed now-a-daies upon our bodies, and how little upon our soules! How many sutes of apparel hath the one, and how little furniture hath the other! How curious, how nice are the men and women, and how hardlie can the tailer please them in making things fit for their bodies. How many times must they be sent back againe to him that made it. I will say nothing of our heads, which sometimes are polled, sometimes curled, or suffered to grow at length like woman’s locks, manie times cut off above or under the ears, round, as by a wooden dish. Neither will I meddle with our varieties of beards, of which some are shaven from the chin like those of the Turks, not a few cut like to the beard of Marquess Otto; some made round, like a rubbing brush, others with a pique devant (O fine fashion!). “In women, too, it is much to be lamented that they doo now far exceed the lightness of our men, and such staring attire as in times past was supposed meet for none but light housewives onelie, is now become an habit for chaste and sober matrons. What should I say of their doublets with pendant pieces on the brest, full of jags and cuts, and sleeves of sundrie colors, I have met with some of these trulles in London, so disguised, that it hath passed my skill to discerne whether they were men or women.” If this discerning old gentleman had shot his quill along our sidewalks, I think it would have punctured a good deal of bloat, and stirred up no little bustle. The King himself had a great liking for fine dress in others, though he was himself a sloven. Lord Howard, a courtier, writes to a friend who is hopeful of preferment: “I would wish you to be well trimmed; get a new Jerkin well bordered, and not too short: the King liketh it flowing. Your ruff should be well stiffened and bushy. The King is nicely heedful of such points. Eighteen servants were lately discharged, and many more will be discarded who are not to his liking in these matters.” And again, speaking of a favorite, he says:—“Carr hath changed his tailors, and tiremen many times, and all to please the Prince, who laugheth at the long-grown fashion of our young courtiers, and wisheth for change everie day.” A London Bride. One other little bit of high light upon the every-day ways of London living, in the early years of King James, we are tempted to give. It comes out in the private letter of a new-married lady, who was daughter and heiress of that enormously rich merchant, Sir John Spencer, who was Lord Mayor of London; and who, in Elizabeth’s time (as well as James’), lived in Crosby Hall, still standing in the thick of London city, near to where Thread and Needle Street, at its eastern end, abuts upon Bishopsgate. Every voyaging American should go to see this best type of domestic architecture of the fifteenth century now existing in London; and it will quicken his interest in the picturesque old pile to know that Richard III., while Duke of Gloucester, passed some critical days and nights there, and that for some years it was the home of Sir Thomas More. The Spencer heiress, however—of whom we began to make mention—brightened its interior at a later day; there were many suitors for her hand; among them a son of Lord Compton—not looked upon with favor by the rich merchant—and concealing his advances under the disguise of a baker’s boy, through which he came to many stolen interviews, and at last (as tradition tells) was successful enough to trundle away the heiress, covertly, in his baker’s barrow. Through the good offices of Queen Elizabeth, who stood god-mother to the first child, difficulties between father and son-in-law were healed; and when, later, by the death of Sir John Spencer, the bridegroom was assured of the enormous wealth inherited by his bride, he was—poor man—nearly crazed. Among the curative processes for his relief may be reckoned the letter from his wife to which I have made allusion, [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] and which runs thus:— “My sweet Life, I pray and beseech you to grant me the sum of £2,600 [equivalent to some $30,000 now] quarterly: also, besides, £600 quarterly for charities, of which I will give no account. Also, I would have 3 horses for my own saddle, that none shall dare to lend or borrow. Also; 2 gentlewomen (lest one should be sick)—seeing it is an indecent thing for a gentlewoman to stand mumping alone, when God hath blessed the Lord and Lady with a great Estate: Also, when I ride, a hunting or a hawking, I would have them attend: so, for either of those said women there must be a horse. “Also, I would have 6 or 8 gentlemen; I will have my two coaches—one lined with velvet to myself, with four very fair horses, and a coach for my women lined with cloth, and laced with gold;—otherwise with scarlet and laced with silver, with four good horses. Thereafter, my desire is that you defray all charges for me, and beside my allowance, I would have 20 gowns of apparel a year—six of them excellent good ones. Also, I would have to put in my purse £2,000 or so—you to pay my debts. And seeing I have been so reasonable, I pray you do find my children apparel, and their schooling, and all my servants, men and women, with wages. Also, I must have £6,000 to buy me jewels, and £4,000 to buy me a gold chain. Also, my desire is, that you would pay your debts—build up Ashley House, and lend no money as you love God! When you be an Earl [as he was afterward in Charles I.’s time] I pray you to allow £2,000 more than I now desire and double attendance.” Happy husband! Ben Jonson again. We must not forget our literature; and what has become of our friend Ben Jonson in these times? He is hearty and thriving; he has written gratulatory and fulsome verses to the new sovereign. He is better placed with James than even with Elizabeth. If his tragedy of “Sejanus” has not found a great success, he has more than made up the failing by the brilliant masques he has written. The pedantic King loves their pretty show of classicism, which he can interpret better than his courtiers. He battens, too, upon the flattery that is strown with a lavish hand:— “Never came man more longed for, more desired, And being come, more reverenced, lov’d, admired.”[4] This is the strain; no wonder that the poet comes by pension; no wonder he has “commands,” with goodly fees, to all the fêtes in the royal honor. Yet he is too strong and robust and learned to be called a mere sycophant. The more I read of the literary history of those days the more impressed I am by the predominance of Ben Jonson;—a great, careless, hard-living, hard-drinking, not ill-natured literary monarch. His strength is evidenced by the deference shown him—by his versatility; now some musical masque sparkling with little dainty bits which a sentimental miss might copy in her album or chant in her boudoir; and this, matched or followed by some labored drama full of classic knowledge, full of largest wordcraft, snapping with fire-crackers of wit, loaded with ponderous nuggets of strong sense, and the whole capped and booted with prologue and epilogue where poetic graces shine through proudest averments of indifference —of scorn of applause—of audacious self-sufficiency. It was some fifteen years after James’ coming to power that Ben Jonson made his memorable Scotch journey— perhaps out of respect for his forebears, who had gone, two generations before, out of Annandale—perhaps out of some lighter caprice. In any event it would have been only a commonplace foot-journey of a middle-aged man, well known over all Britain as poet and dramatist, with no special record of its own, except for a visit of a fortnight which he made, in the north country, to Drummond of Hawthornden:—this made it memorable. For this Drummond was a note- taker; he was a smooth but not strong poet; was something proud of his Scotch lairdship; lived in a beautiful home seated upon a crag that lifts above the beautiful valley of Eskdale; its picturesque irregularities of tower and turret are still very charming, and Eskdale is charming with its wooded walks, cliffs, pools, and bridges; Roslin Castle is near by, and Roslin Chapel, and so is Dalkeith. The tourist of our time can pass no pleasanter summer’s day than in loiterings there and thereabout. Echoes of Scott’s border minstrelsy beat from bank to bank. Poet Drummond was proud to have poet Jonson as a guest, and hospitably plied him with “strong waters;” under the effusion Jonson dilated, and Drummond, eagerly attentive, made notes. These jottings down, which were not voluminous, and which were not published until after both parties were in their graves, have been subject of much and bitter discussion, and relate to topics lying widely apart. There is talk of Petrarch and of Queen Elizabeth—of Marston and of Overbury—of Drayton and Donne—of Shakespeare (all too little)—of King James and Petronius—of Jonson’s “shrew of a wife” and of Sir Francis Bacon; and there are more or less authentic stories of Spenser and Raleigh and Sidney. Throughout we find the burly British poet very aggressive, very outspoken, very penetrative and fearless: and we find his Scotch interviewer a little overawed by the other’s audacities, and not a little resentful of his advice to him—to study Quintillian. An Italian Reporter. [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] It was in the very year of Ben Jonson’s return from the north that a masque of his—“Pleasure is Reconciled to Virtue”—was represented at Whitehall; and it so happens that we have a lively glimpse of this representation from the note-book of an Italian gentleman who was chaplain to Pietro Contarini, then ambassador from Venice, and who was living at Sir Pindar’s home in Bishopsgate Street (a locality still kept in mind by a little tavern now standing thereabout called “Sir Pindar’s Head”). This report of Busino, the Italian gentleman of whom I spoke, about his life in London, was buried in the archives of Venice, until unearthed about twenty years since by an exploring Englishman.[5] So it happens, that in this old Venetian document we seem to look directly through those foreign eyes, closed for two hundred and seventy years, upon the play at Whitehall. “For two hours,” he says, “we were forced to wait in the Venetian box, very hot and very crowded. Then the Lord Chamberlain came up, and wanted to add another, who was a greasy Spaniard.” This puts Busino in an ill humor (there was no good-will between Italy and Spain in those days); but he admires the women—“all so many queens.” “There were some very lovely faces, and at every moment my companions kept exclaiming: ‘Oh, do look at this one!’ ‘Oh, do see that other!’ ‘Whose wife is this?’ ‘And that pretty one near her, whose daughter is she?’ [Curious people!] Then the King came in and took the ambassador to his royal box, directly opposite the stage, and the play began at 10 p.m.” There was Bacchus on a car, followed by Silenus on a barrel, and twelve wicker-flasks representing very lively beer bottles, who performed numerous antics; then a moving Mount Atlas, as big as the stage would permit; scores of classic affectations and astonishing mythologic mechanism; and at last, with a great bevy of pages, twelve cavaliers in masques —the Prince Charles (afterward Charles I.) being chief of the revellers. “These all choose partners and dance every kind of dance—every cavalier selecting his lady. After an hour or two of this, they, being tired, began to flag;” whereat—says the chaplain—“the choleric King James got impatient and shouted out from his box, ‘Why don’t they dance? What did you make me come here for? Devil take you all—dance!’” What a light this little touch of the old gentleman’s choleric spirit throws upon the court manners of that time! Then Buckingham, the favorite, whom Scott introduces in Nigel as Steenie—comes forward to placate the King, and cuts a score of lofty capers with so much grace and agility as not only to quiet the wrathy monarch but to delight everybody. Afterward comes the banquet, at which his most sacred majesty gets tipsy, and amid a general smashing of Venetian glass, continues the Italian gentleman, “I went home, very tired, at two o’clock in the morning.” Ah, if we could only unearth some good old play-going chaplain’s account of how Shakespeare appeared—of his dress—of his voice—and with what unction of manner he set before the little audience at the Globe, or Blackfriars, his part of Old Adam (which there is reason to believe he took), in his own delightful play of “As You Like It.” What would we not give to know the very attitude, and the wonderful pity in his look, with which he spoke to his young master, Orlando:— “Oh, my sweet master, what make you here? Why are you virtuous? Why do people love you? Oh, what a world is this, when what is comely Envenoms him, that bears it!” Shakespeare and the Globe. Neither our Italian friend, however, nor Ben Jonson have given us any such glimpse as we would like to have of that keen-witted Warwickshire actor and playwright who, in the early years of James’ reign, is living off and on in London; having bought, within a few years—as the records tell us—a fine New Place in Stratford, and has won great favor with that King Jamie, who with all his pedantry knows a good thing when he sees it, or hears it. Indeed, there is some warrant for believing that the King wrote a commendatory letter to the great dramatist, of which Mr. Black, in our time, makes shadowy use in that Shakespearean romance of his,[6] you may have encountered. The novelist gives us some very charming pictures of the Warwickshire landscape, and he has made Miss Judith Shakespeare very arch and engaging; but it was perilous ground for any novelist to venture upon; and I think the author felt it, and has shown a timidity and doubt that have hampered him; I do not recognize in it the breezy freedom that belonged to his treatment of things among the Hebrides. But to return to “Judith’s father”—he is part proprietor of the Globe Theatre, taking in lots of money (old cronies say) in that way; was honored by the Queen, too, before her death, and had written that “Merry Wives of Windsor,” tradition says, to show Queen Bess how the Fat Falstaff would carry his great hulk as a lover. We might meet this Shakespeare at that Mermaid Tavern we spoke of; but should look out for him more hopefully about one of the playhouses. Going from the Mermaid, supposing we were putting up there in those days, we should strike across St. Paul’s Churchyard, and possibly taking Paul’s Walk, and so down Ludgate Hill; and thence on, [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] bearing southerly to Blackfriars; which locality has now its commemoration in the name of Playhouse Yard, and is in a dingy quarter, with dingy great warehouses round it. Arrived there we should learn, perhaps by a poster on the door, that the theatre would not open till some later hour. Blackfriars[7] was a private theatre, roofed over entirely and lighted with candles; also, through Elizabeth’s time, opening generally on Sundays—that being a popular day—hours being chosen outside of prayer or church-time; and this public dramatic observance of Sunday was only forbidden by express enactment after James came to the throne. At her palace, and with her child-players, Sunday was always Queen Elizabeth’s favorite day. This Blackfriars was at only a little remove down the Thames from that famous Whitefriars region of which there is such melodramatic account in Scott’s story of Nigel, where Old Trapbois comes to his wild death. If we went to the Globe Theatre, we should push on down to the river—near to a point where Blackfriars Bridge now spans it—then, a clear stream free from all bridges, save only London Bridge, which would have loomed, with its piles of houses, out of the water on our left. At the water-side we should take wherry (fare only one penny) and be sculled over to Southwark, landing at an open place—Bankside—near which was Paris Garden, where bear-baiting was still carried on with high kingly approval; and thereabout, on a spot now swallowed in a gulf of smoked and blackened houses—just about the locality where at a later day stood Richard Baxter’s Chapel, rose the octagonal walls of the Globe Theatre, in which Mr. Shakespeare was concerned as player and part proprietor. There should be a flag flying aloft and people lounging in, paying their two-pence, their sixpences, their shillings, or even their half-crowns—as they chose the commoner or the better places. Only the stage is roofed over; perhaps also a narrow space all round the walls; from all otherwheres within, one could look up straight into the murky sky of London. There is apple-eating, nut-cracking, and some vender of pamphlets bawling “Buy a new booke;” such a one perhaps as that Horne Booke of Gulls—which I told you of, written by Dekker—would have been a favorite for such venders. Or, possibly through urgence of the Court Chamberlain, King James’ Counterblaste to Tobacco may be put on sale there, to mend manners; or Joshua Sylvester’s little poem to the same end, entitled Tobacco battered and the Pipes shattered about their Eares that idly idolize so base and barbarous a Weed, by a Volley of hot shot, thundered from Mount Helicon. “How juster will the Heavenly God, Th’ Eternal, punish with infernal rod In Hell’s dark furnace, with black fumes to choak Those that on Earth will still offend in Smoak.” But hot as this sort of shot might have been, we may be sure that some fast fellows, the critics and æsthetes of those days, will have their place on the stage, sprawling there upon the edge, before the actors appear; criticising players and audience and smoking their long pipes; may be taking a hand at cards, and if very “swell,” tossing the cards over to people in the pit when once their game is over—a showy and arrogant largess. Perhaps Ben Jonson will come swaggering in, having taken a glass, or two, very likely, or even three, in the tap-room of the Tabard Tavern—the famous Tabard of Chaucer’s tales—which is within practicable drinking distance; and Will Shakespeare, if indeed there, may greet him across two benches with, “Ah, Ben,” and he—tipsily in reply, with “Ah, my good fellow, Will.” Those prim young men, Beaumont and Fletcher, who are just now pluming their wings for such dramatic flights as these two older men have made, may also be there. And the play will open with three little bursts of warning music; always a prologue with a first representation; and it may chance that the very one we have lighted upon, is some special exhibit of that great military spectacle of “Henry V.” which we know, and all the times between have known; and it may be that this Shakespeare, being himself author and in a sense manager of these boards, may come forward to speak the prologue himself; how closely we would have eyed him, and listened:— “Pardon, gentles all; The flat, unraiséd spirit, that hath dared On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth So great an object: Can this cockpit hold The vasty fields of France? or may we cram Within this wooden O, the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt? Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts, Into a thousand parts divide one man; Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them Printing their proud hoofs i’ the receiving earth, For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings, Carry them here and there, jumping o’er times; Turning the accomplishment of many years Into an hour-glass.” And then the play begins and we see them all: Gloucester and the brave king, and Bedford, and Fluellen, and the pretty Kate of France (by some boy-player), and Nym, and Pistol, and Dame Quickly; and the drums beat, and the [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] W roar of battle breaks and rolls away—as only Shakespeare’s words can make battles rage; and the French Kate is made Queen, and so the end comes. All this might have happened; I have tried to offend against no historic data of places, or men, or dates in this summing up. And from the doors of the Globe, where we are assailed by a clamor of watermen and linkboys, we go down to the river’s edge—scarce a stone’s-throw distant—and take our wherry, on the bow of which a light is now flaming, and float away in the murky twilight upon that great historic river—watching the red torch-fires, kindling one by one along the Strand shores, and catching the dim outline of London houses—the London of King James I.—looming through the mists behind them. In our next chapter I shall have somewhat more to say of the Stratford man—specially of his personality; and more to say of King James, and of his English Bible. CHAPTER II. e have had our glimpse of the first (English) Stuart King, as he made his shambling way to the throne—beset by spoilsmen; we had our glimpse, too, of that haughty, high-souled, unfortunate Sir Walter Raleigh, whose memory all Americans should hold in honor. We had our little look through the magic-lantern of Scott at the toilet and the draggled feathers of the pedant King James, and upon all that hurly-burly of London where the Scotch Nigel adventured; and through the gossipy Harrison we set before ourselves a great many quaint figures of the time. We saw a bride whose silken dresses whisked along those balusters of Crosby Hall, which brides of our day may touch reverently now; we followed Ben Jonson, afoot, into Scotland, and among the pretty scenes of Eskdale; and thereafter we sauntered down Ludgate Hill, and so, by wherry, to Bankside and the Globe, where we paid our shilling, and passed the time o’ day with Ben Jonson; and saw young Francis Beaumont, and smelt the pipes; and had a glimpse of Shakespeare. But we must not, for this reason, think that all the world of London smoked, or all the world of London went to the Globe Theatre. Gosson and Other Puritans. There was at this very time, living and preaching, in the great city, a certain Stephen Gosson[8]—well-known, doubtless, to Ben Jonson and his fellows—who had r...