"Yet would I gladly heare some mery fit Of mayde Marion, or els of Robin hood; Or Bentleyes ale which chafeth well the bloud, Of perre of Norwich, or sauce of Wilberton, Or buckishe Joly well-stuffed as a ton."

He again mentions "Bentley's Ale" which "maketh me to winke;" and some of our ancient domestic pastimes and amus.e.m.e.nts are recorded:--

"Then is it pleasure the yonge maydens amonge To watche by the fire the winters nightes long: At their fonde tales to laugh, or when they brall Great fire and candell spending for laboure small, And in the ashes some playes for to marke, To couer wardens [pears] for fault of other warke: To toste white sheuers, and to make prophitroles; And after talking oft time to fill the bowles."

He mentions some musical instruments:

" . . . . Methinkes no mirth is scant, Where no reioysing of minstrelcie doth want: The bagpipe or fidle to vs is delectable."

And the mercantile commodities of different countries and cities:--

"Englande hath cloth, Burdeus hath store of wine, Cornewall hath tinne, and Lymster wools fine.

London hath scarlet, and Bristowe pleasaunt red, Fen lands hath fishes, in other place is lead."

Of songs at feasts:--

"When your fat dishes smoke hote vpon your table, Then layde ye songes and balades magnifie, If they be mery, or written craftely, Ye clappe your handes and to the making harke, And one say to other, lo here a proper warke."

He says that minstrels and singers are highly favoured at court, especially those of the French gise. Also jugglers and pipers.

The personal references throughout the Eclogues, in addition to those already mentioned, though not numerous, are of considerable interest. The learned Alc.o.c.k, Bishop of Ely (1486-1500), and the munificent founder of Jesus College, Cambridge, stands deservedly high in the esteem of a poet and priest, so zealous of good works as Barclay. The poet's humour thus disguises him.--(Eclogue I., A iii., recto.):--

"Yes since his dayes a c.o.c.ke was in the fen, I knowe his voyce among a thousande men: He taught, he preached, he mended euery wrong; But, Coridon alas no good thing bideth long.

He all was a c.o.c.ke, he wakened vs from slepe, And while we slumbred, he did our foldes hepe.

No cur, no foxes, nor butchers dogges wood, Coulde hurte our fouldes, his watching was so good.

The hungry wolues, which that time did abounde, What time he crowed, abashed at the sounde.

This c.o.c.ke was no more abashed of the foxe, Than is a lion abashed of an oxe.

When he went, faded the floure of all the fen; I boldly dare sweare this c.o.c.ke neuer trode hen!

This was a father of thinges pastorall, And that well sheweth his Church cathedrall, There was I lately about the middest of May, Coridon his Church is twenty sith more gay Then all the Churches betwene the same and Kent, There sawe I his tome and Chapell excellent.

I thought fiue houres but euen a little while, Saint John the virgin me thought did on me smile, Our parishe Church is but a dongeon, To that gay Churche in comparison.

If the people were as pleasaunt as the place Then were it paradice of pleasour and solace, Then might I truely right well finde in my heart.

There still to abide and neuer to departe, But since that this c.o.c.ke by death hath left his song, Trust me Coridon there many a thing is wrong, When I sawe his figure lye in the Chapell-side, Like death for weping I might no longer bide.

Lo all good thinges so sone away doth glide, That no man liketh to long doth rest and abide.

When the good is gone (my mate this is the case) Seldome the better reentreth in the place."

The excellence of his subject carries the poet quite beyond himself in describing the general lamentation at the death of this worthy prelate; with an unusual power of imagination he thus pictures the sympathy of the towers, arches, vaults and images of Ely monastery:

"My harte sore mourneth when I must specify Of the gentle c.o.c.ke whiche sange so mirily, He and his flocke wer like an union Conioyned in one without discention, All the fayre c.o.c.kes which in his dayes crewe When death him touched did his departing rewe.

The pretie palace by him made in the fen, The maides, widowes, the wiues, and the men, With deadly dolour were pea.r.s.ed to the heart, When death constrayned this shepheard to departe.

Corne, gra.s.se, and fieldes, mourned for wo and payne, For oft his prayer for them obtayned rayne.

The pleasaunt floures for wo faded eche one, When they perceyued this shepheard dead and gone, The okes, elmes, and euery sorte of dere Shronke vnder shadowes, abating all their chere.

The mightie walles of Ely Monastery, The stones, rockes, and towres semblably, The marble pillers and images echeone, Swet all for sorowe, when this good c.o.c.ke was gone, Though he of stature were humble, weake and leane, His minde was hye, his liuing pure and cleane, Where other feedeth by beastly appet.i.te, On heauenly foode was all his whole delite."

Morton, Alc.o.c.k's predecessor and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury (1486-1500), is also singled out for compliment, in which allusion is made to his troubles, his servants' faithfulness, and his restoration to favour under Richard III. and Henry VII. (Eclogue III.):--

"And shepheard Morton, when he durst not appeare, Howe his olde seruauntes were carefull of his chere; In payne and pleasour they kept fidelitie Till grace agayne gaue him aucthoritie Then his olde fauour did them agayne restore To greater pleasour then they had payne before.

Though for a season this shepheard bode a blast, The greatest winde yet slaketh at the last, And at conclusion he and his flocke certayne Eche true to other did quietly remayne."

And again in Eclogue IV.:--

"Micene and Morton be dead and gone certayne."

The "Dean of Powles" (Colet), with whom Barclay seems to have been personally acquainted, and to whom the reference alludes as to one still living (his death occurred in 1519), is celebrated as a preacher in the same Eclogue:--

"For this I learned of the Dean of Powles I tell thee, Codrus this man hath won some soules."

as is "the olde friar that wonned in Greenwich" in Eclogue V.

The first three Eclogues are paraphrases or adaptations from the Miseriae Curialium, the most popular of the works of one of the most successful literary adventurers of the middle ages, aeneas Sylvius (Pope Pius II., who died in 1464). It appears to have been written with the view of relieving his feelings of disappointment and disgust at his reception at the court of the Emperor, whither he had repaired, in the hope of political advancement.

The tone and nature of the work may be gathered from this candid exposure of the adventurer's morale: "Many things there are which compel us to persevere, but nothing more powerfully than ambition which, rivalling charity, truly beareth all things however grievous, that it may attain to the honours of this world and the praise of men. If we were humble and laboured to gain our own souls rather than hunt after vain glory, few of us, indeed, would endure such annoyances." He details, with querulous humour, all the grievances of his position, from the ingrat.i.tude of the prince to the sordour of the table-cloths, and the hardness of the black bread. But hardest of all to bear is the contempt shown towards literature.

"In the courts of princes literary knowledge is held a crime; and great is the grief of men of letters when they find themselves universally despised, and see the most important matters managed, not to say mismanaged, by blockheads, who cannot tell the number of their fingers and toes."

Barclay's adaptation is so thoroughly Englished, and contains such large additions from the stores of his own bitter experience, as to make it even more truly his own than any other of his translations.

The fourth and fifth eclogues are imitations,--though no notice that they are so is conveyed in the t.i.tle, as in the case of the first three,--of the fifth and sixth of the popular eclogue writer of the time, Jo. Baptist Mantuan, which may have helped to give rise to the generally received statement noticed below, that all the eclogues are imitations of that author. The fourth is ent.i.tled "Codrus and Minalcas, treating of the behauour of Riche men agaynst Poetes," and it may be judged how far it is Barclay's from the fact that it numbers about twelve hundred lines, including the elegy of the n.o.ble Howard, while the original, ent.i.tled, "De consuetudine Divitum erga Poetas," contains only about two hundred. The fifth is ent.i.tled "Amintas and Faustus, of the disputation of citizens and men of the countrey." It contains over a thousand lines, and the original, "De disceptatione rusticorum et civium," like the fifth, extends to little more than two hundred.

In the Prologue before mentioned we are told (Cawood's edition):--

"That fiue Egloges this whole treatise doth holde To imitation of other Poetes olde,"

Which appears to be a correction of the printer's upon the original, as in Powell's edition:--

"That X. egloges this hole treatyse dothe holde."

Whether other five were ever published there is no record to show; it appears, however, highly improbable, that, if they had, they could have been entirely lost,--especially considering the popularity and repeated issue of the first five,--during the few years that would have elapsed between their original publication and the appearance of Cawood's edition.

Possibly the original reading may be a typographical blunder, for Cawood is extremely sparing of correction, and appears to have made none which he did not consider absolutely necessary. This is one of the literary puzzles which remain for bibliography to solve. (See below, p. lxxix.)

The next of Barclay's works in point of date, and perhaps the only one actually ent.i.tled to the merit of originality, is his Introductory to write and p.r.o.nounce French, compiled at the request of his great patron, Thomas Duke of Norfolk, and printed by Copland in 1521. It is thus alluded to in the first important authority on French grammar, "Lesclariss.e.m.e.nt de la langue Francoyse compose par maistre Jehan Palsgraue, Angloys, natyf de Londres," 1530: "The right vertuous and excellent prince Thomas, late Duke of Northfolke, hath commanded the studious clerke, Alexandre Barkelay, to embusy hymselfe about this exercyse." Further on he is not so complimentary as he remarks:--"Where as there is a boke, that goeth about in this realme, int.i.tled The introductory to writte and p.r.o.nounce frenche, compiled by Alexander Barcley, in which k is moche vsed, and many other thynges also by hym affirmed, contrary to my sayenges in this boke, and specially in my seconde, where I shall a.s.saye to expresse the declinations and coniugatynges with the other congruites obserued in the frenche tonge, I suppose it sufficient to warne the lernar, that I haue red ouer that boke at length: and what myn opinion is therin, it shall well inough apere in my bokes selfe, though I make therof no ferther expresse mencion: saue that I haue sene an olde boke written in parchement, in maner in all thynkes like to his sayd Introductory: whiche, by coniecture, was not vnwritten this hundred yeres. I wot nat if he happened to fortune upon suche an other: for whan it was commaunded that the grammar maisters shulde teche the youth of Englande ioyntly latin with frenche, there were diuerse suche bokes diuysed: wherupon, as I suppose, began one great occasyon why we of England sounde the latyn tong so corruptly, whiche haue as good a tonge to sounde all maner speches parfitely as any other nacyon in Europa."--Book I. ch.

x.x.xv. "According to this," Mr Ellis (Early English p.r.o.nunciation, 804) pertinently notes: "1, there ought to be many old MS. treatises on French grammar; and 2, the English p.r.o.nunciation of Latin was moulded on the French."

To Barclay, as nine years before Palsgrave, belongs at least the credit, hitherto generally unrecognised, of the first published attempt at a French grammar, by either Frenchman or foreigner.

"The mirror of good manners, containing the four cardinal vertues,"

appeared from the press of Pynson, without date, "which boke," says the typographer, "I haue prynted at the instance and request of the ryght n.o.ble Rychard Yerle of Kent." This earl of Kent died in 1523, and as Barclay speaks of himself in the preface as advanced in age, the date of publication may be a.s.signed to close upon that year. It is a translation, in the ballad stanza, of the Latin elegiac poem of Dominicus Mancinus, _De quatuor virtutibus_, first published in 1516, and, as appears from the t.i.tle, was executed while Barclay was a monk of Ely, at "the desire of the righte worshipfull Syr Giles Alington, Knight." From the address to his patron it would seem that the Knight had requested the poet to abridge or modernise Gower's Confessio amantis. For declining this task he pleads, that he is too old to undertake such a light subject, and also the sacred nature of his profession. He then intimates his choice of the present more grave and serious work instead--

Which a priest may write, not hurting his estate, Nor of honest name ob.u.mbring at all his light.

"But the poet," says Warton, "declined this undertaking as unsuitable to his age, infirmities, and profession, and chose rather to oblige his patron with a grave system of ethics. It is certain that he made a prudent choice.

The performance shows how little qualified he was to correct Gower."

Instead of a carping criticism like this, it would have been much more to the point to praise the modesty and sensibility of an author, who had the courage to decline a task unsuited to his tastes or powers.

He professes little:--

This playne litle treatise in stile compendious, Much briefly conteyneth four vertues cardinall, In right pleasaunt processe, plaine and commodious, With light foote of metre, and stile heroicall, Rude people to infourme in language maternall, To whose vnderstanding maydens of tender age, And rude litle children shall finde easy pa.s.sage.

Two editions of the work are sufficient evidence that this humble and praiseworthy purpose was, in the eyes of his contemporaries, successfully carried out.

The only remaining authentic production of Barclay which has come down to us, is a translation of the Jugurthine War of Sall.u.s.t, undertaken at the request of, and dedicated to, his great patron, Thomas Duke of Norfolk, and printed also at Pynson's press without date. The Latin and English are printed side by side on the same page, the former being dedicated, with the date "Ex cellula Hatfelde[=n] regii (_i.e._, King's Hatfield, Hertfordshire) in Idus Novembris" to Vesey, the centenarian Bishop of Exeter, with this superscription:--"Reueredissimo in Christo patri ac dno: dno Joanni Veysy exonien episcopo Alexander Barclay presbyter debita c.u.m obseruantia. S." The dedication begins, "Memini me superioribus annis cu adhuc sacelli regij presul esses: pastor vigilantissime: tuis suasionibus incitatu: vt Crispi Sal.u.s.tij hystoria--e romana lingua: in anglicam compendiose transferrem," &c. Vesey was probably one of Barclay's oldest west country friends; for he is recorded to have been connected with the diocese of Exeter from 1503 to 1551, in the various capacities of archdeacon, precentor, dean, and bishop successively. Conjecture has placed the date of this publication at 1511, but as Veysey did not succeed to the Bishopric of Exeter till August 1519, this is untenable. We cannot say more than that it must have been published between 1519 and 1524, the date of the Duke of Norfolk's death, probably in the former year, since, from its being dated from "Hatfield," the ancient palace of the bishops of Ely, (sold to the Crown in the 30th of Henry VIII.; Clutterbuck's Hertfordshire, II.) Barclay at the time of its completion was evidently still a monk of Ely.