The Ship of Fools, Volume 1-2 by Sebastian Brant (novels in english TXT) 📕

grieued with any playne sentence,

Rudely conuayed for lacke of eloquence.”

 

The most important revelation in the whole of this interesting passage,

that relating to the author’s age, seems to have been studiously overlooked

by all his biographers. If we can fix with probability the date at which

these Eclogues were published, then this, one of the most regretted of the

lacunæ in his biography, will be supplied. We shall feel henceforth

treading on firmer ground in dealing with the scanty materials of his life.

 

From the length and favour with which the praises of the Ely Cathedral and

of Alcock its pious and munificent bishop, then but recently dead, are sung

in these poems (see p. lxviii.), it is evident that the poet must have

donned the black hood in the monastery of Ely for at least a few years.

 

Warton fixes the date at 1514, because of the praises of the “noble Henry

which now departed late,” and the after panegyric of his successor Henry

VIII. (Eclogue I.), whose virtues are also duly recorded in the Ship of

Fools (I. 39 and II. 205-8), but not otherwise of course than in a

complimentary manner. Our later lights make this picture of the noble pair

appear both out of drawing and over-coloured:—

 

“Beside noble Henry which nowe departed late,

Spectacle of vertue to euery hye estate,

The patrone of peace and primate of prudence,

Which on Gods Church hath done so great expence.

Of all these princes the mercy and pitie,

The loue of concorde, iustice and equitie,

The purenes of life and giftes liberall,

Not lesse vertuous then the said princes all.

And Henry the eyght moste hye and triumphant,

No gifte of vertue nor manlines doth want,

Mine humble spech and language pastorall

If it were able should write his actes all:

But while I ought speake of courtly misery,

Him with all suche I except vtterly.

But what other princes commonly frequent,

As true as I can to shewe is mine intent,

But if I should say that all the misery,

Which I shall after rehearse and specify

Were in the court of our moste noble kinge,

I should fayle truth, and playnly make leasing.”—ECLOGUE I.

 

This eulogy of Henry plainly implies some short experience of his reign.

But other allusions contribute more definitely to fix the precise date,

such as the following historical passage, which evidently refers to the

career of the notorious extortioners, Empson and Dudley, who were executed

for conspiracy and treason in the first year of the new king’s reign.

 

“Such as for honour unto the court resort,

Looke seldome times upon the lower sort;

To the hyer sort for moste part they intende,

For still their desire is hyer to ascende

And when none can make with them comparison,

Against their princes conspire they by treason,

Then when their purpose can nat come well to frame,

Agayne they descende and that with utter shame,

Coridon thou knowest right well what I meane,

We lately of this experience haue seene

When men would ascende to rowmes honorable

Euer is their minde and lust insaciable.”

 

The most definite proof of the date of publication, however, is found in

the fourth Eclogue. It contains a long poem called The towre of vertue and

honour, which is really a highly-wrought elegy on the premature and

glorious death, not of “the Duke of Norfolk, Lord High admiral, and one of

Barclay’s patrons,” as has been repeated parrot-like, from Warton

downwards, but of his chivalrous son, Sir Edward Howard, Lord High Admiral

for the short space of a few months, who perished in his gallant, if

reckless, attack upon the French fleet in the harbour of Brest in the year

1513. It is incomprehensible that the date of the publication of the

Eclogues should be fixed at 1514, and this blunder still perpetuated. No

Duke of Norfolk died between Barclay’s boyhood and 1524, ten years after

the agreed upon date of the Elegy; and the Duke (Thomas), who was Barclay’s

patron, never held the position of Lord High Admiral (though his son Lord

Thomas, created Earl of Surrey in 1514, and who afterwards succeeded him,

also succeeded his brother Sir Edward in the Admiralship), but worthily

enjoyed the dignified offices of Lord High Steward, Lord Treasurer, and

Earl Marshal, and died one of Henry’s most respected and most popular

Ministers, at his country seat, at a good old age, in the year above

mentioned, 1524. The other allusions to contemporary events, and especially

to the poet’s age, preclude the idea of carrying forward the publication to

the latter date, did the clearly defined points of the Elegy allow of it,

as they do not.

 

Minalcas, one of the interlocutors, thus introduces the subject:—

 

“But it is lamentable

To heare a Captayne so good and honorable,

So soone withdrawen by deathes crueltie,

Before his vertue was at moste hye degree.

If death for a season had shewed him fauour,

To all his nation he should haue bene honour.”

 

“‘The Towre of Vertue and Honor,’ introduced as a song of one of the

shepherds into these pastorals, exhibits no very masterly strokes of a

sublime and inventive fancy. It has much of the trite imagery usually

applied in the fabrication of these ideal edifices. It, however, shows our

author in a new walk of poetry. This magnificent tower, or castle is built

on inaccessible cliffs of flint: the walls are of gold, bright as the sun,

and decorated with ‘olde historyes and pictures manyfolde:’ the turrets are

beautifully shaped. Among its heroic inhabitants are Henry VIII., [‘in his

maiestie moste hye enhaunsed as ought a conquerour,’ no doubt an allusion

to the battle of the Spurs and his other exploits in France in 1513],

Howard Duke of Norfolk, [‘the floure of chiualry’], and the Earl of

Shrewsbury, [‘manfull and hardy, with other princes and men of dignitie’].

Labour is the porter at the gate, and Virtue governs the house. Labour is

thus pictured, with some degree of spirit:—

 

‘Fearefull is labour without fauour at all,

Dreadfull of visage, a monster intreatable,

Like Cerberus lying at gates infernall;

To some men his looke is halfe intollerable,

His shoulders large, for burthen strong and able,

His body bristled, his necke mightie and stiffe;

By sturdy senewes, his ioyntes stronge and stable,

Like marble stones his handes be as stiffe.

 

Here must man vanquishe the dragon of Cadmus,

Against the Chimer here stoutly must he fight,

Here must he vanquish the fearefull Pegasus,

For the golden flece here must he shewe his might:

If labour gaynsay, he can nothing be right,

This monster labour oft chaungeth his figure,

Sometime an oxe, a bore, or lion wight,

Playnely he seemeth, thus chaungeth his nature,

 

Like as Protheus ofte chaunged his stature.

… … .

Under his browes he dreadfully doth loure,

With glistering eyen, and side dependaunt beard,

For thirst and hunger alway his chere is soure.

His horned forehead doth make faynt heartes feard.

 

Alway he drinketh, and yet alway is drye,

The sweat distilling with droppes aboundaunt,’

… … .

 

“The poet adds, ‘that when the noble Howard had long boldly contended with

this hideous monster, had broken the bars and doors of the castle, had

bound the porter, and was now preparing to ascend the tower of Virtue and

Honour, Fortune and Death appeared, and interrupted his progress.’”

(Warton, Eng. Poetry, III.)

 

The hero’s descent and knightly qualities are duly set forth:—

 

“Though he were borne to glory and honour,

Of auncient stocke and noble progenie,

Yet thought his courage to be of more valour,

By his owne actes and noble chiualry.

Like as becommeth a knight to fortifye

His princes quarell with right and equitie,

So did this Hawarde with courage valiauntly,

Till death abated his bolde audacitie.”

 

The poet, gives “cursed fortune” a severe rating, and at such length that

the old lady no doubt repented herself, for cutting off so promising a hero

at so early an age:—

 

“Tell me, frayle fortune, why did thou breuiate

The liuing season of suche a captayne,

That when his actes ought to be laureate

Thy fauour turned him suffring to be slayne?”

 

And then he addresses the Duke himself in a consolatory strain,

endeavouring to reconcile him to the loss of so promising a son, by

recalling to his memory those heroes of antiquity whose careers of glory

were cut short by sudden and violent deaths:—

 

“But moste worthy duke hye and victorious,

Respire to comfort, see the vncertentie

Of other princes, whose fortune prosperous

Oftetime haue ended in hard aduersitie:

Read of Pompeius,” [&c.]

… …

“This shall be, this is, and this hath euer bene,

That boldest heartes be nearest ieopardie,

To dye in battayle is honour as men wene

To suche as haue ioy in haunting chiualry.

 

“Suche famous ending the name doth magnifie,

Note worthy duke, no cause is to complayne,

His life not ended foule nor dishonestly,

In bed nor tauerne his lustes to maynteyne,

But like as besemed a noble captayne,

In sturdie harnes he died for the right,

From deathes daunger no man may flee certayne,

But suche death is metest vnto so noble a knight.

 

“But death it to call me thinke it vnright,

Sith his worthy name shall laste perpetuall,” [&c.]

 

This detail and these long quotations have been rendered necessary by the

strange blunder which has been made and perpetuated as to the identity of

the young hero whose death is so feelingly lamented in this elegy. With

that now clearly ascertained, we can not only fix with confidence the date

of the publication of the Eclogues, but by aid of the hint conveyed in the

Prologue, quoted above (p. lv.), as to the author’s age, “fortie saue

twayne,” decide, for the first time, the duration of his life, and the

dates, approximately at least, of its incidents, and of the appearance of

his undated works. Lord Edward Howard, perhaps the bravest and rashest of

England’s admirals, perished in a madly daring attack upon the harbour of

Brest, on the 25th of April, 1514. As the eclogues could not therefore have

been published prior to that date, so, bearing in mind the other allusions

referred to above, they could scarcely have appeared later. Indeed, the

loss which the elegy commemorates is spoken of as quite recent, while the

elegy itself bears every appearance of having been introduced into the

eclogue at the last moment. We feel quite satisfied therefore that Warton

hit quite correctly upon the year 1514 as that in which these poems first

saw the light, though the ground (the allusion to the Henries) upon which

he went was insufficient, and his identification of the hero of the elegy

contradicted his supposition. Had he been aware of the importance of fixing

the date correctly, he would probably have taken more care than to fall

into the blunder of confounding the father with the son, and adorning the

former with the dearly earned laurels of the latter.

 

It may be added that, fixing 1514 as the date at which Barclay had arrived

at the age of 38, agrees perfectly with all else we know of his years, with

the assumed date of his academical education, and of his travels abroad,

with the suppositions formed as to his age from his various published works

having dates attached to them, and finally, with the traditional “great

age” at which he died, which would thus be six years beyond the allotted

span.

 

After the Ship of Fools the Eclogues rank second in importance in a

consideration of Barclay’s writings. Not only as the first of their kind in

English, do they crown their author with the honour of introducing this

kind of poetry to