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<h2> THE MUTABILITY OF LITERATURE. </h2>
<h3> A COLLOQUY IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY. </h3>
<p>I know that all beneath the moon decays,<br/>
And what by mortals in this world is brought,<br/>
In time's great periods shall return to nought.<br/>
I know that all the muses' heavenly rays,<br/>
With toil of sprite which are so dearly bought,<br/>
As idle sounds, of few or none are sought—<br/>
That there is nothing lighter than mere praise.<br/>
DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN.<br/></p>
<p>THERE are certain half-dreaming moods of mind in which we naturally steal
away from noise and glare, and seek some quiet haunt where we may indulge
our reveries and build our air castles undisturbed. In such a mood I was
loitering about the old gray cloisters of Westminster Abbey, enjoying that
luxury of wandering thought which one is apt to dignify with the name of
reflection, when suddenly an irruption of madcap boys from Westminster
school, playing at football, broke in upon the monastic stillness of the
place, making the vaulted passages and mouldering tombs echo with their
merriment. I sought to take refuge from their noise by penetrating still
deeper into the solitudes of the pile, and applied to one of the vergers
for admission to the library. He conducted me through a portal rich with
the crumbling sculpture of former ages, which opened upon a gloomy passage
leading to the chapter-house and the chamber in which Doomsday Book is
deposited. Just within the passage is a small door on the left. To this
the verger applied a key; it was double locked, and opened with some
difficulty, as if seldom used. We now ascended a dark narrow staircase,
and, passing through a second door, entered the library.</p>
<p>I found myself in a lofty antique hall, the roof supported by massive
joists of old English oak. It was soberly lighted by a row of Gothic
windows at a considerable height from the floor, and which apparently
opened upon the roofs of the cloisters. An ancient picture of some
reverend dignitary of the Church in his robes hung over the fireplace.
Around the hall and in a small gallery were the books, arranged in carved
oaken cases. They consisted principally of old polemical writers, and were
much more worn by time than use. In the centre of the library was a
solitary table with two or three books on it, an inkstand without ink, and
a few pens parched by long disuse. The place seemed fitted for quiet study
and profound meditation. It was buried deep among the massive walls of the
abbey and shut up from the tumult of the world. I could only hear now and
then the shouts of the school-boys faintly swelling from the cloisters,
and the sound of a bell tolling for prayers echoing soberly along the
roofs of the abbey. By degrees the shouts of merriment grew fainter and
fainter, and at length died away; the bell ceased to toll, and a profound
silence reigned through the dusky hall.</p>
<p>I had taken down a little thick quarto, curiously bound in parchment, with
brass clasps, and seated myself at the table in a venerable elbow-chair.
Instead of reading, however, I was beguiled by the solemn monastic air and
lifeless quiet of the place, into a train of musing. As I looked around
upon the old volumes in their mouldering covers, thus ranged on the
shelves and apparently never disturbed in their repose, I could not but
consider the library a kind of literary catacomb, where authors, like
mummies, are piously entombed and left to blacken and moulder in dusty
oblivion.</p>
<p>How much, thought I, has each of these volumes, now thrust aside with such
indifference, cost some aching head! how many weary days! how many
sleepless nights! How have their authors buried themselves in the solitude
of cells and cloisters, shut themselves up from the face of man, and the
still more blessed face of Nature; and devoted themselves to painful
research and intense reflection! And all for what? To occupy an inch of
dusty shelf—to have the titles of their works read now and then in a
future age by some drowsy churchman or casual straggler like myself, and
in another age to be lost even to remembrance. Such is the amount of this
boasted immortality. A mere temporary rumor, a local sound; like the tone
of that bell which has tolled among these towers, filling the ear for a
moment, lingering transiently in echo, and then passing away, like a thing
that was not!</p>
<p>While I sat half-murmuring, half-meditating, these unprofitable
speculations with my head resting on my hand, I was thrumming with the
other hand upon the quarto, until I accidentally loosened the clasps;
when, to my utter astonishment, the little book gave two or three yawns,
like one awaking from a deep sleep, then a husky hem, and at length began
to talk. At first its voice was very hoarse and broken, being much
troubled by a cobweb which some studious spider had woven across it, and
having probably contracted a cold from long exposure to the chills and
damps of the abbey. In a short time, however, it became more distinct, and
I soon found it an exceedingly fluent, conversable little tome. Its
language, to be sure, was rather quaint and obsolete, and its
pronunciation what, in the present day, would be deemed barbarous; but I
shall endeavor, as far as I am able, to render it in modern parlance.</p>
<p>It began with railings about the neglect of the world, about merit being
suffered to languish in obscurity, and other such commonplace topics of
literary repining, and complained bitterly that it had not been opened for
more than two centuries—that the dean only looked now and then into
the library, sometimes took down a volume or two, trifled with them for a
few moments, and then returned them to their shelves. "What a plague do
they mean?" said the little quarto, which I began to perceive was somewhat
choleric—"what a plague do they mean by keeping several thousand
volumes of us shut up here, and watched by a set of old vergers, like so
many beauties in a harem, merely to be looked at now and then by the dean?
Books were written to give pleasure and to be enjoyed; and I would have a
rule passed that the dean should pay each of us a visit at least once a
year; or, if he is not equal to the task, let them once in a while turn
loose the whole school of Westminster among us, that at any rate we may
now and then have an airing."</p>
<p>"Softly, my worthy friend," replied I; "you are not aware how much better
you are off than most books of your generation. By being stored away in
this ancient library you are like the treasured remains of those saints
and monarchs which lie enshrined in the adjoining chapels, while the
remains of their contemporary mortals, left to the ordinary course of
Nature, have long since returned to dust."</p>
<p>"Sir," said the little tome, ruffling his leaves and looking big, "I was
written for all the world, not for the bookworms of an abbey. I was
intended to circulate from hand to hand, like other great contemporary
works; but here have I been clasped up for more than two centuries, and
might have silently fallen a prey to these worms that are playing the very
vengeance with my intestines if you had not by chance given me an
opportunity of uttering a few last words before I go to pieces."</p>
<p>"My good friend," rejoined I, "had you been left to the circulation of
which you speak, you would long ere this have been no more. To judge from
your physiognomy, you are now well stricken in years: very few of your
contemporaries can be at present in existence, and those few owe their
longevity to being immured like yourself in old libraries; which, suffer
me to add, instead of likening to harems, you might more properly and
gratefully have compared to those infirmaries attached to religious
establishments for the benefit of the old and decrepit, and where, by
quiet fostering and no employment, they often endure to an amazingly
good-for-nothing old age. You talk of your contemporaries as if in
circulation. Where do we meet with their works? What do we hear of Robert
Grosteste of Lincoln? No one could have toiled harder than he for
immortality. He is said to have written nearly two hundred volumes. He
built, as it were, a pyramid of books to perpetuate his name: but, alas!
the pyramid has long since fallen, and only a few fragments are scattered
in various libraries, where they are scarcely disturbed even by the
antiquarian. What do we hear of Giraldus Cambrensis, the historian,
antiquary, philosopher, theologian, and poet? He declined two bishoprics
that he might shut himself up and write for posterity; but posterity never
inquires after his labors. What of Henry of Huntingdon, who, besides a
learned history of England, wrote a treatise on the contempt of the world,
which the world has revenged by forgetting him? What is quoted of Joseph
of Exeter, styled the miracle of his age in classical composition? Of his
three great heroic poems, one is lost forever, excepting a mere fragment;
the others are known only to a few of the curious in literature; and as to
his love verses and epigrams, they have entirely disappeared. What is in
current use of John Wallis the Franciscan, who acquired the name of the
tree of life? Of William of Malmsbury—of Simeon of Durham—of
Benedict of Peterborough—of John Hanvill of St. Albans—of——"</p>
<p>"Prithee, friend," cried the quarto in a testy tone, "how old do you think
me? You are talking of authors that lived long before my time, and wrote
either in Latin or French, so that they in a manner expatriated
themselves, and deserved to be forgotten;* but I, sir, was ushered into
the world from the press of the renowned Wynkyn de Worde. I was written in
my own native tongue, at a time when the language had become fixed; and
indeed I was considered a model of pure and elegant English."</p>
<p>(I should observe that these remarks were couched in such intolerably
antiquated terms, that I have had infinite difficulty in rendering them
into modern phraseology.)</p>
<p>"I cry you mercy," said I, "for mistaking your age; but it matters little.
Almost all the writers of your time have likewise passed into
forgetfulness, and De Worde's publications are mere literary rarities
among book-collectors. The purity and stability of language, too, on which
you found your claims to perpetuity, have been the fallacious dependence
of authors of every age, even back to the times of the worthy Robert of
Gloucester, who wrote his history in rhymes of mongrel Saxon.+ Even now
many talk of Spenser's 'well of pure English undefiled,' as if the
language ever sprang from a well or fountain-head, and was not rather a
mere confluence of various tongues perpetually subject to changes and
intermixtures. It is this which has made English literature so extremely
mutable, and the reputation built upon it so fleeting. Unless thought can
be committed to something more permanent and unchangeable than such a
medium, even thought must share the fate of everything else, and fall into
decay. This should serve as a check upon the vanity and exultation of the
most popular writer. He finds the language in which he has embarked his
fame gradually altering and subject to the dilapidations of time and the
caprice of fashion. He looks back and beholds the early authors of his
country, once the favorites of their day, supplanted by modern writers. A
few short ages have covered them with obscurity, and their merits can only
be relished by the quaint taste of the bookworm. And such, he anticipates,
will be the fate of his own work, which, however it may be admired in its
day and held up as a model of purity, will in the course of years grow
antiquated and obsolete, until it shall become almost as unintelligible in
its native land as an Egyptian obelisk or one of those Runic inscriptions
said to exist in the deserts of Tartary." "I declare," added I, with some
emotion, "when I contemplate a modern library, filled with new works in
all the bravery of rich gilding and binding, I feel disposed to sit down
and weep, like the good Xerxes, when he surveyed his army, pranked out in
all the splendor of military array, and reflected that in one hundred
years not one of them would be in existence."</p>
<p>* "In Latin and French hath many soueraine wittes had great<br/>
delyte to endite, and have many noble thinges fulfilde, but<br/>
certes there ben some that speaken their poisye in French,<br/>
of which speche the Frenchmen have as good a fantasye as w<br/>
ave in hearying of Frenchmen's Englishe."—CHAUCER'S<br/>
Testament of Love.<br/>
<br/>
+ Holinshed in his Chronicle, observes, "Afterwards, also,<br/>
by diligent vell f Geffry Chaucer and John Gowre, in the<br/>
time of Richard the Second, and after them of John Scogan<br/>
and John Lydgate, monke of Berrie, our said toong was<br/>
brought to an excellent passe, notwithstanding that it never<br/>
came unto the type of perfection until the time of Queen<br/>
Elizabeth, wherein John Jewell, Bishop of Sarum, John Fox,<br/>
and sundrie learned and excellent writers, have fully<br/>
accomplished the ornature of the same to their great praise<br/>
and mortal commendation."<br/></p>
<p>"Ah," said the little quarto, with a heavy sigh, "I see how it is: these
in modern scribblers have superseded all the good old authors. I suppose
nothing is read nowadays but Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, Sackville's
stately plays and Mirror for Magistrates, or the fine-spun euphuisms of
the 'unparalleled John Lyly.'"</p>
<p>"There you are again mistaken," said I; "the writers whom you suppose in
vogue, because they happened to be so when you were last in circulation,
have long since had their day. Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, the
immortality of which was so fondly predicted by his admirers,* and which,
in truth, was full of noble thoughts, delicate images, and graceful turns
of language, is now scarcely ever mentioned. Sackville has strutted into
obscurity; and even Lyly, though his writings were once the delight of a
court, and apparently perpetuated by a proverb, is now scarcely known even
by name. A whole crowd of authors who wrote and wrangled at the time, have
likewise gone down with all their writings and their controversies. Wave
after wave of succeeding literature has rolled over them, until they are
buried so deep, that it is only now and then that some industrious diver
after fragments of antiquity brings up a specimen for the gratification of
the curious.</p>
<p>* "Live ever sweete booke; the simple image of his gentle<br/>
witt, and the golden pillar of his noble courage; and ever<br/>
notify unto the world that thy writer was the secretary of<br/>
eloquence, the breath of the muses, the honey bee of the<br/>
daintyest flowers of witt and arte, the pith of morale and<br/>
intellectual virtues, the arme of Bellona in the field, the<br/>
tongue of Suada in the chamber, the spirits of Practise in<br/>
esse, and the paragon of excellence in print."—Harvey<br/>
Pierce's Supererogation.<br/></p>
<p>"For my part," I continued, "I consider this mutability of language a wise
precaution of Providence for the benefit of the world at large, and of
authors in particular. To reason from analogy, we daily behold the varied
and beautiful tribes of vegetables springing up, flourishing, adorning the
fields for a short time, and then fading into dust, to make way for their
successors. Were not this the case, the fecundity of nature would be a
grievance instead of a blessing. The earth would groan with rank and
excessive vegetation, and its surface become a tangled wilderness. In like
manner, the works of genius and learning decline and make way for
subsequent productions. Language gradually varies, and with it fade away
the writings of authors who have flourished their allotted time; otherwise
the creative powers of genius would overstock the world, and the mind
would be completely bewildered in the endless mazes of literature.
Formerly there were some restraints on this excessive multiplication.
Works had to be transcribed by hand, which was a slow and laborious
operation; they were written either on parchment, which was expensive, so
that one work was often erased to make way for another; or on papyrus,
which was fragile and extremely perishable. Authorship was a limited and
unprofitable craft, pursued chiefly by monks in the leisure and solitude
of their cloisters. The accumulation of manuscripts was slow and costly,
and confined almost entirely to monasteries. To these circumstances it
may, in some measure, be owing that we have not been inundated by the
intellect of antiquity—that the fountains of thought have not been
broken up, and modern genius drowned in the deluge. But the inventions of
paper and the press have put an end to all these restraints. They have
made every one a writer, and enabled every mind to pour itself into print,
and diffuse itself over the whole intellectual world. The consequences are
alarming. The stream of literature has swollen into a torrent—augmented
into a river-expanded into a sea. A few centuries since five or six
hundred manuscripts constituted a great library; but what would you say to
libraries, such as actually exist, containing three or four hundred
thousand volumes; legions of authors at the same time busy; and the press
going on with fearfully increasing activity, to double and quadruple the
number? Unless some unforeseen mortality should break out among the
progeny of the Muse, now that she has become so prolific, I tremble for
posterity. I fear the mere fluctuation of language will not be sufficient.
Criticism may do much; it increases with the increase of literature, and
resembles one of those salutary checks on population spoken of by
economists. All possible encouragement, therefore, should be given to the
growth of critics, good or bad. But I fear all will be in vain; let
criticism do what it may, writers will write, printers will print, and the
world will inevitably be overstocked with good books. It will soon be the
employment of a lifetime merely to learn their names. Many a man of
passable information at the present day reads scarcely anything but
reviews, and before long a man of erudition will be little better than a
mere walking catalogue."</p>
<p>"My very good sir," said the little quarto, yawning most drearily in my
face, "excuse my interrupting you, but I perceive you are rather given to
prose. I would ask the fate of an author who was making some noise just as
I left the world. His reputation, however, was considered quite temporary.
The learned shook their heads at him, for he was a poor, half-educated
varlet, that knew little of Latin, and nothing of Greek, and had been
obliged to run the country for deer-stealing. I think his name was
Shakespeare. I presume he soon sunk into oblivion."</p>
<p>"On the contrary," said I, "it is owing to that very man that the
literature of his period has experienced a duration beyond the ordinary
term of English literature. There rise authors now and then who seem proof
against the mutability of language because they have rooted themselves in
the unchanging principles of human nature. They are like gigantic trees
that we sometimes see on the banks of a stream, which by their vast and
deep roots, penetrating through the mere surface and laying hold on the
very foundations of the earth, preserve the soil around them from being
swept away by the ever-flowing current, and hold up many a neighboring
plant, and perhaps worthless weed, to perpetuity. Such is the case with
Shakespeare, whom we behold defying the encroachments of time, retaining
in modern use the language and literature of his day, and giving duration
to many an indifferent author, merely from having flourished in his
vicinity. But even he, I grieve to say, is gradually assuming the tint of
age, and his whole form is overrun by a profusion of commentators, who,
like clambering vines and creepers, almost bury the noble plant that
upholds them."</p>
<p>Here the little quarto began to heave his sides and chuckle, until at
length he broke out into a plethoric fit of laughter that had wellnigh
choked him by reason of his excessive corpulency. "Mighty well!" cried he,
as soon as he could recover breath, "mighty well! and so you would
persuade me that the literature of an age is to be perpetuated by a
vagabond deer-stealer! by a man without learning! by a poet! forsooth—a
poet!" And here he wheezed forth another fit of laughter.</p>
<p>I confess that I felt somewhat nettled at this rudeness, which, however, I
pardoned on account of his having flourished in a less polished age. I
determined, nevertheless, not to give up my point.</p>
<p>"Yes," resumed I positively, "a poet; for of all writers he has the best
chance for immortality. Others may write from the head, but he writes from
the heart, and the heart will always understand him. He is the faithful
portrayer of Nature, whose features are always the same and always
interesting. Prose writers are voluminous and unwieldy; their pages
crowded with commonplaces, and their thoughts expanded into tediousness.
But with the true poet every thing is terse, touching, or brilliant. He
gives the choicest thoughts in the choicest language. He illustrates them
by everything that he sees most striking in nature and art. He enriches
them by pictures of human life, such as it is passing before him. His
writings, therefore, contain the spirit, the aroma, if I may use the
phrase, of the age in which he lives. They are caskets which inclose
within a small compass the wealth of the language—its family jewels,
which are thus transmitted in a portable form to posterity. The setting
may occasionally be antiquated, and require now and then to be renewed, as
in the case of Chaucer; but the brilliancy and intrinsic value of the gems
continue unaltered. Cast a look back over the long reach of literary
history. What vast valleys of dulness, filled with monkish legends and
academical controversies! What bogs of theological speculations! What
dreary wastes of metaphysics! Here and there only do we behold the
heaven-illumined bards, elevated like beacons on their widely-separated
heights, to transmit the pure light of poetical intelligence from age to
age."*</p>
<p>I was just about to launch forth into eulogiums upon the poets of the day
when the sudden opening of the door caused me to turn my head. It was the
verger, who came to inform me that it was time to close the library. I
sought to have a parting word with the quarto, but the worthy little tome
was silent; the clasps were closed: and it looked perfectly unconscious of
all that had passed. I have been to the library two or three times since,
and have endeavored to draw it into further conversation, but in vain; and
whether all this rambling colloquy actually took place, or whether it was
another of those old day-dreams to which I am subject, I have never, to
this moment, been able to discover.</p>
<p>* Thorow earth and waters deepe,<br/>
The pen by skill doth passe:<br/>
And featly nyps the worldes abuse,<br/>
And shoes us in a glasse,<br/>
The vertu and the vice<br/>
Of every wight alyve;<br/>
The honey comb that bee doth make<br/>
Is not so sweet in hyve,<br/>
As are the golden leves<br/>
That drops from poet's head!<br/>
Which doth surmount our common talke<br/>
As farre as dross doth lead.<br/>
Churchyard.<br/></p>
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